Damage Control

by Eric Alan Williams

  Ezra pulled up Xairin's profile. Sure the virus that was wiping out facial recognition was still being dealt with, and the software used to help them identify links early on was still being pestered, but a visual glance at Xairin's previous profile before he became a vampire clearly said it on his drivers' license, "Sensitive, Level 2."

  Ezra grunted, "Then that would mean whoever…"

  Grace stopped him. "The first cases, all club victims, it would mean that whoever knew who was a sensitive would have had to have been someone who had direct access to the Identifying process."

  Hannibal turned around, joining in, "The doorman."

  Grace smirked, "Did you all really rely on the computers A.I. to do that much of your investigative work? Seriously?"

  Ezra rolled his blue eyes. "Okay, so we have a lead."

  Marine turned around and looked at her computer and began cross referencing any known perp that had committed Sensitive related hate crimes in the past. When she did, the computer virus slowing the progress of the investigation down, prompted a blackout of her screen followed by the animated form of a clown, waving a long skinny pointer finger. "N.A., NA, NA, NA, NA, NA." The clown announced in a high-pitched helium-induced voice."

  "Mutha fucker!" Marine yelled.

  Ezra and Hannibal Quessenberry both scoffed while sarcastically speaking in unison. "DAMN FUCKING HACKERS!"

  "I guess that proves Grace's theory." Marine had to admit.

  Ezra let out a drawn-out sigh while running his fingers through his brown hair out of frustration. "Okay, so we put out an alert. If this group of sickos is targeting sensitives, the least we can do is warn the sensitive community."

  Grace had to add something else. "Not to mention going public, put out an all-out bulletin for everyone. It could at least make the public more aware."

  Hannibal nodded. "If we can't trace him through using our technology, then maybe we can ask for more government aid until they crack this computer virus."

  Grace thought of something. Something rash. She dared to speak it allowed, as it would be perilous, but it had to be mentioned. "Once we put out a warning to the public, it will hopefully thin this groups ability to find new victims. When that happens, it will give us an edge to put someone undercover." She looked at Ezra. "You're a sensitive, and according to Scott Summers, his last correspondence with the perp, the perp asked him if he had been taking his Xyphamine. He was attacking defenseless sensitives."

  "So, what's your plan?" He asked.

  She smiled, "You're not going to be defenseless and lie when he asks you if you've taken your Xyphamine."

  Ezra smirked. "It won't be a lie, I don't take Xyphamine, I take Tepathazine, remember?"

  Marine interrupted. "I thought you were some hotshot agent from Faustin Academy? You can't lie if asked. Otherwise, it won't hold up in court, remember, it could be considered entrapment. Let us just hope if this group of assholes does contact you, that they don't ask if you're a cop…"

  "Yeah really," Ezra said as he looked at his cellphone. He placed his hand on in it tenderly. He tapped his fingers on it a few times. They were itching to flip it over. He wanted to see Xairin's face on his contact profile. Instead of flipping it over and texting, he stopped himself.

  _____

  Andre Charles Halfway Home for LGBT Youth.

  Rory Winstead had just finished working at Abrams Meats and Cloning Facility. During the day it was well known that Rory helped grow the cloned meat products and occasionally oversee limb replacement cloning vats when they were short staffed. Today was a day he was thankful for. He managed to stay in the factory monitoring what looked like red seaweed growing in massive translucent tubes running them from a control panel on the floor, clear to the ceiling. It wasn't seaweed he was helping grow. It was cloned beef, modified to meet W.H.O.'s standards in dietary consumption.

  He was wearing his white lab coat which didn't fit that well anymore. It was baggy, too large for the recently enthralled man. Xairin's modifications that he had bestowed on Rory had him three times as attractive, and in dire need of a new wardrobe now that everything he owned was too loose on him.

  Rory went around the factory, overlooking the shoulders of the workers. He inspected temperatures, the protein and fat ratios being detected, as well as the vitamin supplementation being infused into the meats they were cultivating. Once he made his final round and made sure everything was ready for tomorrow's harvesting, he went into the locker room, changed out of his lab attire, and dressed down into his blue t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers.

  Rory owned a blue Volkswagen hover beetle. He walked to his parking spot, clicked his car keys, and waited on the car door to raise upward. Once inside, the man decided to drive instead of fly, keeping it in land mode. He went two blocks over, still continuing toward ward 88, and parked in front of a refurbished hotel recently reconstructed by Nano-ants. In honor of a famous Drag Queen's real name, the facility had been named The Andre Charles Halfway Home for LGBT Teens. The name was right on the front of it, lit up with an old-fashioned rainbow sign.

  Rory had accepted a new position right after Xairin left for training. He loved his old volunteer job, but after some changes the city had made at the last minute, the facility he was previously counseling for was consolidated. He loved the former LGBT home he was helping with. He had been volunteering there for years in his spare time. Even though it was strictly a labor of love, he showed up every night, he was assigned to show, never missing a day. He loved the kids and helping them find placements.

