Splitsville (Unedited Draft)

AN: At the risk of reminding people of one of those authors who hold their own work hostage and don\'t update until they get a certain number of reviews, I\'d like to ask for anyone who\'s read this far to give a little shout out in the reviews. I\'m struggling with keeping the energy up to keep going at the needed pace to win NaNoWriMo and a little feedback would do a lot to perk me up. Even if I don\'t get any reviews, or get all flame-y things, I still plan to keep going- This Is NOT A Hostage Situation!

Chapter Six- Bloody Mary and Dead Anne

ON CAMPUS...

A little while after Mary had returned to the dorm, Matt called- imagine that a guy who calls the next day after a date. Anne was the one who spoke to him and had to explain all that had happened that day without explaining all that happened, but they were getting pretty well practiced at that, so he didn\'t doubt her story. He had wanted to come over and comfort Maryanne, but Anne was able to put him off saying that the gas had given her a headache and she was just going to sleep it off. Since Mary was sleeping by then, Anne caught up on some studying, got a little dinner and slid into an early bed with her double. The days one or both of them nearly died always seemed to take it out of them.

Over then next few days they hear nothing from the FBI, which was surprising- Agent Culpepper had seemed so determined before Dunstan had pulled the rug out from under her- they heard nothing from the FBI, but heard constantly from Matt. Matt was always popping up with flowers or chocolate or pretty little kitschy trinkets for her. He said he like knowing where she was all the time because she had gotten into so much trouble lately. It wasn\'t as stalker-ish as it sounds- he was being sweet and a little clingy.

They took turns visiting Professor Drake in the hospital. He\'d taken a turn for the worse after the first prognosis. Being that he was almost eighty years old, his heart wasn\'t dealing well with the stress he\'d been through. Until the doctors got his rhythm to stabilize, they weren\'t letting him go home until they were sure he didn\'t need a pacemaker. Mary got to meet Professor Drake\'s wife, Mina- yes- Mina. And Anne had met Drake\'s daughter Lucy. They were both grateful for what Mary had done to help him and said so profusely. Linus Drake was well loved and Maryanne was well loved for saving him. And she was most definitely going to pass his class.

Mary was over at the hospital visiting Professor Drake one afternoon nearly a week after the gas-poisoning event and Anne was at class- working on the design for her final basket of the semester. After class, she walked over to the student post office to check her mailbox and, when she stepped outside, she ran into Agent Culpepper. It wasn\'t accidental.

\"Miss Twombly? What are you doing here?\" she asked Anne, looking puzzled.

\"Uh- I go to school here. Why shouldn\'t I be here?\"

\"It\'s just that I had information that you were going to be visiting your ailing professor this afternoon. You didn\'t go?\"

\"I had class. I might go a little later,\" Anne hedged.

\"You don\'t have class later?\"

\"No,\" Anne answered cautiously.

\"Good, cause I\'d really like to talk to you. There are a few things I need you to clear up for me, if you don\'t mind.\"

\"Now\'s not that good a time.\"

\"But you don\'t have class now. You just said so,\" Culpepper reminded.

\"True, but I am a bit busy.\"

\"I\'ll say- class here at two o\'clock and across town at the hospital at two fifteen- it\'s like you\'re in two places at the same time. How do you do it?\"

\"I multi-task, I guess.\"

\"Then I guess you can squeeze in a little time to talk to me.\"

\"You\'re right, I can make time,\" Anne conceded and followed the FBI agent across the quad towards the Security Offices.

***

ST. ROMAN\'S HOSPITAL...

\"Why are you wasting your time inside this dreary hospital room with an old geezer on such a beautiful day, Miss Twombly? You should be out enjoying the sunshine with Mr. Godunov,\" Professor Drake scolded Mary as she came into his room for a visit.

\"Maybe I\'d rather be here with you? Matt\'s pretty and all, but with age comes experience,\" Mary teased, giving him a wink and a nod.

\"Bah- experience doesn\'t count for anything one you pass a certain age and a certain hairline,\" he replied, running his hand over his bald head.

\"Oh no, didn\'t you hear- bald is beautiful, baby,\" Mary chimed and sat down in the chair next to the bed. \"Where were we now?\" she asked, picking up the copy of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that she had been reading to him all week since trying to read it himself was still giving him headaches.

\"Hyde is stalking his first victim.\"

\"Of course,\" Mary remembered as she found the marked page and began reading.

