(Adapted from the published adventure
by Crystal Frasier and Jefferson Jay Thacker)
Colin shivered and hugged himself in defence against the chill in the Friday morning air. Autumn had been overwhelmed all too quickly by an early winter that had arrived with a vengeance, leaving the gathered students standing outside the school waiting impatiently to get into the warmth inside. Just another day at Claremont he thought as he nodded to acknowledge the little purple alien, Amy Thyst as she flew past him in search of her friends.
It had been two weeks since the school had been subjected to the demonic invasion and yet so many things still remained unexplained. Lilly and the twins had been given daily detention after school for their stupidity but they still claimed to have no memory of the man with the skull topped walking cane nor had the school managed to figure out who he was or what had been his motivation.
Mr Andrews was still healing from the wounds inflicted during his wrestling match with the oversized Urgoth demon, which he only finally admitted to the morning after the ‘incident’. His injuries, supposedly the result of a ‘motorbike accident’ he’d had immediately following the Junior Ball, accounted for him having his arm in a sling. Why they hadn’t called in Doctor Collins to heal him was just another of the school’s little mysteries.
The School’s copy of the ‘Monopáti ton Daimónon’ still haven’t resurfaced, though Lilly was now doomed to spend several months acting as a library assistant as punishment for its loss and for her wanton vandalism of the school’s copy of ‘Dark Rituals and Modern Mayhem’…
Suddenly behind him, he heard several loud and braying voices and looked round to see Charlene in her containment suit under her uniform but lacking a jacket, trying to rush passed Ces’ and his cronies. As she tried to push by Kelvin MacKenzie, she tripped over her own feet and went flying, her books scattering across the tarmac. Kevin smiled and did a thumbs up towards Ces’ and Angel. For a second Colin thought he had to have tripped her but reviewing the fall in his mind, it seemed unlikely. Then things took a very bizarre twist as Charlene started to hit her helmet repeatedly with her fists as though she was trying to punch herself and her cries turned into loud barks…
Kevin and the others just laughed and walked away leaving Charlene to scrabble on the ground gathering her books and phone, which apparently hadn’t been damaged thanks to its pink protective case.
She looked really upset as she picked up her books and ran indoors but then she hadn’t looked happy since her arrival at the school. He was aware that she seemed to be gaining some degree of control over her abilities. Even the teachers were amazed at how quickly she was learning to control her toxicity though he’d overheard something about her having extra psychiatric sessions with a specialist most days after school.
The rest of the day was excessively boring; too many of his classes had consisted of revision tests in preparation for his A-Level exams next year so he was glad when the school bell rang for the end of the school week. Colin wondered what to do with himself for the next couple of days. He was excused from supporting the Watch this weekend, Malone had nothing new for him to investigate and Mystery had gone to ground. He could always patrol, or alternatively he could just head over to the 7-Eleven on the outskirts of St Mary Mede, buy a tub of Rocky Road ice cream and watch that new series on Cyberflix on his laptop?
It was after seven when he finally jogged down to the nearest shop to the school, located close to the roundabout that linked the school to St. Mary Mede and the main road into Wessex.
As well stocked and provisioned as Claremont Academy was, most of the students needed regular access to a supply of junk food and caffeinated drinks from somewhere and the 7-Eleven was the closest shop within walking distance of the school. Some inmates sneaked out to visit the local convenience store almost every night in their search for junk food.
Colin knew that this particular 7-Eleven was usually free from the accumulation of litter that most of its cousin stores collected in an average busy business day, possibly due to its proximity to the nearby posh neighbourhood. Tonight this benign scene was marred by several boxes of sweets and unopened soft drink cans scattered on the ground, visible just behind the building. The hum of the florescent lights occasionally accented by distant cars passing by disguised the soft moans but the flickering lights couldn’t hide the figure lying unmoving in the shadows. Colin rushed in closer and saw that it was a hulk of a young man in a Claremont Academy rugby shirt: the popular rugby player, Owen Sauvage.
He reached down and checked his pulse. Owen was alive but he had a large, red mark on his neck that Colin was convinced was a chemical burn. If he had to guess, he would think that Owen was in a severe hypoglycaemic coma, though he was pretty sure he wasn’t diabetic. He did need medical attention as soon as possible. As he reached for his phone to call for an ambulance, his forensic senses clicked in. There were signs of a quick struggle but no scuff or drag marks. He had apparently been taken down where he now lay, quickly and efficiently without much of a fight. He was surrounded by a couple of open packets of crisps and a number of unopened cans of caffeinated drinks, which appeared to have been just dropped. In amongst the mess he could just make out a shard of pink plastic, which appeared to be a piece of a broken case — going by its colour it was probably not from something that belonged to Owen.
Behind him, he heard someone coming and looked around to see one of the shop assistants. He knew him; he was a recent employee and often worked the evening shift after school, admittedly not Claremont but St. Mary’s high school. He thought his name was Melvin and he was a very nervous individual. That was when he realised that the front of the store has a security camera overlooking the car park.
Putting together the nature of the wound, the identity of the victim and the familiar pink plastic shard, Colin had a sick sinking feeling that the wave of feminine vengeance against the school troglodytes hadn’t yet passed.
Using sleight of hand, he palmed the fragment of plastic and stuck it in his pocket, and then set about trying to get Owen into the recovery position until the professionals arrive. He considered applying some sweet sugary glucose to the inside of his mouth but decided not to risk it in case his diagnosis was wrong. As he checked Owen’s pulse and airways he nodded enthusiastically at the shop assistant, “Melvin – isn’t it? Look, I’ve already called for an ambulance, they will only be a couple of minutes at most so don’t worry. I think he is going to be okay.”
He paused for a second as Owen’s pulse crashed and he considered whether to flip him over and start chest compressions. Somehow giving him mouth-to-mouth, unless absolutely necessary, seemed a dangerous option until they knew more about why he’d collapsed. Then he heard a siren racing towards him and a minute later felt a gentle hand on his shoulder, pushing him aside as two medics began to take over. As he went to walk towards Melvin, he heard a voice behind him say “Well done, you did a great job kid. We’ll take it from here.”
Time to put his persuasion skills to good use. He tapped Melvin on the shoulder, “Nothing more either of us can do here. How about we both head back in? Did you see what happened? Or hear anything?” he asked.
“That big guy? I saw him come in with another student, the pretty-boy type. They’re regulars unfortunately, but this time they were arguing about something—don’t know what, but it got really heated. They took some sweets and drinks without paying… I, I don’t know why I didn’t try to stop them. They do it regularly and the other staff are the same, we all seem to ignore them both until after they’ve already left… Anyway, as they went outside the big guy knocked over a display of 2-litre SunJive, smashing a couple of cartons open so I had to go mop that up.”
He paused, shook his head and apologised as he rushed into the back of the store for a minute then returning with a slip hazard sign which he placed by the restored display. “Need to suggest to the manager that we move them somewhere else. Anyway, I didn’t hear the sound of a fight or anything like that, but I think they were talking to someone outside while I was mopping up the spill.”
“So why did you come out when you did?”
“Well, the lights flickered briefly and the till reset. I wondered if someone had broken into the junction box round the side. That’s when I saw you and the big guy on the ground. Pretty boy had already left.” And was the junction box damaged?” Melvin paused, “Ah, no. Still locked I checked as you were rolling him onto his gut.”
“Might be worth checking the store and car park cameras in case he was assaulted. Do you want a hand?” The in-store footage showed what Colin had already suspected. The ‘pretty boy’ turned out to be Kevin MacKenzie and they seemed to be just helping themselves while Melvin looked on as though in a trance. Then there was the sound of a crash and nothing, the screen went blank until it reset a few minutes later. The car park camera showed the same thing, both leaving the store, apparently arguing about something then the camera overloaded and shut down before the attack occurred.
Outside Owen was loaded into the ambulance before it speeded away. Both he and Kevin were day students, however there was an interschool rugby match planned for the next day and if he was up for it, Owen was due to play. Kevin usually also attended, though more to try to use his friendship with Owen as a means of chatting up one of the female supporters. He’d need to wait until then to talk with them.
Charlene on the other hand was an inmate in the same cellblock as him. He looked again at the shocking pink plastic shard as he jogged back to the school, his tub of ice cream forgotten.
He found Charlene ‘alone’ in her room when he knocked. He smiled when he realised that the evening Residential Assistant, Jan was keeping him under close observation from the end of the hall.
Senior year pupils were allowed to visit each other in their rooms, even if they were the opposite sex, provided they kept the doors open. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot when she opened her door, apparently from extended crying and she was not wearing her containment suit. “What do you want?” she asked suspiciously.
