Jackie put the page binder away, and stacked up the freshly bound reports she had promised Mr. Lamper would be finished and on his desk first thing in the morning.
The reports were tucked snuggly under her arm as she stepped through the door, into his now empty office. Most everyone had gone home earlier that evening. And now that Jackie was finished, she was finally going home.
The reports were set neatly upon Mr. Lamper's desk, the lights turned off, and the office door locked before she grabbed her purse and coat, and took the elevator down to the parking garage underneath the building.
Jackie didn't have a car there, she usually took the subway. But the parking garage had an exit on the back end of the building, which let her out closer to the station. It was a path Jackie had taken many times, and this evening was no different.
The garage was silent save for the clicking of Jackie's heels on the concrete. She fiddled with the strap of her purse when she felt a strong gust of wind come from overhead, as if something had flown past her.
Jackie stopped and looked up. Concrete beams and supports created a crisscross of shadows overhead. There was nothing else to see.
"Probably a bird or something," she mumbled as she smoothed her hair back, and continued through the garage.
Tap-tap-tap, Jackie's heels moved faster toward the garage exit. Tap-tap –she stopped when she heard the flutter of wings, and felt the strange breeze again. Something else clicked against the concrete. Jackie knew it was something else because she wasn't moving and there was no one else to be seen.
"Is someone there?" she asked. "Chris? Is that you?" Jackie peered around one of the support pillars, but saw no one. "Creepy bastard," she muttered to herself.
She reached into her purse and grabbed a hold of a Taser. Being a native of New York City, Jackie had seen her share of creeps and scary situations. This would be no different. She could handle it.
More tapping caused Jackie to whip herself around, Taser at the ready. But it was already in front of her. A great, black, winged shadow towered over her, nearly taking up the whole of her vision.
Jackie backed away and turned the Taser on as she screamed.
The Taser had no effect on the figure as it bore down upon Jackie like a great black ghost. But it wasn't a ghost. Jackie felt the warmth from it as it covered her mouth with a calloused hand, and the brushing of what she would have sworn was leathery wings that surrounded her. But that was impossible. People didn't have wings.
The Taser was pulled from her and dropped on the ground as the dark figure put its face next to hers. Even this close, Jackie couldn't tell who or what it was. Its eyes were black, and seemed to absorb whatever light entered them, and its face was hooded, so Jackie could only see a black shadow with a vague shape that indicated a mouth.
"Sh. Listen," it said gently, pressing a finger to its lips as its other hand covered Jackie's mouth. The voice was surprisingly pleasant, and held no malice whatsoever.
"You have a beautiful soul," it said softly.
Jackie didn't struggle. It wouldn't do to upset it. She squeaked, making small muffled noises underneath its hand as it put its lips to her ear.
What started as a soft, clear note grew and grew until it was deafening. The sound of it reverberated off of the walls of the garage, shattering car windows and causing alarms to go off. Jackie screamed, but she was drowned out in the sound that thudded in her chest and rattled her brains until her eyes closed and she went limp.
The figure allowed her to fall to the ground. Jackie lay on her side, dead. Her once terrified eyes frozen, staring blankly at the concrete as blood trickled from her ears and nose.
Summer didn't fade like it should have. It seemed to have turned itself off, like someone flipped a switch. And autumn instantly took its place with chill winds, morning frosts, and afternoon rain.
In other words, it was October in New York City.
The rain never bothered him. He pushed his scarf closer around his neck as he walked – well, limped his way to the locked gate of the abandoned building. Harold Finch unlocked the gate and went inside the library.
Thinking for the hundredth time that he should get someone to clean up the main level – books shouldn't be treated like trash, thrown haphazardly upon the floor – he mounted the stairs, and began his slow ascent, keeping his stiff posture as he did so.
The lights were already on in the makeshift office which he and John have affectionately referred to as HQ for the past four years.
Harold made it to the landing and walked into their office to see John's feet propped up on his desk, and a thick book in his hands. John Reese looked engrossed in the book, the title of which Harold couldn't see from where he stood.
"Morning, Finch," John said without looking up.
"I'm trying to decide if your proactivity is a good or a bad thing, Mr. Reese." He cleared his throat softly, and John, getting the hint, let his feet drop to the floor and stood as Harold took his place.
"Come on Finch, out of the two of us you're closer to the evil overlord type." John smiled a little and leaned against the window sill.
"We have two numbers that came in early this morning. I think you'll find them to be right up your alley, as it were."
