Psych Investigation Episodes: Episode 1 (A Young Adult Scifi / Fantasy) (34 page)

Despite having torn her clothes on the glass
and having several scrapes and bruises, she seemed to beam with
relief and happiness. “You got it, Paro! I’ll wake him up now.
Wait, what happens when you wake up someone who’s
sedated?”

“
Five more minutes!”
Jack
pleaded, tossing and turning on some weird, bed-thing. Where was
he? Whatever, he didn’t care. He was too tired for it to matter
where he was or what he was sleeping on.

“
Jack, get up—now!” It was Melissa’s
voice. His eyes shot open and he looked around him. He was in some
kind of hospital room, with a needle and IV-bag sticking out of his
arm. Jack opened his mouth to scream, but Melissa covered
it.

“
Don’t worry. We’re taking that out
now, just relax.”

A man in a white coat walked over and removed
the needle while Melissa held him down. “There we are, Mr. Harris.
You’re up and ready to go.”

Melissa ruffled his messy hair, looking as
beautiful as always, although she was scraped up like she’d just
been in a fist fight.

“
So, how do you feel,
Jack?”

“
Ah, you know, as good as can be
expected given the current economic climate.”

Melissa sighed. “Why do I even ask?”

“
Where are we?” he asked.

“
You’re in H.Q, on the second lowest
floor of our building, quite a bit below ground, actually. We keep
our med-center and temporary holding areas here.”

Jack wiped his eyes. His vision was slightly
blurry. It was cold in the room, which really did look like one
from a hospital. There was a sink, needles everywhere, and cabinets
with medicine. The walls were all white and there was a medical
smell to the place.

“
How did I get here?”

For some reason, Melissa looked taken aback,
but when she spoke, she sounded like she was reciting something
from memory.

“
Andy hit you over the head pretty
hard and you blacked out. It’s okay, though. We stopped him. He’s
in custody one floor below us.”

So I couldn’t save him.
Jack filled
with sadness.

“
Anyway,” Melissa said, her face
brightening with cheer. “I’ve got some good news. We’re going to
fly you home. We don’t want your mom to worry now, do we? I know
you’ve been itching for another helicopter ride.”

Jack’s eyes widened at the news, and he
couldn’t help but smile. “What are we waiting for then, let’s
go!”

Carla made sure the boy was secured as she
closed the back door of the truck. All she wanted was to finish the
job and get home to her son, but the damned captain was making it
difficult for her.

“
Like I just said, and will only say
once more—you can interrogate him at the facility. The orders are
to bring him there at once, and that’s what I’m doing.”

Carla didn’t care that the man was a captain,
and why would she? Her orders superseded his. But the man was being
more than just a little stubborn. Carla was not a mean person, or
even a pushy person, but when you’re a mom in your mid-forties with
parental responsibilities, you don’t always have the time to waste
discussing matters that have already been settled.

“
Listen to me,” the man said. “I
need the information in this child’s head. It could very well mean
the difference between life and death for a great many people. You
can have him after we’ve revived him
here
and gotten what
we need from him.”

“
And you listen to
me
, Mr.
Puro, or Paro, or whoever the hell you are,” she growled in retort.
“A Commander has already given the order to take him to facility-B.
If you want, you can see him first thing in the morning. Now, if
you’ll excuse me, it’s already past dark and he should’ve been
there by now. Out of my way.”

She didn’t give the man a chance to respond.
She was so sick of arguing with idiots. Carla double checked the
locks and restraints then made sure the bed the boy lay on was
secure. The last thing she needed was to explain to her superiors
why their prisoner was rolling around the highway.

The transport van was large. It was wide in the
back with room for up to fifteen to be seated comfortably.
Although, at the moment there were only seven of them, with her
being the only Psych. Truth be told, she didn’t really need to be
there—she never did, but it was all standard procedure. All
criminal transports required at least seven recon officers and one
Psych.

“
Doug, we ready to go?” Carla asked
the man sitting behind the wheel. All seven men were armed with
standard assault rifles, dark blue T.A.C jackets, and
non-constrictive helmets.

“
Moving out, Carla,” he
said.

There were no windows except the driver’s in
the front, so a sudden lurch in her stomach was the only indication
she had to know they were accelerating. Facility-B was located in
the Harbor off Staten Island. Given current traffic conditions and
expected construction sites, she estimated a travel time of two
hours.

Carla looked over at the unconscious boy. She
was tempted to close his eyes. The way he seemed to be almost
starting at her, it was more than just a little creepy. They were
wide-open, bloodshot, and had an unnerving look to them, as if they
were saying that whatever had put him in a coma was something
beyond terrifying.

