Season 1, Episode 8:
FANthrax
Part 5 of 10
The four agents stood outside the latest victim’s house,
double-checking their Hazmat suits to ensure some protection against this
unknown illness. Sobered from the
morning antics, they listened as Julilly explained the situation.
“Bree-Anna Richards was one of the first cases brought into
the hospitals. From what we were told,
her symptoms were severe from the beginning, and it wasn’t long before… well,
Bree-Anna was the first to die from whatever this is.”
“But if she…” Brian started, but stopped when Julilly
continued.
“Her case was pretty bad, but she’s not the reason we are
here. A few hours after her death, her
sister Sophie started to show the signs.
The CSIS was brought in with Sophie’s case. The hospital could not explain why Bree-Anna
seemed fine one minute and was dying the next and Sophie’s symptoms
progressively got worse. Sophie and her
sister shared a room at home and were in close contact; their case may provide
some insight into this disease.”
“What about the parents and the rest of her family?” Brian
questioned out loud.
“When Sophie became sick, they moved from their house into
a hotel. None of the others are showing
signs, but since Sophie progressed slowly, there is no guarantee that the rest
of the family will not contract it.”
“Why are we just now investigating this house?” Nick blew
up. “If Bree-Anna was the first
infected, why now? Why didn’t we come
here first?”
“Nick, the CSIS have investigated this house. Our agents have been all over and couldn’t
find anything. Dr. Carter was giving
Sophie some experimental treatments that she seemed to be responding well
to. And we weren’t sure there would be
anything to find here, since Bree-Anna’s case was so old. Now, we need to find something, and since
Bree-Anna was the first to show up in the hospital, we thought that…”
“Perhaps the first cases hold the key,” Red chimed in. “Terrence Phillip was also one of the first
to be brought in, yet it seems that even though he came in after Bree-Anna, he
seemed further progressed. It was some
of the same treatments Dr. Carter used on Sophie that kept Terrence alive as long
as he was.”
“Unfortunately, the first ones infected are harder to
determine; many of the sick are not showing up until the symptoms reach their
peak and are unable to speak at that point.
Bree-Anna and Terrence shared the common thread of being fine one minute
and violently ill the next, which leads us to believe they were among the first
infected,” Julilly added.
“So if we can find a link between the first infected, we
might stand a chance at determining the cause and ultimately discovering an antidote,”
Red mused.
“That’s what we believe and are banking on. Now shall we?”
Nick lead the group towards the house. As they trooped across the lawn in their
bulky suits, he was reminded of the scene from ET, where the government scientists invaded the house. “EEEEEE-Teeee… phone home…” he warbled in his
best ET voice.
“Nick, shh!” hissed Red, casting a warning look towards the
dead girl’s parents, who were waiting at the front door to meet them and answer
their questions.
The entryway of the house immediately walked them into the
front room, set up as playroom for the children younger than either
victim. Toys were scattered
everyone. Brian closed his eyes and
hoped none of the younger children would catch what Bree-Anna and her sister
had. In a matter of a few steps, the
crew was at the stairway leading upstairs.
Brian looked ahead into the dining room and kitchen and wondered how
many times they hit their arms on the chairs and cabinets; the passageway between
them narrow.
When Nick reached the top of the stairs, he couldn’t help
himself. He leapt up the final stair, starting
again, “That’s one small step for Nick…”
“Nick...” Red and Julilly groaned in unison, and Brian
added, “Not again…”
They entered the girls’ room at the top of the stairs and
looked around. Posters of pop groups –
The Backalley Boys, The Moffatts, and The Jonas Brothers – adorned the
walls. The two beds were up against
opposite walls; Bree-Anna’s bed was next to the window. CDs lay scattered on the floor in front of
the CD player, clothes tossed on the floor and draped over the beds. A long table sat on the only other free wall,
chairs askew from the last time they were used, which, the group assumed,
wasn’t recent, as papers covered the seats of the chairs, as well as the desk.
“How are we supposed to find anything in this room to
help?” Nick scoffed.
Red opened her case and pulled out some swabs. “Here.”
