L*st and Death

The motel owner, slumped apathetically on the sofa behind the counter, lit up the moment Anna stepped through the door. As if something exciting had happened worth gossiping about over drinks, he made no effort to hide his giddy anticipation. His small, yellowed eyes blinked rapidly as he looked past her, scanning for someone else behind her.

"Where are the men? The cops you came with last time."

"I came alone. I'm a police officer too."

He didn’t bother to hide his assumption that Anna, being a woman, must be some third-rate cop.

"Aren’t you afraid to walk around alone?"

"Don’t worry. If I see anything suspicious, I’ll just shoot it."

Brushing aside his nonsense with an aggressive tone, Anna immediately began her inquiry. The first time she’d come to the motel following Yoon Siron’s trail, all she managed to do was collect his belongings. But today’s questioning was different. The motel owner remembered more. Through his additional testimony, Anna learned that Yoon Siron had participated in a clinical trial to earn money. The physician conducting the trial was almost certainly Isaac Bazelli.

Anna was able to connect the dots between Isaac and Siron through a simple Google search. The clinical trial was the link. Searching “Dr. Johnson Urology” brought up several pages, including one recruiting test subjects for a drug trial targeting men with sexual dysfunction.

Sexual dysfunction. Anna felt a sobering wave wash over her, as if she’d glimpsed the wounded soul of Yoon Siron.

"Thank you for your cooperation. Please contact us if anything else comes to mind."

The man pouted like a bulldog, tapping his fingers slowly on the table before blurting something out.

"This one’s better than the last."

"Excuse me?"

Anna bristled at his tone, interpreting it as judgmental. But the motel owner continued, his expression softening.

"At least you're pretending to investigate."

"What do you mean?"

"This is the third time someone’s been dragged out of here half-dead. The cops who came before didn’t even bother with an investigation. I never got reimbursed for the blood-soaked sheets."

He told her that sex workers staying at the motel had been violently assaulted while high on drugs—suffering horrible injuries and then disappearing under suspicious circumstances. Despite the CCTV footage showing massive, doorframe-sized suspects coming and going from the rooms, the police never conducted any real investigation.

It was a story Anna knew too well. Despite public belief in justice, the reality was that fewer than 1% of sexual assault cases resulted in conviction. Detectives were often indifferent or outright negligent.

Sex crimes were messy, time-consuming, and often hinged on testimony rather than hard evidence. Many officers actively avoided them. Some victims even ended up being accused of falsifying evidence or lying under oath and were punished instead. It was easier to flip a mentally fragile victim into a suspect and close the case quickly.

Anna, a traffic cop, couldn’t formally handle sex crimes, and she wasn’t in a position to intervene in such personal tragedies. But for some reason, what the motel owner said stuck with her. Especially the part about victims being drugged and raped by men built like doorframes.

"Do you know how to contact the victims?"

"Of course not."

The motel owner scoffed like her question was absurd. He sighed, then spoke in a tone that was half-condescending, half-pitying—like he was schooling a clueless little girl on how the world worked.

"Come on, missy. You think a hooker’s gonna leave a real number? Fake name, fake address, fake phone."

"Excuse me—officer."

"Huh?"

"Not 'missy'. Officer."

Leaning in close over the counter, Anna looked him over from head to toe with cold authority. Realizing he couldn’t push her around, the man flushed and grumbled in reluctant acknowledgment.

"Anyway, officer. If you want contact info, can’t you just talk to the telecoms?"

"I’ll try. For now, I’d like a copy of the CCTV footage you mentioned."

Though she technically had no authority to demand evidence, Anna took the surveillance footage without hesitation. Then she left the motel and drove her white SUV out of Mocho-Lakka and back toward her home in Linhart.

She’d been awake for nearly thirty-six hours straight. Her plan was to take a short nap before her evening shift. But intrusive thoughts kept bubbling up, refusing to be ignored: the sex workers found drugged in motel rooms, the hulking men seen entering those rooms on CCTV.

Were they alphas?

To Anna, alphas were the embodiment of everything wrong with the XY chromosome. She didn’t have to look far for proof. Her own younger brother Lewis had once tried to rape her in a fit of lust. And several of her group therapy peers had suffered assaults by men presumed to be alphas. On top of that, violent crime had been rising sharply in Baggers City for the past few years. And yet the city’s police force, citing a lack of manpower, had all but given up.

