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Our Paranormal Chernobyl Stranger was fifteen feet into his escape tunnel, using his mask like a spade, his hands bloody but continuously healing. He felt a sudden lurch, and then he seemed to be falling through space. Iggy had him again. A minute later the giant set him on the ground, in the same cavern he'd been in with Ed. The metal PRIMUS boxes were still there, and JigSaw's box was still closed. Ed was watching Stranger carefully, but at least the esper seemed calmer. And there were two new people in the room, as well as a German Shepherd. Stranger fitted his scraped and dirty mask into place. The first man lay face down in the dirt, and looked to be unconscious. The black-haired man wore a stylish coat that Stranger recognized, and on his right hand was a big diamond ring. The other man was sitting down, looking shaken. He was a broad-boned man in his mid-forties with a receding hairline and a pony tail. Stranger had met a lot of doctors who liked pony-tails. The man's blue button-down shirt was torn, and his beige pants were stained with grease. He was absent mindedly petting the fur on the German Shepherd that stood close to his side. "This is Doctor Goran Vrlick," Iggy said. "And this is Argo." "Hey," said the dog. Its lips didn't move. "Hey," Stranger answered. Ed didn't seem surprised either. Stranger wondered if he talked to animals as much Stranger did. Theo went to the unconscious man and rolled him over. Yep, it was him. "Mr. Diamond," Stranger said aloud. It was the man he'd caught following Crossfire and the others this morning. The man who'd called the same 555 number that Mapes had called. "Close," Iggy said. "His real name is Vito Diamante." The giant quickly filled them in. Diamante had been in the warehouse at the address Ed had extracted from Mapes, standing guard. Goran was being held prisoner, and Argo had somehow knocked Diamond out and unlocked the cage where Goran was being held. They were about to leave when Iggy arrived. The doctor had been kidnapped by Maggie Thorin—and it wasn't until Maggie transformed herself before his eyes into a duplicate of himself that Goran realized he'd been taken in by a shapeshifter. "It's Freya Sontag," Goran said, his voice quavering. "She's behind all of this—the new metas, the deaths. She hired those robots to inject those people, to track them. And now she's with Maggie. There's some woman and a baby that she wants to test or capture—a woman who may be carrying the cure for Roya's daughter. We have to stop Freya, or she may kill them all." He took a ragged breath, still petting the dog. "She's heading south as we speak—it's got to be New Orleans, Maggie's home base." "I can take you to Sontag's jet," Iggy said. "Goran says that a pilot stays with the plane." "Wait a fucking minute," Ed said. "Slow down. How do we know they're going to New Orleans? How are we going to find them?" "I'll lead you there," the dog said. "I can smell them." Ed made the pilot come in low and slow, cruising over the Thorin labs campus, and when they saw the huge white sphere on the lawn they knew they were in the right place. "They're down there," Argo said. The dog had been one of Sontag's earliest experiments, and he'd spent most of the intervening years hiding his talents. Only Goran had known his secret. Ed could sense a powerful mind in the animal, and the dog could track people on the psychic plane like... like a psychic bloodhound. "Last one down's a rotten egg," Stranger said, and shoved open the aircraft door. Cold wind rushed in. "Let's Away!" he yelled, and jumped. Ed shook his head. Two could play at that game. Ed jumped next, pulling the dog and Goran out with him in a splash of copper-colored light. Ed let them drop for awhile to catch up with the crazy-ass Theo, then put on the telekinetic brakes. Stranger hit the turf like a meteorite; by the time he dug himslef out, Ed, Argo, and Goran were by his side. "In that building," Argo said, "A hundred feet down." And Ed got the barest scent of an emotion, the touch of a mind—Maggie was in pain. Stranger went through the plate glass without breaking stride. Alarms sounded, and lights flashed, but they ignored them and headed for the elevator shaft Argo directed them to. "Down there," the dog said. Maggie was in pain. Ed kept his face neutral as the feelings re-played themselves in his mind. He’d tasted pain of late, oh yes. More pain than he would have imagined possible, with himself the cause of some of it. He watched as Theo August headed towards the glass, knowing what was about to happen. Maggie was in pain. He’d tasted her pain before. And found it sweet. The memory of it still held the power to make his heart skip. That’s what he could be if