Spilling Guts

Part 116 - Coffee and Ethics

Early Friday morning, Doctor Milton Balcuwitz followed a set of vibrant arrows marked with crayon on the walls to his office. Empty suitcase in hand, fueled by coffee infused with hot chocolate and chili oil, and ready to reorganize other people's troubles. He walked into his office and found Louis asleep on his leather couch.

I see work is here early today. Balcuwitz kept the main lights off. The small lamp by his desk would be enough to work by. He shuffled over to his desk and gently set down his suitcase. Louis hadn't stirred, breathing deep and slow. At least another fifteen minutes of peace. Technically the work never ends, I'm on call if they ever need me. But the work for him won't start until he's ready.

Milton opened his notebook to a rough outline of Retten's profile to keep him occupied.

***

When the metaphorical midnight oil ran out, Rachel retrieved coffee from the break room. The conference room had a kitchenette but didn't have a coffee maker. Which was a crime since she was wasting time having to walk back and forth just for coffee.

Hayman seemed to be doing fine with pulling all nighters at his age while running on tea. Rachel needed a better boost. Especially at eight in the morning. Six scoops of grounds to two cups of coffee. And enough creamer to make the coffee the color of oatmeal. That'll do. Creamer counts as a dairy. A granola bar counts as a grain. Two out of five food groups would tide her over until she could sleep.

Back to the room she and Hayman had taken over with their whiteboard full of theories and post-its. She felt red strings connecting everything might be next, and then their dive into insanity would be complete.

Hayman saluted her with his cup of tea, his serenity from the beginning of the night waning as the sun rose where they couldn't see. "Welcome back."

Rachel saluted with a groan, bits of petrified raisin stuck between her teeth. "Any revelations what I was gone?"

"No. Circling back to the main problem." Hayman pointed to the phrase circled on the whiteboard. "The Devil's Neckbrace isn't doing what it was programmed to do."

"It's not doing what Grovic programmed it to do." Rachel sipped her coffee and tried to swish out the granola stuck between her teeth. "We have no idea what others did to it after it left his hands."

"They turned it into a monstrosity," Hayman bit out. "Why wasn't it reverse engineered when it entered Watch possession? A blueprint of what it is would be better to work with than what it was."

"Because once we figure out how it works, it means the plans are in our database and available for others to recreate or build on."

"...oh." Hayman slumped back. "An ethics question."

"Yeah, ethics." Something she toed the line of when it came to curiosity, even when she knew better. Rachel thought back to the night Megan and Teegan brought in the beaten metal case that contained the Neckbrace. They had carried it like it was live warhead. "I argued against burying it, wanting to get a deep scan when I could. Agents Carry and Shiloh wanted it destroyed. But Watch three recommended putting away for safety reasons. We didn't need another Barley Circle."

"What about the scans you took... yesterday?"

"I'm getting my wish," Rachel said bitterly. "I'm getting a scan of the infamous Devil's Neckbrace, but not the way I want to. There'll be records in the database, like it or not. And we still don't know what's causing it to work like this."

And once Megan and Teegan find out they'll be pissed. We're doing this for a good reason, for Will. But it still sucks that this thing could possibly be copied. Doesn't matter that there are two more of these things out there.

Rachel tabbed the control for the whiteboard so the Devil's Neckbrace's original blueprint filled the board. It did look monstrous. Like it would crawl off the board and find someplace to nest. Like the Alien movies.

Her unfocused mind spun a random idea she was too tired to consider silly. "Monsters aren't usually taken down by one person. It takes a mob."

"You want to summon a posse with pitchforks and torches?" said Hayman.

"We need help." Rachel looked down at her over-creamed coffee. "And sleep. Will's condition is getting worse, but we're getting nowhere. Delegate some of the hard thinking to fresh minds."

"Do you think Agent Patriarch would mind helping? He did a good job on his report."

Rachel snorted. "Between this and his inbox, he'd love to help."