3.3 Code Blue

Quotes

Deaver: "In this town, if you're missing for more than 24 hours ... well, you're either about to blow up the town, or the town is about to be blown up."

Stefan (to Rachel): "Can I use my 'safety key'?"

Geoff: "Wow Gabe, this is a side of you I've never seen."
Gabe: "I've got lots of sides."
Geoff: "A regular hexagon, you are."

Deaver: "I have put sunlight in a box, but cell phones are beyond me."

Geoff [spouts tons of trivia on Ketamine, then glances at Rive]: ".... I'm, uh, a doctor."
Stefan [mumbles]: "Dr. Feelgood ...."

Deaver: "Remember that 'Toe-mass de Leee-on' guy?"
Stefan [sighs]: "Thomas de Leon."
Deaver: "Yeah, well, it turns out he's FRENCH! And, uh, he wrote in French. So get your butt over here and translate."

Geoff: "A vessel for a dead Indian princess? Yeah, I'm going to go with 'Chase would hate that'."

Stefan: "So should we start checking some of he places where we haven't fought some cataclysmic battle?"

Geoff: "What is this purification ritual?!?"
Gabe: "With Chase, that could take a while."

Rive: "Uh-oh. I think I knocked him out too hard."

Four young hotshots in lab coats fill a small room in an abandoned wing of McKennit General. Among them are Jessie and Rick. in the basement with pfilfered equipment. Rick is one of them. Jessie wheedles him in to going first. He's hooked up to all the monitors. They use the gas mask. He goes under.

"You guys ... maybe this wasn't such a great idea ..."

The monitor buzzes.

"Code blue. On standby."

Rick stands in a field on the edge of a forest. It looks like the land around McKennit, but with lighting is twilight and tinged with strange colors. The breeze is visible as it runs across the grass, but the only sound is the echo of the monitor alert buzzer. All of the sudden, he hears noises that are harsher and louder than life. A rattle of breath. Heartbeats. Running. Rick thinks he sees something dark out of the corner of his eye and spins. Nothing. On alert, he starts backing cautiously towards the trees. Across the field, he sees children running and laughing soundlessly through the tall grasses. Something in black moves out of the corner of his eye. He turns and runs.

"One minute down. Let's start bringing him back." Syringes in the IV. First one, then another, alternating.

Rick darts between the trees on a thick carpet of pine needles. Something is behind him, and it is gaining. A lonely bird cries out. He stumbles on a mossy patch and hits the ground. He staggers to his feet.

"Almost there."

There's a low snarl, and a figure with icy blue eyes, black hair, and a ragged black robe leaps onto Ricks back, digging clawed fingers into the back of his neck.

"Now."

With a sharp intake of breath, Rick opens his eyes, which flash a bright, cold blue. Under Jessie's shriek, he whispers a single word: "Mesatawe". His eyes fade to normal.

* * *

Stefan answers his phone to find a worried Rachel on the line. It is now Sunday morning, and she hasn't heard from Chase since Friday night sometime. Since Chase ALWAYS calls her to let her know where she'll be, she's concerned. Since she's stuck in a Cernunos Grove thing all day, Stefan agrees to track Chase down and give Rachel some peace of mind.

It ends up being harder than he anticipated. No one in the gang has heard from her. A little bit worried now, they meet up at Common Grounds to brainstorm. Since the last place Rachel mentioned knowing Chase was headed was a med school party Friday night, they give Geoff a call. He joins them at the coffee shop, telling them that she and Rick, who was her ride, hadn't shown up by the time he left. A few phone calls later, it's clear she's missing - and no one has really heard from Rick, either. He called in sick to work Friday and apparently sounded like hell. So they head to his place to try to get a hold of him.

The door is unlocked when they arrive, and the apartment has that rifled look as if someone was looking for something in a big hurry. They scour the apartment and turn up all kinds of party-boy type goodies. Geoff notices an open phone book laying on the coffee table. The page jogs his memory - he's looking at the veterinary section, and there was a vet robbed late Friday night out on the edge of town. One tech was assaulted and the robber took a hefty amount of Ketamine.

At this point, they're willing to act on the coincidence, and they head out. On their way across the apartment complex parking lot, Stefan finds Rick's cell phone smashed and lying on the ground. Seizing the opportunity, they take it back to Deaver's where he extracts the card from the wreckage. Unable to get the phone to spill its secrets, he hands it over to Gabe, who does a surprisingly expert job of hacking into Rick's voice mail.

There are a few messages of note - one from Chase at about 10:15 Friday night letting Rick have it for being late (Geoff can't help smiling at it), a call from The Cauldron and Kettle Saturday afternoon telling him his order is ready for pickup (with a list of strange Native-American sounding herbs), one from the hospital telling him to get his ass in or call them, and one from Jessie (who they talked to earlier), telling him that she wasn't pissed he'd missed the party but that she was worried about him, since he's seemed distant and weird ever since their little "experiment at the hospital" on Thursday.

