Participants:
| Scene Title | Ravenous |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | In the darkness beneath the streets of Red Hook Market, a clue leads Cassandra to a dark discovery. |
| Date | March 17, 2018 |
Date: March 17, 2018
Case #: 18-11472
Investigator: Cassandra Baumann, 8:30pm
Safe Zone Food Storage Theft Investigation
With the time spent in the sewers beneath the Brooklyn Red Cross storage facility and some time to kill before the forensics reports came back, Cassandra decided to do a little digging on her own.
Beneath the wreckage of the ransacked Safe Zone Commission storeroom a body was found. The bones were removed along with any personal items and, after a quick forensic examination, the remains of the boy - William DeLuca - were stored in a small, cool room dedicated for such things until the investigation was over. His personal items were stored with him and Cassandra, being the sort with the ability to investigate things with a bit more depth than others, took it upon herself to visit what was left of the boy in order to do the most thorough investigation she could before going to the site itself.
Spending a few moments in front of the cooler, familiarizing herself with the forensic report, Cassandra plucked William’s Linderman Act Registration card off the board where it was pinned and lowered herself into the coroner’s creaking office chair, reading it through the thin plastic.
William DeLuca
Registered Evolved; Tier-1
Psychic Projection
With a twist of her fingers, she breaks the seal on the id card and with bare fingers, plucking it from the bag. She spends a moment trying to get quick flashes of anything, her eyes closing for a second, but nothing substantial appears. Little glimpses of things that will require her diving deeper. She sighs and puts the card on the desk in front of her, winding her blindfold tight, hiding her eyes and slipping it back into her hands with a little fumbling. “Here we go, William.” she murmurs, settling back in the chair, rubbing the ID between thumb and forefinger. “Show me what you’ve got.”
And for the longest time, there’s nothing to see. As time passes and Cassandra focuses her power, more intense emotional echoes start to come to the front.
Muddy images of clinical rooms and offices, blood tests and doctors, men in suits and observations. It's an invasive Linderman Act-era ability screening, probably a post 2010 period judging from the armed guards watching the registration.
It’s confusing. Everything is hazy, coming from everywhere instead of one or two places, all mixed into each other. Cassandra feels the thorns of a headache starting to dig into the base of her skull. She grits her teeth and focuses, trying to make sense of it all.
The vision is blurred from the multiple perspectives that may have something to do with the way William saw the world using his ability. Ultimately the most succinct pieces pulled from the id are of a man and a woman in their early thirties - this must be DeLuca’s parents. But even that is hazy and indistinct.
With a shiver, Cassandra lets her power fade, pulling the blindfold off and wiping her eyes before looking down at the smiling face on the battered hunk of plastic. The card is placed back in its envelope and pinned back on the board, the woman rising to her feet once she’s gathered her bearings and makes to leave. Before she does, though, Cassandra rests her hand lightly on top of William’s box, giving it a light, almost affectionate pat. “Thanks, William.” She sounds sincere. “We’ll see about getting you some peace.”
Three hours later.
“Are you sure you need to go down there?”
Cassandra, swaddled in her exploration gear and waterproof boots, looked up at the man standing guard over the opening she was currently halfway through. “Yes, I’m sure. The better question is ‘do I want to?’” She lets that linger, staring at the sanitation worker for a few quiet seconds before she starts down the path, following the markings left by SESA forensic teams. Yellow crime scene tape was draped everywhere forming a barrier across the mouth of the tunnels that she moved through. This wasn’t as bad as the Brooklyn sewers - a little more claustrophobic which was unpleasant, but without as much water which was better than having to wade through waist-deep sewage.
God, it took her two hours to get the stench out of her hair.
Finally, after a few twists and turns, Cassandra arrived at the site of the pile of refuse beneath the storage room, now mostly cleared up. The mattress - William’s last resting place - was still there, discarded in a corner, stained with almost a decade of unmentionable grime, the alcove where his body was found clean and quiet, every physical trace of him gone.
Crouching in front of the small alcove, Cassandra put the milk crate she brought with her down to act as a makeshift seat and prepared herself as best she could to see what more than likely was a young boy’s death. Taking a sip from her flask, she wrapped her blindfold tightly a second time and pushed…
Rain pours down in streams through the sewer grate in the ceiling, floods the floor and makes garbage float a foot off the ground. The wind outside sounds like a scream, heavy and howling, more than an ordinary storm. Lightning flickers from the surface, the sound echoes down into the sewers, briefly drowning out the sound of shrieking rats.
A boy of twelve or thirteen years old is crouched on a mattress supported from the floor by four milk crates. The flood waters lap at the bottom of the mattress and a swarm of rats swim in the water, shrieking and hissing and climbing over one-another in a frenzy. The dark brown rats are slick with rain, scrambling for dry ground, and find it on the edge of William’s mattress.
He’s screaming, calling for help, trying to knock the rats off the edge with a foot but for every two he removes five take its place. They're agitated, panicked, scrambling up his legs. William steps back, steps too close to the edge of the mattress and it flips. He falls backwards, smacks his head against the concrete wall and splashes down into the icy cold water. The mattress upends, leaning against the wall in the direction he fell.
Thrashing, screaming, afraid — William is overwhelmed by the swarm, his screams are the things of nightmares. But eventually they stop, they just cease with a sudden disconnection as though William were not experiencing his own horrific death. The rats do not abate, not until there is nothing left.
“Oh God!” Cassandra screams, scrambling back in shock from the horror of the vision. Tumbling off of her makeshift seat, she barely manages to catch herself before she tumbles into the center of the sewer where the grossest stuff dwells. Reaching up, she unwinds her blindfold with trembling hands and finds herself sitting down n the sewer but, thankfully, the waterproof pants do their job to keep her rear end dry. Still, that doesn’t stop her from scrubbing her arms and body with her hands roughly as she gets to her knees, trying to flee but stumbling, falling to her hands and knees, shuddering and then heaving at the sensations that were the last the boy experienced.
Fort Jay
8:30pm.
Sitting in front of the glow of the computer screen in her office, Cassandra Baumann, wrapped in a blanket after a long, hot shower, watches the cursor on the word processing program blink incessantly, the system waiting for input on the case that she’s in the process of reporting on. It’s very difficult to put into words what she’s found discovered, and once this report is put into record, it’s certainly going to cause conversations and almost certainly a few questions about where to go next.
That’s one of the problems with Cassandra’s ability. Instead of just giving answers, all tied up in a neat little bow, even with a great deal of time and practice, it only shows what happened and counts on her, and anyone else who’s been watching, to put the pieces together. Even then, without the proper context, finding the truth of the matter is often not entirely clear. Add in the confusion that time, emotional entanglements, or general background clutter overlapping the echoes can cause, and you get what Cassie has started to call a Time Headache - a combination of stress and exertion that settles itself down on her shoulders and neck uninvited like a thick blanket of ache that just refuses to let go.
Still, she has a job to do. Taking a couple of Tylenol and chasing it with a swallow of lukewarm black coffee, she sits down to write her report, referring to her notes as she goes.
Addendum:
“William DeLuca, age 13, was an Evolved person- a tier 1 psychic projector according to the card, but I think he was more than that. When he was dying in that sewer, his consciousness escaped his body. Cut loose like a balloon floating into the sky. But where did he go? Is he still around down there somewhere? Could he be the cause of the food thefts? Will need to investigate further.
- Cassie