8~
At Darrow University, there was a sorority that had something of a reputation.
Lambda Epsilon Gamma, Gamma House, or LEG, as it was known around and outside campus, was lively to the more conservative and wary students, citizens, and faculty.
It was the best way they could describe its occupants without sinking down to the house's level, they believed.
A shabby-looking, stockings-draped den of bad landscaping and questionable mores, occupied by the feminine cream of the slacker crop, the sorority's claim to dubious fame was its contribution to gender equality by being just as body-conscious, lustful, and academically underachieving as their wrestling-obsessed, male counterparts at Mu Gamma Tau on the other side of campus.
Historically, weekdays were the most eventful, and weekends, by far, the noisiest the house could become, bringing, on either end of the week, the campus police, concerned faculty, or, as it was mostly the case, randy, male members of the student body, through its doors.
This day, the lounge of Gamma House was graced by the perturbed presence of the elderly, diminutive, but by no means, milquetoast, dean of the university, Daniel Darrow.
"I've had it with the whole lot of you!" he addressed the small group of girls that sat, in various levels of apathy, on the curved divan. "You girls will get your act together and uphold the good name of Darrow University, or I'll have you all bounced out of here so fast, you'll think your backsides were made of rubber!"
The threat only provoked snickers from some girls, including one Dean Darrow focused his ire towards.
"And that goes double for you, Teresa. Just because you're my granddaughter doesn't mean you get to slack off. You're a Darrow. It's high time you acted like one."
"C'mon, Grandpa," she sighed. "You make it sound like Darrows never had any fun. It's college, we're young, it's inevitable."
"I'll tell you what's inevitable, young lady, your expulsion if you don't straighten up and fly right. It would break your mother's heart to find out that I had to kick you out of my school because you want to sully our name with these...friends of yours."
One of her friends spoke up. "I'll bet it was that stuck-up witch, Paula, who ratted us out. Just because she's got one of the highest GPAs in the school, she thinks she's in charge. She's not so clean-cut, y'know. I heard that the boys in the quad call her "Put-out Paula."
"Miss Wilcox did not tell me anything I didn't already know through the list of school complaints I've received...from everybody else," Daniel said.
"That's not what I heard, 3D."
Daniel crooked his eyebrow up at the impertinent student. "What did you call me, young lady?" he asked with ice in his voice.
"3D," she answered casually, instead of cautiously, as she should have. "Y'know? Dean Daniel Darrow? 3D?"
"I know what it means, you scamp."
"Then why did you ask me-"
He had enough. "I've had enough! You listen to me, all of you. If I hear one more complaint about this...house, if I see one more failing grade or one more out-of-control party, I am going to see to it that your charter is revoked, and the whole sorry lot of you are expelled."
He turned suddenly to address Daisy Blake comfortably watching the proceeding on a nearby chair.
"Miss Blake, what are you doing here?"
"Oh, I'm just visiting a friend, Dean Darrow. I'll be leaving shortly."
"See that you do, young lady. Just because your family donates a great deal to this university doesn't mean you have time to cavort with this college riff-raff. You don't need their bad influences rubbing off on you."
"Yes, sir, Dean Darrow, sir. Thanks for the advice."
He walked back towards the front door but gave the girls a warning glance before he left. "Remember what I told you, troublemakers. One more time, and I'll shut you down. No one outwits Danny Darrow!" Then, he left.
As soon as the door closed, all of the girls gave a simultaneous Bronx cheer and laughed off the encounter.
"Ol' 3D's always good for a laugh," chuckled a heavy-set teen in a varsity sweater that read "Darrow." "Boy, he'd bust a button if he knew we were going to cheat on our psych exam."
"Brunhilde's right. He shouldn't worry about our grade point average dropping any lower after we ace that next psych test," said a slim, sexy brunette with bright eyes who went by the sorority name, Minx. "Speaking of which, congratulations are in order. To our dear friend, Daisy Blake, who tirelessly fished through a ton of dumpsters to find the test answers for us. At our next rager, we're definitely giving you a toast."
Daisy stood from her seat and gave a stretch. "Thanks, guys. It's the least I could do. You guys saved my tail a bunch of times when I dumpster-dived on university grounds, and you distracted the campus police long enough for me to make my get-away."
Minx smiled. "That's cool. Besides, we always thought you and your sisters would be great for Gamma House. We've always prided ourselves on being slackers but, when you're so underachieving, you can't even make the qualifications to be accepted into Gamma House, that's when we knew that you would have been perfect here."
