They bagged and sacked his clothes, the contents of his pockets. The scuffed wallet was opened but all of its treasures had already been ransacked: they weren't to know, but its treasures had mainly been a driver's license, some baseball cards, fluff. None of that remained. Not even the handful of loose change, enough pennies to get you a couple cheap pieces of fruit gum at the really old drug stores -- all of it was gone.

There had only been one piece of paper left, and this had been taken out and held up to the light and looked at: it had a phone number, scribbled hastily with a leaky bic pen. A cellphone number, local to Destiny City. They wouldn't have looked it up, except that identification was proving -- difficult. This happened. They had the forensic dentist coming in tomorrow, which would help. But in the meantime they called the number, and waited for it to pick up, and found that the other end contained a terse "Hero Barrett speaking," and that was that.

It would not have progressed past there had the teenage girl not become increasingly agitated. They asked her to wait; they said that they would keep her informed -- and then forty minutes later there was the head of the department who was always way too ******** much into the PR asked them to bring her down into the station anyway. Some little girl who'd done the temper tantrum of DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHO I AM? and gotten her bigshot politician daddy into it.

But she'd been -- not sanguine about the viewing, but. Steady. Yes, this was Jude Lawson. Yes, they should have his records in the hospital, and fingerprints. Yes -- no, she was just a friend. Did she have any idea about where he was last night? No.

When was the last time he contacted you, when was the last time you'd seen him?

She gave all the details, right down to a text message.

Do you know if he was in trouble?

No.

-- Family details. She'd looked at the sheet pulled back as though everything there was blank, was odd. When she was scrawling down an address, she eventually said: "But what about his chest?"

They couldn't really comment on the nature of the wounds. They would be finding out. It was useless to make an assumption right now. They were very sorry.

It was at that point that Hero Barrett realised that only she could read the word carved on Jude Lawson's chest in painstaking spiky writing:

OBSIDIAN


The concept of déjà vu did not apply here. It was jamais vu: of having seen something before, but being as befuddled as though that this was the first time that this had ever happened. Jamais vu: two separate Heroes watched as Jude Lawson lay before them, dead, a little fuzzy as though the two overlays did not match up perfectly. Somebody offered her a cup of tea. She refused.

They sent her home.