Museum Core Chapter 19: “Triumphant” Return

Leaving the jungle felt almost as surreal as entering it had been as much of the noise normally associated with civilization returned with a vengeance.

Shouting, demands and pleas for help, cursing, general sounds of discontent … on any other day, this would likely have been deemed a riot and responded to with some kind of completely over-the-top overreaction.

But today, that just left two police officers who’d locked themselves inside their cruiser, watching and waiting.

And Gula was currently huddled under the glove compartment, where she couldn’t easily be seen from outside. Last time they’d gone past this place, her presence had almost caused serious trouble, trouble they’d only evaded by driving into the jungle. Jaclyn really didn’t want a repeat of that coming out.

She rolled down the window and leaned out while stopping next to the cruiser.

Gillet noticed her immediately, thankfully, and rolled down his window too.

“My radio broke, I need to borrow yours,” Jaclyn said and the asked-for device was tossed to her a moment later.

With that done, she slowly began to make her way through the crowd with liberal use of the horn, and once free, drove off at a rapid but still measured pace. Gula clambered back onto her seat with incredible difficulty, stuffing herself into her hiding place with such a huge frame had done her no favor, and Jaclyn started using her radio to request stuff.

The coroner for the human bodies in the trunk, an ambulance for her, and whichever HAZMAT unit was best suited to dealing with monster corpses. Also, someone who could do an autopsy on the electronic devices that had broken in the jungle. Stuff seemed to be working just fine out here, but if they couldn’t rely on their technology in there, with the monsters, then getting survivors out would be a nightmare.

Not to mention that they didn’t know what was causing the effect. If the monsters were projecting or carrying it along with them, then they’d be heavily limited in what they could use to fight them.

The world may not have ended yet, but they already knew it would soon get worse. And if humanity wasn’t able to use most of its best weapons, their chances of survival went way down.

Honestly, all of that was something for the boffins to figure out. She had a child to check up on and at some point, she’d have to rustle up a bed. And in the long term, there were monsters to fight and a jungle to explore.

And if someone needed something specific to do that research, she’d gladly grab it. Assuming it wasn’t a suicide mission. In that case, she’d happily throw them into a monster den herself.

As she drove, Gula resummoned the Caladrius and the bird once again alighted on her shoulder and burst into shards of light as her injuries overwhelmed it.

It was a decent power, capable of removing toxins and infections while somewhat reducing the impact of actual injuries.

It might lack the direct healing power necessary to magically bring her up to peak health or save her from an immediately fatal injury, but when it came to fixing the general maladies one might pick up on a jungle expedition, it was pretty nice.

A quick check in the rearview mirror while she’d stopped at a red light revealed that her injuries were still somewhat there, they just looked weeks old, and while blood might not be too obvious against her brunette hair, she would need to wash it soon. But overall, she didn’t look too bad for what had happened just now.

Even so, when she reached the precinct, she grabbed the windbreaker from the pack she’d brought and flipped up the collar to minimize how much of her injury was visible.

Mind you, it wasn’t her colleagues she was worried about, but Eve. Seeing one’s mother all but torn to shreds wasn’t exactly the kind of thing that contributed to a good childhood.

“Inspector Abrahams?” a man dressed in a HAZMAT suit approached her as she headed towards the precinct’s door, looking already exhausted.

“Yes,” she nodded, gesturing to the car.

“Oh thank God,” the man half-sagged. “I’ve been running around for half an hour, looking for you.”

Jaclyn sighed. “I wasn’t even here yet. There are dead monsters on the back seat and I have some samples in evidence bags in the driver’s side door. I’ve been around those things for an hour and I’m still here, so I don’t think they’re dangerous, but good on you for taking precautions.”

She had been the one to request HAZMAT, but that was mostly because someone would have probably thrown a hissy fit down the line if she hadn’t. Not because they cared about her ignoring a non-existent protocol, but because it would be an easy way to smear her as incompetent.

Jaclyn could already picture the whole mess in her head. Someone would want to exploit some natural resource or other, something she’d discovered and deemed too dangerous to get close to, which would in turn have caused some kind of regulation or law to be put on the books. And the best way to get around that would be to attack the person at the root of it all.

Was it possible that she was thinking a little too highly of herself? Yeah, obviously.

