Midnight Solstice

Chapter 13

Picture: Michael Morgynstein (The big bad, Old Man Morgynstein himself)
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Three months have gone by since that night in the garden, and I must say that we have gotten farther with the Morgynstein case than we ever have before.
Fred and George have the hardest job right now. They have to sort through all of the data on the flash drive. There is a lot on there, and I mean a lot. There has to be a least five years worth of evidence on that piece of plastic. We now have the last known location of Michael's residence as well as the current location of all of his companions that have been assisting him. We also have the process to his experiments as well.
Michael basically takes the test subject and gives them a small amount of serum to start, and the doses increase until the test subject is at its most powerful. Like Pauley told us, he uses vampire venom, fae blood, and werewolf saliva to make his serums. He mixes them together, and puts more of one thing into the serum depending on the species being tested and what he wants to create. He has moved on from using human subjects B.K. (Before Katerina) to using half human species (Katerina), and finally, full species A.K. (After Katerina). We use B.K. and A.K. so that if someone gets their hands on our notes, they have a harder time figuring out our information.
Anyway, when he does his tests on a full species test subject, the serum makes them immune to the other species. In other words, if a vampire was injected with the serum, they would be immune to any fae charm if they drink fae blood, and the bite of a werewolf. Not to mention that they get extra strength and speed.
Each of the newly created species has a major flaw. For vampires, it's that they have to feed more often. The fae also have to drink blood, and their elemental gifts become weaker, and werewolves become susceptible to vampire venom. There aren't many test subjects that are werewolves though, because we hunted them to near extinction many years ago. A majority of them are faeries which is why Alucard was worried.
Pauley's address book has come in handy as well. The names he has in there match up to some of the names on the flash drive. We don't have much on Samuel Goodrich and Adam Quimby, the men that are working with Morgynstein, other than the fact that they work for him. Yes I know, that's the best information you could ever have on said persons...don't remind me. Anyway, the name of Michael Morgynstein's supplier is Jerome Brandy, who Katerina and I are talking to in the interrogation room right now. That was the one thing we could tell Aro since he knows we have the book. And yes, for those special cases like this one where Aro can't read anyone's mind, we have interrogation rooms.
The inside is a dark grey color with a metal table that had two metal chairs placed on either side of it. There were no windows, with the exception of the two way mirror that served as a window to anyone watching on the outside. Katerina was sitting down in the chair across from Jerome while I paced around him. He ran a hand through his dark brown hair.
"Don't I get a lawyer?" He asked angrily.
"No." Katerina and I said in unison. He growled.
"You can't keep me here!" Jerome shouted angrily. He stood up. I walked over and pushed him back down.
"Why don't you sit down and stay a while? You just got here." I said giving him a fake smile.
"Just tell us what you know Jerome...I can do this all day." Katerina told him.
"You are a lot like your father...you have other people do your dirty work..." He gestured to me. "And you have his eyes." She glanced at me.
"Can I kill him?" She asked me, sounding very angry.
"No, but you can beat some answers out of him if he doesn't start talking." Her smile grew as an evil laugh escaped her lips.
"Is this chick for real?" Jerome asked me.
"Oh yeah...you've just pissed off the wrong woman. I hope she doesn't kill you before we get the answers we need." Katerina stood up out of her chair. She slammed her hands down on the table.
"I want answers Jerome, and you are going to give me them, or else things are going to get ugly real fast!" The veins popped out under her eyes, but they didn't change her crimson eye color. That was enough to scare Jerome.
"Jesus Christ, woman...what the hell are you?!"
"One of Michael Morgynstein's experiments. And I'm one of the more normal ones so I suggest you start talking before these..." She pointed to her fangs. "Start tearing you apart bit by bit until you tell me something!"
"And I would start talking soon, because if you are scared of her right now, then you'll be ten times as scared when I start to get angry." I told him, giving him an assuring pat on the back. He inhaled sharply.
"I've supplied him since he started his experiments with Katerina. Before that he got his own supplies."
"How do you get your supplies?" Katerina asked him, making her veins disappear as she sat back down in the chair.
"At first I got donations. I advertised it as donating venom, blood, and saliva to a hospital that helped dying supernatural creatures. But soon that wasn't enough and Michael wanted supplies more often. I eventually had to do that, and harvest his supplies from other test subjects before he started his experiments. I'm kind of having money issues right now, and he pays me a lot to do this for him, so I don't complain."
"What else do you do?" Katerina questioned.
"What do you mean? What else do I do for him? I'm just the supplier."
"That's a lie. You do more than your letting on."
"I already told you everything."
"Another lie...you are just a boy full of lies, aren't you Jerome?" He growled and stood up. Katerina did the same.