"Aww, you really mean it?" Daisy gushed. "Thanks, you guys. Anytime you need something from me, just let me know. Well, I gotta scoot. I'm gonna grab something to eat at Campus Burger, and then I gotta get in touch with a friend of mine. She left a message on my cell phone, but I couldn't answer it in class. See ya."
Daisy strolled across the weedy walkway to her car, parked in front of the sorority house, took out her cell phone, and inputted the command to playback messages.
She took out her car keys while listening to Marcie's message, which, in the end, had confused her as much as it dismayed her. Brainwashing? Ice water?
Daisy shook her head, trying to make sense of what the girl had said, and had just made it to the driver's side door before Dawn and Dorothy appeared behind her, unheard or seen.
"Guys!" Daisy yelped in surprise. "Don't sneak up on me like that. Almost gave me a heart attack."
"Sorry, Daze," Dawn said.
"We wouldn't want that," Dorothy added. "Who was on the phone? It sounded like Marcie."
That stuck Daisy as odd. She had thought that she was the only Blake who had any dealings with Fleach. "Yeah, she left me a message. I didn't know that you knew Marcie, too."
Dawn shrugged. "Yeah, we met once or twice."
"You guys need a ride somewhere? I'm on my way to Campus Burger for a bite. Wanna come?" asked Daisy, not noticing how closely her two sisters' positions in front of her resembled a flanking maneuver.
"Oh, that's alright, sis," Dorothy told her with an innocent smile. "We rode to school with Delilah."
"Where is she? I wanted to talk to you guys about something."
"Oh, she's around," Dawn said, glancing around the general area. "Why don't you tell us, now, since we're here and all."
Daisy leaned against the car door with a pensive look about her. "Okay. You guys know that I've noticed you sneaking out of the house late at night. I know you want to keep it a secret, but if you're getting into something that will get you into trouble, you've got to stop. I won't tell Mom or Dad, I promise, but you've got to come clean. I'll understand."
Her two sisters gave enigmatic smiles, glanced knowingly at each other, and shrugged.
Dawn spoke in a sing-song voice. "You won't believe us."
"I will. Just tell me."
"Okay. We sneak out at night and take up collections from the selfish people of Crystal Cove, all for the glory of our spiritual leader," Dorothy finished.
Daisy rolled her eyes. "Wait. You're telling me that you guys are doing community work for a church? Don't kid a kidder, okay? You know darn well that the only church we ever go to has the words "toga" and "party" in it."
Daisy turned around and opened her door, stepped in, and started the car.
"If you don't want to tell me, fine," she conceded indignantly. "But there's no guarantee that I won't tell Mom and Dad about this. They have to know sometime."
The chloroform rag came around her face so swiftly, she didn't react for a full two seconds before she tried to lean forward against the strength of the arm that clamped the rag to her.
Fingers desperately clawed and pulled against the offending hand, and Daisy struggled so frantically that she taxed the oxygen she already had in her lungs when the rag appeared.
She reflexively breathed in, smelling the pungent chemical as it began to steal her lucidity as effectively as the attacker stole from homes in the dead of night.
Daisy looked at Dawn and Dorothy imploringly from the closed car window, wondering why in the world were they smiling, waving, and pushing the car door closed when they should have been running to get help.
Her wondering soon became a distant concern as Daisy's eyes finally rolled closed, and she fought no more.
Delilah, in the back seat, pulled the rag away from her sister's face, only to have the car's steering wheel take its place, as Daisy's face fell against it, setting off a sustained blow from the horn.
Dawn opened the driver's side door, casually pushed Daisy over, and stepped into the driver's seat.
"I told you that you wouldn't believe us," Dawn sang slyly.
She found Daisy's phone between the two of them. Picking it up, she gave it to Delilah, who pressed the message playback.
As they listened to Marcie's warning, they became simultaneously stone-faced in the face of this sudden turn of events. The church was threatened. Ringleader was threatened.
"We can't call our master, now," Dorothy said as she got into the rear passenger seat next to Delilah.
"True," Dawn agreed. "He's in the middle of planning a daylight heist and can't be disturbed."
"That's okay, girls," Delilah told them as she began dialing on the confiscated phone. "I know who to call."
Thick-gloved hands moved with practiced grace over the trays of open-ended capsules that sat in airless readiness inside of the clear, cubicle vacuum chamber that was rigged in Marcie's lab.
