Disclaimer: Blah, blah, my story...blah, blah, don\'t sue me. There.
Ikimashou!
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CHAPTER 9: Weapons of Mass Distraction
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Cortez had tried everything short of waterboarding to get William Choi to talk, but the pudgy editor of the Courier was as tight-lipped as a crazy-glued oyster. Both men had their respective reputations to protect, and neither were budging an inch. Choi was known throughout the journalism world as a man with impeccable integrity; who never divulged a source, and always defened a story. Cortez was the man who could get anything from anyone at anytime...especially if that anything had great importance.
“Look, Mr. Choi,” the sergeant said with exasperation. “We\'re both reasonable men. You want a story, and I don\'t want that story to get out. Thus, we are at an impasse. I\'m not a big fan of impasses, and neither are my superiors. They can make your life pretty miserable, trust me. If they have to shut down your paper in order to get what they want, they\'ll do so.”
Choi kept a tough grin. “I\'m sure you\'ve already shut down my paper, or at least shut down the building while you search for whatever it is you\'re looking for. So that threat is weak. I will tell you this: Mine isn\'t the only paper in the city, or even the nation, that would love to hear about your superiors. You can\'t shut everyone down!”
“That\'s where you\'re wrong, Mr. Choi. We can enforce a news blackout throughout the country for the sake of national security. That alone will buy us time to find the information and destroy it before it gets out of control.”
“Then what do you need me for?” Choi asked smugly. “If the story broke, I\'m sure your people would treat it the same way they treat stories about UFOs...or shoulder-launched missles. You\'d just find someone to explain it away, or issue a press release saying it was a hoax. So do that, have a good laugh, and let me go.”
Cortez had to admit that this editor knew his stuff. “I\'ll hold you here as insurance. If that story breaks I want to see who breaks it, and what connections if any you have to the leak. If I find any such connections, Mr. Choi, your next story will be your obituary. Am I making myself clear?”
“Then you might as well kill me right now.” Choi didn\'t back down from the threat whatsoever. “You\'ll definitely link the information to Dr. Attaturk and my reporter, who obviously works for me. Even if someone else leaks it, you\'ll kill me anyway because it\'s what you want to do. If you really want to kill the story, stop wasting your time with me, and use your resources...I\'m sure you have enough to find a single piece of information.”
It was a sound argument, yet Cortez couldn\'t give in to it. At this point, an impasse was better than a loss. He left the room, locking the door and leaving Choi to have a laugh at his expense.
“I hate journalists,” the sergeant muttered as he left.
- - - - -
A small green car pulled up to a modest apartment building in the Minato ward of Tokyo. Out of the car stepped a middle-aged woman who dragged a large bag full of clothes behind her. It was the last thing she needed to move into her new place; after having some of her things go missing in her last move, she thought it best to take her personal items herself.
As she reached the door to her apartment, an envelope marked “Megumi Morisato” in Roman lettering caught her attention. “No one even knows I\'m here...who would send me mail?” She examined the small padded envelope and frowned, noting that the sender\'s address was left blank. Curiosity got the better of her, so she opened the envelope, finding a first-class ticket to New York. The frown turned into a sad smile. “Oh, Naya-chan,” she said fondly, “...what have you gotten yourself into now?”
- - - - -
Naya and Annette slowed down as they reached the entry to the staging area. Other than the fact that the surgical tent was taken down and moved, it seemed like business as usual in the vast space. People milled around performing various dutes, while this vehicle or that would occasionally prowl by taking someone to another wing of the compound.
The two women hid behind a large container. “Damn, I was hoping the surgical tent was still up,” Naya whispered. “There could\'ve been some useful information about you there.” Then she remembered the sheet Cortez showed her earlier on. “I know...there\'s a room here that they were going to take you to. If we go there, maybe we can find something.”
“Good...but we can\'t keep sneaking around dressed like this...at least, I can\'t.” Annette looked at her torn orange pajamas. “We\'re going to stand out so badly!”
