Spilling Guts

Part 51 - The Why

Louis waited five seconds after Megan and Teegan left before pacing in front of Cetz's desk. He glared at both Rachel and Cetz; he knew half the time they shared brain cells when it came to executive decisions.

"You kept this from me."

"You knew Retten was keeping an eye on you," said Cetz. "We needed to know how close he had been."

"Too close!" snapped Louis. He could have helped, instead he had spent the last few weeks toiling under patents and frowns from his partner. A person he trusted with his coffee, the most sacred of things, had sold him out. His fists clenched until his left hand seemed to swell against its brace. "And there is no "we"! Anything else you're keeping from me?"

Against his better judgment, and Rachel's warning look, Cetz answered: "I had Balcuwitz do a profile on Retten."

"Seriously?!" yelled Louis. "Is Will on the hunt for Retten too? Is that why he's gone today?"

"Will is doing a friends and family visit upstairs," Cetz snapped back. "He doesn't know about any of this. And Balcuwitz read me the riot act for keeping Retten's case from you. Don't blame them."

"How long have Megan and Teegan been hunting Retten behind my back?"

"Since you disappeared during the Freewill raid and we thought finding your body would be a lucky break, Patriarch." Cetz's roar made him rise out of his seat, seeing Louis eye to shades and sharing the same fury. "One of our own went missing under their watch, we all damn well didn't want it to happen again. They've been searching for Retten since the raid and they haven't stopped. You have no idea how horrifying it was to know that Retten had you in his hands. That he could finish what he started.

"You're not the only one trying to not let Terry down!"

The invocation of Louis' first partner hit him like a punch to the face in the middle of a thunderstorm. His indignant fury sputtered and died. He had forgotten that Terry, brash, bombastic, and wholly brave, had been a friend to more than just him. Megan, Teegan, Cetz, Rachel, and others on base had cried at his funeral too. In fact, it was the first time he had ever seen Cetz or Rachel cry.

Had they blamed themselves for Terry's death too?

Rachel brought them out of their impassioned reflection.

"Now that we know what we know," said Rachel. "Louis, how often did you get coffee with Parker as your server?"

The wheels were turning in Rachel's head faster than his or Cetz's. Louis tried to keep up and answer what he could.

"About three or four times a week," said Louis. He sat on the couch where Megan had vacated and relaxed his hands, his left wrist aching. Grief itself was an ache that came and went. "She worked at Bean Scoot for almost a year."

"Did she ever take pictures of you?" asked Cetz.

"A few times. She needed a test model for some new lenses she had bought."

"And she quit the day of the Freewill raid?"

"She wasn't there that morning. Part of why I was running late. New barista didn't know my usual order."

Louis hadn't considered Parker a close friend, but she had been a bright cog in the day to day machine of wake, coffee, work. Not familiar enough to know her past, but he knew her favorite colors, magenta and orange, knew she had dreams. Over time he had learned her name and her penmanship on the sides of his cups, always with a tiny smiling face instead of a dot above the "i" in Louis. A kindness taken for granted that he had missed.

Apparently he hadn't missed her enough to question why she had left with no word or warning.

"Why would Parker do that to me? Why would Retten make her do that?"

Cetz and Rachel took their own seats on the opposite side of the coffee table.

"I don't think Parker drugged you out of maliciousness," said Cetz. "Retten is manipulative; one of his better talents according to Balcuwitz's report. He probably convinced her it was the right thing or the best thing to do for you."

"As for why..." Rachel took out her tablet and turned to a set of files she had titled "Freewill: Project Super Soldiers Theory" and her hypothesized process on how Retten made them. She passed it to Louis. "Retten didn't just shoot you with a shrink gun in Freewill and abracadabra you were small. Making a person shrink due to light was a long and involved process. For months, his previous victims were dosed with a DNA mutating serum before going under his machine.

"I'd been wondering how the machine worked if you didn't have the serum for as long as the others. Now we know. Parker was dosing you for him."

"And now it's lost," said Cetz.

"Why is this serum so important now?" asked Louis. "It's done its job. I'm a freak."

"Retten never recorded its chemical composition or dosage," said Rachel. "Without knowing what it was we can't find out a way to reverse what happened to you."

Louis felt like a wet wool blanket landed on his chest. A chance he might have had to go back to normal long gone before he even knew it existed.

All three of them looked defeated and tired.

"I'm sorry," said Rachel. "Unless you have a cup of coffee from four months ago?"

"No. I threw them all away." Louis wanted to visit the firing range and put holes in something, or the gym and punch something. He also wanted to steal Balcuwtiz's couch and sleep the rest of the day away until it was a blunted memory.

The day Watch Two raided the Freewill compound came back to him; the day that changed his life into this uncertain existence fueled by frustration. And the newbie nerd that had tried too hard and had offered him coffee with a smile every morning.

While Louis pointedly came in with his own...

"Wait..." Louis' mind snapped together pieces like a puzzle made of sulfur and phosphorus. "Wait, Will was being an green-geek and collecting my coffee cups! He had a whole bag of them the morning of Freewill."

Rachel sounded more dubious than hopeful. "Would he still have them after all this time?"

"That was months ago, I haven't a clue!"

"Call him and find out," said Cetz. At Rachel's look of censure he shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe he hoards recycling."

No hesitation, no second guessing or questioning, Louis took out his phone and called Will. And prayed.