Anomaly

Chapter 6 -The Report

From the rooftop, the fall had looked final.

The boy’s body had slipped backward over the ledge, arms flailing, swallowed by twenty stories of open air. The man in the coat had leaned just far enough to watch the descent, expecting the impact to end it cleanly.

Only it hadn’t.

There had been no thud, no splatter across the pavement. Just… nothing.

The man’s jaw tightened. He scanned the street below, eyes narrowing against the glare of wet asphalt and neon. Empty. No crowd gathering. No blood. No broken body.

An absence.

He pulled his radio from his coat pocket, thumbed the button, and spoke low. “Subject went over. No recovery at street level. He’s alive.”

Static crackled. Then a woman’s voice, clipped and precise: “Confirm visual.”

“Negative. Visual lost. But he’s alive.”

“How do you know?”

He hesitated, lips pressed thin. How to explain what he’d seen? The strange shimmer around the boy as he fell, like light bending through glass. The way the air itself had seemed to ripple before he hit. It was brief, almost too quick to trust his eyes — but he’d seen enough anomalies over the years to know the difference between death and transformation.

“I know,” he said flatly.

A pause on the line. Then: “Understood. Teams are already in motion. Sweep the sector. Containment priority.”

The radio clicked dead.

He slipped it back into his pocket, jaw set against the sting of rain. His coat clung heavy to his shoulders, but he ignored it, eyes still fixed on the slick streets below. Somewhere down there, the boy was moving, breathing, awakening.

And that meant the clock had started.

He turned from the ledge and strode back toward the access door, boots grinding gravel. The city at night was vast, but they had ways of narrowing it. Cameras. Sensors. Informants who knew what to look for.

An anomaly couldn’t hide forever.

And if this one had truly awakened, then hiding wasn’t the only danger.

He pulled his collar higher, muttering to himself as he disappeared into the stairwell:

“Let’s see what you really are.”

The stairwell smelled of rust and old rain, each step groaning faintly under his weight. He descended quickly, shoulders squared, every movement precise, as if ritual kept him from replaying the fall in his mind.

Two men waited at the bottom, both in plain clothes but carrying themselves with the same rigid alertness. One lifted his phone the instant he appeared, showing a grainy shot of an empty street. “No body,” the man reported. “Nothing on cameras within a three-block radius either.”

The man in the coat didn’t flinch. “Because he walked away.”

The second operative frowned. “From that height?”

He didn’t bother answering.

Instead, he brushed past them and stepped into the night. The city pressed close here — neon signs flickering against wet brick, the low hum of traffic, the faint hiss of steam venting from a grate. Every sound felt sharpened in the aftermath, every shadow heavier.

A black van idled at the curb, headlights off. Its side door slid open with a hollow scrape, revealing two more inside, bent over glowing screens. One screen displayed a city map, grids of blue light marking sectors. Another showed feeds from traffic cameras, crosshatched with time stamps.

“Sector sweep expanding,” one of the techs said without looking up. “Thermal’s a mess in this weather, but we’ll tighten.”

The man in the coat climbed inside, rainwater dripping from his collar. He stood behind the techs, watching as new grids lit up on the map.

“He’s tired,” the man said quietly, more to himself than to them. “Rookie anomalies always are. He won’t risk the crowds yet. He’ll look for cover.”

The tech at the map nodded, fingers flying across keys. “Abandoned sites in a five-block radius. Laundromats, old offices, maintenance tunnels. Cross-referencing now.”

The van rumbled into motion, merging with the flow of late-night traffic.

The man in the coat finally sat, folding his hands in his lap, eyes fixed on the shifting feeds. He didn’t need to tell them how important this was. They all knew.

The boy wasn’t just another anomaly. The fall had proved that. Most would have splattered across the street — broken, wasted potential. But this one had endured.

That made him valuable.

Dangerous.

And the organization didn’t tolerate either without control.

As the van turned onto a darker stretch of road, the man let his eyes close just for a moment, seeing again the way the boy’s outline had blurred in the air, scattering like dust caught in light.

A shiver traced his spine.

“Yes,” he murmured under his breath. “We’ll find you.”

The van rolled slowly through the dripping streets, its headlights dimmed to blend with late-night delivery trucks and taxis. Inside, the glow of monitors bathed every face in cold blue light.

“Cross-referencing finished,” one of the techs reported. “Three abandoned sites within range that fit shelter profile. One laundromat, one storage facility, one office block.”

The man in the coat leaned forward, gaze fixed on the map. His finger tapped once on the laundromat marker. “That first one. Run thermal.”

The tech keyed the command. The screen flickered, resolving into a grainy heat scan. Nothing but faint signatures of rats in the walls. Empty.

“Next,” the man said.

The map shifted to the office block. Thermal scan again. A handful of faint spots — transients or squatters curled in upper rooms. Nothing that matched.

The tech turned to the final location. A maintenance stairwell under an old office.

The image was muddy, the rain distorting the sensor, but there — faint heat, small, low to the ground. Not moving.

The van went silent.

The man in the coat narrowed his eyes. “Playback last ten minutes.”

The screen rewound, blurring into streaks of static before resettling. The figure had shifted once, restless, then gone still again.

Sleeping.

A faint curl of satisfaction touched his lips. “There.”

One of the operatives in the back straightened. “Orders?”

“Not yet,” he said. His voice was calm, almost patient. “He’s exhausted. Let him think he’s safe. We move in daylight, when the streets mask us. By then, he’ll either stay put… or he’ll crawl out hungry and desperate.”

The tech hesitated. “And if he uses—”

The man cut him off with a sharp look. “He won’t. Not yet. He doesn’t understand it enough. Fear keeps him in check.”

The van hummed onward, tires hissing against the wet pavement.

Outside, the first hints of dawn seeped into the sky, painting the clouds a dull gray. The man in the coat watched it through the windshield, silent, his thoughts turning not to the capture, not to the protocol, but to the blur he had witnessed on the rooftop.

The way the boy had come apart and reformed.

Not every anomaly managed that.

And if this one had done it instinctively, without training…

He folded his hands together, the faintest trace of unease in the gesture.

“Daylight,” he repeated, voice low but firm. “We’ll take him in daylight.”

The van slowed to a crawl, parking in the shadow of an overpass. The hum of the city above masked its idle engine. Inside, the operatives worked in near silence, fingers tapping softly across keys, eyes darting between the glowing grids and camera feeds.

One of the techs cleared his throat. “Cross-checking thermal with records. Running identity confirmation.”

The man in the coat said nothing. He didn’t need to. His gaze stayed locked on the grainy figure in the stairwell, curled against the wall, hood pulled low, the faintest glow of warmth pulsing in rhythm with sleep.

The tech’s screen pinged softly. A file slid open — photo, fingerprints, school records, hospital charts stacked thick with inconclusive notes.

“Match found.”

The operative beside him leaned in. “Name?”

The tech’s voice was flat, clinical. “Elias Hale. Age seventeen.”

The name hung in the stale air of the van, sharper than the static hiss of the monitors.

The man in the coat repeated it once under his breath, as if testing the sound. “Elias.”

Not just a subject. Not just an anomaly. A boy with a name.

His lips pressed thin, expression unreadable. Then he leaned back in his seat, the faintest curl of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“Good,” he said. “Now we know who we’re dealing with.”

The van’s lights dimmed as dawn crept over the skyline. The city was waking. And so was the hunt.