Chapter 6
Lacey
The sound of rush hour traffic coming off the highways and overpasses is finally dying down at seven p.m. It’s one of the few hours I can really get away from it all.
I’m parked behind an abandoned church near city limits. A cold wind sweeps over the marshy field nearby, rattling my car as I sit in the driver’s seat with the engine turned off. The rain on my windshield melts the lines of telephone poles and brickwork together in a wash of dreary colors.
Adrianna’s voice blares through the call on speaker. “Ok, but like, how big a favor are we talking? Like I was hoping to sell one of my kidneys and pay off a loan, but I guess if you ask nicely—”
“Not that big, just,” I say around a yawn, scrolling through my news app, “I need you to make a phone call in an hour if I don’t call you back by then.”
There’s quiet, some shuffling around on the other end of the line before she answers. “What’s his license plate number?”
“No, Adri, I–”
“Actually, just screenshot his dating profile, I can work with that.”
“It’s not like that–”
“Wait, I didn’t think you were at the dating other people stage yet,” she says, then scoffs derisively. “But when would you even meet someone?”
I don’t know what makes me say it, but I admit a little sheepishly, “Well, one of Maestro’s hench-guys did ask me out. Can you believe that?”
“AND YOU SAID YES?”
“No!” I’m a little scandalized that she’s so on-board with the idea. “Why would I do that to Clayton?”
Even as I say it, I feel all kinds of twisted up over it.
I can’t believe I said I had a crush on Mr. Bat-Thing; I mean, I don’t, I just wanted him to stick around long enough to answer some of my questions.
Not my most professional moment, maybe. I don’t think weathergirls are required to have journalistic ethics, or a vow of chastity.
Then he got all close, and I couldn’t keep it up.
An intense flutter passed through my middle, a heat creeping up the back of my neck.
I thought I might melt or break apart into a hundred pieces or moan out loud—all equally terrible outcomes.
Suddenly I couldn’t go through with it.
“Oh my God, can you imagine, though? If he’s a full-on mutant—like I’ve seen the clip—I mean, he’s blue, got clawed monster feet, wings, and tail is all he’s got? I bet he’s got like six nipples or something—”
I have no doubt that Adrianna has seen the clip.
In fact, I’m sure she’s seen it from angles that most people haven’t—it wouldn’t be the first time she’s procured some grainy CCTV footage that captures an event off in the distance.
At this point I just assume she’s omniscient.
Perks of working in the editor’s basement at Channel 6 News.
“Wait, so he asked you out, and you shot him down?”
“No, like . . . I don’t know, it was weird. Maybe Maestro put him up to it to distract me. I can’t imagine it was genuine.”
“If he’s a bad guy, then does that make you a good girl? Is that the dichotomy you’re setting up?” Adrianna asks. “You couldn’t inject a little nuance into your perspective even to get laid?”
“Adri—no, that’s not,” I interject, but get nowhere.
“If he had any game, he shoulda called you a good girl. Oh, that would have made my knees weak,” Adrianna says, apparently writing self-insert fanfiction as we speak.
I sigh and resign myself to waiting her out.
We’ve been friends for a long time; a photo of the two us as interns at Channel 6 is still my lock screen, the pair of us grinning, cheek to cheek. She always tells me to change it out for a better picture, or at least one where her twists aren’t all fuzzy.
I scroll past another article about the ongoing environmental trials with Steel Spires.
The headlines on my news app are still largely concerned with the police’s investigation of the “vigilante.” Everyone else is still trying to track him down. Even the filler pieces—one claims you have the same chances as winning the lottery as running into him.
Hopefully my luck isn’t so bad that I win it a third time in so many days.
Ten minutes into this phone call and I still haven’t asked her the original thing I called her for because she has six tangents she needed to get through first. I love her, but she has the attention span of a caffeinated chipmunk.
At any given moment, Adrianna is reading off at least three different screens, loudly typing another email while she’s on the call with me.
“Look, Adri, it’s getting dark out. Can you just do me this favor?”
“Fine, fine,” she sighs, annoyed that I don’t sound as interested in this as she is.
“I texted you the address. Can you . . . ” I chew my lip halfway through the question, rethinking this.
I don’t want to tell her to send Clayton to come get me, or to turn on whatever new tracker he’s had hidden in my car again. The whole point of our breakup was that he was smothering me.
