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Our Paranormal Chernobyl
Scene 32: Special Deliveries
Tuesday, 2:50 pm, PRIMUS Chicago Headquarters

The receptionist, Tina, entered the Silver Avenger office, set the pizza box on the desk and opened the lid. It was the Giordano’s East specialty, a deep-dish "stuffed" pizza: thick dough for the bottom crust and walls, filled with sauce and Italian sausage, green peppers, and onions, then capped by another layer of thinner dough, with sauce laid on top of that. It looked like it weighed five pounds.

Pender and Ed were both famished. The squad car had dropped them at PRIMUS headquarters a half hour ago, and while they waited for the pizza they watched the MCTs and Ferraras bring Jack in. The big man was still unconscious, thanks to a needle-tipped Intravenous drip the agents had forced through his tough skin. The dimensional portal—or whatever it was—inside Jack’s mouth had turned off when he went unconscious. The doctor that PRIMUS kept on-call arrived after a few minutes, and they quickly filled him in. The MD added a glucose drip to the IV, as well as an appetite suppressant, though he warned them that he had no way of knowing if that would be enough to keep Jack soothed when he woke up.

Laura didn’t count on the appetite suppressant having any effect; Jack’s hunger seemed to be something more than a mere "appetite." Lacking any better course of action, though, she’d okayed it, but kept Mehldau and Grodenko on watch over him, just in case. Though it was difficult for her to believe, she actually had more pressing matters to deal with at the moment.

After Jack was squared away, Pender led Ed to the Silver Avenger’s office, closed the door, and got the update from her staff in the kitchen. True, it wasn’t the usual place for that sort of thing, but neither was Chicago the usual place for dragons and giants. Besides, she had to keep Ed somewhere for the time being, and the SA’s office—her office—was as good as any.

That guy was a whole host of problems.

The real SA, Raj Pirhu, still hadn’t phoned in, and wasn’t taking calls. Teddy Amidon had gone to try to talk to his boss in person. Field Agent Andrew Neel and MCT Phyllis Heitzman were still searching for the two missing agents, Dave Beck and Bobby Kvafian.

The Chicago PD had reported sightings of four more metas. The body of a man who had evidently turned to stone was pried away from the park bench where he’d lain and brought to the Cook County Hospital morgue. Police had found another dead man just a few minutes ago. His body was a thin, rubbery mess: his feet rested just inside the front door of his apartment building, and his body stretched up the stairs, winding around the landings, to where his head and arms lay just outside his third-floor apartment, key in hand. Cause of death unknown.

The third meta went by the name "Stranger," and he’d been seen earlier near the giant that had shown up at the Art Institute. He wore a black, hooded body suit with a metal mask, but the police somehow knew that he was actually Theo August, the mental patient who’d attacked a police officer this morning. He’d been spotted again, being carried over the city by a white spherical vehicle driven by an unseen operator who called himself "Q-Ball"—he was very particular about the spelling. Detective Hammersmith and Maggie Thorin had evidently joined with Q-Ball in trying to subdue August. August had escaped. After the fracas, Q-Ball broke off a conversation with police officers and disappeared into Lake Michigan.

But all that had to be dealt with after pizza. When she saw the delivery man appear on the security cameras, Pender headed for the SA office and got ready to eat.

"Agent—SA Pender," Tina corrected herself, stepping in between her and the imminent pizza. "Could I get your signature on these?"

Pender took the stack of paperwork from her. "Been piling up, I see...." She looked up as the smell of Giordano’s entered the place.

"Oh—excuse me," Tina said. "I’ll go take care of that."

Pender sighed, told her rumbling stomach to be patient, and got down to her signing and initialing. It could’ve waited, but she had the feeling that this was as close as she’d get to "free time" for the next few days.

The smell of the pizza was making Ed’s mouth water, and the legs on the secretary weren’t helping. Damn, but she was fine.

Ed sighed and looked around the joint as Pender got an update from her goon squad. Nice carpet, good furniture. Looked like a goddamned psychiatrist office.

He’d thought about sliding into Jack’s mind as they’d wheeled the bastard past him, but decided against it. Drugs did weird shit to people’s mental landscapes, and the more severe ones could carry out into the real world, making Ed look fucked up for a few minutes. He’d once skimmed Little T’s mind while she’d been strung out on coke. It hadn’t been pleasant.

"Screw it," he muttered, and mentally flipped the lid on the pizza box open and teked himself a slice onto a stack of nearby paper plates. The plate sailed across the room silently and settled gently onto his lap, and the thing was as heavy as it looked. He waited to see if anyone was gonna be pissed he’d started in on the food.

