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Our Paranormal Chernobyl
Scene 57: The Turn in Progress
Wednesday, 2:30 am, Thorin Labs, New Orleans

I'm probably the last person you want to deal with right now, Ed projected into Pender's mind. And I can't even begin to apologize. So I won't. Not here, not yet. But Theo is hammering down the door, I'm here with Goran. And Argo… he's the dog that can talk, and Agent Pender, he's a lot more than that. He's the one helping me contact you. He knows some things too… Things that can help. I… The thought stumbled, nervousness and shame threatening to swamp it. Tell me what you want us to do.

Pender, still disoriented on the floor where Freya had flung her, gritted her teeth, and Ed had a mental image of her doing so while she rapidly built a brick wall, slapping brick upon mortar at an unreasonable speed. Blood flowed freely from the right side of her chest. She soon disappeared from sight behind the brick wall, while inside the lab she kept an eye on Ed via the monitors. Pender hadn't enjoyed her brief visit into Ed's memory, and playing host to his mind now was almost unbearable. His intentions might very well have been good, but they were no match for that wall.

"Not now, Ed," she muttered, watching his reaction onscreen.

About twelve different things flashed through Ed’s mind as Pender's memory of the attack slammed into him. Fear, regret, pain, sadness, shame… Shame was a big one, oh yeah. The doors in the back of his mind rattled, the sound of jagged black shards whistled in the dark, the tacky feel of blood on the bottom of his sneakers. Lily… Standing right there, holding a baby for Godsakes! He could smell her even, thanks to the weird linking with Argo.

No time for that now though. Ed withdrew from Pender's mind and re-focused his talent on another.

Thorin... can you stop this thing?

Damned if I know—and crisse, can you tell me what you two are doing here?

We're here for the same reason you are, Ed's mental voice broke in. To stop that thing.

Stranger was beginning to get impatient. Ed was just standing there with his hand on the dog's neck, and his eyes were glazed over. Argo had the same look. Stranger wasn't sure what the kid was up to, but there was something else eating away at Stranger. He really wanted to hit the door. So he did.

Ed saw Stranger wind up, and covered his ears just in time. The boom seemed to shake the air, and Ed swore he felt the floor ripple with the force of the blow. Argo barked angrily.

The big man's fist was now stuck about six inches into the metal door. He pulled his hand free, ripping more of the tattered black shirt. His knuckles were smeared with blood.

Theo feels pretty strongly about it, Ed added. We've got Argo here, he's the one helping me talk to you. He's more than we thought. What can we do to help? Should we call somebody?  

He could sense that Thorin was getting ready to do something. Her resolve was strong, even through this weird-ass link he was sharing with the dog, and Ed felt a peculiar sense of helplessness. It was pretty obvious they didn't want him down here. Probably didn't want to see him or Theo August ever again, unless it was behind bars.

And there was that burning question he just had to ask.

Why... Ed swallowed, his mouth dry. Why is Lily here? Why does she have a baby?

Maggie didn't answer. 

She yanked off her her armored gloves, and let them drop. Then she grabbed the prototype armor's hands and yanked, pulling the new, slightly thicker gauntlets off the mannequin.

With a grim smile she put them on.

A familiar command—backwards compatibility, eat your heart out, Mr. Gates— brought forth a crackling energy field around the gauntlets. She slammed her left palm with her right fist, and the two forcefields collided with a sound like a small thunderclap, complete with a lightning crack. "All right, Ms. Sontag—the kid gloves are off."

From the next alcove came an inhuman growl.

Pender very much wanted to see what was going on in there, but her vision was blocked by a tall filing cabinet and a ten foot high wall of translucent Goo that stretched from the middle of the room and into the alcove.

Suddenly the huge gelatinous body shuddered, and Sontag appeared in the middle of the creature, quilled arms thrashing. A gargled scream vibrated from Goo's surface, and then its body lost integrity. The meta collapsed like a wave, sloshing onto the floor, and then spread in all directions in an inch-high, glutinous flood.

The shapechanger shook itself, throwing glittering droplets from its quills. "Disgusting," it said to itself.

It no longer looked like Goran or the black woman or even anyone human: it was hairless now, the skin beneath the quills a mottled gray. When it turned to Pender, its green eyes bounced light like a cat's. It nodded at Pender, then over her shoulder, at Maggie. "Which one of you is next?"

Pender, still sitting on the floor, swung the BrickBreaker which had been slung over her shoulder into position, bracing it against one leg.

"Me," she warned, and pulled the trigger.

