Together, they moved down the hall. Edgar wondered where they were going, but not for long. They stopped in front of a door with a keypad next to it. She typed in the code much faster than Edgar's eyes could follow. The door popped open, revealing a stairway into what Edgar presumed to be her super secret lair.
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"How long can your friend keep this survivor with her?" Emily asked as they descended.
"Her name is Alejandra. And not long. A week maybe. Two of we're lucky."
"I see..." They finally reached the bottom of the steps, passing through another doorway into a rather open secret lair. In the center was a raised circular podium of sorts with a ramp leading up to it. There were monitors everywhere, and a man in glasses rolling around from monitor to monitor in a wheelie chair.
Off to the left, sharpening a blade, was Emily's brother. Edgar couldn't remember his name, or if he'd even shared one. All he could remember was the distaste the man had shown to him the night they met. It looked exactly like it did now, as Emily's brother glared daggers at him. Edgar ignored the glares. While he wasn't one to turn down a challenge, he was running on fumes at this point.
The blonde man with glasses jumped when he turned around, spotting Edgar. "Em! A secret lair isn't secret if you keep taking people into it," he said, poking his glasses further up his nose.
"He's working with us against the supernaturals. He has the deats on one in particular that has been experimenting on people." Emily then glanced at Edgar and nodded. "This is Derek, by the way. He does all our nerd-work." She shot Derek a sly grin, before turning to head back upstairs.
Edgar watched her go, before turning to go up to Derek.
"Well, uh, yeah. I'm Derek." He held out a hand to Edgar, which Edgar shook.
"Edgar." He took out his phone, again pulling up the pictures. He offered it to Derek. As he scrolled through the pictures, Edgar glanced over at Emily's brother. He'd stopped his pull-ups and was menacingly glaring at Edgar. He didn't even bother to hide his hatred.
"Is the man's name Elias Thorpe?"
"Yeah. And he's a zombie, actually."
Derek stopped scrolling to look up at Edgar with raised brows. "A zombie? Like walking dead? Day-Z? Seven Days to die?"
"No. This one actually has a mind and practices voodoo. Judging from his work, he also has a completely functioning brain."
"That's pretty scary," Derek looked back down at the phone, his brows now furrowed. And then suddenly, Edgar's phone was plugged up, and he was uploading the pictures he'd taken to his computer. Edgar opened his mouth to protest but decided against it. He didn't have the energy to argue with some nerd uploading pictures from his phone.
Once he was done, he handed Edgar's phone back. "Don't worry. I only took the related ones." Derek rolled across the podium to another monitor and a keyboard, punching something in. "Elias Thorpe," he muttered as he typed. "Know anything about him?"
"No. Just that he dated my familiar's former master. And he's probably English. I mean, he's got the accent and all."
"Woah. Cool. You have a familiar?"
"He's an asshole, and will probably drive you insane," Edgar blatantly told Derek.
"Oh. Well. I hope he's not an illegal immigrant."
"I hardly doubt he's bothered to register with customs. Dimensions as influential as the Black Road and the Underworld have exits to all parts of the world." Edgar could practically see the gears turning in Derek's head as he tried to figure out how that was scientifically possible.
"Well. I doubt I'll find much on him with such little info. But we'll let the database do the work." Derek then rolled back across the podium to where he was previously and started going through the pictures on the bigger screen.
"...Wait a freaking second.... Listen, this is some real spooky shit on these notes." Derek started ramblingly on using all these medical terms that Edgar didn't recognize. He only recognized a few like neurologic, and seizures, etc. Common words for common folk. But before he got too far, Edgar was sure to shush him.
"English please, Derek."
Derek rolled his eyes. "Well, it looked like he's basically creating something that targets the brain." He stumbled over his words as he switched between the pictures. "Starts with a fever, terrible coughing. Symptoms then escalate to bleeding from eyes, nose, and then from the ears. That's about when it starts messing with your head. Hallucinations, seizures, spewing blood, and then death follows shortly after." He scrolled through a few more pictures. "Longest any of these test subjects listed here have survived is forty-eight hours after contraction. Symptoms started around hour twelve, roughly."
He scrolled back a few pictures and pointed at the blocky handwriting of Elias, which said that it was extremely contagious, and spread through the blood. If this information was really correct, then he did the right thing in letting Alejandra's friend shoot himself.
His mind immediately flashed back to those moments the house was blazing. The scream. Then the two gunshots.
He rubbed his eyes, shunning the intrusive thoughts. "There were two survivors. One was sick... Seemed I did the right thing giving him my gun."
Derek glanced back. "Holy shit. That's harsh. But you did the right thing. Trying to save him probably would've just resulted in an outbreak. Poor guy." Derek leaned back in his chair.
"Yeah. The girl, Alejandra, was pretty torn up about it." As he mentioned that, he flashed back to the moment he stepped into the basement. The overwhelming smell, the sobbing, the convulsing man. God he wished he'd stop thinking about it. He didn't even know these people, so why was it bothering him so much?
