The Collector

by Luna, David

  “Exactly,” Zack agrees. “And he came up as Howard Marlow. Supposedly sold himself to you guys.”

  “Hey, are you Howard or Sergio?” Neil asks the haggard man. “Or neither,” he adds.

  No response.

  “Check him again,” Neil tells Zack. “Same sample point. Consider it early Collector training.”

  Zack rolls up the haggard man’s sleeves, revealing light bruising and a needle imprint from a recently taken sample. Using his gun-shaped device, Zack fills a cartridge with blood and runs it against the identity database on the Wall’s check-in kiosk. The scrolling database finds a profile match for Sergio Escobar, a clean identity.

  “Hmph, now it’s a match,” Zack says as he scratches his head.

  “When’s the last time you had yours serviced?” Neil asks, pointing to Zack’s sample device.

  “A month ago, as scheduled,” Zack says. He inspects his device before holstering it. “I didn’t mean to waste your time, Neil. I’ll let him through.”

  Zack unbinds the haggard man’s hands, but something catches Neil’s eye – small blood stains on the left side of the haggard man’s chest. The haggard man notices and shifts his suit jacket to conceal it.

  “Wait,” Neil orders.

  Neil reaches to inspect the shirt when the haggard man suddenly makes a mad dash towards the gate. Zack reaches for his gun, but Neil gives chase and quickly brings him down, immediately ripping open the haggard man’s shirt to reveal three scabbed puncture wounds over his heart.

  “Where’d you get this done?” Neil demands, his eyes wide.

  Zack waives off the other four SEOs with their guns drawn. He squats down next to Neil to take a closer look.

  “Who did this for you?” Neil questions. “You do this with Sage on the black market?”

  “What is it, some sort of heart transplant?” Zack asks.

  “Transfusion. With Sergio’s blood.”

  “Why?”

  “You want to be a Collector and you’re asking questions like that?” Neil fires back.

  Zack thinks on it. “To get the fake papers to match what’s in the database,” he says to himself as he puts the pieces together.

  “Closest thing to a guarantee of not getting caught,” Neil confirms before turning back to the haggard man. “Isn’t that right, Howard? Where are those gypsies hiding? Where’s Sage?”

  “Let me through the gate and I’ll shout it to you from the other side,” Howard mocks.

  Neil scoffs. He lifts Howard to escort him away until Zack interrupts.

  “Hey, Neil? I haven’t heard back about my application. Think you could put in a good word for me?”

  “You were just about to allow a Breacher to cross the Wall,” Neil replies.

  “I’ll do better, I promise. I’d really owe you one.”

  Neil considers long and hard. “You better not embarrass me,” he says bluntly. He then continues to drag Howard away.

  Neil takes a detour on the drive over to the transfer tunnel entrance in the slums. He glimpses Howard through the rearview mirror, who doesn’t seem to notice the longer route as he slouches in the back in defeat, his hands bound and head drooped knowing he failed in his attempt to escape and is now set to die. Neil clinches his jaw in disgust at the sight of the Breacher. He has no patience or sympathy for those who go back on their voluntary word and attempt to exploit the system. To him, it is a dishonorable attack on something he considers very honorable.

  Neil returns his focus to the sight forming ahead of him. It’s the antique shop coming into view. He maneuvers the vehicle’s thick tires through the narrow dirt path, lurching slowly by the front where once again the curtains are shut and the handcrafted sign indicates the shop is closed. Neil assumes Inna is still where he saw her earlier, back at the landfill collecting trash and other discarded items. A smile forms across one side of his mouth as he recalls just how excited she got while leading him through the maze. Her game seemed naïve to him then just as it seems naïve to him now, but he will admit that for a moment she was able to convince him to see the landfill through a different lens while he was up there. Perhaps that is what people mean when he hears them say they were caught up in the moment. He chuckles to himself as he continues towards the tunnels.

