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  "Yeah, we...we just want this whole thing to be over," Bill responded.

  "Do you have any idea who would want to do this to our son?" Jennifer added.

  "I was actually going to ask you the same question," Officer Sanchez replied as he opened the small box to reveal a container of finger print dust and a small round brush.

  On cue, Officer Sanchez's partner entered the room. The notepad that he'd used to take down Jennifer’s account of the night’s events was in hand and ready for any additional information he might be able to obtain.

  "I don't know anyone that would want to hurt an infant," Bill rejected what he found to be an insulting question. He didn't associate himself with people capable of such an act. As far as he knew he was well liked by just about everyone he knew.

  "I don't mean to imply that any of this was your fault. I'm just simply trying to come to an understanding of what exactly happened tonight. I, too, find it disgusting that someone would commit such a heinous act, but it doesn't change the fact that they did," Sanchez continued, as he began gently tapping the brush against the crib's railing. "Have you had any issues with a family member or someone close to you regarding your son?"

  "No, of course not," Jennifer quickly answered.

  "And you said that you adopted your son, right?"

  "Yeah, the paperwork was just finalized at the hospital a few days ago before we brought him home," Bill took his turn to answer.

  "Any issues with the natural parents?"

  "No, it was an unwanted teen pregnancy. The girl was only fifteen years old. Both of the girl's parents were involved in the process and everyone was more than happy with the arrangement. Tiffany—“

  “—That was the girl's name," Jennifer interjected.

  "Tiffany...," Bill continued, "...was very happy about the arrangement. I mean, she was understandably upset the other day after giving birth, but it's not like this was a spur of the moment decision. She chose us as the adopting family nearly six months ago and we made it very clear that she is more than welcome to be a part of our lives as much or as little as she wants. She's a great girl. Her whole family has been great.”

  "I don't think I'm going to get anything here," Officer Sanchez announced, giving up on dusting and returning the brush to the box.

  "I didn't think you would," Bill, under his breath muttered.

  Jennifer shot him a look and as he lifted his gaze from his wife's scolding glare he was met by another set of judgmental eyes looking up from the notepad in front of them.

  Apparently Officer Sanchez had not heard the sarcastic comment, continuing the momentarily paused conversation. "What about the father?"

  "Excuse me?” Bill asked, turning away from Sanchez's scrutinizing partner.

  "The father. Your son's biological father. Any issues with him?"

  "We don't know who the father is. Tiffany had apparently gotten drunk at some party and hooked up with a guy she didn't know. I think she said something about an Asian kid from another high school."

  Not really noticing that Officer Sanchez's younger partner was of Asian descent until he threw out the descriptive term about Oliver's biological father, Bill quickly turned back to the officer scribbling in the notepad as if to confirm that the use of the term Asian was still socially acceptable. The officer's eyes remained focused on his pen as he added the new information to the page before him, apparently undeterred by the term or just not willing to show his discomfort with the word.

  "The father wasn't involved at all in the process," Jennifer took over answering the officer's questions. "As far as we know, Tiffany's family and the adoption agency were never able to determine who the kid was. As far as anyone knows, he isn't even aware that Oliver exists."

  "Alright, fair enough. Well, I don't think that there's much else we can do here, so—“

  “—You're not even going to go out and look for the guy?" Bill interjected.

  "Mr. Nesbit," the entire department has been notified to keep an eye out for anyone in the area dressed in black jeans and a black hoodie but we really don't have much else to go by here, unless you've got some more information for us that we haven't yet heard.”

  Thinking for a moment, searching his brain for any additional details from the brief encounter.

  "Listen, I'm going to make sure that a car comes through this neighborhood at least once an hour for the next few days. In the meantime, if you think of anything else, please give me a call."

  Officer Sanchez removed a business card from his pocket and handed it to Bill.

  "I suggest you get an alarm company out here first thing tomorrow morning and get this place secured. I know it can be expensive but the peace of mind is worth it. If we find anything else out, we'll be in touch."

  And with that, Officer Sanchez and his partner exited the room.

  "Do you think he'll come back?" Jennifer asked worriedly, as if it was the first time the thought had occurred to her.

  “Who, the officer?”

  “No. The guy.”

  "I don't know. I'll get ADT out here in the morning and I know you don't like them, but I'm getting a gun.”

  FOUR

  Out of Order

  The Sharpie sign, taped to the elevator doors, was the perfect conclusion to a night Jason wanted nothing more than to forget.

  The walk back to his dorm, though relatively short, seemed to take forever; thanks to the debacle that had been his date playing over and over in his overactive mind. By the time he had reached the ten story building he'd called home for the past four years, he'd wanted nothing more than to climb into bed and sleep away the remainder of the disappointing evening. Instead, staring at the broken elevator, he now realized that he had nine flights of stairs to continue his obsessive examination of his relationship failings, past and present.

  He could forget about tonight. Sure, it hurt to find out that he was apparently too...whatever he was that made it so horrible to even complete a casual dinner. It would take some time to put it behind him but eventually he would. After all, it wasn't the worst thing that had been done to him by the fairer of the sexes. The memory of Jenna Bishop on the other hand; that was one that still lingered and probably would for the remainder of his days.

