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Mar. 2nd, 2006 12:56 amThursday, 2 March, 2006
14 North Moore Street
Basement
Evening
"Come on, Joey, time to go to bed," called Ray as he padded his way down the stairs. "I promised your mom you'd be in bed half an hour ago. Dr. Venkman's already reading Alex his bedtime story."
There was no answer. Ray sighed. He'd promised his sister he'd take the boys for the evening while she and Alan attended the Met's late-night music and dinner special event, but he'd sort of assumed that Joey would be pooped out by now. Pausing next to the biometric panel for containment unit access, he said, "Joey, come on-"
He thought he heard a scuffling noise from the other end of the basement, and flicked on the light. No immediate sign of his nephew, but the lab door was ajar. With a nod he crept forward. If Joey were investigating his uncle's lab this late at night, he didn't want to surprise him. The four-year-old would almost certainly break something. "Joey?" he said softly as he slipped the door open the rest of the way.
"Over here," came the answer.
"I can't see you, Joey, it's a mess in here." Which was true. Egon tended to leave his projects in an insanely complicated sort of order that only he ever understood. "Where are you?"
"I'm lookin' at the stuff."
Ray's blood froze. They didn't keep anything that could be described as 'stuff' in this lab except Agent K's black oil sample.
He picked his way through the lab as swiftly as he dared- some of Egon's work might take months to reconstruct, but this was his nephew. It didn't occur to him that the place looked remarkably undisturbed, considering that a four-year-old boy had found his way through it. His skin was too busy goosepimpling for him to think of things like that. "Don't you touch anything, Joey," he warned as he stepped over something with far too many power leads. "It's really important-"
Joey was sitting on Ray's preferred stool, an old silvery affair with a battered naugahyde cushion. His elbows were propped up on the slate-grey countertop, and he was frowning intently, as young children often do when something confounds them. Less than half a meter away, the black oil slithered sluggishly back and forth inside its container. The stuff had been very, very temporarily opened under vacuum-tight conditions inside a glovebox, and then sealed up again. The theta-blocking bottle the Men in BLack had sealed it in remained intact. So did the cuneiform wards Ray had inscribed on the inside of the glovebox, and the magnetic bottling layers that had been arranged around the bottle. Joey's nose was practically touching the glovebox the way he was sitting; as his uncle's worried face reflected in the surface of the glass, he turned and looked up.
"You really shouldn't be- how the heck did you get in here, anyway? We keep that door locked."
"It's evil, Uncle Ray," said Joey, still with that intent little frown. "You should destroy it."
14 North Moore Street
Basement
Evening
"Come on, Joey, time to go to bed," called Ray as he padded his way down the stairs. "I promised your mom you'd be in bed half an hour ago. Dr. Venkman's already reading Alex his bedtime story."
There was no answer. Ray sighed. He'd promised his sister he'd take the boys for the evening while she and Alan attended the Met's late-night music and dinner special event, but he'd sort of assumed that Joey would be pooped out by now. Pausing next to the biometric panel for containment unit access, he said, "Joey, come on-"
He thought he heard a scuffling noise from the other end of the basement, and flicked on the light. No immediate sign of his nephew, but the lab door was ajar. With a nod he crept forward. If Joey were investigating his uncle's lab this late at night, he didn't want to surprise him. The four-year-old would almost certainly break something. "Joey?" he said softly as he slipped the door open the rest of the way.
"Over here," came the answer.
"I can't see you, Joey, it's a mess in here." Which was true. Egon tended to leave his projects in an insanely complicated sort of order that only he ever understood. "Where are you?"
"I'm lookin' at the stuff."
Ray's blood froze. They didn't keep anything that could be described as 'stuff' in this lab except Agent K's black oil sample.
He picked his way through the lab as swiftly as he dared- some of Egon's work might take months to reconstruct, but this was his nephew. It didn't occur to him that the place looked remarkably undisturbed, considering that a four-year-old boy had found his way through it. His skin was too busy goosepimpling for him to think of things like that. "Don't you touch anything, Joey," he warned as he stepped over something with far too many power leads. "It's really important-"
Joey was sitting on Ray's preferred stool, an old silvery affair with a battered naugahyde cushion. His elbows were propped up on the slate-grey countertop, and he was frowning intently, as young children often do when something confounds them. Less than half a meter away, the black oil slithered sluggishly back and forth inside its container. The stuff had been very, very temporarily opened under vacuum-tight conditions inside a glovebox, and then sealed up again. The theta-blocking bottle the Men in BLack had sealed it in remained intact. So did the cuneiform wards Ray had inscribed on the inside of the glovebox, and the magnetic bottling layers that had been arranged around the bottle. Joey's nose was practically touching the glovebox the way he was sitting; as his uncle's worried face reflected in the surface of the glass, he turned and looked up.
"You really shouldn't be- how the heck did you get in here, anyway? We keep that door locked."
"It's evil, Uncle Ray," said Joey, still with that intent little frown. "You should destroy it."
