Episode 1.12: Front Row, Part One
A white, windowless van was making its way down the interstate highway on a Saturday morning. In a city full of virtually identical vehicles, this particular one did not attract any specific attention, just as its procurers had intended. This was key for instead of ferrying a plumber or an electrician to a job this particular van was carrying an Unknown. During the workweek, the department had made other deliveries with other trucks and vans, all similarly unimpressive, so that all of the essential lab equipment and personnel had been relocated from the basement of the office building that housed the department to a large repurposed warehouse secured through the usual means.
Besides the Unknown, the vehicle contained a team of agents. All three of them had varying levels of military and law enforcement experience and all of them were in different places in their lives, but the trio had three important things in common: they needed the work, they did not ask too many questions about the jobs they were assigned, and they had all signed the same ironclad non-disclosure agreement. As for the unconscious creature in the back, the only thing that could be definitely proven about it was that it was alive.
From the outside, the Unknown looked fairly strange, but not as bizarre as a cursory look at the data, even just the fraction of it that made any sense, would have led one to believe. The creature held to the floor of the van by a series of straps was a plump quadruped. It was orange except for its cream-colored underbelly and extremities and had three-toed feet, a stubby tail, and bat-like wings emerging from the top of its head that were currently folded up against its body by further restraints. Although they were obscured behind the jerry-rigged apparatus affixed to its face, the porcine creature's eyes were clenched tight in pain and soft wheezing noises were coming out of its mouth with every exhalation. The two men in the back of the truck watched their prisoner uncomfortably, not only because of how strange the creature was, but also because of the unnervingly human protests that it had been making before the sedative. Its pleas and cries should have belonged to a small child, not a monster like this. Even now, unconscious and secured, its shaky breaths were unquestionably distressed.
Both men wished that they did not have to be in the windowless back of the van, unable to take their eyes off of their charge, but a job was a job. The task was not made any more comfortable by the bumps of the vehicle as it drove over the numerous potholes that characterized the sorry roads of the Twin Cities Metro. Each jolt of the van moved the restrained Unknown about violently even in its unconscious state and caused the leather harnesses to dig deeper into the strange being's wings and midsection. This, in turn, elicited more half-hearted whines of pain and deepened the unpleasant silence between the occupants in the back of the van.
"Do you have that thing secured?" asked the driver, unaware of his passengers' discomfort. When they did not answer, he turned around in his seat to face them. "Hey! Is everything okay?"
That broke the men in the back out of their private thoughts. "Watch the road!" one of them said and they both stood up as best they could and moved towards the front of the vehicle like two identical dark gray blurs in their matching uniforms and ballistic vests. In their hurry, one of the men's feet became caught underneath a strap lying across the floor of the van and, as he attempted to step forward, pulled the restraint tighter to cut into the Unknown's body and producing a squeal as it regained consciousness.
The driver had just returned his eyes to the road when the noise split the air and he began to turn around again. "What was that?" Then he caught a city bus looming larger and larger through the windshield. All three men swore in various fashions as the driver slammed on the brakes and jerked the wheel violently to avoid a collision.
The windowless van came to a stop only when it struck the railing of the overland bridge over which it was traveling. The Unknown's pained screeching, much louder and consistent now, was joined by honking from the other vehicles on the highway. The sudden crash had sent the two unsecured men in the back sprawling into the front seat, but neither of them nor the driver were injured. Despite this, all of them were pale as ghosts. The department had warned them again and again against attracting the attention of other authorities, and a car crash would do just that.
They did not have to worry about discretion for long.
In addition to damaging the front of the van and shaking the three men physically and mentally, the crash had jerked the now wide-awake Unknown about on the floor of the white van. The harnesses restricted, but could not completely stop the prone creature's thrashing. As smoke billowed out from under the hood of the van, the Unknown was breathing rapidly and its blue eyes had dilated obscenely. Foam collected around its mouth, coming out in a light spray of spittle with each forceful exhalation. Its escorts were still recovering from the shock of the crash, and failed to notice the hyperventilating Unknown until its body was consumed by an opaque gold sphere that glowed with a faint light. With sudden horror and confusion, they heard a childlike voice uttering a piercing scream, "Patamon digivolve to-"
A blinding light filled the van as the orb burst into pieces. All of the humans shielded their eyes with their arms, but light was not the only thing that was filling the van. The orb of light had changed the weak, panicked creature into a form which snapped through the leather restraints and swelled inside of the suddenly cramped confines of the van. Effortlessly, the transformed Unknown crushed two of the department's contractors against the sides of the van before the buckling vehicle's walls bulged and then burst to free the golden creature that had emerged. The driver was held in place by his seatbelt and unable to escape the huge brilliant horn which gored him in his seat. The bridge itself began to sag and groan as what was left of the van was crushed under the unknown's weight.
