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Our Paranormal Chernobyl
Scene 40: The Inside Scoop
Tuesday, 4:55 pm, Inside Q-Ball

"Hmmm," Goo pondered to itself as it observed the furnishings and equipment. "Odd. Fami-i-iliar. A little."

Pender was watching them come in, practically tapping her foot in exasperation. Stranger was off to the side, guzzling a two-liter bottle of Jolt Cola. And behind them, on a six-foot high platform that looked like a life guard’s station, was a three-inch high man in a shiny metal helmet.

"No fucking way," Ed whispered as he stared at the tiny man. He’d dealt with the funny cows, he dealt with the huge brother, fuck, he’d even dealt with the leper and the thing from Ghostbusters that sat waving it’s fucking arms around and glooping all over the place.

But this? When did it end?

He closed his mouth (embarrassed to find it hanging open) and shook his head. What was next?

"All in?" came a voice from the speakers. "Then let’s get some privacy." The ramp receded into the side of the sphere like a 1950’s sci-fi saucer, the door closed, and then everyone in the circular room except Goo felt the weight in their knees as the vehicle lifted off.

Goo, for its part, felt a mild compression in the lower reaches of its volume.

"Whoa whoa whoa, where the hell are we going?" Ed asked.

"I’m only going up to a hundred feet," the speakers said. Looking closely, Maggie could see the tiny man’s mouth moving. "But the ECM array is on, so no one should be able to eavesdrop."

"Oh."

"I’m only going up to a hundred feet," the speakers said. Looking closely, Maggie could see the tiny man’s mouth moving. "But the ECM array is on, so no one should be able to eavesdrop."

The man made some adjustments to controls at his tiny chair. "Please, have a seat and make yourselves comfortable. If I can get you anything to eat or—well, the food’s gone, but if I can get you some coffee or tea, just speak up."

Goo thought about the food, wondering if it was hungry and what it could do about it.

"Now, as Maggie said earlier, we badly need to compare notes," he continued. "And I think it would help if I went first. I think we all know that there’s an experiment going on in Chicago. What only Agent Pender and I know is that this is the second such experiment—and that I’m the only survivor of the first trial."

"Now, as Maggie said earlier, we badly need to compare notes," he continued. "And I think it would help if I went first. I think we all know that there’s an experiment going on in Chicago. What only Agent Pender and I know is that this is the second such experiment—and that I’m the only survivor of the first trial."

"That we know of," Pender added.

How long had those damn robots been doing this shit, anyways? Ed thought with exasperation. Who built ‘em in the first place?

"My name is Harris DuFord," the tiny man began. Fifteen years ago he worked as a nuclear safety engineer for Sontag Resources, a mining company, in Moab, Utah. When the uranium mine shut down, DuFord had stayed in Moab, even though there was no work for him. He fell on what he called "hard times," going through a divorce, drinking heavily. "Then one night four years ago I was kidnapped, by the same doll-like robots that injected Stranger, and probably Goo as well."

He went on, and Pender remembered the story from the first time Harris had told it to PRIMUS. He was kept prisoner for weeks while the robots collected other guinea pigs, then he was injected. Harris had begun to shrink, and the entire complex seemed to go to hell as the other abilities activated in the other prisoners: telepathy, super strength, armored skin. There’d been gunfire, and the robots had set off explosives to kill the prisoners and hide the evidence. Harris, shrunk to three inches tall and hiding in an air vent, was the only survivor that PRIMUS found.

[As told in Turn 25—ed.]

"Agent Pender was the one who found me," Harris told the group, his voice still coming from the hidden speakers in the walls of the sphere. "And for that I’m eternally grateful. She continued to investigate, but didn’t get very far, isn’t that right, Agent Pender? The criminals had covered their tracks very well."

"You have a gift for understatement," she replied dryly. But then again, you are three inches tall. It was the last time for the rest of his tale that she allowed herself the luxury of irony.

"But as for me," Harris said, "my life had new purpose."

After being rescued by Pender, he found that his transformation—and perhaps his sobriety—had given him a new facility for understanding electronics and miniaturization, for designing efficient systems. He’d always been fairly bright, but now he saw things in a completely new way.

Thankful for his rescue, he joined PRIMUS’ R&D division, and within a year he was promoted to more highly classified projects, where he started working on new weapons and vehicles. In fact, he was the one who designed the improved net gun, and before he’d left he’d proposed a new multi-gun that combined several non-lethal weapons into one unit. He was a true believer, and he wanted to rid the world of criminals like the kind that had killed all those people in Utah.

Then one day, while researching biofeedback interfaces for a PRIMUS vehicle he was working on, he came across a computer file named biomech_chassisdesign_draft4, created by a user with the initials RRM. It was actually many compressed files, a series of CAD drawings. The design was for a very sophisticated robot with a cutting-edge telepresence interface that would allow it to be operated remotely. And the outer surface looked just like a Barbie Doll. Harris recognized it as one of his abductors.

He went to his supervisor, and showed him the file he’d found. His supervisor took the file and said he’d talked to his superior. He never got an answer. Harris kept pestering, and a month later they told him that it was classified, but that they were investigating.