he wanted. It would be easy. Stranger went through the plate glass without breaking stride. Alarms sounded, and lights flashed, but they ignored them and headed for the elevator shaft Argo directed them to. "Down there," the dog said. Ed breathed deep. Another dark place, surrounded by people he didn’t know or trust. Another fifteen minutes of terror and misery. Maggie was in pain. And he couldn’t let that happen could he? He’d traveled across at least four state borders to put a stop to it, hadn’t he? To keep the shape shifter from doing whatever it was doing down there right now; to put an end to people who didn’t care what they did to people like Jigsaw and Goo and Theo August? Stranger ripped open the doors like tinfoil. They looked down. The shaft dropped for another hundred feet, where they could just make out the roof of the elevator cabin. “Fuck it,” Ed said grimly as he stepped up to the shaft. “Me first.” It was time to pay the piper. Time to make the bastard choke on it. With a flare of copper energy, he dropped silently into the dark. "How'bout it, doggie?" Stranger said to Argo. He stretched his arms out and motioned for Argo to jump in them. "The name is 'Argo,'" the dog said. It was spooky how his lips never moved. "And don't mind if I do." He jumped into Stranger's arms. Goran leaned over the elevator shaft, then looked at Stranger. "I'll wait for the elevator," he said. Stranger stepped forward towards the shaft opening and sized it up. He whispered something to Argo, and the dog said, "I'll keep that in mind." Stranger jumped into the middle of the shaft, grabbed the cable with his free hand, and slid down, ignoring the pain and the smell of burning flesh. Ed had already reached the roof of the elevator cabin. Stranger dropped down next to him. Stranger reached down and snapped the bolts that held the door closed. "Look, I seriously doubt that anyone is going to be expecting us. We might want to keep it that way." he said putting his finger up to the part of his dented mask where a mouth should have been. Ed nodded and reached down, pulling the door open as quietly as he could. Which direction is she? he asked Argo telepathically. The dog's nose seemed to be quivering. "Straight ahead, about ninety… no, a hundred feet. Maggie Thorin is there, and Crossfire, and five others I've never smelled before. One of them smells like old Jell-O, and three of the others smell dee—very good." "Can you tell what they're doing?" Stranger said to Argo as he put the dog down on top of the elevator. "I just get smells. The whiff of Maggie's pain I got a second ago has dissipated. I don't usually get emotions, to tell you the truth, and I don't 'see' anything that's happening." His shields flickering with soft copper pulses, Ed looked back up the shaft at the pale square of light spilling out from the opening far above them and wondered (not for the first time) what he would be walking back into when the goons from PRIMUS caught up with him. He hadn't actually seen her yet, but reports said that Pender was not only alive, but moving around. Maybe they had some sort of Star Trek sick-bay or something. Whatever, he still had to face up to what he'd done. It didn't help that Maggie's pain was ebbing, but the memory of it gnawed at his mind like a persistent rat with week-old cheese: snip snap snip, tear them apart and put them together, it all fit's so nicely... Which reminded him of Pender's pain, which reminded him of that horrific nightmare room in which they'd found Jigsaw, which reminded him of another room in Dallas… He sighed and looked away from the light. He didn't want to, LORD he didn't, but Ed cast his talent out like a net, hoping to snag some sort of clue as to what they might be heading into. The power of the dog's mind burned like a furnace next to him. All he got were emotions: a mix of panic and fear and anger. Any more subtler emotions were lost in the distance and layers of obstructions. He came back to himself, and looked down. Theo August was on all fours, his head stuck through the trapdoor. "Do you see anything, Theo?" Ed whispered quietly. Stranger took a breath as if he were going to answer and then let it out in a sigh. His shoulders dropped noticeably. He pulled his head out of the door way and stood up. He dusted off his chest and his left leg, and then folded his arms. "Look, man, what's your problem? How many times do you want me to say it: I'm Stranger. Theo is dead. Yes, I know he isn't really dead. When I say that he's dead I don't mean it literally, but I do mean that I no longer identify with that name or who I was when I went by that name. So I'll say it again for the cheap seats, and please indulge me this time: My name is Stranger…" And I am a fucking psycho, Ed