Anton Strout - Dead Waters

Elyse looked up at me. “Sorry we tried to kill you,” she said, “with. . . well, you.”

“I bet,” I said. “I was the last me standing, but don’t worry—I’ll still have the nightmares for years to come to remember it by.”

Darryl had his arm around her. His toughness had left him and he looked to the Inspectre. “So, what happens now?” Darryl asked.

The Inspectre walked over to the couple, staring down at them. “Well, that depends on how cooperative you choose to be.”

Elyse started nodding, eagerness in her eyes. “We can be cooperative,” she said. “Like I mentioned, there are notes and film footage, computer files. . . You’ve seen what we can accomplish without a blood sacrifice . . .”

“And with a blood sacrifice, too,” Trent spat out at them, pointing to the spot on his side where Elyse had cut him and released Professor Redfield’s army of tiny office monsters.

“First things first,” the Inspectre said, stopping Trent with a reassuring hand on the boy’s shoulder. “This process that Mason put himself through. . . can it be reversed?”

Elyse’s face sank. “I don’t think so,” she said. She turned to her partner in crime. “Darryl?”

He shook his head. “No,” he said. “We hadn’t even got the process working in the first place. There wasn’t even a chance to figure out how to, umm, verse it let alone re verse it.”

“I’m confused,” Connor said.

“You’re not the only one,” I added.

Connor shot me a look that shut me up. “We’ve seen the professor in his current state. Young, agile, in shape. . . Why would he need you to kill anyone for him? Why not just do it himself? Why kill one of you, his loyal students?”

“I don’t know,” Elyse said, falling silent as she sat there, dejected.

“I think I do,” Trent said. “When you found me tied up on the floor, well. . . it wasn’t the first time we had tried to use blood that day.”

“Oh, really?” I asked.

“Ask Elyse,” Trent said.

I turned back to the young actress. The girl looked guilty. “After we were visited by the professor and. . . sent George off to him, I thought maybe we might be able to use blood for our own gain, too. I thought if we could harness the power of a blood sacrifice somehow, maybe we could use it to our advantage. So I told Trent we wanted a little. He even agreed to it.”

I looked over at Trent and he looked down at the floor. “What do I know?” he said with defense in his words. “I’m a freshman. I thought it was a hazing ritual!”

“Problem was, the ritual worked, but just barely,” she said. “We could animate certain objects or pieces from tiny bits of film, but they didn’t last very long before they quickly ran out of juice.”

“So you decided you needed more juice,” Jane said. “More blood.”

“That still doesn’t answer my original question, though,” Connor said. “Why use his own people? Why did he use George like that?”

“The professor always talked about the power of betrayal in film class,” Elyse said. “To him, it was such a classical theme—betrayal, revenge. I think he saw a real and twisted power in it.”

“Betraying his own followers would give their blood more power,” the Inspectre said. “Enough, perhaps, to complete his transformation for good.”

“Growing his strength, prolonging his stolen life with it,” I added. “One of you better be prepared to help us figure this out. It’s not just Professor Redfield I want to take down. For instance: you acted like you didn’t know about the water woman earlier, the same way you acted like you didn’t know the professor was alive. That’s my girlfriend who’s suffering from that woman’s mark. Now, give up some details on her.”

“Tell us what you know about that woman,” Jane said, her eyes showing her desperation for answers. “Please.”

“Like I said before, what woman?” Elyse repeated. “What mark?”

“The green woman,” I said. “Stop acting like you don’t know.”

“I don’t,” she said, panic on her face.

“Neither of us knows about her,” Darryl said.

“Bull,” Connor said.

Elyse looked defeated and shrugged. “Fine. Don’t believe me.”

The thing was, I did believe her. I mean, if you were going to cop to almost murdering one friend and handing the other to a recently rejuvenated madman, why lie about not knowing the watery she-bitch?

I stormed away in frustration, heading for the door.

“I think Mason Redfield may have found allies to help him in his rebirth, doing what he and his students couldn’t,” I said. “We don’t know what kind of dark bargain the professor made with that water woman, but I aim to find out.”

“Where are you going?” Jane asked.

“To find someone who might actually have some answers for me.”

I left the rest of the group to deal with locking up the students. I needed a break from the interrogation and I had a few things that still needed checking out with Godfrey Candella, and just as I put my handle on the door leading down to the archives, the man himself sent me a text saying he had some information to share.

Every visit down to the Gauntlet was a new adventure in creepiness, especially when it was dead silent and I found an exhausted Godfrey asleep with his eyes open at his desk, his head propped up on a now-drool-covered stack of books and his cell phone flipped open on the desk. I shook him awake and he sat bolt upright in his chair, startled. When he noticed it was only me, however, he relaxed.

“Wow,” Godfrey said. “That was quick.”

“I was on my way down, actually,” I said.

“Oh,” he said. “So, any luck with Director Wesker or Ms. Daniels?”

“Not yet,” I said. “We’re questioning some of Professor Redfield’s students, and even though they were in on his magic, they’re maintaining that they know nothing about the woman in green we keep seeing.” I paused for a moment, my mind switching gears. “Let me ask you something that’s been troubling me the past few days. Do you think you’d be able to take down a loved one if they were transformed into something horrible?”

Godfrey tidied up several of the files and books on his desk as he thought about it. “I don’t know,” he said. “I suppose I’m grateful that I don’t work in the field and will hopefully never have to answer that. On a good day, I only deal in theoretical dilemmas or recording those of other people.”

“I’m just asking your opinion.”

Godfrey sighed and put down his books. “Fine,” he said. “In that case, I’d probably die first. I wouldn’t be able to do it. I’d hesitate and that would be my undoing, but don’t worry, Simon. That won’t happen to you.”

“It won’t?” I asked. “Why not?”

“Because that’s not who you are,” he said. “You save people, and that includes yourself as well. It’s why you’re out there and I’m down here.”

Godfrey was probably right. The reason I obsessed over every little thing was my near-constant need these days to be helping others. My issues with Jane, the dresser, and the apartment were only a reflection against that, my last safe haven where I didn’t have to defend the world, my Fortress of Solitude. My emotional psychometric outbursts were only an extension of my raw feelings about not wanting to share that, but if I was honest with myself, it wasn’t that I didn’t want Jane to move in. Hell, she wasn’t even asking to. I was simply scared because it would ultimately be the final wall to giving myself over to someone completely. The realization alone was enough to ease some of my tension, and I switched my focus back to the case.