Checking Out- The Complete Trilogy

by T W M Ashford

  ‘Yes, exactly that. Out of my control. If this were my hotel I’d already have spoken to me by now. Viola, what is that in your hand?’

  Viola stopped chewing and smiled. She unclenched her fist.

  ‘Tuna roll,’ she said, popping another one into her mouth. ‘Palmed it from that tray over there.’

  ‘Heads up,’ said Wesker, nodding towards the door marked as private behind the desk. ‘Your friend’s coming.’

  A small, slight man in a well-brushed, well-fitting suit emerged from the back room. His hair was cut short and slicked to the side, like Pierre’s. He wore a pair of small, circular glasses. He smiled a beaming smile at Pierre, and then hurried around the side of the reception desk. Pierre left the front of the queue to meet him.

  ‘So lovely to meet you,’ said the man, bowing quickly. Pierre found himself mirroring this action without meaning to. The man’s charm was contagious. ‘Sorry, my colleague didn’t quite catch your name.’

  ‘Pierre,’ he replied, shaking the man’s hand. ‘Just Pierre.’

  ‘Well good evening, Pierre,’ beamed the concierge. ‘My name is Mr. Kim. It’s not my real name, of course. But it’s what my friends call me. Everybody else, too. To which branch do you belong, may I ask?’

  ‘London,’ replied Pierre. ‘Le Petit Monde. This guy,’ he added, gesturing towards Wesker, ‘works the bar there. And this here’s Viola. She’s an, erm… guest.’

  ‘Lovely, quite lovely,’ said Mr. Kim, taking them all in. ‘I’ve never had the chance to visit London. A pity. Perhaps I shall have to drop in next time I take a vacation. So how may I help you, lady and gentlemen?’

  Pierre felt himself visibly squirm. The sensation wasn’t wholly unlike being a water balloon looking out from the inside of a tumbling slinky whilst being boiled under the glare of a heat lamp. The last thing he wanted that day was to have to explain to somebody - particularly a somebody who was quite clearly more responsible and trusted by the Council of Keys than himself - that he’d accidentally-on-purpose shoved a nosey hotel inspector through a portal and into the arms of the criminal enterprise operating within this nice man’s city.

  He was a nice man, though. He didn’t want to have to lie to him.

  ‘We were wondering if you could give us a quick rundown on the local geography,’ he said, speaking as if choosing the wrong word would have the same repercussion as taking the wrong step in a minefield. ‘Viola and I were doing some, erm, spring cleaning, when by mistake I knocked a, erm, a…’

  ‘A feather duster,’ suggested Viola, barely managing to suppress a smirk.

  ‘Yes, a feather duster,’ continued Pierre, trying hard not to talk through gritted teeth. ‘I accidentally knocked a feather duster through an open doorway. Very silly of me. From what I could tell it rolled into a warehouse in the Akihabara district, but I must have left a window open because a breeze on our end slammed the door shut before I could tiptoe through and grab it. It sounds daft but I don’t want any loose ends, you know?’

  ‘Ah,’ laughed Mr. Kim. ‘I think I understand. A “feather duster,” of course,’ he added, even going so far as to make the quotation marks with his fingers. ‘But no warehouses are springing to mind, unfortunately. Tell you what. Come upstairs to the Jūyō Lounge with me, and you can have a rummage through my brains.’

  Pierre sucked air in through his teeth. He could see Wesker tapping at his watch again.

  ‘I mean, I’d really love to,’ he said, ‘but we’re running behind schedule as it is…’

  ‘And let’s look into getting some food inside your friends,’ said Mr. Kim, clapping his hands. ‘They look absolutely famished.’

  Wesker stopped tapping and raised an intrigued eyebrow. Viola’s grin stretched from ear to ear.

  Pierre sighed and gave up.

  ‘Lead the way,’ he said, with a plastic smile.

  Pierre forced himself to admit it, even if the admission was only to himself. The Jūyō Lounge was much nicer than anything of which Le Petit Monde could boast.

  It was big, for one thing. Pierre didn’t know how the hotel managed it. From the outside, it couldn’t have been even a quarter the size of the London branch. His branch. And yet on the sixth floor was a lounge at least as wide as the entire floor should have been, if not more. A baker’s dozen of dozens milled and mingled. There was a bottomless bar stocked with more bottles of liquor than even a dehydrated Mr. Boyle could have got through, all laid out like a glass city on top of a table that was probably more expensive than the average family car.