added mentally. "… and Theo August is dead. Now, I'm not moving until you promise to call me Stranger from now on." He turned his head away. "And no, I didn't see anything." "Okay, Stranger," Ed said as calmly and quietly as he could. "Looks to me like it's time to party. After you." "Good," Stranger said, and uncrossed his arms. He dropped through the opening and looked up. "Lower Argo to me." "I'm good," Argo said, and jumped through the hole. Ed came through a moment later, senses extending outward, trying to find whomever might be down here. Again, he could only get the boldest of emotions: fear, panic, and raw anger, all many yards away. The elevator doors were closed. Stranger crumpled them out of the way, only to reveal another door, this one much more formidable. It was thick as a vault door, and looked to made of the same stuff as Thorin's armor. There was a six-inch wide slot on the right hand side about waist level, but no other controls. Stranger looked at Ed and then Argo. "What'da ya think guys? I have a shot at breaking throught the door if I get a good head of stream up, but it might not be pretty for anyone behind it." The dog raised its snout. "There's no one behind the door for a hundred feet," it said, confirming what Ed had sensed. "Okay, let's give it a try," Stranger said. He pulled back his arm and let fly. To Ed it sounded like someone had rung a gong, and Ed was inside the gong. Argo yelped in pain. Where Stranger's fist had struck was now a shallow dent, only visible in the dimness from the slight change in the way the light reflected from the metal surface. Otherwise, the door was unchanged. Stranger tilted up his mask to suck on his bloodied knuckles. Goran called down. "My God! Is everyone all right down there?" "That sucked," Stranger said, shaking his hand. He looked up. "Yeah we're fine, I think this is going to take a while." Ed nodded. Thorin was supposed to be a genius, and Ed had half been holding his breath, expecting some sort of gas or something to knock them out for messing with her place. Or blades. Maybe even acid. Or maybe he'd been watching too many 007 movies. A smile tried to cross his face, but didn't quite make it. The dog, Argo, was staring at the vault door, its nose quivering. Are you okay? Ed sent to it. We have to hurry, Argo replied. The German Shepherd had his nose in the psychic plane, and in that brief telepathic contact, Ed got a sense of the minds out there: Maggie, Pender, the aquarium-like mind of Goo, and the familiar brain of Crossfire, unconscious again. There were other minds, too, that he didn't recognize. "Hey man, before I bring down the house is there anyway that we contact Maggie and have her open this piece of shit? Like with a radio or some mental thing, cause otherwise I'm be here a while." "We can look for a radio or something, I guess," Ed replied. "And you need to hurry—there's a lot of people in there I don't recognize, and who knows what kind of shit they're pulling." He looked at the two... beings standing near him. "Don't suppose either of you know her cel phone number? Or that PRIMUS number? I bet we could find a phone and call somebody, let 'em know what's going down in case we can't stop it." "Can't you use you mental stuff to contact them?" Ed looked at the cold steel mask of the Stranger. "No. I can't. It doesn't work that way." "Why can't you contact them like you tried with me?" Do you really want this mental case knowing how to keep you out? Ed thought with a sigh. Does it really matter at this point? "Because I can't see them. I have to be able to see them to do anything." "Shit. That sucks. Too bad you couldn't combine your powers with Argo. He seems to be able to see them." "Yeah well…" Ed began, then looked down at the dog. "Hey, you know I've never tried anything like that before. If you really can see them, maybe I can sort of use you like a pair of binoculars or something. You willing to try it?" The dog barked affirmatively. "Let's do it—though I have to warn you that I don't really 'see' them—it's a smell thing to me. But I'm interested in finding out if the psycho-somatic analogs are subjective." The dog, evidently, had been hanging around with scientists too long. For Ed, the thought of being inside the dog's head was a curious one. Especially because Ed wasn't really sure Argo was a dog. The mind inside the canine was strong, and Ed had a real fear of being lost inside it. Ed touched the dog's mind like he'd done a moment before, and there were the minds he'd seen—Maggie, Pender, Crossfire, the others—and damn if he couldn't see and smell them. Maggie seemed slightly dazed, Red was definitely out of it. So it was time to pay the piper just a wee bit early it seemed. Ed focused his talent and "spoke." |