Dead Waters - Anton Strout [46]
Allorah looked pissed. She stormed off with her arms widespread, showing off the expanse of her extensive open office space. “Do you see what I’m working with here? High school classroom leftovers. . . I’m pretty resourceful, but I’m quite a bit short of being a medical MacGyver.”
Jane sat up, pulling her tank top back into place. “So, what do you suggest we do?” she asked. “I’m beginning to think I was safer when I was still temping for cultists.”
Allorah sighed. “For starters,” she said, “you can go home and relax.”
“That’s it?” I asked, exploding.
Allorah remained calm and cool. “That’s it.”
I looked at her in frustration, then walked off across the open loft toward her office area. “You’re as useful as going to the school nurse.”
“Simon,” Allorah said in a sharp tone. “Please understand. Jane’s been marked. Of that, there’s no doubt. The real question is: for what reason? She’s not in pain or visibly hurt. Until Jane exhibits some kind of symptom because of it—and she may not—there’s very little we can do.”
“Shouldn’t I be quarantined or something?” Jane asked, hopping down from the table. “I could barely pull myself out of the shower last night.”
Allorah smiled. “Maybe you just like showers,” she said. “There are some mornings I can’t get out of them, either. For now, you’re fine. I’ll research this. There’s no sign of anything wrong with you, other than the mark. Nothing viral, no wounds or sores . . .”
“I feel sore,” Jane said.
“You and me both,” I added.
Allorah put both her hands to her ears, covering them. “I don’t need to hear about your sexual exploits, I assure you.”
“It’s nothing like that,” I said, shaking my head at her. “We both just took a pretty brutal beating at the hand of that aqua-woman.”
“Hold on,” Allorah said, running over to her desk. She shuffled through several of the folders on it until she pulled one to the top, flipping through it. “Argyle told me about this. This is the same woman you dove off the roof after, yes? The one that tried to drown you?”
“One and the same,” I said.
“And you’re telling me you saw her again?” she asked. She flipped through the folder, and then stopped. “I don’t seem to have a report on that.”
“It just happened last night,” I said. “I haven’t had time to file anything yet. There were fire hydrants going off at us left and right using some form of water manipulation. I think it’s safe to assume she’s the one who drowned Mason Redfield from the inside out.”
Allorah closed the folder and came back over to the lab area. “Do you have a sample?”
I was about to say no, and then remembered my jacket, which was still damp. I went over to where it was hanging on the back of one of the chairs across the lab. It weighed a ton still. In my haste to get Jane to the Department for an exam early this morning, I hadn’t even thought to grab something dry.
I walked over to one of the lab tables covered with supplies and grabbed an empty glass container off of it. I lifted my coat up over it and twisted it until water trickled out of it.
Allorah set to work with different pieces of her chemistry set. “This is a pure sample?” she asked.
“Mostly,” I said. “We were fighting in the rain, after all.”
Allorah continued working in silence for several more minutes like Dr. Frankenstein in his secret lab, running tests and recording results. She was at one of her microscopes when she stood up from it and frowned.
“And you were where again?” she asked.
“Outside the high-rise where we found the professor,” I said, “way over on the East Side by the river.”
“Odd,” she said.
“What is?” Jane asked from the chair she had settled into.
“The water from all those exploding hydrants is still city water. It’s all processed and therefore should be drinkable. In theory, anyway.”
“So?” I asked. “It was raining. We weren’t all that thirsty.”
“That’s the thing,” Allorah said, pointing at the glass slide on the microscope. “You couldn’t have drunk this sample if you wanted to.”
Jane stood and wrapped her arms around my left one. “Why not?”
Allorah tapped at the slide.