“Sir, there’s no fire. It turns out some kids pulled the alarm. They claim a woman paid them to do it.” I could feel my pulse quickening.
Mr. Hayate’s fingers slid down his temple and came to a stop on his cheek. “Anything else?”
“Yes. One of our new recruits was found behind the emergency staircase. Stripped down to his boxers. His uniform is missing.”
Every single cell in my body was screaming at me, “Get out! Leave now!” But I refused to listen. This was the very definition of dangerous, but so far, so good; it didn’t sound like they knew who had taken his uniform.
Mr. Hayate sat down in the empty chair. “Any idea as to what happened to him, or his uniform, or who took it!?” If they were still gathering information, that security guard could very well be here on this floor. If he saw me, my cover would be blown. I thought I should poke around and try to gather evidence while I still could. I could always make a break for it toward one of the three exits.
“We’re still gathering information from him.”
“Wonderful!” Mr. Hayate calmly rose from his seat, wrapped his hands around the arms of the chair, picked it up, and tossed it to the other side of the room. “This is insane. We’ve gone over the footage from this morning a million times. That strange-looking smoke completely blocks our view. You can’t see a thing.” I wondered if the strange-looking smoke came from the explosion. I still had so many questions. “What good are any of you to me if you can’t even stand guard in front of an emergency exit door?” Mr. Hayate brought his tightly clenched fist up to his lips. “I want you two to keep going over that footage.” He looked over at that third monitor. “I need someone to take Lilly’s place.”
I knew it was beyond stupid of me to do so, but I had to see that footage. My arm shot up high into the air like a fiery rocket. “I’ll take her place.” I had clearly said that way too loudly. Everyone in the crowd turned around to face me. I ignored them and pushed my way through the tiny crowd until I was standing directly face to face with Mr. Hayate. That guy mentioned earlier that the security officer I knocked out was one of the new recruits, with an s, meaning there were more than one, so if they had some new employees here, I would be able to blend in well. “Callisto Marine reporting for duty, sir.” Callisto was my middle name and Marine was my mother’s maiden name. I figured this would make for an excellent fake name. I scooted over to the other side of the room, then I pushed the slightly damaged chair back to the empty desk.
Mr. Hayate stared at me with such great intensity that I thought maybe he didn’t believe me. “I don’t recognize your name at all,” he said in a low voice while tapping a finger on his chin. I had all I could do to keep the calm expression that was on my face. “Johnson!” The young man from earlier who gave the report on what happened to the security officer I knocked out poked his head through the doorway. “I need a list with all of the new recruits’ names on my desk ASAP.” Johnson shook his head yes, then he disappeared back into the hallway.
Mr. Hayate placed his hand on my shoulder. “Gary and Carol will bring you up to speed on our current situation, and they can show you how to use the control keys for the monitor screen.” With that, Mr. Hayate exited the room and everyone who was gathered around the doorway immediately followed him. I slid down in my wobbly chair and let out a tremendous sigh of relief. My plan actually worked!
The young man seated next to me, Gary, turned to me and patted me on my back. “Welcome aboard, Ms. Marine. You picked a terrible time to start working here on the Titan.” Carol took a pin and stuck it into the somewhat messy beehive hairdo that was on top of her head. “If I were you, I would have called out and stayed home.”
“Well, I can’t afford to call out and stay home. I need the cash.”
“I hear yah, honey,” Carol responded.
“Enough chitchat, girls. We need to get to work,” Gary remarked.
“So what does Mr. Hayate wants us to look for exactly?” I asked.
“Before the bomb went off at the end of the third hallway, this entire floor was filled to the brim with this strange dark purple smoke. Hayate wants us to go over the surveillance footage from that morning to see what the source behind that purple smoke was.”
Carol let out a long yawn. “He believes that whoever took the rings used the smoke as their cover so they could leave undetected. But we have gone over this footage a million times already. There’s nothing to see.” Carol put her elbows on her desk and returned her attention to her security monitor.
