For the first time in... Well, ever, I request that you keep criticisms to a minimum. My 15-year old cat (update) has passed away (April 1) and I gotta admit that my emotional state is feeling a little fragile right now. Let's just go with good vibes and happy thoughts.
I'm uploading this anyways because I'm going to need the distraction.
Chapter Thirteen: Too Weird For Words
The first Monday of November slunk up quietly on Metropolis in a slithering kind of way as to avoid the bombardment of alarm clocks and vile swearing. The day started off cold and bitter and brightly lit, an irritating combination if there ever was one. It was one of those days when it actually looked really nice outside. The skies were clear, the sun was out and for just a minute, it looked like it might just be quite warm out there for this time of year.
But then you actually stepped outside and there was an eight-below wind-chill factor and seven inches of snow on the ground and all it was reflecting back the light, for seven inches of snow had actually fallen on Metropolis over the course of the night. That Monday morning was out to blind everyone and freeze them afterwards when they were stumbling around helplessly.
Lieutenant Maggie Sawyer put on a pair of sunglasses before she even stepped outside.
The chill breeze was the first thing to rush up into her face, carrying with it a burst of the loose, powdery snow that had dropped overnight. The tiny flakes pelted her skin in a stinging kind of way. She grabbed the lapels of her long jacket and pulled it tighter over her neck in lieu of a scarf.
Detective Dan Turpin followed her out the door, hissing out a curse when the reflected light struck him fully in his unshaded eyes. He threw his hand up and stared down at his feet to make sure he wouldn't trip while the light blinded him momentarily.
They didn't say anything as they made their way down the front walk. An officer lifted up the line of yellow crime scene tape, allowing the pair of them to duck under it. They crossed the street back to the car, which was decorated with all the decals of the Metropolis City Police Department, plus an additional banner declaring them from the Special Crimes Unit.
Maggie got into the driver's side of the car while Turpin fell into the passenger's seat with a heavy slump that rocked the vehicle. They pulled the doors shut, finally cutting out the loud whispers from the gawkers and the ongoing squawk of the ambulance sirens.
"That was ugly." she said quietly.
Turpin nodded silently. Nothing else needed to be said.
Maggie started the engine to get them away from the scene.
The meth lab bust from the second week of October had been exactly like taking a pick-axe to a hornet's nest. It had garnered the same level of "holy fuck, this only looked like a good idea" and you could never be sure exactly what you had unleashed until it came pouring out in wave after wave of buzzing, winged horrors.
But people like Maggie Sawyer were not allowed to run for cover any longer than it took to get the hose.
Thanks to a little outside pressure from the likes of a rookie reporter named Clark Kent and the implied threat that was Sofia Gigante, the operation's forebrain Kyle Faust had sprung a leak like the faucet at home that Maggie was still wrestling with. He had dropped a wealth of information on everything from the routes to the pushers to the dealers to the drug mules to the storage areas. Essentially, he had upended the entire operation within the afternoon of his interrogation. Police had been scattered across the city since then, brandishing warrants to make raids and busts and bringing the city's largest organized drug operation to its knees.
It had been a good four weeks since then. Plenty of positive press for the police and Mayor Novak's proposed drug-busting policies had started looking better. The Daily Planet had never been more complimentary.
But lord, some of the things Maggie had laid eyes on in the last two weeks alone made her wish they were suppressing more information than usual.
One of Forebrain Faust's tips had led them to the quiet suburban neighborhood of Galliwood, where untowards things weren't supposed to happen. Not in quiet green neighborhoods where the most interesting thing was Mr. 4238 Pleasant Street going out to check his mail in nothing but his birthday suit regardless of what the weather looked like right that moment, his nads always swaying in the breeze. And it wasn't even interesting anymore because it happened every day.
This Monday morning, however, the neighborhood of Galliwood had woken up to the police crashing through the door of a typical ranch house. It had been one of the storage houses for the meth supply and the guards had gotten enterprising, mixing the product with god knew what and shooting up small children to see what the effect was. Two of the kids were definitely going to be alright, after a fashion, and the oldest one might even get his sight back once the swelling went down on his face.