Naya looked around and found a door marked “Stock Room”. “Luckily for you, I think we can get some nice off-the rack stuff!” She thought for a moment, then smiled. “Wait here for a moment...”
Annette watched with wonder as Naya simply strode across the room and walked to the stock room. The fact that no one noticed her boggled her mind. Soon the other woman returned with two lab coats.
“How did you do that? No one bothered to stop you!”
Naya smiled as she put on the white smock and removed the bottoms of her pajamas. “It\'s pretty easy for a cat. All you have to do is not do anything worth noticing. Remember when we first met? You didn\'t hear me coming, did you?”
“Yeah, but you came up behind me. I would\'ve seen you coming had I been facing the other way.”
“True,” Naya agreed, “but if your mind\'s occupied, like most people here, you won\'t notice a thing. Now, put on your coat, and follow me.” She helped Annette with her smock, and pointed for her to remove the pajama pants. “Orange kinda stands out. You might want to get rid of those.”
“But...it\'s kinda drafty without them. Besides, you just walked across the room in full orange pajamas!”
“I\'m a cat. I can walk quietly. You can\'t...you fidget too much. Now, let\'s go!”
The two women waited for a moment when no one\'s attention was focused in their direction, then they calmly walked out from behind the container. Naya\'s feet silently padded across the busy floor, while Annette shuffled to keep up. Soon the reporter fell in step with her companion, and their stroll across the room was nearly complete.
Annette looked up and saw a room with a light on. She followed the windows to a doorway, which stood in front of a stairway. “Let\'s go there. We might be able to find something.”
Without saying a word, Naya continued her pace, adjusting for the course correction. The two women reached the top of the staircase without abatement.
Seeing no one in the room, Naya opened the door and the two women walked in. It was a file room, with rows of cabinets facing away from a central desk. “You\'d think they\'d put this stuff on a computer or something,” Annette remarked.
“Could be they don\'t even trust their IT people. If so, why keep this door open?”
“You think Tesla knew we\'d come here?”
Naya looked through the cabinet labels until she stopped at the one marked \'1985\'. “I think you\'re right.” She rifled through the top drawer\'s files, stopping at a file marked with a black tab. As the others had more colorful tabs, this one caught her attention. “Looks like he even left a treat for us.”
Annette joined Naya at the desk, where they looked over the folder. The file held quite a few clipped groups of papers, each of which had a photo of a child attached to the front. The reporter picked a group of papers at random, and read through the information on the lead sheet. “I wonder if these kids all went through the same thing I did...”
Naya\'s face blanched when she saw one of the pictures. “I sure hope not...for your sake.”
Annette saw the shocked look on her partner\'s face. “Did you know her?”
“More than that, Annette...” the other woman whispered. “I killed her.”
“You what??”
Naya sat at the desk, her head buried in her arms. “It was an accident. My group was told that she was born with a small heart, and we wanted to find a way for her heart to grow at the same rate as the rest of her body. But the serum we created accelerated the natural regeneration process much too quickly. Her heart actually grew into her ribcage...and burst in her chest.” She let her head drop to the top of the desk. “It was horrible, Annette...we tried to help her, and we ended up killing her!”
“You...you tried to help her, Naya...” The blonde left the file on the desk and put her hand on the other woman\'s shoulder. “You could only do so much...”
“You don\'t understand, Annette...they lied to me—she was perfectly fine before we gave her the serum! They just wanted faster results, and played on our sympathies to kill a helpless child!!”
“You didn\'t know, Naya! Like you said, they lied to you! You can\'t blame yourself for that!”
“That\'s just it, Annette...we were so gung-ho about saving that girl, that we didn\'t fully test the serum. If we took even another day to run tests, we would have seen that it wouldn\'t have worked!”
Annette let Naya cry herself out, holding her and rocking her until her tears subsided. “Are the other kids in this file...are they dead, too?”
“I...I can\'t say for sure,” Naya answered, regaining her composure. She looked at more of the file, and saw something that caught her attention. “Do you remember anything about being on Plum Island?”
