by Simon Archer
“That’s our block!” I exclaimed, my heart racing in my chest. “Is there a mole at the company?” My mind whirred, trying to think who it could be. Anyone, really. Maybe I was right to have been cautious with Clem and Lin after all.
“No, I don’t think so,” he said, to my relief, and my heart calmed down a bit. “When you look closely, you see that the dots for recent calls are all at the other binding corps. Many of them after the Parliament proceedings this morning.”
“Many? You mean there’s more?” I asked.
Malthe nodded grimly. “Yeah, it looks like whoever’s making these calls has been in contact with the other corps for a long time. Like a really long time. Not regularly, mind you, but there’s a pattern dating back decades, and the calls have really picked up in frequency the last few months.”
“What about these dots?” I asked, pointing at a cluster on the other side of the block we were looking at. “Isn’t that TelCorp?”
“Yeah, but all of these are dated before we took over,” Malthe said. “So no mole, at least not one that’s communicating with these people using this method. The rest are dated before Elias Berg died, including one that morning you said he kind of freaked out on everyone at the office.”
“Oh yeah, that was crazy,” I said, remembering how Elias had stuck his head out of his office door, looking uncharacteristically disheveled, and screamed at everyone, halting all binding business at the company.
“So basically, whoever these people are, they’re communicating with the other binding corps and with Parliament,” Malthe summarized. “And before we took over, they were communicating with TelCorp, too.”
“I think it’s probably safe to assume that the members of Parliament didn’t know about these people before this morning,” I said, thinking carefully. “Maybe the ones who were in Parliament before this session did, but we replaced most of them. But this new crop, they all looked so surprised and scared this morning. I can’t imagine that they knew anything beforehand. It was such a sharp contrast with their behavior the night before.”
“That assessment would line up with the calls themselves,” Malthe said, nodding slowly. He did something to the computer, and the dots on the map changed.
“What did you just do?” I asked, pointing at the map.
“I looked back at the calls made during the two years the last Parliament was in session,” he explained, pointing to some numbers in the top right corner of the screen. “See these here? Those are the dates. Now, if you look closely at all these dots, they’re still concentrated in Parliament in this area. The calls themselves are just more spread out over time.” He zoomed back in on the block containing Parliament.
“So the old reps did know,” I said. “Is there any indication the new ones did, too?”
“Let’s see,” Malthe said, fiddling with the map some more until it shifted again, to show only a small smattering of red dots in the Parliament building. “These are the calls made in the weeks between the old Parliament leaving and the new one creating a government. Looks like there are only a few dots…. and yes, just like you suspected, they’re concentrated in the office areas of the members who were re-elected.” Malthe squinted to look more closely at the dots and locate the individual members’ offices.
“Which are the ones who weren’t on board with us in the first place.” Relief flowed through me that the Prime Minister and the others were innocent, at least until this morning. “They must’ve been threatened somehow.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Malthe agreed. “But how? What leverage could these people have over the members that TelCorp doesn’t?”
“That’s an excellent question,” I said, biting my lower lip as I thought this over. “I’m not sure, but I don’t really want to find out. I mean, we need to find out. But I’m really not looking forward to it. It must be bad to lead to all this.”
“Exactly.” Malthe shot me a nervous look. “Are you sure you want to go down into the tunnels, boss? We have no idea what you could run into down there.”
“I know,” I said, setting my mouth in a firm line, “but I have to go. We have to find what’s going on down there. We don’t even know that we’re right about the tunnels yet. Speaking of which, what about where the calls are coming from? Does that map tell us anything about that?”
“No,” Malthe said, shaking his head. “Though the absence of the information may be information in and of itself.”
“How?” I asked, turning back to the map.
“Well, when I switch to the inputs, where the calls are supposed to be coming from, that is, the whole thing just goes blank,” Malthe explained, demonstrating this on the computer. Sure enough, all the red dots disappeared, not to be replaced.
“So if it was anywhere in the city, we’d be able to see it,” I reasoned, following his line of thought. “Unless there’s something disrupting the signal. Namely, some kind of barrier.”
Malthe nodded.
“Like the ground,” I said, realization dawning over me.
“My thoughts exactly,” Malthe said. “So basically, either these calls are being made from off the island, or they’re originating somewhere on the island that we can’t see on the map.”
“Have you looked at the Void at all?” I asked, remembering the foxgirl internment camp turned slimeball prison located on a remote island off the coast that we’d only recently discovered existed. “We think these people used to run that, too.”
“Yeah, I looked there, too,” Malthe said, zooming out on the map and narrowing in on the smaller island. “There’s nothing unless there are tunnels under there, too.”
“I can’t imagine that happening…” I said, my voice trailing off as I considered this. “Although, I couldn’t imagine any of this happening just a day ago.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” Malthe said. “What else do you know about these tunnels? Anything?”
“I don’t remember much.” I wracked my brain to remember what I could about the tunnels from school. “Just that they used to be all over the city, and now they’re abandoned. I don’t think the entrances are sealed or anything.”