Maggie preferred to think of it like that -- in the more positive light. It was better to say that two of the kids had survived, rather than say that five of them were dead. It kept her sane when she had to deal with shit like that and worthless excuses for human life like the guards.
"I hate the ones where kids are involved." she commented out loud, just to break the heavy silence in the car. "The two we hit where the kids were mules were bad enough. I didn't think it would get worse than that."
Turpin grunted, a grumbly sound that easily encompassed the varied range of 'I'm not talking to you'. He kept his eyes fixed firmly on the passing scenery.
"Are you still mad at me?" Maggie asked.
Since she was wearing sunglasses, she felt safe enough to roll her eyes, especially when her partner just grunted again. It was a deeper, more incensed sound that was almost words. The closest that one could get to speaking without actually saying anything coherent.
It was a sound that Maggie had become very familiar with in the last few weeks, since she and Turpin had gotten into a bit of a bitch-slapping fight instigated by a miscommunication. Turpin handled things by trying to avoid them or not confronting or just seeming to do everything he could to step out of the very thing that involved him. It was the strangest thing Maggie had ever seen from the dedicated detective. In the line of duty, he never avoided a thing. Instead, he charged headlong into the mess, determined to solve it through sheer willpower.
His avoidance behavior in regards to their argument was very off-putting and uncharacteristic.
"I'd order you to stop being mad at me, if I thought it would work." Maggie said. "Dan, we cannot be fighting like this. We're the leaders, the team captains. We have to look like a united front. We had an argument; a lot of people do. But we can't let it affect our professional performance."
She wanted to add that they had also been working together for three years. They had reached a point where it wasn't weird to go out for drinks or dinner after they were off shift. Dan Turpin was the first friend she had made after transferring to Metropolis and she didn't want to shred that over something they could talk about.
"I don't want to get into this right now." Turpin said, never taking his eyes off the window. "I'm still nursing the grudge."
"And how long are you going to coddle it?" Maggie wondered. He had been holding a stony silence against her for three weeks now and part of her couldn't blame him for reacting the way he had. But how long could he drag it out?
"Until I don't like it anymore."
"Okay then..."
Then it could be a while. Turpin was not the sort to forgive and forget very easily, as Maggie had learned over the past three years. He had the personality of a bulldog and the temperment of a volcano. The rookies called him "Turpin the Terrible" or variations thereof. Maggie knew that when the rookies referred to you with that sort of nickname, you could be sure that you were doing something right.
The only terrible thing that she had ever seen about the detective were his eyebrows. Good lord, she hadn't known until she'd met him that eyebrows could resemble Einstein's hair.
Turpin was everything a good cop needed to be. He wasn't a model cop, but one could make the argument that there was no such thing, given the way the law ran. He upheld the ideals of protecting and serving the public trust, holding himself accountable and expecting the same of others, never betraying his badge, and so on. He would never compromise his morals unless it was for a very good reason and it would still have to be the world coming to an end before Maggie would consider asking such a thing from him. Turpin's best trait was that he was loyal. Even if for some dastardly reason that their friendship never recovered, she could still count on him to be at her right hand in a pinch.
But she would miss the three a.m. food runs to Big Belly Burger.
Maggie hung the next left to the Gerald D. Ordway Memorial Bridge and back to Downtown, and tried to ignore the uncomfortable stillness.
She was the head of the Metropolis P.D. Special Crimes Unit, ever since she had transferred from Star City. They had taken one look at her record and decided that she fit the mold they were looking for and then put her in command of some rather odd people. She was still trying to figure out what kind of "mold" they'd been talking about.
The SCU was largely responsible for responding to terrorists and bomb threats, anything that included espionage and threatened the internal well-being of Metropolis. As well as anything else that was classed as "Code Veitch" -- which was basically the short-hand way of saying "This shit is so weird there's really no appropriate adjectives for it and I won't tie up the radio trying to describe something the English language has no words for". When the weird stuff cropped up, it was the SCU who was sent to the scene.
