Abnormals

“What are you even reading?” Liz asked, pulling Pete’s book away before he could stop her, “Harold Piec III: A Life of Discovery. Why are you reading some nerd’s vanity project?”

Pete rolled his eyes and grabbed the book.

“He had a lot of insight into xenology.”

Liz nodded.

“I see. This is about the powers thing. It’s not like you didn’t know it could happen.”

“Do you know the probability of a normal couple having two empowered children in a row?”

“I think you’re about to give a low number.”

“6.25%, Liz, not including further external factors.”

“What external factors?”

Pete crouched further into the couch.

“I haven’t gotten that far.”

Liz laughed.

“Of course you haven’t.”

Pete slid further into the furniture.

“Listen, mom knows you’re uncomfortable around pools now, but you have to come outside and mingle. Grandpa Dante wants to see you.”

“What if I injure everyone in the water?”

Pete thought back to the first spark of these powers he still couldn’t control.

“I’m pretty sure Grandpa Dante would just be impressed. He said he wants to see your powers in action.”

“I don’t.”

Liz looked at the book again.

“You know mom and dad went to school with him?”

“Who?”

“Harold Piec, he married mom’s roommate. Mom dated his roommate for awhile before hooking up with dad, but you know what they always say about him?”

“What?”

“He was never afraid of learning.”

Pete looked outside, then at his book.

“Then I won’t be either.”

Electron wandered, catching radio waves to see if anything maybe needed his attention. Really, he was trying to wear himself out because he couldn’t go to sleep, and this would, physically at least, provide that.

He wasn’t focusing on where he was going really, but he found himself mostly around the ME’s lab building. Somewhere in there was the creature he and Cate saw, that apparently attacked her sister.

They’d probably call tomorrow. There was no reason to worry about it, except that someone was crawling onto the roof.

Using all his power to keep his armor from clanging, he carried himself right behind them.

“What do you need to take from the coroner’s office?”

They didn’t look back at him, but continued replacing the vent they came out of, without touching it. So they were some kind of kinetic.

“Tissue sample,” she said, “Something’s fishy about this, and I need a xenologist to look over it.”

Pete happened to know a few good xenologists. He happened to be one. He pulled the woman around, and nearly took a step back.

Cate?—Mandie! Her sister. Did Cate know about this? She could be talked into a lot of anxiety responses, but she wouldn’t ask Mandie to do this. One thing was clear, if Cate had this, she wouldn’t be able to hide that it was stolen. He placed his hand out. Mandie wasn’t wrong about this being fishy.

“Whoever you plan to implicate, it’s safer with me.”

“Are you a xenologist?”

Her look seemed critical through his helmet, but he didn’t actually see much.

“I know a few.”

“So you’d implicate more people in the process.”

Only himself, ideally just Electron, or whoever they pinned this breaking and entering on.

“Just the one if I throw you through the window.”

She smiled.

“You wouldn’t.”

If it weren’t for the contractions, she’d sound a lot like Catherine.

“What makes you so sure?”

“Well for starters,” she stood up. Pete could see Cate’s same gray eyes, “There’s no way you’re going to catch me in that armor. For seconders,” She really had no idea how to not sound like herself, not that she seemed to be trying, “I don’t want my sister endangered anymore than you do.”

She placed what looked like an old pickle jar in his hand. He didn’t really have a good place to put it. He was expecting a baggie. She knew he recognized her.

She knew he recognized her.

Did she know why?

“I recommend you get out of here. I’m not hearing a lot of fondness for you.”

Not hearing?

Something clouded his mind, and he couldn’t see her anymore, but he could hear sirens.

“God Damn It!”

He was sure he could hear a chuckle. He flew up, trying to remove the tail.

“Imagine my surprise, darling,” the altered sound of The Voice of Reason said, “When I heard police were chasing Electron, who didn’t even attempt to contact me about patrolling tonight?” they yawned as they finished their sentence.

“I was just trying to wear myself out to go to sleep.”

“There are smarter methods. Turn right.”

He obliged.

“Well you see, I was too tired to think of a smarter method.”

He could practically hear them rolling their eyes.

“Well did you do anything worthwhile to get the police to follow you?”

“I may have robbed the city coroner?”

“What!?”

“There was something suspicious about that monster at the wrestling federation. I wanted a tissue sample before they disposed of it.” He forgot how easy it was to lie sometimes.

“What are you going to do with the sample?”

“Send it to a Xenologist friend of mine.”

“As long as they work at the Quartz institute.”

“Of course, what do you take me for?”

