1.8|Elsie’s Investigations

 

1.8|Elsie’s Investigations

 

Elsie stood nonchalant, stirring a mixing bowl while children ran by. She was aware of the woman who she'd grown to call her sister at the far end of the hallway, talking on her phone. There were those peering out of the stair handles, the voices of three younger children, giggling, who seemed to be playing a game. Among them, a ginger girl with a sunhat and freckled cheeks spread her shoulders, allowing her plastic butterfly wings to fly. "Aunt Elsie, catch me!" She climbed over the rails and leapt down. "Mimi!" Elsie rushed in and caught her in a single arm, putting the bowl aside. "Where is your mother young lady?"

She turned to Elanor texting near the kitchen. Elsie frowned and stroked Mimi's dark hair, frowning. "Not with you at the moment." She let the girl down and went over, avoiding the teenagers Candice and Aeroy along the way. "Sup Teach!" "Hello sarge." They said. "No running in the halls." She wagged her fingers teasingly as they headed out back the house to the jet skate rink setup. Elsie didn't like the idea of the teenage girls skateboarding in the hallway. She glanced at the little group out there with Candice and Aeroy. There was more than a fair chance she'd find some sort of inappropriate relationship blossoming.

Soon she approached Elanor "Elanor, far be it for me to correct your parenting skills. But your daughter almost jumped off the stairs. Is there something I should be aware of?"

Her sister pulled at her ponytail, beige sweater slicked with Azul-tinted slime.

"Elsie, do I look like I have time for a lecture right now?" Her sister yelled.

"Did someone fill the holo-pinata with spiders?"

"Sis this is serious."

Elsie blinked. "Serious. As you say sarge."

"Don't even start!" Elanor smelt like a panic of adrenaline to the teacher's

nostrils.

Elsie leaned forward a little. "It's just a term of authority. When a cop calls you sarge, it's usually in a good way. Or when you hear from your commanding officer it's a compliment." She straightened up. "Now," she looked at the young group, "I don't want to hear any trouble either. Mind if I take a peak, and we can see what's wrong."

Elsie straightened, hands on hips. "I am a teacher, Elanor. I am here to look after you." Her sister rolled her eyes. "Not to lecture you. Just to look over what seems to be a little girl having fun with her friends.” She took a deep breath and captured her composure, took in her sister's calm and steady expression and did not say a word, putting her hands on the girls temples and concentrating her psychic reading.

Within her sister's head, a vision flashed of Mimi half an hour ago upstairs. Elsie had watched her mutate right before her very eyes, her skin filling out with cyan-blue welts, dark hair turning white while her eyes glowed with neon-green sclera. There were veiny blue cracks of light around her spatially, flickering and dissipating, pulsing and flashing. 

Mimi was the one who broke Elsie's concentration, laughing and pointing. "Yaaay! I'm a butterfly!" The girl squealed. "A butterfly!" she shouted. "The butterfly emerges from her Chrysalis, and is.. ME!" She giggled. Elsie focused again and went deeper into her sister's mind. Flashbacks of the young girl, in dark corridors, tested on by men in starched labcoats, taking injections and tests. Once Elsie had what she needed, she peered out and examined the young girl in the flesh. Her hand laid atop her scalp, gently stroking and patting her before she plucked a single hair.

"Ow!" Mimi yelped, she blushed red in the face mumbling.

"It's okay, it's just a hair. Go run along and play, enjoy your friend's birthday." Elsie instructed her, briefly peeking into the wellspring of joy that was her mind and then peeking out before she ran along.

Elanor felt a twinge of guilt. "I'm sorry for bringing this all back to the forefront.. I didn't want you to have to get involved."

Elsie cleared her throat. "I'm going to run to the garage lab to analyze this sample. I'll be making a few calls." She looked back briefly. "And Nancy.. please don't let this slip out. You've been out of Frontier Biomedical and Xi's shadier crosshairs for over half a decade now. It'd be quite problematic for all of us if we're dragged back in."