The armor-piercing shell ripped through Sontag's left thigh, spraying blood. Red blood—which was a relief. Pender half expected green acid, or perhaps motor oil.

The shapechanger grimaced, but didn't fall. "I'm going to take your head off for that," she said. The quills seemed to retract, and the gray skin abruptly hardened into rough sections like a rhino's plates. She flicked her arm to the side, and her forearm and hand became a saw-like blade.

"Gee, nice trick," Maggie said, stepping out of the alcove. Her vision had cleared. "Must be a great conversation piece at parties." Her shields blazing, she lifted her arms and fired the animo acid neutralizer at Freya.

The blob of gooey paste hit the shapeshifter in the chest and spattered in all directions. Sontag shuddered, and seemed dizzy for a moment.

"Agent Pender," she said. "You just lost your place in line."

The shapechanger lunged, and the blade arm came down across Maggie's chest. The force of the blow knocked the armored woman back six feet and onto her back, just inside the door of the alcove.

Maggie looked up groggily. There was a deep gouge in her armor, and she felt like she'd been hit by a truck, but the blade hadn't reached her flesh. If the sword edge hadn't struck one of the Mithralite chestplates, she would have been bleeding all over the floor.

Pender swung the brickbreaker toward the shapechanger, and Sontag spun sideways, bringing up that sword arm. Pender fired at nearly point blank range, but Sontag was still in motion, and the shot went wide. The blade came down across the barrel of the gun, slicing it in half.

"Wait your turn, Agent Pender," the gray woman said. "I still have some things to finish with Ms. Thorin."

Stranger punched the vault door again, and a chunk of the bright metal went flying into the space beyond, leaving a hole about three feet in diameter.

On the other side of the hole was a corridor about forty feet long, ending in another vault door—and this one was glowing like one of Maggie's forcefields.

Ed noted Theo August's success with a shudder. Was there anything capable of stopping this guy? Well, there was the box, but shit, that meant keeping him doped up for… well, forever probably.

”Nice one, Superman,” Ed said to Theo, his hand dropping to rest on Argo’s head. For some reason just touching the soft fur made him feel better.

But Stranger was breathing hard. He stood with his hands on his hips, chest heaving.

"Thee— uh Stranger," Ed said. "They're getting their asses kicked in there by that shapechanger."

Stranger looked at him, took a deep breath, and flexed his shoulders. "Okay. Let's get in there."

He pulled back and threw another punch. The door folded like a book and launched from its hinges. It bounced off the floor with an echoing clang, then slid a few feet down the hall.

"We're in."

Well, at least further in. They were at the end of a long hallway. On the opposite end was the other vault door, and it was shielded by one of Thorin's forcefields.

Ed pulled back from Maggie (and her lovely pain) and re-focused yet again. He wanted to take on the Freya thing, see if he could root a weakness out of its head. But God alone knew what he'd pull out of there along with the information.

And his talent wasn't at full strength—some of it was being leeched out through the dog. And he couldn't really see them, that was the pissy thing.

He wondered if Thorin could open the doors while leaving the fields up and running. Keep it in where he could see it and do a quick shake-and-bake on its head.

Pender, you may not like me being in your head, but I think you're losing this fight. What can we do to help? Ed sent, ignoring the brick wall she'd thrown up to stop him. Theo's through the door, but we've got one of those force-field things blocking us now. If I could see that bitch-thing you're fighting, I could try and knock its ass out.

Pender took one last look at her now-useless BrickBreaker, then tossed it aside; it clattered and skittered across the floor into the pool of Goo. She glanced away from Freya for a moment to Ed's image on the security monitor, then back to the homicidal shapechanger.

Congratulations, Ed, she replied. You're the lesser of two evils. I'll see what I can do about the door.

Beneath the shapechanger's feet, Goo rose up like a wave.

The armor-skinned woman flew into the air, smacked against the ceiling twenty feet above, and fell back into Goo's embrace.

Sontag rolled to her feet with a snarl, and jumped. She covered nearly fifteen feet, and landed with a bang! on the steel work table that held Maggie's helmet.

"Okay…" Maggie muttered, painfully pulling herself to her feet. "Time for idea number two. Hope it works better." She lifted her hands again and fired the electric dart at Sontag.

The dart grazed the shapechanger's shoulder and discharged with a loud snap and a tangled burst of electric arcs.

Sontag grunted, and looked at her arm. She didn't seem to be in much pain.

"You depend so much on toys, Thorin," she said, and hopped off the end of the table. She grabbed the table edge and heaved it toward Maggie and Pender.

A mound of Goo rose to block the table's flight. The steel table struck with a fwap! and bounced back a few feet.