“I’ve never seen an entrance, though,” Malthe said, “or anything that I think could be one.”
“Yeah, I think they built over them since they weren’t used anymore…” I said, still not entirely sure of myself. Then, as I gazed at the map still on Malthe’s computer screen, I thought of another question. “What about before Elias came along? Before he was CEO, I mean.” I pointed at the map.
“What d’you mean?” Malthe asked, giving me a confused look.
“I mean the calls,” I clarified. “How far do they date back?”
“Oh.” Malthe scratched his head and peered at the map as well now. “I didn’t get a chance to look back that far. Let me see.” He pulled the computer closer to him and typed furiously on the keyboard. I craned my neck to see it, but the map was just a blur of constantly changing images now. Finally, he returned the screen to its original position and showed it to me.
“Here, this is the year before your dad died,” he said. “I wasn’t sure it would go back this far, but here we go.” He pointed at the screen. Sure enough, there were red dots in this timeframe as well, but not nearly as many.
“That’s all TelCorp,” I said, narrowing my eyes at the single cluster of dots in Termina’s financial district. “I don’t see any others.”
Malthe zoomed in on the region. “Yeah, that’s true. Whoever our guy or gal is, looks like they were only in contact with someone… or someones, I guess… at TelCorp.”
“Zoom in closer,” I instructed. “Can we see where in the building the calls were placed, like with Parliament?”
Malthe obliged, and zeroed in on the second-highest floor, the one right below the CEO and bindings offices, as well as the tunnel to the board room.
“That’s where my office is,” Malthe said, and he was right, not that he used it much himself. Every member of the board ha
d an office on that floor except the CEO, who was on the top floor.
“Yeah, that’s where Elias’s office was at the time, too, though I’m not sure which one he was in,” I mused. “Looks like the dots are all concentrated in one area, though.”
“Yep, so just the one murderous, money-crazed madman then,” Malthe said with a false cheeriness.
“I guess so,” I said. “Did any others at TelCorp start getting calls later?”
Malthe shook his head. “I don’t think so. Let me check.” He hacked away on the keyboard again for a few moments.
“Doesn’t look like it,” he said when he finished. “This is all the calls at TelCorp up until we took over. All on the top floor after Elias took over.”
“Good,” I said, a bit relieved that my dad never had anything to do with these people. “So when did it start?”
“When did what start?” Malthe asked.
“The calls,” I clarified. “When was the first one placed?”
“Hmm,” he muttered, pursing his lips together. “Let me see what I can do.”
He fiddled with the computer for quite some time now. The others would be wondering what I was up to, though I doubted anyone really bought that I just came up to grab see if Malthe wanted some water. Finally, Malthe pushed the map back over so we both could see it.
“I think this is the first call,” he said. I looked up at the numbers in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, and my mouth fell open.
“That’s ten years before I was even born,” I said, shocked. “They’ve almost been around longer than TelCorp has.”
“I guess so,” Malthe said, running a hand nervously through his hair. “What d’you reckon that’s about? What does it mean?”
“It means these people are playing the long game,” I said grimly. “Where are these dots going, anyway? That doesn’t look like TelCorp.”
“There are just a few scattered throughout the whole city,” Malthe said. “None in the financial district yet. Those dots show up in a couple of years.” To demonstrate, he changed the dates, and the dots changed, moving back to TelCorp.
“That looks like Elias, too,” I said. “Same office.”
“Must’ve been when they recruited him or something,” Malthe mused. “I dunno. They don’t start dealing with the other binding corps until after your pops died.”
“You mean after Elias murdered him,” I corrected. Then something else occurred to me. “Unless… unless it wasn’t Elias after all….” My voice trailed off again as I mulled this over.
“What d’you mean?” Malthe asked. “He admitted to poisoning him back at Serenity General, didn’t he?”
“Yeah, he did,” I said, nodding slowly as I continued to think hard on this. “He told us right before we killed him, but maybe he was disingenuous. Maybe he did administer the poison, technically, but I am starting to think that it wasn’t his idea.”
“You think these people were behind it all now?” Malthe asked. “Behind Elias taking over TelCorp?”
“I mean, Elias was afraid of them.” I thought back to that morning he had totally lost it. Then I pointed to the map again. “Can you look at the night my dad died?”
Malthe nodded and changed the dates again.
“Two calls, one on the board offices floor and one on the top floor in the CEO’s office,” he said, squinting at the little dots. “The first was timestamped in the morning and the second late at night.”
“After he killed my dad,” I said sourly. “Elias must have moved into his office pretty damn quick.”
“Looks like it,” Malthe said.
“Also looks like these people had something to do with it all, doesn’t it?” I asked.
“How so?” Malthe asked. “Because of the calls?”
“I mean, yeah,” I said. “Think about it, man. They call the day he dies and then immediately call again right after he does, and Elias takes the call in his fucking office. It sure seems like they orchestrated the whole thing.”
“I guess that would also explain the secret room in the morgue,” Malthe thought aloud. “At Serenity General, I mean.”