She waltzed the other way through the porch and onto the lawn, guests taking note of Elsie's stern strut and poise. She squeezed through a crowd of teenagers. "Teach!" Several shouted. "Gerrick, don't you run from me. I expect your essay on my desk on Sunday." Elsie replied, before making her way to the garage hub. She went inside, pulled a hatch to a downwards stairway open and descended into the depths below.

She peered into a small chamber, watching the door to a laboratory. Her eyes fell to a screen connected to an array of heavy equipment, she pulled up a chair and started typing away. The communicator app on the screen showed  a young man of a similar age and build to Nancy. The man's dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail with the back bared. Sweat glistened on his forehead. "I'm Sergent Elsie, enlisted 17th battalion. Present history teacher. Candice sent me. She used to be an old researcher, I'm sure you know." She stated, her hand resting on the small of her back. Elsie had been known to carry her gun concealed while conducting business.

His face lightened up a little. "Yes, quite Sarge. Name is Agent Jarson. Welcome to the 789th precinct comm channel. Elsie.. I heard you were known for your bloodlust. They said you liked killing? They called you 'The coffin maker.'"

"I'm not here to brag." She cleared her throat. "I need you to get me files on project Rose Nite."

"I'll need about half a day before I'm able to access any information on the database. It might take a little longer if we have to pull any pertinent files. In which case-"

"I'll make it worth your while. Top-security clearance, and a pass aboard Elder Dragon Akito's sky-yacht."

"Have it to you in an hour Sarge, mam!" He paused. "Wait, you're Psychic? How did you kn-" She was already heading back out the hatch, to look on her sister proudly as they began serving cake.

Elsie never sat, she forked marshmallow fluff bubbling out of a bread slice, occasionally biting in.

"Sister?" She turned to Eleanor.

"Hm?" Her sister blinked and took a long breath, looking into the distance and watching the birthday girl enjoying herself. The girl was on her second slice. "Mimi is.. uh.. You know, she is really excited, she's a little.." Her sister looked down, "She's.. she's not quite sure of herself. We have a lot to learn about how to help her in such situations." She took a sip of her tea. "Mimi's a lot like me, once she loses her boundaries she has a hard time re-establishing them again. Always has, since I adopted her.. with us it was the same way, y'know? Y'now.. But you know, mother and daughter are the same. They are still learning. Both of us."

Her sister glanced down at the cake, giving her speech to Elsie a dramatic pause. "But she's a good girl. A very good girl, even for a young girl her age.." She hugged Elsie close. "And I am proud of you for getting the teaching job. You are doing something good, not just saving your sister, but also the youth of this world. The galaxy." She took a deep breath. "I love you Els."

"Sis, are you okay? You’re acting strange." Elsie gently pried her away, setting her plate aside on the table. "Not to go all sergeant on you, but you don't have to be so dramatic." She gave her sister's chest a gentle thump. "You're worried because of Mimi. She cares about you. So, you're worrying about her because she is the way she is right now because of you. But you're not the only one who worries, and that's okay." She looked over at Mimi in the jetskate rink. "Outside the, colorful features, there's no noted health defects or physiological-"

"Elsie stop!" Eleanor interrupted.

Her sister nodded. "I'm sorry. I just-" She took another deep breath. "You're not gonna love me for this, Els. But I'm going to say this now. I wish I was better at showing you how you affected me. Y'know, when I was growing up, it was me who took care of mother and you.. okay, you paid the bills, you kept the lights on. You made the phone calls, signed all papers and held our fort together. But you weren't, with us. You were cold Elsie, and you left our home an igloo. How was child me supposed to understand that, when you were never around?"

Elsie didn't reply, she looked out at her students on their lawn. Elsie flinched as she saw the memory Eleanor had just conjured. The image of an ailing, lonely old lady, cared for in a raggedy quilt by her step-daughter. A frail lady she couldn't bear to be around, hatred for weakness hard ingrained in her mind. "Yeah.. I always felt inadequate. I wished I could be there, hugging our mother. But you know that's, not me Eleanor." The girl leaned into the porch rail. "There's no such thing as monsters. Just people, and some of us are better than others at controlling our emotions, some aren't good at showing them."