But in her single journey into the jungle, she’d already found cause to demand any colonizing attempts involved creating a massive gap between any buildings and the treeline to avoid any creepers from being able to ambush people without leaving the jungle.

And she was pretty sure that every time she entered that godforsaken place, she’d find similar stuff that needed to be taken into account.

Not to mention that she’d probably wind up being the one to discover half the venomous critters in the jungle by sheer virtue of being the only one who lived to report on them. After all, her Spirit Bond also gave her the arguably most legendary ability of the Honey Badger, the ability to walk off basically any kind of venom.

Jaclyn looked around to see if the coroner had shown up yet. He hadn’t.

She swore internally. Abandoning monster corpses meant for study would be fine. Leaving human bodies in the trunk of her car while she went elsewhere would land her in deep shit. Chain of custody was less of an issue at the moment, considering that this wasn’t a real criminal case, but still important.

So she grabbed the nearest officer and told her to guard the car until the coroner finally arrived. She also handed over  the bricks her phone and radio had turned into at some point, inside evidence baggies, to be handed over to the appropriate specialists so they could be checked out. If something in that jungle fried electronics, they needed to find out what it was, how it worked, and what they could do to counter it.

She wasn’t even entirely sure what was causing the delay. Yes, a disaster had struck the city, but it had done so in a way that should make retrieving bodies nigh-impossible. So what was keeping him?

At least now, it wasn’t up to her to stay.

Jaclyn marched into the precinct and was greeted by a zoo even one meter in. The crack in the sky was smaller than it had been initially, and likely that, in combination with a little time to gather their wits, had spurred people to start taking action.

Which, judging by the conversations she was overhearing, involved calling 999 until the phone lines were overloaded and then flooding the precinct.

“Excuse me.

“Coming through.

“I’m sorry, I have business inside …”

After two minutes she’d barely gotten five meters in so she wound up turning around and going in the back, but was forced to slam the door behind her as people who saw the new entrance tried to use it as well. Jesus, what a mess.

Around half the officers she met wound up jumping as she marched past, which wasn’t a good sign. They shouldn’t be that stressed in their own precinct, but the current situation was messy beyond belief, and they likely wouldn’t be getting much, if any, rest in the next several weeks.

She’d wanted to head straight to Owens’ office but was brought up short when she ran into Granger on the way.

From when she’d seen him in the morning, his appearance had changed massively.

His clothing was still the same, but he was now covered with more tattoos than even the most cliche gangster character found in any movie, including face tattoos. But they weren’t tattoos, were they?

For one, they were moving, but that wasn’t the strangest part. Looking at them, she could tell exactly what they were all about. This one meant that he’d failed at juggling, that one told a tale about him being too slow delivering coffee …

“You played around with the contracts, didn’t you?” Jaclyn sighed. “How long are those going to stay on your face?”

“We couldn’t get the time under a day,” Granger admitted.

“Then you’re not leaving the precinct until they go away. The orcs value honesty above basically everything else, and they really shouldn’t see you like that,” Jaclyn ordered. “We don’t know if they’ll believe us when we explain.”

“Oh, they already know,” Granger proudly told her. “I was running in and out of the precinct to ask them for help with the report.”

“How did they react?” Jaclyn asked.

“They thought we humans were idiots for how we use the contracts, and started laughing when I explained.”

So things hadn’t gone too badly here.

“How far did you get?” she asked.

“I’m mostly done,” he reported.

“Did you talk to Owens about it?” she wondered.

“Not yet,” Granger told her.

“I’ll fetch you once I’m done with him,” Jaclyn said and continued onwards, shaking her head. He really did look ridiculous, the only way he could look worse would be if he’d put on a clown suit.

As she closed in on her destination, she caught sight of Eve playing with the children of several other officers. The toy situation in the precinct might have been abysmal, but the kiddos seemed to be having fun. For a brief moment, she considered heading over there but decided against it. It would be for the best if she was one hundred percent presentable when she greeted her kid.

She heard Owens in his office, sounding haggard but it seemed like at least, he was being bombarded with fewer calls.

Wait … that office was decently soundproofed. Not fully soundproof, but even standing outside the door, she shouldn’t be able to hear him unless he shouted or she pressed her ear against the wood.