Harris did research on his own. Personnel files were classified, but there were old printouts of PRIMUS phone directories that the secretaries kept in a file drawer. Harris tracked down the three RRM’s, and the only one that made sense was Russell Reinhardt-Mapes, who worked in R&D in Colorado. From cafeteria gossip with some folks who used to work in CO he eventually found out that Mapes was an electronics / biomechanics guy, working on some project called "Birthstone." But that he’d been fired for some kind of personal reason—everybody had heard that it was "sexual in nature" but nobody had any details.

Harris went to his superiors and asked them if project Birthstone had gone forward—did they build any of those robots? Harris was told it was beyond his level of clearance, and that he should stop his investigations immediately or he’d be fired. Harris stopped trusting his superiors.

Two nights later, while working on the experimental vehicle—the very one they were now standing in—he was attacked in the lab. A beautiful woman with hands like ice casually picked him up in her fist, told him he’d been a naughty little thing, and prepared to squash him with a toolbox—a tragic industrial accident. Then he "managed to get out of her hand" (Harris was vague on this point), got into the vehicle, netgunned her, and escaped.

That was two years ago, and he never went back to PRIMUS. He tried to track down what he thought must be the new breed of Birthstone robots, but got nowhere until he read a story in the New Orleans Sun/Star earlier this year. Maggie Thorin, JusticeMaker, and some others had stopped a super virus. And next to a picture of Maggie and UltraViolet was another picture, that of the robot who had attacked him. Her name was Topaz.

"I realized right then," Harris said over the speakers, his voice quivering with emotion, "that I could continue my fight against crime, even without PRIMUS. I would follow in Maggie’s footsteps, using science and technology to bring criminals to justice, wherever they were found. And I vowed to track down the masterminds behind the grisly experiment in Utah."

Ed winced as the little guy’s outrage washed over him. And he had to ask himself again if he belonged in this room with these people. What was he, after all, but a punk who got lucky enough to be born with a talent few had. He didn’t want to go bust crime. He didn’t feel the need to put on the jammies and call himself MindBoy.

So what the hell was he doing here?

Helpin’, Edward. These folks need it, and you can provide it, Gram’s voice whispered. ’S about right and wrong, not about those p-jammas you keep goin’ on about, and you know it. Now pay attention, stop woolgatherin!

Harris told how the first break he’d gotten in the case came this morning. When he heard the news reports about the huge number of metas showing up dead, he flew cross-country and arrived over Chicago just as the 400-foot giant disappeared back under the street. From above, he started scanning the crowd for the Barbie robot, and also followed Maggie, Crossfire, Ed, and the Detectives as they walked to the tavern. That’s when Harris noticed that a black-clad figure was following the group as well, hopping from roof to roof. The police bands were already announcing that man in the black suit and metal mask was Theo August, wanted for questioning. So, Harris switched his focus to shadowing the man from above, until suddenly Stranger attacked a pedestrian for no reason. Q-Ball swept down and grabbed him.

"Fuckin' Red…" Ed muttered. "What the hell happened to him anyway? You know he wanted to kill this old guy he met at the museum? Guy killed his parents or something. Maybe he’s off chasing him down again."

"That’s right," Harris said. "Where is Crossfire?"

The question took Laura somewhat by surprise. She’d gotten used to Q-Ball’s sensory apparatus providing DuFord with virtual clairvoyance, and it was almost disconcerting to know that a sore thumb like Crossfire could go undetected by him.

"Autobody," Goo explained. "K. Flip truck. Cro-o-ossfire. Truck.

"Whumped. Upside head.

"B, K left. Away from me, Ma-a-aggie.

"I flipped truck. Stro-o-ong. Cro-o-osfire breathing.

"A-a-ambulance."

"Oh my," Harris said.

"Well," Harris said, picking up his story again. "Maggie and Stranger know the rest." Harris told the others in the group about following Stranger into the sewers, but that Stranger had gotten away—neatly omitting that he’d entangled everyone, even Maggie and Hammersmith, and that Stranger had knocked out Maggie.

"But I am extremely glad that Stranger did escape," Harris said, nodding to the man. "I think he saved my life today, and Ed’s too, and that of Acting Silver Avenger Pender. Which brings us up to this moment. What have the rest of you learned about what’s going on?"

"First of all," Pender began, breaking the pregnant silence and taking the reins of the conversation, "you’re right about Stranger. I think it’s fair to say that Ed and I owe him our lives. As for what’s been learned, I’ve spent this morning discovering the Moab connection you just confirmed, but Miss Thorin has uncovered considerably more."

"Wait a minute," Stranger broke in. "So this whole thing is a byproduct of a PRIMUS project gone wrong?" He shook his head in disbelief and then straightened up.

