Darkness at Noon
Chapter 5: Running Up That Hill
"So, mind explaining why you're drunk and rubbing yourself with cough syrup and slime?" She drawled.
"Ugh," he choked, shuddering over the toilet.
"Mm." She reached into the bathroom to rub his back soothingly. "Very astute. I'm going to give you the benefit of a doubt here and assume it had some reasoning behind it."
"Hgrflgrl." He gave her a flat stare.
"My thoughts exactly." She backed out of the way so he could stand and brush his teeth.
Kylie was fretting just outside the door. "- and I'm really, really sorry I took the ghost beacon, if I'd have known any of this was-"
"Nevermind that," Egon growled. "I've slowed the effects for the time being. Someone call the hospitals and inform them that topical application of opiates will help."
Kylie fled to do his bidding in hopes it would get her back on his good side.
He leaned on the sink cabinet, shivering. He was soaked through in sweat, his left hand was coated in ecto, and his right arm had spatters of sticky cough syrup over his other skin afflictions. He looked like hell warmed over and Janine felt bad about her sarcasm a moment ago.
"What happened?" He was looking at her now, actually taking her in with increasing concern.
Oh, yeah. She put a hand self consciously over the bandaged cut over her brow. It had stopped bleeding a while ago, and it wasn't bad. "The trap exploded, not sure why...It flattened both of Ecto's back tires and there was only one spare so...We had to take a couple subways back. I called you from three different payphones to take my car and pick the packs up. Took forever to get back here, we got stopped by a couple cops because we had them with us."
He looked at the clock, then his watch. It had been four hours since they had gone out shortly after sunset and it was now 11 p.m.
"Yeah, it really did take that long. What were you doing here?" Janine quirked a brow, crossing her arms.
"Time dilation," he muttered.
Janine just shook her head in response. That didn't answer very much.
"Injuries?" He lowered his voice. He scratched at his non-cough-syrup-coated arm.
"Some bruising, a few cuts. We were able to get Ecto between us and the trap before it went. We're all okay aside from the car." Hopefully it wasn't being stripped as they spoke, it wasn't exactly parked in a good neighborhood.
He exhaled and leaned on the door frame. "Thank goodness, I had thought..."
He shook his head and brushed past her to the lab, where he began coating his ugly spots with cough syrup. It looked strange, smelled strange, and in general was strange, but it did seem to bring him some relief. That much done he went to his drafting board and tore a sheet off the massive ream of paper, setting it aside carelessly.
Janine sighed, watching.
Garrett came up beside her. "So what's the plan, Sarge?"
"You kids are going to get onto the database and look through the photos for anything resembling the entity; I didn't see it when I was attacked. Iam going to double check my figures and make sure the equipment does not fail again."
"We got one better than that, Kylie knows its name."
"Good, then look it up. And send Roland in, he called the companies, correct?" He sat down, shoulders hunched as he began scribbling a series of equations in the margins.
"Yeah..." Garrett seemed taken aback by the abrasiveness.
"Then get on it."
Janine cast an apologetic look at Garrett, who just shrugged and rolled away.
Egon glanced over his shoulder, his face pinched and pale. "Janine...I dislike asking this, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to focus with you standing there. Can you please go assist the others?"
She opened her mouth to say something and thought better of it. "Yeah, no problem."
Janine left him in the dim and headed downstairs to the garage, where most of the kids were gathered around Peter's old desk. Kylie was leafing through a book with a frustrated expression while Garrett and Roland were trying to use the computer - from their expressions that was going just about as well.
Eduardo was seated at her desk with an open phone book in front of him. She raised a brow at him as she passed and he shrugged at her, instructing the person on the other line to hold the anchovies.
"Alright, what've you got?" she asked, pushing the gate open and stepping into the office.
"Whole lotta nothing...None of these are in English." Kylie scowled at the book in her hands and added it to a pile she had collected off to the side.
Roland gestured at the computer. "Password protected. We haven't been able to figure it out."
Janine sighed and glanced over at Eduardo just as he hung up the phone with a 'click.' "Hey, go upstairs and get Egon's password. And ask him where Tobin's is."
Eduardo blinked at her and pushed his hands into his pockets as he rose, muttering as he went. In the meantime Janine helped Kylie sort through the books, separating them into piles of "English" and "Egonish."
Eduardo returned a moment later.
"Hey, so..." Eduardo held up a note, squinting at it. "You know, here, he said it was case sensitive. Tobin's is supposed to be in the corner."
Roland sat the note on the keyboard and mumbled as he typed. "B67AcO7637LiSiSc347792 exclamation point..."
Kylie went to search for the book while Roland and Garrett commenced to the research finally. Janine glanced at Eduardo and gave him a half smile. "I'll pitch in for pizza."
