Author's note: I really thank the people who have kept dropping me notes, and have been following the story. Believe me, this chapter came out kicking and screaming, and it was your attention that made me keep plugging away. There is more that I have scripted in my head, but I reached a good stopping point and you folks have waited long enough.

Unrelated, if you want another Dresden Files kick, check out my oneshot "Fringe Element" *shameless plug*


Peter hunched over on his knees, trying desperately to get up, to call out for help, to breath, to do anything other than lay there wheezing, glaring at the hulking thing currently holding his partner by the throat. He could hear a clatter as Olivia's gun fell to the ground. In spite of the agony, he tried to rise to his feet, only to be sent skidding backwards by a kick that forced him instinctually to curl up.

Mr. Hulk seemed fixated on Olivia, treating him as nothing more than an incidental obstacle. It was probably why he didn't see the dog coming as it bounded out of the night as quickly and their attacker to clamping its jaw over the man's neck and twisting as it used its momentum to tear. Something wet splattered onto the sidewalk and the man dropped Olivia and snarled, swinging out a leg at the dog, but the dog was already moving, having already landed and bounded away. "Dog "was hardly a perfect word to describe the creature. It made you think of cheerful slightly silly animals that you let play with children. You forgot that all those weird shapes and funny faces came from fifteen thousand years of mankind taking wolves, creatures who were so feared as predators that they remained some of the most common villains in faerie tales and were bred to attack other animals for their masters. Whoever had bred one of these dogs hadn't changed very much from their wolf ancestors. Now actually needing to fight to claim his prize, the man turned to face the dog as it began to turn around for another pass, only to be decked from behind as another dog, equally as large and only different in that it had reddish fur like an Irish setter rather than the grayish tones as its companion. The man staggered forward, putting a hand on his neck as something dark dripped out.

They're pack hunting. It was a strange thought to flash through Peter's head as he slowly began to recover, a detached part of his brain identifying what was happening. A third dog, with mousy brown fur stepped over Olivia protectively and let out a menacing growl. The message to the man was clear, and what had seemed like easy prey was now turning out to be a serious fight. The man looked over the three dogs, the first two circling now, eyeing him for an opening and began to back away. The dogs watched for a moment until the man slinked out of sight. Peter gingerly began to bring himself to his feet, eyeing the dogs warily and wondering if he was going to be next. Instead of attacking however, the dogs came out of their aggressive stances. One gave a cheerful bark and wagged his tongue before flicking his tail. That seemed to be a prearranged signal and the dogs broke off at a run, following after Olivia's attacker.

The immediate danger passed, Peter rushing to Olivia's side. "Liv,Liv, wake up!" He gently began to shake her, noticing that there was a mark on her neck from where she was grabbed. After what felt like a painful eternity, Oliva drew in a ragged breath, eyes fluttering open.

"Peter." It was a soft whisper, but it was definitely there. Peter could hear the sounds of sirens in the distance, probably called in response to the gunshot fired on the grounds of a busy college campus.

"I'm here Olivia. Stay with me." Peter continued to hold her as the first campus security vehicle pulled in. "We're going to need a medic!" He shouted as the first guard ducked into the car to grab his radio, continuing to hold her as help arrived.


"So, you had a run in the famous University Wolfpack." The security officer passed Peter a cup of coffee. Olivia had flat out refused to go to the hospital, so the next best option was the EMT center on campus. Peter had already given his account, while Olivia was now working with a sketch artist.

"Wolfpack?" Peter arched an eyebrow. "Those things are really wolves?"

The officer gave a chuckle. "I doubt it. They're a bit of a legend on campus and in the surrounding area. A couple years back people started reporting a group of dogs going through the campus at night without a leash. They get sighted, and some of the students took the name from some movie. You know how college kids are."

"Isn't that, you know…kind of unsafe?"

The officer shrugged. "We've called Animal Control more times than I can count, but we keep getting nada. Bait isn't touched, and every time they send someone to chase after the dogs they never wind up seeing anything good. Except that one girl who was streaking…" The man trailed off, a smile tugging at his lips from the memory. "They seem to be friendly for the most part. Everyone who's made a complaint about it is typically getting written up for assault, or worse, so we don't typically take it seriously."

