Star Harbor Nights

The museum's parking lot was well-lit, even though it was past closing time. That wasn't unusual, though. The security kiosk outside the parking lot was empty, but it looked unmanned rather than abandoned. The door was closed and locked and the lights were off. The big glass entrance doors were gated off, and there was no sign of anything disturbed within. The only indication that anything was amiss was the employee door propped open by a cinder block.

That, and the NCPD cruiser parked in the fire lane.

"This is Officer Dare, Car 571, responding to silent alarm at 111 Museum Drive..."

"Oh, for Christ's sake, just say 'We're at the museum, Lorrie'," Karen Seven said. "She knows where we are. She sent us here. What's the point of having plain language communication protocols if you won't speak plainly?"

"Karen!" Jason said, looking scandalized. He'd dropped the radio receiver like it was radioactive as soon as she'd opened her mouth... which was exactly why she'd done it. Jason Dare's last name was entirely ironic. He was a good cop... an excellent cop... but despite his years of experience he'd never, in Karen's estimation, be a great cop. That took guts. Jason was among the bravest men Karen knew, but bravery wasn't gutsiness.

At least he stood a better-than-average chance of someday becoming an old cop.

"This is Officer Dare, Car 571... come in, Dispatch? Over," Jason said.

"It is Police Appreciation Day," Karen said, when Jason's second attempt failed to raise a response. "Maybe the crooks all called in sick and the chief sent everyone home. That would make me feel more appreciated than sucky ass coffee and doughnuts."

"Free doughnuts to every precinct," Jason remarked. "Maybe they should have called it Police Defamation Day. Not that they weren't good doughnuts."

 "I wouldn't know," Karen said.

"Hello, Dispatch?" Jason repeated. "Come in, over."

"Comin' over and bringing a keg," Karen muttered. "Here, gimme that."

She snatched the receiver out of his hand and, before he could do anything else, she screamed into it, "LORRIE! HELLO! EARTH CALLING LORRIE! PLEASE TAKE YOUR FINGER OUT OF..."

"Karen! The radio is not a toy," Dare said grabbing it back. "That's an open frequency. The whole force could have heard that."

"Then why aren't I getting an alternating sequence of verbal high-fives and ass-chewings?" Karen asked. "Or any chatter of any kind for that matter? Have you noticed the radio's been dead almost since we got the alarm?"

"I have, actually," Jason said. "It's very unusual. I don't like it. Try the cell."

Jason didn't like anything unusual. For once, Karen had to agree. She pulled out her department-issued cell phone and dialed.

"It's ringing busy," she said.

"The main switchboard should never ring busy," Jason said, frowning. "Not unless the whole city's in flames. Try direct..."

"It's not just the main switchboard," Karen said, hitting more numbers. "Everything. Captain's desk, dispatch... and... I just tried my own home phone and got a busy signal."

"Something's wrong with the phone, then," Jason said.

"Or with all of them," Karen said. "Let me try something."

She hit another number, and Jason's cell phone began to ring.

"All the landlines are blocked or tied up," she said. "This has got..."

"Oh... don't say the v-word."

"This has got 'villain' written all over it," Karen said. "And the museum heist is a classic villain gig."

"An art museum, sure... but who steals from a science museum?"

"Mad scientists," Karen said. "We should go in."

"I'll go in," he said. "You keep trying to get dispatch on the horn, or the phone, or whatever. If I'm not back in half an hour..."

"Half an hour? Whatever happened to fifteen minutes?"

"It's a big place," Jason said. "I need fifteen minutes going in, and fifteen minutes going out."

"Fine, but don't think I'm not going to time it," she said.

"And don't you think I'm not going to wait inside just behind the door and goose you when you come charging in after me five minutes from now," Jason said.

"We could avoid this whole mess if I just go in first," Karen said.

"I have seniority," Jason said.

"So pull rank and send the rookie in!" Karen said.
 
"I don't work that way."

"I'll flip you for it," Karen said.

"Like I'm falling for that again," Jason said. "You haven't lost a coin toss in all the time I've known you... you've got a trick quarter or something."

"So use yours," she said. "Or throw rock, scissors, paper... whatever... just something to settle this, or I swear to God you'll have to handcuff me to the car."

"Alright, fine, whatever," he said, raising his balled hand. "One... two... three... go!"

"Ha!" Karen shouted in triumph, holding up two-fingers in a scissor sign. Her smug look fell completely off her face when she realized that Jason had left his hand in a fist: rock beats scissors. "What the hell?"

