I wondered, if no one was left to clean up after Black Claw this time, what the rest of the police would think.

Don't search for procedurial accuracy, it's just something done like that, because I felt I needed to write it before season 6.
Also, consider that Nick and Renar disappeared after the facts. At least, they didn't show up to work the next day.

Chapter one

John McClee had slept like a baby, unlike the usual, when he arrived at work. Nonetheless, all the sleep in the world would not suffice for his brain to make sense of what he was seeing right now.

It happened, sometimes. Some cases were simply too sick, or too illogical, for him to understand what had possibly happened at first sight. Sometimes, there was simply something wrong, like he was missing some important, huge piece of the puzzle. And that what he was convinced of right now.

Let's just say that when his boss had called and said there was a case, John hadn't expected that kind of case. And when his boss had told him where exactly he was supposed to go, John had certainly not expected to see this. Even if his boss had been clear on the facts that 1) it was big, 2) it was shocking, 3) he'd need to see it to believe, because even now, the boss couldn't believe it either. And he was at the scene.

Sure, John had found it strange that he'd have to go there, to work on a case, considering it wasn't in his boss' jurisdiction, far from it. He had wondered why no one there could just go and handle the case themselves, after all, it was as much their role than it was his.

Now that he saw what he had come to see, John understood better why they had to take care of the case. Considering, you know, that all the detectives of the actual precinct on which depended the case were dead, in their own precinct.

Well, not all of them, but John could say for sure there were at least three dead detectives amongst the various dead police officers on the floor. And considering no one had managed to reach the other detectives of the precinct, or even the captain in charge, it was more than probable that they were dead too, just, somewhere else.

John McClee, detective in Portland since 2007, had to refrain from throwing up as he looked at the crime scene before his eyes.

"How many dead?"

"For all we know, eleven. From normal cops to detectives. Given the... hugeness of this slaughter, we called for reinforcements, and help from the higher ups. They shouldn't be long, but until then, I'll ask you to look into it, alright?"

John winced, but he supposed the Portland police was a bit short-handed, now.

"And that's not all."

He turned, disbelieving, to stare at his boss.

"That's not all?"

"There are two dead cops at the Central Precinct, too, but they are from here. Apparently they were about to transfer a detective from there to here."

"Transfer?"

The boss' eyes looked glazed, as if he didn't even want to think upon the meaning of what he was going to say. John's stomach clenched, already waiting for the worst.

Even if he wasn't sure where stood the "worst" in this story. It seemed to have gone beyond his imagination, somehow.

"Yeah, transfer. With cuffs on his hands."

There was a silence, and John tried not to look too closely as the forensic team moved the bodies away. It didn't work well, and he could say there had been some gruesome wounds at work here, even if most were simple gunshots. Like, one of the shooters had gone bullseyes with every shots.

Yeah, because there had to have been more than one perpretator. No one could single-handedly make this much damage to a group of armed cops, John liked to believe.

"Why?"

"Apparently, Nick Burkhardt and the new mayor ended up throwing each other around in Renard's former office yesterday. They seemed pretty pissed off, from what I know."

"And they had to transfer him to this precinct for this?"

It certainly wasn't normal.

The boss sighed, and pointed at a fallen chair in the middle of the room. Actually... What was it doing here?

"McClee, what do you think this chair is doing here, just in the middle of our dead cops?"

"I don't kn... Wait, why does it look like the chair where someone is tied up and beaten up by corrupt police officers in a historical drama?"

"Because that's probably what happened. I have no idea why, but Burkhardt's precinct was almost empty when these guys came to take him, and I'm pretty sure he was the one sitting on that chair. Until he wasn't anymore, and half of this precinct laid dead on the floor. If this was a spy story, I'd say his team came to get him, after a failed attempt at the Central Precinct. Hence the dead cops. There's something terribly fishy about this situation, you know? More so as we know Renard made tremendous changes to the affectations to this precinct as soon as he became mayor."

"This is ridiculous."

"Agreed."

