As a police officer walking the beat I knew to look for motive, means, and opportunity when pursuing an investigation. As one who was now about to be outside the law and its protection it was simple to reverse my thinking.

I was motivated, gangsters coming to drag me from my home and chop me into little bite sized pieces had that effect on a being. There would be an opportunity when they came for me, that much had been created when I openly challenged the Bone Syndicate. Now all I needed was a method, a force multiplier, something to give me an edge.

A peek inside Sacher's paper parcel had revealed some useful items but it wasn't enough. The enemy would come in waves, overwhelming and pinning me down. And as much as it pained me to say it, I was not an überhund. I was not a superhero like in the radio dramas.

My rage burning bright inside my chest made me want to believe that I could take on the world. But that wasn't how real life worked. Wanting something did not change the fact that I physically could not take on that many enemies and hope to win.

In the end it all came down to math, cold unfeeling numbers. The outcome of a one on one fight was anyone's guess. Because even though the Möhin were larger and physically more imposing, firearms eliminated that advantage, essentially making us equal. But with each added attacker the scales tipped exponentially in the Syndicate's favor.

I needed a first contact weapon, something that would burn through the enemy like a thunderbolt. I needed something that would kill most of my attackers and leave the rest too wounded to fight back. Then I could mop up the survivors and make my escape.

Strangely enough, it was my time as a police officer and not my training as a commando that yielded an answer. As the tram shuddered and shook its way towards the station I remembered an incident maybe two winters prior where an entire family of Katzen had been killed.

Things in Möhi were hard for the Döbian and the Sühi. Even though we all looked different and had our own cultures at least we were the same species. That got us a little leeway. But the Katzen were felines, descendants of the big cats of old.

They looked different, smelled different, talked different, thought different. I wasn't comfortable around Katzen but I never understood why others seemed to hate them so much. Even my father hadn't been able to give me a satisfactory answer because for all the horrible things he did he hadn't hated them either. They had merely been in his way.

Nobody noticed the dead Katzen until the children failed to come to school. Their teacher had tried to contact the parents and when she got no reply I had been dispatched to do a wellness check. What I found when the apartment manager opened the door broke my heart, a whole family curled together for warmth, dead in each other's arms.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

It had been unusually cold that winter. I could remember how my every breath had hung in the air as I stood outside on a landing and listened numbly to the Möhin apartment manager explaining what had happened and why it wasn't his fault.

"We get these every few years." He told me. "There's a rule against gas heaters in the building but when the weather gets cold… well folks do what they want."

I remembered the notification pinned to the door. "It can get pretty cold in an apartment with concrete floors and no electricity." I responded, the wind whipping at my coat.

The whole city was covered in a layer of sooty snow and it would have been beautiful if I hadn't begun to associate the cold with death. It seemed like every shift I was finding some drunken vagrant frozen in a fetal position buried under the snow.

"That's between them and the utility company. If they don't pay their bill you can't expect us to pay it for them. We're a business, not a charity." His next words cut me deeper than he could possibly know. "Besides, it's just some Katzen. You're Döbian, I'm surprised you even care."

The smart thing to do would have been to just shut my mouth, file my report, and be done with it. But I had just seen dead children and thought they were not of my race or my creed, I could not and would not let that go unchallenged.

I felt the mask beginning to slip. It would be easy to push this Möhin bastard over the railing and watch him splatter on the ground below. I could imagine him freezing solid on the way down and shattering into a million selfish pieces.

Instead I got in close, so close that the steam from our bodies mingled. "I'm a Döbian and as you know we enjoy efficiency and neatness. Investigating when citizens freeze to death or die from gas leaks is a waste of police resources." I told him with barely contained menace. "If I have to waste my time coming here again I'm going to take it personally. Do you understand?"

The apartment manager nodded. He couldn't comprehend basic decency and he didn't have a better nature to appeal to, but he understood a threat when he heard one.

When the gas had dissipated and it was safe to enter the apartment I was struck by how quiet it was. The Katzen looked like they were asleep but I couldn't hear them breathing. I can remember thinking that if only one of them would start to breathe that they would all just wake up as if nothing had happened.

I knew that they were dead. I had checked earlier. But all the same I found myself pleading with God to just let them breathe, if they started breathing again everything would be fine. But God was asleep that day, just as he had been when my father committed his atrocities. The marks of which were tattooed underneath the eyes of the dead mother and father Katzen.

So instead had I said a prayer to a god that was not listening. A Katzen prayer I had forced myself to learn.

"God, full of mercy, who dwells in the heights, provide a sure rest upon the wings of the Divine Presence, within the range of the holy, pure and glorious, whose shining resemble the sky’s, to these souls…"

The tram lurched to a stop and brought me back to the present. I had work to do.