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. Wevolley 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.
I can make out the silhouette of a dark blue body through a couple of the tubes, in one of the center ones. I duck into the room, creeping closer. There’s some condensation on the capsule, blurring the exact details of what’s inside.
After a few more feet, I’m peeking around a control board. The shape inside the capsule moves languidly, almost rhythmically. It’s him, the mutant who rescued me. And he’s jerking off.
I can’t help but let out a gasp when I realize what I’m seeing. “Eeep!”
“HOLY FUCK,” he startles, the sound muted and distorted through the glowing liquid. He grabs one of his wings and wraps it around his waist; his tail flicks agitatedly in the solution.
My hands are up by my face in an instant, and I’m only barely peeking through my fingers at him. Oh my God, I’m trespassing and a peeping tom and utterly in the wrong, and still curiosity gets the better of me, rooting me to the spot.
“Oh, hey, Lacey. Fancy seeing you here,” he says, a slight hitch in his voice as he recovers. “Where I live. And work. What a...coincidence.”
While he speaks, he leans against the edge of the tube, stretching and folding an arm behind his head in a way that really emphasizes his bicep. Then he flashes me that smile, with his sharp, pronounced canines.