Goo shook off the pain, and pondered what Maggie had said about an "idea number two." Maybe if Goo stopped thinking like a Silver Avenger and more like…

A portion of Goo coalesced into a humanoid statue.

"So-o-o. Freya, is it?" the portion of Goo asked, conversationally. "Going we-e-ell, dearie? Ki-i-i-ill us all for your little gi-i-irl?"

In the corner of the room, away from Maggie and the others, another portion of Goo formed into a blob that looked something like a five-foot-tall Raggedy Ann doll. With tentacles.

"Mommymommymommy," the doll said, tentacles waving, in Goo's soprano voice. "Make me better, Mommymommymommy. Kill lo-o-ots of people, Mommymommymommy. Become a mu-u-urderess."

For her part, Pender watched the two forms take shape out of Goo with a mixture of astonishment and horror. It was a brilliantly cold idea; surely using the image of Freya's daughter would be enough to distract her from the rest of them. But it wasn't the Raj Pirhu she had known. Something else, some other part of him, was coming to the surface now, but if it worked, she wasn't about to argue with it.

The shapechanger looked at the tentacled doll, then back at the humanoid shape, as if unsure which of the Goo Goo dolls to strike first—and then burst into laughter.

"A puppet show?!" Sontag said. "Unbelievable. How many voices do you have in there, Pirhu?"

"Goo", Maggie said in a low voice, hoping the blob near her could hear—but not the shapeshifting Sontag. "Try to throw her in that alcove."

Sontag's attention was on Goo, and Pender seized the moment. She jumped to her feet and ran pell-mell for the lab door.

Maggie made a quick deduction about what Pender was about and called, "Security, open main doors."

The door in front of Pender whisked open, and the forcefield blinked out, revealing a portion of the long hallway.

Maggie fired her jets. Swooping in an arc around Goo and above the lab tables, she fired her electric dart gun towards Freya again.

The shapechanger ducked and the dart went high, barely missing Goo's caricature of Roya.

"That's right, Thorin, get everybody in here. Goo's trying to appeal to my sense of decency, and there's no telling how many people I'll have to kill to prove my point."

Ed looked at the blood spatters on the ragged hole that Theo August had punched into the huge metal doors and felt a chill pass through him. Pender's comment chased itself around his head like an energetic puppy:

"Congratulations, Ed, you're the lesser of two evils."

Then the doors whooshed open at the end of the hall, and he looked up: He could see the thing that Pender thought was barely worse than himself. "You know, Argo, I'm really sick and tired of all this bullshit," he said conversationally as he glanced at Theo. "Stranger, I'm about to fuck with that thing. It'd be nice if you could keep it away from me."

"Stay behind me once we clear the hallway," Stranger said as he ran the doorway. A dozen feet in, he reached down and picked up the steel door, then kept moving towards the lab at top speed.

In a moment Stranger would block his view of the room. Ed dropped the link with Argo, but still kept his hand on the dog's shoulder as he took a deep breath and focused his talent on the cause of the nightmare. The mind there was old, and strong.

"Go to Hell," Ed whispered, and burned his way into the thing's mind.

The shapechanger grimaced in pain. "Security!" it shouted in Maggie's voice. "Close the main doors!"

The forcefield sprang to life again, and the doors whisked closed. 

"Dammit," Pender muttered to herself—not surprised, but disappointed.

"I'll get back to them in a minute," the shapechanger said again in its own voice. "Right now I have to teach Goo how far I'll go to save my daughter."

Sontag stepped forward and sliced the blade arm through the effigy of Roya. A great dollop of Goo flew into the air, tentacles waving.

Pender winced in sympathetic pain at Goo's quasi-dismemberment; there were no recognizable signs of damage—no blood, no severed limbs, per se—but Goo had to be in pain, and odds were he couldn't take much more. On the monitor she could see Stranger, barrelling down the hallway with his twisted hunk of steel, and Ed, both of them suddenly impotent now that the door had closed again. She looked to her left, where Lily and her child were still huddling under a table less than ten yards away, confused and afraid—and directly in Freya's field of view. Instinctively, the Primus agent crouched down for cover.

"Lily," Pender called out softly. "Lily!"

The woman looked up, eyes wide, the baby clutched to her chest. Amazingly, it seemed to be asleep.

"Get to that alcove over there," Pender instructed, pointing to the west wall of the lab. "Get in there while Sontag's still distracted. I'll protect you."

Somehow, she added mentally.

Lily nodded, then peeked over the top of the table. The shapechanger was still intent on Goo.

