Chasing Ghosts I: The Big Come Down
05 Aug 2023Maul Montresor
"There is a hate that burns within
The most desperate place I have ever been
Try to get back to where I'm from
The closer I get the worse it becomes"
The most desperate place I have ever been
Try to get back to where I'm from
The closer I get the worse it becomes"
I woke up to the sound of someone shouting. I hadn’t opened my eyes yet though and I only presumed they were shouting at me. My eyelids felt heavy, heavier than the G’s of that planet I was on a few weeks ago…or months maybe…whatever. I don’t fuckin remember anymore. I find myself thinking back a lot to that botched half-assed rescue attempt me and that Imp chick "Descartes" pulled off. It was an absolute shit show. I'm not sure I can even recall exactly what happened. But like I said; I don't fuckin remember anymore and that's pretty much how I've been living since then. "Coasting" would probably be a better term since I've not been doing much in the way of living. Whatever though, I just hope that gal Willow is alright, poor girl's life went from 0 to 100 in like a second. Haven’t seen or heard from her since dropping her off at that medical facility. Des, on the other hand, I haven’t a clue what happened to her afterward but I hope she’s still out there somewhere and that she's safe.
The whole thing was crazy and things have been a blur since. Not to mention the terrifying Thargoid encounter. Like I said; absolute shit show. During that whole kidnapping ordeal, I was pushing back withdrawals of one drug by abusing a couple of other ones to keep my mind in some form of a functioning state. My brain was on overdrive, felt fuckin weird. Like I was simultaneously the most content I’d ever been and the most disconnected from reality I had ever been. It was kinda nice honestly, in comparison to now. I mean, I'm still on the shit, but the newness has worn off and I'm back to feeling miserable most days. It was refreshing for a while, not thinking about things so goddamned much and just living in the moment. Even if the whole situation back there with the girls was fucked up, it was still nice in a way.
….
There’s that shouting again...
I finally opened my eyes. It took a moment for my cybernetic eyes to adjust and focus. They say it can sometimes take a little longer than organic eyes, depending on the model of the hardware, and feels a lot weirder too. Almost like a camera lens adjusting in your skull, or at least it does to me. Once they'd adjusted I was met with a cold nasty stare from a man I’d never seen before in my life.
“We said you could use the room for 2 hours, you’ve been here 7.”
I had no clue where I was or what this guy was talking about or who he even was. As I said, things have been a blur as of late. I sluggishly sat up straight, well as straight as I could. The sorry excuse for a sofa I had been laying on had done a number on my back. With the crust rubbed from my eyes and the new perspective on things, I still had no idea where I was. Glancing around the room there were empty bottles of alcohol and unmarked pressurized canisters scattered across the floor and furniture. The very fake leather sofa that I had lost consciousness on had a pool of saliva where my head used to be and the walls were made of some sort of fogged-over glass, like a privacy window or something. The entire room was illuminated by a calming blue light that subtlety changed hues as various changing holo-ads were being projected in front of two of the opposite walls of glass.
“The Boss is letting it slide this time because of that thing you did last week.”
He'd interrupted my floating gaze around the room. Last week? Boss? I could barely remember yesterday, much less a week ago.
“Sorry, I…”
“C’mon, she wants to speak with you. Now!”
I barely got a word out before he cut me off. His arms were crossed now, causing his full black jumpsuit to pull up slightly around his ankles and reveal his socks. He should have gone with a bigger size to prevent that from happening but that didn't matter at the moment. I was struggling to focus.
Honestly, I wasn’t so sure I was capable of standing yet, much less putting one foot in front of the other and following the guy. My head was pounding and my legs felt heavy. I attempted to stand and take my first step towards him when I nearly fell over a shin-high table that I was quite sure wasn’t there a moment ago. The angry jumpsuit man rolled his eyes and mumbled to himself as I struggled to get motivated enough to move. I wouldn’t have helped me either and I probably would have agreed with whatever he was mumbling about anyway.
