Chapter 126: The Test (Part 3)
The City of Townsville. Suburbs. The House.
14 MAR (Tuesday) 1989. 2348.
Ever since it happened, The House felt dirty, tainted. It'd felt that way even though the professor had moved the Girls back up the second floor, back to his room. The door of his room had reminded him of everything too. The door was broken, the bottom half of it chipped away by bullets to circumvent the metal blocker at the bottom that was locking up the door...
He had called Captain Scott in the meantime, who was assisted by Lieutenant Blake. The USDO special operative had returned to the site to camp his men at a nearby house only to be drawn into this.
In the meantime, he had a huge personal crisis on his hands. He had to shoot and kill his own girlfriend and fiancee to save Buttercup and her sisters, who were likely next on Selicia's hit list. Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup were raised with the impression - the lie - that Selicia was their mother. Needless to say, that meant lots of problems. Blossom and Bubbles now had to deal with the fact that their Mom tried to kill them, while Buttercup had been led to believe that he had murdered Mom when all he was trying to do was to protect her.
Even Asian drama shows had nothing on what had gone down this night.
In the master bedroom, the professor had sat the Girls down on his bed - except Buttercup had gone off on her own to sit at the dressing table on her own, mesmerized by the wedding veil Selicia had left there, and the wedding dress hanging nearby. A mere glimpse of those artifacts was painful enough for the professor that he had to force himself to ignore Buttercup in favor of Blossom and Bubbles.
Taking a first-aid kit from the washroom, he began treating Blossom's graze wound, applying antiseptic more out of a doctor's habit than medical necessity before bandaging the wound.
"Daddy…" Bubbles muttered. "Why did Mom try to kill us?"
The million-dollar question he had no answer to.
"Will she be alright?" Blossom added. It was a question he had all the answers to, but it was a question he didn't really want to answer.
In the end, the professor did not answer either of them. All he could think about right now was the USDO security teams sweeping through The House. They would no doubt have to collect Selicia's body…
The City of Townsville. Suburbs. The House.
14 MAR (Tuesday) 1989. 2349.
Captain Scott and a few handpicked men descended down into the labs, where a panicked professor said was where Sergeant Selicia Goodwin could be found. He could hardly believe what he said, that Selicia had turned against the bioweapons, and therefore the USDO. Although he wasn't very involved in the relationship between Professor Utonium and Selicia, he knew that they were close and he was invited to their wedding, which had been delayed and, now, likely canceled for good. Why Selicia would do this was beyond him.
Regardless, he and his men scoured the labs for any possible intruders, in order to anticipate all possible scenarios, but there was not a soul to be found. Selicia was working alone.
Going through the winding corridors of the busiest corner of the lab, they came upon a trail of blood and some kind of black substance on the floor, going in a direction contrary to their own. The soldiers with Captain Scott raised their weapons, now afraid of some kind of force at work in the labs.
The trail of blood and black substance continued in the distance, eventually tapering off into spots of blood, but the captain was more interested in scouting out the deathbed of Selicia first. Going in the opposite direction of the trajectory of the blood trail, the security team traced it all the way to the Chemical X storeroom, where they found where it had happened.
Going through the airlock, they found that a shelf had collapsed, with broken bottles all around the mess. Chemical X had formed a pool on the floor.
There were no corpses anywhere, and somehow, Captain Scott expected it…
The City of Townsville. Suburbs. The House.
14 MAR (Tuesday) 1989. 2351.
Agent Blake and his men were left to guard the exterior of The House when gunshots rang out inside. He had been provided very little information on what was going on. Captain Scott had gone into The House immediately, leaving his lieutenant to brief him on what was going on. Apparently, Captain Scott's right-hand man knew about as much as he did, which was nothing. There was something the captain wasn't telling anyone, and now it was exploding in everyone's faces. Blake could only speculate that some enemy operatives had survived, and were beginning to wreak havoc again.
Whistling to his men, Agent Blake raised his XM4 carbine, approaching The House cautiously. His men formed wings on his left and right. They were more than halfway to the front door when it opened and out walked the form of a shapely woman in black USDO uniform and gear, shambling out almost as if drunk, hunched as if exhausted, an MP5 in one hand. Prodigiously long hair covered her face, hair that was more than waist length. Locks of hair curled at the end, swaying with the dying wind. The locks of hair seemed as if they were curling and flexing on their own - or was it the wind?
