I was a man follow the kid Ashley and I had been sent to collect by Helen. We followed them and nearly hit the mas we had followed.
"Whoa, hey!" He called out to us. We stopped at the end of the alley and looked back at him for a moment before speeding down another ally. We followed the kid until he hid behind a dumpster. We got off our bikes and I took off my helmet shaking my red hair down my back. I scanned the area with my red eyes and went to the dumpster but the kid was gone. I went back and grabbed my black duster and followed Ashley to follow the kid on foot. When it started raining Ashley and I grabbed an umbrella from a store and opened it, still following watching the kid like a hawk; and as the rain stopped we folded the umbrella we had been carrying. He ran into the subway out of sight and we followed. I pulled my pistol and made sure the safety was on. as it got darker Ashley and I pulled out flashlights and looked around for the boy. A train was coming up so we pushed up against the wall to avoid it. We waited until it was gone the continued down the tracks. When the tunnel started getting lighter we saw two cops walking along the tunnel.
"Damn sector gives me the willies, man." The skinnier ones said. We snuck closer to them.
"No one likes working under old city. Place is toxic."
"Rent's cheap, though. Hold it." They flashed their light on the kid on top of a box
"What the hell you doing down here, kid? Look, wherever you ran from, this place is worse, okay? So let's go." the kid shook his head quickly. "That wasn't a request, kid."
"I wouldn't do that if I were you." Ashley told them as we stood behind them. As they turned to us, she kicked the first officer and I hit the second one. In the end, both men were knocked unconscious and when we turned back to the boy, he was gone.
"Peachy. Come on Liz." She said pulling out her pistol once more. Once we found the boy, I sent a text to Helen and we waited. I watched her enter the area we were in with another man.
"What I still don't understand is, who tipped you off that the boy was down here?" He said.
"I did." I said as Ashley and I came up behind them.
"We've been tracking the little dweeb all night." She told them.
"Who the hell are you?" he asked us.
"Who the hell are you?" Ashley asked him.
"You said you had him." Helen said breaking up their little conversation.
"We did, until the circus arrived." I told her pointing back the way they came.
"Still, roughing up two policemen." She gave both of us a look.
"They were going to get themselves killed." Ashley defended.
"They didn't know who they were dealing with, Helen. We made a quick decision." I told her.
"Uh, guys?" The we turned to the man and pulled out our guns and followed him to the crate the boy was hiding in. The man stood in front of the crate talking to him.
"It's okay." he told him, trying to calm him down. A snake-like thing attacked him and Ashley tackled him down to protect him. They tolled a little and she immediately came back up and took aim at the boy.
"Don't! We need him alive!" Helen told her. Helen and I walked in front of the crate. "We want to help you." she told him, lowering her gun. I stood next to her as Ashley came to her other side, both guns still drawn. "Do you understand me? We're not going to hurt you, I promise." The boy came out of the crate and stood before us. The snake-like, as we saw now, appendage was waving about dangerously. "That's it." the appendage stoke out and bite Ashley in the shoulder.
"Hey, hey, hey! Over here. Over here... yeah, that's it." the man said drawing his attention away from us. "That's it... nice and easy." he glanced at us. "Any time..." I shot the boy with a tranquilizer dart and he collapsed. "You okay?" the man asked Ashley.
"Yeah, I'm fine." She told him.
"This chaos was completely avoidable." Helen told us.
"These tunnels reek and I need a bath. I don't need a lecture." Ashley told her.
"Here here." I agreed.
"Seriously, who are you?" the man asked us.
"Dr. Zimmerman, this is Ashley, my daughter, and Elizabeth, an elemental." Helen introduced us.
"Ugh. I get it, alright?" Ashley asked in the med room as her mom stitched her up. Dr. Zimmerman was holding an ice pack to his head and I was just sitting in the room, watching. "Ow! Mom, take it easy."
"All I'm saying is that we could have better coordinated our efforts." Helen told us.
"Again, we got the ghoul, okay? Take a pill." Ashley told her.
"She has a point, Helen. The boy is safe here and we're all alive." I reminded her. She gave me a look and I rolled my eyes.
"I apologize for Ashley and Elizabeth's unruly behavior, Dr. Zimmerman. What they lack in refinement, I assure you they make up for in their field skills."
"May I remind you, Helen. I'm older than all of you put together by many years." Dr. Zimmerman gave me a look.
"Really?" he asked looking at me but Ashley thought he was asking about her skills.
"Somebody saved your life tonight." she gasped in mock surprise. "Oh, wait! That was me."
"Hold still." Helen told her.
"So I take it you guys, uh, do this a lot?" Dr. Zimmerman asked, looking at all of us.
