Her name was Dr. Catherine Lewis, and she was a professional. You could tell that she was a professional from the way that she dressed: one who was familiar with the Sanctuary might have mistaken her for a smaller, red-headed version of a secretary named "Lisa." Not that Dr. Lewis was in any way affiliated with the Sanctuary, or had gone shopping with that woman.

Her office was relatively small, and somewhat plain. The waiting room contained four folding chairs, and on the wall one could find a framed copy of her degree in Mutant Studies, a field in which Miskatonic University, the good doctor's alma mater, is well known. One could also find several small surveillance cameras. Aside from the entrance, the waiting room had two doors: one, closed, marked "restroom," and another, open, which lead into the office proper, where the doctor now sat behind a wooden desk, doing important research on a small laptop computer.

"Have you seen 'Llamas With Hats?'" Marco asked the doctor, standing behind her swivel chair and looking over her shoulder. Both the doctor and her colleague were grinning. But before the good doctor could give her professional opinion on llamas, or their headwear, her digital watch began to beep.

The two gave each other a nod.

Soon, Marco was sitting in the waiting room, leaning back on one folding chair and resting his feet on the other. His ears were engulfed by a large pair of headphones, whose wires ran into a small device in his pocket. The door to the main office area was still slightly open.

Catherine Lewis eyed the two swivel chairs on the other side of her desk, and took a deep breath to steady herself. She could do this. She was ready. She had to be ready.

It was almost time.

It was totally Calley's idea. He'd found the photograph by accident: he'd been looking up New York City's laws for carrying swords. According to the Internet (with a capital, authoritative "I"), he could carry the sword Cafas had made him from and to legitimate sword-using places, so long as it was reasonably hard to get to. ie, Not strapped to his side. ie, He had to have a talk with Sebastian, maybe. The older immortal had enough cop problems without that cross-sheath of his...

The Internet failed to link him into any actual Official (with an "O") resources, though. No .gov sites; mostly just a lot of forums where people wanted to carry swords in public. As Calley had learned in his Keyboarding and Computer Basics class, those were maybe not the sites to trust, when determining one's likelihood of getting arrested. Calley was still waiting on his trial for that whole 'turning a cop into a crustacean' incident; he didn't need more trouble.

Nothing they could pin on him, anyway.

He found it in with the old newspapers. He found the old newspapers next to the legal code books. One of these sections was more interesting than the other; and so it was that Calley found the picture. It was from over a year ago, but looking at locker names down at the station had convinced him she still worked there.

"She looks just like you!" Calley said, proudly shoving his ten cent photocopy into Lupe's face. "I mean, if you sort of squint."

The graduating K9 class of 2010. From left to right: Officer King with dog Jal, Officer Willam with dog Baba, Officer Lillehaug with dog Viking, and special instructor Officer Banks.

Lupe face had been priceless, upon being compared with one of New York's finest. But com'on, it was perfect: what better way to break in than to walk in? It took some convincing, of course, but Officer Banks was soon walking dog Bruce in through the 18th Precinct's front doors late one night, a duffle swung casually over one shoulder. Nothing to see here folks; the lady just forgot something. In the laundry room.

Two uniforms were quickly secured; "Officer Banks' " uniform even happened to be fresh out of the drier, in a spot of excellent luck. Into the duffle it went. Then they were strolling back out, with a friendly but not-too-memorable goodbye to the man at the front desk. Lupe was good at keeping her hat brim pointed towards the cameras; almost as good as her dog was at leading her straight through their blind spots. Neither of them commented on these facts later, to the mutual satisfaction of both.

The badges were even easier. Turns out New Guidance Counselor was dating one Detective Cervantes. Turns out that the fine upstanding officer didn't keep very good track of his wallet when relaxing with her on the Mansion couch. A ten minute trip upstairs and a cute-cat-eyed conversation with his own significant something-or-another easily lead to two genuine fake badges, the real one returned, and a hug to a certain pink-haired metalmancer.

