Baltimore City Morgue

[Trask]

Simmons looked at the girl framed in the doorway and nodded. Clearly the biological need to eat was now beyond her. It made sense given her now non-existent metabolism. That left the unanswered question of where her body got its strength.

He lumped that question in with the one about how she was moving around at all. There was a force at work here that wasn't quite mutation but something else.

She also seemed much, much calmer, as if coming to accept the peculiar, twilight existence that she now lead.

That was good; Simmons didn't want to have to restrain her again if he could possibly avoid it.

The next few hours seemed to fly by as Simmons and Largo worked together to run a series of first medical and then scientific tests to isolate the source of her strange state.

It seemed they tried in vain.

Her reflexes and reaction time remained unchanged and her body, if anything, had strengthened from the change. The needle scars from the previous blood test healed almost completely within the first hour but not into the state of live tissue; her flesh returned to its greenish preserved state.

The Cerebro circuit was checked, rechecked and wheeled out again, only to give the same reading as the first. Moonbeam was neither human or mutant, falling into some category in between the two.

Finally, Simmons realised his team was beginning to flag. None of them had stopped for rest or refreshment since their arrival and Daniels in particular looked like he was in need of a coffee at the very least.

"I'm going to have to leave you for awhile now," Simmons said to the strange, dead girl, "but don't worry, I'll only be just around the corner."

He glanced at the bed with its menacing straps.

"I won't let them strap you down again, I don't think that will be necessary since you are doing very well," he gave her another gentle smile.

"Is there anything I can get for you?"

[deadgirl]

She looked down at herself, finally clothed in a hospital dress rather than the blood remnants of the clothes she'd worn in life. Looking back up at Simmons, she offered a faint smirk.

"Clothes?"

+++

As they left her to her own devices, she stepped over to the window and carefully opened the shades. Down in the parking lot people came and went, some with flowers, some in wheelchairs. She was in a hospital, that she'd known since she had a look around her room. But where she was, she didn't know.

Sitting in the chair by the window sill, she stared out at the gray day and ran fingertips over her lips, darted them into her mouth to feel her tongue. Her skin was cool to the touch but not cold. She felt alive, and yet, only the smallest amount of fluid dampened her mouth. No saliva, no blood as she scraped at the inside of her lip. Looking down at her fingers, she saw the skin she'd torn out curled under her fingernails.

The quiet of the moment allowed her to hear them again. The dead, rising from the floors below, walking the halls outside her door.

I never made it, you know.

"What didn't you make?" She answer placidly, picking flesh out from under her fingernails.

To the finals. I had a flush, but that fucking twitch in my eyes... he saw it. James. Ya know he won four mil at the World Series in Vegas?

"Vegas." She thought about it, looking back into the room in the direction of the voice. She knew Vegas. Pretty lights, cars, palm trees. Money and guns and mobsters. She wasn't sure where the idea came from, lifting like a bubble through congealing blood, but it was there.

Yeah, Vegas, ya stupid broad. Who doesn't know Vegas? Nothin but crazies on this floor.

"I'm not crazy." She wasn't right? Looking down at her hand, she wondered if the grayish veins beneath her white-green skin were really the colour they seemed to be or if, as the voice said, it really was all in her mind. "What's your name?"

Harold Macon, sweetheart.

"Harold Macon..." she looked out the window again. A elderly woman pushed her walker across a crosswalk, a younger man beside her carrying a grocery bag filled with books.

What's yours?

She only shook her head. "Don't have one, Harry."

[Trask]

An hours break had worked wonders on the teams morale. Even Daniels had perked up a bit, though the junior still wasn't at all comfortable around the girl and had said as much. He didn't personally have anything against mutants, but the living dead just wasn't right. Everybody deserved the chance to rest.

Simmons had managed to gather some spare clothing from the hospital laundry and was on his way back to the room. He'd reached the door and was about to enter when he heard the muffled sound of the girl's voice coming from within.

He pressed his ear against the cold metal and listened.

What's your name?

The question was followed by a moments silence. Simmons made to open the door again but stopped as she spoke again; something of a one sided exchange between herself and someone called Harry Macon.

Once he was sure that nothing else was forthcoming he opened the door and walked in with the bundle of clothes tucked under his arm.

"I managed to find you some things," he said with a smile, "and though I doubt it is high fashion it should be more comfortable than that hospital shift."

He dropped the clothes onto the end of the bed and looked at her. He supposed she had been looking out of the window and wondered what the world looked like through those weird red eyes of hers.

"I thought I heard you talking to someone just before I came in," he said, not wanting to press the issue if she didn't want to talk about it.

[deadgirl]

She sighed.

Yeah, tell him I'm your dead boyfriend. Heheh.

"He's dead," She said simply, looking back at Simmons. She saw the clothes, and smiled a bit. "Thanks."

Walking over to the bed, she sat down and undid the hospital gown. She didn't really feel shy about him seeing her naked, and wondered at the difference between vomiting and nakedness. Her own instincts were a story in and of themselves.

