by A. A. Allsop
Cutters knew the man who’d quit, and it was very unlike him to dump contract work like that. He might have taken that as a red flag had he not already known what it was like to work with David Windover. The guy was a real piece of work—angry, demanding, unreasonable, not to mention a bona fide sadist to every boyfriend he took during a gig. Cutters had sworn he wouldn’t work with him again, but the man made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: triple the normal paycheck and, more importantly, a referral to The Community.
Cutters had worked years in contract security, and not once had he landed a job with The Community. The shadow organization was nearly impossible to join and had some of the cushiest, highest-paying work someone in his field could get. Only the elite, the most trusted, and the discreet could get jobs in The Community. A referral to The Community could be worth millions of credits. Thus, Windover’s offer had stopped him in his tracks.
He had thought back to his first time hearing about the organization. His friend had been drunk at the time when he confessed that he had worked for them. “Fucking scary as hell, but best money I ever made,” he said, slurring his words a little.
It had taken some coaxing, but Cutters finally got his friend to spill how much he made from his one job. It was six times the amount he had made for the nine months of work he had just finished at the time. Since then, he had been doing his best to land a job, but his friend had been no help. Once he sobered up, he tried pretending he had been joking, but Cutters could read the truth on the man’s face. Finally, after some pressuring, his friend had said, “I can’t. I’m sorry. Only paying Community members can put in referrals.”
Nineteen years. Cutters had been trying to join The Community for nineteen long years, and here David Windover had offered a referral to him on a platter. He might have thought the offer bullshit if it had come from someone else, but for all the man’s faults, he was not a liar. He never made a threat he didn’t act on, nor did he ever make an offer he didn’t back up.
Cutters was a little deflated when he learned how the process worked, but after he did, he appreciated it. Windover opened up a website and then a referral ticket. A legit ticket on a friggin’ website… He wouldn’t have believed it—didn’t actually believe it—until ten minutes later when he received a call from an untraceable number.
“Mr. Cutters, good evening,” the deep voice on the other end of the line said. “Please put me on speaker.” Windover, looking nervous for the first time in Cutters’ memory of him, fidgeted on the expensive couch in his living room. Cutters, sitting opposite him in a chair that he was sure cost more than his car, pressed the speaker button on his cell and set the phone on the coffee table in front of him.
“Mr. Windover, a pleasure.” Windover said nothing, and the mystery man continued, “Mr. Cutters, we hear you are interested in joining us. We vet few, and then, even fewer are chosen. How does Angie feel about your desire to join us?”
Cutters stiffened and looked at Windover. The man was staring at the phone like it would explode. There was a deep chuckle on the other end of the line. “Mr. Cutters, are you surprised that we know you? The Community is everywhere.” Cutters swallowed and waited for the man to keep speaking.
“Our… members are not always… in agreement with the law. As such, there is a certain amount of due diligence taken before another member is accepted. Sometime after the next several weeks, we will reach out and let you know if we are interested in moving forward. Tom,” Cutters’ gaze snapped from Windover to the phone, “we’ll be watching.” The line clicked dead.
“How did they get my ex-wife’s name?” Cutters had asked in a deadly calm voice.
When Windover found his voice again, he sounded angry. “They flagged you. I saw you on a list.” Cutters gripped the side of his chair as Windover continued to speak. “You were on a very short list of people they were even willing to vet.” He took a deep drink from a glass of brown liquid and said, “That means they have been watching you for a long time, maybe even for years.” The more Windover spoke, the more and more he started sounding like his old self again. “They will not even accept referrals if you are not on the list. There are waiting lists to be reviewed to get on the waiting list you were on.”
Chills ran down Cutters’ spine. Years… he had been searching for them for years, and they had been watching him. He knew he should feel happy about this, but he had a growing sense of apprehension.
Windover must not have been feeling completely like his old self because he took a few minutes to talk about how the referral system worked. Apparently, due to the nature of The Community, many of its members were inclined to screw each other over. “Also, they don’t want undercover agents getting secrets from its members,” Windover explained. He got up and refilled his drink from his liquor cabinet, offering none to Cutters.
He paced a little, looking at nothing but still speaking. “They started doing stringent, full, investigatory reviews a few hundred years ago.” He sipped his drink. “First, a ticket is opened,” he said. “Then, you do your thing like normal. They watch you for days, weeks, months, who knows. Then one day, you get a call saying whether you’re in or not, what kind of work you are qualified to do, and what level they put you at. The higher the level, the higher the pay. If the answer is no,” Windover shrugged, “you never get another shot at it again.”
Cutters said nothing. Even though he did not trust this man, he knew that he was telling the truth, or it matched up to what his friend had told him, anyway. His instincts had never led him wrong before.
Or had they? Now, Cutters stared at the desert landscape ahead of him, thinking about all the shit that had gone wrong—that was still going wrong. Had Windover tried to screw him over? Tried to mess up his chances with The Community? Or was The Community testing him by sabotaging him? The very thought pissed him off.
A half hour later, Cutters was presented with two additional problems. The first came in the form of some troubling news from one of his men.
