He looked shocked at the words. “Why would I have any hard feelings dear, it's you that would have any right to those...” He actually looked worried, she saw. It warmed her heart a little to see.
Then she started hitting him, gouging at his eyes with her first blow, making him cry out, then a series of uppercuts, awkward in the dress she wore, her wound pulling at her a little, hit his mid-section. Too weak, they didn't do any real damage. He fell back instead of trying to fight, diminishing the power of her blows even more, her new body not really in condition for fighting yet, and the injury to her chest suddenly burning making it hard to use even the small amount of power she should be able to muster.
She kept after him, kicking and gouging, noticing that the detectives in the outer office had come to look. None of them broke through the wall created by their fellow detectives to help her. The situation was probably just too confusing for them.
She spun, grabbing the heavy chair Mathews had just been sitting in, planning to hit him with it as hard as she could. The man on the floor put his hand in his pocket and smiled at her a little sadly, even as the chair passed through his position without seeming to make contact making a thunk on the floor and sending a shock through her arms, then he disappeared altogether.
No one moved for a time.
The man had fucking disappeared. Vanished. Not just invisible either or the chair would have connected. Right in front of her! Right. Magic. Fucking adapt Gwen. Adapt. She chanted that to herself for a moment, feeling the blood rushing away from her head.
She finally, still breathing hard, asked Bethany to go back into her normal state, the non-work mode, so that she could get the others to do whatever they needed to, not having a clue what you did with mesmerized people at all.
The female detective took charge immediately. “Right, everyone out there, the chief and these four in front of the door have been influenced via radiative aided mesmerism. He had a device for it on him. We need to snap them out of it. Start telling them to come out of it and wake up. They'll likely be confused, so try to explain things clearly.” She spun, looking at Gwen.
“He's not insane. Mathews. His mind was clear and focused the whole time, in fact, nearly as much as my own, which is highly unusual given the circumstances. I did pick up that he told you what he believed to be the truth however. He didn't add a lot more, some small bits and pieces I'll need to work out, if I can.”
Peals took the longest to rouse, people shaking him, slapping him a bit, ordering him to wake up fully and come back to himself now. Bethany told them all that it made sense, having the freshest mesmerism. The others had been under for at least an hour longer than Peals had.
Not knowing what else to do, Gwen started writing down everything she could remember about talking to the man, and her actions, so that she wouldn't lose the information later. She moved to Bethany's desk to do it. After about an hour, half the men scrambling out to alert the full Constabulary about Mathews' guilt and escape. Peals called her back into his office.
He looked pale and a bit shaken.
“I have to apologize for my weakness. I, well there's no excuse. I should be on my guard at all times... to resist such things, and I wasn't. Constabulary Detective Westmorland tells me that you continued the questioning even after you realized something had gone wrong? Even while fearing that we... might be brought in by this... man... to harm you if you attempted to detain him? Most impressive. If he hadn't had a translocator on him, he'd be in custody right now. Hard to beat high magics like that on the fly though.” He took a shaky breath, that Gwen realized, given this culture, she probably wasn't supposed to notice. To her it seemed natural enough. He'd been assaulted, if mentally, and left powerless. Why wouldn't it affect him?
Even with all the pain of being stabbed, what still haunted her most about the attack had been her own inability to move, or fight back in any way. It made her feel weak and useless. The chief probably felt the same.
Maybe even worse.
She'd felt helpless to protect herself, but Peals had been left helpless to protect her, she realized. Given his profession and culture that might make things a lot harder on him.
If hiding the effects helped him, she didn't have a problem with it. He'd deal with it, probably by redoubling his efforts to not let it happen again. Not knowing the man well, she couldn't be certain, but that felt right. He seemed like the kind of person that, finding themselves weak to something, responded by learning more, becoming a better fighter, not letting the same thing get them twice. There had been a lot of people like that in her martial arts classes over the years. Mug me once, shame on you, mug me twice and I'll collapse your trachea...
It had been early morning when Mathews had been brought in, the work day just beginning. As the hours passed, scrambling to search every second of conversation or thought for any clue they could find, they all forgot that they were supposed to go to the quarry that afternoon to try and run this group to ground that way.
Just before noon James the driver showed up at the door of the office's main room. Doctor Wiseman standing behind him wearing tough-looking tan slacks and a matching jacket, made of something that seemed like very heavy canvas. He had on dark brown leather boots that laced in the front, reminding Gwen of the combat boots she'd seen on television programs from time to time.
Both men carried their hats in hand.
“I've been sent with box lunches by your Mother, I mean Mrs. Vernor, ma'am.” James said by way of greeting.
The way he said it made her wonder again if he just didn't know about her or was simply that good of an actor. If his job was to make her seem like Katherine Vernor playing a game, he was doing a superb job. For the time being she really needed to just act like he didn't know when she could, since that would play into his act best, if it was an act.
