Chapter 23: Rue

Monday, June 24th, 2002

Main Branch - New York Public Library

8:22 AM

The Earthquake had done enough to the city, let alone the monstrosity that demolished Chelsea the week before. Today was another disaster. In the main reading room of the library, tables throughout were destroyed. What looked like a large trail of viscous ooze covered the floor. Alongside one of the walls was a group of police and the New York County coroner. He was taking pictures of a body that was laying beside the wall. It was a guard. Her name tag read, "Daniels."

On the other side of the room was the guard that was running main security. He was extremely distraught; his head was in his hands running his hands through his hair. He was draped in a blanket. He kept repeating to himself, "Tell me this is a dream," whimpering hard as he kept peering over to the scene of the crime, then back to the floor. A group of police walked into the crime scene accompanied by members of the Library staff and some city officials.

A larger mustachioed man in a police uniform approached the man and knelt down before him. He saw the guard was extremely shaken. The officer sighed as he looked behind him, "Someone please get this man some water?" a man in a suit nodded and walked away from the scene. The officer looked to the guard again as he spoke in a soft yet stern voice, "It's okay son. Everything will be okay."

"Emily never did anything to deserve this!" the guard uttered. He whimpered, "I swear I didn't mean to fall asleep! I swear!" The officer sighed as he put a hand on the man's shoulder, "We know you didn't, son." The guard looked up. He had tears soaking his face. It was a face of terror; a look that knew he was guilty of allowing a fellow guard to die. He didn't believe it, "Someone died because of me! It's my fault!"

"No, it isn't," the officer pointed to his partner. His partner produced an evidence bag with an amber bottle of chloroform inside of it. There was a tag on it indicating there was another piece of evidence that went with it, "We found this on Ms. Daniels' person. There was a rag in her pocket, as well. We're going to analyze the rag to see if had been used in correlation to the chloroform. My gut tells me both of them were used on you last night."

"W-what?" the guard was conflicted, "N-no. Emily…"

"I know this is a shock to you, son, but in order to clear you of any negligence, we do have to ask you to submit to a blood test. Please, follow these gentlemen outside." The one man came back with a cup of water and handed it to the guard. As the guard was being ushered out, the officer instructed him to drink the water to help settle his nerves. Carlos Rivera, "Carl" as he liked to be addressed, watched as the guard was escorted outside to a squad car. Carl turned to the destruction before him and shook his head in disgust, "What the hell compels scumbags to trash a Library? This place has fallen on insane times, Manny."

Carl's partner, Manny Chang - an Asain American - looked over the library reading room and whistled, "I donno, Carl, this reminds me what the Ghostbusters did to this place little over 10 years ago. Remember that Thanksgiving?"

"How many times have I told you…" Carl was beginning to turn red.

"Yeah, yeah, don't mention the name, 'Ghostbusters'. Still…" he knelt down and looked at the yellow-colored slime on the floor, "Kinda hard to deny this as a, 'Not Normal,' thing."

"The only thing I see as, 'not normal,' is the poor new hire was supposed to be a patsy and things didn't go as planned. Her getting killed was not part of the operation."

"Operation?" Manny asked as he stood. "Yeah. Someone wanted something, and someone went ape. Why else would the bottle be left on the one guard's person? Wouldn't she ditch it the first second, on command, after the first phase was done?" "But," Manny looked to his partner, "what is there to steal here? A bunch of old dusty books that're stamped? I don't get it."

"Maybe," Carl put his hand to his chin, "we're not supposed to get it. Maybe we're dealing with more than one culprit here."

Manny sighed, "You're starting to sound like a character from, 'Watchmen.'"

Carl and Manny were on their way to their squad car out front of the library when Manny's phone went off. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and looked at the name; it read, "Eduardo". "Hang on," he said to his partner, "I gotta take this." He pressed, "send," the call answering, "Hello?" Carl looked at his partner as he responded to the phone.

"Manny," Eduardo's voice rang over the phone's speaker, "if Carlos is there, as far as he knows, it's not me. Got it?" "Yeah, Riana, I'm free for the moment," Manny replied in short succession. It's obvious this conversation has been done before. Carl turned his attention back to the squad and walked away. Manny waited until the man was out of earshot, "Okay, what's up?"

"We've got something goin' on here, man. We kinda need your help."

"Before you go any further," Manny interrupted him, "something happened you might wanna know first…"

Ecto-1 pulled in front of the library. The doors opened as Roland and Kylie emerged, Garrett rolling from the back shortly after. Roland - ever ready with a PKE meter in his hand - scanned the area, "Strong class 5. Residual. May not need packs, but grab 'em just in case."

