Crime Rave

by Sezin Koehler

  Red Feather knows the FBI will probably put her right back into a cage. She sees it in his face. “Never mind.” Annoyed. “Whadya wanna know? My friends and I can take care of our damn selves, anyway. Fucking humans.” Hate drips from her voice.

  “Tell us more about the Roswell Institute,” Günn demands.

  “What about it?” NRG might be more ready to pick a fight than even Günn.

  “For starters, where is it?”

  “Underneath LA. It might even be under this building. I’m not sure of the dimensions. We always surfaced in different places.”

  “Los Angeles is built over fault lines, how is an underground anything even possible?” Günn’s annoyance returns.

  “I don’t frickin’ know. Prisoner, remember? Alls I do know is they’re self contained.” NRG returns the irritation pound for pound. Talks to Günn like she’s mentally disabled and needs it spelled out. “Recycled air, water, hydro and solar powered via access points all over this city. It’s run by a madman. Came home from Vietnam touched in the head. Likes to torture creatures. Likes to kill humans. He’s a mercenary. Name’s Colonel Randall Ransom, pet name’s Ripper. Isn’t that just adorable? Go ahead and look him up. I bet you won’t find much after his Vietnam years, but you’ll see at least what he was party to while he was there.” Shudders.

  “And you and your friends are held captive there?”

  “I said that already. What’re you, thick or something? This is the second time we’ve escaped as a group. Chamelia’s managed it a few times before on her own.”

  “How’d she manage that?” Holes in this story a mile wide, Günn thinks.

  “Magic,” NRG says with a mean wink. “No really. Chamelia is amazing. She can basically do anything she wants, teleporting being one of many talents. She’s full-blooded alien, not like us hybrids. She’s sort of an ultimate being, from a planet of other ultimate beings.” NRG shakes her head. “Man, what I’d have given to see that place. Whooeee,” NRG whistles and both detectives break out in gooseflesh.

  “She was not very forthcoming about herself in her interview.” Red Feather says, hoping for more information.

  “Figures. She doesn’t like—doesn’t trust—strangers after all she’s been through. She’s really not a big fan of humans at all. Don’t tell her I told you, but her planet was invaded and so they sent out emergency ships just in case they lost the war. At least there could be survivors, even if not at the home planet. Her ship crashed on Earth and we still don’t know if there were any other survivors.” NRG’s voice drops to a conspiratorial whisper, her anger aside for the moment. “Can I tell you something else?”

  “Sure,” Red Feather says, pulling his chair in closer.

  “It’s so incredible. So, her people are all shapeshifters, right? So crazy. Well, each individual has their own ultimate shape. Hers is the lizard one you saw. Can you imagine a place where you’re all the same species but you look totally different from each other? Each individual has their own ultimate shape but they can change to look like anything they want? Think about it, you’re hanging out with your friend who looks like a zebra man and you keep knocking him with your lizard tail so BAM,” she claps her hands. “You look like zebra man, but in your own way, and you can hang out no problem.” Her metal eyes are wide and she’s talking fast. “Like, WOW! My brain does a loop-de-loop when I think about how awesome that must have been. I get stared at a lot and I hate it. I’d love to just blend in.”

  Red Feather sits back in his chair. “So incredible I can hardly believe it.” He doesn’t.

  Günn on the other hand is captivated. Attitude aside, NRG appears to be telling the truth. Though, it does now occur to Günn that her ability might not work on extraterrestrials and hybrid cyborgs.

  “Yeah, figures. But according to Chamelia, it’s true. And I believe her. She’s the cornerstone of The Institute’s projects. An ultimate being from an ultimate planet. Her blood. Her DNA. Without her they’re just a bunch of douchebags with guns and empty labs.” NRG beams, “I’m actually partly made from her. Lots of the hybrids come from her. She’s tops.”

  And dangerous, Red Feather thinks, especially in the hands of a madman, if that’s what this Colonel Ransom is. “There’re more hybrids like you?”

  “Oh yeah. Basically any kind you can imagine, they’ve got ’em.”

