by Dani Hoots
It was for me.
Chapter 4
Once I let myself calm down, I headed toward the ballroom to check on how Peter and Laura had been doing with their tasks. I doubted if either of them found anything or I would have already been notified. I made my way up through the palace. The ballroom that held the event the night before was located on the other end, including a few stories’ difference. I passed corridors holding representatives that had stayed the night. I nodded to each one of them, but they tried to ignore me and hurried away when I approached. They always seemed to fear that I may do something to them. Which always begged the question, what had they done to worry that I would be ordered to kill them?
I entered the ballroom and examined what had changed from the night before. Eerie silence filled the ballroom, a contradiction to the noisy chaos of last night. I preferred the silence. I found Laura and Peter in the corner, examining the windows. I stepped up to them, hoping they didn’t think he came in through the window. They’d be dense to think that.
“You really don’t think he came through the window do you guys?” I muttered as I approached them.
“We have to check every possibility, yes,” Laura answered. She had changed into her uniform now, a contrast to the blue number she had on only hours earlier.
“Yes, but there isn’t a possibility he came through the widow,” I corrected.
Laura stared angrily at me. “Then you figure out how he got in.”
“That is why I am here. You two have been at it long enough,” I turned away and eyed my surroundings.
“Are you trying to say we don’t know what we are doing?” Peter inquired with almost a threat. He hadn’t changed yet. He still wore his tuxedo pants and shoes but his jacket and button-up shirt lay on the floor next to him. All he had on now was a white tank top.
“No, I am just saying you need a new pair of eyes to see things at a different angle. That’s how most unsolved mysteries get solved you know,” I kept glancing around.
“Experienced this before then?” Laura followed me as I walked into the middle of the ballroom.
“Yes, and I was the one who came in and solved it then, too,” I said, then grinned. “Maybe it isn’t just a pair of new eyes; maybe the answer is always me.”
Peter rubbed his eyes. “Can you stop with your sarcasm? I haven’t had any sleep for a while and you are just pissing me off.”
“I suppose,” I faced them. “Did you question the staff?”
“Oh, gee, we didn’t think of that. Good thing you’re here,” Laura jeered.
I eyed Peter. “And you are complaining about my sarcasm?”
“Laura, you aren’t helping.”
“Sorry, go on,” she turned away from me, not wanting to be in the same room I presumed. She usually didn’t care about my remarks but now she was tired and frustrated.
“We questioned them but none of them knew how the perpetrator could have gotten in or stolen one of their uniforms,” Peter explained.
“Whoever this person is, he didn’t leave a trail, at least none that we have found yet. It’s almost as if he showed up out of thin air,” Peter added.
“Well, we have to find something quick, otherwise it could happen again. I don’t know about you, but I keep the Emperor’s safety as one of my top priorities,” I examined the ballroom once more.
“As do we,” Laura emphasized.
“I am sure that you do,” I whispered as I closed my eyes.
“What are you doing?” Peter inquired.
“I am replaying everything that happened last night. Seeing if we missed anything out of the ordinary,” I explained.
“You think you can just come in here and figure it out just like that? Do you have no respect for us and think we are incompetent? We’re generals of the Empire and you think we can’t handle this?” Laura accused.
“If you could have handled this on your own, then you would have already figured out what had happened last night, now wouldn’t you have?” I shot back.
“Hey, ladies, calm down,” Peter interrupted. “We can work together. She is right, Laura, we haven’t found anything. We could use her help.”
“Yeah, well, she doesn’t have to be a bitch about it,” Laura muttered under her breath.
I grinned. “I heard that.”
“Good. I wanted you to.”
I heard Peter mumble something to her but I ignored it. Turning my attention to what happened the night before, I replayed all the events I took note of. Every person’s face, every conversation I heard, every movement someone made. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but then I remembered the incident with a waiter.
My eyes shot open. “There’s someone missing. You didn’t question all the waiters did you?”
“That’s right. We couldn’t find one of them; others simply said he snuck out early. How did you know?” Peter responded.
“The one missing is the one that spilt the wine all over his uniform isn’t he?” I started to put the pieces together.
Peter nodded. “Yeah, his friends figured he decided to use the excuse to ditch. We sent some men to find him but they haven’t had any luck. Probably drunk off his ass somewhere.”
I shook my head, “No, he never left. He is still here.”
“What do you mean?” Peter followed as I sprinted towards the servants’ locker rooms.
“Our intruder probably snuck in through the servants’ locker room. He showed up right after that waiter spilt wine on himself. If we are lucky, he might still be alive,” I revealed as I hurried through the kitchen and into the servants’ locker. “Search every locker; he could be stuffed in one still.”
Peter and Laura nodded and began to pry open each locker with a crowbar that had been lying on top of the lockers near the door. Long story short, this wasn’t the first time we had to search the locker room. Last time it had to do with some stolen jewelry that one of the servants pick-pocketed during a banquet. Servants these days. Never had to search for a body before, though. Well, that wasn’t entirely true, but those were completely different circumstances.