The doctor of geology started in on a much more flowery welcome, but Bethany put up a hand to stop him.
“We've had... an incident here today. Your colleague Baron Mathews... it turns out that he is indeed the person that attacked Gwen. He used some form of enforced mesmerism on several of the detectives, which would have been a crime even if he wasn't guilty of anything else. Gwen had to use force to try and subdue him, but he managed to escape, using a translocator or teletransporter of some kind. I mention this because your university may wish you to distance itself from our investigation at this point. You... should probably signal the dean and make certain that he doesn't feel your aid would sully the school's reputation.” Her voice held as much diplomacy as Gwen had ever heard someone use in real life.
“Right. My... are you alright, Miss Farris? He didn't harm you did he?”
“No, no, I'm fine. The only one harmed was him and I don't think I did too much damage really, since he got away before the chair hit. If I could have been a second faster...” Gwen smiled at the man, who still looked concerned, but went off to call his university as Bethany had suggested.
“You know, Bethany, where I'm from, the police, the Constabulary, kind of outrank an employer as far as investigations go. This seems really odd to me. Plus, wouldn't they want to volunteer their help? I mean, nothing distances you from a scandal like trying to take down the guilty party with everything you've got, right?”
James cocked his head at a funny angle but didn't say anything. He settled his weight back on his heels and waited, relaxed, to find out what the plans were.
“That's interesting.” Bethany took Gwen's arm, using it to steer her over toward their bags and jackets. It looked like they, at least, were going to this quarry, no matter what the geologist found himself doing.
“How does that work? Don't businesses end up closing due to the bad feelings of the public?”
It took a while, but Gwen explained how well it actually worked for the businesses, which ended up having almost total protection from what their employees did, as long as the company or employer hadn't ordered it themselves. Even then it sometimes gave them protection, the company being considered separate even from the owners in a lot of cases, if they were big enough. No one really wanted to lose all those jobs after all.
Wiseman came back from the small room where the telestator was kept.
“The dean suggested that I continue to aid you, provisionally. He asks only that our aid be kept out of the press, if at all possible. Not too keen on the newsies myself, as a rule.” The grimace on his face when he talked of these newsies seemed genuine. Reporters? That made sense to her, but she needed to learn what they were for certain if she could. Maybe she could get Bethany alone and pick her brain later?
In the back of the carriage each woman found a small lunch packed in white baskets. Inside there were small ceramic containers, each with a tiny lid that fastened into place with a clever lock over it made of steel, to one side sat a linen napkin. When she pulled it out to place on her lap, which Bethany had done and so had the doctor, from his own larger, brown-colored basket, a cream colored envelope pulled out as well. She managed to catch it before it hit the floor.
The outside said “Miss Farris” in black ink, handwritten. She opened it, looking around carefully, in case this turned out to be a trap of some sort. If it was, then they'd better not eat the food, she'd thought, only half joking. After all, she had a guy disappear right in front of her earlier. The technology worked differently here, they even talked about magic... but that... well, if some of them could do that, who knew what else they could do? Reading minds seemed easy to accept compared to that. Gwen could accept it though. It happened all the time on TV and in movies, so a part of her knew to simply acknowledge what had happened and move on. Here people could teleport and read minds. OK.
No problem.
She read the letter inside twice, then looked up at Bethany, biting her upper lip a little. This however might be one though, Gwen thought.
“Um... Mrs. Vernor's birthday party is this Friday evening and she wants us to come, if we can... It's formal. Apparently Katherine is expected to show up and this is something that will be covered in the press. Possibly. If she, Katherine, doesn't show... We're both invited.”
Bethany nodded, clearly thinking of something. Wiseman sat up suddenly, looking surprised.
“My! That's unexpected then isn't it? An invitation to one of the Vernors' famous parties? That's special. I'm surprised, that they'd be willing to host a Wes...”
She saw him falter then, quickly looking at Bethany then away as if he'd made some kind of major misstep. The other woman noted this, waving a bit as if to let him know no offense had been taken. The face above the hand looked less than pleased.
“Right. A Westmorland. We're generally not asked to large social gatherings... Really we're generally not asked to anything that doesn't directly affect our individual areas of endeavor. Maybe I should just beg off and send you alone?” Beth sounded concerned, as if she really felt that going would be a bad thing or make too many waves.
Popping the seal on one of the small containers, trying to collect her thoughts, Gwen saw it had something like coleslaw in it, a tiny portion, enough for about four small bites it looked like. The next had a small salad with a vinaigrette dressing and next to that a small portion of potatoes in a cream sauce. The largest section, which still looked small, held what looked like a few slivers of braised roast beef. No bread of any kind came with it.