EPISODE 2.02.5: FALLOUT
Some problems are harder than others to solve.
-x-
"Look, I'm sorry, but I swear - whatever happened to her, I didn't do it! I have no idea who you're talking about - you've got the wrong guy!"
Once more Becquerel Jones shoved the photograph back across the table, his index finger leaving a smudge on the glossy surface. It was a school portrait of a fourteen year-old girl, her head tilted, shoulders relaxed. She gave the camera a wide smile, and barrettes held her hair back from her face. Becquerel Jones had stopped looking at the picture hours ago. They said that it had been several weeks since the girl had gone missing. They said that she'd left a note the night she disappeared. They said that it mentioned him by name.
He'd never seen her before in his life.
"Becquerel, please calm down. You're not being accused of anything - we just want to know what happened to Demia Carter, and any information you can give us will help."
That morning, he had been pulled from his lab for questioning. Apparently they'd turned up at his high school first and, upon not finding him there, had searched his family's primary residence before finally turning up at their old home (the one he had used as a base of operations for the last several years, after his folks had needed to move to a place that allowed more mobility for Liz). At first, two international law enforcement agents had sat on the other side of the table; now, several hours later, it seemed like the entire local precinct had started to take the interrogation in shifts. Early afternoon sun cut across the tabletop, across the picture of the missing girl; it was sweltering in the small room, despite the fan on the corner of the table that occasionally wafted his sweat-slicked hair back from his face.
The woman studying Becquerel now was the third officer to deal with him, and she looked as exhausted as the teenager felt. Throughout their talk, her hands remained wrapped around a styrofoam cup of coffee that wafted a faintly rancid smell into the air. Too much sugar and artificial cream. Hands perfectly still, her face occasionally shifting, giving him no other physiological cues to work with. No way to tell what he should say to make this entire situation go away.
Bec felt like he was going to be sick.
"You can't keep holding me here! I don't know anything, and unless you're charging me with something, you have to let me go! I - I should at least get a phone call, shouldn't I? I want my phone call!" He lifted his chin, folding his arms across his chest, trying to hide the shaking in his voice.
"We've been over this already. You've been placed at several crime scenes in the past two years, Jones." Her brow furrowed. "Looking at your file, we've got several cases of breaking and entering, one count of minor theft, and multiple vandalism charges. And that's not even touching the accusations of stock market fraud. The records just aren't in your favour."
"Hey, the fraud charges - those were years ago and they were totally dropped anyways, and I'm not a killer! Look, I'm - I'm not even from the same country as her, I don't know how you think -"
"No, I don't think you're a killer, you're right. But that girl has a family, and anything you can tell us will help us get her back to them." She settled back in her chair, and took a slow swig of her coffee. "That's all we want - to find that girl and get her back home."
"You're not listening to me! I don't know her! I never forget a face, okay? It's a gift, I never forget people, never forget anything, and I have no idea who that girl is! I wish I could help you, but I can't!"
Silence, for a moment, following his outburst.
Before either individual could speak again, the door opened to admit a young woman. It took Bec several moments to realize that she could not have been much older than he was. Dressed neatly in a skirt and blouse, her curly blonde hair pulled up in a bun and a file folder clutched against her chest, her heels clicked smartly against the floor as she strode across the room.
The officer half rose from her chair in protest. "This is a private room," she stated, and then added uncertainly, "The school tours don't cover this part of the building."
"I'm here to speak with Becquerel Jones, actually," the woman announced, her voice fluid with a European accent - French, though in his dazed state it was difficult for Bec to place the exact region. Her hand extended, a white business card held between two fingers that the officer stared at blankly before realizing she was supposed to take it. The young woman's fingernails were manicured a careful, flawless pink - clearly, she was somebody who knew the benefit of a strong first impression. "I represent his legal counsel."
"Sorry, Miss..." The officer glanced down at the card, "Pardiso?"
"Paradizo," she corrected, withdrawing her hand once more. "And if you'll excuse us, I need a moment with my client."
After the police officer had shuffled dazedly through the doorway, Miss Paradizo crossed the room to stand opposite Becquerel, lifting the officer's abandoned cup of coffee from the table as she passed. Without looking up, she dropped it in the garbage; still half-full of liquid, it rattled against the metal as the styrofoam cup landed right-side-up in the trash can. Not breaking stride, she flipped open her folder and removed the top sheet of paper, setting it down on the surface of the table in front of him. "This is what you are going to do," she told him, finger tapping the page. "Four steps to get you out of here."
