Prelude

2016, March

When we arrived at the scene, it was chaotic as hell. Flashing lights of red, white, and blue were playing like it was disco night. The hotel was cordoned off by the police and surrounded by a large crowd of hotel guests, gawkers, and reporters. Their hands raised into the air like they were in a concert as they videoed the scene with their mobile phones.

Seeing our registered plate numbers, the police officers cleared the way for our vehicle to enter. We entered the basement parking and parked in between two police cars and a couple of senior officers quickly came up to us. "Who are you?"

"ISD 'P' Divison," My colleague whipped out his ID and showed his credentials to the police officers.

"ISD? P Divison?" Both the officers frowned as they returned the ID card back. "What is the Internal Security Division doing in a crime scene?"

"It just turned into a terrorist case," My colleague said as I went the other two to collect our gear and equipment at the trunk. The side doors of the unmarked dark tainted windowed van that was following us slide open and a hit squad of STARs came out, further surprising the two police officers.

"Your superiors clearly doesn't think so," My colleague explained patiently to the police officers. "We got called in."

I carried two large black cases and asked, "Where is the scene?"

"Eh... it's on the thirteen floor..." One of the officers said. "I get someone to escort you over."

"Lock down this entire place," I added. "Also evacuate the entire hotel. Do it floor by floor."

The face of the senior Inspector in charge of the scene turned grim as he heard my words. "Got it!"

I nodded to the rest and we followed the police officer who was called over. The young looking police officer seemed both excited and intimidated at the same time. We had to take two elevators to go up the hotel with the number of people we had.

We walked down the thickly carpeted hallway and the scene was easily found as a small crowd of police doing their jobs was all over the place. The young officer said helpfully, "A couple of hotel guests found the suite door broken and blood all over the place. They quickly called the hotel security and they called us in."

I nodded, as we stopped before the partially broken door. It had swung ajar outwards with several plywood panels of the door splintered and the magnetic lock hanging off the door frame. I took a look at the suite number and shook my head. < 1313 > Talk about luck...

The STARs team quickly deployed themselves in the hallway, their tactical gear and weapons surprised the CID and CSI team as they paused in their work on documenting the crime scene. I gingerly stepped over the female body in a cocktail dress with her head caved in laying before the door, avoiding the bloody carpet and shoe prints.

"Who are you?" A balding bespectacled middle aged man, wearing a dark blue working vest with bold white CSI printed on its back stopped us.

"ISD," I reflexly replied and held up my ID for him to check. "This is now a terrorist case, so we are gonna take over."

"What?" The CSI guy was confused as he looked around the scene.

"Don't worry," I said. "Your superiors called us over. Can you please tell me what you have learned of the scene so far?"

The CSI guy frowned as he returned my ID card. "Well, if you say so..."

"Well, be careful of where you step," He warned and gestured me and my other two colleagues in. "My name is Hong Yun, you can call me Hong. I'm in charge of the CSI team here."

I took a look around the pretty large suite which had two adjoining bedrooms and a huge living room with one side of the wall windows facing the night of the city and led out to the balcony.

"Call me Neo," We didn't shake hands as he was wearing his blue latex gloves and I didn't want to get dead people's juice on me. "So what happened here?"

"Well, the police got the call at 0023," Hong said. "First responders reached this place at 0031. We got a party got bad from the looks of it."

He gestured to the cracked glass table in which one corner had blood on it. "Drugs, preliminary tests show its methamphetamine."

"We got nine dead, four in the living room here, one at the door which you just saw," Hong pointed to the marked bodies on the floor with numbered place cards next to them. "Girl was probably trying to escape when she was killed with a blunt force trauma to the back of her head."

"Another two in the toilet and two more in this room," The CSI leader showed us the other deaths. The both couples in the toilet and room were half naked and clearly engaged in sexual acts when their throats were ripped out.

"Cause of death for the four in the living room was the loss of blood. Multiple lacerations are found on their bodies," Hong read from his notepad. "We suspect something like an ice pick or similar. Looks like some kind of rage killing."

"As for the two couples in the toilet and bedroom," Hong flipped his notes. "All four had their throats and neck ripped out by something..."

"Hotel records and surveillance cameras showed ten people entering the room, time stamped at 2252," added Hong. "Five males and five females."

Hong sighed as he removed his glasses to rub his tired eyes said, "I guess is that they had some party going on, with lots of alcohol and drugs. One of them most likely overdosed and high got into a fight with the rest and it turned out badly."

"This is clearly a murder crime," Hong stated. "I don't know why will it be related to terrorism."

