by R. E. Graham
“Let’s get off here my love” Eva said with a fake smile to Varius. He followed her off the elevator while Eva headed for a tunnel that connected the divide in the level three garage from the next section and went down a nearby stairwell. Varius followed several steps behind until they reached the ground level. People walked in both directions as some were entering the garage while others were exiting.
Eva turned left out of the stairwell entrance with Varius close behind.
A large white gloved hand reached out and grabbed Eva by the shoulder. “I need to see some I.D.”
Varius hopped back behind the doorway before he was seen.
“Oh, no problem officer” Eva said as she kept her face relatively hidden and reached her right hand into her green vest. She chopped with her hand just under the agent’s helmet into his windpipe. He stepped back gripping his throat and gasped for air.
She stepped forward and took his stun baton from his belt and turned it on. “Night, night” Eva said as she jammed him in his armpit. He convulsed violently and collapsed to the floor. She carelessly tossed it to the ground.
Several onlookers kept on walking while others didn’t even look up from their communicators to even care.
Varius poked his head out from behind the wall, eyebrow raised.
Eva looked over at him and rolled her shoulder where the KoP agent had grabbed her. “What? A girl can’t learn a few tricks for when a guy grabs her?”
The Inquisitor shrugged unsure of what to say. Eva walked off and once again he followed.
Chapter 7
Cycle: 412 Month: 7 Rotation: 9
Prefecture: Siimon
Planet: Eden
Location: Downtown Lucifer
Since they had come close to being spotted on the district level, Eva had decided it was best to keep to the lower streets and take their time to get to her hideout. Varius felt uneasy as the pair passed multiple patrols of KoP agents along the way. Being on the outside of the law was not something he done since he had joined the inquisitor program cycles ago. But, he had to complete his mission.
After several hours of walking and after they had stopped once for Eva to get a sandwich from a sidewalk food station, the pair had finally made it to her backup hideout. On the 15th floor of the 32-floor apartment complex, Varius and Eva stepped off the pristine silver colored elevator. The Inquisitor looked around the foyer of the floor and whistled. Expensive red shora rugs covered the marble floors, glistening gold colored wallpaper lined the walls, while he also caught the smell of something lovely floating through the air.
“Now, this isn’t anything special, and I haven’t been here in a long time so excuse the mess” Eva said as she walked down the hallway.
“Mess? This place is incredible.”
She pressed her thumb up against a scanner panel next to the door. The numbers “1507” were formed out of gold and placed above eye level on the door.
A small ding chirped before the door pulled back then slid into the wall. While the hallway and foyer smelled like a lovely combination of sweet flowers, the inside was much more stagnant.
As soon as Eva was inside she waved her hand passed a light panel and began picking up several items that had been tossed around. Varius checked the hallway to see if anyone was watching before he stepped inside. While the door closed behind him, the Inquisitor looked around the apartment.
To his right was a kitchen and dining room area, while ahead of him was a very spacious living space. Despite furniture being covered in dust, he could tell that everything looked very expensive.
“Like I said, sorry for the mess. Last time I was here I left in a bit of a hurry” Eva said as she placed two armfuls of items on a nearby countertop. She ran a hand through her hair while she put her other hand on her hip.
“Who’s place is this?” Varius asked as he walked deeper into the unit and scanned the room.
“Well, um…it’s technically mine.”
“Technically?”
Eva strolled nervously over to a lounge chair and sat down. A small puff of dust blossomed up around her. She coughed and waved her hand to clear the air. “Yeah, I uh…lived here for a while.”
Varius noticed a physical picture in a gold colored frame with Eva, a man and a young boy. They all looked very happy together.
“Why is this your backup hideout?” the Inquisitor asked as he enter the living room.
“Because…um…no one that knows me knows about this place” Eva couldn’t help but get lost in some memory deep in her mind.
“From what I read in your file, you did not sound wealthy nor did it indicate you had any family. Being an inventory organizer isn’t exactly high paying on most worlds. I imagine then that Eva Primus is not your real name?”
Eva avoided the Inquisitor’s gaze and looked away. She rubbed her arm with her opposite hand. While Varius looked around the room, a flash of lightning from outside lit up the hallway that he couldn’t see from the front door. There was a pile of something in the hallway that sat outside a room with an open door on the right. It seemed…off. As if it had fallen there. He started to walk down the hall when Eva shook herself from her mental wandering.
“Inquisitor, please don’t go down there!” she said as she shot up and followed him.
Varius stopped himself outside the room when he saw multiple old blood spatters. There was some scattered on the walls, while there was a large dried pool on the carpeted floor. The air still had a tinge of death and must to it even though whatever happened clearly was a long time ago.
Eva stopped short of the doorway, frozen. “Pl…please Inquisitor, please don’t go in there.”
The Inquisitor looked to her with eyebrow raised. That was when he saw a tear fall to her cheek. “What happened here?” he asked with a nudge from his head toward the room.
“I…I uh…used to live here with my husband and…my son” she said as she brought her hand up to her mouth. She spun around in a hurry and walked away.