This tissue sample wasn’t doing much, not that Pete expected insights on the creature to be easy.

The results at least followed a pattern. Whoever this was, they had been human. Even in death, it was hard to damage, which made using a microscope that much harder. Something had interfered to make them like this.

The Demutater program, tater for short, gave a result that was still mutated. Their basic detection program came up as inconclusive. He needed someone else.

“Cate! You willing to offer an opinion?”

Cate casually came up beside him.

“What do you got?”

“Coroner sent in a tissue sample. Detection program was inconclusive. Tater gave something still mutated, but you know it can only get so far.”

“They sent a sample already? It usually takes a few days.”

“I’m as surprised as you.” At least he was almost as surprised her sister gave the sample to him. “They really must want to know what’s going on.”

“First time for everything,” Cate muttered.

“I did send in a formal request once I got home.”

“With your computer? Surprised it got through.”

Pete rolled his eyes. Compared to Cate, anyone would seem inept with technology, not that breaking most things with an electric pulse at the first sign of frustration helped with Pete’s own proficiency.

“Point stands. Any ideas?”

Catherine was already engrossed in the printed information. Only the one eye really moved, the right one being a prosthetic. The asymmetry was hard to look away from.

“As expected, the detection program was useless.”

“It’s standard diagnostic procedure.”

“That nobody actually pays attention to. The fact our friend is still mutated after a run in the tater is interesting though.”

“Lends to the hypermutation theory.”

“Exactly, but how hypermutated? Have you asked for a reproductive sample?”

“Already sent the request.”

He actually had sent in the request, planning to play dumb when they inevitably asked about the sample they did not send in.

“Good work!” Cate gave an awkward thumbs up. Pete hid a grin at the awkward comment behind his hand.

“Why are you grinning? What just happened?”

“Nothing. It was just a bit cute is all.” Pete gave his own matching thumbs up, which Catherine rolled her eye at. She couldn’t hide her blushing, though. She turned her gaze toward the actual sample.

After a moment, she rubbed her thumb against the fingers of her left hand, gave a smile as she nodded, then put on a glove.

“May I see the sample?”

“You want to touch it?”

“Yes, why else would I put on the glove?”

Pete gestured toward its current petri dish. Catherine rubbed the sample between her fingers, clearly looking for a feeling. She ran to the cabinet, grabbed a beaker, and dumped some hydrochloric acid inside.

“Can I use a piece for an experiment?”

“Only if it’s interesting. It’s hard to cut anything off though.”

Catherine started to cut with a scalpel, rotated the sample 90 degrees, then made a quick and clean cut.

“Cut with the grain, not against it.”

Pete smacked his forehead. It was a rather obvious solution in some ways.

She dropped her small sample in the hydrochloric acid.

Normally, the hydrochloric acid would start dissolving the flesh, but this stayed inert.

“Invincibility?”

Cate shook her head.

“Anything coming off of someone with invincibility tends to disappear fast for some reason. The whole sample would be gone by now if that were the case, not that it wouldn’t be heftily resilient with everything it had going for it.”

Pete thought back to sharing a shower with his sister. He’d never noticed most of the hair was his since they had the same hair color.

“Okay, so then what is it?”

“I might have an idea.”

Mandie’s lawyer was rehearsing the part where he wouldn’t let her speak over and over in his head.

My client doesn’t have any comments. My client doesn’t have any comments. My client doesn’t have any comments.

She was going to have a headache after this. This was the best Leslie could do? Thoughts and actions were often disparate, but this wasn’t helping.

She tried to close off her mind, letting her hearing extend past the room. Her lawyer was muttering the same words under his breath too. She would have heard him earlier if his brain wasn’t so loud.

“You can’t be serious. I’m sure I can make her talk. Looks like she’s about to crack just being in the interrogation room.”

That was just her being annoyed.

“Drop the case,” someone’s probably superior demanded, “If it’s weird, the DSR takes the case. You know this.”

“I just got an email from someone who works for the Quartz institute,” another voice said, “They claim we sent them a tissue sample, but we have no record of it. What we do have record of is a break-in last night.”

“Do you have security footage?”

“Sample of what?” The probably superior asked.

“Of the corpse found outside Leslie’s. I didn’t even notice when I did the autopsy because it was so deformed, and hard to cut into, but it can’t be a coincidence.”

“Drop it, both of you.”

“They’re asking for a reproductive sample. I sent them a message back about the stolen sample, and they insisted even more that they get the reproductive sample.”

