Abby took the news regarding Matilda's suspicions about as well as Dan could've hoped.
"No no no, this is the worst, this is terrible," she moaned, pacing back and forth in her kitchen, still dressed in her pajamas. Dan sat at the table, nursing a cup of coffee and waiting out her panic attack. He had come straight over from the Pearson, after Graham had left, to find Abby only just waking up.
He probably should've waited for her to ingest some caffeine before dropping the news, but this was fine too. Better for her to get it all out now, while she was still too drowsy to consider upping his training regime as punishment for his carelessness. She'd run out of steam eventually, and they could get to work actually solving the problem.
"It's alright," he tried, testing the waters.
She turned on him like a wild animal, eyes blazing. Her hair puffed outwards, frizzy from stress and disheveled from sleep. She looked more like a pissed off mountain lion than the beautiful woman that she was.
"It is not alright!" she snarled viciously. "She's gonna catch you and you're gonna get caught and you'll go to jail and I'll have to call Mama Ana to rescue you and then I'll owe her for the rest of my life and you'll have to go on the run and that is not alright!" Her words fired out in rapid staccato, and she was wheezing by the end of her rant.
Dan, very carefully, stood up and gave her a hug. She bristled at the contact, at first, before slowly sinking into him. He rubbed circles into her back until she was breathing steady once more.
"I'm okay now," she murmured, her face pressed into his shoulder. "Sorry."
"You got nothin' to apologize for," Dan replied, leading her over to the table and sitting her down. He took a quick look into the nearest cabinet, digging out another coffee cup and filling it. He stuffed the mug into her hand, then took a seat across the table.
She sipped at it with a heavenly sigh. "Thanks."
"Anytime." Dan grinned. "You good now?"
"Mm good," she mumbled into her cup. She took another delicate sip. "Ahh~"
"So," Dan attempted once more, "any ideas on how to fix this?"
Abby reclined into her seat, shifting around to get comfortable and kicking her fluffy slipper-clad feet onto the table. "Well," she mused, "a good start would be to deny everything. You might've given away the game already, but she doesn't exactly have proof of anything."
Dan frowned. "Would that work? She's got a recording of me."
"Do you think you messed up on camera?" Abby asked curiously.
"Well, no," he admitted, "but I must have. She seemed fairly certain that something was off about me."
"She might've just been legitimately curious about your mutated upgrade, at first," Abby pointed out. "I'm sure you becoming a stuttering mess as soon as she questioned you on it wasn't suspicious at all." Her last words were drawn out, dripping with sarcasm.
Dan flushed, taking a sip of his own coffee to hide his face. "It seemed reasonable at the time."
"Mmhmm," Abby hummed affectionately. "So either she has solid video evidence of your power doing something it shouldn't, or she made a guess based off your spectacular poker face."
"Those seem to be the options, yes," Dan muttered into his cup.
"Denial is still your best bet," Abby summarized, tilting her cup in Dan's direction. "You're technically registered as a mutate, yeah?"
"Marcus entered me into the system, somehow," Dan clarified slowly. "I've got no idea how good my, um, cover is. He basically told me to try not to get arrested for anything serious."
"So it might hold up to a basic background check," Abby mused, twirling a strand of hair through her finger. "This Matilda," she packed more vitriol into that name than Dan heard in an average year, "clearly has friends in law enforcement, so we can assume that she can get your registry information."
Dan fidgeted in his seat, uncomfortably aware of how serious this could be. "Is that a good thing?"
"Could be," Abby replied with a shrug. "I doubt she'll expect you to have the capability to dupe the upgrade registry. That's... not something just anyone can do."
Yet another reminder of Marcus's mysterious background. Dan would get those answers, eventually.
"If you wanted to be certain," Abby offered slowly, "then I could ask Mama Ana to take a closer look into your background. She would be able to find out how secure your file actually is, and let us know if there are any issues."
A cold wind flowed through Dan's body in a wave. He felt as if someone had trod over his grave.
"I'll pass on that, thanks," he responded weakly. "Your grandmother terrifies me, and I don't want her to know any more about me than she already does."
