Jay shot a look at Edie from where the two were sitting in the back seat of the LTD, and tried to subtly point to their partners in the front seat. Kay was focused on his driving, and Aileen was checking out the city out the passenger side window, but he was sure that he had seen those tendrils of hers twitching in the rear view mirror. Was a little alien action going on up there that those two didn't want him to find out about?
Edie looked over at him and nodded slightly. She had seen it too. They were going to have a lot to talk about, that was for sure, once they got the city, and to wherever Agent Kay intended to let them off. She just hopped that Agent X's cousin, riding in the SUV behind them, wouldn't mind having to hear more than a little gossip. With the preparations Aileen had made, and the fuss over how her human suit looked, she had been halfway tempted to make sure she packed up her place before they left home, in anticipation of a possible move. As it was, she had settled for bringing half of her massive book collection along, claiming they were duplicates that she needed to trade.
Kay looked in the mirror at his parter, and had to fight to keep from rolling his eyes. Maybe leaving Jay and Edie alone together wasn't the best idea in the world, but surely with X's cousin in the middle of things, they couldn't manage too get into too much trouble. Any trouble they got into, though, he could deal with later. He needed the time alone with Aileen, to…
The communicator on the dashboard beeped before Kay had time to finish his thought.
"Kay, got a problem at your location." Zed said as soon as Aileen clicked the communicator on. "Alcidian cabbie just spotted it and called it in. Looks like we've got another Beruga on the loose. Containment crew's on the way, but the lot of you, X and Elle are almost on top of it."
"You're letting X and Elle get around a Beruga after what happened last time?" Jay chuckled, remembering the fit Elle had pitched, when her partner had offered her up as Beruga bait. "Good thing that his cousin's a nurse. He pulls another trick like he did before, he'll probably be needing one."
"Don't think it will go that far, son." Zed said. At least he hoped with X's mother there visiting, along with his cousin, that it didn't. "Looks like the Beruga's still on an iron diet, a long way from going after people."
"We're on it." Kay told Zed as he pulled over. He climbed out of the car and took a moment to survey the situation before issuing orders. "Slick, take Edie and go that way, check out the buildings. Aileen and I will head back the other way. There's a train track. Might be a tempting target."
"Yeah." Jay chuckled as Kay and Aileen started to leave. "Hey, just don't the two of you do anything I…. Well, Zed…" No, he had seen the looks their boss gave X's mother Zoe, when he thought no one was looking. "Don't do anything that the worms wouldn't do!"
"I ought to have packed more of my books." Edie said. "Those things are going to be a pain to get shipped, if things keep going the way they look like they're heading. So, have you ever dealt with a Beruga?"
Before Jay could reply, they heard someone calling.
"Wait up!" X's cousin Zara called as she hurried down the sidewalk to join them, the long, reddish brown hair of her human suit swaying despite the ribbons holding them in loose braids on either side of her face. She did make a nice looking human, Jay had to admit, and without her cousin's complaints about wearing a human suit too.
"Thought your cousin would want you to stick with him, with that thing on the loose." Jay told her.
"My cousin and that little human of his were arguing about the last time that they dealt with a Beruga." Zara told them. "I was about to tell them to get a room, except that X would probably have to ask me for the money to pay for it. I thought it made more financial sense to head this way."
"A room?" Jay frowned. "Wait, is all of that arguing some sort of Jeedangian courting thing?"
"I don't know about other Jeedangians, but it is for my cousin, not that it's been very successful for him so far. It does seem like Agent Elle likes it a lot more than the females back home, though. Maybe Aunt Zoe won't have to hold an auction to try to get a daughter-in-law after all." Zara said.
"Great. So, we're the only ones here not thinking about sex, then?" Jay said.
"Well, I don't know about what you're thinking." Edie said with a grin.
Jay just shook his head before turning to Zara. "You sure you don't want to maybe wait back at the car? Beruga can be…."
