Joel laughed. “You’re probably not wrong there… Yes. I agree on all counts. So how do we define the kinds of cases?”
“I think they have to have certain things in common, like they are all focused on helping make life better for people, and defending the little guy. And if we can take out groups like The Syndicate, or at least cripple the fuck out of them as we go, then so much the better.”
Joel smiled at her bug bear - her unrelenting drive to defend the underdog. He knew where it came from, and how deep that wound went. He respected the hell out of the way she had come to treat it more as a driving force that spurred her on, and less of the vengeance kick that he thought it might turn into.
He approved of her criteria. “Yes. I think everyone will be down with that, too.”
“Great,” said Molly, swinging herself in her chair again with one foot still on the ground. “And we can start in the area of the pharma, since that’s where we have a lot of relevant intel right now, what with Garet and the last case. And then down the line we can always pivot into other areas, like security or transport or whatever.”
“Faster-than-light-travel!” yelled Brock through the open door, as he wafted past, his outdoor boots squeaking against the laminate flooring.
Molly and Joel exchanged surprised glances. “How the fuck does he do that?”
“Hell if I know,” exclaimed Joel. “Probably heard us on his way past a moment ago.”
Her eyes were skeptical again. “Did he go past before, though?”
Joel shook his head. “Dunno.” He turned his attention back to his screen. Neither the mystical, nor the mythical, was something he knew how to manage, mentally or otherwise.
Molly followed his lead and looked back up to the screen, shaking her head in amusement at Brock. “So, dare I ask how much this is costing?” she nodded at the new software toy he’d obviously already signed up for.
“Best not.”
“Okay.” She got up and walked out of the conference room, leaving him to his new toy.
CHAPTER THREE
Ventus Research Facility, downtown Spire
The two colleagues hurried down the spartan corridor.
“Okay, let’s leave in both cars,” Ana Grossman, the lead scientist at Ventus Research, suggested to her colleague, David Rek. “Avoid suspicion,” she added.
Though she was trying her best to keep it together, the anxiety of the fraught situation played across her face.
David nodded his agreement, as he held one of the double doors open for her. They stepped out into the dimly lit car park, greeted by the familiar smell of fuel cells and engines.
David’s eyes darted around, making sure there was no one to see them. “Sure. Let’s rendezvous back at my place, though, and then we can call them on the secure line…”
Ana started moving away. “And get our fokking lives back,” she added grimly. The stress of the last several hours had taken its toll on both of them. Being leveraged to break company protocol and out and out steal lethal toxins was not something they thought they would be doing when they woke up that morning.
Ana, still in her lab coat, scrambled in her purse for her keys.
David watched her carefully. “I’m over that way,” he said, pointing off to the left, but still standing behind her.
Ignoring David, she looked up, orienting herself and trying to remember where she put the car when she got in. She’d been distracted. She scanned the parking lot; there was still quite a few cars there.
“I think I’m-”
She didn’t get to finish her sentence. A knife had come from behind and slit open her throat. David, carefully avoiding the arterial spray, allowed her to slump to the ground in front of him.
He dropped his gaze to his former supervisor and her shocked expression, as she tried to compute what he’d just done. She wasn’t able to breathe, and within seconds he saw the life slip away from behind her eyes.
He took a step backwards, avoiding the pooling blood. He seemed non-plussed by what he had done. A moment later, reality set in, and he found himself fighting the urge to vomit.
He looked around, checking that no one had seen him. Part of him was screaming inside; that same part was also hoping someone had seen. Hoping someone would come and make this go away.
Strange how he would want help, he thought. But he wasn’t doing this because he wanted to; he was as much a victim in all this as she.
Only he had to live with what he had done.
There was movement behind him.
A voice brought him back to the present. It was deep and commanding. “Good work. Now go back to your house, pack a bag, and wait for contact there.” There was no discernible accent, not that David could detect. It was the same voice that had given him instructions that morning, after he had left his wife and children at the house.
David took another step backwards from the blood, the image of the carnage branded onto his retinas. He dropped the knife, and was vaguely aware of the figure of a man behind him, in the direction of the voice.
He knew the drill. He was told someone would meet him here to take care of the body. He just had to keep it together and follow the rest of the instructions.