"But that’s it, that’s perfect. This is what we need to turn the tables on the robots and the people who are controlling them. Why don’t we just track their remote control signal? Harris said that these things are supposed to be cutting-edge devices. I would assume that means that the telesend control thing Harris mentioned must use a very unusual signal. Agent Pender, since this is a PRIMUS device, why don’t you just get the Birthstone plans? I bet Harris and Dr. Thorin can fix up a tracking device based on what those plans reveal. I mean, you basically have a flying Radio Shack here. I bet you could build just about anything. All we need to do is get the plans and then we can get the people who are causing all of this."

Ed laughed. It was just to fucking funny, he couldn’t help it. Pender stood there, looking all official and shit while a doll-man narced all about how retarded PRIMUS was, and not three feet away one of her precious agents was squished into a pile of pudding by something other PRIMUS numbskulls had let get away from them.

And all of it probably because some big-brain couldn’t get laid.

God, that was a joke. All these people dead because of PRIMUS. All this misery, that girl in the building outside, other people torn to shreds, Theo’s life totally screwed up.

Admittedly, in August’s case, things might have gotten a little better due to the robots. Everyone else was fucked though. Bench guy with the cows, that woman on the truck that weighed a billion pounds.

Iggy.

OH yeah, Iggy. He should probably say something about Iggy. After all, the giant was out for revenge, and who knew what destruction he could cause.

That thought sobered him, and his laughter died down to a chuckle.

"PRIMUS," he said pointedly to Pender, "sucks."

"Thanks for your analysis," she replied—but inwardly, she had to admit that he had a point. Certainly from his perspective, she reminded herself, PRIMUS had been nothing but trouble.

He opened his mouth to really let her have it… and then stopped. She wasn’t responsible for this. She was as stuck in this shithole as the rest of them. Hell, she was a fucking norm. No powers. And he really doubted it had been her finger on the button that turned on the robots. If it had, he’d have seen it by now.

Bitching at her wouldn’t make anything any better, and he flushed in embarrassment as this sank in.

Goo, on the other hand, felt obliged to comment.

"PRI-I-IMUS doesn’t suck. It . . . just . . .

"Bu-u-ureaucrats. Mi-i-icromanage. Then laissez-faire. But not fair. Se-e-ecrets. Need to know."

Goo was having trouble finding words to express its long-held, mixed feelings about an organization that it had, somehow, never heard of before this day.

"It . . . just . . .

"Okay. Su-u-ucks."

"Iggy wants revenge," Ed went on, calmer now. "He’s got something planned, and he asked me to meet him tonight. Thought you should know that," he tossed out.

"Iggy wants revenge," Laura murmured, and part of her felt it as much as he surely did. Iggy was still there, lurking angry and confused in a neglected corner of her mind, thanks to Ed’s telepathy. She knew there had to be a way to get rid of Iggy’s second-hand mental residue, some way to cleanse him from her system, but now, unfortunately, was not the time.

"And," Ed said, "if you can find the robots using that tracker stuff, then can’t they see you coming if August or they—" He pointed at Goo. "—come along? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure Theo has one of those things inside. I figure we’d see it if they did though."

"Oh yeah," Stranger said. "Can somebody check to see if I can still be tracked? I think I trashed the pellets with the MRI, but I don’t know for sure."

Ed looked down at the piece of the leper, then it floated out towards the center of the room.

"This thing’s got one too."

"Six," Goo said. "I know six sets pe-e-ellets.

"One and two. Autobody, back seat. One, wo-o-oman. Dress. Two, man. No Empathy ‘99. Mike’s Tavern.

"One and two, me. Ma-a-aggie says. But pe-e-ellets slide through. So not see me coming.

"Three. Theo. MRI, so no bli-i-ip. Not see Theo coming.

"Four. Below, now. Ball said sta-a-a-ationary. Ma-a-aggie said wo-o-oman?"

"What?" Ed all but shouted. "Woman? Not the woman sitting in the blood?" There was an edge to his voice; had they been suckered? Had the woman had some part in the bloodbath below? And if she had, they’d just sent her to a hospital full of more people to butcher.

Of course, she had been terrified. You just couldn’t fake that degree of fear, nuh-uh. So maybe whatever the robots had done to her wasn’t gonna kill her, or anybody else.

"Five. In . . . that." Goo gestured toward the floating chunk.

"Leaves sixth. PRI-I-IMUS. Agent? Me.

"Where sixth? Slid through, probably. Somewhere. Don’t remember. But Ed. In head. Remember for me, ma-a-aybe."

"Remember more, ma-a-aybe. Clues. Details. PRI-I-IMUS."

Ed shook his head. "No way. Not now. It’s too soon."

Stranger was staring at the floating chunk of the Jigsaw Man. "Somebody had better secure the rest of that thing before it wakes up," he said, then looked at Pender. "And I don’t think you want to send anymore of the folks in white to do it".

"I think we can handle a few rocks," answered Pender.

Ed stared at her.

Balls of steel. She’s got balls of steel, man.

Laura’s tolerance for PRIMUS-bashing was minimal to begin with; DuFord’s wild stories and Ed’s disrespect for authority in general weren’t helping. "That’s not what concerns me. DuFord, do you have any evidence to support these allegations? I realize my current role as ‘Acting Silver Avenger’ gives me all of the title and none of the clout of that position, but I’ve never heard of this ‘Birthstone’ project. Sorry to be so corporate, but I have a hard time believing that PRIMUS knowingly had anything to do with this. I’d expect that kind of thing from the government, but… not from us."