“No...why?”
“Because most of these kids were there, according to this. I guess it\'s safe to assume they were all used for some kind of testing, and that you were included with them.”
Annette\'s face brightened up. “So maybe my file is here, too?”
“I doubt it...remember, Tesla made it easy for us to come here—I think he wanted us to find this, but I doubt he wants us to find your file that easily.”
“So maybe we should find him?”
Naya looked at the blonde incredulously. “Now, why would you want to do a crazy thing like that?”
“Well, if he\'s really toying with us, I\'m guessing he wants to keep us busy while he does something else. He\'s keeping us occupied, Naya...he can get of us anytime he wants, but he\'s playing with us. Why?”
Naya followed Annette\'s train of thought. “I\'m thinking he doesn\'t have all the information on you that he wants, and he wants to see what\'s missing. Remember, you just learned yourself that you\'re practically indestructible.”
“But you\'d think he\'d know that already, considering he probably made me that way.”
“But what if he didn\'t?” Naya leafed through the folder once more. “What if it wasn\'t him, but Nikolai or someone else who headed the projects back then, and he\'s just now catching up? When I was with the project 25 years ago, we weren\'t in this place, so I\'d never come in contact with Peter. Hell, I didn\'t even know Tesla was around then...or if he even had a kid.” She found a page and took it out of the file, folding it and putting it in her pocket. “We have to get out of here. If he\'s gonna give us free reign in here, then it\'s best we find him before he does finish. And I think I know where...” She gathered the rest of the folder and put it back in the drawer.
“Where are we going?”
“To Plum Island. I think we\'ll get a lot more answers there.”
The two women left the room as it was, and headed down the stairs. “Naya...is it just me, or did it get really quiet in here all of a sudden?”
The other woman look over the railing of the staircase, and sure enough not one person was in the large room. “This can\'t be good...”
Suddenly the staircase shook violently, as if it had been hit by a truck. Both women were thrown from it; Naya landed on her feet, then barely avoided a tumbling Annette, who crashed into a large container.
“Annette! Are you alright?”
The reporter got up and shook her head. “I guess so...” She checked herself for wounds, but found none. “Yeah, I\'m okay...how \'bout you?”
“Fine...but if we\'re getting out of here, you\'re gonna have to pass Tesla\'s next experiment...” She pointed back to the stairs, where a growling Chimera was beating the ground with the staircase.
- - - - -
“You really should be charging pay-per-view prices for this, Tesla.” Cortez watched the feed from the room where Annette and Naya squared off against the Chimera on his laptop. “I was beginning to wonder why you let them go like that, but I can see the method to your madness.”
“There\'s nothing \'mad\' about it, Sergeant,” Peter snipped. “I just want to see if these two can be put to better use than the disposable dolls your agency wants.”
“Don\'t lump me in with those idiots! I just work for them...doesn\'t mean I\'m one of them.”
Peter laughed. “Oh, that\'s right. You have your own problems with them...especially a certain captain, if I remember correctly.”
“A problem that will soon be resolved, believe me.” Cortez took another look at the monitor. “Does she know about her real parents? I wouldn\'t think she\'d be happy.”
“No, and I intend to keep it that way...no matter how much her and that cat keep digging.”
“You know what they say about curiosity and cats, Tesla.”
“Let\'s see just how many lives she has left,” Peter said harshly.
- - - - -
“You ever fight one of those things, Naya?”
“Yeah, once...” the white-haired woman dodged a chair that was flung in her direction. “Let\'s just say I didn\'t end up on the good side, okay?”
“Thanks for the encouraging words.” Annette ran around the edge of the room, hoping to draw the Chimera\'s attention away from Naya. “Hey ugly! Come and get me!!” When the brute didn\'t acknowledge her, the blonde picked up stray chair and tossed it, hitting the monster in the back. “I said over here, stupid!!” That got his attention...for a second. “What\'s your problem??”
