Timeline Note: The events since the beginning of Chapter One (and continuing on now) all take place in the space of a single day. I'll leave a note when the story moves on to the next day.
The elevator doors opened slowly and noisily, and tried to close immediately. Melissa stood by laughing as Sketchy got his foot caught, struggling to yank himself free, and falling flat on his face when he did. Barely conscious after the continuous celebrations of the past day, he needed a little help getting to his feet, and a little more navigating the straight, empty corridor towards the door of his apartment.
Though it had only been published the day before, the article was already a hit; the subject of several talk-shows and quite a lot of news reports. The previous day, Sketchy had gone into the offices of New World Weekly to pick up his CD player, which he'd accidentally left in his desk drawer. He'd been the subject of many handshakes and backslaps, and his fingers had once again been crushed by Ben Mitchell, who, smiling as widely as everyone else, had unsettled Sketchy more than ever.
Since he'd left the New World Weekly office early the previous morning, his phone had been switched off, his pager left by the wayside, and the booze had flowed freely and without pause. Sketchy made a mental note to himself to investigate the fact that he was still able, more or less, to stand.
With a little effort, he managed to fit his key into the lock, and eventually figured out which way to turn it. Once inside, he stumbled a little again, but just about managed to stay upright with Melissa's help. She turned him around, propped him up against a wall, then fell against him heavily.
They stood like this for a minute or two, each one half-supporting the other. "I think a shower before bedtime would be a good idea," Melissa suggested.
Sketchy glanced towards the kitchen area, at the clock on the wall. "It's two o'clock in the afternoon," he pointed out logically, slurring a little.
"Yeah," came the groggy response. "Henceforth known as bedtime. C'mon." She kissed him lightly on the cheek and made her way towards the bathroom.
Sketchy was about to follow, but stopped suddenly, noticing something on the kitchen table. He was too far away to see what it was, and his gut told him he probably didn't want to know. He took a slow step towards the kitchen, and was willing himself to take another, when the front door splintered, cracked, then fell clean off its hinges, crashing to the ground at his feet.
"Don't move!" cried one of four armed men in urban assault gear Sketchy saw standing in the hallway, as one of the others rushed him. In one swift movement, Sketchy's legs were kicked out from under him, his arm was twisted behind his back, and Sketchy was flat on his face again.
Two of the attackers moved towards the bathroom, one of them receiving a sharp kick to the ribs as Melissa appeared from behind the doorway to the bedroom, all of a sudden seeming wide awake and very sober. By the time he'd hit the ground, Melissa had the pistol he'd been holding pressed against his companion's left eye. Her other hand gripped the barrel of the second man's shotgun, forcing it down until it pointed directly at his foot.
"Seattle P.D!" roared the same guy who'd yelled at Sketchy when they'd knocked the door down. He took aim at Melissa, a small red dot appearing on her cheek. "Drop it and let him go!"
Melissa glanced sidelong at the guy who seemed to be in charge for a moment, before letting go of the shotgun and handing the pistol back to the man who was picking himself up off the floor. "Traditionally, it helps if you announce yourselves before you start pointing guns at people," she spat sullenly. She hardly paid any mind to the guy she'd knocked down when he grabbed her and dragged her roughly towards the kitchen. The guy who held Sketchy to the floor picked him up and took him into the kitchen as well, forcing him into a chair by the table. The pair Melissa had attacked both stood by the doorway, eyeing her suspiciously.
Sweating like a pig, and suddenly feeling as sober as Melissa looked, Sketchy cleared his throat and addressed the lead officer. "Um, what exactly is that all about, fellas?" he asked as calmly as he could manage.
"Calvin Theodore?" A fifth and sixth cop had entered the apartment, dressed in plain clothes. The speaker was a short, fleshy guy with a red face. His partner, a redheaded woman around the same height, though in much better shape, moved around the table, standing behind Melissa, who was staring at something on the table.
Sketchy nodded silently, and the guy who'd asked his name continued. "You work part-time at New World Weekly?" Another nod from Sketchy. "Deborah Litvack, your editor; seen her lately?"
"For like a minute, yesterday morning," Sketchy said when he found his voice again. "I went in to pick something up from my desk drawer."
"Would you be able to recognise something of hers?" asked the woman standing behind Melissa.
"I don't…what are you talking about?"
"Those, for example?"
