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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 161: Takano 134
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Brown 340
“He’s what?” Tommy asked, shocked. William Tell Junior was at the door. “Uncle Brian,” she called, “come quick!”
Brian emerged from somewhere. “What’s the problem?” he asked.
“Gorillaxe has been murdered in his cell,” Tell replied. “I’ve told the warden to keep everyone out of it until we get there.”
“Right,” Brian said. “Give me a minute.”
“I’m coming, too,” Tommy said, and leapt up the stairs to don her gear. She was back before Mister Justice. The three of them jumped into Tell’s Cadillac and sped to the prison.
They arrived and were escorted to the warden’s office. “You know the drill,” he said.
“Not this time, I think, warden,” Mister Justice said. “My sword does more than fight, and we need all our tools here. This, by the way, is Truth; she’ll be helping us here. Now, if someone can show us the scene of the crime.”
The warden seemed a bit flabbergasted, but apparently decided not to argue with three superheroes, grabbed a ring of keys, and led them through corridors to a section of the prison which was clearly built with super-strong prisoners in mind. Guards were watching one cell, and there was a man in it standing over the body of a gorilla who was, from his dress, probably the prison doctor.
“What can you tell us?” Justice asked.
“Not much,” the doctor said. “I’m not a veterinarian. I’ve put a call in to the zoo for them to send someone out here to do a post mortem, but on a guess I’d say he was fed something that would kill a gorilla. Since we keep a close eye on poisons, it’s probably some kind of over the counter medication that works for humans but is harmful to gorillas, but as I say, that’s a guess.”
Mister Justice drew his sword and lit it, then passed it over the body. Truth wasn’t sure why, but decided not to ask as she wasn’t sure what powers the sword had, or even if he knew them all. She decided to look around the scene. She noticed something freshly scratched into the wall. Justice spoke first.
“We’re not going to learn anything else from the body without the autopsy,” he said. “You can remove it.”
“Right,” the doctor said with a bit of a sarcastic tone. “As soon as the forklift arrives.”
“The Wall,” Truth said. “It says ‘Yellowstone’.”
“Yeah, that’s a city up in Montana, sits on a river of the same name,” the warden said. “I looked it up.”
“It’s also,” Justice said, “the location of the largest known volcano in the world, but no one realizes it’s there.”
“How do you--?” the warden began, but a look from Tell silenced him.
“I don’t know how,” Tell said, “but I’m betting that it fits into Mordenslice’s plan somehow. I’ll fly up there tomorrow and nose around a bit.”
“Just watch your back,” Justice said.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #518: Versers Plan. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
