Though his pseudo-geeky converse pumps were dusty and fashionably “worn,” his immaculate pinstripe suit and crisp white shirt looked like something out of a catalog for the nouveaux riche.
“How was your trip in?” asked Joel, as he invited the Estarian to sit down at the small table in the bar.
The place was peaceful, but there were enough people around talking, drinking, and eating for them to remain relatively anonymous.
“Yeah, good. Really good, thanks. How was yours?” Pieter leaned forward, one arm at an angle on the table, and used the other hand to sweep through his shaggy hairstyle.
Joel sat more squarely, and pulled up his holo notes. “Good also. Thanks.”
The waitress appeared at his elbow within seconds, and they ordered some mochas and got straight down to business.
“Your resume is impressive. With your abilities, you could choose to do anything; how come you’re not working in the city, reeling in the big bucks?” Joel asked him.
Pieter was unfazed. He barely paused to consider his response. “It’s just not the type of environment I’d be happy in. I’d find it rather dull.” Pieter’s accent was slightly melodic, and light, and he didn’t seem to put much effort into enunciating his words. Joel was trying to place which area it might be from.
“So tell me a little about what you’ve been doing for work then…” he asked.
The interview continued for a good hour and a half.
By the end of it Joel was pretty certain they had a good candidate and that he would fit with the team. There was just one more question Molly had asked him to cover.
Joel asked the question, just as he had all the others. “Tell me about your gambling problem.”
Pieter froze. He took a moment to formulate the words. “It’s in the past. But how do you know about that?”
Joel smiled, a relaxed smile. “It’s okay. It doesn’t preclude you from the job. We know because our hacking kung fu is better than yours. But then, we have a few unfair advantages. One of them being your future boss.” Joel closed his holo notes and put all his attention on Pieter. “What we need to know is how ‘in the past’ the problem is.”
Pieter swallowed.
Joel remained casual, but held his gaze. He wasn’t backing down on this one. He needed the truth. The integrity of the team needed the truth.
Pieter’s eyes had gone from being cool and casual to much more earnest. “Very. I mean. I still owe money. That’s why it would be good to get off-world for a while. But I haven’t placed a bet in years. I’ve just been working to keep making payments. But there’s always pressure… from the wrong kind of people, if you know what I mean.”
He ran his fingers through his full head of hair again.
Joel nodded. “Yes, I know exactly the kind of people you mean. I’ve come across those kinds of folks in a few cases I’ve worked.”
Pieter’s eyes dropped to the table, having spilled everything he had been hoping to not mention.
“Okay, so cards on the table time…” Joel continued. “We want you because you are talented, and you’re able to work outside the box. We’ve looked into some of the jobs you’ve done, and you’re a creative thinker.”
He paused, trying to word the next bit right so as not to be misunderstood.
“The other reason we want you on the team is because you can make a judgment call. You don’t play strictly by the book. And, quite frankly, there are going to be times when we need that.”
He paused again, making sure that Pieter was taking it all in.
“Now, when it comes to the team, though, you need to have their backs. If there is even a hint or suggestion that you’ve been creative with the truth, or done anything to harm or take advantage of them, then I personally will come down on you so hard you will wish you were back here on Estaria at the mercy of the gambling sharks.”
Joel sat back in his chair, his casual air returning. “Do you understand our position?”
Pieter swallowed again, and nodded. His eyes were suddenly tired, as the anxiety caught up to him and fatigued him.
“Okay. Great,” said Joel, taking a last swig of his mocha before placing the mug down on the table. He looked up at Pieter. “If you want it, the job is yours.”
Pieter’s eyes had a distant look behind them. He had looked like he had been listening to Joel, but then when Joel finished speaking, Pieter just kept bobbing his head, processing.
Joel waited for his response. “Well?”
Pieter managed to nod more firmly. Then he smiled and nodded again. “Yes, I understand. And I’m in. Please.”
He sat up a little straighter.
Joel leaned forward with his arms on the table. “Well, good then,” he said. “We need to leave in a few days. We’re in the middle of a case right now, so we need to remain flexible. How soon can you leave town with us?”
Pieter’s eyes looked upward as he considered his answer. “Erm,” he paused, his eyes flicking left then right. “Probably about two days. I need to pack some things, and make arrangements at my apartment.”
