Chapter 6: Looking for Leads
Paulie looked around the street briefly, his brown eyes scanning the rooftops for threats as he fingered the revolver he wore under his coat.
“It’s fine. Mursk’s men already checked it out.” A female voice said from nearby, a familiar one.
He turned to the side, from the entrance of the building he saw Junior Detective Sasfren slither into view, her expression petals opening slightly but not flashing color. Her snake-like head tossed slightly in a gesture bidding him to follow and so he did. Walking across the sidewalk and into the building quickly.
The inside was dark, not hard to see, the walls were black and the floor seemed to be covered in black tile. The walls hung with paintings depicting alien scenes of dim forests and moonlit nightscapes. The lights were a pale orange that set a grim tone and he chuckled a little.
“Kinda moody in here.”
Sasfren nodded. “Yes, that’s why I like it. Reminds me of a cave perhaps, or the forest at dusk.” He cocked his head a little, he could see the vibe she meant.
He pursed his lips as they walked along the open hall till they reached a set of elevator doors. He glanced behind them, Jakiikii was approaching with Sergeant Aril and Mursk in tow, one of the PDF troopers was there too. But the thin heechian stopped halfway to them and took up position guarding the entrance.
Jakiikii and Paulie took positions next to each other, the termaxxi giving him a sideways look. Her head had to turn up slightly as she was only as tall as his shoulder, he glanced down at her as she did so but said nothing.
“Okay, in ya go.” Sasfren said cheerfully, the parasite that was in his head translating in the manner of a jargon worm. Paulie frowned a little and stepped inside.
His own apartment building didn’t have elevators as it was not very tall. From what he had seen outside, the structure they were in was at least twice as tall and much wider. They were further towards the middle of the city, closer to the main adjudicator’s complex. A small part of him wondered how many others lived in the building or if it was nearly vacant like his and Jakiikii’s.
The elevator ride was brief, the monitor above the door held lines of falling alien script. But he had been paying attention and with a little additional help from Jakiikii he was able to recognise the symbol as they stepped out onto the seventh floor.
“Seven.” He muttered sideways to Jakiikii as he pointed at the symbol.
She beamed at him with her eyes, patting his arm with two of her own as if to tell him he was doing a fine job. He chuckled a little inwardly, but frowned as he thought about all the other things he was missing. A few symbols was a great start but ultimately useless in the long run if he could not wrap his head around the common tongue of the Intercession.
The trip down the hall was short and filled with mild apprehension. Paulie hadn’t seen Mack since the award ceremony nearly a week before. The action so far he had been able to participate in amounted to one thwarted mugging attempt and nothing else. He was itching to get back into the thick of it, to get some real justice served to those unrelenting killers that still haunted the streets of Korscam.
Aril and Sasfren took a turn and led them down an adjoining hall before they stopped at a room he was able to decipher as a large number over one hundred, but not more than that. The strange alien text was still largely an enigma to him it seemed. He frowned again, Jakiikii seeming to notice his annoyance as she gave his nearer arm a reassuring squeeze with two of her hands.
“Here we are. Come on inside, Mack isn’t here yet.” Sasfren stated, holding the door with her dexterous lower body as they stepped inside. Mursk stopped by the doorway and turned to face the hall. “You are staying out here?” She asked the mendagoonian guardsman. He made a signal that seemed to imply the affirmative and she deflated slightly but Paulie noticed.
“Oh don’t worry so hard Mursk. Besides, what if the assassins are already inside the room?”
The mendagoonian man didn’t seem terribly amused by the comment and seemed to hesitate for a second before making a hand gesture that could have meant anything and stepping into the room. Paulie caught a small glance from Sasfren but didn’t make any note of it to her as he followed the royal guardsman inside.
Paulie looked around the room as he entered. It didn’t seem to be lived in, or at least not recently. There was no bedding and the walls were bare. In the center of the room stood a rectangular table with several stools and to the side of a wall was a desk scattered with laserdisks and holopucks. It reminded him of the kind of cubicle an officer worker might inhabit, his suspicions were confirmed as Sasfren scooched into the room and then activated a console on its surface.
“Okay, well as long as we are still stuck around here waiting for Mack to arrive I might as well tell you two a little bit more about what I have found out.”