It was totally Calley's idea. If the real police were dragging their heels investigating what had really gone on at the Iris Apartments, then he would give them a little help.

That is, Detectives Cervantes and Banks would. It was their job.

"Thank you for your time, Dr. Jackson. If you think of anything else, please give us a call." They had even made cards, using Lupe's excellent idea about using disposable phones for their official cop numbers.

"Who's next?" Calley Cervantes asked, leaning over Detective Banks' shoulder. She really had her act together, with this imitating-police-officers business; he was really impressed.

It was totally his idea, though. For the record.

Jocelyn hadn't even known she made it into a photograph in the newspaper.

She was going to kill the photographer, the editor of the paper, and her handler who had assured her that there were no pictures of her left anywhere.

“Uh... you think so?”

Apparently he thought so, because soon they were infiltrating the police department with Jocelyn pretending to be herself. It was easy to put back on the cop swagger, easy to smile the old familiar cocky smile at the receptionist, easy to avoid the cameras, because she knew this was probably not the kind of thing she had permission to be doing while under cover. Taking her own uniform? Sure. But letting someone else take her colleagues' uniform in order to impersonate a cop? Probably not quite as legit.

She didn't know how he had gotten two such perfect copies of a badge, though. She was actually quite impressed in a don't-really-want-to-know-how kind of way. Because if she knew, then someday she'd have to bust him for it.

Even though it was kind of a strange circumstance to pretend to be herself, it felt good to be back in her old blues. The world felt like it all balanced out if Calley pretended to be a a cop some of the time, while she pretended to be a criminal.

They had a legitimate mystery to solve, too. Apparently the socks and undies belonged to someone from a family that lived in a rather mysterious apartment building and parted ways from each other in a rather mysterious way.

Today they would be interrogating a witness to those mysterious occurrences.

“Now we go in and ask questions,” she replied, “and maybe sniff around a little bit. We'll take turns.”

Dr. Catherine Lewis was, upon first glance, much younger than Jocelyn expected. She was also more familiar than she expected. Not that she would be admitting it, or even showing any recognition. No, this was not a little girl she had helped catch rats for an entire afternoon in search of her little furry friend. Not at all.

In her most official, serious faced cop voice, Jocelyn introduced herself, “Hello, I'm Detective Banks, and this is Detective Cerventes. We were hoping we could ask you a few questions about recent events that took place at the building across the street from you. We understand that you've been working her for a few months now?”

She raised her most official faced cop eyebrows, expecting an answer.

Dr. Lewis could see the feed from the cameras on her computer. They were recording when the two "detectives" walked in through the door, capturing a few good frames of their faces. She recognized both of them before they even met face to face. Detectives Banks and Cervantes.

"Ah... hello. It's good to see you again, Detective Cervantes." She smiled at him. The good doctor had met Detective Cervantes before, during the Halloween incident in Central Park, back in 2010. Cervantes had lost a lot of weight since then. And he'd gotten shorter. And he'd gotten younger. And he'd changed his ethnicity. If she wasn't an expert on the subject of mutants, as well as what they could do to people, Dr. Lewis might have immediately assumed that this was an imposter. Strange things happened to people who spent their lives working with mutants. She herself was well-acquainted with this fact.

"I've had my office here for about a month, yes. Please, take a seat." She gestured at the chairs on the opposite side of her desk. The doctor, however, did not sit down. Reaching into a drawer in her desk, she retrieved a digital camera and a small UV flashlight. While the camera remained off, she shined her UV light at the pair of detectives. First, she shined it on their faces, then she moved on to various other parts of their body. The little doctor looked closely at every spot she shined her light on, apparently hoping to find something. She seemed very preoccupied with this task.

If this didn't work, she was going to feel really stupid. Or, rather, Elias would feel really stupid for suggesting it. It sounded really clever when he first mentioned the idea, anyway.