The two took in the lively scene for a moment, everything on their artificial lawn a serene pantomime of joy.

"Y'know you are the most caring person I know." Elsie said. "No amount of training or experience could  give you that kind of emotion. So, I would say, what you do is normal, and what I do is wrong. But I feel like a hypocrite. I should say I'm sorry for this. I'm sorry you had to live with it, it must have been horrible. But I should've been there, and I wasn't. I need you to understand a little better how our minds work. I need you to understand me. I need you to trust me..."

"Trust? Pfft, that's a funny thing for a psychic to say y'know. I don't know your thoughts ever."

She continued. "And more importantly I need you to trust yourself."

Eleanor's mind flashed back to her days at Frontier Biomedical, when she was trying to hold her own. She saw herself in a clunky rubber hazmat suit and gasmask, gears hissing in a labyrinthine facility, her heavy breathing through the muffled mask still replaying over and over. The imagery of injecting Mimi and putting her in a plastic drawer, attached to tubes and wires, the syringe still dripping with an echoing plip plop. - Elsie peered briefly and saw it all.

 

"You're a good person Els. Is that what you want to hear?" Eleanor said softly, her voice barely breaking. "I tried to be like you. I went to Frontier so I could accept responsibilities. I went to be normal. I was so sick of people who didn't believe in me, of you always being in opposition to me. I wanted to be the way you were, I just didn't know how. Because I never felt normal Elsie, ever." Her hand flew to her mouth, shock written clearly on her face. "I experimented on my daughter. I don't understand, how could I ever have-"

"I'm a clone Eleanor." The older sister told her.

Elsie gave her sister's hand a light squeeze. "I got you here for a reason. You aren't perfect, but neither am I. And normal? Compared to me.... you're wearing Khakis."

She cleared her throat, not letting go of her sister's hands. "I am sorry you had to go through that Eleanor, I really am. But I want you to understand that this is all for you. I have no interest in anyone else but you. Everyone here is just a means to help you. You're important to me, and I want to make you proud. So I won't break, and I won't walk away. No matter what you do, or what you say, I will never give up on you." She held her arms around Eleanor close in a tight embrace. A little stiff, but well intentioned.

"So trust yourself, even if it is hard." She pulled away.

"Alright.. I'll try. I do try you know."

"I know Eli." Elsie's comm vibrated. "I'll be right back."

She made her way back through the crowd into the garage hatch again, heading into the lab once more. On the screen, the 789th channel appeared back up, the ambience of the green settling upon her like a radioactive sunrise in a toxic mist of mantis shade.

"Give me the scoop Jarson."

"I copied all existing footage from Frontier Biomedical." The operator said. In the footage, the door to the lab slid open and Mimi was brought out, bound hand and foot, naked except for the suit she was still in. Her legs were shaking and blood stained her skin, the lab technician helped her sit down. She couldn't have been older than 3 or 4. Elsie ran through the archives into the last existing footage, in which she recognized her sister's grim, masked heavy rubber hazmat suit. The gimped worker pulled Mimi from the drawers, unhooked her and ran from the center. Security alarms were activated. "She utilized various nerve gases to paralyze the rest of the facility." Jarson told her.

"Who authorized this entire operation?"

"The Daughters of Rose Nite.. an offshoot of project Nite Rose. Nite Rose was initially commissioned by Xi's secret Black Trust division, led by expat scientist Dr. Nicolo Francis Xoticel. It was discontinued, atleast in official government capacity. Black Trust continued its geneticists project and replication of deeper agents. But their old cloning labs were infiltrated by R.I.N.G. approximately 50 years ago. Nite Rose was then re-continued by a man only known in the records as the Courtier, who came to terms with R.I.N.G. a time prior. He privately commissioned Biomedical Frontier, merged with his private foundation to form a sub-division in an alliance with PFU and R.I.N.G against the latter's knowledge. The project started with an intent to breed fail-safes for Rose Nite's operations. Breeders were chosen.."