Harold woke up the computer and began typing away at the keyboard as window after window popped up on the half dozen monitors that sat upon the desk. John leaned over Harold's shoulder to get a better look.
"There are dozens of aliases for each of them. Credit cards, IDs, passports – "
"That's a dangerous hobby," John commented.
"After digging for a few minutes, I believe I found the true identities of our numbers. They are brothers. Dean Henry Winchester is the elder. Born in Lawrence Kansas in nineteen seventy nine. His brother, Samuel Jonathan Winchester, is four years younger, born in nineteen eighty three. He was a student at Stanford until his junior year."
"Wait, wait Finch, it says here that they died back in two thousand eleven," John pointed at a specific window and Harold brought it to the main screen.
The details weren't too specific, but apparently, after a killing spree across the country, the Winchesters were both killed in a police station that they apparently tried to escape from.
"Yes. It was confirmed by the authorities. Perhaps someone has stolen their identities."
"Maybe," John agreed with a slow nod. "Their many identities. But who would want the identities of two murderers?"
"Well, Mr. Reese, there is obviously much more going on here, hence our habit of researching the numbers first."
John suppressed a smile at Harold's ever obvious sarcasm as Harold dug deeper at the history of the Winchesters. The pair of them stared at the past of what was beginning to look like the two strangest numbers the Machine had given them yet.
Late in the morning after Jackie's death, two tall men wearing cheap suits parked across the street from the building in which the murder took place.
"I hate big cities," Dean Winchester said to no one in particular. He glanced around at the buildings and the crowded sidewalks that surrounded him. "Everything's all closed in on you. I can't breathe here, man."
"You're breathing just fine," Sam said dismissively as he shut the squeaky car door on the passenger side.
"Yeah, but it's like breathing through one of Bobby's old shirts."
Sam's nose wrinkled slightly at the idea as they strode across the street toward the office building, and entered.
Dean coughed dramatically on his way down the steps into the parking garage and Sam smiled a little. "So you want to live on the open range with your dog named Fido?"
"Shut up," Dean said automatically.
"And there's the little piglet you nursed to health because it was rejected by its mother – "
"Shut up. And who names their dog Fido?"
They approached the section of the parking garage that was taped off and assumed their standard professional behavior.
If you act like you own the place, people will assume that you do. The statement went through Sam's mind as he and Dean lifted up the yellow crime scene tape and stepped under it.
A patrolman instantly accosted them, but Sam and Dean had been through the routine several times before and reached for their fake badges.
"I'm agent Lloyd, this is agent Fox," he said, gesturing to Sam. "We're investigating a chain of murders, and we think this one might fit the MO."
The officer squinted at the badges as Sam and Dean flipped them open and closed again. The only thing that policeman truly could have made out were the big letters "FBI" printed above the badge. And yet, he let them pass into the crime scene, just like everyone else did. It was all Sam could do not to smile.
"Detective," the patrolman called, waving his hand to gain the attention of a woman who was examining the crime scene.
She wore the standard blue latex gloves, a black coat and scarf, and blue slacks. She stood, and approached Sam and Dean with slight suspicion
"Detective Carter," she said shortly. "I didn't think this warranted federal concern."
She was baiting them. Sam saw it. Dean, Sam was pretty sure, did not.
"We think it may be linked to a case we're working on," Dean didn't miss a beat.
"Right. There was another one like this at a local bank a few days ago, right?" Sam asked, giving Carter a hint that they did indeed do their homework.
Carter lifted her dark eyebrows. "Well, you're welcome to take a look." The suspicion didn't leave her expression as she led them to the crime scene.
Dried blood stained the ground next to a support column and a white sedan. Smudges of a darker substance shared the space with the blood. The body itself was gone. It had already been taken to the morgue.
"Jacqueline Rhodes," Carter said as if she was reading off a ledger. "Twenty-two years old, single, worked in the building upstairs. She was working late last night and was killed right here, on her way to the train station. They're examining the body now. From what we can tell her eardrums burst from exposure to a certain sound frequency at high volume, which also caused a hemorrhage in her brain, which is what killed her."
The suspicion then left her expression and Carter shrugged. "It's all a little weird if you ask me. There is blood left from her ears and nose, and some fecal matter on the ground. And that's about it."
"Nothing else on the body?" Sam asked.
"Nothing yet."
"Fecal matter?" Dean asked. Sam had to restrain his eye roll.
"The vic crapped herself." Another detective, short, stalky, with curly brown hair approached them, already having listened to their conversation thus far.