"Should've stuck to coin tosses," Jason said, climbing out of the car as she sat stunned, seemingly unable to comprehend the fact that she'd lost. "I'll keep in touch."

She watched blankly as he unsheathed his flashlight and undid the snap on his holster on his way to the door, then he disappeared from sight. Sighing resignedly, she picked up the radio and began trying to get a response from H.Q.

About twenty minutes after Jason Dare entered the museum, Karen began her approximately thirty-seventh attempt to raise somebody on the radio (though maybe only the fifth or sixth non-lyrical one). She had become so focused on her task that she was just realizing that Jason hadn't contacted her since shortly after he vanished through the door.

"This is Officer Seven..."

"Get off the frequency, kid," a voice--definitely not Lorrie's or Jason's--said abruptly, cutting Karen off. Still broadcasting, he said, "Hey, guys, I got some kid sounds like he ain't even hit puberty playin' secret agent on the police band. 'Officer Seven', he says."

New guy, Karen thought. She began again, more forcefully, acting as if she hadn't heard the aside.

"This is Officer Karen Seven requesting back up at the Museum of Natural History."

"You're shittin' me."

"No, I really am requesting back up."

"...your name is really Seven?"

"Who is this?" Karen asked, justifiably irritated. The dispatchers should know that every second could make the difference between life and death. "You can't be with the 7th."

"Nah, sweetheart, this is Sergeant Dan Bodago from the 18th. Whole bunch of us got pulled in to cover for all the pansies that went home with the flu."

"I didn't hear about that," Karen said.

"Just happened, starting like an hour ago, people upchucking all over the place... add that to the asylum break and you'll be lucky to get..."

"Asylum break?" Karen said. "Why wasn't there a bulletin? And how did H.Q. get you guys over from the 18th so quickly, if the vomiting started less than an hour ago?"

"Uh, yeah... um, oops?" the dispatcher's voice said, changing mid-sentence from the gruff-and-gravelly caricature to something completely different, something soft and feminine, and sharp and jagged as broken glass. "Guess I didn't think this part through as well as I could have... but then, I didn't think I'd really need to pull this schtick tonight. I mean, when I heard that all cops like doughnuts, I thought that meant ALL cops... and yet here you are, the proverbial fly in my ointment."

"What are you talking about?"

"Police Appreciation Day, sweetie. My little letter writing campaign yielded big results. The local Krusty Kreams and Apollo's Coffee Houses sent oodles of free product to the precinct houses throughout the day. Mixed into the coffee and that disgusting glaze they use was a special time-release formula of my own devising, designed to ensure that anybody who partook of even a tiny bite would go out like a light around the time my little caper commenced. It's not exactly elegant, but I needed something to take out the cops who weren't in the precinct houses when the gas goes off. Oh, if anybody managed to cram more than about a dozen of those things into their maw, by the way... well, let's just say there could be some openings on the force. But you don't have to worry about that... you didn't eat any, did you?"

"What can I say? I'm more of a bagel-and-lox kind of girl," Karen said. As soon as she released the talk button, she opened the squad car door and jumped out, switching on the portable unit on her shoulder. There was no sense letting this joker know she was on the move.

In point of fact, though, she had been looking forward to the free doughnuts... and had been pissed to find that she'd missed the last delivery and nobody had thought to save any for her. She guessed it was a stroke of luck, after all.

"Funny, 'Seven' doesn't sound Jewish."

"I Americanized it when I joined the force," Karen said. "My birth certificate says 'Sevenstein' on it."

"Ooh, that was almost funny... are you trying to make me laugh?"

If it keeps you talking, then yes, Karen thought. She had a very good idea who was on the other end, and she knew that when she talking stopped, the real danger would begin. It was like the saying about barking dogs never biting... true, if only in that it's hard to bark around somebody's leg.

"All part of the friendly service," Karen said absently, slinking along the cut stone wall towards the open door. Her gun was in her hands.

"You sound... different," the villainess said. "Shall I assume you've exited your vehicle?"

"If you're going to assume, make an ass out of yourself and leave me the hell out of it," Karen said. She swept into the door way, weapon ready. The hallway was clear. She glanced up at the top of the door frame before stepping through and checking the near corners, the blind spots.

"Oh, you very neatly avoided my little trap," the manic female voice said. "I don't mean anything nasty I did to the door... plenty of time for that sort of thing later. I mean the verbal one. You see, I simply can't stand the rather, how shall we say, plebian comeback that everybody and his drill sargeant uses whenever the word 'assume' crops up in conversation. It's so very trite, so completely overplayed, so pedestrian... and yet, don't people act like they're such a sparkling wit every time they use it?"

