Heart of the Storm (Part 7)
Title: Heart of the Storm
Authors: lizynob and lorafantastory
Pairings: Oscar/Block as the Anna/Hans dynamic
Characters: Oscar Schlumper, Wayne Schlumper, Dr. Block, Dr. Tease, minor mentions of Party Mania characters
Word Count: 47,002
Warnings: Descriptions of anxiety, some bullying, angst, references to death
Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Epilogue, Bonus Content
One Wrong Move and Everyone Will Know
When Oscar and Block, hand in hand, finally made it back to the east conference room, Wayne had already left the table. Oscar briefly wondered how long he had been gone but was too busy giggling and beaming with elation to care much about the answer.
He spotted his brother looking over one of the nearby less-crowded displays. “Wayne, there you are!” Oscar called out happily as he and Block walked over to him.
Wayne lifted his head up at his name being called. “Oh, there you are. I was wondering where you were, Oscar.” He smiled a little. “I wasn’t sure if you had gotten distracted or just lost."
“Neither,” Oscar told him as he tried to compose himself somewhat. He gestured to Block with his free hand. “Wayne, I’d like to introduce you to my girlfriend, Dr. Block.”
Block put on one of her brightest smiles. “It’s pleasure to meet you, Dr. Schlumper.”
Oscar waited for Wayne to greet her in return, but Wayne merely looked at the two of them like he’d never been so confused in his life. “Your…girlfriend?”
“I know it’s all very sudden,” Oscar conceded. “But, well, that’s because it happened so suddenly- but wonderfully! Anyway, we were discussing the possibility of moving in together. We, I mean Block and I, haven’t worked out all the details of course, but we have plenty of room at our place, you know.”
Wayne began to gape even more. “Our place?”
Block demurred a bit at his tone. “I knew it was too much to ask,” she said to Oscar.
Wayne desperately was trying to figure what was happening. “I don’t-“
“But you can still move in with me instead, Oscar,” she proclaimed before Wayne could even begin to figure out what to say, and he watched her momentarily lean her head against his brother’s shoulder. “My lab might not be very big, but we could make it cozy together.”
“Oscar-”
“I wouldn’t want to want to overburden you, Dr. Block,” Oscar said before finally looking back up over to Wayne “I could still keep some of my equipment in your lab, couldn’t I?” he asked.
“You mean our lab,” Wayne corrected, alarm creeping into his voice. “It’s our lab.”
Oscar kept talking like he didn’t even hear him, though. His eyes were back on Block. “I don’t have an overabundance of personal items, but we can sort that later and in time we can get a bigger place with all the room we’ll need.”
“Oscar, I don’t understand what’s going on.” Wayne said hurriedly in an effort to get in a complete sentence and not be cut off yet again. “Did you get engaged behind my back?!”
“What? Of course not, Wayne!” Oscar exclaimed. “That’s ridiculous. I mean, I don’t even have a ring to give her.” All at once his expression changed as though he suddenly realized something important. Oscar turned away from Wayne yet again. “Is there a particular gemstone you like best?” he asked Block.
Her eyes lit up like he’d just offered her the world. “Well, I’ve always been partial to-“
“Wait just a minute!” Wayne cried out. “Would you slow down, the both of you!?” The other people who had been looking at the display began backing off, whispering and looking back over their shoulders. Wayne felt a rush of humiliation at being the middle of such a scene, but he tried to gain some control over the situation. “Oscar, may I talk to you, please? Alone?”
Oscar straightened up and only squeezed Block’s hand tighter. “Whatever you have to say, Wayne, you can say to both of us,” he said firmly.
Wayne let out an overwhelmed breath. “Fine then! Oscar, you can’t plan an engagement to a woman you’ve only met tonight!”
“We’re not planning the engagement yet. Right now we’re only planning my moving in with her. I’m an adult, Wayne. I love her and if we want to move in together, we can. I don’t need your permission. I…I just would prefer to have you as excited about this as I am.”
