by Anton Strout
“You guys aren’t normal police, are you?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “The normal police vacillate between laughing at us and fearing us. It’s frustrating.”
“Come on,” Connor said, grabbing him by the shirt. He pulled at Trent and the boy started walking again, still taking in everything around him as we went.
“Are you, like, Men in Black?” he asked, addressing me.
“No,” I said. “They’re fictional. You know how I know that?”
Trent shook his head.
“Because they have a huge budget and unlimited resources.”
The three of us continued walking back through the bull pen before passing through the curtain that sectioned off most of Other Division from the main work area. We were approaching our partners desk when Trent started to get back some of his focus.
“I think maybe I should call my dad,” he said. “He’s a lawyer.”
“Sit down and shut up,” Connor said, throwing the kid down onto the extra chair at our desks.
“Ow,” he said. “I thought you said you were supposed to be the good guys.”
“So?” Connor asked, sitting down at his desk. “Doesn’t mean were the gentle guys, now, does it? So, let’s get back to what you were talking about earlier. You mentioned there was a problem with your little operation over at NYU.”
Trent shook his head. “Problem?” he asked, trying to feign ignorance. “What problem?”
“Knock it off,” I said. “You’re not that convincing an actor.”
Trent looked hurt. “In all fairness, I am only a first-year. They won’t even let me pick a specific school of acting until much later on.”
Connor leaned down over him. “There’s not going to be a later on if you’re thrown out of NYU or stuck in jail, is that clear?”
Trent ran his fingers nervously through his hair. “Okay, okay. . .” he said. “You know, come to think of it, I do remember what we were talking about earlier.”
“How surprising,” Connor said, standing back up.
“So what do you want to know?” Trent asked.
“Why don’t you start with what you meant when you said there was a problem with those. . . things that came after us?”
Trent settled back into the chair, looking sheepish. “Those creatures that were attacking you,” Trent said. “They were a part of an ongoing experiment that the professor had started when he was alive. It was all part of what he called the next level of cinematic achievement—interactive films.”
“So you were finding ways to bring things to life using film,” I said.
“Yeah,” Trent said, “but despite all of the professor’s efforts, anything he animated didn’t last very long. Whatever he created would disappear back to nothingness after a short time, liquefy. He died before he could find a way to stabilize it.”
“Even so, how was he able to do even that much?” I asked.
Trent shook his head. “I don’t know. The other students didn’t really let me in on everything. Said it was because I was new . . .”
“Or maybe they wanted you for something more sinister,” I said. “Maybe they needed a little something human to get things stabilized.”
“What do you mean?” Trent asked.
“When Elyse cut you, your blood seemed to spark things off,” I said.
Trent looked down at his bandage. A little bit of the blood had soaked through to the surface, forming a tiny circle on the top of it. “Don’t remind me.”
“You said that those manifestations weren’t permanent,” I continued. “That they’d run out of steam and dissolve away.”
Trent nodded. “That seemed to be a very vexing point to Elyse, the professor, and the others,” he said.
“You know what I think?” Connor asked, and then pressed on without waiting for an answer from anyone. “I think Mason Redfield found a way to make the manifestations permanent, only he didn’t share it with you all. I think he figured out that it would take a full-on blood sacrifice.”
“But once he figured it out, he kept quiet and only used it on himself,” I said. “Which means that really was him we were fighting the other day.”
“Wait,” Trent said, leaning forward. “Are you saying the professor’s alive?”
Connor looked at him, watching his face. “You mean you really don’t know?”
The color drained out of Trent’s face. “No. . . I mean, we knew he wanted to try and get the whole process to work on humans, but it had never succeeded. When he died, we thought that might be the end of it until Elyse talked us all into continuing on his work. But he’s alive?”
“Reborn,” I said. “Much younger, too.”
“Wow,” Trent said, suddenly looking more thrilled than terrified. “Forgive me, but from the practical science aspect of it, it’s impressive, isn’t it? How did he get it to work?”
Connor gave him a grim smile. “You remember what we said about your blood sparking up those movie creatures earlier?”
“Yeah . . .”
“Have you seen your pal George lately?” Connor asked.
“Oh,” Trent said. He sat there in silence as the realization took hold of him.
“So you’re saying you didn’t know this was Professor Redfield’s plan?” I asked.
Trent shook his head. “We were all going to get rich together making films—that’s it, as far as I knew. Think about it. If you could take a bank robbing movie and reproduce the contents of a bank vault. . .Well, it wasn’t like we were actually hurting anyone, right?”
“I think you’re underestimating the power of greed,” Connor said. “You know what I think? I think your fellow students had a better idea of what the professor was up to and I think they kept you in the dark. You were getting played, kid.”
“But why?” he asked. “Why would they do that?”
“I think the professor taught them something very fundamental about magic,” I said.
Trent looked at me, his face searching for understanding in mine. “And what is that?”
“Magic has a price,” I said, “and for something like Mason Redfield being reborn, that price is high. You want to achieve the impossible, there’s going to be a big price tag on that. This one was written in human blood.”