Detective Cervantes ran his eyes over the kid in the waiting room; gave him a small nod of formal greeting, as one complete stranger to another. Detective Cervantes was a gruff Hispanic man, trapped in the body of an Italian shifter. Just like Dr. Lewis was a real doctor, trapped in the body of a detonator.

He accepted the offered seat, and sat down with long-suffering professionalism.

"You're looking younger every day, Dr. Lewis," he said. Because Detective Cervantes knew how to talk to the ladies.

The UV light was nearly as pleasant as high beams in a mirror. The gruff lady's man took it in stride, with nary a blinded blink, and a single sidelong glance at his partner.

"Some sort of new research, Doctor?" The non-counterfeit Jorge asked, employing the detective skills they paid him for.

Jocelyn recognized the UV light as something that would make certain dried fluids glow, things like blood, semen, and laundry detergent. It was somewhat odd for Kaitlyn Dr. Lewis to be shining on their faces and clothes. Other than blinking, the detective faking a fake detective did not pay much attention to the bright light.

Her partner sat, so she remained standing, wandering idly to the bookshelf where she ran her finger over the spines.

One could learn almost as much from how someone reacted to a person pawing through the things on their bookshelf as one could from the types of objects on the shelf. There were a token number of books about mutant studies. Not many of them had the telltale crack in the spine that indicated they had been open much. There weren't many worn corners that told of numerous times they had been unceremoniously shoved into a book bag.

She pulled a book at random and haphazardly flipped through the pages. No notes in the margins and the pages still smelled more like a publishing house than it did like a dorm room, coffee shop, or office. It certainly didn't smell like Kaitlyn. Her conclusion, if she hadn't already known that Dr. Lewis was not really who she said she was, would be that this book hadn't ever been read.

“What can you tell us about your neighbors from across the street?” She asked this over her shoulder as she slid the book back onto the shelf and ran her finger across the wood and then examined the amount of dust she found there.

Looking younger every day? The detective certainly had a sense of humor. Kait Catherine managed a smile. "Oh, you know how my mutation works. I'm stuck this way for the next few years." She said the word 'stuck' with just as much disgust as she was going for. Then, she sighed, a bit more dramatically than she had intended, and finished her ultraviolet light-assisted check. Dr. Lewis was a dramatic person; a person in a conversation with her often felt like he was in the middle of a play, and the Doctor was an over-acting performer. This was a personality trait that people like Detective Cervantes, who definitely knew her, would be privy to.

The UV light was new research, in fact. And very interesting research. "Yes, but I'm afraid I can't tell you much about it," Catherine said, her voice inundated with regret. "Faust Pharms and their lawyers would kill me."

Lupe -err, Detective Banks? Banks was looking through her books. This was a bad sign, because of... reasons. Because, of course, Dr. Lewis was an eccentric, and she didn't like people touching her books. Nothing was better than a pristine bookshelf, and LuI mean the Detective's hands, which may have at some point handled rats for all Catherine knew, were defiling that pristine-ness. And she would probably have to remember which book the Detective touched, so she could burn it later. Because she was an eccentric, and that's a thing that eccentrics do.

No, that's stupid. I'm not going to do that, she told herself.

She had taken a little bit too long to think about Detective Banks's question. "My neighbors...? You mean the Csendes family? I've heard about them on the news, I guess. Nothing you don't already know. The man tried to kill his pregnant wife, the body wasn't ever found... Terrible story. Terrible."

The redhead grabbed the digital camera, flicked it to film mode, and began recording. "I hope you don't mind. This camera has a special lens. It lets me see stuff that I can't tell you about." She used it to look both of the detectives up and down. This was important scientific research.

Detective Cervantes was taking notes. That's what good detectives did: they slid very professional looking black pads out of their coats, took out very professional pencil stubs, and started scribbling things only legible to themselves and their third grade teachers.

>>> " I'm stuck this way for the next few years."

