Chapter Text
The autumn air chilled her skin as she took another drag from her cigarette. Her head thudded against the slightly damp brick behind her as she blew out a cloud of smoke and clutched her jacket tighter around her with her free hand. Liz knew it was better to stay separated while hunting for their next target, but not having Patty by her side set her on edge. They’d been through this routine a dozen times. One of them would snag some drunk sucker who’s a little too handsy, the other would come in for the pinch, and guns would be out once they’d reached the alley. There’d be change in their pockets and dinner in their bellies before the hour was over.
Simple.
Patty’s sunhat, a little ways down the street, was almost comical in the aftermath of New York’s gloomy, autumn shower. But she’d insisted it would be fun to play tourist for the night’s mugging, and Liz hadn’t had the heart to convince her otherwise. Theirs wasn’t the most glamorous life, why not try to make it at least a little fun? Besides, being able to see her sister’s hat bobbing among the evening crowd calmed her nerves, if only a little. Suddenly, Patty raised the sunhat in the air, waving the signal.
Showtime.
Liz took one more drag before stomping out her cigarette on the wet pavement. Sure enough, an odd-looking fellow hobbled down the sidewalk, the front of his coat clasped together in his hands. He snapped his head left and right, wildly watching for anyone following him. Liz mused that he might be on drugs instead of simply being drunk. Once within earshot, she called out to him, “Look a little lost there, pal.”
The man stopped in his tracks, crazy eyes giving her a once-over. He didn’t say a word, just sniffed the air as if trying to place whatever scent he had caught. Their target was pretty weird. Patty wasn’t too far behind him now, casually looking over a shop’s advertisement. If things got hairy, at least they were both together.
“You, uh, looking for something?” Liz tried again, taking a cautious step forward.
His hands tightened around the fabric of his coat, and he folded into himself a bit. Clearly hiding something.
“You have a delivery? I can get you to where you’re going if you need. These streets can get pretty dangerous, especially at night.” She took another step closer, focusing on how blank his stare was. “Let me help you out here, friend,” she said, offering a hand.
The man grabbed and bit her fingers, and immediately let go, speeding off down a nearby alley, body low to the ground. Patty rushed over as Liz held her stinging hand.
“Fucking weirdo!” the older sister cursed as the pain subsided a bit.
Patty rested a comforting hand on Liz’s shoulder. “He’s gotta be hiding something, did you see how protective of his coat he was being? What do you think he’s got?”
The older sister grinned. “Only one way to find out.”
There were few advantages to being abandoned in the middle of New York City at a young age. Thankfully, learning every nook and cranny that the city had to offer was one of them. Once they’d determined exactly which alley and direction their target had sprinted off down, the two decided to split up. As easy as trapping a rat in a trap.
Patty raced up ahead before disappearing behind a corner. Liz’s job was to tail the strange man. Fortunately for her, the man wasn’t difficult to track down with all the back alley garbage he had either run into and created a loud noise with or strewn about the still damp pavement. Once she’d finally caught up to him, she found him panting heavily, ramming into a chain-link fence desperately.
“Looks like there’s nowhere to hide, buddy,” Liz smirked at him. She pulled a handgun from its place in her waistband. “Whatcha got there that’s so precious? Huh?”
The man’s look remained very blank, save for the rapid movement of his eyes. None of this seemed right, Liz could very easily tell that something was off with this guy. But she was in control of the situation. She was the one with the gun after all, and he was just a crazy person who hid things in coats and bit people’s fingers.
Patty appeared on the other side of the fence, fingers wrapping around the links. Her hat was missing, probably lost along the way. “Sharing is caring, you know,” she teased, startling the man into turning to look at her. “It’d be way easier if you just hand it over to Sis. You wouldn’t like me on that side of this fence.”
His eyes flitted between the two of them a moment before he hunched over to the ground. The sisters shared a look of concern once he started making sounds like a dying animal. What was the protocol here? No one had ever actually been harmed in any of their muggings. Can you take a man you were planning on mugging to the hospital?
Patty scaled the fence in record time and dropped to the earth a safe distance away from the man as he continued to howl. Liz cocked her gun just in case and took a step closer to him. “You okay, man? Look, we don’t plan on hurting you, just… get up, okay?”
The howling grew louder, and the man’s back began to arch. More than a human’s back probably ought to. The seam down the back of his coat ripped loudly, red and white feathers protruding from the hole created. A long, white tail slithered out from the hem of the coat.
Liz took aim at- whatever this thing was and shouted at Patty to get behind her. As the younger sister moved to safety, large golden eyes peered out from beneath the collar of the coat. There was a slurping sound, like the last dregs of a milkshake, and a yellow appendage that appeared to be a god damn beak peaked out at them from the neck of the coat. Whatever the creature was shaking the remains of the coat off its back, revealing three-toed, clawed paws and a dopey-looking beak-face the girls could only compare to that of a dog. Its drooling mouth clamped down on a bright green orb, shimmering and swirling like those cocktails Liz had always wanted to try but could never afford.
