Chapter 358
We stepped into Phyxaflame and headed for the front desk. The attendant behind it didn’t even look up as we approached and just continued to clack away on a terminal without a care in the world.
”Ahem.” Hope coughed lightly and tapped on the front desk with her knuckles. The metal of her gauntlet clanked harshly against the synth-wood.
The attendant finally looked up—and her face immediately paled. The professional corpo smile she had on cracked at the edges, and fear seeped up through the cracks. “Ah! M-m-my apologies, I-Inquisitor… what brings you by?”
”My squire was here earlier today, yes?”
“Hello!” I cheerfully waved to the attendant.
She hesitantly waved back. “Of course. She met with our PR manager, Sally Wroughtsworth.”
“No I didn’t.” Damn. I thought something was off when I was here last, but I didn’t expect this. Did this go deeper than just a wild goose chase? Jerry’s reactions and actions had been a little weird in hindsight. “I spoke to Jerome Palsworth.”
”Jerome Palsworth?” The attendant's eyes narrowed and her terrified expression dipped into a frown. “Who?”
“Fuck…” Was it a switcheroo? If his name was even Jerry in the first place. Was that Lavender in the flesh? Or just someone working with the arsonist? Why go through the effort of lying and misleading me like that? Maybe Jerry was here for something else, and I just happened to show up at an inopportune time? “Did you not see him come and get me?”
”I-I was trying really hard to avoid looking at you, squire.” The woman’s voice went quieter and quieter as she spoke until her head dipped guilty.
“I’m going to need access to your camera footage.” Hope slapped the warrant down onto the counter.
“I-I’ts policy to have a manager deal with Crusade relations.” The woman fell back onto protocol like it was a life line and part of her confidence returned. Or, at least, enough of it for her to put that stupid smile back on.
I tapped the counter next to the warrant a few times. “And we really don’t want to wait thirty minutes for a fake manager to come down this time.”
“Did you really wait thirty minutes?” Hope’s voice dropped into a much more casual tone. She turned away from the counter and leaned up against it. Her message was clear—we weren’t going anywhere.
”Chek.” I shifted from foot to foot. “It gave me time to review the case, at least.”
”That’s something. So Jerry, huh? What’d he look like?” Hope asked. Her voice returned to normal, as if the conversation we had in the car on the way over hadn’t happened. A bolt of relief shot through me.
”Um…” I didn’t really look all that closely at him. I wasn’t face blind by any means, but I kinda just glazed over him. No, that wasn’t quite right? Was it something magical? Surely I would’ve noticed… unless it was something even stronger than that haze fluid. “He looked like every other corpo manager. He wore a custom suit and was a little fit?”
”Might be Lavender himself.” Dev crossed his arms. “Here to cover his tracks.”
Hope rubbed at her mask. “Maybe. Phyxaflame properties have a higher arson count than anywhere else. What are the chances he’s using this place to plan his attacks?”
”He’d have easy access to sabotage the suppression systems if he acted as a Phyxaflame engineer.” Unfortunately, there was a Crusade traitor too, otherwise we’d have more concrete evidence to work with.
”Akef covered the tracks well,” Dev muttered. It seemed he was thinking along the same lines that I was.
”How’d that turn up, by the way?” I assumed they made good progress since they were out galavanting around with me now.
Hope froze up and then looked away. Her silver mask hid her expression, but the rest of her posture radiated a mix of guilt and embarrassment. “It didn’t. Akef doesn’t exist.”
I figured. The name itself was weird. Akef—Fake. People thought they were so smart with their names. It was like Jasmine a while back during the Abernathy case. Or was that the manager that used the name? It was a long time ago. A lot had happened, and I was having a hard time remembering exactly. What did she use? Elias?
”Someone’s been using him to cover up crimes for years.” Dev kept going once Hope stopped. “Everything from petty theft to arson.”
”How did nobody notice that?” Except for us, I guess. And covering up different kinds of crimes obfuscates the guy’s trail. Nova…
”Crusade’s busy.” Hope shrugged. “Once a case is solved, it's solved. At least, usually. We don’t have time to look back through every document and ensure it's done. There's always some new mass casualty event, glitching merc, or psychopathic serial killer to hunt down.”
