Author’s Note: This story is much different than my previous works but the plot has been very insistant about being brought to life, holding all my other stories hostage until I get this written out. While it is Flack-centric and heavily revolves around a case, there will be appearances from everyone on the team. It takes place nearly a year after "Snow Day" so spoilers for the entire series. Also, Mac/Peyton and Danny/Lindsay are present in this story though 'ships are not the focus in this story.

Warning: The following work contains strong language, graphic violence, discussions of a sexual nature and most likely some smut because I can’t seem to write something that doesn’t include it. Enjoy.

Chapter 1

God Is Everywhere

There are many who believe that ongoing human evolution will one day bring about beings who are more God than human. There are many who believe that the combination of technology and genetic manipulation will produce a transhuman species. And there are some who believe that there were humans out there who believe they have already made the ascension to a living God.

They take on the true role of a God, doling out fitting punishments to those who have sinned. They are above mere mortals, free of sin, they cast the stones of judgement. They spill the blood of the wicked with pious hands, seeking true justice by smiting the immoral beasts of humanity.

But in a world where civilization dose not recognise the authority of the living Gods, their punishments are seen as something different. The transcendent are seen as monsters, true evil given form, predators who kill with mindless lust. They are not feral animals, stalking random prey, taking pleasure from the death and destruction they cause.

They are true masters of the Creative. It is art. The chase is a dance, the spilled blood an exquisite tapestry, the painful screams for forgiveness a symphony. They are Gods who walk among man, charged with the task of teaching humans how to be better, how to elevate themselves beyond the mundane.

And in the city of New York, one of these self-named Gods walks the streets, always watching, always judging. It has been a long time since those eyes had scanned the city, seeking those that deserved divine punishment. They had not learned the first time, the wicked souls that were taken had not made a lasting impact on anyone.

It is time for humanity to be reminded of their sins. They need to remember their place in the hierarchy, that they are being judged from on high by a vengeful God. Their sins will not be ignored and the streets will once again run with the blood of the guilty.

And the Lord said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff necked people:

Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation. - Exodus 32: 9-10

Flack parked his car next to a cruiser, flicking off the siren on his dash and grumbled about the evils of mid-morning traffic as he exited his car. He downed the rest of his lukewarm coffee and lobbed the cup in a nearby trash can, nothing but net, of course. A bright spot in an otherwise shitty morning, where he had been caught in traffic because some dickhead had rear ended someone in a fit of road rage, spilled coffee on his favourite tie and realised that an old fast food container was hidden somewhere in his car, slowly rotting and sticking up the interior. He knew he would have to clean up the mess that was his backseat sometime today before a new species grew out of the rancid food but first there was more important work to do.

"What do we got?"

"10-87. Crime scene and the ME are already on scene," the rookie informed him. Flack nodded his thanks and slipped under the crime scene tape. He saw Danny and Stella at the end of an alleyway, their kits opened, beginning to process the scene. As he walked towards them, Danny looked up from where he was laying out numbered markers at the perimeter.

"Hey, buddy, you might want to prepare yourself, it's pretty brutal," Danny said, glancing back to where Stella was taking photos of the body.

"I'm sure I'll be fine, Messer," he replied, rolling his eyes and moving past Danny towards Stella and the body.

"Don't say I didn't warn ya," Danny tossed back as he continued to mark whatever trace he had found on the ground.

The body was at the end of the alleyway, next to a row of dumpsters from the adjacent restaurant. Their vic was naked, no sheet or tarp nearby to cover it; whomever had done this did not seem too worried about the body being discovered. Placed only about thirty feet from the street, next to garbage for a busy restaurant, it would not take long for someone to stumble across the body.

Flack’s experience told him they were most likely looking at a crime of rage, committed in the heat of the moment and their killer had paniced and ran, leaving the body where it had fallen. Still, that did not explain why the vic’s clothes had been removed or why the vic’s arms were crossed over the chest as if ready for burial.