  With his schedule free from any pending Collection Due Dates later that afternoon, Neil turns his focus back to his looming assignment, the one Mazer made very clear he wanted completed – to track down the Brigade or else. For a moment Neil wonders why he was the only one pulled aside and tasked with this. While he intends to complete the assignment, he can’t help but feel he’s being punished for Wade’s actions. What about their psychologist being punished? She assessed Wade and allowed him to continue. Or what about Mazer himself being punished? He screened Wade and approved his application. No matter. Neil knows he will reprove himself to Mazer, and maybe even earn his fourth stripe in the process.

  Neil clears his mind of these bitter thoughts as he hovers over a horizontal computer terminal with glass tabletop. It resembles an old arcade machine one would find in a bar decades ago, even with a giant scroll ball to navigate the screen. Three other terminals fill out the center of the room, while a collection of floor-to-ceiling servers hum near the shadows in the back. Musty, dimly lit, these are the Archives located on the ground floor of the old library just around the corner from Agency Headquarters.

  As Neil selects to enter his information – Username: VaughnN1, Password: VaughnN1 – he receives an error message, UNAUTHORIZED USER. He furrows his brow and pulls out his PDA to dial a number.

  “Adrianne, it didn’t work.”

  “It didn’t work or you can’t log on?” Adrianne’s digitized voice blares out from the handheld device on speakerphone. “I granted you access.”

  “It says Unauthorized User.”

  “Try your badge number.”

  Neil follows her suggestion. He enters ‘1405’ as his password and tries again to log on. It works.

  “I take it by your silence it worked,” Adrianne quips. “You Collectors are all the same. For all your rules and protocols, you really need better passwords.”

  “I’ll call you back next time I want a lecture.”

  “What is it you’re looking for?” Adrianne asks.

  “How can we know so much about everyone, yet know so little about them?”

  “We know a lot about the Brigade.”

  “Not them,” Neil replies. “Sage.”

  “You think the Black Market has a connection?” Adrianne asks.

  Neil doesn’t know. That’s why he’s here. He thumbs his fingers against the tabletop as the Archive database finishes loading. “I gotta go.”

  “Wait, Neil,” Adrianne interrupts before he hangs up. “Good to see you’re still on my screen.”

  Neil is unsure how to respond. In typical fashion, there is a brief moment of silence before he falls back with simply, “Yeah,” then ends the call.

  The Archive database is a simple set of generic icons – ARTICLES, STATISTICS, MAPS, etc. – all housing data on the history of the city. Neil navigates the scroll ball to the MAPS folder and clicks on a file. Suddenly, the old computer terminal displays its true power as a semi-transparent holographic 3D map spreads out across the glass tabletop and projects nearly half a meter upwards. It’s like a military war room and Neil is the strategic commander, the city’s landscape extending across the tabletop before him – mountains, valleys, buildings, and structures. The scroll ball allows Neil to move throughout the 3D map in all directions from a bird’s-eye view.

  Neil examines the holographic map to confirm it is up-to-date – the slums in the West, the skytowers to the North, and the processing facility along the bank of the East Bay. The semi-transparent map dissipates just beyond the border of the giant horseshoe-shaped Wall enclosing the city. Not even the Archives knows what lies beyond the Wall.

  Neil continues to utilize
the power of the computer terminal as he simultaneously pulls up a series of archived articles. The transparent reports, clippings, and write-ups float mid-air above the digital landscape, each with a headline involving rumored sightings of Sage and the Black Market. Nearly half of these articles are written under the same pen name: QUADO.

  The glass tabletop also allows Neil to scribble notes directly on it like a touchscreen, highlighted in the color of his choice. He begins by marking in yellow WHO’S QUADO? along the top, followed by drawing yellow dots at the locations of each of the rumored sightings documented in the articles. To the far east; to the far west a month later; then three months later directly under the Agency’s nose within the Downtown Sector itself.