"You sound like a goddamned lawyer," Ed muttered. "Look Pender, we all of us know you didn’t ask for any of this. And that you didn’t start it, or anything like that. I can’t speak for them, but I sure as hell don’t blame you for any of it. You’re just trying to clean up a big fucking mess your parents made."

He sighed.

"They fucked up, we’re paying for it, and covering for them here is crap. Let’s just find the assholes and put a stop to it, and thank God that some of us can go home tonight and put it all behind us. Iggy can’t, and neither can your man stuck inside of Them." He pointed again at Goo.

"If some asshole asks, ‘Did Pender defend us?’ I’ll say yeah. Corporations suck anyway," he lamely finished, wondering what possessed him to open his mouth sometimes.

Stranger just couldn’t take it anymore. "Your own people have been killed. How can you be so cavalier? You’re more concerned with the good name of PRIMUS then getting to the bottom of what’s going on. If Harris was smart enough to snatch this huge machine from you guys, don’t you think someone could sneak out a couple of robot plans? I mean, you’re the one with all of the resources, can’t you just check it out? People are dying and all you can say is ‘that’s not what concerns me.’ Just count the body bags and maybe you’ll get concerned."

"Don’t be absurd," she returned, insulted. "Of course I’m not going to just sit idly by while people get killed, but I’m not going to waste time rooting through my own corporation to find those responsible unless Mr. DuFord can back up his claims. I may have ‘all the resources,’ but that doesn’t mean I can just make a phone call and get all the classified information I need. Silver Avengers of small branch offices aren’t exactly privy to the sort of high-level security needed here. Like I said, I’ve never heard anything about Birthstone—or this Topaz character—before today, but if what you’re saying is right, DuFord, that means that PRIMUS' possible involvement with this could have started many years ago, possibly significantly predating the Moab incident, making this a long-term cover-up, highly-sensitive and damaging in nature. If no one found out about it in all that time—somehow—odds are we won’t uncover anything, assuming there’s anything to uncover, anytime soon.

"Don’t get me wrong," she added. "I’m as desperate to end this as any of the rest of you, and so is PRIMUS. I just want to do it right."

And she was desperate, Ed could feel it. "She’s not hiding anything." Ed told Theo. "I’d feel it if she were. She’s as mad as the rest of us, probably madder."

He looked at Goo again, and shuddered.

All of this talk about PRIMUS was interesting to Goo, and Goo had a zillion questions. But one seemed especially important.

"Acting Pender," Goo asked, attempting to get Pender’s attention.

"A-a-acting. Why?"

Now that, Ed thought, was a damn good question.

"That's not important right now," she replied curtly, and really, in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't—but it weighed on her mind as heavily as anything they were discussing.

"Well," Harris said over the speakers. "That’s, uh…." He sounded like he was at a loss. Then he cleared his throat and said, "Evidence. Acting SA Pender’s quite right. I wouldn’t have believed that PRIMUS was involved myself if I hadn’t seen the evidence with my own eyes—and if Topaz hadn’t tried to kill me." He started typing something at his console. "Maggie, you’ve dealt with Topaz. Do you have any evidence that she—it, rather—is from PRIMUS?"

"Okay," Maggie put in. "My turn." She got up and started pacing while she talked. "First, I know Topaz. She seems to work for PRIMUS, she descended upon a base we’d just purge of a certain living virus, threatening us waaay beyond any legal power she had." She frowned. "Later on while investigating Intergen, who’d created the virus, she popped up—she was in league with them. She was destroyed in the ensuing battle."

Living virus? Ed wondered. What the hell was that? Like flu?

"The worrisome part is that she later popped up to threaten us some more; obviously her actions had PRIMUS sanction and they’d rebuilt her. This… peeved me." She looked at Pender. "I’ve been documenting these events, I was planning to send a package to a few key politicians and papers. I was rather hoping to see the Hounds of Hell descend on PRIMUS at that point."

Sucks to be Pender today, Ed thought.

"Now, as to how I got involved in this mess…" Maggie began explaining how she’d met Goran and how she’d been drafted to find a cure for "a young patient who I’d prefer remain nameless." The patient was a relative of Freya Sontag—and she made sure to point out the correlation with DuFord’s story. She explained the patient’s condition—that she would generate a cell that induced metahuman mutation, including in herself. She described Goran and his two assistants, the talking dog Argo, and how Goran himself had started to investigate if any of the enzymes produced by the patient had gone missing.

"While he was doing that I went to help Iggy," Maggie continued. She gave a quick résumé of how she helped deal with Iggy, since she arrived late and had only a minor role in that. Then she quickly went through the events that led to the hunt for Stranger. She skipped over the battle itself, since DuFord at been there, but she gave Theo August a sidelong glance before she continued.

