So, our heroes have a few hours before the basketball game at Fireweed Academy, where Tristan St. Cyr is convinced something awful is going to happen. They decide to check out the site where Donna Fitzroy crashed her car and died.
They find the site easily enough, it's on a curve in a residential area. Apparently she spun out and hit a tree, but as they look at it, the envoys are confused. Kat Jameson tries to mentally recreate the accident and can't quite brain it - how fast was she going? What angle did she hit this tree? And more to the point, how was this accident fatal? Tuulugaak Hanta texts Dr. Bellman back in Seward and asks for more info, and he calls back a few moments later.
He tells them that, according to what he was able to find, Mrs. Fitzroy died from blunt force trauma to the head, apparently from her head whipping back and forth after hitting the tree. She wasn't wearing her seatbelt (weird) and the airbags didn't deploy (weirder), and either of those things probably would have saved her. Tul looks at the road and does a little mental math, and figures she had to be doing at least 40mph and accelerating for the accident to be as bad as it was, and that doesn't make any sense, either.
Kayla Vanderhoven looks at what's in the area - mostly houses. She does a little digging into who lives in those houses, and comes up with a couple of very interesting results. First, Tanya Valmier, the teacher who died from an "accidental" gunshot, lived less than a quarter mile away. Second, and perhaps more significant, Tom Gregorov, brother of the late Baines Gregorov, the mechanic who was crushed by a car in his shop, lives very close by, as well.
The envoys decide to go and check on the Gregorovs. Tul sneaks up to the house and senses the Unknown, but doesn't feel anything. He gives an all-clear to the others, and Tristan knocks on the door. After a tense exchange with Mr. Gregorov, he opens the door and faces down Tristan (remember that this guy got two spam calls from "QCOMM" yesterday and now so goth kid is showing up at his door, it all seems very weird). But Tristan makes good use of the Telepathic Empathy discipline and manages to steer the conversation toward Baines and Samuel (Tom's son, Baines' nephew), and Tom even mentions that he's heard Sam talking to Baines in his room. Probably that's normal?
Tristan asks to speak with Samuel for a moment, and Tom lets him in. Sam is pretty taken with Tristan's pet raven (especially since it meows, sometimes), and Tristan uses his discipline on the kiddo as well. He feels that Sam feels tremendous guilt over the deaths of his teachers - like, not in a generalized way, he feels directly responsible. Tristan tries to sense the Unknown and just winds up with a headache for his trouble. Tom goes to get him an aspirin, and Tristan takes the opportunity to press Sam a little more.
Sam tells him that when he and his dad went to his uncle's shop, he found a little mechanical man that looked like Baines (he calls it "Robo-Baines"). He says that Robo-Baines talks to him, and that when he got in trouble with Mr. Torney for cussing out Nat Levin last week, he told Robo-Baines that he was mad at Mr. Torney and the next day he died!
Tristan asks to see Robo-Baines, but Sam says he's not here, he hasn't seen him since yesterday. Last time he saw him, Robo-Baines' arm wasn't moving and he was dragging his leg, like he was hurt.
Sam's dad comes back with pills, and Tristan takes them and thanks them. He offers counseling via QCOMM and then excuses himself, and hooks up with the others. Now with a better understanding of what they're dealing with ("so it's like, a car golem?"), they start thinking of how to find it. Kat figures that, if it was injured, it probably hitched a ride with either Tom or Sam yesterday, and where did they end up?
Well, Sam ended up at school, where Nat, the kid he was mad at, was carried out in a stretcher. That seems like the best place to look.
The envoys head to the school, and Tul makes contact with Miguel, his buddy who works there in athletics, and offers to help set up for the game. Miguel is happy to have the help, and when the envoys get there he gives them all jobs, which they mostly ignore. Kayla notes that the bleachers are motorized; hit a switch and they retract or expand. She watches the switch, while Tristan peers underneath. He doesn't see anything, but he hears a sound like a child wheezing.
Tristan immediately heads underneath to help, and gets about to the middle of the bleachers when suddenly he can't move. Rather, he can, but he feels clumsy and unsure of himself, like he has to move everything deliberately. And then, of course, the bleachers start closing. But fortunately, the envoys figured this might happen.
Tul uses Power Surge to short the bleachers, and Arlo Miller activates Sphere of Protection over where Tristan is, giving him time to get out (when the Sphere goes up, the weird clumsy-brain effect goes away, too). Now figuring that Robo-Baines is underneath the bleachers somewhere, the envoys flank the openings, looking for it, but then all of their phones die.
None of them really want to go into the dark to look for this thing, but fortunately they have another option. Kayla whips out her yoga mat and sits down to meditate, and Leaves her Body (Tristan stares with newfound respect and fascination). She walks through the bleachers and looks around, and finds the thing. It's just as Sam described, a little gnome-like creature made of lugnuts and car parts, but it's missing its left arm.
 |
| It looks something like this |
She draws back to kick it, using Astral Attack (what the heck, worth a shot), but misses and falls right through the wall into the snow. At this point, Tristan standing near her body, sees a little metal object scuttling out of the bleachers and heading right for her!
Tristan tries to get in its way, but it's much too small and quick. It leaps up in the air and aims for Kayla's eyes, but Tristan yells "YALDY! GET THE SHINY!" and his raven snatches it out of midair and drops it in Tristan's hand. Tristan smashes it against the bleachers until it comes apart, and Kat, also standing near Kayla, hucks a basketball at it. The ball knocks it to pieces, and Tul goes under the bleachers from the other side and stomps the rest of the gnome into oblivion. Arlo raises a Sphere just to check, but the parts don't move. Kayla returns to her body and Tristan helps her up, and they both use Eyes of the Dead to see if they spot anything. All they see is a faint wisp of...something...dissipating as the gnome dies.
At this point their phones turn back on, and they get a bunch of messages from Dr. Bellman (who's been trying to contact them to give them more info on Tanya Valmier, which of course they don't need now). The envoys hang around to watch the basketball game, and then head back to Seward, victorious.
No comments:
Post a Comment