Sentinels of the Multiverse: Broken
Chapter 1: Maia
Ugh, I am tired. From that meeting this morning to stopping that robot with Dr. Stinson, Legacy, and Bunker, I just didn't have the energy to fly out this evening. Heck, I barely had any energy to try and make it back to my home. Unfortunately, I don't have powers of flight, so conventional travel is the only way to get from place to place. I made it back to the bridge, but my limo and my driver were already gone by the time I arrived. The tow truck must have already come and the driver probably assumed I found another way when I wasn't inside. Crud, I forgot to ask for Bunker's insurance info. Ugh...that's going to raise my premiums probably. I may have lots of money, but it doesn't mean I am not conscious of saving for the future. You never know when a really bad day may come and you may need an out. That also means that I need to figure out what to do to get to bed. Remote controlled cars, motorcycles, and planes are only real in comic books and the imaginations of dreamers. If I could figure it out, travel would be so much easier. Maybe getting bit by a mutated bird or something is the answer. More than likely if that happened, I would probably just die a slow agonizing death...yeah I need sleep, I'm becoming darker than usual without it.
I find my bag of clothes that I stashed under the bridge and know there is a road close by. I make a call to a cab company and get a ride back home. After a quick shower, I flop on my bed. If I don't get some sleep I'm going to go crazy. I may beat criminals on the street with my bare fists, but without sleep, I lose focus and can really hurt them or myself. I quickly slip into unconsciousness and begin to dream. Memories of the day fill my dreams and I make a mental note to check up on Meredith. That trick she pulled today at moving faster than I could see makes me wonder what the heck happened since the last time I saw her. There will be plenty of time to think about that later, but for now I let my mind drift off into dreamland.
About two hours later, my phone wakes me up. Thanks to technology, you can now patch into the local police scanner and hear what is going on in your part of the world. I programmed my phone to give off a certain tone would be audible to me alone and no one else. Seeing as every 23 year old girl in the world spends most of their time texting and talking on the phone, no one ever suspects why I check my phone so much. Being a popular socialite just helps perpetuate the illusion. I groggily wake up to see that a murder has occurred in downtown Rook City and snap awake as it is the third in a series of murders that have had the same M.O. in the past week. The killer uses precision strikes to kill his targets suggesting a high level of intelligence, but the gruesome mutilation afterwards suggests they are psychotic. Whomever this is, they make Jack the Ripper look like an amateur.
I dress quickly and grab a bike from the garage. Speeding my way to the crime scene, I stop about 6 blocks away, far enough to avoid suspicion, but close enough to make my way via rooftop. I grapple up and find the officers on the scene. Since “superheroes” don't exactly have jurisdiction, I just have to listen from above and use a camera connected to my eyepiece to do an examination of the body. The gruesome scene is hard to look at partly because of the extents that the body was mutilated and partly because I hadn't eaten anything more than a power bar for about 12 hours. From what I can tell, the victim has been dead for about 2 hours. Through all the gore, I could barely make out the sources of what killed them, but it appears that they were strangled from behind and then beaten to death before being torn apart. This is one sick killer, but something interesting catches my eye in the distance.
I wait for the police to turn away before making my move. I drop down from the rooftop a considerable distance away from the scene to get an up-close view of what my eyepiece had spotted. It was an empty syringe, but not something that a junkie would use. No, this was something from a lab. There is barely anything left in the syringe, but enough to possibly get the sample examined. Looks like I'm going to have to get back to Megalopolis and talk with Dr. Stinson.
About 30 minutes later I arrive at her laboratory. Her light is on of course because the doctor never gets any sleep it seems. I'm sure she's probably trying to figure out what's going on with her, but if this serum leads me to the killer, allot of people will sleep easier tonight. I cautiously make my way up to her window trying to avoid any flying objects again. I'm inside and she is studying a sample under her microscope.
“Dr. Stinson, that lab result you wanted is...WOAH! HOW DID YOU GET IN HERE,” cried out her lab assistant.
Meredith didn't exactly turn around, but in a flash we are face to face. I try to stifle a scream as she just move about 30 feet in the blink of an eye up to me. Fortunately, she's smiling when she sees me.
“Oh, hello Wraith. What can I do for you?”
“Hello Dr. Stinson, first off...you're freaking me out with how fast you move.”
“Oh that, I have been examining my blood and apparently the experiment that I was in today has fused my molecular structure with the Tachyons we were using. Although there appear to be no side effects besides super-speed in all aspects of my life, I don't know how long this will last. It may be permanent. Probably the hardest thing right now is talking mainly because to speak at a pace that a normal person would understand, I have to almost talk as if I'm babying a small dog. If I tried to go as fast as my thoughts, I could read you the whole phone book in about 10 minutes by my calculations.”
“That is incredible! However, I have some urgent business as I need something examined.”
“Urgent isn't a problem, lets see what you have.”
I hand over the syringe and she quickly gets to work.
“The centrifuge is a little too slow for me for now, so I'll just do this all by hand.”
Within seconds she separates compounds and begins her experiments moving from one point to another waiting for reactions to occur while she grabs a quick cup of coffee. All the while her assistant just stands there with her mouth open.
“OhKrystalIhadalmostforgottenaboutthatresultyouweregivingme.Let'ssee...”
Her eyes scanned the results as the first compound finished its reaction.
“Um, Dr. Stinson,” Krystal began.
“Oh right, sorry about the fast talk. That will be all for now.”
“What is the result Dr. Stinson?”
Meredith looked at each of the compounds with a puzzled look on her face. Three times she checked each compound and finally sat down as if she were scanning her brain for the answer.
“To be honest Wraith, the compounds themselves are highly unstable. There is allot in there that isn't commonly found in a drug store and most of the compound is experimental. Whatever was in that syringe is manufactured, but it wasn't what was in it that was the most interesting.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I tested the needle as well for trace amounts of the serum, but of course there was blood on the end. The blood itself had compounds that were not from this batch, but from something else entirely, but with the same base. Now I keep up with what other research labs are doing mainly because I am being paid by them to help with different projects, but this is from somewhere completely new. However, there is very little impurities in the compound itself, so more than likely it is being manufactured in a sterile environment. This much sterilization leads me to believe it is some sort of laboratory with large chemical processing power.”
“Do you know of any labs in Rook City that could do this?”
“No, Rook City doesn't have anyone working on something like this...but there might be someplace you can look.”
“Is there any way to determine who's blood is on that needle?”
“Not as fast as you are hoping, no.”
I thank Dr. Stinson and in half an hour I arrive at my destination, Pike Industrial Complex. The company is led supposedly by Graham Pike, taking over after his father's untimely death back in the 1920s when Rook City was known by its official name Overbrook City. To my knowledge, Graham never had a heir to take over the company, but no one else is claiming leadership. If it is true that he is still the CEO of Pike Industries, he would be ancient. What secrets could this place have?
Pike Industries has been a leader in pharmaceuticals for over 100 years creating some revolutionary stuff that has helped allot of people, but there are rumors of a darker side of things. People going missing and their bodies showing up months later completely disfigured. Most had been former death-row inmates, so no one really paid attention, but here I was now to find out what was going really on.
I dropped through the skylight onto the walk way above the vats of chemicals. The place reeked from the fumes of the vats and so I put on a breathing mask. As I made my way across the walkway, I could hear a rustling in the distance. A small light shone through a doorway as the noise continued. I dropped down one level to the doorway itself, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever was making all that noise. As I turned to look in an arm smashes through the wall and grabs me.