She handed some to Nick. “Start
swabbing surfaces.” Everyone grabbed
some swabs and spread out in the room.
Cautiously, they started to swab different surfaces in the room, hoping
to find the source of the infection.
Nick poked Brian with a clean Q-tip, holding it up like a
finger. “El-li-ott…”
Brian turned away, shaking his head. “I can’t believe my cousin allows you to work
for him,” he muttered, going back to his own swabbing.
After almost an hour of working, with complete silence from
everyone, including Nick, Red capped the last swab and put it in her case with
the rest.
“Let’s go speak with the parents,” Julilly stated, as she
headed back outside. While Julilly asked
the parents questions, the others listened.
“What did you find in there?” Bree-Anna’s father asked.
Julilly shook her head and bypassed the question. “What can you tell us about Bree-Anna’s
activities the day before she was sick?”
Bree-Anna’s father shook his head. Her mother thought for a few minutes before
giving her answer. “She was at a
friend’s house. Someone she met recently,
I believe. Bree-Anna always made friends
so easily.” Tears started to flow from
the mother’s eyes, and it was a few minutes before she felt ready to
continue. “I just remember she was
excited.”
“Can you tell us the girl’s name?” Nick interjected.
“It was unusual; I remember that.” She blew her nose in the crumpled tissue in
her hand. “Natalie something-or-other…”
“Spice...” the father added. “That part I remember, because is seemed
strange.”
“Natalie Spice,” Nick repeated. “Do you know an address for this young lady?”
Both parents shook their heads, before a fresh stream of
tears rolled down their cheeks.
“You’ve been a great help,” Julilly consoled. “Would you mind if we took one more look
around the girls’ room before we leave?
If we could get in contact with the girl Bree-Anna was with that day, we
might learn more about what made her ill.”
“Of course not,” the mother sniffed, waving vaguely towards
the stairs. “Do what you need to do.”
“Anything that could help Sophie,” the father agreed,
nodding in earnest.
Julilly lead the team back upstairs to the girls’
bedroom. “Anyone remember seeing any
reference to this girl, Natalie Spice?” she asked the others.
They shook their heads slowly, trying to remember, but
coming up short.
“What about her computer?” Nick suggested, nodding towards
the PC that was set up on the desk between the girls’ beds. “Maybe there were emails or IMs, tweets, that
sort of thing. I can check.” He was no
“Good idea,” said Julilly.
“We should take her cell phone too, if she had one.”
“I’ll check with the parents,” Brian volunteered, and they
heard him clumping downstairs in his bulky suit.
To Red, Julilly directed, “Let’s re-check drawers, book
bags, anywhere she might have kept notes from this girl, maybe an address or
phone number.” While Nick sat down in
front of the computer, the two women worked around him, pulling out desk
drawers, unzipping backpacks, leafing through notebooks, emptying purses.
The girls’ computer had been shut down. When it finally booted up, Nick first
launched the internet. The browser
opened to a website he’d never been to before:
a black background behind a layout with bright orange flames, with a
header that read Complete Mayhem. Scanning the page, he quickly realized it was
a website for stories of some sort, a type of archive where writers could post
their work.
Why, he wondered, did the girls have this website as their
home page? It had to be a favorite
website, one they must have frequented regularly. He wondered if one or both of them had posted
stories on this site. If he could find
their accounts, maybe there would be clues, or at the very least, links to
point him in the right direction – to email accounts, social networking sites,
and the like.
A stroke of luck! As
he started to read the main page more closely, a line of text caught his
eye: You
are currently logged in as Moffatts-Chick-404. Score!
Whichever girl used this website, she had set her account to log her in
automatically.
On the menu that loaded, there were lots of options for
managing stories and series and reviews.
He bypassed these and clicked on a link that said “Edit Bio,” hoping for
a look at the user’s current “bio.” The
page opened to a form that was already filled in with information.
“Bingo,” he muttered to himself, when he saw “Bree-Anna”
entered in the name field.
“Find something, Carter?” asked Julilly, looking up from a
small notebook she’d opened on Bree-Anna’s bed.
