Scavenger Hunt

by Michaelbrent Collings

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and stepped toward the night deposit slot on the side of the bank.

  “Either way,” Mr. Do-Good said suddenly, “you’re going to live with the consequences. Think carefully on –”

  She didn’t hear the rest. She just heard the heavy, solid sound of the night drop door pulling open. She heard the nearly-as-heavy thud of the first full sleeve of money falling into place. She heard the pregnant slam of the door shutting, and the muffled whisper of the sleeve cascading down the chute in the wall.

  She opened the chute again. Deposited another sleeve. Like the first, it was so full it barely fit in the space provided. But fit it did, and she closed the chute door again and again heard the sound of money falling and then coming to rest.

  She took longer with the third sleeve. She stared at it for a moment, aware the final seconds were counting down. What remained was still a lot of money. Not enough to take St. Jerome’s out of debt completely, but enough to make a dent. Enough to make a difference.

  And not keeping it will make a helluva difference right now. To me.

  She dropped the sleeve into the chute. Thunk, whisper, thud.

  Gone.

  She stayed there, hand on the cold metal handle of the night deposit drop. She waited as the timer froze at two seconds. Waited, waited.

  Finally, she turned and looked at Noelle and Clint. Both young people stared at her with expressions that were strangely wounded. Like they had expected more – expected better from her.

  “What else can I do?” she asked. “What would you do?”

  Clint answered quickly and decisively: “I wouldn’t leave someone who needed help.”

  Elena looked away. As she did, she heard a beep. She went rigid as she realized the sound had come from her neck; from the collar there.

  Do-Good lied. He lied, the bastard, the sonofabitch, the Higginsian asshole, the –

  A click sounded. She felt something drop away and looked down to see the collar she had worn since the start of this misadventure. It lay on the ground. A moment later, the watch on her wrist fell away as well.

  She took a step away from them. Her body clenched, expecting a double-cross – a final bright light and dark sound and then nothing at all. But nothing happened.

  She looked at Clint and Noelle again. “I’ll… I’ll find help for you.” Noelle nodded, and Clint didn’t move at all. But Elena could tell that neither of them believed her. “I promise,” she said. “I’ll help.”

  Then she ran. She ran and ran and ran, and it wasn’t until she was home and showered off the last bits of blood and flesh – and then wiped the shower clean and bleached it and cleaned it a second and third time – that she realized she was safe.

  She was done.

  She could do her work. She could save her lambs.

  She smiled at that. There was always work to do, there were always lambs to save… and perhaps that was what had saved her. Perhaps Mr. Do-Good had sensed the good work she did, and was unwilling to stop it.

  That made sense, cosmically.

  And it didn’t matter, subjectively. She was alive. Alive, and with much work to do and many lambs to save.

  Interlude

  1

  Thaddeus Sterling had made many hard choices in his life. That was part of being a powerful man, in fact. Normal men and women could go to work – or not; could pay attention to everything around them – or not. The effect either way was largely the same.

  But when a man like Tad, a powerful man, didn’t go to work, or didn’t pay attention, people’s lives suffered. His decision to go into business with another company meant a seismic shift that changed the economies of cities and states. His preference to avoid a product meant that product would likely wither and die.

  Hard choices. But Tad was used to them. He had come to relish them, in fact. Hard choices meant something hung in the balance; and that meant that there was something to be gained. Something to win. That was why he took some businesses over and ran them, and others he shattered to bits and sold what was left. It was why he persecuted some in his company when they broke rules and laws, and turned a blind eye to others.

  It had even been why he shoved his wife away so hard when she got between him and his daughter. Hard enough that she hit her head when she fell, and died in the same hospital where his daughter almost did the same.

  All decisions he’d made. And he regretted none of them.

  Now, though, he worried that his hardest choice – and the decision he finally made – had been one of the rare situations where he lost more than he gained.

  He looked at his daughter. She had turned twelve last month, and she was beautiful, even with the huge scar that ran a third of the length of her body. She had always been beautiful and, he knew, always would.

  But there are different kinds of beauty, and hers had changed in the last few years. She had grown cold and aloof. She had stopped speaking to him unless it was absolutely necessary, and now days often passed without her addressing him.

  She was courteous. She never snapped or raged or mocked. But even the staff had grown aware of her apparent derision of her father – of the man who had done everything for her, and had saved her in ways and at costs she could never hope to understand.

  If the staff knew things were bad, then something had to be done.

  Tad hadn’t decided what would happen. It was another hard choice, and those always deserved careful attention, thought, and planning. But he knew that he could not stand for a life in which his daughter, his dearest treasure, hated him. Or at least, for a life in which she obviously hated him.

  Tad wasn’t a monster. He understood that people had feelings, and those feelings couldn’t always be controlled. But he also understood that whether a person felt strongly about something or not, they could always at least act with courtesy. Could always act as if they loved him.