Trent was practically shaking in his seat, his eyes nervous. “I don’t want to die,” he said.
“We don’t want you to die, either,” Connor said. “If you help us, we’ll do our best to keep that from happening.”
Trent nodded, but didn’t speak.
“Good,” I said. I got up from my desk and stepped out into the aisle outside our work area. “Come with us, then.”
Trent stood and followed me, with Connor sticking close behind him. Trent seemed resigned to his fate, but I didn’t put it past him to try to make a run for it if we gave him an opportunity to. I headed upstairs, straight for Allorah Daniels’s office where Director Wesker was working alongside her. Jane sat exhausted with a ring of empty water glasses in front of her.
“We come bearing gifts,” I said. “Yet again.”
The three of them turned to look at us, all of them scrutinizing the stranger with us.
“And who is this?” Wesker demanded.
“This,” Connor said, slapping the student on the back hard enough to drive him forward, “is Trent. He’s our best chance at figuring out what our mad professor was really up to.”
“I’m starting to wonder if the water woman killed him so he could be reborn,” I said. “He had to die to be reborn, right? What kind of deal did Mason Redfield strike with her?”
Trent spotted the coil of film sitting on the laboratory workbench. “May I?” he asked.
Allorah waved him over but gave him a look that was stern warning not to mess with her.
Trent walked over with tentative steps and waited for her to hand the piece of film over, and then held it up to the light to examine it.
“Recognize it?” I asked.
&nbs
p; Trent looked uncertain. “I’m not sure,” he said, and then his expression changed. “Wait. . .I do know this. I worked on it.”
“You did?” I asked.
Trent nodded.
Connor went over to him. “What is it you did for the professor, exactly?”
“I dabble in computers,” he said. “Mostly film editing. The professor had asked me to mash up some of these old monster movies with some old footage of him from his early twenties. He said it would help my skills at composite editing once he mastered the magic technique.”
“It did more than that,” Wesker said. “It helped him come back to life.”
Trent handed the film back to Wesker and stepped back. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know that’s what he was planning . . .”
Jane walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. Trent flinched.
“What about this?” she asked. She spun around and pulled her hair aside, showing him the tattoo between her shoulder blades in the dip of her tank top. “Can you tell me about this symbol?”
Trent examined it for a moment, but then shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m sorry. I haven’t seen that before. What is it?”
“I was hoping you could tell me,” Jane said, frowning.
“I think the professor was definitely making a watery new friend outside of those in the film department,” Connor suggested.
“We’ve been poring over the books to try and deal with the professor as much as we have Jane’s mark,” Allorah said, “but we don’t seem to be able to counter the film’s magic or destroy it.”
“Yet,” Wesker added.
“I think I can help you with your film problem,” Trent said.
“Let’s hope so,” Wesker said. “I’d hate to think these Other Division fools spared your life for nothing.”
“Way to encourage his cooperation, Director,” I said.
Trent ignored us and stepped over to the lab bench. “What do you have in the way of chemicals in your lab?”
Allorah walked him over to a storage cabinet against the wall and threw open the doors. “Help yourself,” she said.
Trent scanned the shelves of bottles and powders, and then took one of the bottles. He went back to the bench, grabbed the tub the film was lying in, and filled it with water. He pulled off the top of the bottle, shook it over the whole thing, and then stirred it with a glass rod that was sitting on the workbench. The reaction was instantaneous as the film destabilized and turned to a reddish brown mush in the tub.
“What did you use?” I asked.
Wesker looked a bit angry at the ease with which Trent had dispatched of the film and snatched up the bottle from counter. He spun it around in his hand to read it.
“NaCl,” Wesker said, and then threw it down into the sink. “I tried chemicals and acids, not to mention magic, and yet nothing. You just came in here, made salt water, and poof.”
“Yep,” Trent said, and then shrugged. “I don’t know why it works, but it does. We kept trying various experiments with the professor, and when they failed, he had us destroy the footage this way.”
“Salt water,” Wesker repeated. “So simple.”
“Don’t beat yourself up too badly, boss,” Jane said with encouragement. “Who would have known it would work, right?”
Allorah stood up from her spot at her lab setup. “I should have been able to figure that out,” she said. “After all, I have several case samples already that are full of salt water. From Simon’s wet coat to the water found in the dead professor’s lungs, even.”
“And I’ve certainly been on the receiving end of enough saltwater attacks,” I said, “that it’s obvious to me that the professor’s had a little help in making all his twisted dreams come true.”
Jane looked down into the tub, grabbing the sides of it and rocking it. The mush swirled as it broke down even more. “So, what?” she said. “Is that it? Does destroying the film destroy the creations? Is the professor dead?”
She looked to Wesker for an answer, but he waved her off, perturbed. “Don’t ask me,” he said. “I’m the one who kept failing to destroy the damned thing, remember?”
All eyes turned to Trent. “I’m not sure, either,” he said, his voice weak. “The few times we actually succeeded in our test footage, destroying the film took care of whatever we had pulled out of it. But now that he’s using blood to sustain it, I don’t know. I was never a part of this blood ritual of Professor Redfield’s. He kind of raised the bar for crazy on us all, now, didn’t he?”
