No Time Left to Kill
Friday, August 7, 11:43 P.M.
Someday, Ben McClure was going to give up and put a cot in his office. There was only one thing stopping him from that logical course of action. If he put a bed in the office, he'd never remember to feed the long-suffering goldfish in his apartment's front room. They were only the cheapest kind of fish, sold to feed to aquatic pokemon, but his youngest sister would be devastated if he killed the things.
He glanced at the clock again. Rumor at the station had it that Detective Johnson worked all hours on big cases, so an 11:30 P.M. phone call shouldn't be a waste. Decided, he dialed the number for her cellular phone. She might not be in the office at this hour, but she was probably still awake.
Detective Johnson answered after the third ring. "Fuck are you what do you want?"
"It's Ben. Ben McClure. Your colleagues at the station were all sure that you would be awake at this hour, and my interns just sent a report through." Outside of his autopsy room, Detective Johnson still made him feel like a sixteen-year-old.
"Oh. Shit. Give me a second. Piece of paper, pen... Can you e-mail it?"
"Is your e-mail secure enough for confidential police files?"
"I meant my work e-mail, and it'll actually be Smith's, so yeah."
"Officer Smith isn't with you?" Ben asked, surprised. He had seen them apart, but thought he might be able to get advice from both of them. "Two of the interns had technical questions, but those are written into their report." He keyed in a password sequence to forward the document. "You should have the full list of names and suspected alliances in your inbox, now."
"Great. Is that everything?"
"Perhaps you and Officer Smith could stop by tomorrow? If you have any further questions, the interns will be thrilled to attempt to answer them."
"Oh joy, crazed lunatics who get off on sleep deprivation and coffee... Wait, that's cops... Whatever. Do you realize the fucking time? I'll haul Smith down around noon, that good?"
"That will be fine, detective." He made a note on his calendar. "Interns are the crazed lunatics who think that if they look very industrious and shiny, you'll be very impressed and give them an easy job. If you put the fear of authority back into them, the supervisor here will buy you a coffee."
"Bet I can have the toughest of them crying in five minutes, tops. Anything else comes up, call, wake me up, I don't care. Just, for the sake of the gods, could you not sound so chipper?"
He smiled wryly. "I shall endeavor. Good night, Detective Johnson."
Detective Johnson hung up without reply.
Ben hadn't expected her to say anything. He didn't know why the officers at her station complained so much. She, at least, was predictable. She would complain about cheerful people and threaten to make students cry, but she would answer the phone at quarter to midnight if it might be about a case.
He scanned his e-mail accounts for important messages, saved his report to the remote hard drive, and was in the process of shutting down his computer when he heard a quiet click. No one would be in the basement at this hour, except him. He was still getting used to the new station, and often left the office at midnight.
Ben McClure didn't turn in his chair until he heard a second click, this directly behind him. There was a young girl framed in the doorway of his office, dressed in a cream colored shirt and blue jeans, with pale blonde hair loose over her shoulders and pale, colorless eyes fixed on him. There was nothing like sanity in the clone-girl's gaze.
Friday, August 7, 11:49 P.M.
Four didn't like doctors. They were mean, split her up from her sisters. And one of them didn't make people feel better, he made her old-young sisters hurt. Doctors weren't supposed to make Four's sisters hurt and whimper and cry and curl up in corners. When the mean doctor did the bad thing, that's what happened. So she killed him. He'd had that rope around his neck anyways, and Three had laughed and laughed when Four told her about it afterwards.
This doctor, in his lab coat and wrinkly shirt, he was bad too. He took her sisters and locked them up in the dark forever and ever. That's what Three had told Four. Three was everywhere, watching from the shiny metal, whispering the doctor's secrets in Four's ears. This doctor cut up people. He was bad. He could open the door to the body-cutting-room, get Four's sisters. Then she could take them away and they could sleep in a nice park forever and ever and ever. But first she had to get through the door, and she couldn't just pull it open, so she needed the doctor. Three told her so.
"Hi," she said, and stared up at the doctor. "I'd like my sisters now, please." It was always better to be polite.
"I do not believe we have met," the doctor said slowly, his eyes wide. He didn't hold out his hand for her to shake, but he did stand up. "My name is Ben."
