Blue Bloods

A huge fabric sign hung over the entrance to the warehouse. The ropes on the bottom, intended to hold it stretched out so passerby could read it, flopped around fitfully in the breeze. Damien tried to read the partially covered writing half a dozen times before he gave in. He reached out, grabbed each rope with one invisible hand, and pulled them taut.

"Damien!" Katrina's whisper barely tickled his ear, but he could feel the sudden paranoid urge to hide his face. He didn't let go of the sign, but looking at the ground he didn't a chance to read it, either.

"What's up?" He smiled at her, putting every ounce of innocence he could still muster into his grin. She held her frown in place, but he could tell by the way her eyes crinkled she wouldn't be able to for long. She glanced back and forth, realizing how many people heard her whisper.

"I'm stunned at how many people showed up here today."

The elderly woman ahead of them turned her head just a bit before speaking. "Doc Merilyn has a new widget that can tell how bad the anemia is hitting you, and new iron pills that are supposed to keep better than the bottled ones."

Damien knew he should handle the conversation; people knew Katrina's face. He couldn't stop her, though, when she sidled by him before he could think of a reply. "Do you know Doctor Merilyn, then?"

"Oh, yes, dearie. She's a friend of my neighbor, Charlie. She used to stop by and check on me at least once every few months, but what with all the troubles, she's been too busy." She shrugged. "I needed to get out more, anyhow."

"Thanks. That makes me feel a lot better."

Damien hooked an arm over Katrina's shoulders and pulled her closer. "See? Nothing to worry about."

"I'm Alicia Gardner, by the way. You seem sort of energetic for someone with anemia. Or is it your husband who's come down with it?"

Damien hid a grimace; he'd left his slowly decaying hometown mostly to avoid the endless conversations about people's health. Instead of replying to her comment about anemia, he tried to distract her with the other topic old people went on about. "Yup. Well, we're not married, actually."

Alicia frowned. "Young people. You two have been living together how long?"

Katrina had remembered their plan to let him do the talking; she tucked herself under his arm as if to support him. He tilted his head to lean against hers, paying as much attention to Katrina snuggling into him as he did to Alicia. "We're not, actually. We both have our own apartments."

The old woman rolled her eyes. "Really. People think I'm blind because I'm old, but just because I'm old doesn't make me stupid." She smiled, taking some of the sting out of her words. "Look at me. I've been cooped up so long I start playing busybody with two folks I don't even know. Who are you, by the way?"

"I'm Damien. This is Kat. Who is definitely not living with me, even if I would kinda like it better if she were."

Katrina jostled his head upright as she twisted to face him without leaving the shelter of his arm. "Did you just make the lamest marriage proposal in the history of wedlock?"

"Nope."

"Damn. Here I was all ready to say yes, too."

He shook his head as Alicia laughed. "You'd better not wait too long, young man. Someone will snap this one up quick if you don't."

The line started to move forward before he could reply. Without looking, he tucked each of the banner lines under the corners of the open doors. Before he walked into the building, he took one glance up to read the sign. Other than the sponsoring company's logo, a pair of stylized capital 'b's in royal blue, the sign was simple.

"Blue Bloods Incorporated Free Clinic and Testing Center. Why Blue Bloods?" He managed to ask the question with a straight face, despite a growing suspicion, based entirely on a memory he tried to block out.

"I'm sure I don't know, Damien. You could ask Angela why Charlie picked the name, if you get a chance to talk with her."

Damien frowned, looking down at her as they navigated a twisting corridor of eight foot fabric cubicle walls. "What do you mean, if we get a chance? Why wouldn't we?"

Before Alicia could answer, the three of them came to the end of the maze. It debouched into a hallway that ran the entire width of the building, with curtained alcoves all along one side. A sign tacked to the outside wall read 'please move to the next open examination room'. Halfway along the corridor, a curtain stood open, a young woman in hospital scrubs standing beside the opening.

"Well, it's nice to have met you."

With that, Alicia toddled off in the direction of the open doorway. Damien leaned over and whispered to Katrina, "Odd."

"What's that?"

"The setup." He knew she'd understand. Before the Rain, they'd been able to complete each other's sentences sometimes. They'd grown closer since then. She could usually tell how he felt, and occasionally could tell his thoughts without before he spoke.

This time she responded to his unease, not his words. "It's actually way better than most clinics I've seen. Someone took their time, first thinking about the layout, then setting everything up. They've got the individual booths for privacy, the amusement park hallway to keep the line in a line rather than a herd, and I'm guessing..."

The curtain nearest the door slid aside, revealing a tidy little alcove with another curtain on the far end. A desk split the space in two, a laptop and an automated blood pressure machine taking up nearly its entire surface. A familiar looking young man in a light blue coverall stepped out to greet them. Damien couldn't place where he'd seen him before, or if he just resembled one of the thousands of people he'd filmed in the background of Katrina's shoots. "Hello, folks. Which of you is next?"