But in Metropolis, not much weird stuff happened. So they were handed more of the mundane-in-comparison bomb threats and drug busts, because VICE was understaffed and overworked trying to put out the red lights in Metrodale.
Maggie parked the car in the lot behind the SCU building, once the local court-house until the Metropolis city council decided that it was too small to stay in use as a court-house. It was Greek revival architecture and three floors tall, though the SCU had only needed one floor. One and a half, really. The floors were marble, the dome above the main concourse was stain-glass and did pretty things to the interior during the noon hour, and there was a statue of Lady Justice that had been too heavy to move.
The building sort of lurked between the Major Crimes Unit and the forensics labs. Both of the neighboring buildings tended to sprawl, as there was quite a lot associated with both units and they needed the growing room. Sometimes the SCU felt like the squat, dumpy step-sister whose intelligence was questionable and was usually caught picking her nose in every family photograph.
That wasn't to say that the SCU was a joke department or its staff was untrained and incompetent. The SCU actually had some highly-skilled individuals on staff, to balance out those who didn't have a specialized skill, but had more than enough pluck and grit to make up for it. But there were days when Maggie couldn't shake the feeling that they were being toyed with, especially when smart-ass beat cops sent them reports from people who had claimed to see ghosts or asked her if they had solved the mystery of the Loch Ness Monster yet.
Sometimes, they got the stupid stuff.
The main rotunda was the nerve center of the SCU. There was barely a dozen of them, so there was no point in having them spread out to the empty offices. They occupied half-wall cubicles instead with an appropriate number of shelves and filing cabinets that they were free to decorate. They didn't have a day-shift or a night-shift, so its members were in and out of the building at all hours of the day and night. Some kept a change of clothes at their desks, slept in the lounge, and took showers in the locker room, and only remembered to go home when it occurred to them that the laundry needed doing, the plants were turning brown, and the milk needed to be removed from the fridge before it grew a brain-stem, or they needed to keep up the pretense that they were actually living there and not just storing things there.
Maggie had barely stepped through the double doors from the front foyer before she was intercepted by Officer Colletta Kanigher, who made up roughly ninety percent of the pluck and grit in the SCU.
"Lieutenant Sawyer, this government agent busted in here and he won't leave, not until he talks to you." she reported.
Maggie groaned; she had been awake and conscious nearly twenty hours now. Frankly, she had been looking forward to some quality time with a soft surface and it didn't particularly matter if it was a couch, a bed, or her girlfriend, which ever was more readily available by the time she got home. She just didn't want to deal with any more people today.
"Who is he, what does he want, and can it be wrapped up quickly?" the lieutenant asked.
"Agent Jason Trask, he wouldn't tell me, and it didn't sound like it." Colletta replied, offering a sympathetic smile. "He's waiting in your office."
"Thank you, Kanigher." Maggie nodded. She looked down at her clothes, searching for crumbs or coffee stains that might make her look less than professional. "Do I look presentable?"
Colletta shrugged. "You don't look awful." she said. "I don't think he'll care anyways. He looks like the sort of guy who'd poke out his own eyes just to prove a point."
"You let him in?"
"We couldn't keep him out."
Then he sounded like that sort of government type; the entitled asshole who believed his authority was synonymous with the size of his penis and just as effective as rapier, but was unaware that it was completely useless.
"Thanks for the warning, Kanigher." Maggie patted her shoulder as she passed. "If you've been here longer than twelve hours, go home for a few hours."
"I haven't been here that long." Colletta said protestingly.
"Go home." the lieutenant repeated. "I shouldn't have to order you."
She was heading to her office, so she didn't see Colletta make a face at her back. But Maggie knew well enough that Colletta had put in twelve hours already, because she always tried to downplay the number of hours she'd been present when they surpassed ten. It was a bad habit of hers, but Maggie felt there was plenty of time still to break her of it.