  Jenna Bishop. The very thought of the name made Jason want to run and hide in shame. Even though no one in Boston, besides his longtime friend and now roommate Derek, knew about the incident, he couldn't help but think that, at times, people were still whispering the embarrassing little details to one another whenever they saw him. Looking back on the incident he couldn't believe how gullible he'd been, but it had been Senior year of high school and Jenna had been the aggressor, approaching him for a date, so for that reason alone he understood his puberty driven mistake.

  The entire school had been in shock to find out that he and Jenna, a cheerleader, were going out. He'd overheard people ask her what she was thinking going out with someone like him, as if he carried the plague or something, but he didn't care. Jenna was beautiful and for some reason she wanted to be with him or at least that's what he'd been led to believe.

  Only a week into the budding romance, they'd gone to a movie, they'd had dinner at her house with her parents and obnoxious little brother, who also seemed to question what in the hell their daughter and sister were doing with the frail, nerdy kid from school.

  By the end of the weeklong relationship he'd felt on top of the world. Everything was going to change for him. He'd expected high school to be an unpleasant necessity in life. A sentence of abuse at the hands of kids more popular than he but now, having catapulted his way into the social elite with his romantic connection, everything was looking up, which was probably why he hadn't found it odd when Tyler Bidwell had invited him to a party that weekend.

  The night had started great. His arrival had been marked by dozens of excited peers welcoming him to the party and offering him drinks, which he'd politely declined. He’d enjoyed the flirtatious advancements of numerous
girls, which oddly Jenna hadn't taken offense to and by nine o' clock, he'd found himself in an upstairs bedroom with Jenna straddling his chest and his hands bound to the bedposts. The very thought of what was occurring should have been more than enough for him to finish right then and there given his lack of experience but amazingly he'd managed to contain his hormonal excitement.

  Everything after that was a bit fuzzy. Likely, it was his brain’s way of trying to protect him from the devastatingly embarrassing spectacle that had followed. All he could remember clearly was Jenna excusing herself for a moment and then, the next thing he knew, the room was full of people pointing and laughing at the half naked kid tied to the bed. There were jokes and names coming from all directions as he’d struggled to free himself from the silk scarves holding him prisoner. The flash of what seemed like dozens of cameras had been blinding, making it that much harder to undo the well tied knots. To make matters worse, there was a giant purple dildo laying on his chest. It had probably been a normal sized dildo, but no dildo is normal sized when you’re tied to a bed with your pants around your ankles in a room full of your peers.

  Thankfully, he’d managed to free himself, return his pants to his waist and with his head down, scurry to freedom. Needless to say, he hadn't even bothered talking to another girl until sophomore year of college when Derek had finally convinced him to go out on a date with Samantha Fishorn, a girl from his physics class. Samantha had been nice, but nothing had come of the brief romance so his solo existence had continued, occasionally interrupted by a date or two over the last three years.

  IX

  The crooked Roman numerals on the cold metal door were a welcomed interruption to his mind's once again, unwelcomed wandering. Pulling the door open, Jason exited the dim, concrete stairwell into the only slightly better lit, carpeted hallway that led to his increasingly desired dorm room, and within it, his bed.

  It was nights like this that he wondered why he even bothered to go out in the first place. Nothing good had ever come from his attempts at social interaction. Just as he had done right after that incident with Jenna so many years ago, he needed to focus on what was truly important. He needed to dedicate all of his attention to the one thing that mattered most. He and Derek were on the verge of a major breakthrough. They were about to make science fiction a reality. That breakthrough was what mattered most and the night's failure was just the push he needed to bring this thing across the finish line. He just hoped that Derek was close on his end, as he'd been claiming to be for the last month and a half.

  Slipping his key into the lock, a renewed energy had taken over and Jason couldn't wait to find out if his roommate was home. He couldn't wait to find out the status of the machine and the last component needed to test his theory. He turned the handle and pushed the door inward, the questions impatiently waiting on the tip of his tongue, fighting to be the first one uttered.

  "So, did—?“ Jason began to ask as he slipped into the room, closing the door behind him.

  “—Where have you been?" an unfamiliar, female voice interrupted the winning question, causing all of the others to retreat back into Jason's throat.

  Jason turned to see a topless blonde sitting in Derek's bed, her lower half likely equally as bare if not for the white sheets strategically positioned to show no more than an exposed upper thigh.

  "Oh my god!" The girl's demeanor quickly changed from seductively playful to bashfully horrified at the sight of the unfamiliar company as she struggled to utilize more of the sheet’s concealing surface.

  Shocked and embarrassed as well, Jason quickly threw his left hand up over his eyes.

  "Jason, right?” the girl, recovering from her initial shock and now fully covered, nervously questioned the stranger.