Peter found himself raising an eyebrow again as he took a sip of the (as he discovered) atrocious coffee. "Seriously? Something like tonight has happened before?"

The man nodded. "There's a lot of theories about it. The one I like is that some dog trainer is living nearby and liked to keep his place stocked with guard dogs and he lets them out at night. But I will tell you that our crime rate is lower than Kendall and Roosevelt, and lower than a lot of campuses in major cities nationwide.

"I guess we chose the right campus to get mugged in." Olivia peered in from the doorway. "Peter, I need you. We're going back to the scene."

Peter wordlessly rose as he followed his partner out, the pair walking silently together for a few moments.

"Liv…" Peter's tone was soft. "Are you sure you don't want to take the night off? He had you pretty good there."

"I'm fine." The answer came quick, and perhaps a hair sharper than Olivia had intended.

"You don't have to feel bad Liv, neither of us saw it coming."

"I'm fine." Olivia shot Peter a hard look, quickening her pace.

"He had be curled in a little ball in seconds. I know how hard he hits." Peter pressed on, unwilling to back done.

"But you're not the one with training." Olivia snapped back. "You're not the one who has to file an official report where they were overpowered and let their attacker get away. I'm the one who has to deal with that. And I'm fine." Olivia powered on, leaving Peter standing behind here while he paused, watching her back before he trailed behind.


"Walter, I have to say that you're looking better than I expected. You seemed awfully upset the last time I saw you." Peter had regained his good spirits by the time that they had gotten to Walter's ad hoc setup. Unlike Harvard, there weren't any abandoned labs. They did, however, have a dining hall that was in sudden need of sanitizing. It wasn't the prettiest use of space, but when space was at a premium there wasn't a long list of places which had the space for heavy equipment and the power to run it, proper ventilation and the refrigeration space to hold a number of bodies that the FBI may or may not be concealing from the general public.

"Well, they have the proper materials for a strawberry milkshake here." Walter replied, taking a long slurp out of a straw that was buried in one of his concoctions. "And I managed to find a few students who were willing to sell me some cannabis to relax."

"As a federal agent, I didn't hear that." Olivia raised an eyebrow as he watched a couple of harried looking graduate students hauling in pieces of equipment that had apparently been poached from other labs on campus. Apparently, Massive Dynamic had promised to replace the equipment with newer models. Seeing the state of some of the pieces brought in, it might have been the only chance the academic departments would have gotten to upgrade.

Walter's expression went blank for a moment. "What I said was-"

"The bodies Walter." Peter mercifully interjected. "Did you find what we asked you to look for?"

"Oh, right." Walter set down his drink and gesticulated into the air as he walked toward the walk in refrigerator. "Like the policewoman said, there is a pair of poison sacks in each of their mouths, like a serpent's. I was able to extract them and analyze the venom. It appears that the venom is an opiate derivative, likely used to disable its targets. It would most likely be…" Walter produced a small piece of flesh. "Incredibly pleasurable. Upon injection into the bloodstream, it would certainly disorient, possibly disable its target. But…" Walter trailed off.

"Walter?" Oliva placed a hand on his shoulder, trying to comfort him. "What is it?"

"It wouldn't kill them." Walter's reply was blunt. "And it would be absolutely addictive. These creatures…they had human identification, did they not?"

"Yes." Olivia supplied. "We're still running them, but they to appear to be convincing fakes…why?"

"Because there is no chance that these creatures," Walter gestured to the number of bodies currently on slabs. "Could possibly be mistaken for the people that their identification claimed. Unless they had a way to appear to be the person that they claimed to be. Unless…they had a way of disguising themselves. Combined with a toxin that is designed to impair, but not cripple…you are looking at an incredibly complex biological relationship."

"What do you mean?" Olivia asked, raising an eyebrow. Generally speaking, it was the best way to get Walter to explain things in any realistic sense and coax answers out of him.

