Blue Bloods

Angela slipped both vials into her chromatograph. They clicked into place, the cover slid shut, and the machine hummed into action. She stepped over to her computer, logged in, and typed as she waited for the results. She sent an email to Charlie, letting him know about the two new potential recruits. Without thinking about it she addressed it to 'Mr. Morgan', asking him to send 'Kronos' to her lab to speak with Watkins and Wells. She went back to tinkering with designs and let her mouth run on automatic while she waited for his reply.

"At this point, there's not much we can tell you. There are at least three documented haemochromatic anomalies, but with everyone still reeling from the aftereffects of the Rain of Fire, it's distinctly possible we're missing something."

Damien interrupted her, his New England accent softening the faint hints of anger lingering in his voice. "Hay Matto what now?"

"Odd blood coloration. So far I've tested nearly ten thousand individuals, and..."

Katrina cut in, reminding Angela why she hadn't become a teacher. "Ten thousand? How did you get ten thousand samples since the Rain?"

"Actually, it's only in the last two weeks. I've been working with other clinics around the tri-state area, as well as working through Agent Johnson's government and military contacts. If I had enough information or reputation to go public, I could get even more, but I don't yet."

"Okay. What colors?"

She shot Katrina a quick frown. "Still looking for a scoop?"

"It's a habit. Hey, I might be able to help you with that going public thing, you know."

"We'll see. At any rate, out of those ten thousand individuals, roughly five hundred now have a distinct violet color to their blood. Interestingly, the largest single concentration were employees at Mr. Morgan's auto reclamation yard. I'm still looking to see if there's an environmental factor, or if it's purely a genetic predisposition triggered by the Rain." She brought up a color swatch on her right monitor and pointed. "That's the shade. At any rate, up until you two arrived, we'd discovered five individuals with bright cyan blood." She brought up another swatch. "In each of those cases, the blood is also luminescent. In one final case, the blood is neon green, also luminescent." She brought up a final color swatch.

"Now, in each of the cases of violet blood, the patients have displayed a complete resistance to the anemia inducing effects of the post-Rain dust. I'm not presently sure if the same mutation that caused the violet blood change is protecting them from the anemia, or the protection from anemia is preventing full conversion to copper-based blood oxygen transfer. With me so far?"

The pair stared at her. Wells nodded and smiled, but her eyes carried the glazed incomprehension Angela had come to know and hate. Watkins just stared, his mouth hanging open a bit, his head shaking.

"Right." She rubbed her temples, trying to remember her classes on how to relate the nature of illness to mentally challenged patients. These two had normal intelligence, or she thought they did, but lately it seemed like everyone played stupid unless she pretended they'd suffered brain damage.

"Okay. Purple blood is rare, and immune to anemia. Got it?"

"Ayep." Damien nodded once.

"Glowing blood, whether green or blue, is extremely rare, and in every instance we've seen it's correlated with some form of... let's call them unusual abilities. One example would be Centurion's invisible hands. We've seen other individuals able to generate equally strange phenomena."

"Such as?"

Angela smiled at Katrina's persistence. "Such as the abilities I cannot share with you due to privacy concerns."

"You know about them, though."

"First, I am the physician of record for all but two of the haematocyanotic individuals we've seen so far. Second, I am the staff physician for Blue Bloods, and have access to medical records for everyone in that organization as well."

Wells smiled at her, trying unsuccessfully to hide her intentions. "All but two, huh? Mind if I ask who those two are?"

Angela couldn't help her smirk. "Not at all."

They waited in silence, Angela returning to her work on the next generation of tools for her med techs. She desperately wanted time to work on her research equipment, but those modifications took all of her attention, and in just a few seconds she knew...

A tiny sigh of exasperation escaped Wells. "Okay, then, who are the last two?"

Angela spun around, her PC locking behind her once more. "I thought that would be obvious."

"Would I be asking if it was?"

Angela took a deep breath. Her bedside manner had deteriorated since the Rain. She knew it, but she couldn't do anything about it. She could talk to Charlie; he could almost keep up with her, and if he couldn't, he gave himself time to think without interrupting the flow of the conversation. She'd always treated Steve like a moron, so she could still banter with him. Oddly enough, Drew could come up with good ideas, although she always seemed more standoffish than usual when she did.

Wells opened her mouth, and Angela spoke quickly to forestall her. "Wells, Katrina and Watkins, Damien. At a guess I would say Mr. Watkin's abilities are related to his helping hands, and Ms. Watkins are vocal in nature."

Wells' professional composure shattered in an instant. "You will not tell anyone about this."

The subsonic reverberations of her voice plucked at Angela's spine, sending chills along her limbs and planting a seed of fear deep inside her gut. A curtain of gray hovered just beyond her vision. Before Wells could speak again she interrupted once more.

