C'mon, Ads. Where Are You? Who: Archer and Lalita Where: the hospital What: Archer goes to track down where Adelaide might be. Lita’s supposed to be covering for her, but no one could’ve predicted that it’d be raining blobs. When: late Tuesday
Though he may be in charge of the police department now, Archer Avery spent the bulk of his career as a detective. Considering that he thinks anything worth doing is worth doing well, it’s safe to say he’d been a good one. A great one, even. So why is it so fucking difficult to track down Adelaide?
Yeah, sure, fine: the massive storm of blobs isn’t making things easy. Archer hasn’t slept since just before dawn of Monday morning and he’s still going strong, barking orders and looking in with folks and making sure Deputy Chief O’Brien is properly equipped to deal with the worst of the quivering virus-laden masses. Among other things, the police are rescuing the stranded and checking with shelters to be sure the possibly infected are in quarantine; Archer isn’t asking the people who work under him to do anything he’s not willing to do himself, uncertain immunity status or no. Yeah, he’s been fucking busy, and maybe ‘still going strong’ is more hyperbolic than strict truth, but in any event, he’s still on his feet and making a concerted effort to make sure everyone is okay.
The one person he can’t seem to do that with is Adelaide Lansing.
It’s setting off the alarm bells to clang in the back of his mind, no matter what he says to himself in an attempt to muffle them, and his gut’s telling him all is not well. In the few minutes he allows himself -- after showers and clean, dry clothes, just in case, even though he carries no open wounds and his gear has kept off the worst of the rain -- he ferrets out what clues he can. Adelaide left Charlie in the care of the Mayor’s secretary’s teenaged daughter. She’d last been seen just before noon, just before the storm, heading out in the humvee Thomas commandeered for her use. This should make him feel better, just a little, that Ads has the protection of the armored vehicle, but it really doesn’t. Purportedly, she volunteers over at the hospital? Archer can’t imagine why she wouldn’t drop that into conversation with him at some point and then tries to tell himself that he has no claim on her life, or her time, and all of that logic and boundary respecting is fucking great and all except he can’t fucking find her and she could be in danger. Like him, she’s never been bitten; her immunity status is as up in the air as Archer’s own. Blobs might not be shamblers or runners but they carry the virus and this rain is a fucking nightmare. The first storm was the worst but there continue to be cloudbursts and there continue to be more blobs and he wants to know, wants to be able to see for himself that Ads is really okay. This might not be like the days where he and Bran stood back to back, picking off zombies as they came at them, not like the days where they had to hold the line and hope they’d see dawn… but these blobs are no less serious and this rain bothers Archer because it’s just one more thing for everyone to be afraid of. Zombies come in three speeds, not to mention their gelatinous cousins; there’s the blister gas and the Prax and the raiders; there’s starvation and malnutrition; there’s outsiders and there’s infighting… and now there’s rain. They get to be scared of rain.
Archer makes the time to go over to the hospital. He’d parked the police vehicle under an overhang at the Capitol and tucks it out of the way in the emergency bay of the hospital so he manages to stay completely dry for the first time in hours. Leaving the outer layers of his rain gear inside the armored land rover, Archer stalked through the doors into UMCB, nodding briefly to the Department of Resources official on patrol inside. The stoic’s face is still fairly bland and he works to keep it that way. He’s moderately successful.
A brief conversation with the person at the desk nets Archer his destination. He goes to the floor indicated and in no way attempts to disguise his approach: in dark trousers and a white shirt with a dark nylon jacket open to show the gold chief’s badge pinned to his black tactical vest, the tall cop comes striding right down the hall toward his target.
Dr. Lalita Singh. With any luck, she’ll know where Adelaide is. He hopes the answer is ‘here.’