Division 13 Case File 013-012: The Stalker

A mother. A daughter. A stranger watching from the dark.

When Division 13 investigates reports of a stalking case in Flatbush, Brooklyn, the team uncovers a threat far more disturbing than anyone expected.

A hooded figure with glowing orange eyes has been appearing outside Angela Sinclair’s home night after night — getting closer each time. Phone calls in the middle of the night. A shadow outside her daughter’s school window. And a growing sense that something impossible is closing in.

As Captain Shipman and the team race to identify the stalker, the investigation begins revealing connections to the Downing case… and to Apex Technology Solutions.

But some cases become personal.

And sometimes the most terrifying thing isn’t the monster in the dark…

…it’s recognizing its face.

If you’re into paranormal detective fiction, supernatural thriller audio drama, and conspiracy-laced NYPD task force stories, hit play, then subscribe, share the episode, and leave a review so more listeners can find Division 13.

Transcript

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Division 13 And Office Banter

SPEAKER_03 0:00

My name is Hannah Keegan. I'm a lead detective for a top-secret New York Police Department Task Force. We're assigned to the unexplained cases that border on the paranormal. This is Division 13, and here are our case files.

SPEAKER_02 0:15

What do you mean? I said. I have a love life. Kendrick and I had ridden up from the garage together, and somewhere between the second and third floor, he had decided, apparently, that what the morning needed was unsolicited commentary on my personal life. Kendrick looked at me with the patient expression of a man who was being very generous with his skepticism. Cap, name one thing you did last weekend that wasn't related to work. I considered this. I went to the grocery store. Work adjacent. You were probably thinking about case files the entire time. I bought cereal. Revolutionary. He shook his head. I'm just saying, you're a human being. You're allowed to have, you know, a life outside of this building. I have a life inside this building. It's a very full life. That's what concerns me. The elevator doors opened. I stepped out first, mostly to escape the conversation. Kendrick followed, still wearing the expression of a man who considered this discussion unfinished. Waiting outside my office, Overton, Castillo, and Kenny, all three of them with coffee cups in hand. Kenny was also holding a flat white pastry box with the casualness of someone who had planned this gesture and was pretending he hadn't.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

Morning, he said. He held out the box. Figured the new guy should come bearing gifts that aren't guns. Kendrick's face split into a grin.

SPEAKER_02 2:00

He took a donut immediately and without hesitation, the way a man does when he's been waiting for exactly this kind of morning. Look at that, Castillo said.

SPEAKER_06 2:12

He's been here two weeks and he already knows the way to this team's heart.

SPEAKER_04 2:17

It's a stereotype.

SPEAKER_02 2:19

Overton said, taking one anyway.

SPEAKER_04 2:22

We should probably be offended.

SPEAKER_02 2:24

And yet, I said, and reached into the box. Kinney's expression was the quiet satisfaction of a gamble that had paid off. We were standing in the hallway, eating donuts at eight in the morning, and for a moment the building felt less like a place where we processed things we couldn't explain, and more like a place where people worked. The distinction mattered more than it probably should have.

Briefing The Stalker With Orange Eyes

SPEAKER_02 2:52

Loretta Smith appeared at the end of the hallway. Good morning, she said with the tone of someone who had somewhere to be.

SPEAKER_04 3:01

Whenever you're ready.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

She slid the case file across the table.

SPEAKER_04 3:06

Intercepted from the 67th precinct late yesterday. I've spoken with the duty sergeant. They're standing down in our favor.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

She opened her copy of the file.

SPEAKER_04 3:16

The complainant is Angela Sinclair, mid-30s, single mother, resident of a brownstone on Ocean Avenue in Flatbush. She has a 10-year-old daughter, Lizzie. Angela has been reporting stalking incidents for approximately two weeks.

SPEAKER_02 3:41

Hoping this case wouldn't lead to an unfriendly reunion, I quickly refocused on the matters at hand. What kind of incidents?