"Ms. Wells, I would take it as a personal favor if you do not attempt to control me with your vocal abilities."

"It's okay, Kat."

Damien's quiet warning fell on deaf ears. "Doctor Merilyn, I would appreciate it if you didn't reveal our nature to the authorities." The reverberations intensified. The curtain of gray ground down, nearly obscuring Angela's vision entirely. She held herself still, focusing on the tiny circle of clarity in the center of her field of view. Her head ached with the force of the gray dust pounding at her.

"I wish I had that helmet again."

The moment the words left her mouth, she regretted them. Her tiny slice of sanity filled with speculation, hypothesis after hypothesis flashing into her head, only to be discarded. The moment the final idea fell, falsified, a weight settled on top of her head. The reverberations cut off like someone had thrown a switch. She concentrated on her breathing until the wall of gray dust cleared.

Wells stood staring, her mouth hanging open. Not even stunned shock could keep her from talking, though. "You're... you're one of us... of them, I mean."

Angela rolled her eyes. "You can stop trying to hide it. Ms. Wells... Katrina. Your abilities have to do with your voice and the ability to control people with it. His have to do with some form of telekinesis. My own, as you might have guessed, include a drastically increased intellectual capacity. Just in case you're still in shock, I've found I'm very, very smart. It appears, however, that any psychological instabilities are exacerbated in equal proportion to our enhancement."

Damien spoke up again. "It's okay, Kat. I don't think she means to hurt us. But... are you saying it makes us crazy?"

Angela smiled at him. "No. I'm saying it makes us crazier. Human beings tend to be a little off at our best, and those of us who deliberately choose high risk or high investment professions tend to be off balance further than normal."

Katrina cocked her head to one side. "Do you hear something?"

"Sort of. A wobbly noise. Kind of like what happened when she pulled that hat out of thin air, only... different."

"Fascinating. It appears you can detect other enabled individuals. Jack, could you open the curtain for Kronos, please?"

Without a word, Jack pulled the curtain aside. A moment later, Kronos appeared in the middle of the room. He still wore the gas mask, but Angela had reshaped the breather to something less obstructive, as well as replacing his outfit with one made of a loose, flowing fabric. At his request, she'd made the torso and upper half of the legs out of a deep blue fabric, and the lower half of each leg out of beige. He thought he looked like an hourglass when he stuck his arms and legs out to the sides.

He was almost, but not quite, entirely wrong.

Katrina jumped at his sudden appearance, but her partner didn't even blink.

"Mr. Kronos?" he drawled, a soft New England accent leaking through.

"Just Kronos." The gas mask altered Charlie's voice enough strangers wouldn't recognize him, but it wouldn't work once he'd been on television a time or two. Angela sat down and tapped out a basic schematic for a voice changer she could shoehorn into his mask.

"Mr. Watkins. Ms. Wells. I'm Kronos, head of the Blue Bloods field team. I understand Agent Jamil Johnson sent you to us?" The gas mask damped some of the nuance in Charlie's voice, but Katrina picked up the cue despite that. Shaking her head and blinking, she still spoke as clearly as any news program could want.

"Yes. I suspect he was giving us a not-so-subtle hint we should join you."

Charlie nodded. "I agree. We'll need Doctor Merilyn to do a physical..."

"Done." Angela interrupted.

Damien looked at her. "You took a blood sample. That's not a complete physical."

"I haven't checked the data yet, and could purge it if you like, but my medical analyzer checks temperature, blood pressure, muscle and bone density, and body fat composition, as well as doing a quick scan for foreign bodies and biochemical irregularity. I suppose I need to do a check of your joints and reactions, but I'd hoped to hold off until we've got a more suitable gymnasium for that." She didn't actually look around; she had more important things to work on. The database for the analysis tool, the next generation of the tool itself, and now Charlie's voice changer.

"Right," said Katrina, "so why did you need to show me my blood? Why didn't your widget tell you I had blue blood?"

"Because it doesn't have a big enough screen for that kind of readout. It's hooked to my handheld, but I didn't have that out. The bigger ones the med techs are using have a built-in screen, and they call me in if anything abnormal shows up."

"I can't believe the FDA is letting you get away with this."

Angela shook her head without looking away from her screens. "The Federal government is dealing with the biggest disaster mankind has ever faced. I'm sure when the FDA realizes they'll be screaming bloody murder, and the AMA might want a piece of my hide as well, but right here, right now, I'm keeping a lot of people healthy, and the fact that they're not at an emergency room or taking up the time of doctors and nurses needed to deal with critical issues means they're able to save a lot of lives."

