NYPD 25th Precinct

Chip Smith was shaking his head as he rounded a corner and Sargent Connie Anderson looked at him and said, “Anyone tell you that you need a shave and a shower…?”
Chip looked at her condemningly and said, “Anyone ever tell you that you need to get out of this place and have some sex…?”
It was well after eight and Chip was supposed to be on vacation. That was happening now. His own niece was sitting in an empty office, across from an officer that was going to treat her like shit, with a donut and a cup of stale coffee in front of her. Right then, he’d imagined that she was probably holding onto the cup for its warmth. The warmth probably wasn’t getting too deep into her bones because interrogation rooms were always cold. It was a way to make the interrogated spill the beans. August had plenty of beans to spill but she wasn’t one of the bad guys.
Connie said to Chip, “Actually, I have been told that…”
Chip smiled and said, “Well, I have a suggestion. When we’re done here…I’ll get my shower. That is; only if you’ll accompany me and we’ll both take care of what we need the most…”
Connie smiled. It was true that Chip had actually just sexually harassed her but she didn’t actually care. They were just chewing the fat. Chip needed this right now. He needed it badly. The phones hadn’t stop ringing, the press was at the doorstep and the only reason that the Chief wasn’t breathing down Chip’s back was because he was needed to keep the wolves at bay. August would tell no one what really happened to her. Her story was fantastical but she was sticking to it.
Just then, Elaine Bothwright came into the hall from the right of Chip and Connie and she said, “Just the confused drunk I was looking for…”
“I’m not a drunk…” Chip said.
“You could have fooled me…”
“I was drunk when I came in…but I am not a drunk. We all need to kick back on the occasion.”
“Well, you’ll need it after what I have to tell you.” Elaine said and that was when Chip noticed that she was carrying a folder. This was going to be bad and he knew it. “I’ve got the forensics report from that apartment…”
‘The apartment beneath August’s…?” Connie asked.
“Yes, that one; and nothing makes any sense.”
Chip stuttered, “T-This already doesn’t make any sense, Elly, please don’t make this any worse, Detective…”
“There’s no hope in that. There were two blood samples, of course; August’s and John Doe.”
“Not too weird so far…” Chip said as they walked into the bullpen.
“August is type A, nothing strange there. Her blood may be the purest sample I have ever seen. If there was ever a corporation that needed to do research on a pure sample, she could donate. Has she ever been sick…?”
“More than a cold?” Chip asked, “I doubt it. She’s never even gotten any serious cuts or gashes. She has no obvious scars either…”
“Sounds about right. She’s perfect…”
“Not weird…” Chip said and shrugged his shoulders, “I don’t understand what the problem is.”
“The problem is not with her, Chip. It’s with the man that she described as being nearly seven feet tall that she tossed out of a window. The fact that he fell six stories, landed on a Porsche and got up and walked away don’t even compare to what’s in this report…”
Chip finally stopped. He stopped and looked at Elaine. She held out the report limply and he looked from it to her and back to it before she held it closer toward him “Take it, Chip. You need to see this… The blood samples and the epithelial samples from the window tell us the same thing…”
Chip snatched the report away and opened it. He read a few lines before his mouth dropped and he looked away from the report. He couldn’t talk, could hardly breathe. This couldn’t have been right but there was no way that the forensic report could be wrong.
Elaine knew what Chip was thinking and she said, “We ran the tests four times. I didn’t want to believe it, Chip. It just doesn’t make any sense….” Chip shivered as Elaine looked toward the floor and said, “Those samples…belong to a person that has been dead for two days already. I can’t even explain why it-“
Chip walked away from Connie and Elaine.