Lily turned and ran for the alcove in a half crouch, shielding the child as much as possible. Inside, she leaned against the south wall, breathing hard.

Pender breathed a tentative sigh of relief. Even the completion of this one simple act seemed like a victory of sorts. Forcing herself to be satisfied with Lily's position, she turned her attention back to the door—specifically, to the "Emergency Exit" switch beside it. Scenarios ran through her mind in which she tried to jam the door open somehow, but these all ended with a table being crushed by a ton of Mithralite or bisected by a force field. She'd just have to hope Stranger could make it through in time. If they could only coordinate their efforts….

Ed, she tried, on the off chance that he'd maintained contact with her, but he was gone.

Ed chewed his bottom lip in annoyance, watching for the door to open again. Of course, Theo was headed right towards them with his battering ram, which meant it would probably be open soon enough.

He took a moment to relax, his right hand absently petting the dog that stood next to him. "It's old," he said to Argo as he watched to see what Theo was going to do. "Did you pick that up? Old and tough as shit."

Having convinced herself that Freya was, for the time being, occupied with Maggie and, hopefully, Goo, Pender made another short sprint for the door's Emergency Exit switch.

Her hand came down on the switch. Alarm lights flashed, and the door slid open.

Stranger stood on the other side of the doorway, holding… another Mithralite door. The forcefield vanished, and the way was clear.

"Please exit the area," a calm electronic voice intoned. "Please exit…"

"Go, Stranger," Pender told him, sounding less calm than the computer. "Quick."

A second door had opened at the opposite end of the room, behind Goo and the shapechanger. Pender had assumed that the door led to another alcove, but now she could see another long hallway beyond it, leading, presumably, to an equally high-tech back door.

Stranger moved into the room. As he crossed the threshold he turned and placed the first door the he had broken flat on the floor in the door way.

Looks like Goo didn't catch my suggestion, Maggie thought. It was hard to tell which parts of Goo were auditory. Well, time to do the work herself then. First order of business—move into position. Maggie jetted sideways, angling herself so that Freya was between herself and the alcove, and fired another of her electric darts—hoping for a solid hit, for once—but the dart whistled over the shapechanger's head and struck the wall of the alcove with a spray of sparks.

"That's right, Thorin, keep shooting," Sontag said. The gray figure ran forward, through the translucent mass of Goo that covered the floor, toward the alcove that held Maggie's new armor, and toward one of the few raised areas of Goo: a five-foot high Goo-drift that still held the table that Goo had stopped from crashing into Maggie. The shapechanger's arm swung down in mid-stride, and sliced through the translucent mound.

Goo screamed in pain, and then its entire body collapsed again into an amorphous flood.

Ed heard the scream and winced.

"Well shit," he swore, slamming his fist into his thigh. The shapechanger had moved out of his field of view. "Hey, Argo."

"Hey."

"I've got to get closer so I can try and nuke that thing in there, and it's probably going to get kinda dangerous. I don't know how much of a pounding you can take, but you might want to think about staying back here. I know I'd rather stay back here."

The dog looked up at him, eyes narrowed. His lips curled back, revealing sharp fangs—and it was no wonder dentists called those kind of teeth "canines."

"You gotta watch more Nazi movies, kid," Argo said without moving his jaw. "I'm a frickin' German Shepherd."

With a bark that sounded like a laugh, the dog leaped into the hallway, and Ed followed.

Ed could see Pender at the end of the hallway, next to Stranger, and he wondered just what in hell he was supposed to do about it. She'd probably want to take him back to jail, or wherever it was those PRIMUS assholes were planning on taking him.

He'd had a little time to calm himself there in that cavern, and he was seeing things a bit more clearly. Ok, so he'd tried to kill her. Well, he hadn't, the piece of Jigsaw he'd brought out with him had, but how do you explain that to a Normal?

Ed didn't want to go to jail at this particular point in his life. He'd put his ass on the line to help these people and gotten it burned a couple hundred times already - he had no desire to offer that same ass up to some prison homo for repeated abuses.

"Besides," he muttered as he headed up the hallway, "she gets paid for this shit. Part of the job description or something. I ain't even got a fucking 'thank you' yet."

He knew he was being childish and sulky, but being witness to a roomful of chopped up body parts, psuedo-possessed by a homicidal living knife, repeatedly blinded by that asshole Crossfire, wrapped up and stuffed in a box by the PRIMUS jerks and now having this shit to deal with… he was entitled. AND his suit was getting dirty.

Stranger's mind raced as he looked at Sontag. He had to get in there and fast. He wanted to run up to the thing and smash it, but he held back. He saw Pender next to him and the woman with the baby to his right.