"Can't even imagine. She'll never be right..." Derek cracked his knuckles, leaning forward again. He scrolled through some more of the pictures. "Some of these later ones are like Russian to me... They mention reanimation, but that's not even possible is it? Not without using that uh...magic." He said the world magic with hesitation as if the word was weird on his tongue. Edgar assumed he must've been recently introduced to this whole world of the supernatural.
"Do you have someone you can trust that'll look at it for us?"
"Yeah, yeah. I know a girl from my time in med school." Derek smirked, poking his glasses up his face again. Before Edgar could come up with a reply, there was a quiet ding from the other side of the room.
"Whoop! We got some results!" Derek rolled his chair to the other side of the room, to which Edgar followed. A list of thirty-seven Elias Thorpes showed up on a list, with a small profile picture next to them. Derek scrolled down slowly, letting Edgar get a good look at their faces.
Towards the bottom of the list, was their Elias. He wasn't hard to notice. Living Elias had the same exact face, except maybe a few shades lighter than dead Elias. And he still had that ugly pin-straight black hair that went to his shoulders.
"Shit, he even looks like a psycho... Or maybe it's just the lack of a smile." Derek's eyes flickered back and forth, glancing over his profile much faster than Edgar could.
"Wow, he went to Yale. Majored in Neurology and studied a few other medical sciences. Clearly, this dude had no life. Gosh. Even had a 4.0 average." Derek paused, reading some more. "Says he was born in Lancaster and moved to America after college. Lived in California of all places." He scrolled down some more.
"Disappeared five years ago, nobody discovered. All that was found was a note on his door that said he'd ended it."
"How lovely," Edgar idly noted. But his mind immediately wandered to Barry. Elle entrusted Barry to him about five years ago... Could Elias have had anything to do with Alex's death? If that was the case, then oh boyo...Elias was certainly in for a bad time.
"Yeah. That's about all there really is. Write your number on this, and we'll contact you if we find anything else on him or what he's up to." Derek pulled a notepad with a pen clipped to the spiral rings that held it together from behind the monitor.
"Right. If you guys happen to catch him, don't kill him. My best friend has some beef with him, I'm pretty sure." Edgar had said this as he scrawled his cell number on the notepad.
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"Can't tell them what to do. I'm just the IT guy. But I'll pass your message. Seeya Ed. Can I call you Ed?"
Edgar shrugged. Derek was alright, so he didn't mind all too much. "Sure. Whatever. Thanks for this, Derek." Edgar straightened, clipping the pen back to the notebook. He shoved his hands in his pockets and turned to leave.
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He couldn't help but notice Emily's brother was still glaring daggers at him. And despite how tired he was, it was not above him to stop and glare back.
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"If you have a genuine issue, let's take this splendid opportunity to clear the air," Edgar said, his tone dripping with sarcasm.
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Emily's brother stepped forward. "Yeah, my issue is you, runt." Ed bristled at being called a runt. He maybe lanky, but he was a few inches taller than this fuck, who was maybe six feet. "A half-demon is still a demon. And we all know what demons are only good for."
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"Of course I fucking know, you twat." As the words left his lips, Emily's brother immediately had him by the collar of his jacket. His expensive brown leather jacket. His favorite one. He was fuming, and it took everything he had to not give in to the demon and beat this fucker's ass.
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"They're liars. Snakes. Backstabbers. Em might like you, but I'm not fooled by your tricks. And I will be here with a whole vat of holy water to drown your ass in the very second you step out of line."
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The urge became twice as strong to give in. But he couldn't. He needed Em, therefore he couldn't hurt him. But God did he want to pluck his teeth out, one by one.
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"You just try, tough man. You'll find that I'm a bit more resistant to your glorified shit water." While most demons got their skin seared away to the bone from a single drop of the stuff, it just gave him some pretty nasty burns. Painful, but he could deal.
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"Then maybe I'll just carve your heart out. A halfling's heart still might fetch a great price. 'Cause that's all you're good for. Being used, like the rusty tool you are." He then let Edgar go but didn't step back. "You'd best get going runt, before I send you back to where you came from."
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Edgar gave him a sickly sweet smile. "Gladly. If anything hurts me more than holy objects, it's being around someone with only a cell or two for a brain."
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"Oooh, burn!" Derek said. Both men snapped around to glare at Derek, who immediately shrunk in his chair.734Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPMMEvCaIq3
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Then before he said anything else, Edgar sped walked off. As he departed the super secret lair of Emily and Co., the urge to give into the Demon and tear her brother to shreds faded. Looking back, he was being stupid for provoking her brother. He should've turned the other cheek... They were his only key to perhaps earning a pardon from the Council. And possibly finding out about this mysterious Elias Thorpe.734Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡD7Inu3rQJE
