The Thunder Rolls
By: Jake Boney
Chapter 5: Information Overload
Claudia had spent the last several hours researching non stop. She discovered that, of the original eleven victims, eight of them worked together at a machine shop in the suburbs of Philadelphia. The shop had recently gone through a series of lay-offs, and the eight victims were some of the employees that had survived the lay-offs. Claudia had a feeling that whoever was using the artifact was a disgruntled employee, who had lost his job, and was seeking revenge on those who hadn't. She had just pieced all of this together, when another ping came through, informing her of the situation at the baseball stadium. There had been twenty lightning strikes at the stadium within the last hour, but luckily, there were only three more victims added to the list. She had a feeling that these victims were probably random, and that the emotional instability of the artifact had come into play, but she couldn't be sure. Artie was still at the B&B, and she had no idea when he would be back. His Farnsworth was sitting on his desk, so she had no way of contacting him. She decided that it would probably be in the interest of all involved, to give Pete and Myka the new intel. She picked up Artie's Farnsworth, and made the call.
When she saw Myka's face on screen, she said "The situation just got drastically worse, the professional baseball stadium just got hit with about twenty lightning strikes in the last hour."
"How many more victims are we dealing with now?" asked Pete, from off screen.
"Luckily, only three more have been struck." said Claudia, "Out of the fourteen current victims, there have only been two deaths, but if this continues, there could be countless more. Of the original eleven, eight were co-workers at a machine shop just outside of Philly, and they were some of the only ones that had survived a series of lay-offs. I have a feeling that what we are dealing with is a disgruntled employee, who believed that if he put a few people in the hospital, he would get his job back. I haven't found a connection with the other three of the original victims yet, they could very easily be random occurences, knowing the nature of this artifact. The three at the baseball stadium appear to be random as well, I think his emotions are starting to get the better of him. The home team had just lost the game when the strikes had started, and his frustration may have set the Key off."
"If his emotional state is so unstable that he can set the Key off when his team loses, I'm a little worried about a confrontation with him." said Myka.
"This is starting to sound a lot like what happened last time the Key surfaced." said Pete. "If we tick this guy off, he may kill a lot of people."
"You actually read the file?" said Myka, "That is amazing, what brought that on?"
"I woke up on the plane, and couldn't get back to sleep, so i figured I'd learn a little about what we were up against."
"Wait, Pete can read?" laughed Claudia. "Who'd have thought it? You guys should head over to the baseball stadium and check out the security camera footage, see if there was anything suspicious going on."
Just then, Artie came in through the door to the Umbilicus. He was shocked to see Claudia talking to Pete and Myka without consulting him first. "What are you doing?" he asked. "You know that you should never contact the agents without checking with me first."
"I got some new information that was pretty time sensitive." said Claudia, "There was another incident with the artifact, and Pete and Myka need to be heading over to the baseball stadium before they go over to the hotel. You hadn't come back from the B&B yet, and I made a decision to call them." She quickly filled Artie in on what had happened since he went up to Leena's to grab lunch for the two of them. She apoligized to Artie for acting without his permission, and he forgave her, knowing she had good intentions.
Artie's face came over the Farnsworth, "I agree with Claudia, head over to the ball field, and see what you can find. We'll keep looking, and give you an update when we know more." And with that the Farnsworth went silent.