Ed looked at Thorin, then at the midget, Dupont or whatever. Both were hiding something about that meeting with August. Thorin was irritated, and Dupont kind of embarrassed. He wondered what had happened…

"I went to the police lab to examine the pellets they’d found," Maggie said. She described first the IP radio pellet, mostly investigated by Crossfire. "I don’t know what they’re used for. We’ve been using them as a tracker, but why use an IP radio for that purpose? Unless it’s a red herring." She went on to describe the gold pellet: a time-released mechanism to release two chemicals in the subject’s bloodstream, one a dose of the mutation enzyme, and the other a dose of the suppressant."

"Red and that guy, Stokel. The Traitor. They figured some of that out," Ed added.

Goo waved enthusiastically.

"Su-u-uppressant? Change back? Change me-e-e-e?"

"I’ll try, Goo. But I don’t know if I can," Maggie said.

"At least you might still have a chance," Pender said to Goo. "Many other victims today have turned up in much worse shape than you."

Maggie went on to explain how she’d originally thought that the goal was to have the suppressant "freeze" or "lock in" the mutation, but she then realized that it would be released BEFORE the enzyme. "I see a few possibilities here; maybe the suppressant takes a while to take effect, so they inject it before to have a shorter mutation time. Or they inject the victim with the enzyme at the same time they do the pellet, then they observe how well the suppressant works. Once they have an idea, the victim becomes inconvenient—" Her voice had a bit of anger. "—so they use what’s most likely to kill an unknown metahuman without too many traces: another dose of the enzyme, presumably overwhelming the suppressant and resuming uncontrolled mutation."

She recounted how they’d use the pellets to track down new victims, ending up catching up with the Plastic People while they were trying to retrieve Goo. She described the battle, which had really not gone their way, with Crossfire and several policemen, including Stokes, ending up in the hospital. She herself, she said, wincing, hadn’t been completely spared. After the wrap-up there they’d raced to here, where they’d met the rest of the group.

"The rest is history. So what happened to you people? I understand you’ve encountered some new victims."

"Show me," Ed said suddenly. "I want to see what you saw, add it to what Iggy showed me about the robots, see if there’s anything I missed."

At least Thorin’s mind was calm. Logical, well-ordered with just a hint of mania. A walk in the park compared to the ones he’d been skimming lately.

He looked over at the tiny guy, Dumont or whatever. "You too. Show me that Topaz thing. Maybe it’s the same as the nurse."

"Just a second…" Harris said, looking at something on his console.

Pender looked from DuFord's face to his console and back. "What?"

The pieces were all gathered here, locked in the minds of those in the ball. And Ed could put them together with these people’s help. All it would take is a little trust. He almost choked on the irony of that thought.

"Time to shit or get off the pot. You’ve all got pieces of this in your memories, and I can pull them out, put them together, and show them to everybody. Faster than talking, and that way nothing gets left out. It’ll fuck me up for a day or so, but hey…" he shrugged.

He smiled as he felt the first twinges of fear from everyone that usually accompanied the thought of letting an esper in their heads. Power felt like this, he knew. He’d watched the deals go down, seen the awe and respect buried with the fear of those who served the Dallas drug kingpins. It was all hooked into being afraid. Afraid of failing, or afraid for someone else’s safety… fear fear fear. Fuck if he hadn’t eaten nothing but terror all day long. He felt almost numb to it at this point.

And he was tired of fear.

"You don’t know me. You probably don’t even trust me, and that’s cool. But since I’m part of this, it’d be stupid to not let me use my talent like I know I can. I ain’t after your secrets, I don’t really care to be honest. Hell, I wouldn’t understand half the shit I’d get from most of you if I were to dig."

He shrugged.

"I’m tired. I’ve been hammered by nothing but pants-shitting fear all day long, and I want it to stop. I want the ones responsible to go down, so I don’t ever have another goddamned day like this."

"Your choice. I know I can do this though, and it’ll be quicker."

Goo softened.

"Poo-oo-oor dearie," it said with obvious sympathy.

"Ha-a-ard day.

"And always shuddering."

"I don’t think we’ll need telepathy to show people Topaz," Harris said. "Here she is." The various viewscreens around the room were filled with a black and white image, a blow-up of a newspaper photo. An attractive "woman" was wearing a black, one-piece bodysuit of some sort. She had short black hair, a narrow, classically shaped nose, and thin lips. The photographer had captured her as she was chomping on a cigar and jabbing an index finger into the chest of Maggie’s armor.

"That's Topaz all right," Maggie said. "Do you know her, Pender?"

She shook her head. "Can't say I've had the pleasure."

"And," Harris continued, "perhaps Stranger, Goo, and Maggie can tell us if the robotic Barbie doll they saw looks like this?" The screen image was replaced with an obviously computer-generated image. The figure was nude, and the blond hair fell straight to her shoulders. The woman had large breasts, but no nipples, and her crotch was smooth and featureless.

"Or maybe I can frickin’ show you, in color and 3D and better than Dolby just what each of you saw," Ed replied. "Pictures are cool, but nothing beats memory."

"Memory. Goo-oo-ood. I’m in," Goo said. "But that."

