Ghostbusters: Regeneration

Chapter Two

Melissa Coleman pulled her white coupé up alongside the pavement, slowed it to a halt, and engaged its handbrake. Ahead of her was the turn leading towards the dockyard's entrance, which was the subject of a police cordon.

Powering down the car, she brushed a loose lock of blonde hair away from the lens of her sunglasses and observed the scene. The glimmering sun, which had barely risen above the Manhattan skyline, was poignantly framed between the open gateway. Just outside the entrance, a police officer was standing by his squad car, regulating all incoming foot and vehicle traffic.

Those being allowed inside - all people who were likely turning up for work - were seemingly each receiving a short explanation of the current situation before they were let through. Melissa studied each and every person, scanning for the recognisable dark-skin, black beard, and ever-present Yankees cap belonging to Leon, her colleague from the news station. So far, she was not having any luck spotting him.

Given her job as a mere copywriter, she had not been told to come down here, nor even officially informed of the incident. She had asked Leon to notify her the next time he was covering any particularly unusual stories. Itching to escape the derivative drudgery of her current role, she had been gunning for a position as a proper news reporter for a while now. She did not care if it was for print, online, video, or some combination of the three. All she wanted was to be given the opportunity to publish her own investigations.

Becoming a proper journalist would mean she could bid farewell to everything she had grown to hate about her copywriter job. There would be no more corporate press releases masquerading as news, covering events she had no interest in, and definitely no more 'beefing up' of straightforward stories with sensational language. But most importantly, becoming a true reporter would allow her to dig deep into the subject she was most passionate about, and get paid for it, no less. While she knew it might take a while to build up the necessary trust, once she had been given enough sway to pick her own topics she would be focusing on New York's supernatural occurrences.

Unable to pick out Leon from the scene before her, Melissa reached for her smartphone and texted him the words; 'I'm outside'. A few seconds later she received the reply; 'Be right there'.

Soon, Leon emerged from behind the dock's tall metal fencing, spotted Melissa in her car, and beckoned her over with one hand. She fired up the coupé and gently drove it up to the gateway. Leon had a few quick words with the stationed police officer, having pointed out his colleague's vehicle. He soon opened the passenger side door to Melissa's car and slid inside. Its driver bristled at the brief blast of frigid morning air he brought in with him.

'Let's go.' He said, not a moment after closing the door behind him.

Melissa slowly took the car past the cop and through the gate. Leon then instructed her to turn left and head in the direction of pier four.

Melissa had never been inside a dockyard before - why would she want to under normal circumstances - but very little seemed out of the ordinary here. Large warehouses and trucks lined the left-hand side of their route while, in the direction of the bay, stood giant cargo containers, cranes, and a couple of moored sea vessels. While the scale and construction of everything here was impressive, it was mostly what she expected a New York City dockyard to look like.

It did not look like business as usual at pier four, however. Two cop cars and a sizeable row of plastic barriers had cordoned off the whole dock and the nearby area. Beyond the barricades, Melissa could see what looked like forensics teams combing the vast site. Several uniformed police officers were dotted around outside the barrier, some of which were speaking with dock workers.