"I don't know, I kind of like trite," Karen said. "Haven't you ever heard the phrase 'trite and true?'"

The comparatively narrow corridor which lead from the side entrance joined the wide boulevard of the main entryway. She (and Jason) had both peered through the glass when they first arrived on the scene, and nothing had seemed amiss, but she was playing things Jason's way here. She gave the barred glass doors the hairy eyeball as she approached the mouth of the hallway before stepping around the corner with her back to them.

"Again with the funny... but in all seriousness, dear Officer Seven, do you realize how very fortunate it is that you didn't rise to my bit of bait? For the sake of this rather earnest gentleman whose radio I'm using, I mean..."

"If you've hurt him..."

"Hurt him? Or harmed him?" she asked. "It's a fine distinction, the thin, sweet line between hurt and harm, but a distinction worth making. I haven't harmed him yet... oh, and from the acoustics, it sounds like you're coming up on the great hall. You should be seeing the first of them soon."

"Them?" Karen echoed, her heart in her throat. Whatever it was the voice wanted her to see, she knew she wouldn't enjoy it. Her grip tightened around her gun.

"Yes, I had some fun on the way in... how shall I put this? Hmm, yes, well... regarding that thin line we mentioned, the one between hurt and harm? It may have been crossed."

The great hall was a large gallery extending through all three of the museum's above-ground floors. It housed some of the more striking showpieces in the collection, including the full-grown T-rex skeleton, an immense stone head from Pre-Columbian central America, and a number of equally striking specimens. Any one of them could inspire awe in an appreciative audience during the day. All of them collectively would have been enough to inspire a low tremor of fear in anyone forced to tread their way through the darkened museum interior at night.

None of them could possibly have produced the feeling of sick horror that fell upon Karen as her flashlight fell upon the grisly tableau in the middle of floor.

"Oh, dear God..."

"Strangely enough, that's exactly what I was thinking of calling it," the voice bubbled happily. "I mean, I know this isn't an art museum, strictly speaking, but you don't think it's too late for them to start a collection?"

It was the body of a middle-aged woman, probably a researcher or museum staffer. She would have been lying face up, except her head was twisted almost completely around. Most of her clothes had been torn off, but tattered remnants of black pantyhose remained around her ankles. Her body had suffered a number of rather traumatic-looking injuries, but Karen would have bet money the one that had killed her had been the arm; it had been ripped off, spraying blood in a wide arc on the floor... spraying blood in the way only a still-living heart can pump it.

"You sick bitch."

"You're so very right to condemn me... here I am, taking all the credit when I could never have done it, without the little people... some of whom should probably still be hanging around. Unless you're really, really lucky, in which case their little hearts will have already gone 'pop!' from all the adrenaline running through them."

Karen scanned the room, gun-and-flashlight sweeping the floor and the two balcony levels for signs of movement. Her own 'little heart' felt pretty close to popping, right that moment... even after her light found a pair of security guards, lying on the floor. Their uniforms were covered in blood and it looked like they'd been trying to tear each other to pieces when they died.

Each had a metal dart protruding from a meaty part of their neck. If there had been any doubt in Karen's mind as to who she was dealing with, it would have evaporated at that sight. There was only one woman--only one creature--who was so full of madness that the touch of her own blood would spread it like a plague. According to the 4B briefing file, surface contact resulted in a powerful but fleeting rush of berserk strength and rage. Direct fluid-to-fluid contamination, on the other hand... well, she was looking at the results.

"Must be my lucky day," Karen muttered.

"Oh, I think that it is," the evil voice on the radio agreed. "Do people call you that? 'Lucky' Seven?"

"People call me all sorts of things," Karen said.

"Lucky my playthings broke down before you had to deal with them... lucky you avoided triggering my pet peeve... lucky your partner went in instead of you... lucky you missed out on the doctored doughnuts..."

"Oh, yeah, when the rest of the force wakes up, they're all going to be saying I'm the lucky one," Karen said. There were three hallways that branched off of the great hall, and that was if she stayed on the ground floor. Too many choices... her gut instinct told her to go for the east wing, the Hall of Stars. It was the crown jewel of the museum, as it were. "So, how'd you do the thing with the phones, anyway?"

"Come now, I may be crazy, but I'm far from stupid. I don't mind giving up the secret to Operation: Cop Out, since that would have been discovered tomorrow anyway," she said. "The best tricks are like that... you can only pull them off once. My telephonic sabotage, on the other hand..."

"Phreakshow broke out with you, or you broke him out," Karen guessed. "Knowing that after almost two years isolated from anything more complicated than an electric razor, he'd be bursting to try something like this."