“Well forgive me if I can’t get excited about your moving in with someone you’ve known for an hour and a half. Oscar, this is absurd!”
“Dr. Schlumper,” Block began, “or, um, Wayne? May I call you Wayne?”
“You may not.” Wayne took a step back, getting more flustered by the moment. “This is ridiculous. I think we should go.” He turned quickly back towards their table and began to gather up the materials there, stuffing the goggles into his coat pocket and stacking the research into piles.
“What?” Oscar asked, staring uncomprehendingly as Wayne collected up the folders and began to walk away from them towards the entrance. “No, wait!” he cried out, rushing after his brother as the space between him and Wayne grew more and more. “We can’t just leave right now! You can’t just walk out on an event you were awarded at!”
“Watch me.”
“How can you be so… Wayne, listen to me!”
But Wayne kept walking without him, and Oscar suddenly reached out and grabbed at his hand, Wayne’s glove slipping off as the two pulled in opposite directions. That got Wayne to stop at least. He instantly whirled around, reaching for the object Oscar was clutching.
“Give me my glove!” he borderline shouted.
Oscar remained standing firm, however, and instead held Wayne’s glove out of his reach. “What are you going to do, Wayne?” Oscar demanded. “Just run back to your room and lock the door like you always do? Lock me out the way you always do when you don’t get your way? If that’s the case, I can’t see why you would even care if I leave.” His sharp words clearly stunned Wayne, and his voice began to crack slightly as emotion from more than just that night began to surface. “Tonight was supposed to be perfect,” Oscar said. “It has been perfect. For me at least. This was supposed to be our big night. I’ve been making the most of it. Don’t you want to?”
“....I just want to go home,” Wayne pleaded softly. “If you want to stay so much, I’ll just call a cab for myself.”
Oscar felt like he’d been slapped in the face and stood without moving as Wayne turned around and kept walking like he was barely holding himself from outright running. Running away. Running from him.
Like always.
Oscar clenched his fists. Not this time.
“What did I ever do to you?!” he burst out as he tailed after Wayne. By this point the activities going on around them had long since ceased, everyone watching the two siblings and their display in stunned silence. “Why can’t you ever be happy for me?!”
“Stop it, Oscar,” Wayne hissed.
“No!” Oscar yelled. “Not until you talk to me. Not until you finally give me some sort of explanation!”
“Shut up, Oscar!”
“You’ve always acted like I ruin your life with my presence, and now you’re acting like I’m ruining your life by going away! Which is it, Wayne?!”
“I said shut up!!” Wayne screamed.
Lightning suddenly burst from his bare hand, bright and crackling. It cut the air in a wide semicircle as he turned, white-hot and burning a black curve into the carpet as the folders went flying.
There was silence in the hall.
Not a single person moved, all eyes locked onto Wayne Schlumper who stood rooted to the floor.
Wayne felt the blood drain from his face, every inch of him going freezing cold. Everyone had seen that. Everyone could still see it in the blackened carpeting.
Oscar stood stricken on the other side of the scorched floor. Wayne had never seen his brother’s eyes so wide, so shocked. Oscar took a step back from him.
That single step was what did it. Wayne felt his world breaking into pieces around him. Electricity surged through him, sparking and popping around his ungloved hand and making the air around him sizzle. The more he tried to clamp down on it, the more viciously it crackled. He stumbled backwards himself, trembling, casting desperately glances from face to face around him and finding only the same frightened shock on each. They knew. They all knew.
“Wayne…” Oscar whispered.
Lightning leapt out to strike two of the chandeliers overhead, shattering bulbs and breaking the trance in the room as people cried out and ducked for cover. With a gasp of despair, Wayne turned and ran.
The metal doors to the street slammed open ahead of him without him ever having to touch them. He raced down the sidewalk as fast as his legs could take him, ignoring the shout of his name that was quickly fading into the distance behind. People shrank out of his way at the sight of the white bolts that were springing forth from his fist. One jumped out and struck a nearby streetlamp which cracked in half, eliciting screams from the pedestrians around him.