"Oh, this is nothing. Hey, Mom, do you remember the summer I turned 18? We do an entire den of werewolves. You know, as in bag and capture? Sedate and catalog? It wasn't just me, Mom was there, too, and a few nervous locals, one who seriously looked like Adrian Brody." I laughed at her comment.
"Ashley..." Helen warned her.
"Mom, you thought he was hot too." she said looking back at her slightly.
"I'd listen to the lady with the needle if I were you." I told her.
"Dr. Zimmerman is our guest. Please bear that in mind as you two blather away." Helen said, continuing her work.
"Anyway, we were low on silver tips, full moon's on the rise-"
"You're making this up." Dr. Zimmerman interrupted her.
"You got the tour, right?" I asked looking between Helen and the doctor.
"Yeah, but..."
"There we are, darling, good as new." Helen said interrupting Dr. Zimmerman.
"Thank you. Hate to bleed and run, but I got to be on the eastside in twenty." Ashley said jumping up and grabbing her jacket.
"For what reason?" Helen asked.
"Sylvio has some fabulous new product for me. Top of the line Kevlar, prototype hollow-points, digital fuses..." The list went on.
"Actually, I'd prefer it if you stayed in this evening." Helen said. I gave her a questioning look, normally she wouldn't have minded.
"What do you mean? Why?" Ashley asked her, not understanding the reason.
"There's been some fluctuations in the EM shield. I'm sure it's nothing, but just to be on the safe side." I gave her a look, there was no reason the shield should have been fluctuating.
"But this won't take an hour, and I promise I'll grind him down on the price. We buy in bulk, we save a ton." Ashley tried to convince her.
"We're Sylvio's best customers. His amazing deals aren't going anywhere, believe me. It's been a long night, Ashley please." Helen begged.
"Mom, come on! I'm just..." Helen gave Ashley a look. "Okay, Facebook it is." She turned to our guest. "Nice to meet you, uh, keep the ice going." with that said Ashley left.
"So she's your daughter? What, did you have her when you were, like, 12?" He asked Helen sarcastically.
"Very flattering." Helen looked down and smiled slightly before looking back at him.
"Adopted?" He tried again.
"The details are unimportant. Ashley is my flesh and blood, and she plays a vital role in my work." Helen told him
"She bags 'em, you tag 'em." He suggested.
"Something like that, but I find it's what happens afterwards that matters the most." I followed them out of the room.
The boy was strapped to a chair, but the appendage was still waving about trying to reach us as we observed from above.
"What is that?" Will asked Helen.
"Massive genetic mutation creating a symbiotic appendage." She told him.
"Well, whatever it is, it helped him clear twenty feet across an alley earlier tonight." He said looking at us.
"Probably its most benign use. Such imperfect children are often adopted by well-meaning immigrant families. Some are blind. Others have deformities, mental illness. I'm sure he seemed perfectly normal in his photograph, if they even saw one." I told them looking down.
"What do you intend to do with him?" Dr. Zimmerman asked, looking intently at us.
"I'll determine his physiological treatment, but we have no hope of truly helping him until we gain his trust." Helen told him as we both looked at him.
"Wait... is this why... No. There's nothing in my training that even begins to apply to a patient like this." he said trying to convince us.
"Your training can't help you here as much as your intuition can." I told him.
"Th-this is insane. I can't do this." He said, trying to convince us. Helen had told me about him after she had saved him.
"What's more terrifying to you, Dr. Zimmerman? That frightened, confused boy down there or the possibility that you lack the courage to help him? Tell me, what do you see when you look at him?" I asked him.
"Body language is... agitated, though he's given us no trouble since he woke up. In fact, the only hostile thing in that room is that... thing." He said looking at the appendage. Then back up at us.
"Then see beyond it. See the boy. If you can do that, then you can help him. If not, then so be it. I'll simply admit that I was wrong about you." Helen told him. He looked back down at the boy. "I'll leave it to you." He gave us an irritate but acquiescing look then left. We watched Dr. Zimmerman and the Big Guy enter the room below us.
"Release him. Please. Trust me." Dr. Zimmerman looked at the Big Guy as he used a remote to release the straps holding the boy to the chair. The boy stood up and the Big Guy put an arm out to stop Dr. Zimmerman from going closer.
"It's okay. It's okay." He looked from The Big Guy to the boy. "How you doing? You want to sit down?" the boy just watched him. Henry entered the observation room where Helen and I are still watching Will, the Big Guy and boy in the room below.
"Kind of harsh for a job interview, don't ya think?" Henry asked her.
"Thank you for your opinion, Henry." Helen said still looking down at the room.
"I'm just saying it's a newbie all alone with the new arrival-"
"Whom he helped capture." Helen said cutting him off.
