by Joe Jarvis
It would be many more years of Barry Arbitration earning its somewhat sketchy reputation, but that was the beginning. Funny that such a petty action by Barry had reverberated so deeply in his life. Barry knew that had he been more humble, he would have no worries. But he had learned too much from the pre-collapse ways of the world – not that he remembered, but from what he read. These days a solid network and friendly relations were as good as gold, and dishonesty was a cancer on business which good people would not abide.
This is an opportunity, Barry finally decided. The redemption he needed to remedy the stupidity of his youth. Drastic times call for drastic measures, and I brought this on myself. Instead of sitting back at this point in my life, I am forced to undertake the most dangerous and risky endeavor yet. He was scared, but his mind was made up. There was no calling off the plan. Mr. Barry would become Minister Barry, head of the Department of Arbitration, or he would die trying.
Six
It was the date and time that was specified on the envelope. Trix took a pod to the neighborhood where Molly lived, but got off at an earlier stop to walk. He had traveled in a pattern that made it hard to track his movements with the various security recordings that people and businesses ran. He traveled to a gap with no surveillance, and came out of it with his face obscured by his sweatshirt, hood, and makeup that would make facial recognition harder.
He was dreading what he had to do, but what choice did he have? It was either kill Molly, or be killed by the agents. Trix could not stop thinking about this deed every second as it drew nearer. He had considered taking the money and hiring security to protect him, but he was not convinced they would be able to. Agent White and Agent Orange could just wait until he ran out of money, and then come after him. He considered how they would be able to find him, but knew what kind of technology they had at their disposal. Trix also would not even know how to describe the agents, or who they worked for, or if a security company would even be interested in taking the risk to protect him.
Each of the past five days Trix had ordered a pod, and almost entered a distant location. But in the end he always took the pod to a nice restaurant or a shopping mall, or to buy more and better drugs. In the week since Trix received the payment he had blown through $4,500 worth of the Atlantitrade currency. Part of this was due to his impulsive personality and drug addiction, but trying to distract himself from the job at hand was another big piece of it. Here he was, caught between a rock and a hard place, knowing that he would never be able to get rid of the guilt of performing this task.
Trix had bought a special mixture of drugs for this, to numb him to what he was about to do. He had also bought a number of drugs for afterward, to numb him to what he had done.
Walking through the neighborhood, a few blocks away from the address, Trix popped two pills which had similar effects to cocaine and pcp, but added an aloof downer effect that made him ambivalent but didn't cause much disorientation. One block later and he felt like he was in a video game; another block and he couldn't even remember what guilt felt like; just one block away he felt like a ninja assassin in a blockbuster movie who was about to fulfill his righteous destiny, before escaping to distant lands where he would have girls, wealth, and glory.
The plan was in his head; he had sketched it out before, thought about each step, and was now envisioning a to-do list of tasks to accomplish his mission. Mission: now he felt like an old world secret agent, infiltrating an enemy data center and taking out a destructive target.
Trix briefly looked to see if Molly had any video surveillance out front, and it didn't look like she did. He walked up to her door, and rang the doorbell, and stepped back.
Molly was working on her laptop in the living room with her TV on. She wasn't expecting anyone, but didn't think it was too strange for someone to stop by at this time; it was still before 21:00 and a weekend. Molly was typically engrossed in her work, even though she didn't really have to be. But she enjoyed it, and was scrutinizing the details in Barry Arbitration's review. Just one more piece and she could downgrade BA according to Business Ethics Review standards. She had looked over the same information multiple times, making tables, diagrams, and graphs to try to see some piece she hadn't seen before. There were certainly dead ends, but every time she looked over the reports, she found another piece of the puzzle.
Molly figured maybe some neighborhood kid was selling something, or maybe a group was organizing a boycott, or maybe one of her friends was in the neighborhood and decided to stop by. She didn't recognize the man standing on her front porch, but he didn't look particularly threatening. It was typical of someone Molly's age to let their guard down – she had only ever known a peaceful society where justice flourished.
Violence was not something on the forefront of the mind of anyone under 40, though more seasoned folks remembered periods of unrest much more clearly. It was partly due to the older generation's use of self defense and refusal to be victimized that aggression had taken a long and steady nosedive over the last 60 years. Violence had reached its modern pinnacle during the New Dark Ages, the years following the collapse in the 2020's. Only once organizations to protect individuals’ rights rose up out of demand was this trend curbed.
The first such company to form policing and protection agencies after the collapse was Food Corp, which was the biggest societal element leftover in New England. In fact, only a handful of communities with some semblance of law and order existed in North America for decades after the collapse.
Of course the New Dark Ages were not on Molly's mind as she opened the door. Trix was smiling warmly as he kicked the door just as Molly began to open it, slamming the heavy oak into her left foot, which broke three of her toes, and toppled her onto the floor. As she screamed out in pain and horror, Trix quickly stepped inside and shut and locked the door. He very calmly and methodically bent down and grabbed Molly's throat to stop her from screaming.
"Be quiet, and I won't hurt you anymore," he said in monotone as he let go of Molly's throat.