SPEAKER_04 3:50

It began with a figure appearing outside the property at night, standing in the street, not moving, watching the house. Since then, the figure has been progressively closing the distance, each night slightly closer. She's also been receiving phone calls in the middle of the night. No voice, just breathing. Then a disconnect.

SPEAKER_02 4:11

Loretta paused.

SPEAKER_04 4:13

Three days ago, her daughter Lizzie reported a hooded man standing outside her school, staring up at the classroom window where she was sitting. The teacher went to look. The man was gone before she reached the window.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

Castillo's jaw tightened.

SPEAKER_04 4:29

The detail that puts this in our purview, Loretta continued, is Mrs. Sinclair's description of the figure. She has reported consistently that the stalker has glowing orange eyes.

SPEAKER_02 4:42

The table went quiet.

SPEAKER_04 4:44

Background on the family, Loretta said. The father, Douglas Sinclair, disappeared 18 months ago and is presumed dead. He was an engineer. His employer at the time of his disappearance was Apex Technology Solutions.

SPEAKER_02 4:59

I looked up from the file. Overton had already written it down. She glanced at me. I glanced back. Same company as Paul Downing. Kendrick said.

SPEAKER_04 5:11

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 5:12

Loretta said. The room absorbed that for a moment.

SPEAKER_04 5:17

Mission is to investigate the stalking incidents, attempt to identify and apprehend the suspect, and determine any nullborn connection.

SPEAKER_02 5:25

Loretta continued.

SPEAKER_04 5:27

Given the apex connection, I want to know if there's a pattern here.

SPEAKER_02 5:32

I looked at Kenny. You're overwatch again, Kagemoto. HQ support. He nodded without complaint. Understood. I looked at him for a moment, then said, for what it's worth, your field training is coming along well. You'll be out there soon. Something shifted briefly in his expression. Not relief exactly, more like subdued acknowledgement of a thing that mattered.

The Apex Link And Hidden Players

SPEAKER_02 6:00

Copy that, Captain. We crossed the Manhattan Bridge and continued down Flatbush Avenue. All around us, the borough was going about its business. Corner stores and parked school buses and kids cutting through the park. All of it ordinary in the way normal things look when you've been spending too much time around things that aren't. Apex Technology Solutions, Overton said from the back seat. She had her notebook open on her knee.

SPEAKER_04 6:32

Paul Downing disappears. Classified Weapons Research. A thin point opens in his basement, and whatever is on the other side is watching. Now a Downing employee goes missing 18 months ago, and a nullborn enhanced stalker starts showing up outside his family's home.

SPEAKER_02 6:50

She looked up.

SPEAKER_04 6:52

That's not a coincidence.

SPEAKER_02 6:54

No, I said, it's not. The question is whether Apex is involved with a noborn directly or indirectly. Kendrick kept his eyes on the road.

SPEAKER_06 7:08

Or whether Sentinel Prime knew about the apparent connection.

SPEAKER_02 7:12

Castillo said from the back.

SPEAKER_06 7:14

And didn't tell us.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

Nobody disputed that. The Downing Mansion, I said. Sentinel Prime quarantined it within hours of us leaving, placed it under lockdown, relocated Mina before she could ask too many questions. I paused. They moved fast.

SPEAKER_04 7:35

Almost like they were expecting it, Overton said quietly.

SPEAKER_02 7:40

I let that sit. Filed it in the cold, quiet place. Tonight we focus on the Sinclairs, I said. We protect the family first. Everything else is secondary. The brownstone was well maintained, the kind of building that took work to keep looking that way in a neighborhood that had seen its share of wear. Window boxes awaiting the first sign of spring, a handmade wreath on the front door. Someone had made this building a home on purpose, and the effort showed.