Gary leaned toward my monitor. Attached to the screen was a black cord; at the end of it were the control panels for the screen. “It’s pretty simple, really. Press the green button to play, red to stop, yellow to pause, and if you want to go forward or back, use the winding dial that’s in the middle. The arrow pad lets you switch between viewing one hallway to the next.” Gary returned to his own monitor and shoved his headphones over his ears. I picked up a pair of headphones from the table, Lilly had paused the video before she dashed out into the hallway. Today’s date was displayed in the corner of the screen along with the time. I twisted the dial on the control panel until the time was set for 7 a.m., then I pressed play.
I decided that I would watch each hallway, one by one, to see what things were like before the explosion, during the explosion, and after the explosion. I started to examine hallway number one; nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Security officers were shuffling to their offices with their fingers wrapped around their hot mugs of coffee. A few people were just lounging around in the hallway talking to each other. This seemed to go on until about 9 a.m. That was when this strange purple smoke burst forth from the air vents on the floor. The smoke turned into a large ominous-looking cloud and it crept down the hallway from each end. After the smoke clouds met each other in the middle of the hallway, they combined to become an even larger cloud that eventually blocked my view of anything that was going on in the hallway. The only thing I was able to do was listen to the workers on the floor panic as they came out of their offices, trying to figure out what was going on.
About three minutes later, a deafening roar filled my ears and the screen shook violently. That must have been the explosion that I’d heard earlier. It took a half hour for the smoke to clear out from both the explosion and from what had been released into the hallway. All that was left after the explosion were a few employees who were trying to fight the fire created by the explosion. I watched as they dashed around the corner at the top of the hallway toward the black cloud of smoke. I turned the dial on the control panel all the way back to 7 a.m. and started to examine the middle hallway. Nothing caught my attention; it was the same as what had happened in the first hallway. The third hallway was the last one I needed to go over; some sort of clue had to be there! Once again, I turned the dial back to 7 a.m.; again, nothing seemed out of the ordinary and I was about to lose hope until I noticed a Martian woman dressed in a gray jumpsuit. She had her orange hair in a fluffy ponytail and she kept her back to the camera as she slopped her mop down on the floor and swayed it from side to side. No one said anything to her or approached her. At eight fifty-five, she pushed her sleeve up all the way to her elbow. I watched as she reached for her wrist. Her left elbow slowly jumped up and down; it looked like she was adjusting or maybe moving something on her wrist.
At nine o’clock, thick orange flames came bursting out of the air vents, followed by fluffy purple clouds of smoke. While everyone else was in a state of panic, trying to figure out why the hallway was bursting into flames and covering their mouths from the purple smoke, she wasn’t. Seconds before the clouds consumed her, she bent down in front of her mop bucket and rested her right arm on her leg. I leaned in so I could get a closer look. She had a watch with an antenna sticking out of the top. At least, it looked like a watch; I wasn’t sure what it was. She pulled a black bag from out of her bucket and immediately ripped it apart. Resting in her hands were a bundle of small red poles. They were tied tog
ether with black tape on both ends. In the center of the red poles was a small box that looked similar to the one on her wrist. She pressed the small bundle next to her stomach before she raced toward the ominous-looking purple clouds taking over the hallway. The explosion came two minutes later. That bundle of red poles must have been a bomb. I didn’t know what that thing was on her wrist, but I wondered if she used it to activate the explosion in the ventilation decks.
I kept my eyes on the screen, but I saw nothing. The clouds were so thick that I wasn’t able to see a thing. I rewatched the footage from the other two hallways. The Martian janitor only made an appearance in the third hallway and the only time I could see her was right before the purple clouds appeared. I looked down at the control panel. Who is this woman? I couldn’t see her face at all. Someone had to have seen her face, even though she carefully hid hers from the cameras. Why go through the effort of rounding up each and every female Martian on this ship if there was evidence on video of who the optimal culprit might be? Since she was wearing a work uniform, the culprit had to be someone who worked on the ship and had to have the proper security clearance needed to get on this floor. It would instead make more sense to round up the workers, more specifically the ones who did janitorial work, than to get every single female Martian who not only worked there but was a guest as well. This still made no sense to me.
