James MacGregor approached from the opposite side of the warehouse; he'd been in charge of leading the rear entry team. "We've cleared all of the rooms in the back. No sign of anyone—they cleared out hours ago. What the fuck is that?"
Keith sighed. "I think he has gills."
"Should we see if he swims?" James joked. Keith glared at him, and he held his hands up in surrender.
"We'll take him to Paul. Don't untie him." It might as well be a death sentence. Paul Cotter was the founder of the Corps, and he had a history of making any Infected he caught disappear. Still, they couldn't just let him loose to spread the plague.
Keith's second in command approached as the sobbing ex-spy was carried away. "We've cleared all the rooms, and there's no one else here. They didn't leave in a hurry, either. There are a few things that were left behind, but it's more like trash."
"Yeah, I figured. Thanks, Alex. We'll pack up and go home." Alex passed the instructions on to the men, and Keith wandered to one of the small "rooms", partitioned with curtains hung on wire. There was a small mattress pad against the back wall, but not much else. A scrap of paper peeked out from under the edge of the pad.
Idle curiosity propelled Keith forward, but when he picked up the page, adrenaline spiked through him, and he turned to glance over his shoulder before returning his attention to the paper. It was a simple but skillful ink drawing of a little girl. To the casual observer, it might look like she was laughing as she tossed a ball into the air, but a closer inspection by someone who knew how to look would reveal that the girl was actually levitating the ball just in front of her chest.
She was a stranger, but the lines of the ink were hopelessly familiar, and so were the initials in the corner: R.H. As in Riley Hart, Keith's little brother.
-- from "War and Peace and Brotherhood" by D.K. Jernigan