and we're back! i've just about got it all plotted out, so things should be getting good :]

Jenkins woke up around noon, still on the bed in the ER. Rubbing groggily at her eyes, she sat up and swung her legs off the bed. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and checked it. There were ten voicemails from the station. Hitting play, she put the phone to her ear. Her eyes widened more and more with each message, and the last one was barely over before she was running out the door.

A few moments passed, and then she walked back in and sat down again. She pulled out her phone and selected a contact. It rang twice before there was an answer, and then she said, "Hey, Sergeant Yancy. I got your messages, but my car kind of exploded. Can you come get me?"

"So explain the timeline to me," Jenkins said as she buckled into the passenger seat of Yancy's patrol car.

Yancy began to pull out of the hospital parking lot. "Kinzel sent out his broadcast at seven this morning. Deputy Chu and Wyldstyle discovered one of his clues about an hour later."

"And you said in one of your messages that it had to do with the pattern of attacks, right?"

"Generally," Yancy replied. "There was one spot that didn't fit, though. The South Side station. So far, we don't have any idea why."

Jenkins chewed on her lower lip. "What next?"

"Deputy Chu sent a squad ahead to the Northeast Projects, but he took a detour to the hospital. That was around eight-thirty. We haven't heard from them since."

"Could they be in trouble?" Jenkins asked.

Yancy's grip tightened on the wheel. "We can't spare anyone to investigate. We're stretched thin as it is. Kinzel really struck a huge blow against us."

Jenkins stared vacantly out the window for a few moments before she said, "Take me to the South Side station."

Out of all the stations, this one had probably been hit the hardest. It had been almost completely reduced to rubble, and what was still upright creaked ominously. Officers in hardhats picked their way through the wreckage. Jenkins stood on the periphery and crossed her arms. "Has there ever been anything unusual about this station?"

Yancy scratched his head. "Not to my knowledge. Honestly, this station was the least busy one in the city."

"And yet Kinzel went out of his way to target it," Jenkins said, narrowing her eyes. "That's suspicious. What does he know that we don't?"

"About one of our own stations?" Yancy asked doubtfully.

Without answering, Jenkins strode forward, not bothering to retrieve a hardhat. Yancy hurried after her. She worked her way through the ruins towards the nearest officer. "Hey!" she called.

The officer looked up as she approached. She showed him her badge and asked, "Have you discovered anything yet?"

The officer shook his head. "It's a mess. If there was anything here, it's probably been destroyed."

Jenkins looked around. "Then do you think it could be a cover-up?"

"It's starting to look like it," the officer replied. "A damn good one, too."

"No," Jenkins said, her brow furrowing. "It's outside the pattern, which draws attention to it automatically. Kinzel would have known we'd be immediately suspicious of it."

"We've been searching this place for hours," the officer said, gesturing around him. "There's nothing here, not even in the basement."

Jenkins pinched the bridge of her nose, thinking hard. Then something occurred to her. "This is one of the older stations, isn't it?"

The officer nodded wordlessly.

"All of the old stations have sub-basements," Jenkins said. "From the early days of Business' reign. He used them to spy on the police force, since in the beginning a lot of dissenters came from the ranks. But once he got a full grip on the city, he didn't need them anymore, so he sealed them off."

Both Yancy and the officer stared at her. "How do you know all that?" Yancy asked.

Jenkins rubbed the back of her neck awkwardly. "After T.A.K.O.S. Tuesday, the Chief put me in charge of cleaning up the stations. He gave me access to all the blueprints, and I ended up spending a lot of time with them."

"Then we haven't looked everywhere," the officer said with dawning realization.

Jenkins nodded. "What's your name?"

"Lieutenant Gary Stibbons, ma'am," he replied.

"Alright, Stibbons," Jenkins said. "Looks like we need to go deeper."

Getting into the basement was a little tricky – the stairwell had been filled up with debris, and the team earlier had only managed to clear it out enough for one person at a time to squeeze through, and once inside, it was pitch black. Jenkins flicked on her flashlight, and, behind her, Yancy and Stibbons did the same.

"The entrance should be a trapdoor in one of the corners," Jenkins said, swinging the beam of light around.

By some miracle – or, perhaps, design – the ceiling hadn't caved in, but the blast had still shaken the room up. The basement was being used as an archive, with rows of metal shelves stacked with boxes filled with files. Many of the shelves had tipped over, and the boxes had fallen, spilling their contents everywhere. It was evident that the mess had been rummaged through, but the search had been aimless, unsure of its goal. But now they knew what they were looking for.

The stairwell occupied one corner, so each of them took one of the three other corners. These were especially cluttered, full of haphazard piles of boxes. None of them bothered with trying to keep it neat, shoving and dragging the boxes clear, and then Stibbons called, "I found it!"

Jenkins and Yancy hurried over. There it was – a metal trapdoor. It looked like it had been covered over by cement until recently.

Stibbons bent over and heaved it open. A ladder below descended into darkness. Jenkins put her flashlight between her teeth and lowered herself down, taking the ladder carefully, rung by rung. It wasn't long before her foot met the floor instead of the next bar, and she stepped back, taking her flashlight out of her mouth.

Then, as if activated by her presence, the lights flickered on. Stibbons and Yancy dropped down next to her.

"Huh," Stibbons said.

The room was completely empty, just a box of concrete barely large enough to hold a few desks. In the opposite wall was a door-shape, which had probably been the other entrance before the room had been sealed.

But then, in the wall to their left, was a gaping hole, jagged around the edges as if something had busted in from the other side. The air coming from the dark tunnel beyond was stale and musty.

Something next to the opening caught Jenkins' eye, and she walked over. It was a small sheet of paper taped to the wall, and Yancy and Stibbons joined her, peering over her shoulder.

"What is it?" Yancy asked.

There was a happy face scrawled on it, and underneath, written in neatly looping handwriting, were the words: A light at the end of the tunnel, perhaps?

Jenkins snatched it off the wall, crumpling it in her fist. This madman was messing with her city and laughing about it. "Assemble the rest of the team," she growled. "We're going in."