One more thing turns out to be retrieving the Fane employees that Frank didn’t have the time to take through the portal.
You’d all escaped Protean Industries easily enough. For all his faults, Hal was spot on with his timing. After packing up into the van and driving out of the parking lot, you’d started to hear sirens in the distance. You even passed a couple of police cruisers on the way, but they seemingly ignored you all and headed in the opposite direction.
The local news had blamed it on a terrorist attack.
“Ha, nerve gas,” laughs Frank as he flicks of the radio. It’s an ugly laugh, harsh and abrupt. Not a sound anyone hears often. He’s referring to the large number of people that were removed from Protean Industries inexplicably unconscious. The local new stations, aware of Protean’s close links to the military, have decided to blame it on a weapon experiment gone wrong. They’d never believe the truth though, that some fell to your knockout touch and some were sung to sleep by Frank.
Protean haven’t been forthcoming with any answers.
Frank leans back in the driver’s seat of the ambulance. You don’t know where he got it, or the jumpsuits that he and you are wearing. They seem to be the genuine article, though neither you nor he make for convincing EMTs. It’ll do for now, you’ll have a chance to pick up a more believable disguise inside the hospital.
Saratoga Falls General Hospital is illuminated by strings of lights. Not just the building’s own lights, but the lights of many police cars and news vans. A couple of portable floodlights have been set up outside the main entrance and a scrum of reporters mob about a thin line of police officers tasked with keeping them out. The story looks to have gone national by now.
Frank drives by the crowd though, turning into a back entrance and down into an underground parking lot. A lone security guard accosts the pair of you at the bottom of the ramp into the parking lot, but he waves your through after only the most cursory inspection of the fake IDs Hal supplied you with. He parks close to a service elevator and you both get out.
“You know where we’re going,” you ask Frank as he punches a button inside the elevator.
He shakes his head. “Picked a floor at random,” he replies as the door close behind you. “We’ll find someone who knows where they are.”
It doesn’t take long to find someone, as the lift chimes open two floors up and a pretty young intern gets in. She’s Hispanic, with glossy dark hair tied up in a tight bun and wearing a white doctor's coat over pale blue scrubs. You glance to the side at Frank as she turns away to press a button, presenting her tight looking ass to you.
Frank, however, doesn’t wait. The intern spins in place as if hit by an invisible force, which is pretty much exactly what has happened. Frank pins the terrified young woman against one side of the elevator with invisible fists. “Where are the patients from Protean Industries,” he roars at her, a sense of pressure building up in the air as Frank applies Lurga as well as Malacandra to his questioning.
“Ward seventeen,” the doctor whispers, shaking violently.
Frank looks at her for one second, weighing up the veracity of her answer. Then he turns to you, almost casually, and speaks. “Take her,” he orders.
It takes a couple of moments to understand his meaning. You’d wanted to get another disguise in the hospital, but not like this. Then again, the intern will need to be kept out of the way until you’ve left anyway thanks to Frank’s little interview. At least she’s pretty enough to serve as a bedroom face later on, and a little medical knowledge might prove useful in the future.
You feel only a brief sense of guilt as you approach her, your hand outstretched and the knockout sigil flickering in your palm. Her eyes are wide with fear and her mouth is locked in a silent scream. “It’s ok,” you say quietly. “It’s going to be better soon.” Your hand makes contact with the intern’s forehead and she folds up, dropping to the floor.
“Hurry up,” growls Frank as you lean down and pick up the sleeping doctor’s ID tag. Dr Vasquez it reads, and sure enough the woman’s imago confirms it: The intern is a one time classmate of yours, Maria Vasquez. She always seemed to be such an airhead at school, but you don’t have any time to be surprised. You let her imago wrap around you tightly, quivering a little as your form morphs into Maria glorious body.
“What are you going to do with her,” you ask, already using Doctor Vasquez’s slight accent.
“Stuff her in a closet somewhere,” says Frank as you pull off the EMT’s jumpsuit. His answer gives you pause, as Rick Breddon always taught you to minimise the impact your switched of identity had on the people who’s lives you borrowed. Already this mission in the hospital is falling way outside your comfort zone. But it’s also moving far more quickly than you are accustomed to. There’s no time for careful planning and scouting out anymore. You have to grab the last of the Fane employees now, so you guess you have to make allowances for the situation.
“Ward seventeen is on the fourth floor,” you tell Frank as you start disrobing Dr Vasquez. It doesn’t take long, as all she has on underneath the scrubs is a plain pair of panties and a bra. Through long practice you slip into her clothes quickly as Frank hits the appropriate button on the elevator controls and then stuff the real doctor into your discarded jumpsuit.
You walk out of the elevator first when it reaches the fourth floor. No one is nearby, so you motion Frank with a wave of your now slim and tan hand. He strides out confidently, with the real doctor slung over one shoulder. “There’s a cleaning store just here,” you say, drawing the information from Doctor Vasquez’s memories. “I don’t have a key…”
“Not a problem,” interrupts Frank. He hoists the intern over to the locked door. He hits at the handle sharply with his free hand, balling it into a fist before he strikes. There is a cracking sound and then the door opens. Frank sneaks inside. When he comes back out a few seconds later, he is no longer carrying Maria Vasquez. “How long did you put her under for?”
“Half an hour,” you answer.
“Should be enough. Is the ward near here,” he asks. You nod your head quickly, sending a strand of hair loose from your bun. “I’ll use this door for the portal then.”
You keep an eye on the corridor as Frank pulls out a stick of chalk from his pocket. There’s nobody in sight at all, leaving Frank time to inscribe a set of sigils onto the doorframe. The meanings hint at penitence and Lurga, more Franks speciality than your own. The view through the doorway – racks of cleaning equipment and beyond them an unconscious Doctor Vasquez – shimmers and vanishes to be replaced by looming, impenetrable darkness.
Frank closes the door over some, leaving it just enough ajar that the darkness beyond is visible through the cracks. “Let’s move,” he says abruptly.
You lead him round a corner and through a pair of double doors into the ward. The overhead lights are off and only a few reading lights dotted down the line of the ward provide any illumination. “That’s strange,” you mutter as you look around.
“Hmmm?”
“Well, there should be someone here,” you say indicating the nurses station, a desk with several chairs stacked round it. Every single one is empty. “That’s what these memories tell me,” you explain, tapping the side of your head. “In fact, I’m surprised there aren’t any cops guarding the doors to the ward, given what we did at Protean.”
Frank scratches his beard contemplatively for a few moments. “What about here,” he suggests, pointing at another closet just behind the desk. You shrug, it can’t hurt to check. It’s locked too, but that prove no obstacle for Frank. He forces the door just as easily as he forced the one outside the ward. “Huh… That explains it.”
You shuffle over to him and look inside the closet. Half a dozen or so bodies are piled inside. Two are policemen, who must have been standing outside on guard and the rest are in nurse’s uniforms. Frank takes one by the wrist and checks for a pulse. “Dead,” he says flatly. He turns the luckless nurse’s head to one side, revealing a small puncture wound in the neck. “Think this might have something to do with it?”
“I don’t know,” you answer, stepping back out and going behind the desk. You flip through the paperwork there, Maria’s memories telling you that there should be some kind of roster there. After a little digging you find it. You pull it free of the mess and pour over it. “There,” you say pointing at the sheet of paper as Frank looks over your shoulder. “That’s not all of the nurses on duty in the ward right now.”
“Where’s the last one,” he asks.
You look up from the desk and down the ward. Is something moving in the distance? You’re sure you saw something. “I don’t know,” you say slowly. “But I think I see where I can get some answers.”
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