Damien reached out a hand. "We're together."

The young man shook hands, frowning. "You're married?"

"No."

"I'm sorry, but we do have a policy against anyone but family members being examined together. Privacy issues."

At the thought of separation, Damien clenched his fists. Squeals filled the air until Katrina put her lips up to his ear. "Hush, love. I'm sure we can work this out." She turned to the young man. "Who's in charge here, Troy?"

At the mention of his name, Damien remembered where he'd seen him before. The thought of a massive, pointed helmet forced a chuckle from him, despite his best attempts to hold it back. Troy grabbed at his chest, glancing down as he did.

"No nametag. How do you know my..." His eyes went wide. "Katrina Wells?"

She smiled, laying one finger across her lips. "We're actually not here for the clinic. We're here to see Doctor Merilyn."

Troy frowned at her. "I'm sorry, Miss Wells. Doctor Merilyn isn't available for interviews. Maybe you could speak with the Blue Bloods press secretary? I'm sure she'll be able to set up an appointment for you to speak with Charlie, er, I mean Mr. Morgan."

Damien's anger swelled again. Something about the rage felt wrong, foreign, but that thought couldn't contain his outburst. "Look, Troy, we need to see Doctor Merylin, and we're not going to be pawned off on some bureaucratic flunky."

Tiny blue lights reflected from Troy's eyes as all of Damien's clenched fists glowed faintly. Troy stepped backward, and Damien followed him into the alcove, his arm still around Katrina. She whispered something into his ear, but the buzzing fury blocked it out. He reached out, even as he tried to stop himself, to grab Troy's coverall in invisible hands and pull him close.

"Is there a problem here?"

The deep voice, calm even in the face of a cloud of glowing, flickering lights, belonged to a square jawed older man with a steel grey crew cut. He stepped through the part in the back curtain, and the glow around Damien's clenched fists winked out one fist at a time. The rage trying to consume him evaporated like mist as the last of the lights went away.

Shaking his head, trying to figure out what happened, Damien leaned on Katrina for support. She whispered into his ear again. "Calmly, Damien. It's going to be all right."

Damien let go of Troy's shirt and turned to face the old guy in the urban camouflage fatigues. "Agent Johnson told us to come see Doctor Merilyn. The ad in the paper said she's here. Was that some kind of scam by the military?"

The old guy twisted one end of his mouth in a wry smile. "Not military. Not for a long time." Holding one hand up, palm angled down, in a gesture requesting patience, he turned to Troy. "I'll take care of them. You going to be all right?"

"Yeah." He waved one hand at the blood pressure cuff. "I don't think we need a blood sample, do you?"

"I'm sure Doc Merilyn will insist on one, but we'll take care of that back in the lab." He turned back to Damien just before his patience ran out. "Okay, son. If Jamil sent you to talk to Doc, we'd best get you to her, don't you think?"

***

Katrina half carried Damien into the depths of the warehouse. His real arm draped over her shoulder; his invisible hands nowhere to be found. She felt his frustration ebbing with each step, but it remained all he could do to keep his anger under control.

The heavyset older guy, Jack, led them past the clearly marked exit, through another curtained alcove, and into an area strewn with the remains of packing materials. Smooth-sided lab equipment, looking a little like overly complex copy machines, filled the remaining space. A single figure, illuminated by a trio of screens, hunched over a keyboard in the middle of the room. Her fingers flew, her keyboard rattled with a constant staccato rhythm.

"What's up, Jack?"

Jack nodded toward Damien and Katrina, ignoring the fact the woman in the chair hadn't looked away from her monitor. "Got a couple here who need to see you."

She finally glanced up at that, barely taking her eyes off her screen for a moment before returning to work. The noise from the keys nearly drowned out her mutter. "I don't have time for interviews, Jack. Have Flex deal with them." Her voice dropped down to a quiet, rapid-fire musing, but Katrina still picked out the words. "Maybe she can give them an interview pretending to be me or something. Not a bad idea." Her keyboard rattled, and Katrina saw an email window pop open, fill with text, and close again in the blink of an eye. The screen in front of her filled with code, the one to the right flickered through half a dozen browser tabs, and the one to her left displayed a rotating, three-dimensional model of something which looked vaguely like a gun.

"Jamil sent them to see you. I think he's a potential recruit."

The woman in the chair spun around at that, her screens locking behind her. She grabbed a heavy, rounded device with a pistol grip from the top of a whirring machine as she walked toward them. She slid it against the side of the form-fitting bodysuit beneath her lab coat, where it hung without any apparent means of support.

"Did the three-dimensional printer get here yet?"

"Nope." Jack rumbled. "I checked online. It's at Philly International now, should be here by tomorrow."

