17:51, 01-12-2012. Official Transcript, NYDOEM
-click-
Hello, Office of Emergency Management. Please state your emergency.
She's dead. Oh God, she's dead. There's- Oh, God.
Sir? Sir, please try and stay calm. Can you tell me where you are?
She's really dead, oh God, so much blood-
Sir. Sir, please, can you tell me where you are?
Um. Yeah. Um. 54th and Pheonix. 227a. She was just a girl, oh my God, she's-
Sir, help is on the way. Please stay on the line until I tell you to hang up, alright?
God- Um, yes, I mean, yes, I can do that.
Are you in need of medical attention?
-silence-
Sir? Are you hurt?
-silence-
Reports are coming in of a massive psychic disturbance in the area surrounding 54th and Pheonix, with hundreds believed to be affected. No casualties have been reported.
Police believe tonight's psychic disturbance to be the result of an inappropriately inhibited telepath-
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A body has been found on 54th and Pheonix, believed to belong to 18 year old Jubilation Lee, a registered mutant. Police are thus far not willing to rule out the possibility of homicide.
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The Mutant Protection League has released a statement regarding the believed murder of Jubilation Lee. The body of Ms. Lee, an 18 year old student at Columbia, was found this morning at the headquarters of the Columbia University Human-Mutant Alliance. Eyewitness accounts say that Ms Lee had apparently sustained massive cerebral trauma from a suspected telepathic attack. Police have refused to comment.
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Mourning in the mutant quarter tonight with police confirmation that the New York Mutant community has been victim of yet another mutation-based crime. Ms Lee, an 18 year old biology student, was found dead this morning at the headquarters of the much-maligned Columbia University Mutant-Alliance by the club's president and co-founder, 22 year old activist Charles Xavier. Xavier has been taken in for questioning; no word yet on whether he is considered a suspect.
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It'll be a tough case for the newly formed NYPD Mutant Division, created on order from Mayor Rogers after the sharp rise in hate crimes against mutants in this city since the passing of Congress' controversial Mutant Registration Act. The Act is hardly the first attempt made by the federal government at controlling the so-called mutant menace since their discovery in the late 1960s, but it is certainly the most far reaching. It has been criticised by activists on both sides of the aisle as being alternately either a violation of human rights not seen on American soil since the internment of Japanese-Americans during the Second World War, or as awarding too many so-called 'mutant rights'. More on this after the break...
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..And join us at eleven, when we'll be speaking with Professor Sebastian Shaw, a professor of medicine at Columbia University and author of several well-received – if controversial- books on the mutant threat and the perils of mainstreamed education. Professor Shaw will be giving us his take on the rationale behind the recent spree of mutant-based hate crimes.
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-click-
Hello?
Erik?
What?
Where the fuck have you been?
Asleep, Moira. It's my day off, remember?
Not anymore, it's not. Have you been watching the news?
No, I've been sleeping. What is it?
Get your ass down to the station- we've got another probable hate crime, and if you don't get here soon, Fury's gonna give it to Stryker.
Fuck. ...Alright. Be there in ten.
You're gonna want to grab some coffee. This is going to be a long one.
Great. See you.
-click-William Stryker
"It wasn't a telepathic attack."
Stryker snorted. "Oh? And how would you know that, boy? Something you're not telling us?"
He would not have thought it possible, but Xavier went even paler, the guilty fucker.
"It would have left a trace," he says quietly, eyes blank. "I would have felt it. Someone wants you to think it was a telepath."
"See, the funny thing about that, boy, is that our best telepaths are on the case, and they say it'll take them at least a few mroe hours to pick anything up."
The boy blinked. "Guess you need better telepaths, then."
"Hmph." He glances down at the file in his hand. "Says here you missed your last appointment for chip adjustment."
"I rescheduled. I was proctoring an exam."
"Mm. It also says you've got quite the little record, here."
The boy doesn't say anything.
"Including... ooh, looky here- an accusation of aggravated assault. Would you call yourself a violent person, Xavier?"