"I've dealt with one before. Nasty things." Zara nodded.
"Wait. I thought they didn't eat Jeedangians." Jay said. X would definitely be needing a nurse, and possibly all of the king's horses and men, to put him back together again, if he had made that one up, and used Elle as bait for a laugh.
"They don't. Someone back home even has a business, renting them out to clean up scrap metal at construction sites. The problem was that some idiot rented one, left it fastened in his yard to clean up, and then took a very long hike. His house was right next to the city's main shuttleport. I think you can guess what happened. It took twenty-five animal control officers, and every peacekeeper in the city to catch the thing. Didn't X tell you about it? He ranted about it for three hours once at a family reunion."
"He's handled a beruga before?" Jay wasn't sure if Elle would be pleased or not to learn that, and that her partner really didn't know what he was doing. "So, you're sure you want to…."
"I've got my bio-scanner. It's short range, but if we get close enough, it ought to pick up the beruga." Zara said as she pulled the scanner in question out of her bag, frowning as she took stock of the medical supplies that she had on hand. If the beruga switched to a carbon diet, she would definitely prefer to have more equipment handily, but what she did have would have to do if necessary.
"Well, okay." Jay agreed as he pulled out his own scanner, before picking a way to go. "Just stick close, though, okay? Don't need your cousin complaining if something goes wrong."
A few minutes later the trio stood outside the rear door of a building as Jay looked from the lock to the readings on his scanner with a frown.
"Retirement home. Isn't that where senior members of your species live?" Zara asked as she looked up from her own scanner. The beruga was still too far away for the scanner to detect it, but there was definitely beruga residue near the door.
"Yeah." Just perfect. The thing might be on a iron rich diet at the moment, but if any of those seniors saw the beruga, it would give them a heart attack. Shot off lock or not, they had to get in there. "Spread out, and find that thing fast!" He ordered as he pushed the door open.
A couple of minutes later, Jay was poking around, when he a voice startled him.
"What are you doing here?" the older man demanded.
"Department of Health, Division Six." Jay said as he reached for his ID.
"Department of Health?" Another man said as he hurried to join the first man, followed by several ladies. "You here to investigate that idiot Mister Weaver with the ambulance service? Because he tried to pronounce Murray dead just yesterday, and he didn't have a thing wrong with him besides a broken toe!"
"Ask if he's here with those other people." One of the ladies demanded. "Never seen anything like it in my life, people running around the building like that!"
"Hopefully they're with the Department of Water, Division Six." Zara said as she came down the hallway, Edie right behind her and a bottle of something in her hand. "Agent Jay, I think we might have a problem. I found these, and there are I don't want to think of how many more, all empty."
"Iron pills." Jay murmured. "Would this be enough to fill it up?"
"If it wasn't, biting into the water main in the basement probably did." Zara told him. "It's flooded. I wouldn't recommend going down there unless you have deep water experience."
"Water. Which means it's likely moved on to carbon." Just perfect. "We've got to find that thing." Jay said as he headed for the steps.
"Jay?" Edie called. "You're more experienced in this, I know, but wouldn't it be a lot faster to take the elevator?"
"Probably." What was he thinking? Jay pulled out his communicator, as he hit the button for the first floor. "Kay, where are you? Got a big problem here!"
"Cemetery. What's the problem, slick?" Kay asked.
"Beruga's on the loose in a retirement home, and it's moved on to a carbon diet, that's what's the problem." Jay said. "If it gets to eating on all these seniors, I don't know how Zed's going to cover that one up."
"Got it." Kay said just as someone called out.
"Sammy? Hey, Sammy! Where's Noah?"
"That is the without a doubt the worst looking human suit I have ever seen." Aileen whispered to Kay as she took in the sight of the short man hurrying across the cemetery towards them.
"That isn't a human suit." Kay said. "Slick, little delay. We'll be there as soon as we can."
"That isn't a…. Are you sure? That's actually a human?" Aileen asked.