Twenty minutes later, Professor Drake was nodding off, so Mary closed the book and left quietly. She waited a strangely long time for the elevator- it creaked ominously, but Mary dismissed it as jitters over all the drama she\'d been through in the past weeks and got on anyway.

Halfway between floors three and four, the elevator\'s mechanism gave a loud grinding noise and it came to a stop. Mary wasn\'t that fond of small locked spaces since Drake\'s office, but she tried not to panic- Anne- what would Anne do? Mary picked up the emergency phone, but it didn\'t seem to be working, so then she panicked, Mary shouted and banged on the doors and generally made a ruckus hoping that someone on the other side of the doors would notice. The only thing she didn\'t do was jump up and down. She could just imagine that the machine was broken in just the right way that if she jumped she\'d go plummeting three or four floors to the ground.

After a few minutes, she gave up the noise- it was a busy hospital- either someone had heard her and was getting help or someone would notice that the elevator wasn\'t working and complain. That wasn\'t her thinking that. That was her thinking about what Anne would say to her if she could. Anne- she could call Anne. She could call anyone- she had a phone. She pulled it out, flipped it open and dialed.

The elevator gave a small lurch and there was a sound of metal scraping against metal. Anne\'s phone rang and several screws that were securing a long strip of metal that ran along the top of the elevator- the screws popped off, letting one end of the pokey piece of metal bend away from the wall and down towards the floor. Anne\'s phone rang again and the next set of screws securing the piece of metal popped off as well. The long sword-like scrap of elevator wall fell even further. Mary stepped into the corner as Anne\'s phone rang the third time and the last set of screws gave way. Unexpectedly, the newly loosed end didn\'t fall to the floor, but hung at about chest height while the other end smacked on the floor with a loud chiming sound.

Anne answered her phone.

Mary watched in horrified fascination as the long bladelike piece of metal hovered in front of her. She thought she heard laughter as the metal swing away from her, paused and then swung back at her like a baseball bat. She tried to duck, but it slashed her across the abdomen just below her breasts. She was probably screaming, but that didn\'t matter, maybe she was singing or saying the Pledge of Allegiance or reciting lines from Joss Wheaton television shows- she was dead no matter what her mouth was doing. The deadly thing slashed her belly again and she fell to her hands and knees. Something foot like struck her in the hip causing her to roll onto her back. Mary saw several all but there people were in the elevator with her. They coalesced into one and she could see that he was Moores. He laughed, pushed the blade viciously through her left shoulder and pulled it out again. Then he dissipated again.

Mary heard the elevator\'s doors creak open before she slid into darkness.

***

Anne\'s phone rang as they started around the back of the post office and through a narrow cut-through between two buildings. The path was little used, mostly because few people noticed it was there. Maryanne had never noticed it before she followed Agent Culpepper into it, either. There weren\'t even any windows looking out on it from the buildings- it looked like they had been bricked up years earlier.

Anne paused to forage through her backpack for her phone saying, \"I\'m sorry, I\'ll just be a minute.\" Agent Culpepper gave her an impatient look. Anne found the phone, put it to her ear and said, \"Hello?\" Anne gave a startled cry of pain and doubled over, dropping the phone.

\"Miss Twombly, are you all right?\" the FBI agent asked and Anne tried to answer her, but all that came out was a strangled gurgle. Anne felt warmth running down her belly saw something dark spilling out onto the cobblestones below her. A searing pain shot through her shoulder and then, the cobbles were rushing towards her. She heard the sound of something heavy hitting the ground- it was her.

***

The was much FBI Special Agent Carrie Culpepper didn\'t understand about her current investigation, most especially what was going on in regards to Miss Twombly. At first it had seemed that she was merely the suspect\'s ditzy girlfriend, but then Maryanne Twombly had survived what should have been certain suffocation- not only survived it, but had managed to save Professor Linus Drake from dying as well, though he had not faired anywhere near as well as Miss Twombly had. The difference could not all be attributed to the age difference- there was something hinky about Maryanne Twombly, of that, Carrie was sure.

So Carrie had taken another look at the surveillance with an eye for oddity surrounding Miss Twombly and she had easily found it. They had had Maryanne\'s dormitory on their watch list because of her romantic relationship with the main suspect in the destruction of the Physics Building and the disappearance of a fellow graduate student, one Narcissus Moores. The logs had Maryanne leaving the building in the morning and then leaving it again several hours later without any record of her having returned via any of the door into the building. And that anomaly didn\'t just happen once- oh no- it happened daily, sometimes several times on one day. This girl had something very strange about her and Carrie Culpepper was determined to find out what it was.