Stepping around the body, he headed off toward his car, looking for his keys in his jacket pocket, and then his pants.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” the voice called after him.
Without turning around, David stopped and tried to think. Then he started patting down his pockets for something else. Locating the vial in his pants pocket, he pulled it out, took a few paces backwards to the figure, carefully avoiding eye contact he reached back, and placed it into the man’s outstretched hand.
With the package relinquished, he scurried away to fulfill his next lot of instructions.
The man started cleaning up the mess, quickly and adeptly lifting the body into a body bag for transport. Less than ten seconds later, he heard a car speed away from the garage, as if someone’s life were in danger. He looked up, pausing in his zipping up of the bag, recognizing it was David getting the hell out of Dodge.
This is going to haunt him, thought the man. If he survives a long and healthy life after the next few days, that is. That was beyond his control. They were all just following orders.
Gaiman-67, Common area
It had been a long day. Joel was vegetating in the common area, watching the downloaded news on the shared holo. Neechie, the pet sphinx (or Feline Overlord, depending on who you asked), was stretched across his lap, basking in a tummy rub.
It was a rare occurrence for the cat-like creature to actually spend time with anyone other than Molly when she was still in the building. Joel just assumed that the sphinx needed some attention and Molly was engrossed in something that not even the cutest creature on the asteroid could distract her from. Sometimes he wondered if the girl was made of stone.
Brock had also come to join him, hoping for news of what was going on in the world.
“I like to keep my finger on the Estarian pulse,” he told Paige when she’d walked through, vocally wondering why they were wasting their evening watching old news.
“Oh, I thought you were lining up for a tummy rub,” retorted Paige playfully; noticing how the boys had commandeered the couch, and the sphinx had commandeered the boys’ laps.
Crash was downstairs working out in their new gym, just next to the main basement area that had become Brock’s workshop for the glorious things that he was waiting to both invent and assemble… if only the supplies would arrive already.
All was peaceful in the safe house. That was until there were shrieks of panic, which seemed to originate in the common area.
It was Brock’s voice. “Molly! Molly! You’re on the news!” He called through to Molly, who was working in the conference room just down the corridor from the main area.
Joel leapt up and swiped at the screen to pause it. It had just gone full screen on the video footage from Dewitt’s residence
cameras, from their rescue mission several weeks ago.
Paige came hurrying back first, her heels clipping on the concrete painted floor.
“Where’s Molly?” Joel asked her, as she came around to see the screen.
Paige answered, “In the conference room. She heard you.”
Molly’s footsteps could be heard next. She emerged a moment later. “What do you mean I’m on the news?” Her frown made her eyes look darker. She’d been working for hours without a break, and she had what Joel jokingly called “book-face”, after the old way that the ancients had used paper stacked and bound into ‘books’ to review information.
Brock read out the headlines on the bottom of the screen. “’Seen entering the Dewitt residence less than an hour before William Dewitt was found dead’.”
“But we spoke to the police?” protested Molly, looking at Joel.
“Yeah. And they said they told us about this footage then. They can’t be after you now.”
“Us,” she corrected, pointing out that they were both on the footage.
“Yeah, strange they don’t seem to mention me,” he admitted.
“Let it run, and let’s hear the whole report,” she suggested.
Joel backed up the player, and set it to run again. Molly sat down on the arm of the sofa where Joel had been sitting. Joel sat down again, the location of the sphinx now forgotten. The bald, purple creature narrowly escaped being crushed under Joel’s mass of muscle. Paige perched on a footstool off to the side in front of the screen, confusion now written over her delicate features.
She went to say something, reconsidered, and then spoke. “This was from when you rescued me.” Her face was now that of a vulnerable little girl.
Molly looked over to her.
“Yeah,” she confirmed. “You okay? You don't need to watch this.”
“I’m okay.” Paige had already turned her attention back to the screen, listening to the voiceover of the reporter.
“… police are now looking for the woman in this video footage in conjunction with Senate Official Dewitt’s murder. She is considered armed and dangerous. If you see this woman, police are urging, not to approach her, but to get in touch…”
Molly sighed, and shrugged, almost comically. “Well, this would have been more concerning if we were actually based on the planet.”