“Stop, Annette!” Naya finished her sentence just before ducking out of the way of the onrushing beast. It crashed into the wall, leaving a good-sized dent in it. “It\'s after me...if it\'s the same one we saw in Brooklyn, it\'s gonna ignore you competely!” She watched the Chimera shake off the blow and prepare for its next rush.
“Is that so? Well, I\'m gonna have to let him know I don\'t like being ignored!”
“Annette...what are you thinking? I hope you\'re not thinking of...”
She didn\'t get time to finish her sentence, as the blonde simply walked up to the monster and slapped it. Hard. Extremely hard. Hard enough to send its lower sliding away from its face and leaving it hang below its head.
“If that doesn\'t get his attention, nothing will!” Annette said proudly.
Naya wasn\'t sure if was her or the Chimera who was more surprised by Annette\'s actions. Both stared at the reporter with their jaws agape, though Naya still had the ability to close her mouth.
The monster wasn\'t happy about losing that ability. It let out an ear-piercing roar then glared at Annette.
“You happy now, Annette?”
The blonde didn\'t get a chance to respond, as the beast swatted at her, sending her flying across the cavernous room. She hit the ground hard, skidding to a stop against a wall.
“ANNETTE!!” Naya ran over to the slumped reporter, who coughed a bit as she tried to clear her head. “Are you alright?”
“That thing packs quite a wallop! How did you manage to fight it?”
Naya gave her partner a sheepish grin. “I\'d say \'fought\' wasn\'t exactly the word I used...it was more like \'evaded\'...” The two women looked in the direction where the monster was, only to see a blank spot. They looked all over the large room, but the Chimera disappered.
“Oh, now you\'re just cheating!” Annette yelled. “How do you expect me to hit you back when I can\'t even see you?”
“Allow me...” Naya lifted the bang over her right eye. “It\'s still here somewhere...it\'s using the camouflage to blend in again.”
“You mean like when it chased us in Brooklyn?”
“Right...hold on a minute.” She picked up a faint shadow of the beast holding its jaw, trying to align it with the rest of its face. Ah! Found you! “Annette, I want you to listen to me very carefully.”
“You have a plan?” the blonde said happily.
“That I do. When I tell you to, you\'re going to take a jump and hit that spot with all you got.” Naya pointed to a spot on the floor.
“You do know it can see me, right?”
“I\'m counting on it. It thinks it can see us, but we can\'t see it. That\'s why you\'re going to surprise it; it won\'t expect you to do that.”
Annette played the scene out in her head, and nodded in approval. “Sounds like a plan...let\'s do it!” She got up from the floor and took a fighting stance.
Naya shook her head disapprovingly. “You\'re supposed to be running, not fighting. Run. Jump. Then fight.”
Annette laughed, her cheeks flushing. “Oh, sorry. I\'m ready.”
“Okay, hold on...” Once again, Naya lifted the white bang over her right eye and found a good spot on the floor. “Ready...GO!”
Annette was off like a shot, spirnting across the floor before taking an enormous leap into the air, yelling like a mad woman as she jumped.
The Chimera was still trying to figure out how to re-hinge its jaw when it saw the blonde take flight. It wondered how a human could jump so high; it also wondered why a human would want to put a large crater in the floor, just as Annette just did. If it understood the concept of gratitude, the Chimera would be grateful that Annette\'s leap and devastating landing was terribly inaccurate.
Maybe that thought was a bit too much for the Chimera to bear, as its head began to pound—rather, something began to pound on it, hard and fast, one side then the other. The pain increased with every blow, making the beast how in pain. It tried to remove whatever it was that was bashing in its skull, but the beast\'s massive arms made that task impossible.
Naya had been giving the creature the brain-bashing of its life. She was alternating blows to its temples, holding on with her offhand to a mass of hair on top of the creature\'s head.
The Chimera wanted to rid itself from this pain as soon as possible. It fell to the floor, writhing in pain as it continued to try to grab the source of its pain from its head. Naya held fast, beating the beast with all she had. Soon the Chimera had had enough, and thought the best solution would be to run head-first into a wall.