Varius inspected the room again before he returned to the living room to find Eva on the couch with her head slumped toward her legs.
“My name is Eva Ar…Archimedus…” Eva started. She sniffed deeply and wiped her left eye. “One night we um…my husband and I were sleeping in our bedroom further down the hall. My husband, Jorse, got up and went to check things out. He told me to stay in bed, but I knew it should have been me…it should have been me to go.”
Varius spotted a well-crafted wooden stool nearby the bar counter and brought it over. He sat down in front of his captive.
“I heard Jorse start to yell at someone and something broke, so I sprang up and grabbed my pistol I kept by the bed. I came down the hall gun ready, and that’s when I saw this… man…dressed in black standing there with Jorse on his knees. He had a knife to his throat and had his hair held in his other hand. Before I could react, he sliced the knife and Jorse looked at me gurgling on his own blood.”
The Inquisitor lowered his head.
“The um…attacker spun around and saw me. He threw the knife at me which cut my right arm here.” She slid back her right sleeve to expose a scar that had long since healed. “He charged me and I discharged my firearm three times. I hit him once in the leg and once in the torso, but it didn’t stop him from reaching me. He slammed into me with all of his weight which bashed my head into the wall. I was way out of practice, but I still should have been able to stop him” Eva said as she looked back down to the floor.
A moment of silenced passed and lightning flashed followed by a deep distant rumble before she continued.
“He picked up his knife and ran off before I could follow. By then Jorse was dead, and that’s when I saw my son…” Eva began to cry at the memory of her young boy. She looked back to Varius with tears streaming down her face. “He killed him. He took my baby from me. That monster stabbed him seven times in the chest. Seven! Seven times he stabbed my baby…why would he do that. He was only six cycles old!” she s
houted before she lost it and wept.
Varius stood up and swallowed hard as flashbacks of his own family attacked his mind. He walked over and sat further down the couch beside her and placed his left hand on her shoulder. As Eva began to weep she slid over and laid her head against his chest. Rain beat against the windows of the balcony view as another lightning bolt illuminated the dusty living room of painful memories.
Eva forced herself to stop crying and wiped away the tears from her eyes. Varius released her and she sat straight up. “I’m sorry Inquisitor. You don’t want to hear about my problems.”
The Inquisitor looked away from her to hide the tear in his own eye. “I’m sorry for the loss of your family.” He stood up and walked over to the balcony to watch the thunderstorm. “Did they ever find the man who attacked you?”
Eva’s shoulders dropped once more. “No” she started, “they never did find that son of a dog. The KoP agents did their normal routine but never came up with anything. But if I ever find him, I will make him beg for mercy before I cut his beating heart out from his chest!”
Thunder shook the windows of the apartment savagely as the storm raged outside.
“After that night I couldn’t stay here any longer. I left and never came back. Ha, I didn’t even pack. I had to buy all new belongings. My husband had a good job so there was plenty of money for me to keep paying the bills. I…I just couldn’t come back here after I left.”
“How did you get involved with freedom fighters?” Varius asked as he turned back around to her.
“I knew a guy who helped me acquire a new identity. Since my late husband had enough money I just paid this unit off for cycles. I couldn’t come back, but I couldn’t let someone else just have it either.” She looked back at her captor. “For the record, we called ourselves Eden’s Forgotten Legion not because we had plans of violence, but because after I left this place I found so many others who had been let down by the government here. I um, served in the government for a while before I retired. So, I knew things were bad, but never from a citizen’s perspective. We organized ourselves first in a local temple and then started renting out a space in the downtown district.”
“Did you think of going to the Bureau of Central Intelligence? I know that they don’t typically send an inquisitor out for a small case…”
“Small?!” Eva sprang up with fire in her eyes. She pointed her finger square at the Inquisitor. “I know plenty about the inquisitors and their short comings. My family being slaughtered before my eyes is not small thing dammit!”
“No, that’s…” Varius stopped himself before he finished saying something else that would rile her up further.
“I know how inquisitors work and I want nothing to do with them. If I didn’t have this stupid bomb strapped to my neck I wouldn’t even be having this discussion with a reckless inquisitor such as yourself!”
“Reckless?” Varius stood to his full height. “You listen here. I have committed multiple grievances against the law to extract you from the heart of a Keepers detention center. I will not be lectured to by a terrorist about my conduct!”
“You don’t get it do you Varius? I’m no fricking terrorist any more than you are a pet groomer. I am being set up by someone in that twisted organization of dimwits. My people were warped into an irrational mob by that bastard Rian Kennedy.”
“I’m not here for your people Eva. I’m here to find out how the Shadow Man was involved with your people on the night of the warehouse attack.”
Eva put her hands in the air confused. “I don’t understand how one arms dealer is such a major deal that you would be sent out here to Eden. There must have been evidence all over the place in that warehouse. I heard that you went there before you burned it to the ground. Do you even know how to properly conduct an investigation inquisitor?”
“I went to the warehouse to look for clues but everything was scrubbed. Gone. They even cleared away the debris from the attack. I didn’t find a single shell casing.”
