SCENT

June - The Breathless (5)

Cuthbert put his scarf over his face. It was soaked with some filtering substances, allowing him to breathe in this stench without gagging. I didn't have the luxury. Inhaling deeply I put my attention away from the horrifying odour, concentrating it on the smells hidden behind it.

"He was here," I whispered as soon as we entered the staircase. The gunslinging superhero looked at me with apprehension.

He'd been here.

He hadn't entered through the front door, but he'd definitely used the staircase. I followed the trail up to the door on the first floor.

The victim didn't look as bad as he smelled, but he was still a horrifying sight. He sat in the chair, wrists and ankles cuffed to the legs, his form rigid as though every muscle in his body was clenched. His face was tightened into a terrifying grimace of extreme, mortal effort, the jaw slack, teeth cracked, eyes bugging out of orbits.

"Detective Sun," Hicks greeted me, a tissue pressed to his face. "How can you stand this stench? Aren't your nose supposed to be super-sensitive, or something?"

"I turn my scent away," I explained.

"Say what?"

"You know how you turn your eyes away when you see something unpleasant? I can do the same with my scent. I concentrate it somewhere else, and the worst parts get... I don't know, pushed sideways. To the peripheral vision, so to speak."

"Oh. Makes sense, I guess."

In my experience, humans reacted so badly to smells because they had no control over their sense of scent. They couldn't use it efficiently, but they also couldn't tune out the unpleasant or distracting cues. With our eyes, it worked just fine. With hearing, we could do it to a degree. When it came to odours, humans were hopeless. Paradoxically, my well-developed sense of smell saved me from the worst of it. As long as I kept my concentration, at least.

"Breathless," Hicks croaked. "It's like his superpower is choking people."

I couldn't disagree right now.

"So what happened here?" I pointed at the victim.

"He put an electric wire around his leg and turned it live," Hicks explained. "When we found him, it was still turned on."

"Jesus Christ." I turned my gaze away.

"What is he now, Liam Neeson?" Cuthbert muttered.

"Do we know who the vic is?"

"No idea. No ID, no credit cards, no documents on him. Personal belongings amount to keys, a pen, a pack of tissues and an used metro ticket." So at least we knew where he was prior to this. "It appears he was looted. His pockets were turned inside-out, the possessions were on the floor. He has a mark on his finger, but there's no sign of the ring."

"He's looting the bodies now," Cuthbert noted. "He's desperate."

"He's been for quite some time," I confirmed. "For what we know, he's re-selling the drugs he takes from his vics, too. Those he doesn't take, anyway."

I closed my eyes, following the smell I found earlier through the miasma of the body. As I thought, it was much stronger here. I dove in, digging into the details. Soon, I shuddered. This was wrong. Very wrong.

"Morgan?" I opened my eyes and took a careful step back.

"He didn't come through the front door, but he entered and left through the staircase," I replied, backtracking. "So he had to come and leave through – here."

I opened a door with an emergency exit plate, exposing metal fire stairs. The trail was strong, he obviously went through there. I followed it down, into a back alley filled with trash.