by Mell Eight
The computer beeped softly to let Mercury know it was finally on. He input his password and settled into his chair to begin sorting through his work email. Most of them were junk or the usual reply-alls that accidentally went viral. Mercury had to delete all of those first before he could get to work on the real emails.
"Mercury, if I might have a word?" a voice asked from outside the cubicle. Mercury jumped in surprise and a fizzle of magic sparked between his fingers. He quickly moved his hands away from his keyboard and mouse so he didn't fry another motherboard. His work computer wasn't as sturdy as Dane's spelled laptop.
"Director Stockton!" Mercury gaped, standing up abruptly when he saw who had interrupted his work. Ames Stockton was the Director of the Federal Bureau of Supernatural Investigations. He was so far above Mercury on the food chain in terms of work that he should be locked in his office on a pedestal while peons like Mercury did his personnel fetching. Stockton was a big man, tall and thickly muscled. There wasn't an ounce of extra fat on his body, but Mercury had little doubt he had to go up a suit size or two in his shirts just to accommodate his shoulders. His skin was dark and his eyes sharp with intelligence as he looked at Mercury.
"This way, please," Stockton said, waving his arm towards one of the conference rooms. Most of Mercury's coworkers were probably still fighting through the crush of people downstairs trying to get through security, but enough people poked their heads around their cubicles to see what was going on that he knew the gossip would be flying once he was out of earshot.
"Is something wrong?" Mercury asked as he obeyed Stockton's directions. There were two other people that Mercury didn't recognize in the conference room and a very large stack of papers covering one end of the long table. Mercury walked inside. Stockton followed and closed the heavy door.
"Nothing is wrong, per se," Stockton began as he took a seat at the head of the table. He gestured that Mercury should sit too, so Mercury pulled out a chair further down the table and perched awkwardly on the edge. "We just have some questions for you."
"Okay?" Mercury asked, wondering where this was going and if he should be contacting Dane to break him out of the office.
"As you know, we performed our usual extensive background check prior to your hiring," one of the other men Mercury didn't recognize said. "Because you were raised in a government-funded foster home, you have a Social Security number and identification we can track. School records, work locations, etcetera. Except one day you simply vanished and only reappeared three years later. You explained the missing time as going dragon in your interview. You realized you needed time to embrace your cultural heritage by spending time in the wild. There were people who believed your story, enough that you were hired, but those few who still had concerns kept digging."
He pulled a piece of paper off the top of the stack and pushed it across the table for Mercury to see. It was a print out of a news article from eight years ago. "Terrorist bombing! Government lab set on fire by a terrorist calling himself Quicksilver." Mercury could make out the destroyed remains of the lab that had held the water dragons captive in the grainy photo.
"You were living in Chicago at the time of this attack and the facility in question was only ten miles outside the city. You did not arrive at work on the day this attack occurred and did not reappear until the day after the fourth attack in Maryland occurred three years later."
Three additional pieces of paper were placed in front of Mercury, each an article detailing Quicksilver's attacks. Mercury looked up at Stockton, whose face was as blank as Mercury hoped his own was. Inside, Mercury was wondering if he should demand to contact a lawyer before the interrogation continued. Gregory, Dane's centaur lawyer, would be tickled pink to be given the chance to go after the SupFeds.
Mercury was guilty of the bombings, although he hadn't used any actual explosives. He had woken up after being kidnapped strapped to a gurney in a lab where scientists had been conducting cruel experiments on dragon kits and eggs. He still didn't know why someone wanted an adult dragon, but he felt safe in assuming that someone had noticed what he was, and that he was in his less-protected human form, and had taken him. The first attack in the newspaper articles had occurred when Mercury escaped from his bindings and started killing the bastards that had kidnapped him. Then Nickel had blown open a wall for his own escape attempt and together they had brought the entire building down around them. The following two attacks had been Mercury rescuing the earth and fire dragons from their own separate labs, and the final attack had been a trap laid to stop him and Dane from pursing the government and the scientists. They had barely escaped with their lives and with Zinc. But he wasn't going to tell the SupFeds any of that.