  Tad was a powerful man. He had realized long ago that everyone seems to love a powerful man. He had realized that the act was very rarely backed up by real feeling. And he had, ultimately, realized that he didn’t much care if the act was real or not. He watched people carefully for treachery, certainly, but beyond that he didn’t care if people actually loved him or just pretended to love him. The outcome was the same for him either way.

  He had enjoyed a perfect life, surrounded by smiles and care. And if he had to crush a dream or two, or destroy a life or two, in the course of his business, why… that was bearable, wasn’t it? So long as he came home to the biggest smiles and the greatest love?

  That was why this all hurt so much. Aside from the fact that he had saved her life, he simply did not deserve the silent treatment from anyone. Least of all his Hope.

  She was in her room now – of course she was. It was in another wing from his – she had insisted she be allowed to move to the new room a year ago, and he had relented, more fool he. So when he decided to challenge her about her attitude problem, he had a long walk to get to her room. A long walk in which to brood, and wonder how she could act this way to him when everything he had ever done was for her.

  She was at her computer. No surprise there, either. As she had withdrawn from him and the real, grounded life he represented, she had grown closer to the ephemera of electronic “realities.” Online games, instant messages, shopping. She lived in a world not of beating hearts and pulsing blood, but in the short spaces between ones and zeros.

  She was at her computer again – computers, he corrected; she had added three more monitors to her set-up. A driving game was splashed across them, with the other two computers showing what he assumed were ongoing chats between the racers.

  “Hope,” he said.

  She didn’t turn away from her game. She just pointed at something to her right. “I’ve been learning to draw,” she said.

  Tad looked at the picture. It was on an easel, a simple drawing done in colored pencil. Nothing special, but he knew better than to say such a thing to a child. />
  “Very nice,” he said. “Hope, we have to –”

  “Do you know who it is?”

  Tad blinked. He wasn’t used to people interrupting him. “I assumed….” He looked at the picture a bit closer. “I assumed it was you.”

  “Not me,” she said. On her screen, the car she was driving spun out of control. It took out five other vehicles as it crashed – quite the epic pile-up, and Tad made a mental note to look into the game’s graphics engine to see if it could be exploited for use in a military VR training package one of his companies was putting together.

  The virtual explosion sputtered out. “YOU DIED” splashed itself across the screen in letters of flame.

  Hope turned to him. “You really don’t know who it is?”

  Tad looked harder at the picture. He could see now that his daughter was right: it wasn’t her. Too young, for one thing. The lips a bit thinner, the cheeks hollow with a hunger Hope had never known.

  And that was when he understood: it was Hope. But Hope as she saw herself. As a Cinderella figure, ill-used somehow and so made to suffer unjustly.

  “Look,” he said softly. “I know that you think you’re going through something. I’m not sure what, but obviously it’s important to you.” He gestured at the picture, trying to will her to understand how much he loved her, understood her, and was willing to support her – no matter how ridiculous or foolish she was being.

  Hope looked at the picture she had drawn. The darker reality of herself.

  “I think I’ll be going to school in Europe this year,” she said.

  Tad was not used to hearing people tell him what they were going to do. He was used to hearing people ask him what they should do, and then following his orders. So the next words – whatever they might have been – died in his throat. His mouth twisted. “Will you, indeed?”

  “I need to learn the ins and outs of your business if I’m going to take over someday, right?” she said, and smiled – for the first time in weeks, she smiled.

  The sight warmed Tad. This would all be all right. His life would continue perfect. That was as it should be.

  “I think I can arrange that,” he said.

  “Could you let me, I don’t know, intern or something? I think that the business holdings in Switzerland are fascinating, and I’d love to see more of them.”

  “Computers,” he chuckled. “I should have guessed that was what was going on. You want to take over that arm of the company this year?”

  She blinked, suddenly demure.

  (And a part of him wondered if this wasn’t his reality – if the affection she was showing wasn’t real as so many affections weren’t real; if she was acting falsely to give him what he wanted.

  And a larger part of him didn’t care.)

  “Well,” she said, “I don’t want to take over this year.” She laughed. It was bright. It was happy. And real or not, it was perfect.

  She went. And Tad was happy, because he had given his daughter what she needed – yet again – and could sleep peacefully knowing that he was a good man.

  2

  FBI REPORT FILE FA2017R2

  Appendix C

  Reproduction of comments on partial videos recovered from designate Portobello Road – see Appendix AC for list of videos recovered from Portobello Road, and report sections 21 through 22 in re actions taken to recover videos and reconstruct corrupted files where applicable.

  See also Appendix AD list of possible Portobello Road users who may have commented on applicable videos

  For list of known homicides possibly attributable to Portobello Road users, please see report for File FA 2018R2.

  See also Appendix AD and files referred therein to list of Portobello Road videos, comments, and homicides. N.B.: Hard copies of the files must be relied upon, as all electronic files are subject to corruption by parties unknown. See Internal Report FA 2019R43.