I walked around the locker room, taking in slow deep breaths, listening to any slight sound that could have been movement in the locker. I took in a slight whiff of wine.
I pointed at one of the few remaining lockers, “This one.”
Peter walked over with the crowbar and pried it open. A body slumped out of the locker and onto the ground. Peter quickly turned him over so we could examine his face. It was him, the man I saw spill wine all over himself. I had figured Rik didn’t kill him and simply just knocked him out. Apparently I was wrong.
Before either of the generals could say anything, I left them there to deal with the body. There would be a bunch of paper work to deal with and that would fill up their time. I didn’t need them following me anyway. They had begun to annoy me, questioning everything I do. Besides, I had more important things to deal with, such as now knowing how Rik got in. Finding the waiter’s body left me to conclude that there was only one way in which Rik could have gotten in. I had always wondered if the stories Neil told me about the wars were true. Now I knew.
Arriving at the laundry room underneath the servers’ locker rooms, I peered up the laundry chute. As I predicted, a person could climb up it if he had enough endurance, which Rik did. He had to have climbed about thirty-odd meters straight up the chute with nothing other than his bare hands and feet. Not an easy climb for a standard person. I could have done it, though.
I peered around the room. Rumor had it that during the initial wars between the Pandronan Empire and the Second Republic two hundred years earlier, there were tunnels leading from the palace to the other side of the city. They were there in case the Second Republic attacked and the newly proclaimed Emperor needed to make a quick get-away. Neil said he didn’t even know where they were anymore because the first Emperor had hidden them well and everyone had forgotten about them. Apparently someone had remembered.
The reason I figured it could be down in the servants’ laundry area was because this spot was the lowest floor in this wing. If the tunnel was here, Rik could have easy access to the ballroom and to the Emperor. A great plan, but I wondered how he could have found the tunnels in the first place or how he even got clearance to land on the planet.
Worn uniforms from the night before littered the room. No one seemed to have gotten to them after everything that went on. This made it harder to notice anything out of place now that it was a complete mess.
I started to question, though, why they didn’t have the hamper underneath the chute instead of next to the washer. Quickly regretting ever wondering that, I shifted it and found a loose tile. Grinning, I pried it up to reveal a narrow passageway.
“Well, well. What do we have here?” I whispered to myself.
Always prepared, I pulled out the flashlight that I kept in one of my uniform pockets and shone it down the passageway. A ladder led down towards a tunnel underground. It didn’t look like it could hold a person without collapsing. Rust covered the bars and mold seemed to be growing near the bottom. Sighing, I placed the flashlight in my mouth and started climbing down the ladder, replacing the tile above me so that no one could find it and follow.
Carefully climbing down the ladder, I felt the rust on each handle making my grip harder and harder to hold. The smell of mold overwhelmed my senses but that didn’t matter. If a little smell bothered me then I wouldn’t have been able to finish ninety-percent of the missions that I did. For some reason, nearly every mission at some point simply stank.
As I reached the bottom, I took a look at my hands. Stained orange now, I quickly wiped off the excess rust from my gloves onto my pants and grabbed the flashlight out of my mouth. Shining the light ahead of me, I started down the darkened tunnel.
I carefully walked down the tunnel, feet sliding every once in a while, due to all the moisture in the air causing the dirt to become mud. It clung to my boots, and I could only imagine what people were going to say if they saw me like this. They would inquire where I had gone, what I had been doing. Not many people in the palace ever had dirt on their shoes except for maybe Tom. I never figured out where he went, nor did I really want to.
I caught a glimpse of some tracks where Rik had been. They led off further down the tunnel. Following them, I realized that Rik wasn’t the only one down here. There were at least two more sets of footprints.
So he did have partners.
There were a few forks in the tunnels leading off towards different parts of the palace. I made a mental note to venture down them later, but first I had to see where these tracks led.
The tunnel seemed to continue on forever. It had to have been the one that led to the other side of the city. How it hadn’t already collapsed was beyond me, but I kept going, not worrying about such trivial things. Besides, I had seen worse carved out tunnels and they held, for a while at least.
After an hour of walking, I came to a ladder that led up to another entrance. I turned off my light and slowly climbed the ladder. The ladder felt the same as the other, unsteady and covered in rust and mud.
Reaching the top, I slowly opened the hatch and peered around. I recognized the area. It was a little out of New Capital City in the more rural areas of Anosira. A ship stood in the distance. If my eyes weren’t mistaken it was a Class Two ship, a private ship. I debated whether or not to step out of the tunnels when I heard two voices come nearby. I lowered the hatch to a crack and listened carefully.
“Do you really think this is going to work?” a woman’s soft voice questioned.
“It has to, it’s our only hope,” a man answered.
I lifted the hatch a little to see if I could get a glimpse of the two. They stood near with their backs turned. The petite woman anxiously fiddled with her coat sleeves as a twig of a man tried to calm her down. I debated whether or not to take them out then, but I decided to listen a while longer.
