Primal Gambit

Chapter 55: The Ransom

"This' a lot of money for one guy, yeah?" Shift barked as he loaded two massive duffel bags into the backseat of his hideous Gretel. The storage area was not sized well to begin with and when the driver placed the bags into it, they seemed two times their actual girth.

A few weeks had passed since Shift and Renault had heard from anybody. They spent their days learning about one another, slowly finding how alike they really were. A burning tether to their mission was the only lead they had. Without the direction of Darwin, they were lost. Renault would not commit to more reconnaissance in fear of crossing paths with the infamous Siberian again. The mastermind kept them in the dark, unwilling to shed light on his real intentions. Like trained dogs they begrudgingly followed.

"It's really not that much, with inflation n' all that." Renault remarked as he leaned over the passenger side door, reveling in the ugly beauty of the net gun that had replaced the side-view mirror.

"Hundred years ago, this'd been around one-point-five million, n' look at it now. Two duffel bags, the contents of which equal somewhere close to twelve. For one guy." The Utah refugee wiped the morning from his eyes before replacing his sunglasses. As soon as the garage door would open, the glasses would be replaced by a long-duration oxygen rebreather, but the cold winter sun already shone through the cracks in the windowpanes. Most current generation vehicles came equipped with fixed, oxygenized air, free of pollutants and hazardous fiberglass fragments, though Gretel had been produced years ago and so her engine did not contain the capacity to "fix" the air.

"I wonder what makes 'im so important." Shift grunted after pushing his seat back to its normal position.

"He used to be a professor. Didn't you look over the data Darwin gave us? He generates the most revenue for the zoo compared to the junkies and addicts – the bottom of the barrel garbage that the wealthy ordinarily pay to see." It was clear to Renault why Darwin was initially after the professor: to seize and hold him against the observatory would decimate their numbers, causing the entire organization to buckle to its knees. With the sighting of the husky Siberian, however, his initial understanding had begun to spiral into fierce inference and delusion.

"Who would pay more to see a professor? Yeah he's smarter n' all that, but that seems boring. The people want to see 'em fight, see 'em fuck. It doesn't make sense. Why pay to see a once-intelligent man play with sticks in the ash?" Shift sat in the driver's seat of the car, hand caressing the manual shifting knob.

"He's in there with all the others, not alone – and they pay more because it's a scare tactic. If they bring their children and show them what is possible should they fall out of the family money or bloodline with no cushion to brace their fall, they will remain within the line instead of finding their own future. The professor serves that purpose best because he once had both family and money – but just fell out once the universities died out." Renault put his gloves on and took his seat on the passenger side, pulling the door closed.

"Seems like a wicked way for an organization to create revenue. I wonder why the captives don't just revolt. It's happened before." Shift lit a cigarette, the smoke drizzling from the end and coating the innards of the car. Renault coughed.

"Their mouths are sewn shut as soon as they arrive, before they are put into an exhibit. They don't know one another – imagine trying to create incentive to riot with a group of strangers you can't talk to." He sighed, ready to begin the trek to the warehouse in The Outskirts.

"Yeah, but time spent in a cage is enough to drive anyone mad. Someone once said there is reason in madness. Perhaps that madness would drive some of them to revolt." Shift took a long drag and shut his eyes, exhaling the smoke throughout the dashboard and center console. The light in the garage was dim, making the interior of the car both dark and cold.

"Somebody somewhere must have fought back at some point. I've heard on the news about attacks made on some of the guards – some of which were literally pulled limb from limb. From what I understand though, those attacks were little more than regressed anger, not an escape plot." Renault was eager to get going, putting his gloves over his hands and reviewing the contents of his pack.

An impending doom sat with Renault, infesting the core of his being ever since his run-in with the brute from across the seas. For reasons he couldn't explain and wouldn't want to even if he could, he felt that the "fog of war" as he had come to understand it during his many tours was going to vanish upon their arrival at the isolated warehouse. All his questions, especially those that plagued him even before he left Utah for The Dark City were to be answered in the coming hours.

Shift was none the wiser. A simple man from one of the last non-warring countries on a sole mission to retrieve the monetary sustenance to aid his sick mother, to fly his sister home, to fly himself home. They needed to be together one more time, to feel like a family as the coming war destroyed the world around them. He cared not for the true reason of Darwin's plea for help on the final job – Shift despised Darwin to begin with. Once Shift's first mission landed in the rocks, the master puppeteer disappeared, vanished like a dying gust in the wind while his men perished to The Yard.

As soon as the job was complete, Shift was going to split the profit with Renault and drive to the airport. He was to fly under a false identity and return to his homeland to be with those he cared about. Renault would likely do the same, though his identity was true.

The garage door opened on rusted chains, Gretel was about to open up.