Storm clouds were gathering in the sky as Wayne ran. Where was he going to go? He had no idea. He couldn’t go home. For the first time, shutting himself up in his room was not an option. He just had to get as far away from people as possible.
The wind began to kick up, whipping his hair into his face as he sprinted along the bridge that connected the conference hall with the winding road out of town. Jagged streaks of hot energy struck the concrete around him, fueling his panic further. He couldn’t hold it back. One single slip-up and he couldn’t stop it from boiling over any longer no matter what he did.
A bright flash and a crash of thunder split the night and Wayne cried out, cringing away from it, away from everything. Electricity exploded out of him and the street lights on the bridge blew out in a massive wave, raining glass onto the pavement. Tires screeched and a white blaze filled his vision as a pair of headlights bore down on him. Wayne flung a hand up without thinking and bolts of light leapt from his fingers, knocking the car across the street to smash into the guard rail. A second car slid into it, with a third skidding and clipping its rear.
A strangled sound of shock tore out of his throat and he took off for the edge of the bridge, ducking off the road at the first chance and stumbling through the trees at the far side of the ravine as lightning raged through the sky around him. He forced his way up the embankment, too terrified to look back and just trying to get as far away as he could. Somewhere without people. Anywhere without people.
*****
“Wayne!” Oscar took off after his brother as the older scientist raced from the hall. There was an uproar around him, and he had to shove his way past people who were ducking to shield themselves from the falling glass. He could barely see his brother halfway across the street.
The metal doors slammed shut in his face, causing Oscar to stumble to a halt, dumbfounded. How in Tesla’s name did he do that?
All sorts of things were raising questions and coming together and tearing apart and making no sense and amazing sense at the same time. The smell of burnt polyester still filled the air from the black arc in the carpet, and the floor was still covered in glass shards with a quarter of the hall plunged into darkness from the loss of the chandeliers.
Lightning. Actual lightning had come out of Wayne’s hand. Oscar looked down at the glove he was still holding, examining it inside and out for the first time. It was insulated.
Gears spun in Oscar’s head, his knowledge of the world battling against the evidence his eyes were giving him. For Wayne to somehow be able to create electricity inside himself… that wasn’t physically possible, was it? But no, he’d seen the evidence with his own eyes and was holding it in his hand.
Whether it made sense or not, it had happened, and it’s reveal did have Wayne terrified. He stuffed the glove into the inside pocket of his coat and set to work fighting with the doorknob. Somehow the door had managed to lock itself. He rammed a shoulder into it, though that did nothing. He’d never had much in the way of muscles but hell if he was going to let yet another door stand between him and his brother.
Dr. Block caught up to him at last, brushing bits of crystal off her lab coat and making sure there were none stuck in her hair. “Did you know about this?”
“No,” Oscar answered truthfully, working to get the lock unjammed. “I had no idea! Although…” He paused as numerous tiny odd events from his childhood suddenly fell into better perspective. “That does explain quite a lot.”
Block’s pretty eyes were wide. “That was unbelievable! And actually pretty violent. You’re not planning to chase him, are you?”
Oscar turned to her. “Whatever’s happening, Wayne is still my brother. And right now, more than anything, he is afraid. I am going after him.”
The door finally gave, and they hurried out into the street just in time to see a massive flash from the other side of the bridge across the ravine. A tingly wave hit them an instant later, and the streetlamp above them blew out. The two of them hurried out of the way of the falling glass, trying to blink the remains of the flash out of their eyes. When Oscar’s vision finally cleared enough for him to see in the growing dusk, his heart sank as he took in the multiple-car wreck down at the other end of the bridge. The drivers were climbing out of their vehicles and, from what he could make out, both lanes were solidly blocked. The faint glimpse of a white coat vanished into the foliage beyond the havoc.
Oscar hurried for the parking lot with Block right behind him.
“Where do you think he’s going?”