Her manner was somewhat more flippant than Joel would have expected. “True. But it begs the question - why are police suddenly looking for you?”
“Unless they’re not.” She paused, looking upward, processing. “They’ve already ruled us out as a threat. I wonder if the media have just gotten a hold of that clip and are trying to drum up a story.”
She stood up, and wandered over to the screen. “For instance, there’s no mention of the starship troopers that came blasting in after us. They would make much more plausible suspects.”
Joel agreed. “Yep. Something definitely fishy going down. Maybe we should get Oz to send them an untraceable message?”
“Maybe,” considered Molly. “But not yet. Let me mull it over, and let’s see what happens. When is this download from?”
Brock pulled up the meta data. “Two days ago.”
“Well one thing is certain,” interjected Paige, now looking recovered from the shock reminder of her kidnapping.
“What’s that?” asked Molly, turning to look at her.
“Those flat boots aren’t doing anything for your shape. You need a heel; maybe even a platform with a heel.”
Joel started laughing so hard he nearly fell of the sofa. Brock joined in, but Paige remained earnest.
Molly tried to resist a smile. “Thank you. Thank you very much, Paige.” She nodded at Paige in mock indignation, and then turned to the boys, ignoring the fact that they had collapsed into two shuddering heaps of hysterical laughter.
She eyed the two guys. “Okay, lemme know if you see anything about me pop up in the more recent stuff, too. I think there is something more to this, but we need more data points to assess it.”
The laughter started to subside a little as she made her way back to the double doors of the conference room corridor. Even Paige was giggling, realizing why her attempt at a fashion intervention was so misplaced, and badly received.
The seriousness of the news report hadn’t escaped them, though. There was a certain comfort in being on a secret asteroid in the middle of nowhere, but that was only going to act as a buffer for so long.
Gaiman-67, Conference Room
The next morning, the team piled into the conference room for their team briefing, laughing and chattering. Joel took a seat on the far side of the table, and Molly placed herself at the head so she could clearly see everyone in the room. Everyone grabbed their seats, holos ready to take notes or look up intel that they needed to make good decisions about kit and upgrades.
Brock was the last one in, dancing. In one hand was his new antigrav coffee mug that had arrived the previous day with their last shipment.
“Wooot woot! Good morning, you sexy people!” he exclaimed as he side shuffled and sashayed through the door to close it behind him with his hip.
He placed his cup down and the others watched as it levitated above the table. He nonchalantly pretended not to notice their amazement.
“Okay, okay, folks. Let’s get to it,” announced Molly, drawing the meeting to a start. “I called this meeting just to get us into some semblance of routine and order… and to keep each of us abreast of the different things we’re all working on.”
The room settled down, giving their leader their full attention.
“I think the first thing that is worth us getting clear on is why we’re here and what kind of cases we’re going to be working on together. Then, I’d like us all to give an update on what we’ve been working on, since someone who isn’t myself or Joel wouldn’t necessarily know about that.”
She looked around the table, making sure to connect with her team. She’d never admit it to Joel, but she’d had Oz download some leadership instructional material about how to make everyone on the team feel included. This meeting was an opportunity to test out some of those tactics.
She continued her overview. “And then I’d like Joel to say a few words about operations training, and the kinds of cases we’ve pitched for, so we know what might be coming up on the horizon.”
She paused looking around the table, and giving everyone a chance to take in what she was suggesting. Everyone nodded, and seemed happy.
So far, so good.
Told you a bit of instruction would help.
Not now, smart arse. Concentrating.
“Okay, great. So, as you know, we’re here to fight the good fight. We all have had experiences in the past that have brought us here, to this point where we don’t want to just sit back and let the bad guys get away with using and exploiting the people who haven’t got a voice, and can’t defend themselves. We’re here to fix that, case by case, knocking out as many of their motherfucking proverbial kneecaps as we can.”
The group let out a collective chuckle.
“So, in order to do that, we need to build out the team and infrastructure to take on the more sophisticated jobs. Joel and I have been looking into the kind of cases that we can pitch for, and honestly, right now, it’s slim pickings because of our small size. However, if we scale up our operation, we will be better positioned to take on the jobs, and deliver the standards I know we all aspire to.”
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