She had been preparing and creating more of her specialty capsules throughout the late morning and early afternoon in preparation for the possible, if not inevitable, showdown with Ringleader.
"This next batch of Insta-ice should be ready to go," she said, as a way to calm her hands, as she poured the blue liquid into the top-end of the capsules, carefully filling them to the brim before vacuum-sealing the batch.
Finished, Marcie slipped her slender hands out of the bulky interior gloves, which were attached to ringed silicone seals and bolted to the inside of the chamber. Making the actual chemicals always seemed more manageable than weaponizing them, and she gave an exhale at another job done.
She was about to make a mental list of needed chemicals she was running low on when her cell phone rang on a nearby counter.
She reached over and answered it, wondering who would call her at this time of the day. Maybe it was Daisy with a reply to her earlier message.
"Hello," answered Marcie.
"Is this Marcie Fleach?" came the woman's voice in reply.
"This is she."
"Oh, thank goodness! Marcie, it's me, Joanne."
This was a surprise to Marcie. "Oh, hi, Joanne. How are you?"
"Not so good. I just got a call from that Ringleader guy," Joanne fretted. "He told me that because I stood up to him, he's going to me what he did to my shop! I want to call the police, but I'd feel a lot safer doing that if you were around."
Marcie paused for a moment, looking around the lab. "Hmm. I've got a few things to finish up in my lab, and then I'll be free. Where do you want to meet?"
"I'm at the Crystal Cove Gym. I have a membership there. I'll leave word with the receptionist that I'm expecting you. Just mention my name to her, and she'll let you in."
"Okay, I'll be there."
"Thank you, Marcie. Thank you."
The call ended, and Marcie glanced at a sizeable thermal shoulder bag, sitting on the floor, like the ones used to carry around copious amounts of cold drinks to events. It was zipped closed and bulging.
Almost time to launch her attack and bring a church to its knees.
The gymnasium part of the business greeted Marcie with the unfamiliar sounds of exercise machines moving smoothly. Lifted, assembled, and lowered weights clanked, and the overall feelings of low and high self-esteem and ego-driven competition amongst the customers dominated.
Marcie ungainly hefted her silvery shoulder bag and walked up to the receptionist's desk.
The moment she saw and recognized the woman, Marcie had to ask, "Weren't you the receptionist I saw on that field trip to Creationex?"
The woman couldn't place Marcie's face but remembered the event.
"Creationex? Oh, yeah. I moonlight there sometimes. Were you there when that guy got caught by security for stealing that prototype?"
"I made that happen," Marcie said proudly.
"No kiddin'? Well, you won't find anything that exciting here, just people trying to impress everybody else. So whatcha here for? You wanna join?"
"Not really. I'm here to see Joanne Barlow. I was told she would be here."
The receptionist looked at her notepad for a second or two, then lifted her head to Marcie once again.
"Oh, yeah. She's expectin' you. She's in the spa side of the building. Sauna room number two."
Marcie hefted her bag and was about to walk past the kiosk when the woman held up a tagged key.
"Here's a locker key. The changing rooms are in the back."
Marcie took the offered key, said "Thanks," and marched through the sea of pumping iron and people running in place.
Joanne lounged on the wooden bench, enjoying both the steamed heat and the solitude. She had a mind to go to the bucket that stood near the hotbox in the room's center and pour another ladleful of water on the hot rocks inside, releasing another soothing cloud.
Her attention cautiously shifted to the sound of the sauna's door opening. Marcie, clad in a wrap-around towel, entered, saw Joanne wearing the same, and sat on the bench.
"Hi, there, Joanne. I got your message."
"Thanks for coming, Marcie," Joanne sighed with relief. "I don't know what to do. That Ringleader has been harassing me for days, and I don't know why."
Marcie tilted her head in contemplation. "Well, I'm sure we'll think of something."
"I heard that you ran into him in an alley a few days ago. How did you manage to deal with him?"
"The same way I'm going to deal with you," Marcie said simply. "With good, old-fashioned detective work...Dr. Joanne Barlow."
Joanne sat up stiffly. "Doctor? What do you mean? I don't understand."
"You will. First, how could you have known that I had my little run-in with Ringleader, and in an alley, of all places? I never told you that."
"When Ringleader was threatening me over the phone...h-he was gloating, and he told me," Joanne answered ungainly.
"I'll bet he did," the girl said coolly. "Especially since it was what both of you wanted."
"What are you talking about?"
"First things first," Marcie told her, holding up a finger to stop Joanne's questioning. "Why did you stop by my school that day?