  ---

  Comments to Portobello Road video designated PR19

  ---

  3 COMMENTS - SORT BY

  Name: XXXXXXXXXX

  Comment: This is the first time I’ve felt happy in three years.

  Name: XXXXXXXXXX

  Comment: Four years for me.

  Name: XXXXXXXXXX

  Comment: 7 years, 6 months, 2 days

  FIVE

  1

  “She left. She just… left.”

  Clint could hear his voice, but it sounded distant, like it had followed Elena as she ran away, disappearing around the corner with her and then being swallowed by the night.

  He took a step, wanting to follow her. Knowing even before his collar began to beep that it wasn’t going to happen. She was leaving. Everyone good left, that was just the way things worked.

  Elena’s footsteps lasted longer than she did, the clack-clack-clack of her no-nonsense flats clattering against the pavement and then, like Clint’s voice, like Elena herself, they disappeared.

  Beep.

  A sharp tone, and Clint felt his body clench. He wanted to vomit, and knew that anytime he heard an electronic tone like that for the rest of his life, he would have to struggle against his own gorge. If the rest of his life lasted long.

  Maybe we’ll make it. Maybe we’ll get out.

  Elena did, right?

  Yeah.

  Right.

  He looked at Noelle. She had pulled one hand out of her pocket to better hear whatever was coming, and Clint followed suit.

  “Do-Good says, ALMOST DONE! Next challenge: find the brown horsey and go for a ride. You have five minutes….”

  Noelle looked at him, her brow furrowed. The nineties-style feathering of her hair had fallen out a bit during the night, and Clint was struck by the odd realization that she actually was a very pretty woman. An odd thought, but something about her in that moment was more comforting than anything else he could stand to think of.

  “What does Do-Good mean?” she said.

  “I don’t know.” He looked up and down the alley. It cut off at a dead end about fifty feet behind them. “No horsies in here, though, that’s for sure.”

  He took her hand and ran with her to the street. They both looked up and down. The night had lasted a long time, but not long enough to end, it seemed: no sunshine broke the horizon, no dawn lit the area. There were streetlights, but they were mostly flickering or dark or broken. The area was dim.

  And even if it wasn’t, Clint mused, what did he expect to see? A random horse trotting down the street a few miles from Skid Row? Sure. That happened all the time.

  Now it was Noelle’s turn to grab his hand. She pulled, yanking him along with her as she fastwalked down the street. She was looking around, her head jerking right and left so fast Clint worried she was going to hurt herself.

  “Horsey, horsey,” she murmured.

  Clint looked around as well. There were cars, shuttered storefronts. “Where the hell are we going to find a horse in the middle of Los Angeles?” he muttered.

  Noelle began running. “Maybe… maybe a picture?” she panted. “Some kind of clue that will lead us to –” She let go of his hand, seeming to forget him in her panic.

  Clint followed after her, looking for something – anything – that might help them meet Mr. Do-Good’s latest deadline.

  Cars. Storefronts. Fire hydrant. Mailbox. More cars. Newspaper –

  “Wait!” Clint shouted.

  Noelle jerked to a halt. He ran toward her, and she felt at her collar, automatically checking it as though worried she had done something to earn Mr. Do-Good’s full and final displeasure.

  Think of Elena. We can get out. She did, so we can, too.

  “What is it?” asked Noelle as he ran to her. “Did you see –”

  She stiffened slightly. Clint couldn’t blame her: he had come right into her personal space, sliding his hand around her side as though to embrace her. And yeah, she was pretty – beautiful, even – but he had no intention of trying to cop a feel or hug her.

  She was
just standing in front of what he needed to see.

  He tapped on it, and Noelle swung around, sidestepping at the same time so she could see what he had put his hand on.

  She frowned. “What do you –”

  “Brown horsey,” Clint said, tapping the car’s brown roof, then pointing at the symbol at the center of the car’s wheel rims. “Mustang.”

  Noelle frowned. “We can’t use cars. That’s one of the rules.”

  “’The nature of the game starts to change now,’” he said, quoting Do-Good’s last instructions to Elena. He said it absently, not at all sure he was right. He looked inside the car. Keys hung from the ignition. That just about clinched it: no one would leave a nice car like this, with the keys just hanging in the ignition, in a part of the city like this. No one but a madman.

  No one but Do-Good.

  As he looked in the car, a screen near the dashboard lit up. A smiley face spun once, winked, then disappeared, replaced by what looked like turn-by-turn directions.

  “Where does that lead to?” asked Noelle.

  “No idea,” said Clint. “But we’ll find out soon enough.”

  2

  Noelle drove. Neither spoke a word as they got in, neither asked, “You driving, or me?” Clint was closest to the passenger door, so he got in and that was that. Noelle hurried around the front of the car, then slid into the driver’s side seat and slammed the door shut.

  She turned the key. The engine hummed to life. It was a late-model Mustang, and had obviously been taken care of. The engine sounded not at all like a horse, but like a pride of lions all purring contentedly.