"It's what woke me up," she explained, an exhausted sort of evenness to her voice that belied a mind trying only to cope with too much oddity. "Their voices in the morgue. None of them knew what had happened to them." Pulling a long sleeve tshirt over her head, she found herself taking pleasure in the fact that it was a few sizes too big. The warm cloth was comforting.

"But they started to figure it out, after a while. When the orderlies came in and strapped me down, they were talking about it. That I should have been dead." She looked pained for a moment, as if she might cry. What few memories she had were too terrifying to fix on for long. Her eyes closed, and she sat still, saying nothing.

Her voice broke as she spoke again. "Will you please tell me what you know, what your people are testing me for, please?" Her hand shook as she brushed long curls of sandy brown hair out of her face. It seemed that unearthly calm could only last so long. The more she knew about her situation, the less afraid she became. "I just want to know what's happening to me."

[Trask]

The voices of the dead.

This was either some further aspect of whatever it was that had happened to her, or she was truly mad. Simmons wondered which and struck upon an idea to verify the truth.

He turned his back on her as she changed, not out of any sense of decency, his mind was far too clinical for that, but so that he could return to the door. Largo looked up curiously from his coffee and shrugged a question.

"Go down to the morgue and find out if there is a Harry Macon on the records and if there is, his time of death."

John Largo raised an eyebrow but scooted off anyway to do as he was told. Simmons returned his attention to the potentially insane, dead girl.

"We believe," he began slowly, "that you are some sort of mutant, though of a kind we have never seen before." He smiled apologetically.

"Up until now our equipment has only been able to distinguish between mutants and humans, though a blood test would reveal a mutant that had been cured. You are none of the above."

She looked sad in the ill-fitting clothes, Simmons thought, like a ragged old children's doll that had been thrown out with the trash.

[deadgirl]

She looked flatly at him. It wasn't so much about being sarcastic or cynical, just... cutting to the point.

"I'm a zombie, aren't I." She winced, sighing. "Like... not living or dead. I'm in between." Her red eyes watched him a bit longer before she slipped on the socks he'd brought. It was nice to cover up all that disgusting mold green flesh.

What? You're not alive huh. Never seen one like you. Now I've seen deadheads, and reawakeners, and psychics come here more than you'd want to know. But a zombie girl? Now that's hot.

The girl rubbed her ear, shrugging away from the sound of Harold's voice from across the room.

"You don't believe in ghosts, do you." She looked warily at Simmons. "Because you can't measure them on your instruments." The look on her face, vaccuous and laced with a growing anger at her situation, made her look all the more corpselike. "You can't measure me on your machines. Maybe you shouldn't believe in me, either."

Her fingers swept under her eye as if for tears. Looking at her dry fingertips, her shoulders dropped a little.

[Trask]

Simmons shook his head and frowned. He refused to use the word zombie. Zombies were made up stories from crazy voodoo myth and the stuff of movies. The girl in front of him was reality.

"I have a couple of theories," he said softly, "and no, I don't believe in ghosts, I am a man of science, of things that can be seen, felt and measured."

He looked directly at her, "you are here in this room, right in front of me, whether either of us likes it or not."

He sat himself down on the end of the bed again.

"There was a mutant at the NovaTeX facility, a powerful one who could control the bodies of the dead," he paused a moment, carefully weighing his words, he wasn't entirely sure how she would react.

"Including yours. How he did it, we have been unable to determine, but the most likely explanation is some sort of bio-kinetic energy and psychic control. That mutant died during the battle."

Yet the other corpses had lapsed into inactivity almost instantly without any other cases of reawakening.

[deadgirl]

She stared at him for a moment, difficult to read. Her expression was somewhat like hearing an old friend had died- faint sadness, a little confusion. It was almost as if she didn't know how to react.

"He controlled me." She didn't mean for it to come out of her mouth as fact, but it did, and memories rolled behind her eyes like home movies on fast forward. Sitting there a moment, her hand twitched, muscle memory responding again just as it had when she recalled the bullet ripping through her throat.

Another forced breath in. Memories of living. Her eyes widened, and she shuddered. "That voice in my head..." she whispered, looking at Simmons with a desperate, shaken expression. Her moods shifted so suddenly, she hardly paid attention anymore. "I remember that." She nodded, clutching at her shirt over her chest. "Oh god." She shut her eyes tight, and sobbed dryly.

Zombie master even? Holy shit girl.

Even Harold sounded awed.

She clapped her hands to her ears. "He keeps talking to me..."

Heheh... get used to it honey. There's a whole city worth of deadheads 'round here.

"If I asked you to, would you kill me? I don't want to live... or... whatever this is..." She opened her eyes, red crescents in a face filled with mourning and fear. "Please."

[Trask]

Simmons shook his head a little sadly; if she really was hearing the voices of the dead he couldn't begin to imagine how tormenting it would be. He didn't imagine the dead were terribly happy about their change of state.

"You arn't really alive," he replied, "whatever force is holding you in your current state can also repair your body. The lethal wounds you were brought in with have already healed themselves and look at the needle wounds from the earlier tests," he pointed at her fore-arm, "they have vanished in a matter of hours."

