Roughly ten minutes after Diluc left the scene, several NYPD patrol cars swarmed the area.
Blinding police lights flashed, and piercing sirens tore through the night sky.
Officer Jefferson, the first to arrive, had barely stepped out of his cruiser when the pungent stench of charred flesh hit him.
He immediately keyed the radio on his shoulder.
“Dispatch, we have evidence of a massive fire at the scene.
Requesting FDNY support.
Also, notify the National Response Center to evaluate for potential hazardous chemical risks.”
It didn’t take long for the fire engines and Hazmat teams to arrive.
Over a dozen 97,000-lumen searchlights illuminated the entire factory grounds, turning the pitch-black night into day.
But as the officers pushed deeper into the site, the horrifying scene before them froze them in their tracks.
Scattered across the scorched earth were several severely carbonized, humanoid remains.
Their skeletal structures were grotesquely twisted, and parts of their bodies were unnaturally shriveled, as if every single drop of fluid had been instantly vaporized by extreme heat.
“Oh my god…
what is this?” A firefighter crouched down, sweeping a radiation detector over the remains.
His brows were knit in deep concentration until he read the meter, letting out a heavy sigh of relief.
“Phew—we’re clear!
No residual radiation.
But these burn marks…
they definitely don’t match standard explosion patterns.”
Hearing this, the police captain pulled out his phone and dialed a number.
“Headquarters,” he said, his voice grim.
“This is the abandoned Brooklyn industrial park scene.
We need an FBI specialized task force down here ASAP.
The situation we’re looking at is way beyond a standard arson case.”
Meanwhile, NYPD officers were rapidly stringing up fluorescent yellow police tape, using bullhorns to disperse the gathering crowd.
“Step back!
This area is highly dangerous!
Do not loiter, keep moving!”
But human morbid curiosity always trumps the fear of danger.
Even knowing the risks, nearby residents gathered in small clusters just outside the tape, holding up their phones to record.
Hushed, excited murmurs rippled through the crowd.
“I heard they blew up some human bones!
I just saw what the firefighters carried out, and that thing definitely didn’t look human…” “You’re full of it!
Everything was covered in tarps, you couldn’t see a damn thing!”
A technician in a Hazmat suit hurried past, a grave expression hidden beneath his visor.
An NRC-7 badge was plastered to his chest.
He gripped a portable radiation detector, his brow furrowing at the rapidly jumping numbers on the screen.
By now, a six-man Hazmat team, fully suited in Level A encapsulated gear, breached the core of the scene under the leadership of Team Captain Mark Redfield.
The moment they crossed the perimeter into the scorched zone, sharp gasps echoed simultaneously across their comms channel.
“Jesus Christ…” one of the team members muttered.
The ground at the epicenter of the blast was cracked in a massive radial pattern, the concrete perfectly vitrified into glass.
Seven or eight carbonized carcasses were scattered around the perimeter.
The most horrifying part was that while the remains vaguely resembled human skeletons, the limb proportions were grotesquely abnormal!
Their tibias were far too long, the ends of their phalanges featured hook-like protrusions, and the mandibles on several skulls were split into a four-petaled structure!
Every single detail screamed one undeniable truth: these things were not human!
In fact, they didn’t match any known biological species on Earth.
“Sampling team, prioritize biological tissue.
Make sure to log the radiation levels of every single specimen.” Redfield crouched down, carefully using titanium forceps to pick up a charred fragment of bone.
“Oh my god!” Aisha, one of the team members, suddenly cried out from the base of a corrugated iron wall twenty meters away.
“Captain!
We’ve got a relatively intact one over here!”
The team instantly rushed over.
Following Aisha’s gaze, they found a bluish-gray torso, missing both its head and feet, lying face-up in the rubble.
Its chest cavity had been pierced clean through by a massive bladed weapon, the edges of the wound completely crystallized by heat.
The skin was covered in a thick, fish-scale-like cuticle layer.
But the most terrifying part was that its abdomen was still faintly twitching!
“Is it still alive?!” Repulsed by the sickening sight, Aisha stumbled half a step back.
“No, it’s likely just residual nerve reflexes.” Pressing his comms button, Redfield ordered, “Command Center, requesting immediate dispatch of a Bio-Containment Team, Code Alpha-Niner.
We need vacuum-sealed stretchers and liquid nitrogen cryo-pods down here now.”
Three hours later, inside a hastily erected testing tent, Redfield pulled off his Hazmat hood and handed a tablet to the NYPD field commander.
“Here are the initial readings:
No traditional explosive residue found.
TNT and RDX are negative.
No signs of a hazardous chemical leak.
VOC is under 0.1 ppm.
Detected an unknown energy radiation.
Radiation intensity at fifteen meters from the epicenter is 450 microsieverts per hour, roughly equivalent to a standard CT scan.”
“This wasn’t a standard industrial accident,” Redfield continued, pointing at the concentric ripples on the thermal imaging map.
“The energy release was highly directional.
The temperature at the epicenter exceeded a thousand degrees Celsius, but just five meters away, it abruptly plummeted back to room temperature…
Dammit!
It completely defies the laws of thermodynamics.”
The commander’s face turned grim.
“Then what is your recommendation?”
“Maintain a 200-meter quarantine radius for at least forty-eight hours.
We hold the perimeter until the CDC and Homeland Security’s Special Biological Hazard Team (SBHT) take over…” As he spoke, Redfield’s gaze drifted toward the still-twitching containment pod.
Meanwhile, standing quietly in the shadows of an alley fifty meters past the police tape, a tall silhouette observed the scene.
Moonlight glinted off the silver hilt of his sword.
Behind dark sunglasses, his eyes swept over the bustling officers—or more accurately, the corpses they were hauling out.
As the containment team wheeled the sealed pod past, his nostrils flared slightly.
Even through the heavy layers of lead shielding, he could still smell that familiar, putrid stench of rotting blood.
‘Someone else is hunting vampires?
Other than me?’ Blade—Eric Brooks—murmured softly to himself.
After a moment of thought, he pulled out his custom-encrypted phone and dialed a number.
“Whistler, do some digging for me.
Are there any newly emerged vampire hunters operating in New York?”
Snapping the phone shut, he turned and disappeared down the alley, his black leather trench coat snapping in the night wind.
Not far away, atop the roof of a high-rise building, Diluc’s red coat billowed in the night air.
He stood by the steel guardrail, his crimson eyes gazing down at the flashing police lights and the chaotic swarm of activity below.
The white suits of the Hazmat team were incredibly striking under the searchlights, and he watched as the Reaper carcass, now sealed inside the containment pod, was carefully loaded onto a specialized transport truck.
His gaze shifted slightly, landing on the tall silhouette lingering at the mouth of the distant alley.
The sunglasses, the black leather coat, the silver straight sword strapped to his back.
“Blade…” Diluc murmured.
As if sensing something, the man below abruptly paused.
He tilted his head slightly, his gaze piercing through the darkness and aiming directly at the rooftop.
But Diluc had already melted seamlessly into the night, leaving behind nothing but a single, fleeting ember dancing in the wind.
Blade stood in silence for a moment before finally turning away, his footsteps quickly swallowed by the city’s ambient hum.
Up on the roof, the space was entirely empty.
The only movement was the night breeze picking up a charred scrap of paper, carrying it gently up into the neon-lit New York sky.