Chapter 13
I'll say this for Wizzit: He may act snotty and immature at times, but he knows how to keep a promise. To this day, I have never seen a single clip of any of Bill's many visits to Shelley.
Regardless, when I got back to my room, I found an e-mail from Angie waiting for me, telling me to check out the news. It had been a few days since Wizzit posted the vid of Shelley's arrest, and I guess it was starting to garner some attention. A lot of attention, in fact; it had gotten tons of views, and people all over the internet were debating the subject of Prime Red's arrest.
The mainstream media was picking up on it by now as well. Wizzit had posted a rather glamorous-looking photo of Shelley to the website, and thankfully, a lot of the online papers and news websites that I skimmed through had chosen to run that alongside their articles, rather than the awful-looking images of her from the video. The articles themselves had fairly predictable headlines like "Prime Red Unmasked!" and "Eric Really An Erica?"
The first stories had simply repeated the bare facts laid out by Wizzit's announcement of her capture, along with the brief bio of her that he had posted. Now, though, some of the New York-based news outlets had begun asking questions of NYPD officials, since they were the ones who made the arrest. The NYPD folks claimed ignorance, saying that they were merely acting on a strongly-worded request from the FBI. The FBI, of course, was neither admitting nor denying anything.
"My guess," Mike said when I shared all of this at dinner that night, "is that you'll find there's an Agent Evalcne at the back all of this."
"An Agent who?" Toby asked, handing Padma her plate.
Padma stared down at her food and wrinkled her nose. "What is this?"
"Bangers and mash, with a side of roasted carrots," Toby announced proudly. "Since it's my turn to cook, I've decided to treat you lot to some of the wonders of English cuisine."
"There's an oxymoron if I ever heard one," Mike muttered to me.
Padma poked her fork suspiciously at the sausages on her plate. "The meat is . . . what?"
"For you, Padma, I've got turkey sausages -- trust me, no cow ever came anywhere near them. Cooked in a separate pan and everything. For the rest of you, you've got your choice -- turkey or a mixture of beef and pork."
Nicolai glanced across the table at Padma and said glumly, "Turkey for me as well, please."
Toby filled a plate and handed it to him with a knowing grin. "So, who is this Agent Whatever-his-name-is?" he asked Mike.
"Agent Evalcne," Mike repeated, "and it's not so much a 'who' as a 'what'." He looked around at each of us in turn. "Oh, come on!" he said impatiently. "Don't tell me you can't figure it out!"
"'Evalcne' would be 'Enclave' spelled backwards?" Trina guessed.
Mike grinned at her. "Got it in one, love," he said. "I'm thinking they're behind Shelley's arrest."
"I remember there was an Evalcne Corporation that caused us problems a number of years ago," Nicolai mused, "but we were never able to prove a connection with Enclave."
"You only need proof if you're going to take 'em to court," Mike declared. "We all knew that Evalcne Corp was Enclave."
"But we don't know it in this case," Nicolai pointed out. He cut off a piece of sausage, swirled it in the mashed potatoes, and popped it into his mouth. "And even if they were behind this, what difference would that make? How would we approach the problem differently if we knew that it was Enclave that prompted the United States government to detain Shelley?"
"First off, we'd . . . ah, that is, we would . . ." Mike frowned thoughtfully. "Hm. I see your point, Nicolai. The problem is still the same. We've still got to get her free in an open, above-board way."
"Exactly," Trina said. "And if the newspapers and television stations are only now becoming aware that she has been arrested, then getting her free might take months."
"If it ever happens," Toby muttered sourly as he handed me my plate.
"Of course it will happen," Padma said confidently. "We just need to, er, 'hang on there.' Not give up."
"We're in this for the long haul," I agreed, ignoring Padma's fracturing of the American idiom. As a general rule, I don't comment on the linguistic foibles of our non-native English speakers, not unless I'm asked. Besides which, Padma is the only Prime who speaks more languages than I do (although most of them are various Indian dialects), so I figure she gets a free pass on that sort of thing. And anyway, apart from a few idiosyncrasies (such as saying "today morning" instead of "this morning"), her English is usually spot-on. "One of the things we're --"
I was interrupted by a flash of black-tinged light as Bill teleported in. All eyes immediately went to him. Mike asked the question we were all thinking: "How's Shelley doing?"
Bill shook his head gravely. "Not so good. She's weak and complaining of feeling lightheaded, and she still seems disoriented. I think that . . ." His voice trailed off as he frowned down at our plates. "Wait here a minute," he said tersely. Then he grabbed a finger-sized sausage from my plate and one each from Nicolai's and Padma's. "Wizzit?" he said.
"Sending you back out now."
Bill disappeared as Wizzit teleported him out, presumably to see Shelley again. When he reappeared a few minutes later, he had an apologetic grin on his face. "Sorry about that. I was going to say, I think that they have been messing around with her diet. I asked her what she'd had to eat, and she said they had given her just fruits and vegetables, some bread with jam -- even candy, believe it or not -- but no meat, no nuts, no beans, and no dairy. Nothing with any protein to speak of."
Toby whistled. "That'd be rough, especially coming off a healing coma."
"I've heard of cults doing that," I commented. "Feeding their members ultra-low-protein diets to screw up their body chemistry. It's supposed to keep them weak and pliable."
"Yup, 'weak and pliable' is just how they'd want her," Mike added grimly.
"So, d'you want me to cook up a fresh batch of sausages for her every morning?" Toby offered. "Or kippers? I could do kippers."
Bill chuckled. "I'm hoping that the sausages I gave her will help put her back on an even keel, but long-term? I'd want something a bit more nutritious. Less fat, especially since her new, er, lifestyle won't be quite so active as ours."
"No, Mike," Trina said firmly as our beloved leader started to speak. "No Marmite." Mike closed his mouth and shrugged.
"Wizzit," said Bill, "what are the odds of our getting her some sort of low-fat protein supplements? Something with lots of vitamins, I'd guess."
"And iron," Trina added. "She'll need iron if it is not in her food."
"Odds are very good," Wizzit said. "Making the arrangements now for high-protein shakes fortified with vitamins and minerals. We should have them by tomorrow morning."
"Excellent." Bill sniffed the air and rubbed his hands together. "Now, is that bangers and mash I'm smelling?"