Building Neptune

Chapter 2: "Surfacing in the Swirling Shallows"

Beeping monitors. Cold sheets. A woman's voice.

"Have you people even bothered to train your staff to treat mutation-related injuries? No, I didn't think so. So unless you know another doctor who has dedicated her life to the study of mutation, I will be treating the boy."

"Dr. Grey, the police have yet to question the boy. It's a sensitive situation—"

"They won't get to question him if he doesn't pull through."

Cal tried to open his eyes, but the left one was covered with a bandage. The right one blinked open, greeted by a white ceiling and fluorescent lights. His throat was dry. He coughed, and suddenly two lab-coat-clad figures were hovering over him—a bespectacled white-haired man and a red headed woman with a low-cut shirt and an expensive necklace.

"Calin, I'm Dr. Grey. How are you feeling?"

He assessed his aches and pains. His eye throbbed like a heartbeat. There was a stabbing pain in his side. His body ached and his head hurt. His throat felt like it had been scraped with sand paper. "Thirsty." His voice sounded raspy.

"He's probably dehydrated," Dr. Grey said.

"He's hooked up to an IV."

"His mutation is related to water. Overuse of it could cause more advanced dehydration than you would normally see. Get another IV going. And get the boy some water."

The old man scowled and left.

"What happened?"

Grey smiled and pushed his hair off his forehead. "You were fighting with your boyfriend."

The memories rushed back in pieces, and he flinched. "Yeah."

"He nearly put your eye out. What did he hit you with?"

"A candlestick. From the table." Cal stared at the ceiling, still seeing that look on Matt's face.

"The stress of the fight triggered a secondary mutation. You pulled the water from his body." She paused. "You couldn't have helped it. Your body acted instinctually."

He looked up at her face. She had sympathetic eyes. "He's dead, isn't he?"

Dr. Grey nodded.

Cal looked away from her. His throat tightened up. It felt like someone was sitting on his chest. Pressure built behind his eyes, but no tears came. He was too dried out.

"We were in the process of offering Mr. Hogan a place at our school," Scott told the detective. "When I approached him, his boyfriend must have thought I was hitting on him. They went into the back of the club, supposedly to talk, but I asked one of his coworkers and he told me the boyfriend had been abusing him."

"Did you personally see any signs of abuse before the murder?" he asked, glancing from the tape recorder to the two-way mirror on the other side of the room.

"Alleged murder. And yes. I went into the club the next night to check up on him. I didn't approach him, but I could see a bruise on his face. But the look on his face whenever the boyfriend came around was enough to know something was wrong."

"How so?"

"The kid looked terrified."

"And did he look that way when you saw him the night of the incident?"

"Yes. Upset, too. Like he might cry."

"Did he look angry at all?"

Scott's brow furrowed. "No. It was obvious to me that the boy was stuck in a bad situation."

"Why did you go back to the apartment?"

He sighed. "Knowing what was probably going on in there, I had to."

The detective leaned back in his chair and looked the mutant over, jaw jutted forward. "And what did you find when you got there?"

"Lots of water. The boyfriend was dead. Cal was passed out, bleeding, breathing in water. His pants were down. I pulled him out of the water."

"What was your impression of what had happened?"

"I figured the boyfriend had tried to rape him."

Jean tucked a stray bit of hair behind her ear. "We know very little about secondary mutations at this point in time. From what we have observed, they emerge much like primary mutations, just later in development. Most appear before the age of twenty, but some have emerged much later. The mutation is always closely related to the primary, a sort of extension of their powers. Not all mutants have them, but we're seeing more and more cases."

The detective looked rather repulsed by the whole conversation. "And what are the signs of these…secondary mutations?"

"Like primary mutations, they appear during times of intense stress, usually with little warning. However, while primary mutations are typically well-supported by the body, secondary manifestations can cause intense stress and fatigue. In combination with the concussion he received, that's probably why Calin was unconscious for so long."

He frowned. "And is this a typical case? Killing someone?"

"Of course not," Jean snapped. "It's the same as the original mutation. You're in law enforcement. You must have been called to more than a few manifestations. Sometimes it's something small but startling, like falling through the floor. Other times, when the mutation is more powerful, manifestation can be dangerous. We have a student who accidentally put her boyfriend into coma while they were kissing."

"Don't they have any control over it?"

She sighed. "It takes time and energy to learn to control a mutation. The first appearances are almost always involuntary, instinctual."

The detective leaned back in his chair with a scowl. "Okay, so what the fuck happened in there?"

"Calin's primary mutation is the manipulation of water. He can't control anything that's in the water, so, for instance, if he manipulated a glass of sugar water, he would leave the sugar and pull out pure water."

"So what's the secondary thing?"

"Now, I can't be sure until I see the autopsy results, but I believe something similar happened to the boyfriend. Humans are made up of sixty percent water. Remove that all at once, and it would cause the skin to tear and the body to shrivel. It's more complicated than his usual mutation because the body's use of water is more complex. It's like the difference between getting water out of a lemon and getting water out of a loaf of bread. It's in both of them, but it's much easier to get to it in the lemon."

"Do you believe that the murder of Matthew Cameron could have been intentional?"

"No, I don't."

"Feeling better?" The detective looked the boy over skeptically. He was sitting in the hospital bed, gown and all. He had two hand-shaped bruises on his upper arms and another bruise on the right side of his face. His left eye was still heavily bandaged.

"Not really," Cal deadpanned.

The detective picked up his chart. "Laceration to the left eye and a fractured cheek bone. Bruising, two separated ribs, and extreme dehydration. Quite a fight."

"Yep."

"The nurses say you've been pretty upset about it."

"Of course I am."

"Feeling guilty?"

Cal looked away. "Yeah."

"Now why would that be?"

"Are you retarded? I killed him."

"But he was abusing you, wasn't he?"

"That doesn't mean I didn't love him. I didn't mean to, but he's dead now and it's because of me." The boy leaned back down on the bed and wouldn't look at the officer. "Can we finish this later?"

Sighing, the detective stood. "No. I think I've got all I need."