Cadet didn’t try to enter but stood just outside trying to get a good look inside the room. She went on, “Look, just say whatever you’re going to say. I’m not inviting you in. Haven’t you heard? You’re not my ‘type’ and anyway no one enters my room, anything I spend any time touching—like my bed, desk, and laptop—all end up as poisonous and as toxic as I am, and no, I don’t want to step outside.”
Looking past her into the room he could see a video chat on her open laptop. He could see on the screen four other teenagers in dark clothes and bulky silver jewellery in their respective chat windows.
Cadet tried to think how to word this diplomatically but in the end just said it as it was; “Look Charlene, there is no nice way to ask this. Owen, one of the people who had been annoying and bullying you was found a short time ago comatose outside the 7-Eleven in town. He had a chemical burn on his neck. Were you there by any chance?”
On screen behind her the four teenagers all shouted that she’d been with them all evening and who the fucking hell did he think he was anyway?
Charlene was visibly angry and her reply was short and to-the-point. She’d been playing Nosferatu — a modern gothic horror role-playing game — online all night with her friends from her old high school.
Her friends loudly corroborated this from the laptop. He looked closely at the screen and saw the session timer in the top right-hand corner confirm that the call had been going uninterrupted for over three and a half hours.
He apologised and was about to leave when he saw that her mobile was lying face down on her bed. The case didn’t appear to be broken but it did look weird, contorted somehow. It took him a few seconds to realise that it had a home repair look about it, as though someone had melted then stretched the plastic of the casing. Then again, he had seen it fall on the ground that morning.
He turned and left as Jan also closed her door. He immediately headed to Chris’ room instead of his own as he wanted Chris to check the incident files on the poisoning of this Zoe girl. Specifically he wanted to see if she had suffered any form of chemical burns. At this point, all the evidence he had was clearly circumstantial; there was not nearly enough to get the teachers involved.
It took about half an hour to confirm that there was no record in her medical files that Zoe had suffered any chemical burns to her lips or hands. She had admitted to the Police that she had obtained immune boosters to help her resist Charlene’s powers long enough for at least brief contact. What she seemed to refuse to say was where she had got them and how she’d paid for them. There were no records of such drugs being stolen. In fact, she’d insisted that whoever had sourced them for her had given them to her for free. Altruistic to say the least given they weren’t addictive (so, no guaranteed return sales) and must have cost a sizeable amount of money to purchase, that in itself seemed unlikely surely?
Next morning Colin wandered down to the rugby pitch to see if Owen had been released from hospital. He knew that if he had, he would be there even if he wasn’t fit to play, cheering on his teammates.
The usual cacophony of the Claremont students were muffled, though not completely suppressed this morning. Students moving in packs traded whispers about Owen and who could have hurt him. Despite there only being a relatively few supporters on the edge of the field, tensions were high about the interschool match about to be played. There was no sign of Owen, or for that matter Kevin but he spotted a fresh face walking around: Charlene, without her containment suit.
Even in this cautious flow of students, a wide wake formed around Charlene as she made her way through the crowd with a nervous look painted on her features. When she passed by, the whispers shifted. “Why isn’t she wearing her suit?” “Is she trying to get everyone sick?” and “Who even wears black lipstick any more?”
Despite her nervousness, Charlene looked as though she was riding high. Something had given her a confidence boost, even to the extent that she had taken to wearing some of her old wardrobe from before her transformation. She’d made some rash decisions in regard to her choice of wardrobe, but she appeared so relieved that she didn’t care. Instead of her usual containment suit, she was currently wearing a spectacularly gothic outfit, complete with black lipstick, gloves, sheer sleeves and a black leather collar with a silver heart pendant.
Seeing Colin, she made straight for him. Colin tried to keep his distance but a sudden sense of euphoria washed over him and he felt that he needed to talk with her no matter the risk. She appeared to be in a casual, even chatty mood —a big improvement on her usual depression.
He asked about her not wearing her containment suit and she explained, almost bubbly, that she had been getting better control of her powers thanks to “the cool new doctor” she’d been seeing, and now she could wear what she wanted out of school, instead of that “ugly suit.” All the progress she’d been making was why Ces’ and Kevin’s teasing yesterday had hurt her so much.
She looked at him and asked after Owen but Colin explained that he was either still in hospital or his parents had elected to keep him at home today and he hadn’t seen him since he had collapsed.
“Look, about last night, sorry – I was a bit abrupt but, well, I wanted to get back to chatting with my friends.” She explained that she and her friends were, had been, in the school drama club and loved to play vampire Live Action Role-Plays. She’d stayed in touch with them online and they still gamed together online, but it was not the same—she was feeling like she’d been forced to quarantine from the whole world.
She walked off to sit separate from the others but Colin couldn’t help notice that the people she’d passed were speaking a lot nicer of her now than they had been even a few minutes ago. Seems getting out of the suit had a calming effect on them. Who knew?
He looked around one more time and confirmed that neither Kevin nor Owen were around, then he headed back to his room. He still needed to find something to occupy him for the rest of the weekend. There was nothing local on Trouble Alert so he started monitoring the emergency channels for other unusual activity after last night. What he found were a number of ambulance calls over the last 30 minutes to non-responsive teenagers in St. Mary Mede, each with unusual burn marks on their necks.
He went and asked a laid back Chris if he would monitor the usual Social-media channels to see if there was anything that might shine a light on the teenagers that had collapsed. What would have taken Colin half an hour at least to do, if at all, Chris achieved almost instantly. He reported that there were several posts related to the situation and there were three known victims, a Mark Greer, Jacob Nguyen-Smith, and Matt Alstead, all senior students at St. Mary’s.
A couple of the posts mentioned seeing some geeky-looking kids attacking one of the victims, the one called Mark Greer, early this morning and that he’d been left completely out of it with the “Hickey from hell” on his neck. Chris had even managed to find a photo online showing the well-built, acne-faced youth lying on the ground with a very nasty yet strangely familiar-looking red burn to the side of his neck. What was surprising was a smirking Kevin standing at the edge of the crowd.
The sight of Kevin’s smug face crystallised a suspicion that Colin had been nursing ever since he’d watched the CCTV footage from inside the store. Why had Melvin not reacted as Kevin and Owen looted and then trashed the shop in front of him? From what Melvin had said, he wasn’t alone in not responding to their blatant shoplifting and thuggery, other staff had also seemed incapable of reacting to their actions. Then there was the fact that it had been so easy for Colin to get Melvin to show him the store’s CCTV footage, revealing his then-current extreme suggestibility.
IT was clear to Colin that the ‘worm’ was using his mental powers for something other than rape these days, which also raised questions over the mood-changes in and around Charlene, which Colin himself had experienced.
Then there was Kevin’s presence at the site of at least two of the attacks, Owen’s and then this local kid called Mark. He especially had to wonder why he hadn’t reported the assault on his ‘friend’, which seemed to suggest that he was in some way involved. The big questions then were why and how? He assumed there weren’t two mind-influencers on the loose, other than Ashen or ‘Also’ Rhan of course who he was reasonably sure wouldn’t pull something like this, which meant Kevin had either rigged his inhibitor collar not to work or had taken to not wearing it.
Okay, so Kevin’s powers might account for the comas but the chemical burns on their necks still remained unexplained. It also didn’t explain why Kevin would try to improve things for Charlene? Not out of any native kindness of that he was sure – more likely to perhaps set her up for some kind of fall, which would chime with the fact that the other victims are all seniors at St Mary’s. But who was actually inflicting the chemical wounds, Kevin himself or these “geeky” kids?
Colin turned back to Chris and asked if there was anything more on the attackers. Chris replied, “Nothing directly attached to the attacks so far but give it time and imaginations will run riot, they always do.” Colin had to wonder if what they described as “geeky” might also mean “goth” or “nerdy”?
A minute later, he got an answer but was it one he could trust? Chris turned round and smiled; “Now someone’s saying the attack on one of the other youths was carried out by a pack of sparkly, camp vampires in broad daylight… Someone’s watched too many films.”
Goths might fill that description and the size of St. Mary Mede there couldn’t be too many people that wore that particular style of fashion. Still, best to focus on what he already knew. “Chris, is there any way you can infiltrate, or run a permanent location-finder, on Kevin’s mobile phone?”
“I can try to triangulate his location off the nearest mobile transmitters but it will likely be a rough fix, there aren’t that many towers supplying St. Mary Mede. The school grounds are better served than the town is.” Colin responded with a single word, “Try!” He said as he rushed out to see if he could find Serena. He found her feet up, drinking a mug of hot chocolate in the Senior’s common room.