“Maybe. I’m in
Bree-Anna’s account on this website that came up… it’s some kinda writing site,
where you can post stories.”
“Yeah? So did she
post any?”
“Dunno, haven’t gotten that far. It’s definitely her account though.”
“Well, good. Keep
looking.”
“You got it, Jewel.”
His eyes fixed on the screen, Nick didn’t notice Red roll her eyes
before going back to the drawer she was rifling through.
“I’ve got her cell phone,” Brian announced as he strode
back into the room a few minutes later, holding up a hot pink cell phone,
bedazzled in silvery rhinestones. “I
looked through her contacts, though, and no Natalie.”
“Really?” Julilly
looked up again, her forehead creased.
“That’s weird. If she was
spending time with this girl, you’d think she’d have her number stored. Are you sure she’s not there under a
nickname?”
“I don’t think so.
See for yourself.” He tossed her
the phone casually, and she caught it, immediately going to flip through the
contacts herself. “Find anything,
Carter?” The Rok asked, coming up behind Nick.
Nick had clicked through to a page that displayed the
stories Bree-Anna had posted. “Didn’t
your mama ever tell you it was rude to read over people’s shoulders?” he
muttered, as he scrolled through the list of stories, skimming their titles and
summaries. Brian ignored him. “They all have the same characters – Bob…
Clint… Scott… Dave… and, well… her. Bree-Anna.”
He moved his cursor over a graphic that accompanied one of the
stories. It showed the faces of two
young men, along with a teenage girl.
The men’s pictures looked like professional portraits, but the girl’s
appeared to be an amateur photo. “Is
that her? Is that the dead girl?” he
asked.
“I dunno,” murmured Brian.
“Julilly?”
Julilly got up from the bed and came over to look. “That’s her,” she confirmed. “So she’s writing stories about herself and
these guys? Are they famous?”
“They’re The Moffatts.”
Everyone looked around at Red Jewel, who had crept up behind them. Brian looked astonished, Julilly mildly
impressed, but Nick smirked and opened his mouth to make a joke at her expense.
Before he could utter a word, though, Red pointed at the
screen and added, “It says so right there.
‘Category: Fanfiction > The
Moffatts.’”
“Ohh…” they chorused, and Brian added, “Good eye.”
Red grinned. “You
should have recognized them, Nick.
Terrance Phillip had posters of them in his bedroom, remember?”
“Psh,” Nick scoffed.
“Count on a chick to notice shit like that – eh, Rok?” But he had noticed it, he recalled now. Inwardly, he’d ripped on the Phillip kid for
the boyband posters on his walls.
“Good thing she did,” Brian replied. “You reckon it’s coincidence, or could this
be the connection we’ve been lookin’ for?”
“That they’re both fans of The Moffatts?” Nick was doubtful. “How could that have made them sick,
though?” Realizing the joke had made itself,
he quickly added, “I mean, obviously I can imagine the painful side effects
their music would have, but… well, how do you account for the purple pee?”
Brian actually snorted.
Red rolled her eyes, but was unable to suppress her grin. Julilly’s eyes, though, were narrowed; she
was thinking hard. “I think we should
look into this. I’m not sure it is a
coincidence. Really, how many Moffatts
fans are there, even in
“Call me clueless, but… who are these Moffatts guys,
anyway?” asked Brian, looking sheepish.
“I thought I was fairly in-the-know on my music, but I guess not…”
Julilly chuckled wryly.
“You’d only remember them if you were ‘in-the-know’ in the late
nineties. Consider them
Nick frowned, looking around the room. There was a poster of The Moffatts on
Bree-Anna’s side of the room too, perhaps even one of the same ones Terrance
Phillip had up. But how could the
Moffatts connection have anything to do with the mysterious virus from which
they’d both died?
“Are the Moffatts still together?” asked Red, looking at
Julilly. “I mean, they’re not still
playing concerts or anything like that, are they?”
“No idea,” said Julilly.