"It's recruitment." Peter cut in. "It's an old stand by. You take someone, and give them a quick taste. The first few times, it comes free. After a few times, it becomes a need."

"Like drug cartels." Olivia jumped in, comprehension dawning. "When you find someone vulnerable, out of place, looking for cause, make them feel special and get them hooked. Then, threaten to cut them off. There is never anyone as desperate as an addict, and they'll do anything to get it. They can be entirely functional, and people might even know that they are users. They would do almost anything to protect their source, and when their source is a person…"

"Precisely!" Walter broke into an excited grin. "We are looking at one of the most perfect predators that nature has created! Assuming that they are able to, somehow, camouflage themselves as humans, they are able to suck in victims to defend them, while using them as sustenance."

"Sustenance?" Peter raised an eyebrow, then looked over the bodies. "No. Nooo, no, no no no. You're not saying-" Peter stopped. "Bat-like people. Who bite their victims. And feed off their blood?" You're talking about vampires here?"

"No, not vampires." Walter tried to wave dismissively, but didn't manage to make it seem convincing. "Just…human bat hybrids. That pass themselves off as human. And have an organ for storing blood and have fangs designed for the removal of blood." Walter reached for his milkshake, only for Olivia to place his hand over his.

"Walter…you're not telling us that vampires are real? Are you?" She slowly withdrew her hand, allowing Walter's eyes to meet with hers.

"Olivia…Peter…the technology to genetically alter organisms to this extent would have been at the very bleeding edge twenty years ago. The oldest example we have seen in drastic human genome modification, that of Dr. Hughes and his son was 17 years ago. The identification on the bodies they found ranged, but none were older than their mid-twenties. Some were in their mid-forties, and their bone structure suggests that they were fully into adulthood. While there is a chance that their growth was artificially accelerated, but I I am forced to conclude that there is a possibility that these mutations arose as part of natural selection."

The trio was silent. No one wanted to say anything.

"Walter…" Olivia finally broke the silence. "You said that they were able to pass themselves off as human, right?"

"Yes." Walter nodded. "That seems most likely."

"So how did someone know? The…things were all killed at the same time, in the same way, within days of the attack on FBI Headquarters. That's awfully precise for a random attack."

"Aha!" Walter's face lit up. "That's right. There might have been a way to detect them…or a way to use a safeguard. Come here." The scientist waved Olivia and Peter toward a few of the bodies which were currently on makeshift slabs. "The injuries which killed the creatures are all very similar…but they are not surgically precise. What it tells me is that whatever killed these creatures works quickly and violently, and it may have been done remotely."

"Remotely?" Peter raised an eyebrow.

"If you see something next to be ripped violently open, you typically get a reaction." Olivia supplied. "In mass shooting cases, you typically see a cluster of initial victims, and than one or two caught fleeing. Here-" Olivia's eyes narrowed for a moment in concentration when she recalled the pictures of the positioning of the bodies. "It was as if they all dropped at the same time. The angles and body positioning don't match up."

Walter nodded. "As to what triggered it, I don't know. I can't find any shrapnel in the wounds, and no burn marks on the skin to suggest explosive charges. Heart tissue seems to be the most damaged, simple heart failure would not cause this sort of catastrophic damage on the rib cage. I plan to take samples of the cardiac tissue and take a closer look."

Peter let out a long groan. "I don't suppose that you have any good news for us, do you?"

"Oh, good news?" Walter broke out into a shaky smile. "Well if you were looking for the, ah, elusive Mr. Dresden, I think I found something of interest. Come, come." Walter waved the duo out of refrigerator, going back to waving his fingers in the air as he walked. "While I was waiting for the remains to be transported here, I took time to examine the some of the phenomena associated with our "wizard". Walter's voice dripped with sarcasm at the last word. "And I found that he was dragged into court by the host of a local cable television show. The host claimed that when Mr. Dresden was invited to his show, Mr. Dresden used a series of stage effects and damaged the set in the process." Walter moved to a glowing computer monitor. "Apparently, there are websites which have free videos of things on the internet!"

