Author's Note: Happy Belated Halloween, all! For some lighthearted Halloween shenanigans, go check out my update in The New Adventures of the Young Lin Kuei :) It's been a crazy month; got attacked by an offender and even though we officers came out the victors, I'm still on bed rest because my hip and spine got all jacked up in the row. So that kind of set me back on everything I needed to do. Regardless, I hope you enjoy this update!

The smell was the first thing people noticed about Major Crimes' forensic laboratory. The sour tang of formaldehyde and bleach wafted on the air, singeing the nose hairs just enough to be uncomfortable, but not enough to notice beyond that. Long, tall benches ran concurrently beside each other, all of them boasting microscopes, computers, and racks full of test tubes, beakers, and flasks. The light in here was dim at the moment, having been dulled so that Kabal - who was working at one of the many microscopes - could see the slides he was looking at. The microscope currently projected the samples onto a screen hanging down the wall, revealing terrifying alien-like orbs in tight clusters: pollen.

As Kadeem focused intently on his work, occasionally typing new parameters into the database on the computer to his right, Kurtis paced around the lab like a nervous hen, still shaken up by the woman crying on the phone. But if the burned detective noticed it, he said nothing and continued working. That was his way; once he got on a roll solving a puzzle, he was like a pitbull who'd been groomed to fight - relentless. Now that he was on the case, he wouldn't stop until it was solved or he was dead.

"Who do you suppose it was?" his partner finally broke the silence. "The woman? The crying woman on the phone?"

"Oh, she doesn't matter," he dismissively said, choosing his words poorly. "Just a random hostage. There's no lead there."

Kurtis scowled. "For God's sake, Kadeem, I wasn't thinking about leads!"

"Then you're not gonna be much use to her," he drily remarked.

"Well, maybe they'll get lucky and trace the call," he muttered.

Now Kabal's cell phone beeped and he started to reach for it on the counter behind him. "They won't get lucky," he promptly deflated his friend's hopes. "The bomber is too smart for that." He couldn't reach his phone so he nodded to Kurtis. "Who is it?" he asked, refusing to get up.

The other was more than used to his partner's quirks by this point, and he scowled at him as he looked at the notification. "It's Agent Walker," he reported.

"Delete it," he absently commanded.

"Delete it?" he repeated.

Kabal peered at the computer and typed new commands. "Those plans are undoubtedly out of the country by now," he said. "Nothing you and I can do about it. It's the CIA's problem now."

"Well, Walker seems to think it's still his problem," Kurtis argued. "He's texted you eight times already. It must be important."

"Then why didn't he cancel his dentist's appointment?" the burned detective challenged him.

The other lifted an eyebrow in staunch skepticism. "How could you possibly know he was at the dentist?"

"Walker loves to hear himself talk," he informed him. "I'm surprised you haven't noticed that about him. He'll never text me if he can call me directly. It's like he's stuck in the Stone Age with Alexander Graham Bell." Kabal finally looked up at his partner. "Look, Benjamin Jones somehow stole the plans, tried to sell them, and got his head stomped in for his trouble. End of story. The real mystery is why the CIA and the FBI want to bore the two best NYPD detectives in the city with this crap when we have a terrorist on our hands being pretty fucking interesting?"

Kurtis scowled again, completely exasperated by his partner. "Yeah, I know you ran with a bunch of cutthroat pirates at one point in your life, but you're a cop now. Try to remember that people are in danger because of this madman. That poor woman might die!"

Kadeem cocked his head in equal irritation with his friend. "Why should I worry about that?" he demanded to know. "That's not going to help her. And there are plenty of people dying out there from all sorts of things. Go to a hospital and cry over them in the ICU, see how much that helps them."

"You're an ass," his partner snapped. "Where's your fucking heart?"

"What's a heart?" he now said, being deliberately contrary before looking into the microscope again. His then happily yelled, "Fuck yeah!"

"Any luck?" a woman's voice now chirped, and both men vaguely noticed one of the forensic analysts, Ella Rizzo, a dowdy woman with rosy cheeks and a sloppy ponytail, slide into the room. She was wearing her usual lab coat and round, wire-rimmed glasses.

"Does a bear shit in the woods?" he murmured, thoroughly pleased with himself.

"You should come work with us, Kadeem," she said, casting a glance at the pollen on the screen. "I think you'd be good at it."

"Mmm-hmm," he hummed, not really listening.