Godunov, the boyfriend- he was an interesting fellow, too. Carrie was sure he knew something about Twombly that he hadn\'t shared during the interrogations Carrie had had with him. Carrie was sure he\'d crack soon, he was pretty scared of Carrie- and he was lusting after her, as well. It was almost endearing how he nearly gave her what she wanted if she asked him in just the right way before remembering his loyalty to his girlfriend and claming up.

Her partner was a bit pissed at her just now over all this. Dunstan was a facts and figures kind of guy- first he got the facts, then he figures out who to arrest. The way Carrie worked- using her instinct- making suppositions and finding evidence to support them- that didn’t work for him. He was just marking time until he could be rid of her anyway- he was moving to Honolulu in six months. He had wanted to pin the whole thing on the missing grad student and call it a day as soon as they had gotten to campus. Of course, if they\'d done that, then the fire the next day would have brought them back there anyway. Dunstan hadn\'t appreciated her pointing that out, either. Go figure. So, Dunstan had basically taken a powder and left Carrie to her own devices while he ate things sweet and crumbly.

Keeping tabs on Twombly was tricky- Carrie hadn\'t even been in search of her when she headed into the campus post office to inspect the incoming mail for both Twombly and Godunov. It had been lucky chance and, having some fairly strong respect for the messages the universe sent via the medium of coincidence, Carrie had decided that maybe that day was the day to question Miss Twombly again.

They were cutting down an alleyway between some buildings when Miss Twombly had stopped to answer her phone and was suddenly having some sort of seizer. At first, Carrie had thought it was a seizer- until she saw the blood on the paving stones.

\"Miss Twombly, are you all right?\" Carrie had asked as she had bent over, grunting. Miss Twombly had looked up at her with a shocked look and blood had bubbled from her mouth. Then she fell and Carrie hadn\'t been fast enough to catch her. There was blood everywhere- pouring from several gut wounds that had mysteriously appeared from nowhere. Carrie pulled off her suit jacket and pressed it to the damage to try to slow the bleeding, but it was of no use. The blood soaked through the fabric in what seemed like no time at all. Carrie picked up Miss Twombly\'s cell phone from where she had dropped it and tried to dial 911. It took forever because her hands were slippery with the blood and shit! The phone didn\'t seem to be working and this girl was bleeding out- she was dead. Oh God! She was dead! Carrie closed up the phone. The ambulance could wait and she couldn\'t have found words to say to the dispatcher anyway. The girl had been fine- pretty and perky and rudely answering her cell phone with a flip of her fine blond hair. Then she was dead- gore on the ground and on Carrie.

Carrie cried.

***

Matt had to get his advisor\'s signature on yet another form dealing with the loss of all his thesis data in the fire. He hated to bother Professor Drake- he was still in the hospital after another mishap, but Matt needed to get the form to the dean\'s office by the next day or risk getting dropped from the graduate program because he had no thesis. The dean\'s office was offering him no slack and no sympathy about it- probably because they knew he had been repeatedly interrogated by the FBI. At least Professor Drake believed that Matt had nothing to do with any of it. Moores had been a problem student of Professor Drake\'s for a long time. Drake was sure Moores had gone over the edge and sabotaged the particle accelerator in a fit.

Matt rung for the elevator that would take him up to Professor Drake\'s hospital room and waited, leaning against the wall and humming to himself. The elevator doors opened and Matt saw someone lying one its floor- lying bleeding on its floor. He yelled for help and stepped inside to see. She was really bloody- it was horrific.

He stepped back out of the elevator and yelled for help again, \"Get a doctor! There\'s a woman unconscious and bleeding in the elevator, Damn it!\" He stepped back inside not sure what if anything he should be doing to help her. He could hear people shouting behind him starting to react. Matt looked closer at the once pretty face of the young blond woman. It was Maryanne- it was his Maryanne. He kneeled down by her and tried to wipe the blood off her face with his hand and someone pulled on his shoulder to get him out of the way. Another someone said something to him and pulled harder on him. He stood and backed away, letting whoever it was take him wherever. He watched several more people rush into the compact area and start doing medical things to Maryanne.

***

Carrie had taken much longer than she should have to get a hold of herself after seeing Maryanne Twombly die. She just couldn’t process what she\'d seen. This girl had been an enigma that Carrie was just beginning to examine and now she was dead- her strange death another unexplainable aspect of her mystery. Carrie really needed to call the locals and get the area cordoned off. She should be on her cell calling the field office for a forensic examiner to take the body back to Quantico for autopsy, but the girl\'s cell phone wasn\'t working -maybe from being dropped, maybe from being soaked in blood- didn\'t matter why. And Carrie\'s own phone was still in her suit jacket pocket- probably also soaked in blood and Carrie couldn\'t bear to touch it just yet.