“About the murders?” Jakiikii asked. Her voice a mixture of worry and contempt, she was just as annoyed as Paulie himself was about the whole sitting on their proverbial thumbs business.
Sasfren nodded slightly. Her triangular neck frills flashing a bright orange and red as she growled, “Yes. I have been tracking them for the last four days. They didn’t seem to have any pattern that I could recognise, until I started looking at diagrams of the old city.”
She tapped the screen and it was projected to the center of the room, seemingly floating inches above the table around which they stood. Paulie made a small surprised sound, he was still getting used to the limits of GGI technology and this was a new one for him.
He pointed at the holographic map as it showed the city in ghostly white. A perfect three-dimensional render of every street, building and alley. She tapped a few more commands and then the city flashed before it was overlaid with a series of dark red channels almost like veins that ran all throughout the city itself. Radiating out from the oldest areas of the city like a parasitic growth lurking just below the surface.
Paulie muttered quietly, “What is that?”
Aril peered closer but it was Jakiikii who plucked the meaning from the mire first. “Oh, that looks like an overlay of the old tunnel system that runs under the city!” She glanced toward Paulie with a few eyes and then motioned towards Sasfren. “We got moved through these by a Duigong right before the attack on the city. They are extensive and impossible to navigate without a guide.” She paused, looking at the projection. “Or a map.”
She whirled to look at Sasfren. “Where did you get these? Certainly not from public records? I was under the impression that the vast majority of people did not know about these.”
The maggastium female scrunched her semi-feline features. “Not at all, and indeed until I pressed harder I had not even known of their existence. Not to this extent anyway. Rozz itself dug this up for me from one of the old libraries in the historical district. Apparently there hasn’t been any work on the old system in over two hundred years. But they are still there, dilapidated and crumbling as they may be.”
Paulie muttered, “Well that duigong that helped us certainly seemed to know her way around them.” He glanced towards Jakiikii as she took a seat on one of the stools beside him. “What was her name again? Something complicated.”
Jakiikii made a small annoyed gesture. “Alecc-Gersh’tani. It isn’t that hard to remember.” She said, two of her eyes roaming around the room as she said it. Paulie just shrugged, it was alien enough to be hard to keep straight in his head.
Aril folded her scarred arms, her tail flicking behind her like an annoyed cat. “Well.. do you have a way to reliably get in touch with this Alecc individual? It might be nice for them to provide the adjudicator’s and local PDF with more up to date and detailed maps of their interiors.”
Paulie spoke up. “I am not sure that would help as much as you think.” he stopped as all eyes turned to him.
There was a pregnant pause before Aril snorted and shook her head. “Was there more to that story?”
He shook himself a little and nodded. “Oh, yeah. My bad, uh.. well it was pretty hard to see down there a lot of the time. But not all of the tunnels that we were let through looked strictly up to code as it were.”
Jakiikii gave him a sudden look. But he was deep in it now and Sasfren had a legitimate concern. If the tunnel system was being used by the terrorists then they had to get the information out sooner or later.
So he continued on despite her obvious silent reservations. “Many of the tunnels and tunnel segments that we traversed didn’t look, well for lack of a better word, civilised. They were dug by something through the foundational soil of the city itself, not built. Possibly made by the duigong themselves.”
Sasfren glanced at Sergeant Aril and then hissed in annoyance. Throwing out a boneless arm in the direction of the projection she grunted annoyedly, “Then this map is less than useless to me. If the system is not like it is described then I have no control over their potential movements. Zalc!” She cursed a little louder. “This is a disaster just waiting to be unwrapped.”
Paulie wasn’t sure what the issue was. “Why don’t you just get a few of Alecc-Gersh’tano’s people to help you update the maps? Surely they would know it better than anyone else, having lived down in those tunnels for years.” Somebody prodded his arm.
“Gersh’tani, not tano.” He nodded absentmindedly to Jakiikii as she corrected him. Nothing that bothered him at this point, he waved an arm in acknowledgement before turning his attention back towards the maggastium sitting across the room from him.
Sasfren seemed remarkably hesitant about the idea. Her mouth pursing slightly as one hand seemed to fidget idly with the front of her coat.