Her senses were improved by the Mind Stat, and both her hearing and sense of smell were further boosted by Spirit, but she hadn’t really noticed it much so far. She didn’t seem to be more vulnerable to loud noises, she couldn’t hear any new sounds that she knew of, but this was a clear-cut difference that she couldn’t ignore.

Suddenly, something pressed up against her leg, and she rolled her eyes.

Yeah, she had excellent hearing now, but she’d still completely missed the cat.

“Sorry Felix, I can’t play with you yet,” she told him and tried to step away, but he just followed. Typical cat. He wanted pets, and as far as he was concerned, he was going to get it no matter what he had to do.

“Felix,” she sighed, picked him up, and walked the few steps into the bullpen, where she dropped him off for the nearest unoccupied person to deal with. He might like certain people better than others, but in the end, he also didn’t hate anyone he interacted with on a regular basis.

Except for the janitor. Those two had an eternal feud going on over a whole bunch of random stuff the cat stole and hid, but of course, in his eyes, that stuff being retrieved was also stealing.

She headed back to Owens’ office. The call seemed to be winding down, so she waited the thirty-ish seconds it took for him to hang up and then knocked.

“Come in.”

Jaclyn entered but briefly froze as she saw a second person in the room, a man in a nondescript suit who’d squeezed himself into one corner. Nevertheless, she closed the door and sat down in the chair before the superintendent’s desk.

“Jacyln, this is Mr. Jones from MI5, unfortunately, I can’t kick him out of my office, but he also can’t do more than make polite requests.

“Mr. Jones, this is Inspector Abrahams, my left and right hand in this precinct. She’s been to the inside of the jungle and is here to give a report.”

Oof, it seemed like things hadn’t been peaceful in this room while she’d been gone.

“I’m not here to be a nuisance, I’m just here because this precinct is currently spearheading all recovery efforts and the situation could easily spill over into sensitive topics,” Jones tried to explain.

“We can’t even get the people out, and you’re concerned about, what, random documents being found in the basements of ruined government buildings?” Jaclyn sighed. “If you want to make yourself useful, I brought back some monster bodies, but the fire department’s HAZMAT has them. So if you want one, you’ll have to fight them for it.”

Also, he was probably here to spy on the Worldstrider tribe. That was going to be … interesting going forward.

Jones glanced at the door but shook his head.

“Just to make it clear, he’s my boss,” Jaclyn jerked her head to Owens and swiveled her chair to the point where Jones was barely in her field of view.

“How have things been here?” she asked.

“Apparently, I’m the second most senior London Police officer who didn’t get caught up in the jungle, and the only person above me had a panic attack and isn’t handling it at all.”

“Does that make you the Commissioner?” Jaclyn asked.

“Functionally,” Owens shrugged. “I’ll be acting as one until the whole mess gets sorted out and at that point, I’ll either get the job or some unqualified plonker who spent the entire crisis with his thumb up his arse.”

Yep, that tracked.

“You failed to mention that we’ve lost the entire royal family and almost all of the government. As in, ever part of it,” Jones chimed in. “This’ll take forever to sort out even if we don’t have foreign agents mucking things up.”

“Is that a risk?” Jaclyn asked, addressing him despite having resolved to ignore the “intruder”.

“Officially, no, everyone is standing down while we’re waiting for the other shoe to drop and we’re investigating who’s behind the catastrophe,” Jones told her.

“Please tell me no one seriously thinks humans were responsible for that?” Jaclyn facepalmed. Of course people were stupid enough for that. They were human, after all, and Jaclyn’s job brought her into contact with some of the dumbest individuals on the face of the planet.

Then, she finally went back to her “ignore the spook” pose.

“The jungle is a weird place, but most of the critters are hiding because their instincts are telling them something very powerful caused the situation. I don’t know how long that’ll hold. We’ve already got some hunting humans,” she began her report.

“Anyone who goes in needs to stay the hell away from the treeline whenever possible because there are some nasty ambush predators in there.

“I didn’t see any survivors, they’re either dead or in hiding. But there’s a smoke signal somewhere near Hyde Park and I’d like to head over there with reinforcements tomorrow. But we’ll need to make sure that the vehicles don’t rely on electronic components, because …”

“What happens to electronics?” Jones interrupted, only to wilt when both Jaclyn and Owns sent withering glares at him. Spook or not, he seemed to be of the pencil pusher variety. He may or may not have had a cool title, but he clearly lacked the fortitude of a field agent.