"You can't seriously think that I do more than that for that man. I'll admit, I hate what I do, but this man does awful things and I can assure you, the only reason why I help him is because of money."
"What about your sister?" She asked him. Both he and I froze. I didn't hear anything about a sister. "Didn't he capture her and threaten to kill her if you didn't corporate? That's why you are still being his supplier. Don't think he'll let her go. He kills the people he loves, so just imagine what he's going to do to her." He shook his head.
   "You're lying, my sister is going to be fine!"
    "She won't be for long. My family thought everything was going to be okay after we tried to get help but my father shot my mother in the head right in front of me." She began to pace around the room. "We are trying to stop him from hurting anyone else Jerome. But to do that, we need answers, and information. If you know anything that can help us, please say something."
Jerome looked around the room, as if he was searching for answers. It was as if you could see him arguing with himself in his eyes. The only sound in the room besides our breathing was the sound of Katerina's footsteps, pacing back and forth, back and forth, until Jerome finally broke the deafening silence.
"He's been getting messier with his experiments. He's been going too quick so he needs more supplies for his serums. Michael's been making more of his super species but they are all weaker than the ones he takes his time on. He says that you are his most successful experiment." Jerome told her.
"Why am I the most successful?"
"Because you are the one only of his experiments that has had a significant growth. In his mind, you went from being a weakling to being one of the biggest, most bad ass creatures on the planet. Believe it or not, even though you still have some of your fae side left and your humanity, you could still take the strongest person here head on in a fight and stand a chance at winning."
"What do you mean when you say she has some of her humanity left?" I asked him.
"You haven't figured it out yet? The one thing all of his experiments have in common is that they lose their humanity...minus her. Michael says that her humanity is her greatest weakness. The vampire side of her heightens her senses and therefore heightens her levels of humanity as well." We heard a tap on the glass. Aro was standing outside and the tapping on glass means he wants to speak with us. I didn't have to see him, to know that he was watching us.
   "Thank you for your cooperation." I told him as we walked out of the room. And I was correct; Aro was standing in front of the two way mirror with Caius and Marcus. 
   "Good job you two. I think you are going to put me out of a job if you keep doing this well." He told us. Katerina smiled.
   "Well what can I say, Alec and I make a pretty good team."
   "How did you figure out he had a sister?" Caius asked Katerina. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her smile slowly fade. She noticed this as well and quickly tugged the corners of her lips upward.
   "I didn't, I guessed...sort of. Uncle Lorne taught me this trick when he would give his future readings to customers at the bar. He told me that if the person you're talking to has a distinctive scar on their non dominant hand, chances are that it was from a woman, and since he didn't seem to be the type of man who can keep a woman, I assumed it was his sister. He seemed as if he was protecting someone, and nothing is as strong as a brother protecting his sister, right Alec?"
   "Absolutely." I said, going with Katerina's response that I knew was absolute bullshit.
   "And what if you were wrong?" Caius asked.  She shrugged.
   "You apologize for the mistake and guess again. It takes three guesses tops to guess someone's family member." He nodded, but uncertainty flashed through his eyes like lightning before giving into the lie.
   "Well next time, let's use facts shall we?" She nodded.
   "Yes sir." I cleared to throat.
    "I think I'm going to take Katerina down to the kitchen and get her somethings to eat before our training starts today." I said as I grabbed Katerina's arms and dragged her away. Once we were out of ear shot, I stopped.
   "What the hell was that?!" I asked her.
    "A white lie." She responded proudly.
    "No that was a bullshit response."
    "But they fell for it, and that's all that matters."
   "Where did you get the information about Jerome's sister from?"
   "It was on the flash drive. I crossed referenced what was in the address book to what was in the flash drive about him. And his sister appeared."
  "Be careful what information you use from that while we are working for Aro. We can't let him know more than what we are supposed to know okay?" She nodded and bit her lip.
   "I'm sorry Alec, I just got carried away."
   "It's okay, just don't let it happen again." We began walking down the hall.
   "Are we really going to the kitchen again? You made me eat before we came down here."
   "No, we are going to go to the supply closet to go get stuff to clean up that mess." I said as two of the lower guard members walked by. The supply closet is what we call the area that Fred and George have their computers in. We set up a table and chairs in there as well. It was originally a large supply closet, but it was empty so Felix stole the keys from the head maid of the castle and we now use it as Rebel H.Q. (As all the newborns call it).
   "Yeah, I think we need to get a lot of supplies from there." She told me with an over exaggerated wink. I rolled my eyes. "Hey! I saw that!"
"Saw what?" I asked her as I smirked. She stuck her tongue out at me, and we continued on our way to the supply closet. When we got there, Fred, George, and Brynn were sitting in front of the two computers. I shut the door and locked it.