Got to get her out first.

He yelled to Lily, "Get out of here!" and pointed with his thumb to the door behind him.

"She's not going anywhere," Sontag said. She ran forward, out of the spreading form of Goo. "None of you are." The shapechanger suddenly wheeled about, and flicked its sword arm toward Maggie, as if it were throwing the blade at her. The arm telescoped toward her chest, becoming a gray lance with the blade at its tip.

Maggie fired her jets and weaved sideways, and the blade whooshed past her. Sontag snapped her arm back, and the blade arm retracted.

Stranger saw his opening and jumped in hard. He landed and threw a punch at the creature, striking it in the midsection. The shapechanger grunted in pain and dropped to the ground, the desk at its back.

Ed couldn’t help but wince when he heard Theo’s fist impact the thing. Sure it was trying to kill them, but shit! Getting fucked up by Theo August had to be just like getting run over by a goddamn truck. Ed had no idea if the thing was down for the count, but if the events of his life in the past twenty-four hours were any sort of indicator he sort of doubted it.

He crouched then leapt in a copper swirl of energy, landing in front of the crumpled steel door. Argo charged in after him, snarling. The shapechanger was down in front of the desk, Theo standing over it like its own personal death sentence. Emotions ran through the room in snapping jagged currents, fear and anxiety and anger whirling through his senses like trash in the wake of a city bus.

The shapechanger looked up at the masked man, grimacing in pain. "You're as strong as I've been told, Stranger." Its gray skin became bone white, then translucent. "Let's see if you're also as stupid."

Suddenly, it was gone. Stranger sensed a blur, moving away from him, between the desks, and then—nothing.

Stranger had seen this before. He had laid awake many a night at the hospital watching such things drift in and out of his room. Horrible figures scorched and maimed, they would appear and disappear almost at random. He always knew why they came to torment him at the hospital, and he was quite sure that he knew this one's motivation as well. He had never been able to touch them then, but he could touch this one, and even if he couldn't figure out where it would appear next he knew some people who could.

"Yeah that's what the Cosmo quiz said, I'm real dumb-bo-dumbino. Maggie help Pender get the lady and kid out of here. Argo or Ed can you tell where Sontag went?"

The dog jerked its snout to the left. "Over there!"

Muttering darkly under her breath some choice words about shapeshifters and chameleons, Maggie flew off in the direction indicated by Argo, the neutralizer at the ready, trying to make out some sign of Freya's exact position. The fact that she was following a dog's direction did register with her, but it was a passing thought—she'd done far weirder things in her life.

Pender was muttering, too, asking herself how things had deteriorated so rapidly. When Stranger had failed to drop her with that pile-driving blow, she realized things were bad, but when Freya vanished altogether, it quickly became apparent that there was still room for things to get much, much worse. Scanning the lab frantically, her eyes fell upon a nearby button labeled "Press in case of fire"; no sooner had she read it than she pushed it.

An alarm sounded—a high pitched ringing to join the flashing lights that had started up when Ed and Stranger came down the elevator shaft—and then from the ceiling twenty feet above, dozens of nozzles popped and hissed with sudden pressure. Water jetted across the breadth of the room, forming a mist, and then began to rain down. Satisfied, Pender made a dash for Lily and hoped that Freya wasn't headed in the same direction.

“Great… Invisible… Fucking perfect…,” Ed muttered. He’d been doing too much of that lately: muttering, murmuring talking under his breath. He supposed if he had to swear (and lets face it boys and girls, he still did) it was best that he do it to himself. That’s what Gram would have wanted anyway.

He saw Pender heading towards where the thing had gone… or maybe she was heading towards Lily? Either way, what the hell was she thinking? That thing would probably do worse to her than he had. The young man in the wrinkled suit sighed resolutely. “Hey, um...,” What’s her damn name again? “… Maggie. If that thing is headed down the hall, can it get out?”

He pointed at the open doorway at the end of the room and waited to see if water made the thing easier to see.

"Crap", Maggie said. She flew to the door and landed across the way, shields at maximum, senses alerted—a charge or an attack would create some sound or disruption in the sprinkler, and she might avoid getting impaled.

"Argo," she shouted across the room. Stranger stood between them, metal-masked head turning as he tried to catch some glimpse of the shapechanger. "Tell me she's still inside."

The dog barked—whether in the affirmative or not, Maggie couldn't tell—and said, "She's still—"

The space in front of Stranger blurred.