The door opened again and this time a shy-looking man entered. He was young - in his twenties or thereabouts - and he had a trim, slightly muscular frame accented by a tight, white t-shirt. The man's eyes went wide in alarm before he quickly said, "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize…"

"Oh, yeah, Dominic, hi!" she greeted enthusiastically, now beaming. "This is Detective Kabal," she said, pointing to the man at the microscope, "and this is his partner, Detective Stryker." Ella blushed when she looked at Kurtis, her brown eyes melting just looking at him. She had a crush on him, unaware that he swung a different way.

Dominic awkwardly cleared his throat, giggled a nervous laugh, and then ran his hand through his chocolate brown hair before working up the nerve to shuffle forward towards Ella. "So you're the famous Kabal and Stryker?" he asked, now beaming too. "The ones who caught the Long Island Butcher? Wow!"

Kadeem never even looked up from his work, but behind him, Kurtis vaguely smiled and nodded his head while stroking his chin. Even he wasn't immune to the star-struck look in Dominic's eyes. "All in a day's work," he replied, then inwardly kicked himself for regurgitating the most cliche line in the history of police work, prompting his partner to groan.

But if the young man noticed, he didn't say anything, and instead pointed to the pollen on the screen. "Are you working on a case right now?" he wondered.

Again, Kadeem ignored him. An awkward silence filled the air, so Ella nervously bounced from one foot to another and said, "Dominic works in IT. That's how we met. Office romance and all that!" Her eyes sparkled happily.

It finally encouraged the burned man to look up. He quickly glanced at the man and then muttered, "Gay."

"What?" she demanded to know.

Kadeem quickly cleared his throat. "Um, nothing. I said 'hey.'" He wasn't remotely convincing. "Hey!" he said again, this time more sincerely.

But it startled Dominic. Immediately, the man stumbled into the counter, knocking one of the kidney pans onto the ground along with a set of delicate tools. The stuff clattered loudly when it hit the tile floor. Kurtis inwardly laughed at his clumsiness, trying hard to hide his smile. He'd drawn the same conclusion as his partner had.

"Sorry, sorry," he apologized repeatedly as he scurried to clean up his mess. Sheepishly, he handed the kidney pan to Kurtis, who said nothing. The detective glanced inside, smirked a little, and then watched as the man shuffled away, still bumping into things like a clumsy goat. "I better be off, then," he told them before looking at Ella. "So I'll see you at Da Club tonight around 10?"

She smiled reassuringly at him. "Yeah, sounds great. See you then."

"Bye," he then addressed the detectives. "It was nice to meet you."

Kadeem had gone silent again, so after another awkward silence, Kurtis looked at him and said, "You too."

When Dominic was gone, Ella whirled around and smacked Kadeem on the shoulder. "What do you mean, gay?" she demanded to know. "We're together. He's not gay - why do you have to spoil everything - he's not!"

The detective scoffed. "Please," he jeered. "With that much manscaping? The amount of shit he puts in his hair alone should be sending you warning flags, Ella. But then there's the matter of the tinted eyelashes, taurine cream around the frown lines and those tired, clubber's eyes. Then there's his underwear…"

"His underwear?" she repeated, shocked.

"Very visible above the waist," he told her, now leaning back and crossing her arms. "Very particular brand."

"Not to mention the very suggestive fact that he just gave me his phone number," Kurtis added, holding up the piece of paper he found in the kidney pan. On it was printed a cell phone number with the words "Call me!" written above it.

"You two are horrible," she whimpered before bursting into tears and running from the room.

"Why is she mad at me?" Kadeem asked his partner. "I'm not the one trying to step out on her."

"Your sensitivity is astonishing," Kurtis told him, shaking his head.

"I'm just saving her time," he argued. "Isn't that kinder than letting her waste her time on a cheating loser?"

His partner shook his head. "No, that wasn't kinder. Not even a little bit," he said as he glanced at his watch. A little over six hours to solve the puzzle before something terrible happened to the woman on the other end of the phone.

Now Kadeem, completely unconcerned, pointed to the mysterious tennis shoes on the counter. "Have a look," he told his partner, his chest puffed up like a peacock, his masked face somehow conveying a smirk. He crossed his arms and looked at Kurtis expectantly.

"What?"

"Have a look," he urged.

"No," he shook his head.

"Oh, come on!"

"No!" he exclaimed. "I'm not doing this again."

"Doing what?" he indignantly replied.

"This thing where I tell you my impressions and then you tell me I'm an idiot and make me feel stupid right before you show off how much better your detecting skills are than mine," he replied, frowning.

"I won't tell you you're an idiot," he promised, his tone gentler now. He pointed to the shoes again. "I need an outside eye. A second opinion. It's very useful to me."

Kurtis shot him a skeptical look. "Yeah, right," he said.

"I'm serious."