A cop in uniform came by at this moment, and waited with a frown on his face for the two to let him talk.

"Who ever did this, they left by the back door. I've found some blood on a broken shard of glass. Someone was definitely gravely injured. But if they don't die of it, they can be sure we'll get them into jail..."

The boss looked sternly at the cop, who suddenly wondered if he had said too much. But it wasn't the first time he had to deal with the death of one of his colleagues, and usually everyone was pretty interested in revenge. After all, they couldn't just let the criminals get away with doing one of them in, right?

"Be careful with your words, Jenkins. There's a high possibility the murderer is a Portland detective, considering what we know, and I'm not yet certain he was the one who started it all."

It took some time for the cop to even begin to comprehend the implications. He just left, blinking wildly. Who was he supposed to defend, to avenge, if both parties were the police, and they had no idea who was the most guilty of the two?

The boss' cellphone ringed, and he walked away. John just kind of wandered amongst the blood stains, a bit shocked at... well, everything.

Now that he was taking a closer look, yeah, there were ropes under the fallen chair. As if someone had been tied up and beaten up. Almost as if it was becoming a possibility, that a whole precinct would turn onto a detective from another precinct and do...

What, exactly?

Or, a more likely question, why?

He ended up staring blankly at the bloodied floor next to a forensic girl.

The young woman looked up from her work, and arched one eyebrow at him.

John cleared his throat, awkward. He had no idea what to ask, because this was all too weird for him. So he settled on a basic question.

"Anything you can tell me?"

The woman's second eyebrow shot up instantly, but she didn't comment on his awkwardness.

"Too many, actually, and none really interesting. But there certainly aren't only gunshot wounds, because I'm pretty sure the guy who landed here and made this blood pool was taken out by a wolf. However in hell it happened, inside and here. And I think Tom found DNA samples on the chair over there. Also, this is a mess, but I think you had that covered."

No, exactly not. John's problem was that he had nothing covered, like, at all. This was so much of a mess he couldn't even grasp it had actually become his to untangle.

But before he could answer anything, or, say, start pulling at his hair in desperation, his boss came back from his phone call, a worse look on his face than before. John hadn't even known, until then, that it was possible to frown this much.

"McClee, I've got another crime scene for you. It's in a remote area, but with all the gunshots in the middle of the night, someone ended up hearing something, apparently. I think we've found the remaining guys from this precinct."

"Dead?"

"Utterly. And there's another man with them, a man we know nothing of. Dead too. Lots of blade wounds, and gun wounds. And they went in that place with kevlar and submachine guns and everything, too. Only the rocket is missing, truly, and they still managed to die."

John didn't bother asking how someone could be less than utterly dead.

"Burkhardt?"

"Not there."

"Well, I guess I'm on my way."

When John arrived at the right place, he was a bit surprised to see how much of a remote area it was, in fact. The guys who had given him the adress had said it was someone's place, like, a home. He hadn't imagined an industrial area.

Two cops in uniform were waiting for him outside. Mark waved at him. He looked a bit green.

"Hi, John. It's a mess in there, I'm warning you."

"Can't be worse than where I come from."

Mark blinked, not having heard of the North Precinct's slaughter.

"How many dead?"

"Eleven."

"Then we still beat you. We have fourteen dead cops, and another unknown guy in there. So, fifteen."

John didn't believe it until he got upstairs, at the actual crime scene.

Sure, there were a lot of bodies, and it was worse than at the precinct, because the room was smaller. From here he could already see a battle axe, several glocks, a sword, three submachine guns and a dagger. Why the occupant of the place had had a battle axe ready for combat in here, he'd probably never know. Nor was he certain he actually wanted to know.

"Any idea who lived here, before these guys went commando on the place? Because it's certainly not suit-guy's place. It doesn't look like his kind of place."

"Nah, not officially. We checked, the name is false. And there's a craddle in the back room."

John's stomach clenched. Again. If he could, maybe he'd just let it like that, to save him the false relief of thinking that maybe it'd be all for the day.

"A baby?"

