EDIT: Retroactive titling! The piece below you is: "Midnight Inquiry."
...
Julia
leaned against the railing, basking in the light and heat radiating from the
propane lamp standing in the roof patio’s corner. Like every other college-town
‘it-bar’ Altus drew from every social stratum: rich, poor, urban, rural, Greek,
GEED. What passed for cosmopolitan in a southern college-town, combined with
the noise, made Altus a good place to meet discretely if you could talk over
the din.
Almost 9:30, Julia thought. She frowned. Sam said this guy would be freakishly punctual. She reached into
her pocket for a cigarette.
“Any to share?”
Julia looked to
her right to see an average boy about her age. He wasn’t unattractive, but aside
from the faux-hawk he styled his hair into everything about him was utterly
forgettable. The way he carried himself, Julia got the impression he preferred
things that way.
Julia handed him a
cigarette. He lit hers, then his, took a draw. He looked her up and down and
smirked, pleased.
“The street’s
pretty tonight, eh?” He turned to look over the railing and Julia followed
suit, sliding closer.
“You have my fee?”
Julia handed him
her clutch. The boy opened it, looked inside, then put it inside his jacket.
“It’s funny,” he
said. “A girl like you usually buys pot, adderall; coke or molly once in a
while. Not this stuff.”
“You get all sorts
of surprises when your assumptions about people are based on how they fit their
jeans.”
He grinned,
blowing smoke out his nose, forming a temporary mustache. “True, but certain
substances attract certain types. From what you requested, you’re not partying,
you’re after answers.”
Julia flinched,
but played it off as a shiver in the cold. She took a drag and exhaled.
The boy’s smile
faded.
“I’m giving you
what you asked for, make no mistake. But seriously reconsider how badly you
want to enter Eden. There’s a reason I’m selling you ingredients, not the final
product.
“Sam said you had
a sober partner, and that you were both chemists, otherwise I wouldn’t have
agreed to supply this particular assortment. But this goes beyond science and
into something far more ambiguous…and disturbing. People sometimes come back
wrong from acid. People sometimes come back right
from a pilgrimage to Eden.”
Julia’s eyes
narrowed. “I’m not stupid.”
“This isn’t a
stupid person’s mistake.”
A pair of hands in
the crowd behind them hooked a full-sized purse onto Julia’s free hand. She
looked in that direction and saw nothing. She looked back towards the boy, but
he was gone.
…
“You two know what
you’re doing?” John asked. He eyed them from the door, more wary of his friends
than being discovered.
“Just watch the
hallway,” said Julia.
“It’s Saturday
night, and Katie says no one’s come to this floor of the Aerospace lab since…everything.”
The three of them
had set up shop in the radiation room, four floors below ground, where three of
their friends had done the same two months ago.
“You don’t want to
find out what happened?” Julia said, measuring the things the dealer sold them
in the amounts Katie specified.
“I just think
there are other avenues to explore that don’t involve pseudo-science and
potential brain damage.”
“Oh ye of little
faith,” Katie murmured, swirling something around a beaker. “The extract should
be ready. 10 grams Julia.”
Julia poured the
requested amount into a test tube, handed it off, then stood and stretched.
“Other avenues,” Julia
said, walking around their circular work area. She gave a dry laugh. “You mean
after the police gave up. After two private investigators gave up, and the
third laughed us away before we could ask. Other avenues, for the three kids
who vanished into thin air. No struggle, no foul play, not a single possession
missing.”
“Doctor Snider—“
John began.
“Will not tell us
anything! Just because the police couldn’t implicate him doesn’t mean he
doesn’t know what happened. Why else would he take his sabbatical four months
early? It would draw too much attention.”
John looked away.
“He has to be guilty. What else could it be?”
Julia folded her
arms. “I don’t know John, but this is our best shot. Snider was the head of
Theoretical Physics, and Kyle, Ian, and Karla were working with him on fringe
theories, so a little ‘pseudo-science’ comes with the territory. Besides, that
one night we all saw—“
Now John snapped.
“You saw something, I was drunk. You must have been drunk
too.”
Julia bit her
thumb. John had been drunk walking
through an alley downtown, but Katie had seen the same thing in a lab on the
top floor of the chemistry building…and Julia had seen it walking into her
apartment bedroom.
It looked like
Ian, but where he had been thin, the thing had been gaunt. It had been
partially translucent, glowing with white light along its skin like it had
stepped off a television screen. Julia had frozen as the thing that wasn’t Ian
turned towards her, snarled, and let out a horrendous screech. John had fled,
almost getting hit by a car; Katie had screamed, drawing the attention of night
guards who found her sobbing in a closet two floors down; but Julia had
remained frozen as it charged her, feeling a strange tingle as it passed
through her, ghostlike. When she turned it had vanished.
“Done,” Katie
said.
She stepped back.
A soft mat and a pillow lay in the center of three concentric rings, one of
copper wires, one of salt and one of yellow oil. Julia stepped inside and laid
on the mat.
“How many
hallucinogens are we dealing with again?” she asked.
“If you lost
count, I don’t think you want a reminder,” said Katie. She flicked a syringe.
“Last chance to chicken out.”
“Better stick me
then.”
Julia closed her
eyes, and relaxed. She felt a prick on her arm, followed by pressure. She counted
until five minutes had passed, focusing on slow, deep breaths.
Then she opened
her eyes.
