From there she shimmied across the pipe for a couple meters before setting her feet beneath her and looking for a handhold above. There was a pair of box-shaped, metal slots which apparently acted as guides for the locking mechanisms some of the shipyards employed for transferring the heavy, cumbersome containers. Without so much as a second thought, she launched herself upward and reached out for the boxes, grabbing one neatly in each hand and hauling herself up to a resting position with her feet perched on a series of regular corrugations not far below the boxes.
She stopped and stretched her legs for a few seconds, feeling a cramp threaten to seize control of her calf. After a brief rest, the cramp dissipated and she sighted her next potential anchor point: another pipe, this one slightly smaller in diameter than the first one, and she gave a critical look to the brackets holding it to the surface of the container. From the size of them, the brackets should have been able to hold her weight easily but there was significant corrosion present on several of them. Still, she decided to trust they would hold, and she leapt up to grab the pipe at the furthest edge of her leap’s grip range.
The pipe held at first, but as she was adjusting her grip to shimmy to a nearby half-ladder welded to the surface below her target ledge, the brackets to her left gave out and the pipe snapped on the far end.
She risked a look at the ground as she tried to find something to grab in order to break the potentially lethal fall, but thankfully the broken end of pipe did not fall more than a few inches. Masozi looked over to the damaged end and saw that the pipe was actually a conduit, and several thick electrical wires ran inside it. Those wires, judging by the size of them, would easily hold her weight.
Taking several deep, calming breaths, she carefully shimmied over to the ladder and hauled herself up to the second rung. It was a small matter to scale the ladder to the narrow ledge above, and when she had done so she took another series of deep, cleansing breaths as she peered over the edge and realized that there was little doubt she would have been crippled or killed had she fallen when the pipe broke.
She placed her hand against the door, which still had a government-mandated clamp locking the door in place. That clamp showed the date it had been applied, as well as the itinerary of the container in question.
“Finally, some answers,” she muttered as she leaned in to get a better look at the surprisingly grimy-looking clamp in order to read the container’s destination. The clamp quite clearly read that the container was bound for Aegis Port City which, for all intents and purposes, was Virgin’s beating heart. It appeared that the container was scheduled to be offloaded in Aegis in three weeks’ time, which meant that the Esmerelda Empática would need to leave sometime in the next few days in order to meet that appointment. Aegis was on the other side of the Leviathan Sea, and the journey took no less than seventeen days for a liner of the Esmerelda’s design. But the weather had already turned for the season, and a few extra days would be required to ensure a punctual arrival.
Masozi, feeling rather less vulnerable for the first time in twelve hours since she was finally armed with some measure of useful information, made a fist and rapped her knuckles against the door panel. Silence was her only reply for several minutes, so she knocked again. But again, she received no indication that there was anyone—or anything—inside the container.
Then there was the whirr of what sounded like an auto-cannon spinning up, and she turned in more than mild alarm to see a military-grade weapon pop out of concealment on the side of the container and train itself on her.
“Whatever it is, we don’t want any,” a woman’s voice said sharply, her voice seeming to originate from the weapon itself. “Go sell it somewhere else, bake shop.”
“Bake shop?” Masozi repeated, uncertain if she should feel insulted.
The ‘gun’ sighed, and Masozi thought she recognized the voice when it said, “You know the list, babe: sweet cheeks, sugar buns, honey pie, baby cakes, butter face, etc. ad nauseam. Let’s just cut to the chase and throw the whole bake shop at you in one go,” the woman said cheerfully. “Saves everyone time, no?”
The autocannon suddenly spun up, and a red light began to flash on its side—a light which indicated the weapon’s safeties had been disengaged.
“Now, like I said, wannabe-pastry-chef,” the woman said, her voice turning serious, “make like a bad sector and frag!”
Just as Masozi was contemplating a leap to the nearby stack of containers in the hope of escaping the autocannon’s firing arc, the weapon’s safety light returned to yellow and the killing machine cycled down.
“Eve, will you please stop harassin’ the woman?” a man’s strangely accented voice came over the same speaker the ‘gun’ had spoken through. “My apologies,” he said after what sounded like a huff from the woman, “but I expected you to knock, Investigator.”
“I did knock,” Masozi said irritably. A second later there was a soft, clanging sound from the floor below, and she looked to see the very ladder she had climbed during the final leg of her ascent had extended and now reached the floor. She suppressed a growl at having made such a dangerous, unnecessary ascent.
“It’s all good, girl,” the man chuckled in a rich, baritone voice. “Please, step into my parlor—I’d ask you to take off yo’ shoes but it doesn’t look like that’ll be a problem.”
The panel before her deformed slightly, and a narrow section of metal recessed and slid to the side. It was almost large enough for her to enter without turning sideways, but she did so anyway and saw the interior of the cuboidal container was poorly illuminated.
“Sorry about that,” the man’s voice came over a nearby speaker as the hidden door closed behind her, “I’ll get the lights.”
A string of soft, bluish panels on the floor and ceiling began to glow until the interior was lit well enough that Masozi could see her way. The lighted panels each formed a large arrow, and without needing to be urged she followed the arrows deeper within the container.