Patty tugged at Liz’s shirt very gently. “What do we do now? Keep it as a pet?”
“Not the time for jokes, Patty.”
The monster squawked a bit and turned to attempt to climb the fence. Its claws caught in the links, and it squawked more.
“Shut up!” Liz hissed, doing her best to keep her weapon aimed at it. “If you don’t keep your mouth shut, someone else is gonna find this… this -”
“Mess you’re in?” a man’s voice chimed in behind the women.
The two spun around to find two men dressed in black suits complete with matching ties watching the scene with stoic faces. A strange whirring from the fence made Liz chance a glance over her shoulder to see a woman in the same attire point some sort of gun at the creature caught in the fence.
“Mind if I have a word with you two?” one of the men before them asked, motioning for them to follow him. The strange firearm went off behind them, trapping and shrinking the creature into a small, transparent blue box. “Don’t worry about Fido over there,” the man continued. “He’s in good hands. Would certainly be having a better night if he hadn’t gotten his paws on that orb in particular though.”
Liz lowered her arm carefully, eyes locked with the man’s. Gold flecks against hazel were the only deviation from his black and white ensemble. Even his hair, she noted, sported a streak of white. She’d met quite a few officers in her time, but the entire situation didn’t sit well with her. It wasn’t even until she felt Patty squeeze her upper arm that she realized she was trembling.
“If you’d be so kind as to place your weapon on the ground,” the man said, gesturing to the gun still tightly gripped in Liz’s hands.
She willed the trembling to stop and scowled at him. “Right, go defenseless with you guys and Man’s Best Friend there surrounding us. I don’t think so.”
He sighed and reached into his suit jacket. Liz snapped the gun up again, aiming directly at his chest. He did not appear fazed however as he continued to search without flinching. Finally, he pulled out a cigar-shaped object, the chrome exterior gleaming in the dim alley light hanging overhead. He held it out in front of him, his other hand searching once more within his suit jacket. The top of the object sprung up, revealing a red light. The man freed a pair of sunglasses from his jacket next and placed them on his face.
“I’m sure you ladies have many questions, but I assure you, they will all be answered in due time. In fact, if you could both look right here,” he said, tapping a finger next to the red light, “you’ll find your first answers.”
Liz didn’t even have a chance to look away. A light flashed bright into their eyes, leaving them blinded for a moment. Left hand still on the gun, Liz rubbed each eye with the butt of her right hand until her vision came back to her, blurry for a moment but slowly coming back into focus. When she finally looked back to him, the man had ditched both weird flashy thing and sunglasses.
“Listen, just because you find a gun lying around New York City, it doesn’t mean you should just start waving it around,” the man chastised, thumbs now uncharacteristically jammed in his pants’ pockets and posture suddenly slouched. “What if someone thought you were a robber or a kidnapper? Pretty unbecoming for such nice ladies.”
Patty started cackling from behind Liz. “Us? Kidnappers? What about you guys and that weird doggo? You’re the suspicious ones, not like any dog catchers I’ve ever seen!”
Shit, she had nearly forgotten. Liz whipped her head back to search for the other strange suited people and the caught “doggo”, but they were nowhere to be found. Gone, vanished without a trace. “Where’d they go…?” she muttered under her breath.
The man did not respond, and when she turned back to look at him, she found him frozen. Those gold and hazel eyes flickered back and forth between the girls, wide as saucers. “I… don’t know what ‘you guys’ or… ‘doggo’ you are referring to.”
With his guard now dropped, Liz knew it was time to make a break for it. The sisters would definitely go home empty handed and stomached regardless of how weird the night may end up, and quite frankly she had had enough weirdness to last a lifetime in the last few minutes or so alone. Her fingers twitched, wanting so badly to take Patty by the arm and run as far and as fast as her legs would carry her. But there were burning questions in the back of her head that demanded answers.
And she knew the man before her had most, if not all, of them.
Without a second thought, Liz snapped her fingers and ran straight for the man, one hand grabbing a fistful of his hair, the other jabbing the barrel of her gun into his jaw. Patty nodded at the secret signal and charged as well, wrestling his arms behind his back. Whoever this man was, he underestimated “such nice ladies”.
“Alright kid, what’s this all about? What was that - that thing we chased? That thing you and your little lackies caught? And what about that flashy stick?” Liz demanded, pulling roughly at his hair.
“You better answer quick, or Sis will mess up that pretty face you have!” Patty sneered behind him.
Eyebrows furrowed, the man stared just past Liz as if deep in thought. “I’ve never had it not work before, this is unprecedented,” he muttered.
With a growl, Liz moved the barrel right over his heart and pulled on his hair to have him face her. “Quit with the funny business! We want answers! Now!”
He locked eyes with Liz and took a deep sigh, never once blinking. “Are you sure that you can handle the truth?”
“Try me.”