Loaded up with equipment and inside, the dayshift team of Ghostbusters saw a flurry of activity around the Rose Reading room - the man room of the Library. Finding amongst the chaos was a grouping of people in suits. Kylie approached them and proceeded, "Excuse me, we're trying to find the president of the library, Alex Soutter?"

A much older man with white hair and glasses broke from the group and approached the team, "I'm Alex Soutter. What is the meaning of this?" Garrett approached Kylie's side to start greasing, "Good mornin', sir, we're the Ghostbusters. We had a tip that you got yourselves a little bit on an ecto problem."

"I'm afraid it's a little more serious than that," Just as the older man said that a gurnie rolled out of the main reading room and upon it was a body bag. The three Ghostbusters watched as the gurnie disappeared out the main door. Roland looked back to the president of the library system, "Good God. What happened? We weren't told about that."

"There was a robbery last night. We are still looking through everything to determine what was stolen, if anything, but so far the police haven't turned up anything. One of our personnel…" He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes with the same hand. "It's okay, sir," Kylie said in an assuring tone, "We'll make an attempt to find out what happened."

"Definitely a class 5," Roland was knelt down scanning the ectoplasm on the floor as Garrett took a sample of said goo. Kylie kept checking the room over. Garrett closed the lid to the sample jar, some of it getting on his hand. He attempted to fling the slime off, but to no avail. He instead wiped the slime on his lower pant leg, "Yuck. This just never stops being gross."

"From these readings, it's looking like we're dealing with a guardian spirit," Kylie stated as she approached the rest of the team, "It's obvious whatever was in here was tied to an object causing it to manifest."

Garrett placed the sample jar into his front pocket as he turned his attention to her, "That's good and all, but didn't the OGB's take care of all the paranormal goobers in here years ago?"

"New books come in all the time," Kylie placed her meter back onto her belt, "It's possible it's another spell book that just got in from God-knows-where. We might have to ask the Director of collections what's come in recently."

Ghostbusters HQ

10:15 AM

Dan was sitting in the lounge area out of uniform. He was watching the news as a report came out about the Library. Eduardo joined him on the couch, bag of potato chips in hand. He watched as images pertaining to the library came onto the screen. Pictures then showed the Original Ghostbusters standing in front of the library, the images taken many years ago. Eduardo took notice of another man with the Ghostbusters in the older images, "Hey, who's the dude with the old team? That's not you, is it?"

"No," Dan reached over and grabbed some chips from Eduardo's bag, "That was some other guy they hired long before me. From what Egon told me, I'm not the only equipment guinea pig this outfit had in the day." Dan began eating his handful of chips as Eduardo joined him, talking with his mouth full, "Man, that has got to be rough. What happened to that dude?"

"Venkman tried a franchise deal and tried to open an office in Chicago. That guy supposedly ran it for about 6 months, then closed up. Most of the hauntings were in New York at the time, so the franchise idea couldn't survive on it's own."

"Chicago?" Eduardo said with surprise in his voice, "You mean, your town?"

"Yeah. It gave me some inspiration to wanna be a Ghostbuster. Place didn't last long enough for me to graduate college. Still, I somehow found my way here."

"You know," Eduardo swallowed his food and proceeded to talk clearly, "there's still a lot I don't know about you. You've been here all this time and you know everything about us."

"What ya mean?" Just as Dan asked that, the elevator opened allowing Garrett to roll onto the floor. He saw the two of them talking on the couch, but their backs were turned to him. They didn't know he was there. Garrett approached slowly as he listened to their conversation, "Well, take Lita for example. I never even knew you had a girlfriend. You never mentioned it to me."

"I never mentioned it to anyone. I have my reasons, Eddie. Let's just say, up to a point, I was kinda embarrassed about certain… aspects… of our relationship."

"But, not anymore?"

"I'd rather not go into it. I'm private for a reason." They heard a creak behind them. They turned their attention behind them to see Garrett behind them. Garrett acted quickly to act like the just came up and hadn't heard a thing, "Morning, fellas! Strain ourselves asking people questions last night?" Dan rolled his eyes at the man as Eduardo asked, Garrett rolling around to face the two of them, "Hey, what was going on there? What did Manny see?"

"We found a bunch of goop, but that's about it. I was on my way to Egon's lab so he can take a look and figure out what it was that trashed the place. You failed to tell us there was a dead body there. Thanks for making us look like complete ambulance chasers."

"Technically," Dan held up an index finger, "we're hearse chasers." Kylie and Roland finally made their way upstairs and into the lounge area. Kylie looked especially annoyed at Eduardo, "What's the matter with you, the idea of a 'Dead body,' a detail not worth mentioning?"

"What are you guys talking about?" Eduardo was genuinely confused at the anger thrown his way. "We get there, and the coroner was hauling a body from the scene," Roland crossed his arms across his chest, "You just about made us look like heartless profitters."

