A gruff voice at high volume issued forth from the multi-control interface.
"SECURITY!"
There was a thud as Rob tripped near the sleeping area.
“Hold your damn horses!” he yelled as his footsteps, thudding and rapid, flew by, causing the curtain to flutter as he made his way toward the front of the Pod. It was all an act, but a good one. By the reaction time and level of credibility given by his presentation, I was convinced he'd been savvy to the security bypass as a "feature" all along. His previous surprise had just been about my awareness of it.
“Yeah? What is it?!" His tone was bleary, like someone just rudely woken up from a dead sleep.
"TxCorp Security," an authoritative voice said. "Any resistance or refusal to an official security order will constitute grounds for investigation as established by Corporate Employment Protocol and the Corporate Security Rights Act."
Rob interceded, his voice a near shout, timing for when the goon had stopped to take a breath. "It's about damn time! I've been waiting over a week for you guys to send somebody."
"You must comply...I...what?!" The security goon sputtered, clearly caught by surprise at being thrown off script.
Rob injected an undercurrent of aggravation suitable for someone who'd been ignored and knew it, "Yeah! I submitted the proper request for an investigation because someone stole—"
"I'm not here for that!" The goon snapped, "I need your acknowledgment you're aware of my right to issue a lawful security order."
"Security order? Hang on now," Rob said, "Someone stole..."
"ACKNOWLEDGE!" The goon bayed loudly, irritation clear in his voice as he tried, by his perception, to take control of the conversation again.
"Okay. Geez!" Rob said in reluctant surrender, "I acknowledge. But, hey...listen..."
The goon, unsurprisingly, didn't seem to care as he ignored Rob's protest with a dismissive air, which seeped into his words as he spoke. "We’re in pursuit of a suspicious individual spotted within this Block. Were there any unusual events occurring within the past hour in pick-up distance of your entryway feed? I remind you: Refusal to comply is grounds for investigation."
“Wait...” Rob said, speaking in a stage whisper loud enough for me to hear from behind the curtain. His voice reverberated through the room theatrically. “Am I..." he asked, putting his face conspiratorially closer to the screen, dragging out the moment with an extended pause, "...in danger?”
I struggled to not make a sound. If Rob wanted to waste your time? He knew all the right buttons to push, and by the Goon's attitude, Rob was playing him like a grid sound sequencer.
I was finding it very difficult not to laugh.
"No." The goon said shortly. "Just 'standard protocol'." I could hear a clip to the words as he fought to keep it together. "Again. Have you noticed anything suspicious within the past hour?"
"Like what?" Rob asked in a suitably clueless tone.
"Suspicious behavior," the goon said, still managing by a mere thread to keep his voice somewhat level.
"It's the middle of the night." Rob said in a deadpan delivery of pompous annoyance. I checked the curtain to be sure it was still in place. I didn't want the camera to pick up the shaking of my shoulders.
"We're aware." The security goon said dryly. It seemed he was slowly losing his willpower to stay civil. "Has anyone been—"
Rob interrupted with a scoff, "I mean, you woke me up; that's suspicious, isn't it?" There was a pause. The Goon was counting, and I had to give him credit; most people would've started screaming by now. Rob, like a dancing boxer, pounced on the moment like a perfectly timed jab as the opening presented itself.
"Well, I've got suspicions about who stole—" he began eagerly, sounding so certain of himself.
The goon snapped. The last thread of patience, which he had thus far managed to clutch valiantly onto, was gone. Adrift in the void. "That will be all," he said.
Rather than retracting, Rob extended a metaphorical finger to prod further, like a probe to test the wellness of a synthsteak set to broil.
"Hang on now. I submitted a report! I've got some serious suspicions..."
The Goon's voice was now a shout as it was all let out in an explosive delivery.
“THAT WILL BE ALL!”
With a short chirp, we were left alone save for the sound of three dull thuds near the front of the Pod as the wall vibrated furiously. A few skipped heartbeats later, Rob’s voice filled the dead silence that followed.
