Chapter 2 – A Troubling Pattern
Late morning sunlight that was coming in through a window lightly reflected off of Sailor Mercury's dark blue hair as she sat in her private office in the Crystal Tokyo General Hospital. This office was her favorite out of all the others that she had scattered around the city. Every wall around her was covered with floor to ceiling bookshelves that were crammed full of various scientific books and extensive medical dictionaries. She never allowed any dust particles to land on her books for very long as she was constantly pulling books out to read or do research for patient treatments. During the rare occasions where she had five minutes to herself, she would dust off her precious books not currently in use before she got back to her pile of work for the day that always seemed to be never ending.
She was sitting at her large mahogany desk, staring into the light of the small desk lamp that she had sitting in front of her. She was taking a break and letting her mind drift off into a daydreaming state and for once it in her extremely busy life that her lifestyle had become, she was thinking about things that most normal women would think about instead of medical procedures or scientific advancements that she hadn't finished dreaming up yet. No, today Sailor Mercury was thinking about how wonderful it would be to go on a second honeymoon with her husband, John. As her mind continued to play on that sweet sounding thought, she'd worried at first about getting a babysitter for their little daughter, Madison before she laughed out loud at herself. She knew that any of the other Sailor Soldiers would almost or maybe literally jump at the opportunity and they may even have to end up drawing straws to see who would get the job.
Feeling her body getting stiff from sitting in the desk chair for almost three hours straight, she got to her feet and started slowly pacing around the office. She did this often when she had something in her head that just wouldn't come up with a solution to itself on its own but now she was doing it just to stretch her legs. Underneath her, there were worn circles in the plush, red carpet that covered the entire floor of the office, from where she'd worn it down from previous circuits around the room. As she continued to think about her sweet fantasy of a romantic vacation with John, she began to think about the next thing on her pile of papers that was waiting for her when she sat back down at the desk. She had such a wonderful analytic brain that she could work on more than one issue in her head at a time. As walked past the desk, she would pause every so often and jot down some notes in a hardcover journal that was always open and ready to receive her wise information as it entered her brain.
Sailor Mercury paused at the large window and took a moment to look out at the world outside. She had an office that almost mirrored this one in the major scientific facility down in the southern district of the city. The view from the window here at the hospital was much more phenomenal as there were further building to block the view and she could see the rolling green fields and snow-capped mountains that dotted the far horizon. Her office overlooked a topiary garden that was just across the street, and when she was feeling a little sad or depressed because of a dilemma that was proving more difficult to get solved, she would stand at the window and stare down at the gardens, letting the natural beauty of them relax her and give her time to refocus. They always seemed to be able to calm her soul and give her fresh energy to continue working on whatever problem currently occupied her time.
The view from the office in the scientific facility on the other hand, only faced the factories that spewed out a thick white smoke, and she usually had the shades drawn so she wouldn't see such a disheartening scene while she worked. She knew that factories were releasing pure water vapour and producing clean energy but the sight of the smoke stacks still brought her back to the time before the Great Sleep when factories spewed far more toxic chemicals into the air.
She had to giggle to herself again as she realized that she definitely got more work done in her office in the scientific facility because she had absolutely no distractions other than the calls or knocks on her door from people needing either her attention or assistance. That being said, she still loved and preferred this office in the hospital more despite the reduction in her work productivity. She sighed heavily as she took one last look at the gardens before turning around to sit back down again at her desk. As she settled down into her chair, she silently vowed to herself that she wasn't going to get up again until she'd made another large dent in the pile of papers sitting in the right corner of her desk that had built up over the last few days since she had last been here. She glared over at it like it was a monster from Negonall that had come to be her personal demon. She had never been to hell-ish dimension but she had heard enough stories from the Sailor Quartet and Sailor Venus that she felt like she had been. She sighed again before reaching out and sliding the top sheet off the pile down in front of her so that she could read it.
When it came to the administrative side of things, Sailor Mercury often turned back into a stubborn teenager. She hated this kind of paperwork more than anything else. She would much rather be in one of her many laboratories, conducting a scientific experiment or making her rounds at one of the hospitals , visiting patients and helping them feel better. However, she was the chief medical officer for Crystal Tokyo and by extension, the Crystal Kingdom as well as a major technological powerhouse that seemed to dominate her time. Sometimes she was amazed that she had even found the time to have a relationship with John, much less have and raise a daughter with him. She was grateful for his patience with her and was the reasons she had been thinking about getting away with him to show her appreciation.