"Yeah, sorry to hear about that," the detective said, his gaze on his scrawling gray lines. "Why the kid body, anyway?" Because, as good of friends as they clearly were, the detective didn't remember the answer to that one. But he suspected it would be good.

Scribble scrawl.

In the notepad, in police hieroglyphs, he wrote: Be obnoxious to bookshelves.

He had a lot to learn from Detective Lupe Banks.

>> "I hope you don't mind. This camera has a special lens. It lets me see stuff that I can't tell you about."

"Oh, that's fine. So you won't mind if I turn this on, will you?" The tape recorder came out with a click of its red record button.

Yes, tape recorder. Calley had grown up on nineties police shows. For Detective Cervantes, who had no relation to Caleb Swartz, this was clearly the pinnacle of modern technology: when he'd joined the force, they'd still been using eight-tracks and papyrus scrolls to take down interviews. Besides, this was a mini-tape recorder: even better.

"So, that explosion a few weeks back. The one that took out a police cruiser right on your doorstep. What do you know about that?"

Detective Cervantes raised a bored eyebrow, pencil tapping on paper.

Faust Pharmaceuticals. That was a real place, and not one a little girl from the Sanctuary would be likely to know much about unless it was for some real reason. Perhaps they needed to go over there and have a sniff around at some point.

It was perhaps the only real thing the girl had said so far. The line about her neighbors smelled like a lie. One didn't live right across the street from a possible murder and not have some opinion to share about what happened. Gossiping, even about false information, was normal. Asking questions of the cops interviewing you and trying to get more information that regular civilians weren't privy to, was normal. Some sorry line about the tragedy and then changing the subject? The girl was hiding something.

There was also a bunch of nonsense about all the different types of technology that she needed for her research, namely cameras and video taping them. Which, honestly was starting to get annoying. Jocelyn wasn't here to play pretend. Or, rather, she was, but she still didn't have to stand for all the silly kid stuff. She narrowed her eyes at the little recording device. She didn't want video of herself impersonating herself floating around on ViewTube.

“Do you have security camera's installed here?”

Hopefully the girl would freely let them look through her footage, but if necessary Jocelyn could fairly easily whip up a fake warrant to search through the doctor's video footage. Dr. Lewis might talk big, about her lawyers and her pharmaceutical companies, but she was really just a little girl and likely wouldn't recognize the difference anyway. If it came to that, they could bag the whole hand-held camera as evidence, too.

There was a good reason for the kid body. "Faust's CEO is an old friend of mine. I'm copying her daughter because she needed my help teaching her how to control her mutation. And I can't really help people with their mutations until I copy them, so... yeah. No dating for me. Haha." The laughter somehow managed to sound even more forced than the rest of what she was saying.

Then the tape recorder came out, and the hard questions started coming in.

"...Explosion?" She stared at the completely legitimate detective in front of her. "Oh, you mean that terrorist attack, or whatever it was. That was a week or so before I got here, so I don't know a lot about that."

As for the security cameras, a laconic "Yup" would suffice. Catherine would be happy to talk more about the dangers of her job and the point of all these precautions, if it weren't for Faust's legal department. Speaking of precautions... "You two have badges, right? Can I see them, really quick? I wanna test something." Video camera and UV light were both standing by.

Video cameras. Legit ones: ones that might have seen what went down at Ghosty's place. That was... genius. Had the real cops checked into that? He couldn't imagine they hadn't. But then, he couldn't imagine them failing to interview most of the people around here, either. It probably came from the MRC being such a small unit; there was only so much manpower they could muster, and the number of mutant crimes in this city wasn't exactly negligible. Really, he had to wonder if someone was setting the unit up to fail.

>> "...That was a week or so before I got here, so I don't know a lot about that."

"I'll bet you don't." Detective Cervantes said indifferently, scribbling a note. Footage. Genius.