“How do we know that? Rik is putting way too much trust into her,” she retorted.
“Can you blame him? She is the only one who knows where the key is.”
I smiled. So they were after me, but I didn’t know what key they meant.
“But what if she doesn’t have the key? What if this was just a wild goose chase and we get caught?” the woman worried.
“Calm down, Will and I will get Rik. Don’t worry. Everything is going as planned.”
There was another person with them. I scanned around but didn’t see anyone else.
“That could change at any moment, David. You know that.”
She was right, it could. And it had. Deciding to report these findings to the Emperor, I headed back down the ladder. I didn’t know what key they talked about even was but it was still good to know what they were after.
I followed the tunnels that led back to the palace. I grinned with satisfaction, knowing that I found the intruders and their plan with little effort whereas the generals were still lost for clues. Not that I could rub it in their faces or anything, but it still left me in a good mood.
Once I made it to where the different tunnels met, I debated which one to take. I wanted to see where each of them led but I needed to report to the Emperor as soon as possible.
As I began to head down the tunnel that led back to the servants’ laundry room, I heard footsteps. I quickly hid behind a support beam and switched my flashlight off. I watched as a man ran from another tunnel into the area with the fork.
“Come on David, where’s my lunch? You were supposed to be here an hour ago. Won’t answer the freaking radio. That man does not understand protocol,” the man mumbled to himself as he headed down the path that led to the rest of his crew. It had to be the other person they referred to as Will.
Going back to the fork in the tunnels, I peered down the tunnel the man had just come from. Clicking my flashlight back on, I headed towards where he came from.
The tunnel was the same as the others, muddy and moldy. Curious as to where it led, I hoped not to find any more of Rik’s crew. I doubted there were more but even so, I could take them out easily.
Coming up to the end of the tunnel, I found two hover boards, ones used for medical transportation. Finding this, I decided to climb the ladder to find where exactly it led, hoping it would answer the question of why they had hover boards there.
As I opened the hatchway and peered around at where I was, I laughed. I knew what they were trying to do and how they would get Rik out of there and, they thought, me.
I headed up to Neil’s office, anxious to tell him what I had found. As I opened the door, I found Tom waiting for me.
“Damn it Arcadia, where have you been?” Tom shoved me back into the corridors.
“Doing my job. Why, what have you been doing?” I remarked.
“Peter and Laura said you guys found a body and when they turned around, you were gone! We have been looking for you for two hours now,” he examined my clothing. “What did you do? Go hiking or something?”
I shoved passed him into Neil’s office. “I need to talk to the Emperor.”
Tom followed as I entered Neil’s office.
“Sir, I need to talk to you,” I said.
“Sir,” Tom began. “She has been missing for the past two hours. Are you just going to let her waltz in here without an explanation?”
“Tom, leave us. Now,” Neil ordered.
Shaking his head, Tom left us in a fury.
“What did you find out?” Neil questioned as he sat down at his desk.
“I know how he got in, I know what he is up to, and I know what he wants,” I answered with a smile.
He gestured for more. “Go on.”
“As you know, I went down and questioned him. I figured out he knew I would be at the ball, knew he wanted something from me. With this information I decided to search the ballroom since the other two hadn’t found anything yet. I ended up finding the passageway in the old war stories you told me about,�
� I reported.
Neil didn’t look as surprised as I thought he would. “You did?”
“Yes, it’s underneath the laundry room for the servers. I followed it out to the other side of the city and found that he had partners. Three of them, I believe. They were talking and I overheard them saying they wanted me in order to locate some kind of key,” I further explained.
“Key? What kind of key?”
“That’s what I have been trying to figure out sir, I don’t know of any key of importance. I mean, who uses keys anymore? Most people use cards now, if not fingerprints and codes.”
“What else did you find then?”
“I decided to return to you but on the way I found another passage. It led right to the execution room. They plan to save him and capture me there when we execute him. They probably will try to knock out the lights or something. We can catch them in the act. They think they will have us by surprise, but they don’t. Not now.” I grinned for what I had found. “I await your orders, sir.”
Neil rubbed his chin, considering all things he could have me do with this information. I could have them all dead within the hour if he really wanted me to. I just hoped he wouldn’t assign Tom to work with me. That would be the worst scenario.
Standing up, Neil gave me my orders. “I want you to let yourself be captured by them.”
Caught off guard by his response, I studied him, making sure I didn’t hear wrong. “Sir? Did you just ask me to be captured by them?”
“Yes, Arcadia. I want you to figure out what the key is and what they want it for. They are part of the P.A.E. and it could be important. We could use this to finally destroy them.”
“But sir, I don’t even know what key they are talking about. And once they get it, they won’t trust me enough to tell me what it’s for,” I tried to change his mind. This was worse than being partnered with Tom.
“Arcadia,” Neil began as he placed his hand on my shoulder, looking straight into my eyes. “This could be the end of the war. You will do what you are ordered to do. Is that understood? Or are you making up excuses so you won’t have to betray your own brother?”