by Simon Archer
“Good,” Lin said, looking relieved and fully confident in her ability to run the company for a few hours now.
“Alright,” I said, looking around the table at my team that was going back into the tunnels. “Everybody ready for this? Ready to go back? Clem, you feeling up to it? Your leg’s still looking pretty nasty.”
I cast a glance down at his leg, which had been crushed by a collapsing tunnel just ten days ago. Modern medicine at Serenity General had worked its magic and gotten him back on his feet quickly, but even a TelCorp binder had limits. Even so, Clem scoffed at the question.
“Are you kidding me?” he asked. “I’ve never been more ready. Let’s find this fucking bastard. And this time, let’s fucking kill him so he can’t escape again.”
“You might be on to something there,” I admitted. “But let’s not be so hasty. There’s still info we want from him, even if we don’t know how to get it out of him yet. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We need to find him first. Let’s go.”
I clapped my hands together, and the six of us who were going into the tunnels rose. I finished off the last of my coffee and headed to the door.
“Let us know the second you find anything new, and we’ll do the same,” I said, pointing to Malthe and looking between him and Lin.
They both nodded, and my team headed out to find our guy.
5
“Alright, so where are we going to enter the tunnels?” Cindra asked as she, Clem, Semra, the other foxgirls, and I made our way through the cylindrical tunnel and back out into the main binder office space, which was now full of employees.
“I think we have a more immediate problem,” I said back to her, as every eye of every binder left at TelCorp trained on us, all asking the same series of unspoken questions about what had happened that morning, which wasn’t many, to be honest. We’d lost a lot of good guys in the binding war that had plagued Termina not all that long ago.
“What’s going on?” one guy, an older binder named Vic, asked. “The reporters heckled us when we came in, but none of us know anything other than what they said on the news.”
“I know, I’m sorry,” I said, holding up my hands to silence the rest of them before they blurted out a hundred other questions at once. “And I wish I could say we weren’t in the same boat, but we are. We don’t know what happened or where Achilles Tibor is. But we’re working on it. We’re headed down into the tunnels right now.”
“I’ll come with you,” about a dozen of them said at once, jumping up from their desks. I smiled and shook my head.
“No, the more people we have down there, the harder it will be,” I said. “But you know what you can do, you can go out into the streets, especially down to the south side, and try to figure out anything you can. Just having eyes and ears around the city will be more than a help to us right now.”
“We’re on it, Mr. Joch,” two of the younger ones said almost in unison, as the entire room began shuffling around their stuff, preparing to leave. I smiled even wider at that.
“Thank you guys for all coming in early this morning,” I said honestly. “And thank you for being so on top of things. I know it’s been a hard few weeks, and it just got a helluva lot harder this morning, before we’ve even had time to process the losses we’ve endured. So yeah, I just want you all to know how much I appreciate that. Your willingness to be a part of the team in this.”
“We want him just as bad as you do, Mr. Joch,” Vic said, giving me a grim smile. “He’s the reason we lost so many guys. This is our fight, just as much as it’s anyone else’s, including your own.”
I nodded at him before turning my attention to the room as a whole. “Report back to Lin. Don’t make any major moves without her say-so. She’s me while we’re in the tunnels. Treat her as you’d treat me.” They all nodded back to me.
“Sure thing, Mr. Joch,” one of the young men said. “Whatever you say, sir.”
“Thanks again, all,” I told them. “Now, get to it.” The whole group of us all scrambled to the elevator at once, but the binders stepped aside to allow my group to go first. While in the elevator, I messaged Lin, telling her to dole out specific assignments to the guys and make sure they reported back to her.
“It’s good they all showed up,” Semra said. “Some of them tend to roll out of bed at noon.” She gave Clem a side-eyed look since he had a penchant for doing that in his binder days. Even now, on occasion.