Four smiled, bright and pretty-girl like. "Hi Ben. I'm Four. You have my sisters. I'd like them back, please." She looked around the office, at all the images of Three, at the flat lights on the walls. She looked back at the Ben-doctor, and flexed her fingers. "Now? I'm kind of in a hurry."
"Your sisters have died, Miss Four." The coroner looked from the young girl's face to her thin fingers. It was entirely possible that she had snapped vertebral bones with those delicate hands. "Until the investigation is over, their bodies will remain in the protective custody of the police." He could hear the upstairs alarms wailing in the distance, now that he was paying attention. The last time the lab had done a drill, it had only taken police fifteen minutes to respond.
Four tilted her head. The Ben-doctor was looking at her hands. She held them up and wiggled her fingers. "Do you like them?" she asked. "I like them. Three had the same hands as me, but she can't use them any more. She got burned up, you know. Now she's in the mirrors." She gestured at one of the shiny metal things, and smiled at her sister. "Say hello, Three!"
"Hello," Three said, and smiled at the Ben-doctor.
Ben was standing with his back to his computer, only two feet from his desk phone. The girl was speaking to a reflection as if it would interact with them both.
He was a coroner. He was supposed to be kept far away from actual detective work, hidden in the basement with cadavers and clinical jargon and paperwork. Miss Four hadn't been told, however, so he would have to make do. He stepped closer to the mirror of his projector, and looked at it curiously. "I-- Hello, Miss Three. Has anyone else accompanied you, Miss Four?" He couldn't reach the phone. He didn't know how he would call dispatch with a smiling clone watching his every move, but he needed one more step.
Three narrowed her eyes. "You're going to have to kill him," she told Four. "He knows you now. He knows our sisters now."
Four tilted her head, thought hard. "Three doesn't like you," she informed the doctor. "You cut people up. Do you make people cry? I don't like that." She took a step closer to the doctor. Three mirrored her, frowning. "Did you make my sisters cry when you cut them up? I want them out. They don't like the dark."
"No one cried," Ben said, standing his ground. He did his level best to keep his voice level and reassuring. "This is my job, Miss Four. I want to know what happened to your sisters. Someone made you very sick."
"I know," she whispered. "The bad doctors did. They wanted to watch us die so they'd make more of us, healthier." She grinned, wide and feral and happy. "I killed them. Are you a bad doctor, Ben?" She took another step closer.
"No," he said, even as his heart rate skyrocketed. "Perhaps you can help me with something, Miss Four. Good doctors like to call their patients by name, but I have only met you and Miss Three." He gestured at the sketches lying out on one of his long metal tables, taking care to use a non-threatening motion.
"What do you want?" she asked, and stopped walking. She peered at the papers, and frowned. "What are those?"
"Portraits, of your sisters," he said. He took a small step back, and very slowly reached behind him with his right arm. He wouldn't be able to explain the situation to dispatch, but he knew the redial key by feel. Brenda had said to call if there was a break in the case.
"Can I see them?" she asked, and blinked in surprise. She hadn't sounded that young since she'd looked like One's age. That had been a long, long time ago. Nearly two years. Or was it three? She couldn't remember.
"Has it been a long time, since you've seen them?" he asked gently. He held his breath. The instant she made a response, for good or for bad, he would take the phone off the hook.
"I want to see the pictures." Four took several steps towards the desk, and looked up with narrowed eyes. "If you try to touch me I'll break your arms." She took the pictures, and stepped back to Three's nearest image. "Look, Three! There's Five, and Six, and Eight, and... Where's Seven?"
He set the phone very carefully on the desk as she spoke, and pressed two buttons: redial, and mute. He couldn't trust that Detective Johnson would wake quietly, but at least the conversation would catch her interest. "Seven?" Ben asked, staying back in the corner. "I have only met five sisters including you, Miss Four. I haven't seen Seven." He had no plans to try touching Four. Coroners needed their arms.
"Seven should be here," Four told him, feeling irritated. "I put her to sleep just yesterday. Her and that nasty doctor lady. She should be here. Why isn't she here? You've got all my other sisters. Are you finally leaving them alone? You should just leave us alone!" She threw the papers in the doctor's direction, ignoring how they fluttered to the floor. "Leave us alone! Let us sleep!"