As Anna mulled over the link between alphas and the city’s rising crime rate, her phone rang. The caller was Matt Orpin, the executive assistant to the Linhart precinct chief.

—"The chief wants to see you."

Matt’s voice, barely past puberty, grated in her ear like nails on a chalkboard. Anna groaned internally and replied.

"Me? I’m scheduled for the night shift."

—"I’ll tell the chief you said he can wait until night, then."

"...I’m on my way."

—"See you at the station."

Sighing, Anna turned her car around and headed for the Linhart precinct. Once there, she quickly made her way up to the second floor where the chief’s office was located.

She expected Matt to be waiting at his post—but the desk was empty. She was about to sit and wait for him to return when she changed her mind and walked up to the chief’s door. The man who’d blocked her promotion and exiled her to traffic duty was rarely seen outside his office.

Screw it. I’m already on his shit list. Might as well go all in.

She grabbed the doorknob, took a deep breath, and knocked lightly as she opened it.

"The last confirmed location was in Mayf— What the hell?!"

Chief Ponce had been deep in conversation and didn’t notice Anna until she was halfway inside. She stepped in fully, reached behind her, and calmly closed the door.

"You asked for me, sir. I knocked, but I guess you didn’t hear."

"You come in when I say you can come in!"

"Oh. I thought I heard you say 'come in.' Must’ve misheard."

The chief looked at her like she was mentally impaired, but Anna just blinked slowly, bored and unbothered. It was a trick—one she often used to lull people into underestimating her. But it didn’t work on Ponce.

"I—I’m sorry. No, no, it’s fine. I’ll call you back in a moment."

Snapping at her one moment and politely apologizing into the phone the next, Chief Shaun Ponce looked ridiculous. He was a greasy man in his late fifties with a showy mustache, once a detective in the Baggers City PD’s central division—back when he served alongside Anna’s father.

Her father had been a sergeant, and Ponce his subordinate and partner. Somehow, after her father’s death, Ponce had risen through the ranks and become chief. And the man who’d once been the central division’s chief, Angus Stone, was now Commissioner of Baggers City PD.

Was he the one on the phone with my father the night he died?

After ending his call, Ponce quickly swept some notes on his desk under another folder. Like he didn’t want her to see them. But Anna had already glimpsed what he wrote.

Mayfield – 25.286615°N, 80.898651°W.

Coordinates. Mayfield. Why did that name sound familiar?

"Sorry, again. I really thought you said 'come in.'"

Glaring at her, Ponce said sharply, "I hear you're investigating a vehicle theft."

"Yes, sir."

"I’m reassigning it to the detectives. That’s not traffic’s job."

Technically, vehicle theft was indeed a detective case. But it was low priority, and Ponce didn’t usually give a damn about anything that didn’t disrupt public peace. The car had left Baggers City, and the owner lived outside their jurisdiction—so why the sudden interest?

If not for Lewis and Baek Kyung’s plea to keep Siron’s kidnapping secret, she would’ve dropped the vehicle case and started an abduction investigation. But it was too late now. More than that—Ponce’s curiosity about a mere vehicle theft was suspicious.

"It’s still something traffic can assist with, sir. And since it’s not a violent crime, I’d like to keep handling it."

Ponce eyed her sharply, then smirked.

"You’re very dedicated. But the case is odd. Who filed the report? The owner’s ID is fake."

He wasn’t supposed to care about this case. Yet he knew the owner’s identity was false. Anna’s mind went blank for a second.

"I... no one filed a report."

"What?"

His face twisted into a comical scowl. And that’s when Anna remembered.

Mayfield – 25.286615°N, 80.898651°W.

A small town on the edge of a national park. Right by the road leading to Secreta. It was also the last known GPS ping of Isaac Bazelli’s Suburban.

Her heart pounded. But she kept her voice steady.

"I witnessed it myself. I saw the suspect stealing a parked car and gave chase—but I lost them."

Believe it or don’t. That was all she could say. Sweat slid down her back as she forced herself to hold Ponce’s gaze. But something in her expression must have cracked, because his smirk deepened.

Ponce—or maybe the people behind him—was looking for Isaac Bazelli. She didn’t know why this case mattered to them, but one thing was clear:

Without realizing it, Anna McCarthy had just handed them a compass. A direct path to Isaac Bazelli.

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