He went over, sat down next to her and briefly explained that he thought something was going down, had she had a few minutes for a chat? They walked outside, steaming hot drink still in her hand to the deserted corridor and he quietly explained his suspicions about Charlene and Kevin and as asked if she could scry Kevin, see where he is and what he was up to. Initially she seemed reluctant, muttering about how it would be an “unwarranted intrusion into his privacy if you’re wrong…”
Before he could argue his case though she stuck her finger into her mug of scorching hot chocolate and stirred it anticlockwise, while muttering what sounded like Latin under her breath… She shut her eyes and breathed in the fumes before stating, “He’s at the hospital by Owen’s bedside. I can’t hear what they are saying but whatever it is, it seems heated.”
Colin reached out, held her wrist for a second to say thank you then as soon as she opened her eyes, he asked, “The attacks, do you think they are Meta or Magic?” She raised her eyebrow slightly, “I can’t say, it’s too far away for me to detect. I’ll head down to the 7-Eleven in a bit and see if I can get anything. I don’t want to speculate with so little information.”
He thanked her again and headed to his room to put his costume on beneath his tracksuit then headed back to see Chris. He wanted to brainstorm the case with him and he had an idea that would require Chris specialist skills.
Back in Chris’ room, (he never knew whether to keep the door open or closed given he’d never revealed that he knew Chris’ secret) he just closed the door over and sat down on the spare bed opposite Chris’s.
“If Kevin is trying to set Charlene up, then the chip of pink plastic might have come from when she seemed to fall over her own feet in public yesterday morning. There was also the fact that she had drummed her helmet afterwards, the weird sounds she had made, and of course, there had been Kevin’s thumbs up to Ces’. What do you think? Had her fall been the result of Kevin’s mental meddling? In which case this splinter of plastic….” He pulled it out to show Chris “would have been deliberately planted to implicate Charlene.”
He had to wonder if it might be worth getting back to Charlene and asking her about that fall, and her reaction afterwards – of course, he would need to ask in such a way that she won’t take offence but perhaps begin to understand that she is perhaps being manipulated, and not to a good end.
He went upstairs and knocked on her door but she wasn’t back yet, assuming she returned after the match ended. Being outside without her containment suit was something she was enjoying; he somehow doubted she’d be back any time soon. What to do instead, hmmm..? Well, there was also the mystery of who had provided Zoe with the immunity-boosters, and why, more evidence of someone manipulating events around Charlene. Perhaps it might be worth getting in touch with Zoe and asking her some questions?
“Chris, you got an address for Zoe Robinson?” “Sure, according to the files I accessed earlier her dad’s the main caretaker at St. Mary’s, he lives in a house next door to the school…”
Cadet elected to take his bike and again changed the number plate before setting off. He pulled into his usual lay by and quickly changed into his uniform, placing his sweats in the bag strapped to the tank and set off for St. Mary’s School, which was located about two miles from the Claremont Academy.
St. Mary’s was a fairly unremarkable public school with a collection of cinder-block and brick buildings, a gym, several temporary Portakabin classrooms and a sports field.
Costumed up, he approached the small terraced house that Chris had said was Zoe’s. His presence in the town drew a small crowd who gathered around the garden and his bike as he knocked on Zoe’s door. A hulking man with a scraggly beard came out and Cadet explained that he was following up on a case and hoped Zoe might be able to help.
The father was initially extremely reluctant, thinking that Cadet was blaming his daughter for what had happened but seeing the crowd gathering around the garden gate, he allowed him to come inside to talk.
Cadet sat on the edge of the old, flowery sofa and politely rejected offers of refreshments from Zoe’s mother a nervous mousy lady, as he explained that he was investigating a conspiracy coming not from the view-point of someone being judgmental, but of someone trying to help Charlene and Zoe escape what looked to be a net of false accusations.
He went on to explain to the two worried adults that he suspected that whoever gave the two girls the capsules (he deliberately avoided saying that he knew that the drugs had been given to Zoe alone) knew they wouldn’t work.
At that, a nervous girl poked her head around the door and anxiously asked how Charlene was doing…
It was kinda cringe-worthy that both parents clearly hadn’t come to terms with their daughter’s sexuality, yet insisted on being present while they talked and refused to condemn their daughters’ choices. Again Zoe insisted that she couldn’t remember who had given her the immune boosters to supposedly help her resist Charlene’s powers but she did let slip that the supplier had been an older man who had used a cane; another familiar memory loss or a cover-up? Hard to say. What was clear was how much she missed Charlene and she was not proud of the fact that she’d dumped her afterward, but she was also scared what might happen if she fell in love with someone she couldn’t ever touch. It was clear that Zoe was not one to kiss and tell, but she was obviously concerned about Charlene.
Cadet stepped outside and saw the crowd still gathered at the gate. He walked in amongst them and asked if anyone knew anything about the attacks. Several people confirmed that the attacks had only occurred that morning and all of them had strange red wounds on their necks. A couple of the pre-teens attached to the crowd even suggested they’d probably been attacked by a vampire, “a day walker” to be precise. Did real vampires really exist outside the movies, he wondered? His only experience of the species had been those that had been transformed into cinematic representations of the creatures of the night by Donna’s magic some months before. Ashen didn’t count, despite appearances he was a Meta after all.
His informal public forum though proved extremely informative about the three victims. All three had reputations as bullies; Jacob was someone who liked to throw his weight around at school, Mark teased and terrorised students that didn’t fit in, and Matt apparently belonged to several unpleasant online forums. Did that include supporting the Humanity First Party, Cadet wondered? Others mentioned that he was known to have cyberbullied several of his fellow students at St. Marys.
He needed to investigate the crime scenes if he could and was about to get on his bike when one of the pre-teens pointed across the nearby sports field and explained that Jacob had been found up there. He climbed off, reset the alarm and headed alone into the field.
It was now late morning and to his surprise he saw on a bench in the shadow of a large elm tree two teens sitting flanked by a half dozen large dogs. A flock of crows had begun to gather on the seating itself, their cries sounding like a jeering crowd. The teenage boys, one round-faced and wearing dark glasses, the other tall and bony, shaded beneath a black umbrella. They were dressed stylishly in dark gothic tones. They both grinned, eagerly revealing sharpened fangs.
The creatures started to snarl or caw as Cadet found himself confronted by a charging “pack of wolves” and a “murder of ravens”. Okay, so the wolves were just large, stray dogs growling and snapping at him as they moved towards him. The crows swarmed into the air and immediately flocked towards him.
Behind them, the two boys in black stood up and began to advance slowly, their fangs glistening in the sunlight while the two sheltered under the shadowy brim of the umbrella. Two words came immediately to mind. As he looked at the swarming birds and the snarling pack advancing towards him, he muttered, “Not again!”
Cadet quickly drew his staff and begin to slowly back off, whirling the staff in front of him like a propeller while calling-out as he retreated, “Are you sure you want to do this? I only want to talk!” If anything, his comments encouraged the two boys. Their skin glistened whenever the sunlight accidentally caught the pale skin of their face even while they tried to shelter under the umbrella. Cadet thought it would be interesting to see if sunlight would actually have an effect on them.
Cadet concentrated on whirling his staff raised it above his head as the crows began to dive-bomb him. He’d hoped to not have to injure them but if it came down to it then he would give the murder a good battering before he went down. The birds were primarily just a distraction anyway, it was the dogs (and the two boys?) he had to worry about. The nearest dog, an Alsatian/Collie cross, suddenly leapt at him and he was forced to somersault over it using his staff, while kicking out at the dog behind it, successfully sending it flying. Unfortunately, a Dobermann managed to leap up, grab his other leg and drag him down into the middle of the pack. To his surprise, only the Alsatian cross and Dobermann tried to attack. The others seemed confused about what to do next; snarling and snapping at him rather than attack outright.
He snapped his staff apart into a pair of Escrima Sticks and swung out with a double strike aiming for the dog’s noses, as he kicked out at the Dobermann. Whimpering at being so badly abused, the two dogs started to slink away leaving the scared, yappy dogs to try to figure out whether to attack or play follow the leaders as the two largest in the makeshift pack withdrew. Cadet helped their decision-making by battering the crows that got too close, into them. It was too much and they turned tail and ran even as he slipped both sticks into one hand, quick-drew his Bolos and threw them, intending to snare the handle of the umbrella and snatch it away from over the two ‘glampires’. It hit centre on, the weight on one end smashing into the skinny one’s face even as the umbrella went flying.
No, they didn’t turn to ash. In fact other than showing serious displeasure at being out in the sun, it appeared to make no difference to them as the two now rushed him hands outstretched. There was something about their weird method of attack that made Cadet wary. He moved to one side, stepping past their clumsy attack and swung out with his sticks to the rear of the head of the plump faced one causing him to fall on top of one of the dogs. As he fell, he put out his hands to break his fall and his palms connected with one of the dog’s backs. It let an almighty yelp of pain and careered off. A large red burn mark had appeared on its back where the boy’s hands had touched it. The fur on top of the mark now sizzled as though burnt by acid.