"Damn. Get a space cleared out and set up for it, please?"

"I'll let Troy know."

The doctor stepped up to Katrina, took a look at Damien, and waved for her to hand him over. Reluctantly, she let Merilyn guide him to a chair. He grit his teeth, but sat. Katrina stood beside him, one hand on his arm. His unseen hands rested on her shoulders, hips, and arms, still clutching at her for support.

"I'm going to take a blood sample. Do you have a problem with that?"

Katrina stepped between the doctor and Damien. "Isn't there some paperwork you need him to sign? For legal reasons?"

The doctor frowned at her, exasperation leaking out to trickle through Katrina's mind. "I didn't think Centurion would want a paper trail, but sure, we'll play that way if you like."

She pulled a small tablet from one of her lab coat pockets. After a few swipes and taps, a printer near the doctor's desk whirred to life. She walked over, grabbed the sheet as it dropped into the catch bin, and walked back brandishing it like a weapon. Katrina took it, glancing through it while Damien stewed in the chair behind her.

After reading the first couple lines, she held it out and pointed at one word in particular.

"The legalese on this seems fine, but he," she swung her arm around to point at Damien, "isn't Centurion."

Doctor Merilyn rolled her eyes. "You spent the last four weeks filming the exploits of Centurion, a powered individual whose signature is the ability to project an unspecified number of invisible hands. Based on the handprints embedded in the sides of your news van, I suspect your first story about a powered individual on the night of the Rain of Fire was also about Centurion. You have four pairs of hands pressing into your body at various points right now. Either he's Centurion, or you are," the doctor paused a moment, her brow furrowing, "or he's nearby and aware of you. Occam's Razor says your friend is him."

Katrina tensed, her professional newscaster’s smile slipping onto her face. "What hands?"

Doctor Merilyn shifted, a bright, artificial smile plastered across her own face. She tapped her tablet a few times, swiped a finger across it, and turned the screen to face Katrina and Damien. There on the screen Katrina saw Damien's mistake. Her shirt and pants, long to hide her bruises, and loose and billowing to keep her from overheating, pressed against her body in hand sized spots on her shoulders, her arms, and her waist.

Katrina's smile slipped from her face. She collapsed forward until she could lean against Damien's shoulders. The moment her fingers brushed against his neck, her fatigue and fear washed away. A rueful grin twisted her mouth.

"So... should we expect the police to be along shortly?"

The doctor frowned again. "I'm sure your friend won't wind up killing any of the officers when he escapes from the squad car."

She slipped her arms around Damien's neck, bending over to hug him close. "No. We won't. We'll go quietly."

Damien tensed, then relaxed back into her arms. The tension leaked out of him with a long, drawn-out sigh. A single word escaped his lips. "Ayep."

The doctor grinned, the expression strangely out of place after her grim statement earlier. "Well. I'm sure Drew will be glad to hear that, if she ever decides you need to be taken in."

Damien stirred beneath her arms. "What do you mean?"

"Agent Johnson wouldn't have sent you to us if he wanted you in jail. He would have called Mr. Morgan and had the Blue Bloods track you down." She shrugged. "Instead, he sent you this way without telling us. I'm guessing he wants us to treat you like we would anyone else who came to us with your... unique condition."

"Condition?"

"You mean you don't know?"

Katrina had a strong suspicion she knew exactly what the doctor meant, but she couldn't force herself to admit it. "I'm not sure. Could you explain?"

"It's easier if I show you. Do you mind if I take a blood sample from each of you?"

She held out her left arm, pulling the sleeve back with her other hand. "No. Go ahead."

The doctor pulled the bulky, pistol gripped device from her skintight jumpsuit. While Katrina stared at the spot she'd pulled it from, which had no hooks, snaps, or Velcro, the doctor grabbed her wrist, pushed the business end of the thing into the crook of her elbow, and pulled the trigger.

"Ow!"

Doctor Merilyn frowned. "Did it hurt?"

Katrina stopped herself. "Um... not as much as I thought it would. A little, where you pressed it in. Mostly it felt... Odd. Like someone giving me a hickey, then dropping hot wax over it."

"Well, that's okay then." She pressed a control on the side of the device, and it whirred, clicked, and she watched as the doctor repeated her process on Damien. The slightest auditory hint of suction, followed by a brief flash leaking from between the device and his arm, and the doctor pulled the device away.

"Okay now." She slipped two sample tubes from the back of the device. Each had an opaque paper covering with a pull tab. Doc Merilyn held up the one with '1' printed on the side and said, "Here's your sample, Miss Wells. Red as rust." She pulled the tab away and stopped with her mouth hanging open. Katrina found herself staring as dumbfounded as the doctor. Only Damien, finally recovered enough to be his typical unflappable self, managed to respond.

"Well, that's different."

Brilliant blue light leaked out from the tube of Katrina's blood.