A splash of crimson sprayed onto the monitor.
Jhett and Bloke chuckled when they noticed how Ted’s blood had appeared to splatter all over Klunka’s new suit, and well stenciled face.
Bloke smiled at the mess he had made.
Jhett had been despondent for a couple of hours now, but with these latest killings, he was feeling a bit less edgy. “I’m just glad we can track these idiots down. But we are wasting our time. Let’s get out of here.”
Jhett and Bloke were about to leave the apartment when the com in Jhett’s vest began ringing wildly. He answered it in an apathetic voice as he looked at Ted’s bloody corpse, “Hello, Jhett Jonez here.”
“JHETT!” Marco’s voice cried in a panic, “Some bad shit just happened man!”
“What, what?” Jhett said, his voice lowering an octave and quavering, “Marco, what’s wrong?”
“Just…just look for yourself,” Marco said frantically.
Jhett switched to the small monitor in his com. The image Jhett saw next, made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. A young woman with red hair, stained with blood, was lying naked on the floor of Marco’s bedroom. She had a burn mark on her chest that had been caused by a laser bolt. There was a pool of blood from the huge hole that had been cut into her head.
“Oh my gods,” Jhett said as he looked at the dead woman.
Marco began frantically babbling again, “She was bugged! She had a camera in her eye!”
“Did she ever leave the place?”
“No man, I was giving her cocaine and Cutz the whole time! She never left once!”
“All right,” Jhett said with a firm looking face. “Don’t panic…she’s probably not CIA, because if she was…well, they would have you locked up by now. She’s probably doing this for someone else. Maybe Makula Pilikoa wired her up and sent her over to you. Lord knows how pissed Makula was at you. But there is hope. If she’s a Transmitter…the chances of her getting a message beamed from your place are pretty slim. Ailana only has a minimum complement of communications satellites and getting access to one is pretty hard with a cranial computer. You don’t have any satellite capable uplinks there for her to plug into do you?”
“Oh gods man, I don’t know if she used it or not!” Marco’s face was shaking as he said, “I don’t get it! She was just…so pretty. Why is this happening?!”
“Calm down Marco, we’ll get through this,” Jhett said, thinking as fast as he could. “We just have a few more people to visit and we’ll have all your Cutz for you.”
“That shit doesn’t matter now!” Marco screamed in panic. “I got a dead bitch with a cranial computer on my hands! I gotta get the hell off this planet right now! I’m not assuming shit man!”
“All right, all right,” Jhett said calmly. “Bloke and I will think of something.”
“NO!” Marco said loudly, “I’m doing the thinking for you! I’ll give you and your team ten thousand each right now! Get the Cutz that you have recovered so far to me right now! I have my people packing my bags, and I’m getting off this shit hole of a planet, now! And I mean right now! I’m getting an expedite pass for my ship! I think I found just the guy to steal it from! After I’m gone, you guys stay here and take care of our OTHER merchandise. We’ll meet at the place we talked about before all this bullshit started going so bad!”
“All right…that should not be a problem. Over and out,” Jhett hung up the com and switched off the monitor. Bloke appeared to be busy peeling a banana. He shoved half of it into his mouth, chewed once, and swallowed.
“Ya know what, Bloke?” Jhett asked the mountain of a man as he pried open another banana. “There are just too many people nowadays who only think of themselves. All day long it’s about ‘me, me, me, me, me, me me.’ If some of these people would just listen to themselves talk, they would realize how full of shit they are. It’s like what Niechetze said in his book; Human, All Too Human…”
“I gotta pee,” Bloke said bluntly, and Jhett suddenly realized how alone he was in the universe.
CHAPTER 21
Location: Anodia Storage Complex…Polynea.
Ailanian Standard Time: 1734 Hours.
The three young men stood at the front door of the warehouse working as fast as they could.
“Hurry up, man…she just told me we might have additional security guards to worry about,” the tallest one whispered as he quickly looked around for anyone with prying eyes.
“I’m almost there…just a few more clicks,” the shortest one said as he punched in a few more numbers into the lock-pad. Moments later, a string of beeping sounds and a few flashing lights made him smile as he said, “I got it!”
As soon as the door opened, they darted inside and ran towards the middle of the warehouse with small flashlights as their only means of breaking the darkness around them.
“Here it is!” The tallest one said as he walked over to a large crate. Seconds later all three of them were removing the crate’s lid with crowbars and small, electric saws. Within moments the lid was broken into pieces and laying all over the floor.
“Shit…nothing’s easy,” The shortest one said as he moved his hands over the large, metal box until he found a lock. “Keep an eye out, I’ll have to crack the code to open it.”
“Here ya go,” The tallest man said as he handed his friend a handheld, electronic device.
The shortest man inserted a wire into the lock and started pressing buttons on the device as its small monitor screen flashed a series of numbers. He bit his lower lip as he watched the numbers and said, “I guess I never thought I’d be using my engineering degree to break open locks and steal something.”
“I never thought we’d have to do something like this…”
“We have to do this, guys…this is our atonement for to deciding to work for a company that designed those Penitentiary locks and security systems.”