  "Uh huh," Jason responded, continuing to hold his hand over his face, not sure if he should enter further into the room or just turn and run from his own home. He shouldn't have been surprised. This was classic Derek. Just as he was incapable of interaction with the opposite sex, Derek couldn't keep them away. "Is Derek in the bathroom?” he questioned, knowing that he probably looked like an idiot standing in the short hall beside the bathroom door carrying on a conversation while self blindfolded.

  "No, he said something about an electron multiplier and darted out of the room about twenty minutes ago. I thought it was some kind of toy or something he wanted to use."

  Jason couldn’t believe the unclothed girl’s lack of embarrassment and sexual honesty. He could feel his face turning red. "Electron multiplier?"

  "Yeah, I thought it might be a vibrator or something."

  “Oh my god," he thought. "I'm going to go find him," Jason excused himself as he slowly backed up, reaching for the doorknob behind him with his eyes still covered.

  The distracting presence of the naked girl on the other side of the room combined with the excitement that Derek might have finally solved the problem, which had halted their progress for the past couple of months, must have been enough to silence the opening of the bathroom door because it wasn't until he felt something warm and soft against his right hand that he realized that someone else was standing behind him.

  "What game is thi—?” the second girl began to playfully question before realizing that she too had mistaken Jason for his roommate.

  Jason dropped his hand from his eyes to reveal a second, completely nude coed; this one a beautiful brunette who was standing between him and the door. They both just stared for a moment, apparently both in shock as he realized that, instead of finding the doorknob, his hand was resting against the girls upper thigh, in the crease between her hip and her more intimate of areas.

  The girl screamed. Jason quickly withdrew his hand and doing everything he could to avoid further contact, slipped around the girl and out of the room.

  *****

  “Thanks to you, I’m probably going to prison,” Jason announced as he entered the lab, ensuring that the door locked behind him.

  “Huh?” Derek responded, the binocular like glasses remaining fixed on the small electronic device before him.

  “Your company. I had a nice...brief...but nice little conversation with one of them. But I think I might have sexually assaulted the one in the bathroom.”

  “That’s good,” Derek mumbled, obviously completely engrossed in his work as a small puff of white smoke billowed up from the tiny soldering gun in his hand.

  “Yeah, I thought so. Then, the strangest thing happened.”

  Derek remained silently focused on the small metal component before him.

  “As I was banging the blonde one,” Jason continued, now standing across the counter from his roommate, “and believe me, she was loving every minute of it, who would you imagine suddenly jumped out of the closet to join in?” Jason paused, looking for a reaction. “Your mother.”

  “How was my mother? I never heard a complaint from my dad,” Derek replied, looking up with a grin.

  “You son of bitch,” Jason laughed. “You were listening the entire time, weren’t you?”

  “What?”

  “Funny.”

  Derek, still smiling, went back to his work.

  “Seriously though. You are aware that there are two naked girls in our room right now?”

  “What happened to the third one?”

  Based on the serious tone of the question and the very possibility of such a situation that involved Derek being true, Jason wasn’t sure if his roommate was joking or not.

  “I guess I lost track of time,” Derek looked up at the clock on the wall then back down at the soldering gun as he lightly touched it to the metal, funnel like object again. “There.”

  “There, what?”

  “It’s done.”

  “You’ll have to forgive me. I’m only a month away from graduating with a bachelors in astrophysics and molecular biology but that in no way has made me qualified to understand what that thing is,” Jason motioned to the tiny silver funnel and wires.

  “It�
��s an electron multiplier,” Derek answered, as if common knowledge, while holding up the small electronic device.

  “The name’s fairly self explanatory. What is—?”

  “—This is the answer,” Derek interjected, getting up from his chair, making his way toward a tall cabinet in the corner of the room.

  “What was the question?”

  “The question was, how do we amplify the amount of electricity to the machine’s core without requiring a direct tie-in to a high tension power line or small nuclear reactor.” Placing his thumb against the biometric scanner on the cabinet door, Derek waited for the click of the releasing lock.

  “As I said before, I don’t exactly know how much power we’ll need,” Jason reminded his friend.

  Derek turned the handle on the safe-like cabinet.

  “My calculations suggest that we’ll need a significant burst of power delivered directly to the machine’s core all at once but I don’t think it’ll be anywhere on the level of a nuclear reactor.”

  “The nuclear reactor was an exaggeration,” Derek felt the need to explain his apparently unfunny humor as he opened the cabinet.

  “The most important thing is that the power is dispersed throughout the core at the exact same power level and at the exact same moment,” Jason preached.

  “I know,” Derek agreed. Closing the cabinet door, the audible click of the automatically re-engaging lock filled the momentary silence followed by the thud of the steel briefcase on the counter beside the newly built component.

  The design of the device had been entirely up to Derek. Jason had protested the metal briefcase design for fear that they’d be mistaken for terrorist lugging around a bomb or something; but Derek had insisted on the design, sighting its electrically conducive properties, as well as its ability to be easily transported without drawing too much attention. While he couldn’t recall when he’d last seen a shiny metallic briefcase, it was better than his initially suggested, blender shaped design with a laptop fastened to one side. Unwanted attention would have surely arisen at the site of that monstrosity.