Detention

The second he stepped foot into the desecrated town, Murdoc Jaeger felt something in the air. A vibration, almost. Maybe he was hearing it, but the buzzing that settled itself in the base of his brain, allowing him to barely notice it if he wasn’t trying to, aroused his suspicions.

“That old man is gonna regret sending me here.” He hissed through gritted teeth, surveying the wreckage of the small village, dread settling in the pit of his stomach. The twisted remains of what Murdoc thought had probably been a food stand of some sort lay twenty feet to his left, on its side, a syrupy blue liquid dripping out of it and pooling on the debris beneath it.

Murdoc sighed, yanking a small black rectangle from somewhere on his person and tossing it lightly into the space in front of him. It hung there, suspended by some invisible force as Murdoc tapped it and entered in two words:

Stanton Carlisle

The device hummed for a second, thinking, before pulling up a list of options for Murdoc to choose from. Impatiently, he scrolled through the list on the holographic screen in front of him, stopping when he saw the words ‘video call’.

Selecting it, he waited for the device to patch him through to his professor, eager to finish serving out the a*s backwards detention assignment that was easily the most tedious thing Murdoc had done that year.

“Yeah?” Came the slurred voice of Professor Carlisle, who was thoroughly smashed on his strict diet of vodka and the peanuts that you’re served on airplanes, which he had Murdoc buy in bulk. “That you Lana?”

Murdoc scoffed, kicking a rock a few inches to his left over to where the ruined food stand was, the syrup still steadily supplying the growing pool on the ground. “Carlisle it’s me.”

“Murdoc?” The man seemed to wake up a bit, and Murdoc heard rustling and the sound of wrappers being cleared off of something through the speaker. His face finally came into view. With his thick wire framed glasses only perched on one ear and the rough beginnings of a patchy beard starting to emerge on his three days unshaven face, he was the picture of a drunkard, which Murdoc often told him.

“Who else ever calls you anymore?” Murdoc spat, folding his arms across his chest, “Aside from your parole officer, I mean.”

“Are you at the pick up point?” Carlisle asked, ignoring his student’s rude comment and shuffling around some papers on his desk, searching for something.

“I guess.” Murdoc shrugged, pulling back on the insults for the moment, “It’s not really much of anything anymore.” He looked around again, the vibrating feeling in the air still setting him on edge. “There’s this weird vibrating in the air, really annoying. Any idea what it is?”

The professor’s face was thoughtful for a moment, he absentmindedly ran a hand through his mop of hair and sighed. “It’s a good sign. It means she’s close, but it also means she could be badly hurt. Be careful going forward.”

“Why do I need to be careful if she’s hurt? Who is this chick anyways? Your niece or whatever?” Murdoc tapped the hologram to refocus it, the connection must be bad, the image was grainy and blurring at the edges.

“She’s a special case.” He murmured, still searching for something on his desk, rifling through years of unfinished paperwork until he finally unearthed something. “Here it is. Yes, she’s my niece, Poppy Caraway.” He held whatever he had found to the camera, showing Murdoc an old, frayed picture of an eight or nine year old girl. “This is her about nine years ago. She should be seventeen now.” Murdoc squinted at the old picture, a combination of pity and exasperation rising in his chest.

“What, you don’t have anything more recent? Don’t tell me she didn’t want to associate herself with a charming guy like yourself.” Murdoc couldn’t have done anything to stop the rude remark from coming out of his mouth if he had wanted to, but he looked at the girl in the photo more closely.

“Yes, well. Once my brother, her father, was murdered she disappeared. I haven’t seen her since this picture was sent to me by him.” He said it nonchalantly, as though Murdoc’s words hadn’t stung, but Murdoc had insulted enough people in his time to know when his words hit closer to home than intended.

Carlisle only ever spoke about his family when he was too wasted to keep himself from doing so. Murdoc, his student aide and, by extension, nursemaid, had gleaned more information than Carlisle knew over the years. He had been faintly aware of a brother, but not even in his worst nights had the professor revealed that said brother had been murdered, much less made any mention of a missing niece.

