Chapter 32 – Flipping Switches
In the district morgue, Keller began to come around. Cedric and Mallus were operating on his face. Bobby Dunkirk stood close at hand.
"What the fuck is going on?" Keller mumbled. The warden’s head was locked into a surgical brace, immobilized. His body strapped into the chair below.
Cedric gestured for him to keep quiet. He explained in his slow, condescending way, "Morgenstern brought you in. You've suffered multiple gunshot wounds. You're missing a significant quantity of brain tissue. I don't know how it's possible that you're speaking.”
Mallus reached over and pinched some of the exposed brain tissue with a pair of surgical tongs. "Do you feel that?” he asked the warden.
Keller glared at him.
Morgenstern sat propped up in a nearby bed, both eyes and his upper head wrapped in gauze. "I woke up in the city morgue," he said.
“Morgenstern, is that you?” Keller asked.
"Yes, it is I.” Morgenstern was still very doped up, his speech lost at sea. “It was the girl, you remember? She shot us. She shot us with the detective’s handgun.”
"That Fox bitch,” Keller growled. “Get me the Majors. She's got a brother here somewhere. I want him found!”
"It appears you haven't suffered any significant cognitive damage. That's encouraging,” Morgenstern observed, drugged out of his mind. “It seems your failsafe wafers are something of a success, Doctor Bergstrom.”
“Of course they are, now shut up the both of you.”
In the District Command Center, the news that the colonel had been wounded had everyone on edge. Over the radio a nurse requested the watch commander to report to surgery immediately.
Major Armitage was shown to the ward and was surprised to find Keller conscious. "Colonel Keller, sir. I'm relieved to see you're recovering sir. We can do this another time if you want.”
"We’ll do it now!” Keller barked.
Armitage nodded.
"Listen jackass, I want you to pull all the rubbers off the line. You're giving the boys live ammo, you hear me?”
"Yes, Sir.”
"I want you to send a gang of head-smashers down to green stripe to secure that bitch's brother”
"Which bitch is that, sir?”
"Ashley Fox." The name tasted like raw hatred in his mouth.
Keller's vitals were accelerating, his blood pressure was up, splashing blood around the exposed brain tissue, making Cedric's job that much more difficult.
The surgeon released more anesthesia into the patient, and Keller lost consciousness, effectively ending the conversation.
Morgenstern turned his gauze-wrapped head toward Major Armitage. He seemed to watch the Major nod to the unconscious Keller, before exiting with an audible sigh of frustration.
Armitage returned to the command center, ordered the ammunition swap and unlocked the armory, granting a group of drooling corporals access to the live-ammo cage. He mused that was rather like watching a pack of hyenas attack a broken-down bus full of cheerleaders, or maybe that was more akin to what comes next.
He assigned Sergeant Wulfgar and Corporal Harrison to the task of arresting Geoffrey. They left to assemble a properly outfitted head-smashing team.
Leonard sat at the mayor's desk, engaged in a call over the videophone. "No, I'm sorry senator, the mayor is not available right now," the secretary explained.
"Bullshit, son," Senator Miller replied over the link. "Do you have any idea how many times I've sat in that office and watched you speak those same words to some other poor fuck, while that lard-ass stands fifteen feet away?”
"Then you know how this ends.”
"Listen to me you fat bastard," Miller yelled to the unseen Mayor of Angel City. "If I have to get on a plane to come down to run your fucking city, I swear to Christ, I will feed you to the goddamn hippies myself.”
From the balcony, the mayor gestured for the call to be disconnected, but it was unnecessary, the senator had already switched off.
Mayor Westbury was smiling broadly. He seemed utterly untroubled by the senator's ire. "This is the best part of the morning. Maybe he needs to eat. That always makes me feel better. Are you hungry, Leonard?”
"Not just now, your honor.”
"Neither am I, not this morning. Perhaps that’s why I feel so pleasant today." The mayor stared out at the city. "We should put some pressure on the state and the federal government to provide assistance in this Ashley Fox investigation. I know the National Capitalist Party, those Nancys, they are in on the situation on District Thirteen. I want to know what they're so afraid of down there.
"There is no point asking my cousin, she would only lie, especially to me. And now she's dead, so that's pointless. I suspect the feds have something dirty going on down there.
"For all I know, Fox may have sent his daughter for the same reason. It's a bit like something out of a comic book, isn't it Leonard? Super-Scientist's mysterious prodigy takes on the morally suspect competition.”
