by Michael Todd
“What?”
“You’re a little scary, you know that?”
“Sure,” she replied with a shrug. “What’s your point?”
“If you intended to kill them, why didn’t you simply do it here?”
“Besides the fact that I didn’t want to have to clean blood up from all over the damn place?” the armorer asked reasonably. “Because I didn’t want people to track the bodies and those jerks’ armor to our little homestead. This way, those who might come looking for them will look in the Zoo, and those that knew where they were going were sent a very important message. Do not fuck with Heavy Metal.”
“Sure, that’s important,” the hacker conceded as they cleared the beer bottles and popcorn bowls from the server room. “But it seemed like you actually enjoyed yourself there. A lot. Maybe too much.”
“Enjoyed it?” Amanda asked with a grin. “Hell, I only wish we had some video.”
Chapter Fifteen
“So,” Sal said as they finished their dinner and prepared to settle in for the night, “how much thought have you put into us retiring and letting someone else run Heavy Metal?”
“The healthy, sane amount,” Madigan said with a grin. “I mean, it’s not like someone would want to go into the Zoo for the rest of their lives. You’ll get old eventually, so it’s always good to at least have a retirement plan if you ever decide that you actually want to use it.”
“Speak for yourself, peasant,” he tossed back. “Madie is known to have some very interesting anti-ageing properties, and while I probably won’t need that for now, I can only imagine what the effects of using it in the long term are.”
“Yeah.” She regarded him warily. “Have you ever considered that taking that blue stuff might be bad for you? We don’t know much about what the goop does to a human body, and the stuff that they’re selling is heavily diluted. I haven’t seen you diluting shit.”
“You haven’t had any complaints so far,” he said with a grin and took the inevitable punch to the shoulder. “But yeah, I’ve thought of that. I’ve kept track of all the changes that it’s made to my body. The good and the bad. Some might only be effects of a vigorous lifestyle with a lot of exercise, so my notes should be taken with a grain of salt. But the way I see it, I get to be at the forefront of some very important scientific testing. If things go bad, my notes will be turned in to the people who matter and then people will know what not to do. Until then, I’ll continue to observe and test.”
“I can’t imagine that there are many scientists willing to put their bodies on the line like you are,” she said and shook her head.
“You’d be surprised. Curiosity is the force that drives people like me to get out of bed in the morning, so I wouldn’t demand that anyone do anything I wouldn’t be willing to do myself.”
Kennedy nodded. “But do you have a retirement plan in mind?”
Sal shrugged. “Like you said, nobody wants to do this forever. Eventually, I will get tired of doing it. I already have a few plans in mind, but...well, you know what they say about telling God your plans.”
“Good point. I don’t doubt that a lot will change in the world between now and when I decide that I’ve had enough. For the moment, though, I have a company that I want to be a part of, a team that I care about, and a partner-slash-lover whom I’d rather keep alive for as long as possible. I drink less and love life a lot more. I don’t think I’ll ever be happy, but this is about as close as I’ll ever get, I think.”
He grinned and leaned in to press a light kiss to her lips.
“And in case you were wondering, I’m loving you too, Sal,” she said and her eyes took a few seconds before they opened and a wistful smile touched her lips.
“I love you too,” he replied and quickly gave another kiss. Without the bulky armor they both usually wore, there wasn’t much to prevent them from drawing in close to one another and enjoying the shared body heat from the contact.
“Hey…so,” Madigan said after a few long delicious minutes, “if you keep poking me with that thing, something is bound to come along and stop our fun. It’s like…a law. It’s a fucking Hollywood trope, for God’s sake. Have sex, the monster comes.”
“Enough of that,” he protested and nibbled gently at her neck. “You’re the one who said monster, not me. I’ll remind you of that.”
She slapped him gently on the shoulder. “Asshole.”
Sal pulled away. “Well, we’ve never done it there before. I always assumed that you didn’t like it, but I’m willing if you are.”
Kennedy giggled, pulled him back in, kissed his lips, and purred softly as he moved on top of her.
“I’ll risk it,” Sal said, and the blood rushed downward in his body as she spread her thighs around him and tugged him in closer. They were both in the middle of pushing his pants down when they were interrupted by a low roar.
“Goddamn it,” he protested and yanked his trousers up again as they scrambled for their weapons. “I still won’t let some Zoo monster have my dick as an entrée.”
“I think we’re both agreed on that,” she responded said with a soft chuckle and extricated herself from their tangle of limbs to snatch the rifle she’d placed beside her suit of armor. “I thought that setting up shop outside the Zoo would make it so that we didn’t have to deal with this bullshit.”
“Yeah, well, there’s a reason why the construction sites still need protection,” he pointed out as he retrieved his rifle and hesitated for a second as he waited for his arousal to diminish. “The animals still get out of the Zoo to be a pain in our collective asses, so I think we should get a watch system going.”
Madigan grumbled something under her breath and nodded. “You still owe me a go, Monster. You take the first shift and I’ll take the second.”