Goo indicated the screen.

"B. De-e-efinitely B."

"Yes, she’s the one," Stranger said. "But she was dressed up like nurse when I saw her. She was with another robot that was dressed like a doctor. They were the ones who drugged me. They were also the ones who killed Dr. Hanns. I haven’t seen them since. I’m curious as to how they are getting around. Someone has to be transporting them in a vehicle, they’re just too conspicuous to be walking around in broad daylight."

"Or they could be driving themselves," Pender suggested. "Nothing conspicuous about that. Miss Thorin, did you happen to notice if they had their own vehicle?"

"I haven't. It seems likely, however."

Stranger looked at Ed. "You seem pretty keen on digging into somebody’s head, Ed, so why not take a crack at the lady with no tongue and the human chainsaw?"

Ed floated the black chunk of the ‘chainsaw’ up to Augusts eye level. "Do you see a mind here? I don’t see a mind here."

These people had no clue.

They ain’t got your gift, Edward. So how could they know what you can and cain’t do? Stop being smart! Gram "said."

He frowned.

Now is not the time, Gram.

His frown deepened.

I’m going nuts.

"I got into that woman’s head while she was down there, and it was nothing but one big long scream. Nothing I can do until she calms down."

"And for your information," he added "I ain’t keen on digging into peoples heads." He swallowed his courage and stared straight at August.

"But thanks so much for trying to make me sound like an asshole. Appreciate that."

"Call me crazy," Stranger said, pointing to the floating rock. "But didn’t that piece come off of a larger chunk? A chunk which could talk. A chunk which is resting on the street below. If you don’t want to look into the big bad man’s head that’s fine, you know your own limits. But unless we plan on beating it out of that thing, you’ve got the best chance of getting any information. He’s down and out right now. You might not get another chance."

Ed folded his arms across his chest. "Look, I saw the pieces of that thing scatter everywhere. That to me says ‘dead.’ Hell, I have a hunk of its arm or something right here. Are you saying you know that thing is still alive down there? Did it talk to you?"

Stranger shook his head. "Look man, I don’t know for sure if it’s alive or dead. I’ve never really seen a living rock before. If you have, and you know that when they die they fly apart, then I’ll have to go along with your line of thinking. But remember that not more than five minutes ago I was picking my guts off of the street and stuffing them back inside, and now I’m fine. That thing was strong enough to live through the mutation process and being knocked through a brick wall, so it could still be alive.

"Now suppose I’m wrong—what will it hurt to try the thing you did to me on the rock creature? If you’re afraid to look then you must think you’ll find something, and that means you do think it’s still alive."

Stranger’s tone was really beginning to piss Ed off. The psycho was more or less calling him a fucking coward, and that didn’t sit well with him right now. He’d done more than his fair share.

To make matters worse, he couldn’t read Theo August at all. He was working blind here, unable to determine what the undercurrents of this conversation were. It was making him edgy.

"I ain’t scared of getting in there. I’ve seen what you have upstairs, bud, and that sure wasn’t a fucking picnic."

"Then what’s the fuckin’ problem? You’re the only one who can find out if it still poses a threat, so just suck it up and take a look."

Suck my dick, Ed thought, and floated the chunk of the leper back to him and tucked it under his arm. He glared at Theo August then clamped his mouth shut.

"Um," Maggie interjected, "people who get blown apart in parts don’t tend to get back up. There are exceptions, but if that being was going to resurrect itself, odds are good we’d have seen something moving by now. Of course, I don’t know the first thing about him." She made the last sound like a question.

"So… care to brief me on what’s happened here?" Maggie asked. "I’ve done my part." She had a wry grin on her face.

"Certainly nothing to smile about," Pender said. "While in transit to meet up with you and the CPD detectives, a distress call from one of my field agents, Andrew Neel, was routed to me through our office. He’d been pinned down in this abandoned school, and the situation didn’t sound good. I investigated; Ed followed, contrary to my instructions, and we happened upon the mineral-based metahuman dispatched by Stranger here shortly after his arrival. Further examination of the building turned up the young woman in the pool of blood, which itself was contained by the individual body parts of several dismembered victims." Here she paused to wet her lips, which suddenly felt very dry. "I’d say that brings us up to date, more or less."

Ed just chuckled and shook his head, eyes on the floor.

‘Ed followed, contrary to my instructions…’, that was fucking rich. If he hadn’t she’d probably be dead. Gotta get it all down for the record though. Gotta make sure her bosses knew she did it all by the book.

Pathetic.

But he said nothing, just filed it away for later.

"Thank you", Maggie said to Pender, then turned to the man in the metal mask. "Stranger? Care to give us an update? I’m really curious about this mineral-based metahuman."