  NRG starts to fidget. “Shit, I shouldn’t have told you any of that. Chamelia didn’t tell you for a reason. I shouldn’t have said anything. Omyfuckinggod I have such a big mouth. She’s going to be angry with me!” NRG works herself into such a state that another series of knives shoot from her body.

  “We won’t say anything to her, NRG, please just relax.” Red Feather has the urge to pet her hand but quells it, remembering the waiver Nurse Pratchett had him sign. “And your other friend?”

  “Secrete? She’s like me, another experiment in recombinant DNA. She’s also one of Chamelia’s sort-of kids. Well, there’re lots of us, but we’re the only two who are actually friends with her.” NRG is a proud daughter. “But Secrete? Dude, she can take out a person by directing her scent at them and you can die by touching her bare skin. Well, not Chamelia or I, but basically everyone else. So, yeah, we’re super soldieresses.” NRG snorts. “I’m a fucking pacifist, man. They didn’t expect that!”

  “Wow, I, uh…” Red Feather at a loss for words, part thirty-seven.

  “Yeah. I know. It’s a lot. She at least told you they’ll be coming for us, right?”

  Red Feather nods.

  “I’ll tell you right now, those people are crazy violent. They will kill everyone in here just to get to us. They’ll kill you because they like to kill. Sickos.” The knives quiver under her skin but don’t emerge.

  “We’ve got a SWAT team on the roof and one in the basement, waiting for them. We’re not gonna let them hurt you,” Red Feather assures.

  “We’ll see about that. I think the three of us would be more effective weapons, but hey, you guys do your thing. Oh, by the way, do you have body armor that will protect you from gamma radiation?” NRG smirks.

  Shit, Red Feather thinks. “Why did Chamelia refuse to talk to us about herself and the Roswell Institute?”

  Nice move, Günn thinks. If you can’t get intel from the horse’s mouth, get it from the horse’s kid.

  NRG shivers. “She used to be fucking badass when I first met her, about forty or so years ago.”

  Red Feather looks at the twenty-something girl in front of him.

  “Yeah, we age to a point and then stop.” A shrug. “That’s how they programmed us. Anyway, back then Chamelia had been in for probably ten years already. She was always arguing, fighting, finding ways out of her cage. Shifting into this soldier or that, even getting out of The Institute. So clever. To tame her they came up with this serum that forces her into human form. They’d shoot her up and send all kinds of creatures to rape her. You can’t imagine how she’s been tortured. And then months of solitary confinement at a time. She’s this close to being broken. In here,” NRG taps her finger on her temple. “I mean, who treats an ultimate being like that? We should be fucking worshipping her.” NRG’s tears are silver and bounce off her polka-dotted hospital gown. “I hope you kill the bastards.” The knifepoints rise to the surface of her skin again. “Oh man, back up!” Pfft, pfft, pfft. The slivers shoot from beneath her skin, into the chair.

  “Does it hurt?” Red Feather asks.

  “Yeah. It feels just how it looks—knives going through my skin. Why didn’t they make me so it didn’t hurt, huh? Wouldn’t that make me more efficient?” NRG is now bitter, her emotions all over the place. Red Feather wonders if she’s got some disturbia going on in her own cerebrum.

  “Can you tell us about the party at the Crane Mansion?”

  NRG recounts the same tale as C
hamelia: The attempted gang rape by security guards before the party, the attempted kidnapping and murder of the one-eyed girl by Mr. Crane’s goons, the vulval pink ooze that ate Mr. Crane. Next, the DJ spinning poison music, ravers with bleeding ears, and then the explosion.

  Red Feather shows her the photos of the survivors. She IDs Chamelia, Secrete, and Lily. She also IDs Charles Wallace Crane, the motel king.

  “Sorry, I don’t really recognize the other ones. Humans sort of look the same to me. I’ve heard that my vision is like photo negatives, reverse black and white. I can’t really tell one person from another unless there’s something really distinct. Sorry. I know race is a big thing for you guys.”

  “Major,” says Red Feather, a wry smile.