Just as she had been warned, her office wasn't empty. Behind her desk, in her chair, was government agent Jason Trask. He was probably handsome with his dark hair and blue-gray eyes, if Maggie was into men. But he had the kind of face was easily given to sneering and then there was fact he was in her chair. Everyone one knew that you weren't supposed to sit in the boss's chair, no matter who you were or what your rank was; even the commissioner didn't sit in her chair unless she had given him permission. He was leafing through one of her files and sucking on a cigarette, puffing out gray-white smoke with every breath.
"This is a smoke-free zone." Maggie announced, closing her office door loudly. "Put it out or I'll have you fined for violating the basic human right to breathe clean air."
Trask turned and gave a remarkably sleazy and wholly unprofessional smile around his cigarette. There was no mistaking it when his eyes darted between her chest and her hips before finally moving up to her face.
"I wasn't expecting someone so shapely." he said. "Is your boss coming soon?"
"I am the boss." Maggie said. "Lieutenant Sawyer. Didn't you see the name on the door? I honestly haven't met a man who calls himself 'Margaret'." She crossed her arms. "What do you want?"
"To talk to the man in charge, sugar bumps." Trask said. He made a shooing motion. "So do me a favor and get him for me, okay? I can't talk to a woman about this."
He lowered his cigarette and blew a cloud of toxic smoke in her direction. Maggie held her breath until it had dissipated and bit down on a flare of anger and the urge to reach for her gun and empty a clip into his head. There were laws against shooting the people who annoyed you and the government wouldn't be too happy if she shot one of their agents.
Even if he was a self-entitled prick who didn't have the required number of brain cells to comprehend the fact that women were human beings.
Honestly, why did government agents always seem to be chain-smoking sleaze-bags who weren't capable of drumming up basic respect for others but still expected it? Was it a law or something? A hiring requirement? Did they have to take a test that measured how big of an asshole they were? Was it just something that developed over time, as the idea of working for all-powerful agency went to their heads? Or did she attract them? Like they could smell the lesbian in her and decided that they were enough of a stud-muffin that she would "change her mind".
Why couldn't she meet the professional government agents who kept their hands and their leers to themselves and didn't act like inflated douchebags?
Why couldn't she meet the government agents were women, at least?
She opened up the door and stepped out into the hallway.
"Can I get someone in my office who speaks sexist pig?" she called across the main room. "I'm having a hard time translating the squealing and grunting into proper English. And a glass of water in here too!"
Turpin stood up from his desk, straightened his tie, and smoothed down his ruffled suit jacket as best he could. After nearly a full day on the job, he was going to look a touch untidy no matter what he did to fix it.
Maggie nearly told him to go back to his desk and finish his report so he could go home. He had been on shift for closer to twenty-four hours and he had to be exhausted from running on catnaps and coffee. But she knew it would be pointless. That was just how Turpin's loyalty worked. Even though they were on the outs with their friendship, he would still be the first person to come running to her aid.
One of their detectives, John Jones, stood up as well. He was a tall black man with a shiny bald head and a heavy brow. He followed Turpin about halfway across the room and paused by the water cooler to fill up one of the little plastic cups. Then he resumed his walk to the office.
"Here." He offered her the cup.
"Thank you, Detective Jones." Maggie stood to one side. "Why don't you come inside?"
Turpin was there as a show of solidarity, standing beside his commander, and because Trask probably wouldn't talk to anyone but a white male. But Jones was a good luck charm. He had an uncanny knack for spotting lies and knowing when someone was untrustworthy. When dealing with a government agent who'd left a bad taste in her mouth from the get-go, she wanted someone like Jones in the room.
Some days, Maggie swore that he could read minds.
At Turpin's entrance, Trask sat up and his expression shifted into one of satisfaction. Maggie didn't give it long to blossom. Giving in to the irrational urge to smack his ego down, to impress upon him that he was not in charge around here, she grabbed the cigarette from his mouth and shoved it into the water, extinguishing it with a tiny hiss.
"This is a federal building. Smoking is not permitted on the premises, as per Metropolis city law." Maggie said coolly, dropping the cup into the waste bin. "Further violation will result in a one hundred and fifty dollar fine and confiscation of your cigarettes and lighter. You will not get them back."