Meeting Angela And Lizzie At Home

SPEAKER_02 8:16

Angela Sinclair answered the door before I had a chance to knock. She was exactly the file photograph, and nothing like it simultaneously. Mid-30s, dark haired, bright green eyes. Her face showed the tiredness of a person who had been running on adrenaline for two weeks and had learned to function inside that state. She was composed, but the composure was the kind you construct deliberately, brick by brick, because the alternative is falling apart in front of your daughter. I found my gaze lingering on her for just a beat longer than necessary. Behind her at the edge of the hallway, a small face peered around the doorframe. Button cute, wide-eyed, dark curls. She looked like her mother in miniature, green eyes and all, except that the wariness in her expression hadn't yet learned to disguise itself. Mrs. Sinclair, I said. Captain Shipman, Division 13. These are my colleagues. We're here about your report. Angela exhaled. The exhale of someone who'd been waiting for someone to take them seriously.

SPEAKER_05 9:32

Thank you. Please come in.

SPEAKER_02 9:36

We settled in the living room. Castillo sat on the floor beside the couch where Lizzie had cautiously taken a seat, and within three minutes had engaged the girl in a quiet conversation that made Lizzie smile for the first time since we had arrived. Angela told us everything. Two weeks ago, a figure had appeared across the street from the brownstone late at night. Just standing there, not moving, just watching. She had assumed it was a neighbor or someone waiting for someone, and she had gone to bed. But the next night, the figure was closer. And the night after that, closer still. The phone calls had started on the third night. Three in the morning, four in the morning, the phone ringing in the dark, and nothing on the other end but breathing that scared her for reasons she couldn't quite put into words.

SPEAKER_05 10:36

I kept telling myself there was an explanation, Angela said. A rational one. I kept telling myself I was imagining the eyes.

SPEAKER_02 10:48

She paused.

SPEAKER_05 10:49

But Lizzie saw them too. She didn't say anything to me because she didn't want to scare me. She's 10 years old and she was trying to protect me.

SPEAKER_02 11:01

Her voice held steady, but only just.

SPEAKER_05 11:05

But then it showed up at her school. That's when I called the police.

SPEAKER_02 11:10

You did the right thing, I said. Both of you did. She looked at me directly. There was something resolute in her expression. Something that hadn't been broken by two weeks of fear and a missing husband and a daughter trying to be brave.

SPEAKER_05 11:27

I don't scare easy, Captain. But this is different. Whatever this is, it's getting closer every night. And Lizzie and I are alone in this house.

SPEAKER_02 11:39

I know, I said. That's why, with your permission, we'd like to stay tonight.

Setting The Trap And Holding The Line

SPEAKER_02 11:47

The team worked with the efficiency of people who had done this kind of thing before. Kendrick checking sight lines from the windows, Overton noting the approach angles from the street, Castillo organizing the vehicle into an inconspicuous position down the block while I walked the perimeter. By the time evening settled in, we had positioned ourselves throughout the first floor, out of the sight lines of the windows. The living room light stayed on, the kitchen light stayed on. From the street, the house looked occupied and relaxed. Castile, in a move I suspected was as much genuine affection as tactical thinking, suggested ordering pizza. Lizzie's response to this suggestion was unambiguous. She was in the kitchen chair with a paper plate before the delivery arrived. For an hour, the brownstone felt like what a home was supposed to feel like. Kendrick made Lizzie laugh by pretending to be terrible at card games and then pulling off increasingly improbable victories. Castillo and Angela talked in the kitchen while the rest of us kept our positions. Kenny's voice came through the radio periodically with quiet, competent Overwatch updates.

Douglas Sinclair’s Life Starts Cracking

SPEAKER_02 13:10

After Lizzie was settled into bed, Angela came back downstairs, poured two mugs of coffee, and handed one to me. We sat at the kitchen table, and she talked. Douglas Sinclair had been an engineer, good at his work, she said, and proud of it. He had joined Apex Technology Solutions four years ago, drawn by the government contract work and the salary that came with it. For the first two years, she said, everything had been fine. Good, even. He was present, he was engaged, he was the man she had married. Then, something changed.