“How?” I asked. “Because they keep physical records in addition to the digital ones?”
“That’s part of it. It would be in line with their M.O. of staying off the grid,” Malthe agreed. “But also, why would the hospital hide something like that from Elias Berg if they were answering to him and TelCorp? Seems like an unnecessary risk.”
“That’s right,” I said, growing excited again. “He didn’t know about that place either, did he? And then he killed the hospital director because he was so pissed off about it.”
Malthe shuddered at the mention of this. We’d all seen the crumpled up body bag in the corner of the room. “Ugh, don’t remind me,” he said, scrunching up his face as if he’d smelled something particularly nasty.
“Right, and then no one else at the hospital seemed to know a damn thing about it,” I said, ignoring Malthe’s reaction. “So, can we see any calls to Serenity General around that time?”
“Let me see,” Malthe said, biting his lip as he perused through the map settings again. “Yep, it looks like there’ve been occasional calls going into Serenity General since shortly before your pops died. There was a flurry of calls the day we killed Elias, then nothing at all since.”
“Okay, so it was probably just the director then, right? No one else at the hospital?” I asked. Malthe nodded.
“I would guess so,” he said. “All the calls went to the same general area, which must be his office. That would explain why there hasn’t been any contact since. There’s a new director and no need for further cover-up.”
I nodded curtly. “Good. That’s something, at least. Where else in the city do these calls tend to go?”
“Not much elsewhere,” Malthe said. “A smattering of places you might expect. TelCorp, the other binding corps, Serenity General, Parliament, and then a few other places where there are concentrations of organized crime and industry in the city, like major nightclub conglomerates, the brawling centers, stuff like that.”
“So they have contacts all over the place,” I said.
“But few and far between,” Malthe corrected. “It looks like they just stay in occasional touch with a smattering of key figures in all areas of the city, geographically and economically. Mostly on the north side.”
“And in addition to that, they have employees they communicate with using coded language,” I said.
Malthe nodded before continuing. “Right, but I can’t make heads or tails of that. I’m only able to access the two employees we know of, both of whom are dead, and that’s not a lot to go on to crack any code. Well, one’s dead, and the other might as well be, that is.”
“Yeah, that is a roadblock,” I said, frowning. “I wish we could find Beaufort, though I guess he wouldn’t be much good to us since he’s a vegetable. Still, maybe I could look into his soul again and see what I could find.”
“That would be nice,” Malthe said, “but I think we should focus on other priorities, like finding these tunnels and figuring out what we’re gonna do when we get there.”
“When I get there,” I corrected him. “There’s no way I’m letting any of you guys go down there with me. Too much of a risk.”
“That’s fair,” Malthe said. “I’ll try to rig up an earpiece for you on one of the other radio frequencies that might work underground so we can communicate.”
“Awesome,” I said, grinning. “How long do you think that’ll take?”
Malthe shrugged. “Not long. I have all the parts, and now, I know what frequencies and methods work down there. Shouldn’t be more than an hour. I’ll also try and figure out where an entrance is.”
“You’re a gem, Malthe,” I said, rising from my crouch and clapping him on the shoulder.
“Just earning my keep, boss,” he grinned back.
“I should get back downstairs. They’ll be wondering what I’m u
p to up here,” I said, turning to leave. “Oh, before I forget, do you want any food or water or anything?”
“I’d take an energy drink,” Malthe said.
“An energy drink?” I repeated flatly. “It’s nearly ten at night.”
He shrugged. “So?”
“Okay,” I said, turning to leave and shaking my head. Malthe really was an odd duck.
I made my way down to the kitchen and poured some water for everyone before finding a massive energy drink in the fridge for Malthe. I carried the waters into the main room where everyone was still watching the holonews with expressions of morbid curiosity on their faces.
“Sorry I took so long,” I said as I placed the waters in front of my friends on a nearby coffee table.
“Malthe figure out anything interesting?” Lin asked, and Clem turned to watch me carefully.
“Not really,” I said dismissively. “We were just talking.”
Lin looked disappointed, but Clem narrowed his eyes at me again. For a second, I thought he might interrupt, but he didn’t.
“Anything interesting happen while I was up there?” I gestured in the direction of the holovision.
“The other binding corps are joining together to make a new company,” Kinley said grimly, and my heart sank.
“What?” I asked, staring open-mouthed at the screen. Sure enough, the headlines read that what they said was true, and images of the CEO’s of the five other major bindings corps were splashed across the screen. Every single one of them, according to Malthe’s data, was in contact with these strange, off-the-grid people.
“They were all just on the show,” Cindra explained, her voice forlorn. “They banded together to try to take TelCorp’s business.”
“It sort of makes sense when you think about it,” Kira said. “The other companies can’t compete with us on their own. They need some kind of alliance like this to even have a chance.”
“Well yeah, we’ve always known that,” I said, thinking back to the many times Elias had laughed at the other CEO’s stupidity with their inability to figure this out. “But I never thought that they would do it. They’d never be able to decide what to name it, who was in charge. They were all too afraid of their company getting submerged by one of the others.”