The fogged-over glass door to the room slid to one side as we approached. Outside of the room was what appeared to be an empty nightclub. Lights of every color were dancing around the empty room accompanied by the sound of near silence. A low fog produced by the fog machines from the previous bouts of partying was now attempting to dissipate. There was a scantily dressed woman at the bar wiping drink glasses while a man in a jumper very similar to my new friend here’s jumpsuit was sweeping up the dance floor. So, that explained it; this guy is a janitor.
“So why’d they send the cleaner to get me? Was security too busy?” I smugly asked at the back of the man’s head as I followed.
He turned and smirked without breaking his pace.
“Nah, the Boss was afraid you'd finally blasted a plasma round through that rotting brain of yours and made a mess of the VIP lounge. Sent me in to check. It's a good thing you hadn’t, woulda made my night a lot more complicated.”
I was too out of it to reciprocate with a rude remark of my own. So I just shook my head and followed him up the stairs that he was leading us towards. At the top of the stairs stood a metal security door with a red holo flashing above it that said: "RESTRICTED". A man and woman in nearly matching suits stood on either side of the door. The man stepped towards me without saying a word and forced my arms and legs apart to search me for weapons before giving the woman next to him an affirming nod. The door slid open and I stepped inside.
Inside, the room was lavishly decorated. Well, lavish for a nightclub owner's office. A young fair-skinned, brown-haired, woman was sitting behind a desk tapping at a datapad. From a glance, she seemed to care about her outward appearance quite a bit, or at least, she had a very specific way she wanted people to perceive her. She wore an open frilly white collared cropped jacket that only covered her arms and shoulders. Beneath that was a black business dress that stopped just before her knees. The dress had some sort of tech built in that was emitting a constantly changing light design. Not a casual look by any means. Her dark brown eyes met with mine as she acknowledged my presence in the room and smiled at me.
"Mr. Montresor, I'm happy to see you're still in the land of the living! I was worried after seeing you in here last night in the shape you were in."
It finally clicked, this was Mrs. Julie Carte. Wife of Mr. Stefan Carte, the owner of the very nightclub I was standing in. I began to recall the job I ran for her last week. She put a contract out on The Network looking for a "hacker who could be subtle and careful", but instead she got me. The job was pretty simple though, plant some phony evidence painting her much older and disgustingly wealthy husband in a bad light to help push along the divorce proceedings and land her a fat cred balance and a few of the assets he owned.
It's a shame they lived in a Fed-controlled Corporate ruled system. A lot of paperwork with these kinds of things. If we'd been in an Anarchy system she could have just as well shot her husband and taken everything he had by force, making things much more simple. Sure, she'd have to deal with the backlash of a few angry individuals but that's why everyone packs heat in those systems. If they got a problem, they get rid of it. Then she could have instead used the money that she hired me with to hire a bunch of goons to watch her back and hoped they didn't turn on her. It's not perfect but some Anarchy systems make it work. Back home, there's like a silent code amongst everyone. We stay out of each other's way and pick our fights carefully.
Regardless, the payout was upfront and pretty substantial so I couldn't say no. And framing her husband as a dirty cheater wasn't too difficult considering he actually is one. See, I started by following the guy for a few days so I could look for vulnerabilities in his routine that I might be able to exploit and maybe learn more about him. Amid my 'investigation', if that's what we want to call it, I found the guy meeting with a mistress. He basically did all the work for me. All I had to do was gain access to his coms device and record the audio of the whole exchange. Julie seemed happy with the evidence and marked the contract complete. The Network took its cut as the middleman and my payout shortly followed.
Mrs. Carte gestured toward the open seat in front of her desk. Perfect, my head was beginning to spin again.
"Are you alright? Can I have someone get you a drink?"
I could tell she was feigning sympathy. She pulled the same stunt the last time I met her. The fakeness was enough to make me squirm in the overpriced chair I was sitting in.
"No no, just having a rough day."
Julie's head tilted and her brow furrowed. She looked confused for a moment.