“Eh, it’s the name of the game,” I shrugged. “This profession’s flexible, that’s part of the appeal, but when push comes to shove, these are good guys. They show up for the team. That’s why we kept them on after Elias died or hired them to replace the ones we fired in the first place.”
“So, where are we starting?” Semra asked again.
“Oh, right,” I said, turning to Clem. “What do you think? You’ve spent the most time down there out of all of us.”
“Well, the tunnel on the far north side is open,” he said. “We can start there and see where it takes us, though it won’t be close to much of the main stuff. It’s just easier to get there since the closer tunnels are more obstructed by debris.”
“Okay, we’ll start there,” I agreed. “I’ll call Gunnar for us.”
Gunnar was the air car driver I used most often. He was a good guy, and most importantly, he was trustworthy and loyal to TelCorp. I might even make him a TelCorp employee when I had the time and wherewithal. Take him off the busy streets and give him some more stability. His family would like that, I knew, and so would he.
Always at my beck and call, willing to drop everything to drive me, it didn’t take long for Gunnar to show up. I paid that well, at the end of the day, and I tipped even better.
We waited in silence back by the elevator for him, avoiding the reporters, who were still pressed up against the entrance to the building. If anything, there were even more of them now. Then, my E-pad pinged, signaling Gunnar’s arrival. Predictably, the throng of reporters noticed him pulling up next to them, and they began harassing him instead of desperately peering into the windows.
“Alright, let’s go rescue the poor guy,” I said, sighing and leading my group out and across the main lobby. “No one deserves this bullshit.”
Despite having been watching the lobby intently before, not a single soul noticed us until we were outside, their focus now entirely on their new shiny object: namely, Gunnar. The poor guy was holed up in his air car, the windows shut tight, cowering from them, which was an interesting sight considering that he was huge and practically made of muscle.
“Hello, please make a path,” I called to the crowd when we were just standing there at the entrance, watching the throng of reporters heckle our poor driver. Of course, they all whipped their heads around and scrambled to accost us.
“He said to make a path, losers!” Semra screamed at the top of her lungs.
Some of them must have remembered her from when she berated them when she tried to get in the building, as several of them widened their eyes and then stepped back. That made a slim path for us to cross through the crowd to get to Gunnar’s air car.
“How d'you manage that?” I asked Semra as we climbed in the car, bemused. “What did you do to them the last time?”
“I reminded them of my many talents,” she said, winking at me and putting her hand on the hilt of her holo knife.
“Oh god,” I groaned, rolling my eyes. “That’s gonna be on the holonews this afternoon if it isn’t already.”
Semra just looked even more pleased with herself as she took a seat against the back left side of the air car, while I sat between her and the foxgirls. Clem climbed in the front so he could better stretch out his wounded leg.
“How’s it going, Gunnar?” he asked the driver. “The reporters didn’t heckle you too much, I hope.”
“Oh, I’m alright, Sir,” Gunnar said as he swooped the air car up and over the throng of reporters, though he still looked a bit shaken up. “They’r
e just doin’ their jobs like you and me.”
“I suppose that’s one way of looking at it,” Clem said, giving a hollow laugh.
“So what’s goin’ on, Mr. Joch?” Gunnar asked, and he really looked nervous now. “Do ya think that this guy’s out runnin’ around on the streets somewhere?”
“I doubt that,” I said, trying to sound reassuring. “That’d be too obvious. But it’s probably best to keep as low a profile as possible until this is all over.”
“Oh, Mr. Joch, you’ve been tellin’ me that a lot lately,” Gunnar said, shaking his head and giving me a small smile in the rearview mirror.
“I know,” I said, setting my mouth in a thin line. “I’m sorry. We’re doing our best to fix that, I promise.” I knew Gunnar worried about his wife and kids, alone in their apartment all day and sometimes at night while he worked.
“Oh, don’t you worry about that, Mr. Joch,” Gunnar said, waving a hand dismissively in the air. “I know you’re doin’ everything you can. Who knows where this city would be without you, after all. I hate to think of it.”