“It’s gotta be Bill.” He said, still using his pompous character voice. The tone was one only the truly clueless or unaware use when they believe they're right, in spite of evidence to the contrary. “I knew it’d be that asshole.” He sniffed with the air of a Spirelite complaining about the quality of the bottled water in their penthouse suite.
I lost it. I must've looked like an idiot once the tension of the moment passed.
Rob yanked the curtain aside, a huge cheek-splitting grin plastered on his face. "You know the best way to keep Security from investigating you? Threaten them with the risk of actual work by asking for legitimate help. Guaranteed to clear out before you can file a complaint, like that!" He snapped his fingers, pointing his hand at me like it was a gun.
Wiping the tears from my eyes, thankfully from laughter this time, I couldn't refute the claim.
Rob turned, taking up position in front of the panel as he prodded it back to life. I eventually calmed down enough to ask, "So now what?"
"Now? On to stage two of Plan—er, whatever. Grab the bags and pull them over here,” he said, gesturing for me to sit in the kitchen area. "We're going to be in for a bit of a wait. Might want to take a load off so we can chat for a second. It's my turn for questions."
I did as instructed, moving the bags to the front of the Pod for easy access before sitting.
"You sure he isn't coming back?" I asked once I'd settled.
Engrossed in reading the data stream, Rob didn't answer immediately. "Pretty certain. Based off his movements, he's fishing for information by going door to door. Most of the neighbors are from our shift, so the Pods in this Stack will be mostly empty this time of—" He glanced up, eyes focusing toward the chrono line of the upper display. "morning."
Feels like it's been a year, I mused morosely as I confirmed his words by checking my own interface. Officially, the digital readout placed us just past midnight as the chrono's first pair of digits clicked over from a golden twenty-three to a set of double zeros. My aching limbs and persisting fatigue reminded me well enough of where the time had gone. However, even knowing was still like taking an abrupt hammer to the skull. It was a new day.
Rob tapped the screen a few times to toggle between readouts. "Fact is," he said, "he's the only one in this Stack I can detect. If they've sent only one guy to do the scutwork of getting intel out this way, it means they're running light and not actually certain when and where Sa—" He went quiet as he pressed his lips together to seal them. It was the same expression I was becoming all too familiar with; he was keeping something from me but was still stuck on deciding if he wanted to share.
There was a pregnant pause between us as, eventually, he made up his mind.
"Price," he said, turning to lean up against the wall next to the display to face me. "You told me he had to call off Golrich, right?" He had tucked one hand into an armpit, raising the other to bite his thumb in what I liked to call his "thinking" pose. I sat up straighter, making sure to pay attention; there was a quality to his voice hinting I was in for an interesting conversation.
"If by 'he' you mean McCreed? Then yes." I said, nodding along.
“So McCreed stopped Golrich and the Goons, and then—what exactly?” he asked, eyes reading my every move.
I looked up at the ceiling, leaning back in the chair to try recalling the exact phrasings McCreed had given me. “He told the group he wanted to speak with me in private," I said. "First thing McCreed started on was an odd discussion about ‘Lords’ and how they ‘deign rather than request’ things from people. You know, patter.”
“Patter?” Rob said in a question, his eyebrows high in surprise as if not expecting me to know the word.
“A prepared talk." I said, "More like—what? A sales thing or something, you know? Where they try to convince you of the marvels of their products or services? It was too smooth, too practiced to be anything else.”
The ghost of a smirk twitched at the corner of his mouth. “Where’d you learn the term?” he asked.
“My biological father,” I said.
I caught yet another flash of familiarity I hadn't expected as the smirk disappeared.
I faltered, trying to remember the exact word my father had used, but it was like trying to grab a fistful of smoke, “the—uh, art of the...drift?”
Rob corrected me immediately. “Grift."
“Uh...What?” I said, nervous now, suddenly feeling seven years old again.
“Guh. GEE. Grift,” He said, “It’s Art of the Grift. As in 'a swindle'?”
“I thought it was drift,” I said, honestly.
Rob's eyes lost a little of their hardness as a faint amusement subbed in, “What would a drift be?”
“Like a sideways move? lateral? Kind of like flanking or sideswiping?” I used my hand to sweep right to left, “Swoosh!”
