With the exception of Rhymes and two other hooded figures, everyone agreed on Zelda’s proposal. Aaron added his own flare to the issue. “Aeon Strain. Followed by the acronyms. ASV1, for the original strain. Aeon Strain Variation One. Aeon Strain Variation two, for the humanized version and so on.” After a few moments, that subject was agreed upon mutually by all present, including Rhymes this time.
Zelda also added another bit of information. “Also, my friends, you’re going to have a window of opportunity to collect the newly infected. Apparently, there is some, cocoon like state each of them will enter. Most cases it lasts seven days.” She sat up straighter while making a biblical parallel. “God created the world in such time, if you believe that. Apparently so does the Aeon Strain in creating and completing the life it makes. Possibly where that biblical reference was derived from in the first place”
Sophie took point. She had considered the facts proposed and was looking over both data recordings while making up her mind before proposing her next move. “According to the last page in this Mr.’s Jordan’s journal. She indicated names of immortal factions. Vampires, Thropes, the Gorgon, and Mer… Of these four categories, The House of Ninlil, The Sasquatch Werewolf Tribe, The Order of Poseidon, and the Olympian Tribunal, are listed as factions this vampire proposed being possibly reasonable to approach. Two paragraphs down, she warns of a sect calling themselves, The Fallen, apparently, they thought themselves to be fallen angels bent on overthrowing god. They manipulated a human order of hunters called the Hand, which may still be around. Then there’s a faction called the Immortal Conclave, apparently these are the worst. She lists a dozen others, but these are the names we have to work with. I propose we follow our Australian allies’ footsteps and go public. Maybe we can reach someone willing to come forward. Can we agree to at least try, and hear them out?”
Rhymes grunted. “You want us to contact creatures... They’re not human Madam Supreme.”
Sophie was tired, she looked at Rhymes. “If these people are indeed still around, and this woman’s blood sample proving the existence, predating the comet, we need to explore this. Then we need to consider all options.”
It took several minutes before the Primes in the room agreed to at least meet with a leader and make plans from there, that was contingent of course on one coming forward. Preparations of arming troops with silver weapons was agreed upon shortly after, just in case negotiations went south.
Sophie stood up. “When the United States of America were in power, they offered my people, as well as several other tribes, national status. Operating as independent nations upon tribal land. If negotiations with these house leaders arrive in an accord, we could offer them an advisory seat as an olive branch. We need allies in this. Not to mention the disturbing fact that if the Aeon Strain was indeed created, that means a super power in the galaxy exists and given this comet passed by earth once before, they’ve been in scientific prominence far longer than we have. What if they came here looking to control their creations? … Something to think about my friends. We may need allies.”
Sophie looked at Aaron, “In the meantime, keep me updated every 12 hours on any new findings you come across, and also, until further data can be collected, I want the remaining victims that are in cryogenic stasis to remain there for now. Until we have additional facts, and an Aeonian or Immortium that we can verify predates the comet to come forward, I want the infected to remain in quarantine.”
Chapter 5
Ezra Riker Huxley.
The very man that politely refused to take Xairin up on his offer for a dance, was Detective Ezra Riker Huxley. Ezra had been undercover that night with his partner Detective Marine Evans. It wasn’t that he wanted to turn down Xairin’s offer, it was the simple fact he was working. That and Ezra was opposed the smell of alcohol.
Interpol Precinct 7 was located two blocks from the Haze. It was a tall building of skyscraper status, reaching past the cloud banks on a cloudy day. The structure was one of several that wasn’t black in color, but chrome colored. It had the same solatex exterior, just a different shade. The building had LED lighting like most, and had Precinct 7 in Blue glowing letters, written down the sides of the building’s corners.
Two floors below one of the landing bays, was Ezra’s department, special victims. He sat in a silvery room, surrounded by computer screens, holographic imaging, and TV screens being reviewed by HKC Droids. He sat at a cubical wearing a black suit, white shirt, and a black tie. This was the standard attire now, often being jokingly referred to as the men in black. He was reviewing data on his touch screen computer while leaning in and resting his left fist into his check to support his head. He had been working a case involving 19 disappearances that had evolved into homicides within the gay community that had spanned six months now. The majority of the victims were last seen in one of several gay clubs in Bastion City, some of the more recent, had been linked to fake profiles on a new dating and hookup app called BUMP.
Ezra was tired. He looked at the faces of the victims. No specific pattern had presented itself yet. Age was ruled out, since some were as old as fifty, and the youngest being 18. No specific race stood out, nor xenotype. Even the City’s best profiler was having difficulty on advising the detectives on who to look for, and what type of person might be targeted next. The patterns were erratic. The only noticeable common denominator was the fact each victim was confirmed to be gay, not bi or trans.