“I’m glad you think so,” I said, looking back down as we passed over the last of the reporters. I wondered not for the first time how many in the city felt like Gunnar, and how many wished I’d just left well enough alone and let Elias Berg run the company and the city the way he saw fit. It would’ve meant a lot less controversy, that was for sure.
“So, where are we headed, Mr. Joch?” Gunnar asked. “To the south side again? The Void, maybe?”
“Not today, Gunnar,” I said. “Or at least not yet. We’re going to switch things up on you and head to the north shore this time. Where is it specifically, Clem?”
“Northwest, right by the big hotel,” Clem said absent mindedly, as he was busy staring out the window.
“I know just the place,” Gunnar said cheerfully. “What brings you up this a way, Mr. Joch? I’ve never taken you up here before?”
“We think we might have a lead up there,” I said, keeping it vague not because I failed to trust Gunnar, but because I feared for his safety should someone come looking for him, asking about me.
“Really?” Gunnar asked, looking a combination of nervous and excited. “Well, I hope that works out for you, Mr. Joch, I really do. Nobody wants this guy off the streets more than us air car drivers. But you won’t mind if I duck right out of there after I drop you off, just in case, ya know?”
“No problem,” I said with a laugh. “Why do you say that about the air car drivers in particular?”
“Oh, Mr. Joch, take a look around,” Gunnar said, waving his hand in the air again, this time in the direction of the window. “What do ya see?”
“Not much,” I said, gleaning his meaning as I looked out the windows on both sides of me. “I’m sorry, Gunnar, this must really be bad for business.”
“Yes, sir, I’ve never seen it this bad,” Gunnar said, shaking his head glumly. “Even when you three were rabid and on the loose, supposedly.”
He nodded back to the foxgirls and flashed them a smile to show that he knew very well how ridiculous a suggestion it was that they were so dangerous to the general public. Even so, that’s how Elias Berg and law enforcement portrayed them at the time. The streets had been deserted for days, and service drones filled the skies, bringing food and other supplies to the scared residents of Termina locked up in their luxury apartments and townhomes. Meanwhile, people like Gunnar kept on working because they didn’t have much of a choice.
“It’s really worse than that even?” I asked him, continuing to peer out the window. “How can you tell?”
“Even the nightclubs are closed,” Gunnar said, his tone and expression dark. “I’ve never seen that happen. Not once. Those places keep on runnin’ rain or shine, war or peace, every day of the year on and on forever, as long as I can remember. And they’re all closed. Every single one of ‘em.”
I stared at him in that rearview mirror. “Really?” I asked, shocked. If this was true, it really was a bad sign. It meant people were spooked. Panicked, even. And that was the last thing we needed at a time like this.
“Yes sir.” As Gunnar spoke, he swooped the air car down to the pavement.
I took a moment to take in the north shore scenery as we landed. Unlike the south shore, where everything was dingy and old, and the water was in an industrial harbor surrounded by factories and shipping freighters, the north shore was nothing short of luxury. The harbor was made up of glistening, clear blue water, not dirty in the slightest, and was lined with private boats and yachts that belonged to Termina’s financial elite. I had a boat myself, here, somewhere, used sparsely for partying along the shoreline.
We never went anywhere else. We never had any reason to. We were fine right here.
I hadn’t gone out on it in what felt like a lifetime. It hadn’t even crossed my mind. I had so much else going on, and most of the goings-on in Termina centered around the financial district, in the heart of the city. This was more the area CEOs and board members retired to once they’d made enough money to live off of three times over by the time they were forty. I already had far more than that from my inheritance, but I wasn’t even close to being ready to slow down yet. Thus, I didn’t get up there very often, but it was sure damn beautiful.
The others seemed to be thinking the same because Clem let out a low whistling noise.
“Why is it we don’t come up here all that often again?” he asked me, leaning across the front seat in order to do so.