Sketchy looked towards the table where she nodded, suddenly remembering that he'd noticed something before the cops had kicked his door down. Melissa had barely taken her eyes off the sight on the table since being dragged into the room, but her expression was far from frightened or disgusted; she simply looked mildly surprised. Sketchy thought that the alcohol must have been blocking the part of her brain that allowed her to really comprehend what she was seeing – and wished it had done the same for him - because the moment he saw what was sitting on his kitchen table, he leapt up from the chair, shoved his way past the female detective, and made it to the sink just in time to greet his old friends Huey and Buck.
Donning a pair of latex gloves, the chubby cop picked up the pair of human eyeballs and placed them in a clear plastic baggy. "Now I got the whole collection," he announced proudly. "Her body was found sitting in her car on the side of the road near Udub, and her head was up on a shelf in her office, next to the family photos. Anonymous tip said we'd find the rest of her here."
Melissa shot a contemptuous look at the cop for his attitude, while Sketchy continued leaning over the sink, reviewing everything he'd had to eat and drink over the past twenty-four hours.
"I'm telling you, I had nothing to do with this!" Sketchy squealed for the third time. An untouched cup of coffee sat on the table in front of him, but since his sojourn at the kitchen sink, he'd never felt more alert or clear-headed in his life.
"Then you need to explain how your bosses' eyes made their way out of her skull and onto your kitchen table," the redhead explained patiently. "You don't strike me as a psycho, but you need to talk to us or you could be in a lot of trouble. Terrorism's a pretty serious charge, in case you didn't know."
"TERRORISM?!"
The redhead dropped a file on the table in front of him. "Found in Litvack's office."
Sketchy didn't even need to open it to know what was in the file. It was the same one Litvack had shown him the day he'd brought her the information about the Familiars; the dossier that identified Logan as Eyes Only.
"He's not a terrorist," he stated flatly, sounding much braver than he felt. "He's just a journalist."
"Who rails against the government and the military, incites public unrest at every opportunity, and openly supports subversive groups like the S1W…"
"And the Transgenics," Sketchy snapped. "That's what this is really about, right? You know I didn't do anything to Litvack, and even you can't be thick enough not to get that whoever called in the tip was the real killer, and he wanted you to find that file. You shut down Eyes Only, you shut down Terminal City's biggest supporter. You're being played!"
"You could be right," shrugged the redhead unconcernedly, "but now that we have this, we can't exactly ignore it. You gonna tell us where Logan Cale is, or do I start going through a list of potential cellmates for you?"
Sketchy breathed deeply, dropped his gaze to the floor. Melissa's hand slipped around his, squeezing lightly. Suddenly felt as brave as he was trying to act. However, before he could speak again, a voice at the door ordered one of the guys in assault gear to stand aside, and a man in a simple black suit entered the room. Just as suddenly as Sketchy had found his courage, he now wanted to vomit again.
"Mr Theodore, don't say another word," said the newcomer. He glanced at Chubby and Red in turn, and apparently decided Red was in charge. "Special Agent Gottlieb, F.B.I," he announced, flashing an I.D. "We'll be taking over from here. This case is Federal jurisdiction, from the moment you found that file in your murder victim's office. I can only assume that your failure to call us was a momentary oversight," he added, his eyes narrowing.
If Otto Gottlieb didn't cut a very intimidating figure, his companion certainly did. Looking like an upright bear uncomfortably squashed into enough human skin to cover three normal people, he stood at seven feet tall, was almost too broad across the chest to walk through the doorway without turning sideways, and had arms thicker than holiday roasts. Whatever reply Red had for Gottlieb was lost the moment she laid eyes on Sparks.
Otto gestured towards Sketchy and Melissa to stand up, and Sparks moved away from the door to let them out. They were in the hallway outside before the cops recovered their senses. "Hold it!" Chubby cried, rushing out to stop them at the elevator. "You can't just take over and haul our suspects away without any kind of clearance."
"Who do you wanna talk to first," Sparks queried, "the DA or the Mayor?" He took a phone out of his pocket and flipped it open.
"I'll get these two in the car and call in," Otto told his partner, who nodded lightly, not taking his eyes off the two cops, who now both looked very uncomfortable, having apparently expected the usual resistance and condescendence the F.B.I was famous for, and not knowing what to do when met instead with courtesy. Ushering Sketchy and Melissa into the elevator, Otto hit the button for street level.
"What the hell is going on here?" Sketchy demanded the moment the elevator doors had closed.
Otto glanced at him, clearly surprised at the tone as he remembered his last encounter with a drunken, terrified Sketchy. "Well," he began, "you're not under arrest for starters, so how about you drop the attitude?"
Melissa spoke up before Sketchy could respond. "I thought you and White were DOD, not FBI," she said pointedly. "That's what they were saying in the news after you were on that Eyes Only broadcast."