I placed my headphones back down on the desk in front of me and politely tapped Gary’s shoulder. After he took off his headphones, I said to him, “I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. The only thing that seemed to stick out was that janitor who was in the third hallway. She looked really suspicious to me.”
“Oh, her. I heard that they brought her in for questioning.” I wondered if she was being held on the security room floor. Was that where Hayate and the other security officers were headed? Gary continued, “I have no idea where Hayate is holding her.” There were a ton of people on this floor. Someone had to have an idea as to where she was being held. I’d just have ask someone else.
“Well, something else is bothering me. What’s with this crazy mandatory roundup of female Martians that Hayate ordered?”
Gary’s forehead became covered in wrinkles. In a hushed tone, he said, “I don’t remember hearing him give out an order like that.” Okay, if he didn’t know about the roundup, then who did? Were only a select group of people informed about it and asked to do the roundup and the security sweep? I would figure that out as well later, but right now, I needed to cover my tracks.
“Oh, I was in the lunchroom and I thought I heard someone say something about a roundup and I was just curious. That’s all.”
Gary patted me on the shoulder. “Look, kid, you’re new here. Let me give you a little piece of advice. Unless it comes from the head man himself, Hayate, I wouldn’t believe it. His word is law around here. Anything else is just pure rubbish.” I shook my head yes. A small knock at the door interrupted our conversation. “Come in,” Gary hollered. A young man with a clipboard tucked under his arms and tears falling from both eyes walked through the doorway. He used his right hand to help hold himself up in the doorway as he laughed. “What’s so funny, Ben?” Gary asked. Ben let his clipboard fall to the floor. With his body bent over, he balanced himself with his hands on his legs.
“I interviewed that guy who got knocked out and was left alone half naked on the fire escape and I just can’t get myself together.” My heart skipped about five beats. Ben pushed himself up from off of his legs. He wiped his tears away. “So the best I could get out of this guy is that we should look for a naked, semifrantic girl that’s wearing glasses.”
Gary raised his eyebrows. “A naked girl with glasses, you say? You can sign me up for that search party.” Carol leaned back in her chair and took a pencil from out of her beehive. She tossed it at Gary. “Excuse me, but don’t you have a girlfriend!?!” she teased.
Ben continued, “Whoever this chick is, she left this dress with roses all over it neatly folded behind the staircase. Oh, this whole situation is so crazy.”
I had to get out of there. Ben turned his attention toward the hallway, and a small smile crept onto his face. “Oh, look who’s here! It’s the sandwich guy!”
A Martian man in a crisp white uniform poked his head through the doorway. “Good evening, everybody. I know you guys are working late tonight, so I thought I would come up here and bring you guys some chow.”
Ben licked his bottom lip. “Do you have any turkey sandwiches in there today?”
“I’ll check and see,” the Martian man said with a smile.
This was a perfect time for me to quietly slip out of there. I calmly got up from my seat and I stretched my arms. “I’ll be right back, guys. I need to visit the little girls’ room.”
“Okay, then. Don’t get lost on your way back, Callisto,” Carol said.
I smiled at Ben as I walked through the doorway. I walked past the sandwich guy, he was crouched in front of a long gray cart; perfectly sliced sandwiches that were wrapped in plastic were stacked on the long trays inside of the cart. With a turkey sandwich in one hand and a ham sandwich in the other, he looked up at me and said, “Would you like one?”
I shook my head no. Then I quickly glanced down at the black cursive stitching that was on his shirt pocket. It spelled out the name “Prometheus.” “No thank you, Prometheus,” I said as I walked away.