"Perhaps she's on her way," Ben said quickly, realizing an error in his strategy. He was out of her way, but he had no room to move. "Perhaps we can discuss this, Miss Four? If your sister and the doctor lady are sleeping in the same location, they may not have been noticed yet." Johnson was probably listening to this conversation, and police responding to the alarms upstairs should sweep the entire building. If he kept her talking...
Four walked towards the Ben-doctor, no expression on her face. She wanted to break something. She wanted to squish something. That was why Three was dead, after all. Three wasn't supposed to be dead but the doctors were all bad, and Ben was a doctor.
"No one will care if you squish him," Three whispered.
"We need him to open the door first, Three," Four replied. "Are you going to open the door?"
Ben could feel the telephone's faint whirring, some odd result of faulty circuitry that meant that his call was going through. "What would you do if I did open the door?"
"I'd take my sisters and I'd put them in a nice place to sleep." She wagged one finger at him. "You can't follow though. Do you need your legs?" She looked down at them with vague interest. "They don't look very pretty. Maybe you can get pretty legs if you got rid of these ones." If she ripped his legs off, did she have to kill him? She'd ask Three in a minute.
"You can't bury them until after the investigation is over. When criminal proceedings against the scientists are finished, I will be happy to release your sisters to your custody." Without the sisters, there was no case. There was a bizarre story and a large number of photographs and tissue samples.
"I don't want to bury them. I want them to sleep in a pretty place. Can't sleep in the dark." She took several steps closer. "What's that?" she asked, and pointed at the computer.
"I was working when you came in, on a few ways to track down the scientists," he said candidly. "That computer has enough information to put the scientists in jail for a long time. They'd hate jail." Ben backed up every file in his network every other day, but even losing one day's work could be devastating for any replacement coroner that might need to take up the case. He felt oddly calm as he watched the clone-girl draw nearer.
"Oh." She picked up the computer screen. "Is jail like being sent to your room for being bad?"
"Yes, but it will last for years and years. They won't be able to do any more science experiments even when they're allowed out of their jail rooms."
Four nodded, and carefully set the computer pieces on the floor. She even put down the phone. It was probably broken anyways, it was making weird little clicking sounds. "I think you need this thing fixed," she said, and gestured at the phone. "Now. I want my sisters." She narrowed her eyes. "You're going to open the door."
"You can't have your sisters yet." He didn't know why he was so calm. Maybe it was because he had been working with those little girls for seven days. "I would need to speak with a judge first."
"I can make you give them to me," she replied, just as calmly. Still calm, listening to what Three told her to do, Four bent down and grabbed one of the desk legs. In one quick, smooth movement she'd lifted and flipped the heavy piece of wooden furniture. "You're going to open the door. You're going to give them to me." She started walking towards the Ben-doctor again. "You don't have a choice."
This girl, Ben decided, was absolutely crazy. "This would be an excellent time for the cavalry," Ben remarked loudly. "There's always a choice, Four. Your choice is to wait for a short time and to use the proper channels."
"What does TV have to do with it?" she asked, not threatening while she tried to figure it out. "I don't like commercials, but what does that have to do with my sisters? Do you have them on TV? Where's the TV?" She looked around the room. "He's not talking about a TV," Three hissed, and Four growled. "You're trying to trick me!"
"I'm not trying to trick you." His vocabulary was going to get him killed, he thought. "If you want to take your sisters away from here, you need to ask the judge for permission." It wasn't the usual protocol, but the case was hardly usual. Unless there was physical evidence of the cloned girls, the jury would never believe the prosecution's story.
"I don't have to ask anyone's permission!" Four took two big steps and shoved the doctor in the stomach. She grinned when he fell down. She hadn't used all her strength, just enough. She didn't want to break him just yet. "Now. Are you going to be nice and open the door now?"
"You don't need to ask permission. I do. Will you give me a week to get a decision from my boss?" That decision would likely be "no," but security would have plenty of time to be warned.
Four tilted her head. "I don't want to wait." She crouched down next to the doctor's head, and patted his cheek. "Now. Or I'll hurt you." Kill him. Three was right.
He really should have done some kind of sport in high school, he decided, or joined a gym while in college and medical school. There was absolutely no way he could move faster than she would. Ben glanced at the clock, and resolved to have a long talk with the local police department. Twelve minutes.