Trask gave her a dirty look like she had just completely overstepped every boundary she wasn't allowed to cross. The look of a man who saw that an unworthy woman was exercising a level of authority she wasn't even supposed to know about.
Maggie squelched the equally powerful urge to force-feed him the soggy cigarette.
A little behind her, Jones made a throat-clearing noise that no one would have mistaken for a laugh, but that was definitely what it was. Turpin's usual smirk flickered into existence for a second before he smothered it back into a smooth professional mask that didn't give much away. Maggie turned back to the visitor and crossed her arms.
"What can we do for you today, Mr. Trask?" she asked.
Trask's expression of displeasure deepened to really ugly depths. Then he straightened the whole thing out into something coldly professional and took an envelope out of his pocket.
"I'll get right to business, Miss Sawyer," he started, professional but nonetheless still oozing blatant disrespect. "I'm searching for two fugitives, one of whom I believe is hiding out here in Metropolis. This letter I have is from the state-house. It grants me the authority to utilize the resources available to the Special Crimes Unit-"
"I'm sorry, you haven't quite introduced yourself." Maggie interrupted. "The only reason I know your name is because Officer Kanigher told me. Let's do introductions first." She cleared her throat. "I'm Lieutenant Maggie Sawyer, head of the Special Crimes Unit. This is Detective Dan Turpin, my second in command. This is Detective John Jones, who doubles as a lie-detector in the absence of a polygraph."
She wanted to put that one out there, just in case the agent thought he could get away funny business. Jones's lie-detection abilities were really spot on and they never seemed to fail him either. He had an accuracy rate of ninety-five percent and that wasn't a generous estimate. It was actually more like ninety-nine percent, but ninety-five percent gave him a little more wiggle room in the event he got it wrong.
Which was rare, truly.
Trask stood up slowly, obviously thinking his height would better exert his superiority.
"Agent Jason Trask, of Bureau 39." he said.
"I haven't heard of them." Maggie said. "Is there a number I can call? I'd like you speak to your superior, to verify your claim."
Trask laughed, a condescending little chuckle. "Miss Sawyer, I am the superior. I'm the director of Bureau 39." he assured her.
"I'm sure that you'll understand if I don't believe you." Maggie said. "Normally, in the past interactions I've had with government agents, they've had the courtesy to call ahead and provide verification in regards to their identity. At the very least, I see a badge."
Trask made an 'ah' face and started digging around in his pockets. While he was doing this, Maggie looked over at Jones, silently asking if the agent was telling the truth. To her dismay and annoyance, Jones nodded.
Crap, there's no getting rid of him now. Maggie realized. So much for getting home before lunch.
Trask found his badge and displayed it to them.
"As for why you've never heard of us before, that's not a surprise." he went on. "We're an extra-governmental department who deals with the things the government can't afford to be associated with."
"Wetworks." Turpin commented.
Trask tilted his head. "Something like that." he said evasively. "As I was saying, this letter grants me the authority to utilize the resources available to the Special Crimes Unit--"
"To find two fugitives?" Maggie interrupted again. This wasn't adding up and she had barely heard any of it. That was rarely a good sign.
"They are very dangerous fugitives." Trask told her. "We've been tracking them for over six years now and we've finally managed to trace one of them to Metropolis. I'm positive the other will follow in time."
"And you want to use the SCU as your personal hit squad?" Maggie asked. She was getting that sense from his pompous asshole routine. She shook her head. "No, I won't allow it, no matter which branch of the government you're from. We're understaffed as it is. We can't afford to give up anyone for any reason."
"Your opinion on the matter isn't valid, Miss Sawyer-" Trask started.
"Lieutenant!" Turpin corrected sharply, shooting a rather deathly glare at the agent. His wild, wiry eyebrows only amplified the evil eye effect.
The agent raised an eyebrow of his own. "Pardon?"
"Lieutenant Sawyer." Turpin repeated, a very bulldog-like growl in his voice. "You're speaking to Lieutenant Sawyer, head of the Special Crimes Unit, Agent Trask. Treat her with the respect due."