Clues! Finally! Deaver places the herbs as the native-american names for a lot of common plants used in purification, healing, and black magic rituals. The message from Jessie has the group a flutter - she didn't mention anything about this when they called her looking for Chase earlier - and they all immediately take off for the hospital.

Jessie is reluctant to talk at first, but eventually tells them the details of Thursday's experiment in the abandoned hospital wing. She mentions that she could swear Rick's eyes flashed a bright blue and he said something that sounded like "Mesatawe". But she was startled at the time, so she must have been imagining things.

When he woke up, Rick told them most of what he saw "on the other side". Then he clammed up and stalked out, which ended the evening, since they didn't want to proceed any further without another set of hands. He's been really weird since then, and she hasn't seen him at all since then - just talked to him on the phone a few times, and even that was Friday morning before he called in sick.

Thanking Jessie, the group heads to the library where Deaver plunders Bannon's collection for anything related to this "Mesatawe". He finds what he's looking for. In the mid 17th century, Mesatawe was the daughter or a prominent Abenaki tribesman in the McKennit area, with a supernatural ability to control the weather. It was a source of great prosperity and power for the tribe. Then one year, there was a horrible drought, and the girl could not relieve it. Despite French attempts to convert the natives in the area, a small number of them still clung to old beliefs, and decided that the girl had to be killed to appease the spirits. So that's what they did.

Other sources tell of a French missionary who was working with the tribe, a man named Pere Thomas de Leon. Supposedly "Sky-Eyes", as the tribe named him, fell in love with the girl and was driven mad with grief after her death.

Geoff, Stefan, and Rive go to talk with Owen about the girl from the vet's office, who was assaulted and taken to ER. They don't get much more that is useful, except that yes Valerie Swain (the girl) was at least a casual acquaintance of Rick's. She hangs with some of the heavier partiers in town.

Gabe and Deaver continue to research "Sky-Eyes" and strike gold, finding the delicate remains of the missionary's journal. It charts his descent into madness, his conviction that the girl was taken before her time against God's will, and his determination to prove the tangibility of God's miracles by bringing her back. To achieve his end he starts spirit-walking, and gets further and further into tribal and black magic - and by the time the other three scoobies returned, they have pretty much determined that de Lyon has possessed Rick and intends to resurrect his lady love using Chase as the vessel for her return.

Deaver puts together a list of sacred sites where a ritual based in bastardized Abenaki lore could take place, and they decide to use the little green locator spell to narrow the options somewhat. It gets them as far as a forest clearing, where it hovers for a moment and finally explodes. Searching the trees and boulders, Gabe eventually spots a tiny crevice that leads down to what is probably an underground cavern - a description that fits one of the places on Deaver's list.

The scoobies descend into the darkness, and shortly find themselves in a large natural space that is glowing with fat white candles. Wax and herbs scent the air as a low latin chant reaches their ears. Chase is tied to a smooth slab of stone at the end of the chamber, battered and unconscious, covered head to toe in painstakingly drawn mud-black symbols. The nasty tracks and bruises on the inside of her arm indicate what all the drugs were for.

As Rick turns to face them they see that he is DEFINITELY not himself - cold blue eyes stare out at them from a haggard face, and his hands are claw like and tipped with long jagged nails. He continues to chant, ignoring them. Gabe starts chanting too, an exorcism this time, earning a very nasty look from the once-priest.

So Stefan and Rive attack! While they pin the priest down, Deaver and Geoff take off towards Chase. They get the ropes cut and realize that the paste she's covered in is searing itself into her skin, so they get her to a musty blanket nearby and start getting it off of her.

The battle is quick and decisive. Rive and Stefan manage to knock Rick out without killing him. Gabe keeps chanting. Rick awakens, and they promptly knock him out again. Eventually Gabe's spell goes off, and the spirit of de Leon rises out of Rick's body, as Rick slumps to the floor. Gabe solidifies the spirit with a wave, and Rive and Stefan reduce him to a pile of sand.

Geoff gently picks Chase up, wrapped in a blanket, and carries her back out of the cavern. She's still out cold. Stefan picks up Rick and throws him over his shoulder. As the group starts back through the woods, the chilly air revives Rick, who is exhausted and hopelessly confused about what is going on, and Geoff dismissively makes up something about a bad trip. Stefan cheerfully puts him on his feet, and he trails along behind the group, dazed. Chase eventually rouses as well, picking her head up with a murmured "Geoff?" She stares at him fuzzily, still heavily sedated. They have a short conversation where she is utterly convinced he's a hallucination, before he quietly tells her to go back to sleep. For once, she cooperates. She snuggles up against him and drifts off on the long walk back to town.