2014.03.06 - Pop Goes the Co-Ed

Its mid-afternoon when Etta knocks on the glass of Bruce’s lab, her brisk and businesslike demeanor fading to a smile at the sight of him. After being buzzed in she clicks her way across the lab floor to where he’s working and leans a hip against his desk. “Are you terribly busy? I have something I need to follow up on and I think I might need someone from Sci-Tech to come with. I wouldn’t ask but I can’t seem to find either Fitz or Simmons at the moment, or anyone else more senior than the lovely fellow who washes the beakers...” The corners of her mouth turn down a bit as she says, “I know that you’re... not terribly interested in field work, but it should /just/ be your biochemical expertise I need.”

Bruce smiles up at Henrietta. "Not a problem, Agent Black," he says, keeping it professional. "Let me grab a field kit and we'll go." He starts tossing things into a black bag, almost a doctor's valise. "The other night was fun," he says, smiling over his shoulder at Etta. "I haven't danced in forever. Thanks for going out with me to the Park," he says, repeating his earlier gratitudes. He slings the bag over his shoulder and walks over to Etta.

"Ready when you are," he confirms.

“Why Doctor Banner, I haven’t the faintest notion of what you might be referring to...” Etta says in a faux-prim voice that has a heavy undercurrent of laughter to it. This patently false statement is punctuated with a little wink and a smile before she does slide back into her more professional persona and starts to lead him off towards the helicopters that will carry them down from the Argus to the world below.

”The first reports are a bit sketchy, I’m afraid, but we’ll see soon enough first hand. It looks like two college students dead under unusual circumstances in the dorms at Columbia... and apparently odd enough to warrant it crossing our proverbial desks, so...” She casts a sidelong glance his way, a little worry showing in her face. “Is that going to be too much....?”

"Nope." Bruce pops two pills into his mouth and takes a bite of a brownie from his pocket, chewing heavily. "Surprised you need me, though," he mentions as they climb into the helicopter. "I would guess you'd need a forensic scientist, not a biologist. Is there a concern of infection, or disease...?" he asks, trailing off with a concerned tone of voice.

“Well, I confess, I don’t entirely know /what/ I’m going to need, but the initial report requested a biochemist, and seeing as you’re one of the most brilliant minds of our age /and/ the only person available...” She tosses a smile his way before saying, “We’ll make do as best we can and bring whatever else we can’t process there back to the lab for further analysis. It could be entirely not our business too. Sometimes universities cast a wide net out of panic...”

In short order they’re on a helicopter and the loud and rhythmic thrum of the propeller blades make further conversation difficult. It’s a short hop until the copter alights near the grounds of the august campus of Columbia University, older by some years than the country itself and Etta is leading them on a brisk stride across brilliantly maintained grounds and towards one of the more modern dormitories.

And, no matter how prestigious the university, any college dorm is very much like another. Industrial carpet lines the walls which are plastered with fliers for this and that meeting and reminders about rules that the students are perfectly adept at ignoring and it smells of old pizza and stale pot smoke. Down a corridor lined with doors adorned with collages of spring break photos and white boards they go, till they approach a knot of people up ahead. Agitated students mill around while one that is probably the RA tries to corral them, all outside of a room that’s being guarded by two New York City police officers.

Etta’s all business here, all expression gone from her face as she shoulders her way through the crowd by sheer virtue of assumed authority. Her credentials are produced and shown to the officers guarding the door and she murmurs to the older of the pair, “Keep them back but keep an eye on them, mmm?” She makes a show of getting out her phone as if to check messages while taking a couple of pictures of the crowd of faces. “All set?” She asks Bruce with another little touch of worry, just in case the pot brownie hasn’t fully kicked in yet.

For the entire ride over, Bruce had been nibbling on his brownie, and when that finally kicked in, switched to a bag of Dorito's chips. He'd also been playing footsie with Etta while they were sitting in the passenger area, but that is more a function of being unable to talk to one another.

Once on the ground, though, they're all professional, the doctor and the Agent. He follows her brisk stride with a little more laconic one, though they're of a height, his eyes alert and flickering. He fairly hides behind Henrietta as the crowd crushes a little, and looks relieved when Agent Black cuts a path through the crowd with her badge and presence of authority.

"I'm ready," Bruce says, nodding at Henrietta, his bag slung over one shoulder. "Let's pop this and take a look." He offers her a pocket respirator and eye protection, though for obvious reasons he doesn't need the same protections as most people.

She eyes the equipment uncertainly but, as they say, better safe than sorry. She avails herself of both, though with her back turned to the crowd to avoid triggering any panic, and opens the door.

Like the hallway, the room beyond is exactly what you’d expect. Two twin beds, two utilitarian desks and a lot of decorations that are only really appealing to eighteen year old girls. Garlands of fake flowers and fairy lights are draped across walls festooned with trite black and white posters of puppies, children and couples walking in the rain. One girl is seated at the desk in front of her computer, notebooks and history texts spread out haphazardly around her. The other girl is sprawled face-down on the bed with a copy of Wuthering Heights still clutched in fingers painted with bright spring green nail polish. It almost looks like some sort of still-life of a typical day in the life of the freshman undergraduate.

Or, you know, it would if they still had heads. Which they most certainly do not in either case. Not that there are any severed heads laying about the floor either, but instead there’s something like a fine and slightly viscous red splatter sprayed in three foot every direction from either of the girls, like their heads had just... exploded. There’s really no other word for it.