The console flashed with an incoming call. "Mayor's office," Leonard answered.
The governor's aide appeared on screen. "The Governor of California would like to extend his support in the form of a federal task force to assist with your on-going investigations." The aide then burped.
"Please let the Governor know that any assistance would be much appreciated,” Waltman replied.
"Sure." The aide leaned forward and switched the unit off.
Mayor Westbury grinned like a jackal. "Call Del Toro, tell him he's downhill on this shit ball. Tell him not to cooperate in any way. Make them spend some goddamn money. I don't care if they blow up the whole city. I want to see swat kites and soldiers and riots and shakedowns all over town. Violate some rights and if they don't cooperate, drop the anarchists over the side!”
Leonard knew not to take the mayor literally when he was off on one of his rants. Still, he was disturbed by the concept that the man's primary objective seemed to be child's image of a city at war, replete with people being dropped from aircraft like bombs.
Keller was fully conscious for the last bit of surgery. Cedric and Mallus hovered, their fingers moving quickly, cleaning all the dead and burned tissue from his wounds and packing the brain area with Cedric’s purple healing goo.
They couldn't risk giving the colonel any more anesthesia, he'd already had three times the recommended max. He was safer awake and in pain, rather than comatose and suffering irregular electro-cardiogram patterns.
The colonel screamed at the assembled majors, who had so far been unsuccessful in locating or even identifying Geoffrey. Of course, this was due to the fact that Ash and Geoff had never been properly registered in the first place.
"I hope you all packed your fucking parachutes," Keller growled as the Majors took their leave.
Morgenstern alone laughed.
Finished with the surgery, Mallus exited, leaving Cedric to stitch and bandage the wounds.
Bobby stood in the background, desperate to ask about his father, but too terrified to draw any attention to himself.
FBI Director Trafford arrived at the Angel City Police Department at dawn. Accompanied by six anonymous agents, he appeared at the main desk and asked to be directed to Chief' Del Toro's office.
Upon arriving at Del Toro's office, his agents took up key positions at nearby intersections and hallways.
Chief Del Toro came out from behind his desk as Director Trafford entered the Chief’s office alone. He extended his hand; they introduced themselves and sat down.
"I just want to be up front with you, so we're not stepping on each other's toes," Trafford began.
"I appreciate that," Del Toro replied.
"I'm up from Atlanta to determine if we can't help each other with our ongoing investigations. We're chasing a mass murderer, a vigilante by the name of Luther Solomon Wolfe. A Reverend.”
"Interesting. A religious man?”
"He may have been, at one time," the direct
or replied. "But he killed eleven people in Valdosta about six months ago. As far as we know, he currently has no connection to any registered faith.”
"Tell me, Director, those victims down in Georgia, did they stay dead?” Del Toro asked.
Caught off guard, Trafford looked away. "Why do you ask that?”
"What do you know about military grade bio-mechanical engineering?”
Trafford scowled, disturbed by the questions. He spotted a frequency scanner in the corner. It glowed with a solid negative read.
Trafford looked back to the chief, his words laced with condescension. "I know a lot, Chief, but my focus is the Reverend. We believe he's involved with District Thirteen. We want him.”
"The Reverend?”
"That's right.”
"And?" Del Toro asked, smiling.
"And I have a writ of extradition, should the Fox girl be taken into custody." Trafford removed a folded document from his briefcase and handed it to the chief.
Del Toro didn't even glance at the paperwork; he simply slid it to the side, as a non-issue. "Ms. Fox was executed by the state, Thursday, September twenty-second. Didn't they tell you?”
Trafford pouted.
Del Toro leaned forward. "In the interests of inter-agency cooperation, let's cut through the bullshit. Four suspected serial killers, the people responsible for the Fox execution, were reported DOA with your Reverend last night. They all got up and walked out of the morgue. Dunkirk bit two technicians to death, bit them in the neck, like a wild animal.”
"Your man Cole, he's not dead either, is he?" Trafford asked.
"This is the part where I tell you to go fuck yourself," the Chief smiled.
"So we'll be looking for Ms. Fox on our own then?”
"Between us, let me ask you something." Del Toro stood.
Trafford stood as well.
"Don't you wonder why they sent you down here, after Fox and this Reverend character, instead of after the other gang of fuck-ups?”
"Ours is not to reason why." The director offered a weak smile.
"Good luck, Director.”
Director Trafford nodded and left.