"Well, I'm glad you're here." She said in a perky tone. "I wanted to let you know that things are moving fast and well here. I'm now the proud owner of this club! Isn't that exciting?!"
It took everything in me to not vomit at the moment. I wasn't sure if the nausea was from the partying, her fake chipper attitude or my morality finally catching up with my actions.
"...Yeah. I'm happy for you,...really. But one of your boys said you wanted to see me. Is this all you wanted or what? Cause I got other shit to do."
"Oh, like what?" Her fake smile and perky tone had melted away as fast as they appeared. "Get wasted and slam your Krait into ANOTHER flight control tower just so you can come crawling in here to beg me AGAIN for a bonus on 'a job well done' so you can then go off and pay your fines and get your ship out of lockup AGAIN...or was that just this once?"
Ah, right. I forgot about all that. Fuck.
"...Or did you want to go get fucked up again and trash another one of my VIP rooms while somehow finding the time to harass my customers in the process!?"
"I- Uh-" I couldn't muster a cohesive thought after that verbal onslaught.
"I should have you stripped naked and spaced for the shit you pulled yesterday. You emptied my club with your toxic behavior!" Julie exclaimed, her every word dripping with anger. "Coming into MY club and asking ME for credits after our deal was already settled! I even lent you the VIP room FREE OF CHARGE so you could recover from whatever bender you were on and look at the shape you left it in!"
She lit a cigarette and leaned back in her chair, crossing one leg over the other and taking a long drag to try and calm her nerves. She released a cloud of smoke between us before speaking again.
"Actually, I've got the perfect way you can repay me. That is, given that your brain hasn't turned into complete mush just yet." Julie knocked a few ashes off into an ashtray on the desk and tossed her datapad at me. "Another one of my soon-to-be ex-husband's assets has graciously been given to me. Some ship that's being used for research or something. Some sort of pet project of his, I guess. I don't know nor do I care. I just want the thing decommissioned and sold off secondhand."
I looked over the information on the datapad as she continued. The ship was named 'Sepultus Memoriae'. The info appeared to be outdated by about a year according to the date at the top of the file but at that time there were about 300 people employed for a wide array of tasks. The file had no mention of the type of research that was being done but had a list of the lab equipment onboard that might as well have been hieroglyphics to me. A useless asset file as far as I was concerned.
"Only thing is," Julie continued. "all communication with the vessel seems to have cut off about a month ago and we don't know where the damned thing is."
That was enough to grab my attention away from the datapad screen. I looked up at Julie as she leaned toward me and smiled. Placing her cigarette on the rim of the ashtray and pointing at me with her new freshly manicured nails.
"But you're gonna find it."
I tossed the datapad back on the desk. I couldn't say no. I had accrued a debt with Julie and this is how she wanted it paid off. And with her newfound wealth, I had a feeling she'd sweeten the pot a bit. So I took a shot.
"Fine. What's my cut?" I asked, leaning back in my chair to put distance between Julie and me, hoping she'd bite the bullet and not me.
"50 million credits..." She said reluctantly through an exhale before she retrieved her cigarette and took another drag. "The contract went live on The Network a few hours ago. Log on and formally accept the job and you'll be given 10 upfront. The other 40 will come after I confirm that the ship is at the coordinates you'll send me once you've found it. The Network will take their cut and after that, well, hopefully, we never cross paths again."
I locked eyes with Julie, expecting to see a smirk but got nothing. The woman was as cold as ice when it came to business and now she had the credits to back her attitude. As much as I respected that, I also feared what she may become if she stayed on this path. Loads of creds can change a person. Sometimes for the worse. It can lead you down a relentless path of self-destruction that harms not only yourself but everyone around you in your wake. Isolating you further and further until you feel so alone and closed in that you can't breathe anymore and you'd do anything to feel nothing at all and forget who you are in the process. Banking on the feeble idea that if you lose yourself enough that maybe, just MAYBE you could start anew again and do things right this time.
...But then again, what the fuck do I know?
"Deal. 10 up front, 40 later." I said, extending my hand to Julie, sealing the deal with the devil.
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