The other boy rushed in and Cadet flowed to the ground tripping him even as he hit out at his shin with his sticks. He, too, fell forward, this time landing on top of his companion. Where his hands touched, the clothes melted and for a second or three his companion’s arm burnt. He let out a yell at the unexpected pain but as Cadet watched, the burn healed itself.
Before he could do anything, the crows resumed their assault on his head and he was forced to break out a smoke bomb and use it to keep the pesky creatures away while he again stepped in and began to hit out at the boys’ arms and legs to keep them off-balance. His companion rushed to the other’s rescue only to be hit behind the knees himself.
He hoped that he would soon be in the position to subdue the ensemble to the point where he could interrogate the human component. As he hit out again, again and again, though not hard enough to break anything (though he was now sure they would be capable of healing that as easily as it did his other hits), he tried to figure out what to do next.
Despite their behaviour earlier, they clearly weren’t vulnerable to sunlight; though they acted as though they had an intense sensitivity to bright lights. Between the occasional dive-bomb through the smoke from a kamikaze crow, or one of the remaining dogs risking a quick, sneak attack to try to nip at his calf or the clumsy assaults by the two boys, the overwhelming odds meant some of their attacks succeeded. His costume had several chemical burns he’d have to analyse if he succeeded in getting out of this alive. Thankfully, none of the grasping attacks had managed to land on his bare skin. He had also managed to ignore the insidious ‘whispering’ in his mind that he presumed came from one of his human attackers.
Cadet again tripped up one of the boys and he landed in a heap amongst the remaining snarling dogs. Again, he tried to use them to stand and again his touch burnt them. Cadet was trying to figure out how to safely detain them for questioning when he saw the eyes of one of them glaze over and collapse in a heap on the ground. His ‘friend’ also fell down unconscious a few seconds later.
As they collapsed, Cadet noticed the animal attacks stopped instantaneously and the creatures immediately scattered, both confused and angry. Cadet knelt down and checked their pulse and breathing being careful to keep clear of their hands in case this was a ruse. Both boys appeared to be suffering from severe hypoglycaemic coma, just like the others. Had they been victims or fellow ‘glampires’? It appeared that the shock of their injuries and possibly the amount of energy they had expended in the fight had left them in the same comatose state as the others.
Cadet put a call in for an ambulance and went to put them into the recovery position and check that their airways were clear when he discovered that their fangs were fake—high-quality porcelain fakes admittedly, usually only available online or sold in speciality stores. He also discovered that one of their black leather coats still has an anti-theft tag from a shop called “Pop-Topic” attached to its back. He smiled; he knew that removing it would stain the coat and anybody nearby with a bright blue anti-theft dye. Okay, he knew that a Pop-Topic store had opened recently on St. Mary Mede’s Market Street. He thought the shop specialised in alternative and Goth apparel, accessories, and music.
He quickly checked their wallets and found that both boys had student IDs in their wallets confirming they were St. Mary students, Frank Brown and Andy Miller in fact, though their photos showed faces with a lot more acne and generally a lot less attractive features than the two assailants lying in front of him. He returned their wallets to their coats and carefully turned their hands over to show the palms. There was nothing out of the ordinary on show, despite their acidic touch earlier.
He again tried to rouse them but failed. Interrogation would have to wait until they had recovered consciousness. He stayed by their side until the Ambulance crew arrived and then quickly left. Last thing he needed was the Police turning up and requesting to see his HCP licence.
He ran to his motorbike and was about to head back to the school when it occurred to him to check out the Pop-Topic store, especially after finding the tag on Andy’s new and obviously stolen leather coat. If they had also obtained their fake fangs there as well, then the store might have CCTV of everyone who had either bought or stolen a set recently?
He headed down Wessex Road towards the centre of St. Mary Mede. Even before he arrived, he could hear the crowd, but what he did see when he got closer was bizarre. Almost two dozen teenagers had smashed a shopfront window with a metal bin and were attempting to steal everything from the window display inside. The staff had barred its front door and was trying to stop the rioters from gaining entry to the store itself. What really stood out was that the shops on either side had not been vandalised or damaged in any way and all the rioters’ efforts were focused on gaining entry or stealing from just this one store. Cadet parked up, ran towards the scene, which he noticed included several familiar faces from school, including Owen, and was that Chris Templar trying desperately to grab a pair of fishnet stockings from the smashed window? They had gathered into an angry mob in front of the Pop-Topic store, brawling for spiked collars and black t-shirts, fighting amongst themselves over the spoils.
There were about 20 young teenagers in total and above them all, standing on the bonnet of a parked car was Kevin MacKenzie —dark circles under his eyes—screaming at the top of his voice, his arms raised high as though appealing to the heavens, “Yes! Yes! That’s it. Get tribute for our beautiful new Queen!”
Cadet was seriously pissed-off with mind-controllers interfering, and there seemed to be too many of them about as far as he could tell, monkeying with other people’s thoughts. He was not sure whether the two kids who had attacked him had been attempting at one point to control him or were they themselves being controlled? Then there was the fellow with the fancy cane… How did he fit into this whole mess?
Easier to just deal with the immediate situation for the moment. He had Kevin in his sights. There was no way that someone like Chris Templar would act this way without some form of outside interference and the best source of that was Casanova himself, front and centre.
He vaulted up onto the car-bonnet behind Kevin. Before he could turn round, Cadet elected to ruin his concentration with a couple of sharp raps with the butt of one of his Escrima sticks at the base of his neck. Kevin collapsed to his knees even as he reached up to shield his neck with his hands and turned his head to glare at Cadet now standing above him.
“Slipped our collar, have we, MacKenzie?” Cadet said coldly. “If you don’t want to be exposed and arrested, I suggest you try to do something to reverse what’s going on here. And by reverse I mean put it…” (He tapped him hard with the butt again, this time to the temple) “…right.”
Kevin looked like he was trying to concentrate through the pain, so Cadet followed through with another painful tap to his forehead, right between his eyes. As planned, he had successfully taken Kevin by surprise and he seemed to have given himself a brief window against a mind-controlling response from Kevin. In any case, Cadet tried to tightly focus his mind on what needed doing, with the same kind of intensity he used in combat situations.
It didn’t work. A voice inside his mind told him to hit himself repeatedly in the face with his sticks. He seemed powerless to resist as he tried to focus on not doing himself a major injury. He still noticed though, that during his moment of conflict the rioters had paused in their scramble for prizes from the store window, several of them displaying bleeding hands and wrists from trying to grab goods covered in shards of glass. Cadet focused on trying to break free of the compulsion to hurt himself as he mentally tried to calm himself down by focusing on his kata moves. Closing his eyes, he centred himself, despite the continuing compulsion to repeatedly hurt himself and willed his hands to follow through by relying on muscle memory. He heard Kevin scream inside his head as his focus overshadowed the compulsion. He stopped bruising himself and instead occupied his mind with his moves, most of which ‘impacted’ on Kevin who was caught by surprise at his failure to resume control over his meat-puppet. Kevin’s lack of HCP training soon became apparent as Cadet moved from one kata into the next. Just as he thought he was breaking free completely though, his foot slipped off the edge of the car bonnet he and Kevin were standing on and he found himself falling backwards onto the tarmac.
He hit the ground hard but tried to get to his feet as a bleeding and bruised Kevin pointed and the rioters forgot their attempts to seize ‘prizes’ and instead swarmed towards him. It doesn’t look as though reasoning with the mob was going to work. He noticed Templar running towards him with the others, hate in his eyes and fishnet tights clutched tightly in his hands still. Despite everything, he knew that young Chris was an unlikely fanatic and that they were clearly being manipulated by someone else, for some purpose – though for what, he couldn’t imagine.
Cadet reached into his belt; pulled out his rebreather and a couple of sleep-gas pellets, which he rolled under the mob’s advancing feet as he placed the device between his bleeding teeth. As they rushed forward, the pellets were crushed under feet and the chemicals began to mix with the air. It would take a few seconds however to take effect and they could do a lot of damage to him in that time, especially those that had armed themselves with sharp slivers of broken glass.
Then everything went black as darkness fell instantaneously over the street. A gentle hand reached under his arm and helped him to his feet as beside him, he could hear a soft, familiar, feminine voice muttering words of power. Seven had said she had intended investigating the convenience store where Owen had been attacked. She must have subsequently followed Owen’s trail, which led her here. Suddenly the darkness vanished leaving everyone blinded by the reappearance of sunlight as Seven manifested mystic shackles on the crowd’s limbs as well as around Kevin’s throat.
