Wow, thanks for all the reviews and feedback. Just to give you an idea, I believe we're more than halfway through the story. I can promise a beginning, middle, and end to this one. Woo-hoo! Thanks to everyone reading!
(x)
Harvey sighed to himself as he pulled back onto the main road. Same old, same old. That girl just wasn't happy unless she was working on giving him a migraine or a heart attack… Or you know, another condition further South and a little simpler to clear up. He shook head and made a frustrated sound. He tried to sift through the thoughts, sensations, questions, and memories brought swirling into his mind since Maddie waltzed her way back into town. He found trying to put them into any solid order going about as well as giving a stray cat a bubble bath. So he did what he always did when he realized that the best possible outcome would not be worth the time, effort, or brain power required. He moved onto more cut-and-dried matters.
Or he would have anyway, if there had been any.
Harvey never found out where his thoughts might have taken him next. His cell phone vibrated at his side. He recognized the number and answered it, "Yo, Jimbo. What you got for me?"
"Where are you?"
"Just dropped off the doc-in-a-box. What'd I miss?"
"Plenty," Jim said. "I'm at Park Row. Someone started a fire in a luxury apartment complex. Residents who escaped identified the arsonist as Lucy Grimwold."
Harvey gritted his teeth. "Let me guess. She's a nice lady. Got some problems but would never-"
"Set fire to her own building? Yeah. We still haven't found her. Fire trucks just arrived. You better get down here."
Harvey looked up into the sky and saw a black plume of smoke curling up above the skyscrapers in the distance. "Do yourself a favor. Hold off doin' anything all Jim-Gordon-full-on-hero-like for like five minutes. I'm on my way."
The wheels of his squad car burned rubber as he made a U-Turn and flicked on the red police siren mounted to the dashboard.
(x)
Jim ended the call and looked to his phone. He opened an attachment from Captain Barnes to show a picture of Lucy Grimwold's driver's license obtained quickly from the database at the DMV. He stared down at a photograph of a girl in her late twenties with blonde hair, brown eyes, and an easy smile. Jim asked in a hard voice, "Any chance she could have gotten out?"
The city fire marshall, a tall, middle-aged man dressed smartly in a fireman's uniform, shouted over the sound of sirens and the blaze of the fire, "My guys're are in the building, pulling people out as quickly as they can. No one's come out who's matched her description so far."
Jim nodded. "Can I take a look at the floor plan?"
The fire marshall handed him his phone, and Jim quickly took in the entrances, exits, and general layout of the building. "I wouldn't go in if I were you, detective," the marshall said.
Jim handed him back his phone and scanned the street for Harvey's car. He saw a bus, a blue van, and a sedan parked nearby, but no sign of Harvey. He looked up into the broken windows spouting flames over his head. The smoke clouded into the air, filling his lungs and making him cough. He flicked open his sidearm and removed his gun. "I'm not going inside, but I am gonna secure the perimeter. If this one's anything like the others, she'll make her presence known."
The fire marshall told him, "Whatever you do, be careful. I've got my men working, but this blaze is gonna get worse before it gets better."
Jim nodded and ran down the side of the building, past firemen pulling residents away from the flames. A voice of reason spoke up from somewhere inside of him saying, 'Most people run away from a building going down in flames, yet you run toward it.'
The smoke stung his eyes, making them water. The closer he got to the building, the more the heat radiated, like someone turned a hair dryer on full blast right into his face. He held up his left arm and buried his face in the crook of his elbow to stop himself from breathing in the smoke. He looked up at an old metal fire escape. For a moment, Jim saw nothing except the black smoke billowing up the side of the building.
But then…
A woman with blonde hair dressed in a blouse and blue jeans staggered down the steps, lost in the haze of the smoke, coughing so hard that Jim heard her before he saw her.
"Lucy!" he called up. "Lucy Grimwold!"
The woman fell to her knees coughing. Jim caught just a glimpse of her face before her head lulled forward and she collapsed on the metal steps above. He quickly holstered his gun and ran forward to the metal rungs of the fire escape. The rungs, badly damaged from disrepair even before the fire started, hung high above his head. He jumped as high as he could, straining. His fingertips hit the corroded metal. "Lucy!" he bellowed. "I'm almost there! Just … Just hang on!"
He jumped again and just barely got a grip. It was short-lived. In no time, his fingertips slipped, and when he went down, he elbowed something.
Not something. Someone. Harvey Bullock sighed out, "Should have waited for me." He bent down and clenched together both his hands. "C'mon."
Jim nodded. "Get me up there."
Harvey supported Jim's foot and catapulted his partner upward. Jim grabbed onto the metal rung and grunting, he managed to pull himself up. His right foot found its hold, and he hurried up the ladder of the fire escape.
A blast boomed beside Harvey, sending glass shards shooting outward along with the flames. Harvey ducked and pulled up his leather jacket to shield himself. He shouted upward, "Jim! Hurry it the hell up! The entire building's going up in flames!"
Jim worked quickly, but the smoke only worsened the higher he climbed. Sweat poured down the sides of his face, and his breathing became labored as he gasped and coughed. Finally, he felt the fabric of Lucy's jeans underneath his hands. He pulled her forward, grabbed her up over his shoulder, and scaled back down the rusty ladder as quickly as his legs would carry him.
Beneath him, he could hear Harvey yelling but he couldn't make out what he was saying. The fire blazed, crackling overtop of his partner's words. Jim hurried, descending from rung to rung. His foot went back to find its hold and instead, Jim cursed as he lost his balance. It was too late to correct. He and the unconscious body of Lucy Grimwold tumbled downward.
