Director Wesker put his hand on my shoulder, squeezing down on it hard. “Speaking of distractions,” Wesker said. “I want a word with Mr. Canderous and Mr. Christos in my office now.” He reached over to Jane and snatched the film from her hands.
“Thaddeus,” the Inspectre said. “There’s too much to do. Redfield’s on the loose and we need to keep searching for the water woman who killed him, despite the fact that he is alive once more. She may have had a hand in his rebirth. Some strange connection exists between these two incidents and we need to know what it is.”
“That may be,” said Director Wesker, unmoved, “but clearly your lapdogs are stirring up trouble on your behalf and I’d like a moment with them by myself.”
I looked over to the Inspectre with a pained expression. “Sir. . .?”
The Inspectre sighed. “Go, both of you,” he said, still catching his breath. “I’ll be along soon.”
Wesker pushed Connor and me both toward the doorway to the offices, waving us toward it with the film reel.
“You’d better hurry, then,” Wesker said. “I can’t promise they’re going to live that long.”
Professor Redfield’s attack had been brutal, but it was Thaddeus Wesker’s string of expletives on our way back to Greater & Lesser Arcana that really stung. It might have had something to do with most of his comments being aimed directly at me more than Connor for allowing Jane to get marked.
“Do they actually teach you anything in Other Division?” Wesker asked, stomping his way toward his office in the red-lit hallways of the Department. “Or is it always free-range chaos over there?”
“That didn’t fit on our business cards,” I said. “ ‘Other Division’ did.”
Wesker turned to me with a hard glare in his eyes. He went to speak, stopped himself, and then threw open his office door and headed over to a workbench on the right side of the room. The lights and power flickered on both in his office and out in the hall.
Connor put his hand on my shoulder. “Not the time, kid.” He walked over to Director Wesker, who was busy flicking on a magnifying work lamp on top of the workstation as he set the film reel down. “What can you tell us?”
“What I could tell you would fill up volumes,” he sneered, still fuming.
“Hey,” Connor snapped. “This is the first time either of us has ever been attacked by a living film, so give us a break, okay? I’d say it was a first for you, also.”
Wesker turned back to the half-unspooled reel of film and set to examining it. “I’ve at least heard of people experimenting with this before. It’s a bit of a Holy Grail among film buffs with an interest in arcana, but I’ve never actually heard of anyone accomplishing it.” He stretched a length of the filmstrip between both of his hands and held it up under the lens. He moved it up and down to watch it as if running it through a projector. “Interesting.”
I moved closer to study the strip over his shoulder, despite the aura of go-away still radiating off of him. “What is?”
He pushed the arm holding the lens over toward me, keeping the film in place underneath it. “Look closer and tell me what’s missing.”
I studied several of the individual frames, all of them from the end section of the film. The spliced-in section that contained bits of other horror movies was familiar with fields of grass covered with half-dug-up graves in each panel, but I realized what was missing from each and every one of them.
“The professor and the zombies,” I said. “They’re all gone.”
“Exactly,” Wesker said, lying the piece down on the reel. “This section should be filled with dozens of zombies from the film, but now they’re no longer there.”
“Of course they’re not,” Connor added. “Why should they be? All of them died in the theater, save Mason Redfield himself.”
“You mean they’re gone from the film completely?” I asked.
Wesker reached over to me and patted my head. “This younger generation,” he said. “They catch on so quick.”
Before I could say or do anything, a loud haroom came from the doorway and all three of us turned. Inspectre Quimbley and Jane were standing there, looking at us.
“Careful, Thaddeus,” the Inspectre said, walking in. “You keep petting him like that, he’s liable to follow you home.”
Wesker pulled his hand away like I had grown quills. “No, thank you,” he said. “You can have your lapdog back now.” He wiped his hand on his pant leg, and then turned his attention back to the Inspectre. “Well? What’s the damage?”
Jane stepped forward. “Actually, when I killed power to the building, I caused a bit of a problem with getting everything up and running again. I’ve been talking to the Department’s electrical grid with my technomancy and it’s starting to cooperate, but it may take a while for everything to fall in line.”
Wesker changed his focus to the Inspectre, looking none too pleased. “And what about your old . . . friend?”
The Inspectre sighed. “I’m afraid Mason Redfield is gone. We were able to take down all of the zombies that crawled out of the film, so it wasn’t a total wash.”
“So you let him escape?” Wesker asked. He turned his fury on me, his finger pointing only inches from my face. “This is all your fault, Canderous.”
My draw dropped. “How is this all on me?”
“I’m not sure,” he said, “but every time I see a fiasco around here, you’re somehow involved in it.”
“Now, Thaddeus,” the Inspectre chided. “No one just let Mason escape. He planned the whole thing perfectly, only we beat his students to the film apparently. He banked on the zombies providing enough of a distraction if his plans went wrong, thereby securing the means of his evading us. In life, Mason Redfield was quite clever, you know. And why wouldn’t he be? I practically trained him when he came into the Fraternal Order of Goodness. If you want to lay blame anywhere, you had best start at my feet.”
Wesker gave him a tight-lipped nod. “I’ll be sure to do just that when I speak to the Enchancellors.”
“Stop it!” Jane shouted, stepping between the two of them. “Our numbers in the Department are already far too few these days to start fighting among ourselves. Especially when we all that monster loose on the city.”
The Inspectre reached for Jane’s right hand, taking it in both of his. “Thank you, dear girl,” he said. “It’s easy to lose sight quickly in these trying times.”
“Hold on,” I said as something occurred to me. “Does this squash our murder investigation, then?”
Connor looked puzzled. “What do you mean, kid?”
“What I mean is that, technically speaking, Mason Redfield isn’t dead. We watched him walk out of here today, alive . . . ish.”
“A ritual raising like that doesn’t come without a blood price,” Connor added.
“Oh, I can more than guarantee that,” Wesker said. He scooped up the strand of film and rubbed the nail of his thumb against it. He pulled it away and held it up, showing that it had turned a brownish red color.
“This whole spliced-in section of horror film has been soaked in blood,” he said. “Something tells me it isn’t his own.”
“Ick,” I said. “Great. So how do we stop him?”
“First things first,” Wesker said. “We destroy this piece of film.”
“Do you think that’s going to work, Thaddeus?” the Inspectre asked.
“I’m not sure,” he said, “but there is magic bound to these frames, and as far as first steps, destroying that bond is a good way to go.”
“Do we have an expert on this or something?”
Wesker narrowed his eyes at me. “Did you not hear me before when I said I’ve never seen this done successfully before?”
“Right,” I said, throwing my hands up. “Sorry.”