“You’ll stop this now boy, or you’ll find my collar is a lot less comfortable than the one you wore yesterday… Yes, I know who and what you are, so don’t test my patience. Release them.” Seven’s voice was almost a hiss, the words spoken with such venom.
Suddenly the section of the mob still conscious dropped what they were holding and staggered back towards the pavement obviously very confused. Cadet grabbed Kevin and immediately broke another sleep capsule under his nose. Yes, he desperately wanted to question him but that wasn’t possible here and he couldn’t risk Kevin being able to attack them again should Seven momentarily lose concentration.
Of all of those gathered, Owen seemed the most incoherent and confused. Seven ignored him for the moment, though she did wonder at his ability to resist the dregs of the sleeping gas Cadet had unleashed. She manifested a breeze to blow the gas away from her and the others then fashioned a mask out of darkness to disguise her face as she approached the shop.
A simple transmutation spell caused all the shards of glass to fly together like a giant jigsaw as the glass melted and reflowed to repair itself back in the window frame even as the other school kids began to regain consciousness. With a great overwhelming sense of embarrassment, they immediately began to hand back to the shop assistants their stolen goods and ‘prizes’, each apologising about not knowing what had come over them.
It was only after the window had repaired itself that she realised that she’d forgotten to remove the litter bin that had smashed the window, which now lay inside the shopfront. Oh well, it matched the rest of the display she thought, before pulling herself up for being judgemental.
She joined Cadet as he asked the shocked assistants what had happened and had there been any usual events leading up to the riot? Had anything else happened recently, anything else strange – such as seeing a bearded man with a cane?
What he learned was that, yes there had been an increase in shoplifting this week but no one remembered seeing a man with a cane, as for CCTV? They had none. At Seven’s urging they agreed not to press charges against the kids, especially since the window was now fully repaired and all the goods stolen had been returned. As the manager went inside to cancel the Police, Cadet stepped aside while Seven revived the remaining unconscious ‘would-be rioters’ to contact Chris over his comms. He wondered if the illegal trace he had asked Chris to put on Kevin’s phone would allow him to plot his route to here, in which case that might be worth backtracking on, with Seven along for company, hopefully.
Chris confirmed that Kevin had visited the hospital this morning and then he had apparently accompanied Owen back home. He had then returned to Claremont for about half an hour before finally heading back into St. Mary Mede’s.
As Cadet talked with Chris, he overheard a semi-conscious Owen muttering something about Kevin telling him just how great Charlene is… then something about Kevin being really secretive, going on to hold one-on-one meetings with other teenagers both at Claremont and in St. Mary Mede, each time he finished his conversations with them by stating how amazing Charlene is.
What he wanted to know was – were any of them responsible for any or all five of the attacks? If so, what had inspired them to do it? What were they using on the necks of their victims and was a lame older fellow with a distinctive walking-cane involved in any way? Chris’ meanwhile said that he would suit up and have a hunt around the school for Charlene while Cadet and Seven sorted out the situation in town. Cadet asked him if he could run checks on social media or hack into the CCTV network to see if there have been any recent sightings in the area of the elusive old fellow with the cane and the tin leg.
Cadet ended the call and went to interrogate those coming round but none of the other youth could answer his questions and unfortunately, Casanova and Owen were both still too far gone for the moment to answer questions sensibly. The other students all shared a similar story, Claremont and St. Mary Mede resident alike: they all appeared to be suffering from some form of general euphoria, though they could manage to snap themselves out of their haze for a few minutes at a time to answer questions. They weren’t sure why they were so easily distracted or in such a good mood, just that it had started some time earlier that day.
They confirmed that they had been attending various Saturday morning activities, at either Claremont or St. Mary’s schools, when they were suddenly overwhelmed with the need to do something nice for someone. They all remembered that guy, pointing at Kevin, insisting their new ‘Queen’, Charlene liked Pop-Topic goodies, and suddenly getting a cool gift for her from the clothing store seemed like the only thing in the world that mattered. They didn’t know what was going on, but they knew it was creepy and they knew that they wanted to avoid whatever might have happened from reoccurring, despite the feelings of elation that accompanied it.
There was one common element in every story they heard; everyone remembered that they had come in physical contact with either Charlene without her containment suit on, had touched or been touched by one of the “new goth kids”, either in the school grounds such as at the rugby match, during training or while walking into St. Mary Mede.
Charlene had visited the town herself only about half an hour ago and several of the kids mentioned they had accidentally brushed against her, touching her, or even giving her a congratulatory hug when they discovered she could leave her containment suit. For some reason they felt compelled to physically touch her but now couldn’t explain why. It wasn’t as though ‘toxic’ Charlene was unknown in St. Mary Mede; after the town’s infamous serial murderer, Miss Maple, Charlene was possibly the most famous resident in the town at present.
When he asked where she was now, a couple of them suggested that she must have returned to the school after a bit of wishful window-shopping so she couldn’t be responsible for their uncharacteristic actions – that had been due to Kevin surely?
Kevin seemed an extremely unlikely cheerleader for Charlene. It was just possible he was still the mastermind behind this stir, just from a perverted need to make the most trouble for Charlene, but somehow Cadet felt that Kevin was himself being manipulated, this time. Then there was the fact that a lot of the mind-messing seems to have radiated from around Charlene herself. Even the ‘glampires’ he’d fought earlier looked strangely familiar and he was sure he’d seen them on Charlene’s laptop the night before. “I guess we need to find Charlene, fast,” he said to Seven, “But I don’t fancy leaving Kevin on the loose. How about we call emergency services and report Kevin for making a mental attack on Owen and Chris Templar – which in fact he did, and get some medics here to check out Owen and Chris, and some enforcement to restrain Kevin?”
Seven paused for a few seconds then muttered quietly in his ear, “Or we can call an ambulance to check everyone out then call Camille and the school and let them decide what to do with Kevin. In the meantime I agree we need to check out Charlene though I haven’t felt any mystical interference in this affair.”
Several minutes later, they left everyone to be treated by the ambulance crews and he and Seven were heading back towards the school. Given it was a Saturday the gates were open so no need to change back into civvies, especially if they had to deal with any more rioters or day walking ‘glampires’.
As they began their search for Charlene’s current location, he decided to put another call through to Chris, though he would be in his Firewall personae by now and invite him to join them as soon as possible. As he explained to Seven, “things are getting heavier by the minute. We may need Firewall’s zappiness.”
Cadet immediately tried to contact Chris and let him know what they’d discovered so far, but all he got over their shared channel was “Hi Cadet, I’ve found…” then there was a loud beep followed immediately by static. Cadet tried to contact him back but the channel was dead.
He asked Seven if she could Skry around a bit to save them some searching-time, looking for both Firewall and Charlene around the school (including at the treehouse and the grotto). She found a puddle and kneeling down stirred the water while muttering under her breath. A second later, she stood up. “I can’t find Firewall, he’s definitely not in the grounds but I found Charlene. She’s in the auditorium and she’s not alone…”
As they headed towards the auditorium, the school grounds seemed quiet… too quiet. They passed several students stumbling around in a haze, smiling vaguely to themselves. Others rushed passed them, avoiding eye contact at all cost. Cadet found it unsettling that there were large flocks of crows perched along the windowsills and building ledges, eyeing them hungrily.
This needed resolving and quickly before it affected the whole school, he thought. The door to the school auditorium was open and inside they could see Charlene sitting on the stage with four seemingly unfamiliar kids dressed in black. Cadet was sure that they were students from St. Mary’s.
As they entered the room, Charlene stood up, more athletic and confident than they’d ever seen her. Her eyes flashed with some sort of inner power. “He said you’d come for me, just like you came for Frank and Andy, But I know he’s not right. You’re like me. You know what it’s like to be a freak but Doctor Payne helped me make that into something special. I can share that with you. I can turn you into a child of the night like my friends here and then we won’t need the rest of the world!” Fangs slowly extended down from her upper jaw. “Join us!” Charlene’s ‘glampires’ also stood up and stood behind her.
Fangs, Charlene’s were real fangs, Cadet thought as his heart skipping a beat. He called out, “Charlene, you’re being used! This is not the way to fight back…” but in his heart he knew he had little hope of making any impact on her. He didn’t even know if there’s any way of reversing whatever process Charlene has undergone.
Vampires, even semi-fake ones, apparently did not like bright lights so he darkened his visor then ran forward and threw several flash-bang bombs at head height while scanning around to memorise the environment for any helpful features that might be useful.
