Detective Fog finally invited Senator Athena Rex to her office one afternoon when all was quiet, with no news. Some weekends were just surprisingly silent in The City compared to the mayhem of the rest of the time. It was off-putting but also provided a sense of privacy and anonymity that usually was impossible to acquire. Still, the meeting time was set for midnight.

Malyssa was camped out on Jimmy's couch, as usual curled up on a throw pillow half her size and poring over a laptop with a million open windows and internet browser tabs. The knock on the door came at precisely twelve o'clock.

"Thanks for meeting with me at this hour," said Athena when Detective Fog opened the door.

Fog led her into the inner office, sat down at the Ikea desk facing the window, and swiveled the chair around to face Athena, who took the uncomfortable plastic guest chair. On second thought, Detective Fog jumped up, crossed the room, and lurched suddenly at a bookshelf in the corner. One booted foot stepped on the bottom shelf to propel her to the height she would need to reach over to the top of a corkboard on the wall perpendicular to the bookshelf so she could grab what looked like a kind of magnet or paperweight that read, "Stupid People Keep Me Employed."

She twisted the thing once in her palm and came back to the desk, plopping it down as she said, "Security camera. I just turned it off."

Athena nodded pleasantly.

Back in her seat, Detective Fog checked out Athena's mask of calm, searching for cracks and flaws. "You're really going to have to trust me," she said before long. "I'm going to have to shoot you in the head and the heart and leave you to die. Teleport you to another place, which I gotta tell you I currently have no idea how to do, and then resurrect you. The back from the dead gig is something I've only ever tried once."

"But it worked," said Athena.

"It worked."

"For a price?" Athena wondered.

"None of that fairytale bullshit. No price. No strings attached. No 'don't feed after midnight' crap, that never would have worked on Dianthea anyways."

"It was your sister you brought back? That's interesting. Why only once, then, if there's no cost? Surely your job entails running into the mortally endangered on occasion. Why not save lives more often?"

"It's against the law, for one, Ms. Senator."

"You've never broken the law?" asked Athena with curiosity. "Never jaywalked, never drank underage. Never smoked marijuana? The more I think about the Prohibition era, the more certain I am that some laws are meant to be broken, then repealed. Rewritten. So don't give me that, Detective."

Detective Fog crossed her arms in front of her chest and said, "Believe me or don't, but I have never done any of those things. The only laws I ever broke were while I was in police services, the day I was dismissed. But that's about to change. We'll need a test subject. Or several. If you're going to trust me, we better make sure I can do this without a hitch. I'm willing to compromise my principles for this cause. Why don't we head to the Tenderloin and find some recently deceased to bring back from the other side?"

"You're saying we can just walk into the neighborhood and find someone recently deceased?"

"If you know where to look, you can go for a serious likelihood. Probability is on my side. Plus, you said you wanted to stop the mafia presence in this city within six months of Mayor Banikas's death. We've got until November 1st. That's six weeks from now. Plenty of time to do a couple of test runs."

Fifteen minutes later, Detective Fog was leading Senator Athena Rex into the Tenderloin in search of fresh corpses or victims about to expire. As they got out of Athena's Fiat 1100, the senator pulled a fedora down so the rim covered part of her face. She ordinarily wore something more feminine, a cloche or a side beret or a tiny hat with a tiny veil or a turban set with a brooch or had her hair up in a knit hair snood. It wasn't much of a disguise, but the likelihood of recognition from the impoverished inhabitants in that neighborhood was unlikely.

Hiding her barbie hair under a hoodie, Malyssa led Athena up Leavenworth, a dirty street of midrises and two-story buildings, ugly ones with fire escapes for decoration, which may or may not at some time have been painted interesting colors. Now the paint was faded. And in the recesses of every doorstop and storefront, plenty of them abandoned and all of them looking that way, were sleeping bags either currently occupied or filled with someone's every last possession and asset in the world.

On every corner, small gaggles of congregates in hoodies ignored the two women who strode past minding their own business. On one block, three panhandlers banded together on a couch left out on the street, having taken the sign which presumably had read 'Free Couch' on one side and now said, 'Bet you $1 you'll read this sign' on the other. Every rundown building called itself a hotel or albergo, was covered in both the beautiful kind and the vandalism kind of graffiti, and had locked gates over doorways and windows.

On the next block, Declan sat in the recess next to the entrance to a convenience store called "Donuts and Cigarettes" on a lawn chair next to a stack of full, warm styrofoam containers as tall as he was.

"Hey Declan," said Detective Fog. "Can I borrow your keys?" Declan wasn't actually homeless, but he was hungry, disabled, and unemployed. He shared a flat on Leavenworth with three other impoverished souls and some guy who managed to pay the rent in exchange for a combination of cash, narcotics, and leftover takeout from the other tenants. The place was rent-controlled. The owners rented out a dozen apartments on the market, and this place had only rented for a couple hundred bucks a few decades ago when the tenant first nabbed it.

