Page 14 of Storm Echo

Each and every one of the team appeared exhausted—hardly a surprise, given the waves of horrific insanity that had hit their race over the past weeks, the outbreaks so random that there was no way to prepare for them. Ivan had kept an eye on the news the entire time he’d been on the course, ready to respond with an assist should it be required. But he’d been too far away from this one to help during the event itself.

It was the least he could do to assist with the cleanup.

Because the recovery part of this particular operation was long over. It had been forty-eight hours since the Psy in this settlement lost themselves to the urge to do murderous violence. Many affected by this insidious disease turned on themselves, but others threw their inexplicable rage outward.

Ivan found the woman in charge, volunteered his services. Perhaps the assistance offered by a random Mercant wouldn’t have been accepted at any other time, his family’s reputation for hoarding secrets and unearthing skeletons too strong. But this was no secret. This was just death, and he was a strong man with the capacity to help put bodies in bags and haul them to the morgue trucks.

That the cleanup was still in progress two days after the massacre was an unspoken indicator of resources stretched to the limit. He hadn’t realized it was this bad, or he’d have come much earlier. The entire settlement would’ve been a putrid pit had they not been in the heart of winter. A dusting of white covered the bodies around him, creating silent sculptures unchanged from the moment of death.

A small, furred body, glimpses of black and gold below the white.

Crouching down, he brushed away the snow with a gloved hand, his breath visible puffs in the air. It was extraordinary, how changelings could have such a different mass in their human form as opposed to their animal one. In human form, this small feline had likely been a full-grown adult.

“All ocelot bodies go in that truck,” the mortuary attendant told him, pointing to a truck parked away from the others. “Survivors want to deal with their own dead.”

Ivan nodded, unsurprised by the need of the pack to see to the respectful burial of their lost packmates. “Neighbors caught in the crossfire?”

“Yes, the ocelot pack’s main residential area butts up against this settlement.” The attendant indicated a line of trees on the other side of the wide parklike strip that held the vast majority of the bodies; it had functioned as this small township’s outdoor recreation area. Now it was their temporary grave.

As the attendant knelt down beside another ocelot body, Ivan picked this one up on his own. It was heavier than it looked—another thing that set changelings apart from ordinary animals. Their bodies weren’t built the same.

“No question that the infected Psy attacked their neighbors, and the cats tried to defend themselves,” the attendant added as he made a note on the datapad he was using to track the dead. “Significant number of ocelot casualties.”

“Why haven’t the survivors already retrieved the bodies?” Changelings took care of their own; he’d witnessed that multiple times with the bears in Moscow. No wounded or otherwise incapacitated bear was ever left on their own. The idea of a pack leaving its dead out in the open like this … no, it didn’t sit right.

“Majority of the pack is dead,” was the sobering response. “The others are injured. We offered an assist, but they’re adamant they’ll bury their dead without help.”

Ivan asked no more questions until after he’d put both dead ocelots in the truck with their brethren. Not all the changelings were in their animal form. A number were in human form—but had been identified as ocelot from identification found on their bodies, or from signs of a semi-shift: claws unsheathed, eyes frozen in their other form by death, patches of fur on their skin.

The latter he’d never even heard of, so he had to assume it to be an artefact of severe trauma, a malfunction in the changeling ability to shift. Those found in full human form with no visible sign of changeling status would be identified later, using whatever resources were available. If he had to guess—and with the bodies so well preserved—he’d say the pack would send a survivor to look through the dead.

Changelings didn’t like to share fingerprints or DNA data with the Psy.

That task done, he returned to the attendant who’d been assigned as his partner, and they continued on in their grim work. The other man was able to immediately identify the Psy casualties using a fingerprint or DNA database. Ivan’s family made it a point to keep their information off those databases, but most Psy took the tracking for granted. The same with many humans—not so much on the DNA, but with fingerprints.

When another attendant came to consult with Ivan’s partner, Ivan carried on. He could handle the smaller bodies on his own, and the attendant had paired his device with Ivan’s phone so Ivan could run the IDs.

Despite everything, he still wasn’t ready to see bodies so small he could carry two or three at once.

But of course, children had called this place home, too.

“They’re just as dead,” he told himself, keeping things chillingly pragmatic. That was how he functioned with anyone but Lei, was the reasonhewasn’t insane: a wall of cold sophistication that separated him from the wider world.

He pulled that ice around himself now. He was no use to the dead if he couldn’t do what needed to be done, if he saw in these small bodies a whisper of what might’ve been for a small boy born into a pitiless life some three decades ago.

After ID’ing and logging the first child’s body, he got a small body bag from one of the boxes situated throughout the area of the massacre. It was a matter of two minutes to return, put the body gently in the bag, write the ID on the tag, and carry it with care to the refrigerated truck.

“Sleep well, little one,” he found himself saying though he knew it was foolish; this child’s ears would never again hear anything.

He still treated the body with utmost care, even climbing inside the truck so he could position the body on the top shelf.

Where nothing would crush that small, cold form.

Then he continued on. Body after body.

It was in the most churned-up part of the park area that he found her. She was buried under five other bodies, and invisible to his gaze. He’d been planning to ID the bodies he could see, then call over his partner to help get them in body bags, as the deceased were all adult males. Because while Ivan was far stronger than suggested by his lithe frame, the dead had a dark weight to them.

Then the background telepathic scan he ran at every moment, a low-level security tactic that was second nature, suddenly snagged, hitting a mind that was a wall. Not shielded. Naturally opaque. Only changeling minds felt like that.

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