"I think I've finally got a list together of who we're missing from the holding cells." Edie called as she spotted Aileen and X returning hours later. "Jeebs was being a major pain or it would have gone a lot faster. He kept telling the prisoners to give the wrong names."
` "He wanted to avoid his brother. I don't know what Jeebs' problem is." X grumbled. And he was definitely going to have to have a talk with his cousin to see what charges she could dream up for Jeebs. Hindering law enforcement during a crisis after law enforcement had helpfully arranged for him to avoid his brother sounded like a possibility although it might need a bit of a better wording.
"How many are we missing?" Aileen asked Edie. "Although thank goodness we can add Drekk to the list of back in custody." She looked over as a group of Jeedangians rolled in cart containing the frozen Drekk. "Holding cells, maximum security and I want him kept frozen." Keeping Drekk frozen was the only thing she could think of to do with him at the moment. With the limited resources that they had, they couldn't take any chances on him escaping, something Drekk had proven remarkably adapt at doing. "How bad was the escape."
"It could have been worse." Edie said. "It looks like there was some sort of failure with the first level of the lockdown. Which thankfully means that the prisoners who got out were in on lower level charges. They'll be robbing everything in sight, committing massive amounts of vandalism and I'm pretty sure none of them should be driving on this planet, but they aren't likely to try killing anyone. There are about forty of them from what I was able to figure. Luckily the other two security layers stayed in place."
"Zed did some re configuring of the security layers a few years ago after they had a major breach in the lockdown." Aileen said as she thought for a moment about what Kay had told her about that particular situation. "Everything was put onto separate systems with extra layers to keep something like that from happening again." What happened before though…. Was it possible there might be some sort of connection there? "Edie, see if you can get through to someone at the Protonean Gulag. Make sure that Dr. Lupo's still there and anyone he might have had contact with lately if he is."
"Definitely hope he's still there." Edie said, remembering what she had seen about that particular lunatic on news reports. "Oh, and Team Moms seem to have an idea about what might have happened with the cake."
Just wonderful. His mother had met Elle's mother, and they had teamed up already. Elle was going to have his ears when she recovered enough from the poison to find out about that. Although he supposed he could always argue that if they had listened to him and given Zed that tie or the day off instead of going for the party then none of this would have happened to begin with. That sounded like a highly reasonable argument to him. Odds were that his partner wouldn't go for it, but at least X had something he could try. And maybe he and Elle would get lucky and their moms would stick to trying to assist in solving a crime instead of playing matchmakers.
"I'm glad to see that horrible Drekk is back in custody." Zoe called as she came hurrying over with Rose right behind her. "I do hope he didn't start any fires. I'm sure the poor humans would be very upset if he burned any of their buildings down or that lovely park."
"No fires, and as far as the humans know, there was an impromptu ice sculpture contest in the reservoir." Definitely not the best story considering the time of the year, but it was what she could come up with on short notice. "Edie said you had an idea about the poisoning? And does someone have an update on the medical situation?" She didn't ask about Kay specifically, knowing if she did that all she would want to do would be to check him personally, and knowing that was the last thing he needed her to be doing at the moment. If she wanted to help him recover, she needed to get this situation under control.
"We think that the poison might have been in the cake icing." Rose said.
"And as for all of those poor, poor dears, they're all doing fine." Zoe said. "Zara says at this point the best thing for them is to keep them quiet and comfortable until this runs it's course."
Keep them quiet and comfortable. Why did she have a feeling in Kay's case that might prove more than a bit difficult? "Just let me know if anything changes with Kay. I can probably help as far as getting him to rest. You think the poison was in the cake icing?"
"It would make the most sense if they were wanting to make sure that certain people were effected fairly strongly." Zoe said. "There's an etiquette rule with cake. The birthday person goes first and gets the best piece. And usually their closest friends are next."
"And the best piece generally has more icing." Rose added.
"So put something in the icing, and you're definitely going to get Zed, and Kay and Jay too." Aileen said.
"Probably a good thing for Jay that he's been a bit more cautious about food since the hot sauce incident." X said with a shake of his head. And a good thing for Little Ears too that she had apparently been waiting for him to get back and had only nibbled on her piece of cake. Although when she finally woke up, he fully intended to remind her that if she had waited without any nibbling she could have missed the lovely poisoning experience all together and helped him instead of alarming him.
"Okay, so if it was in the icing, how would that effect figuring out who did it?" Aileen asked.
"I imagine they make the icing." Rose said. "That would be more efficient than using pre made. If they do, it would be easy to slip something into one of the ingredients." She frowned as she thought about the last time she made a cake and frosted it. "Probably in the sugar. If they put it in any liquid ingredient I think it would effect the consistency too much, and probably the taste, too."
In sugar. Well, that eliminated any bugs as suspects, anyway. They would gorge themselves on sugar, not poison it, X thought.
"And son, doesn't it seem strange to you how quickly all of the criminals started to run wild?" Zoe said. "That horrible Drekk knocked over that bank when you were at the store, and that couldn't have been more than an hour or two after the poisoning. And the Fmecks were here at the same time."
"They knew somehow the agents were out of commission. They all knew it." Aileen murmured. And that was something that that shouldn't have been known that fast.
"That reminds me of a book." Edie said. "There was a murder and a bunch of different people were working together to commit it."
"Murder on the Orient Express." Rose said with a nod. Would something like that be a possibility?"
"Maybe." And a terrifying possibility too. If all of the enemies the MIB had made over the years were working together….. "Let's go over the building security. Those prisoners were able to get out and the Fmecks were able to get in. Let's make sure no one else is going to get in." With the agents so vulnerable, and every peacekeeper they had needed on the streets trying to gain control of the situation…. "And maybe triple check everything just to be sure."