SPEAKER_05 13:53

I don't know if it was the work, she said. I never knew exactly what he did there. It was classified, he couldn't talk about it. But he started coming home different, quieter in a way that put me on edge. Like something was building up inside him that he couldn't release.

SPEAKER_02 14:13

She wrapped her hands around her mug.

SPEAKER_05 14:16

Then the anger started. Small things first, then bigger things, then she stopped. There was an incident with me. One incident, but it was enough. I had already started making plans to take Lizzie and go when he disappeared.

SPEAKER_02 14:37

I'm sorry, I said. She shook her head slightly.

SPEAKER_05 14:42

Don't be. The honest truth, and I'm ashamed to admit this, but it's true. When he disappeared, my first feeling was relief. Not grief. Relief.

SPEAKER_02 14:55

She looked at her coffee.

SPEAKER_05 14:58

What does that say about me?

SPEAKER_02 15:00

It says you were protecting your daughter, I said, and yourself. There's nothing to be ashamed of in that. She looked up. Whatever she saw in my expression seemed to settle something in her. I was aware, in the way I was rarely aware of things that weren't tactical, that I was paying close attention to her. Not in the professional way, or not only in the professional way. There was something in the particular combination of her steadiness and her honesty, and the way she had clearly rebuilt herself and her daughter's life on pure determination. And I found myself. I heard a sound and looked up. Kendrick was in the doorway, wearing an expression of studied nonchalance that wasn't really disguising his amusement. Castillo, just visible behind him, had a knowing look and smirk on her face. Kendrick caught my eye, winked. Once. Barely perceptibly. I returned my attention to the conversation, determined to not look like a man who had just been caught at something.

Lizzie’s Scream And The First Sighting

SPEAKER_02 16:13

A scream from upstairs. Lizzie. We were moving before the scream stopped. Up the stairs into Lizzie's room, where she was pressed against the headboard, pointing at the window with both arms extended. Outside the glass, in the dark of the side alley below, a figure. Standing still, looking up. The orange glow of the eyes was visible even from here. Stay with them, I said to Castillo. She was already positioning herself between the door and Angela, who had followed us up. Kendrick, Overton, and I went out the front and split at the sidewalk. The figure had already moved, faster than it should have been able to. I caught a flash of it at the far end of the alley, moving not quite the way a person moves. There was something wrong with the gate. Too fluid at some moments, then suddenly staccato, as if the body hadn't fully committed to one physics or another. I radioed as I ran. Kajimoto, suspect is mobile. Northwest on East 21st. We are in pursuit.

SPEAKER_00 17:25

Copy, Captain. I'm tracking your radio signatures. There's a closed grocery on Glenwood, half a block north. If Kendrick cuts through the Brooklyn College campus, he can box the suspect.

SPEAKER_02 17:37

Kendrick, you copy? Already moving, Kendrick said. I had a feeling about this suspect. A nagging, specific feeling that had been sitting at the back of my mind since the briefing room that morning. Non-lethals, I said into the radio. Everyone on non-lethals. If I'm right, we need to take him alive.