“I haven’t got the faintest clue but I’m certainly not going to be running anybody down on foot. Certainly not if the bridge is closed. Do you know of another way to get up closer to the top of the ravine?”
Block nodded. “I do. You’d have to head all the way around and then take some back roads, but you can do it. It could take a while to get all the way up there. I’ll come with you.”
Oscar gave her a grateful smile as he reached his car and got the doors open. “I would appreciate that.”
“Block!” The wild-haired woman Oscar had seen earlier came running toward them across the parking lot. “Oh, do tell me you got a good look at that!”
“I did!” Block nodded vigorously to her colleague.
“So what’s the new plan? Should I prepare some formaldehyde?”
“Ye- What? No! Why would you even suggest that, I don’t-”
Tease rolled her eyes. “Well I don’t know what you have in mind and I figure it’s always good to have all the options open.”
Block shook her head in disbelief. “Why do I live with you? Anyway, I am going with Oscar to try to find Doctor Schlumper. You should probably stay here.”
Oscar hurried into the driver’s seat and ducked to look at Tease through the passenger window. “If you’d like to help me, just please don’t tell anyone else where he’s gone. I want to be able to talk to him first before a hoard of confused physicists show up.”
“Ooo!” Tease’s face lit up and Oscar busied himself with starting up the car. “I’ve been waiting for a good time to try out that gas mixture we cooked up last month!”
Block’s eyebrows shot up and she lowered her voice so only Tease could hear. “The hallucinogenic one? You didn’t bring it, did you?”
The blonde scientist pulled a little green vial out of one pocket, petting it excitedly like a child about to get a treat. “Who’s gonna help mommy alter some consciousnesses? You are! Yes you are!”
“And you would just carry that around because…?”
“Exactly!” Tease’s smile was manic and wide. “You never know when opportunity can strike! And I have to say, it struck much more literally than I was expecting tonight.” She stuffed the vial back into her pocket and turned back towards the hall as Block slid into the passenger seat. “You go do whatever it is you’re doing. I’ve got a date with some science!”
Authors: lizynob and lorafantastory
Pairings: Oscar/Block as the Anna/Hans dynamic
Characters: Oscar Schlumper, Wayne Schlumper, Dr. Block, Dr. Tease, minor mentions of Party Mania characters
Word Count: 47,002
Warnings: Descriptions of anxiety, some bullying, angst, references to death
Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Epilogue, Bonus Content
One Wrong Move and Everyone Will Know
When Oscar and Block, hand in hand, finally made it back to the east conference room, Wayne had already left the table. Oscar briefly wondered how long he had been gone but was too busy giggling and beaming with elation to care much about the answer.
He spotted his brother looking over one of the nearby less-crowded displays. “Wayne, there you are!” Oscar called out happily as he and Block walked over to him.
Wayne lifted his head up at his name being called. “Oh, there you are. I was wondering where you were, Oscar.” He smiled a little. “I wasn’t sure if you had gotten distracted or just lost."
“Neither,” Oscar told him as he tried to compose himself somewhat. He gestured to Block with his free hand. “Wayne, I’d like to introduce you to my girlfriend, Dr. Block.”
Block put on one of her brightest smiles. “It’s pleasure to meet you, Dr. Schlumper.”
Oscar waited for Wayne to greet her in return, but Wayne merely looked at the two of them like he’d never been so confused in his life. “Your…girlfriend?”
“I know it’s all very sudden,” Oscar conceded. “But, well, that’s because it happened so suddenly- but wonderfully! Anyway, we were discussing the possibility of moving in together. We, I mean Block and I, haven’t worked out all the details of course, but we have plenty of room at our place, you know.”
Wayne began to gape even more. “Our place?”
Block demurred a bit at his tone. “I knew it was too much to ask,” she said to Oscar.
Wayne desperately was trying to figure what was happening. “I don’t-“
“But you can still move in with me instead, Oscar,” she proclaimed before Wayne could even begin to figure out what to say, and he watched her momentarily lean her head against his brother’s shoulder. “My lab might not be very big, but we could make it cozy together.”