He paused, actually taking the time to absorb my words. “Yeah, okay. I could see that as a kind of correlation. But no,“ he shook his head, “it's far more likely he meant 'grift’, which is a swindle, and far better for the context." He leaned forward, hands positioned as if he were going to grab items off an imaginary flat surface as he talked. His palms were cupped and his fingers were loose; a classic sleight of hand position.
“Usually, at least in the context of how most people use them, a grift is a quick way to make chits or scrit dishonestly by using deception and misdirection." He moved his hands as if juggling the nondescript items over and under each other across the imaginary surface. The movements were smooth, practiced, and, oddly, intrinsically familiar to me. After a few rotations, I spotted one movement different from the others. His palms had clenched, the pinkie and thumb pressing toward each other like the pincers of a claw. The movement was at a near imperceptible level, and if I hadn't been weirdly familiar with the positioning, I wouldn't have sensed it.
Rob stopped the motions, letting his hands drop. "It's a means to convince someone to do what you want, how you want, so you can take advantage of them. The best part," he said, "is normally they're the ones to approach you, not the other way around. The real trick is in setting up the rules of the game so the mark thinks they're the one enforcing them. The rest is making sure they only see what you want them to see." He leaned back against the wall, tucking a hand back under his arm to resume his thinking posture.
“Ah, okay.” I said, grimacing inside as it became clear the talk hadn't just rung true about the three-card game he was using as a demonstration. Thoughts of my biological father's dexterous hands trying, and failing, to demonstrate to me the reasoning for the same techniques Rob had just done pushed forward. The how's of the technique were always limited by my small fingers, unable to copy the movements accurately enough for my father's exacting standards, but, at the time, the why's had actually been the true barrier to my lack of progress.
Now? I think I understood. I made sure to mentally file both the specific technique and word for later perusal.
“'Art of the Grift,' then.” I said aloud, molting myself of the childhood memory.
Rob looked like he was going to laugh as he looked at my expression.
“What?” I asked, suspiciously.
He was shaking his head, a grin spreading across his face in amusement as he looked down toward the floor and onto the tops of his bare feet. “Owen. I can already tell it was the right decision to help you.”
I glared at him. Was he making fun of me? I wasn’t exactly sure how to take his words.
Whether he saw something in my expression or just knew, he stopped me by speaking first. “No. It’s a good thing you don’t just instantly know things like all that; it’s—” He paused, looking up to try to find the right words. “Actually kind of refreshing."
He flashed a genuine smile. One which crinkled the edge of his eyes with warmth and, possibly, a little pride. "Means my first instincts about you were always right, and it's just so rare right now I can't help but be happy." The smile spread. The kind of smile that only served to solidify the feeling I'd had earlier. The one where the Rob I'd known all along might not entirely be just part of some fake persona.
It was comforting.
"Sorry, Owen," he said, the smile disappearing slowly in the presence of a world-weary sigh. "Despite the regular astonishment you keep surprising me with, I can't help but smile sometimes when you prove just how you retained being so pure of heart. Worrying what the intentions are from everyone all the time? It's exhausting."
His expression remained contemplative. He scratched his chin slowly, staring off beyond the tiny window at the back of the Pod. His mind was a million miles away, further than the hillsides surrounding the City 17 boundaries. The clouds were thickening again.
“Thanks? I guess?” I said, uncertainly. I was felt self-conscious as Rob's mind wandered through the ghosts of a past I couldn't see.
He eventually returned from wherever his mind had taken him with a shudder. “Just ignore me," he said wistfully, before resuming his thinking pose. "Continue. Sorry.”
He settled his attention and waited for me to speak.
“So, McCreed,” I paused, glancing up at him to see if he needed to interrupt. He didn’t move.
“McCreed had an odd pattern of talking. Once the patter started, it was like he was setting me up for a sale or trying to convince me to do something. Kept asking about my past before presenting me with a—” I stopped, realizing I still had the strange card.
Uh oh. It dawned on me. I hadn't remembered exactly where I'd put the card after it had been handed to me.
