“Recognize it?” I asked.
Trent looked uncertain. “I’m not sure,” he said, and then his expression changed. “Wait. . .I do know this. I worked on it.”
“You did?” I asked.
Trent nodded.
Connor went over to him. “What is it you did for the professor, exactly?”
“I dabble in computers,” he said. “Mostly film editing. The professor had asked me to mash up some of these old monster movies with some old footage of him from his early twenties. He said it would help my skills at composite editing once he mastered the magic technique.”
“It did more than that,” Wesker said. “It helped him come back to life.”
Trent handed the film back to Wesker and stepped back. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know that’s what he was planning . . .”
Jane walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. Trent flinched.
“What about this?” she asked. She spun around and pulled her hair aside, showing him the tattoo between her shoulder blades in the dip of her tank top. “Can you tell me about this symbol?”
Trent examined it for a moment, but then shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m sorry. I haven’t seen that before. What is it?”
“I was hoping you could tell me,” Jane said, frowning.
“I think the professor was definitely making a watery new friend outside of those in the film department,” Connor suggested.
“We’ve been poring over the books to try and deal with the professor as much as we have Jane’s mark,” Allorah said, “but we don’t seem to be able to counter the film’s magic or destroy it.”
“Yet,” Wesker added.
“I think I can help you with your film problem,” Trent said.
“Let’s hope so,” Wesker said. “I’d hate to think these Other Division fools spared your life for nothing.”
“Way to encourage his cooperation, Director,” I said.
Trent ignored us and stepped over to the lab bench. “What do you have in the way of chemicals in your lab?”
Allorah walked him over to a storage cabinet against the wall and threw open the doors. “Help yourself,” she said.
Trent scanned the shelves of bottles and powders, and then took one of the bottles. He went back to the bench, grabbed the tub the film was lying in, and filled it with water. He pulled off the top of the bottle, shook it over the whole thing, and then stirred it with a glass rod that was sitting on the workbench. The reaction was instantaneous as the film destabilized and turned to a reddish brown mush in the tub.
“What did you use?” I asked.
Wesker looked a bit angry at the ease with which Trent had dispatched of the film and snatched up the bottle from counter. He spun it around in his hand to read it.
“NaCl,” Wesker said, and then threw it down into the sink. “I tried chemicals and acids, not to mention magic, and yet nothing. You just came in here, made salt water, and poof.”
“Yep,” Trent said, and then shrugged. “I don’t know why it works, but it does. We kept trying various experiments with the professor, and when they failed, he had us destroy the footage this way.”
“Salt water,” Wesker repeated. “So simple.”
“Don’t beat yourself up too badly, boss,” Jane said with encouragement. “Who would have known it would work, right?”
Allorah stood up from her spot at her lab setup. “I should have been able to figure that out,” she said. “After all, I have several case samples already that are full of salt water. From Simon’s wet coat to the water found in the dead professor’s lungs, even.”
“And I’ve certainly been on the receiving end of enough saltwater attacks,” I said, “that it’s obvious to me that the professor’s had a little help in making all his twisted dreams come true.”
Jane looked down into the tub, grabbing the sides of it and rocking it. The mush swirled as it broke down even more. “So, what?” she said. “Is that it? Does destroying the film destroy the creations? Is the professor dead?”
She looked to Wesker for an answer, but he waved her off, perturbed. “Don’t ask me,” he said. “I’m the one who kept failing to destroy the damned thing, remember?”
All eyes turned to Trent. “I’m not sure, either,” he said, his voice weak. “The few times we actually succeeded in our test footage, destroying the film took care of whatever we had pulled out of it. But now that he’s using blood to sustain it, I don’t know. I was never a part of this blood ritual of Professor Redfield’s. He kind of raised the bar for crazy on us all, now, didn’t he?”
We all stood there in silence for a minute before Jane broke it.
“I could give you some good news if you like,” she said.
“We could use some,” I said.
“I was able to get a reading off that computer you brought in before it died on me,” she said.
“Really?”
“What did it say?” Connor asked.
“It couldn’t tell me much,” she said, “because it wasn’t up and running, but I did get a reading on it as far as the damage it took.” She picked up the laptop from the workbench next to her and held it up. “See along here, where it’s all crunched in? I could tell at what time the various parts of it stopped working by their last notations before equipment failure. Judging by the size of these marks and what the machine could tell me, I think it was done by something with enormous tentacles. An octopus or something.”
“In the East River?” I asked.
“I don’t make sense of these things,” she said, putting the laptop back down and holding her hands up. “I just report them.”
“I’m not attacking you about it,” I said. “I’m just surprised. And tired.”
“Thing is. . .” she said, “judging by the crush points, I have to say we’re looking at a pretty big one at that. Abnormally big.”
“I’ve heard of mutant alligators around New York City,” Connor said, “but mutant octopi might be a first.”
“Perhaps we will all be better served with a good night’s sleep,” Allorah said. “I know I’ve spent too much time on this today with little results. The only plus to it was that now that we’re understaffed, I was able to skip out on several Enchancellorship meetings.”
“What we need is a way to get ahold of the rest of your fellow students in crime,” Connor said to Trent. “We need answers from them.”
“I think I know a way to lure them in,” Trent said.
“Fine,” I said, “but anything we’re going to do can wait until morning.” I walked over to Jane. She wasn’t looking so hot. Whether it was being overworked or the power of the mark draining her, I didn’t know, but for once I hoped it was simply the former.
25
The second I got Jane back to my apartment in SoHo, she showered for an eternity, and when she was through she zonked out immediately, but I couldn’t sleep. My mind was wrapped up in too many things. Jane’s mark was just one in a long list of things bothering me, along with the Inspectre showing signs of his age in the face of dealing with his recently reborn friend. Both those things were out of my control right now, but there was one thing I could help myself with—learning to control my power better. If I was going to absorb downloads of raw emotion from some of my psychometric readings, I needed to learn how to contend with them better.
I went to the built-in bookcase in my living room that took up the greater part of one wall. The backlog of moneymaking collectibles that I had been nabbing with my powers were starting to take over, not only the shelves but the rest of the room. I could work on controlling my powers using them, all the while sorting much of this stuff for return to potential buyers at the same time, but not tonight. I had a feeling that the metal plate I had pulled from the boat-wreck salvage in the lighthouse would be chock-full of all the emotional power I wanted to contend with.
I grabbed a bowlful of Life Savers off one of my end tables and placed it on the floor next to me. I snagged my shoulder bag off the couch, pulled out the piece with SLO etched into its rusting form, and pushed my power into it. My one concern was that I might be visited in the vision by Cassie or Mason Redfield as I had back when I started shopping for dressers for Jane, but I had to try. I hoped that slowly coming to terms with hunting down a dresser for Jane, albeit unsuccessfully so far, would help keep it at bay.