Becquerel squinted skeptically at the page before looking up at the young woman again. "You're not old enough to represent legal counsel. How do I -"
She huffed melodramatically. "I said I represent your legal counsel. I lied. I am your legal counsel. Here. I know you've had a long day so I've made it as simple as possible. First, you say this." She jabbed at the first line of text and then slowly moved her finger down to the next row, continuing to talk as she prodded each object on the page. "Second, you ask for this. Third, you cite this segment of the criminal code." The woman looked up at him and grinned. "Fourth, you shut up and give your most angelic smile. Say nothing else. Not a word. Got it?"
Bec stared at her for a moment, dumbfounded. She sighed, resigned.
"Your silence is good, but that smile could use work. Now, have you got it?"
"But who are you?"
"That's not what I asked."
"Fine. Yes, I understand." He did not need to reread the sheet, sliding it back across the table. The woman nodded, tucking it back inside her folder as she stood.
"Excellent. I'll see you outside."
-x-
Twenty minutes later, Miss Paradizo was waiting for him on the front steps of the police station. She stood facing the street, folder still clutched tight in her arms. He rubbed the back of his neck uncertainly before stumbling down the last three steps to her side.
She checked her watch. "Well done. I was expecting to wait at least another fifteen minutes. You were holding out on me with that angelic smile of yours."
Bec scowled as if to contradict her words. "And you are still not old enough to be a lawyer. I don't like being lied to. Look, if it turns out I shouldn't be wrapped up in this, or that somebody on the food chain somewhere goofed up and you're trying to cover their backs, fine. I get it. I'll walk away. But all I want is to know what's going on, because you are definitely not old enough to be a lawyer!" It was no longer a question.
"I'm not old enough to be a lawyer, and you're not old enough to possess a combined doctorate in nuclear and engineering physics. Yet, somehow, here we are. Everyone has their own talents; there are simply some individuals who have more than others. For example, you build things. I repair them." She glanced at him wryly. "If it makes you feel better, I'm not a lawyer. Technically, I'm a psychiatrist."
She stepped down to the sidewalk and began walking briskly to the right. Bec hesitated a moment before striding to keep up. "Then why are you here?"
"Because I have terribly needy friends. Any other questions?"
Becquerel paused to collect his thoughts, staring down blankly at the concrete. "The girl, the one who went missing. What - what actually happened to her?"
Miss Paradizo went still. "There's nothing you can do for her, Becquerel. Go home to your family. I'm sorry this happened. The police pulled in the wrong person. You won't be bothered again."
"She's dead, isn't she?"
The woman simply sighed. "Go home, Becquerel." She gave him a tight smile before turning to continue her walk up the path.
Becquerel continued to trail after her, his voice hard. "The police said that she mentioned me by name in her letter. I have a very unusual name."
"It was a mistake, that's all. Go home to your family," she said again.
Becquerel stopped. The woman's heels clicked on the pavement as she drew away several steps. As he watched, she brought a cellphone to her ear. "It's done and he's out. You owe me - again." And before there would be time for anyone to respond on the other end, she snapped the phone shut.
When she walked away this time, Becquerel did not follow her. Instead, he sat down heavily on the curb, resting his head in his hands for a moment.
It's over now. Just breathe.
-x-
That should have been the end of the matter.
He'd misplaced his cell phone a month ago, and so he couldn't call anybody to come pick him up. When he'd finally regained the composure to stand, Bec had no choice but to hike the four blocks to the nearest light rail station. Walking outside, breathing in the fresh air (or, breathing in air that was as fresh as air ever got in downtown Denver), he took the opportunity to consider exactly what to do next. Part of him wanted to go after the strange woman, and determine who and what she was. If that girl, Demia Carter, was out there and in danger, didn't he owe it to her to try and do something about it?
The phone call, though: that was calculated. Bec knew it. Miss Paradizo would have never let him overhear it unless she wanted him to know exactly how dangerous this situation was. Well, if she was trying to intimidate me, it worked. He prodded the guard rail with the toe of his sneaker, considering.
Foresight had never been one of Becquerel's strengths. The first time he'd submitted his doctoral research project before a committee, he'd entirely forgotten to calibrate it for the change in altitude between Denver and Stanford. As a result, the poor device had gotten confused and nearly exploded - only a rapid adjustment to his compiler had managed to avert blanketing half of Silicon Valley with low-level gamma radiation. More impressed by the quick fix than by the device itself, the committee had awarded him his degree.