"Yeah, sure, he might pull it off. You know, even a blind squirrel can find a nut. Or is it monkeys and bananas? I can never remember." Henry said going on.
"Do you have what I asked for?" She asked him, ignoring his statement.
"Yeah. The analysis of the goop you took from the cops' frontal lobes? Check." He handed her a computer tablet that he had been carrying. I looked over her should to see a globe. Helen touched a control and the image began tracking and zooming in. "Not many places you're going to find radiation traces that pure, mostly former soviet republics. But if you match up the mineral traces in the plutonium sample to known mining operations in each possible location..." the image on the computer finished zooming in and showed the result of his search.
"Chernobyl." Helen said, looking at the image. I looked back at the boy.
"Only city in the world with more personal Geiger Counters than clocks." Henry said, taking the computer back from her.
"Many of the survivors of this disaster moved on and had children." She told him looking down as Dr. Zimmerman made progress with the boy.
"Yeah, if you can call them that." Henry leaned over the rail slightly to look at the boy.
"Your sensitivity is breathtaking." Helen said irritably.
"The kid sucks brains! Not that I'm being judgmental." Henry said trying to defend himself.
"Is there anything else?" Helen asked, trying to get him to leave politely.
"Ah no, not really. A working girl was found murdered behind a warehouse down near circle square about four hours ago." Henry told us.
"Murdered how?" I asked him.
"Just your typical old school stabbing; no one saw anything, cops are clueless, as usual." Henry said shrugging his shoulders.
"Send me what you have." Helen told him, jumping to the same conclusion I did.
"Really, we care about this? I mean, it's very sad, but-"
"Send it to me." Helen ordered, interrupting him.
"Okay, fine. All right, I'll transfer the CCTV footage from that part of town to the central network, which, by the way, is still fluxing like a bitch. Did you get the request I sent for those upgrades?" Henry asked her.
"We'll talk about it." Helen told him.
"Okay, fine. By the way, if there's a cleanup on aisle 2, I don't want to know about it." Henry told us, leaving the area. Down below us Dr. Zimmerman was holding a chair in front of himself and the snake-like appendage was striking the chair while trying to get him.
"Whoa, woah, hey! Woah, woah! Time out a second! Time out! Time out, everyone just calm down." The appendage withdrew slightly, still waving in the air. Dr. Zimmerman lowered the chair but he didn't set it down completely. "You think that's supposed to scare me, huh? Well, let me tell you something, you see this guy here? He scares me a hell of a lot more than you do." He turned to the Big Guy, "No offence." He turned back to the boy. "All right, let's just calm down, all right?" He looked back to the Big Guy. "Will you give us some space here?" The Big Guy moved back and stood in the doorway. "It's okay. It's okay... just relax..." The appendage wrapped itself around the child's torso and the child seemed calmer now. I smiled at the result of this test. "Okay, how come you're not trying to eat my brain anymore? I think I'm getting the hang of things here. The less I'm scared of you, the less you want to snack on my cerebellum? Okay... I'm just going to put this down." He put the chair down on the ground in front of him. "Do you have a name?"
"Alexei." the boy answered.
"My name's Will." Will moved around to sit in the chair. "You want to tell me how this all started?" He asked.
"I lived in Kiev with parents. They told me I was not safe, that if people found out about me, I would be taken away. Family adopt me, bring me here, but they not like me. Not after..." The boy fell silent and looked down at the appendage.
"Wasn't the kind of reception you were hoping for, huh?" Will asked him.
"They were afraid. I tried to stop it, but only more fear comes." Alexei told him.
"So the more fear, the more it comes out?" Alexei nodded at him.
"And you can't control it. It's a defense mechanism... with a mind of its own." Will concluded.
"It is not my fault. I not want to kill." Alexei told him.
"No, you just want to be safe. Listen to me, Alexei. Feeling safe is something we all need. That is nothing to be ashamed of. All right you're no different than anybody else." Will explained to him.
"You don't fear me?" Alexei asked him.
"No." Will told him.
"Magnificent." Helen said smiling slightly.
"You were right about him, he is good." I told her.
Later that night, I was waiting for Helen in her office when she rushed in and went directly to the computer with Ashley following.
"Mom, why are you freaking out?" Ashley asked her.
"Grab what weapons you can. We'll need them." Helen told us.
"Helen what is it?" I asked, making sure my pistol was fully loaded.
"No, not until you tell me why this ghoul is such a problem." Ashley told her.
"Because he'll kill us both! He allowed himself to be captured by you, I'm certain of it. We may only have moments before-" We all turned toward a sound of someone teleporting into the room. Helen and I raised our guns and pointing them at that person. My eyes widened at the tall, bald man I saw.
"Bloody hell!"