  “What else do you want to know?”

  Red Feather looks over at Günn, who nods, still not smelling anything, and not understanding how that’s possible. “I think we’ve got all we need for right now. You just hang tight and rest.” Red Feather pauses. “Do you mind if we…” he points to the knives that have turned the visitor’s chair into a pincushion.

  “Have at them. Nobody will believe you otherwise,” NRG smiles and raises a silver eyebrow. Sarcasm suits her.

  Red Feather collects a few samples and puts them into a plastic baggie to send to Stacey Chang over at the lab.

  “Thank you for your help, NRG.”

  “No worries,” she replies. But Red Feather and Günn can see she is very, very worried indeed.

  NRG

  You’re thinking about how they made you at The Institute. Skin opened up, bones excised and penetrated, one limb at a time. The excruciating pain of fire marrying flesh as the metal alloy poured into your bones. Even in your coma you could feel it. Red dreams of agony, an inferno of torture. The healing time of weeks, waiting for the process to take. Your body rejecting it. More tests. Another limb. Another session. Finally. One year later and you become who you are.

  Who were you before they made you? Vague memories of a dark-haired mother, dressing you up for school. You had a Bewitched lunchbox. She made you peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, the chunky kind, with fig jelly. Strawberry milk, that tasted so sweet to wash down the sticky mess.

  Or are those images just dreams within an adamantium fever? Did they just make you in a lab? Put memories in your head? It’s not clear anymore. Everything is a fuzzy puzzlement of the then and the now. You can’t control yourself. The knives emerge and emerge. Surely you’d run out by now? They keep coming. The chair in the corner of your hospital room fills with your rage. Get a grip, self, get a grip. If only for your own comfort. Pull it together. Ride it out.

  You fall into an uneasy sleep and dream of the gods who used to walk among humans. A war is coming. The heavens above are alight with the reason why you’ve survived at all. They’re calling you to fight, and you’ll heed them. Anything to not go back where you came from.

  9:40 AM LAPD Headquarters

  FBI Liaison Agent Dilbert Linus hunkers down in an empty office, sifting through the traveling pharmacy in his briefcase. His heart palpitates and he’s sure an attack of irritable bowel is imminent. He finds two bottles, one for his heart and one for his stomach, pops the pills down with triple distilled spring water. Immediately feels better. Half the pills in there are placebos, a fact which keeps only a handful of his more remorseful doctors awake at night. However, those are the only pills in Linus’s arsenal that work, not that he knows.

  Ever since Agent Linus contracted hepatitis from a perp spitting in his face, he’s been a hard man to handle.

  And he’s dreading CIA Special Agent’s Quatro’s arrival. He can’t stand her. When she looks at him he’s sure she can read his mind like some crazy Columbian voodoo witch. She sees too much, and he doesn’t like it one bit. That knowing smirk. It drives Linus up the wall. But she’s the best interrogator and closer in the entire federal government. The only one with a one hundred percent solve rate. She’s the first in entire history of American law enforcement to boast that record. Probably the only one who ever will. So Linus will take a pill and deal.

  A crescendo of bustle outside the office. Linus hears Special Agent Quatro’s voice, lilting with only the slightest trace of her South American roots accent, greeting the officer on charge.

  “Now or never, Mr. Clever.” Linus pops an extra heart pill just in case.

  “Special Agent Quatro, so nice to see you again,” Linus extends his hand, she shakes it in a bone-crushing grip, closing her eyes while doing so. Linus is so convinced she’s sprained his metacarpals, he doesn’t notice her odd gesture. She releases and his hand falls limply to his side.

  “Cut the guano, Linus. You’d rather a terrorist walk in here than me.” Her hazel eyes sparkle and she smiles broadly, the harelip scar that bisects her upper lip stretching into a line parallel to her teeth as she does. The man hates being teased even more than he likes being called out, and Quatro well knows it.

  Linus really wants another pill. An anti-inflammatory for his hand. Quatro watches him squirm, making him fidget all the more as he tries to hide it. She laughs and decides to put him out of his misery, though she could easily torment him for another five minutes before getting bored.