The government had funded those labs, and there were some who were also benefiting directly from the experiments being conducted there. Jacobson, Stockton's immediate predecessor, had been one of those people. Jacobson and others had forced the media to keep the findings of smashed dragon eggs and the bodies of dead kits mixed in with the dead scientists a secret, one that had only gotten out when Dane leaked it to the media five years ago. Stockton knew the terrible truth about the labs and hadn't confronted Mercury about it, although he had to have his suspicions about Mercury's involvement.
Another piece of paper was dropped in front of Mercury, this one unfamiliar. "Quicksilver Strikes Again! Terrorist bombs another government facility." It was a print out from an online news site dated just that morning. The article said the blast had occurred at six o'clock in the afternoon the previous day while Mercury had been at work.
His alibi was airtight, recorded on the cameras scattered throughout the sixth floor and on every exit and entrance into the building. Mercury had arrived at work at eight in the morning. He had to work late to finish a report and hadn't left until six-fifteen that evening. He wasn't sitting in an interrogation, Mercury realized—he was in a debriefing.
"Was any evidence of experiments conducted on dragons found in the destroyed facility?" he asked calmly.
"Nothing specific," the third man, who had yet to speak, answered. "The responding officers found a few rooms that might have been used as jail cells, but the facility was too destroyed. We can't be entirely certain."
"And the signature?"
"Different," the man replied immediately. "Handwriting analysis of the first crime scene photos show we are looking at a copycat of some sort."
A destroyed facility with no evidence of dragons could mean two things. Either the copycat had heard about Quicksilver's bombing attacks and had decided to emulate them for his or her own purposes, so saving incarcerated dragons wasn't part of the plan, or it was the enemy blowing up their own emptied facilities in order to draw the real Quicksilver out. The enemy had been on the run ever since Mercury had started destroying their labs and Dane, the Genie of the East, had declared to the supernatural community that he was on the side of the dragons and anyone experimenting on them would be punished.
"And you want me to look into this?" Mercury asked, wondering if the SupFeds were laying a trap to connect him to Quicksilver too.
Stockton sat forward in his chair and caught Mercury's eyes with his own piercing ones. "We know you had something to do with Quicksilver," he said, the sharp tone of his voice brooking no arguments. "You can't deny that and I don't want to hear you even try. We both also know that the person calling himself Quicksilver in this new attack is a copycat. You're the only analyst in this department with enough experience with the issue to understand what's going on." And his connection to Dane would ensure Dane got involved without the SupFeds having to pay him for his work. "We're putting you on a field assignment with one of our special agents. She's waiting for you at your cubicle and has been fully briefed on your connections to the case."
That was a dismissal, so Mercury hopped back to his feet and hightailed it out of the conference room. His cubicle looked empty at first glance, but as he approached, a woman straightened up. She had been leaning over
to get a closer look at Mercury's lone picture. Her hair was a nondescript color of brown, pulled into a no-nonsense tail at the base of her neck. Her makeup was light, just a touch of eyeliner around her brown eyes and ChapStick on her lips to keep up a professional appearance. She was completely human as far as Mercury could tell, which meant that she couldn't get away with skipping the female version of a tie, i.e. makeup. Her pants suit was off the rack, navy blue, and her blouse ordinary white.
He approached her quickly, not wanting to keep her waiting. When he got close enough, she eyed the bronze scales where they peeked out of the collar of Mercury's shirt for a moment before meeting his eyes. Her own eyes were cold and Mercury knew he had been found wanting solely because of his species. It was something he was used to. Most dragons didn't attend any school, let alone have any eligibility for jobs at a government facility. The vast majority of dragons never left the forest at all. Humans, apparently including the woman in his cubicle, had developed prejudices against magical creatures deemed uneducable. Admittedly, most dragons weren't interested in attending school. Mercury had seven kits at home that were prime examples of that fact, and putting himself through high school and then college hadn't been easy, but it was doable if the right motivation was involved.