"I don’t think I blew it apart," Stranger responded. "When I knocked it out of the building it got right back up. Then when I jumped on it, it seemed to just shut down. I’m pretty sure that I hurt it, but that’s all. The fact that parts of it flew off don’t lead me to believe that it’s dead. Remember, it isn’t just one big piece of stone. It was a bunch of stones hovering around an energy core. The stones were almost like some kind of outer field. Kind of like floating pieces of armor or quills on a porcupine. It could also move those pieces around, turning ‘em into weapons and other shapes. In fact it transformed part of itself into a weapon when it nearly cut me in half. So when I hurt it I think the energy core shut down, and there was nothing to hold the outer pieces together. But I am almost positive that it is still alive. I hit it hard, but I don’t think enough got through to kill it, at least I hope not. That’s way I’ve kept asking Pender to get that thing secured."

So… they wanted to do it the hard way, Ed thought. Blabbing endlessly, asking and re-asking questions, getting confused… whatever.

Ed rolled his eyes and sunk down onto the floor, his shields kicking on in an attempt to keep his suit clean.

Losers.

He liked how Pender avoided the whole "acting Silver Avenger" question, and he wondered if Theo August would accept her non-answer. There was a man with an even healthier disregard for organized authority than even Ed possessed. You had to respect that kind of paranoia. And he could feel her twinge of nervousness when she’d delivered her reply, buried under a veneer of "I’m in charge." Kind of funny, really. But he kept his yap shut. He’d said his peace, and now it was listen to them blather time. God he needed a cigarette!

"You don’t have any smokes in here, do you?" he asked Duprey.

From his spot the floor, Ed couldn’t see the little man’s face, but DuFord’s voice was aghast. "No! I mean—I’d rather have no smoking inside."

"Figures."

"Harris." Goo addressed the little man. "Telepresence u-u-unit. Comm medium? Range?

"Jam?"

"Good question," Harris said. He tapped his keyboard and the Barbie picture was replaced with one that looked like a schematic of the Barbie’s internals. "I’ve been studying these files for awhile, and there’s a lot they don’t tell about the individual parts. In fact, some of them may not have even have existed when this file was created—it’s clear that some of the design elements are mere placeholders. The TP Unit, though, actually exists, and I’ve come to know it fairly well. The bad news is that it’s tunable, meaning they can choose the frequencies they want to use with a certain range, and it’s massively multiplexed, which means that it sends a blizzard of data packets over several frequencies at once, which are reassembled at the receiving units. If we get within one hundred feet or so, we could jam them by blasting at a wide range of frequencies. But there’s another big ‘IF.’"

"Which is…?" Pender said archly.

"These plans are five years old. They could have easily modified the hardware by now, or they could be using an entirely different TP Unit altogether."

"I don’t know if this has anything to do with any of this," Stranger said, "but I tracked this suspicious looking guy who was watching the goings on at the museum. He called a local number: 312 555-2410. I think his name is Diamante and he appeared to be reporting in to someone. He had a real slick look to him, like a mob guy or something. I gave this info to Hammersmith, but I don’t know if he checked it out."

"Cops. Give me that number again later, and I’ll see what I can do with it," offered Pender. Duong will earn his pay today, that’s for sure.

"Later? When later? I don’t exactly have a phone to call you with. If you feel like checking it out, just get it from Hammersmith," he said shaking his head.

"Harris, do you have the tools to try to jam the signal? We may as well be somewhat ready for them the next time."

"If we get within that hundred-foot range," Harris replied, "the equipment I have on board can flood those frequencies."

Goo raised a pseudopod.

"People killed. Pla-a-astic attacks.

"Who? Where? When?

"Pa-a-attern, maybe."

"Maybe", Maggie said. "It will be hard to discern because the victims are mobile after being injected, but now we might have enough of them to come up with something."

Harris spoke up over the speakers. "Give me a moment and I can plot the first known locations of the various new metas."

There was a pause as the group watched Harris work at his console. When it looked like the map wasn’t going to immediately pop up on screen, Goo broke the silence.

"O-o-okay," Goo said in its flat, low voice. "Still de-e-etails to know. Some. But time short.

"So, question. What now? How find pla-a-astic?"

"Yeah that’s the question alright," Stranger said. "What strikes me as odd is the whole dressing up as doctor and nurse thing. Here you have two secret robots conducting strange experiments on innocent bystanders. Why bother dressing them up as a doctor and a nurse? Why not put them in heavy overcoats to try and hide the fact that they are top-secret robots? You really give a lot away by advertising what these things are. The only reason you would do it is if you were in a real hurry.

"Dr. Thorin, about this young patient you were supposed to be helping, just what was her condition? Could she be around other people without exposing them to the mutation? The reason I ask is if she is contagious, what better caretakers to have than a pair of ultra-sophisticated robots? As far as a pattern goes, doesn’t it seem strange that all of the mutations are manifested in the form of some physical attribute? All of us who were affected had our physical structure altered in some way. There were no subtle changes. Is that similar to the mutating effects this young woman causes? And if her condition was quickly deteriorating, would someone go to extreme measures to save her?"

Theo’s speech patterns were… weird. As Ed listened to the psycho talk, he wondered what Theo was before he got fucked in the head. He was smart, but sometimes he acted stupid. Like right now, he was talking to these scientists and nerds on their level, while earlier he’d acted like a kid. Some act.

