“I think there’s one thing we all want to know most,” Shades started off in earnest: “Just who the hell is this Erix anyway?”
“That’s a tough question,” Roxy admitted up front. “No one knows where he’s originally from, and no realm wants to claim him. What is known is that he doesn’t like to stay in one place for long— even his time in New Cali was brief, for all the damage he caused. He steals whatever he wants, and kills anyone who gets in his way. A shortage of living witnesses leaves a lot of gaps in his record. The handful of prisons that ever tried to hold him failed miserably, which is why so few places even want him alive anymore. The last prison he wound up in, he escaped during a prison riot.”
“I could see that…” Shades mused, recalling his own awkward conversations with him. “He has a knack for twisting your own words against you. In less… mindful company, I could totally see him turning prisoners’ resentment to his own purposes.”
“You’re reading too much into it,” Roxy told him. “All he did was leave the door hanging open behind him. The prisoners did the rest all on their own, and he just took advantage of it as he always does. Chaos is his only friend.
“And because I disfigured him,” she explained, “he’s now a marked man, making his fugitive life a lot more complicated. Now he has to be careful where he even shows his face out there, so his grudge against me is personal.”
“So you’re saying that no prison can keep him?” Max marveled.
“Yeah, pretty much,” she said, then added, “but there does seem to be one strange exception. When I was investigating his activities in New Cali, a certain information broker provided me some top-secret documents about an experimental prison, the only one that supposedly ever held him… For one hundred years, according to the report.”
“A hundred years!” Justin blurted. “How the hell is that even possible?”
“They kept him in stasis,” Roxy answered. “It may have been a century out here, but to him it was only a couple seconds. Still didn’t stop him from hunting down the grandson of the judge who sentenced him… According to the report, he said he wanted his ‘hundred years back’. It’s still not known to this day, who sabotaged the facility, but he wasn’t the only one held there. It seems someone was collecting dangerous people and creatures there, and the whole operation was financed by Camcron Industries.”
“Camcron?” Max gasped.
“The Institute, then?” Shades surmised darkly.
“You’ve heard of them?”
“Don’t forget,” Shades reminded here, “when we were in the Isle of St Lucy, we had to escape from one of their little projects.”
“And don’t forget that disappearing island,” Max added.
“We talked to a man once whose home island disappeared after the Institute started ‘researching’ out there,” Shades filled in, recalling Russell Wilkins’ account, wishing he already had one of those datapads, wracking his brains for names.
“He saw it from the next island,” Justin explained.
“Right, you did mention something about that.” Recalling one night’s tale aboard the Excelsior, she speculated, “It sounds like they’re doing something dangerous. So big, it would be impossible to cover up if it happened in New Cali…”
“But to what end?” Shades pondered.
“Hard to say,” Roxy admitted, “but you also mentioned someone named Geist, didn’t you? We had other things to deal with back then, but I believe you were right to worry. Accounts of Mr Geist have been floating around for decades, and usually with some connection to Camcron and its ‘research’ institutes. Seems nobody wants to talk about him, and anyone from Camcron will dismiss him as an urban legend.”
“Do you know anything about him?” Justin asked.
“Not really,” she confessed. “Never met him myself, not sure if he’s even the same person, or just a code name of some sort. Though the Institute’s been around for at least a century, they only started building these remote facilities in the last forty or fifty years, and no one knows what for. All I know is that his name comes up a lot in the establishment of these places, and that if it comes up again later, it’s never a good sign. Far as I can tell, this Geist acts as some kind of emissary and troubleshooter, possibly Camcron’s own enforcer.”
Justin swallowed hard at that name. As if this whole stasis business wasn’t already reminding him uncomfortably of Tranz-D.
“The reason why we know so little about him is that those who may have actually met him won’t speak a word, and anyone else is dead. He’s one of only a couple people I’ve ever heard of with a shorter survivor list than Erix…”
“There’s someone who leaves even fewer witnesses than him?” Shades remarked. “Damn…”
“It shouldn’t come as a surprise, being an assassin and all,” she elaborated. “Some don’t even believe he exists. Known only as the Reaper, a shadowy figure with no face. Just a ghost with a laser sword. The strangest thing is that the few people who’ve seen him and lived to tell all give the same description, of dark robes and a hood with no face under it. The other thing is that his energy blade is supposedly black.”
“A black laser blade?” Shades scratched his head. “How does that even work?”
“But a blade’s supposed to glow…” Max had heard, in addition to all he’d seen, that energy blades could be tuned to practically every color of the rainbow, but something that ‘glows’ black made no sense to him.