Each victim was drugged. He knew that much. A Columbian drug called Scopolamine had shown up in every blood test in what remains of the victims had turned up, mostly arms, legs and a torso, never the head. The profiler figured it was some sick twisted version of trophy collection. If it wasn’t for the perp always leaving the victim’s wallet behind, identification would have been a lot harder since most people still had eversions to microchipping. As for the scopolamine, it was nicknamed the Zombie drug for its effects on making its victims highly complacent. Once under the effects, free will was dissolved. Simple verbal commands would have the target do just about anything. It made for the perfect date rape drug. The other factors all the victims had in common, were being decapitated, and each limb severed by a sharp object of surgical quality. Sodomy by a glass object was listed as another commonality, the bottle being broken each time, busted inside the victim's abdomen. Lastly a sanitizing laser was likely being used since in every case, there were minute laser irritations to the epidermis of the victims. They were common in the medical field now. Simply press a button and sanitize a room within seconds without cellular harm to human beings and animals. Pathogens, dead skin and loose hair however, could be microwaved in a heartbeat. What worried Ezra in this case, was sanitizing lasers could be purchased anywhere now, Amazon being the primary supplier.
Ezra scrolled through picture after picture, recording each face in his memory. He knew every victim. He also had to be the one to tell the families when the body parts turned up and genetic profiling confirmed the victim’s identity. He was growing increasingly tired of being the one to have to deliver such heart ripping news.
Marine sat next to him. She was going through pictures of every I.D. scanned into each club’s data base on the night of a victim gone missing. Not a single hit was coming across. Evans and Huxley both knew, whoever was doing this, was new to the game, and had no priors. Plus, the scopolamine’s effects would simplify the abduction process. A few drops of the tasteless and odorless liquid, and the perp had the perfect slave ready to obey orders. No one on the recording feeds showed any signs of a struggle.
“Any luck Marine?” Ezra asked. His baritone voice wasn’t easily reduced to a whisper.
She huffed. “No, not a damn thing Ezra. I’ve looked over these pics a dozen times now, and not a one matches a single known offender. I’m also getting a little pissed. Doctor Yenson’s profile work has always been on par, but this time. She gets to step up her game!” Evans sat there while running her fingers through her afro. She kept puffi
ng it out while trying to think. She then proceeded to adjust her black tie, while shaking her head. “Ezra did any droid pick up anything?”
Ezra leaned back to see his partner's face. “No. I tell you Marine, I’m not sure I can handle telling another family their loved one got chopped to bits and sodomized by brutal force. It's wearing on me girl. I thought drug enforcement was bad, this case, it's seriously making me rethink transferring.”
Marine rolled her eyes. She was often blunt and came across apathetic at times. She cared, but had managed to leave her job at work, no matter how gruesome the details were. She kept that part separate. Ezra on the other hand, she worried about. So far, he’d been the best partner she’d had, and she didn’t feel like training another. “Look Ez, you gotta get it together. These cases, you must learn to separate yourself. Cause this shit. It's going to get worse before we catch this sick son of a bitch. We do what we can, with what we got. And since we’ve been playing mutant catcher the past forty-eight hours, we’re all running thin until the GA issues our department additional HKC Droids.”
Marine took a breath and exhaled slowly. “Did you pick up anything at the Haze with that mind thing you do?”
Ezra shrugged. “You try reading the minds of more than a few hundred people and see how hot you do… I had a flipping headache for almost a full day.”
Marine shrugged again. “Back to regular police work I guess.”
Ezra was a second gen sensitive, a level six. Ezra could read minds, manipulate to some degree, and had mastered telekinetic control. One of the reasons he was chosen for Interpol, was the fact his abilities were more on par. A level six’s testimony from reading minds held up in court, that and Ezra had mastered forcing people to tell the truth. He was good at it.
Ezra got up to get a drink of water from the water cooler twenty feet away from his desk. He grabbed the plastic cup, filled it, and popped one of his pills. This one was red, tepathazine. It was a new form of Xyphamine that allowed the user to continue using some of their abilities. The drug naturally was military, and Interpol prescribed only. Ezra had to undergo intensive background studies as well as interviews before his name was added to the dispensary list. They couldn’t afford people of his caliber having free reign to use their abilities should they be found out, being a spy or worse, a terrorist.
He popped his pill, finished his eight-ounce glass, and placed the plastic cup in the recycling slot in the wall. Seconds later, a new cup fell from a glass tube that looked like a drive through banking tube, filling the stack.
Ezra was musically inclined and could carry a tune. He hummed a lot, sang a little, and could play just about any instrument you tossed at him other than the drums. Today he was trying to keep a positive mind while humming a tune across the room. It was his humming that caught the attention of is Commanding officer. Commander Alberta Fentrose.
Commander Alberta Fentrose for lack of a better term was a cyborg. The woman had been in an explosion when she was servicing active duty twenty years prior during a recon run to acquire a terrorist named Larry Hill. He sat off a bomb right before Alberta and her team entered his warehouse. Now, she was a bald black woman, with two robotic eyes that could focus in like a camera on a phone. She had metallic arms, metallic legs, each of which was concealed by her attire. Her torso was mostly human, except the woman had no heart, it was artificial. The ongoing joke was she was a stone cold heartless bitch, and she should be when her subordinates didn’t do their jobs...