As he neared the body he saw that their vic had been severely beaten, the black and purple bruises standing out on the sickly white flesh, dried blood caked brown in other places. It was bad but he had definitely seen worse considering that this body had not even come close to starting to decompose. He was wondering what Danny had been talking about when he finally reached Stella's side and saw the body up close and personal.

"Jesus Christ..." he breathed out and Stella gave him a sidelong glance.

"It is shocking," she said as he continued to stare down at the dead man.

"Shocking?" he replied incredulously, "That is more than shocking, it's...it's..."

"Wrong on so many levels."

Both Flack and Stella looked up to see Sid standing in front of them, snapping his glasses in place as he hunkered down to examine the body. "Is it all gone?"

"Near as I can tell, though I'm not as familiar with the area as you boys might be," Stella glanced at both men, the corner of her mouth turned up as she tried to supress a grin, "Both the penis and the testicles have be removed."

"So wrong," Flack shook his head as Sid took a closer look at the wound on the man's groin.

"I won't be sure until I'm back at the morgue but on first glance, I'd say the castration happened pre-mortem," Sid informed them, making notations on the clipboard in his hands.

"So very, very wrong," Flack lamented, finally turning away from the body because he was afraid that his own testicles would retreat so far into his body, they would never find their way out again. Messer had been right, it was truly brutal.

His eyes came to rest on the wall opposite the dead man and was surprised he had not noticed it earlier. The grey concrete had been vandalized, brown letters scrawled across its surface, flaking away in some places, thick and wet in others. He realised that the words had not been written in paint but in blood. He took a step back to stand beside Stella as she photographed the wall, focusing on what was written there.

THE GLORIOUS GIFTS OF THE GODS ARE NOT TO BE CAST ASIDE

"That his blood?"

"It's definitely human," Stella replied, showing him the purple Q-tips that held samples from each letter sealed in evidence bags. "We won't know for sure if it's his until we run DNA but I don't see why it would belong to anyone else."

"Well, it is quite possible it's someone else's," Sid replied, taking off his glasses and standing up from the body. He signed the papers on the clipboard with a flourish and handed them to one of the morgue attendants. "It won't be official until I do the autopsy but COD is exsanguination."

"But he couldn't have bled out here," Stella said, "There isn't even a blood pool around the body and there isn't enough on that wall."

"Lucky for me, it's up to you to figure out where that blood came from," Sid grinned at them, removing his latex gloves.

"Well, I ain't no doctor, Sid, but I figure it probably came from the hole where his bits and pieces used to be," Danny said as he walked up to join the group. Sid merely chuckled and nodded a goodbye before exiting the alleyway, leaving Stella and Flack to fill Danny in.

"What he meant, smart ass, is that aside from the blood on the wall, there ain't a drop anywhere else. This isn't our primary crime scene, it's the dump site, so why bring blood with you to write quotes from Homer on a wall?"

"That's from The Simpsons?" Danny asked, glancing up at the smeared letters, his brow furrowed as he seemed to search for humour in the words..

"No, ya dink," Flack replied, cuffing him on the shoulder, "Homer the Greek poet. It's from The Iliad."

"Now, when did you become a literature buff?" Danny asked, smirking as he handed the envelopes of evidence he gathered to Stella.

"I can read, Messer," Flack replied, a bit more defensively than he had intended. Danny held up his hands in surrender, letting the subject of Flack's knowledge of Greek classics drop.

"So," Stella spoke up when she finished packing away the envelopes, "Is this actually a message or just the ravings of a lunatic?"

"My money's on loony," Danny grunted as he glanced back at the body as the attendants from the ME's office began to prepare the body for removal, "Why else would you castrate a man?"

"I could think of plenty of reasons," Stella quipped, earning cautious stares from both men and she laughed. "What I mean is that there is symbolism in castration and considering our perp likes to leave quotations written in blood at the scene, this is definitely a message."

Flack stared down at the beaten and broken man that the attendants were putting inside the body bag. His eyes stared up at him, glassy and empty, dark voids into nothing, the life slowly drawn out of them by a cruel hand.

"Then the question is can we figure out what the killer is trying to tell us before he sends us another message?"