Charlie cut in. "Which brings us back to the two of you. Mr. Watkins, Ms. Wells, if you'd like we can list you down as having haematocyanotic blood on your medical records, give you Doctor Merilyn's number in case you need to see a doctor familiar with the condition, and let you go on about your lives. On the other hand, if you're looking to lend a hand...?"

Damien and Katrina exchanged a long, silent look. At the end, he reached out and took her hand, and she nodded, once. Damien stood, extending a hand to Kronos.

"Call me Damien. How can we help?"

***

Charlie leaned against Angela's desk. Sweat drenched his close-cropped hair, beaded on the inside of his mask. The anti-fog coating on his lenses kept his vision clear, but the thick rubber coating covering the outside of his costume kept the sweat from evaporating. It ran along his sides, down his limbs, and pooled in his gloves and boots. He wanted desperately to pull off his mask, to collapse and pant until his breath came back, but without the all-concealing costume, someone might recognize him.

"What's wrong?" Angela asked her question without looking up. Her keyboard rattled as she waited for him to respond. Her left screen switched to a view of the parking lot. Jack and Troy helped the two new recruits into Charlie's pickup truck. Jack hopped into the back, and Troy pulled himself up into the driver's seat and drove off.

Charlie realized he'd been staring at the screen for the past few minutes without answering. "Tired."

"It's probably stress. You've never had to deal with the press before." She paused, waiting for his reply. It came slowly, hauled from the depths of a fatigued brain, forced from numb lips.

"I do promotional work for the Junkyard. Just finished doing it for Blue Bloods."

She nodded, as if expecting his denial. "You're not getting enough sleep. That exacerbates the stresses of leadership and being in the spotlight, both of which are particularly hard on you."

He tried to force himself to push harder, but his body failed him. He held his time, but it slipped from his exhausted grasp. His answer came out in a muttered rush. "I don't need as much sleep anymore. I get plenty."

"You've never dealt with someone who can and has ripped men to pieces with the power of his mind."

His mouth hung open as he searched desperately for any kind of reply. He kept searching as Angela stood, walked across the room to the charging station for her medical scanners, picked one up, and returned to his side.

"Yeah. Haven't done that before."

"So. Maybe you'll believe me if you see the results for yourself?" She waggled the scanner at him. She wasn't giving in until he let her play doctor. That thought merged with the visual of her lab coat hanging open, showing off the form fitting bodysuit beneath. He lost track of why she needed to close with him, but he let her, craning his neck a little to get a better look.

She sucked her teeth, sighing when she had to pull his arm out of his costume to get her sample. Shaking her head, she spoke, probably to keep him awake while they waited for the results. "You did really well. Got lucky, too."

"Nope. Not luck." No matter what rushed through his brain, his mouth wouldn't go beyond monosyllabic responses.

"What do you mean?"

He tried and failed to come up with an answer. The third attempt without being able to say a single word tempted him to use his power, but when he tried it slipped from him again. Finally, the timer alarm shook him out of his stupor enough to give her an answer, sort of.

"Groundhog Day."

She looked up, the tiniest moment of confusion furrowing her brow before she nodded, her eyes widening for an equally short amount of time. "You can retry things."

"Hard. Tired. Hurts."

She looked at his arm again, turning it until she saw the hand shaped bruises on his shoulder. "You step back, you don't reset time itself."

"Something like. I've got to get back to the base. Mr. Morgan needs to talk with Wells and Watkins."

She slid one hand across his bruise, and cool relief spread from the point of contact. "Not right now, you don't. I'll call Flex. She can run them through the initiation stuff you came up with. You need to get back on your meds, not to mention getting some sleep."

"Haven't taken meds for years."

"You haven't had this many new stressors for years, either. Don't worry, it's a small dose, just enough to keep you together long enough to get some real sleep."

Adrenaline shot through him when he realized what she'd done. "You dosed me just..." A yawn split his words in two, and she just stared at him as he muttered the rest of his sentence. "Drugged me."

"Yes. I am your doctor. We will, on rare occasions where a patient's life is in danger and there is no next of kin to consult, do that. Since by the terms of my contract you're liable for any malpractice suits against me, I don't think the patient will litigate. You might even forgive me when you wake up."

He pushed more words at her as she led him to the cot on one side of her room. "Patrol. Drew. Tonight."

Angela caught him as he fell into the cot, lowered him until his head touched the pillow. "Drew will be fine for one night of patrols on her own. She managed often enough before all this started."

"Code name."

"Yes, well. She doesn't have one yet. We all vetoed 'cop' and all variations thereon, as you'd remember if you'd been sleeping properly. Good night, Charlie."

The sound of her rattling keyboard lulled him to sleep.