A/N: I'm not altogether happy with this chapter, but I promised weekly updates for as long as that was possible, and darn it, I'm gonna give them to you! Also, I apologize for any medical inaccuracies. The information on the cardiovascular system was taken from my 9th grade biology notes (which I luckily still had, for whatever reason) and any misinformation is the fault of me and my poor note-taking abilities. Anyway, ON WITH THE SARTHA!
Martha checked out of her own room at a Bed and Breakfast across town and checked in next door to Sam and Dean. The new lovebirds, to the older brother's annoyance, had decided to work on this hunt together, but it turned out Marty was pretty damn good at research. Hey, at least it got Dean out of doing it.
"So you think this is an alien?" Sam asked her yet again as they sat at a small table, bent over a book and a laptop, respectively. Dean glanced at them from where he sat on his bed, sharpening knives with maybe a bit more gusto than was necessary. Somebody had to keep up the masculinity levels in the room, and Sam, with his big puppy eyes and stumbling flirtations, certainly wasn't going to be the one to do it.
Martha nodded, typing something on her keyboard. Sam took a peek at her screen, and his mouth dropped open.
"Holy crap, what kind of clearance do you have?"
The woman smirked. Sam had nearly had a heart attack when he first saw her computer, praising it as a "thing of beauty". Dean told him to stop being such a geek. Not only envious of the technology she was issued, both Hunters had been a bit put out at the fact that U.N.I.T. was pretty much a group of people doing exactly what they did, only with aliens, legality, and, oh yeah, getting paid for it.
"I can get into databases you couldn't even imagine existing," Martha teased, glancing sidelong at Sam. He grinned, and the two regressed into nerdspeak that made Dean glad he had something else to focus on.
It wasn't that his brother being in a relationship bothered Dean. Far from it. He'd been bugging the kid to get with someone for years, and after that whole thing with Ruby… No, the problem was that there were so many more important things going on, like, oh, maybe the goddamn Apocalypse? Apart from that, the two just seemed so freaking perfect together. It was almost creepy. They had the same intense expression when they read, the same workaholic nature when it came to research, and Dean was fairly sure that it wouldn't be long before they starting finishing each other's sentences. The older brother remembered, in the very brief time he'd known Jess, the way Sam had looked at her, all softness and care and shooting sugar and rainbows out of his eyes. He wasn't at that level yet with Martha (thank God) but Dean could see the beginning of it, the telltale signs that his little brother was falling hard and fast.
"So you're saying that werewolves are actually aliens?" Sam's flabbergasted cry shook Dean from his thoughts.
"The virus is extraterrestrial in origin, yeah." Martha confirmed.
"Wow. And all this time… Dean, can you believe it? Alien life, it's just-just insane!" There was a huge nerd-grin splitting Sam's face.
"That's certainly one word for it." Dean said, smiling sardonically. His brother just huffed at him and went back to conversing excitedly with his new-found geek buddy.
There were so many mushy feelings clouding up the room you could have cut them with one of Dean's knives. Frankly, he was sick of the awkwardness of being a third wheel, and battled it the only way Dean Winchester knew how: being irritating. He suddenly interrupted Sam in the middle of some anecdote by humming "Martha My Dear" very loudly, which earned him a spectacular bitchface from his brother, but a smile and a laugh from Marty when she recognized the tune. Huh. It seemed he was growing on her. As it happened, the feeling was mutual (not that Dean was likely to admit it).
"Alright," Sam declared a while later. Dean had retired from his knife-sharpening and was settled in front of the television. "This is getting us nowhere. Whatever did this isn't following the pattern of anything I've ever seen. Not so far as I can tell, anyway. We should go to that warehouse where they found the most recent body, see what we can see."
"I agree," Martha chimed in, closing her laptop. "It's hard to know what we're up against, be it alien or one of yours, without scoping out the place for ourselves."
"Great," Dean said, finishing his beer and switching off the TV. "Thought you'd never ask. I'll drive, you two can cuddle in the back or whatever." He smacked the door frame on his way out, spinning the keys to his car around his finger. "Let's go."
The Winchesters hopped straight into Dean's car without a second thought, but Martha lingered for a moment, trailing a hand across the hood. So this was the famous Impala. During the Year-That-Never-Was, whenever Sam would talk about his brother, he would always mention this car. Dean's "baby", as he called it. Of all the things that had been destroyed and brought back from that hell year, the sleek black Chevrolet probably symbolized the most. It was good as new (more or less) and Sam and Dean were alive and ready to save the world yet again.
"Hey Marty, you comin'?" Dean shouted out the driver's side window.