Maggie saw it then, a pattern suddenly resolving out of the visual noise of the falling water like a constellation from a sea of stars. Twenty feet away from Stranger was a glassine humanoid shape, bent forward like a pitcher completing his throw, a crystalline arm like a battering ram extending from its shoulder.

Stranger catapulted backward, removed from his spot as if struck by a train, his head enshrouded in a mist of blood.

His body crashed into the wing of the U-shaped worktable, and the steel folded around him. Momentum carried him into the other wing, and it crumpled as well. The mass of metal and embedded flesh skidded backwards, metal shrieking on concrete floors, and jerked to a halt.

Stranger sat nestled in the tangle of steel, unmoving. His mask was still on, but it had become concave, an obscene depression sunk three inches into his skull. Blood soaked his body from neck to waist.

No one moved for a long second. Alarms continued to clang idiotically. Water drummed down on the steel tables.

Lily collapsed to the floor with a sharp cry, her arms draped over her baby. Mavis stood unmoving, mouth open, one hand still protectively on Crossfire's shoulder.

Stranger did not get up.

"My God," Pender said, stunned, and it occurred to her for the first time that Freya could get what she was after.

The time for words had passed. Ed's lips peeled back from his teeth and he crouched on the floor, eyes narrowing to burning slits. He'd never wanted to hurt anyone as bad as he wanted to hurt this thing, and he poured his anger into his talent, flinging it out at the killer as hard and fast as he could.

Theo August was probably borderline psycho, but underneath all that muscle was nothing but a terrified young man. He didn't deserve to die like this.

The shapechanger screamed in agony, and Ed felt the woman's mind reel from the assault. Sontag was still conscious, but barely.

Sontag materialized out of the artificial rain, translucent skin suddenly graying. She gleamed in the wet like a dolphin. Her left side bulged disproportionately; the massive arm and fist that she'd used to pummel Stranger hung at her side like a great hammer.

"You'll pay for that, psychic."

She convulsed, and the arm launched toward Ed, stretching across the divide, over the head of Argo. The great fist unfolded in mid flight, fingers splaying, expanding, into thick, rubbery tentacles.

"Suck my dick, bitch!" Ed snarled as he skipped back away from the woman. Water glimmered and slid on his shields as he tried to dodge Sontag's grasping hand.

The squid-like mass slammed into the glowing young man, covering him from the waist up. Shrouding his face.

"If anyone moves," the shapechanger called out, voice carrying over the alarms, "I'll pop his head like a dandelion." She looked down at the German Shepherd. "That goes for you as well, dog."

Argo bared his teeth, much like Ed had done a moment ago, and growled deeply.

"For Christ's sake, Sontag, let him breathe!" Pender shouted angrily, though she stayed rooted in place. "He's just a kid!"

"A very dangerous kid, agent. Is it true he almost killed you, today? The reports about your hospitalization were a bit muddled." Her squidlike hand didn't move. "I'll offer you a trade, though. Send Lily and the baby out the back door, and I'll let him live."

Ed, blinded and choked by the shaperchanger's grip, couldn't tell if the woman was bluffing or not. Her mind was old, and tough. In the moment of his attack he could sense her pain, and he knew he'd hurt her, hurt her deep. But still, she hadn't folded. Her mind was not something easily controlled, easily read. Her emotions were closed to him.

"I promise you," Sontag continued. "The woman and her child won't be harmed—in fact, they'll receive the finest health care money can buy."

"As your 'special guests' for life," Pender shouted back over the cacophony, and ventured a step towards her, "assuming whatever experimentation you have planned for that child won't prove fatal. What happens when you're through with them, Freya? Do you really expect me to believe you'll set them free, knowing what they know? No, you'll keep them locked up, like your daughter. That's quite a little menagerie you're gathering there."

Mexican standoff, Maggie thought. Classic. She did wonder what Freya hoped to gain—even if she did escape, she wasn't going to be able to resume "life as usual" after this stunt, and furthermore, Roya was, as far as Maggie knew, safely in the hands of the police. She must be stalling for time, Maggie figured. Ed hurt her, and she needs time to recover before she goes back to trying to kill us. That means she won't be letting Ed go unless we make her—but how?

Sontag lifted Ed into the air and pulled him to her, over the head of the growling Argo. The long gray arm folded in on itself like a collapsing telescope, until Ed was beside her, dangling a few feet off the ground, head and chest enshrouded in gray flesh.