She looked at the former Miss Twombly drying blood caked in her hair and kept vigil. Later, Carrie would have never been able to tell you how long she sat there on the cold bloody stones watching an unmoving dead body and crying in shock- it didn\'t matter how long, what mattered was what came next.

What came next was a breath. Miss Twombly breathed a short gaspy breath. Then she did it again. And again. Carrie scrambled over to her, no longer caring about the blood, no longer seeing the blood. Miss Twombly\'s eyes were closed, but they had been open- dead and dull and open. And Miss Twombly was breathing, but she had stopped- she had stopped. Carrie inspected the wounds on her belly- they were still there, but they were puckered closed with what almost looked like stitches except there weren\'t stitches. The edges of the long gashes were pressed together and there were regular, slightly indented striations along the length of each of them like invisible stitches were pressing the skin down and together, sealing the wounds.

Carrie looked at the shoulder wound and she could see it pulling closed as if of its own accord. Similar indented marks appearing there, as well. Carrie watched as the wound was completely closed by an invisible force, just as it had seemingly been punctured by one earlier. Miss Twombly\'s color was returning and her breathing was evening out. She was alive- alive and ostensibly repairing herself. What the hell was this girl?

***

Maryanne was in surgery. Matt wasn\'t getting any official information from the nurse because he wasn\'t family, but the nurse had taken one look at Matt and known that he cared about Maryanne. So when Matt had informed her that Maryanne\'s family was three states away, she had put him in the waiting room, given him some scrubs to change into, because his clothes had gotten bloodstained, and promised to tell him what was going on. What felt like forever later, the nurse had reported back with the news that her wounds in and of themselves weren\'t that serious- no vital organs had been punctured in the attack. The real concern was blood loss. She\'d bled more than half of her blood onto that elevator floor in the time between the attack and Matt finding her. Two surgeons were trying to sew her back together and replenish her blood before she suffered permanent damage.

The nurse suggested that Matt give a pint of blood at the blood bank downstairs- he might not be a match for Maryanne, but then again he might be and even if he isn\'t, he\'d be helping someone in straights similar to Maryanne\'s by donating it. Since it was at least doing something positive, he agreed. When he came back up to the surgical waiting room, the same nurse told him that Maryanne was in recovery and that things had gone well. Then she sent Matt home- he wasn\'t going to be allowed to see her until the morning anyway.

Matt stopped by Professor Drake\'s room on his way out. He was asleep, so Matt quietly left the form he needed signed and a note. He didn\'t have the strength to wake the man and tell him that the woman who\'d saved his life might just die any minute now.

***

Special Agent Carrie Culpepper had accrued a few resources over the six years she\'d worked for the Bureau. She was cashing out almost all of them in now.

The first thing she\'d done once she\'d gotten over the shock of seeing Miss Twombly reanimate before her eyes was retrieve her cell phone and call the Bronxes. The Bronxes were three brothers who\'d been part of a major syndicated crime trial several years earlier. Shortly after testifying they\'d each died a mysterious violent death. Now they lived under different names in a different city doing nearly exactly the same thing they used to do- taking care of bodies. In their previous incarnations, they had dug shallow graves in out of the way places that nobody but nobody could fine but them. It had been very illegal and they had been very good at it. Now, they dug deep graves in picturesque places and guided family and friends to the burial spots and planted roses in respect. They ran a well-respected funeral home and they were very good at it.

The Bronxes owed Carrie- she\'d taken care of them when they decided to turn state\'s evidence and she still took care of their mother if she ever needed anything. They hadn\'t asked questions- they knew how to do that really well. They had just shown up with a truck with a fake moving company\'s name on it, disguised the stretcher that Miss Twombly had been lain on as a large box of scientific equipment and loaded her into the truck. They\'d also been kind enough to provide Carrie with her own set of coveralls to keep her bloody outfit from attracting attention. They were brilliant. No wonder they\'d never found Vinnie Carlucci\'s body.

***

When Matt returned to the hospital the next day, it was to the news that, while Maryanne was doing far better than expected- she was already sitting up and talking- while Maryanne was doing far better than expected, Professor Drake- Mat\'s mentor, his advisor, his friend, had passed on in his sleep while Matt was gone.