Abby mumbled something into her coffee mug.
"What was that?" Dan asked, dread pooling in his stomach.
"I said, uh, she probably already knows something is off about you." Abby's eyes widened, and she flailed her free hand. "N-not that there's anything wrong with you! It's just, um, she's a little paranoid? She probably gave you a rigorous background check after the first time I mentioned your name. But she clearly approves of you, because she let you into the mansion! Or, at least, doesn't disapprove too much..." She trailed off, to Dan's growing horror.
"That's—" Dan exhaled forcefully. "Nope! Not dealing with that right now. Let's table that issue. Moving right along!"
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
"Right!" Abby nodded in agreement. "Other options. Um." She scrunched her forehead in thought. "I guess you could tell her the truth?" The uncertainty in her voice exposed just how little she favored her own suggestion.
"I don't think so," Dan immediately replied. "Not only is she a total stranger to me, she's already proven that she isn't averse to a bit of implied blackmail. I'm not gonna give her more power over me."
Abby sighed in relief. "Oh, good. Because that was a really bad idea."
Dan held his hand up, thumb and index finger barely apart. "Just a little bit."
Abby rolled her eyes. "Anyway. My suggestion is this: go meet with her, see what she has to say, and play as dumb as possible. This woman is an upgrade analyst, not a scientist. Mutations are poorly understood as is; she's got no way to confirm her suspicions so long as you're careful around her."
"Why meet with her at all?" Dan asked curiously. "Why not just ignore her completely?"
"Why risk her making a fuss?" Abby replied with a shrug. "Better to entertain her curiosity, but make it clear that there's absolutely nothing interesting going on with your power." She paused. "Alternatively, you could pretend that your mutation was poorly documented, and go along with whatever ideas she suggests. Up to you."
Dan ran his hand through his hair, rubbing at the back of his head. "I think I'm gonna make a list of exactly what aspects of my power I'm allowed to show in public, and stick to that from now on."
"Seems reasonable," Abby confirmed mildly. She stood up, stretching her arms to the ceiling with a moan. Her loose top pulled up above her belly button, and Dan stared very intensely at the kitchen's wallpaper.
"Right, so that's settled," Abby exhaled with a happy sigh. She stepped over to her coffee machine, and began refilling her mug. "Anything else interesting happen during your field trip?"
"Um." Dan hummed innocently. "Kinda?"
Abby graced him with an unimpressed look. "Danny."
He grinned sheepishly. "Be right back."
Into the void he fell, emerging within his hotel room. He spared a pat on the head for a dozing Merrill, before retrieving his luggage from the closet. Buried beneath a small mountain of underwear and socks, was the melted collar he had retrieved from the Burn at Red Creek Ranch. The damn thing was still warm to the touch, but outside of the enclosed space of the tree, it was bearable to hold. The heat only lingered on the edges of the collar, where it had been melted.
"And I'm back," Dan announced, falling into his chair in Abby's kitchen. He spun the twisted piece of metal around his hand, then dropped it on the table with a flourish. Abby eyed the dirty thing with displeasure as it rattled to a stop.
"Danny, why is there junk on my kitchen table?" she asked sweetly.
Dan blinked, then carefully retrieved the collar. "Sorry. I found it in the woods. Haven't had a chance to, uh, clean it up."
She raised a delicate eyebrow. "What is it?"
"I'm not sure," Dan announced shamelessly. His expression sobered. "Though it's looking pretty likely that it's some sort of torture collar. I found it on the edge of Red Creek Ranch. Apparently there was some kind of huge fire a couple years back? Rendered a shitload of woodland area completely uninhabitable? This ringing any bells?"
Abby's brow furrowed. "Yes? A little bit? This was, what, five years ago?"
"Something like that," Dan said. He proceeded to tell her the full story, as he knew it. From what he had gathered from his talks with Tawny, to finding the collar embedded inside a tree, all the way to Graham's story about his kidnapping. By the time he had finished, Abby was nursing a new cup of coffee with one hand, while examining the collar with the other.