"So let me see if I understand you, Pender," the shapechanger said. She glanced up at Ed, then over at Maggie. "You'd rather see this boy dead than let me run tests on Lily and her child—tests that could save the life of another child." She shook her head. "You don't have children, do you, Agent Pender? I bet none of you do—God help us all if Theo August has spawned any offspring. I think Lily is the only person in the room who can possibly understand me." She raised her voice. "Lily—now that you are a mother, is there anything you wouldn't do for that child in your arms? Is there any line that you wouldn't cross?"

Lily, cowering in the alcove directly across from Sontag, stared back at her through the falling water.

Pender glanced over her shoulder at Lily; her gaze retreated from the young mother's frightened eyes, tracked along the floor, and found Freya once again. "Not every mother is an amoral psychotic, Freya," she said, cautiously closing the distance between them. "Hopefully Roya hasn't taken after you. If she has a shred of decency in her, she doesn't want innocents slaughtered in her name. Don't use her as an excuse for what you've done. You're not a loving mother—just a selfish one. This has all been about you, not her."

She came to a halt not more than five feet from the shapechanger. "Or maybe I'm wrong, and Roya is every bit the monster her mother is."

"Words words words," Sontag said. The shapechanger beckoned Pender with her free hand. "Agent Pender, I need you to take two more steps forward. Be a good girl."

"So you can kill me?" she replied. "Odds are only three people will leave here alive, and I won't be one of them. You're more than capable of killing us all and taking your prizes, but that doesn't mean I have to let you."

"You certainly are a sharp one, Agent Pender."

Suddenly, something seemed to snap inside Maggie and she looked down, shaking her head and chuckling ruefully. "Saint-Calibine. To think it could have been so godawfully simple," Maggie muttered. "Two of the top experts on mutant physiology, the best database on mutant science this side of Star Trek, all the high-tech lab equipment you can shake a stick at, a moody mad geneticist who just doesn't let children die takes failure as a personal insult—and heck, I've even got a base for a vector for phenotype realignment if we don't find one." The Adam cure, of course, but Maggie wasn't about to share this tidbit with Freya.

She looked up at Sontag. "You do realize that you're blowing the best chance Roya has, right?" she shouted, voice carrying over the alarms and the drumming of the water. "Even if you do extract the suppressant, it won't be magical—this is science, not sorcery. Roya is far gone, just trying to stabilize her won't do—you need to reset her structure to at least a nominally human level." The shapechanger frowned at this.

"Where are you going to find the equipment, with all the paranormal agencies on the planet on your ass?" Maggie continued, voice rising again. "And where are you going to find the expertise you need? Heck, I'd even hazard that this"—she tapped her temple—"is pretty much the only place you'll find that expertise. And before you started going gonzo on us—I was going to try and cure her. Of course I was, dammit, I don't let children—any children—just die." She said that last heatedly, and everyone in the room knew she meant it. "Or do you have another of your brilliant plans?"

"You know," Sontag said conversationally. "You two are cute when you're outraged and pleading for your lives." Maggie could barely hear her, but her sharp mind extracted the words from roar of background noise.

"You make a lot of sense, Thorin," the shapechanger said, louder. "In fact, I was more than happy to let you do my work for me, before Agent Pender decided to force my hand. But you're also naive. I get the distinct impression that you think I'm Freya Sontag." She shook her head, and her face seemed to blur. "I'm no more Sontag than, say—" She abruptly became someone that both Pender and Thorin recognized: Jeremy Paternak, director of the metahuman research lab at Stronghold. "—a highly placed PRIMUS staffer. Or a simple Chicago policeman." Detective Hammersmith's round, smiling face regarded them. "Use your imagination, ladies. I'm a shapechanger. Sontag is just one of the suits I wear to work."

Her face became again the gray, slick-skinned thing.

"This break has been refreshing, but I'm out of time. However, you have made me realize one thing. A mind is a terrible thing to waste."

She nodded at the alcove across the room. "I'm walking out of here, now, with Lily and the child. If you try to stop me, I'll kill you all: you two, Ed, even the talking dog. However, if you do somehow come to your senses and immediately step into one of those alcoves, I'll give you a week to find a cure for Roya. Fail, and I come back to kill you at my leisure. Succeed, and you get to save my daughter's life, as well as that of everyone in this room." She raised a hand. "Say anything at this moment but 'Yes, Madam' and you've made your decision."

Maggie shrugged and made to leave the doorsill for the nearest alcove, but then she paused after a few steps and looked at "Sontag." "Oh, but how am I supposed to be able to find your cure without Lily and the child, hmm? In a week, no less. I appreciate you put such stock in my ability, really but I myself am not that confident."

"Oh Ms. Thorin—I'd leave them with you, but I just don't think you'd send them back to me after you'd failed. I'll send you tissue samples, though. Now move." The gray person nodded to Pender, and the dog. "You too."