"You're not going to open the door?" Four bit her lip. "Okay. I'm sorry, but you could've done what I asked." She reached down, slowly so as not to startle him, and touched his neck. "This is going to hurt."
"Wait!" Three hissed. "Kill him after you open the door."
"I definitely won't open the door if you do that," he pointed out. Ben looked calm, though pale. Four hummed a little to herself. Three said to wait, and Ben had a point. The asleep couldn't open doors.
"You made my sisters cry," Four murmured, and looked at her other hand. Pale skin, four fingers and a thumb. He liked hands. "You won't open the door. You're keeping them in the dark. You're bad, just like the other doctors." She trailed her fingers down his neck, over his shoulder, down his arm, to his wrist. She picked up his hand and smiled. "Are you going to open the door for me?"
He wasn't a profiler, and didn't do any work with criminals when he could help it. He still understood that look in her eyes. No matter what he did, she hadn't ever planned for him to survive the night. "No." Breaking fingers or the bones of the hand was a methodical act typically paired with a great deal of antemortem damage, some small part of Ben's mind knew. That meant that he still had time before she killed him.
"Not even if I say please?" she asked, and gripped his little finger in one hand. With the other, she held firm to his wrist. He'd probably bruise. He had pale skin. Not as pale as hers, but the bruise would show up dark.
He had thought that his mind was completely detached from his body, but his breath still caught. "Still no."
She nodded, and looked up at Three. "One at a time," her sister told her. Three smiled pleasantly. "Maybe he'll change his mind."
"Maybe," Four replied. "Okay." She looked down at the Ben-doctor, and smiled. "Remember, you can always change your mind." She snapped the finger. She almost pulled it off, but remembered not to just in time. That'd be messy, and she only had the one set of clothing.
Four frowned. She'd expected more of a reaction. He'd gone white in the face, and tried to pull away, but he hadn't yelped or done anything. Maybe if she did it again? She touched the broken finger again, and nodded. A second time. And maybe a third. As many times as needed, to get him to open the door. People had a lot of bones.
She'd just snapped the second finger when she heard it. She jerked around, turning to stare over her shoulder at the room door. People were running down the stairs, yelling. She hated yelling. She looked back down at the Ben-doctor, and scowled. "The door can stay closed this time," she told him. There was an air vent just big enough in the hallway outside the door. She'd go through there.
Saturday, August 8, 12:00 A.M.
Brenda groaned into her pillow, and hit at her alarm clock. She knew the snooze button by feel, but even hitting it three times didn't make the ringing stop. She opened her eyes, and groaned again. Cell phone, that's what it was… Now, where'd she put it?
She managed to knock her bedside table lamp to the floor before she got her hand on her cell phone. She flipped it open, and winced at the brightness of the tiny screen compared to the pitch black darkness of her room. Blackout curtains were great, until you had to turn on a light suddenly.
"Hades?" she muttered, and after a bit of puzzling, managed to answer the call. "You are a sick bastard, you know that?" she asked.
"What would you do if I did open the door?"
It took her a moment. Hades wasn't talking to her- so who was he talking to?
"I'd take my sisters and I'd put them in a nice place to sleep. You can't follow though. Do you need your legs?" A pause. "They don't look very pretty. Maybe you can get pretty legs if you got rid of these ones."
Cold sweat beaded on her forehead, gathered under her arms. Oh, shit. Young female, sisters, talking to Hades in the morgue… Fucking hell.
Brenda shot out of bed and ran for the door, not even bothering to change out of her pajamas. Loose cotton pants and a sports bra weren't that bad, and oh gods if Hades got killed while she was listening… Oh gods, she had to hurry.
She did grab her shoes, though. Driving would be impossible without them.
She didn't listen too closely to the conversation on the other side of the phone. She was too busy starting her car, flipping on the sirens, and driving like all the demons of Hell were after her.
"I think you need this thing fixed." Pause, the sound of something being put down gently. "Now. I want my sisters. You're going to open the door."
Brenda pressed the gas pedal to the metal. Midnight- far too many people on the streets, she was going way too fast for the corners she had to take, but she was a good driver. One of the best. And a cop with the sirens going could run red lights if it was their professional opinion that it was safe.
She didn't stop for anything.