He returned the smile. "Nah, it's okay, I work for the place on weekends so it's free. Just gotta tip. So what do we do now?"
Janine looked over her shoulder. Kylie was nose deep in Tobin's and the boys were engrossed in the computer.
"Do you know how to play Spades?"
About an hour later, between the five of them, they had turned up only one readily available source on their spook. As far as the computer database went her full name was most likely Achiratima and it meant something like 'destroyer of civilizations.' The shortened version meant 'swift or prompt.' It had turned up the title of four or five books, but only one they could actually find in the Firehouse.
Said book just had to be written in indecipherable pictographs. Egon read it aloud to them, skipping several lines as he did so. Janine only caught it because she was watching him keep his place with his fingers.
"This confirms your findings at least. The remaining data is sketchy...I am fairly certain I know how the 'destroying of civilizations' is done, but it has no further information on if the disease can spread without a proxy to host her essence." He set the book down carefully.
"The radio's still saying more people are getting sick," Eduardo supplied. They had been listening to it in the living room while they played cards. He took a breath to add something and stopped himself, crossing his arms and bouncing on his heels. Janine was sure she knew why he wasn't saying anything else.
"I don't like the sound of that." Roland scratched his cheek, staring at the sticky patches on Egon's face.
"Neither do I." Egon looked away from them, towards the floor. It was hard to tell exactly with it kept as dim as it was.
Janine bit her lip. "Alright, so we just have to track her down and trap her, and everything should be back to normal, right?"
Egon shrugged. "That's not always the case. I find myself at a loss on whether or not it would work that way. Ideally, yes, but ideals are not always the reality."
"Well, lets get back out there and try at least!" Garrett shouted. "No pain, no gain!"
"Do you think this is a game?" Egon stared at the red head with an unreadable expression.
"Naw, not a game, but we better win regardless, right?" Garrett scratched the back of his neck.
"Right..." Egon sighed, resting his elbows on his knees. "Alright, I need you to get the remaining traps. We're going to give them an overhaul and be absolutely certain they are in working order if we have to cobble them together. Get the packs too, we must have missed something with the first trap."
Janine chewed the inside of her cheek, knowing he probably blamed himself. Normal people could make mistakes, Egon couldn't. She lingered after the kids had gone downstairs to get the equipment from where they had stashed it.
"So, the radio said there had been fatalities from this..."
He winced as though struck and took his glasses off to rest his head in his hands. "Damnation," he whispered.
"When were you going to tell us it's potentially fatal?"
"It would just have distracted you."
"Sure, but its still a factor." She lowered her voice. "You're dying, aren't you?"
"That's irrelevant." He glared at her. "You five have more important things to worry about."
"Alright," she said softly. "Just know that I'll be here if you need me for anything."
"...I could use a cup of coffee?" he asked with a weak smile.
"Sure thing, boss." She forced his lips to curl upwards in a return smile and quickly left for the sanctuary of the kitchen. She couldn't let him see the size of the lump in her throat or just how pale she was certain she had become.
The kitchen was a horrific mess. She dug through cabinets, upturning a petri dish here and an inexplicable remote control there. Eventually she dug out enough coffee grounds and a filter to make a couple cups. Hell, everyone needed it anyway, they'd been going all day and she knew she was running on fumes at this point.
Sleep was not a luxury they were afforded right now.
The kids passed by with the packs and the traps. She opened the coffee maker and suppressed a gag at the old grounds. Cleaning it was quick business, but it still took time and now even time was a luxury for a whole lot of people. Her cheeks felt damp for some reason.
She turned the maker on, turned the light off, then sat in the dark for a moment while her eyes adjusted and damniteverything was so blurry and her chest felt tight like she was suffocating and she knew she had no one to blame for this but a spook they might or might not be able to catch with the equipment like it was...
She grabbed the coffee can off the counter and raised it over her head to spike it on the ground, then stopped herself. Don'tgooverboardhere, Janineoldgirl, justgetthroughthis.
She took a deep breath, schooling herself into a less frantic state of mind, and sat the canister back on the counter. The maker purred and the coffee filtered into the carafe. She spent fifteen minutes waiting for it to finish and another ten pouring everyone a cup, then putting them onto a tray she unearthed. It gave her just enough time to compose herself like she should have been all along.
After all, everyone was depending on her to lead the charge.
Running Up That Hill is a song by Placebo.
Note on Egon's password.
It's Janine's biorythm using the Periodic Table. Because rule of "Hypsidium is a hopeless romantic." Not that anyone knows what it actually is.
Random numbers courtesy of my Megamind buddies...
5, 67, 89, 8. 76, 37, 3, 14, 21, 34, 77, 92!
Works in a waveform, but not dependant on a circle so no pi over x, etc. Scale of 1-100. 10 numbers because it needs to be unique enough to track, the wave would repeat.