"I told you. I wanted to thank you for helping me when Ringleader was trashing the mall."
Marcie gave Joanne a suspicious glance. "Wow, booby-trapped jewelry. When you care enough to send the very best."
Joanne shook from that. "Booby-trapped? What?"
Marcie looked behind her, saw a wooden wall nearby, and leaned casually against it.
"I took the liberty of analyzing the bracelet you gave me, and I found something exciting on the Internet. Apparently, before you were a small business owner, you used to work for a local pharmaceutical company, before it went bankrupt due to lawsuits concerning the release of a powerful new sedative that you and your team created that had a most unusual side-effect. It was suspected to make those who took it very susceptible to suggestion."
"You knew this sedative could be introduced through the pores of the skin, so before the company closed down, you must have smuggled some of the old samples out, and when you started your new business, coated some bracelets from your store with it. When anyone wore the bracelet, and the wrist started to sweat, the chemical would enter through the pores and drug the victim."
"Now that you have the power to make hypnotized slaves, getting them to steal for you would have been easy, except trying to control them yourself would make you too exposed and risk your operation. You needed someone else to be the public face for that, to attract that attention away from you."
"Enter your partner, whom, I suspect, was probably a special effects technician since the explosives in your store were expertly rigged. He played the part of Ringleader, so he could control the victims, and keep the heat off of you, Joanne. Thus, you were able to use your shop to distribute free bracelets, creating more slaves, which Ringleader would program and send out to steal for both of you."
"That's ridiculous," Joanne scoffed, waving at the girl with a dismissive hand. "All of it."
Confident in her hard-fought deduction, Marcie ignored the gesture and continued.
"I beg to differ. You see, I also noticed a tiny chip inside the costume jewelry of the bracelet. With your partner's electronics skills, it would have been easy to hollow out the gems and then bug every bracelet with a small homing device that he could track, using his van, so he would know when somebody wore it and where they were."
"That's how he tracked me down. And that's why you came to my school, Joanne, to tie up a loose end and get rid of a possible threat. Me."
"That's nonsense. You're talking nonsense," the woman derided in a higher register than average. "There's nothing wrong with that bracelet. It was a gift. Besides, why did he blow up my shop if that's where this so-called operation was located?"
Marcie shrugged. "My guess is that both of you caught wind that someone was getting too close to finding out why their kids were acting so hippy-dippy since it was probably known that they had received bracelets from you, hours or days before. So, the attack at the mall was more than just a heist. It was misdirection meant to keep the public's focus squarely on Ringleader."
"And what makes you think that I was partners with that lunatic, anyway?" Joanne asked tightly.
"When he blew up your store, you were caught in the blast," Marcie explained. "When I went to help you, you looked a little heavy, and I felt something underneath your clothes. At the time, I thought it was just a really bad girdle, but when I saw you again at school, you looked way thinner."
"Then, it hit me. You must have been wearing protective clothing that day, meaning you knew that Ringleader was going to blow your shop up ahead of time. You wanted to be hit by that blast to make his attack on you look good. If you were willing to take that kind of risk, you either had to be working for him or with him."
Joanne got up off the bench in an irritable huff, standing in a posture of challenge towards Marcie.
"He's not my partner, all right?" she yelled, all pretense at civility gone. "Maybe what went on in the mall that day was just...coincidence."
Marcie crossed her arms at that and watched her, unperturbed, by her place by the wall.
"Lady, I'm a scientist. We don't believe in coincidences. Just like I don't believe it was a coincidence that I kept getting tired after I wore your bracelet and sweated."
One of Joanne's eyes gave a twitch as she stared at Marcie for a few heartbeats. Her mind no longer tried to form futile defenses but instead was engaged in almost bittersweet admiration for the young Miss Fleach, which was reflected by the sardonic smile that started on the corner of her lip.
This strange, little nothing of a schoolgirl had figured her out and laid her schemes bare.
But the game wasn't up yet.
"Well, I don't care what you believe," she told the girl calmly, as calmly as she padded towards her. "But I do care that you found out about me. The Blake Sisters called me earlier to warn me about you. Too bad you walked right into my steamy, little trap."
She held up a new bracelet. "By the way, you should be sweating quite nicely by now."
Joanne's arm lashed out like a cobra and caught Marcie by the wrist, pulling it by painful degrees towards Joanne's other hand, which held the poisonous bangle.