He nodded and began to put pieces of his armor on as she slipped back into the tent.
“I’m going to kill that fucking trope,” she mumbled to herself as she settled in for her half of the night of sleep. “I fucking swear.”
Anja paused and stared at her screen, a little uncertain whether she should discuss what she’d found so far with someone, or if she should continue digging. On one hand, the time she’d spent around there told her that she was a team player now and needed to run everything she dug up by the people whom she worked with. Amanda had been good with that and she’d helped her learn the ropes. She wasn’t the boss around there, of course, but the chain of command seemed to be somewhat lenient when it came to managing their people. It was a simple matter of make sure money wasn’t wasted and that everyone behaved like adults about their jobs, and everything would be fine.
The armorer had filled her in when they had worked up a cage to ferry into the Zoo when they dealt with the mercs who had attacked the compound. It wasn’t a matter of disrespect, but rather the fact that Sal and Kennedy both knew that what the two women did was out of their field of expertise.
She shook her head and checked the clock at the bottom right corner of her screen. People talked about the problems that arose when you traveled around the world, and the biggest problem cited was usually jet lag. She hadn’t had to deal with that too much, all things considered. Her body clock worked at all hours of the day and only rang alarms when she was too tired to focus on her job. That, added to the fact that she’d spent most of her time in this little corner of the planet as awake as much as possible—while hoping not to get eaten, shot, or otherwise killed—meant that adapting to the time zone around there demanded less focus. By the time she’d actually settled in, it had become fairly obvious that things were a lot less tight than they’d been at her last job. Fitting in had, in fact, been a breeze.
Which was why she simply nodded when the clock read a quarter past four in the morning. It explained why she couldn’t hear Amanda in yet another argument with Connie outside or…well, anything else. The tags she’d put on Sal and Kennedy’s suits told her that they were still out in the Zoo. All of that added up to t
he one simple conclusion. She was all alone and there was no one who could judge her if she dug deeper into what she’d discovered.
Anja opened an encrypted chat sequence a friend of hers had created with her help while she’d worked on her degree. It had started out as a way to compare notes on lectures and share information that would be asked for on tests and the like across campus. As their jobs became more and more dangerous, it became one of the safest methods of long-distance communication.
She pinged her friend and waited for him to ping back before she sent him the newest information—a connection between one Andressa Covington, a rich billionaire in the US, and a certain Dr. Alfred Monroe, father to one Dr. Courtney Monroe. The payments themselves weren’t what attracted attention, but rather, the fact that five of them, totaling in excess of seven million dollars, had been transferred days after Monroe Sr. died. At any other time, Anja would have guessed that there were certain funds that needed laundering after the death of a major player in a company in case of an audit, but there was more to this than met the eye.
She remembered that her friend, going by the screen name of Khaos, had minored in economics while they’d studied together, so she sent him the documents.
I need your usual rate, she typed in after hitting send. Twenty-five grand to tell me where this money came from and where it went after it was transferred into this account, and why.
Done, came the response a few seconds later with a winking face. The friends and family discount. My usual account. Why am I looking into this?
I’m tracking down what could have been a murder.
Oh shit. That message came as an immediate response before all other contact ceased. She assumed he was doing his research on what had happened and how he would be able to track down the money’s origin and destination. Anja used the time to double check on the status of their defenses. While Amanda took an odd amount of pleasure in verbally arguing with Connie, the hacker found that it was far more productive to keep the AI on text only.
All the defenses were still up. She nodded and returned to the chat window.
Tracing the payments forward and backward from this one, said a message that was waiting for her, should be a while, but the logic is simple. There are only three reasons to move that much money through a man’s account after he’s dead. One is to launder money that will go offshore. Two is to incriminate the dead man posthumously. Third, and more likely, is that they tried to fake the sale of something.
Why is that more likely? she typed quickly.
The dates of the payments have all been marked as prior to the man’s death, but they only entered the system after, although they came prior to the money itself. It looks like the transaction is to prove that an agreement was made with the dead party and nobody can deny the sale. The official payment records are linked to a trade document that, again, dated to a few weeks before the death of Dr. Monroe but was only entered into the documents of the company and laid out for the IRS to see after the death. Considering that this Covington woman is, or was, one of the higher-ranking officials in the company, she would have had all the access in the world to fake the dates to fit her desired version of events.
A document he sent her contained the signature from both the buying parties and the selling parties. She made a note of the company involved in the sale, as well as the CEO who had signed the document, but she was sure it would lead to a confusion of shell corporations and dead ends. Still, she had to investigate each one.
The real problem was that the document looked like it had been signed by Dr. Alfred Monroe, which gave it all kinds of legitimacy despite the fact that it had been submitted after the man’s death. While physical paper signings like that were no longer common, they were still used from time to time and would be perfectly legal in any court should anyone seek to contest this sale. If it could be confirmed that Dr. Monroe had actually signed, there would be no way to dispute it.