Pender walked in just in time to see the plate come to a complete stop. She wasn’t quite sure how successful she was at hiding her discomfort at this open display of his abilities. Espers were worse than other mutants: they could get inside your head, hear your thoughts. Right now, she wanted to control the flow of information, but with Ed being a telepathic she didn’t know how she could. And that was a sobering thought.

"Best pizza in the country," she remarked nonchalantly. "Just keep it away from Jack."

Ed nodded around a mouthful of pizza. She was right, it was really good. He waited for Pender to help herself and get comfortable, taking a couple more bites while he was at it.

"That Jack guy," Ed began after taking a swig of coke to wash down his food. "Man. That was bad. See, Red’s plan was to lure the guy outside if he couldn’t calm him down inside the store. If I saw him, I was supposed to put him down, ‘cause that meant Red hadn’t been able to talk sense into him." He started to wipe his hands on his pants, stopping just before he ruined a new pair of very expensive slacks.

"Shit," he said, reaching for a napkin. "Anyways, so I did what we had agreed. Hell, I even tried to talk to the guy myself, and all I got was this huge stomachache when he fed his hunger back to me down the link. And Waters knew what was going on too. Don’t let him make you think otherwise. That guy is slick with a capital ‘S’."

He let his mind replay the situation again, wondering if somehow he had screwed up. But he couldn’t see it. He’d done just what they’d asked him to do. He shook his head and tossed down the napkin.

"I really don’t know why Red freaked out. And then your guys started shooting, and the crowd started freaking out, and I guess I did too." He managed to at least look a little embarrassed. "Sorry, sometimes when I’m around a lot of people, I ride whatever they’re feeling. It gets into my head and I can’t help it."

He shrugged and took another bite of pie, waiting to see if Pender had anything to say.

She didn’t—not for a few moments, anyway. I ride whatever they’re feeling. She found his inadvertent empathy more than a little disturbing, and it briefly sent her mind in circles: if she felt uneasy, he’d pick that up, so the answer was to take it in stride and not let it affect her... but the anxiety this created would more than likely counter any artificial calm she could muster.

Sometimes, she decided, not for the first time, I think I’m in the wrong business.

"That’s, that’s understandable," she replied at last. "Being an empath isn’t always peaches and cream, from what I’ve heard."

Ed shrugged. "I’ll get a handle on it one day. It’s just kinda hard when you hafta teach yourself, you know?"

"Maybe there’s something we can do about that."

"So what about these ‘Barbie dolls’? How is it that you know about them?"

"Iggy," Ed replied after hastily gulping down another mouthful. "That big huge guy that we helped save this afternoon. I went into his mind and saw who did it to him. You know, made him big? It was these two things that looked like grown-up dolls. Dressed like a doctor and a nurse. If you want, I can show you."

"Right—telepathically. Um.… I think I have a pretty good idea of what they look like, if not who they are."

A slight smile tugged at the corners of Ed’s mouth. It was obvious that Pender was a little freaked out by this whole thing, and for some reason that made him feel better. Made her seem more like a person and less like some cop.

"To be honest," she decided, "I’m not the best person for that. We should get a police sketch artist in here. If you ‘show’ me, you’ll have to show others, but a sketch artist can draw. What you can show me, though, is Iggy’s experience with them. How do you know him?"

"Know who? Iggy?" Ed asked. "I don’t. I only know what I found in his head when I went digging. He’s a homeless guy, and he was just minding his own business when those robots drugged him and made him big."

"Sounds familiar."

Ed helped himself to another slice of pizza, careful to avoid spilling anything on his clothes.

"Probably the same with all of ‘em. I didn’t really look into Jack’s head, ‘cause he was pissed enough as it was. And I didn’t know that Bench Guy was a freak, cause there was all this other weird art around that the convenience store guy said had been there for awhile."

"The Cows on Parade," Pender said. "Apart from the Blue Man Group, there’s no better place in Chicago to discreetly dump a meta."

Ed merely shrugged. "I guess."

She sighed and wiped pizza from her hands with a napkin. "Alright, Ed. No sense in waiting." Keeping her mind open to this would be like voluntarily breathing in water. "I’ll call this Detective Hammersmith and see what we can do about getting a sketch artist, but for now, show me the robots."

Ed smiled at her. "I’ll show you, but first, I want to ask you a question. I figure I’ve been nice enough so far, played by all the rules, haven’t fucked anyone up for all that’s been done to me by your people. So, you answer my one question, and I’ll show you everything."

Oh God.... "Deal."

He sat back and folded his hands behind his head. "Why? Why do you do this crap? You’re a nat. You ain’t got any powers I’ve seen, and I can feel you’re nervous about even being in the same room with me, so why put your ass on the line duking it out with crazy-ass supervillains? What do you get out of it?"