Marcie yanked back, the muscles in her thin arms straining in this desperate tug o' war for control of her mind. Although for the moment, she had managed a grateful stalemate where neither had gained ground, she knew it would be brief. She looked around the room, searching for anything she could grab hold of to anchor her.
Then, what she feared most had happened. She began to skid slowly forward, the soles of her bare feet starting to give way over the moist floorboards, giving Joanne the precious leverage she needed for a win.
Marcie pulled harder but now gained no new ground. Joanne simply outweighed and outmuscled her by a good measure. She did say that she had a gym membership, after all.
Next to them was the controlled inferno of the hotbox, making them more than keenly aware of its danger, which made their fight near it all the more frantic.
A half-foot closer. Marcie lost more footing, and the girl cursed her lack of traction until the toes of her furthermost foot bumped against the base of the water bucket next to the hotbox.
Marcie's brain switched tactics. She looked around the room again, but this time, to study it. The sauna was small, capable of seating six people with any comfort, with the broader end sporting the two-tiered benches in the rear of the room and the narrower path leading towards the doorway.
If she could use the room's cramped geometry to her physical advantage by forcing Joanne into the tapered, forward end of the room, then she could prevail, possibly.
But that seemed like a lifetime ago, as Marcie slipped too far ahead, her balance defeated by one last furious wrench by Joanne.
Marcie's wrist was forced into the space of the bracelet, just as Marcie, seizing one chance at a distraction or a counter-attack, reached for the ladle in the bucket and splashed water at the blistering stones closest to Joanne, blasting her sensitive face with gouts of boiling steam.
The woman winced as choking, heated mist clouded the room, obscuring the duo's vision but not their sense of touch, as they still grappled and collided with the benches on that side of the room.
As the water began to evaporate, visibility grew clearer, and Joanne emerged from the steam, using her strength to hold Marcie's bejeweled arm up high. Her other hand kept the other arm low to keep them so far apart, Marcie couldn't remove the bracelet.
Marcie tried to pull away, tried to kick free, but Joanne wisely kept her bent-legged stance to maintain her balance and leverage, following her victim, like a dance of dominance, as Marcie tried to twist and jerk loose from side to side.
Then, Joanne felt it, a slackening of the girl's body and a weak twitch from Marcie's upheld arm signaling the chemical end of her struggles.
Joanne smiled cruelly, feeling like a spider finally overpowering feisty prey.
She let go of Marcie, and the girl's arms fell to her sides, limp like the rest of her body, yet she refused to fall to the floor. Waning scraps of both her energy and willpower held her upright.
Joanne gave her opponent a contemptuous shove that drove Marcie back into the wall that she had been leaning against earlier. She didn't fall, but it was clear that the fight was gone, and she stood there, helpless.
Triumphantly walking towards her, Joanne stopped in front of Marcie.
"There are no backsliders in our church, missy," she said. "Now then, you will obey my commmmmands...annnd forget...everrr trrrying...Whaaaaattt?"
A wave of dizziness and fatigue from the fight hit Joanne like a left hook. She had to fight to keep her knees from giving out, and her mind tried to stay coherent enough to understand what was happening. She was losing her consciousness, slurring her words, but why?
Marcie straightened herself up and stepped away from the wall, bright, violet eyes completely lucid. She pulled the bracelet from her wrist and then held the arm up, like a magician revealing a trick.
Using her other hand, she felt around the raised wrist and then, to Joanne's groggy surprise, tore a length of clear packing tape from around it and then did the same to the other.
'Impossible!' Joanne thought in a hazy rage. 'To be counter-moved this badly!'
Joanne peered unsteadily towards her own wrist. She focused and finally saw her old bracelet, the one she gave to Marcie, securely on her now-medicated wrist.
"Nnnnnooo..." she moaned, fooled by Marcie's misdirection with the steam.
Joanne stumbled back to the benches to rest while trying to clumsily take off the bangle, but then Marcie leaned forward and, copying Joanne's tactic, grabbed both of Joanne's arms by the wrists, forcing her arms down and apart, so she couldn't bring them together to remove her bracelet.
All the strength that Joanne once possessed mere moments earlier left her as she lifted her head, gritted her teeth, and tried one last spiteful time to defeat Marcie's leverage and break the hold. It felt like trying to raise a Cadillac.
Then, Joanne quieted down as the Snoozex flowed through her veins, and she became passive. Her head bobbed, and finally, hung low.
Marcie took a well-earned seat beside her.
"Now," Marcie told her, exhausted yet satisfied with her success. "Let's have a chat. Just between us girls."