The nature of her two competing careers made it necessary some days where she had to actually lock herself in her office and hide the key from herself in order to get the accumulated paperwork that needed to get done so it wouldn't stack up like this and potentially hold up any of the people that worked with or for her. Sailor Mercury was far from being a procrastinator, but when it came to the administrative side of jobs, she would seemingly just conveniently "forget" that it had to be done before the pile grew as tall as she was. Although she had hired several people to do this job for her, there was still a significant pile each day that needed her personal attention, such as a mystery illness that the doctors couldn't cure and she would need to read up on the known or attempted treatments in the past that had failed before she attempted to find a new way. On the other side of the coin were the forms and documents that needed her personal signature, such as an approval to build a new wing to the hospital or whether or not to pull the feeding tube on a patient that was declared be brain dead. Those decisions were especially hard on her, because she wanted to save everyone, but knew that she couldn't. When something like that happened, she would leave the hospital in tears and rush home to her husband and daughter for comfort as he was her 'rock'.
She'd began to sway along to the soft jazz music that came from a small radio that sat nestled into the corner of her desk just as she had been for the last hour or so before getting up to walk around as she resumed the process of going through the paperwork one page at a time, organizing them in piles marked as either being complete or needing some more input or research before she could sign off on it. The completed pile was steadily growing and it was soon noticeably larger than the one that was labelled as needing more information. That bolstered her confidence that she might be able to get out of here in time to spend almost the entire evening with her family. There were some nights that she never left the office because there was simply too much work to do and some of it was time sensitive. On days like that, she would pull out a small cot that was folded up inside the closet next to her desk with a blanket and pillow resting on the top shelf, ready to sleep on. She smiled as she let her mind enjoy the thought of snuggling up to John in her bed instead of the stiff makeshift bed when the phone rang, cutting through the music and her focus. She paused for a second, letting it ring one more time before reaching for it without lifting her eyes from the page that she was currently perusing.
"Hello? This is Sailor Mercury. Can I help you?" She propped the phone between her ear and her shoulder so that she could sign the document in front of her and add it to her completed stack with a small smile.
"Yes, ma'am. This is John Cumberbatch." The tone of voice was neutral. It was neither bursting with anticipation to share with her some wonderful news from one of laboratories under her jurisdiction nor was it brimming with regret at having to tell her that some accident had occurred or some experiment had gone out of control. Sailor Mercury immediately recognized the name thou. John was the chief scientific supervisor for the Europa territory of the Crystal Kingdom. He was in charge of a lot of important research and experiments that were being conducted under her direct orders. He was as high as anyone could get in this field because he reported directly to her. Sailor Mercury had a chief scientist in every territory of the Crystal Kingdom who reported directly to her, because she was the be all and end all for the scientific experiments that happened on Earth since she was the only one with a direct line to Neo-Queen Serenity who was the ultimate voice about anything that occurred within the Crystal Kingdom. Her chief scientists usually checked in with her once a month where they would share all of the current progress on the projects that were currently under their supervision.
"Oh, well hello, John. I didn't think I would be hearing from you again so soon. I thought we'd agreed to talk in another week or so." It wasn't necessarily that Sailor Mercury didn't want to talk to the man, it was just that an early call usually meant that something bad had happened and they needed Sailor Mercury's guidance on how to fix it and/or start over. Those were the days when it almost felt like she'd lost one of her own children. Granted, she knew that her daughter, Madison was safe and sound at home with John, but it still had a very emotional pain that panged through her at the explanation of a failed experiment that had shown such high promise in theory.
"I'm very sorry to call you and break our usual formalities but we have a very serious situation at one of our scientific facilities that requires your immediate input and attention." Sailor Mercury immediately perked up and focused entirely on John's voice. She didn't like being in situations like this but she knew that this was something that only she could take care of given her job titles. As she began to formulate ideas for what John could possibly be calling about, she dropped her pen to the desk surface as she completely forgot about the paperwork that was still sitting in front of her. The desk itself even seemed to disappear along with the rest of the office as her mind shifted into its analytic mode. All that existed at the moment now was the phone that she held in a death grip, right up to her ear.
"There was another robbery, wasn't there?" Sailor Mercury guessed, recalling her memory of a string of recent robberies across the Kingdom where non-specific laboratories would be empty at night but when the scientists that worked there showed up in the morning the next day at their normal time, large equipment or materials would be missing. So far, nothing had ever shown up on the security camera video footage to help them out in their investigations as to who could be behind them. It was almost like someone had frozen the screen during the robbery, then let it play again after they were gone with their stolen goods. From the tone of voice that John was using as he spoke to her, she already knew that whatever "situation" he was calling her about was large, and probably involved a large piece of laboratory equipment if she had to guess.