Which meant that she needed to locate every digital copy of it and erase it, as well as perhaps find someone in the company whom she could trick into destroying the physical copies. Didn’t Courtney work at that company, though? Wouldn’t she be in a position to do that?
Send me word when you can trace the payments, Anja messaged before she closed her end of the encrypted chat room and peeled away from the computer screen. She rubbed her eyes wearily. Her head reminded her that she had all kinds of work to get done, but her body told her that it was time to get some sleep. She decided to listen—this time, anyway.
Chapter Sixteen
Sal mumbled somewhat incoherently as he dragged himself out of the tent. His wide yawn prevented any further speech and he wondered vaguely if his jaw would break with the effort. The half-night of sleep wouldn’t help either of them much, but it had been necessary. The simple truth was that neither would actually have slept at all if they couldn’t trust that the other was keeping watch. The unexpected and unexplained presence of what they assumed was a merc hideout urged caution. With the Zoo on their other side doing what it did best, there was no assurance that their rough camp in no man’s land between the jungle and the wall offered any degree of safety
In the end, even with the noise coming in from the Zoo, no attack had come.
“Fucking premature cockblockers,” he grouched and stretched to ease the kinks out of his spine. “I’m happy that we weren’t attacked in the night but come on. If you interrupt a guy’s chance at getting laid, you have to give him something else to get his rocks off to, right?”
“You’re gross,” Madigan said but chuckled as she handed him a mug full of coffee, “but I happen to agree with you. All roar and no bite make Madigan a dull girl.”
He nodded and forced back yet another yawn before the powerful beverage hit his system with something close to shock. Coffee this strong would probably sap their resources quicker, but it was worth it. They wouldn’t be at the top of their game if they didn’t have some help. And considering what they had planned for the day, they needed an even stronger boost than usual and couldn’t be too picky as to where they found it. He might have gone with cocaine at that point.
A dawn start made very little difference and even though they’d located the Pita plants the previous day, they only managed to reach them close to noon. The heat was already oppressive despite the fact that they weren’t directly under the sun. By tacit agreement, they took another quick dose of coffee to dispel the drowsiness that slowed their responses once they reached the clearing.
A pack of hyenas slunk around and sniffed around at the plants as if to check that all was well. There weren’t many of them and all looked too young to want to initiate a fight. As the humans moved closer, they backed away quickly and yipped halfhearted defiance at the intruders as they disappeared into the dense foliage.
“Do you still think we should do this?” Kennedy asked. She removed the contraption from her pack and advanced cautiously on one of the younger-looking plants. Sal found a second.
“I’m still sure that this is a terrible idea,” he said with a nod. “But in a crazy place like this, though, fortune does tend to favor the bold. Exhibit A.” He pointed at himself. “My first trip into the Zoo ended up with me surviving someone’s attempt to get a Pita plant out and taking one myself. All while I ran for my life as a first-timer. I was bold, I got shit done, and I made it out alive. Which is all you can really ask for around here, I suppose.”
She nodded and settled the contraption carefully around the plant before she turned away. “So, do you still think we should wait until something happens to distract the animals before we do this?”
“Oh, definitely.” He grinned. “Just because I’m bold doesn’t mean that I’m stupid. Maximize our chances of survival while doing bold shit—that’s what I’m all about.”
She grinned and nodded. “We might need to set up camp then. There’s no way to know when a fight will start. It will have to be temporary, of course, so we don’t waste time when we take
it down. Besides, we should probably catch a couple of winks here and there while we can. We’re not likely to have the opportunity once we’ve plucked these things.”
Sal agreed, and they set up a hasty camp at the edge of the clearing and close to the plants—which might also shield them from immediate notice of anyone who might come their way. That done, they simply enjoyed what little sunlight filtered through and alternated between standing guard and taking quick naps to try to rest up as much as possible. Nothing had happened by the time the sun started to set, so they fortified their camp somewhat and each managed their share of real sleep. There was no sudden urge to get into each other’s pants out there. They were still in danger and he had discovered that surviving danger was the true aphrodisiac, not the danger itself.
As night faded into morning, he faced his growing unease about their location. It was more than a little exposed, even though they had tried to be as inconspicuous as they could. While the creatures seemed content to avoid them for now, he knew they would get over it soon. The longer they remained in one place, the higher the chances were that the creatures would grow bold and mass against them.
He shifted his weapon irritably as mid-morning came around. Sleep had left him more rested than he had been the day before, but they’d used the last of their coffee. If ever there was a time to grab something and get out, it was today. Otherwise, they would simply have to pick the plants clean and come back another time.
“Fuck,” Kennedy exclaimed. “The plant’s outgrown the box.”
Sal turned quickly. The Pita plant she had encased had grown almost a full foot in one day and actually lifted the container off the ground a couple of inches.
While his partner disengaged her container and hunted for another suitable plant, he caught a glimmer of movement from the corner of his eye. He stopped abruptly and scrutinized the area where the movement had come from in an attempt to identify what it was.