Bedlam - Friday

[xp_daytripper]

"The doctor won't clear our Jane Doe for interview. Says she's too barking," Patel said, approaching Acland in the cafeteria where he was finishing the preliminary paperwork over a cup of tea. The white sticking plaster over the scratches on his face tugged as he nodded.

"Is she being rational now?"

"A bit more. Doc gave her a mild tranquiliser and that's settled her down a bit. No signs of recent drug use, but the blood tests won't come back for a couple of days and he didn't want to risk anything stronger in case it interacted. She's been done over recently, a few bruises, but nothing serious. She's got some pretty major scarring on her back, some kind of ritualistic looking thing, though with kids these days you never know what's abuse and what they thought would look cool at the time." Patel sat opposite him at the long table, looking vaguely irritated. "She's still refusing to give a name."

"Well, I've sent her prints off to the database - maybe we'll get lucky," Acland replied, draining the last mouthful of tea from the large white mug. "And I've done a ring around the local psych hospitals, just in case she's wandered out of one of those. No joy there yet. And of course there's no beds free - we'll probably have to hold onto her for a bit, wait for a place."

"I still think it's drugs. LSD, something like that," Patel said stubbornly. She raised her eyebrow at him assessingly as he set the empty mug down. "Social Services should be turning up at some point eventually and then we can turn her over to them."

"Hopefully they'll be able to do something for her. Kid's a mess." Patel gave Acland a strange look.

"Not going soft on her just because she's all waifish and cute?" she asked, a little waspishly. Her stomach still hurt from where she'd been kicked.

"Of course not. Just... a kid that age in the state she's in. It makes you wonder what happened." Acland shrugged and stood, scooping up his papers. "I'll go talk to her. Maybe we'll find out."





"I'm PC Acland. I just want to chat, see how you're doing. Do you know where you are?"

The girl looked up at Acland, eyes blank and glassy. The tranquiliser was apparently working better than expected. She was hunched into herself on the floor, looking even smaller. In the harsh lighting of the cell, the hollows of her face were deeply shadowed and streaked with chalk and charcoal smudges.

"London?" she hazarded at last. Acland nodded encouragingly.

"That's right, you're in London. Do you know where you are specifically?"

She gnawed at her bottom lip anxiously. "Police station," she muttered eventually, dropping her eyes to the floor. In her lap, her hands started twisting at her clothes.

"Liverpool Street Police Station, to be exact. Do you know why you're here?" Acland kept his voice steady, careful to avoid any harshness - no sense frightening her if there was a chance of getting an ID out of her.

She fidgeted a little, picking at her cuticles and wincing as she tore one out and set it to bleeding. "Made a mess," she replied at last, almost sullenly. "Bad girl, I've been a bad girl."

"'Made a mess' isn't the half of it," he replied, a little wryly. The girl looked up, eyes wide and somehow cunning despite the tranquiliser.

"There was a little girl who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead," she chanted in a cracked sing-song. "And when she was good she was very very good, but when she was bad..." Here she shuddered a little, the blue of her eyes darkening. "When she was bad she went to the evil vampire witch and betrayed everyone."

"Um, right then. You understand why you're here - it's a start," Acland eventually said, coughing slightly. "Do you have anywhere to live?"

"Bedlam," came the rather prompt reply. He frowned.

"We checked with Bedlam. There's no record of a patient answering your description."

"Not thefake Bedlam," the girl admonished, almost playful now. Her mood shifts were dizzying. "Old Bedlam, true Bedlam. Our Star of Bethlehem Hospital, founded in 1330, moved in 1675 to make way for tracks and platforms and people, people rushing this way and that. Lemmings in suits, rushing headlong into suburbia."

"Liverpool Street Station," Acland clarified. There was a plaque with a lot of this on it, he'd read it a dozen times whilst on the beat. "You live at the station?"

"Gold star for the bright constable," she told him solemnly. "It was where I got stuck, you see. I worked it out. There were too many voices, too many bad memories and I got caught up in it like a fly on sticky paper. So she did the only thing she could and let me go."

"'She' who?" He seized on the pronoun amidst the gibberish like a drowning man seizes a life preserver.

"London," came the almost serene reply. "London took me in, kept me safe, but she couldn't hold me forever. Too bad - it was nice in there. Riding the city, being everywhere and everything and everyone at once. It's a fucking trip." If it hadn't been for the subject, she sounded almost normal with the last.

"You... what are you saying? You were a part of London? Inside it?" Acland felt a fool for even asking the question. But he received a beatific smile.

"London swallowed me, held me close, kept me safe," she repeated in that sing-song. "I was in every brick, every wire, every spark of neon and every street." A frown flitted across her face. "But I think I got lost. When she let me go, it was all gone, what I was, what..."

"So you're saying you don't know who you are? Do you know your name?"

"Jubilee," the girl replied promptly. Acland felt a surge of hope. It hadn't been so difficult after all.

"Surname?"

"Fenchurch." A beat and then she continued. "Victoria. Auldwych. Museum. Tottenham Court. Blackfriars. Islington..."

Acland sighed. Spoke too soon, apparently. "Sorry, love, those are Tube stations, not names. We're looking for somewhere to take you, but that might take a little while, so we'll keep you here. You sure there's no-one we can call?"

Mutely, she shook her head.

"I'll get you a cup of tea for while you're waiting."







"We've got a name," Patel told him triumphantly as Acland returned to the muster room. He'd left the girl in the cell with a Styrofoam cup of tea: she'd thanked him and told him Rom would like him and he'd been startled to see sudden tears in her eyes.

"We do?" Acland took the fax she was holding out to him. The letterhead was from the Met.

"Amanda Sefton, also known as Amanda Carlisle. She's got outstanding warrants for soliciting, vagrancy and one count of shop lifting in Brighton. Nothing new for the last five years - she seems to have dropped off the map entirely during that time."

"Well, that makes things easier..." Acland caught Patel's expression. "What?"

"She's a Ward of the State. Or was - she's apparently twenty-one now. But there's a social worker on the way - apparently our Little Miss Gibberish is a mutant."

"A mutant?" Acland found it hard to believe. Apart from the delusional thinking, there hadn't been anything unusual about her at all, just another messed-up street kid. Certainly no superpowers. "Any idea of what she can do? Should we be moving her to the secure cells at the Met?"

Patel shook her head. "Nothing specific," she admitted. "Apparently the whole time Social Services had contact with her, she never exhibited any powers; her status was confirmed by blood test. Strange things apparently would happen around her, but nothing that could be nailed down. I put in a call to Muir Island - if any of her behaviour is related to her mutation, it's best to have them onside."

"Good thinking. How long before the social worker gets here?"

"An hour?"

"So we've got time for a dinner break then. I can finish that bloody paperwork."