FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Well, information is the key to breaking any case. Sure, a spree-serial is likely to strike at any time, and one as prolific as this is not going to keep to our schedule, but still the adage holds up.

I start sending out commands and requests for information through the net. Someone hands me a portable console and a fresh cup of 'caff, and off we go. It's not as exciting as the pitcs will have you believe. We're not always diving out of moving cars or getting into monorail-top brawls. Most enforcer work is done by delegation to an army of clerks, pic-watchers and other lower positions. Then we have to add up whatever they gather for us and put it together.

Within half an hour a more formal picture of events has been brought to me. It runs thus;

The killer appears to have battered his way through several locked service tunnels, leaving numerous metal shavings but no organics. They beat open the access grate to the street, sending it flying. This attracted the victim, leading to the murder.

The preliminary autopsy is back. Barring a few minor parts all the body is there. The appearance of being eaten was given by the choice organs being pulped by heavy blows or ground apart. That's...interesting. No organic traces were found in the wounds either; just more metal. The mortician jokes that it might be an ursine. That might have got a laugh around the lab, but only credulous fools believe in the hairy, mountain and forest haunting creatures. I dismiss the comment and focus on the facts.

Info cams in the area have been scoured, and the results sent to me, tagged 'unusual' and 'high interest'. I open the file. The pict clarity is pretty good, speaking of a high-end model. I look around and see the cam I am sure the footage came from. Orienting myself between it and the crime scene I line up the frozen picture and hit play.

Unusual does not even begin to cover it. The killer is...blurred. Some sort of stealth suit or newtech for foiling info cams? In either case they are BIG. Equine big. Bovine big. The camera tries to track and refocus on the blurry mass as it stomps towards a terrified looking lapine. The male tries to bring his arms up to protect himself from a blow. I wince as the...whatever...collides with him, hurling his body into a nearby wall. When the thing moves closer it overshadows the victim, meaning it is impossible to get much else from the footage.

I skip to the end. The alley is now a charnel house. The thing stands there, heaving like it is panting. A severed leg falls out of the distortion and it lopes of in long, ground-devouring strides.

The file concludes and I turn to face the way the killer went.

Conclusions, I think. What can I draw?

The killer is big, meaning they are either an equine or bovine. However the body showed none of the characteristic trampling of a clan-ganger, so even if it is an equine they are a trained mercenary or soldier rather than a street-trained killer. The lack of organic traces points to some sort of all-over body suit, possibly strength-boosted to allow for the kind of feats he pulled. The fury and overkill speaks to some derangement, as does the number of bodies in such a short time.

The killings began in the surgical district and lead here. The two most obvious options are;

The killer is a ganger, mercenary or other killer who was horribly damaged in a fight, and was taken to the surgical district for up-gunning or augmenting. During the process something got cross-wired in his head and he went blood-crazy. That will make finding him easier, as even gangers leave traces. That kind of rebuild or resculpt would be easy to trace.

The other option is that this was someone's attempt to build a better bodyguard that went wrong. There is a reason full-body augmetics are expected to attend life-long therapy and include mandatory shut-down controls. That's not going to be easy to trace as that work takes place off the books for noble houses.

In any case, we have a rough direction where the killer went. Once we have him or her under lock and key or on a mortuary slab, I can worry about what happened to them as part of the cleanup.