“No. We drop this and send it to the DSR. Maybe they’ll send a reproductive sample, whatever that means.”

“Assuming it still has reproductive organs, it’s what we find inside there.”

“Still has, do you mean it had them in the first place?”

“All animals do sir, but it could have been human, especially with the information the institute sent about the possibility of hypermutation.”

“Out!”

“Do you have any footage of the break-in?” The detective asked.

“Out.”

The door opened.

“I’m sorry Ms. Piec. You’re free to go, just don’t leave town.”

“Of course not.”

“We’ll get you an escort to exit the building.”

Her lawyer went through another anxiety spiral about the fact she talked.

 “Henry Eisel calls it desensitate,” Catherine explained, “Which does not say much about the chemical makeup. I never really bothered to remember the longer name. It essentially makes the body more durable, and more accepting of foreign substances at the cost of permanent nerve-damage.”

“A miracle cure for allergies,” Pete said.

“A permanent solution for organ donation receivers.”

“A great boon for the cybernetics industry.”

Catherine crossed her arms, holding tightly. She personally knew how essential it was for the cybernetics industry, but she hadn’t expected Pete to catch on so quickly.

“So why haven’t I heard about it?” Pete asked. “I may not be directly connected to the medical community, but I have friends there. Why hasn’t this miracle drug come up?”

“Because it’s only approved for military use, cybernetics.”

Pete’s expression turned dark. What was he thinking?

“I assume the dosage is a pain to get right.”

“Yeah. It’s not great to ruin a subject’s sensory abilities, especially in the military.”

“Seems like the perfect place to me. How do you know so much about this?”

Catherine hadn’t thought about that excuse, so she just stared to make Pete come up with one for her.

“Being Henry Eisel’s goddaughter doesn’t grant a free pass to every classified Eiselcorp project.”

“My dad worked on it,” she remembered, “It was one of his last projects. In fact, if you’re willing to do some side work on the weekend…”

“Always. Coffee at my place.”

“And dinner, if Jaime is fine with my invasion.”

“He’s got a date.”

That was wrong. Pete should be the date. They were together, right? Pete told her they were together.

“Jaime dumped me,” Pete explained to her confused expression, “But I still need to afford rent. No hard feelings, it was at the point where it wasn’t serious anymore.”

She remembered her indirect promise to Mandie’s coworker.

“I will keep your single status to myself, assuming you are single now.”

“Yeah, probably for a bit. I don’t really go out looking for relationships.” He stared at the wall behind her.

“Well, I am only doing this out of obligation to my sister, but Rachael, her coworker, did ask if you were single.”

Pete grimaced.

“Is she unattractive?”

“Perfectly attractive! Just not what I’m looking for right now.”

“Because you are not looking.”

“Right.” Pete looked uncomfortable. She should probably table the relationship talk.

“So when does Jaime have a date, because I should probably know when to come over?”

“Saturday. If you come by at four, I should have some good coffee ready.”

“Perfect. I will find my dad’s old journals, and see what he had to say about it, and if it is at all connected to the probable hypermutation.”

“The cause or an attempt to treat it.”

“Exactly.”

Thank goodness Pete was already on the same page.

Mandie was glad for an escort that took their time. It let her watch and listen for anything interesting, particularly the chief taking a phone call.

“Hello, Carter, was it?” The voice on the phone asked. Something had altered it to not sound quite human.

“Carson, sir.”

“Carson, how’s the promotion been?”

“I’ve been chief of this precinct for the past—”

“And I’m sure you’d like it to stay that way, Carson, so how is my favor going?”

What favor?

“The monster is being transferred to DSR as we speak.”

That was the favor? The DSR would have taken this over anyways, so why were threats involved?

“Of course it is, that’s their job. Wouldn’t it be a shame, though, if some information got lost?”

“Yes, it would be a shame.”

“And you know what I hate more than my friends being anonymously reported about their misconduct? When my property lands in the hands of those assholes in the DSR.”

Blackmail. The chief of police was being blackmailed by whoever made that thing in the morgue. Not surprising, but worth looking into.

“Of course,” The chief said, “I’ll look into it, Hank.” The name carried a threat of knowledge with it.

“That’s what I love to hear, Carson, and never call me Hank again, you don’t know who might be listening.”

“Of course, my apologies.”

The escort finally finished grabbing coffee and took her to the elevator. She got what she needed. True, there were plenty of wealthy men named Henry who wouldn’t hesitate to blackmail law enforcement, and would be involved in making whatever that thing was, but Mandie knew exactly which one to start with.