"You know, you're getting to be a bit of a spoilsport, Lucky," the voice said darkly. "But, do mine ears deceive me or am I hearing double?"

Karen's luck had held true to form... in that it had lead her right to a dangerous, psychotic supervillain. Rhyme, the self-proclaimed Queen of Insanity, was holding court in the Hall of Stars, the central chamber of the museum's extensive astronomy-themed collection.

Her outfit could be described as a gothic court jester. Her face was painted garishly white, a mixed motif of harlequin clown and death's head. Her head was crowned by a head-wrapping cowl that was also a three-pronged jester's hat. Her upper body was covered by a leather-like tunic with a square neckline, one side black and the other gray. She wore tight, sleek leggings with buckles up the side, the color of each leg the reverse of the tunic. They had a raised-line diamond pattern on them. Her feet ended in whimsical, elfin-type curly toes with the obligatory bells, but they were no slippers... they were combat boots with a thick tread, and one of them was pressing down on the side of Jason Dare's neck.

To Karen's relief, he didn't look hurt, though he was out like a light.

"It seems your friend had a bit of a delayed reaction to my Trojan pastries," Rhyme said. "I wonder... was that your luck, again?"

"I don't see how it's lucky for anybody," Karen said. She called to memory what she knew of the madwoman and her abilities.

She knew the costume's main function was keeping Rhyme's body together, like crash gear. She could be injured just as easily as a normal, but she'd get better almost instantly. If she hit a brick wall at sixty miles an hour, her body would go splat the same as anybody's... but her costume would keep the splat from splattering far, and her healing gift would pull it all back together. The tunic was also bulletbroof, but even without it bullet wounds were inconvenient to her, not fatal.

Rhyme held Jason's radio in one hand. In the other, she held a medium sized watermelon, balanced on its end on a single finger. She'd apparently ditched her blood-dart crossbow somewhere. According to her profile--the part that Karen was sure most people forgot about--this made her even more dangerous. The more useful a weapon Rhyme held, the more focused on an immediate goal she'd be... in that state of mind she could be stalled, countered, possibly even reasoned with.

When she pulled out the props and gags, though... that meant it was time to play.

"What's the caper, Rhyme?" Karen asked, trying to keep her on task. "What do you want a bunch of moon rocks for?"

"'A bunch of moon rocks?' Nothing," she said. "I'm here for one rock, a rock, singular... The Rock, if you will, and I don't mean that appallingly muscled fellow with the eyebrow. I'm talking about a little bit of a meteor that fell to earth approximately, oh, a bajillion years ago."

"I don't get it... what's a piece of outer space rock to somebody like you?"

"In a word: everything," Rhyme said. "But I don't expect you to understand."

"I'm always glad to live up to expectations," Karen said. "Step away from the officer, and put your hands up."

"Oh, I really don't think I'll be doing either of those. Free will, don't you see? Now, philosophers say the essence of free will is choice," Rhyme said. "So I'm giving you one now... you can either watch me pound your partner's head to a pulp with my boot while I eat this watermelon... or vice-versa."

"Let me think," Karen said, shooting Rhyme in the calf before she'd finished speaking. The shot surprised her, but she felt no pain and the impact wasn't even enough to really stagger her.

"Nice try," Rhyme said.  "I guess you weren't paying attention in Villain-Bustin' Class, the day they covered the 'impervious-to-harm/heals-almost-instantly' part of my power scheme."

"No," Karen said, watching with a growing feeling of triumph as a cord of Rhyme's oily, unnaturally viscous blood ran down from the hole in her legging towards the face of Jason Dare. True to the woman's words, the wound was already closing, forcing the bullet out in a rather grotesque fashion before slamming shut like a falling portcullis... which severed the strand holding the gooey droplet in place. Karen silently prayed that the chemicals it contained were more than a match for the ones in Officer Dare's bloodstream. "I'm afraid I was paying more attention to the 'contact-with-blood-causes-berserk-rage' portion of the lecture, actually."

Rhyme's jaw dropped, in as close to true cartoon fashion as Karen had ever seen. Her eyes rolled downward, to lock with Jason's as they snapped open... but there was nothing of the overly cautious police officer in them.

The watermelon fell to the floor.

"Did I err?" Rhyme said, moments before inhumanly strong hands grabbed her foot and threw her off the former hostage's neck.

"You have the right to remain silent," Karen said, backing up against the edge of the room, keeping her pistol on Rhyme as Dare's berserk body administered a savage beating. "If you choose to waive that right, anything you scream can and will be used against you in a court of law..."