"You have no blood or living organs to poison, no working lungs with which to draw breath."

He looked down at his shoes.

"I'm sorry, without the mutant that put you in this state I cannot begin to imagine how to reverse it."

He glanced around the room.

"Is it possible to block the voices out? Can you ignore them?"

[deadgirl]

"I'm stuck here?" Her voice was dry and it squeaked with the last word. She rubbed both palms over her face, moaning sad and soft.

"I don't think I can. I can't do anything to them. They can hear what we say and see us, I think."

Damn right. Heheh.

She sighed. "The one who did this... he's dead?" Her face was hopeful, as if she may have misheard him. "I wonder if... it'll wear off. I don't want to BE like this." She shook her head.

"What am I supposed to do now? Stay here forever?"

Don't worry, I'll take care of you honey.

"Shut UP!!" She yelled, looking in Harold's direction. Then a shy glance to Simmons. "He keeps hitting on me." A sigh. "I'm sorry, that must sound insane."

[Trask]

Simmons wasn't sure whether she was insane or not, hopefully Largo would be able to confirm that. He wasn't entirely sure that he was comfortable with the idea of the dead speaking. It lent strength to the idea of an after-life, and as a scientist Mr. Simmons rejected that idea on virtually every level.

It turned conventional science on its head.

"I don't know," Simmons said, "you can't stay here forever. We could take you back to the facility with us, at least there wouldn't be quite so many dead around."

Mr. Largo chose that moment to return, clutching a non-descript brown file.

"They were a little reluctant to let it go, but given out fairly unique position I managed to convince them."

Simmons flipped the file open.

Harold Macon. Cause of death had apparently been lung cancer; the man had smoked more cigars than Simmons thought humanly possible. Looking at the toxicology report revealed that even if he hadn't smoked, the hard drink or cholesterol would have got him sooner or later.

He'd been dead a couple of days according to the file.

Coincidence?

"I want you to do something for me," he gave her a smile, "give a skeptical scientist a little faith if you will. Can you ask Mr. Macon how he died?"

[deadgirl]

HA HA HA HA HA.... heheh... oh that's good. Little shit thinks you're crazy. Tell them him I died boning his mother!

"I'm not going to say that," she retorted, not looking at Simmons as she argued with the disembodied voice.

Oh come on! Let's have a little fun. How do YOU think I died sweetheart?

"He's not saying," she mumbled. "He's just being a jerk."

Oh look, it's my file.

She looked over Simmon's shoulder as if Harold were standing directly behind him. "Just TELL me!"

Wait... you mean to tell me Jenny was listed as my next of kin? That bitch. I bet she got the house too. God DAMMIT.

The girl winced, the sound of Harold's yell not hurting her, but making her mind a bit crowded. She looked flatly at Simmons again. "He won't tell me how he died, but now he's cussing about how some 'Jenny' is listed as next of kin in the file."

It was CANCER, alright? Cancer. Ya c**t.

She closed her eyes. Hearing the dead was going to get really old, really fast. She whispered. "Cancer. He says Cancer." She almost didn't want to tell him, would almost rather let him believe she was crazy. It would certainly make things easier.

[Trask]

Simmons threw an involuntary glance over his shoulder at whatever she was looking at. There was nothing there. The girl clearly believed there was though.

There was no way she could have read the file previously and while cancer was a common enough cause of death to have been a lucky guess, the next of kin information was accurate.

It was still possible she was a psychic of some sort and was reading his mind. That would still mean she was delusional, and a delusional psychic was a dangerous thing indeed.

On the other hand she seemed to be mostly rational.

But then nothing about this girl made any sort of sense.

He really needed to get her to the facility, to a more controlled environment where they could investigate her abilities more thoroughly.

Simmons closed the file.

"That's right, Harold Macon died of lung cancer two days ago and the majority of his finances and property passed to a Ms. Jennifer Langley."

He sighed softly.

"I guess I have to believe you now. Would you like to be moved to a room as far from the morgue as possible?" He asked, "and in the morning I'll arrange to have you transfered to our science facility, it will be much quieter there."

Simmons smiled.

"But only if you want to, I can't force you to go anywhere if you don't want to."

[deadgirl]

With a soft, broken laugh, she rubbed her eyes yet again.

"If you can get me away from them... I do whatever you want. I'm afraid of the world. Of going outside. How can I walk down the street looking like this?"

FUCKING BITCH! JENNY!!!!

She winced away from the yelling. "I um... thank you, by the way." She nodded. "Thank you for trying to help."

[Trask]

Simmons nodded once and adjusted his glasses; he would have the team packed up and ready to leave in the morning. Then they could move her to a place where they could properly examine any abilities she might have.

"I'm going to start getting the equipment packed away so that we can get out of here in the morning ok? Mr. Largo will be just around the corner if you need anything."

He stepped into the doorway, turned and nodded again.

"You'll be fine, we'll do what we can."

Then he closed the door and was gone.