“No idea,” Roxy shrugged, “that’s just what people keep saying, even people who’d never heard of him before. Like a lot of things about him, it sounds like the stuff of tall tales. Sort of like how he’s also supposedly over three hundred years old.”
“Okay, now you’re just yankin’ our chain,” Justin laughed.
“Or maybe it’s a name that’s passed down,” Max suggested, “like Striker?”
“Could be,” the bounty hunter conceded, “after all, the name’s been floating around for generations. Or it might just be someone out there taking advantage of the legend. Whatever the case, he scares some powerful people in New Cali bad enough to post a bounty that rivals Erix, so I keep my ear to the ground. After all, you never know…”
“You know…” Justin brought up, his face abruptly taking a turn for sober, “now that I think of it, there is one thing I’d like to know. Just who the hell is this ‘Justin Black’ you kept goin’ on about yesterday? I mean, if other bounty hunters know that name, who’s to say they won’t come after me, too?”
“Oh? Him?” The bounty hunter paused for a moment, switching gears. “I was reviewing my info on him after we… parted ways. So tell me, you really never have been to New Cali?”
“No,” Justin answered, “not even when I stowed away aboard the Skerry as a kid…”
She stared intensely at him for a long moment, then turned her focus on Max, seeing no lie in either face.
“Mistaken identity then… Truth be told, you don’t even look much like him, either. So, what was that you said about… Benton, was it?”
And Justin took a couple minutes to fill her in about his streetrat childhood in the Triangle State, leading up to the Pullman Uprising.
“So really, they never put a price on my head over that?” he finished.
“Not that I’ve ever heard of,” Roxy replied, “though it may be that no one knows you were involved in this Trevor fellow’s death.”
“Though it does raise some ethical questions about the kind of people you’d be willing to work for,” Shades pointed out. “As your former henchman, I wouldn’t mind knowing where you draw the line.”
“I try to keep things on the up-and-up,” she told them, “and I won’t take a job if I don’t like the smell of it. A lot of bounty hunters are part-timers, mercenaries for whom hunting is just one type of gig. Even some specialists are known more for their results than their scruples. I’ve had run-ins with people who wanted to use me as some kind of discount assassin, but I refuse to play that game. Of course, in my line of work, letting your targets escape is bad for business, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t spread that around. I do have a reputation to keep.”
“I’m actually curious to see if you had anything on me,” Shades chuckled, yet still sounded a tad aloof, “but I doubt there’s much to go on, since I’m not from this world originally.”
“For all the trouble you’ve gotten yourself into,” she replied, “you don’t seem to have picked up any bounties.”
“Still,” Max pressed, “why were you so sure he was the one you were looking for? He’s been in the Triangle State all these years.”
“Funny you should mention that, because that was the other thing I wanted to know. According to my information, it just so happens that he’s originally from the Triangle State.”
“Wait a minute…” Justin’s relief at being off the hook evaporated instantly as he put two and two together. Clearly not liking the result. “Show me this picture, would you.”
Visibly apprehensive about the answer, even as she searched her datapad.
“That son of a bitch…” Even years later, Justin still recognized him. “When I catch up with him, I’m gonna kick his ass!”
“You know him?” Though Roxy figured she shouldn’t be so surprised if they both spent time in the same place.
“Yeah, somebody I used to know back in the Triangle State,” Justin muttered. “Jesse Fletcher. Jesse. James. Fletcher. That bastard! Running around, using my name…”
“How come you never told me about him?” Max asked, perplexity competing with a hint of hurt.
“I figured it was all in the past,” Justin told him. “I mean, we didn’t exactly part on friendly terms… I once thought of him as a friend, but he was a constant liar, and I guess I didn’t want to jinx our friendship by reminding myself of him. But to think, he’d stoop so low, after I gave him a place to hide from the TSA…”
“The Ruins?”
“Hell,” Justin snorted, “guess I should be glad he didn’t blab about that, too. So tell me, Roxy, just what has he been up all these years?”
“Try not to be too disappointed,” the bounty hunter replied. “He’s mostly just a petty con artist and grifter. He’s not even half as notorious as Erix, or even Striker, which is probably why you’ve been lucky enough not to run afoul of anyone who’s heard of him up ’til now. Even so, things got too hot for him in New Cali after he tried to swindle the Cass family. Dangerous game, that. They’re one of New Cali’s most powerful families, majority shareholders in Camcron, with rumored connections in the underworld, as well.