"Yes, I'm afraid so. A company in the Germanic region reported that a large centrifuge has gone missing. They can't understand how because the thing was bolted to the floor and weighed almost a ton. It was supposed to have round the clock surveillance, but they've already interviewed the guard that was to be on duty the night it disappeared, and he openly admitted that he went to the break room to listen to sports on his radio instead of watching the centrifuge. Rest assured that he is being disciplined accordingly for that infraction but that is a moot point right now.
The scientists employed at that facility were expressly told that the centrifuge was not to leave that particular workroom for any circumstances so it is highly unlikely that it simply misplaced in another laboratory. There were no drag marks or tire tracks, or anything else that would indicate how someone could have moved it. As I already stated, it would have taken a lot of mechanical power just to get that thing up off the floor, much less out of the facility. It's a complete mystery, and even though the police have been called to come investigate with a team of forensic scientists; there is absolutely nothing at the moment that can tell us how it was taken or where. Also on a side note, one of the canisters of liquid nitrogen was reported missing. Again, we have no idea how and are currently investigating that theft as well."
While she was listening to John talk, Sailor Mercury reached into the top drawer of her desk and took out a small notebook which she flipped open to the first page. She glanced over the information that was on the page and was devastated to be reminded that there had been twenty industrial or scientific machine thefts over the last seven months. The thefts ranged from the western part of Americana to the Ming region and even into the southern regions of Afrika and Mestizo. She had every location, date, time, and what was stolen catalogued so she would be able to devote any of her spare time to figuring out what all the missing parts could possibly be used for. She began to write today's entry in the book that John had just reported to her. She let a frustrated sigh escape her lips. This problem had just jumped up to the top of her list of current priorities, and she didn't like it in the slightest. It made her sick to her stomach to know that such powerful machines that were meant to help so many people in different ways were disappearing at an alarmingly rate and more than likely, being used by evil people for things that they were never meant to do.
"I understand. I will bring this to the attention of Neo-Queen Serenity and the other guardians immediately. An investigation of our own will be launched just as soon as we can all get together. In the meantime, I want you to see to it that any other facility with sensitive research or materials are equipped with the new anti-theft technology that we developed last year, including the Germanic one that was just robbed. I'm afraid that the thieves may come back and if they do, we must be ready. They've never stolen two things from the same facility before, but who is to say that they may not come back for more at some point." Sailor Mercury's voice sounded grim as her words sunk within her.
"If I may interrupt you for a moment, ma'am. The Germanic facility already had those anti-theft and anti-intrusion measures in place and they have already been proven to have been operating at peak efficiency during the time of the burglary. Somehow, the thieves managed to bypass them completely and not leave us a single clue on how they did it or even who they are. That was why I called you immediately, Madam Mercury. I wanted to stress just how dire this situation really is. I don't know how we can stop these invisible thieves or at the very least, prevent future burglaries from occurring." Sailor Mercury could hear the desperation in John's rise as he spoke. She couldn't blame him for being concerned and troubled by this crime spree.
She pursed her lips both in anger and frustration. The investigation by the Sailors that she'd just promised John was not the first one that had taken place. Each disappearing piece of equipment or material had had an investigation of sorts at some level of authority. The Sailors had conducted their own probes after the tenth and twentieth theft but so far all of them had turned up absolutely nothing. Sailor Mercury was getting more and more frustrated by the lack of progress that was being made, and she was almost certain that Neo-Queen Serenity was as well. They couldn't figure out where the stolen equipment was being kept, or anything about who had might have taken them in the first place. She had developed a new computer program that she had installed into the Crystal Supercomputer located in the heart of the Crystal Palace as soon as she had deemed it was ready. This program was designed to monitor the entire city, and all its outlying regions for large amounts of energy, in particular vast amounts of mechanical or electrical energy generated by clean sources such as water or wind which is what it would take to run most of the machines that had been stolen thus far. After all, why would someone steal all of those machines if they weren't going to run them? She had also placed the same program in various less powerful computers in each of the territories of the Crystal Kingdom which made up almost the entire planet. In theory, if the machines were somewhere on Earth, there shouldn't be any place where they would remain hidden for such a long time. So far, however, the supercomputer and its sub-systems had turned up nothing as well, and the corresponding investigations were still stuck at square one.
The news that her anti-theft devices had also proven ineffective was equally troubling to the brilliant sailor guardian. She had personally developed the more high tech anti-robbery devices within the last year, and had been sending them out in increasing quantities to the laboratories once they had passed the quality tests. These new apparatuses had included pressure sensitive floor pads, interior atmosphere monitors, and audio detectors. She had hoped that these new items would help them either prevent future thefts or at the very least, gather information on the perpetrators when they committed another crime. She was sure that the gadgets' design worked just fine since she'd personally tested them out herself.