"Hello Helen, Elizabeth." Druitt greeted.
"John..." Helen whispered while I stayed silent.
"Wonderful to see you both again." He told us.
"You know this ghoul?" Ashley asked us as Druitt began walked slowly toward us.
"Oh...they and I go way back." Druitt told her. In an orange flash of light and Druitt disappeared. He reappeared behind Ashley and twisted her arm up behind her back, using her as a shield between himself and the two of us.
"John, don't! This is about you and me, not her." Helen tried convincing him.
"For the moment. You have no idea what it's been like... alone, wandering this godforsaken world, wanting only peace. A fragment of what we had. What I lost..." He leaned his head closer to Ashley's.
"You have nothing to gain by harming her. Or us." I told him.
"Mom, Liz, shoot him!" Ashley told us.
"Shall we drop the pretense? You know exactly why I've come and what I want. It's all within reach, everything I've ever wanted. And you're going to give it to me, or she will die." He told us.
"Mom!" They disappeared and Helen ran to the computer and started scanning the security screens.
"Helen, you have to calm down. He won't hurt her." I told her.
"You don't know that! Oh, bloody hell..." she said searching, more frantic now to find them.
"Ah, I knew him well." We turned and aimed our guns at him. He was holding a small skull.
"Where is she?" Helen questioned him. Druitt continued to ponder the skull. "Where is she?!" Druitt put the skull down and covered it with the glass dust cover that had been protecting it and started to wander the room.
"I'd tell you she was safe, but I'd be lying. No, your scruffy little helper mentioned something about where the worst of the worst are kept." He smirked at us.
"You bastard."
"Oh, no doubt she helped capture whatever is in there and they can reminisce."
"Threatening her-"
"Is my only option, Helen. I can hardly threaten you. Using one of your own precious creatures as the blunt instrument... Some of my best work, I think." he said interrupting me. Helen started to run out of the room.
"I'll get there first." Helen stopped and stared at him with wide eyes. "And just put her someplace more dangerous." Helen slowly backed towards me once more. "I don't want her to die, Helen, but that is exactly what will happen if you test my resolve."
"There's only one reason you would have taken this risk, to risk her. Because you have to. You're dying, aren't you?" I asked him.
"We're all dying. It simply comes down to survival, and I intend to do whatever is necessary to ensure mine." He told me.
"Even if it means killing her?" I asked once more, he knew the truth about Ashley.
"Her life is in Helen's hands. I don't think the two of you want to lose her over something as easily accessible as Helen's blood." He said walking over to stand close her her, smiling softly.
"You saved my life once before. You can do it again." he reminded her.
"I can help you, John, and not by prolonging this nightmare. We can find a cure." Helen tried convincing him as she tried all those years ago.
"She clearly doesn't know." he said ignoring her attempt.
"How could I possibly tell her?" Helen asked him.
"She must have asked how she came by her killer instincts." He smirked once more at us.
"She thinks her father's dead." I told him. He swallowed hard in anger and glared at us.
"I wonder how she'd feel to learn the truth." Druitt threatened us once more.
"Your mind is poisoned, John, through no fault of your own." Helen told him.
"Helen Magnus and Elizabeth, friends to nature's abominations and enemies of common sense! Your blood, Helen!" He yelled at us. Dritt looked over our shoulders at the security monitor. "Oh, time is growing short." Helen and I turned to the screen to see Ashley in the SHOE. Helen walked to the monitor and computer and typed something in. She then took out a small wooden box and opened it. There were vials of her blood inside it and she filled a syringe with the blood and handed the syringe to Druitt.
"How can I be sure?" He asked us.
"It's mine. Centrifuged, pure." Helen told him. He glanced at me.
"I watched her out it in there myself." I told him. Druitt injected the blood into his arm.
"Thank you, Helen. You won't regret it." He told us smirking.
"I'm sorry I can't say the same for you." she told him. Druitt began to look ill and he started flashing. He glared at us once more.
"Forgive me, John." She asked of him.
"The Six, the others...will come." Druitt said, pain filling his voice. He then disappeared and Helen and I ran out of the room to help Ashley.
When we got there, we opened the cell door and Helen, Henry and I rushed in.
"Stay in the light!" Will told us. I pointed my gun at the creature that was closest to us while Helen ran to aid Will and Ashley and Henry ran to the Big Guy.
"I've got her, I've got her." Helen told us. Helen took Ashley and Will helped Henry with the Big Guy. We all exited the cell and as I left I pressed the controls to close the cell door. We had both Ashley and the Big Guy on gurneys.
"Dude, are you nuts?" Henry asked Will.
"It's a distinct possibility." Will told him. We all walked/limped away from the cell pushing a gurney.