“And it was a bad year for New Cali’s elite, too, right on the heels of Erix trashing the Sky Room at Highwind Towers. Of course, the Towers are always the center of some scandal or another— what you get for having so many bigwigs rubbing elbows all the time in one place— but that year had to be some kind of record.”
“Sky Room?” Shades marveled. “Just how tall are these towers anyway?”
“Taller’n anything you’ll find in our world,” Roger piped up from the cockpit. “The Citystate of New Cali’s even bigger than the entire state of New York, let alone NYC, and you can see those towers from a hundred miles away, piercing the clouds…”
“Trust me, the name ‘Sky Room’ is no exaggeration,” the bounty hunter corroborated. “Highwind Towers is a mega-structure, with a central tower even taller than Camcron HQ. The highest levels actually have to be pressurized, and the Sky Room was a dome at the top, an exclusive club, where the air wasn’t the only thing rarified about that place. There are even rumors about a secret, experimental teleportation system being developed to get around…”
“Let me guess,” Shades commented, “another Institute science project?”
Roxy shrugged.
“Cass…” Justin turned that name over in his head, finally asking her, “Does the name ‘Felicia’ ring any bells with you? With the Cass family, I mean.”
“Felicia… No, but there is a Felicity Cass. The disgraced daughter of Perry Cass, the family patriarch. She used to be the heiress of the family fortune, before she was involved with some kind of huge scandal. Last I heard, she was disowned, and her younger sister now stands to inherit everything. Word on the street was that she ran off with some lowlifes she took up with.”
“A rather paper-thin alias…” Shades contemplated, seeing where Justin was going with this. “Was these lowlifes’ leader called ‘Danjo’ by any chance?”
“Could be.” Roxy shrugged. “I heard somebody who called himself that got himself in trouble with the Tanistas around that time. Compared to New Cali’s major syndicates, the Tanista Cartel is a bunch of small-timers who like to talk big, like those yappy little dogs they’re so fond of…”
“I think she mentioned that name when she was arguing with Clyde,” Max added.
“Clyde?”
“Clyde Voidt,” Shades explained. “He calls both himself, and his gang, ‘Danjo’ for some reason. If you ever find him, be careful. He’s got the same time-bending moves as that Ma’Quiver fellow we told you about. If he gets the first move, he’ll mop the floor with even you.”
“I see. Thanks for the warning. Still, the Tanistas are little more than a loose coalition of street gangs, without the big-business fronts or the financial clout of the older families. Even so, I heard their current leader is young, hot-headed and ambitious, to the point that a lot of folks are worried he’ll do something stupid, like start a turf war with the big boys. Then again, I imagine having both them and Cass pissed off at you would be enough to drive anyone out of town…”
“And it still doesn’t tell me how Fletcher fits into all this,” Justin pointed out, recalling, with a jolt, how they came to this topic in the first place.
“Even that I’m not sure of,” Roxy confessed, “and ‘Justin Black’ might not be the only alias he’s used over the years. Still, you used to know him, so if we compare notes, we might both learn something.”
While the two of them continued to examine her notes on him, and Justin recounted what he could about his time with Fletcher, Max realized with a start that he hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Bandit since they took off.
For a moment, he had a horrifying image of his feline friend falling overboard during their assault on Erix’s Checkmate, but that evaporated in a flood of relief at seeing a black-and-white tail sticking out from behind some containers in the back of the cargo hold.
“Bandit? You okay…” As Max poked his head around the corner, he saw that Bandit wasn’t doing so well, curled up in the corner, with a nasty mess in the opposite corner.
“Poor kitty…” Shades remembered all too well his own struggle with seasickness when he first set sail with his friends. “I think he got airsick earlier.”
“Airsick?” Max cocked his head.
“It’s kinda like seasick, except from flying,” Shades explained.
“Airsick?” Roger groaned. “Great… Just what we need up here. Check the First Aid kit. I have some medicine I keep in there for passengers. For a cat about his size, I’d stick with the child dosage. You can also crack a couple vents to make his breathing a little easier. And let him have a little water. Just don’t feed him unless he can hold that down first. In fact, you should probably only let him eat a little while we’re up here, until he gets used to riding like this.”
“Good advice,” Shades seconded, recalling his mother using similar treatments for her dogs when taking them to and from the veterinarian, on that rather lengthy drive between Lakeside and Kalispell.
That said, he turned to helping Max, making sure he found the right medication, even doing what he could to clean up the mess, relieved that Roger had installed a small airline-style bathroom onboard, while Max comforted his old friend.
Author's Chapter Notes:
questions and answers
