Ori avoided the confused looks of people as the captain introduced him to the station. All he could think of was the uncanny difference it had to the bureau or any other place he’d worked at. The piles of papers, the constant ringing of telephones in the distance and the squealing of chairs reminded him of some torturous place for ordinary sinners.

The whiteboard in the small office was riddled with bad handwriting and he made sure to stay as far away from it, to avoid any chance of rubbing his sleeves against it. He tried his best to remain calm in the new hell he was assigned to as the smell of someone's feet almost blinded him and the utter chaos on the computer screens made him dizzy.

“I know this is temporary, but please do your best to make our guest feel welcome.” said the captain straightening the king’s portrait that hung by a thin nail from the wall. “This is Orelin… umm… Avenolis.” He stopped and cleared his throat looking back at Ori with a slightly confused expression.

“Orelin Avenonilanis,” Ori returned bowing only slightly. “Special Investigator with the Bureau of Magical Investigations.”

“How powerful are you then? Asked Ronns the moment he had the chance. His face had a wide childish smile on it accompanied by a mayonnaise stain on his chin.

“It’s a very relative matter,” returned Ori. “I do not actively partake in magic. Such people have long been -” A gust of wind cut him off before he finished.

“Apparently not very, since he ended up here,” said Myra as she stormed into the office. She did not bother to look at either Ori or the captain and dropped a heavy box on her desk.

“Tamon, I thought we had an agreement,” the captain said loudly enough to make the windows rattle.

“Sorry, captain. I got carried away,” said Myra shrugging her shoulders, and quickly pulling the dusty files out of the box. She put them on her desk side by side until she found the one she was looking for.

“It’s alright,” said Ori. “I’m used to it already.”

The whole office laughed, somewhat fearfully, hiding their amusement as much as they could. They did not find that easy to believe. Myra smirked as well as she flipped through the file and slammed it back together. Then, like a casino card dealer, she handed each of them a file of their own.

“This is all we have from last time. We need to go through everything again,” she said.

“This should be fun,” said Kalin, clearing his desk and pulling his fingers, which instantly made Ronns shiver and distance himself away.

“I hate you when you do that,” Ronns said from behind the monitors.

“Right,” the captain said as he reached for the door. “Keep me in the loop.”

Myra blew the dust off the stash of papers and threw the box under the table. She prepared to take a deep dive down memory lane but the captain stopped her from taking a seat. He had his phone in his hand as he held onto the knob.

“You need to go see Dr.Katen,” he said reading through what looked like a long set of documents.

“They have something?” Myra upstarted.

“DNA results are in, but there’s probably more.”

“Finally.” She grabbed her coat from the chair and tried to leave, but Ori was there first.

“Captain, do I have to take the wizard to the morgue?” Myra said with flattened lips.

The captain remained silent and jerked his head towards the exit.

***

“To be clear, I am not a wizard,” said Ori as they stepped into the elevator.

“I don’t know how that makes any difference.” Her voice was flat as what she heard held the same importance to her as last year’s snow.

“Not to you I suppose.”

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When the door opened again they were in a seemingly endless hallway and the unmistakable smell of formaldehyde took over. The small black mosaic on the floor pointed the way to the morgue. It was not uncommon for police stations and city morgues to be connected by underground hallways many years ago. Sometimes even hospitals had their own private networks to all the other necessary departments. The tunnels still retained their original beauty and to any new visitor, they appeared as a step into the past.

Ori did not say a word as they approached the last door in line which stood slightly ajar.

Inside there was a body laid on the first of three tables. It was clean, and strangely paler than before, almost entirely white. Myra could not help but stare at it, the same way she did ten years ago. Such strange circumstances made her wonder just how far the similarities ran if even the stitches were in the same place as before.

“Oh, it’s you Tamon,” said the mortician, as soon as she heard the footsteps circling the body. “What a deja vu, huh? Oh, and you must be our special guest.” She fixed her glasses and stretched her hand over the body to shake Ori’s.

“It’s bizarre,” said Myra, now fully convinced that it was not a trick and that history has indeed repeated itself.

“Well, yes,” returned Avva. “Of course it is. But not entirely, I must say. It is strange enough to make you wonder, but when you get deeper inside, it kind of gets, I don’t know… boring.”