"Hey, how the interrogation go?" Fred asked, spinning to face us. He and George suggested that we buy office chairs that spin for in here since they are "more comfortable" than regular chairs. We all know he and George just roll them at each other and spin around while we're gone.
"I almost blew it." Katerina told him, plopping down in the chair next to George.
"Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades." George told her. "What happened?"
"I may have mentioned that Jerome has a sister, and Caius asked where I got that information from. I made up some lame excuse that I learned a trick from Lorne. I lied and said that Jerome had a scar on his non dominant hand, and that chances are it was from a woman. I said a bunch of other crap too but they fell for it."
"Don't be so hard on yourself." Brynn told her. "I wouldn't have been able to come up with that on the fly like that." Fred chuckled.
"Well if you give them a story with a lot of details, they won't ask questions. When George and I first got these chairs, we raced down the hall with them. Caius caught us and George gave him the most ridiculous response."
"Yeah. I told him that we were testing out the new chairs for the receptionist. But he just kept asking me questions after that so I just told him that if the receptionist falls out of the chair because it broke and she hits her head on the floor and dies, it's not our fault. And that he just wasted perfectly good blood."
"And then he smiled and walked away!"
"But not before saying..."
"I hate children." They finished together. "Good times." Then the door unlocked, and in walked Andi and Caleb.
"Welcome to Rebel H.Q." Caleb said, walking behind Katerina's chair. "We have cookies." He took out a box of cookies from behind his back and put them in her lap.
"Golden Oreos! You're the best!" Katerina exclaimed opening the box.
"Kat, I just hope you know, that you are the whitest American girl I have ever met." Andi told her.
"Yeah, I'm cool with that."
"Kat I don't think you get it. You are such an American it's not even funny. You're over here like "where's the Dunkin Donuts?" The rest of us are like "in America" because America runs on Dunkin."
"Okay give me a break. Gracie and I both wanted to go to Dunkins one time people!"
"When did you even come here anyway? You act like you've been here your entire life but you also act so American." Brynn asked her.
"When I was ten we moved from America to here. It was a big jump."
"Yeah. It must have been. But you've been here for a while so forget about Dunkins." Caleb told her, giving her a pat on the back.
"You can't complain, they have Dunkins in England!"
"Not where I'm from."
"They do where we're from." Fred told us. "I still think only America should run on Dunkins though. I mean the one we had in England was really slow and they always got my order wrong."
"They have Dunkin Donuts in Mexico." Andi said, wiggling her eye brow at Katerina who frowned.
"Thanks for making me miss America. You know, I was really feeling pretty good about here until you brought up Dunkins!" We heard a knock on the door.
"Quick, Brynn, start moaning sexually." George whispered.
"What? No!" She protested.
"Oh Georgie." Fred moaned in a high pitched voice. George shook his head and smiled. Andi, Brynn, and Katerina were trying to stifle their laughter. "Oh yeah!"
"Quit it Fred! It's me!" Adeline shouted from behind the door. I opened the door and let her in before shutting and locking the door once more.
"Geez, could you guys act anymore like...guys?" Adeline asked.
"Yeah, we could. I was about to grab that chair over there and start banging it against the wall." Caleb told her. "For dramatic effect."
"You should've dude. We could've had a straight guy threesome." Fred said.
"You must have had a lot of guys on you when you danced." George said to him. He laughed.
"Yeah, but the ballerinas were even better." He winked at George who wiggled his eyebrows.
"You danced?" I asked him. He nodded.
"Yep. Ever since I could walk. I've competed for a while as well."
"Hey if this quiets down, we should be partners, I've never danced with a guy before." Katerina suggested.
"That would be cool. We could be the next Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers."
"Who's that?" Andi asked.
"Famous dancers from a long time ago. They were really talented." Katerina told her.
"Okay, I'd really hate to break up this dancer talk, but we need to get to training before Jane flips her lid on all of us." Adeline said. "She was about to kill Felix when I came down here." That was enough for us to all leave and walk to the training room.
"Hey Alec." Fred whispered as we walked. "You need to come back to Rebel H.Q. after training."
"Why?" I asked.
"We found some pretty deep shit. You have to see it before someone else finds it." George told me.
"It's mostly theories but maybe you can sort through it. More than half of it is just unbelievable." Fred added.
"I will, just lets get through training first."
Jane, Felix, and Demetri were already in the training room when we arrived. Demetri and Felix looked nervous, while Jane looked an innocent doll, with an evil aura surrounding her like a dark cloud.
   "There you all are!" She exclaimed, with an evil  smile on her face. "I have a surprise for you."