"I'm Mercury," Mercury said with a small smile. He would try to be friendly first, and if that didn't work, he would hope for a cordial working relationship at the very least.
"Valerie," she grunted in reply. Her severe face didn't soften into anything resembling a smile.
"I guess we're working together, then?" Mercury asked. He let his smile fade away, but he forced his voice to remain friendly. He refused to be the reason their partnership failed.
"Let's get some things straight right away," she snapped. "I'm the lead on this case. You will listen to what I have to say and do it as I say it. Understand?" Mercury nodded wordlessly, feeling his eyes grow round in surprise as she continued to snarl. "Good. Shut down your shit and meet me downstairs in five. We have a crime scene to investigate."
She stomped off and Mercury sagged against the edge of his cubicle. He glanced at his watch and winced when he saw it was only eight-thirty. One o'clock lunch with Dane couldn't come soon enough.
"So you're the one stuck with Crazy Valerie this time," Cheng asked as he stuck his head over their shared cubicle wall. "I had to work a case with her last year, and let me tell you, she's a piece of work! How'd you get stuck with her?"
"Lowest man on the totem pole?" Mercury asked. It was true that he was one of the more recent hires in the department and he certainly had one of the lowest level positions, but it was also true that she had been assigned the case and Mercury was the most knowledgeable analyst on the topic.
"Look, my advice is do whatever she says, no matter how stupid. It'll keep her from yelling at you." Cheng was grinning at Mercury as he spoke, no doubt glad that he hadn't been chosen. "Once the case is resolved, you just have to fill out the paperwork to transfer out of the field department and back to the cubicle farm. She's had so many partners over the years that HR is probably used to it. If she didn't get slam dunks with just about every damned investigation she was put on, she'd have been out the door a long time ago."
Mercury nodded, taking in the gossip with half an ear while he shut his computer down.
"Any other advice?" he asked after glancing at his watch to see that he still had another minute before Valerie would consider him late.
"Take up drinking?" Cheng asked with a laugh. "You'd better go."
Mercury waved goodbye and headed to the elevator to meet with potential doom, apparently. He couldn't believe he had gotten stuck with such a hard ass, especially one who didn't respect him solely because of his species.
Valerie was waiting for him in the lobby, her foot tapping impatiently as she glared at the elevators. Many of Mercury's coworkers were giving her a wide berth as they headed past her into the building.
"There you are," Valerie snapped the second Mercury stepped out of the elevator. "It's a forty-five minute drive. I hope you have gas in your car."
"I don't drive," Mercury replied, already flinching in anticipation of her reaction. She glared at him, her eyes narrowed and lips pinched, but she changed direction in the parking lot to head towards a rusty clunker of a car tucked awkwardly in the back corner. It didn't look like a car that could safely be taken on the highway, let alone survive a forty-five minute drive.
There was a better, magical option that would ensure they actually made it to the scene, but Mercury didn't think Valerie would ever agree to let him transport them with a spell. She already hated him. Would it be any worse if he didn't ask for her permission first? Probably. Yet, as they walked closer to Valerie's very dead-looking car, Mercury honestly believed that it was still the better and safer option.
"What's the address?" Mercury asked as magic fizzled through his fingers as he began to build a transportation spell around them. Valerie didn't notice, but she rattled off the address after a quick glance at one of the papers sticking out of the bag she was rifling through for her keys.
Mercury added the address to the spell and felt it lock on. He jogged up to Valerie, looped his arm through hers, and let his magic pull them both away.
The parking lot vanished and magic swirled in its place for a brief moment before a debris field manifested around them. Mercury let go of Valerie and took a step back to look around, but before he could see more than broken wood and shattered brick scattered on the ground nearby, Valerie's fist caught him in the stomach.