"Different things," she said, after a pause. "It’s a good feeling, knowing that I help keep people safe. I suppose you could say it’s rewarding. And yes, I’m just a ‘nat,’ but this nat has gone up against a few metahumans in her time, and come out on top. I guess that’s part of it, too—proving to myself, or whomever, that people are people, whether they’re super-powered or not, and no one is truly superior to anyone else, in the grand scheme of things."

Ed said nothing at first, his expression almost unreadable. When he finally did speak, his voice was quiet, almost as if he were speaking to himself.

"That’s a nice dream, that whole ‘everybody’s equal’ thing. But you know it ain’t the way it really is. Not today, and definitely not tomorrow. Maybe it used to be that way when our parents was growin’ up, but things are too big now."

He frowned as he realized he was actually having some sort of conversation with the woman who, one hour earlier, was ready to arrest his ass.

"Here it comes," Ed said, and then there were memories not Pender’s own unfolding in her mind.

…they were the whitest people on the planet. They looked like dolls: perfect hair, and that smooth skin that gleamed like new plastic. And they wouldn’t stop smiling. Their grins were fixed and fake, like a bank teller who’s secretly hitting the security button.

The man was young, maybe late twenties, though his brown hair looked as lifeless as a toupee. He wore a white, short-sleeve smock with large pockets, white unwrinkled pants, and shiny black shoes. A black stethoscope hung from his neck, and he carried a large black doctor’s bag. Inside the bag were the two devices Iggy had been shot with, as well as the big gun that the man had showed his people to scare them off.

The blonde woman wore a crisp, white nurse’s uniform stretched tight over large, perfectly rounded breasts. The skirt just covered her ass. Her legs were long and gleaming, thin thighs tapering to narrower ankles, her delicate feet wedged into white, three-inch stiletto heels.

Iggy had known immediately that the two of them were trouble. Ig’s friends had been lined up to get their injections when he’d interrupted them and tried to scare them off with a crowbar.

He never learned the woman’s name. But near the end, when Ig lay trembling at their feet, she had called the doctor "Kay." And they had talked about someone named "Sontag..."

And then it was over. A little part of someone else’s life was inside her, and she didn’t like it. Laura could smell her—Iggy’s—unwashed clothes, feel the anger as she rushed the plastic constructs, and then the panic as her body underwent the changes they had wrought. It was terrifying, to be sure, and she didn’t envy Iggy any more than she pitied him, but that paled in comparison to what she’d learned from it.

"Fun, huh?" Ed asked quietly.

That certainly wasn’t the expression she was wearing, of that she was sure. "I have to make a phone call," Laura said abruptly, and produced the card Waters had given her. She re-read it before reaching for the telephone.

"Hammersmith," a voice said.

"Detective Hammersmith? This is PRIMUS Acting Silver Avenger Laura Pender. According to Detective Waters, we’re working on the same case."

"I think the whole city is," Hammersmith said.

"Fair enough. Listen, I’ve just learned some critical information. Have you happened to have come across Sontag Labs in your investigation?"

The detective chuckled. "I’ve come across it, through it, and at the moment, I’m carting it away. I take it you’ve been talking to Ed."

"Yes," she said, glancing over at him eating Giordano’s. She wasn’t sure "talking" was really the right word for what she’d experienced. "I have. We should compare notes. You’re at Sontag Labs now?"

"Yes I am, along with Crossfire and Maggie Thorin. We're seizing the entire lab and sending it down to the evidence lab. But I’m about to leave for the Mayor’s office for a coordination meeting on the entire meta situation. You should be there as well—I’ve been trying to reach Raj, but Teddy Amidon wouldn’t put me through. Since you’re still acting SA, I take it he hasn’t shown up?"

"SA Pirhu isn’t currently available," she confirmed.

"Hmm. Well, I have a favor to ask, then. Crossfire and Ms. Thorin believe they have a way to track down other victims—other new metas, like the man you just captured. Waters told me that you know about the pellets. I assume you’ve taken them out of the man?"

"The medical staff is in the process of doing that right now." Have to check with Keith on that.... "I’ll meet you at the Mayor’s office. Will you need the pellets for further evidence? Otherwise we’ll leave now."

Ed glanced over at the agent, one eyebrow raised. "Where we goin’?"

She held up a "one moment please" finger to him. Ed looked towards the ceiling. "Upstairs?" he asked. "What’s up there?"

"I’ll need them eventually," Hammersmith said. "But don’t let it hold you up. According to Ms. Thorin, one pellet should be empty. The other one’s probably a tracking device—you might want your people to disable it or jam it."

"Will do."

"Which brings me to the favor. Maggie and Crossfire think they can track these pellets, even though they’re low-powered. I’m going to refer them to our Narcotics people who have some radio equipment they can use. But the more equipment we have triangulating the broadcasts, the more potential metas we can find—hopefully before they turn up dead. And of course, PRIMUS would want to be on the scene for any first contacts."