“August, I know you’ve told the story but I need to hear it for myself. I don’t want to hear about what you had to say from everybody else…”
August was sitting across from Chip, looking at her hands that held onto a quickly cooling cup of coffee. She’d told this story seven times. It didn’t matter whether or not Chip was family. She just didn’t want to tell it. She looked at him with sorrowful eyes and all that she could say was, “Uncle Chip…I killed a man today.”
Chip looked at the table with sullen eyes as August asked, “Have you ever killed a man?”
“I must say that I haven’t, August…so I don’t know how to help you…”
“I don’t know what to think. I don’t know how to deal with his…”
Chip shook his head as, from the corner, Charles said, “Rainy, feel Rainy…”
August opened her eyes wide and looked back at Charles. Chip asked her what was wrong and August said, “That’s what he told me before the man smashed in my damned front door… You know, he’s always known when it was going to rain so I thought he was telling me that it felt like rain. I told him that it didn’t. It was much too nice out for that but, now, I get it. He was telling me to feel…”
“To feel?” Chip said slowly.
“He was telling me to feel what happened…”
“Does that mean that something else is about to happen!?” Chip asked as he got up so fast that his chair smashed into the wall behind him.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Chip. I don’t know what any of this means…”
Chip smiled with a twitch and placed his hands on the table. “August…please tell me something, anything?”
This story was old. “I came home to Charles, sent Olivia home and went to Charles’ room. There was a knock at the door and I went to answer it. The man crashed through the door and we fought. He broke through the floor…I don’t know how… B-But we fell through it. And then…I changed…”
“You changed…?”
“I just changed… I was able to….to stop his attacks without touching him. He came at me a couple times but this…energy; an invisible field,” August said and raised her shivering hands, looking at them, “It just came up around me, Chip… I don’t know where it came from or how but it just swept around me. Then, the man was gone… He was out of window before I knew it…Chip… I-I just… I can’t…” August mumbled, her words were running together, her eyes welling with tears. She began to cry but Chip was around the table in a second, holding her in his arms. “I wish my mom was here…” August said.
Chip was silent.
“I wish….just once…Charles could understand me when I was sad…”
Charles, sitting in the corner, kicking his feet, sipping on a juice box, looked toward Chip and August and said, “Rainy, it’s time Rainy… We have to go to the cross-y place… The world crosses on the street, Rainy…”

Alasdair was walking past the fenced in parking lot of the precinct thinking of the dream he had been having before he had been woken up by a call from work. In his dream he had been laying on his back in a lush green field staring at the rain falling from the sky. Alasdair had always loved the rain, it helped him calm down and think whenever he had a problem and in this dream his concentration was at its peak. He watched the rain fall and saw each individual drop hit the grass and break apart, he saw the molecules in the water moving around and forming different drops. It was glorious, it was tranquil, and it was annoying as hell when the ringtone of "the dark side of the force is calling you, (Darth Vader breathing) the dark side of the force is calling you" woke him up. What was really bothering him was that when he had woken up to answer his phone his bed had been completely soaked through mattress and all "one mean cold sweat" he mumbled to himself. There wasn't time to think about it anymore though he was walking into the precinct passing the last piece of graffiti which read "Jesus saves". By the sound of that call hes going to need to be saving someone Alasdair thought as he walked into the cool florescent light of the precinct. He stopped at the desk and asked Jenny where the lieutenant was, and then headed off down the hall she pointed to throwing a "thanks" over his shoulder. As Alasdair rounded a corner he saw Chip sitting in an interrogation room with a woman and some kid. He went around and knocked on the door before entering "So what's all the ruckus about some woman blowing a guy out of a build-" he stopped in mid sentence as took in chips expression and posture, something was wrong. "Sir this is serious inst it?"

Chip looked at Alasdair with a blank expression and he said, "You don't look as bad as I do... I feel like shit. You just look like it. I look and feel like it... And yes, I-"
Chip was cut off when August shot up from her chair and screamed. Charles didn't make a sound but Alasdair and Chip both grabbed at their ears. Bulletproof glass or not, it cracked and Chip turned to yell at August as the jug in the water cooler exploded but before more could happen, August stopped screaming. She looked at Alasdair and said, "You stay out of my head!"
Chip began to yell, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, calm the fuck down August! What the hell was that!?" Next, officers were coming, weapons drawn, stepping in the water on the floor. Chip raised a hand to calm them and said, "It's okay...it's okay... As-as you were... Just get to work..."
The officers reluctantly returned to their posts and Chip looked toward August before he flung his arm out and yelled, "What the hell was that August!?"
She pressed against the wall behind her and said, "I don't know... I just felt like...like there was too much in my head. That man..."
Chip looked at Alasdair and said, "HIM!?"
"His body was talking too me and it was saying too much.... Way too much...."
Chip looked back at Alasdair and said, "There is way too much shit going on right now... I can't do this..."
"Smith," Connie said as she ran around the corner and nearly ran into Alasdair. Chip continued rambling about his plight. "Smith..." He kept talking. Connie yelled, "Chip!"
"What!? Connie, God DAMN it! What?"
"You need to hear this, Sir"
"Damn it, what Connie...?"
"You're not going to believe this but we've got another one..."
"Another one!? I've got my niece in here breaking bullet proof glass, screaming at McCarthy, whose body is talking in her mind! And you're telling me I've got another one? Another what, Connie?!"
Connie pointed to August and said, "Another one of those... A case like hers. Young woman in TriBeCa got 'attacked' by a child that was reported to throw automobiles with her mind. The woman was reported to set herself ablaze and destroy a bus that was completely removed from the ground and moved toward her. She fainted, EMS just picked her up. And her last name is McCarthy too..."