He asked again, “What, what is wrong with that idea?”
Sasfren just shook her head. “The issue is that they are notoriously hard to work with. They live like outcasts in their self-imposed exile from the rest of the city. Zalc, if you had not mentioned them I might not have even thought about them at all.” She admitted.
Paulie frowned. Yeah the duigong he had met seemed to be a little on the less than pleasant side to be around due to their uncompromisingly offputting stench. But once you got past the fact that they seemed to exude an aura of rotting garbage, they were really quite pleasant people. Just ones that seemed to live a life far from the accepted eyes of society.
He said as much and Sergeant Aril shook her own head in response, horned head tilting as she quipped, “Not a good plan. You can’t trust those garbage munchers to put themselves in danger for the rest of the city’s sake. They only think of themselves.”
This time it was actually Jakiikii that responded. The woman’s normally pale skin flashing white in apparent anger as she defended the duigong. “And look at how they are treated by the rest of the city? By so-called civilised beings? It is far more disgusting to me how they are seen as less respectable beings than their smell ever could be.” She folded her arms and sat back into her stool. Sergeant Aril’s face darkened slightly, her long tail lashing behind her in a furious manner as she seemed ready and willing to throw hands with Jakiikii.
Sasfren checked her wrist worn personal communicator and then shuddered slightly as her emotional display petals flared a bright yellow suddenly. Aril’s mouth snapped shut, her desire to respond cut short by the sudden change in the other alien’s demeanour.
“What is it?” She asked, her words hanging for a minute in the cool air of the room like motes of dust caught in a sunbeam.
Paulie watched as she lowered the device and shook her head. “Mack isn’t on his way, he was delayed. Didn’t say by what or for how long.” She seemed a little dejected by the news but Paulie tried his best to be reassuring. “He just said to be careful. I wonder what he means, we are just sitting here waiting.”
Paulie spoke up, raising a hand to get their attention as he did so. “I am sure he will be on his way here as soon as he is able. I mean, after all.. he called us here for a reason. Means he must have important information to share. We can wait around for a while to see if he turns up?” He shrugged and put his hand down, it wasn’t perfect, but it was the best idea he had on hand.
So they would wait, Paulie shook his head a little. He hoped that whatever it was that Mack had called them there for was important enough to get them back into the action and off their asses. He was tired of waiting around for something to happen. Tired of the silence.
That almost made him chuckle out loud. How he would have given anything to live a simple and quiet life before his abduction all those weeks ago. Back when the biggest worry in his mind had been what to microwave for dinner when he got home from work. He smiled and glanced at Jakiikii who saw him looking and raised several brows in silent question. He just gave her a small smile and waved a hand to say he was alright.
She pursed her small mouth and then went back to speaking to Sergeant Aril.
Sasfren slithered over to him and sat back on the haunch of her serpentine lower body. “I fear that something may have come up desperate enough to take Mack’s attention off this. I don’t know exactly why he wanted to speak to you both, nor why it was here and not at the complex or your own domicile. But whatever it may have been, I only wish that he is alright.” She seemed a little nervous so he tried to help her as best he knew how.
Reached out he gave her a slap on the back, gently as he was aware of his own strength in comparison to hers. “I am sure he is fine. You know Mack, always getting himself into trouble. If he needed us he would have said something by now I am sure. He is probably just caught up in his research again and lost track of time, you will see.” He told the fidgeting maggastium woman.
“Then why the warning?” She muttered, seemingly unconvinced.
He spread his arms and asked, “Really? I am involved, he was probably warning you to be careful with me. Mack knows my aptitude for breaking things, and even I will admit it.”
She nodded her head, glancing his way with those dark pupiless eyes. “You think so?” She asked.
Paulie didn’t know anything for sure, but this was one of those times where it was the right thing to do to reassure a friend. So he lied a little off the top, it felt a little scummy to him but the situation called for it. “Oh absolutely. No doubt.”
‘Nailed it.’ He thought to himself as he saw her perk up a little.
She nodded and turned to the others. “Okay, we will wait a little longer to see if Mack changes his mind or gives us different instructions on where to meet him. A little waiting never hurt anybody.” She said cheerfully.
Paulie smiled, but internally he was starting to feel a tiny seed of dread growing.