Dead Waters - Anton Strout [82]
Jane came down from the projection booth and walked over to me through the last bits of fighting, the reel of film held in her hands at arm’s length. She clearly wanted nothing to do with it. Connor walked over to me when he finished dispatching the remaining zombies next to him. He looked down at the growing film of goo on the floor. “You think that happened to the professor, too?” he asked.
“Let’s hope so,” I said.
“Doubtful,” the Inspectre added as he joined us, winded and huffing. “Very doubtful.”
“Why do you say that?”
“The Mason I knew was resourceful, a careful thinker, and this newly reborn Mason seems to still have it. He wouldn’t have planned this out only to suffer the same fate as these celluloid minions. You heard what he expected. He thought he would be with some of his students at another location, not here in our movie theater. The zombies were a mere distraction.”
Director Wesker put his hand on my shoulder, squeezing down on it hard. “Speaking of distractions,” Wesker said. “I want a word with Mr. Canderous and Mr. Christos in my office now.” He reached over to Jane and snatched the film from her hands.
“Thaddeus,” the Inspectre said. “There’s too much to do. Redfield’s on the loose and we need to keep searching for the water woman who killed him, despite the fact that he is alive once more. She may have had a hand in his rebirth. Some strange connection exists between these two incidents and we need to know what it is.”
“That may be,” said Director Wesker, unmoved, “but clearly your lapdogs are stirring up trouble on your behalf and I’d like a moment with them by myself.”
I looked over to the Inspectre with a pained expression. “Sir. . .?”
The Inspectre sighed. “Go, both of you,” he said, still catching his breath. “I’ll be along soon.”
Wesker pushed Connor and me both toward the doorway to the offices, waving us toward it with the film reel.
“You’d better hurry, then,” Wesker said. “I can’t promise they’re going to live that long.”
Professor Redfield’s attack had been brutal, but it was Thaddeus Wesker’s string of expletives on our way back to Greater & Lesser Arcana that really stung. It might have had something to do with most of his comments being aimed directly at me more than Connor for allowing Jane to get marked.
“Do they actually teach you anything in Other Division?” Wesker asked, stomping his way toward his office in the red-lit hallways of the Department. “Or is it always free-range chaos over there?”
“That didn’t fit on our business cards,” I said. “ ‘Other Division’ did.”
Wesker turned to me with a hard glare in his eyes. He went to speak, stopped himself, and then threw open his office door and headed over to a workbench on the right side of the room. The lights and power flickered on both in his office and out in the hall.
Connor put his hand on my shoulder. “Not the time, kid.” He walked over to Director Wesker, who was busy flicking on a magnifying work lamp on top of the workstation as he set the film reel down. “What can you tell us?”
“What I could tell you would fill up volumes,” he sneered, still fuming.
“Hey,” Connor snapped. “This is the first time either of us has ever been attacked by a living film, so give us a break, okay? I’d say it was a first for you, also.”
Wesker turned back to the half-unspooled reel of film and set to examining it. “I’ve at least heard of people experimenting with this before. It’s a bit of a Holy Grail among film buffs with an interest in arcana, but I’ve never actually heard of anyone accomplishing it.” He stretched a length of the filmstrip between both of his hands and held it up under the lens. He moved it up and down to watch it as if running it through a projector. “Interesting.”
I moved closer to study the strip over his shoulder, despite the aura of go-away still radiating off of him. “What is?”
He pushed the arm holding the lens over toward me, keeping the film in place underneath it. “Look closer and tell me what’s missing.”
I studied several of the individual frames, all of them from the end section