Normally Cutters would have seen that there was bad news coming before it left the man’s mouth. He would have noticed the look in the man’s eyes, the shift in his gaze, the rigid stance the man took. He would have noticed that the man had left his post without his permission. But this time, Cutters was completely blindsided.
Axel King was a good friend of his. They had worked together when they were alive and worked even more jobs together after their deaths, forty years ago now for “Axe,” as he was called by his friends.
Cutters had made it back to command and was standing in front of the mess hall erected for the gig. He was staring down at a clipboard, going over all the final details for the inspection and was about halfway down the list. So far, security and safety protocols were checking out, but already the camp director was scrambling to rearrange sleeping bunks to be in regulation, and the equipment manager had to make some adjustments that would shut down the drill components in Areas 4 and 7. The reboot would take forty-five minutes. The lead engineer also had to make some changes to the shifts and cancel some overtime that was in the books. Cutters had no doubt the books would be adjusted back once the inspector gave the OK.
“Hey man…” Axe said, startling Cutters out of his thoughts. He stared at his friend, completely caught off guard.
Axe looked nervous and uncomfortable. “What’s up?” This informal speech was almost never used by either man while on a job. Sure, they were friends, but they were both professionals. It was always “yes, sir” and “no, sir” to whoever was in charge at the time. But neither man was in his right state of mind at the moment.
“Listen, Cutters,” Axe said, “I ain’t no buddy fucker . You know me. I wouldn’t rat someone out.” Cutters let the pages of his clipboard flip back to normal and stared hard at his friend. “I ain’t trying to get nobody in trouble,” Axe continued, “but it ain’t like him…”
“Spit it out, Axe,” Cutters said, suddenly feeling impatient.
“Jackson
and Clover ain’t come back yet.”
“Back?” Cutters asked, confused.
“From night patrol,” Axe began, but Cutters cut him off.
“And I’m just now hearing about this?” he snapped.
“Listen, right when the replacement team noticed something was wrong, the explosion happened. It happened right at shift swap. Soon as things calmed down, I sent a double team to sweep the area. No sign of them.”
Cutters felt his chest constricting slightly, but then a thought occurred to him. He looked at Axe levelly.
“Any chance you think that might have been…” Cutters looked for a PC way to say what he was trying to say. “Intentional?”
“No way,” Axe said right away. “Clover rooted for the other team, sure, but he had a steady boyfriend. But Jackson, no way… not in a million years. And besides, you and I worked with Clover and Jackson. Them boys ain’t no broken dicks. Nothing’s changed. I worked with them on the last four contracts. They’re solid.”
Cutters nodded, his apprehension growing. He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, a voice with a foreign accent came from behind, presenting him with his second problem.
“Mr. Tom Cutters?”
Cutters turned around to see a slim, dark-haired, Hispanic woman standing behind him. “My name is Agent Celestine Fettin. I am here to do an investigation.”
She held out her hand, and he took it, purely out of surprise. Nothing about this woman was what he’d been expecting. Sure, he had assumed the inspector would be male—most were—but female inspectors were not so uncommon as to be rare. No. What stopped the words in his throat—all the rude things he wanted to say to this woman who had just showed up three hours early—was simply what she was wearing.
Inspectors were, by their nature, mostly desk jockeys. They did 90 percent of their work by computer, and the last little bit they did begrudgingly in the field. Never once had a damn inspector worn appropriate clothing. He’d had to rescue more men in loafers who had decided to climb through the jungle or through a marsh to get to whatever dig site they were in than he could count.
He eyed her khakis, which were worn and cut in a few places. Her muddy boots were the same industry quality that he had all his men wear. She even had the same heat- and storm-resistant brand of goggles that he himself owned dangling at her neck. Her khakis and long-sleeve, button-up shirt were the same tan as the landscape around them, and she was holding a tan, canvas backpack in one hand.
“Morning, ma’am,” Axe said, his full Tennessee accent coming out. He was staring at her with the same awed expression as Cutters, who realized he had his mouth open and closed it. The shock was starting to wear off, and his bad mood was coming back. He frowned at her and crossed his arms, planning to lay into her, when, yet again, she caught him off guard. “I am here because of the missing men.”
Cutters stared at her and then looked at Axe, who shook his head. “Don’t look at me,” he said, bemused.
Cutters gave him a head nod that they both understood as I’ll talk to you later, and Axel nodded and turned to walk off. Cutters indicated that the inspector should walk with him into the mess hall. The building was designed with a retractable front wall to create an open, tent-like atmosphere that could be closed and fortified, in case of a storm.
The hall was busier than normal. Since three sites were shut down for the moment, men were allowing themselves some leisure time, and the atmosphere was light in spite of the morning’s events. One heavily bandaged man in a wheelchair was surrounded by other men, clearly recapping the morning’s events.
Cutters and the inspector seated themselves at a table far out of earshot of the others. “I work for the FBAI,” she said, blowing anything he had been expecting her to say right out of the water. “I am part of a specialized team investigating the disappearances that you may have heard about.”