  There was a buffet, too. Pierre could spot tiny cubes of cheesecake and little sausages on sticks.

  ‘Help yourself,’ said Mr. Kim, following Pierre’s eyeline. Viola was off like a guard dog after a postman, piling food onto a small, delicate plate as if otherwise it might slither off to hide under a table somewhere. Wesker followed in a slightly more dignified manner. Pierre smiled but stayed seated.

  ‘This is the recreational area for our more… travelled guests,’ said Mr. Kim, beckoning for one of the lingering waiters to bring over a bottle of sparkling wine. ‘Of course, I’m sure a man of your experience noticed the diversity as soon as we walked in.’

  He sure had. It was like a menagerie of time gone by in there. Modern businessmen rubbed shoulders with silver-clad stockbrokers from the century ahead, whilst a tribe of Norse oarsmen sat around a coffee table sharing a pitcher of mead. Tall men as thin as lamp-posts, as white as winter and as bald as billiard balls, stood in a circle of three, each swilling a glass of red wine and muttering in a language a thousand years forgotten. They wore heavy black eyeliner and white cloaks that draped the lounge’s carpet. Around their necks hung bronze medallions. Something decidedly non-human-shaped stood hunched over in the corner by itself, shrouded in a heavy, dusty brown shawl. And…

  ‘That bartender is serving a Glardon General,’ said Wesker, returning to the ring of cosy, red armchairs in which Pierre and Mr. Kim sat, ‘and he’s doing it while smiling!’

  ‘Yes, it’s a very, erm, eclectic mix you have here,’ said Pierre, as the waiter came back with a tray bearing a bottle and four champagne flutes. ‘Don’t you have a lot of trouble with the… regulars?’

  ‘No, not at all,’ replied Mr. Kim, dismissing his employee with a smile and pouring the sparkling wine himself. He did so impeccably, Pierre noticed. ‘Our travellers always adhere to the hotel’s policy of bi-universal segregation. Those who come to us via the ‘doors’ must remain in their rooms or this lounge. Unless they have a satisfactory disguise, of course,’ he added. ‘Then they’re free to move about as they please. We wouldn’t want any of our regular guests getting unsettled now, would we?’

  Something slithered across the floor behind him.

  ‘No, of course not,’ mumbled Pierre, taking the flute that was being offered to him.

  It wasn’t that Pierre didn’t like Mr. Kim. It was just that Mr. Kim was so very clearly brilliant at his job, and that made Pierre uncomfortable. Half of the species and cultures present in the lounge were on Le Petit Monde’s no-travel list - a list he’d thought had applied to all the hotels under the management of the Council of Keys.

  It appeared that the Council had even less trust in him than he thought.

  Not the best time to have misplaced an inspector, then.

  ‘So, this warehouse you saw,’ continued Mr. Kim, toasting their little group (sans Viola, who was still darting in and out of the buffet like a conga eel slipping through holes in a coral reef). Pierre found himself mirroring Mr. Kim again, not wishing to offend. The man was so damn pleasant he was making Pierre polite, too. ‘I don’t suppose you have any more details I can work with?’

  Pierre thought back to the half-dozen gangsters, the shell-shocked inspector and the suspicious stain caked onto the concrete floor.

  ‘There was a lot of bright, waxy lighting?’ he offered.

  ‘Sounds like a warehouse to me.’

  ‘Very tall ceilings,’
he suggested. ‘Probably one and a half storeys… maybe two storeys in height?’

  ‘You’re sure narrowing it down, aren’t you?’

  Pierre closed his eyes and tried to recall some of the smaller details within his memory, ones which weren’t a load of sidearms being pointed in his direction. At some point before he opened them again Viola returned to her seat, carrying a plate of finger-food piled so high into a mountain that Pierre could have sworn he saw dwarfs mining away in it.