Screams of pain were accompanied by theatrical covering of eyes and faces by the glampires, which allowed Seven to wind-walk into the air as she summoned up a gale to keep them off-guard. Meanwhile, she tried to mystically shackle Charlene but failed as she dodged, moving way too quickly and then jumped straight at Cadet. She might lack any combat training but he knew she was still a major threat.
Cadet wasn’t going to let her touch either of them and didn’t fancy being ‘turned into a child of the night’ by her. He fired off his grapnel and swung over her head, kicking out at the pale-faced youth behind her, hitting him under the chin. He immediately went flying backwards.
He twisted round in the air and kicked out again at another of them. Still blinded by his flare bombs, the kick successfully connected as he wrapped the cable from his line round both of his victims and hit retract, sweeping both of them up to hang struggling from the roof.
He dropped to the ground behind Charlene as one of the others tried to grab him and he was forced to throw himself backwards onto his back and kick out at this attacker’s knee. As he collapsed screaming in agony, he fell on top of him. For a second he panicked as his victim’s hands scrabbled around on his body as the Goth tried desperately to break his fall.
He felt cold and drained as the tips of his attackers’ fingers momentarily touched his face. Then behind him, Charlene turned and rushed in, hands outstretched. Floating above, Seven gestured and the wind intensified, picking up everyone including Cadet, and smashing and pressing them tightly against a nearby wall a couple of metres off the ground.
The two hanging from his grapnel were swung hard into the ceiling knocking them unconscious as Seven allowed the wind to die back. Cadet hit the ground and rolled back onto his feet as the three pinned against the wall collapsed hard to the ground behind him. “Give up Charlene, before you force us to really hurt you!” he shouted as he spun round and pulled out several sleep pellets from his pouch and palmed them ready to throw.
Charlene again tried to rush at them both only to pull up short as Seven mystically reshaped the leg of one of the benches and spun it so that it twisted loose. She then directed the newly formed floating wooden stake to within a centimetre of one of Charlene’s friend’s heart. Her voice was angry and harsh as she shouted, “Enough! I’ve no idea what was done to you or how but I will end it if I have to and I most certainly know how to deal with vampires, pseudo or otherwise. Cease or one by one I’ll permanently kill all of you…”
Charlene collapsed to her knees, crying – the fight knocked out of her as Seven dropped the floating stake and manifested mystical shackles on those still conscious. Toxin’s glampire coven began to calm down as soon as they were subdued. Like the students from the earlier mob, they were clearly not entirely in control of their actions and seemed confused and surprised by what they’ve done.
Cadet swung himself up into the rafters and lowered the two unconscious Goths to the ground before recovering his grapnel. He dropped back down to the ground and walked over to Seven and Charlene. “Okay Charlene, what happened to you?”
Over the next half hour and despite her friend’s pleas, a crying, frightened, lonely girl revealed how, after she’d accidentally poisoned Zoe, she had been approached by a Doctor Payne. He knew of her situation and he explained that he was working on an experimental treatment that might, just might, alter her abilities and allow her to live a normal life. He offered to help her control her powers by using these experimental, unlicensed medical procedures but it had to be their secret. Sick with grief over what she had done to Zoe, she immediately agreed.
Over the next few weeks, despite the painful treatment he exposed her to every day after school, ‘the Doctor’ helped transform Charlene’s abilities and powers so she no longer risked poisoning or hurting others, uncontrollably anyway.
Cadet was curious, “I heard you’d been seeing a psychiatrist to learn how to better control your abilities, not that you were being experimented on…” Charlene looked embarrassed as she admitted that officially, Doctor Payne was a psychiatrist but that he had used these experimental treatments to change and control her abilities. He had claimed that he had only done so to help her; stating that he understood what it was like to be an outcast and pariah himself.
Doctor Payne had been treating her secretly ever since. She admitted that the original treatments he had exposed her to had successfully allowed her to gain control over her toxic powers, but in return, they had given her a vampiric hunger for the bio-energy of other people. Her touch could drain them, rendering them temporarily unconscious and initially she had only used it on willing volunteers from her old drama club at St. Mary’s, never realising she was also giving them abilities like her own. They didn’t mind when they realised what had happened, they had none of the weaknesses of vampires but all the benefits including physical enhancements. Doctor Payne though had warned her to keep the changes secret for the moment and she had but then she’d seen Kevin and Owen at the 7-Eleven, the red mist descended and she had attacked and drained them. That’s when she discovered that the latest treatments given her by Doctor Payne had also resulted in her gaining the power to make people want to please her, which in return resulted in them experiencing feelings of euphoria when they complied, like an addictive drug.
She was convinced that Doctor Payne was the only person who really cared about her gaining control over her powers. It took all of Seven’s and Cadet’s persuasion to convince her that perhaps he might have an ulterior motive for helping her. That was when reluctantly she revealed that Doctor Payne had threatened to withhold any further treatments unless she brought him another student with meta-abilities for him to study.
He had kept that ‘promise’ the night before when he had refused to give her any further treatments until she complied. Shortly after she’d gone berserk on Kevin and Owen yet next morning she’d woken up feeling wonderful, only to subsequently discover that she were contagious and utterly ravenous for more and more bio-energy. However, no matter how much she syphoned off from her victims, it wasn’t enough.
She paused for a second then crestfallen she continued, “In the beginning I was able to cope with leeching a little life energy from one of my friends every day. They didn’t mind as they got a high from it and when they discovered it also augmented them, turning them into energy vampires, they were cool about it. However, after only a few days I discovered that I needed more and more energy so started asking more of my old drama group to let me feed off them as well. Now it feels like I am always hungry for more.”
She knew she couldn’t survive without the continued treatments and she didn’t want to return to being trapped in her containment suit again but knew she couldn’t maintain her transformation without Doctor Payne’s continued treatments.
Then she had remembered when she had first arrived at Claremont one of the boys, a Colin Duncan, had reached out to her after she’d been confronted by school bullies and he’d told her that her bullies were “like that to all of us” and that she was sure he had just admitted to being a Meta, like her. In her withdrawal she’d found herself looking for him, intending to trade him to Doctor Payne for the resumption of her treatment but couldn’t find him so she checked out his friend, Chris Sett thinking that Metas might hang out with each other, especially as both of them were special curriculum students.
She’d contacted Doctor Payne and told him that she thought that Chris Sett might also be a Meta and he’d given her a scanner to check. Sure enough, Payne’s device had confirmed it. The device also summoned a teleporter, a girl with coffee-coloured skin, curly hair and European features. The next thing she knew, Chris had vanished into a circle of darkness while walking across the field to talk with her, rendered unconscious from behind when the girl grabbed him out of the darkness and then both they and the portal had disappeared into thin air, transported she assumed to Payne’s house leaving behind on the grass, her treatment. Doctor Payne had once boasted to her that he’d cracked the teleportation ability genome years before and had gene-grafted it into a family of clones.
A teleporter eh? So, Chris had been kidnapped and it was all his fault. Charlene started crying again, saying how she’d initially hated herself for what she had done but the high she’d got from her cocktail of drugs had washed the feelings of guilt away, until now.
Cadet responded to Charlene’s sobs, “I think this Doctor set you up to take his bait. I’m pretty sure it was him who gave those drugs to Zoe, and lied about what they could do, just so that disaster could happen. Zoe’s heart-broken now, really missing you and sorry about how she reacted afterwards.” As he tried to comfort her, Seven contacted Camille and briefly asked her to head over to the auditorium and immediately ended the call before she could ask any questions.
Charlene offered to share the Doctor’s location as that was where she assumed they had taken Chris: to an old gothic manor house on a bluff overlooking the main road, only about three miles north of the school. The two of them immediately set off to find Charlene’s Doctor Payne.
A light rain began to fall as they caught sight of the sagging old house: a two-story Victorian manor that has seen better days. Yellow lamps flickered from the wall surrounding the dark estate, but a more modern blue-white glow shined from the basement windows. The old house was a teetering, water-damaged wreck.
As the door opened, they found themselves staring at a man of the same height and build as the man with the cane but that was where the similarity ended. This man had neatly styled grey hair, immaculate beard and wearing a monocle over his right eye. He was wearing a lab coat. What struck Cadet as odd was Doctor Payne’s strangely grey face.
He removed his monocle as he opened the door wide. “Ah, welcome I’ve been expecting you. Please come in…” He stepped back and gestured for them to enter his hallway. After they entered, he closed the door.
Everything inside was covered by heavy dust cloths and mildew and much of the exterior wood siding showed signs of dry rot. “Follow me please and I will explain everything,” he said calmly as he stepped back, passed a coat rack with a walking cane topped with a skull design in ivory sitting in the stand beside a large dark umbrella.
He proceeded to walk down the hall until he stopped and opened an internal door, which apparently led down to the basement. He smiled and waved them forward as he switched on the stair light before proceeding down himself. Somewhere, something beeped – just once.