He let out a long, annoyed sigh, hating himself for getting sucked into his partner's game yet again. But he shrugged and then picked the shoes up and began to examine them. "They're just a pair of sneakers. Air Jordans."

"Good," Kadeem praised him.

Kurtis turned them over in his hands. "Well, they look like they're in pretty good condition. I'd say they were brand new but -" Now he looked more closely at the soles. "-the soles are well-worn so I'd say he's had them for a while."

"Yup," his partner agreed.

"Very 90's," he now said, feeling less reluctant. "Probably one of those retro designs."

"You're knocking it out of the ballpark today," Kadeem told him, his voice beaming proudly. What else?"
"They're pretty big. I'd say they belonged to an adult, but-" His partner looked at him expectantly. Now Kurtis felt his own swell of pride when he uncovered the remnants of a name written in felt tip marker on the underside of the tongue. "There's traces of a name inside. Adults don't usually write their names in their shoes. So these shoes probably belonged to a kid."

"Excellent!" the other crowed. "What else?"

"That's it," he told him. He handed the shoes back to the burned detective.

"That's it?"

"Yup. That's it." Kurtis crossed his arms, bracing for the insult. "How did I do?"

"Good, Kurtis. Really good."

The detective raised an eyebrow. "Really?" he suspiciously asked.

"Absolutely!" he said. "I mean, you've missed nearly everything of importance, but you did a lot better than you normally do."

"Oh, there it is," he scoffed, throwing his hands up in the air.

Kadeem chuckled and then looked at the shoes, his gaze flicking over them. "The owner loved these. Regularly scrubbed them clean and used whitener on the spots that got discolored. Changed the laces three...no, four times. Even so, there's traces of flaky skin where his fingers have come into contact with them, so he suffered from eczema. They're well-worn but more so on the inner side, which means the owner had weak arches." Now he looked up at Kurtis. "And they're twenty years old."

"What?" the other asked, puzzled.

"These aren't retro, they're the original," he informed him. He pointed to his computer screen. The exact style of Air Jordans as the ones before them - blue and white - flashed on Google shopping. "Jordan IV in Legend Blue," he said. "1999."

"But they've still got mud on them," Kurtis argued. "And they look new."

Kadeem nodded. "Someone has kept them that way," he darkly replied. "There's a lot of mud caked on the soles. Analysis shows it's from Buffalo but with Manhattan mud overlaying it."

"How do you know?"
The burned detective toggled between the tab with the shoes to a different one, this one showing a map of New York. "Pollen." He paused, deep in thought. "So a kid came to Manhattan from Buffalo twenty years ago and left them behind."

"So what happened to him?"

"Something bad," he replied. "He loved these shoes, remember? Wouldn't leave them filthy like this. Wouldn't let them go unless he had no choice. So the kid with big feet gets-" He interrupted himself. "Oh…"

Kurtis furrowed his eyebrows. "What?"

"Kyle Coffey."

"Who?"

"Kyle Coffey! Kurtis…"

"What is it?" he asked.

"My first case," he trailed off.

Then Kadeem turned back to the computer, quickly entering something into the Google search bar as Kurtis watched him, bewildered. In a few quick clicks, an archived page from an old newspaper flashed on the screen. Kurtis noted that it was dated roughly twenty years prior. The headline read: "Buffalo boy died doing what he loved." Under it was a photo of a cheerful brunette boy wearing diving trunks, a swimmer's cap, and a pair of swimming goggles pushed up to his forehead standing beside a pool, holding a trophy.

"Kyle Coffey, 2000," Kadeem said. "Young kid with a promising future as a swimmer. There was talk of him going to the Olympics someday. But he came to a school swimming tournament in Manhattan from Buffalo and drowned in the pool."

"A champion swimmer drowned in the pool?" his partner frowned. "That's odd."

"It was a tragic accident," he continued.

"I take it there was something fishy about it?"

He shrugged. "Nobody else thought so. Nobody except me. I wasn't much older than he was. Like fifteen or sixteen. My father read it to my mother from the newspaper one morning at breakfast before me and Khadija went to school."

Kurtis barely contained his smile. "So you started young, did you?"

Kadeem ignored him. "Kyle Coffey had some sort of a fit in the water, and by the time they got him out, he'd already drowned. But there was something that I couldn't wrap my head around. Something wrong about the whole thing."

"What?"

"His shoes," he answered. "Where were his shoes? According to the paper, he'd left all the rest of his clothes in his locker, everything but his shoes. So where did they go? I tried to get the police interested, but they didn't think it was important because Kyle had died of natural causes. There was no trace of his shoes…" He looked at the Air Jordans in front of him. "Until now."