For all he knew, Carlisle’s b*****d son could show up at Wayward any day now, Murdoc thought somewhat bitterly, but he kept his mouth shut.

“So, what? You think she was kidnapped by whoever offed your brother?” His abilities of insensitivity were at their best tonight, apparently.

“I doubt it. She was too smart, even back then to be caught, Cyril always made sure of that.” He paused for a moment, and in that moment Murdoc saw whatever Carlisle thought he saw at the bottom of every bottle he drained. “I’ve been searching for her for God knows how long, but she’s an expert, apparently, at hiding herself. A good thing, too, because if I had been able to find her at any point over the years, so would everyone else looking for her.”

“Sounds like your niece has landed herself in a lot of trouble.” Murdoc noted, raising an eyebrow. “You plan on bringing a target like her to Wayward?”

“Wayward is the only place she can live without being detected, there are so many energy signals running free here, so much atomical chaos, that it’d be like trying to find a needle in a pile of identical needles.” Carlisle, still holding Poppy’s picture to the screen, turned it around so he could get a look at it himself. “As long as you get her here without incident, whoever’s after her will think she died in the explosion.”

It had crossed Murdoc’s mind to ask what exactly this girl had gotten herself into, why these people after her wanted her dead so badly, what she had to do with this insufferable vibrating, but something in Carlisle’s eyes told him not to. Besides, he was, by nature, not terribly nosy. He had always half thought that maybe that was the reason he had been accepted as Carlisle’s apprentice in the first place.

“I’ll check any hospitals or temporary infirmaries first, send me that picture.” Murdoc prepared to end the call, shrinking down the holographic screen and grabbing the Handi-Cube, bringing it closer to his body. Carlisle nodded, scanning the photo with and sending it to Murdoc.

“Oh, and one last thing,” Carlisle said suddenly, as though remembering something, “I haven’t seen her in nearly a decade, but even before all this she was slippery, don’t let her escape.”

“Oh, you know me.” Murdoc sighed, rolling his eyes. “Always letting the ladies slip through my fingers.” He ended the transmission and threw the Handi-Cube back into an inner pocket in his coat, his fingers brushing against his dorm key and the key to Carlisle’s office on their way out.

His eyes combed through the wreckage, landing on the desecrated food stand after finding nothing else in the area. He sauntered over, kneeling over the remains of the cart, slathered in some type of batter, and unearthed a small dagger from somewhere on his person. He pried up hardened pieces of twisted metal until he came across what looked like the register, prying it open and taking the eighty or so dollars inside.

Hey, it had been here for at least a couple days, it was up for grabs as far as he and anyone whose opinion he cared about was concerned.

He stood, stuffing the large wad of cash into yet another pocket in his fitted trench coat, and started heading towards  wherever the road would have led if it hadn’t been destroyed, keeping an eye out for any people he happened to come across.

It was weird, actually. He hadn’t seen a single person at the accident site, no damage control or people scavenging for any lost belongings. When Carlisle had given him the assignment he hadn’t received many details, but according to a newspaper he had bought at the train station he had come through the incident was only three days old, and that was basically all anyone knew about it. There was no motive, and no group took responsibility or issued any threats or demands.

Obviously, Carlisle understood what was going on, and it had something to do with his little fugitive niece. Try as he might, Murdoc, despite having seen a younger version of her via Carlisle’s old memento, couldn’t help but imagine a barbed wire tattoo on her arm and scar running across the bridge of her nose. Maybe an eyepatch, whatever. He hadn’t put much thought into it.

The vibrating, which had been keeping itself tucked away in the back of his mind, had become more prevalent in the past minute or so, something he was taking as an exceedingly annoying good omen.

He had escaped the reach of the blast a few minutes ago, and the road was finally clear of rubble. Wastebaskets lined the street every twenty or so feet, standing next to the pristine red benches that stood out against the bluish gray brick of the walkway. It would have been pretty charming if Murdoc couldn’t taste the rain in the air and the sun hadn’t somehow been swallowed by the heavy clouds gathering in the sky. He had never been one for charming anyways.