“Oscar-”
“I wouldn’t want to want to overburden you, Dr. Block,” Oscar said before finally looking back up over to Wayne “I could still keep some of my equipment in your lab, couldn’t I?” he asked.
“You mean our lab,” Wayne corrected, alarm creeping into his voice. “It’s our lab.”
Oscar kept talking like he didn’t even hear him, though. His eyes were back on Block. “I don’t have an overabundance of personal items, but we can sort that later and in time we can get a bigger place with all the room we’ll need.”
“Oscar, I don’t understand what’s going on.” Wayne said hurriedly in an effort to get in a complete sentence and not be cut off yet again. “Did you get engaged behind my back?!”
“What? Of course not, Wayne!” Oscar exclaimed. “That’s ridiculous. I mean, I don’t even have a ring to give her.” All at once his expression changed as though he suddenly realized something important. Oscar turned away from Wayne yet again. “Is there a particular gemstone you like best?” he asked Block.
Her eyes lit up like he’d just offered her the world. “Well, I’ve always been partial to-“
“Wait just a minute!” Wayne cried out. “Would you slow down, the both of you!?” The other people who had been looking at the display began backing off, whispering and looking back over their shoulders. Wayne felt a rush of humiliation at being the middle of such a scene, but he tried to gain some control over the situation. “Oscar, may I talk to you, please? Alone?”
Oscar straightened up and only squeezed Block’s hand tighter. “Whatever you have to say, Wayne, you can say to both of us,” he said firmly.
Wayne let out an overwhelmed breath. “Fine then! Oscar, you can’t plan an engagement to a woman you’ve only met tonight!”
“We’re not planning the engagement yet. Right now we’re only planning my moving in with her. I’m an adult, Wayne. I love her and if we want to move in together, we can. I don’t need your permission. I…I just would prefer to have you as excited about this as I am.”
“Well forgive me if I can’t get excited about your moving in with someone you’ve known for an hour and a half. Oscar, this is absurd!”
“Dr. Schlumper,” Block began, “or, um, Wayne? May I call you Wayne?”
“You may not.” Wayne took a step back, getting more flustered by the moment. “This is ridiculous. I think we should go.” He turned quickly back towards their table and began to gather up the materials there, stuffing the goggles into his coat pocket and stacking the research into piles.
“What?” Oscar asked, staring uncomprehendingly as Wayne collected up the folders and began to walk away from them towards the entrance. “No, wait!” he cried out, rushing after his brother as the space between him and Wayne grew more and more. “We can’t just leave right now! You can’t just walk out on an event you were awarded at!”
“Watch me.”
“How can you be so… Wayne, listen to me!”
But Wayne kept walking without him, and Oscar suddenly reached out and grabbed at his hand, Wayne’s glove slipping off as the two pulled in opposite directions. That got Wayne to stop at least. He instantly whirled around, reaching for the object Oscar was clutching.
“Give me my glove!” he borderline shouted.
Oscar remained standing firm, however, and instead held Wayne’s glove out of his reach. “What are you going to do, Wayne?” Oscar demanded. “Just run back to your room and lock the door like you always do? Lock me out the way you always do when you don’t get your way? If that’s the case, I can’t see why you would even care if I leave.” His sharp words clearly stunned Wayne, and his voice began to crack slightly as emotion from more than just that night began to surface. “Tonight was supposed to be perfect,” Oscar said. “It has been perfect. For me at least. This was supposed to be our big night. I’ve been making the most of it. Don’t you want to?”
“....I just want to go home,” Wayne pleaded softly. “If you want to stay so much, I’ll just call a cab for myself.”
Oscar felt like he’d been slapped in the face and stood without moving as Wayne turned around and kept walking like he was barely holding himself from outright running. Running away. Running from him.
Like always.
Oscar clenched his fists. Not this time.
