Chapter 24: Cold Trail

Ghostbusters HQ

1:30 PM

Egon had been running a spectral cross-reference on the slime sample to determine its origin. The machine was taking a rather long time as it was fairly old. In the lounge area, Kylie was looking over the manifest of books recently obtained by the library to see if anything had stuck out to her. It was a rather long list.

On the other side of the lounge, Eduardo was on the phone, "Why the hell didn't you mention it to me, Manny?" "Sorry, Eddie, I couldn't risk exposing more than I did. Word travels fast around here; especially with the media being what it is." Eduardo grabbed the bridge of his nose and tried to suppress his rage, "Okay, fine, but next time, drop a hint! Now, did you find anything on your end?"

"What little I can find. We had one lead, but it turned out to be a dead end. What is it we're looking for, exactly?"

"Hey, you got your gag orders, I got mine." At that moment Lita walked into the lounge and found Kylie looking over the list of books, she approached and pulled up a chair, "Hey, Kylie. What ya got there?"

"We had to take a call at the library this morning," the goth flipped a couple of pages and kept looking down the list. Some titles had highlighter marks on them, "Someone stole a book from special collections. I'm trying to see what book would have been likely taken."

"They don't know yet?"

"They got somewhere around 74,278 books to check and make sure they're still there. I'm checking the most recent to see if someone was expecting it." Lita's eyes widened at the number, "Why would someone steal a book? Seems kinda… dumb." Kylie turned in her seat, irritated, "Dumb? You do know special collections has some of the most rare and dangerous tomes in all the paranormal world, right?"

Lita blinked. It was clear the woman still wasn't up to speed on how dangerous the job was, "N-no, I didn't."

"These things don't just appear in a vacuum; they have an origin and they have a means to conjor them!"

Eduardo, now off the phone, approached Lita and placed a hand on her shoulder, "Don't mind her, Lita; she gets her in panties in a wad whenever someone insults her books." Kylie reached up and grabbed him by his goatee, yanking him down to where he was face-to-face with her, "How would you like to wake up one night with one of my books open attempting to suck you into the netherrealm?"

"Kylie," Egon had stepped out of his lab to the spectacle before him. She looked over and found him standing there with his arms crossed. She promptly let him go, "You got lucky this time." "I just received a fax from Amy's machine. We need to gather our materials and send one back."

"Oh, crap, I forgot about that!" Kylie slammed the papers on the desk and quickly stood up to head to Egon's lab. Eduardo rubbed his chin, "That woman is friggin nuts. Almost ripped my hair off, man."

"I donno," Lita said, bemused, "I seem to see a small glint in her eye as she berates you."

Eduardo rolled his eyes, "Yeah, love at first assault." He turned to walk back to the couch when Lita stood, "Hey, Eduardo? Have you seen Dan anywhere?" Eduardo plopped onto the couch grabbing the remote as he did, "Yeah, him and Roland went into the basement for something."

"Are you sure this is the smallest magnetron you could find?" Dan looked from his work on a table in the basement of the firehouse, peering through his safety glasses at Roland. He looked back down as he answered Roland's question, "Yeah, it's as small as I can find," smoke lumed away from the device he was working on as he soldered the last connections into place, "People will actually look at you strange when you tell them you need a smaller magnetron. Managed to find this one on an old transmitter dish."

Lita opened the basement door and began walking down to the large open space of the containment area. As she walked down, she couldn't help but peer at the large red device that sat on the far side of the room, humming ominously like a near-silent menace. The Containment Unit instilled a sense of fear the likes no one has ever known. It kept mankind safe and in danger at the same time just by existing.

She felt a hand on her shoulder. She jumped, grabbed the hand, and quickly flipped whoever grabbed her over on his back. It was Roland. "Oooooo..." Roland groaned as he looked up, Lita kneeling down beside him, "Oh, God, Roland, I'm so sorry!"

Roland groaned out, "Dan kept warning me not to do that," She helped him up as Dan stood from the workbench, "Maybe now you'll listen." Lita helped him into a chair, soon after looking over what was on the bench, "What are you guys doing down here?"

