Bring Her Home from the House of the Dead

Leaving the bedroom she used before moving in with Allison, Angela, in doctor's whites, boots and cane, and carrying a characteristic doctor's briefcase, ran into the feline feral, Cat, and Brennan. The feline actually apologized for her remark. There was such an enormous amount of pain emanating from the young woman that Angela, even without any psionic telempathic powers could feel the deep and ancient hurt inside her soul. After introductions, the cat woman went her way and Brennan mused almost to himself, "She's not herself, and she wont talk to any of us about what's wrong."

"Maybe..." answered Angela. "Maybe she can't. Maybe she doesn't even know how to tell anyone what's wrong."

From the main computer, Riley Jackson, aka Revolution, called. "I have Allison's case number. And the location of the... ahem... remains." And she handed Angela a printout.

"Can you call up a blueprint of the morgue and Forensics lab facility?" asked the bird feral.

"Coming up!"

The space above the console lit up as the holographic image of the building formed on thin air. "The remains are..." started the hacker.

"Let me guess," interrupted Angela. "They are in the Forensics Odontology and Anthropology labs. Here and there."

"Yes, how did you know? Are you psionic?" asked an amazed Revolution.

"No, it's simple logic," came the answer. "After a case of SHC, there's not much left of the body. Here, besides the SHC, there was a regular fire. What was left must have been obliterated. Our only hope is teeth and bone. And not many of them."

Adam, Cat and Shalimar were on their way to the loft. "Angela?" he called her while passing the trio studying the hologram.

"Yes?" Angela's eyes left the image, as she turned to face the man she called "falconer".

"Bring it all here, not just samples," he instructed his bird-of-prey, his voice heavy with sadness. "We will make the identification and bury her in the Hall of the Fallen, where we've buried Richard Saunders."

The winged woman nodded and the glint of a tear shone in the corner of her eye, which she quickly blinked away.

"Emma and I have already talked to Allison's parents." Adam went on. "They're not coming."

Angela stole a glance at Emma, then at Cat. Their eyes met. They understood.

"Are you ready?" asked Brennan, taking the briefcase from the feral's hand.

"As I'll ever be," she answered.

Seeing that they were all gathered in the main computer room, each on his or her way to a painful assignment, Adam surveilled his inner circle, his eyes laying on each face. "Good luck to us all."

&&&

Angela and Brennan met Jesse in the garage. The young molecular was waiting for them
at the wheel of the minivan. "Good thinking. An inconspicuous car, that's exactly what we want," said the feral woman. "Lets go."

&&&

They arrived at the City's Forensics Lab and Medical Examiner Offices by lunch time. The technical crew, restricted to the few already attending to cases, should be eating their meals, and security shouldn't be hard to avoid.

Jesse phased a back door and they broke into the building. The men, wearing lab coats, passed as technicians. Angela, a real doctor, should go unnoticed. "Nobody looks twice to a cripple," she said as they looked for the Forensic Odontology room.

The three mutants quickly made their way through the maze of corridors and hallways. The Odontology room was empty, no-one in sight. The locked door was no challenge to Jesse and he let the feral bird woman enter, while he and Brennan guarded the door against any intruders.

On the counter, in full view, the latest hot case evidence, a plaster mold with all the blackened teeth found on the crime scene neatly inserted in their right places. Fishing a plastic box from the briefcase, Angela rapidly had the mold secured.

They left Odontology and headed to Anthropology. Through the bay window, they saw a man in doctor's garb carefully laying down and labeling charred pieces of bone on a long metal table. Angela signaled Jesse, and he silently phased through the door. One quick blow to the back of the head and the man crumpled to the floor. Jesse opened the door to Brennan and Angela.

While the young men locked the unconscious technician into a cabinet, Angela checked the labels, the case number matched. She pulled on rubber surgery gloves, picked up a plastic evidence ziplock bag, pincers, and started collecting the bones from the table.

As Jesse and Brennan were about to leave and stand by the door in the corridor, a motion from the bird woman's hand stopped them. She signaled they should stay and guard the
door from inside. She looked at the two young men, let her eyes glow feral, two amber rings with black diamonds inside and surveilled the room. Through the doorway leading to the Anthropology head's inner office, her glowing eagle eyes closed in on the object she sought. As fast as she could, her boots making her walk unstable, the cane softly tapping the linoleum floor, she hurried to the back room.

"Freeze!" The main door to the Forensics Anthropology lab flew open and two armed security guards jumped in, only to be met by a karate chop to the back of the neck and a tesla coil to the chest. As the world turned black to the guards, Angela came back from the back office carrying a blackened and cracked skull. Her hands shook slightly as she carefully inserted the evidence in another ziplock bag. She closed the briefcase, now carrying all that was left of the woman she loved and they quickly made their escape from the house of the dead.