"An empty craddle. Like, for a few days."

John stared at Mark long enough that the cop felt the need to justify himself.

"What? I have a kid, too. Anyway, I said we don't officially know the owner's name, but I found some stuff with the name Nick Burkhardt on it."

Mark waited patiently as John cursed loudly for one good, long minute.

"Just a question: is it the Burkhardt I'm thinking about?"

It made John pause. The detective turned slowly to look at his friend, as if he was seeing him for the first time.

"Detective at the Central Precinct, yeah. You know him?"

Mark shrugged, but it was obvious he wasn't feeling as calm as he pretended. As if, all of a sudden, the two slaughters made more sense, even if it didn't make sense. As if it wasn't such a surprise that Nick Burkhardt could deal with this many opponents if needed, hell, as if he might very well be the only one who could possibly do it. Even if Mark couldn't understand why the detective would do such a thing, or why half a precinct would come for him at his own home. A home under a false name, moreover.

Wait, were those armored shutters? And why did the guy feel the need to install such a security system? Oh, right, for the same reason the place was bought under a false name, obviously.

Whatever that reason was.

Maybe Burkhardt had been waiting for something like that to happen. If anything, the man had known how to deal with the geared-up police officers, despite the obvious difference in numbers.

What kind of person does suspect the police might assault their house in the first place, if not a criminal? Certainly not a detective of the Portland Police Department.

John had gotten past the "weird" tag so long ago he didn't even remember what it looked like, it seemed.

Oh well.

He turned his attention back to Mark.

"I know of him, and I saw him once or twice."

"What do you know?"

Mark hesitated a moment, not sure if talking was the thing to do, because what he was going to say could very well be taken badly. John McClee wasn't the kind of man to take it badly, but given the circumstances...

Then again, why were there fourteen cadavers of cops in Burkhardt's home? A place under a false name, at that?

"People talk, John. And Nick Burkhardt has a... reputation, let's say."

"A reputation?"

"He gets all the weird, creepy cases, and he solves them all. Ripped throat, but not an animal attack. A girl who aged sixty years in a few hours, and died of it. A thief who tore off a man's arm, leaving him to die in his house. All those cases that'd make you believe in monsters. I saw him go against guys twice his size, and still knock them out easily. Once, he had to stop a murderer, and he threw a knife in his leg because he had no ammo left. There are so many stories, I don't even know which ones are true and which aren't. And that's ony the normal stuff."

"You call this 'normal'."

At this point, it wasn't even a question. John was so done with the impossible happening, he suspected he'd only take it all in a stride.

Mark wasn't finished, though.

"For him, yeah. It's nothing personal, you see, so it's normal, because his personal stuff is different. Like, a whole new level. They say his parents were murdered and beheaded in their car when he was a kid, and four years ago Burkhardt killed a scythe-wielding serial killer who was after his aunt. After that a few others tried to murder her, and one finally managed to do it. As if she had had a bounty on her head or something. Then there's his ex's coma and subsequent memory loss. After that there's the slaughter on a ship: two FBI agents came in, got killed, and no one knows who killed the killer, but Burkhardt's number was the last one to be called, he conveniently forgot his gun home, and he was taken by the Bureau for a few hours. And you remember the Zombie Fiesta two years ago? He went to the containers, but no one saw him when we arrived, and the day after that he was white like a cadaver, beaten up, but present to work. He spent more time in Renard's office, from what I've been told, than anyone else; as if they were in the know for some grand secret."

Mark didn't look like he had more to tell, but John still interrupted him fast.

"Wait, Burkhardt was chummy with the captain Renard?"

"More so than the others, yeah. They've been seen working together on some sensitive cases, too."

So why had they started boxing each other the day before? How had Burkhardt ended up in detention when he was seemingly Renard's ally? Unless the mayor wanted to get rid of the only other cop who knew whatever it was they were hiding... supposing they were hiding something... which was only a guess... a wild guess...

After a moment of silence, Mark waved his hand before the detective's face to get his attention.

"You don't think they're corrupt or something, do you?"