Naya was so into her brain-bashing session that she didn\'t notice that the Chimera planned to bash its own head. Nor did she feel someone grab her before the beast crashed full-bore into the wall. She felt herself hit the ground and tumble a bit, before coming to a stop. The Chimera slumped against the wall as its head was inextricably lodged in. The beast twitched, made one last attempt to pull itself from the wall, then it slumped in silence.
Naya let out a huge sigh of relief, then wondered when she had grown another set of arms and legs. The extra set of limbs were wrapped around her, and there was an odd weight on her back. “Annette?” she asked in a dazed voice.
“You\'re welcome,” the blonde responded. “I really should\'ve let you hit the wall for pulling that trick on me, but since your plan worked, we\'re still alive and that thing is dead, I\'ll forgive you.”
“Thank you, Annette...and I\'m sorry for not telling you what my true intentions were.” Naya kept her eyes on the dead creature, so as not to have to face her friend. “I knew that you\'d want to go in and take it out by yourself, but it would\'ve seen you coming and probably rip your insides out. I didn\'t want that to happen, so I came up with that little diversion instead. I knew once you had its attention, I could attack it.”
Annette thought about the plan and, after some further consideration, agreed with it. “I\'m not crazy about the idea of you trying to beat it senseless by yourself; nor was I crazy about being a diversionary tactic, but it\'s much better than the alternative...it could have very well ripped my insides out, then come to kill you while I was regenerating.” The reporter stopped right there and thought about her sentence, letting out a chuckle. “Our little conversations are getting weirder and weirder, aren\'t they?”
Naya smiled, nodding in agreement. Naya felt Annette\'s arms begin to untangle themselves from around her, and she grabbed them and held them in place. She liked the feel of the position she was in, and saw no pressing reason for her to leave it.
- - - - -
Cortez closed the window on his laptop which showed the fight between the women and the monster, and maximized the window which contained the somewhat purturbed face of Peter Tesla.
“Hmmm...by that sour expression I\'m guessing you had money on the Chimera,” he said with a smile.
“Actually, I had expected this result,” Peter said in his usual matter-of-fact tone. “What bothered me was Miss Attaturk; her interference corrupted the data I sought.”
“You didn\'t expect Naya to just sit there and watch the Stanhope girl get mauled by that thing, did you?”
“No,” Peter answered, “but I would have liked to see what she was capable of without Naya assistance.”
“Unfortunately for you, it seems like they\'re a matched set now. You don\'t get one without the other.”
“That does complicate matters. I need to have them separated, but that is becoming increasingly difficult.”
Cortez grinned as his mind hatched a plan. “I have an idea...I would be able to take one of them off of your hands for you...or even both, if I may be so bold.”
“Bold? I\'d say \'insane\' would be a more fitting description! What would make you think I\'d want to part with both women, much less one of them?”
“What if I said I could provide you with the ultimate test/control subjects? This way, you can conduct your research on younger, untainted subjects, and I can control two...rogue experiments...before they go public.”
Peter\'s mind began to percolate. “You do make valid points, Sergeant Cortez. Let me think about it. Get me information on your, \'subjects\' as you called them, and I\'ll get back to you.” The window his face was in suddenly went black, signalling the end of the conversation.
Cortez grinned even wider. “Looks like we might have a trade. I best get my chips.” He pulled up another window, this one held a live video feed of Constanza sitting outside the Armbrister home. “Are we ready?”
“Just waiting for your word, sir. If I may be frank, sir, I would suggest commencing the operation within the next hour, as the targets will be waking up for school soon.”
“Good idea, Constanza. That\'s why you\'re my Number One.” Cortez saw the flush on the woman\'s cheeks, even as she tried to push the color back down. “Alright then...do it!”
“Understood, sir!”
- - - - -
The Armbristers were nestled all snug in their beds, while visions of Alaska danced in their heads. Jean and Jenna had adjoining rooms, separated by a common sliding door. Each room was the mirror opposite in both layout and fashion sense, yet the twins shared the same penchant for sleeping facing towards their common door. After sleeping together in the same bed for years as children, they simply never grew out of the habit as teenagers. Jane once remarked that, when they get married to separate husbands and live miles away from each other, they\'ll probably still sleep facing each other.