"Breeder?" Elsie inquired. "Can you give me their files?"

"240 subjects, it's getting a little bit dark. All subjects of Rose Nite, were injected shortly after insemination and most expired after a successful parturient stage. The test subjects that were born, were transferred to 6 separate facilities in parallel operations, 4 of which are located and known. R.I.N.G. discovered these experiments and cut ties with the Courtier, before terminating all located centers. It also created a rift and rivalry between them and PFU."

Elsie took a deep breath, her body tensed and ready for action.

"Jarson? Can you show me any of the other stations or channels the Courtier utilized."

"Negative Elsie, nothing is accessible." The reply came with a heavy silence. "Guy's a ghost. Everywhere he goes, records vanish, even from private archive channels and remote starservers."

"I see."

"There is one dossier on him, it's brief. None of the usual suspects.. a stored backfile from LAME."

Elsie's brow furrowed, "L.A.M.E.? I swear to Xi, if this is some shitty meme-"

"Take a look."

On the screen, an unfamiliar room appeared with multiple white-clothed bodies, lined up at various stations around the room. Every subject was a young man, all of whom had an unusual pallor about their skin, or more accurately their lack thereof. It seemed the subjects were covered from their faces to their hands, some of which bore burn marks.

"What is this?" Elsie yelled, her hand flying to her face.

"I don't know." The operator said. Jarson could be heard typing. "This asteroid lab was titled under 'The Foundation', the burn marks appear to be from an incendiary accident that occurred there under the Courtier's watch. The footage goes back further, briefly during the fire. The recording and audio isn't clear but, look..."

"Adrenline Influx........ Some ......... the kick, y'know?"

She watched the static flickering on a firetrap of a scene, barely able to make out the imagery.

"I ...just doing my father's ......got a little curiou...... little too ......You know what I'm talking about. Why, why am I like...... was I just talking about? Oh well, doesn't matter...." A gunshot was heard shortly after from the clip. She paused and zoomed in on the grainy imagery of a man in a white mask.

"You're looking for that man?" The operator said. "He's the son of Dr. Francis Xoticel. He's presently scientist known in the underground by L.A.M.E. He's also known as the Courtier, a member of the Black Trust. Some of their facilities are known to be in the West Star Coast, but locating them isn't possible. That whole galactic quadrant is restricted."

"And what about Doctor Della?"

"The girl? She's the daughter of Rose Nite's current leader, Ovid. All 240 test subjects were impregnated by Rose Nite are a cult group now trying to jump the discontinued project, the most prominent branch of which is the Courtier's Rose Nite. The Courtier recruited Ovid as a seminal specimen to be their baby daddy. You've probably read their group profile, its extensive." Jarson continued. "But as I said, the Courtier themself is a total ghost in the records."

"What about Ovid?" Elsie asked. "Search all records on him."

"Not possible, he only appears in archives in his capacity as Rose Nite's leader and the donor for Daughter's of Rose Nite." Jarson typed again.

"I see." Elsie eyed the pixelated image of the Courtier's mask, their shifty gaze in the flaming footage looking towards a silhouette she couldn't entirely make out.

"Who was the voice in the Courtier's recording here?"

"We don't know, there's no listed name or profile on file."

Elsie considered the information. "Jarson? I need you to get me anything you can on the Courtier. He's going to be a point of investigation for the Lot Investigating Bureau and the R.I.N.G. They're going to want to talk to him. If he does show up anywhere, track him down. Understand?"

"Rodger. My manager's coming back, godspeed sarge."

"Later."

Elsie spun in her chair, sliding down abit. There was a brief flash of light behind her. She turned around, seeing some glowing wraith or figure, winding to see all her screens and equipment. She reached for her gun. "Excuse me?"

She asked, with a slight gasp, trying to catch her breath. The figure turned around and there was a bright flash of something between them. The flickering figure was gone. She was alone again.

"What the.."