Ori took a deep breath and laughed, covering his mouth with the sleeve of his coat. He did not want to admit why it was so funny, but deep down he knew he had the same thought.

“What are you saying?” Myra felt lost between two morbid minds that appeared to understand one another and leave her out of their mad logic. “Use normal words.”

Avva smiled, tucked her curly grey hair behind her ears and disappeared behind the door to the laboratory. When she returned she was carrying a thick white envelope.

“I’ll send you the official report once we’ve put it all together, but here’s the outline I already showed the captain. I compared the injuries from the first case and this one, and though they are very similar, there are major differences.” She presented them with a set of photographs, almost all of which were of the victim’s back. She began arranging them on the table in the middle, like a puzzle meant to form the shape of a body out of paper. Then, with the help of her assistant, she turned the body over and let the obvious truth come out.

“Not the same,” concluded Myra, as she stood in between, and compared each cut like it was a challenge in the daily newspaper.

“Both the size and depth. Three cuts were made while the victim was standing, and so they are the least precise. The ones made later, while he was on the ground were much better placed, and deeper. I’d presume they were done with much more certainty.”

“What about the angles?”

“Left-handed. Same height I’d say, same angle of entry, same force applied.” She proceeded to make a small mimic of how the victim was stabbed using the red pencil from her lab coat.

A short silence took the room before Ori decided to break it.

“Same killer?” he asked.

“Judging by the fact that the first one was never caught, I’d say the possibility is very high.” Avva returned smiling.

“And what about the elephant in the room?” Myra growled pointing to the two instances of the same thing that were laid out around her. “How does either of you explain the same person being killed twice?”

“Necromancy?” said Avva looking at Ori with pure curiosity in her eyes. Her eyebrow was raised almost as high as the corner of her mouth.

Ori shook his head in denial. “You would have a rotting corpse on your table. The first victim had been dead for far too long to look like this.”

“Worth the try,” Avva whispered and crossed her arms. “Some sort of cloning or duplicating perhaps?”

“A possibility but very hard to track. Even so, he’d have to be alive for it to work, or you know, corpses.”

“Shapeshifter?”

“Would have reverted upon death.”

The conversation made Myra increasingly anxious, as the two kept making loose assumptions without any conclusive outcome. She resorted to holding onto the ridges of her coat as the only thing that kept her from freezing to death. “It's your turn wizard,” she said abruptly. “Do you sense something? Some magic residue of whatever it is you look for?”

“Oh, oh, like a magic fingerprint?” said Avva excitedly. “Is that even possible?”

“Yes, though highly inconclusive and unreliable. Such findings cannot be used in court because they can be highly subjective. Plus, there are people who…-” he stopped once he realized that he was inevitably prolonging his stay in Helden with every word he said. He felt Myra’s fiery gaze upon his cheek and instead of talking he took off the glove from his left hand and lifted it over the dead man’s body.

He closed his eyes and let small, almost invisible flashes of electricity enter the pale skin of the victim. They bounced around the body, making it light up like a summer storm. It got so saturated with energy that the neon light above the table began to flicker. After a few rapid flashes, the light exploded into pieces with such strength it would have made them suffer more wounds than the dead man.

But, before the glass could hurt anyone Ori clumped it back together with one swift move and let it fall to the floor in the form of a thin layer of dust. He turned back to Myra with a peculiar expression on his face.

“What was that?” she said in utter horror. The speed at which it all happened left no time for her to react and the best she could do was grab the cold metal of the table behind her and hold onto it. The last thing she needed was to be reminded of the consequences of magic.

“Something that was not supposed to happen,” said Ori raising his head to where the neon lamp once hung. “Have you personally tested the DNA?” he turned to Avva, who was trying to shake off the shock from her face.

“Yes, of course. Why?”

“Could you do me a favour and test again tomorrow?”

“Care to enlighten us?” Myra intruded, breaking their eye contact. “Is there something there?”

“I have to entertain a thought,” Ori said quietly. He put his leather gloves back on and clenched his fists several times as if to check his fingers still worked. “If I’m right, we might have something to go on.”