"It's strange," she mused, prodding the inward facing tines. She drew back her hand with a hiss, flinching away from the worst of the heat. "This design is a little familiar to me. I've seen something like it used before."
"I really hope not," Dan responded honestly. He couldn't think of many situations where such a device could have a beneficial function.
"Not this," Abby jiggled the collar, "exactly. The idea of it is familiar though. What was it..." She pursed her lips, staring into the distance, her free hand still fiddling with the warm metal. Dan watched her think, pleasantly enthralled by the view.
"Oh!" Abby straightened, snapping her fingers. "Training collars!" She turned to Dan with a wide smile. "For the military. That's what these remind me of!"
Dan's eyes widened. "They make soldiers wear these?"
"No, of course not," Abby replied with a dismissive wave. "Training collars are about the size of a matchstick box, and cause about as much pain as a slight pinch. The military used to use them to help train their members that possessed particularly destructive natural powers."
"That really doesn't make it sound better," Dan pointed out. "Especially since you called them collars."
Abby shrugged helplessly. "Hey, I didn't name them. They aren't even actual collars, just these little square chunks of metal that adhere to your skin." She held her thumb and index finger about three inches apart. "Besides, they fell out of use over a decade ago. They were originally designed to help limit collateral damage. The device was placed on the neck," she explained, tapping her throat, just above her collarbone, "and administered a slight shock when their user's power exceeded a certain threshold. They each had to be calibrated to their specific owner, though, which was hilariously inefficient."
"That sounds needlessly complicated," Dan observed.
"I'm not an engineer!" Abby replied with a pout. "I'm sure someone more knowledgeable could tell you more. All I remember, is that my family's company was approached to design something more reliable back when I was a kid. We didn't take the contract though. Grandma didn't like the idea. I remember her yelling about it a lot."
She narrowed her eyes in thought. "I'm pretty sure we've got an old training collar in our trophy room, as well. It's got little prongs on the inside, which is why it reminded me of your collar."
"Okay, first of all: Not my collar," Dan pointed out reasonably. "Second: Is there any way for you to get more info? Because it looks like someone is making suped up versions of those things and using them on unconsenting people." Dan fished the collar out of her hands. "I'd really like to be able to hand this over to someone who can do something about it, but I don't know where to even start. The local PD was locked out of the Burn investigation, and I don't wanna stick my head into something secretive and end up in some kinda interdimensional Area 51."
"Area 51?" Abby asked, scrunching her brow.
Dan sighed, waving off her question. "Nevermind. Doesn't matter. I just don't want to stumble into something over my head."
"Yet you seem to have an almost supernatural ability to do so," Abby commented fondly.
Dan rolled his eyes. "Well not this time! I'll be doing the smart thing, and keeping this quiet for the time being. Hopefully Marcus will have more information—"
Dan's pocket pinged. He reached into it, and pulled out his phone.
----------------------------------------
Daniel,
I believe that it is safe to visit once more. I could use your assistance with some matters, and I believe I can help you with others. Please come by at your leisure.
Marcus
----------------------------------------
Dan stared at the text for a small eternity, then quickly ran a hand over his clothing, patting himself down.
"What are you doing?" Abby asked curiously, as Dan spasmed like a man covered in ants.
"Checking for listening devices," Dan replied through grit teeth, shoving his head into the inside of his shirt.
Abby approached him with bemusement, picking up his phone while he flailed about. Her mouth made an 'O' shape as she saw the screen. "That's some very fortunate timing."
Dan's head reappeared from out of his shirt sleeve. "The old bastard bugged me, I guarantee it!"
"It's probably a coincidence, Danny," Abby said, stifling a giggle. "Speak of the devil and he shall appear."
"Devil is right," Dan muttered furiously. Having finished his investigation of his shirt, he moved to unbuckle his pants, then considered his audience. Abby watched him with a mix of embarrassment and amusement.
"Right." Dan eased his posture. "It was probably a coincidence." He would burn everything that he had ever worn inside the station, just in case. "Either way, it's a good chance for answers."
"That's the spirit!" Abby cheered. "Now let's make a list!"