Trask proceeded to make a face like he couldn't believe such a thing was being asked of him.
"As I was saying, Lieutenant," He sneered all over the title, making it clear he didn't believe Maggie had done anything to earn it. "This letter grants me authority over you." He pointed to the notarized stamp in the corner. "According to the state-house, I am in temporary command of the Metropolis P.D. Special Crimes Unit until such a time that it's no longer necessary. So you can whine and bitch about me using the SCU as my personal hit-squad, but the truth of it is that you're not being given a choice in the matter. Is that clear?"
"Only unless you can explain to me why you didn't go to Major Crimes or Criminal Investigations." Maggie said. She was not going to have control wrested away from her by a tiny-dicked douchebag without good reason.
"Because the SCU receives most of its intelligence from every department. As I understand it, you're the melting pot of the police force." Trask pointed out.
Dammit, that's actually a pretty good reason. Maggie cursed. Since they usually got the weird stuff, they had to collect the pieces of evidence from every department, waiting for all the little things to stack up into a larger picture and hoping it made sense. It was like putting together a puzzle when they had to go on a scavenger hunt for the pieces. If the agent really was hunting for two fugitives, working out of Special Crimes would ensure that he had access to all the information he needed.
"So, you'll be turning over authority to me and obeying my orders." Trask said. "If you'll address me as 'Agent Trask', I'm sure we'll get along nicely."
No we won't. Maggie thought. What she said was: "Tell us about these fugitives."
Trask smiled, a mockery of the smile of a proud father might have given his daughter. On his face, it was the kind of smile that said: 'gosh you're cute when you think you're in charge.' He opened his mouth to speak, but then had a thought.
"No, there's something you need to see, first." he said. "If you're going to understand exactly what I've been dealing with, there's something you need to see. Come on."
He made a 'follow me' motion and walked out of the office. Turpin shot a look at his commanding officer, but Maggie could only shrug. She had skimmed the letter while Trask had been brandishing it and it was pretty airtight with its wording. The SCU was under the command of Agent Jason Trask of Bureau 39 for the however long it took for him to apprehend the fugitives. However, the legalese didn't imply an imposed time limit, which mean Trask might command the SCU indefinitely. Capturing fugitives was no small task and if Trask's pair had stayed on the run for over six years, they weren't going to come in quietly.
"Let's go." Maggie told her two detectives. "He thinks he's in charge, so let's humor him."
"That man does not have a sense of humor." Jones commented.
"Men like him don't have any emotions except 'smug'." Turpin said, crossing his arms. "I don't like him, Maggie."
"That makes two of us, Dan." Maggie said, really trying smother her delight that Turpin was addressing her by her first name. It suggested that their friendship wasn't as out as she was imagining.
In the main concourse, she looked around for her third-in-command, Sergeant Escudero (whose name was a bit longer than that, but Sergeant Leocadio-Escudero was sort of mouthful when you were trying to be expedient). But the sergeant appeared to have vanished in the meantime.
"Sergeant Kesel! I've got to step out for a moment! Keep an eye on things in here!" Maggie ordered, turning to her next highest-ranked, Margaret "Midge" Kesel, who popped off a tired salute. "Officer Kanigher! With me!"
Colletta promptly dropped what she was doing (picking up her coat, logging out of her computer) and hurried over to join them. No doubt Trask noticed, but he didn't say anything. He led the group across the concourse to the stairs. They were actually on the second floor. Back in the day, only the second and third floor had been immediately available to the public. Once full of offices, the ground floor been converted half into record-keeping and half into an employee only area; the private cafeteria remodeled into the lounge, the locker rooms which had existed since the first World War, and a room full of work-out equipment donated by a gym for when the officers needed to punch something or sweat it out (and the janitorial supply closet, furnace room and boiler, of course).
This was also the only internal entrance to the attached evidence warehouse.
"What's going on, Lieutenant?" Colletta asked in a whisper.