"But, Manny didn't mention it to me!" Eduardo stood up and began defending himself, "I would have told you." Dan stood, "I can vouch. Eddie had the guy on speaker phone when he called him. He never mentioned it." Everyone looked to the two of them. They couldn't be lying, considering. Dan looked and saw the sea of faces before him not understanding, "Look, the guy likely had a brain fart. It's been known to happen. The mistake was clearly not Eddie's."

The three dayshift looked to the other two Ghostbusters before them, then to each other. Roland looked to them, "Okay, you guys have the benefit of the doubt, but next time, Eduardo, make sure this guy gives us a better heads up."

"Yeah," Eduardo's face became more solemn as he agreed, "no problem, man." With that the three dayshift left the room and walked into Egon's lab. Eduardo sat down as he threw the chip bag onto the coffee table. Dan sat beside him, "You owe me for that." Eduardo looked to the man beside him, "I didn't ask for you to do that, man." "I know," Dan agreed, "but that's not a thing you just miss. I saw your body language start screaming, 'It's not true.' It's only fair you be heard, even if I have to stick my neck out for ya," he patted the latino on the back, then grabbed the chip bag throwing it back onto his lap, "Come on, before Slimer…" "POTATO CHIPS!"

Dan saw a green streak fly out of the ceiling and towards Eduardo. Dan dove over the side of the couch and hit the floor. After a nice, healthy SPLAT! Dan peered over the arm of the couch. Eduardo had been slimed and Slimer now had the bag of potato chips in his hands. Eduardo looked over to his partner and leader, scowling hard as he did, "Why couldn't you have stuck out your neck for that?!"

All Dan did was shrug.

Staten Island

11:20 AM

Madame Holly was once again holed up in her office. She had tore her office apart digging through boxes looking for something very specific, but was coming up empty. On her desk was a beaten and worn book with a destroyed binding on the spine. She looked to be slightly manic looking through the boxes and drawers, "Goddamnit, where is it?"

She was shaken. Something had happened that morning that was now starting to bother her worse than anything had before. She backed up from her filing cabinet with her hands over her mouth and nose. She was starting to breathe in a panic; she attempted to calm herself down a moment. When that moment passed, she turned to face the door to find Matthew standing there. She jumped, "Jesus Christ, Matthew! You scared the hell out of me!"

"I'm sorry, Madame Holly," he once again spoke in his even tone, "after what happened this morning with Sister Daniels, I took the liberty of taking the…" he looked around the office and saw the destruction, "Diary of… Eiffel. It seems you were doing the same."

"What?" she yelled, rounding around her desk to confront him, "You took Eiffel's Diary without my consent?" She wound up and slapped the man across the face, the man's hair finally being knocked from it's slicked back position, "Do you have any idea how long I was looking for that goddamn book?"

Matthew looked back forward and looked to his priestess with a scowl. He snapped and grabbed her by her cheeks, "Let us understand something, you fucking harlett: I may be at your beck and call, but my patence can only be worn so far. I am trying to cover your ass. Now sit down and let me explain while you drink yourself into another blackout!" He shoved her toward the ground.

As she stood up and scrambled to her desk where she sat atop, Matthew produced a small, what appeared to be photocopied booklet. On the pages were scans of yellowed pages of an old diary, "I have managed to find a means of taking care of our little problem. I assume you were trying to use this information yourself, but I had already found our solution. Using Eiffel's notes, I am currently having built a molecular bonder. It will use modern parts and will be used in conjunction with selenium-core girders. Not even Effiel could have foreseen Shandor's influence with his old inventions."

"We have to be sure this will work, Matthew," Holly reached for her bottle of whiskey. Pulling the cork, she took a straight swig from the bottle. A sour look appeared on her face for a moment before she put the bottle back down, "Considering what happened…" she stopped and shook her head. She looked distraught, "It's too high a profile."

"If we activate this device, it will keep the Ghostbusters away from the area as well," He put the photocopied book down and took out a comb. He proceeded to straighten his hair out, "The added effect would be dissipation of paranormal energies by way of absorption."

"We have to be careful," the woman stated as she took another swig of alcohol, the burn telegraphing on her face before she continued, "We can't do it too close to where the circle would be established; the Gods would be weakened by such a device."

"I have anticipated that," hair now in order, he placed his comb back into his pocket, "We're installing the device into the milling facility on the storage scaffold. Is there something wrong?" Matthew looked intently at the woman before her and saw she was now straight up nursing the whiskey bottle; there was a look of extreme worry, "I donno, Matthew, maybe we're going about this the wrong way?"

"Don't worry, my Gydje," he approached and slowly pulled the bottle from her hand, "We have everything under control. You just pray for our fallen sister."