A Bitter Pill To Swallow

"It was overwhelming and new and I got caught in my head. The rage came out, so I had to pull back. I don't think my ... other side liked where that was headed."

She listens to the confession about Brian."You have to tell me. Why do you say that? What did Dave say? Please?"

As Augusta and Melissa stop outside the restaurant to talk, a figure approaches from the darkness. The rain has let up for once, but Eva still wears a waterproof windbreaker, has the hood up, and walks up with her hands stuffed into her pockets. She feels like a rhino compared to these two much more delicate and feminine women, and she lifts her chin in greeting as she comes into the light of the Golden Fist.

"Hey," she first offers, not knowing what else to say to the pair. Her clothing isn’t as style challenged as usual, as she’s just getting off work: a black turtleneck beneath her unzipped jacket, a plaid skirt, dark tights and clod-stomping Doc Martens. Every piece of her outfit was second-hand, but it was a look that fit the woman, and that emphasized her height and the dramatic curves of her legs and body.

"Dave here yet? He tell you guys what he wanted to meet about?"

"Oh Hey," Melissa says, dragging her eyes up and down Eva's attire. The wannabe rich woman can't help it. She reflexively judges.

"Nope. Just got a message to meet him here." She makes a face at the restaurant's facade as though she is wondering how safe it is to eat the food. "Might as well go in and find out."

Augusta warmly welcomes Eva too, impulsively offering her a brief barely-touching hug. "Glad to see you Eva, I've been hoping we could spend more time together." She looks over the woman's ensemble with Melissa and approves, feeling a little jealous at her statuesque friend's ability to pull it off.

Leading them inside she spots Dave at his nice table and heads straight there. She touches him on the shoulder as greeting and sits gracefully in a chair.

Melissa catches Dave's eye and sits next to Augusta, patting the chair on her other side for Eva.

"Hello Dave. Good to see you again. What's up?" she asks, cutting straight to the chase. She figured they had shared enough to justify dispensing with the small talk.

Eva shifts a little uneasily as greetings are exchanged, and as the two women eye her up and down. Both are dressed better than she is and have (at least what the tall blonde thinks are) impeccable senses of style. They are both more classically feminine, and just less… loud, less amazon-like. She nods when Melissa suggests they go inside, and manages a smile when Augusta mentions wanting to spend more time together.

"Yeah," she says simply to the Asian woman as they go inside. "Me too."

She greets Draven as well, then sits down next to Melissa, definitely feeling a little awkward without exactly knowing why. It’ll get better once they all find out the purpose of the meeting. She hopes.

ANNESBURG, 5 NOV 2023
Hu's Golden Fist Restaurant

Dave sat at the table with his finger on the pepper shaker spinning it to occupy his attention while he waited. He stood up as the ladies filed into the restaurant and waited on them to take a seat at the table, greeting them as they approached. "Oh, just figured we all needed a little face to face outside the Group. You never know who else might show up. People not exactly 'in the loop'." he told Melissa in response to her question. "There's a lot of stuff going on that relates to all of us and I don't like compartmentalizing information. Too great a risk of someone getting hurt or making a mistake because of a lack of information." He opened his coat a bit to tap the faded red, white and blue screen print on his military green tshirt that read KNOWING IS HALF THE BATTLE.

"Someone tried to run me off the road, big black American truck. I managed to out maneuver them, and then took off. Now, Melissa saw into the truck and got a look at the driver, in a security guard uniform, with a picture of me and my car.

Where this turns interesting is that I went for drinks with Tim's sister Bree. She works up at Wyvern Lake, and says that the guards there are third party, not Plaxo. Their badges say A.S.S. which she thought was a tragic mistake. It stands for Athena Security Services. If we could get Melissa a good look at ... " she trails off, an idea coming to her.

She pulls out her phone to see if the ASS website has a logo or better, a picture of a uniformed guard.

"Ok. It's not a bad idea I guess, but what loop are we talking about here exactly?" she asks Dave.

When Augusta tells her story about being run off the road, Melissa nods emphatically. "Yep. I was there. Right behind Augusta. Saw the whole thing unfold." The blond can't resist a chuckle at the letters on the guard badges. "Guess the folks in charge of naming stuff fell a little short."

"Good look at what, Augusta?" she asks as she watches her pull out her phone.

Taking off her jacket, Eva listens as Dave invites the group to information share, and as Augusta starts. But she’s quickly lost, confused — the delicately-boned, beautiful woman seems to start in the middle of the story, leaving the big-breasted blonde at the conversational starting gate.

When she glances at Ang’s phone, though, the logo shakes something loose in Eva’s head. "I think… I think I know that logo. It is from Wyvern Lake. What connection do you have with that place?"

Augusta purses her lips. "No connections as far as I know. There was a possible slender thread that Brian Floyd, who works at Plaxo as a salesman of some sort, was involved in giving me a dose of some chemical that changed me. But that appears to be a dead end." She looks at Melissa, who had been investigating that angle, her eyes asking an unspoken question.

"Since Plaxo does research at Wyvern Lake, then maybe you could draw a line from there to me, but it's tenuous at best. Truth is, I know nothing about that place."