Commander Fentrose’s voice wasn't human either. Fully robotic and monotone. It had a feminine quality to it, but despite her best efforts, conveying emotion was lost. “Detectives Huxley and Evans, my office please!”
Ezra and his partner looked at one another in unison. Typically, being called to her office was either a good thing, or a bad thing, there was never middle ground.
Her office was about ten feet by eight. It had a small desk, a touch screen computer, and a few flat screen TV’s on the walls. It was brown in theme, from the desk, to the light absorbent paneling job. There were three chairs, one with a high black back to it, which Alberta sat in, the other two chairs were simply stools, much like a doctor’s office would have. She liked having that approach, so people had to look her in the eye.
“Yes Commander?” Ezra asked, trying to break the ice as his partner sat down.
Commander Fentrose was never the type to waste time. That and half her brain was cybernetic, so she was constantly multitasking. “Twenty-four hours again, a body was found in sewer system 3 by some repair droids doing a routine check up on the drainage system. They encountered a small group of those infected bats, the albino being one of them. Their lights apparently scared the damned things off, thank god for photosensitivity. Anyhow, preliminary reports indicated by the coroner’s office have found trace elements of Scopolamine in the victim's blood stream. Aside from multiple bite wounds, he had a foreign object inserted in the rectum, and I’m sure you can guess what type of object it was…”
Ezra looked at the ground while exhaling. Marine took point. “Commander are you saying we have an intact victim?”
The cyborg nodded. “Doctor Hilgenberg feels that the perp responsible may have been scared off by the infected chiroptera. It's likely the bats opportunistic nature lured them in for an easy meal once they got a scent of the victim’s blood. Point blank, The World Health Organization hasn’t been playing nice. They received the report on hour ago, as did I. I want you and Huxley to get to the coroner’s office, download as much data as you can before W.H.O. shows up and confiscates that body. And Huxley, since the body is intact, I want you to do your sensitive thing, I’m hoping you can get an imprint. Are we clear?”
Ezra raised his head and nodded. “I’ll give it a go, but if the brain’s been too damaged, I may not get much.”
Marine chimed in, “Why can’t Hilgenberg just transmit her findings to here?”
The commander crossed her arms. “Ezra, do what you can.” She looked the black woman sitting there jiving her head with a little attitude that almost set the cyborg off. “Evans… All data streams are being surveyed by the GA at this time to make sure enemy hands are unable to access any intel into the event. Because of that, certain data streams are coming in scrambled so this needs to be a manual retrieval. Get over there, download the data, and Huxley, do your best to read that body and get back before W.H.O gets there to retrieve it. Who knows, maybe this poor victim’s corpse might leave us something to finally go on.”
“Dismissed Detectives.” The woman said while returning to looking at her computer screen.
_____
Bastion City Coroner’s office.
Ezra and Marine wasted no time in making it to the rectangular shaped complex. Contrasted to most sterile environments, the halls and rooms to the city coroner’s office were a light grey in color. Metallic themes populated the complex.
Doctor Hilgenberg was a short woman. Five foot, five inches, a little on the plump side, and was usually spitting out slurs that would make a sailor blush. Today the short brown-haired woman was spooked. She wasn’t her usual spit fire self.
She led them into a large chrome colored room with glass tubes coming down from the ceiling that surrounded the metal slabs in the middle of the room. Each glass tube had touch screen capacity you could see the icons from several feet away.
Ezra looked around the room. He noticed a few researchers manning some computer terminals while Hilgenberg adjusted her thick black glasses. “They body you want is over here in cryo.” She then looked at Marine. “You can link your tablet’s USB cord to the terminal over on the far wall. Just press ZX805. Patient 99B.” Marine nodded and walked off.
Marine’s partner seemed less than pleased with that statement. “Cyro? As in he’s frozen?”
The coroner nodded, “Had too, only way to slow those alien cells down is to cool the body to -87 degrees.”
Ezra scoffed. “If the brain is frozen solid, I can’t read
him.”
The coroner just shrugged. “That’s right I forgot you’re a sensitive. You might be able to get something Detective. This alien physiology is weird. After two hours of infection, some of them start to produce some kind of enzyme that prevents cells from freezing, but at -86, they go dormant. Anyhow, best of luck I guess.”
Ezra didn’t want to see the body, but kept up with the short woman, watching her lab coat in the breeze her body was generating by her brisk pace. “Here he is.” She walked up to the round tube. Ezra noticed the tubical coming down from the ceiling and containing the body. He could see the faint blue lighting being emitted from above as the sound particle emitter slowed the molecules down in the air to cool the containment area. He could see the cryogenic steam inside the stasis cell. The body’s skin was blue.
She placed her hand on the glass tubical and Ezra watched it ascend into the ceiling while a cold chill from the sound particle emitter dampened. A cold steam left behind, evaporated. Ezra was shocked. “Are you sure this is this safe? I mean, isn’t the body infected?” He demanded to know.
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