Whatever. Ed had nothing to add. The chunk of rock was growing heavy under his arm, so he floated it over to his copper-shielded lap.

Maggie tapped her chin with one finger thoughtfully as she answered. "Physical mutation is certainly in line with what I’ve seen with the patient. Her body shows severe metahuman traits, and they’re not for the better. I suspect most of the metahumans died because their metabolism proved unable to sustain their own mutations. As for whether someone would take risks to find a cure… Yes, there is someone who might go to extreme measures. But somehow I don’t buy it. If the goal is to test a cure, then why let the victims loose? If you were willing to use human guinea pigs—" and she frowned at the concept, "—you’d want to monitor their progressing condition, preferably under lab conditions, not let them outside of your direct observation. There’s something else at work here."

"But Pla-a-astic ARE monitoring," Goo insisted. "Visiting victims. Second time."

"Yeah he—it’s right," Stranger put in, agreeing with the gelatinous creature. "And didn’t Harris say that the last time they did these experiments the whole damn lab was destroyed? I mean how in the hell would you contain a 400-foot tall man?"

"Suggest plan," Goo said.

"Pri-i-imus agent. Pellet. Pla-a-astic will find. We find pellet first, wait pla-a-astic. Then…"

Goo found itself growing very fond of this phrase.

"Get ‘em!

"But pellets," Goo continued "Where? Can’t remember. But Ed in head. Remember.

"So," Goo summarized. "Ed in head. Pri-i-imus pellet. Pla-a-astic.

"Get ‘em!"

Ed wasn’t listening. He was staring at the chunk of rock in his lap.

"Uh…" It took a second for Maggie to wend her way through Goo’s unusual speech patterns. "Laying an ambush for them. I’d love to—it’d sure be a better situation than the last time I met them." Her fists clenched at that; obviously the encounter didn’t sit too well with her. "They need a good ass-kicking."

"Ye-ea-ah," Goo agreed.

Goo sensed that Maggie was disappointed in the outcome of their battle with the plastic people. Goo felt it had done the best it could and hoped that she wasn’t disappointed with it, itself.

Silently, it resolved to do better next time. The plastic people would not get away again.

Maggie looked to Pender. "PRIMUS’s involvement in this whole deal also needs to be investigated. Even if it’s some rogue agency, we might get some valuable clues from that line of inquiry."

"Ed in head. Might help PR-I-IMUS clues, too," Goo noted.

"So, Ed? Okay? Back in head?"

"Jesus, dude. You sound like a frickin’ junkie," the young man replied. "In a minute. I’m doing something right now."

Goo made a burbly sort of a sigh. Didn’t anyone consider this important except for Goo?

But Ed was obviously up to some kind of mental trick at the moment, so there was nothing to do but wait. Goo hoped that Ed was raiding Pender’s memories. There was obviously something that she wasn’t sharing with the rest of the group.

Ed, however, had gotten curious about the chunk of rock. Now he focused his talent on the thing, seeking out any thoughts or emotions that may have remained attached to it after the destruction of the being it was a part of. There was definitely something there… a latent heat, like the core of a burnt coal. He probed further—and nearly dropped the thing in surprise.

It was alive. And it had a mind.

Or at least the fragment of one. It was small and primitive, a bundle of simple drives and half-thoughts and fractured memories, like the minds of the rats that ran through the city. No wonder he hadn’t noticed it—it was like all the animal brains that murmured in the background, brains he’d learned to screen out long ago before they could drive him crazy.

But it wasn’t an animal mind, he could see that now. The pieces of memory were too rich—the touch of skin on concrete, the taste of chocolate birthday cake, the smell of soap on a woman’s skin.

And the thoughts were too complex. Ed dug into the little mind and pulled out desire hopelessly mixed with loathing and disgust, then a kernel of pride buried in a loam of shame, and a dozen more contradictions.

No, not an animal mind. But not exactly human, either. None of the thoughts were complete in themselves, none of the memories added up to more than a hint of past events. Ed could sense the jagged edges where the mind ended, saw the gaps where other thoughts should fit, but none of it made sense on its own. It was like…

…a goddamn puzzle piece.

Ed got to his feet. I need to go outside, now, he sent to the tiny man in the captain’s chair.

DuFord looked up from his console.

So this is what telepathy is like! Fascinating! the pilot sent back. But you do know that we’re a hundred feet off the ground?

Uh… sure, Ed. I guess.

"Ahem," DuFord announced over the speakers. "Ed would like to open the door to, uh, look down. So please stand back."

He did something at his console and the door behind Ed began to open. At the same moment, the chunk of rock Ed was holding glowed red and rocketed toward the exit.

Ed felt his stomach go with it.

As (bad) luck would have it, Goo was in its way. The rock sliced through the creature with a slurp! then disappeared through the portal.

Then everyone shouted at once.

"Ya-a-a-argh!" said Goo.

"Fuckin’ shit!" said Stranger.

"Ed!" said DuFord.

"DuFord!" said Pender.

"Calice!" said Maggie.

Then Ed all but whispered, "Oh that’s just fucking great. It’s waking up."

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