"It's amazing what they can do with the internet these days." Peter responded dryly, trying very hard not to roll his eyes.

"Yes, it really is!" Walter responded without a slightest trace of irony, hitting a key to begin the playback. "There was someone in the studio audience who was carrying a handheld camcorder between filming. Now…watch."

It was the first look that Olivia or Peter had gotten of the elusive Harry Dresden outside of a few blurry photographs, not that this was much better. The camera bounced from the movements that typically accompanied an amateur cameraman. The man they now knew was Dresden sat on the edge of his seat, apparently in conversation with another of the guests on set. Suddenly, there was a cough of static and a series of loud pops. Lights in the ceiling exploded in brilliant flashes. Camera's crackled and burst into flames before the image went completely fuzzy.

"That looks like…" Peter began.

"Electrical disturbance. Like with Joseph Meegar." Olivia finished. "It fits. If Harry Dresden generated electromagnetic waves, it would explain a great deal". Olivia dove into a pile of documents. "We have all of his bills, but never anything for electricity or a cell phone. Electromagnetic pulses would constantly shut down either of those."

"And his car registration has a VW Beetle. An original Beetle." Peter grinned, meeting Olivia's eyes flushed with triumph. "It's a model which is notably easy to repair, and rolled out before the invention of the sparkplug. He wasn't being an ascetic, he was being practical. Even if credit card magnetic strips would be wiped out, he could still give numbers over the phone. Private investigators are often paid in cash, since a jealous spouse doesn't want to know that they had someone spying on their significant other."

"Murphy mentioned that she saw signs that reminded her of autism." Olivia jumped back in, snapping the case file shut. "Dresden was a ward of the state in the 80's and early 90's. They wouldn't have known to look for signs of Asperger's Syndrome. He has a long record with issues with authority figures. He kept his living area scrupulously clean, but the sub-basement was a wreck when agents raided his home. He had apparently spent a huge amount of time building a scale model of Chicago, suggesting an enormous devotion to a special interest project. Reports have mentioned that he was hesitant to make eye contact. So far, it tracks with a few common symptoms. If so, he might have made mental leaps that even he couldn't have fully understood. Combined with sudden electrical problems whenever, like Meegar, he got upset, or something bad happens…"

"You have someone who is trying to apply reason to something beyond the pale of natural science." Walter nodded to himself. "A sufficiently advanced application of the laws of nature beyond the scope of what is known would indeed seem to be indistinguishable from magic. As much as I object to armchair psychology, having been the subject of it for some time, I do think that the two of you at least have a foothold to start on. I think that the morning will find us slightly less jet lagged, and with a fresh perspective to continue our search."

"He has a point." Peter stretched, trying to stifle a yawn and failing. "We've been up at least twenty hours at this point. I know I could use a night's rest. Come on Walter."

The three slowly made their way to the door, sorting away the last of the items in the lab before shuffling off to get some well deserved rest.

The lab was still for a minute after that. If anyone else had been around, they might have noticed a gentle rustle, likely the sound of the wind. There was a bare whisper as a dim light, like that of a will-o'-the-wisp flittered about the hall, easily mistaken as the passing headlights of a car or a flashlight. The light slowly weaved its way to the refrigerator, the door creaking open to reveal the chilly exterior. The light paused over the frozen body of the creature for a moment, illuminating its face. And then, the room went dark.


Author's Note 2: Alright, I'll be the first one to say this: I am one of the last people who should be talking about symptoms of Autism. I know that it is complex, and most certainly not in my wheelhouse. Then again, it isn't for Olivia, Peter or Walter, so their guesses are as much of an extrapolation as I would have…and in any case, it would be wrong. In case you are not familiar with the Dresden Files, there are logical answers for everything point that were misconstrued because Fringe Division has no reference point of magic users generating EMP's when they cast or get upset, wind up sharing their soul whenever they make eye contact, Harry having a legitimate magical purpose to build Little Chicago and him just being a natural wiseass.