"Me and Roland have been working on this on and off for… what, about a year now?" Dan closed up an access panel on the side of the device and hefted it up, "We call this a Psychonetic Pulse-Rail." The device looked like a shotgun with two proton canisters attached where the butt of a normal gun would be. On the front pump-handle were three coils over the barrel and on the body was a drum-like storage tank hanging below just in front of the trigger.

"Using gallium metal, we plasmatize the metal using a microwave generator and the hydrogen from the proton canisters, then expel the projectile from the barrel using gauss coils. It has the benefit of a concentrated proton beam burst with the kinetic thump of a shotgun slug. If another Draugr goes walking around here, we'll be ready for it." Dan sat back down and began activating the device, "I can't wait to test this thing."

"Are you sure we should start playing with it?" Roland asked with caution, finally shaking off the cobwebs, "I mean, we just got done with it not even 5 minuets ago."

Dan cocked the pump handle, the device giving off a menacing whirl, "Come on, Roland, we might have to make a few adjustments, but…" Dan pulled the trigger and a large flash emanated from the barrel along with an ear-piercing ping sound. Lita and Roland jumped as the force of the blast knocked Dan backwards in his chair, his safety glasses flying from his face in the process. An energy wake tore through the air as the gallium slug hit a cinderblock in the wall causing it to explode outward. Lita and Roland looked at each other then ran over to him, Roland leaving his own chair.

Lita and Roland hung over Dan as they looked him over, "Dan!" Roland called out, "Dan, you alright?"

"Yeah," Dan coughed regaining his breath, "adjustments are at the top of the list."

Lita looked him over, "Do you need help up?" "No, no, that's okay," he responded, "I think I'll just lay here for a minute; reflect on my life." His eyes squinted as he looked to the ceiling of the basement, "Slimer's gone through that ceiling a lot over the years; the stains on it!"

Roland and Lita looked at each other again, then rolled their eyes as they said the same thing in unison, "He's fine." They shook their heads and started walking to the stairwell door, leaving Dan alone on the floor. After they walked upstairs, Dan still laid there looking at the ceiling, "...I am not cleaning that ceiling."

3:00 PM

The night team began their shift an hour early. Coming back up from their lockers dressed in their uniforms, they walked into Egon's lab. "Hey Egon," Dan call out, "how's the term paper doing?"

"We're getting along slowly," the physicist was typing out his document reading from other printouts Janine had relayed to him, "It appears a very small amount of artifacts were transferred from the region any time recently. Most other artifacts either went directly from customs to its point of destination outside of New York, or never even came to New York at all. We may have to assume whatever has been brought to New York has been here for some time."

"Then what do we tell Raye?" Lita asked.

"I'm giving her instructions on what the recorder looked like from the best of my recollection. It had been many years since I have seen it, and I only saw it briefly. With any hope, the image she conquers up may be enough."

Dan didn't like that, "That's a big hope, Egon."

"I know, Dan," Egon stopped and sighed. He looked to him, "but all we can do is wait until something happens again."

"I guess we'll have to use Roland's algorithm to find what we need," Dan took out the modified meter he received the night before, "This is gonna be like finding a needle in a…" Dan turned on the PKE meter and it started going insane. Dan left the meter in Recall mode which had Roland's program running already, "Whoa! What the hell?"

"Hey, man," Eduardo looked over his shoulder, "why's the meter going crazy?"

"Roland's program! It got something and it's nearby!"

Egon stood from his chair and looked at the display, "What? Impossible! According to this, it's right here in this room!"

"How can that be?" Lita covered her ears over the loud screeching the device was emitting, "Roland had that meter on last night. What changed?" That was when it dawned on Egon, "I know exactly what changed!" He snatched the meter from Dan's grip and started pointing it at his spectral analyzer. The sample jar Garrett handed him that morning was still sitting there. Pointing the meter at it, the signal peaked, "This robbery and the earthquake yesterday are connected. I think we need to find the book that was stolen…" he turned to his night crew, a look of dread on his face, "…And we better do it soon."