"This would be an excellent time for the cavalry." Hades, sounding calm, but there was fear there. She could hear it. "There's always a choice, Four. Your choice is to wait for a short time and to use the proper channels."
"I'm coming," she said, and nearly bounced her head off the steering wheel. She knew someone who could get to the morgue a lot faster then she could, why hadn't she called him first?
She was driving too fast to go one-handed, but what other choice did she have? She couldn't use her cell phone, no fucking way was she turning it off. Besides, did Mewtwo even have a phone? She fumbled for her car radio, listened to the All Points Bulletin before growling. Apparently someone had broken into the crime lab and morgue- but she knew that.
A few quick glances down at the dash, and a quick push of a button, and Brenda had her radio going directly to Mewtwo's. The gods knew what he did with it when they were working, but he kept it at his apartment, she'd seen it. "Smith!" she snapped.
She called his name several times, before a burst of static interrupted her. He was awake then, but probably couldn't talk over the radio. Stupid telepaths.
"Ben's in trouble, go to the morgue. Now!"
Another burst of static, and she turned her radio off. She'd slowed down a little while fussing with the radio, and now she sped up. She couldn't hear the cell phone over the pounding in hear ears; not words, anyways. As long as she could hear Hades' voice, though, he was alive. She just had to get there before his voice stopped.
The normally forty-five minute drive from her house to the morgue ended up being somewhere closer to twenty minutes. She'd probably broken every rule of the road getting there.
Brenda stomped on the brakes. Her car's front bumper ended up maybe an inch away from a patrol car's back bumper. So long as the two weren't touching, she didn't give a flying fuck. She could see Mewtwo working away, unrolling crime scene tape and securing it to knee high sticks jabbed into the ground. He noticed her at nearly the same moment, and nodded towards one of the police vehicles. She frowned, and headed over.
Dr. Ben McClure did not look healthy. He was seated half in, half out of the police cruiser, someone's uniform jacket draped over his shoulders. He was as white as a living human could go, eyes staring into nothing, cradling one hand in his lap. Brenda only needed to glance at his hand to know what was wrong. Broken fingers hurt like a bitch, and when you weren't used to pain... "Hades?" she called, approaching slowly. "Hey. You look like shit."
"Are the paramedics here yet?" he asked. "I believe I'll look better when I know the bones in my hand didn't fragment. I think they were clean breaks."
Brenda blinked, and crouched down at his feet. "Can I see your hand?" she asked. "I've had broken fingers before. I'll probably know how bad they are."
He gingerly uncovered his left hand. "The clone was kind enough to break fingers that aren't completely necessary for my work," he said, his voice a little clearer. "She didn't identify herself by name. She called herself Four, and gave the others numbers as well."
"I think the numbers must be their names," Brenda murmured, and carefully took his hand. She'd held a baby pidgey once before. She was even more careful with Ben's hand. "It doesn't look so bad. Some ice, some splints, you'll hardly even notice they're broken. I can take you to a doctor right now, if you want. No need to wait for paramedics."
"I don't think the other officers will notice. They're looking for Four. She left through the air vents." Before he went into work the next day, someone was going to check the cover on every last vent that led into the morgue while Ben watched. "She was going to kill me. She wanted her sisters' bodies so they could sleep in a better place, and then she was going to kill me for making them cry."
"Alright now." She stood up, wincing a little as her bad leg protested. One of these days she'd have to look up treatments for healed burns. "Come on. To my car." He was shocky, and his hand was cold. "We'll get you to a doctor. She's good, I trust her."
Brenda found she had to wrap one arm around Ben's shoulders, and guide him to her car. He didn't seem to notice anything below eye level. More then once she had to catch him when he stumbled. Classic shock signs. "Okay, hold on a second." He would go in the passenger seat. She got the door open, and Ben buckled in. "Just stay here, okay? We're going to go to the hospital now."
Mewtwo had seen her go over to Ben, he'd seen her guide him to her car. He was smart; he'd put two and two together and get four. She could go to the hospital, secure in the knowledge that someone would know that Ben was safe. She walked around the back of the car and got in the driver's side. Then she just had to take a minute to calm her breathing. "I was scared when you called," she said. "I thought I was going to hear you die."
His eyes were glassy, but he smiled weakly. "There was one point where I was thinking about the next coroner, and how I'd left a mess on the morgue counters."