An hour later, after a trip to the vegan Thai restaurant down the street from the precinct, Kurtis had returned to the lab with a couple of cups of coffee for himself and his partner, and found total shoe carnage before him. The Air Jordans were in bits, sliced up by the scalpel that brilliantly gleamed next to the soles. String had been pinned up from corner to corner, and pieces of the shoe hung from them like photos in a darkroom. In the heart of the mess, next to his computer and his microscope, Kadeem sat on his stool as he pored over police photos and documents, deep in concentration.

"What can I do to help?" he asked his partner as he set one of the cups next to him. When he was met with silence, he sighed in frustration. "I want to help. There's only five hours left." As he said it, his phone dinged inside of his pocket. Annoyed, he withdrew it and looked at the message. "That's Agent Walker. He's texting me now."

"Must be a root canal," Kadeem murmured, still looking at a paper.

"He said it's of national importance," the other added.

"Did he?" his partner responded with a hint of amusement in his voice. "That's cute."

Kurtis bristled. "What is?"

"You," he said. "You're all King and Country. Couldn't be anymore Captain America if you tried."

"You can't just ignore it!" he snapped. "This is your future-"

"I'm not ignoring it," he interrupted. "I'm putting my best man onto it right now."

"Okay, good," he replied, placated. "Wait, who are you sending?"

An hour later, Kurtis found himself in the New York branch of the FBI, sitting patiently in a hard chair before a large, ordinary desk in an office that was little more than a glass cubicle. A portrait of J. Edgar Hoover hung on the pale gray wall, his bloated face and black beetle eyes under bushy black eyebrows calling to mind one of the mafiosos he'd so ardently denied existed in America. The detective would never say it out loud to anyone - not even Kadeem - but he secretly wondered if agents like Walker beat off at the thought of their founding father.

As he thought it, Walker pushed his way in with his head buried in a file. "Detective Stryker," he cordially greeted. "How can I help you today?"

Kurtis cleared his throat. "Um, Kabal has asked me to come get some more information from you. Collect some more facts about the stolen plans."

The agent looked up from his file. "Did he?" he suspiciously asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yup," he nervously replied. "He's investigating right now. Investigating away!" He cleared his throat again. "He just wanted to know what else you could tell us about the dead man."

Those piercing hawk eyes still regarded him distrustfully, but he said, "Twenty-seven. A low-level analyst at the CIA's New York office. He was last seen by his girlfriend at 9:30 Monday night. They'd been watching a movie at home. He suddenly left her without any explanation."

"He was found at Pelham Bay Park, yeah?" he asked, taking notes now. "So he got on the train?"

"No," Walker cringed as he gingerly touched his jaw. He winced a little. "He had a MetroCard but it hadn't been used."

Kurtis nodded. "Must've bought a ticket."

"There was no ticket on the body," he added.

And now the detective looked up in confusion. "Then-?"

"Then how did he end up with a bashed-in brain on the tracks at Pelham Bay Park?" Walker finished his thought. "That is the question. The one I was hoping Kabal would provide an answer to. How's he doing?" he abruptly changed tacks.

The detective felt the color drain from his cheeks. Walker knew. He knew, and Kabal was going to jail. Quickly, he cleared his throat once again and said, "He's...fine. It's going well." His tone was less than convincing, but still he continued. "He's completely focused on the case," he lied.

Back at the lab, Kabal was bent over a microscope, lost in his work, close to a breakthrough, he was certain. Three cups of cold coffee stood untouched next to his computer. But he didn't need caffeine right now to sustain him. The thrill of the hunt was the thing. Still, being hunched over the microscope for the last four hours hadn't helped his back at all, so while the computer searched through the database for a match, the burned detective stood up and stretched his limbs before pacing around the lab. When his muscles felt more limber, he happily planted his butt back on the chair and gazed into the microscope once again.

Ella walked in and sighed. "I don't know why I bother sometimes," she grumbled as she looked at the mess Kadeem had made with the shoes. He didn't even bother to look up at her. "I don't mind you using my lab every now and then, Kabal, but I am not your maid. This place needs to be cleaned up before you leave."

The detective suddenly sat back, his eyes glittering with triumph as the computer found the match he was looking for. "Poison."

"I know," she softly replied, looking at his three untouched cups of coffee. "It's the caffeine. I have decaf, if you want. Or green tea."

"Clever. Clever," he thoughtfully rasped, not even hearing her.

"What are you talking about?" she wondered as Kurtis now returned.

Kadeem looked up, thrilled to see his partner and tell him the news. "Clostridium botulinum."