"I was acquitted and a juvenile. You can't have that."
"And yet, I do... funny how that works. Oh, and don't try to read my mind, you mutie freak- there are telepathic inhibitors built into the walls."
"Look. A girl is dead. She was a friend of mine, and I want to help you, but I can't if you don't let me. So tell me the truth, detective- do I need a lawyer?"
"Depends on how guilty you feel."
The boy purses his lips, and clenched his hands in his lap. "I think I would like my phone call now, please."
The door burst open. Great.
"We're in the middle of an interrogation, here-" he starts hotly, until he see's who it is.
Great. Rogers' fucking Wonder Twins, here to save the day.
Lehnsherr doesn't even spare him a glance, his eyes moving right over him and onto the kid.
"You're off the case, Stryker," he snaps. "Fury's orders."
Stryker flushed hotly. "This ain't your-" he begins.
Lehnsherr cuts him off with an eye roll. "Frost just reported in. It wasn't a telepathic attack. Which means someone wanted to make it look like it was- someone human, probably, and the trace strong emotions found suggest a hate crime. It's under my division. You're off the case."
_
Moira
Erik looks like hell. Which made sense, because that was how Moira felt; this was the sixth mutant-based hate crime this month.
18. 18 years old, dead from cranial trauma designed to look like a telepathic attack. Body found by one of the most powerful telepaths in the state. Fuck.
She needs a vacation. Somewhere warm, where the sun beats down and the air smells like salt andshe can drink mai-tais and sleep.
She's running on empty, and so is Erik, and she can't help but wonder if they might have solved these cases sooner otherwise, if they were just too exhausted, too angry, to see it all. If they were missing things.
They can't screw this up. There are too many factions, in the police and outside, waiting for them to fall, watching their every move with baited breath.
Fuck them. A girl is dead, and they're going to do their fucking jobs.
She accepts the proffered coffee with a wordless murmur of thanks. It has taken them years to get to this point, the point where they work better together than any other team in major crimes, to the point where they were made into the bloody poster child for human-mutant cooperation, an irony if there ever was one, when Moira thinks back to some Erik's more – intense – rhetoric in the first months of their cooperation.
Erik really does look awful. Normally- well, normally he's got one of those faces, the kind that looks good with a bit of scruff, but now he looksold, tired and old and utterly sick of this bullshit. Moira doesn't blame him
"We got any witnesses?" Over the years, Erik has perfected the art of speaking seemingly while drinking. Moira suspected it may be a particularly useless secondary mutation. Or maybe a tertiary one- the junior officers at the station would probably tell you that Erik's secondary mutation was being really fucking scary.
"Just the one who called it in- Charles Xavier, registered telepath, second-"
"-I know who he is."
"You do?"
Erik looks at her like she is from another planet. "Of course I do. He was in the Post last week- he runs that website, the Coalition for Genetic Diversity?"
"Oh, sorry, I should have realised you'd be up on your shitty activist blogs. I swear, sometimes I wonder if you missed your calling as a poli sci student-"
"Isn't that part of our job? And it's not bad, as far as college kid stuff goes. Some of it's pretty juvenile, but he's got a good head on his shoulders. He got a record?"
"Nothing major- a few offences for underage drinking, some sealed juvenile stuff, nothing that indicates a propensity for violence."
"Time of death?"
"8:15 AM, roughly five minutes before Xavier called it in. He probably witnessed the whole thing."
Erik nods. "Let's go, then."
_
Erik
Fucking Stryker. The kid looks like hell- white-faced and swaying with exhaustion, hands clenched tightly around the arms of his wheelchair, and fuck, is that blood on his face?
"Charles Xavier?"
"Yes?" The kid looks at him, but his eyes are blank. Clearly in shock. Erik softens his tone.
"Can you tell me what happened?"
The kid nods jerkily, but says nothing. Then- "Am I a suspect?"
Erik looks at him. He is silent for a long moment. Then- "No. No you're not. Tell me what you know."
The boy takes a deep breath, and begins.