Chip was raising his voice into the phone in his office saying, "Well, I don't care what they need to do! If she isn't at the hospital and she doesn't need to go then they can bring her here! It's one call from dispatch! All it takes is one call to the unit to bring her here! It's not breaking any rules!" Chip paused and then yelled, "i don't give a fuck about protocol. I've got my niece here who blew a dead man out of a wind- No, Roxanne, he was already dead. And it seems he still isn't, because he got up and walked away right... You're an idiot. Okay, fine, he was already dead...and he fell from a window...dead. So if he was already walking and was dead, then falling out of a window and still being dead and then, getting up and walking away....still means that he is dead..." He paused again. "I don't give a shit about that, Roxanne. I have the woman's brother down here and I need her here! NOW!"
Chip slammed the phone. Alex and August were staring at him, blinking. Charles was on the couch, sipping a juice box.
"Chip..." August said quietly, "Is it okay...?"
"Yeah, they're bringing her down here... It's no big deal..."

“For the last time, I’m not in shock so get this blanket off of me.” Edana all but growled at the paramedics in the ambulance as she shrugged off their help once more. She wasn’t hurt, wasn’t in shock, she just wanted to go home. If she went home and curled up, then none of this had happened. The girl didn’t happen, whatever she had done out there that seemed to freak everyone out hadn’t happened. Everyone insisted on keeping her there though and the crowding of these strangers after everything was almost too much. Edie needed her brother here, without him her mind was whirling a mile a minute and she was lashing out at the people who were only trying to help her. It’s how she responded to stress and at this point, her limit was met long ago.

Finally, they let her be to just sit on the gurney in the ambulance and she looked down at her hands, opening and closing her fingers. Everyone was saying she practically destroyed a bus, the one the girl flung but she didn’t remember doing that. Despite not remembering, she knew it was true because the release of energy she felt was real. That building up until the electrifying release, that had happened, it wasn’t something the public made up in a whirl of mass panic to explain the unexplainable. God, was she a freak or something? Maybe it was like in the comic books and movies where superheroes discovered they had powers but she certainly was no hero. Ah, shit why was she sitting here trying to figure this out, nothing made sense right now and wouldn’t until she pretended it was all part of her imagination. Resigning herself to the fact she couldn’t possibly understand what was happening to her, she put her face in her hands and sat there quietly until she heard one of the paramedics talking over a cellphone. Something about taking her to the precinct? Ah, this was fantastic! She could only hope with every fiber of her being that her brother was at the station when she arrived.

The ride to the station was short and, despite the paramedics efforts to stop her, Edana all but ran off of the ambulance and into the doors of the precinct. The moment she stepped foot inside they all stared, like she wasn’t real or shouldn’t be here. They better be glad she just had a traumatic experience or she would let them know how rude she thought they were by watching her that way. Her attention was taken away from all of the eyes as a woman escorted her to where she needed to be. Seconds after she caught sight of her older brother, she ran up and threw her arms around him. Burying her face into his chest, she made a muffled statement. “I swear I’m never going to smoke again.”