“Scrubbed?” Eva slumped back down into the couch. “I had hoped you were just clumsy.”
Varius squinted. “Wait…”
The woman looked back up at him with a concerned look on her face. “Sounds like this is much worse than I imagined.”
“I was able to find one plasti-crate deep in the facility with a triangular symbol on it. It happens to be the same symbol on a crate that I found on a different world. This Shadow Man may be more than just a small arms dealer. Do you know what he was trying to sell to your people?”
Eva crossed her arms and sighed. “No, they wouldn’t tell me. I let myself get too upset that they would even consider buying guns and before I knew it, Rian had me thrown into the closet and locked me in. Like I said earlier, by the time I escaped and got to the deal it was already crawling with KoP agents.”
“I need to see the evidence you have on the Shadow Man so I can continue my investigation.”
Eva’s eyes got a little wider then she bit her lip. “Haha…so about that. I don’t exactly have the evidence.”
“Where is it then?”
“No, I mean I um…might of kinda lied.”
“WHAT?!” Varius kicked a small table against the wall and began to pace angrily. A dusty metal cup that was on top of the table bounced off the wall and rolled on the marble floor.
Eva stood up frantically and put her hands up. “We…well I didn’t tell the full truth exactly. I know that Rian had set up the deal. I am sure he knows more and can lead us in the right direction.”
The Inquisitor’s eyes blazed. “Do you even understand the possible repercussions I might have because of you? I should just take you back to them immediately!”
“Look, Varius, Rian is the key. If we find him, you can do you inquisitor thing and interrogate him. I didn’t know what else to do. Just before you came into the room the one KoP agent put a gun to my head and told me to confess into his recorder or he was going to kill me!”
Varius stopped pacing and turned to her. “Wait, confess to what?”
The woman looked confused for a moment. “That I was responsible for leading my group to seek out firearms…that we had plans to attack the governor.”
“But why would they do that if they already had enough evidence to link you to the group and the arms deal?”
Eva shrugged. “I don’t know. All I do know is that things are looking more and more like a setup since Rian is some sort of KoP undercover bastard.”
A dull roar of thunder echoed off the skyscrapers outside the apartment.
Varius brought his hand up to his chin while he analyzed the situation. “What if some members of the garrisoned KoP forces were behind some sort of coverup? That would explain why the warehouse was scrubbed clean of evidence. What if Titus and Vega are somehow involved?” Varius thought to himself.
He nodded to himself as he made his decision. “I’m going to go find this Rian Kennedy. But you’re staying here.”
“There’s no way that I’m…”
Varius cut her off when he held his right index finger up. He reached into his pocket with his left hand and pulled out a transmitter.
“You wouldn’t!” Eva exclaimed as she recognized the device.
The Inquisitor set it on the kitchen table and pressed a series of keys on his gauntlet. “If you try to leave the area of this transmitter, the bomb on your neck will go off. If you try to get too close to it, the bomb on your neck will go off. If you try to tamper with this transmitter…”
“…the bomb will go off” the woman said as she waved away the Inquisitor and slumped angrily on the couch. In defiance Eva crossed her arms and stared at the wall across from her.
“I will be back for you after I speak with Rian. If you are lying to me, I may just deal with you myself” Varius said before he left the apartment. The door slid behind him and Eva was only left with the terrible memories and the roar of the storm outside.
Chapter 8
Cycle: 412
Month: 7 Rotation: 10
Prefecture: Siimon
Planet: Eden
Location: Downtown Lucifer
Varius spent the hours after he left Eva secured in her old apartment quite productively. He had taken refuge in an abandoned repair shop to build his plan for the next step of his investigation.
Rain water from the previous storm dripped through a hole in the sheet metal roof and pooled on the floor of the dank empty structure.
Marth was able to hack into the Keepers of Peace stream network on Eden and identify the agents involved in the warehouse sting operation.
Thankfully, the Inquisitor had a glimpse of the KoP agent Eva identified as Rian Kennedy. That is, before she started shooting at him when the pair was still underground within the KoP command center and was able to compare the agents profile pictures with his memory.
“Marth, pull up all agent profiles involved with the warehouse operation, remove the female agents and display the remaining faces” Varius said as he stretched his shoulders and adjusted his neck. Fatigue on his body was starting to build. He tossed two white caffeine tablets into his mouth and chewed.
When traveling to different worlds one’s internal body clock could get disoriented and make you tired at strange times. Unfortunately, there was no time for sleep right now. I have to get a solid lead on the Shadow Man.
A green holographic projection appeared from his gauntlet and lit the nearby area of the abandoned structure eerily.
Using his right hand, the Inquisitor scrolled through the faces until he recognized one of them. The chiseled jaw gave Rian Kennedy’s profile away, except in the profile pic he was clean cut. In the compound he had a burly beard and longer hair.
“Must have changed his appearance for going undercover. Let’s see what his profile says.” Varius reached up and double tapped Rian’s face and began to scan through the file.
“So, Rian Kennedy is really Carso Rey? He has training in espionage? Interesting. Marth, locate Agent Rey’s home address. I think it is time we have a chat.”