"These days I'm neither; and hopefully those two won't push it and Sparks will be able to walk away before they realise what's happened."
"Then who the hell are you?"
"A friend of a friend," he stated flatly. "That's all you need to…"
He was cut off as the elevator doors chugged open and a fist caught him between the eyes.
No sooner had Otto hit the ground than Melissa was floored with a sweeping kick, followed up by the sole of Ben Mitchell's shoe stomping on her head. Sketchy joined them both on the floor less than a second later.
Melissa and Gottlieb were both already awake by the time Sketchy came around.
All three were bound and gagged on the dirt floor. Mitchell seemed to have thrown this together in a hurry, and hadn't enough rope for all three; Melissa's hands were bound with the cord from a telephone.
It took Sketchy a moment to realise that they were in the basement of the old abandoned building in Sector Two which had, until recently, been home to the burial ground he had come to investigate for his story. Mitchell stood by the pit that had housed the remains, speaking quietly into his cell phone. Sketchy couldn't hear what he was saying, and his expression was unreadable.
Turning to his fellow captives, he saw that both of them were casting their eyes about them, apparently looking for something that might help them escape, though both seemed quite calm considering their situation. Melissa noticed that Sketchy had woken up, and her eyes widened enquiringly, by which Sketchy assumed she was asking if he was okay. He nodded, and posed the same silent question, receiving a shrug and a bashful grin through the gag in response, as if she were annoyed with herself for winding up like this.
Otto had begun fingering at the knot near his wrists. If he thought that with Mitchell preoccupied on the phone and his hands out of their captor's line of sight, he was wrong. Barely glancing towards them, Mitchell raised a silenced pistol and fired into the dirt by Gottlieb's head. Otto grunted and turned his head from where the bullet hit, a cut appearing on his cheek trickling blood.
Nobody moved again until Mitchell approached them, placing the phone back in his pocket. He stood over Otto, using his foot to turn him onto his back.
"Where's Sandeman?" he demanded, to which Gottlieb responded with a badly muffled "Who?" through the gag.
Mitchell jabbed him sharply with his foot. "I know you're working for him, and our people just got a look at a sketch the cops are about to release from witnesses at the Farmer's Market from yesterday, so I know you brought him '452. Where are they?" he asked, drawing his pistol once again.
Otto's wordless response was easily enough interpreted despite the gag. Mitchell fired a round at his leg, grazing his thigh. Otto winced and groaned loudly, but stopped himself quickly. His eyes narrowed in anger as he stared silently up at Mitchell.
Mitchell raised the gun once more, but this time he levelled it at Sketchy's head. He didn't ask the question again. For a moment he simply held the gun there, saying nothing, waiting for Gottlieb to try and speak up. When Otto made no sound, his finger began to slowly squeeze the trigger.
The gun discharged as Melissa kicked it from his hand. The bulled shattered the glass on the guardhouse door, and the gun flew through the air, bounced into the far corner of the room and disappeared under the wreckage of a half-fallen wall.
The wire that had been used to bind her hands and feet tossed aside, Melissa charged Mitchell head-on. Off-guard and off-balance, the Familiar stumbled backwards, before across the room as she followed up her tackle with a powerful dropkick, skidding across the dirt floor and falling into the burial pit.
No sooner had they heard the thud as he hit the ground out of sight than Melissa had untied Sketchy's hands and was working on his feet.
"There are more of them coming. He was calling for people to come and collect you for interrogation," she told Otto as she moved to untie him once Sketchy was loose. "Go to Terminal City," she ordered, "and ask for Mole. Tell him what's going on."
"What the hell IS going on?" Sketchy screeched.
Mitchell was up, and already scrambling back over the edge of the pit. Covered in dust and dirt, with blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth, he looked a like a vampire who'd just forced his way out of his coffin after being buried.
"GO!" 'Melissa' roared.
Sketchy slowly allowed himself to be moved, as Otto quickly checked the his wound to be sure it wasn't serious, then hurried off, pulling Sketchy along behind him. Mitchell leapt to his feet and moved to stop them, but 'Melissa' attacked again.
"Well," she announced after the pair had disappeared into the wrecked building's main hallway, "that's a guy who'll never speak to me again!" She stepped around Mitchell's fist as he swung at her, roaring like a lunatic. "I'm just gonna go ahead and blame you for that, since – well, since you're here."
"Y'know, we haven't even been properly introduced," she added. Stepping towards while deflecting another punch, she caught him under the arm and flipped him head over heels, landing him flat on his back. "Hi!" she announced cheerfully. "I'm Jondy."