“No wonder Internal Affairs showed up.” I shook my head. It seemed like we should at least have a couple people dedicated to checking paperwork. Not that it’d matter too much. The Crusade never was one to worry about bureaucracy and redundancy.
All three of us went silent while we waited on the manager. My mind drifted back to the earlier conversation. Did they actually know? My knee jerk reaction was no, they didn’t. If I thought about it a bit more though—could Dev’s story be an attempt to assure me everything would be fine if I came clean?
S-should I just come out and say it? Leading a double life like this—it was honestly exhausting. Part of me wanted to come out and just tell the truth. It was that same part of me that I’d beaten into submission the last time it reared its ugly head in the AEZ just before I was taken by Mother.
Maybe… maybe I could test the waters a bit more before—
“Whatcha doin’?” Mira’s voice echoed around the back of my head, granting me a welcome distraction.
I took a few steps away from the other two and covered my mouth with my sleeve. “Working with the Crusade. You finally done?”
”With part one. Ugh—they didn’t tell me the Troubleshooter test would be a three day process.” Mira sighed. “I shoulda studied more.”
”How’s it going, then?”
“It’s going.” I could practically see her shrug across the city. “How late are you going to be?”
”Um.” I looked up to Hope and Dev. The latter was staring at me like he knew exactly what was going on. “Not too much later, I hope.”
It was starting to get late, anyway. I doubted they’d want to work through the—actually, nevermind. They both seemed sleep-deprived. I didn’t want to pull an all-nighter, though. After this, I’d clock out and head back to the apartment.
”Sweet. I’ll grab burgers on the way back. Don’t keep me waiting too long.” She chuckled lightly, though the tail end of it fell off. “U-um, Shiro?”
”Yes?” Why’d her mood abruptly flip? I felt deeply uneasy all of a sudden.
“So, that counselor… The only opening was for tomorrow.” Her voice came out in a rush. “W-we can talk about it tonight, but I figured you should know now.”
My fist clenched and my entire body went rigid. Right, I forgot I agreed to that. Tomorrow… I sighed and shook my head. “Chek, we’ll talk about it tonight.”
”Okay!” Some cheer crept into her voice. “Then I guess I’ll see you in a bit.”
”See you in a bit.” I dropped my arm and turned back to the other two. Hope had likewise started to watch me at some point. Her silver mask reflected my face. “Hey?”
”Who was that?” Hope nodded her head.
I froze for a beat before dropping into a casual stretch to cover it up. “What?”
The inquisitor shrugged. ”On the phone. Looks like you got some bad news.”
How did—did they think I had some kind of internal communication device? It wasn’t totally out of the question. It’d make more sense than a magic ring. I could work with that. “Uh, yeah. I’ve got a psychiatrist appointment tomorrow.”
”Oh.” Hope’s head tilted to the side. “That’s fine. You can have half the day off to take care of that.”
”Thanks.” I glanced out the window of Phyxaflame’s lobby. It was already dark out, and the streets were backlit with neon and holographic arrays. “How much later tonight?”
”You can go after this. I’ll take care of the report.” Hope abruptly turned around and faced toward the elevator. “Hopefully we won’t be out much longer.”
A few moments later, the elevator doors dinged and a woman in a posh pantsuit stepped out. An assistant followed right behind her. Her eyes immediately snapped to us and she strode across the lobby. “Inquisitor.”
“You must be Sally.” Hope put in some effort and managed to make a somewhat friendly voice.
”I prefer Wroughtsworth.” The woman put on that professional smile that everyone and their dog seemed to have down to a tee. Honestly, I think it’d mean more if a corpo started off glaring at me by this point. “Squire Zuku and… Dev, I presume?”
”I see you had time to do your research, Sally.” Hope’s voice lost its friendly edge. “I thought we said not to keep us waiting.”
“It was a long elevator ride. And I’m not a fake manager.” Sally waved a hand to one of her assistants. “Trisha here will take you to see the security feeds, if that’s alright.”