The basement below was a stone walled large chamber with two large powered capsules that glowed blue through the mist inside to reveal what looked like two unconscious bodies. One of the people Cadet recognised immediately, Firewall still in his costume.
On the opposite side of the room were several smaller containers each containing what looked like skinned human faces floating in a strange cloudy liquid. One of the faces was immediately recognisable; the lifeless, bearded and wildly haired detached face of the man they had met outside the Mansion asking for directions to the school treehouse a couple of weeks before. The face had been peeled away either in one piece or had been carefully stitched back together afterwards. Doctor Payne patted the container, “I keep this one around to remind me of whom I used to be.“
With that, he reached up to his face and began to systematically rip the skin off his face, neck and hands (which shredded bloodlessly) to reveal a grey-looking metallic face beneath the skin with strangely contrasting brass highlights that looked as though they had been salvaged piecemeal from a number of antiquated devices. What looked like valves popped out slightly around his forehead and on his neck, Frankenstein-like. He smiled, a strange sight on that mechanical monstrosity as he dropped the shreds of the stolen face to the grey stone-slabbed floor. “I won’t need that identity again, thank god. If I never hear another squabbling, complaining mundane demanding I spare them, it will not be too soon… so determined to save face as they say.”
His voice sounded mechanical and flat, devoid of any emotion. “Ah, please excuse my complaints; it’s been too long since I’ve been myself in front of others. I am known as Professor Prometheus. Excuse the theatrical circus that was my borrowed, though technically it would be more accurate to say stolen, personae, Doctor Edward Francis Payne, R.I.P.”
“I was a psychiatrist once and before that a surgeon you know, though that was over a century ago, I retired after the Ripper, who was in reality a werewolf-like predator not some insane doctor or lecherous Prince as the fanciful novels and reveal-all books of today try to paint him. No, he was a real-life werewolf. He slaughtered my younger brother Philip.” He pointed towards the other stasis chamber as he spoke.
“That didn’t stop his being resurrected as a vampire by Prince Drakul himself shortly after, or was that before? In those long ago days I was known as Colonel Sir William David-Astor and I had served with the Bengal Lancers before receiving a medical discharge after I damaged my leg when my horse fell on me. He laughed mechanically, “Who knew I would subsequently surpass the limitations of my humanity and frailty of my flesh? Since my meta-human transformation in 1910 at the age of 62, I was transformed and rejuvenated by the Metamorphosis into an immortal creature, admittedly one I have improved upon several times since.
Over the next century, it was I that perfected the Mythic-Mystical-Meta transformation bonding process used by the Seminarium Sinister of Setekh and the Court of Shadows. I stayed with them until they perverted my work, used it for their own purposes to create their hybrid warriors. I had experimented several times on my brother’s, and others, vampiric blood to try and reverse the effects of his transformation but never with such extraordinary success as I have achieved with Miss Hart.”
Prometheus nodded, “when you first arrived, my meta-sensor only identified myself as a Meta. You’re both either just mundane or possibly mystically powered; either way, you are of no possible benefit to me therefore I have no logical reason to leave you alive. I will end your interference as efficiently as possible. I’d like to say it will be painless but I would be lying…”
Behind him three massive leopard-sized Praying Mantis suddenly wandered out from the darkness to stand behind him. “Let me introduce you to a couple of my pets. A colleague of mine, a Doctor Moreau, developed them years ago and I have found that they are useful for disposing of those no longer of use to me, though I am not without my own means of protecting myself.” With that, he unleashed an electrical blast from his hands straight at them.
The blast branched and just missed Cadet as he grabbed and rolled a metal trolley towards the Professor hoping to earth the blast even as he cartwheeled sideways away from the Professor and his pets. Seven wasn’t so lucky and a branch of the artificial lightning bolt hit her. Thankfully, due to hovering at the time she hadn’t been earthed and was able to shrug off the blast.
The backlash caused the sleeve of Prometheus’ lab coat to catch fire. He pulled off the now burning coat to reveal a body covered in metallic dermal armour.
Realising that the mantis were about to pounce, Cadet sprinted towards the stasis chambers on the other side of the room, looking for an unlocking mechanism or some means to free Firewall. He was convinced he didn’t want to liberate the brother, there were already enough enemies in the room. The panel of lights on the glass part of the cylinder looked his best bet but before he could do anything one of the mantis was upon him.
Cadet quickly unfurled his cloak and holding it toreador-fashion, tried to entice it to break the capsule open by smashing into the glass door of Firewall’s chamber.
Meanwhile, a pissed-off Seven was busy causing the walls of the building to collapse or at least bulge inwards towards her attackers even as chunks of stone from the walls broke free of their ancient cement and smashed in the brains of her nearest mantis.
Despite the ensuing fight and risk of injury from Seven’s assault, Prometheus kept up his conversation even as he unleashed another blast at her. His voice remained restrained and calm at all times, totally devoid of any emotion, “I rescued my brother from his eternal servitude to Drakul but he kept on trying to return to his side. In the end, I was forced to imprison him, later placing him in a stasis chamber such as you see while I try to reverse his condition. Miss Hart is the closest I have come to a working solution for his condition.”
The Professor was obviously a high-functioning psychopath obsessed with expanding his knowledge of the darker areas of scientific experimentation in order to rescue his brother; in other words, the archetypal mad scientist. It was clear that he could no longer feel emotions as normal people defined them. Even while he was attacking them, he remained calm and emotionless.
He continued talking even as he was forced to physically shatter with his fists the stones Seven was assaulting him with. “If I can perfect the transfer process, Philip would be able to feed off another’s life energy instead of their blood. A Meta-human such as your friend would be sufficient to feed him for several months, possibly even as long as a year at a time and it would free him from the limitations and restrictions his current vampyric state has inflicted on him. He would again be immune to the sun’s rays, no longer able to be compelled by others – a cure if you will for the vampire condition.”
On the other side of the room, a triangular head poised on a long neck was watching Cadet. The head turned a full 180 degrees round to scan its surroundings with its two large compound eyes (and the three other dark eyes it had located between them that he had never known existed before today).
Cadet swirled his cloak round his attackers’ triangular head and using his latest, favourite trick immediately hardened it while using his staff to break the mantis’ skinny front legs. It managed to tear through his cloak with its mandibles and attempted to take a bite out of him only to crash into the other chamber and a blue luminescent mist began to seep out through the crack in the glass. Stunned, it gave Cadet the opening he’d hoped for as he brought his staff down in an overhead motion to smash its head in.
He was immediately forced to dodge though as the Professor fired a bolt of electricity at him. It missed but the static discharge caused by a strike so close, caused his arm to go numb with an intense attack of pins and needles. He tried to shake it off as he somersaulted over to a delicate-looking equipment that he assumed was regulating the stasis chambers, in the hope of attracting another attack from Doc’ Shock himself.
He began to shout at him saying that he planned to drive a stake through his brother’s heart, hoping to divert his attention away from a clearly tiring Seven. She had given up on trying to animate the walls and was now manifesting a gale to knock everything away from her while trying to shatter his equipment.
Cadet fired his grapnel up towards the roof and managed to snag it on a jutting out piece of masonry. He immediately extended out several metres of the cable as he bounded round Philip’s cracked and leaking chamber then leaping over the end of the cable connected to the hook he severed it and quickly tied it off so that it was completely wrapped around the chamber. The last remaining Mantis was now leaping towards him, its mandibles eager to rip off his head and eat him. He grabbed the cable and used it to swing between the chamber and the wall whereupon he brought his feet up and kicked the chamber loose of its seals. He had so wanted to not use the vampires’ cylinder for this in case it added an aroused Philip to their list of attackers, but needs must…
The unit swung free of its base and crashed into the creature even as it leaped for him. It was a clumsy swing and the unit itself was too heavy for the cable or possibly his knot as it slipped loose and rolled across the floor, hitting and snapping off one of his attackers’ rear legs in the process before rolling to a halt in front of Prometheus.
Fire! He remembered that Seven could control fire! He dodged the clashing jaws and grasping front limbs of the now immobilised Mantis in front of him as he pulled out one of his flash-bang pellets and threw it towards a table just behind the Professor, piled with test tubes and bottles of chemicals, hoping some of it at least would be combustible.
The pellet hit and cracked one of the vials before erupting into a phosphorus-bright light with a loud and echoing bang. It was only then that Cadet realised that the stolen book ‘Monopáti ton Daimónon’, ‘The Pathway of Demons’ lay open on the table beside several blood samples.