She coughed and sucked in air, trying to catch her breath, hyperventilating from the pain and shock. Tears streaming down her face, Molly looked up at Trix terrified, and rapidly nodded her head in agreement, unable to speak.
"All I want is your cash and jewelry. Anything valuable."
Even when Trix looked at Molly there was nothing behind his eyes. It was like he was staring at a boring slide show presentation, trying to maintain focus. Trix grabbed one of Molly arms and yanked her to her feet. She let out a short cry as some weight shifted to her broken toes, but quickly bit her lip to silence herself.
Trix removed a small black knife from his pocket, and made a "shh" gesture, putting the blade up to his lips in place of his finger. As he did this, he couldn't help but let out a giggle, amused at his use of the knife in shushing Molly. He felt like he was in a dream, and this task was playing out easier than he thought. It was the drugs.
Molly began to lead him into her bedroom where she kept a safe, and as they crossed the living room Trix grabbed her foldable tablet, and put it into his backpack.
Molly thought it was strange that the man who had just kicked in her door was taking a year old tablet without much value, but she was still too scared to speak. Molly desperately hoped that the man would just take what he came for and leave; his eyes said he was on a mission. In her bedroom she opened her closet door and unlocked the safe.
Trix was rummaging through drawers and her desk. He found a flash drive in her bureau and a tablet was sitting on her bedside table, both went into his backpack. When Trix heard the click of the safe unlocking, he quickly sprang over to it and put his hand on the door to stop Molly from opening it herself. Nudging her out of the way, Trix went into the safe, took an external hard drive that was connected wirelessly to the rest of the electronics in the house, and also stole the little amount of jewelry – a couple silver coins and one antique looking golden coin.
Molly also had a handgun in her
safe which her dad had given her. She wasn't really interested in guns, but he had insisted that she take it to be safe. She wished that she had kept the gun out in her living room, or at least concealed and accessible, but the chances of something like this happening were so small that there was no way for her to predict it.
Trix took the handgun, and cocked it. Molly let out a gasp and quickly covered her mouth, but Trix tucked the handgun into his pants.
"Show me the rest of your electronics," Trix said, without expression. Even when his eyes met Molly, it was like she was not even in front of him. She noticed this too, that his eyes seemed to look through her, focused on nothing in her room.
"There's... the TV in the living room... and another tablet in the kitchen... and a telescreen in the living room and kitchen." Her voice was trembling, cracking every few words, with tears still running down her cheeks, and hiccups interrupting her speech.
It seemed like Trix was almost taken out of his trance for a moment, but he quickly turned away, about to leave the room, the drugs still suppressing his emotions.
Walking through the living room to the kitchen, Trix noticed an open window, as it was an unusually warm fall night. Trix closed the window. Molly all of a sudden felt like she couldn't breathe. She was panicking, but she was so frightened and her mind was in such knots that she couldn't pinpoint why.
"Please... please don't hurt me," Molly choked out between sobs.
"I told you I just want the valuables," Trix restated emotionless.
Molly shot a glance towards the window. There was no reason for this intruder to close the window if he intended to leave after pillaging the rest of her electronics. Trix had taken the rest of the electronics and put them into his backpack. The only ones he couldn’t take were the telescreens attached to the living room wall and kitchen counter.
Trix pointed at the kitchen counter telescreen. "Log in."
Molly swallowed hard, and did as she was told. Trix then pushed her aside, and started opening up various accounts, and deleting the contents. He opened the cloud storage, and purged it. He had to click multiple warnings about deleting information permanently. Then he had to go into the deleted files section, and purge those permanently. He went through this process on at least three different accounts, changing the password and email on each account when he was done. Molly was feeling sicker and sicker, not being able to explain why this supposed thief was interested in deleting her information if all he wanted was money and valuables.
She kept glancing into the living room to the panic button 15 or so feet away. She was too terrified to make the leap however, and was distracted by her feelings of terror that this was more than a robbery.
"And your portable," Trix said, indicating that he wanted Molly's pocket sized tablet. She walked into the living room to retrieve her mini-tab on a couch-side table. Turning around she tried not to glance once again at the panic button, and gave her mini-tab to Trix. She was now only two steps from the wall mounted panic button.
"Okay," Trix said, but didn't move. He glanced at the door, he glanced at the window he had closed, and he briefly looked back at Molly. "Okay," he repeated monotonously.
Molly was staring at him, frozen with fear, praying to whatever god might be listening that he would just leave. Trix's hand shot down towards the gun in his waistband, like a cowboy drawing in a duel. In one swift motion he had raised the gun pointing it directly at Molly's face, as she turned sideways and squinted, bursting into a renewed fit of tears. He was only three feet away from Molly, the gun closer, squared at her temple; he pulled the trigger.
The moment the trigger was pulled felt like an eternity to Molly, the fall of the hammer seeming to span meters. She had time to reopen her eyes, and look back towards Trix through her tears, down the barrel of the gun. She could see the rifled grooves of the cylinder, and as she blinked, she swore she saw her life flash before her eyes. By the time her eyes opened the trigger was pulled. She expected to hear a loud boom, see a bright flash, and have everything go dark. Instead she heard a click.