  Neil continues to scour and dig in order to build some sort of timeline and migration trend. Unfortunately, the yellow dots are scattered all over the place with no discernable pattern. Neil is only able to connect them by forming a pentagon shape between five of the data points, yet the route doesn’t add up. To get from one point to the other the band of gypsies would have to travel directly through highly populated Sectors, and the number of rumored sightings would surely be in the dozens or even hundreds over the years, not just a scarce handful – and all mostly reported by the same mysterious Quado.

  Neil wonders how Sage could evade the system for so long. No Breacher has ever gone undetected for more than a few days, yet here was an entire band of gypsies providing illegal services – including procedures to evade identity checkpoints – and have gone nearly undetected for years. This solidifies Neil’s hunch that Sage and her followers are undoubtedly connected with the Brigade, each helping one another, and if only he could find Sage could he find his targets. But how is he to find Sage when no one else ever has?

  Frustrated, Neil’s eyes gravitate towards the holographic slums, locking onto the approximate region of Inna’s antique shop and tracing the path from the shop to the landfill. He scribbles a yellow star over the mounds of trash as he reflects how he and Inna aren’t so different. He knows right now she is up there in the landfill searching for anything she feels could help someone just like he is here in the Archives searching for a clue on how to help the city. Who knows what sort of item she will unearth today? Maybe it will be something simple like a tattered pair of shoes. Or maybe it will be a deck of cards or another old form of entertainment like a forgotten board game. Though it will surely be missing some pieces, either one of these could provide a short-lived distraction to take a person’s mind off the dire state of the city. Kids need that. Hell, adults need that. Neil smiles as he confirms his initial assessment. At the end of the day each of them are trying to help people, albeit in their own ways.

  Just then Neil remembers he is alone in the musty basement of the library with a mission at hand. He shakes his head to get back on track, upset that he again allowed himself to become distracted. It’s been happening more and more recently and he doesn’t know why. He returns to the yellow star scribbled over the landfill, then to the pentagon connecting the data points of Black Market sightings. A star versus a pentagon...it births a wild idea. While one would assume Sage would travel the pentagon route in order to remain on the farthest outskirts of the city, what if this is incorrect? Neil erases the pentagon and connects the five data points via a star, exactly like the one scribbled over the landfill. He steps back to examine the map, but the migration route still doesn’t add up considering now some of the intersecting lines cut straight across the polluted bay. It would not only be impossible but illogical for the gypsies to travel across water to get from one location to the next.

  Neil nearly bangs his head on the glass terminal. He came to find answers, but he’s not doing anything but chasing loose ends. Here he is, surrounded by infinite bytes of history and information that very few have access to, yet he can’t figure it out. He bangs his head again when it suddenly hits him: history. Neil returns to the MAPS folder and selects the oldest map on file at the bottom. Soon the holographic rendering of the current city is replaced by a map many years older. It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly how old the rendering is, but most noticeably is the absence of the processing facility as well as the Wall, which dates this rendering at well over half a century old.

  Immediately a new clue leaps from the table, as obvious as a shock baton prodding one in the neck. While it’s true some of the city’s landmarks are missing from this older map, there are also landmarks depicted here that are suspiciously missing from the current version. Neil’s eyes lock onto the old mining tunnels weaving underneath the city, converted into transfer tunnels in present day to transport volunteers directly to the processing facility. He discovers that there are a dozen more tunnels and entrances in the old 3D map, many he didn’t know existed, and his star-shaped route connecting each Black Market sighting suddenly makes sense as the five vertices of the star coincidentally align with five of the forgotten tunnels.

  Neil’s eyes go wide at the revelation. Sage is potentially using long forgotten mining tunnels as her means of traveling about the city undetected. As he pulls out his PDA to snap a couple of photos, a million thoughts surge through his mind. How could she even know about these tunnels when he – an operative of the Agency – doesn’t? And furthermore, how is she never spotted when a few of these underground paths still intersect with active transfer tunnels the Agency currently uses?