"Well, thankfully you're the next coroner." She started the car, and turned up the heat. Not that she minded, but she normally kept it lowered for Mewtwo, who boiled in his fur. "So. Random question, you don't have to answer if you don't want to, but do you have a girlfriend?" If he did, she'd call her. If not, then she'd ask another question.
"No, not since undergrad," he said. "I'll call my family tomorrow."
"Okay. What sort of family do you have? I mean, any brothers, sisters?"
"Parents, a brother, three sisters. All younger siblings," he said. "I'm not sure how quickly this will make the news, but they'll all be asleep by now."
"We can keep it quiet, if you want."
"She's... you heard most of it, right? If it will help your case, I don't care." He banished the image of his office from his mind anyway. Maybe he could just work out of his morgue for a while, or work directly from his supervisor's office for a couple days.
"Yeah. Sounded like a total nutbar to me. I think we'll keep it quiet. You don't need reporters harassing you."
"She was talking to mirrors, like they were other clones."
Brenda chewed her lip, and focused on the traffic. Getting into the hospital parking lot was a headache and a half. But once she'd run that gauntlet, she could reply, more or less with all her mind. "If one of the clones was like her identical twin, and dead, and she's insane, then it's reasonable to think that she thought the reflections were other clones."
Brenda sighed, and found a parking space. Obvious cop cars like hers got away with not paying the parking meter. She got out, got Ben out, and half carried him into the waiting room. No matter how painful, broken fingers didn't trump a car crash victim. She took him to the emergency ward, but didn't immediately call for a doctor. Instead, she sat him down in one of the chairs, told him not to move, and headed for the receptionist.
"Hi," she said. "I need to talk with Dr. Melanie Copeland as soon as she's available." She flashed her badge. "Alright?"
The receptionist nodded, wide eyed. Satisfied, Brenda headed back to Ben.
Ten minutes later, Melanie peered into the waiting room. She didn't recognize the man with Brenda. For a second, she thought that Mewtwo was using a new illusion, but then she noticed the angle of two broken fingers. Mewtwo's hands wouldn't bend that way, and she didn't think he would take the trouble of making two fingers appear broken.
"Brenda, you and your friend can come right back," she said. Melanie took a blank chart from the front desk. The pale man, whoever he was, was in a police jacket and with Brenda.
"Right," Brenda replied, and more or less manhandled Ben into standing and walking. "He's in shock," she explained. Any cop hearing her tone of voice would've keeled over. Brenda Johnson, sounding calm and comforting? Still, she could, and right now, she had to. "Near death experience and all."
"Do you know if there was any internal damage?" Melanie asked.
"No," Ben answered, still letting Brenda steer him through the hallway. "Just to the phalanges. I think they were clean breaks. Contusion to the abdomen, left side, but without sufficient force to cause any significant damage beyond hairline fractures to the inferior ribs."
Melanie looked from her patient to Brenda. "Where did you find him again?"
"Morgue. He's been working on a case of ours. The case got a little firm with him."
"Case, huh?" Melanie asked.
"Yeah. Dead little girls."
"Strength-augmented suspect, identical victims, big headache," Ben agreed as Melanie led them into a room. "How much of an ache should I expect for my hand tomorrow? Is there any way I can glove this?"
"I'm not sure what your pain tolerance is, but I can get you a script for some heavy-duty ibuprofen," Melanie said. "For gloves... talk to your supervisor at the morgue, I'm not sure what your BSE status is."
Brenda rolled her eyes. "Now that I've got him here, can I go? No offense, but I kind of want to talk to Smith and all the other officers. The gods only know what's going on over at the lab."
"If you'll make introductions first," Melanie said.
"Introductions?" Brenda asked blankly.
"Since you are the person here who knows both of us." Melanie scribbled a few notes on the chart. "I can take care of broken fingers, easy, and justify priority by saying this is a police matters. Names, however, do make my job easier."
"Oh. But I already know both of you," Brenda pointed out. "What do you need introductions for?"
Ben was too tired to be surprised. "It's polite to make introductions for the less well informed, then. Hi. Ben McClure, coroner."
"Melanie Copeland, not-quite-a-doctor." She finished marking the chart. "Brenda, tell - Vahan that he still owes me an appointment, please?" There was only a slight pause before she used Mewtwo's assumed name.