Etta stands there a moment, taking in the scene from behind her visor. “Well.” She says at length. “That /is/ unusual, yes.”

Bruce paces around carefully, not touching anything. He examines things with a pencil, shifting bodies, touching things, probing with patient motions.

"Looks like... point of origin was the back of the mouth," he says, peering at the stumps. "There's very little left above the jawline. But they didn't swallow it, their vocal cords are intact." He considers the corpses for a few more minutes. "Not much brain matter. This... vaporized their heads. Like entirely. Only viscera remains."

He turns to Etta. "I'd guess something metahuman or magical. Something very specific." He spritzes the bodies with a chemical mist. "No traces of gunpowder or explosive, so that rules out conventional means. Yeah, this is something shifty."

Etta starts with the girl on the bed, donning gloves and only lightly prodding her lifeless form after immortalizing the grizzly scene in a few photographs from different angles. She frowns a little, the cause becoming apparent as she plucks and bags a piece of the girl that had been lodged between the pages of her 19th century literature homework. Finding nothing too telling, she makes her way towards the other girl at the desk who has just received a spritzing from Bruce.

The chemicals don’t reveal anything, though they do serve to confirm his initial assessment: no explosives, no gunpowder, nothing like that. The papers on her desk, at least the ones not rendered illegibly by the remains of her own brain, are just lecture notes. And by her right hand is an empty can of red bull and, half obscured beneath a handout about the battle of New York harbor, a small china box.

Its cutesy, like much of the décor in the room, shaped like a cupcake with pink icing dusted with glitter. Its hinged top is also open and inside are maybe eight or nine little pink pills.

"Drugs." He takes one pill and dissolves it in a small phial. "I'd guess MDMA. Ecstasy," he explains to Agent Black.

Banner rises, looking around, and shakes his head at Henrietta. "I'm sorry," he apologizes. "There's nothing scientific here. College girls, some recreational drugs, killed simultaneously sometime in the last fourty-eight hours, I'd guess. Pretty well sealed in this room- no ants or bugs growing," he observes. "Temmperature is a bit hard to gauge with the thermostat going up and down as much as it does. I'm out of suggestions," he apologizes again. "Might need to bring in a meta-specialist for this one."

“No apologies necessary.” Etta says, watching him take a sample of one of the pills and dissolve it in the phial. “So irrelevant then? Because I don’t think I’ve ever heard of an ecstasy overdose that resulted in anything like... well, this.” Her eyes sweep the bloodied surface of the desk around before coming back to Bruce.

”Hmm. I’m not a chemist of course, but... that seems unusual?” She asks, her eyes fixed on the phial still clutched in his hands.

The twee pink pill has dissolved into something red, little threads that look disturbingly like capillaries floating suspended in the fluid and clinging to the glass wall of the vessel next to his hand, like they were trying to worm their way through the barrier and into his flesh.

"Now, /that/ is interesting," Banner says, eying the dissolved capsule. He fishes around for a moment, then takes a chunk of his brownie from his pocket and drops it in the beaker, then firmly caps it. The second he removes the cap the shimmering red threads start to move agitatedly through the water, straining towards Bruce’s fingers. They enfold the little chunk of brownie as it breaks the surface, but almost as quickly ignore it again and go back to writhing against the glass. They last another moment or two before they slowly start to come apart, dissolving into nothing.

"Well, here's your smoking gun," Banner says, getting to his feet. "Just based on the structure and the movement, I’d guess it targeted their vascular system. Probably grew so fast that it made the girl's heads explode, and then just dissipated," he guesses. "Which is why there's so little detritus left."

Etta watches the horrific science experiment, pursing her lips into a stern looking bow. “Good lord.” She mutters under her breath, furrowing her brows as she looks up to Bruce and says, “If that’s the case they clearly didn’t willingly sign up for this. I’m sure we can get a better idea of what it /is/ in the lab but... what did they /think/ it was? And more importantly, where did they get it? The last thing we want is an epidemic of... college students exploding.”

"You kidding? Didn't you go to college?" Banner takes another bite of his brownie. "You give any kid on campus a free pill, they'll pop it without asking questions. She might have thought it was MDMA or some kind of neurolytic," Bruce explains. "If I was a killer, I'd mix my murder pills up with a couple of freebies and send the girls home with them. But this is clumsy- I mean, the first thing /any/ cop would do would be to get a sample of the pills. So this is either a newbie, or someone trying to send a message," he points out to 'etta.

Etta tisks at Bruce, managing to summon a flicker of a smile for him despite their surroundings. The things you get used to working at SHIELD. “Doctor Banner, I will have you know I was ever such a good girl while I was matriculating.” He seems to have an excellent point there, though. She thinks it over, eyes narrowing, and removes the safety equipment. “I think we’ve established that it’s not very likely to be airborne, so.... let’s see just /how/ foolish our killer might be. Because if I was completely inept at something like this and either basking in my first kill or utterly terrified at my success, I expect I would be....”

She swings the door open and stands there on the threshold, her blue-green eyes making a slow circuit of the small crowd still gathered out there. Something approaching two-dozen faces look back at her, each hungry for some gory photo op for their twitter accounts. They all look eager until she gets to the floppy-haired boy in an oversized flannel and jeans. His eyes widen in alarm the second she looks at him, but before he can even turn ‘round to bolt Etta says, “Officers.”

The two cops do all the heavy lifting for Etta and Bruce. It helps that the boy manages to trip over the hem of his own pants in his hasty flight and, before he can recover, he’s firmly in the grip of New York’s finest.