  “So, what’s the skinny on this mess here?” Special Agent Quatro runs her fingers through her long, curly, borderline frizzy hair, in what would be a fetching gesture to anyone but Agent Linus.

  “You can’t even imagine the level of incompetence I’ve had to deal with. And it’s not even ten yet!”

  “Some things never change,” Quatro singsongs. Linus shoots her the evil eye. “So what are we looking at this time?”

  “We’ve got three suspects in the bombing in custody. A detective, allegedly unauthorized by the captain, goes in and interviews one. Kid lawyers up. That leaves us only two suspects. It’s a disaster.” Linus’s breathing picks up and he worries hyperventilation is in order. Not in front of Quatro! Not in front of Quatro!

  “Calm down, Linus, you know I only need one suspect. Any news on other players involved?”

  “The terrorist group—the Bad Vibe Kids, they called themselves—seem to have had a solid exit plan and likely have left the country. They confessed on the video they sent to media, but no names. You’ll have to get that.” Linus squints, certain he’s losing the vision in his left eye.

  Nodding, Agent Quatro looks around. “Where’s my office? And where’s the chief?”

  “Assistant Chief Ortiz is on his way to the explosion site after doing the press rolls with the mayor and company. Ortiz called ten minutes ago, gave an ETA back here of eleven.”

  “Call him back, tell him I’ll meet him there. I want to get a lay of the explosion. Then I want to sit in on the survivor interviews. And I want to talk to the PD reps who witnessed ‘The Event’.” She makes air quotes.

  “The what?” Linus wheezes.

  “The people who grew from body parts. That’s all my escorts could talk about. We need to get a statement out to the press sooner rather than later, before rumors spread it’s a zombie apocalypse.” Quatro helps herself to a paper cup and fills it with water from the half-empty cooler. In spite of almost constant travelling around the world, her skin never gets used to dry airplane air.

  “When you gonna interrogate those little shits?”

  “Once I’ve figured out who is responsible, as usual.” Agent Quatro flashes her superstar smile and Linus flinches like she’s raised her hand to hit him. “Have the forensic accountant and tech teams been assembled? Let’s get rolling with what we can find from the suspects’ computers.”

  “Those Red Team members are upstairs, already working on it,” Linus sighs. “This isn’t my first rodeo, you know.” He massages his right hand and glares at Quatro for spraining it.

  “Ah, but isn’t it your first terrorism case? Wasn’t Peter
sen on the World Trade Center bombing in Oklahoma?” Quatro knows just what buttons to push. Linus’s face fills with blood, he worries he’s going to faint. She gives him a placating smile and pats him on the shoulder. Linus’s blood pressure rises as it always does with patronizing people.

  Where’s that anti-inflammatory? And can this day be over yet?

  Special Agent Rosario Quatro

  You were essentially raised by the CIA after your entire family was killed in one of Pablo Escobar’s Bogotá assaults, at your older sister’s unfortunate wedding to the drug lord’s cousin and perceived coca rival. You hid in the rectory kitchen as a hail of bullets brought the church down and that’s where an American undercover agent eventually found you, tucked between the pots and saucepans. You were the only survivor.

  After receiving immediate asylum in the US, the CIA discovered you tested off the charts for IQ, and your personality questionnaire indicated a highly intuitive individual—borderline psychic if the agency believed in such things, again testing off the charts—who would be well suited to the CIA’s variety of interrogation programs. You were the youngest CIA recruit in the company’s history at sixteen years old. And on December 2, 1993, it was you who shot the fatal bullet that pierced Pablo Escobar’s ear, putting an end to at least his reign of terror. Your first and last wet work assignment.

  Since then, you’ve been keeping the schedule of a stewardess, never more than forty-eight hours in a city. Your unique interrogation method—non-confrontational, non-violent, almost non-communicative—stops being questioned by your superiors after you maintain a one hundred percent solve rate, the only agent in the history of the Central Intelligence Agency to ever boast this stat. Not that you boast about it at all.