"Yeah." Martha slid into the back seat, an odd little smile on her face.
The warehouse was surrounded by a high fence, the gate of which, much to the brothers' dismay, had an electronic lock. Sam and Dean's lock picks were useless.
"Hey, Marty," Dean turned to her, "think you could use that fancy clearance of yours to get us in here?"
"I probably could," Martha began thoughtfully, "but the downside of working for a secret government agency is that it's, well, secret. With the time it would take to go through all the proper channels and convince the local authorities that I actually have reason to be here," she was backing away from the fence now, pensive expression replaced with a small, sly smile, "it would probably be easier to just do this." And with a short running start, Martha leaped up onto the chain link fence, scaled it like a monkey, did a freaking back flip over the top, and landed perfectly in a crouch on the other side.
She flipped her hair up out of her face and grinned at Sam and Dean, whose mouths were hanging open in shock.
"Coming, boys?"
Neither moved for a moment as the British badass turned and strolled casually over to the building. Dean clutched at Sam's shoulder.
"Sammy," he said, "marry that girl." Then the Hunters scrambled over the fence to catch up with the newest member of their team.
The sight that greeted Sam, Dean, and Martha as they ducked under the crime scene tape was not a pretty one. The warehouse was old and damp, the pungent odor of mildew pervaded by the metallic tang of congealed blood. In the center of the open space sat something like a perverse version of an operating table, with arm and leg straps to restrain a victim, surrounded by all manner of horrific instruments.
The boys scanned for EMF while Martha did her own investigating.
"What were you thinking it could be?" Martha asked Sam. "If it is something supernatural, I mean."
"Well," he began, one ear still tuned into the converted Walkman, "Dean and I were thinking a djin, or a nest of vampires maybe. None of the victims were drained of blood, though. Not more than what they lost while… being tortured."
"They weren't missing any parts, either." Dean piped up. "So whatever this is wasn't eating them."
"It's interesting, though," Martha observed, walking around the table with a thoughtful crease in her brow, "how they were all tortured mercilessly, for hours, but their deaths were quick. Stabbed through the heart, if I remember correctly." Sam nodded in affirmation. "Quite professionally, too." she continued. "Straight into the aortic valve then down through the septum, severing the chordae tendonae in the left ventricle. Someone knew what they were doing."
Sam and Dean blinked at her, surprised and baffled by the medical jargon.
"I thought you couldn't get access to the coroner's report?" Dean said in an accusatory tone.
"I couldn't. But I did manage to sneak into the morgue and get a look at the bodies for a bit." In answer to their questioning stares, she shrugged and said simply "I'm a doctor."
Dean turned around as Martha walked to the other side of the room, pulling Sam down to his height.
"Dude," he whispered to his brother. "Doctor. Man, you are way out of your league." Sam opened his mouth to protest, but whatever he was planning to say was lost as the (apparent) doctor called to the Winchesters.
"Oh my God, Sam! Dean! Come and look at this."
Martha was crouching down on the floor, rubbing some type of viscous fluid between her fingers. As the other two neared her, they could see a puddle of the stuff on the floor.
"What the hell is that?" Dean asked, kneeling next to her with a disgusted expression on his face..
"Morphic residue." she said, her eyes alight. "Oh, this is brilliant!"
"Sorry, why exactly is that a good thing?" Sam inquired, wrinkling his nose at the foreign substance. "And what is… 'morphic residue' anyway?"
"It's left behind when certain species change their shape," Martha explained, "and it's good because it narrows down the possibilities of what's killing these people by a lot. We know it's not human, anyway."
"So it's definitely an alien?"
Martha shook her head.
"Not necessarily. You know when shifters shed their skin? It's covered in the stuff." She stood up, wiping goo-covered fingers on her pants.
"Hey, Dean, you remember that shifter in St. Louis?" Sam exclaimed. Dean gave him a look that clearly said Duh. You think I could have possibly forgotten the thing that got me on America's Most Wanted? "It's just like that. The kidnappings, the torture…"
"There's no skin, though, Sam. Just this… morphic crap."
"He's right." Martha interjected, placing a hand on Sam's arm unconsciously. Something about him seemed to relax, to soften, whenever they touched. "But that's just one example. It could still be from earth. You two are the experts there."
"Well, whatever it is," Dean said, "It's a monster and it's killing people, which means it's our responsibility to find it and gank it." He held up his hand for a fist-bump. "Don't leave me hanging!" Sam and Martha exchanged identical eye rolls and walked away.
"Hey!" Dean called after them. "I'm your ride out of here, you know! C'mon!"