I wondered if they had confiscated my dress. I’d try and get that back later. For now, I needed to take a good look at where the explosion took place in the third hallway. I had to collect as much evidence as possible while I still could. I didn’t know if they had or if they were going to interview the two little boys I paid to pull that fire alarm. I knew they would be able to give a much better description of how I looked than that poor guy I punched in the head. Also, I was sure, at some point, Mr. Hayate was going to take a good look at the list of new recruits and he would see there was no one by the name of Callisto Marine on the list. My cover would be blown. I’d have to work as fast as I could to gather up more evidence.
Chapter 7
The fact that this robbery took place several hours ago had to be the loveliest advantage ever. It was so chaotic that no one was questioning me or paying me any attention. In no time at all, I made it to the entrance leading to the third hallway. Long streams of yellow tape were being used to block the entrance. I ducked underneath the tape and turned my head from side to side to see if anyone was down the hallway. The entire hallway smelled like a mixture of smoke, charred metal, and chemicals. A bit of that chemical smell traveled up my nostrils, causing the inside of my nose to burn somewhat. All of the office doors were closed shut except for one that was in the middle. It was propped open just a little bit. I wondered if someone was in there. It was obvious that no one was supposed to be back here. Unlike the other two chaotic hallways, this one was empty. I couldn’t use a bustling hallway as an excuse to get to where I needed to be.
The door swung open. I panicked and decided to duck back underneath the tape that was blocking the entranceway. When I looked down the hallway, my heart fell out of my chest and tumbled all the way down to the darkest depths of my stomach. Standing at the end of the second hallway with his hands over his face was the young man I had knocked out. He was stuck between two men. One couldn’t stop laughing and kept patting him on the back. I climbed under the tape and pressed my back against the wall. I looked back at the door that had swung open. A petite woman with black hair had half of her body hanging out of the door. Thankfully, her back was to me so she couldn’t see me at all. This couldn’t be happening right now! I couldn’t go back down that hallway. If that guy saw me, then I was finished. But I was clearly not supposed to be in this hallway either and I couldn’t let that woman see me. Small drops of sweat appeared on the edge of my forehead. I had to make a decision and I had to be quick about it. I moved as quietly as possible toward one of the office doors that was across the hallway from me. As I lay o
n the door, I kept my eye on the petite woman. She still had her back to me and she was carrying on a conversation with someone in the room with her. I couldn’t hear what she was saying at all, but her voice sounded slightly agitated. I placed my hand over the doorknob and slowly turned it, peeking inside. Thankfully, the room was empty. I pulled the door open and slipped inside. I was not sure what I was going to do, but for right now I thought I would stay there and try to devise a plan. I was about to take a seat at one of the desks inside of the office when I heard a loud, high-pitched shrill. I rested my ear against the door. Someone was definitely out there in that hallway, screaming at the top of their lungs. What was going on out there?!?
“Stop crying!” Being told that they needed to stop crying only caused the person crying to wail all the more. Whoever was yelling continued, even though the other person was clearly upset. “Look at this! Look at what your mother did!” More sobs came from the other person. “You need to tell me what you know or you and your mom are going to be in a lot of trouble and you don’t want that, do you?”
“Noooo. I don’t know anything!” the other person said in between letting out deep, heavy sobs. I heard a loud thud, like something had just hit the floor, and then more crying. Whatever was going on out there, I was going to break it up. I dashed toward the desk and stuffed a bunch of papers into a yellow folder, then I stepped out into the hallway. Lying down on the floor on her hands and knees was a tiny Martian girl in a red plaid dress.
The petite woman was standing over top of her. She immediately turned to face me, seconds after I closed the door. “What are you doing in here?” she said with a hint of panic in her voice. Oh, this was perfect; I just caught a “fellow employee” in a compromising situation and I was sure the last thing she wanted to do was to explain to me what was going on here and why this little girl was crying.
Cosmic Callisto Caprica & the Missing Rings of Saturn Page 7