After climbing a set of staircases, she came to a closed door. It was difficult to tell with such poor visibility, but it seemed the interior of the container was as sparsely-appointed as one might expect. There were several crates of differing sizes stacked neatly inside the container, and she thought she felt a not-insignificant amount of heat being generated on what she came to think of as the ‘second floor’ of the container as she passed the locked door to that level.
“Mind your step,” the man’s voice came from a speaker near the third, final floor’s door before it slid slowly open, “I didn’t have time to tidy up.”
She took a careful step into the room and an odd odor wafted into her nostrils. It wasn’t unpleasant as such, but it was unfamiliar and it put her even more on her guard.
“My apologies, girl,” the man’s baritone voice said, but this time it was coming from inside the room and not through a speaker, “I forget myself. Let me get the normal lights.”
The room was filled with a fluorescent, white light which grew in its intensity until Masozi had to shield her eyes so they could adjust. When they had done so, she lowered her hand and took a look at the chamber
It was something like twenty feet on a side, and had only a few pieces which might be considered ‘furniture’ by any reasonable person. There was a pair of cots against the far wall, as well as what looked like a work bench on the right wall.
The left wall was covered from floor to ceiling with dormant display screens. Masozi counted one hundred thirty six individual displays, but they were far from the most remarkable thing in the room.
At the chamber’s center was a large, contoured, bed-like piece of furniture. It had several medium-sized storage tanks attached to the ‘headboard,’ as well as numerous wires and tubes piping their way up and into a hemispherical array of displays suspended directly above the bed.
And lying on that bed was what had to be the largest human being Masozi had ever laid eyes on.
His skin was sick
ly pale, and every inch of it was fully exposed for all the world to see. He had to weigh well over half a ton, although he was likely no taller than Masozi. His body was swollen so badly he barely resembled a human being, with rolls upon rolls of blubbery tissue spreading across the contoured bed.
“Come on in, girl,” he beckoned with an inviting gesture as his pink-irised eyes never left the array of screens above him. “I’d get up, but…you know,” he said with a chuckle which saw the mass of flesh that was his body jiggle in chaotic waves of blubber.
“Who are you?” Masozi asked as she took a few steps forward. It became increasingly clear to her that much of the bed’s complicated technology was designed to prolong the man’s life, as each of his limbs had a handful of tubes—and even some wires—running into access ports built into his skin. “Oh,” she said when she remembered the item Jericho had given her, “Je…that is, our friend, wanted me to give this to you.”
“It’s a’ight; he actually is named Jericho, and I be Wladimir,” he said, his voice taking on the former, odd accent with which Masozi was completely unfamiliar. He accepted the small parcel from her in his thick, surprisingly smooth-skinned fingers, and began to open it before tilting his many-chinned head toward the wall. “’Fraid I got somethin’ to show you, babe.”
The wall comprised of a hundred thirty six individual display screens lit up in unison, and a series of images began to populate the screens individually. She moved closer so she could examine them and felt her stomach tighten at what she saw.
Agent Hugo Stiglitz, wearing his agency’s all-black, armored bodyglove, entered her apartment building through a service entrance after he appeared to successfully override the building’s security protocols. That was less than surprising, given the fact that he was an independent agent of the Interplanetary Investigative Unit.
He’s supposedly an IIU Agent, she reminded herself, for all I know, he’s the terrorist.
The video replayed itself in a continuous loop, so she looked at another one and saw Agent Stiglitz kill Tom—the maintenance man who had been pathetically bad in bed—with a sequence of far-too-quick maneuvers that apparently saw the man’s neck broken while the Agent seemed to hardly break his stride.
Yet another monitor showed Stiglitz tampering with the building’s gas feeds, redirecting some of the gas into the air cycling system.
Still another monitor showed a newsfeed with a video clip showing the explosion at her apartment building. The clip had apparently been recorded via the neighboring building’s continuously operating security cameras.
All of the timestamps looked correct to her, and with each new screen that sprang to life she felt her choler rise ever higher.
Then the images disappeared, to be replaced by a live news feed which spread across the entire bank of monitors, turning them into a single massive display like the marquees on Main Street.
She failed to suppress a gasp as she saw her latest photo—taken just a few weeks earlier at her annual after-dark-ambulation permit’s renewal—with the caption: Disgruntled NLIU Investigator wanted for questioning in connection to recent string of murders, as well as morning bombing of residential complex with 39 confirmed fatalities. Considered Armed and Dangerous.
Before she could wrap her mind around what she was seeing—or even begin to doubt the veracity of the images she was being shown—the screen morphed to show Chief Investigator Afolabi standing at the NLIU official press podium.
“Let me assure the residents of our fair city,” Afolabi gesticulated emphatically, “that we are doing everything in our power to apprehend this dangerous fugitive. Investigator Masozi had a troubled record at the NLIU, and had recently been suspended pending an inquest for professional misconduct. It is my deepest regret that she was able to take out her sick frustrations on the very people who depended on her for protection. She has betrayed our trust,” he said darkly, “and I intend to bring her to justice for that betrayal by any means necessary.”