"Thank you John for telling me all this. I'll be in touch with you after I meet with Neo-Queen Serenity and the others. You could really help us out if you would be so kind as to alert all of the other facilities in your jurisdiction and tell them to be on the highest security alert level that they have and to increase whatever manpower they can manage to put together. It may not be much of a deterrent to these criminals, but maybe someone will see or hear something that would help us. If we're really lucky, maybe one of the thieves could be captured." Sailor Mercury did her best to make that last part sound convincing but even she didn't believe that they would get that kind of break.
"Right away Madame. I'll make sure it's done immediately. I have a team here on standby that can help me get it done that much quicker. If I hear about any other robberies or if there are any developments on this latest one on my end, I will call you back right away. Again, I apologize for taking up so much of your precious time."
He hung up the phone before Sailor Mercury could utter a reply back. Sailor Mercury excused the lapse in politeness on John's behalf and chalked it to his eagerness to get to the tasks assigned to him by her. Sailor Mercury remained frozen in place, with the phone still up to her ear as she stared off into space as she became lost deep in thought. The annoying dial tone continued to drone on in her ear until it reached the point where it broke her out of her reverie and she finally put down the receiver back into its cradle.
She started to go through her notebook, reviewing her past notes on the robberies. She was trying to make heads or tails out of the things that had been stolen. They couldn't all work together, could they? That was one of the burning questions that she had been asking herself as the number of thefts had increased. Her mind was racing with triple the normal speed of a normal person, but she still couldn't see a connection between any of the robberies or what possible reason the stolen items could be used for, either good or bad. She knew that there had to be a pattern that she just wasn't seeing and there was no way that these were just random targets! She just had to try harder and look at it from every angle until she found it. As she finished reading the latest entry about the theft John had just called about, Sailor Mercury's eyes wandered over to the intercom. She reached out with her left hand and pressed the talk button. She waited for the momentary bout of static to clear before speaking into it with a clear and concise voice.
"Mary? Would you come in here please? The door is locked, but there's a spare key hanging from the door handle on your side that you can use to open it." A few minutes later, Sailor Mercury could hear the lock click as the door was opened and a woman knocked lightly on it before she fully entered the room. She was tall, with short blonde hair and she was young, looking to be in her early twenties but with the extended lifespans of every human on Earth now, she was probably closer to Sailor Mercury's age. It made Sailor Mercury feel old for a few seconds when she thought about how many years she had walked the Earth, both before and after the Great Sleep before she mentally shook herself and focused back on the problem at hand.
"Mary. I need you to do me a huge favor, ok? The rest of this paperwork that's on my desk needs to be taken care of and I have a much larger problem that I need to deal with right now that I simply can't concentrate on all of this. Please, can you sit down and make sure they get taken care of." Sailor Mercury had only made this request once before because even though she hated administrative work, she still took all her work very seriously. The last time that she had done this, it was because her water had broken and she was about to give birth to Madison. "I'm so sorry to do this to you, but I need to speak to Neo-Queen Serenity right away about this string of robberies plaguing the Kingdom's research facilities. More and more of them keep happening and we have to get to the bottom of this." Mary smiled and nodded her head in understanding and gracefully moved to the side so that she wasn't blocking the door for Sailor Mercury. "Thank you very much" Sailor Mercury replied as she sprang up from her chair and snatched up her notebook before walking briskly from the room, leaving Mary all alone.
When Sailor Mercury disappeared from sight into the antechamber located off the main office which housed a bathroom and small closet area, Mary moved over and settled into the chair to get to work. She loved working for Sailor Mercury and she looked up to the brilliant guardian as a role model for how she wanted to live her life. She understood that there were so many important things going on in the world that the Sailor Soldiers had to deal with, and she was more than happy to try and lessen the load for Sailor Mercury as much as she could. Her heart usually broke for her boss as it seemed like Sailor Mercury had the weight of the all the world's burdens on her lithe shoulders. Recently of late she was starting to look a little more haggard than usual and it amazed her how one person could balance two demanding careers, a marriage and raising a child without going insane.
When Sailor Mercury finished collecting everything that she needed from her antechamber, she cast a quick look as she passed through the office and saw Mary going through the papers as if she was the world's expert on them. She was so glad that she had someone that she could count on as much as she did with Mary. She made a mental note to make sure she did something nice for her when this current issue was solved. Not breaking stride, she rushed out the door towards the exit with the intention of getting to the Crystal Palace immediately.