"Sure." Brenda glanced between the two doctors and shrugged. "I'll tell him. And in his infinite leisure time, he'll probably make one too. Now, I've got to go. You two have fun. Bond over fancy names for bones. Bye."
Saturday, August 8, 12:12 A.M.
Mewtwo flexed his fingers, and considered hitting two of the other cops securing the scene. They were stationed nearby, and from what he could pick up, spent their nights patrolling the streets in their car. Neither of them had ever seen a dead body before, or had to pull their weapon. Neither of them had excelled in high school; they had been the stereotypical 'jocks', but on the school soccer team instead of football. They were proud of the uniform and badge, and, he supposed, they did good work.
He also supposed it was rude to brush the edges of their minds the way he was doing, but, well, he couldn't quite help himself. They had called Dr. McClure a geek, and at that, his interest was pricked. He had turned his attention towards them, and had felt the fur along his spine bristle. Dr. McClure did not overreact; in fact, in Mewtwo's opinion, the doctor was far too emotionally controlled to be healthy. And while colloquial language wasn't Dr. McClure's strong point, he could converse well enough, he wasn't a 'social retard'.
Mewtwo wondered if it was permissible to hurt fellow officers when they were being this stupid.
They were blaming the lab alarm on a system glitch. The lab security system was too expensive and too well maintained to have a simple malfunction- and where did the broken door come from, pixies? A vent cover in the morgue had been torn apart, and Dr. McClure's fingers had been broken. He hadn't gone into shock because of a surprise and an accident with the heavy morgue door; he'd gone into shock because someone had tried to kill him.
Mewtwo had managed to get that from the coroner, before the man had gone catatonic. All Mewtwo could think to do was get a jacket, because Dr. McClure had been shaking. He'd been called away to help with securing the scene, but he'd at least managed to keep an eye on the coroner, at least until Brenda had arrived and spirited the poor coroner away. To a hospital, hopefully, or to Melanie's apartment.
And these cops were talking about Dr. McClure like the man was an idiot, or a fool. It was infuriating.
What Mewtwo wanted to do was go over there and impress upon the two cops the facts of the matter, but he didn't quite dare. He was, compared to them, a very junior officer, his survival of Brenda's temper not withstanding. He would get written up for insubordination if he yelled at them.
All he could do, reasonably, was what he was doing. Cordon off the area, keeping an eye out for signs someone had gone anywhere near the building. Not that there was much chance of that, but there was always the possibility. The other two weren't even bothering to be careful about where they put their feet, nor were they watching the ground.
Perhaps he could point that out to Brenda. Watching her scream at the fools should be satisfying enough.
This area of town, everything was concrete or brick. The ground was paved over, a few hardy bushes planted up against the lab building walls. The bushes were too small, and too scraggly, to hide a meowth, let alone a human, however.
Not much later, Brenda drove up, slightly slower then her first arrival. She got out, hiding a wince as she put her weight down on her bad leg, and started walking over to him, instead of to the officers who'd been first to the scene. Directly in defiance of normal procedure, but then, this was hardly normal.
"Detective," he said. "Shouldn't you be talking to the first on scene?"
"What can they tell me?" she asked, voice rough from lack of sleep. Telepathic voices couldn't sound like that, thankfully. "What can you tell me?"
The question shouldn't have been enough to make him feel proud of himself, but it was. "When I arrived, the clone had already escaped through an air vent. Dr. McClure had been taken up to sit on the front steps, with everyone else in the building. There was only a skeleton staff, and they're currently going through the various labs to make sure nothing was tampered with."
"And Hades?"
Mewtwo shook his head. "Is he alright?"
"Handed him off to Melanie. I think they're bonding over fancy names for fingers." For a moment, Brenda looked baffled, but she shrugged it off. "Anything else?"
He nodded in the direction of the two fools. "You might want to talk to them. I overheard- they think the alarm was a glitch in the system, Dr. McClure must have broken his fingers in the door, and they're not even attempting to look for evidence."
He didn't have to say anything else. Brenda scowled, and stalked over to the two cops, who were now just standing by their car talking. A foolish move, and a stupid one as well.
Mewtwo folded his arms and smirked, ready to watch the show.