Blake could recognize her. Selicia Goodwin. He'd worked with her for years, and would have been able to identify her in the dark. But the hair - how did it get so long? And was that blood on her uniform?
"Selicia, what's going on in there? Who's attacking us?" Blake asked. Selicia raised her SMG as a reply. "What are you doing!?"
She opened fire without warning, sweeping her bullets across Blake and his squad, who fired back, but it was ultimately a one-sided encounter as bodies fell. Several bullets zipped through Blake himself, who fell over, face to the sky. By the time it was over, only one man in Blake's squad remained, crouching low on the ground defensively.
Selicia stared at this man, whose eyes met hers. He was a young soldier in his early twenties, a corporal who had joined the USDO only months ago. Walking over to him, she caressed his cheek with a hand before staggering away into the night, towards an unoccupied humvee. There were still some soldiers in Blake's squad who were alive and well, hiding behind their Lamborgini Speed Transports, but somehow, when they set their eyes on her, they refused to open fire, whether due to fear or something more insidious and unknown. Mesmerized by the lady, the young corporal followed her and got into the humvee with her.
The City of Townsville. Suburbs. The House.
14 MAR (Tuesday) 1989. 2353.
When gunshots rang out in the lawn of The House, Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup became curious and ran to the circular windows to see just what else had transpired. What they found on the lawn shocked them.
Soldiers lay in the snow, pools of blood spreading underneath them, eight in all. A dark shadow was walking away from the scene, a figure with black waist-length hair and black USDO uniform and gear. But how could it be? Wasn't Mom dead in the basement?
No, it couldn't be Mom. Mom was dead.
It was another traitor, the Girls each thought on their own, just like the police officers who rained on their parade.
Blossom stared at the men on the ground. It didn't take long for her to notice that Blake was among them. So were Fields, Holliday, Rutherland, and a few others who had been kind to her. Her eyes misted up at the sight of her friends on the ground. Their friendship had been built over the months, and now it had been extinguished in an instant.
When it was all over, men from all sides swarmed the soldiers who had been shot down, checking for pulses, ripping open combat gear and fabric, and applying first aid with tourniquet and bandages where applicable.
Blossom ran out of her room when she saw it, followed by Bubbles and Buttercup, running past even the professor and down the stairs. Zooming straight through the front door, she stood at an arm's length from the crowd of USDO soldiers gathering to save their fellows, unsure of what to do. What could she do except watch?
One by one, her close ones were leaving her, and this time, it was Mom and Blake and all the friends he had brought along during the early days. The world was getting smaller; it was as if walls were closing in all around her, slowly but surely.
Professor Utonium caught up with her within seconds, pulling her away as she began to cry shrilly, followed by Bubbles. Buttercup stared, looking a little shocked and teary-eyed - Blake and his team had gotten through to her somewhat, if only because they were cool, and doubled as fun playmates. The professor pulled her along too.
"Don't look at them," the professor said, himself badly shaken by recent events, held together only by his love for what remained of his patchwork family. He pulled Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup along, guiding them back towards The House. "Just keep walking, don't look back."
The professor would lead them back down to the lab as a medical checkup was necessary after what they had been through. He forced himself to work, to ignore the call of the alcohol, the gun, and misery as he tended to his surviving family.
When the Girls were put to bed, he returned to the Chemical X storeroom, where he sat on the floor and watched as Selicia's blood dried on the floor, wondering how Selicia's body would be treated. Would it be dumped into a furnace without a second's thought? Or should he expect a second funeral in a day or two?
Little did he know, just like his Girls, there was no body, and Selicia was still out there, somewhere…
The City of Townsville. Suburbs. The House.
15 MAR (Wednesday) 1989. 1021.
The next day, no one came to arouse Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup from their sleep. Waking up on their own, one after the other, they wondered how life was going to continue from here, now that Mom was gone forever.
Blossom was the first to leap off her bed, discovering that some of her strength had returned, as did her speed and reflexes. It was small comfort, nothing that could take her mind off of the recent family tragedies. Morosely, she jumped in an attempt to hover or even fly but found herself falling back down on her feet again. The only consolation was that she could jump high enough to vault over her sisters and land softly enough that it didn't hurt her feet.