“They just stopped working at some point. Phone, radio, trunk, electronic power steering, everything’s fried at this point and I don’t know why,” Jaclyn shrugged.

“And the RAF just lost a F-35 above the city. One moment, everything was fine, the next, it dropped out of the sky,” Jones explained.

Well, shit. Something really was frying electronics in there, and they had no idea what.

“Well, my phone’s with CID,” Jaclyn shrugged and this time, Jones did get up and hurry to leave.

It actually wasn’t with the Criminal Investigation Department didn’t actually have any of her electronics yet, but that should keep him running around searching for a while.

“What was it really like out there?” Owens asked.

In response, Jaclyn pulled down the collar of the jacket to reveal the still visible scratches.

“Superpowers work, and monsters have them too.”

“Wait, how old are those?” Owens frowned.

“An hour, maybe? Gula has a healing spell,” she explained.

“How bad was it?” he asked softly.

“My powers probably saved my life,” she said, prompting a wince.

“A jungle full of monsters where electronics don’t work, and we don’t even have a proper command structure,” Owens sighed. “And that’s just our little corner of the world.”

Jaclyn could feel her blood running cold. He’d mentioned that the rest of the world had been affected too, hadn’t he?

“What’s going on there?”

“As far as I know, we’ve got eight transformation areas. Ours, ‘the jungle of the verdant hells’, according to the orcs, is the smallest.

“There’s also some kind of winter wonderland in the American midwest, part of Siberia just turned into crystal, there are two new islands in the southern Atlantic and Indian Ocean, one’s a desert and the other looks like it’s a part of Mars, some kind of mangrove forest is in the deepest part of the Pacific.”

Jaclyn was tired mentally tired and rapidly approaching physical exhaustion, but she could still count.

“That’s six,” she pointed out.

“There’s also a dark spot in the North Atlantic that might be one, and a container ship got eaten off the coast of Japan, so there’s probably something there, but no one knows where or what it is.”

“Eaten!” Jaclyn exclaimed.

“Big snake, one chomp, and … gone,” Owens didn’t even seem particularly concerned about the situation, but Jaclyn knew that expression. That was the look of a man who’d been faced with so much crap in so little time that he’d stopped caring.

The phone rang.

He sighed and picked up the call while Jaclyn just waited, listening. It seemed to be about something involving the military and the potential of getting support on that end.

Once it was over, Owens flashed her a tired grin.

“So, the military is going to be fully mobilized by the end of the week, and we’ll have enough people to provisionally cordon off the jungle tomorrow. You’ll also get your expedition. And we’ll get some more powerful guns soon.”

That was good. Jaclyn had her Glock, which was perfectly serviceable for what she normally needed it for, but nowadays, she had to fight monsters. The higher-ranked ones might be bullet-resistant or even bulletproof.

With how much stronger she already was after one day, she should be able to handle the highest-caliber handguns with ease. Even the kinds that normally broke the wrists of those who failed to handle them properly. Eventually, she’d need to be able to rely entirely on her powers, but until then, she wanted a solid and powerful firearm to fall back on.

Jaclyn nodded.

“I had Granger write up a report about what people might be inspired to do and he even cross-checked that with the orcs, I think we should both have him explain it to us after I’ve checked on Eve.”

Owens facepalmed. “Should have told you, I booked out the nearest Holiday Inn for everyone who doesn’t want to drive home. Also, you can keep your gun off the clock, just make sure your kid doesn’t get her hand on it.”

So that was where it had gone to now? Ignoring gun regulations?

“I think I’ll leave it at the station,” Jaclyn said. “I appreciate the offer, but I’d have to literally sleep on top of it with Eve around.”

Her daughter might be fairly well behaved all things considered, but children and guns were a terrible combination.

She wound up leaving a minute after that, and went to visit Eve with her collar once again up. But in the end, her kid turned out to have been dead on her feet, two seconds away from falling asleep, so Jaclyn wound up checking into the hotel right then and there.

That way, she could spend all night making preparations for tomorrow while also being around when someone needed information on the jungle’s insides. She had no doubts about how people would wind up bothering her in the hotel, but that would wake Eve and that would be unnecessarily problematic.

She was unlikely to get any sleep either way, but at least like this, her daughter wouldn’t be kept up all night.