  With some of the new changes coming down the pipe due to new funding, and since Rory had a counseling degree in therapeutic counseling for young adults in addition to his biology degree, the nights he would be working at DHHFLGBT, he would actually be getting paid for it now. One of the pleasant changes’ thanks in part to a grant that The Society of Night had offered each city it had an embassy in.

  Rory entered the building, past the security desk being operated by two droids and a newly hired vampire, he checked in with Olivia. "Any word on the three runaways we reported yet?"

  Olivia shrugged. The woman was once in her sixties as a mortal and had a hairstyle to match her age. After being bitten, Olivia could pass for her early thirties now. She leaned forward with a sad look on her face. "Not yet. If anything turns up, I will make sure you're in the loop."

  Rory walked over to the elevator. The three kids he was referring to were lost in the transition to the new facility. They were always the types to Elope, now with everything going on, Rory feared more than ever about where they could be.

  Changing his thoughts and trying to put on a more positive frame of mind so that the kids wouldn't pick up on it. He took a deep breath and jumped up and down a few times to get his blood pumping and his energy flowing.

  Right before stepping inside the elevator, he looked around at how clean the facility was on the bottom floor. It still had a hotel feeling, but man was it a step up from where his kids originally had to stay. Not to mention The Andre Charles Halfway Home for LGBT Teens had a capacity for eight hundred teens. Each of the hotel rooms had been reworked to provide individual space.

  He pressed the button taking him to the fifth floor where his office was, once he was inside the translucent platform, and a moment later, he was walking down hallways with real plants making up the decor, freshly installed yellow solatex walls, and pictures to give it a lovely apartment building feel.

  Inside his office, it was a work in progress. He had a desk, a few couches, a kitchenette, and a full bathroom if he needed it. He sat down at his computer, pulled up a screen, and noticed his first appointment, Reese Lawndale was due in ten minutes.

  Reese Lawndale was a fourteen-year-old boy, bitten by a bat in New York City's ruins. He was a former scav rescued from a building that a strange red eyed vampire had come to help the survivors evacuate. Reese had been bitten a day before the arrival of the peculiar vampire and had kept his injury to himself. It wasn't until
he was in quarantine and being checked out by the medical officers until they discovered he had been hiding a secret, not just one but two. He was attracted to other boys.

  The Orphan walked with his shoulders down, and his head slumped. He was having trouble adjusting to both being a vampire, being removed from the scav group that he had known all of his life, and the fact that he liked boys his age. When the scav group found out he had not only been bitten but also his other secret, he was ostracized when they offered reunification of the group into the same building.

  A faint knock on Rory's door prompted the blond haired man to rush over. He looked through the keyhole, noticed the young dark-haired boy standing there, and opened it. It was their first meeting.

  "Reese Lawndale?"

  The brown-eyed boy kept looking at the ground. His voice still youthful, not even cracking yet, mumbled. "Yes, I'm Reese."

  Rory extended a handshake. The boy seemed cautious but accepted.

  "Come on in Reese. My name is Rory Winstead, one of the councilors here."

  Rory sat behind his desk as Reese looked around the room for almost thirty minutes before he started speaking up. This was a side of Rory most never got to see, the side of him that abounded with patience for those that were hurting. "Take your time, Reese."

  The boy perked up a little. "Don't you have other kids waiting to see you?"

  Rory nodded while offering a welcoming smile. "I do, but I only see three a night, and my other one isn't due for a while."

  Reese looked to the side.

  "I know what it feels like, being different Reese. It can be a scary thing."

  Reese frowned. "You're human. And now the people I knew all my life, they don't even want to look at me."

  Rory leaned forward while putting his hands together. "I'm human, but my best friend is a vampire, and you and I do have one thing in common. I like guys too."

  That perked Reese up a bit. "You do?"

  Rory nodded. "I had my first boyfriend when I was about your age, maybe a little younger, I might have been thirteen or so."

  "Were you a scavenger?"

  "No, I grew up in here in Bastion City pretty much my whole life. I can't even imagine what it must have been like for you out there in those ruins."

  Reese leaned back keeping a submissive posture. "Those ruins were all I knew."

  "Do you want to talk about that Reese?"

  Reese shook his head. "No."

  "Is there anything you would like to talk about?"

  Reese thought about that question for a minute before finally answering. "How did your family take it when they found out you liked boys?"

  Rory took a long look at Reese. He tried not to frown, or smirk, or make any unfriendly gestures. He simply answered. "My mom came home and found me and my friend J.D. playing around in my bedroom. She wasn't happy about it. Before all was said and done, my grandmother ended up raising me, Reese. Now my grandmother totally accepted me for who I am, hell, she even introduced me to my second boyfriend when I was seventeen. Some guy that used to work at her favorite grocery store. But as for my mom, well, we don't talk. And it took me a while to get over that and realize that sometimes the best family you have are the ones you get to choose."

  That got Reese to pay a bit more attention. It was something else they had in common. He finally opened up a little about his family. "My parents left Bastion city years ago, they died when I was young, maybe four, I'm not sure. The group I was living with took me in and raised me with the rest of the homeless kids they came across. They, uh, were, really, religious I guess."