"Of course; I see what you’re getting at. I’ll put my intelligence people on that as soon as I get the data."

"So," Hammersmith said. "What kind of material can you put on the street? Anything in the high-tech war chest I keep hearing about?"

"That depends—what have you heard?" she chuckled. "We’re actually a little short-staffed right now. A few agents and vehicles are still out in the field, but at least two MCTs are here with me, and the chopper’s finished refueling after airlifting the Dragon."

Then Agent Pender heard a loud crack!

Hammersmith had dropped his phone.

"Hello...? Hell—?" Pender covered the phone and turned to Ed. "Mayor’s office, to answer your question. Hammersmith’s done some legwork for me, and we’re going to meet to compare notes." Along with Crossfire, she mentally added, hoping Ed didn’t pick up on it. "And I need you to come along."

Mayor's office. Jesus Christ, Ed thought with a touch of amusement. Wonder what Gram would think of that?

"Oh," Ed replied, standing up and stretching. "Hey, this place have a bathroom? If I’m gonna meet the mayor, I wanna clean up some."

"Sure—sure," Pender replied, still distracted by Hammersmith’s sudden disappearance. She opened the door and got Tina’s attention. "Tina? Could you show Ed someplace where he could clean up a little? Hello?" She’d resumed her efforts to get the detective’s attention. "Hello?"

Ed perked up a bit at that. Cool, I get to talk to the hottie.

Tina, however, was all business. "It’s right down the hall, third door on the left, next to the water fountain." She barely glanced up from her computer.

Hammersmith's voice came back on the line. "Well whaddya know," he said, "a talking dog. You still there, Agent Pender?"

"Still here, but not for long," she answered. "I have a few things to clear up with my staff, and then we'll meet you at the mayor's office."

"Fine. Let me get you the data on the tracking devices. Maggie, Crossfire: do you know the frequency that PRIMUS should be scanning for?" A pause. "Seventy-two megahertz," Hammersmith said. "See you at the Mayor's."

Ed sighed and slouched down the hall, wondering where he’d be tonight. Some roach-trap motel probably, if things went the way they normally did. He barely registered the few people who passed him, all dressed in suits and ties, bearing plastic laminated ID badges clipped to their lapels. At least nobody was shooting at him.

He pushed his way though the door into the men’s room and went to stand before the sink. The Ed that looked back at him from the mirror looked tired and old, and perhaps just a little crinkled at the edges.

"Ed, old man, you’re in over your head again," he said to his reflection. "Shit." He stared at himself a moment longer, then washed his hands and combed his fingers through his hair. It was the best he was gonna be able to do for now, and in the suit he at least didn’t look like a thug.

He straightened his tie, and headed back to the PRIMUS-chick’s office, stopping only long enough to ask the secretary if he could bum a cigarette.

"I don’t smoke," she replied coolly.

Laura had kept an eye on Ed through the office window; despite his apparent cooperation, there was an outside chance he might just decide to make a new deal for himself—one that cut her out of the picture. When she saw him emerge from the hallway and heading back to the office, however, she walked back to her desk.

"Okay, Gramma, we can go any minute now," he said to Pender as he flopped back down into his chair. "’Cause on a scale of one to ten, this place is a forty-six on the boredom meter."

"Then I’m sure you’ll love the Mayor’s office. Give me a couple more minutes to talk to some people, and we’ll get out of here."

Laura quickly made the rounds and checked in with all her staff again, now armed with new knowledge. She made sure Keith knew about the pellets in Jack, and confirmed that the the big man was still down and out with the help of manacles and an IV drip. Grodenko and Mehldau were to remain with Jack for the time being, just in case, but with the understanding that she might need them in the field later, with a vanful of armament.

Later, she’d have to get Ed to read his memories for a little more evidence. She could simply ask Jack what he’d seen and heard when he came to, but apart from not wanting to give him an excuse to open his mouth again, there was no getting around the fact that Ed’s methods of "interrogation" simply left no room for error. Iggy had overheard two important pieces of the puzzle, and there was no telling what Jack may have subconciously picked up.

In the meantime, Teddy was to keep up the good work, no matter who (or what) asked about Raj’s whereabouts, while Sal Ferreras went out to determine Raj’s whereabouts. He had a cell phone and instructions to keep in regular contact with her. She apprised Duong and Sarilee, the communications and information specialists, of the nature of the pellets she expected Keith to be pulling out of Jack "soon," and that when he did, their collective cup would overfloweth.

"Alright, Ed," she said, rushing back into the office with a cell phone in hand. She rummaged around in a desk drawer for a moment, then held up a set of keys. "Let’s go see the Mayor."

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