I choose not to reply and bent over at the open cases of bagged evidence placed on the side. I picked up Evidence F - 11 and held it up against the light and gave the ziplock bag a tiny shake.

"Oh that," Hong frowned as he saw what I was doing. "Some kind of animal fur, we need to take it to the lab for testing before we know more. Seems like they might have smuggled in a dog or cat into the room as we had camera footage of some animal running out of the room."

I narrowed my eyes slightly as looked at the long greyish black strands of fur in the evidence bag and nodded before returned it back to the evidence case. "Thanks, Mr. Hong, I need to make a call to my superiors to report in."

Hong gave a nod and returned to his work while I walked out to the empty balcony and sighed. The view was pretty good, nice view of the city's CBD and river. Even the full moon acted as the perfect backdrop to the scenery.

I gestured to my two colleagues to join me at the balcony and spoke in a low voice, "Lycanthropy?"

"Textbook style of attacks. Shredded clothing and even fur." Both of them nodded, "It should still be in the building. I saw the surveillance video. Something animal like dashed out of the room."

"Shit..." I sighed again. "This should be a new turned."

Damn! I hate werewolves. Fucking things were fast, armored, can regen health, and twice the strength of Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime. They can only be killed if you either chop the head off, deal enough damage to overwhelm it's cheating regenerative system or filled it with enough silver to choke the daylights out of it.

Long story short, it basically means you need lots of firepower to kill it. And boy do we have firepower!

We left the balcony and I approached Hong again. "Can you have your people stay inside this room without leaving?"

"Why?" Hong's eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"Well, the guy that killed these people?" I cooked up some cock and bull story on the spot. "He's a known member of a terror cell which we can't name them due to security reasons. He's a highly trained killer too, and we are suspecting he is still in this hotel. So for you and your people's safety, we are gonna do a sweep of this whole hotel."

I could see my bullshit story had convinced him as he nodded and turned to his colleagues, calling them to gather up as he gave them a brief of what I had said. I picked up the cases I bought along and headed out of the suite and the STAR's team leader joined me. "Sir?"

"Well, it's a fucking werewolf," I said. "Luckily its newly turned, so it's not so smart nor fully accustomed to its abilities."

"Bad news is, it's still somewhere in this hotel," I gestured towards the security cameras. "Later, it's gonna be fucking hell to erase all the evidence..."

The Special Tactics And Rescue team leader nodded and spoke into his comms, informing his men to switch their ammunition to silver while I slipped a bite proof armored vest out and loaded the FN P90 with a 50 round stack of 5.7 x 28mm full metal silver-jacket that can punch through a Level IIIA Kevlar vest at a range of 200m which in my dictionary means its a good werewolf killing gun!

My two other colleagues similarly armed and armored split off with the STARs team as we split into two teams. One team will clear from one side of the hotel while the other team handles the other side. We retreated to the first place and started to work our way up, while our only colleague still in the basement acts as our liaison with the Police.

The Hotel management with the Police had managed to evacuate as much of the guests as possible while they made public announcements over the Hotel intercoms warning the remaining guests to lock themselves in the room.

The first few levels of clearing the Hotel was easy, but on the fourth floor, it started to suck. Seriously, I hate wearing body armor. I mean it can be the line between life and death, but these things are hot and heavy. I didn't even want to look at the STAR team as they had to suit up with long sleeved uniforms and protective guards, armor and even balaclava.

I mean, I'm sweating and panting by the time we climbed the stairs to the fourth floor. Even with the air conditioning of the Hotel, it sucks! And there are still fourteen floors to go!

Anyway, we found the damn thing by use of the cameras after climbing another seven floors, and I swear to God that I lost a couple of kilos of fats with that workout...

The call came in from our comms, stating that the cameras on floor sixteen spotting a large dog or animal seeming trying to force its way into one of the hotel rooms and Hotel management was urgently reporting that there was a guest on the room service line calling for help about some crazy guy in a wolf costume.

I quickly had the Hotel management unlock the elevators and we made the remaining trip up. As we exited the elevators, the werewolf had already broken down part of the suite door and was partially digging its way into the room.

It was kinda hilarious if you ignore the screams coming from inside the suite as half the ass off the werewolf was sticking out, facing us. I mean, I never tried shooting a werewolf in the ass till it died, but in this job, there's always something first!

In the end, we gave the furry ass a massive dose of lethal injection of silver bullets. Pretty much anti climax, same for the murdered, who had their heads chopped off in the morgue to prevent them from ever turning.

Luckily, we could shift all blame to terrorism, without the public ever finding out that there were things scarier than suicide bombers...