Joel tapped the table with his forefingers, in conclusion. “Okay, fine. Go ahead and put those things in place, and let’s stay in close holo contact.” He grinned again. “…So we don’t leave without you!”
Pieter tried to grin back, uncertain if Joel was pulling his leg or not.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Ventus Research Facility, downtown Spire
Eugene led Paige and Molly through the automatic double doors and a securi-field, which looked like it had some bio-hazard detection layer to it. “Okay – so, here we are,” he said, walking into the largest open-plan lab Molly had ever seen.
Paige looked around in awe, as if she’d just arrived on another planet.
Molly got straight down to what she needed to see. “Okay, so if you can show us the lab reports first…” she suggested, by-passing the usual small talk that Eugene was used to when he gave visitors tours.
Eugene bowed his head slightly and then signaled for them to follow him. “Of course. Time is of the essence.”
They passed rows of white benches and equipment, and batches of tests being run in various machines. About halfway through the immense lab, Eugene took them over to a holo portal and stopped. Flicking through the screens, he started pulling up pages and navigating to the intel they needed.
“It’s all here,” he said, stepping back, opening his palm to the holo and allowing Molly in to navigate the lab reports.
Molly stepped forward, and started looking at the material. “Thank you,” she acknowledged briefly. “We’re going to need some supplies, and then we’re going to work from a secure location. Can you get me everything we’d need in the way of samples and disposables for the experiments?”
Eugene looked slightly disappointed. “You mean, you won’t be working from here?” he asked.
Molly didn’t take her eyes from the data. “No, we need to be elsewhere to do this.”
Eugene stayed still. “I… I just wanted to ask…”
Molly glanced over at him briefly. “Uh hm?” she said, waiting for him to spit it out.
Eugene was wringing his fingers nervously. He glanced around furtively. “Erm, well. It’s Ana and David. Do you think they’re ok?”
Molly shook her head. “I have no idea. Why do you ask?”
Eugene leant in a little, and spoke in a low whisper. “Well, I know them. They’re my friends. I’m… I just worry that something awful has happened to them… and I can’t understand why the police aren’t investigating their disappearance. I mean… everyone knows they’re not around. Surely someone must have reported them missing. They have… families.”
Molly frowned, taking the intel on board. “You make a good point. I don’t have answers right now, but… I’d say, keep your head down and let us do our job. If they’re alive, we’ll get them back.”
Eugene looked part way satisfied. “Ok. Ok…” He nodded, as if talking himself i
nto believing her. “Let me go and get what you’ll need.”
He scuttled off.
Paige started chattering about the lab, but Molly was engrossed.
Oz, I think we’ve got the detail we need in this set of experiments I’m highlighting. Are you able to download what we need?
Already on it. Patching through to their Ethertrak now.
Good. And then we just need to look at what they ended up producing, and somehow figure out what combinations could have been mixed.
Molly spun around looking round the lab for something.
“What? What is it?” Paige asked, her last sentence abandoned.
Molly’s eyes scanned the far reaches of the lab. “I’m looking for where they might actually store these toxins once they’ve produced them.” She noticed a door with another securi-field and a keypad. “There…” she nodded with her head, subtly so that only Paige was aware.
Paige turned to look where Molly had indicated. “What do we need to do? They’ll give us access, right?” she asked.
“I would have thought so.” Molly looked around for where their escort had gone. He was nowhere, but there were plenty of other employees walking around in white suits.
She stopped a passerby with a rack of samples in his hands.
“Excuse me,” she said.
He looked at her, and nodded, without bothering to speak.
Her hackles went up a little, and her face firmed, noticing his attitude.
She continued, “I’m here investigating the situation for Dr. Knotts. I need to see the storage area, please.”
“You’re the one who wrote the paper?” The lab-coated passerby spoke, his voice more cold than impressed. The guy was young, and he stood tall and proud; his Estarian blue glow not completely diminished like most of his colleagues. Molly guessed that he had only arrived that morning, whereas the others had probably been working most of the night.
Molly pursed her lips. “If you’re talking about the paper on splicing and dicing the Yultok plant to prove that fucking around with genes is a bad idea…”
The young scientist looked taken aback. Paige assumed it was Molly’s language.
“You look surprised,” Molly commented flatly.