In exchange for the affordability of the digs, the place had never been renovated. The landlord ignored most complaints since the occupants forgot within twenty-four hours, and most of the building was in complete disrepair.

It was also the perfect warren of substance abusers, and Detective Fog had always worried what she would find in the hallways and behind the broken door locks of that complex. Today maybe she could help someone.

"That'll be five hundred dollars, please," said Declan. He held out what sincerely looked like a Square Cash reader and said, "I take credit card."

"We brought lasagne," said Detective Fog, extending two styrofoam temples of nutritious calories.

"Is it cold?"

"Still steaming hot," said Detective Fog, and she pulled the containers back out of his reach, putting out her other hand expectantly.

He dropped keys as cold as ice into her palm, and she passed over the lasagne. "Thank you," they both said at the same time. Detective Fog gave him a nod, and he added, "Your friend is pretty," to the pair of backs moving away from him up the street.

The slummy apartment building was one short of the corner, one of the few four-stories that didn't call itself a hotel. On the other side of the barred gate, which she opened with Declan's key, several people were seated on the half flight of stairs in the smoggy, smelly air. They passed something between them, which one of them stuck into a sleeping bag with surprisingly alacritous sleight of hand at the sight of the detective and the senator.

"Don't worry," said someone else, "It's Detective Fog, she's cool."

From deep within the recesses of a hoodie, a neighbor of Declan's peered out with lucid eyes shining at the pair of them and nodded. Despite some sluggishness and a seeming avoidance of much more movement than that, the occupants of the stairs all appeared to be alive and well and thoroughly enjoying themselves, so Fog just asked, "Everyone all right here?" as she moved past to the front door and didn't really wait for a real vocal response.

More than one neighbor was also loitering in the hallways passing things which they hid from the strangers back and forth, blocking the two doorways' views on that floor and crowding the stairwell going up.

Between a pair of legs, Malyssa could make out someone slouched on the floor in the corner and elbowed Athena as if the two of them had just gotten lucky. The detective led the way past glaring eyes and heads that swiveled to follow what they wanted to see, and when Detective Fog crouched down next to someone who might not be just sleeping, a male voice said, "Hey, can I help you girls with something?"

"Just checking to make sure your friend is okay," said Detective Fog.

She didn't turn, make eye contact or engage, and felt that it was generous of her to have responded vocally. The heel of her boot squished on something that felt like a wet cigarette, and she hoped that her imagination had interpreted the feeling accurately because there were much worse things that could be.

The figure she knelt by was without any apparent gender, or age for that matter. A thin face with no color, no expression, no fat, nothing round, just a vague suggestion of straight lines such as a nose and a chin, and closed eyes behind straight slits of eyelid. All that wrapped in a hoodie under a navy puff jacket that could have fit six men of the figure's size or one full-figured male.

The sleeping or possibly dead human had his or her knees pulled into the jacket, giving the appearance of leglessness. Just a huge, bulky torso with a tiny, hairless baby head that could have been a hundred years old or fifteen.

All thought of personal space forgotten, Detective Fog reached two fingers into the sleeping or dead figure's sleeve and searched through the layer of unwashed grime and thin skin for a pulse.

The three figures by the door started coming forward, and the male spoke again. "What's the idea, you a cop?" Unfortunately, none of this group knew Detective Fog by appearance.

Athena answered him, "We're not police. We're here to help."

"Declan asked us to stop by," Detective Fog added, and with the final words, she felt a steady heartbeat coming from the "patient's" wrist. Not wasting any time, she got up and turned around, and immediately walked back toward the stairwell and past the three interrogators without asking them any questions. Not paying them any mind.

"What was that?" one of the girls called after her. Malyssa ignored her, but the other girl moved fast, darting at the detective and slamming a fist into the wall in front of her, blocking the way with her arm.

"My girl asked you a question," said a tough, similarly grimy visage. "What's Declan want you here for?"

Keeping her own face a neutral mask, her chin dipped to err on the submissive side, Malyssa told her, "Just a public safety check. Let's say I'm a kind of nurse. I'm here to see if anyone needs the medical services I can offer."

"Such as?"

"Resuscitation and revival."

"Why you think someone would need re– resuscitation and revival, Ms. Not a Cop? Might I add that those two words are basically synonyms, so that's redundant, but moving along, explain to me why you come here looking for someone in trouble. Did Declan say someone was in trouble?"

"He worries. You know you're all family to him, he worries all day every day, and since I was in the neighborhood, he asked me to come by and check on his fam."

"What, like he thinks someone's about to OD any second? We're all just sitting around sticking needles in our veins and tottering off to the other side? And if you stop by at any random hour, you'll be able to find some poor fixer to save? That's so nice, thanks for your concern."