  Neil finishes his last picture when another terrible thought pops into his head. He always assumed Sage had a relationship with the Brigade. That’s what brought him here in the first place since he isn’t directly after her, he’s after them. But not many people could know about these tunnels nor have the access to pull them up on the Archives. The Agency grants special permission to these files and even he had to call in a favor to be able to do so. Who else has access? He struggles not to allow the next thought to come to fruition, but it does so nonetheless: could Sage be receiving help from someone within the Agency?

  The suspicion sends a chill down Neil’s spine.

  Neil climbs the cement stairs from the basement to the ground level floor of the library. As he veers towards the exit, his head in a fog and overwhelmed from his potential discovery, a familiar voice stops him in his tracks. It’s Inna. She leans over the front counter and converses with the librarian, while her pull wagon, fully pieced back together, is loaded down with dirt-stained books beside her. Neil stares longer than he should. He thought Inna was at the landfill. Out of all the places in the city, especially one so far from the slums, what are the chances of running into her here? Neil shakes his head to brush her out of his mind and turns again to leave, but Inna’s infectious laugh keeps his feet from moving. He watches as her head tilts back and her leg kicks up – the precious subtleties of beauty. He gives up on leaving without saying hello and moves closer.

  “Back in action I see,” Neil interrupts as he tilts the wagon handle back and forth to test it. “How’s it holding up?”

  “Better than your uniform,” Inna says as she reaches to adjust the 3-stripe arm badge she reattached. One of the corners is already coming loose. “What’d you do, roll around in a pile of tacks?”

  Neil didn’t notice the tear until now. He supposes it must’ve been from his scuffle with Zack and the Breacher up at the Wall. No matter, it doesn’t bother him. “What are you doing here?” he asks. “This is a long way from the slums.”

  “Donating some books I found.”

  Neil flips through the torn, dirt-stained pages. “Are these even readable?”

  “It depends on if Collectors can read.” Inna giggles as Neil tightens his jaw. She covers her mouth as she tries to control the volume of her laughter. She knows this is a library after all, but she finds it funny how Neil is always so serious. She calms herself down. “Yes, they’re fine…for the most part,” she says. “One might have to use their imagination for a chapter or two, but maybe that’s a good thing.”

  “Why not sell them at your sh
op? Use the money for rations.”

  “I’m not thirsty,” she replies.

  Neil eyes her from head to toe: a girl dressed in pieced together recycled clothing with a wagon covered in burn marks, all the way over here in the concrete jungle just to donate a handful of books. “You’re strange, did you know that?” he tells her.

  “Says the Collector who mingles with a slum girl.”

  Neil recoils back, her joke nearly slapping him across the face. It reminds him of his role and that he is walking a fine line just by talking with anyone that is not related to an assignment.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it,” Inna apologizes, sensing that her joke made him uneasy. She returns to their original subject. “These old stories shouldn’t just be left to rot. Books are a window into the times they were written; a snapshot into the soul of the people whether the author intended it or not. We can’t let that type of honesty be lost to time. At least here they’ll be preserved.”

  Neil grabs one of the books and stares at the title, A TROUT FROM THE SOUTH. “Soul of the people?” he smirks.

  “You know what I mean.” Inna nearly hits him as she returns the book to the stack.

  Inna’s positive naivety once again penetrates Neil’s guard. He smiles. While it’s true he is mingling with a slum girl, Inna’s different. There’s just something about her that draws him in to keep coming back and hanging around her. She makes him think differently. She challenges him to look at the old in new ways. He can’t pinpoint why exactly, but it’s refreshing. For a moment he thinks of Wade and the path his rookie chose to follow, but then he yells at himself not to allow Wade’s decisions to infiltrate his mind. What Wade did was drastically different. He and Inna are just talking after all. If reported to the Agency, Mazer might give him a longer than normal stare, or pull him aside to whisper a few harsh words, but overall it’s a minimal infraction. “Do you need a ride back?” Neil offers.