  ‘There was another set of doors to the left,’ he managed. ‘The sort of doors that flap back and forth, as if designed for people who’ll have to push them open with their backs because their hands are full. There were a lot of cardboard boxes and plastic crates, though they were all stacked up against the walls so there was plenty of space in the middle of the hall. There was a wooden chair, though I’m not sure if that helps much. The ceiling was… concrete, not tin. As if there were more floors above. I think there was twinkly music coming from somewhere… not the warehouse itself, but somewhere nearby… and…’

  ‘And?’ prompted Mr. Kim.

  ‘And there were these great big lumps in the far corner, covered with what looked like bed sheets,’ he finished. ‘Odd, wonky, geometric shapes that were wider at their bottom than at their top. I’m guessing they were made of some kind of metal. The sheet on one of them had slipped off enough that I could make out some writing underneath. I’ll be damned if I remember what that writing was, though. Something… something like… Alley Puncher? Road Bully?’

  Mr. Kim smiled and snapped his fingers.

  ‘I think I know where it is your “feather duster” went,’ he laughed. ‘You might have even passed it on your way here. Did you come via the Main Street?’

  ‘The one with all the lights and television screens and curious posters?’ asked Viola, speaking out the side of her mouth. The rest of it was full of tiramisu. ‘Yeah, we came that way.’

  ‘Well the main attraction of that street, if you didn’t notice, is the arcades. Them and the vertical superstores, I guess. Every other building is a multi-storey gaming heaven. You can find everything there, from claw-crane grabbing machines and coin slots to retro classics and virtual reality experiences. Maybe that was the twinkly music you heard off in the background. It certainly goes some way to explain why there were arcade cabinets in that warehouse you saw, though like I said, this is a popular area for that sort of thing.’

  Mr. Kim took another sip from his flute and then relaxed further into his armchair.

  ‘There’s probably only one place big enough to warrant a warehouse of the size you’re talking about,’ he said after a moment’s consideration. ‘Most of the machines stay where they’re put on the arcade floor until they break down, you see. Then they get fixed. Pretty much any game can be popular around here. I’ve not been there myself, mind, but you might want to check out Press Start Tokyo. That’s probably as much use as I can be to you, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Press Start Tokyo?’ repeated Pierre, rising from his chair. He briefly and erratically pumped Mr. Kim’s hand up and down. Wesker left his plate on the coffee table and did the same. ‘No, that’s fantastic! Come on, Viola. Stop eating and let’s get this over with.’

  ‘Off so soon?’ asked Mr. Kim, looking bemused as he watched Pierre and Wesker hurriedly depart. ‘Are you sure you haven’t got time for a tour?’

  Viola looked up, having paid the conversation considerably less attention than she had her plate. The mountain of food had already been reduced down to a small hill. She wiped her mouth with a napkin and tossed it aside.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked Wesker, catching up to him once she’d downed the rest of her sparkling wine. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘We’re going to the arcades,’ said Wesker, following Pierre out through the lounge doors and towards the hotel elevators. ‘Whatever the hell that is.’

  Chapter Seven

  At least the rain had stopped. The smell of wet tarmac fought with the odour of pork ramen wafting towards them from the hole-in-the-wall vendor down the street. Water gurgled into drains and gathered in thick puddles. The moon looked down from a night sky that had only recently begun to shift its clouds.

  ‘Which way, boss?’ asked Wesker, stepping out into the cooling evening air. The front doors of the hotel closed and their over-door heater was cut off from them. ‘Can’t say I’d remember the way back from here.’

  ‘Oh man, I can’t wait,’ said Viola, grinning. ‘Let’s go show these Yakuza what a real criminal looks like.’

  She hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her trousers and Pierre caught sight of an old-fashioned handgun.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ he shouted. Somebody down the street almost dropped their bowl of noodles in surprise. ‘No guns, Viola! We go in, we grab the inspector, and we get out - nothing more. Put that thing away before somebody sees it, for crying out loud!’

  Viola grumbled and hid the gun with her jacket.

  Pierre glanced at his watch out of habit. It was useless pretty much anywhere but home, of course. Whenever he travelled to another universe, his actions there had no impact on the space-time fabric of his own. And even if it did, or if he were in his own universe, it would make little difference. No matter how long he stayed somewhere, no matter how far the hands on that clock turned, he could always travel back to the exact same moment he’d left. Or before, if he chose to.

  Still, just glancing at his watch told him everything he needed to know. He was in serious risk of running out of time.