He groaned and fell to the ground, his hands automatically coming up to protect his stomach as he wheezed for breath. Valerie stood over him while he gasped, glaring down.
"Owwie," Mercury whimpered when his diaphragm finally relaxed enough that he could take a full breath.
Valerie's lips twitched involuntarily and Mercury winced and wondered when he had acquired Alloy's vocabulary.
"I have seven kits," he grumbled in explanation.
Valerie's almost-smile grew for a brief moment—Mercury thought he could call it an actual grin—but it faded just as quickly as it appeared.
"Don't you ever use your magic on me like that again!" she snarled. Her hands were in fists as she glared down at him. He could tell that she wanted to hit him again, but at the same time she knew she shouldn't have attacked him in the first place. It wasn't professional. Then again, she was known for having trouble keeping partners.
"You hit me!" Mercury grumbled back, which had her freezing in place.
"Everything all right here?" another voice asked before Valerie could retort. Mercury stumbled back to his feet with a suppressed groan. He was going to have a bruise there! Dane would be so angry, but he would also get the chance to kiss it all better tonight, so Mercury wasn't too upset. Besides, Mercury was kind of enjoying needling Valerie. He would do the same if any of his kits were in a bad mood, and she had almost cracked an actual smile for a second there, so maybe he was getting through her growly shell.
"Just a little dizzy from the transportation spell," Mercury explained, turning towards the man approaching them. "I slipped on some of the debris. Are you in charge here?" he added, quickly reaching into his pocket to pull out his badge.
The man was a plain-clothes police officer. His suit fit him better than Valerie's fit her, but he hadn't yet perfected the stony cop's face that she wore all the time.
"Captain O'Simmons is in charge," the officer said once he had looked at both Mercury and Valerie's badges. "He knows you're stopping by to have a look. He's right over here." He waved towards a grouping of officers, some in uniform and some not, standing near a squad car and ambulance that were blocking the road from commercial traffic. Mercury and Valerie walked in that direction.
They had landed just outside the crime scene tape that surrounded the blasted area, which was the purpose of the simple wards that were cast on every roll of the tape. The officer led them around the perimeter towar
ds the squad car. Mercury followed, but he also looked at what was left of the building.
Only one wall was still standing of what appeared to have been a two-story structure. The rest of the building was scattered around the street and the parking lot. Nothing was still smoldering, although soot was heavy on the ground and the debris. He was in a commercial area of town that had seen better days. The shops on either side of the destruction zone were empty, their windows boarded up. The asphalt underneath his feet had been cracked and pitted with age before the destruction had made it even bumpier, and rivulets of water and firefighting foam made it slippery to walk on. The wind was blowing gently and Mercury smelled the usual city scents of old cars, filth, and muck, but he also caught the slightest whiff of gunpowder underneath the stench of char, which was decidedly odd.
The inside of the standing wall came into view as they neared the squad car. Mercury had been feeling melodramatic and, quite frankly, pissed off when he had finished destroying the water dragon lab where he and Nickel had been held and had etched "Let My People Go" into the small bit of that lab that was still standing. It had gotten his point across fairly strongly, he had felt at the time, and the connection to biblical slavery and incarceration had been poignant.
"Is that paint?" he couldn't help exclaiming after studying what the impostor had done.
"Meant to look like blood, I think," one of the officers milling around grunted in agreement.
Mercury's lip curled and he let out a growl of disgust. "The original Quicksilver used magic to etch that saying into the brick or stone of whatever lab he had just finished destroying. Red paint is the work of an amateur."
"Valerie Robertson, FBSI. This is my partner, Mercury Chicago." Valerie stated, flashing her badge. Mercury flashed his too, manfully not wincing when she mentioned his last name. It was a result of the foster system arbitrarily handing him a last name when they had to put him into the system. He had wandered into a suburb of Chicago as a kit and that was the name they had stuck him with.