As he’d hoped, a fire broke out even as Seven smiled, gestured towards the flames and they took the form of a phoenix in flight and immediately engulfed the Professor. To both of their surprise, even though he was on fire it had no effect on his actions as he calmly picked up a large rock and hurled it at Seven. Without the storm to protect her, it hit her in the ribs. Seven screamed and fell to the ground, clutching her side. Cadet realised she was now earthed and the Professor’s next electrical blast could have a deadly effect on her.
Cadet pulled out his bolos and sent them flying towards him, hoping to tie-down or impede his blasting-hands. They hit the Professor’s wrist and sent him spinning round slightly just as he unleashed a blast intended to kill Seven. Instead, the blast hit the wall next to him, peppering him with shrapnel even as the Bolos themselves slid to the ground.
It had given Seven enough time though to raise her mystical shields even as the glass front to the detached chamber swung open and a pale, skinny youth with features similar to the face in the jar stumbled out. Damn, his worst fears realised, Cadet rushed over and began to scramble at the control panel to Firewall’s stasis chamber hoping to even up the odds.
Then, several things occurred at once and it was impossible to say which occurred first. Voices, familiar, adult voices could be heard above as several schoolteachers and staff entered the mansion and immediately began to search the premises.
A stinking stench enveloped the chamber as a black portal appeared just behind the Professor and a young Afro-Caribbean girl stepped out, grabbed hold of a still semi-comatose Philip and jabbed a syringe into his neck as she dragged him into the darkness. The Professor, still on fire, meanwhile had calmly thrown himself on the ground to extinguish the few remaining flames still trying to burn him, revealing a full cyborg’s body under the remnants of his lab coat and trousers. He stood up, saw the portal and then grabbed the blood samples off the table.
A blast of electricity flashed across the room from behind him, hitting Prometheus square in the back and causing him to fall through the hole of darkness. They heard his voice, still calm and emotionless saying “Close it now, Nine…” The portal vanished only leaving behind its sulphur and liquorice-like stench to contaminate the basement.
Cadet turned and looking behind him saw a staggering, very angry Firewall, finally free of his prison. That explained the farewell blast! Cadet walked over and helped him sit on the ground thankfully out of reach of the injured mantis still trying to crawl towards them to take a few choice bites out of them.
Well, they’d retrieved the stolen book and caused the bad guy to flee, he just wished he had found a way to restore Charlene to normal life again.
At that moment the door to the basement was flung open. Headmaster Summers appeared at the top of the stairs, his walking stick banging against the steps as he and several faculty members hurried down the stairs apparently ready to help take their corrupt scientist into custody. Somewhere a sensor beeped multiple times.
When Summers realised that Professor Prometheus had escaped he had the staff check that the three pupils had no life-threatening injuries before he thanked them for their extraordinary bravery and skill in subduing a dangerous villain, but also chastised them for placing themselves in danger and for not seeking help. He explained that Nurse Joy was standing by back at the school to check them out, especially after Seven admitted that she thought she had a cracked rib.
From the conversation the staff were having, it appeared that Charlene had already admitted to Camille everything she’s been doing over the last couple of weeks and was now talking with Dr Lockheart.
The three pupils were sent back to school accompanied by Mr Hawke and Ms Zyn while the rest of them examined the scene and dealt with the surviving and injured mantis.
Epilogue
It was several days later before they again saw Charlene, once more back in her containment suit, despondently making her way alone through the crowd waiting to get into school.
Without the continued treatments, Charlene’s powers had reverted to ‘normal’ after a few days, placing her back in her containment suit for the protection of other students. As a result, Charlene had initially retreated even further into herself, but Dr Lockheart had shown her that a number of the students had shown genuine concern for her even at her worst.
She had already apologised to Chris who had to accept she now knew his identity, as well as to Colin. She had also made a couple of new friends at the school and according to Seven who’d accidentally ‘overheard’ a teacher conference on her progress, she had begun to open up a little and was trying to see her isolation as a temporary accommodation rather than a prison sentence.
Who knows, in time, she might even manage to rekindle her relationship with Zoe?
What was clear though was that Prometheus’ research was never intended to cure Charlene, but it had born fruit. The search by the teachers of his house had uncovered extensive details on the nature of her abilities, sufficient to hopefully help her learn how to control them.
Charlene’s various victims—those afflicted by her poison, those influenced by her ‘intoxicating touch’, and even her friends that had been transformed by her altered powers had all begun to revert to their normal selves after a couple of days. The withdrawal symptoms were not without its side effects though, and the cold turkey they experienced had been bad.
Charlene’s withdrawal was the worst of them all. To add to her woes, Charlene herself had earned a term’s worth of detention with her little stunt, but thankfully, the Claremont Academy staff were more interested in providing additional counselling for her depression and disassociation to help keep her from seeking such desperate ends in the future.
Like the other victims, Kevin and Owen had reverted to their former selves after a day removed from Charlene’s presence. While Owen was a little more sympathetic towards Charlene, Kevin only saw her as a potential rival and his interactions had become, if anything, even more antagonistic.
Colin had elected to check on him afterwards and had planted a bug under his collar to allow him to listen in on his scheming. It had been illuminating in a dark, sadistic sort of way; he was plotting ways to get revenge on her for controlling his mind—missing the irony of the experience — but he now had a new, intense hatred for Charlene Hart.
Now Charlene had returned to classes and Kevin and Owen had gathered with Ces’ and his cronies to give her a ‘welcome’. Kevin had been pulled over the coals about not keeping his inhibitor collar on when he was outside his house and for using his abilities to shoplift. He knew that he was expected to keep his nose clean while he awaited a return visit to the judge for breaking his parole conditions.
That didn’t stop him from egging Ces’ to try and make Charlene’s life a misery. Still unaware that Kevin was a Meta, Ces’ was about to start in on Charlene when his phone received a text message. In fact everyone’s phones in the school, teachers included, received the same message, or to be more precise a photo. It was of Ces’ cowering in the spook alley coffin, blubbering away.
The laughter and finger pointing was sufficient for Ces’ and the others to slink away while Ces’ tried, unsuccessfully, to claim it was ‘fake news’ and a ‘photoshopped’ photo though even his friends didn’t believe that, remembering perhaps the tears on his face at the Junior Halloween Ball a few weeks before.
Colin tried to hide his smile as he asked Chris, “Did you hack my phone and steal that Photo, Chris?” Chris smiled, trying and failing to look angelic, “I thought Charlene deserved a distraction” he said “and you would never have released it so I made the decision for you, see? Ces’ in all his glory, crying his eyes out is a great distraction and it’s now on everyone’s phone. So sue me, I’m not as nice a person as you are!”
That night while he was in the Senior Common Room catching up on his algebra homework, Chris approached him and told him he’d done some research on Prometheus or at least on what he’d revealed to them while down in the basement.
A background search on what he’d told them revealed that a Colonel Sir William David-Astor had been born in 1848, studied at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, receiving his medical degree from the University of Edinburgh in 1873, and subsequently joined and trained as a surgeon in the British Army. He joined the British forces in India serving alongside the 13th Duke of Connaught’s Bengal Lancers. He saw service in the Northwest Frontier where he had his horse shot out from under him whilst tending to a local chieftain and was sent back to England following his recovery where he was discharged in 1887. With his health ruined, he took over running his father’s estate until the death of his brother Philip in 1888, supposedly murdered at the hands of a werewolf that he claimed was in fact Jack the Ripper.
He subsequently spent some time in a sanatorium following this, but when discharged he became an alienist (psychiatrist) himself while continuing his research into the metaphysical and abnormal. He disappeared from England in 1916 during the First World War where it was believed that he travelled to Russia and subsequently vanished, believed ‘killed’ during the Russian Revolution that occurred the following year.
A Professor Emil Prometheus turned up in Carpathia two years later. He was listed as a Nazi sympathiser and collaborator during the Second World War, only to pull the same vanishing act in 1945 as David-Astor had done in Russia.
He’d also uncovered some notes that were attributed to a Professor Emil Prometheus, In them he had speculated that in the world of superpowers, not everyone was a winner and possibly his own Meta-abilities were hurting or even killing him. His body, specifically his nervous system, couldn’t handle the electrical current it was generating and was shutting down. Desperate, he looked everywhere for answers. He frantically put his own multidisciplinary genius to use, trying cybernetics and gene therapy, applying his analyses of hundreds of superhuman physiologies to his own dilemma.
At some point, his experimentation must have succeeded. He managed to stop the neural deterioration, but his own cybernetic modifications had already radically changed his brain chemistry, submerging his original personality under an intellect shed of inhibition and moral judgment. Then the information trail went dead. There was no mention of his brother Philip and it was interesting that he’d elected to publish ‘Dark Rituals and Modern Mayhem’ under his own name really…
Growing up Meta, UK-Style! 