Above all of the rising din, a deep, bellowing voice announced its presence to the world, "Rhinomon!"
"I don't understand how a person can live like this," said Todd as he rejoined the group. "Why would anybody need all this space?"
"Aw, did somebody get lost trying to find the bathroom?" asked Emily and a light chorus of laughter swept through the room.
The young man replied, "No, getting back here was the hard part." It took a few seconds for the gathered humans and Digimon to realize that Todd had attempted a joke, but once they did, there was another round of chuckling.
When the boys had woken up with their Digimon missing, their emotions had run the gamut from fear to worry to anger, but Emily's texts, which Joshua had subsequently passed onto Paul, had soothed those ruffled feathers. After some cajoling, Joshua had managed to obtain a ride for himself and Paul from Emily to pick up their Digimon. Todd had insisted on driving alone, of course.
Dracmon and Floramon's tamers had met at Joshua's and, after being subjected to Emily's driving, they all had arrived at the wealthy neighborhood where their Digimon had holed up with Lynn. During that short journey, Paul had been strangely quiet, offering only a few curt answers to questions directed his way. Emily had given her other passenger a curious look, but Joshua could only shrug, and then yell that she needed to keep her eyes on the road. Even their arrival at Lynn's impressive house had produced only a muted reaction in the pale teen. Joshua, on the other hand, had been awestruck by the opulent dwelling and had only been able to tear himself away from staring at the house when the door opened and Lynn had beckoned them to come inside.
"Is your dad okay with you having people over?" Emily had asked her friend.
Lynn had been leading her guests down a wide, high-ceiling hallway with large windows that were letting in the warming rays of the early summer sun. "My father's spending the week in Japan on a business trip."
"What about your mom?" Joshua had asked.
The two girls had not answered him. Lynn had looked as if she were about to say something, but then her taller friend had quickly said, "That's pretty cool that you've got this whole place to yourself. Where are the Digimon?"
At that, Lynn had wiped some of the sleep from her eyes and let them into a kind of media room complete with a couch, chairs, and a projector hooked up to a MacBook so that some awful comedy could be shown up on a large screen for all of the creatures in the room. They had all been spread out, some sprawled out on the furniture while others had found seats on the carpeted floor. Though they certainly had been enjoying the movie, once the humans had appeared, the slapstick antics on the wall were forgotten in their rush to greet the teenagers.
Penguinmon had hugged Joshua's leg and began rapidly recounting the events of the previous night. Floramon had told the same tale to her own tamer, although the story that Emily had received naturally left out the details of what had happened in the stolen van. The other lost Digimon had not gotten the same joyous reunions at first. When Paul's figure had darkened the room's doorway, Dracmon had gleefully vaulted off of the couch and rushed up to him with a huge grin on his face. But the smile had not been returned, instead the black-haired young man had given the humanoid creature only the most cursory of acknowledgements before he had returned his focus to looking glum.
Poor BlackAgumon had faced an even greater disappointment. As the other Digimon had reconnected with their partners, he had looked around first hopefully and then desperately for his own tamer. "Where is Todd?" he had asked Lynn in a shrill voice so unlike his usual growl. "You said that they were all coming, but Todd is not here! Where is Todd?"
The waifish girl had reluctantly opened her eyes and sat up on the couch. As she had pulled away from Kudamon's gently massaging paws on her shoulders, Lynn had asked, "Emily, where is Todd?"
With a gentle rolling shrug of her shoulders, Emily had offered, "He said that he would be coming separately, but-"
"But he doesn't drive as creatively as you do, chief," Floramon had finished with a toothy grin.