  ‘It’ll take too long to go all the way around again,’ he said, knotting his fingers together so much that his hands looked as if they were doing the tango. ‘We might have to try our luck cutting through the market.’

  ‘I thought you said it was like a labyrinth?’ said Wesker. ‘That we’d get lost trying to find the other side?’

  They looked over at the other side of the street. There were all manner of alleys and crooked roads spreading out like roots from an old and gnarly tree. Some of them were so narrow it would have been difficult to walk in anything but single file; none were wide enough for a car to pass down without clipping off its wing mirrors, that was for sure. There were dozens of wires and cables hanging over the low tin rooftops, and the only light came from the neon signs sticking out from the craggy walls.

  ‘We could just use the keys,’ suggested Viola, shrugging. ‘I mean, we know where we’re going now, don’t we?’

  Pierre shook his head. ‘But none of us have ever been to the arcade before. We could still come out someplace else and be just as lost as when we first got here.’

  ‘We might be closer though. I can’t imagine it would be hard to get our bearings once we’re near.’

  They continued to look at the lanes and backstreet passages.

  ‘We’re going to take our chances going through the market,’ said Wesker, suddenly. He crossed the street and beckoned for Pierre and Viola to follow. ‘Come on. If we stand out here deliberating all night we’ll miss our window for sure.’

  Viola shrugged at Pierre again, and then they traipsed through the puddles after him.

  They chose to take the alleyway closest to the middle; it was the least cramped and most illuminated. Generators on the walls of the ramshackle buildings to either side of them hummed and grumbled. Pigeons perched on the spluttering gutters and cooed at the trio as they passed. What rain remained floating in the air made the bright lights streak across their vision in thick brush strokes. The shadows pooled as much as the water.

  ‘These are all bars,’ said Viola, as they passed door after door. She was peering into the windows of some of them. ‘But they’re tiny. Like, this one only has space for three people. And one of them’s the bartender!’

  Pierre poked his head into the open door of the bar across the alley from him. Viola was right - they were tiny. This one was modelled after an Irish pub, complete with stereotype-oblivious shamrock hanging above the bar
. The whole place was about two metres wide and three deep. There was a cassette player singing sorrowful folk tunes and two old men - Westerners, at a glance - were sat on wooden stools, nursing pints. Neither of them looked up at Pierre’s intrusion.

  ‘There’s them cartoons again,’ sighed Viola, disapprovingly. She was peering through the window of the next bar along. Six dozen or more pairs of enormous anime eyes stared back. ‘They’ve got posters of them plastered up like bloody wallpaper!’

  Pierre squeezed past a yellow sandwich board offering him a range of things he didn’t understand, and took a look into the next bar along. It had almost as many themes as it did seats - Heavy Metal and Horror Movies. Very niche, he thought. Most of the window embedded in the top half of the front door had been painted black, and he didn’t fancy knocking.

  ‘I thought you said this place was a maze,’ said Wesker, pushing forwards. Pierre couldn’t tell if Wesker was impressed or disappointed by the hundreds of micro-bars and pocket-sized pubs around them. His moustache was giving nothing away. ‘Doesn’t seem all that tricky to navigate. Everything’s built in straight lines.’

  ‘That’s because this isn’t the market,’ replied Pierre, picking up his pace as well. ‘Not yet, at least. The market comes after, I think.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Viola, coming up behind. ‘That place back there was selling tiny wooden racehorses. Come on, let’s get a move on. This place is confusing me, and that’s saying something.’

  The three of them swapped their walk for a jog, their footsteps splashing through the cramped, deserted alleyway. Passing the last of the bars, Pierre wondered how many of them counted Chiisana Sekai’s more unusual guests amongst their regulars. There sure were a lot of closed doors, and a lot of very specific tastes.

  By the lane’s end it had tapered to such a narrow point that they had to squeeze themselves sideways between the shanty buildings leaning over from either side. Pierre almost lost a button off the front of his uniform. Steam was rising from a vent in the rickety lane beyond, obscuring the way ahead. A cat mewed somewhere in the darkness; Pierre hoped that meant there weren’t any rats about. He followed Wesker through the steam, pushing aside a thin metal fence and inhaling the creeping scent of fish.