Melissa wonders why Augusta doesn't answer her question but decides there must be a reason and doesn't push it. Maybe the fact that they aren't alone is the reason.

"Dave and I wanted to get into Brian's apartment but the security setup there was too tight making a break-in difficult. I think a lot of answers would come quickly if we were able to snoop at his place. He's a bad person involved with bad people."

That's all she was prepared to say and truthfully she wasn't sure if she hadn't said too much already.

Finally finding the website once more from her earlier investigation, it's not obvious where to find it, she shows Melissa the ASS logo from their website.

"That Brian guy is definitely involved in whatever they are doing at Wyvern Lake," Eva adds in. She’s not sure how much Augusta or Melissa know — hell, even how much Dave knows at this stage — so she decides to just put it all out there.

"I escaped from Wyvern Lake a while ago," the super-fit woman goes on, leaning back in her seat. "I don’t know exactly what’s going on out there, but it’s not good. My memories are… fucked up and vague. I think they were drugging me — or something. I was like… an operative or something. Anyway… I think there were a number of people like me. Maybe… created there? That woman in the prison… Belinda… and Tanya? They are part of it too."

"And then there are these…" she continues, producing a bottle of pills. "Does anyone know a lab or someone who could analyze them?"

Anyone looking closely might note that Eva isn’t looking her best. The barista is pale and looks tired… like she’s exhausted and hasn’t had the sleep she needs.

Melissa's eyes narrow as she listens to the busty blonde, nodding emphatically when she mentions being drugged as though that confirms Brian used drugs on both Augusta and herself.

"Created? My Belinda? But how? I knew something funny was going on with her. Christ!"

When Eva produces the bottle of pills she has an idea. "Can I have one of those?"

If she gives one to her she will ask the waiter for a glass of water if there isn't one there already.

GRAYBRIDGE, 5 NOV 2023
Hu's Golden Fist Restaurant

"Okay. Now we're getting somewhere..." he tapped the table with his hands, evidently pleased with the flow of new information. "Finally putting some of the puzzle pieces together and finding some new ones to play with."
"I came to Graybridge a dozen or do years ago looking into the secret behind why my friend, Danvers, ended up in the TANC. That secret he's guarding from the people at Plaxo but more likely from the people at Wyvern Lake. Floyd came onto the scene a few years back and I suspect he's a go-between for Plaxo and Wyvern Lake. He's got to be. But he's a tough nut to crack... I don't want to tip my hand by just dangling him off a roof but he's got some tight security at his apartment and odds are he doesn't even keep anything incriminating there. At least, nothing I can really use to string things together with." He looked over to Melissa, "I was hoping that with Melissa's help we..." he really meant 'I' "...would have a better chance at breaking into his place and having a look around. It'll take a little more time but it's a good angle."

He watched and listened as Eva presented her story to the others and produced the pill bottle. "Oh. I bet they...um, Wyvern Lake...designed a metabolic deficiency into you and those pills give you what your body can't naturally produce." He leaned over to look at the bottle in Eva's hand closely. "That's definitely an improvement over just getting people addicted to heroin to ensure loyalty... " Dave deadpanned as if it it were an everyday practice. "I bet Rebecca could get it analyzed. She's an ER doc over at Graybridge Memorial. We go back a ways so I might be able to convince her to find out what's in those pills.

He hadn't forgotten about Augusta's hit & run. "Who do you think might be behind your road ambush? Any reason for someone to do that? Did you get a license plate or make & model of the car?" He had to back up his enthusiasm and address a more pressing concern, "Are you okay?"

"I don't know," Eva replies honestly to Melissa when the woman asks how Belinda was... created. "It might not be that. It might be she was modified... went through the same procedures I did. Whatever those were."

When lean blonde makes for the pill bottom, Eva holds it out of the other woman's reach. "Uh -- no. We don't even know what's in these!"

The hell? Was Melissa some kind of junkie?

Dave swoops in then, as he does, filling in some gaps and making sure Augusta's story doesn't get lost in the mix. He also mentions a doctor that might be able to help, and that puts Eva more at ease than she's been in days.

"God! So Brian was trying to modify us?" When she sees Eva's reaction she explains.

"I want to see how well these pills dissolve in a drink. They could be the same kind of thing we suspect Brian dropped in our drinks. He might have pulled the same stunt on Augusta too. Neither of us suspected a thing and now we have these special powers. It kind of fits. Problem is I'm not willing to check if they are tasteless once they dissolve. Who knows what will happen to me if I do that."

"They might not be the same, Melissa. If Eva just needs missing amino acids or something, they could be no different than multivitamins to us."

To Dave, she says, "I might have tipped my hand to Brian. We confronted him at a restaurant, and he angered me, Melissa too, so I stormed out and then crushed the tailpipe of his car. Not my sneakiest move. Him hiring a goon to wreck my car seems like a message saying he knows it was me, and two can play at that game. Only, I don't know what game he's playing."

"For sure, Augusta. But any information is better than none. I'm grasping at straws I know." Turning to Dave she pauses as she formulates an idea.

"I could look into Brian's apartment. I have decent range with my special vision. But if you don't think there's much there there's probably no point?"