A Bitter Pill To Swallow

Augusta drinks her green tea latte and tries to look past Anna's offensive mouth. She's been through a lot, and confronting her isn't likely to calm her down. She looks over Brock, but doesn't know much about trauma or medicine.

Instead, she says, "Could you describe those pills for us? Eva has been given some too, but they didn't turn her into a ... well, I guess I don't know what they did to her. Were these pills from Wyvern Lake?"

After tanking up on his preferred blend of coffee, a noxious concoction he called 'Battery Acid Black', he contemplated the next move after laying low for a bit. There were a lot of moving pieces to the story currently and that made it difficult to formulate a plan. So, he decided to stick with what he knew best. When there were too many moving parts, you jam up the machine to better see how it worked.

The damp rusty smell of the abandoned warehouse was at least comforting...to Dave, anyway. About the only thing they had to possibly deal with out here were rats and maybe a homeless squatter or two. Much better odds than tangling with SWAT or anything the TANC could drop on them. "Brock? He couldn't have cooked those pills up.
He can barely manage to cook Spaghetti-O's. If Tanya is involved...' and he felt that she probably was "...maybe we should take our questioning to her. We probably need to take loverboy here..." he toed Brock's still unconscious form with his boot "...to the ER but not until we're sure he's not going to lose control and 'blizzard out' or whatever. Oh, and on the chance that does happen, head for the car. Eva and I'll try to handle him. Bad dreams and ugly truths are one thing to handle, the kind of cold Brock can produce can lose you toes, fingers and noses..."

Eva has an extra large frappamoccachino with whipped cream and drizzled chocolate and some other things she barely remembers ordering. It wasn't every day someone else was buying, so she went all-out at the counter.

When there's talk of pills inside the warehouse, the leggy blonde pulls hers out and rattles them in the bottle at the group. "Don't think they're the same," she says, showing them the yellow capsules. "And I don't think these suppressed my... powers or whatever. Just made me stop feeling sick."

"How do you know Tanya?" she asks Anna. "Wyvern Lake is a... like a base, or a lab. Kind of both. A fucked up place where they experiment on people. Where they're like splicing DNA or cloning people or -- I don't know, really. I was there... but they fucked with my senses and memories the whole time. Made me go on, uh... missions."

Augusta sits back and sips her latte. "I'm sorry this happened to you, Anna. I understand that you've gone through a lot. Do you need some space to unwind? Because if not, we've got a lot more questions. Things like, when did your powers start, and do you know anyone from pharmaceutical companies? But you seem upset, so I understand if you just need to punch a throw pillow or something."

Eva frowns, unused to being lashed with an acid tongue.

"I have no idea how you fucking know Tanya," she returns aggressively. "She's not a college girl. She lives at Wyvern Lake. She might be a psycho, she might be under their control, or she might need our help. We don't know which yet."

Augusta is stepping in then, calming and defusing, leaving Eva to mutter, "I haven't seen too many movies. I've hardly seen any movies compared to most of you..."

Melissa wrinkles her nose as she gazes around the warehouse. Her ears perk up when Eva talks about Wyvern Lake and then again when Augusta asks Anna about her powers starting up. Compared to the others her powers feel almost benign. Cloning people though? That sounded messed up and all of a sudden Melissa wants to go back to being her old self, the boring rich wannabe. But it was too late.

"So what do we do now? What's the plan?"

"Let's go talk to the pill-pusher in question and get to the bottom of where those pills are coming from and why she's decided to play 'candyman' all of a sudden." Dave offered between sips from the dregs of sludgy coffee. "Then we need to throw a monkey wrench into whatever is going on at Wyvern Lake if they're connected to all this. And we can start with kicking some A.S.S." he looked between the gaze of the girls, "You know, that security company that pulled a hit & run on Augusta. We can find their office, stake it out and find the truck that hit you and maybe get some answers."

Eva nods, glad they are suddenly talking about taking some action, not just talking and talking and trying to figure things out, and talking more. It might be literally in her DNA, but the woman is jonesing for some shit stirring.

"What do we do with this guy?" she asks, pointing at Brock.

As they stare at each other for a few moments, Augusta crosses her arms. "We can't leave him, of course. Or can we? No, there's no reason we need to move just now. Your pill-pusher friend isn't somewhere we know she won't be in a few hours. I think we should stay, enjoy our coffees and the romantic ambience, and allow Brock to recover. If he doesn't, we can find a bathtub, or hottub to warm him up."

Melissa shrugs. If that's what they want to do, who is she to argue. They were in this thing, whatever it was, together.

"I'm all for checking out that security company. Bunch of assholes. I'd like to get Belinda out of the TANC too. She shouldn't be in that hole. "

"I'm not leaving Brock's side," Anna snarls when the other women are so casually dismissing him. "I don't know what fucking hit-and-run you're talking about but I want to be there when you confront Blondie. I have some choice words and horrors for her." She narrows her eyes. "In fact, why don't you call her here right now?"

As they're talking, Melissa's phone chimes with an incoming text message.

Brian:	Melissa, we left things in an awkward place last time. I saw you had some fun with my credit card, but I don't mind. Work has been good and I would like to celebrate. Will you give me the honor of another dinner with you? I miss you.
Brian:	Full honesty, if that is still what you want.

While Melissa is reading her phone, Eva is frowning a little. "How do you know Belinda?" she asks. "How long have you known her? She has connections to Wyvern Lake too."

Dave wipes his face with his hand, mastering his unresolved emotions towards Anna. Was it anger? Frustration? Resentment at her powered outburst? Maybe it was still lingering trauma from what she'd dredged up in him. He didn't know and wasn't about to try to process it in the moment. "Okay, look. We can talk to Tanya about the pills THEN we take Anna and Brock to the ER to get him some help. After that, we can figure out the next step" Dave pointed to dirty skillet at Anna, "No powers. Got that? We're going to listen to what she has to say and you're going to keep those brainwaves inside your own head or we'll be dropping off two unconscious people at the ER... Capiscé."

Melissa lays down her phone, her hand tightening around the steering wheel as she thinks about Eva's question.

"Belinda is my BFF. We've known each other for .... well I don't know, to be honest, seems like a very long time. Met her after I graduated from high school. Some of that is a fog though. I had a penchant for partying a little too much, you know?"

After a brief silence, it is clear that Melissa is getting worked up. "I don't get it. Why the hell is she in that horrible place? They've been drugging her, hurting her. I know what the place is for but I've never seen her exhibit anything out of the ordinary. Wyvern Lake? Connections? I don't even know what that place is. She never mentioned it."

Eva looks at Melissa as she gets her own phone out to text Tanya. It’s a quick one.

E: Need to talk. Available to meet?
Out loud, when Mel finishes, Eva adds, "I dunno. Something’s going on between Wyvern Lake, the prison, and this pharma company."