“I don’t follow the music scene in
Nick returned his attention to Bree-Anna’s computer. He noticed a link at the top of the website
that said “Community” and clicked it. It
took him to a message board that supplemented the site. “This could give us some insight,” he
remarked, tapping the screen. “If she
posts here, too, she might have mentioned some kind of event she and Terrance
both could have been at.”
Finding Bree-Anna’s posts on the forum turned out to be
easy. All he had to do was click on a
members list and scroll down until he found her screen name. Then he could view her recent posts.
The most recent was a survey she had filled out. He scanned her responses eagerly, but there
was nothing remarkable, nothing telling there.
Some of the answers seemed made-up anyway: he hadn’t recalled seeing a 2008 Lexus or a
2007 Mercedes – the cars she, at fifteen, supposedly owned – in the
driveway. Disappointed, he was about to
click the back button, but Brian suddenly said, “Hey!”
“What?”
The CIA agent jabbed his hand towards the screen. “Scroll down!
Look at the name of the next poster… ‘Moffatts-Spice’? As in, Natalie Spice??”
Nick’s eyes widened.
“Moffatts-Spice,” too, had filled out the survey. First question: What is
your first name?
First answer: Natalie.
“It’s her!” he said excitedly. But there were no contact details in the
survey, and when he clicked on the girl’s profile, all he found was an email
address.
“An email address, that’s something,” Brian said,
encouraged. “We could email her, if
nothing else. Can those be traced? Email addresses?”
“Not sure, but IP addresses can. Only the moderators of this board would be
able to see that, though. I wonder if
Nick fiddled with the watch on his wrist, the one which did
everything but tell time. A few seconds
later,
He could just make out
Nick felt a familiar jolt in his gut at the mention of
their former ally-turned-enemy. The last
time he’d seen Drums, he had been clinging, literally one-handed, to a mast of
Dr. Rough’s pirate ship, the stump of the hand Nick’s sword had severed
bleeding copiously. Dr. Rough’s
helicopters had come to whisk him away, but Nick didn’t know if the guy was even
still alive…
“So what do you need?”
“Oh! Uh – I need you
to do some hacking for me. I’m on this
message board, and I need the IP address of one of its members and a trace for
it, down to the physical address, if you can get it.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem.
Give me the URL and the username.”
Nick relayed the information. A few minutes passed before
Nick grabbed a pen and a sticky note from Bree-Anna’s
desk. “Ready,” he said. It was cumbersome to write with latex gloves
on, but he copied down the address as
Julilly snatched it out of his gloved hand and squinted at
it. “What?? No, that can’t be right. That address is here. This house. Bree-Anna’s address.”
“What?” Nick took
the sticky note back and stared at it.
“Hey,
“That’s what I traced, Nick. ‘Moffatts-Spice,’ right?”
“Right… and it traced here??”
“Sure did.”
“Okay… well, can you look up the IP address for
‘Moffatts-Chick-404’ then?” Nick asked, grasping at straws.
It took Pearl only a minute or two. “Nick, their IPs are the same,” she said. “That means they’re using the same computer…
Likely, they’re the same person, with two different accounts.”
Nick looked from Julilly, to Brian, to Red, in
confusion. “So, what, Bree-Anna just
made up this Natalie girl? Why would she
do that?”
“Simple,” smirked Julilly, holding up her phone. “My contact confirmed there was a Moffatts reunion concert in
Nick still felt bewildered.
“But why make her an account on a message board too? Isn’t that taking it a little far?”
“She probably had different reasons for doing that. But don’t ask me to explain the psychology
behind teenage girls, Carter; we’d be here all day. Listen, we know there was a concert; we just
need to prove that Bree-Anna and Terrance Phillip were both there and then find
out how many others were, too. I’m going
to go back downstairs and see if Bree-Anna’s parents know anything about the
concert. Then I’ll call Terrance
Phillip’s mother and ask her, too.
Julianne, why don’t you contact Dr. Boulet and see what she can find out
at the hospital? Carter, keep searching
her computer for any proof that she was at that concert, and Littrell, search
the room again – look for ticket stubs, souvenirs, anything like that.”