He twisted his body so that he'd taken the brunt of the fall and waited for the sick pound of his back against concrete. He gasped in a breath as his body hit into something soft but solid instead.
"Ow! Son of a… Aw…" Harvey struggled to climb up from underneath his partner and the unwitting civilian-turned-arsonist. With the wind knocked out of him and smoke building all around them, Jim hurried to his feet and pulled his partner up.
Together they carried Lucy and ran as fast as their legs could carry them. Another window exploded behind them, sending a stream of fire shooting right past them.
Two firemen met them. They gently took Lucy Griswold from them onto a stretcher. An EMT rushed up to take her vital signs. Jim asked, "Has she got a pulse?"
The EMT waited a few seconds and then looked up, "It's faint, but it's there. We'll get her in an ambulance."
Jim said, "We'll follow."
Harvey stood beside him, hunched over, his hands on his knees.
Jim stood next to him. After a string of coughs, he said, "Thanks for the assist."
His partner let out a ragged breath and said, "For the record, I make a better blocking shield than I do a trampoline."
"Looks like I owe you one."
Harvey smirked. Jim understood. Right. As if either of them at this point could be keeping count.
Jim kept his eye on the ambulance and walked forward to follow. Harvey let off a groan and did his best to keep up. He waited a moment, as so not to lose his partner, and he looked for where Harvey parked the car. Jim saw the blue van, which he'd eyed before, jut forward and squeal its tires as it took off from the scene. He frowned and squinted. He caught that the license plate started with 'CV', before it disappeared around the corner.
Harvey took off his hat, wiped the sweat from his brow. "You know, when the Cap told us to turn up the heat on this case, I don't think this is what he had in mind."
Jim turned his attention back to the street and found Harvey's car poorly parked up against the sidewalk. "Lucy Grimwold's still alive. That's something."
They reached the car and climbed inside. "I don't know, Jim. First, the drug turns 'em into psycho killers. Then, before they can talk, it kills them on site. It leaves a bunch of bodies in its path, and so far it's taken care of anybody who's taken the drug telling us their story."
"But why?" Jim asked. "What's the pay off? What does anyone have to gain in doing this?"
Harvey rolled his eyes, speaking as if his partner oughtta know by now. "Gotham is a simple equation, Jim. Crazy plus mass hysteria equals general mayhem. The 'why' isn't high up on my list of wonderings. It's who's running this three ring circus that concerns me."
It concerned Jim, too. "When she wakes up, hopefully she'll have something to tell us."
"If she wakes up," Harvey said. "After Torres and Yanagi, it doesn't look good for her."
They followed closely behind the ambulance, making their way to the hospital. All Jim could do was hope that his partner's first instincts this time were wrong.
(x)
In the front seat of his beat-up blue van, Dr. Moon felt a bead of sweat build on his temple and trickle down the left side of his face. His breath shuddered out of his body as he watched the fire, the cops, the girl, and the entire scene unfold before his very eyes. One of the cops, a good looking clear-eyed fella, carried an unconscious Lucy Griswold away from the building that she'd very nearly burned to the ground.
Dr. Moon's lips pursed together in a thin, frustrated line. Then he jumped as his cell phone rang at his side. He didn't have to look down at the number to know who it was. Dr. Moon took the call, but an all-too-familiar voice answered first. "Dr. Moon," he said brightly. "I think we need to talk."
He could hear the fear in his own voice when he said, "Funny. I was just about to say the same thing to you."
The doctor on the other end of the line laughed, loud and long. "I like you, Dr. Moon. I liked you the moment I hired you, and I still like you now."
Dr. Moon watched paramedics accept the girl from the arms of the detectives before they shuttled her into an ambulance. "Oh," Dr. Moon drew out, his voice weary. "You might see it differently if you were sitting where I am now."
"On the contrary," the doctor's voice said. "You've eluded local law enforcement so far, albeit just barely. I can't imagine you're very comfortable. Sitting in your van breathing in the nasty smoke from that fire."
The sweat poured down in buckets now. Dr. Moon's voice caught in his throat.
The doctor on the other end of the phone line chuckled before he continued saying, "Don't give up now, Dr. Moon. You've kept this interesting. I was afraid when I first spoke to you about your experiment that its end would be as disappointing as your last. But something about conducting the experiment in real time is challenging you. I believe you're closer now that you've ever been."
Dr. Moon made himself breathe and then made himself speak. He raked out. "What do you want?"
"There are so many answers to that question," the doctor answered. "Mostly I want to see what this drug can REALLY do. Right now we get only a few moments of the raw anger these patients feel. I want to see their anger's full expression. I want to see what these victims can do, what vengeance they'll seek when they really feel the hell of their nightmare."
Dr. Moon sighed. He'd made all the calculations. Each subject recreated their scenes perfectly, the sights, the sounds, even the smells. They attacked. Just not for very long. He needed to keep them alive and keep them fighting. Dr. Moon said, "I've sent the drug to every person on my list. …But I still need to find one last subject."
The doctor took a deep breath before responding. "I have a request for your last subject."
"I'm not sure you're aware, but I'm on a little bit of a deadline here," Dr. Moon quipped back.
He chuckled and when that laugh died down, he said, "I've seen your soldiers, your nurses, your survivors … Now I want you to show me something you haven't before. We all wear our masks. You have your mask. I have mine. … In the final chapter of your experiment, I want to see what someone looks like when we take that mask off."
Dr. Moon continuing staring at the two detectives. He thought of them when he ended the call, when he started up the van, and when he peeled away from the crime scene.