"I wasn't for three years." Kay said. Just perfect. What was his brother's team doing here, and where in the world was his brother?
"Delay. Can't believe this." Jay grumbled as the elevator moved up another floor. "Someone's going to get eaten for sure. Anyone picking up anything?"
"There. Next floor. There's something up there that could be the beruga." Edie said as she looked at her scanner.
"Still to far away for mine." Zara said. "The range is only maybe a 150 of your yards."
"Ought to help narrow it down, though. That's good." Jay said as the elevator opened and they got out. "The second that things gives a beep you let us know."
After that, things almost seemed to happen in fast forward. The three moved down the hallway, scanning for any sign of the beruga. Then two things happened almost simultaneously. Zara's scanner beeped just as the sound of gunshots rang out.
Before Jay could stop her, Zara pushed the door of the room that it sounded like the shots had came from in.
"What in the world is she thinking? Zara!" If he let anything happen to his cousin, X would probably leave him in pieces. He started for the door himself, with Edie right behind, but before he took two steps, the Beruga was there, tackling him, and sending him flying into the room in a way that he hadn't exactly planned.
"Jay!" Edie raced in, barely missing knocking down the human who apparently lived there as he fled, dragging his oxygen tank with him at a pace that would seem to suggest he might not really need the thing. Jay was on the floor, pinned down by the beruga, X's cousin on the other side of the room, kneeling by an injured human.
"Zara, that thing poisonous?" Edie shouted. Not that a little poison was going to stop her from getting it off of her friend.
"No, just annoying." Zara called as she raised her head for a moment to glare at the weaselly looking human in a corner of the room. At least that other nice human had knocked his weapon away from him so he couldn't do anymore damage. "Shhhssh. You're going to be fine." She said to the injured human in what she hoped would be a reassuring tone. "I've fixed much worse than this before."
She looked up to glare at the weaselly human again just as the beruga caught the scent of the injured human's blood. It crouched on Jay's chest for a moment, before tensing up and springing, towards what it clearly saw as an easier meal.
Zara moved in front of the human, bracing herself as best as she could, so the beruga's weight wouldn't send her crashing onto her new patient as it hit her. She expected it to back off as soon as it realized she was an inedible Jeedangian, but apparently getting to a wounded meal was too tempting. The thing held on, trying to knock her out of the way. it's claws cutting into the human suit and raking her actual skin.
Mark Sheridan shook his head, almost unable to believe what he was seeing. He blinked hard, but the thing was still there, and Royce was running out the door, leaving them with it, and most likely leaving that boy to die. Perfect chance for him to get out of there but…. No. That girl didn't even know the kid and she was trying to protect him from what looked like a monster. Least he could do was try to help He grabbed it and jerked hard, pulling the thing back a few inches, and giving the girl a chance to pull free, and move into a better position to shield the young marshal.
"Edie, help him!" Jay yelled. He pulled his noisy cricket before realizing it would be too dangerous to take a shot with that, and going for an icer. "Can't get a clear shot!"
"It's too tight in here for a clear shot!" Edie grabbed the beruga too, and pulled hard, trying to drag it towards the window with the human's help. Maybe if they could get it there…. It twisted in their hands, though, before she could do anything to stop it, sinking it's fangs into her hand and making her loose her grip.
"Edie, you okay?" Jay shouted as the beruga shook off the human too, and jumped out the window, scrambling up the fire escape.
"Fine. Didn't even get through the human suit." Edie said. "Zara?"
"I'm fine. Go after it." Zara said as she switched the scanner from beruga to human, and ran it over the injured human, cringing inside as she saw the readings. She definitely didn't have enough supplies on hand for this. "Go! This is what I do, remember? I'll be fine."
"And you." She ordered the human who had tried to help them. "Go and find a needle at least four or five inches long, and the syringe to go with it." She might not have the equipment that she was used to, but surely she could improvise something.