Craze headed back toward the central city, checking on the address Gattar had given him. The building rose eight stories, a ramshackle midrise of rented rooms squiggling left and right like a drunk, not too far from the seedy bar where she’d taken him earlier. The apartments building was faded and dingy from the neglect of years, Elstwhere’s invasive vines threatened to reclaim it, and trash littered the stoop. The door sat half-open, stuck where it was by the buckling doorframe.
Craze circuited slowly around the block, noting the other businesses—pharmacies, bootlegged goods spread over cramped street corner stalls, diners, grungy mini-grocers,
gambling parlors, and dancing girls. Other types of gals hung out in the shadows, trying to catch his attention. He brushed them off, branching out his surveillance to the adjacent blocks.
With his tab, he took photos and video, noting the placement of security cameras and motion detectors. Craze wondered if the patrollers really kept track of it all, figuring they only reviewed images when there was call to do so. Would tonight create such a moment? He tugged at his suspenders, worried about exposing his face so much. Although, hiding it would perhaps bring attention sooner than he wanted. So, he kept on, playing tourist, stopping to look at products meant to part visitors from their funds.
“One of a kind Elstwhere plasticine. You’ll be the envy of your friends on the central planets. Everyone will want an invitation to your place, to eat off your plasticine-ware.” Not needing envy, Craze shuffled on, fingering scarves and knickknacks, scanning the side streets.
The Jix would want the meeting tonight to go off as low-key as possible. Those mystery people wouldn’t want any notice either. Therefore, Craze figured the exchange might happen nearby. The Jix had only ventured to the docks for a rube, otherwise she seemed to prefer staying in this general vicinity. Craze could see why. The bustle was enough to hide in, yet not so much as to get in the way. It wasn’t flagged as a notorious crime area. In fact, when Craze looked up the district on his tab, InfoCy said it was a good quarter of Elstwhere for families and shopping. Plus, it was close enough to the docks to make a ship useful and a getaway quick.
He enlarged his circuit by another block, keeping the location where he was to meet the Jix in the center. A row of wholesalers promising the lowest prices on Elstwhere led to an avenue with several abandoned storefronts. The street held promise as the place where the chocolate deal might go down. Craze noted fanned objects partially opened in front of the
motion detectors on that road and boxy red modules attached under the security cameras, which hadn’t been on the cameras on the other streets. Craze photographed them, relaying the data to the aviarmen.
Lepsi texted back, “Probably jammers to take the cameras off line or to loop them.”
A thieving strategy older than the Backworlds. This had to be the street. Someone had prepped the area for covert activity. Who? The smugglers? The Jix? Chocolate was reason enough for precautions, but the tampering with cameras and motion detectors increased Craze’s wariness.
He thought about what Talos had said about the Jixes and Gattar in particular, wondering what the chocolate might conceal. The worst thing he could imagine was a shipment of frizzers, taboo weapons of the Foreworlds outlawed on the Backworlds. If he planned for that kind of bad, he’d be ready for whatever the deal turned out to be. He hoped not frizzers. He didn’t want to be involved with that, didn’t like the idea of anyone on the Backworlds having those awful weapons. Setting one paralyzed the victim in searing agony. Setting two burned flesh in blue flames. Setting three calcified bone, dooming the victim to a slow, excruciating death. Taboo for very good reason.
“It doesn’t have to be anything more than chocolates.” A mantra to calm his worries, he said it again and again.
He ducked toward the most shadowed of the buildings, the one he’d choose for a clandestine operation he didn’t want anyone noticing. Four stories high, a faded sign on its facade announced it as Mr. Slade’s Emporium. Craze didn’t know what that meant, what type of business Mr. Slade advertised. It didn’t matter.
The sealed front door wouldn’t budge. The caked-over windows revealed nothing of the inside. Craze went around to the back. Two doors were barred over and locked up tight. He
tried them anyway. Neither had any give. The building next door had a half-broken entry. Craze slipped into it.
He crouched motionless, silent, listening, letting all his senses span out to detect anyone who might be there. The room he hunched in had been a kitchen abandoned in haste. Pots and pans, crates and cans, mud and dirt lay strewn everywhere. Smoke stains marked the walls.
After five minutes passed and nothing stirred, he crept toward the doorframe. He moved deeper into the building, seeking a way into Mr. Slade’s Emporium. Nothing presented itself on the ground floor. Craze found the stairwell up and tiptoed over litter and shoes, old mattresses and discarded tabs. More tables and chairs filled an open expanse on the second floor. It was either more dining space or another restaurant. No doorways led to the emporium, but there was a balcony. A plank lay across its railing and rested on the sill of an open window of Mr. Slade’s.
Craze crawled out on the boards, reaching for the sill, pulling himself over, pushing up the window, and letting himself inside. He huddled in the dim light, pressing himself against the wall while listening for activity within the building. The room he hunched in was stark and small, swept clean of litter unlike the restaurants he’d slunk through to get here. The difference was telling. This would be the place.
He heard nothing move, so he slinked toward the doorway. The next room was larger. Some shelves and racks with empty hangars spanned the space. It was obviously a shop in a former life. The exit yawned wide on the far side. Craze inched toward it. It opened onto a terrace ringing the interior. The expanse wasn’t huge. Craze could touch the railing in front of the shop opposite if he stretched out his arms.
All rubbish and dirt had been cleared and banished to the corners. He glanced down at the empty lobby noting a large X
and O
marked on the floor in tape. Stairs led up and down.
Craze went down, finding the entrances and exits, noting the crevices in which to hide.
He went back up, mapping any possible ways in and out on the upper floors, paying careful attention to anything that was something in all the emptiness. He spotted a pulley system attached to the third floor, set up with a huge hook and chains to handle the burden of heavy weight. A large metal disc topped it off. He touched it, sniffed it, observed an On switch. He flicked it, and the disc hummed. Clips, hangers, and wires flew up to slam against its flat surface.
“A magnet.” Craze nodded, plucking off the clips, hangers, and wires before shutting it off. He circled around the interior again. If this ended up being the place, he wanted to know it very well.
When done, he inched back over the boards to the building next door. From its balcony, he leaped onto the terrace of the shop across from it. He slipped inside the window and down the steps, finding himself in the backroom of a deli. Tiptoeing into the aisles, he was about to sneak out into the street undetected. His tab buzzed and he jumped.
The chime sent him in a hurry to examine the goods in front of him as if looking for just that very thing. He pretended to determine the best one, grabbed a jar of pickled snoink feet and tails, set it down on the counter, and hoped the shopkeeper hadn’t noticed he’d ducked in from the back. It was possible she hadn’t. She was quite engrossed with her tab.
“Fifty chips,” the merchant said, still giving more attention to her tab than Craze.
Shit. Fifty chips for something Craze wouldn’t eat. Chips he couldn’t afford. Not until he got his hands on that chocolate. Craze pinged the money over, glancing at the ID of the incoming call. He gulped. He should let it ring or cut it off, but the tiny face was one he hadn’t learned to say no to yet. He
wondered if he ever would.
“Hello, Yerness.”
