Part Two: Three Lives
By:
Chapter Completed: July 13, 2008
Chapter Notes: Title taken from the book by Martin Palmer
Anderea lead Fletcher to the back of an old brick building. Once it served as a barracks for military families, but now the residence were much less official. The shout three-story building dawned a large Alien Arms billboard on the front and catered to the few tourist who still sough out a vacation to Dreamland. The kitsch still brought in enough money to keep the boarding house running, but Anderea was much more invested in the basement door at the rear of the building, just off the isolated, sun bleached alley.
"I've been thinking," Fletcher leaned against the doorframe, as he watched Anderea needlessly fiddle with the duel locks, "If we're going to be working together here, closely together, we should do something against all this sexual tension building up between us. You know, relieve the pressure, clear our heads…"
The door suddenly swung open, and a gruff voice declared; "You'll be relieving all that sexual tension on your own there big boy."
Anderea's face lit up, "Uncle Mel! You guys made it." She flung herself around the smaller man in a tight hug.
"Barely," Melvin Frohike gave a tired groan as he returned his niece's embrace.
"I, for one, forgot how hard it is to travel when you don't exist," John Byers pushed the door further open, ushering everyone inside.
Anderea moved quickly to embrace him as well, seemingly catching the other man off guard. "It's not that you don't exist," she gave an extra squeeze before releasing him, "You're just –"
"Dead. I know," he gave an odd little shrug if his shoulders as if still unsure of the idea.
"That doesn't seem to slow you down any," Langly quipped from further inside the makeshift hideout. He didn't bother getting up to greet the girl, or her guest, keeping his feet comfortably propped up on the table.
This time she shrugged, sharply, "I just have more practice at it."
"An odd experience, I'm sure," Fletcher reminded them all of his presence. "Though I thought you said they were dead?" he leaned in closer to whisper to her.
"You must have misheard," she gave him a sly smile, moving swiftly among the other men. "I believe I said I had nothing left to lose," she replied coolly, her face again void of emotion as she walked around Langly to the small kitchenette, "I can't help how you took that." She opened the refrigerator, but paused, "What does it matter?" she turned to eye Fletcher, who still hovered around the door.
Fletcher opened his mouth like a guppy, but settled for one of his detached shrugs.
"Besides," Frohike eyed the G-man over his wire frames, "Aren't you the one who told Anderea we were alive in the first place?"
Fletcher raised an eyebrow, "Whoever thought that would stick? Experiments and all that."
"Alien viruses can be very protective of their hosts," Anderea announced, unscrewing the cap and taking three long gulps of bottled water. She really wasn't used to the dry New Mexico air. Not after spending her life in the Washington State area. She almost missed the damp sidewalks.
"Which works as a great segue for why the Suit is here," Frohike walked back to the dinning room-slash-kitchen, shoving Langly's feet off the table, and taking a seat.
The younger man only grunted, crossing his arms tightly over his chest.
"Hold on," Byers stopped mid-stride to join them, "Where's Jimmy?"
"He was tailing us," Anderea moved to pull out the middle chair for herself, but catching Langly's stare from the corner of her eye she decided against it. Settling, instead, for leaning back against the counter.
"He's getting so good at being inconspicuous he lost sight of himself," Langly snorted.
"Wait? The Big One," Fletcher gestured Jimmy's rough height with his hands, "he was following us?" he gaffed.
"The whole time!" Jimmy beamed, stepping up silently behind the older man, gaining himself a startled jump, "You even passed me in the hall," he added with his usual puppy-enthusiasm.
"Then what held you up here?" Frohike eyes him carefully, ever the teacher.
"Mrs. Johnson, across the way," he shrugged, "she wanted to tell me about her dogs." The little old lady was forever chatting up the strapping young man. Jimmy found it sweet, and didn't mind at all. He figured the woman was lonely, and could understand the need for companionship.
"You know, part of tailing someone means you're supposed to keep your eye on your mark, the whole time," Langly spoke with a snide tone.
"And I'm supposed to maintain our cover," Jimmy shot back. Long gone was the man who would sulk at their criticism. "Besides, I knew she could handle him," he clapped Fletcher on the back – an odd action that mixed friendly and threatening in one gesture.
"Not the point," Langly grumbled under his breath, but offered nothing else.
"By the way, Derea honey," Jimmy continued as if there had been no interruption, "Mrs. Johnson says hello and hopes to see you again soon, she owes you another bridge lesson."
Anderea allowed herself a small smile at the shared joke. She would have to visit the widow soon for another afternoon of cards – or an afternoon of margaritas and seedy gossip as it usually ended up.
"Alright," Fletcher rubbed his shoulder where the larger man had made contact, wincing slightly, "Someone needs to start explaining all of this." He looked pointedly at the blonde woman on the other side of the table.
"Yeah, Derea honey, you should explain all of this to your new friend," Langly abruptly got to his feet, abandoning his chair to stand at the farther end of the room
"Okay," Anderea frowned; any joy from the pervious moment was gone. She dropped herself into the abandoned chair, "Where do I start?"
"Start with your death, that's always a great ice breaker." Langly sneered, his words surprisingly hard.