  Rory nodded. "I hear that quite a bit from the scavengers that make it back over here. So, what happened, how did they find out you that you're gay?"

  Reese shrugged. "The shelter they had us all staying at. They were coming around to me being bitten and all, but there was this guy, sixteen, from another scavenger clan. We hit it off, and someone saw him kiss me. I kissed him back, and then the group I was here with, well, they didn't want me staying in the same housing that they were."

  "What about the boy you kissed, what happened to him?"

  Reese got quiet. It took him a few minutes before he started talking again. Rory could see the boy become tearful. He handed the boy a tissue. "Before they placed me here, James ran away. Some cops came by asking me questions, no one wanted to talk about him because what we did was an affront to their God, so they... "He started crying.

  Rory turned to his computer screen and pulled up records from where Reese was stationed. He saw a police report. James Doner, sixteen, listed as deceased. The body was identified by a minor, Reese Lawndale. Rory became tearful too. "You were the only one willing to identify his remains?"

  Reese started sobbing. "No one would look at him. He came with another group, a lot like mine. Being gay was against everything they believed in. They, um. They didn't care. They said that the devil cut him up for being a sinner and that I was marked by the beast for being what I am."

  Reese cried. "I can't stand being like this. Why did this have to happen to me? I didn't wake up one day wanting to like other boys. I didn't ask for this." He looked at Rory. "Why is God punishing me, why?" The boy continued crying. His brown eyes becoming solid black, followed by his front medial incisors elongating into sharp fangs. The boy looked like a nosferatu without the baldness. "Why is God punishing me?"

  It was usually against policy to touch, but Rory thought, FUCK THE POLICY!" He went over and held the boy. He waited until the whimpering stopped. "I don't think God is punishing you, Reese. I don't think he's punishing me, or anyone else that's gay. No matter what anyone tells you, I think God loves anyone who is a good person Reese."

  The boy hugged back. No one had been this comforting before to him. He had been on his own living with Tobias's group since he was four years old, and never once was he offered a hug by an adult. Reese cried at that too.

  Once he settled down, Rory returned to his seat and handed the young man sitting there dressed in the grey issued uniform another tissue. After a minute, his black eyes turned back to grown, and his two front fangs reverted. "Thank you, Mr. Winstead."

  Rory reached into his desk and found a few pamphlets on Christianity and homosexuality. Soulforce, a well-established religious organization, had put out several articles over the past several decades. He handed Reese one of the most recent, the title was, "What the bible says, and what it doesn't say about Homosexuality." Reese extended his hand but started to become teary eyed again. "I can't read."

  Rory looked at his screen and noticed the next couple patients were not new, but ones he had seen previously and had been adjusting okay so far. He decided to call Olivia at the front desk by pressing the intercom button. The cheerful vampire answered. "Yes, Mr. Winstead?"

  "Cancel the rest of my sessions for tonight Olivia, I need a little bit more time with my new patient."

  Rory went over to the couch, taking the pamphlet with him. He motioned to Reese. "Come over here, sit. The boy did as Rory asked. Once he was sitting beside him. Rory started pointing at the pages and reading slowly." He figured that since the young man came from such strict religious backgrounds, maybe offering him a different view from the same religion might help him. Rory was prepared to read the entire piece if he needed.

  _____

  Ward 92

  Ezra, Marine, Hannibal, and Grace Tomlin had been summoned to a crime scene in ward 92. Ward 92 was a recent addition to Bastion City. Ezra could still see nano-ants crawling along the sidewalks as they continued refurbishing the reconstruction zone just a block away. A teenager had been found killed two hours ago, requiring the team to arrive post haste. The teen's name, Gregory Lindsay, was one of three reported runaways that were assigned supposed to report to Andre Charles Halfway House for LGBT Teens. Lindsay was a new addition, a young sensitive with a history of using his ability to mentally persuade humans into giving him currency, credit cards, and occasionally tech. Gregory's remains met the criteria of
Ezra and Marine's caseload. They found a cellphone that had been reported stolen. Grace had connected her tablet to the phone scanning for recent activity and saw what she had hoped was a mistake, but it wasn't. The seventeen-year-old had downloaded hook up apps, posing as a nineteen-year-old. What was left of him had been dumped in an abandoned building that the nano-ants had discovered. Only a genetic scan revealed who Greg was. The head was missing like all of the other victims belonging to the specific case they were working.

  "Jesus, seventeen," Ezra said with a sigh.

  Marine was poised at the side of the boy's torso. She was clenching her eyes and shaking her head. The sick bastards had taken out a teenager this time.

  Grace wasn't as empathetic. "Looks like our runaway used his abilities to snatch a cellphone. He was posing as a nineteen-year-old on at least nine different hookup apps."

  Hannibal was looking over the crime scene. The building was being cleaned by the nano-ants, which was slowing progress. It was hard to tell how much of the evidence had been moved in the darkened stairwell that the remains had been dumped in. As droids arrived, the area lit up, with floating illuminating orbs. Hannibal could see blood on the ground where the body had been dragged. He followed it until the line stopped at a trail of nano ants. "Damn it!"