Agent Hyde stared into her cup of coffee, watching the steam rise from the dark liquid, feeling the heat on her hands through the styrofoam. Her job had her awake at all different hours. It was so hard to maintain a consistent schedule that she mostly relied on caffeine to stay functioning when she was on-duty. Traveling didn't help. Sometimes she forgot what it was like not being jet-lagged and running on a few hours of sleep. Still, she managed. She had to, right? It wasn't like anyone else was going to do her job for her. It was thankless but important work, and it had to be. Agent Hyde wouldn't put up with these conditions if it wasn't.
The one upside to her job was that she got to see all sorts of interesting places. At least that's what she told herself in an effort to keep from getting too jaded. The town of Hammer Hill was a familiar sight, not that she had ever visited it before. But Agent Hyde had been to enough towns similar to it that it felt familiar enough. The population was in the four-digit range, she was pretty sure that were more livestock than people, and what few people there were certainly didn't trust her being there. It wasn't like she put too much effort into blending in. Jeans and flannel weren't really her style, and she knew that she stuck out in her grey business attire. The locals reacted even worse when she showed them the badge. They probably thought she was with some kind of shadowy government agency and had a license to kill, that if they saw something that they shouldn't she would swoop in and make them disappear.
Instead, she was standing in the middle of a field, watching the sun just begin to creep over the horizon with not a soul in sight. Well, there were cows. Maybe they counted.
"See anything, Hyde?"
The voice was coming from her earpiece, a subtle wire that ran behind her ear. Her hair was too short to obscure it entirely, but it wasn't obvious to anyone unless they were looking for it.
"Nothing yet. Just cattle. How is it on your end? Over." She took a sip from her coffee. Hopefully things would start warming up soon.
"All quiet. The window is closing, if we don't see anything soon then we should pack it up and try again tonight."
Hyde sighed. This was starting to turn into a wild goose chase. What had started out as a solid lead with some very compelling evidence was quickly revealing itself to be, well, this. Standing in the cold, waiting for something interesting to happen. There was a lot of that in this job. Sunlight was beginning to glint off of the morning frost. Tonight was a bust, but there was always-
"Hyde! Eyes up, I've got movement. In the air, your ten o'clock."
Her eyes snapped up, scanning the morning sky. There it was, she spotted it gliding away from their position.
"I see it. Pretty big wingspan, humanoid body."
"Think it made us?"
"It's not going for the cows, but it might have found a meal somewhere else. I'm moving to follow. Keep with it, Strahl."
Agent Hyde dropped her coffee, the cup emptying all over the grass. She moved towards the herd of cows, which seemed nonplussed by her presence, using them as cover. This was supposed to be a surveillance gig, and nothing ruined a good surveillance gig like getting spotted. She could see it, light shining through its membranous wings, veins spider-webbing across them, its skin a mottled grey. It flapped its bat-like appendages, hovering in place.
"I think it saw me." Strahl sounded scared. His voice wavered like he was out of breath. "I think... I think it knows I'm following it."
"Are you sure? Strahl, just stay low and-"
It opened its mouth, far wider than Hyde would have expected. A piercing screech filled the air, sharp and painful to her ears, enough to make her wince and to make the cows stir and shuffle. It brought its wings close to its grotesque body and swooped low. Hyde tried to move through the panicking cattle, her pistol already out of its holster and in her hand. She heard a burst of gunshots, a rapid 'pop pop pop pop!' of frantic fire. By the time she cleared the cows it was gone. Hyde was breathing hard, cold air filling her lungs. No sign of it. No sign of Strahl.
"Strahl! Are you okay?" No response came from her earpiece. She sprinted in the direction she saw it last. "Strahl! Strahl, come on, if you're there, say something!"
Agent Hyde stood at the edge of field, near a messy tear in the barbed wire fence. She could see that the frost was disturbed, that bits of fur and cloth were snagged on the fence, thick black blood splattered about the ground. Empty casings were nearby, and her partner's pistol lay discarded in the grass. But no Strahl.
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