“What did I ever do to you?!” he burst out as he tailed after Wayne. By this point the activities going on around them had long since ceased, everyone watching the two siblings and their display in stunned silence. “Why can’t you ever be happy for me?!”
“Stop it, Oscar,” Wayne hissed.
“No!” Oscar yelled. “Not until you talk to me. Not until you finally give me some sort of explanation!”
“Shut up, Oscar!”
“You’ve always acted like I ruin your life with my presence, and now you’re acting like I’m ruining your life by going away! Which is it, Wayne?!”
“I said shut up!!” Wayne screamed.
Lightning suddenly burst from his bare hand, bright and crackling. It cut the air in a wide semicircle as he turned, white-hot and burning a black curve into the carpet as the folders went flying.
There was silence in the hall.
Not a single person moved, all eyes locked onto Wayne Schlumper who stood rooted to the floor.
Wayne felt the blood drain from his face, every inch of him going freezing cold. Everyone had seen that. Everyone could still see it in the blackened carpeting.
Oscar stood stricken on the other side of the scorched floor. Wayne had never seen his brother’s eyes so wide, so shocked. Oscar took a step back from him.
That single step was what did it. Wayne felt his world breaking into pieces around him. Electricity surged through him, sparking and popping around his ungloved hand and making the air around him sizzle. The more he tried to clamp down on it, the more viciously it crackled. He stumbled backwards himself, trembling, casting desperately glances from face to face around him and finding only the same frightened shock on each. They knew. They all knew.
“Wayne…” Oscar whispered.
Lightning leapt out to strike two of the chandeliers overhead, shattering bulbs and breaking the trance in the room as people cried out and ducked for cover. With a gasp of despair, Wayne turned and ran.
The metal doors to the street slammed open ahead of him without him ever having to touch them. He raced down the sidewalk as fast as his legs could take him, ignoring the shout of his name that was quickly fading into the distance behind. People shrank out of his way at the sight of the white bolts that were springing forth from his fist. One jumped out and struck a nearby streetlamp which cracked in half, eliciting screams from the pedestrians around him.
Storm clouds were gathering in the sky as Wayne ran. Where was he going to go? He had no idea. He couldn’t go home. For the first time, shutting himself up in his room was not an option. He just had to get as far away from people as possible.
The wind began to kick up, whipping his hair into his face as he sprinted along the bridge that connected the conference hall with the winding road out of town. Jagged streaks of hot energy struck the concrete around him, fueling his panic further. He couldn’t hold it back. One single slip-up and he couldn’t stop it from boiling over any longer no matter what he did.
A bright flash and a crash of thunder split the night and Wayne cried out, cringing away from it, away from everything. Electricity exploded out of him and the street lights on the bridge blew out in a massive wave, raining glass onto the pavement. Tires screeched and a white blaze filled his vision as a pair of headlights bore down on him. Wayne flung a hand up without thinking and bolts of light leapt from his fingers, knocking the car across the street to smash into the guard rail. A second car slid into it, with a third skidding and clipping its rear.
A strangled sound of shock tore out of his throat and he took off for the edge of the bridge, ducking off the road at the first chance and stumbling through the trees at the far side of the ravine as lightning raged through the sky around him. He forced his way up the embankment, too terrified to look back and just trying to get as far away as he could. Somewhere without people. Anywhere without people.
*****
“Wayne!” Oscar took off after his brother as the older scientist raced from the hall. There was an uproar around him, and he had to shove his way past people who were ducking to shield themselves from the falling glass. He could barely see his brother halfway across the street.
The metal doors slammed shut in his face, causing Oscar to stumble to a halt, dumbfounded. How in Tesla’s name did he do that?
All sorts of things were raising questions and coming together and tearing apart and making no sense and amazing sense at the same time. The smell of burnt polyester still filled the air from the black arc in the carpet, and the floor was still covered in glass shards with a quarter of the hall plunged into darkness from the loss of the chandeliers.