So it was that, when the next homebound train finally arrived, he took it. There were clearly factors at play here that he could not anticipate, and he highly doubted any of them could be manipulated by a few cut wires and cleverly-placed lines of code. A moment of fumbling around in his pockets led him to realize that he'd managed to leave his transit pass at the police station. Rather than return to get it, Bec kept his fingers crossed the entire way home that nobody would actually pull him aside to check.
His parents had both been frantic, cornering him in the kitchen for questioning. He'd done his best to shrug off their concern, mumbling something about a legal fund for wrongfully-arrested minors and an unfortunate case of mistaken identity. "It's over," he'd assured his mother before changing the topic, once more, to his sister's health.
-x-
Three minutes past midnight, he gave up on sleep and cracked open his bedroom window. Before proceeding any further in his escape attempt, Bec paused to listen, making sure it was safe. He could hear his father snoring down the hall, and his sister's stereo playing quietly through the house despite the blankets she shoved under her door to muffle the music. Other than those two sounds, all was quiet.
Great, time to go. It's been a long day - I need to tinker with something. Maybe then I'll be able to sleep.
He leaned halfway out the window, twisting upwards to grip the eaves of the roof, pulling himself all the way out of his room. Hanging by his fingertips, he shut the window behind him by pressing with his knees against the glass pane and angling his body to slide it shut with a soft click. He knew from experience that if it were left open, somebody could notice the draft.
That taken care of, Becquerel let go of the eaves and dropped to the lawn below. Wringing his hands together to work out the pins and needles, Bec paused to take one last look at his family's home. All the windows were closed, and all the rooms were dark. It was peaceful.
Unbidden, he thought once more of Demia Carter. He wondered if her parents were asleep at this very moment, or if they were awake and trying to find their only daughter. New Brunswick, so three hours ahead of us. There's not much you can do at three in the morning, but I don't think they'd be resting.
Shaking his head as he set off at a loping pace across the front lawn, Bec tried once more to remind himself that this was not his problem to solve.
-x-
The parcel was waiting on the front step of his lab, sitting beneath two pieces of junk mail. Bec groaned, cursing the postman who consistently forgot to use the mailbox in the way it was intended.
The parcel, shoddily wrapped in brown paper and lacking a return address, bore no postmark. His name was printed in blocky capital letters along one edge of the package. It was a small and relatively flat box, stiff cardstock to protect its contents. Likely a disc of some sort, Becquerel surmised as he stooped to pick it up, leaving the junk mail where it lay on the doorstep. He had to use the lockpicks he kept under the front mat to jimmy his lab's door open - ever since one of his projects had exploded a few months back, the mechanism always jammed shut in humid weather. For some reason, he'd never gotten around to replacing it. Nor had he bothered to duplicate his keys. It didn't matter much, as it only took him a few minutes to pry his way inside even with the parcel tucked under one arm.
Hope none of the neighbors are watching, because this would be hard to explain to the police. And that's the last thing I need.
Again.
It was odd, how quickly he'd stopped thinking of this place as his old home and began viewing it only as a place to keep his work.
Bec took the steps to the landing two at a time, ripping the brown paper away from the cardstock to free an unmarked disc from the package. Maybe one of my forum friends burned me a mixtape? Becquerel paused on the threshold, spinning the disc for a moment between his thumb and forefinger. The grooves on the side of the disc caught the soft green and blue lights emanating from his lab, power lights and motion sensors reflecting back a multitude of colours.
His laptop was kept in a drawer underneath one of his benches. At one point he'd installed a safe in the corner to keep it safe, but the lock there had recently started to jam. After spending one particularly nerve wracking afternoon trying to free his laptop from the metal box, he'd stopped trusting the safe, deciding it was much safer to hide the device in plain sight. It was nestled now beside his dart gun, and he gingerly moved the tranquilizer out of the way as he lifted his laptop to set it on the bench.
After isolating his critical system files (just in case his friends weren't as cautious as they should be with their antivirus programs), Bec popped the disc into the player, and waited a moment for it to load.
-x-
The first time he watched the video, he had no idea what he was seeing.