Taking up their assignments, the two Jewels left the room
to make their contacts, leaving Brian and Nick alone in the bedroom. Brian moved to Bree-Anna’s dresser and opened
the top drawer. “Man, I feel weird
pokin’ through a fifteen-year-old girl’s britches,” drawled Brian, holding up a
lacy pair of panties between his fingertips.
Nick snorted. “Did
you really just use the word britches?”
he replied incredulously, before turning back to the computer. “Anyway, you should be used to it, coming
from Hicktucky or wherever the hell you grew up. I thought y’all hooked up with your sisters
and cousins down in those there parts.”
“You know, for a bigshot secret agent, you’re damn
ignorant, Carter,” The Rok replied. Nick
could tell
Some clicking around led him away from the Complete Mayhem site entirely and onto a
YouTube account Bree-Anna had posted in her profile. It was her own, as evidenced by the dead
girl’s smiling face in a screenshot of one of the videos. He clicked play and felt a strange ripple of
sadness as a sweet-faced, blonde girl grinned into the camera. He could see the poster-covered wall in front
of him behind her in the video, as she started gushing how much she loved her
favorite band, The Moffatts. She had
shot the video in this very room, just over a week ago, according to the
posting date. It was eerie to realize
how quickly the mystery virus had taken hold of her and claimed her life.
“Hey, I think I found somethin’,” said Brian from the other
side of the room. “A glow stick and a
button, with those guys’ faces-”
“Shut up, I’m trying to watch this,” Nick snapped, focusing
back on the YouTube video.
“…
I never thought I would get to see them in concert, but guess what? On Saturday night, I’m going to…” Bree-Anna ducked out of the frame for a
moment, apparently reaching for something on her bed, and then popped back into
it, holding up a ticket with a gleeful grin on her face. “… THE
MOFFATTS!!!”
“AHA!” Nick shouted.
At the same time he was pausing the video on a frame of
Bree-Anna holding up her ticket, Brian gasped, “Ow!”
“What?” Nick turned
around. Brian was still at the dresser,
holding up his left hand. He appeared to
be examining his index finger. “What’d
you do?”
“You startled me. I
stuck myself,” said Brian, sounding dumbfounded. “With this.”
He held up a pin-on button; the pin part was open.
“Ouuuch…” said Nick in his ET
voice.
Brian ignored this.
“Like I was trying to tell you,” he added irritably, “it’s got the
Moffatts on it.”
“Sorry.” Nick
swallowed. “Did it go through your
glove?”
“Course it went through my glove; it’s a pin.”
“Are you bleeding?”
“I dunno… I’m fine; I’m sure I’ll be fine. I’m just gonna go wash it out real good and
get a new pair of gloves.” Brian hurried
out of the bedroom, leaving Nick by himself.
He swiveled back to the computer, looking at the image of
Bree-Anna beaming behind her ticket. He
clicked play again. “Oh my god, I’m SO excited!!
This is gonna be the best night of my life!!” she squealed, bouncing
a little on her bed.
All of a sudden, he was overwhelmed by that strange feeling
of sadness. It wasn’t the best night of your life, he realized. It was
the last night.
Julilly and Red burst back into the room a few minutes
later. “Find anything, Nick?” Julilly
asked brusquely. Without waiting for an
answer, she rushed on to say, “Bree-Anna’s parents are clueless, but the
Phillip mother confirmed that her son was at the Moffatts show on Saturday. She said he was making a scrapbook page about
it when he collapsed Sunday night.”
“Bree-Anna was there, too,” said Nick, gesturing at the
computer monitor. “She showed her ticket
in this video.”
“Did you find the stub?”
“No, but Littrell found a button and a glow stick that were
probably souvenirs.” He wondered if
Brian was still getting cleaned up in the bathroom, but before he could mention
what had happened, Julilly nodded, a broad smile splitting her face.
“That’s all the confirmation we need. Next stop on the trail: the Air Canada Centre.”
“Where’s that?” asked Nick.
“It’s where the concert was held,” said Julilly. “And I have a feeling it’s where we’ll find
another piece of the puzzle.”
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