Each of the twins\' rooms had a skylight built over their bed so the girls could watch the moon and stars before they fell asleep. Tonight, however, something was watching them.
After getting the go-ahead from Constanza, the local Raptor Unit made its move, splitting into two teams. One person from each team quietly removed the skylight windows and dropping a cannister of sleeping gas in each room. Then two members slipped in each of the rooms, gathered each of the girls, and sllipped out. Each team had one replaced the skylight window as the rest took the girls off of the roof. They gently laid each girl on the ground, gagged and bound them, and put them both in the back of one of the two SUVs that were parked in front of the house. When the last members left the roof, the Unit gathered in the other, and both drove off into the night.
The neighborhood—and the Armbrister home—was as quiet as it had been before the Raptor Unit. Not another creature stirred, not even a mouse.
- - - - -
“Owl Unit, reporting.”
Cortez smiled as he heard Constanza\'s voice come over the radio. “Check, Owl Unit. I take it you have good news to report?”
“We do, sir. Both packages secured without a problem.”
Cortez nodded in approval. “Take them both to Building 257. Park the van in the garage, and leave it there. I don\'t want to chance them seeing any landmarks once they wake up. We did police ourselves, did we not?”
“That we did, sir...not a trace was left behind.”
“Very good, Constanza. I might have to give you a raise for this. For now, get some well-deserved sleep. Pleasant dreams.”
“You...you too, sir. Owl Unit, out!”
- - - - -
Fresh off a win against the Chimera and a few hours sleep, Naya and Annette set off for a way out, and a ride to Plum Island. Naya was in her feline form, being carried by the reporter, who wore both lab coats in case her feline companion had a need to change back into human form.
“It\'s a good thing you\'re not heavy, otherwise you\'d be walking.”
The cat looked up at her handler. “I\'m too tired. I haven\'t eaten anything in awhile. You might not think it, but it takes a lot of energy to maintain that form!”
“So, maybe we should try finding some food before you cough up a hairball...or do whatever cats do when they get really hungry.”
Naya snickered. “We just revert to our basic feral instincts...and eat the closest food source we can find.” She put her head down and licked Annette\'s hand. “Mmm...tasty!”
“Very funny,” the blonde said with a smirk. “I\'m beginning to wonder how you\'d taste with barbecue sauce...or dipped in chocolate...”
“You might want to wait until I change back into human form before you try out your latest fetish, Miss Stanhope!”
Annette suddenly found it hard to get the image of Naya dressed in chocolate-covered lingere out of her head. Thankfully the sound of an oncoming jeep helped her out of her midnight fantasy.
“Uh-oh...here\'s comes trouble.” Naya squirmed a bit and tried her best to look cuddly and cute.
“Stay like that,” Annette whispered. “I can use that!”
“Can I help you with anything, Ma\'am?” one of the guards asked. “You look like you could use some assistance,” he pointed glanced at Annette\'s blond hair, which was a total mess due to the fight.
“Oh, you have no idea! I\'ve been chasing this one all over the base for hours—you have no idea what hell is until you tried chasing a cat!--and now look at me...I\'m a mess, and I\'m starving!” She looked down at Naya, who was sandwiched between Annette\'s breasts. “It\'s all your fault! Bad kitty!”
The guard couldn\'t help but look where the cat had been, no matter how flustered it made him. “Well, I, uh...I could take you both to the commisary. I\'m sure they still have something open, as night-shift folks like you gotta eat too, right?”
“You\'re so right, sir!” Annette leaned forward, giving the guard a better view. Even the driver of the jeep had to take a peek for himself. “I\'ll just hop in the back. Thank you ever so much for your help!”
Weapons of mass distraction, Naya thought to herself. When I get my lab back, the first thing I\'m gonna do is find the breast enhancement gene.
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End of Chapter 9
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