Before Emily could start defending herself, the doorbell of the spacious home had rung and echoed throughout its cavernous interior. At the door had been the missing tamer, and with his arrival the group was made whole and BlackAgumon was overjoyed. After that, the teenagers and Digimon had settled into the simple act of hanging out.
At first, the conversations between the humans had been terribly stilted. After all, with the notable exceptions of Emily and Lynn's current friendship and Todd and Joshua's long-dead one, none of them had really interacted with each other outside of the haze of combat or combat's prologue. Not helping the matter had been Paul's withdrawal into his own melancholy, a state that neither Dracmon nor Joshua had been able to improve despite their best efforts. Still, the Digimon had proven much more comfortable with one another after their time together over the past number of hours and that had helped to gradually break the ice. By the time that Todd returned from the bathroom, everyone but Paul was engaging in conversation and the atmosphere was slowly growing more and more friendly as the adolescents shared funny stories about their respective Digimon partners and got to know one another better.
It was not to last.
Emily was just about to suggest putting on a movie that wasn't complete garbage when it happened. All of the Digimon stopped talking and turned to face in one direction in unison. All of them were making low rumbling noises in their throats and their eyes looked almost feral, even Penguinmon. None of the humans knew what to make of this and so they all stared dumbly at the frozen creatures for a few seconds before snapping out of their own trances. All of their voices overlapped into a cacophony of concern.
"Floramon, what's up?"
"Is something wrong, Kudamon?"
"BlackAgumon?"
"What is it, Penguinmon?"
"Hey, Dracmon, snap out of it!"
Then, just as suddenly as it had started, the spell broke and each of the Digimon stopped growling. Only Penguinmon looked sheepish about what had happened. "It's, uh, it's nothing," he squawked nervously. "How about that movie?" The other digital monsters leveled him with looks that ranged from exasperated to furious.
"It's not nothing, chief! It's a-" Floramon began, only for BlackAgumon to interrupt.
"A new enemy!"
Kudamon's eyes narrowed slightly as she corrected the larger Digimon, "A new threat."
"Whatever it is, it's strong!" Dracmon said excitedly, his fingers drumming excitedly against his palms. "I haven't felt this since-"
"Since Floramon digivolved," finished Penguinmon glumly.
At that last word, the teenagers began their own frantic discussion of what this meant and what they should do about it. Was it a wild Digimon or was there another Tamer out there? If it was the former, then how had it been able to transform without a human partner? Most important of all, what were they going to do about it? Leave it alone or investigate? Observe it or fight it? How strong was it? Could they beat it?
This pandemonium of overlapping debates was brought the halt when Paul finally broke his silence with a question of his own, "Why didn't our Digivices pick this thing up whenever it first appeared? And why aren't they picking it up now?"
"Can't you track it?" Todd asked his Digimon, but BlackAgumon just shook his head.
"So even if we did want to fight this thing, we couldn't even find it," Emily said, noticeably more disappointed than relieved, much to Lynn's chagrin.
"Fight it?" the other girl interjected. "Only one of us can digi-whatever! What if we can't beat it?"
Todd snorted contemptuously. "Some of us can." BlackAgumon quickly worked to mimic his pose and confident expression.
"It would be a good chance to see what Sunflowmon could really do," offered Emily, and that seemed to be all the convincing that Floramon needed.
Joshua mused that over briefly before adding, "And maybe we can get more of you guys to digivolve?"
Penguinmon did not meet his tamer's eager gaze and instead looked helplessly to Lynn, Kudamon, Dracmon, and Paul. "How about we put it to a vote?" Penguinmon offered tentatively. "Deciding whether or not we go and get ourselves killed should require a two-thirds majority, I would think?"
"He's been watching too much House of Cards," explained Joshua, but there were no objections to the idea itself.
"Emily, how do you vote?" asked Penguinmon, affecting a kind of southern drawl as he did so.
"I vote yes, we'll have to deal with this thing one way or another."
"Floramon?"
The Digimon in question cracked her petal-covered knuckles and said, "Ditto. Let's kick some ass."
"Erm, all right. Todd?"
"Yes."
"BlackAgumon?" A fair bit of fear had crept into Penguinmon's voice.