-x-
[After a moment of static, an image loads. The camera must be mounted in the cockpit of some vehicle, as the room in the video is half airplane and half commuter train. It hums a little, and though it has no windows it must be moving very fast. Smooth edges, soft lines, white lighting, grainy webcam image. I am there, seated before the camera, head tilted back; behind me, two strangers. No, not strangers - one of them is the girl from the photograph, tulle skirt and rainboots, her hands fluttering as she talks, her face earnest, expressive. And the other -
- I don't know who the other person is. Not much older than me, pale eyes, formal clothes, dark hair, stiff posture. Somebody off camera talks in a language I do not understand, and the stranger responds in kind. Harsh words. It escalates. I jump out of my chair.
"Technically, he's our hostage, so you negotiate with Miss Carter and myself, not Artemis!"
More words, and then we are falling. Somebody - is that me? did I make that sound? - screams. The stranger's face, close to the camera. He speaks quickly, calmly. English, this time.
"Call you back."
The screen goes dark.]
-x-
The second time he watched the video, Becquerel Jones remembered everything.
-x-
The third time he watched the video, Bec paused it in the moment before the shuttle began to crash. He reached forward with one fingertip, as though he could reach through the screen and touch the past.
Demia.
How could he have forgotten? How could he have forgotten her?
-x-
After the fourth watch of the tape, Becquerel Jones knew exactly what he was going to do. He booted the disc from his laptop without bothering to properly eject it from the system. First thing in the morning, he'd destroy both laptop and disc. Can't leave a trail for the LEP.
Demia was dead. He knew that for sure - he raised a hand to his cheek, touching the place where she had kissed him goodbye.
Demia was dead. There was nothing to be done about that.
He'd forgotten. They'd made him forget. His head hurt.
Demia was dead, and he knew exactly who was to blame.
-x-
He worked through the shock of fresh memories, through a numbness coated with the threat of thick emotion. Fingers flying across his keyboard, he pulled up web browser windows; frantically, he dug through old folders and notebooks for any trace of useful information. It was frustrating work, as very little had survived the fairy's sweep of the lab. For most of it, he was starting from memory; other tasks had to be begun from scratch.
Only once did he pause, looking up over the lid of his laptop with unfocused eyes. Dawn's first light was spilling through the skylight, illuminating wires and circuit boards in a jumble on the workbench. For the first time in his life, the disorder troubled him. He saw again in his mind's eye the mess of torn-apart systems in a torn-apart shuttle - panels hanging on loose hinges, bent latches jutting out at odd angles, pink rainboots treading on wires, one last terrified yelp as the shuttle wall ripped open, a blinding flare of blue light, the taste of bile in his throat -
He shut his eyes tight, blocking the stale fear with a sea of black. When he looked down at the keyboard again, his hands were no longer shaking.
The next time somebody panicked, it was not going to be him.
-x-
[I looked down at my hands for just a moment, one thumb tracing over the other to hide the fact that both were trembling. When I returned to watching Artemis, my voice came out hollow. "We're not on a first-name basis, Fowl. We are not friends."]
-x-
OUTBOX:
Hello,
I've been following your blog for the last year or so, and I hope it's okay that I dug up your email address because I didn't want to post this as a public comment. The thing is, I think you may be onto something with the energy signature disturbances around your family's home, and I think this might be bigger than either of us know! Even if your older brother doesn't believe you about them, I definitely do.
Here: I've attached a bunch of satellite readings (please don't ask how I got my hands on them, since it's a very long and slightly illegal story!) for you to go through. They've been scrubbed from the official records, but they present a weird pattern, don't they? Do you think it could be related to what you're working on?
This could be seriously important, and I don't think I can get to the bottom of it alone! I'm looking forward to hearing back from you!
-Henri
-x-
INBOX:
Henri;
I think you could be right - these satellite numbers are pretty weird! Are you sure they're for real? They do confirm a bunch of my suspicions. I didn't really blog about it because it's kind of embarrassing, but I think my brother might've buried an entire cable line just to get me to stop poking around. I think he thinks I'm wasting my time, but you know what? Just between you and me, he's wrong, for once. There is something here.
I can feel it.
If you still want to help me find out what it is, that's okay. I've attached the readings I've taken around our home, and all the data does seem consistent. What's going on here? I hope we can figure it out! :)
Your friend,
Myles
-x-
Author's Note:
Winged and I have been working on the next episode, but since we're both in the middle of yet another round of papers and finals, we decided another webisode was in order. Oh, and kudos to everybody who suspected we weren't quite done with Bec yet! - Freud