She watched the irritation swell in the guy’s chest and face. “Yeah. Well…” he started, “it was a fucking stupid paper to write.” Then his voice suddenly softened, and his chest relaxed a little as if he were changing his mind. “But I hadn’t realized your reason for writing it - until you said that.”
“Oh,” Molly raised her chin slowly, and paused. “Yeah, that was the main premise. I got graded down because it read more like ‘a manifesto of what science shouldn’t do’,” she shared. “What did you think the paper was for?”
The scientist looked a little embarrassed. “To wreak death and destruction. Probably set you up for your nice cushy job with the military.”
Paige’s eyes widened, watching for Molly’s reaction.
Molly’s mouth flew open in outrage. “You’re serious?” her voice louder and two octaves higher. “I worked with computers in the military. I would never develop this kind of toxin - or any toxin - for military use! It would be a crime against life!” She ran out of breath, and had to stop speaking to breathe.
Paige wasn’t certain, but she thought she saw tears of anger forming in Molly’s eyes.
The young scientist relaxed his frame, and nodded sympathetically, now looking ashamed of how he had jumped to a conclusion that was so far off the mark.
He looked down at the floor, and scuffed a toe against the surface, flicking his hair out of his eyes before looking back at her. “So,” he said more quietly now. “You’re here to help us find an antidote?”
“Yes,” she told him, cautiously holding her hand out to shake his. “I’m Molly, and this is Paige,” she tilted her head in Paige’s direction. “And we need to move fast.”
“Guss,” he answered. He shifted the rack of test tubes into his left arm, and offered them each in turn a fist to bump. “Geek hand-shake,” he explained. “Product of working in a lab with all kinds of things you don’t want to transfer.”
They fist bumped. He smiled at them, as he turned around. Paige shook her head to herself.
This really was another world.
He quickly popped the samples down in a nearby gas cupboard and locked it with a fingerprint device. “Okay, follow me,” he instructed, leading them off to the door across the lab. Clearing the securi-field, he gave them the rundown of how things were stored.
“By category and date?” Molly confirmed.
Guss nodded.
She looked out at the shelves of temperature-controlled samples. “This means that we can take a guess at the products that were disturbed in a given area, and then cross reference them with the lab reports.”
Guss looked at Molly, and blinked. “Yeah. And that would tell us what was missing,” he said, finishing the thought. “I guess we hadn’t thought of that.” He scratched his mop of brown hair, looking a little sheepish.
Molly wasn’t paying attention to him, though. They’d found the shelves that had been disturbed. Some of it had already been cleaned up for obvious reasons. But Molly looked carefully at what had been disturbed. “It looks random. And rushed. She walked up and down the other shelves in the area to check that nothing else had been broken, or looked obviously missing. “This doesn’t look like a special concoction was being produced,” she commented.
Guss had one hand on his hip, and one gripping his hair. “Yeah, uh. I guess you’re right,” he admitted, looking around to see what else he’d missed.
Molly and Paige took images of everything that they would need to narrow their task down, and Guss led them back out to the main lab where they met Eugene. He’d accumulated several boxes worth of samples and materials they would need.
“You guys have transport?” he asked, his hand on a stack of three of the crates.
“We do,” Molly told him. “Out in your visitor parking lot.”
Molly was suddenly glad that Brock had changed the plates before they left, just in case they were being tracked. The car itself worked for their low-key op, as it was inconspicuous and not too new. No one would look at it twice in the downtown environment.
“Okay, let me give you a hand then,” Eugene said, lifting the first set onto an antigrav hover device he’d located while he was fetching the supplies. Guss scurried off to get another couple, and before they knew it, they had “hovered” everything out and loaded up the car.
Guss closed the trunk, and patted it with the flat of his hand. “That’s the last of it.” he told her.
“Thanks for all your help,” Molly said, fist bumping the two nerds. “I’ll be in touch as soon as we need more intel, or when we have something to report.”
Paige hopped into the passenger seat.
Guss and Eugene smiled back at Molly, then Paige. Then Eugene had a thought. “You don’t want to see Dr. Knotts before you head out?”
Molly was already opening the car door on the driver’s side. She shook her head. “He has my holo. He knows where to reach me. Something tells me he’s otherwise disposed right now.” She gave them a knowing glance.
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