Lightning. Actual lightning had come out of Wayne’s hand. Oscar looked down at the glove he was still holding, examining it inside and out for the first time. It was insulated.
Gears spun in Oscar’s head, his knowledge of the world battling against the evidence his eyes were giving him. For Wayne to somehow be able to create electricity inside himself… that wasn’t physically possible, was it? But no, he’d seen the evidence with his own eyes and was holding it in his hand.
Whether it made sense or not, it had happened, and it’s reveal did have Wayne terrified. He stuffed the glove into the inside pocket of his coat and set to work fighting with the doorknob. Somehow the door had managed to lock itself. He rammed a shoulder into it, though that did nothing. He’d never had much in the way of muscles but hell if he was going to let yet another door stand between him and his brother.
Dr. Block caught up to him at last, brushing bits of crystal off her lab coat and making sure there were none stuck in her hair. “Did you know about this?”
“No,” Oscar answered truthfully, working to get the lock unjammed. “I had no idea! Although…” He paused as numerous tiny odd events from his childhood suddenly fell into better perspective. “That does explain quite a lot.”
Block’s pretty eyes were wide. “That was unbelievable! And actually pretty violent. You’re not planning to chase him, are you?”
Oscar turned to her. “Whatever’s happening, Wayne is still my brother. And right now, more than anything, he is afraid. I am going after him.”
The door finally gave, and they hurried out into the street just in time to see a massive flash from the other side of the bridge across the ravine. A tingly wave hit them an instant later, and the streetlamp above them blew out. The two of them hurried out of the way of the falling glass, trying to blink the remains of the flash out of their eyes. When Oscar’s vision finally cleared enough for him to see in the growing dusk, his heart sank as he took in the multiple-car wreck down at the other end of the bridge. The drivers were climbing out of their vehicles and, from what he could make out, both lanes were solidly blocked. The faint glimpse of a white coat vanished into the foliage beyond the havoc.
Oscar hurried for the parking lot with Block right behind him.
“Where do you think he’s going?”
“I haven’t got the faintest clue but I’m certainly not going to be running anybody down on foot. Certainly not if the bridge is closed. Do you know of another way to get up closer to the top of the ravine?”
Block nodded. “I do. You’d have to head all the way around and then take some back roads, but you can do it. It could take a while to get all the way up there. I’ll come with you.”
Oscar gave her a grateful smile as he reached his car and got the doors open. “I would appreciate that.”
“Block!” The wild-haired woman Oscar had seen earlier came running toward them across the parking lot. “Oh, do tell me you got a good look at that!”
“I did!” Block nodded vigorously to her colleague.
“So what’s the new plan? Should I prepare some formaldehyde?”
“Ye- What? No! Why would you even suggest that, I don’t-”
Tease rolled her eyes. “Well I don’t know what you have in mind and I figure it’s always good to have all the options open.”
Block shook her head in disbelief. “Why do I live with you? Anyway, I am going with Oscar to try to find Doctor Schlumper. You should probably stay here.”
Oscar hurried into the driver’s seat and ducked to look at Tease through the passenger window. “If you’d like to help me, just please don’t tell anyone else where he’s gone. I want to be able to talk to him first before a hoard of confused physicists show up.”
“Ooo!” Tease’s face lit up and Oscar busied himself with starting up the car. “I’ve been waiting for a good time to try out that gas mixture we cooked up last month!”
Block’s eyebrows shot up and she lowered her voice so only Tease could hear. “The hallucinogenic one? You didn’t bring it, did you?”
The blonde scientist pulled a little green vial out of one pocket, petting it excitedly like a child about to get a treat. “Who’s gonna help mommy alter some consciousnesses? You are! Yes you are!”
“And you would just carry that around because…?”
“Exactly!” Tease’s smile was manic and wide. “You never know when opportunity can strike! And I have to say, it struck much more literally than I was expecting tonight.” She stuffed the vial back into her pocket and turned back towards the hall as Block slid into the passenger seat. “You go do whatever it is you’re doing. I’ve got a date with some science!”