By Nate Petersen

“So how long have these strange things been happening?” the young officer Alex Roberts asked, stopping at their patrol car. He looked over the hood of the vehicle to an older man, rounding the back of the car.

“Years now.” his partner, Ben Carlson, replied without hesitation, climbing into the vehicle, hot dog in hand. Shaking his head, the young Roberts did the same.

“The same guy?” Roberts asked, referencing an earlier conversation. Roberts, a rookie on the New Metro Police force, had only recently become aware of a secret long kept by the officers working the streets of the dark city. A vigilante, more myth than man, had been watching the city streets for years now. The city’s once astronomical crime rate and status as a haven for criminals quickly disappeared with the arrival of the shadow, leaving the city grateful but its officers baffled.

“Not that kind of strangeness…” the white haired Carlson said, strapping himself in. “New Metro, I don’t know, its like a magnet for weird things. Long before the shadow.” He squinted and checked his mirrors before pulling out into traffic, though in this section of town there was usually very little of it. “For example, 48^th block, on the south side here-”

“Yea, Boulavard and 48^th, street with a bunch of those psychic hotlines and fortune tellers….” Roberts interrupted.

“Yes, with the fortune tellers…” Carlson continued. “Talk to them, they say the street’s got some kind of mojo, mumbo-jumbo or whatever. But, here’s the strange part…” Carlson put a finger up. “Back a good twenty years or so, almost on the otherside of town, was a number of homes where the Projects now stand.”

“Those have been derilect for years now, haven’t they?” Roberts asked.

“At least one of the buildings always has been. Completed, but never inhabited.” Carlson said grimly. “When the land was being acquired for the Projects, a number of the people living there sold easily enough, but tennants in one of the old apartment buildings held out. The owner wanted to sell, but several of the tennants refused to leave. The deals offered by the developers were only made once, and with a short window to accept it. So, with the tennants holed up and holding out the landlord publically refused the offer. Shortly after though, a fire tore through the building in the middle of the night, burned everyone alive.”

“Geez…” Roberts grimaced as he looked out the window, watching the neon lights pass by slowly as the patrol car calmly made its way through the streets. “Let me guess, arson.”

“Sure enough.” Carlson replied, matter of factly. “Not enough to directly tie anything to the owner, we ended up catching a thug who confessed, claimed to have broken in and set it off accidently, something with the gas main in the basement, and fled. Without any ties to that landlord though, the thug was the only one procecuted, city office bought up the land for a far better price than what most government purchases are and the landlord disappeared. Projects were completed on schedule. Cept for that one building, built over the site of the apartment. Workers always claimed they heard things while working there. Number of them were from out of town too, so not many knew the history of the site. Got a couple calls out there for intruders on the site that turned out the be nothing, least far as we could tell.”

“Figures.” Roberts replied, a jaded tone to his voice. “People die in horrific fire, their ghosts haunt the site.” He shook his head. “Every place has those.”

“These folks…its kind of like they’re not dead, though.” Carlson was searching for words. “One of the common sightings about the building concerns a little girl, one of the only kids in the apartment. She’s not more than like five or six years old, but always wanted, and wants, someone to play with. Go ahead, walk the building sometime, I can almost guarentee you’ll find a teddy bear or a little tea hat.” Carlson smirked at that.

“A tea hat? A teddy bear? Whats that got to do with anything?” Roberts asked, looking over at his partner.

“The girl had a favorite teddy bear. We interviewed prior tennants after the fire who remembered her quite well. She always had this brown stuffed teddy bear she kept with her, battered and fuzzy thing, well loved. She was always losing the bear’s hat, because she was always playing in odd places in the building. After the portion of the Project over the site had been completed, the interior workers reportedly found the bear several times, but minutes later, whether the bear was in hand or left where it was found, it would disappear. To be honest, I’ve even found the thing. And, thats the only street in the city where we’ve had any kind of reported “sightings”, even though you know a lot of bad things had gone down elsewhere in the city.”

“All right…” Roberts said, unsure of what to make of his partner’s sanity at the moment. “So we have ghost stories. We have guys running around at night. What else makes this place so weird?”

“Whats the biggest dog you’ve ever seen?” Carlson asked after a few moments consideration, keeping his eyes on the road.

“Don’t know off hand…I’ve met some Great Danes that were good sized.” Roberts replied, thinking for a moment.

“Ever seen one big as a car?” Carlson asked, his tone unchanging.

“Excuse me?” Roberts replied in disbelief.

“Like clockwork, every seven years for a couple of weeks, we get these reports…” Carlson replied. “People seeing “bears” in the city. Large, hairy beasts supposidly running amok.”

“Yea, I can see that,” Roberts rationalized, missing his partner’s sarcasm. “We’re in California after all, they could wander in from the north country.”

“These weren’t bears, Roberts.” Carlson looked back to his partner, pitying his youth and inexperiance. “Called out to a couple of these sites too. First time I was totally befuddled when Animal Control insisted on an escourt to one of the sightings, until I saw the footprints for myself…”

“These prints where huge, but shaped like palms and feet,” Carlson continued, almost lecturing as an instructor might. “The size, distance between marks, all said this thing had to be almost eight feet tall and well over four hundred pounds. Fur found at a couple of the sightings were also very unusual, not matching any kind mammal hair, human or animal, seen to date.”

“Only one person’s ever actually seen one up close and personal, but he’s not talking at all…” Carlson’s voice trailed off.

“Why?” Roberts asked, as old Ben knew he would.

“Man’s name is Mattocks. Out of towner from the midwest, out near Chicago. Claimed he was here following up on what he called the “Dog Men” sightings we’d had, referring to the beasts. Knew quite a bit about them too. Course, we didn’t learn any of this right from him…” Carlson took a deep breath. “Found him the scene of a crime, brutal killing. Investor, private fellow, one of the guys on the Northwest just out of town, had been killed. Head taken right off, thrown out the window. When we responded to the scene, we found Maddocks covered in the guy’s blood, huddled in a corner mumbling to himself incoherently. We had him pegged for the murder ‘cept for the cause of death…there was nothing a scrawny book worm like Maddocks could have done to kill the man like that. State had him declared insane and unfit to stand trial anyhow and he was remanded to the Blue Coast psychiatric hospital for housing and treatment. Guy’s still there actually.”

“Wow.” Robert’s eyes widened as he shook his head to clear his mind. “That…that’s something.”

“Thats the tip of the iceberg kid.” Carlson replied. “There are things that are happening within this city that no one knows. What I do know, thats just whats spilt over into our world, our reality.” He looked over at Roberts and continued in a grim tone. “Welcome to New Metropolis, kid. Hope you make out in one piece.”

Welcome to New Metropolis was written as an introduction to the “Divergence” custom card system released in 2006.