The saurian Digimon only nodded.
Things were not off to a good start, but Penguinmon still pressed forward with the vote. Looking to break the streak of yes votes, he asked, "Lynn?" Before she could answer, Joshua's phone began ringing.
"Sorry!" he said before picking up his blue and white mobile and answering it as he stepped off to the side of the group. "Hi, mom. Yeah, I'm fine. I'm at a friend's house. Uh, you don't know her…him. No, I wasn't biking on the highway. No, I'm not hurt, I'm talking to you. Why don't you ever bother Molly like this? I'm not getting angry! Okay. Okay. Bye." When he hung up, Joshuas noticed that everyone, human and Digimon alike, was staring at him and his face flushed. "Sorry, apparently there was some kind of explosion on I-35 and my mom thought I died or something," he explained in a single rapid breath.
"Can't anyone in this stupid state build a road without it falling down?" Emily muttered ruefully.
"Wait! Lynn, where's the metro in relation to here?" asked Joshua.
The girl stood up and turned so that she was facing one of the walls. "Let's see, if that's north…" Lynn then took her finger and pointed towards a different wall while saying, "Then it would be that way." She froze when she saw that she was indicating the same spot where all of the Digimon had been staring earlier. "You don't think...?"
"That there's a Digimon loose on the freeway?" suggested Paul somberly.
Emily chewed that over. "Even if it's the weekend, that'd still be a lot of people in real danger."
"Then we have to go," Lynn said more forcefully than anyone expected. "We have to protect those people, and the only way to do that is to make sure that whatever is out there is no longer a threat."
Kudamon added, "I stand by my tamer."
"And I'll make seven," added Joshua. "There're your votes, Penguinmon, now let's go!"
The teenagers and Digimon scrambled out of the house and into the two vehicles parked on the curb as rapidly as they could manage. Before waddling after the others, Penguinmon bitterly remarked, "Democracy, what a stupid idea."
On that same Saturday morning, Ken Roberts was enjoying a quiet brunch with his family. They had all piled into the car; father, mother, and two daughters; and driven to a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant. It was not quite a routine for them, but still occurred often enough to be a bit of a family tradition. Ken had shed his suit in favor of a dark polo shirt and jeans and surprised himself by managing to relax as he sipped his cup of coffee and listened to his girls talk about school, their extracurricular activities, and their friends. The foursome had just about finished their food and were waiting for the check when it happened.
The pen lingered in Ken's hand, ready to sign the receipt when the waitress brought it, but with the passing of each minute, he began to fidget ever so slightly. Eventually, Ken put the pen to use, scribbling and then drawing on an unused napkin. The check still did not arrive for a while longer, so when Ken's idle doodling was finally interrupted by the return of the waitress for their table, he had put together a couple of rushed sketches of different figures.
"What were you drawing, honey?" Mrs. Roberts asked her husband as he affixed his signature to the receipt and returned his credit card to his wallet.
"Nothing, nothing."
"Doesn't look like nothing to me!" said the youngest member of the family, an eight-year-old whose wide grin prominently displayed her missing tooth, and she then reached across the table to snatch away the napkin with her sticky, maple syrup-covered fingers.
Her sister did her best to act the part of the dignified preteen, forever exasperated by her younger sister, but her eyes still examined the strange-looking creatures her father had drawn. "Wait a minute! Dad, why were you drawing Digimon?"
Ken nearly choked on his coffee and, when his coughing subsided, he could only manage to ask, "What?"
"Yeah," the middle-schooler said as she studied the napkin. "That dinosaur thing, that's Agumon, I think?" She continued to examine the drawings without noticing that the color was rapidly fading from her father's face. "I don't remember any of the other ones though."
"Honey? What's wrong?" asked Mrs. Roberts.
Her spouse paid her no mind, only focusing on his eldest daughter. "Where did you see these things?" Ken asked in the low, authoritative tone that he reserved only for rate instances of discipline.
"On TV!" Ken's daughter said quickly, her fear and confusion warring with her offense at being treated like a little kid. "It was a cartoon that was on Disney when I was little! Some kind of Pokémon rip-off or something!"