The shortest one gazed at the device and said, “If I had only known what life held in store for me earlier I would have just kept my job as a waiter.”
“And miss out on a chance to change history,” his friend said as the small, electronic device began to beep. “Holy shit!” The shortest one explained, “This thing worked…we got it! We got it!”
The lock snapped as the lid on the metal box slowly opened with a soft hydraulic hissing sound.
“Holy shit…would you look at that…how come the Engineering Department at University never taught us how to build these things?”
Their flashlights illuminated three shiny objects that were about the size of footballs. The young men felt a surge of adrenaline and a sense of awe as they realized what they were looking at.
“Hell yeah,” One of them said softly. “The tables are gonna turn now boys…Jacob was truly a genius!”
A com rang. The shortest man answered it, “Yeah…we got em’…and they are beautiful.”
The voice on the other end of the com said, “Then get out of there as soon as you can…and just a heads up, you need to deliver them to this new location I am texting to you. I’ve received word that Wallace has turned on us…he’s trying to find you guys.”
His eyes became wide as he said, “But I thought Wallace and his friends were caught…”
The voice on the other end of the com said, “Apparently Jacob’s betrayal of them wasn’t enough…Wallace is still free…and if he finds you guys…this whole plan could go straight to hell. Now get moving, we haven’t got much time, you need to get those items to some people we trust. Wallace isn’t the only defector we need to worry about. When our little club had its falling out, some of our more important assets went to the other side and there are others, like Wallace, who want our plan to fail.”
“We need just a few seconds of quiet…these items you sent us for are still connected, they could still be activated…we just need to cut this w
ire and flick this switch…”
The other two young men breathed a sigh of relief when the small actions were finally over.
Got it,” the short man said. “We’re on our way.”
The young men reached into the crate and used their combined strength to life the heavy objects out of the box and carefully placed each one into individual duffle bags. When the final zipper had been shut and locked into place, they looked at each other with near disbelief at what they had just accomplished.
“Let’s get the hell out of here…we’re not home free yet and we have a mission to complete.”
The darkness engulfed them again as they jogged back to the door they had used to enter the building. Their small circles of light bobbed along the gray walls and zigzagged across the floor as they panted and prayed that they could escape this abyss from which they had traveled so deep into.
None of them noticed how one of their flashlights briefly illuminated a shiny buckle on a gun holster as they turned a corner and began to sprint for the exit.
Their eyes fixated upon the streetlight shining into the warehouse. They could smell the freedom in the fresh night air. They were twenty meters from the door when the man in black stepped out of the shadows behind them and reached for his gun. He was about to draw and shoot them all in the back when his cranial communications unit started beeping. He raised his hand to his head and heard that familiar voice in his ear again.
“Stop!” The voice silenced his other circuits as it said, “We need them alive, for now.”
The man in black relaxed his hold on the gun as the voice in his ear said, “I know your boss told you to hunt them all down so he could gain the advantage over Kalapana…but they are fitting into our plan all too nicely…and when it is all said and done, we need someone to blame for all the hell and chaos that is about to be released onto this planet. The items they took having tracking devices on them…can you get a fix?”
Once he saw the trio of friends escape the warehouse, the man in black snuck up to the door and carefully peered outside. He saw the three young men putting their duffle bags into an old, purple hovercar that resembled the kind of vehicle poor University students would drive. The young men were obviously not gang members; they were into some other kind of trouble.
The man in black squinted and activated his cranial electron pitched radar system. Within seconds, he had locked onto the devices in the duffle bags and could mentally track them as the three young men jumped into their hovercar and tried to drive away as quickly, yet casually as they could.
The mysterious voice in his ear then said, “You’ve got them…good. And before you leave there tonight, be sure to grab those other five pieces of merchandise those boys left behind. We can use them to tie up the final loose ends before we proceed any further. We’ll get in touch with you soon. When we give you the go ahead, track down those three items and take pictures of where those guys stored them at…that will be the evidence that ends up in the hands of the authorities. We only need one of those items for our plan. They can have the other two for whatever fun they have envisioned for themselves. They claimed that The Evil will continue…well my friend, this is where it is all gonna end.”
Location: Audrey’s office at Hana Paloi.
Ailanian Standard Time: 1445 Hours.
Audrey sat hunched at her desk, her heart racing so fast it made her chest hurt. She stared at her computer trying to make sense of an enormous amount of data, while her eyes felt like they were going to start bleeding from the stress she was under.
Jack was currently in the hallway with some angry Ailanian High Senators. Her breathing was almost painful as she waited for a phone call. She balled her hands into small, shaking fists while she prayed that Jack could hold off the High Senators’ demands for just a few more minutes.
Audrey felt herself nearly leaping from her seat when the call finally came.
“Hi Audrey,” Cindy’s unusually cheerful voice said over the com, “I just got those results you wanted. The bodies of those murder victims, who were killed in those apartment complexes, were all radioactive to some degree. Most of the radioactivity was centered in the lungs.”