Carla was not a member of the Investigative or
Operations departments. She was offered a job in both, but she
didn’t feel either was right for her. Psychs like her didn’t have a
name—they were just workers. Her specialty—if it could
really
be called that—was in prisoner transport. In other
words, she got to sleep in the back of slow moving vehicles while
comatose murderers gave her creepy looks.

The ride seemed to drag on, as the occasional
bump woke her from her doze. She wasn’t really supposed to be
sleeping, but in the close to twenty years she’d been doing this,
the only action she ever saw was a few car accidents.

She tried to doze off again but noticed that
something was a bit off. The bumping had stopped for almost two
minutes, and she no longer felt the movement of the
vehicle.

“
Doug, why aren’t we moving?” she
asked.

“
There’s a young woman lying on the
street up ahead. Carla, you have to see this.”

Carla unbuckled her seatbelt and walked to the
front of the van. It was dark, and for Manhattan, the street held
surprisingly few people, although some still shuffled about. Ahead
of them, she saw the girl.

She was on her stomach with her left arm
stretched out in front of her and her right extended to the side.
Her face was turned, and her cheek rested on the pavement. This
part of Manhattan wasn’t as dense on traffic as others, but it
was
still Manhattan. How did nobody see her?

“
You three.” She pointed to the
nearest three officers. “Go see if she’s okay.”

“
Yes ma’am!”

The three officers leaped out of the back of
the vehicle and ran over to examine the girl.

“
So, Doug, how’s the
wife?”

The man sighed. “Well, she’s a wife, if that
answers the question.”

The two shared a laugh. “Dougie, how many years
have you been married now? You’ve given me that same answer since
we started. You must love her to death if you’re still with
her.”

Doug smiled. “Well, of course I do. But it’s
just that lately I don’t feel like we share the same interests
anymore. For instance, just yesterday—”

The sound of a bloodcurdling scream cut him
off.

Carla whipped her head around and looked out
the front window. Her heart almost gave out, as she saw the three
recon officers on the floor, wailing and coughing up
blood.

“
What in the hell?” Carla leaped out
the back of the vehicle, and ran toward them. “You three, what
happened? Are you okay?”

There was no response, though Carla didn’t
expect one. They were leaking blood so fast that it looked like
their mouths were fountains. A deep puddle of the stuff formed
around the blue-suited bodies. Carla forced herself to remain calm,
or at least she tried to, but she wasn’t doing a very good job of
it.

The other four officers rushed to her side, and
she signaled for Doug to remain in the vehicle. They had weapons
out and loaded, but each one of them looked scared out of their
wits. These men had never had to use their weapons, and they
probably never thought they would.

Carla looked around and tried to get an idea of
what’d happened, and immediately she noticed the girl they had
spotted from the road was now nowhere to be seen.

“
Did anyone see where she
went?”

They were on a narrow street, with entrances to
shabby-looking apartments on both sides. A few small restaurants
lined the block, but on the whole, they were in a low-income
residential area. A cat jumped over a trash can off to the side,
giving them pointed looks before crawling on.

“
Well?”

The men glanced around at each other, but no
one offered a word in reply. Not that it mattered, for only a few
seconds passed before Carla heard yet another scream, this time
from the van.

“
Doug!”
she
cried.

Doug’s lifeless corpse smashed through the
front window of the van and was sent hurtling at her, flying at a
speed so fast that she barely had time to jump out of the way. She
leaped, and the body collided with the officer standing behind her,
knocking him to the ground.

She remained frozen, so did the only three
officers still on their feet. One by one, her men were dropping
like flies, and she didn’t even know who their enemy was. Carla
felt an acidic bubble of fear in her gut. She wondered if she was
only moments away from the end of her life.

The van shook, and she knew that whatever was
still inside it was coming out. The men leveled their guns and
waited for their tormenters.

The two that came out, were two of the oddest
people Carla had ever seen. One was a beautiful young woman, with
exotic red hair and a look of madness so deeply embedded into her
expression that Carla wondered if she was born with it.

The other was a laid-back, tall, black-haired
young man. He didn’t have the crazy-look like the other one did. In
fact, he appeared genuinely happy, yet upon closer inspection there
was sadness present too, beneath the carefree exterior.

Carla loved to watch movies. She watched so
many movies, that their influence on her was apparent even in the
way she spoke. Upon seeing these two, she was expected to offer
them an opportunity to surrender, to turn themselves in. But from a
lifetime of watching cheesy action flicks, coupled with a growing
collection of dead recon officers, Carla wanted these two dead
before her next breath. It was always the hesitation that got the
characters in movies killed.

“
Open fire, now!”

The three officers didn’t need to be told
twice. They clicked off their safeties and unloaded a volley of
fire into the two approaching Psychs. The guns were loud, and the
deafening roar of bullets actually made her feel safer in a way.
The dark Manhattan alley lit up with grandeur as the flashing of
three assault rifles pumped bullets into the distance.