Before Masozi could protest, the video feed shifted again. It began showing the same footage as before when Agent Stiglitz murdered Tom, the maintenance man, with little apparent effort.
But, to Masozi’s horror, Stiglitz’s image in the video had been replaced with her own and she watched as ‘she’ murdered the maintenance worker. The camera froze on a close-up of her face, and even Masozi felt a chill run down her spine at the cold, merciless look she saw in the false image’s eyes.
The feed flipped back to Afolabi at the podium, trying to silence the cacophony of the press corps as they fought to get their questions heard. “Let me make this as simple as possible,” the Chief of the NLIU said with iron threaded through his voice. He gripped the edges of the podium and swept the press with his steely gaze, “Investigator Masozi has shown to be capable of anything—including sexual coercion, which is how we believe she was able to gain access to the apartment building’s maintenance locker. She is to be considered New Lincoln’s Public Enemy Number One: all armed units are authorized to use deadly force when apprehending this fugitive. I’m going to personally oversee this manhunt, so I’m afraid there will be no more time for questions.”
With that, the feed went dark and Masozi felt her knees begin to buckle. She steadied herself by leaning against the wall as a wave of anxiety washed over her. A loud, crackling noise came from the middle of the room and she looked dully toward the morbidly obese man lying on the bed where the sound originated.
“Looks to me like you’d best be settlin’ in for a little cruise, Investigator,” he said in his maddeningly inconsistent accent and dialect as he chewed loudly on something crunchy. He held up a plastic bag filled with cheap, salted grain wafers called ‘Snap-itz,’ which she recognized only from the perpetual adverts lining the city’s streets. “Snap-it?” he offered cheerfully.
Chapter VIII: A Pit Stop—and Don’t Forget the Pasta!
The pain in Jericho’s broken left arm had become nearly unbearable. It was not that it would have physically prevented him from going about his daily activities, but he knew that in order to execute his last New Lincoln contract he would require a degree of composure that would be problematic to attain with a broken arm.
But he had nearly run out of money after diverting the last of the Cantwell fund to saving Investigator Masozi’s life—an investment which Jericho dearly hoped would pay dividends, both in the near and not-so-near futures.
A quick-knitting bone repair kit would have been easy to purchase, and would only cost a fraction of the money he had saved from the Cantwell contract. Spending that money to repair a wound—even a wound sustained during the execution of a wholly separate contract—would have even been a defensible expenditure if the issue was ever brought into the light.
But that was one of the many reasons Jericho kept his contract funding far, far below the average T.E. estimate. It gave him greater latitude for dispersing those funds, and on average his contracts cost only thirty percent that of his fellow Adjusters. Too many Adjusters had fallen victim to the trap of gathering more financial resources than a job required and subsequently pocketing the funds. While not exactly illegal, if deemed guilty of this by his or her fellow Adjusters it would make it essentially impossible to receive the opportunity for future Adjustments.
“Hey there, handsome,” he heard a woman’s voice interrupt his thoughts through the com-link built into his helmet. A small, familiar image appeared at the edge of his helmet’s internal displays—displays which monitored his hover-bike’s engine status, showed a three-dimensional overlay of the cityscape and his location within it, and basically whatever else he desired to call up. “I heard you have a booboo,” the image said as she laced her fingers beneath her virtual chin and batted her eyes suggestively, “want me to make it better?”
“I could use a bone-knitter, Eve,” he said shortly. He was always discomforted by interacting with Benton’s carefully-constructed ‘companion,’ even though he knew he should view ‘her’ like he
viewed any other tool or device which could benefit him in the course of his duties.
“I might have something better…” she purred.
“Not now, Eve,” he snapped before taking a deep breath, “I just need the knitter but I’m short on funds.”
“I could always find one for you,” she said with a wink. “It’d be our little secret.”
“No, Eve,” he replied through gritted teeth. He had, on occasion, ‘acquired’ materials vital to his completion of a mission but he had never forgiven himself for it. Once, he had been bleeding so profusely that he had been forced to hold a pharmacist at gun-point to acquire the necessary auto-suture kit and coagulants. He had never forgotten the look in the man’s eyes as he’d pleaded on behalf of his three daughters’ futures, and Jericho had promised himself that he would never do that again.
“You’re no fun,” she pouted before sighing loudly, “I suppose I could point you to a clinic I know of…”
“No,” he said sharply as he pulled the bike over to the side of the road. He was finding it difficult to concentrate, and suspected that diminished blood volume was playing a part in his mental status in addition to the pain from his broken arm. “I can’t be logged into the system.”
Even covered her mouth with her dainty fingers and giggled briefly. “No, no, silly,” she said playfully, “not that kind of clinic. They don’t keep records where I’m sending you—at least, not for humans.”
He considered her offer and, in spite of his reservations, nodded grudgingly. “Give me the coordinates.”
Eve’s image blew a kiss, causing a lip-shaped icon to leave her fingers and move seamlessly over to his primary display. The disembodied lips merged with the cityscape on a secondary display, and a path was then clearly indicated on the virtual grid. While detouring to the indicated destination would take him nearly an hour out of his way, he knew that he was out of options. He still had time for his final contract even with the delay, so he logged the path in his helmet’s data link.
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