"Jesus Langly," Frohike hissed in disgust.
"I just want to know why you're all here, and why you think it has anything to do with my daughter," Fletcher dragged a chair over to the table, dropping himself into it opposite them. He didn't care about their dysfunctional family drama at the moment. He had reality television for that sort of thing.
Anderea forced a small, tired smile onto her face, "Than I guess I do start with my death: It started last summer when a young, unidentified woman was found under a DC turnpike – dead." She took a moment to clear her throat; "she had some abrasions and bruises on her wrists, ankles and abdomen--"
Langly shuffled his feet, unable to stand still. As if his skin were crawling.
"They were far too familiar," Anderea continued, staring straight ahead at Morris Fletcher's face, "I was found that same way, in a medical lab – only I was alive."
"Barely," Byers breathed out, sending Langly fleeing from the gathering and into the other room, safely behind a computer screen.
"Since it was so familiar, " Frohike picked up the thread, "We had an associate at the ME's office run a blood-test for us."
"And she had the same DNA sequence in that I carry," her face had become expressionless, cold and unfamiliar, as if she were recounting a story that had nothing to do with her or any other living thing. "So we did a little creative computing; created a few new documents, changed some records. And had Jimmy claim the body."
"As her BROTHER," Langly added from wherever he escaped to, exposing the fact that he was still listening even if he had gone to lengths not to hear it again.
"I posed as her adopted brother," Jimmy confirmed, "hadn't seen her in years but swore she was the Anderea that my parents brought home."
"And our blood records proved that," Frohike added.
"So Anderea Jupitor was officially declared dead, and we gave that poor street girl a proper funeral," Anderea's voice cracked then, and she dipped her head to avoid his eyes.
"So, you were free and clear of it all. They had declared you dead and you were granted a life," Fletcher leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest, "Why would you go digging into it all again?"
She looked up at him, and everything flashed through her eyes, "I had to know why and how that girl died. I had to know if I could stop it." The raw intensity, after such a void, was hard to take.
Byers slid a thin paper folder across the table, his voice sounding louder than ever before, "We did some more digging."
Fletcher opened the file and read: "Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto. What is this, a Greek lesson?"
"Or an Astronomy class," Frohike quipped.
Still Fletcher looked confused, and annoyed. He wasn't used to being on the receiving end of shadowed language.
"It's a list of Zeus' lovers," Byers began.
"Or the Galliaen Satellites of Jupiter," Anderea finished, that sad, peculiar smile back on her face, "And, in this case, the code names for a new set of biological strains."
"All from this Project Jupiter you were talking about before?" Fletcher didn't bother hiding his scepticism.
"As far as we've been able to piece together," Byers crossed his arms over his chest, "Io would have been the purest form from the Jupiter Project, and that's what that poor girl was exposed to."
"And that may have been what killed her," Anderea confessed with all the guilt of an estranged Catholic.
"Finding the girl, dead, suggested that Io was a failure," Frohike continued the round table disclosure, "We had to find out what Europa was and if it was being used."
"Not to mention the who, where and how," Langly quipped; the blonde hovered just outside the main circle again, setting up a new dynamic. Everything felt as if it were off its axis.
"We were pointed in the direction of the HPV vaccines by --," Frohike cast a quick, sympathetic look over to Byers, but just as quickly went back to his statement, "by an associate."
"History has taught us not to trust free government issued vaccines, anyway," Langly added, absentmindedly touching his bicep where the smallpox scar branded his skin.
"And that's just what we did," the oldest Gunmen finished his thought, "criss-crossed the whole country, cross checking those little syringes."
"The most we had discovered was that only about 5 of the girls were actually getting a vaccine at all," Byers released a tried sigh.
"That is, until Jimmy and I got here," Anderea broke in – they all knew what she had found there in New Mexico.
"Wait, it was the stooges versus you and the Hulk?" Fletcher couldn't keep the amused smile from his face.
"No," she was quick to clarify, "originally it was Yves, Jimmy and I. But she left about a month in." She offered Jimmy a sad, little smile; "Old habits die hard."
"That's why we changed our cover story. Newlyweds are far less creepy than a brother and sister who share a one room apartment," he shrugged.
"But, by the time we got settled here, half the inoculations had already taken place," the blonde woman looked over at Fletcher, "Unfortunately, your daughter was one of those half."
"Is that all you're basing this on? Some amateur testing and a game of house?"
"With all due respect agent Fletcher," Byers rose to his feet, a rare edge of anger flaring up, "We've become a group of experts on this subject."
"And if your daughter's name hadn't been on that list, we never would have contacted you at all."
"Still don't think we should have," Langly added, after all the man had done nothing but screw them over in the past.
"But I thought you might care enough about your daughter to help," Anderea defended her insistence that they bring Fletcher in on this. That they might actually need him.
Fletcher's shoulders sagged, "What do you need from me?"
A small, satisfied smile curved Anderea's mouth. She knew, deep down, he'd want to be a part of this. That he'd need to be. "For starters, we're gonna need a blood sample."
He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back; they didn't know Chris. "I can't just walk up to my daughter and demand a vile of her blood."
"No," she agreed, "But I think we'll give that a shot."
(End of part two)