Dirty Work: Volume 2

Story Five - Nostalgia - 1

I have, on many occasions, tried to explain the wonders of an ever-unsolved mystery which returns to me time and time again. This mystery is, I believe, a key question which, if answered, could open up many avenues in modern sociology and anthropological thinking, and it might just help revolutionise the way we look at ourselves.

Why can one never get enough of a good, sloppy, greasy, slimy, chemical-stuffed abomination of a fast-food stall burger?

I don't bring this topic up again for no apparent reason. It occurred to me after I ducked across the Magna-Train station to a stand and had one rustled up for me in seconds. I was in Region 76 for the first time in several years. I had eaten one on my last ride out of the hole, and something about it seemed right. Apparently, I now needed one every time I crossed that threshold into or out of the grimy rain that collected in puddles on the streets of 76. Something about the ritual was comforting.

Even the wealthy citizens of Region 76 don't want to be there. Not that there are any in particular. Ending up living in Region 76 permanently is to be consigned to only seeing oneself represented in news articles about riots, murders, and the section of a celebrity's biography which highlights just how far they've come from poor beginnings. You live here at your own personal, mental, and spiritual peril. Most of Celestria is considered a backwater, but when you arrive in 76, you understand why. Even the great neon signs which welcome you are tired, fading, and never repaired.

It was a short walk from the station to my destination. Kall building was a large complex of flats that stood alone like a defiant middle finger. It might be too nice to call its abodes 'flats'. 'Cubby-holes' is more accurate, cubby-holes where one always kept a crowbar handy for rats, or the other occupants. I'd walked past it many times in years gone by, when I lived a short stint a few blocks away.

I heard her voice and turned. The familiar streets swallowed up the ghost and sent her with the steam vents to the heavens.

I crumpled up the burger paper and threw it into an overflowing bin. I took out my Halo-Core and checked the room number. 837. I hoped the building's lift was working but didn't hold out hope.

Déjà vu washed over me as I stepped inside and took to the stairs. I remembered climbing up to find Lura when I'd recently joined Dirty Work's employee register. I remembered how that ended. I wished I hadn't.

I pushed open a door from the stairwell which had jagged fragments of glass still in the window, and started down the hallway reading the flat numbers. After a brief wrong turn where I ended up overshooting, I took the left instead of the right and came across the destination I was after.

Just down the walkway a figure stood smoking in the shadows. He seemed unconcerned with the rain that was splashing inside. For a moment I thought I recognised him, but he disappeared around a corner before I could make out his face.

Stop seeing ghosts. Get a grip.

I knocked on the flat door, and as I did I noticed it. The door shifted a little in the frame. Not locked. There were little nicks and marks on the pass code pad at the side. Not unusual in themselves (especially here), but they were definitely marks that files and screwdrivers might make. At the edge of the doorframe were similar chips in the metalwork which suggested a prying with some kind of instrument. By the look of the exposed metalwork, they were fresh as well.

A shiver crawled up my flesh and I un-holstered my 58 Alpha. I put my hand to the door again and pushed. It swung open without much pressure.

'Mr Wolsal?' I called into the dark. 'Are you there?'

I stepped inside with the gun extended. The flat was a warzone. Glass lay like a carpet of crystal snow on the warped floorboards and it crunched underfoot with each step. Papers and gadgets were strewn all over the floor, and the main light had a gash through it. I looked into the bedroom to see an abattoir of pillow cases and their gutted hosts. The bed frame was overturned. Drawers were ripped away from their wall mountings and lay face down in the chaos. The bathroom, somehow, was fairly clean.

The boss had told me that Mr Wolsal had something interesting he wanted to pass through the underground channels. He was an old friend that had fallen on hard times, but too proud to accept help. He'd always had a habit of picking up old, interesting items, and had wanted either to get it to someone who might know more about than he did, or get it out of sight. The boss didn't know; Mr Wolsal hadn't said.

I'd been told to go and collect the item as soon as was possible (I'd left the Great Complex Area an hour later, as it turned out) but had been given no suggestion of imminent threat or danger. I didn't know what it was; something old was all the information I had. I considered letting the boss know the situation. Probably just easier to bring in the police. There was, after all, no notion that this was anything but a regular break-in and robbery.

As I looked around, the smell of sparking wires from the light still lingering, I tried to see if anything was missing. It didn't seem to be the case. I was walking on the remains of anything that was worth selling. The only thing I didn't see was any sign of the package I was to collect.

I double checked the bathroom. Its cleanliness was odd. Why destroy the rest of the place but keep the tiles sparkling? I lifted the top of the toilet cistern, but there was no plastic bag inside it floating on the water. I checked everything in the tiny shower stall and then went through the half-used bottles of scrub and wash.

With my hand on an empty bottle of cleaner that hadn't been thrown away yet, a possibility occurred to me. I went to the wash basket and rooted through the man's dirty washing but came up empty. I tried the sink and examined a couple of scourers for washing pots and pans, fairly irregularly it seemed.

The third cloth I looked at was what I was looking for. It was still damp and smelled strongly of cheap disinfectant. On the corner was a dark red-brown stain. I sniffed it. Blood, comprised of several droplets.

There was, again, nothing to suggest that this wasn't just a cloth that Wolsal had used to hold over a cut incurred whilst shaving. It was possible that he'd wiped down the surfaces that had got a few drops on it, washed the cloth badly, leaving the spot in the corner, and then run out for a few groceries. The squad of armed thugs had broken in when he was out and torn the place up. Any minute he would walk in, bewildered, with a patch on his chin over the cut, asking who I was.

Celestrians, however, are a cynical bunch, and we're bred to scoff at coincidence.

I dialled the boss and his face floated from the core. 'Place is trashed,' I said quickly. 'Wolsal is gone.'

'Any sign of the package?'

'Negative. Not that I could work out what it might be in this mess.'

He considered. 'Call the police. But do it anonymously, just in case.'

'Noted. Also, I've got a few drops of blood on a kitchen cloth here. You want me to turn that in as well?'

'A few?'

'Yes. As is, more than one.'

'Could they be from different people?'

I looked at it, as if that would help. 'No idea. Possibly. If it's not from Wolsal.'

'In which case, I want you to take it to Spyder and have him run an analysis on it. Police'll just see blood and a kidnapping and leave it at that. Spyder's got a better eye than them, anyway. I'll let him know you're coming.'

A noise outside caught my attention. I turned to the door, gun primed. The sound of someone walking past, then it went quiet. I relaxed my shoulders.

'Something you want to tell me, boss?' I whispered.

'A hunch of mine. Things are happening which seem to be too closely linked for comfort.'

'Them?'

'I don't know. Let me know what Spyder says.' With that his face dissolved and the conversation ended.

The boss's unease had got to me. Once more, what seemed like something which should be routine was rapidly heading downhill.

I remembered the boss telling me not to get involved in things as I left the apartment, having used the swiped cloth to wipe down the surfaces I'd touched. I sent an anonymous message to the local police and watched their kars flash blues and twos as I walked in the other direction back to the station.

The burger place had the shutters drawn under an hour after I'd arrived. That seemed to me like a bad omen.