That was about all that Ken could take, and he hurriedly pulled himself up from the booth and strode to the diner's men's room as quickly as he could. Once inside the wood-paneled restroom, Ken turned on the faucet and splashed cold water on his face. Then he looked in the mirror and stared dumbly at his ashen features.
A part of him was still reeling from the horror he had experienced when he had thought, no matter how briefly, that his own flesh and blood was somehow tied to the Unknowns. His daughter had been so confident when naming one of the monsters that he had sketched. The relief he felt was totally overwhelmed by how bizarre and borderline insane her excuse had been. A cartoon? That was ridiculously, unbelievably stupid. And yet, she had said it without any of the telltale indicators of falsehood that years of parenting had taught him to spot.
So, what could he do now? Was all of this just a kind of huge cosmic joke? And was he, Kenneth Roberts, just the punchline? A man who took an insane world seriously? The hollow figure in the mirror provided him with no answers, none at all.
Before he could spend too much time lingering on this uncomfortable feeling of suddenly finding himself completely adrift, Ken's phone rang. The sudden buzzing sensation snapped him out of his fugue state and he answered the call with a swipe of an unusually sweaty index finger. "Hello?" Ken asked in a small voice so much unlike his usual tone of command.
"Uh, hey Ken, it's Eddy." The man on the other end of the call paused, waiting for a response, then, when none came, he began speaking again, "We've got a situation."
Ken cleared his throat and tore his blue eyes away from the mirror over the bathroom sink and moved to block the door. He simply said, "So handle it."
"Um, you really should come in for this, Ken," insisted Eddy, and it was almost possible to hear the man sweating just from listening to him. "People are dead."
At that, Ken ended the call and composed himself. No response had been necessary. Both men knew what had to be done.
Ken stepped back out into the main part of the restaurant and returned to his family. All of them looked as confused as they had been when he had left, but there was also a palpable sense of relief now that he had returned and they could go home. That feeling faded as soon as Ken kissed his wife on the cheek and told her quietly, "I have to go into the office."
"Oh no. Seriously?"
"Afraid so." He placed a few bills on the table for a tip and told his daughters, "Come on girls, shake the lead out."
None of the Roberts women looked happy with this development and as she slung her purse over shoulder, Mrs. Roberts grumbled, "You work too much. It's a Saturday."
"Well, you know how things are," Ken said absently, but that did not warrant a reply, and so it was in relative quiet that the family got into their car and began driving, first taking the mother and daughters to their home where they wanted to be and then Director Ken Roberts to where he needed to be.
Not everyone had their Saturday off from work. In the Twin Cities proper, a woman in her mid-twenties was rapidly typing on her laptop inside of a cramped apartment when her phone began ringing. While one hand still danced rapidly over the keyboard, eager to complete one last sentence about the Metro Council's proposed fare increase for public transportation, the other picked up her mobile and she answered it. "Molly Kleburg for the Star Tribune speaking," she recited, still delighting in the way that her practiced introduction rolled off of her tongue.
"Kleburg, I need someone on the scene of the I-35 to report on what's going on there."
"Really, sir?" the blonde-haired woman asked, only barely remembering to attach the honorific to her complaint. "I know that the tenth anniversary is a few weeks away, but this seems a little fluffy for a Saturday."
"This isn't about that! The darn highway broke again and you're the first person I could get ahold of!" the man on the other line bellowed at Molly. "You're supposed to be a reporter, aren't you? Why aren't you watching the news?"
"Of course, sir, I'll be there right away, sir!" Molly said breathlessly before hanging up. A quick scan of the apps of a few news organizations while she changed out of her University of Minnesota sweatpants and stained t-shirt into something more presentable let her know that there had been some kind of collapse of a bridge up near New Brighton. The eager reporter frowned between bites of a granola bar as she walked out the door and towards her electric blue Mini Cooper. Having to rely on side streets to get as close as possible to the site of the accident would be tough, especially with all of the emergency vehicles and traditionally nosy Minnesotans trying to figure out what was happening, but that was nothing to scare her off from the prospect of finally getting her first real assignment since starting at the paper. After all, she mused as the tiny car hummed to life, if she had wanted an easy career she certainly wouldn't have gone into journalism.