"Gesundheit," the man said.

"Botulism!" he cried in excitement. "It's one of the deadliest poisons on earth!"

"What? Are you saying that Kyle Coffey was murdered?" Kurtis looked at him in astonishment.

Kadeem nodded. "Remember the shoelaces? The kid suffered from eczema. It would be the easiest thing in the world to introduce botulism into his salve. A few hours later, he came down to Manhattan for the swimming competition, the poison took effect, paralysed the muscles and he drowned."

"And it would've been virtually undetectable on the autopsy," the other deduced.

"Especially since no one would've been looking for it," he replied, his excitement growing. "But there were tiny traces of it still inside the Jordans. From where he'd rubbed the cream into his feet. That's why they had to go!"

"So how do we let the bomber know?"

"We get his attention," he said. He logged onto the NYPD's official Twitter account - Kurtis wasn't even going to bother asking his friend how he figured out the media relations officer's username and password - and began typing out a post. He finished, sat back, and read: FOUND: Pair of Air Jordans belonging to Kyle Coffey (1987- 1999). Botulinum toxin is still present. Please contact Detectives Kabal and Stryker at the NYPD." His voice fell sotto. "Stop the clock."

"The killer's kept the shoes?" Kurtis asked him in disbelief. "All these years?"

"Yes. Meaning-"

"He's our bomber," he finished.

"Bingo."

The yellow iPhone suddenly chimed, prompting the detectives to exchange glances. Then Kadeem rapidly put the phone on speaker so they both could hear. Immediately, they recognized the crying woman's voice. "Well...done you. Come...and get me." At last, her voice dissolved and she wailed, "Help me! For God's sake, please help me!"

"Where are you?" Kadeem asked her. "Tell us where you are!"

She sobbed as she gave them an address, and within the hour, the burned detective and his partner, both decked out in bulletproof jackets, watched from the safety of a SWAT van as the bomb robot entered the Bronx apartment. Directly inside the one-bedroom dump, a middle-aged woman sat tied to a wooden chair with a phone in one hand and a pager in another. She was swaddled in a jacket made of C-4, just like a suicide bomber. A tiny red light from a sniper's rifle bobbed over her, a striking color against the flashes of blue from the police vehicles on the street below, wailing their sirens. One of the men from the bomb squad, layered in bomb-resistant armor, carefully crept after the robot, scanning the room for threats. He found it; his eyes immediately saw the tiny red dot hovering over one of the bricks of C-4. For a moment, the entire police force on scene held its collective breath, sharing in a moment of abject horror. And then...the light winked out.

Inside the SWAT van, Kurtis and Kadeem let out a noisy sigh of relief.

SpinoGuy, dude, IDK, I stopped getting notifications from this hell site about a lot of things, so maybe that's what happened to you. Regardless, you found it, so yay! Yeah, it's cool to try and see him actually be a cop. That's why I had a lot of fun with that one chapter you're referring to in Monster. To answer your question about why I made Stryker gay, I hadn't considered him as gay until the first chapter he and Kabal made an appearance in in Monster where I made a reference to him being a health food nut and kind of looking down on Kabal for eating shit junk food. And it made me think that he was a fussy sort of dude who was very careful about what he eats, and he takes care of his outward appearance - like way more than a typical dude would. So from there it just kind of branched out until I realized that he was gay. I swear I'm not trying to be "woke" or pander to the LGBTQ community because I fucking hate it when authors very obviously pander to certain groups. For me, it just seemed like the right characterization to make with him. It's almost like, when I really had to focus some attention on his character and give him more than just the usual passing thought, Stryker himself told me that's what he was. So I went with it.

nadillaandlaprastthefireandice, hello, I'm glad you found this and I'm glad it's giving you LA Noire vibes :D To answer your question, Kabal might confront Erron for his shady past at some point, but I'm not planning it for this particular story. I don't expect Erron to make any sort of cameo. But maybe they can have that discussion in Monster.

ROCuevas, thanks!

The-06, I'm sorry, it seemed like a natural place to end the chapter!

DinoLord00, I agree, the villain in this is far more subdued and elegant as opposed to the more obvious violent that Shao Kahn or Shinnok are. He (or she?) is someone you probably won't see coming, but will be far more intense and terrifying simply because he (or she) lurks in the shadows and their motivations are shadowy at best. At least, that's my hope for the story. As for Mansfield, she's an older cop close to retirement, and she has seen some shit in her day. She can't fight like Kabal and Stryker can, but she can probably hold her own in certain situations. As always, I appreciate your feedback and I'm so glad that you're enjoying it :)