"Hang on, I've gotta find something." I said to Rob, using my hands to frantically feel along the outside of the pockets of the jacket. By the feel of the lumps I sensed with my fingers, there were a number of other smaller items like the Plat, stashed within the abundance of pockets hidden in the folds.
The multi-display softly beeped, calling Rob's attention as I began reaching into a few of these to examine the items within. One such item, a triangular pendant affixed to a chain and made up of a curious metallic material, made me stop to examine it as I coiled it around a finger before stowing it away again. I made another mental note to ask Rob about it later as I came across more plat chits, a thin container holding a tiny data chip, and the sporadic collection of strings, fluff, and even a nut and screw.
Having examined every pocket I could find, I lastly extracted the Outerall suit's cylindrical Power Pack and laid it onto the table in front of me. A sense of mild panic took over as I fought to remember where I'd last seen the oddly hard-to-see card.
Suddenly. It came to me. I jumped out of my seat, causing Rob to glare at me with one hand half positioned toward his rear waistband as I rushed toward the bags I'd arranged at the front of the Pod. I had a vivid mental image of the card as I shoved it into one of the outer pockets of the work satchel. It had been during my retreat from the goons after my talk with McCreed while I'd made my way to ground level.
Breathing a sigh of relief, I found it, safely tucked within the zippered side just as I remembered. I stuffed it into a jacket pocket as I zipped the compartment on the satchel shut, and repositioned the bags.
"He's gone," Rob said, closing the interface on the multi-display as I reached the seat at the table, "Just finished his rounds and is heading for a ground stairwell. We should be clear in a few minutes. I'd say half an hour at most."
"Well, that's good news at least," I said, sitting back down.
Spotting the power feed on the wall, identical to where it was in my old place, I pressed the status control on the Power Cell which lay on the table, to get a feel for how much power remained. A glowing amber "39%" indicated it was at less than half capacity.
"You mind plugging this in?” I asked, gesturing to the cell and eyeing the single power port pointedly.
"Sure," Rob said, holding out his hand as he neared the table. He extracted the integrated cable, setting the cell on the counter to regenerate as a blinking “40%” ticked upward.
Pulling out the Holocard from the jacket pocket, I tossed it in front of Rob as he settled back into the seat. The card face remained blurry, just as it had been while standing at the railing with McCreed. It was like reality smudged the makeup of the universe to keep it just out of my vision, and no amount of blinking, squinting, or side-eyeing could make it change.
Rob's body language was suddenly rigid again as his eyes narrowed. “Owen. Do you know who McCreed wanted you to deliver this to?”
“Sure?” I said, actually not sounding it, “He said to take the ‘Introduction’ to someone my girlfr—uh, Dora—works for.”
Rob paused. "Did he say a name?" His voice was steady as ever but I had to look at him, concerned.
"Yeah," I said, trying to ignore the tremor of worry building within my gut. Like a snake uncoiling slowly. Carefully. "Uh. Ruby? I think he said Ruby. I've never met her, but he said she knew who I was, or rather, she was 'familiar' with me."
Rob's iris rings spun like tops, glowing with an inner golden light as they locked onto the card in a furious glare. His expression read like he felt it had done something to personally harm him. His voice, scary now and delivered in a dead drone, rang out to me as he asked aloud, "Ruby? Are you certain he gave you this to hand directly to Ruby?"
"Yes?" I said, apprehensively. The dangerous timbre for "Scary Rob" had returned unexpectedly. I began to sweat.
His complexion, normally ruddy but pinkish, began to change to an alarmingly peculiar shade of red. Beginning at the base of his neck, the color crept upward along the surface of his roughened cheeks before shuttling across the bridge of his sharply angled nose, around the tips of his rounded ears, and straight up to his scalp line as it disappeared into his thick mane of hair. It was as if a fire were spreading from the inside. All the while the color worked to burst out from underneath his skin, the only barrier keeping the room from igniting into a blistering inferno.
With the finality of a last nail being pounded into a coffin, Rob turned his head and looked me right in the eyes. His voice spoke three words with a dreadful intensity, delivered in an eerily calm yet enraged tenor.
"This changes things.”
Beside us, the Power Cell's counter ticked to 41.