Chapter Seven:

Investigations

The next morning, Karen and Gordon walked together up to Shiratori Mortuary. She knew that her parents had a burial plot registered with them, so she assumed it wouldn't be very long at all before her mom showed up. As they walked, a couple of pedestrians passed by. Karen pulled down the brim of her large sun hat, doing her best to hide her face.

Gordon brushed up against her, smiling and waving at the people as they passed. "You look fine," he said. "I hardly recognize you."

Karen looked up at Gordon. To be fair, she hardly recognized him either. He had his hair tied back in a ponytail, with dark shades matching Karen's own, and a very convincing fuzzy caterpillar glued to his upper lip. He looked like a guy who was used to riding motorcycles and wearing leather jackets, who had been forced into a suit purely so he could pay respects to a fallen friend.

He tapped his ear. "Ten, how are we looking?" he asked.

Up ahead, an old woman in a blue shawl tapped her own ears and stopped at the threshold, glancing back at Gordon and Karen for just a moment. "I'm heading in now," she said.

"Good," Gordon said. "Be careful. We'll hang back a few seconds."

"See you soon."

The woman in the blue shawl turned and disappeared inside. Small screens popped up on Gordon and Karen's shades, showing the inside foyer of the mortuary, where a few secretaries were walking back and forth, while a woman sat on a small couch in the center of the room. Karen recognized her instantly.

"That's her," Karen said.

Her mom glanced up for a second at the newcomer, her hair a mess, and her eyes a deep red with tears. Karen's heart twisted with guilt.

"Approach with caution, Ten," Gordon said. "We'll be right nearby."

"Got it."

Karen watched as Ten sat down on the couch across from her mother. "Horrible place to be at this time of morning, isn't it?" the agent said in a scarily convincing old lady voice.

Karen's mom nodded, a dejected look on her face. "You here for your husband?" she asked.

"No, not this time," Ten said. "That was about six months ago now. Today, I'm here for my sister."

"I'm so sorry."

Karen was so caught up in watching the conversation with her mom that she jumped when Gordon touched her arm. He pointed out a couple of people leaning against the side of the building, looking like average civilians, but watching everyone who passed by with stern suspicion.

"Come on," Gordon said.

He and Karen lowered their heads and walked up the stairs into the mortuary.

Meanwhile, across town, Rio and Tomas walked into the lobby of Neo Labs. Rio was dressed in a green jumpsuit, as if he was a workman there to perform some maintenance, while Tomas was dressed in a shirt, tie, and glasses, with no makeup or anything, looking like a perfectly ordinary office worker working his nine-to-five, as far removed from the fabulous queen Rio knew as possible.

"Hang out close by," Tomas whispered. "I'll talk to the receptionist."

"Got it," Rio whispered back. He turned to the row of vending machines along one wall, while Tomas carried on up to the front desk.

"Hi," he said. "I was wondering if I could set up a meeting."

Rio tapped his ear. "How's it going, Yoselin?" he asked.

"Great," Yoselin said, pulling herself up into a vent out around the back of the building. "Feels like I'm back with the bureau already. I'll let you know when I'm in the lab."

"Got it," Rio said. He glanced back at his brother, watching him chat up the secretary while subtly attaching a small device to the back of their computer.

Back at the mortuary, Karen and Gordon stood at the front desk, asking to set up a plan for a fake grandmother with late-stage cancer. While Gordon did most of the talking, Karen listened as Ten and her mother talked, Ten reminiscing about childhood memories with her made-up sister. Karen smiled to see her mother laughing a bit, momentarily forgetting her own pain.

"And what about you, dear?" Ten asked.

Karen watched her mother's face drop again, her eyes glistening with tears. "Oh," she said. "My, uh, my husband passed yesterday."

"But you're so young."

Miranda nodded. "I know," she said, her voice catching. "He . . . he was a detective. He was killed in the line of duty."

"Oh," Ten said. "I see." The agent reached out hesitantly, rubbing Karen's mother on the back. "I'm sure he was very brave."

Miranda nodded. "He was," she said. "Much braver than me. So was my daughter." Her eyes welled up with even more tears, and Karen had to fight the urge not to go to her immediately.