He smirked and sighed once again, more amused this time. “Not my preferred introduction, but I suppose one is in order. My name is Agent K. I work with a top secret government organization whose primary objective is to monitor, license, regulate and police extraterrestrial activity on the planet Earth.”
Liz glanced over K’s shoulder to Patty whose face was twisted up in pursed lips and wrinkled eyes, trying her best to hold back her laughter at such an absurd explanation. Liz couldn’t help herself and let one snort through before returning her attention to K. “Uh huh, and those were fellow agents and a…?”
“Code Name: Fido. Originally from the planet Eirdan, they are commonly kept as pets. They’ve been known to steal items on behalf of their owners, however, and this particular one was sent here to retrieve a protected artifact.”
“And the flashy thing?”
“An electro bio-mechanical neural transmitting zero synapse repositioner, otherwise known as a neuralyzer. Standard for MIB operatives.”
“MIB?”
“The Men in Black.”
A silent staring match ensued as Liz planned her next words carefully. It was all garbage, just sci-fi gobbly-gook and urban legends. But she didn’t sense an ounce of dishonesty in his eyes. Dropping the gun to her side and gently releasing his hair, she took a step away from K.
Patty side-eyed him a moment before releasing his arms and following suit. She cocked an eyebrow at the older sister but kept her questions to herself, fidgeting her fingers at her sides.
Returning her attention to K, Liz asked, “Why tell us all this?”
“Well, gun threat aside, I tell you all this because this situation is highly irregular.”
Patty muttered, “You’re telling me,” with a slight giggle.
“You shouldn’t remember Fido or the other agents who were here. Neuralyzers are used to isolate and rewire the synapsis in the brain related to memory.”
“Meaning you tried to scramble our brains?!”
“No, simply rewrite the event in your memory so you could go back to your regular lives. A realization of and traumatic run in with alien life is enough to cause the public to panic and riot. Thus the common use of neuralyzers.”
“And we remember it all because…?”
“That’s what I intend to get to the bottom of. By the way, thank you for sticking around and being such a captive audience.”
“Liz!” Patty shrieked while pointing at something behind her.
Before Liz could turn around to investigate, arms grabbed her from behind, and the gun dropped to the ground. The impact set off a bullet that ricocheted off a nearby dumpster and down the alleyway. One of the other MIB agents grabbed Patty as well and wrestled to put some sort of medical gas mask over her face. Liz was forced to her knees and an identical mask shoved to her own face.
While she struggled against the agent holding her, K walked up to her. “It’s dangerous to go alone. Best to have backup nearby.”
The mask finally fit snuggly over her face, and a sweet smell filled her nose. It wasn’t long before her vision swirled, barely able to make out the image of a large black van pulling up on the opposite side of the fence before the world faded to black.
Unbelievable.
All those years of surviving the drunken rage of Mommy Dearest, fighting off hunger and New York creeps, all just to end up kidnapped by some group of alien-obsessed wackos who hung out in alphabetical order. It was the end of the line for the sisters, she could feel it. What a terrible sister she had been, letting Patty get taken. Could she ever forgive her? Would it even matter?
…
A blinding light engulfed her when Liz finally blinked awake. She found herself reclined in an egg-shaped chair, the arch of the back blocking most of her field of vision. What little she was able to see reminded her of a hospital, a sickeningly pure white room that reeked of sterilizer. Not exactly what she had imagined Heaven to look like. Then again, she had never been sure she was destined for Heaven anyway.
As she attempted to sit upright in her seat, Liz noticed a soreness in the crook of her left elbow. Someone had left a bandaid behind from what she could only assume was an involuntary blood draw. Or worse.
Injection.
“Sis?” a voice yawned to her left.
Liz leaned forward in the odd chair to see an identical chair on the other side of the otherwise empty room, legs swinging absentmindedly off the edge of the seat. “Patty?”
“Sis!” Patty leapt from the chair and rushed to embrace the older sister, the two toppling back in the seat.
A wave of relief washed over Liz as she hugged Patty close to her. The reunion was interrupted by the only door to the room sliding open. Agent K entered, and Liz knew for certain they weren’t in Heaven.
“Chief, this is unheard of! They are criminals, they held me at gunpoint, and they are clearly in violation of -”
A tall man in signature MIB attire stepped through the door after K and held up a hand to silence him. “I know the details, let me be the judge of what they are capable of.” The chief turned his attention toward the girls, offering them a genuine, warm smile. “Hello Elizabeth and Patricia. I am Agent D, Chief of the Men in Black.”
Liz and Patty sat up in the seat, holding each others’ hands tightly. Liz noted that both men had positioned themselves perfectly between the girls and the only visible exit. Trapped, like sewer rats.
“We have a proposition for you,” D continued, holding an open hand out toward them.
She flinched. Correction, lab rats. “What, you wanna poke and prod us some more?” she hissed, holding her bandaid arm toward them.
“No. I’d like to invite you.”
“To what?” Patty chirped up. She squeezed Liz’s hand tightly.
“To the Men in Black.”