"Any time," said Detective Fog. She let out a smile that she hoped would come off as polite. "Got any roommates you want me to check on?"

"How about you leave and take your friend and your bullshit story with you?"

Something in this woman's tough girl act clicked at that moment as something above, beyond, and outside of mere territorialism. Upon closer inspection, Malyssa looked up to meet her eyes and took in a pair of clever oculi, then found healthy round cheeks and finally impressive white visible incisors.

This girl didn't even live here, and was most likely the pusher in this relationship. Possibly for the Mob.

No sooner did the pieces fall into place than the detective felt a metal pistol muzzle slide into her suit jacket and press against her ribs through an all too thin cotton button-down. The Mob girl said, "Have me met before, Ms. Not a Cop?"

Malyssa shook her head, and with zero fear of being shot, reached into her jacket for the copy she carried of her Private Investigator's license. "I don't believe we've had the pleasure, although you may have heard of me. I'm not a cop, but it's not going to be easy to make me disappear."

The woman took the license and started reading. Her two friends moved closer out of curiosity, and Athena was let out of their sight, but moments passed where the senator, who had no training in how to take control of such an emergency, hesitated to take advantage of the situation and make a move.

"Detective Malyssa Alafogiannis," said the mobster. "Nice to meet you, I'm Angela Scolinos." She didn't hold out a hand to shake, and the gun muzzle's pressure against Detective Fog's torso remained the same.

"The pleasure is all mine. Are you still intending to shoot me?" Fog asked. Feigning a look at Scolinos's friends in which she did make eye contact with each of them and offered a smirk to share, she also briefly caught Athena's eyes and tried to tell the woman to do something.

Of course, the signal was short of telling Athena just what to do. The right answer was to cause a disturbance by distracting or assaulting the other two, hopefully causing Scolinos to turn around, at which point Fog could grapple with the woman for the gun. Risky, but Malyssa had a few tricks up her sleeve, and all she needed was a diversion to get her started.

Instead, Athena ended up doing the wrong thing. The untrained and unexperienced senator went for the gunwoman's gun arm, lunging past the other two, who probably were Declan's actual neighbors and would have proven much easier targets for her operation, and failed entirely in her efforts to disarm her or even move the arm holding the gun by more than an inch.

That inch, however, might have saved Detective Fog's life when Scolino fired once into her stomach and then turned the gun on Athena. An explosion of hot blood filled Malyssa's insides, but she wasn't killed immediately, and even as she slid down the wall to crumple to the floor, Scolino flew into the wall on the other side of the hallway with the acceleration of a woman hit by a bus. Something snapped, something cracked, and more than one thing crunched.

There was another gunshot an instant before Scolino flew off her feet, and this was dead center to Senator Athena Rex's forehead.

In the aftermath of the shootout, the two druggies flew of their own accord back down the hallway and out the front door, without a single thought for first aid, leaving the wreckage for the survivors to sort out.

Scolino was crumpled on the floor, not moving.

A crack shattered down in the drywall leading to her prone body.

Malyssa's stomach acid, plasma, and flesh regenerated in moments, and the skin became whole again without so much as scarring. The pain remained as far as the nerve endings in her brain were concerned, and she shuddered and moaned, curling up like a baby on the floor and holding her belly.

She cried out, and tears slid down from her eyes to match the sweat streaming down every inch of her skin. But Athena had been killed, and Detective Fog needed to get up and bring her back.

Despite logically knowing that she was in pristine condition and could have gotten up and walked to where Athena was, she crawled, still shuddering from the memory of being shot in her core. Her muscles felt weak, and knowing that it was all in her head did nothing to strengthen them. She collapsed onto Athena's corpse when she got to her and let the magic do its work.

Within ten seconds, she felt a heartbeat, and after two beats, a breath erupted into Athena's lungs. Malyssa shifted to look up at Athena's perfectly restored head.

"Resuscitated and revived," she said cockily.

Athena wiped blood and grime from her forehead and abandoned the idea of even trying to clean it from her hair. She pinched squishy tissue between her thumb and forefinger and, as shocked as Detective Fog, muttered, "Is this my brain tissue?"

Malyssa put her head back down, resting on the senator's chest, on top of more steady inhales and exhales, and she didn't answer. "I think that's enough testing, how about you?"

Thank you for reading Detective Fog. Please leave your comments and thoughts on this chapter. It erupted suddenly into a Tarantino-esque bout of violence at the end, who knew that was coming? I'm also still working out the stigma around substance abuse and how I write about it in this chapter, so please don't feel afraid to tell me in the comments if any of the descriptions of the Tenderloin residents and their drug addictions felt offensive or unkind. It's not my intention but another draft and some changes to the story may be necessary here.

Leave a star if you'd be so kind, and have a wonderful night!