Miranda let out a sob. "She should be here," she said. "She'd know better than me how to handle all this. I don't . . ."

Karen physically looked back at her mom. She and Ten's eyes met. Ten swallowed and nodded.

"Well," she said, dropping her old lady voice. "What if I told you, your daughter is here?"

Miranda took a moment to process what Ten had just said. "What?" she asked, looking up at her.

Ten looked at her seriously. "Mrs. Miller, I'm here with your daughter."

Miranda stared at her for a moment, trying to decide if she was being pranked or not. "Karen?" she said. "You know where she is? Is she okay? Where is she-?"

Her face turned pale for just a moment, and her hand grasped for the phone at her side, moving away from Ten as fast as she could. "It's not true, is it?"

Gordon, Karen, and Ten all looked at each other in confusion.

"Please, tell me it's not true," Miranda repeated.

"What's not true, Mrs. Miller?" Ten asked.

Karen watched her mom swallow and look around. Karen turned away so her mother wouldn't see her face. "Last night," she said. "When Karen didn't come back, Vernon . . . he said, she'd stolen evidence from the crime scene. He said they believed she was . . . that she . . ."

Karen watched her mother swallow again. "I can't even say it," she said, turning away and covering her face.

Karen stared, the pieces clicking in her head. Vernon had told her that she was a suspect? That she had had anything to do with the murder of her own father? Why? How? Her heart pounded, and she almost turned around when she felt Gordon's hand on her arm, stopping her.

Ten seemed to understand what Miranda was saying as well. "Mrs. Miller, I can assure you that your daughter had nothing to do with your husband's death. We're trying to figure out who did. Your daughter is here, but you need to remain calm. We don't know who might be watching."

Karen's mom seemed to calm down a bit, sitting up straighter and nodding. "Alright," she said.

Ten looked up at Karen and nodded. Karen turned and stepped up to her mother. "Mom," she said.

Her mother turned and looked up to see her face under her hat and shades. "Karen?"

"Hi, mom," Karen said.

Meanwhile, back at Neo Labs, Yoselin dropped down from the ceiling into an empty room in the back of the building. "I'm in," she said.

"Good," Rio said in her ear. "Tomas attached a backdoor device to the secretary's computer. We're hacking in now."

"Keep me posted."

Yoselin looked around the room she was in. It seemed to be an empty break room. She wasn't going to find anything in here. She crossed to the door and paused, listening as a couple of workers passed by. Once they were gone, she slipped out into the hallway and crept up to each door, peeking in through the windows for any abandoned rooms that looked useful. The first two were occupied by a few scientists each, but the third was nice and empty, with a number of blueprints and papers lying on the table.

"Here we are," she said, testing the door and finding it unlocked. She slipped inside and started rifling through the papers, looking for anything related to what she was looking for. "Project Messiah. Project Messiah. Here."

She drew out a file with the exact words printed across the top. She was about to look through it, when she heard the doorknob jiggle behind her. She quickly dove beneath the table as a young scientist with long wavy hair and a bored expression on his face entered the room with a stack of files. "Work, work, work," the scientist complained, dumping the pile down on the table. As he did so, he accidentally dropped his pen.

"Great," the scientist said, ducking to grab it.

Yoselin had no time to react as the scientist's face appeared, his eyes locking with hers for a few stunned seconds.

Outside the lab, Rio and Tomas sat together inside their car, Tomas tapping away at his keyboard while Rio stared out the window, worrying about his girlfriend still inside.

"Got it," Tomas said.

Rio pulled his attention back to his brother and leaned over. "What do you got?"

Tomas gestured to his screen. "Here's a list of all the projects Neo Labs is currently working on. Mostly stuff to do with those big generators."

He gestured to the large one just visible in the distance. He scanned through the list until he came to one clearly labeled Project Messiah. "Here we go," he said, tapping into it.

"What is it?"

Tomas's eyes scoured the documents and blueprints before him. "It's like . . . some sort of master control AI program."

"Master control? For what?"

Tomas nodded again at the tower in the distance. "Them. With this program, one single person can shut every single tower down, redirect which areas get power and which don't. The wrong person could hold the entire world hostage with a program like this."

"Most of the corporations involved," Rio said. "They were against these towers being built, weren't they?"