"Is Mom coming in to get us?" Bubbles yawned, still on her way from dreamland, her memories of yesterday dangerously close to the surface but chained to the seafloor by the anchor of trauma. She was sitting up in bed before pulling her legs closer into a cross-legged sitting position.
"Mom's dead, dumb-dumb!" Buttercup scolded Bubbles after jumping off the bed, annoyed that Bubbles had reminded her of Mom's death. She was already beginning to regret saving her.
"Oh…" Jolted awake abruptly by Buttercup, Bubbles remembered now, everything that had transpired yesterday, how Mom nearly killed her; had it not been for Blossom and Buttercup's interference, she wouldn't have still been around.
"Let's go..." Blossom said reluctantly while approaching Buttercup and taking her hand. "Dad's still not here too, and I'm worried about him." She tugged at Buttercup, who decided to follow… for now. Halfway to the door, she stopped and turned to Bubbles. "Come on…"
Reluctantly, Blossom led her sisters out of the room, and when there was no Dad in the corridor outside, she took them to his room, only to, once again, find no parent to turn to. Their stomachs rumbled, so they turned around and headed downstairs to the kitchen. Similarly, there was no Dad at the stairs, the living room, and the kitchen. But there were signs that he had been around, and it could be detected even before they see it.
There was the smell of kitchen activity; freshly prepared meals, discarded ingredients. When they entered the kitchen, they saw three meals, ready to eat. Pancakes with Chemical X-infused maple syrup and greyish milk also infused with Chemical X.
"I don't feel like eating…" Bubbles mewled, memories of a more complete family still digging at her like a sword. They used to sit here together, as a family. Dad, Mom, Blossom, herself, and Buttercup. Back in January, Mister Blake would visit occasionally. It hurt to see the table so empty.
Buttercup, meanwhile, had no such compunctions. Making a beeline for the nearest seat, she hoisted herself up and poked the pancake with the fingertip of her index finger. It wasn't very warm, which meant that it was prepared some time ago, perhaps half an hour ago.
"What's wrong? It's good food!" Buttercup said before picking up a bottle of maple syrup and squirting more of it onto her pancake. Cutting herself a large slice, she devoured it hungrily.
"Come on, Bubbles," Blossom pulled her by the hand. "We didn't really eat much yesterday." Reluctantly, Bubbles followed. Despite how little appetite she had, it was a whole different story when she got down to eating. The Chemical X was addictive as it was something her unique physiology craved after being poisoned by Anti-X twice over the past few days. Still, Bubbles had nothing on Buttercup, who in the absence of adult supervision, got so hungry for it that she abandoned her fork and knife for her hands, chomping away at her pancakes, huge pieces at a time.
Phone Recording 03151989-1342-TH
DOC: 15 MAR (Wednesday) 1989.
EXTRACTED: 20 MAR (Monday) 1989.
-TRANSCRIPT START-
(The phone's ringtone sounds as the phone line waits for a connection)
Psychiatrist Alice: Hello? Thomas? Is that you?
B-47 (Blossom): No… It's me.
Psychiatrist Alice: Blossom? It's me, Alice. Where's your father?
B-47 (Blossom): Oh… he's… (breaks out into a sob)
Psychiatrist Alice: Honey, what's wrong?
B-47 (Blossom): He wouldn't talk to me! Or Bubbles, or… or… (sobs)
Psychiatrist Alice: Where is he right now?
B-47 (Blossom): In the lab…
Psychiatrist Alice: How is he? Is he okay?
B-47 (Blossom): I don't know. He looks… really messed up.
Psychiatrist Alice: What do you mean?
B-47 (Blossom): His face is all hairy and scary looking and he smells! He looks terrible!
Psychiatrist Alice:That's… Look, I'll be coming over. Can you hold on until tomorrow?
B-47 (Blossom): Can't you come today? Please?
Psychiatrist Alice: I can't. I wish I could, but I'm not allowed to because of security concerns, apparently.
B-47 (Blossom): But…
Psychiatrist Alice: Is your dad taking care of you?
B-47 (Blossom): Yes…
Psychiatrist Alice: Did he feed you?
B-47 (Blossom): He cooked for us but he wouldn't talk to us.
Psychiatrist Alice: Alright. Give me a call if that changes. Just… hang in there and I'll be there at the usual time tomorrow.
B-47 (Blossom): Okay…
Psychiatrist Alice: I… heard about what happened to your Mom. I'm sorry.