And . . . I feel guilty about coming here without telling him.
I feel all kinds of awful about flirting with one of Maestro’s henchmen, even if it’s to learn more about the ooze.
Even as I try to justify it to myself, it feels hollow.
I’m a little too easily charmed by this guy who’s supposed to be one of Clayton’s enemies, my enemy.
Even if it’s not technically cheating, it feels like a betrayal.
Adrianna’s voice crackles through the speaker. “So . . . call Clayton and tell him to pick you up?”
I groan. “I don’t want to involve him unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
“Can you at least tell me what you’re actually doing?”
I glance at the marshy fields surrounding the burned-out husk of the old Steel Industries factory. “Doing some inadvisable spelunking.”
“Ew, ok. If you don’t call me back in twenty minutes I’m calling the fire department and telling them you crawled willingly into a hole,” she threatens.
Adriana’s computer dings in the background, the chime reminding her that she has a meeting in a few minutes. We volley back and forth promises and half-made plans to meet up for dinner sometime soon and then hang up.
A few clumpy snowflakes land softly on my windshield before I find the resolve to get out of the car and start looking around.
I’m on a mission. I know Maestro is up to something; there has to be a reason he had me kidnapped.
It wasn’t too long after the fire at the Steel Industries factory that the mutant attacks started in Goethal.
Most people don’t know that Dr. Maestro was an employee of Clayton’s, only that he was a lead suspect in the case.
He was being sued by the board at Clayton’s company for creating a DNA-mutating serum on company time but withholding the formula they wanted to use in further research.
Dr. Maestro represented himself in court but was unable to convince the judge that turning over the research would violate HIPAA rights; he refused to say whose.
The attack that shut down the factory released a lot of toxins into the surrounding swamp, the ooze.
Clayton’s people have been clearing it out, moving the equipment to the main building.
I’ve been gathering information on these events for the last year or so. I can’t directly tie the mutant attacks to Dr. Maestro, but do we really think there’s another guy who’s been making mutants in a state-of-the-art lab and misusing government grants in this city?
The Steel Industries factory is abandoned—the roof is all burned through, a lot of the walls have been torn down. The few remaining ones are full of scrawled graffiti, one reading: “All Supes Are Cucks.”
It’s destroyed enough that I’m not sure what’s left for me to search through.
That same sickly iridescent shimmer catches my eye, and I turn toward the marshy field behind the church parking lot. There’s a drainage ditch where a faint glimpse of the ooze drips out of a large, corrugated metal pipe. Tall yellow grass hides it partly from view.
I frown and wonder about what Goethal’s Most Wanted said last night about the ooze in the waterways.
The marshy ground squishes underneath my winter boots, and suddenly I’m glad I chose something with rubber soles.
I also wish I wore gloves at this point, gingerly touching the corroded metal to maintain my balance—there’s some glowing blue mold covering most of the tunnel walls.
The air inside has a strong, industrial cleaning fluids kind of smell, despite looking only one step up from a sewer.
Even more concerningly, I can’t smell it any more after a few breaths.
I hope that doesn’t do some kind of lasting damage.
Just when I get far enough into the tunnel that daylight doesn’t penetrate any further in, a crevice of low incandescent light outlines most of a door. When I get close enough, the light from the room beyond is enough that I can make out an empty pizza box propping it open.
I curl my fingertips around the edge of the door and open it wider, scooting around the cardboard.
It’s still grimy and unpleasantly drippy inside the room, the door doesn’t keep even that out. The difference is that the ceiling is not immediately within grazing distance if I stand up too straight. Small mercies.
I creep further inside; it’s quiet, lit mostly by the flickering monitors. A number of screens vary from displaying spreadsheets and programs compiling on ancient software, while the occasional screen shows security footage of the empty factory.
I thought I would see someone in here, but every room I peek into as I sneak down the hallway is empty.
I’m not prepared for how warm it is in here, either. Steam rises from the vents in the grated metal floors, and a number of pipes zigzagging overhead drip with condensation. It’s like stepping into a sauna. I unbutton my winter coat, already sweating beneath it.
There’s a room with several ten-foot tall, maybe three feet in diameter tubes, all filled with a foggy blue liquid that almost glows in the light.
And there’s something in one of them.