Hope shifted and nodded back toward the two of us squires. “Dev, go with Zuku to check it out. Sally and I have quite a few things to talk about.”
The PR manager’s smile cracked, though it was repaired so quickly it might’ve been a figment of my imagination. Her gritted fists were definitely real. “Of course. Please, my office is up a few floors.”
The two walked off, leaving us with Trisha. She spoke quietly and nervously fidgeted with her glasses, “Um, right this way.”
The soft-spoken woman led us down a hallway and toward the back of the building near a massive server bank. She stopped outside of a particular door and scanned an ID. “Please, wait here for a moment.”
She slipped in, and then came back out a minute later with a gruff looking security guard. The guard looked us head to toe and then grinned. “Well I’ll be. Two squires in the flesh… you know, I used to be an aspirant back in the day.”
”Yeah?” Cool story, bro, but we’re here on official business.
”Yeah… took an acid shot to the knee, though. Could never walk quite the same again.” He sighed and pushed the door open wide for us. “Come on in. The feeds from today are loading up.”
We entered the security office and all gathered around a bank of screens on the far side of the room. I looked around them, and then shifted my attention to the small armory on the side of the room. “You run security by yourself?”
The guard followed my gaze toward the armory. “No. Shifts are about to change, though, so the others left early to get dinner. Ah—it’s ready now.”
The screens lit up with footage from across the building. Date and time stamps matched about when I came through—and yep, there I was on the lobby screen. My Crusade gear was unmistakable. “It was about thirty minutes after I entered.”
”Right.” The guard tapped around on the terminal and the footage skipped ahead to just before Jerry came down—
TCHHHH!
The feed broke apart into static and an obnoxious noise played out. The guard frowned and smacked a terminal a couple times like it might fix something, but the screen just remained static.
”What’s wrong?” Dev crossed his arms and shot a glare at the guard.
The guard didn’t even bother to look up and just continued hitting the terminal. “I’m not sure… the footage might be corrupted.”
’Course it was. Things couldn’t be that easy. Things could never be easy. This Jerry guy had a deep reach into the corporation. Hell, he brought me down to Phyxaflame’s R&D department without raising any eyebrows. It wouldn’t be surprising if he sabotaged the cameras as well.
Dev pulled out a drive and tossed it to the guard. “Save a copy of this.”
”Ah, right.” The man fumbled for the drive and then slotted it into the terminal. “Sorry about this. I’m not sure what happened.”
“It’s fine.” Dev and I shared a look. The squire casually crossed his arms once more. “The Crusade’s runners might be able to salvage something from it.”
”Smart.” I stared at the static screen for a moment longer and then pointed toward a map of the building. It was a holographic one that I easily manipulated to show the meeting room I met Jerry in. “What room is this? Who’d have access?”
Trisha fixed her glasses and leaned closer to the hologram. “Should be meeting room twelve, three, C? Anyone who needs it. It’s usually for client consultations.”
Right, so anyone could access it. Including Jerry, who probably didn’t even exist in the first place. Still, it indicated another level of connection to Phyxaflame if the guy knew just where to take me. Not to mention he was either a skilled runner or had some serious connections to waste my time giving me a tour without anyone batting an eye.
”Here you go, squire.” The once aspirant of a guard handed over the drive with the copied footage. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
I turned to Dev. ”What do you think?”
“That we won’t find anything else down here.” He glanced toward the static screens and then nodded toward the door.
“Chek.”
We returned to the lobby to wait for Hope. About twenty minutes later, she appeared inside the elevator with an annoyed expression on her face. “You guys get anything?”
”Bunch of corrupted footage.” Dev lifted the drive and flicked it to her. “You?”
Hope smoothly caught the drive and slid it into her pocket. “A stonewall. They’re refusing to help unless we come back with a stronger warrant.”
Ah shit… so much for an easy hunt. We didn’t even really need Lavender in the first place. “We have any other leads we can work?”
”Not good ones.” Hope sighed and lifted her mask to rub at her eyes. “Let’s head back. Sleeping on it might help.”
We left Phyxaflame and headed back to the cruiser. The entire trip back to HQ was silent as we were all lost in our own thoughts.