Pender looked from Sontag to Maggie and back, hoping for some unseen answer, but found nothing. She sighed in frustrated resignation and turned reluctantly to face the frightened mother, still huddled and soaking wet in the alcove holding her child close.

"I'm sorry, Lily, I truly am. I don't know what else we can do. At least she won't hurt either of you." She looked back over her shoulder. "Right Sontag?"

"Of course not," the shapechanger replied.

"Fine," Pender said, but still she didn't move. "Fine, take them." She stepped to one side and slumped over a lab stool, defeated.

Sontag, still holding Ed aloft, looked across the room at Maggie, and the armored woman shook her head and walked toward the alcove to her right. Sontag waited until she'd completely entered the room.

"Good girl. Now, close the door—I want a little warning when you decide to pop out."

Maggie stepped into the nearest alcove and tapped the keypad. The door slid shut, cutting her off from sight and sound. She felt like a contestant in the worst gameshow ever.

"Finally," Sontag said, "we're making progress. Still awake there, Ed?" She shook him a bit. "Don't die on me yet."

Ed heard only muffled sounds. The shapeshifter's skin flowed across his head, slithering across his face, sealing him from the outside world... Shit, he felt like he was gonna puke. Which would be bad, cause then he'd be choking as well as suffocating.

The thing held him off the ground, its obscenely warm skin filling his senses. This was worse than almost anything except Jigsaw. This was every unwanted childhood hug, every playground wrestling match, every push and shove in the lockerroom he'd ever endured, magnified by about a thousand.

He wanted to scream, to flay it with the knives he knew his talent could create. But... well... fuck, it would just crush his head.

"Sorry Gram, I freaked and it crushed my head," he'd say to her when they eventually met up in Heaven. He didn't know if he could take an eternity of "the Look" from her.

Hell no.

He could visualize Sontag shaking him, his suited legs and dress-shoe clad feet dangling and jiggling with every movement.

Fuck!

Pender was probably laughing her ass off. He'd had it almost down too… Almost, almost, almost… Almost only counted in horse shoes and hand grenades. And he was fresh out of both.

"Now, where did the pilot get to?" Sontag said. DuFord had ridden in to the lab on Goo's shoulder, but then the fighting had broken out, and no one had noticed him since. "DuFord! Front and center." There was no answer. "Don't be a hero, little man. Too many people will die because of it."

Pender, slumped at eye level with the surface of the lab table, saw him first. A tiny arm came up over the edge of the table, and then DuFord hauled himself into view. He was soaking wet, and his padded flightsuit was slimed with resi-Goo.

He looked at Pender, then shook his head in resignation. "Right here," he said tiredly. His voice couldn't have carried over the noise of the sprinklers, but Sontag noticed him and snatched him up in her free hand. "All right, Lily, take your child and go out those back steps." The woman didn't move. "Lily!"

The woman jerked as if slapped. She hunched over the baby to shield it from the water, and walked quickly out of the alcove, toward the back exit.

As she crossed in front of the crumpled form of Stranger, the man made a muffled noise. It sounded like, "Daddy?"

"Oh shit," Sontag said quietly. She lurched forward, between the lab table and the desk, Ed and DuFord bouncing in her grip. She passed Pender, and turned toward Lily.

Pender lifted the metal stool by the legs and swung with all her might.

The stool caught the shapechanger between the shoulder blades and sunk deep into the rubbery skin. Sontag grunted in pain, and DuFord went flying from her hand.

Argo growled deep in his chest and leaped. He buried his fangs into the arm that held Ed, and the glowing esper dropped.

Ed crashed to the floor. One moment, smother-y skin evilness. Then, bright lights, rain, noise, and the floor coming up to hit him in the ass. And blessed blessed air!

"Damn it!" Sontag said. She whipped her arm backwards, and Argo went flying with a yelp.

Ed took a deep breath and looked up, right at the monster that had tried to smother him and that had killed God-alone-knew how many other people. He felt like he was about to pass out, but he couldn't let it get away. His shields fell, cold water seeping into his clothes as he narrowed his eyes and gathered his talent.

"You ruined my suit," he muttered.

The shapechanger screamed in agony, her plastic features stretching into something like an African mask. Ed cried out in unison. Then like mirror images, they both fell back onto the floor with a splash, arms and legs splayed.

Pender, breathing hard, looked from one to the other. Both of them were awake—eyes open, pupils hugely dilated—but neither one was moving. She took another look at Sontag, then slammed the stool into her head.

"Stay down."

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