He was too far back to fully appreciate the Detective's rant, but a deaf man could have heard what she was screaming about. Piss poor performance and a pathetic work ethic and incapable of using their brains… Writing them up for stupidity, how they might have destroyed evidence with their sloppy work… It did his heart good listening to it.
Then, of course, Brenda came back and informed him that he'd have to go left down King Street, looking for smashed mirrors or glass, but it wasn't nearly as galling as it could have been. She was going right down King, and the two idiots were splitting up, one to go up Weber, the other to go down.
If they didn't find anything in an hour, the men got to report back to their station. Mewtwo and Brenda got to go back to their beds.
He plodded down the street, watching for vandalism but not really seeing anything. It wasn't just that he was tired, because he was. This was the third night he'd been woken up in the middle of the night. And he hadn't slept very well the other nights either, tossing and turning as he tried to get comfortable, then half-waking a dozen times during the night.
It was just… This case was wearing at him. Clones. To quote Brenda, gods… Clones, actual human clones. The only thing worse would be Mew clones, because of what it would mean for him.
He stopped, and looked up, searching for the moon in the sky. It was a mere sliver, a crescent, hanging low over the rooftops. Cold and impersonal, he could find nothing in its scant illumination. Not even the knowledge that he was a shadow of Mew, as the moon was a shadow of the sun…
Except the moon wasn't the shadow of the sun, any more then he was the shadow of Mew. He was himself.
Mewtwo shook his head and chuckled wearily to himself. Why did it take him so long to figure out something so simple? Well, no matter, the case would still hit him hard. But perhaps now he wouldn't take it nearly so personally.
He wouldn't bet on it, but he could hope, and he could work in that direction.
An hour later, though, all he could think about was going back to his apartment. Or perhaps to the Detective's home, to borrow her couch. He wouldn't have to worry about meaningless violence in her neighborhood. She would be too tired to threaten him until morning, and her neighbors were sane.
Only the thought that she was probably asleep, probably just as tired as he was if not more so, and the fact that she slept lighter then any wild pokemon, turned him towards the Shades. It would be cruel to wake Brenda up. If the case was hitting him hard due to the clone element, it was hitting her hard because these were human beings, who had been tortured and murdered and there was nothing she could do.
They both needed sleep. He could at least ensure he didn't wake her up.
At least maintaining his illusion was second nature, now. He was so exhausted he was stumbling a little, wavering like a drunk, but at least the humans that saw him would think him human.
He thought that a good thing, until he entered the unofficial boundary of the Shades. He woke up a little; anyone would, when one had the feeling of being, suddenly, hunted.
Other people might have been frightened. Normally, he might have been amused. At the moment, exhausted and with aching feet, all he could muster was annoyance.
And unfortunately for one young punk, he chose Mewtwo for an attempted mugging.
Mewtwo looked down at the idiot from his superior height, grinding his teeth. The punk was maybe fifteen years old, dark skinned, and waving a knife while yelling something about money. Mewtwo was completely out of patience already, and it had only been a few seconds.
"Enough!" he snapped. The punk stuttered, falling silent, eyes wide. Mewtwo didn't wait for the punk to gather his senses, simply gestured- and the punk went flying, up onto the roof of one of the nearest buildings. Three stories high, and if the fire escape was anything other then rusty and in ill repair, Mewtwo would eat meat.
He glared around himself, and felt rather then saw the local 'hunters' pull back. Good. He lived here, he wanted to walk unmolested. It was a right, wasn't it? Maybe, when he had more energy and the case wasn't taking up every minute of his time, he'd start picking off the criminal element in this area.
Or maybe not. He didn't hold with vigilantism, and if he started, he could only imagine what Brenda would do to him. Something violent, probably.
He continued to muse on that particular train of thought all the way to his apartment door. Once he was inside, though, and the security set, all he could think of was his bed. He stumbled over, remembered to pull the window shade, and nearly fell onto the mattress. He was asleep the moment his head touched the pillow, and if he dreamed, he slept too deeply for it to matter.
End Notes
So, not only is it a long chapter, but things (other then conversations) have been happening. Are you happy?
Major kudos goes out to CalliopeMused, beta reader and writer of Ben McClure (yes, all those impossible to pronounce medical terms- she knows them!), Melanie (medical terms again), and Sheryl. She practically co-writes this series, y'know that? So, kudos to you, Calli.