The Closed Grocery Store Pursuit

SPEAKER_02 18:03

The grocery was dark and shuddered. The meadow gate pulled down across the entrance, but not padlocked. It swung free when Kendrick tested it, the suspect having gone in ahead of us. We ducked underneath and moved into the dim interior. The store smelled of produce and cleaning solution. Emergency lighting from the back cast everything in a pale amber glow. Aisles of shelved goods stretched to the rear. Silence, except for our breathing and the distant sound of traffic outside. Then movement. Fast. Faster than any human should move. My mind instantly flashed to my confrontation with Billy Wrath. The suspect came out of the serial aisle at a dead sprint, covering the distance in what felt like half the time a human being should have been able to. And the moment he hit the end cap, he went up. Not around. Up. His hands caught the top of the shelving unit, and he swung himself sideways along the upper edge with a fluid skittering motion that made my stomach turn. Cap, Kendrick said. I see it. The suspect dropped back to the floor at the far end of the aisle and turned to face us. Even in the dim amber light, the orange glow of his eyes was vivid. Beneath the skin of his face and neck, dark veins traced branching patterns. Not the full-body luminescence of the tomb infected, but the same unmistakable signature concentrated in the extremities. He moved again. Not a charge this time, but a lateral dart, moving at an angle that didn't follow straight lines, as if he was tracking multiple exit routes simultaneously. I cut him off. He reversed direction in a single fluid motion that shouldn't have been physically possible, and went for Kendrick in stand, the knife in his right hand catching the emergency light. Kendrick sidestepped, absorbed a glancing hit to the forearm, and used the momentum to drive the suspect into the shelving. Cans of soup cascaded to the floor. The suspect scrambled. And I mean that precisely. He scrambled, both hands and both feet engaged, moving across the linoleum at an angle that put him briefly on the vertical surface of the shelving unit before he dropped back down and redirected toward the rear of the store. I had seen things in this job that had required significant recalibration. A man moving like a spider across the walls of a grocery store at one in the morning was somewhere near the top of the list. We drove him into the rear stockroom. Nowhere left to go. He turned, crouched. The orange eyes tracked between us with the focused, calculating attention of a creature that was still thinking, still assessing, not mindless, not the vacant, relentless aggression of the tomb infected. He lunged for the gap between Kendrick and me, knife leading. Kendrick took his arm, I took his legs. Overton, who had come in through the loading dock 30 seconds earlier, took his back. He was strong, significantly stronger than his build suggested. But three of us were stronger. He went down. I put a knee on his back while Kendrick got the cuffs on. The suspect Snarled and bucked and made sounds that weren't quite words, but they weren't quite animal either. Somewhere in between. Kendrick looked up at me across the suspect's restrained form. Black veins, orange eyes. But he's different. I said. I know. More coherent. More present. More dangerous in a specific way. Not because he was stronger than the tomb infected, but because there was something behind his eyes that the tomb infected didn't have. I radioed HQ. Suspect in custody. We need transport to HQ. Full containment protocol. We arrived at the Sinclair home. The suspect secured in the back of our vehicle before the prisoner transport arrived. I had a reason for this. Mrs. Sinclair, I said at the front door, I need to ask you to come to the vehicle with me. I need you to look at the suspect. Tell me if you recognize him. She read something in my face, something I hadn't meant to show, or maybe had decided to let show.

SPEAKER_05 23:18

What is it? Who is it?

SPEAKER_02 23:21

Please, I said. Just come look.

The Suspect’s Face Under The Light

SPEAKER_02 23:24

She came. I opened the rear door of the SUV. The overhead light came on. The suspect was cuffed and restrained, head down, the dark veins visible along his jaw and throat, the orange glow of his eyes dimmed, but present. Angela Sinclair stopped walking. She stood at the open door of the vehicle, and I watched the moment arrive. The recognition forming slowly, working against everything she thought she knew about what was possible, what was real, and what wasn't. Working against eighteen months of grief and relief and guilt and moving on. Her hand went to her mouth. She didn't speak for a long moment, didn't move, just stood at the open door, looking at what her husband had become, and I could see her putting it together, resisting it, and putting it together anyway, because that was the kind of person she was.

SPEAKER_05 24:22

Douglas, she whispered.

SPEAKER_02 24:24

At the sound of her voice, the suspect's head came up. The orange eyes found her, and the thing that had been Douglas Sinclair looked at the woman he had once loved, and snarled. A low, ragged sound that came from somewhere behind the human voice, somewhere the virus had reshaped. He lunged against his restraints toward her. Angela stepped back. I stepped in front of her as Castillo slammed the truck door. Mrs. Sinclair, I said, he can't get out. You're safe. She was trembling, not with fear, or not only with fear, with the exhausting grief of someone who has already done their mourning and now has to do it all over again for something worse. That's not him, she said finally. Her voice was barely above a whisper.

