Knee deep in enhanced photography, microfilm, manilla folders and interagency reports, JOSEF had found some leads. The marine in the photograph with Colonel Daniels was one PFC Ronald Valiant, a dishonourably discharged teen delinquent with a storied criminal record. Apparently Valiant used to run drugs for the Contras, before being shot down over Nicaragua and imprisoned by the Sandinistas. After somehow escaping back to the US, he'd entered the St. Louis drug scene, garnering a reputation as an ex-CIA mercenary with a commie ear collection. Valiant had fled St. Louis a few years back, suspected of dosing up a rival dealer on heroin and then burning him alive with homemade napalm.
This "Doug Walters" character appeared to be the deacon of St. Louis' Enolsis chapter. His listed residence was even the same building as their chapterhouse - he lived in an apartment upstairs. Curiously, Walters had a surprisingly sparse bureaucratic trail. Sure his SSN and birth certificate checked out, but he'd only applied for a drivers license a few years ago. Right after Valiant fled St. Louis...
Meanwhile, JESSE was looking at dead people. The basement morgue of St. Louis General Hospital was swarming with armed FBI agents and forensic techs. JESSE watched as the resident medical examiner, Dr. Kimberly Morris, cut up what remained of poor Colonel Daniel. His corpse was so desiccated it had to be held upright with leather straps - it couldn't support its own weight without snapping like a twig. The cause of death was completely indeterminable, but probably had something to do with the runaway chemical reaction that had destroyed Daniel's tissues at the molecular level. The heat released by the disintegration of these atomic bonds had cooked him from the inside out. Lovely way to go.
The corpses grafted into walls and ceilings (and even pieces of furniture in the case of Daniel's dead pimp) didn't offer many answers either. The flesh of their bodies had molecularly bonded with the material they'd phased into. Cause of death was mostly due to shock or organ failure.
At another hospital, JENKINS was trying to get Senator Antonio sober; the politician was conked out on nearly every painkiller under the sun. Unable to make headway, the FBI agent just snuck inside the senator's hospital room while his staffers were distracted. DiTorrio was too insensate to make much sense, seeming to mistake JENKINS for his "boy" and weeping incoherently about him being safe. Strange, considering the senator never had children. Or had he? On a hunch, JENKINS held up a copy of the photograph taken from Daniel's mansion. He couldn't deny the familial similarities between PFC Valiant and DiTorrio. Filing away a potential illegitimate son into his mental blackmail folder, JENKINS made himself scarce before his intrusion was noticed.
At Washington University, JEAN and Scanlon ran into the AFOSI goons again. They were arguing with WU's professor of geology, Dr. Archer. The geologist was exasperatedly explaining the rock was just that. A rock. Totally normal quartz, probably sourced from somewhere in Arizona. Upon the arrival of the Agents, Scanlon offered to perform his own tests so the professor could get back to his lectures. The MiB relented, and allowed Dr. Archer to leave. Unfortunately, Scanlon couldn't find anything to disprove the professor's conclusion - it really was just a chunk of quartz. The only peculiarity was that it was only half a crystal, it had recently been bisected with a jeweller's saw.
Cpt. Wentzlauf thanked the Agents for their work, then demanded the crystal be remanded in his custody. As the Agents argued back and forth with the USAF investigators, a bedraggled Dr. Archer suddenly reentered the room. He claimed to have forgotten a crucial test, then rattled off a bunch of meaningless technobabble as an excuse. JEAN noticed the professor appeared to have recently taken his clothes off - his shirt was on backwards and he was missing a sock.
Scanlon refused to give over the rock, sealing it inside a steel hardcase. So the 60-year-old academic pried the box from his grasp and *threw* the 6' 3" trucker across the room. JEAN and the AFOSI goons swore and pulled their pistols, blasting the shapeshifter's head off with a hail of bullets. It promptly regrew its head and tried to flee the scene, but Scanlon pinned its leg to the floor with a metal rod. The thing ripped its limb to shreds trying to escape, giving JEAN an opening to shoot the hardcase out of its hand. Unnoticed by anyone but J-Cell, the crystal rolled out of the damaged container and under a desk.
As the monster roared in anger, Scanlon scooped up a table and smashed it against a wall, pinning it in place as it writhed and screeched. JEAN grabbed the crystal and fled the scene, passing by the naked corpse of the real Dr. Archer stuffed in a maintenance closet on her way out. The shapeshifter managed to escape Scanlon's pin, but was driven back by a renewed flurry of gunfire from the MiB. The trucker threw a chair into a window and dropped down to ground level, landing unharmed with a safety roll. The pair escaped in Scanlon's box truck, tearing out of the University parking lot as the shapeshifter emerged from the building behind them, now appearing as a naked blonde woman.
J-Cell rendezvoused at their rooms in the Hilton, courtesy of ASAC Gaston. After JEAN and Scanlon briefed everyone on the facestealing monster prowling about, the Agents agreed they'd need a sign-countersign to confirm each others identities - at least the beast hadn't stolen Dr. Archer's memories given its embarrassing attempt at scientific jargon. Likely based on the shapeshifter's similarities to a T-1000 made from chicken mince, they decided on - "What day is it tomorrow?" "Judgement day."
No points for originality.
After patching up Scanlon's bruises and getting a fitful night's rest, the Agents woke up to a call from St. Louis PD about an ABD they'd put out - a patrolman had found Colonel Daniel's missing Mercedes. With several leads to pursue and a monster on the loose, the Agents split up into teams:
- JEAN and Scanlon would investigate the Mercedes.
- JENKINS would return to the (now sober) DiTorrio for a renewed interrogation. The Agents assumed the gagglefuck of private security and police officers surrounding the senator would keep him safe from the shapeshifter.
- JESSE and JOSEF would stake out the Enolsis chapterhouse.
The Mercedes, left in a bad part of town, had been ransacked after being abandoned by Doug Walters. The windows were all smashed out and the tires were missing. The Agents found a discarded purse on the ground, all the cash taken but the identifying documents left behind. It belonged to one Rachael Marx, likely one of the party girls from the orgy.
Unfortunately for Ms. Marx, JEAN found her stuffed into a nearby dumpster. Her head had been smashed in against the brickwork, likely as an attempt by Walters to silence a potential witness. The Agents couldn't find any fingerprints on the scene, it'd been expertly wiped clean. They still took plenty of swabs for FBI forensics to go over, then remanded the car and corpse to St. Louis PD.
JENKINS didn't get very far with the senator. Though the man was awake and lucid, he was hostile to any attempt at interrogation. He recoiled at questions about his connection to Ronald Valiant, causing both senator and agent to exchange heated threats of arrest, sanction, media exposure, firing etc. until JENKINS was politely escorted out of the room by private security. He at least learned that DiTorrio was planning to discharge himself from the hospital and fly back to Virginia later that day.
At least JESSE and JOSEF had better luck. After a few hours of watching the Enolsis chapterhouse from an undercover van borrowed from local police, they saw a man matching Doug Walters' description arrive in a brown sedan. He warmly greeted the (very attractive) receptionist and then entered a sideroom. He exited after a few minutes with a duffle bag weighed down by a pair of heavy objects.
Then he went upstairs for half-an-hour, before returning to his vehicle and driving away. The Agents attempted to follow him, but Walters noticed his stalkers - flooring it through a red light at an intersection. Without a siren to clear the way and unwilling to drive through traffic, they didn't bother pursuing him.
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