It took her a split second to remember that the pistol her father had given her was coded to her DNA, so that no one but she could fire it. Trix evidently had not realized this, because he turned the gun sideways, examining the slide to see what could have caused the misfire. Molly knew she had to seize this opportunity before he found some other way to kill her, like the knife he brought, but she didn't think she would be strong enough to wrestle the gun from him. She launched towards the telescreen in the living room, flipped open the clear plastic hatch above the screen to the right, and slammed down the red button with a force sure to bruise her palm, then immediately thrust herself toward her bedroom, ignoring the searing pain in her broken toes.
By the time Trix realized what happened, and raced to pursue Molly, she was in her bedroom with the door slammed shut, locked. Molly then ran into the master bathroom, slamming and locking that door as well. She immediately started frantically searching the room for anything that could be used as a weapon to protect herself. It would be just a matter of minutes until police arrived.
Trix slammed into Molly's door with full force. He pounded on it with both fists, and hysterically twisted the knob trying desperately to open the door. Trix backed up, and put his full force and weight, shoulder first, into the door. It rattled but didn't budge. He again looked at the gun in his hand, trying to figure out how to make it shoot, but abandoned that idea quickly, placing it back in his waist band.
Looking around the room he searched for something that could be used as a battering ram, but his time was running out. He picked up a heavy stone statue of Buddha, and slammed the base into the door handle to Molly's room. The first time the handle cracked. The second time a small Buddha shaped hole appeared in the door. On the third try, the bedroom door burst open, spraying splinters of wood onto the floor.
In the bathroom Molly heard the crash and began to sob harder, on her knees rifling through everything under the sink, still searching for the proper weapon. The scissors in her bathroom were too small to be an effective defense. There were no blunt objects, and no sharp objects long enough to do any kind of serious damage. She heard Trix slamming something heavy into the bathroom door.
Molly shot to her feet with a spray can of room fragrance, and as the door busted open and Trix rushed in, Molly sprayed the aerosol can of perfume directly into his eyes. Trix let out a loud scream of agony as the liquid burned his eyes. He stumbled back against the wall dropping the Buddha statue onto the bathroom floor, rubbing violently at his eyes. He tried to open his eyes, but it burned more, and he could only make out the outline of Molly. Trix lunged to block the bathroom door so that she had no escape route. He could hear the sirens, they couldn't be more than 5 blocks away, and rapidly closing in.
Molly, seeing her exit blocked, opened the medicine cabinet mirror with full force, slamming it against the wall, and shattering it into pieces. With no time to spare, she grabbed the largest shard she could find, and raised it towards Trix.
Trix heard the shattering of the glass, and the sirens getting closer, but he could still only see in outlines and blurs. As Molly brought the shard of glass down towards Trix, he managed to turn towards the bathroom door, and the sharp piece of glass only grazed his back before ripping into his backpack, filled with the stolen electronics. Molly let out a sharp cry of pain as the glass shard she gripped penetrated deep into her palm. She let go and pulled her hand back, seeing blood spraying out with each beat of her heart.
She watched Trix flee out into the bedroom, and turn running into the living room. Molly sunk down onto the floor of her bathroom, and coddled her severely lacerated hand that was spurting blood, already pooling on the floor, and soaking her shorts. The sirens sounded like they were right outside now, and relief started to pour over her. Molly’s sobs were now a hysterical mix of terror, pain, and happiness upon the arrival of the police.
Trix was stumbling through the living r
oom trying to see where he was going. He saw the bright lights of the cop cars coming through the front windows, and heard the slam of their car doors. He moved as quickly as he could through the kitchen to the back door, bumping hard against the counter on the way. He managed to open the sliding glass door, and escape onto the back porch as he heard Molly's front door burst open as the police broke it down with a battering ram. He was past the bushes running through the neighbor’s lawn by the time another officer came running around the house, and saw the open sliding door.
"We need dogs! Get the Canine units!" The officer’s voice was clear and loud.
As he barked the order, Trix could hear it clearly from the next street that he was now fleeing down. He saw headlights coming around the corner, and took a left turn down another road in the neighborhood to avoid the car. His sight was returning, though his eyes still burned red. Looking over his shoulder, Trix could see a skyship approaching where Molly’s house must have been. He couldn’t tell if it was a medical unit or a police unit. Trix was sprinting down the center of the road, when an SUV came around the corner toward him, and screeched to a halt.
Rolling down the window, the man behind the wheel who looked in his late 60's yelled at Trix, "What the hell do you think you're doing?! I almost hit you, you could have been-" He was cut off by Trix's deep gutted yell, as Trix grabbed the gun out of his waistband, hoping the man would follow his orders, since the gun would not fire.
"Get out of the car!" The drugs were still in his system, but emotion could finally be heard in his voice, though it manifested more as anger than fear on Trix's part. Instead of exiting his vehicle the man inside seemed to duck down, avoiding the path of the gun, while pressing a button that raised the window.