"Agent Trask has a letter from the state-house giving him the authority to command the SCU in order to track down two fugitives, one of whom he believes is in Metropolis." Maggie explained.
Colletta blinked. "Wait, they actually give stuff like that to mouth-breathing douche-weeds like him? They actually let him be in charge of anything?"
She made a face similar to the one Agent Trask had worn while he'd been assimilating the idea of a woman being in charge, but the disgust was a great deal more pronounced.
"What did he say to you?" the lieutenant asked. Colletta was generally very nice and sweet-tempered, but she wasn't shy about expressing herself when she was angry.
"He called me fat. And ugly. While leering at me like I'm a cupcake." Colletta replied, scowling. She patted her fairly flat stomach. "This is not fat. I work hard for my girl abs! I look good!"
Maggie couldn't help but nod in agreement. While Colletta was not her type and Maggie herself was already in a relationship that was leaning towards semi-committed, there was no way she could deny that Colletta really was a shapely, lovely lady. A moderate waist-line offset by generous hips and ample breasts; a true hour-glass figure that Colletta worked vigorously to keep in functional condition because she just couldn't give up her love of candy and chocolate. So she was going rounds with the weight machines every day, but she was earning that muscle.
"He's sexist. Ignore him." Maggie advised, keeping her voice low.
Colletta seethed. "Oh, I will. I won't even notice he's there."
When they stepped into the evidence warehouse in Agent Trask's wake, it became very clear to Maggie that the agent would have cowbird'd his way in regardless of her knowledge. Showing up in her office had been nothing more than a formality, an opportunity to gloat. At the backside of the warehouse where the garage doors opened on to the street, where the larger items were kept, were scattered two dozen men (all men, Maggie didn't see a single woman among them and suddenly she felt progressive for half her staff being women even if there were only about dozen people in the entire SCU) standing in a loose formation around two tarp-covered... things. Whatever they were, they were huge, something like ten feet in diameter.
Without giving the three SCU members much chance to gawk, Trask ordered the removal of the large gray tarps. Several of the man broke ranks and heaved the tarps off. They were heavy and the men struggled for a moment and Maggie had enough time to think that between her and Colletta, they would probably get the tarps off much faster. The thick gray plastic hit the cement floor with a remarkably loud sound, but it was nothing compared to the silence that followed.
Behind Maggie, Jones made some kind of choking noise, Turpin swore loudly, and Colletta gaped soundlessly.
Trask beamed smugly.
Under those tarps was easily nothing Maggie had ever seen in her life. They were... crafts. Ships, of some varieties.
The first craft was gleaming white like a piece of milky quartz. It had an elongated shape, sleek and fast-looking with a central pod that was about four feet long but only two feet wide. Its near-identical twin was more amber gray, like cut smoky quartz and its pod was much more spherical. Both featured three gimbals around their central pods, likes that of a gyroscope to control the roll, the pitch, and the yaw. And Maggie realized with a jolt that the gimbals weren't attached to anything. Not even each other. They didn't float around the pods. They were suspended around it without so much as a wobble. Sprouting from the back of the pods were conical spikes that curved towards each other like claws.
Oh god, they were engines.
And neither craft was even touching the ground.
UFOs! Chirped a hysterical voice in the back of her mind.
Maggie didn't even realize she was listing in shock when she felt Turpin's broad hand press between her shoulder blades, to try and steady her.
There is no way I'm staring at a pair of UFOs. They don't look like UFOs!
"As you can see," Trask started, his grin rather shit-eating. "Our fugitives aren't from around here."
"And by 'here', I'm starting to assume that you mean this planet." Maggie said, her eyes searching the things for... for anything. She didn't even know what she was looking for.
Distantly, she contemplated the idea that Agent Trask was professionally insane and at the crafts were extremely clever hoaxes and the state-house was just having her on. But... There was something that she couldn't put her finger on. Something incredibly alien about both crafts that just screamed, in a very quiet way, that they weren't from Earth.
