“What the hell. . . ?” he said, but words left him as I watched him trying to take in the bustle of activity back here. He looked up and noticed the warding runes carved into the walls of the main bull pen.
“You guys aren’t normal police, are you?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “The normal police vacillate between laughing at us and fearing us. It’s frustrating.”
“Come on,” Connor said, grabbing him by the shirt. He pulled at Trent and the boy started walking again, still taking in everything around him as we went.
“Are you, like, Men in Black?” he asked, addressing me.
“No,” I said. “They’re fictional. You know how I know that?”
Trent shook his head.
“Because they have a huge budget and unlimited resources.”
The three of us continued walking back through the bull pen before passing through the curtain that sectioned off most of Other Division from the main work area. We were approaching our partners desk when Trent started to get back some of his focus.
“I think maybe I should call my dad,” he said. “He’s a lawyer.”
“Sit down and shut up,” Connor said, throwing the kid down onto the extra chair at our desks.
“Ow,” he said. “I thought you said you were supposed to be the good guys.”
“So?” Connor asked, sitting down at his desk. “Doesn’t mean were the gentle guys, now, does it? So, let’s get back to what you were talking about earlier. You mentioned there was a problem with your little operation over at NYU.”
Trent shook his head. “Problem?” he asked, trying to feign ignorance. “What problem?”
“Knock it off,” I said. “You’re not that convincing an actor.”
Trent looked hurt. “In all fairness, I am only a first-year. They won’t even let me pick a specific school of acting until much later on.”
Connor leaned down over him. “There’s not going to be a later on if you’re thrown out of NYU or stuck in jail, is that clear?”
Trent ran his fingers nervously through his hair. “Okay, okay. . .” he said. “You know, come to think of it, I do remember what we were talking about earlier.”
“How surprising,” Connor said, standing back up.
“So what do you want to know?” Trent asked.
“Why don’t you start with what you meant when you said there was a problem with those. . . things that came after us?”
Trent settled back into the chair, looking sheepish. “Those creatures that were attacking you,” Trent said. “They were a part of an ongoing experiment that the professor had started when he was alive. It was all part of what he called the next level of cinematic achievement—interactive films.”
“So you were finding ways to bring things to life using film,” I said.
“Yeah,” Trent said, “but despite all of the professor’s efforts, anything he animated didn’t last very long. Whatever he created would disappear back to nothingness after a short time, liquefy. He died before he could find a way to stabilize it.”
“Even so, how was he able to do even that much?” I asked.
Trent shook his head. “I don’t know. The other students didn’t really let me in on everything. Said it was because I was new . . .”
“Or maybe they wanted you for something more sinister,” I said. “Maybe they needed a little something human to get things stabilized.”
“What do you mean?” Trent asked.
“When Elyse cut you, your blood seemed to spark things off,” I said.
Trent looked down at his bandage. A little bit of the blood had soaked through to the surface, forming a tiny circle on the top of it. “Don’t remind me.”
“You said that those manifestations weren’t permanent,” I continued. “That they’d run out of steam and dissolve away.”
Trent nodded. “That seemed to be a very vexing point to Elyse, the professor, and the others,” he said.
“You know what I think?” Connor asked, and then pressed on without waiting for an answer from anyone. “I think Mason Redfield found a way to make the manifestations permanent, only he didn’t share it with you all. I think he figured out that it would take a full-on blood sacrifice.”
“But once he figured it out, he kept quiet and only used it on himself,” I said. “Which means that really was him we were fighting the other day.”
“Wait,” Trent said, leaning forward. “Are you saying the professor’s alive?”
Connor looked at him, watching his face. “You mean you really don’t know?”
The color drained out of Trent’s face. “No. . . I mean, we knew he wanted to try and get the whole process to work on humans, but it had never succeeded. When he died, we thought that might be the end of it until Elyse talked us all into continuing on his work. But he’s alive?”
“Reborn,” I said. “Much younger, too.”
“Wow,” Trent said, suddenly looking more thrilled than terrified. “Forgive me, but from the practical science aspect of it, it’s impressive, isn’t it? How did he get it to work?”
Connor gave him a grim smile. “You remember what we said about your blood sparking up those movie creatures earlier?”
“Yeah . . .”
“Have you seen your pal George lately?” Connor asked.
“Oh,” Trent said. He sat there in silence as the realization took hold of him.
“So you’re saying you didn’t know this was Professor Redfield’s plan?” I asked.
Trent shook his head. “We were all going to get rich together making films—that’s it, as far as I knew. Think about it. If you could take a bank robbing movie and reproduce the contents of a bank vault. . .Well, it wasn’t like we were actually hurting anyone, right?”
“I think you’re underestimating the power of greed,” Connor said. “You know what I think? I think your fellow students had a better idea of what the professor was up to and I think they kept you in the dark. You were getting played, kid.”
“But why?” he asked. “Why would they do that?”
“I think the professor taught them something very fundamental about magic,” I said.
Trent looked at me, his face searching for understanding in mine. “And what is that?”
“Magic has a price,” I said, “and for something like Mason Redfield being reborn, that price is high. You want to achieve the impossible, there’s going to be a big price tag on that. This one was written in human blood.”
Trent was practically shaking in his seat, his eyes nervous. “I don’t want to die,” he said.
“We don’t want you to die, either,” Connor said. “If you help us, we’ll do our best to keep that from happening.”
Trent nodded, but didn’t speak.
“Good,” I said. I got up from my desk and stepped out into the aisle outside our work area. “Come with us, then.”
Trent stood and followed me, with Connor sticking close behind him. Trent seemed resigned to his fate, but I didn’t put it past him to try to make a run for it if we gave him an opportunity to. I headed upstairs, straight for Allorah Daniels’s office where Director Wesker was working alongside her. Jane sat exhausted with a ring of empty water glasses in front of her.
“We come bearing gifts,” I said. “Yet again.”
The three of them turned to look at us, all of them scrutinizing the stranger with us.
“And who is this?” Wesker demanded.
“This,” Connor said, slapping the student on the back hard enough to drive him forward, “is Trent. He’s our best chance at figuring out what our mad professor was really up to.”
“I’m starting to wonder if the water woman killed him so he could be reborn,” I said. “He had to die to be reborn, right? What kind of deal did Mason Redfield strike with her?”
Trent spotted the coil of film sitting on the laboratory workbench. “May I?” he asked.
Allorah waved him over but gave him a look that was stern warning not to mess with her.
Trent walked over with tentative steps and waited for her to hand the piece of film over, and then held it up to the light to examine it.