"Detective Fusco, these are agents from the FBI," Carter said with a quick glare at him.
"So they're saying that the sound caused the hemorrhaging too?" Sam asked.
"It's not confirmed yet, but there's no other evidence that contradicts that. As far as anyone can tell Jacqueline was perfectly healthy."
Sam and Dean walked in a wide circle around the crime scene as Sam thought. Nothing he already knew about matched this type of murder. Except the fact that it was weird, of course.
"Brown Sound," he muttered.
"What?" Carter asked.
"Brown Sound," Sam said louder, meeting the detective's eyes. "There's a theory that sound at a certain frequency can actually – well … loose the bowels of the victim. With the busted eardrums, it's crazy, but it seems to fit."
"Doesn't seem like a theory anymore, does it?" Fusco said.
Sam and Dean shook their heads in unison as they stared at the stains on the ground.
"Fecal matter?"
Dean's discomfort reared its head once they were back in the car. "What kind of a ghost or monster makes somebody poop to death?"
"That's not what happened," Sam said calmly.
"Not only that, but it's a sound that did it? I mean, okay, I've listened to some music that made me want to – "
Sam and Dean met each other's eyes as they looked away from the windshield at the same time, and Dean stopped himself.
"- want to, you know, all over that band, but involuntary poop is not something we normally deal with."
"Dude! It's not about the poop!" Sam snapped. "It's about the sound. Her eardrums burst, and the damn thing killed her."
Dean hadn't started the engine in the Impala yet. They had been sitting there shouting about feces and going absolutely nowhere.
"Do you know what it would take to create a sound like that?"
Dean opened his mouth to answer, then decided against it. He repeated this process two more times before Sam was satisfied that he didn't know the solution.
"I'm not an expert, but I think it would take some special equipment to project a sound so loud and at such a specific frequency to kill a person."
"And make them poop themselves," Dean added, holding up a finger and thus illustrating his point. "So you're saying that either someone hauled a bunch of sound equipment into that garage to kill that girl, or there's something else going on."
"Basically, yeah."
"You know, if you had asked me yesterday, I would have said that we've seen pretty much everything by now." Dean smiled tragically and shook his head. "This looks like something new, and I hate new," he continued.
"Did you check - ?
"Dad's journal doesn't have anything close to this," Dean cut him off.
"Fine," Sam said, feeling his patience fleeing. "I'll go to the morgue and look at the body. You stay here and interview the victim's coworkers. Okay?"
Dean nodded and tossed the car keys to Sam as he got out of the driver's seat.
John Reese sat in driver's seat of a black Lincoln that was parked down the street from what he recognized as a black Chevrolet Impala from the late sixties, judging by the look of it. He watched the so called "agents" exit the parking garage go back into the car.
John checked his phone. He had cloned Dean Winchester's cell and partook in the conversation that commenced once the brothers got into their car.
"They don't sound much like federal agents, do they?" John said casually.
"They aren't," Finch confirmed via John's earpiece. "But they infiltrate crime scenes, and begin gathering evidence for a case of their own."
"Sounds familiar, doesn't it?" John grinned at the windshield of his car. "I doubt the bureau would allow a haircut like that anyway."
"Shouldn't matter as long as it's neat," Finch commented offhandedly. "I've been digging a little deeper into the history of our would be vigilantes, and it seems like they reappear on the map after they've fallen off for a time. Events that have surrounded these two tend to be very … odd, from what I understand."
"Define odd, Finch," John said.
"It's a little difficult to explain."
"That's new for you, isn't it?"
"Mr. Reese, I'd appreciate it if you took this situation a little more seriously," Finch switched into his college lecturer voice in less than a second. John knew it all too well and stared at the ceiling of the car as Finch went on. "There are strange circumstances that have to do with these two men. I will do my best to sort it out and come up with some answers. But until then I urge you to use caution around them. And at any rate it sounds like they're splitting up."
"Yeah, I'll get Fusco to keep tabs on the one here while I follow the bigger one to the morgue."
John started the engine as the Impala pulled into the street. He knew that Finch was avoiding discussing the obvious, just as he was. These two guys, these brothers were strange enough – crime-solving vigilantes who didn't seem to have a home to go to as far as Finch could tell. Not to mention the "strange circumstances" that surrounded them. That was plenty weird without bringing "ghosts" and "monsters" into it. Was it code? Did the Winchesters already believe they were being tailed? Whatever it was, John couldn't deny what he heard.