B-47 (Blossom): (Silence)
Psychiatrist Alice: Anyway, I'll see you tomorrow. Take care of yourself. Bye.
B-47 (Blossom): (crying) Alice- Please don't go!
Psychiatrist Alice: I have to. I have work to do.
B-47 (Blossom): (crying) But I'm scared! Mom's gone, Mister Blake's gone and… Bunny's gone… and Dad won't talk to me. I feel so alone…
Psychiatrist Alice: I'll be there for you, honey, and soon. Just... stick with your sisters, Blossom. You're not alone and you're a leader, and from what I heard, a lieutenant, at four months old! And that's coming from the harshest soldier I've ever worked with.
One day, Blossom. Just one day and I'll be there.
B-47 (Blossom): Promise?
Psychiatrist Alice: I promise.
-TRANSCRIPT END-
The City of Townsville. Suburbs. The House.
15 MAR (Wednesday) 1989. 1816.
It had happened again for the third time in a day. Dad would creep out of the lab to cook for Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup, only to ignore them when they actually tried to talk to him. For dinner, Blossom and Bubbles (Buttercup had stopped caring since breakfast if she ever cared at all) had even waited at the kitchen to intercept him, only for Dad to ignore them and their pleas for attention as he began cooking for them. No matter how they pulled at his pants and cry and beg and scream, he acted as if they never existed.
And now Blossom had had it. When Dad was done cooking, he had, once again, retreated down to his lab. After nibbling at the meal he prepared, she decided to head downstairs to the labs to find him.
Descending down the stairs, it was as if Blossom's losses were following her, catching up to her. Bunny was gone, and it was all her fault, and now Mom was gone, as was any chance at reconciliation, then there was Mister Blake and friends, all gunned down right in front of The House. She remembered her dream last night. It was the same dream as the night before, of Bunny glaring at her from a distance, and no matter how much she ran and flew to catch up to her, she couldn't reach her at all. Bunny would seem further away the harder Blossom tried, and all Bunny had to do was walk away, and then she was lost forever.
It felt as if Dad was going in the same direction too.
When Blossom was finally crossing the floor of the lab, she noticed that the place was poorly kept. The floor was dusty, with muddy bootprints of security officers still riddling the floor, a reminder of what had happened the previous day.
She couldn't find him anywhere. Not behind his self-ransacked desk, not at the workspaces where chemicals were stored and a cage of dead hamsters still stood, not at the medical wing where she had spent far too much time in. She eventually went in search of him at the cubicles, where she found him huddled against the wall just outside the Chemical X storeroom. He was still a mess, and the last time he'd washed up was when Selicia did it for him. His stubbles had grown longer and his face was still pallid, as if from permanent shock.
The Chemical X storeroom hadn't been cleaned at all. The shelves that had pinned Selicia's corpse had been violently tossed aside by… something - perhaps the security officers intervening? Her blood was still in the room, along with a copious amount of Chemical X, which did not evaporate nor dry. The blood and Chemical X weren't confined to the storeroom. There was a trail of it leading out, something which was a mystery to Blossom, a mystery which she didn't care to solve.
"Dad?" Blossom called out to the professor. He didn't reply. She got closer, but she didn't dare come that close. "Why won't you talk to us?"
She was met with silence again. The professor wouldn't even look at her, wouldn't even acknowledge her.
"Dad, please. Bunny's gone and now Mom and Mister Blake's gone too…" Blossom said tearfully. She sat down next to Dad, and with some apprehension, went for a hug-
Only for the professor to get up abruptly the moment she touched him, pushing her away roughly.
"Get away from me," the professor warned her with a whispery voice before walking briskly away. Blossom, already tearful, followed behind him, just as confused as to why Dad wouldn't even talk to her, or even so much as be with her - and her sisters.
"Why are you being like this?" Blossom cried behind him as they left the cubicles behind. "Dad, I know I'm wrong! Please! Bunny died because of me! I'm sorry!"
She tried to stop him from walking away by hugging his leg, only for the professor to whirl around aggressively.
"I said get away from me!" he barked at her, fists clenched. Taken aback, Blossom stepped away, shrinking from his yell.
"But- no!" Blossom cried.
"We were never meant to be a family! Don't you see- don't you get it!? I- I can't take care of you anymore!" the professor screamed madly before running away, disappearing around the corner, leaving a stunned Blossom behind.