SPEAKER_05 25:16

That's not Douglas.

SPEAKER_02 25:18

No, I said. Not anymore. The prisoner transport arrived five minutes later. We watched as they secured the suspect and drove away into the night. The team prepared to leave. Overton and Kendrick were loading equipment. Castile had stayed inside with Angela and Lizzie while we dealt with the transport.

Aftercare, A Hug, And A Card

SPEAKER_02 25:42

I went back inside. Castile looked up, saw me enter, and headed toward the door. Lizzie was on the couch, leaning against her mother's side with the boneless exhaustion of a child who had held it together as long as she could and was finally letting go. Angela had her arm around her daughter and her chin resting on top of Lizzie's head, and she was looking at the middle distance with the expression of someone beginning the long process of absorbing a thing that had just changed the shape of everything. She looked up when I came in. Then Lizzie looked up, and before I had fully processed what was happening, the girl had crossed the room and wrapped both arms around me with the sudden decisive force of someone who had decided conclusively that this was a person who had earned a hug. I stood there for a moment. Then I returned the hug. Carefully. The way you hold on to something that matters. Something about that thought scared me inside. Just a little. Thank you, Lizzie said into my jacket. You were very brave tonight, I said. Both of you. She pulled back and looked up at me with her mother's directness. Then she went back to the couch and resumed her position against Angela's side, apparently satisfied. Angela was watching me. Her expression had something in it I couldn't immediately categorize.

SPEAKER_05 27:23

I don't know what your team does, she said. But if this is what you face every day, the world should be grateful you exist.

SPEAKER_02 27:33

We're just doing our job, Mrs. Sinclair. Angela, she said. A small correction. A big thing somehow. I nodded. Angela, I said. You and Lizzie are going to be alright. Douglas is in custody. He can't come back here. I'll make sure of it. She nodded.

SPEAKER_05 27:58

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 27:59

I turned to go. I made it halfway to the door. I'm not entirely sure what stopped me, but I turned back. She was still at the couch, watching me, Lizzie still leaning against her. Walking back to the pair, I reached into my jacket, produced a business card, held it out. If anything else happens, I said, or if you if you need anything, or if you just need to. I paused. You know, talk. Or anything. The corner of Angela Sinclair's mouth moved. It was a small smile. In a way, a knowing smile. She took the card.

SPEAKER_05 28:49

Thank you, Captain, she said.

SPEAKER_02 28:53

David, I replied. David, she responded, with a faintly amused expression. Those bright green eyes. I turned and walked out into the late night, closing the door behind me.

The Ride Back And Knowing Looks

SPEAKER_02 29:09

Hearing the door locks engage behind me, I walked to the vehicle, got in, closed the door. As the team secured our gear for departure, I sat in the dark for a moment. The city moved around the car, Brooklyn going about its late-night life indifferent and alive. Here, a woman was putting her daughter to bed and maybe holding a business card. And I sat in a parked SUV, trying to remember the last time I'd been uncertain about something that wasn't supernatural. Kendrick got into the driver's seat. Castillo and Overton settled in the back. Nobody said anything. The silence had a texture to it. I let it sit for approximately eight seconds. Then I turned to Kendrick. Kendrick's expression broke into something genuinely delighted. Cap, all I'm gonna say is it's about time. From the back seat, Castillo and Overton made sounds of agreement that they did not particularly attempt to suppress. It's strictly business, I said. She's connected to an ongoing investigation. The apex link alone means strictly business, Kendrick interrupted. Absolutely. 100%. It is. Copy that, Cap. He started the engine. I turned to look out of the passenger window. Outside, the lights of Flatbush Avenue passed, glowing in the Brooklyn night. Somewhere along the way, I noticed my reflection, looking back at me, smiling. I kept it to myself. Barely.

Case File Closing

SPEAKER_02 31:12

End case file zero one three dash zero one two.