“This is… I don’t know how to feel about this,” Kinley said, something between admiration and a scowl etched across her face. I realized none of the foxgirls had ever probably been up here before.
“It’s overrated,” I said honestly. “I mean, it’s cool and all, but it’s mainly just a bunch of forty-somethings who retired too early and need to blow off steam, getting drunk every night and throwing yacht parties.”
“And what’s wrong with that?” Clem asked, feigning insult.
I rolled my eyes as Semra opened the air car door.
“I never got the appeal,” she said flippantly. “Thanks, Gunnar.”
“Uh, yeah, thanks, Gunnar,” I said, pulling out my E-pad to pay the driver before following Semra out of the vehicle. “We’ll let you know when we need you back. Until then, lie low somewhere nearby. Honestly, you’re probably safer in this general area than closer to the financial district.”
“What?” Gunnar asked, his eyes wide. “My family’s apartment is around there…”
“It should be fine,” I said quickly, trying to sound reassuring. “Don’t worry about it. We’ve got you, man. We’re going to figure this whole thing out like we always do.”
“Of course, Mr. Joch,” Gunnar said, though he still looked a little frazzled. “I’ll be waitin’ for your call.”
We were all out on the pavement then. While the south side’s shore had houses instead of apartment buildings, the north shore still had the apartments. Skyscrapers stretched far up into the sky, way past the gray clouds overcasting the city. The main difference between here and the financial district was the water and that all the buildings were either residential or smaller businesses to do with sailing and yachting along the shoreline, while the rest of the north side also housed all kinds of business, from multinational corporations like TelCorp to laundromats and mom and pop shops, or what was left of them after centuries of corporate development, anyway.
“I don’t care what you all say, it’s nice up here,” Clem said as he put his hands on his hips and stretched out his back. “The air’s clean.”
“Only because the people who pollute it on our side of the city live here and not there,” Cindra scoffed.
“Fair enough,” Clem admitted, “but we’re working on that.”
Though our south side development initiative was on hold due to the renovations that we needed to make to restore the tunnels and repair the damage done to the city in the week-long binding civil war, it h
ad been our top priority prior to all the shit hitting the fan ten days before. We’d done a lot of good work in a short amount of time, too. But the south shore had a lot of work to do before it was even close to this quality if that was even possible or desirable since so many people lived and worked there.
“I’m gonna see if I get through to Malthe on this thing,” I said, pulling the earpiece the hacker had given me out of my tool belt and put it in my ear. It slipped in nicely, with a more snug fit than the last one. I pressed on a button protruding on the side, calling Malthe automatically.
“Aye, what’s goin’ on?” he answered. “You there yet?”
“We’re getting there,” I said, following Clem as he walked down the street we were on, on the block second nearest to the shore, presumably heading toward a tunnel entrance. “We’re walking there right now.”
Clem nodded in confirmation.
“Good, I think I know what entrance he’s sending you toward,” Malthe said. “That should work, provided nothing’s still caved in.”
“You can see us on your map?” I asked.
“Yup,” he said, and an unexpected wave of reassurance washed over me. It had been difficult, losing our connection to Malthe and Lin down there the last time, and the time before that, for that matter. I hoped three would be the charm.
“So, how’s it going back there?” I asked him as we continued to walk along the shoreline, listening to the soft waves rippling against the beach. “Did Lin give the binders their assignments, okay?”
“Yeah, they’re all out there, I think,” Malthe said. “I haven’t been paying them much attention, to be honest. I’ve been focused on my own research. Lin’s been running around the office like crazy, though, and I haven’t seen any binders around in a while.”
“Good, good, how’s your work going?” I asked. “Anything new?”
“Not really,” Malthe said. “I still can’t make much of it. Mainly I’ve been looking for any sign of Achilles on the main island, but there’s nothing. Not on any cameras or feeds or anything anywhere. So either he’s got someone as good or better than me working for him, or… or I don’t know what else. There’s no other option if he’s on the island.”