“That’s great!” Audrey said in a voice that was almost glum. She had been working in her office for the last fourteen hours, but this was the news that she had been waiting to hear.
“So…Audrey,” Cindy’s voice became sycophantic as she said, “Could we maybe talk about, say…getting me out of the morgue…and into a job where I would be of more assistance?”
“Not now, Cindy…I have to go!” Audrey said and hung up before the lab technician could even form a protesting thought. Audrey stared in wide-eyed wonder at her large computer monitor. She had finished her mathematical modeling of a crime scene, and had found something. As of last night, another couple of murders had allowed her to see a pattern emerging.
But time to prove her theory was running out.
Jack Bauman felt as if he were trapped.
High Senator Ulu Jinkua scowled, her lips curling with disappointment and anger. She appeared as if she would bite his head off as she said, “You will sign this order, Agent Bauman. We are sick of waiting for your promise to arrest these evil drug dealers. We want the CIA to start finding narcotics producing facilities for the Allied Military to destroy and we want them soon.”
High Senator Karamotzain’s face was a maze of wrinkles and displeasure as he said, “You may take your orders from Kalapana, but Kalapana ultimately takes his orders from us…it may take a bit longer with the High Senate in such chaos right now. But believe me, son…when order is finally called and the final vote is cast, you don’t want to be on the losing side of this decision. We are not the bad guys, Agent Bauman, we simply have millions of people on this planet that voted for us, and are demanding that we clean up this planet, and get rid of these criminals, so that the Aurorians will invest some much needed capital into our economy and create jobs. So, despite what your boss may have told you about us, we are not the ones demanding this action, the Ailanian people are…remember Agent Bauman you work for them as well. We only ask that you think of their interests.”
High Senator Rammy Klunka, even though he was lower in the chain of command, was just as convincing as he said, “I’ve always supported you, Agent Bauman. I’ve always thought of you as being the best man for this position. However, my committee only has so much money to pay both you and Ms. Winters, for what should really be a consolidated position within a government, which really should be getting smaller instead of getting bigger. But if you are on our side, we’re on yours…catch my drift, son?”
Jack smiled. He acted humble and diplomatic as he said, “Exalted High Senators, please consider our case…an investigation such as this takes time and must be pursued carefully, lest we allow the bad guys to catch onto our cloak and dagger methods. Last night, the police found two men dead in a downtown Polynea apartment. The murders had been grisly, just like the others. One man had been bled to death in the kitchen, and the other, decapitated while sitting in an easy chair. But despite the means of death being somewhat different, we have discovered that all of these murders have something in common.”
High Senator Jinkua sounded like an Earthen Language teacher, who was dealing with an unruly student, as she said, “We don’t care about the drug lords’ murder victims…we only want the drug lords themselves. We wish to wipe out immorality at its source, and getting rid of those drug lords, by any means necessary, will turn many, many of our people back into good, productive citizens again.”
Jack tried to sound enthusiastic as he said, “But Ma’am, Audrey is finally onto something! She now has quite a few confirmed cases of buildings with security cameras being knocked out in such a manner that the useless cameras form a very straightforward route to the murder victims’ place of residence.”
“So what?!” She snipped, her ey
es becoming dark with anger and frustration.
Jack smiled and tried not to sound rude as he said, “This allowed for whoever killed these people to have easy entry and a fast escape route. And, even better than that, we now also have lab results that confirm all these particular murder victims had lungs that were coated with a radioactive substance, like a tracer that allowed them to be located.”
Wram Karamotzain snorted and said, “We still have no idea what significance this has?”
Like a used car salesmen, Jack sounded upbeat as he said, “Well, this explains why our investigation took so long. As you can see, it was only after hours and hours of scrolling through maintenance logs that we were able to determine which cameras had been shut down. Audrey and I discovered there were many more of these access and escape routes all throughout apartment complexes in lower Polynea, mostly around the Go-Go district.”
Klunka said, “We don’t care about the murder victims!”
Jack stood up straight and tried not to look as if he wanted to slap them all, “but this is going to get you the justice you seek…we just need a little more time!”
Back in her office, Audrey was becoming frantic as she searched through her files, looking for one more piece of crucial evidence. She whispered a short prayer while she viciously tapped her computer’s keyboard, and accessed one of the files that Jack had given her. She discovered that a new CIA “Agent”, named Mara Killikia Wilson, was frequenting some of these apartments as she documented life in the Immoral sections of Polynea. After doing some extensive, yet heart pounding research, Audrey discovered that Mara, had been at one of these apartments, where a radioactive person was still living.
“Come on, come on!” She whined to herself, she was nearly at the stage of having a full blown panic attack. Audrey downloaded one of Mara’s ‘documentaries’ that she had done recently, and braced herself. Audrey found herself unable to even blink as she gazed intently at her monitor. She pressed her lips together as she saw how Mara was sitting on the floor of the apartment, with a few other Ailanians and humans, who appeared to be in their mid- twenties. The group of Immoral people were having a discussion, over a bong and a large bag of Cutz, which Audrey tried to ignore. Mara, was stirring the conversation pool.
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