"Sorry, Doctor, but we're on the job right now—we really don't have time to help in your research further." And really, the UV pen wasn't going to turn up anything: these badges were as legit as a metal manipulator copying a real badge could make them. Granted that made them slightly less legit than their on-permanent-loan uniforms, but still. Give it a rest already, Doctor. The less time they spent in here on her charming video, the better. Not that that was hard to explain, in a pinch. Doctor.

"Now. What can you tell me about the Iris Clinic? Did you ever speak to anyone there? Who did you see coming in and out of the place?"

Those drugs hadn't just teleported in. ...Unless they had. He was starting to feel a lot of sympathy for the MRC, actually.

She had connections to Faust's CEO, wasn't that Lori Faust, whom also lurked around the Sanctuary? Kaitlyn claimed to be her daughter, huh? That could explain how she'd gotten access to expensive medical textbooks she'd never read and a nice office she didn't really need right in the heart of the central park neighborhood. But why? Why would the daughter of Faust Pharmaceutical's CEO be poking around over here, in the middle of a missing person's case pretending to be someone she wasn't?

Because as skillful as the girl was at lying, her scent didn't lie. She was the exact same little girl that Jocelyn had met at the Sanctuary. Not even a twin picked up scents quite so precisely, down to the same brand of shampoo and toothpaste. The only thing that was different, was that before the girl had smelled completely innocent and now she smelled a bit like a liar. Was she getting nervous, being asked all these questions?

As for the explosion occurring right before she moved into the office, “Why did you move your office into this particular neighborhood? What with all the explosions and things happening right on your doorstep and all?”

Detective Banks flipped open her wallet and held up her badge for the girl's inspection. Jocelyn was a real cop, and she couldn't tell the difference. There was no way the girl would be able to find flaw with them. This was just silly.

“Would you show us the footage?” Her voice intoned her quickly diminishing lack of patience. Video would likely tell them more than this girl was currently.

They kept up with the barrage of questions. Kaitlyn wasn't sure that she could keep ly The good doctor wasn't sure that she could keep up her... professionalism? ... much longer under these circumstances. She was frankly irritated with the younger detective for not showing his badge off as readily as his counterpart. And with the questions. They weren't giving her a lot of time to answer any of them.

About the Iris Clinic, "Sometimes I'd see that guy with the unicorn horn. I didn't see his wife much, but I really pay a lot of attention to any of them."

As for her office's location, "That's why I'm here, actually. Most of my job is looking into weird stuff that mutants could be a part of."

Finally, with the footage. This is where Kait Catherine would have to draw the line. She looked at the badge, looked at Detective Cervantes, and then at Detective Banks. She reached out slowly, gesturing as if for permission, then lightly snatched the badge out of her hand, inspecting it closely. "I would, if you were really with the police." Her voice suddenly became far more serious than it had been.

She held the badge up for both of them to see, as if it would be clear to anyone watching that it was illegitimate. She had no immediate intentions to return it right away.

Something wrong with their badges, Little Lewis? They were probably realer than that Doctor-diploma on the wall. Any Joe or Lisa Schmo could get their hands on a color printer: it took connections to get such high quality metal badges. So high quality, they didn't even have the faint traces around their edges, or the faint rippling on back, that came from casting. If anything, they were more than authentic.

"Right," the Detective said, in that no-nonsense Cervantes™ manner. Accept no substitutes. He stood up, putting his tape recorder away and flipping out his own badge. Yep, that right there: that was a badge among badges. And the ID looked quite good too, if he did extort a certain technopath say so himself.

"I think we're done here, don't you, Detective Banks? We'll be back with a warrant for those tapes." Unless those tapes were tragically spirited away by miscreants before the Detectives could find time in their busy schedules; what a shame that would be. "In the mean time... your good friend, Ms. Faust. She runs a pharmaceuticals company, doesn't she? I wonder if she's heard anything about that M drug that's been hitting the streets."

Not that Detective Cervantes wouldn't know anything about that.

"Maybe we should go have a chat with her. What do you think, Banks?"