We all stood there in silence for a minute before Jane broke it.
“I could give you some good news if you like,” she said.
“We could use some,” I said.
“I was able to get a reading off that computer you brought in before it died on me,” she said.
“Really?”
“What did it say?” Connor asked.
“It couldn’t tell me much,” she said, “because it wasn’t up and running, but I did get a reading on it as far as the damage it took.” She picked up the laptop from the workbench next to her and held it up. “See along here, where it’s all crunched in? I could tell at what time the various parts of it stopped working by their last notations before equipment failure. Judging by the size of these marks and what the machine could tell me, I think it was done by something with enormous tentacles. An octopus or something.”
“In the East River?” I asked.
“I don’t make sense of these things,” she said, putting the laptop back down and holding her hands up. “I just report them.”
“I’m not attacking you about it,” I said. “I’m just surprised. And tired.”
“Thing is. . .” she said, “judging by the crush points, I have to say we’re looking at a pretty big one at that. Abnormally big.”
“I’ve heard of mutant alligators around New York City,” Connor said, “but mutant octopi might be a first.”
“Perhaps we will all be better served with a good night’s sleep,” Allorah said. “I know I’ve spent too much time on this today with little results. The only plus to it was that now that we’re understaffed, I was able to skip out on several Enchancellorship meetings.”
“What we need is a way to get ahold of the rest of your fellow students in crime,” Connor said to Trent. “We need answers from them.”
“I think I know a way to lure them in,” Trent said.
“Fine,” I said, “but anything we’re going to do can wait until morning.” I walked over to Jane. She wasn’t looking so hot. Whether it was being overworked or the power of the mark draining her, I didn’t know, but for once I hoped it was simply the former.
25
The second I got Jane back to my apartment in SoHo, she showered for an eternity, and when she was through she zonked out immediately, but I couldn’t sleep. My mind was wrapped up in too many things. Jane’s mark was just one in a long list of things bothering me, along with the Inspectre showing signs of his age in the face of dealing with his recently reborn friend. Both those things were out of my control right now, but there was one thing I could help myself with—learning to control my power better. If I was going to absorb downloads of raw emotion from some of my psychometric readings, I needed to learn how to contend with them better.
I went to the built-in bookcase in my living room that took up the greater part of one wall. The backlog of moneymaking collectibles that I had been nabbing with my powers were starting to take over, not only the shelves but the rest of the room. I could work on controlling my powers using them, all the while sorting much of this stuff for return to potential buyers at the same time, but not tonight. I had a feeling that the metal plate I had pulled from the boat-wreck salvage in the lighthouse would be chock-full of all the emotional power I wanted to contend with.
I grabbed a bowlful of Life Savers off one of my end tables and placed it on the floor next to me. I snagged my shoulder bag off the couch, pulled out the piece with SLO etche
d into its rusting form, and pushed my power into it. My one concern was that I might be visited in the vision by Cassie or Mason Redfield as I had back when I started shopping for dressers for Jane, but I had to try. I hoped that slowly coming to terms with hunting down a dresser for Jane, albeit unsuccessfully so far, would help keep it at bay.
The good news was that I didn’t feel any panic over the tattooist or Mason Redfield rising up as I entered the psychometric vision. The bad news was that a wave of completely different and instant panic rose over me instead. It was daylight on the river, and whoever’s body I occupied was drowning. I felt deep gulps of river water sliding down their throat, filling their lungs. This isn’t really me, I thought to myself. I’m not really drowning. Try as I might, the sensations were all too real and I could feel myself giving in to the panic. The person I was flailed their hands and one of them came down on a large piece of floating wood. Their fingers wrapped around it and grabbed on. Using their last bit of strength, they pulled themselves up out of the water onto the sizable piece of wood, coughing up large streams of water and the contents of their stomach.
Now that I had a brief second to catch my breath, I took in what I could. I was male, dressed in clothing styled like those of the turn-of-the-century ghosts out on the Hell Gate Bridge. The board beneath the man bore a full version of the metal plate I held in my hands with the word SLOCUM etched into it. My personal panic started to calm as I slipped into my investigator mind-set, but I could feel that the man was only starting to panic more. I could see why.
Fire and chaos were all around him on this cloudy day. The remains of the General Slocum were sinking in large, fiery pieces all around him, the cries of the dying and drowning filling the air. Ships didn’t sink this way. I had seen Titanic and a few other disaster films. Ships went down as whole objects, maybe even a few pieces. This steamer was shattered. Had the woman in green done this? I didn’t see her in any of the surrounding chaos, and frankly, I wasn’t sure she even had this kind of power over water.
As I sat on the board, holding on for dear life, I got my answer. The surface of the water broke before me and the roll of something gray and slimy passed by until one end of it poked up. A tentacle. It belonged to something huge. It rose up out of the water several stories before crashing back down on one of the large pieces of ship that was still floating, tearing it in half.