"Erm... I hadn't really gotten there yet, but now that you're saying it..."

Mark palled.

"I don't think they are. Or, at least, not Burkhardt. I don't really know enough about Renard, beside the fact that he can be downright scary when he wants, but the detective? He's dangerous, yeah, but not that way, more like he could kill anyone, but he won't unless you take the decision away from him. He never seemed like the type to do something bad for his only profit."

John didn't say anything at that at first, only looking around the slaughter in the room. Oh God, did that guy get stabbed in the eye with a blade?

"The thing is, Mark, it certainly looks the other way around. And not everyone becomes dirty for themselves. The thing being, once you've gone down once, you don't get to go up again. At best you don't fall lower."

But even that, it was a rare occurrence. Most dirty cops didn't get to keep their uniforms pristine even where it hadn't been dirtied at first.

Was it what had happened? Had Burkhardt seen something he wasn't meant to, had he kept the secret for a reason or another, and had Renard decided he wasn't worth the trouble anymore? And if it wasn't Renard, then who was it, who had started all this?

But even as he considered this theory, the detective knew it couldn't work like that. After all, there was still the dead entire precinct in two places, one where John was certain they'd find Burkhardt's DNA on ropes, and the other that was the detective's secret house. How had they been dragged into this? Why had Nick Burkhardt been tied up like a common criminal in a room full of dirty cops, waiting for a beating, if it was really what had happened? What other reason could there be for the chair and the ropes?

And if Burkhardt wasn't the dirty one, the other guys couldn't get an excuse too, from what John had seen. There were only so many reasons for what had happened with the other detectives, and John McClee had a feeling none were good or righteous. Maybe he didn't know the whole story, but he could tell for certain there was something fishy going on with this whole precinct.

With this whole case, actually.

Oh wait.

Hadn't he already reached that conclusion a few hours ago?

Fishy. Ridiculous. Whatever.

The forensics came and went, and John was left alone to stare at the bare place that had apparently been Nick Burkhardt's house, but was now only a bloodied place with bullet holes and broken furnitures here and there. Truthfully, the detective wasn't sure it changed the place much. Burkhardt had apparently chosen safety over comfort, and even then it hadn't been enough.

But why was the guy so paranoid to begin with? And, more than that, why had he been right to be this paranoid?

Eventually John simply searched the room, once more. He found a few things, electricity bills for example. Nothing that would help him to find the other detective.

But he finally got his hand on something. Something not really interesting, not really important, but weird. Something that surprised him a bit. Something he hadn't expected to find in Burkhardt's things.

Just, because, what did it even mean?

Again with that question...

The detective stared at the papers for a moment, not quite sure of their relevance at first, not really sure there was even something wrong with the data he was seeing. He wasn't a doctor, after all, the anomalies didn't just jump out of the documents and assault his eyes until he deigned to understand. To him, it was only numbers, data which meaning he couldn't quite grasp.

Why had Burkhardt even asked to pass all those tests in the first place?

But, on the last page in the folder, John McClee saw a hand-written note from the physician who had apparently examined Nicholas Burkhardt. And that note was pretty clear: the doctor too had no idea what was going on with the other detective.

Apparently, the man had a heartbeat twice slower than that of an average person, and it almost never picked up, but it wasn't a problem for his metabolism, unlike with bradycardia. He could hold his breath for several minutes without damage. His body heat was quite cold. He had more sight sensors than what was normal for a male, human being. His reflexes were incredible. And his hearing was so unbelievable the doctor would have thought him blind had he not known better.

And despite all that freakiness, or maybe on top of all that freakiness, Nick Burkhardt was in perfect health.

Forget a freak, John was starting to wonder if, perhaps, the other detective hadn't been part of some sort of human enhancement secret and governmental experiment.

It would surely explain how the guy had taken out half a precinct by himself, and possibly the other half too, alone or not for that part of the story still being under consideration.

Oh, he'd be happy to give the case to somehow more qualified as soon as they'd be here.

John's head hurt.