Tomas nodded. "The towers basically wiped out the energy industry entirely. Every single company lost a lot of business once everyone had free unlimited energy."

"I guess this is their way of taking the business back."

"Oh, I am so much more than that, Rodrigo Higueras," a staticky voice said from Tomas's computer.

Back inside the lab, Yoselin and the scientist stared at each other in stunned silence for about a minute. The silence was broken when the door opened once again.

"Hey, Mitchell?"

The young scientist jumped and shot back up to his feet. "Yeah, Kei—um, Dr. Usami? What is it?" He shifted slightly so as to block Yoselin from view.

"Have you seen Yoko? She's not in the playroom."

"Um, no, not recently. Have you checked Computer Lab B? I know the Stark kid likes to play video games down there."

"No. I'll check."

The visitor left the room, and the scientist let out a breath. He turned back around and ducked back under the table. "You with the Rangers?" he asked.

"Um, yeah," Yoselin said in surprise.

"I thought so. I've seen your face in news briefings." He extended a hand to her. "Dr. Mitch Jenkins."

Yoselin hesitantly accepted the hand and climbed out from under the table. "You didn't rat me out?" she said.

The doctor looked sheepish, fiddling with a little gold beetle pin on his lapel. "Are you here investigating . . . those people?" he asked.

"Those people?"

The doctor looked around the room for a moment anxiously. "The ones commissioning Project Messiah?"

Yoselin nodded. "Yes."

Dr. Jenkins flicked back his hair nervously, crossing to every computer and making sure it was off, then shutting the door tight and locking it. "Come here," he said. "Away from the window."

Yoselin followed him up next to the wall beside the door, outside the door's line of sight. "Can you tell me what's going on?" she said.

"Only some of it," he said. "But we've got to be careful. Every time a cop or detective starts looking into it, they end up dead soon after. So does any scientist who tries to talk to them."

He glanced past Yoselin to the door again. Yoselin followed his gaze, thinking of the young mother looking for her child. "Please," he said, his voice tense. "You've got to help us."

Back at the mortuary, Miranda Miller stared at her disguised daughter. "A conspiracy? What?"

"That's what dad said in his flash drive," Karen said. "He said he was going to take everything he had to Vernon yesterday, but I guess he never made—"

Karen stopped. A different, much more horrible possibility occurred to her. Her mind raced. Vernon had been the one to tell her mom that she was a suspect. She remembered her dad having the file in his car during their lunch. She thought about the scene of the crash. She would have remembered papers scattered everywhere. And it didn't seem like he'd hidden it anywhere in her apartment, otherwise he would have said something. She worked out the time frame in her head. Her dad would have had just enough time to drive up to Vernon's office between him dropping her off and when the crash happened. And the crash site was right in between her dad's office and Vernon's.

Karen covered her mouth. "Oh my god," she said.

Karen's mother looked at her with concern. "Karen?" she asked.

Karen's heart raced and she started breathing heavily. She remembered Vernon coming to talk to her at the morgue. He hadn't been investigating the murder, he'd been making sure he didn't have to off her too. She remembered him touching her shoulder, comforting her like a beloved uncle. A shiver ran down her spine at the thought of it now.

She shook her head. "Mom," she said, getting herself back on track. "The reason we came here . . . Dad left a message. He told me to ask you about your first date."

Her mom looked at her in surprise. "Our first date?" she asked.

"I don't understand it either, but he said it was important."

A tap on her shoulder made her jump. She looked back to see Gordon standing beside her.

"We're alone," he said.

Karen looked at him for a second, before realizing what he was talking about. The entire mortuary was empty around them. The busy secretaries, the receptionist, and the couple random people who'd been sitting at the next set of couches over had all disappeared.

"Um, Miss Miller," Ten said, grabbing something off her collar. She held it up to show it was a small listening device. Gordon and Karen's eyes grew wide.

Both jumped to their feet just as the front doors of the mortuary slammed closed, a pair of people in rubber masks visible through the glass.

"Karen, what's going on?" her mother asked.

"I don't know, Mom," Karen said. "I—"

She was cut off as a hole was punched through the ceiling above, a tall man landing hard on the floor before them, his mechanical right arm clearly visible as its razor sharp claws shifted and clicked.