Cutters nodded slowly, not saying anything. He was in uncharted waters right now, and he wasn’t about to say something that would get him in trouble. Was this a mere coincidence that the week after he was contacted by The Community, he was getting a visit from the Federal Bureau of AfterLife Investigations? And was it intentional that she presented herself in an email as an inspector instead of FBAI? Was she trying to wrong-foot him? Anger was brewing inside him again, but he kept his mouth shut.
She set her canvas bag on the table, pulled out two thin files, and handed them to Cutters. He hesitated and then took them slowly. He set them on the table and opened the top one.
The face of his friend stared back at him from the photograph clipped inside the file. He knew how to train his face to hide his feelings, but he couldn’t help opening his mouth slightly in shock and confusion.
“Ben isn’t missing. He quit. I took his place. That’s why I was called to this gig, last minute.”
“His family has not seen or heard from him,” the agent said.
Cutters closed the file and steepled his fingers. “He isn’t exactly the best family—”
“We are aware of his history and behavior. I looked into that.” She steepled her fingers too, mimicking his forward posture as well. She was good… “The only way off a BorderWorld is through a Tech 9 or higher, fully manned Portal. Not even a class-10 witch or warlock can teleport their way off a planet this far off the grid. The only registered Portal is in the transit station on the other side of the World. I checked the records and cameras, and there was no sign of Mr. Kramer or Mr. Grimrey even entering the building, let alone taking a Port.”
Cutters opened the second folder. A picture of a smiling man holding a little girl was clipped to the front. The name printed on the demographics page was Trenton Grimrey.
Cutters could tell the agent was watching him closely, looking for clues in his face. He swallowed hard, closing himself off to this woman. “I made a sweep,” she continued, and he looked up, closing the file, “to try locating any unregistered Portals or Portal sites, as they leave energy traces, but I did not find anything.” She paused, opening her hands. “This leaves only one option,” she said.
“They are still on this planet,” Cutters finished her sentence. He slid the files back. “What about the local girls? There is a whorehouse on the other side. The men were looking forward to visiting there on their downtime.”
“Checked it. No sign of either of them.”
“You think the whores would be honest with you?” Cutters said, arching his eyebrows.
She tightened her jaw ever so slightly—the first crack in her professional demeanor. He might have missed it had he been in his earlier state of mind, but now the stakes were raised even higher than he could have imagined. Missing people on his crew… and she only thought it was two people. He swallowed.
“The girls, no,” she said. “They were not open whatsoever. However, either by poor design or clever espionage, an ATM was placed by the only door in the building. I am sure it was placed by a visiting colony, as the technology is far too advanced for the locals. It recorded every person that ever entered the building—and the surrounding shops at that.”
Cutters nodded. After a series of robberies, the ATM makers upped their game and created some high-tech surveillance. The camera could catch such a clear, precise image of someone’s hand, they could get fingerprints from it. The cameras had a 365-degree panoramic view and even had heat-sensing capabilities for identifying people behind objects. The heat signatures were so specific and high-tech that they could identify ridges in the nose and eyes. After some analysis, they could make a pretty accurate sketch of a person’s face, even if they were wearing a ski mask. Cutters could think of no other reason to stay on the planet. There was a local bar, true, but if he was remembering correctly, that would be in view of the ATM. Though the world was huge—the size of a fully developed planet—the human population was very small, and there were only a few developed places a person could go.
Cutters didn’t know this Grimrey fellow, but he knew Benjamin Kramer enou
gh to know the man enjoyed his creature comforts. If there was no money, beer, or whores, the man wasn’t going to stay anywhere long. Any one of his ex-wives could attest to that. He sighed. It was time to tell this agent the truth.
“Two of my men did not get back from night watch last night.”
Four men going missing within a couple weeks of each other, presumably all within the same ten square miles, was not a coincidence. The agent informed him that there was already a team on the ground and another on its way. This was now part of a full-scale investigation funded by the Inter-Dimensional Corporative Investigation Initiative that Cutters had been hearing and reading about.
He, however, did not think the two men’s disappearances had anything to do with the others she had been assigned to locate. His stomach tightened. Disappearances around a rig site meant there were usually creatures—or worse, a hive of creatures—nearby that they had not detected.
The inspector turning out to be an FBAI agent instead of a normal inspector might have helped to solve one of his problems, but it potentially created other, more serious ones. While he felt that it wouldn’t hurt to have extra help looking for these men, he worried that she, or one of her superiors, might try to get in his way. Unless they had a team of monster and category 4+ creature experts, Cutters and his men were better qualified to search for these missing boys than her.
His other concern was The Community. He wasn’t worried about not getting in—well, he was, but he would not risk the lives of his missing comrades just for a job. He might have made a shit husband and father, but he lived his Life and AfterLife by a code and that code was to leave no man behind.
No, what he was worried about was The Community misinterpreting the FBAI agents’ presence as an attempt to turn them in, which would be very unfortunate for him. He did not fancy his chances against an entire underground network of thugs. He hoped, for his sake, they were not the shoot-first, ask-questions-later type.