There was something quite odd about them. It was like her eyes wanted to slide to one side, like they didn't want to look directly at either ship. She wasn't sure if that was an effect being generated by the ships themselves, or if it was her brain messing with her perceptions like... Like the Uncanny Valley effect. Where it was familiar enough, but at the same time, it was also intrinsically wrong.
"I don't think they're even from this solar system." Trask nodded. "Both of the crafts were recovered at the same time in the same place, but this one," He patted the exterior gimbal, the one to specifically for yaw, of the white quartz ship. "Has been on the planet for far longer."
Turpin laughed harshly.
"That's damn ridiculous because aliens don't exist!" he declared in open defiance. "These 'ships' aren't proof! Wires! Hoaxes! Really clever models." He strode up into Trask's face. "Buddy, I'm a cop. I have seen some shit--"
"You haven't see what I've seen!" Trask roared, his expression suddenly becoming quite unhinged and bellowing at such a volume that even the men standing four feet away reeled back. His eyes bulged madly, a vein throbbed in his temple, and spittle flew from his lips when he started shouting again.
"I saw hundreds of tons of space rock fall from the sky! I watched Prometheus himself bring fire down from the heavens! The power! The strength! He was not a man! He could level mountains with flick of his finger! Turn the earth off its axis! And he's not from this planet! You haven't seen what I've seen, little man! He and his kind cannot run around unchecked! They must be captured and destroyed!"
Trask breathed out heavily and sucked in an equally forceful breath. His eyes danced around from Maggie to Colletta to Jones and glared at each of them, as if he was daring them to make a comment and challenge him again.
It was Jones's hand that pressed into Maggie's back this time, on her shoulder blade. It had taken them a little while to develop a few silent, discreet gestures to communicate by -- but the left hand on her right shoulder, only the middle two fingers exerting pressure -- that meant 'danger(ous) be careful'.
"Okay..." Turpin raised his hands compliantly and took a step back, eyes wide under his bushy brows. "That sounds... pretty serious."
"It does." Maggie agreed, stepping forward until she was level with her second-in-command. "Agent Trask, what can we do to help? I assume you have an idea as to where to find your fugitives?"
"Only one of them, for now. But the other will come running to us in time." Trask snapped his fingers and held out his hand demandingly. One of his men came scurrying up to him and passed him a Diamond tablet. Trask, in turn, handed Maggie the tablet to show her the image on the screen.
"This is the 'man' we're looking for. And I promise you that's only a disguise. His true form is..."
He trailed off, as though he had no words to describe, but that also might have been because Colletta hurried up beside her commanding officer with an astounded expression and pointed at the image.
"He's not alien! He's a reporter with the Daily Planet!" she complained. She scowled at Trask. "Where'd you get the idea that Clark Kent is an alien?"
"Kanigher--" Maggie began a reprimand, but that was all she got in before the government agent jolted like he had been hit with electricity. His eyes glitter with a less than sane gleam and he turned smartly on his heel.
"We have our target men! Move out!" he ordered.
The agents had already fallen into formation and were running for the garage doors before Maggie realized that Trask was going to arrest a news reporter (one whom Lois Lane had spoken well of, no less) on the sheer luck of walking out of a fireball alive (for the image was a video still of Clark's heroic rescue of the little girl, caught from the other side when he'd been running out of the fire with his coat tails slightly aflame).
"Wait!" Maggie slapped the tablet into Colletta's arms and ran after the agent. "Wait a minute! You need a warrant!"
"I only need a warrant to arrest a human!" Trask told her.
Because his fugitive was not human.
Oh yes, he remembered Clark Kent. His primary suspect; his Prometheus -- though the alien had never truly slipped up enough for Trask to prove it. And those poor adults, that married couple who so whole-heartedly believed that they had raised a normal little human boy. He had never been able to show them they their "son" was an alien invader.
But now, Trask would prove it. He would expose Prometheus for the invader that he was and show the world that they were under threat from beyond the stars. They would see that there was an aggressive alien race out there seeking to destroy them. They would learn that the advance scouts were already here, studying them, learning their culture, learning how to destroy them.
And he would stop that alien army dead in its tracks.
-0-