Chip sat down in his office, grabbed a remote and turned on the television in the corner, near the ceiling. The picture came in as a man said, "Naw, man! Everybody is crazy! She wasn't on fire, man! She shot lightnin' from her fingers and shit. It was like whoosh-zap-boom! She damn near carved the bus in half. They keep saying fire," the dingy man said. His story may not have been too credible on any other day, as he was a bum. But on this day, he was a television star. He shook his head and said, "but she wasn't on fire. Harvey down on 12th set on fire the other day tryin ta warm his mitts in a oil drum. And dis wadn't fire. Dis was electric-city. I was watchin. My box is in da alley over there," he said and pointed. The reported removed the microphone and held it noticeably lower than normal and into she said, "And there you have it. A crazy story for a crazy day... I don't exactly know what to say about this event but it will surely be in the news for a few days until someone can figure....well...anything out..."
August who was sitting at the desk said, "This is crazy, Chip..."
"I know it is. New York is being sucked into the twelfth level of hell and you and McCarthy play a part in it." At the time, McCarthy was down in the bay waiting for Edana's ambulance to arrive. Chip shook his head and mumbled, "Son-of-a- No way..."
August looked back at the television as the anchor said, "-ports coming in about...a situation in Manhattan. There seems to be another situation like TriBeCa. Eyewitnesses reported of seeing a young girl....blow up people. We can't be sure if it's....a terrorist attack at Times Square or not but...she just blew up so-hold on...we've got a little bit of home video from-" The anchor pushed his finger against his ear and said, "I'm urged to warn all viewers that this imagery you're about to view is extremely visceral and unedited in anyway. What you're about to see is going to disturb you..."
August thought that they were supposed to warn you that it may disturb you....but when she saw it, she understood why the Anchor had said things that way.
The video started off like any family vacation video. A father was taking footage of his son and wife in front of Broadway signage but that was shattered when there was a sound like a sonic boom. The man lurched forward and appeared to have been caught by his wife. The family went down. Then, there was screaming. The wife was screaming, the son was crying and the father was saying, "Oh my God, oh my God, wh-what's..." He turned around and focused the camera on a little girl that was standing amidst a rain of blood and flesh. There was a teenage boy resting against a light pole at the end of the sidewalk. Then, the wife was screaming for the husband to run as others began to do so but he wanted to get the footage. The man swatted his wife and son away but then, he was soon knocked down and he began screaming as he was trampled by people trying to get away from Times Square. Then it came back back to the anchor who was awe-struck. He didn't say anything and a woman was crying in the background. Before the man could say anything, it cut to commercial.
When Chip looked away from the television, the McCarthy siblings were there. The sister was staring into space before she looked at August and said, "That was her... That was the girl that...attacked me in TriBeCa..."
Chip looked at Alasdair and the man nodded his way. "Alright," Chip said and got to his feet, "that's all I need to know... McCarthy go find Connie, get a Durango ready. We're going to Times Square and all of you freaky people with your exploding water coolers and lightning hands and throwing dead men out of buildings are going too..."
Charles, finishing another juice box, his fifth, looked at August and said, "Feel....Rainy..."

*Continuing at "The Crossroads of the World

Alasdair clapped his hands over his ears as the woman started screaming. what the hell is wrong with this woman he thought as she yelled for him to stay out of her head. Finally Chip had calmed her down and sent the officers who had busted into the room away, but before Alasdair could put in his two cents about his body telling her to much It's not like I'm trying to hit on her or anything Connie came in with a report about some woman throwing taxi cabs in tribeca. "dear god what this dosent stop" Alasdair said as he listened to Connie. His breath froze in his chest when he heard her say the suspects last name McCarthy. "Shit sir, I need to see her to make sure she is ok!" Alasdair said in a frantic voice. No sooner had he spoken than the lieutenant started rattling off orders to get his sister to the station. "Thank you sir" was all Alasdair could manage before he had ran out the door heading towards where his sister would be dropped off.

The ambulance finally arrived and Alasdair waited impatiently for them to escort his sister inside. He felt a flood relief as he saw her escorted by Jenny, she was a little worse for wear but she was alive and that is what counted. Edana ran up and embraced him telling him that she "would never smoke again". Alasdair had tears in his eyes as he replied jokingly " and I thought is was just a miracle you survived gettin taxi cabs thrown at you... and now your quitting smoking looks like Gods puttin in some over time huh" He squeezed her tightly one more time before grabbing her hand and gently pulling her down the hall "The lieutenant wants to see you sis, best not to keep him waiting with all this shit goin on"

They arrived in the room with Chip right as the new was showing bloody clips of chaos happening down a tribeca. God it was horrible and all caused by some little girl. "That was the girl that...attacked me in TriBeCa.." his sister announced a little shakily. Alasdair looked at Chip and recognized the look in his eyes; It was time to do something. He nodded at the lieutenant in knowing agreement and rushed out of the room to find Connie. He found her scanning through papers like she was possessed, she looked like hell. "Connie, Chip need you in his office ASAP" she looked at him blankly for a second before she actually heard and nodded her head. He grabbed some keys for the Durango and ran into the parking lot to get one passing by the Jesus saves graffiti again He sure as hell needs to tonight. Alasdair hopped into the Jeep and and pulled around in front of the station. He dialed Chips number on his cell and when he heard the click of an answer "I've got the Durango out front sir!"