Ghostbusters: Regeneration

Chapter Seven

Melissa made it to Hiroko's house about an hour after leaving her former place of employment. Traffic had been backed up as far as she could see outside the MNN offices, so she was forced to leave her car in the lot. After walking a few blocks she was able to catch a cab driving south and somehow managed to avoid any major traffic issues on the journey.

As soon as she reached the bottom of the steps to Hiroko's basement, she could see her friend had already been keeping a close eye on the unfolding events. Two of her four computer monitors were filled with social media posts featuring images and videos of the disruptions, while a third one had a live video feed from a local news station on the scene at one particular disturbance. It looked like the eagle statues from Grand Central Terminal had come to life and were harassing people who were attempting to enter the station.

Melissa began to recount everything she had witnessed to her friend, beginning with her close encounter with the Slimer-type ghost. As she expected, Hiroko was both astonished and envious of her run-in with a bona fide supernatural being, especially one which was so famous. After answering all of her excitable friend's many questions about that initial run-up, Melissa went onto explain the incident outside the MNN offices and how she had abandoned her car and found a taxi.

On the ride over she had seen some city blocks that seemed to be untouched by the chaos, but many more where the paranormal uprising was obvious, with people fleeing in fear, police rushing to respond, and in some cases, streets and building fronts trashed. She had to wonder how many more disturbances were occurring inside Manhattan's many towering buildings and in its sprawling subway system.

Despite the air of alarm and panic, Melissa got the sense that this uprising was not an orchestrated, malevolent attack. The ghosts, monsters, and other hard-to-define life forms appeared to not only be scattered but were also acting without a single goal, and none she saw seemed to be actively trying to harm people. She had also noticed that these paranormal appearances seemed to be localised to Manhattan for the time being, as she saw nothing out of the ordinary once she had made it over the Brooklyn Bridge.

Once Melissa had concluded the story of the last hour of her life, Hiroko quietly sat back in her desk chair, seemingly trying to wrap her mind around everything that was going on. When she next spoke up, the first thing she asked was about why Melissa had left work so early in the day. Unable to dodge the truth any longer, the freshly-unemployed Melissa begrudgingly explained what had happened with her boss.

'Awww damn.' Hiroko responded, visibly deflated by the news.

'It's fine,' Melissa sighed, 'we've got bigger things to worry about right now anyway.'

'Yeah we do.' Hiroko replied. 'To add to everything that's going on, we've had another development with the demon-monster-thing case. About 20 minutes ago, I got a DM on the Phantasm forums. It was from the group's founder. 'Ready2Believe' is his online handle. I started chatting to him and told me that he urgently needs our help.'

'Our help? Why?' Melissa asked.

'He said that he works for the City, dealing with unusual activity that other divisions can't handle. As far as I know, he's never revealed any of this to any other members of the group. He said that because of my ghost-catching equipment and our investigation we were the best Phantasm members to turn to for help.'

'What does he need assistance with, exactly? Surely he has people and resources in the government that can provide better help than we can?'

'He wasn't clear about that. But he contacted me right after all the chaos started happening, so I figure it has to be directly related to that.'

'So what did you tell him?'

'I said I'd help, of course, and that I'd assemble everyone here.'

'What? Hiroko!' Melissa exclaimed in an exasperated manner.