Part 2 | Chapter 14 - Operation: Oceanic Memory (3)

Part 2 - Orientation Day

Chapter 14 - Operation: Oceanic Memory (3)

“Get a plate, act natural,” says Everett in my ear as I enter the mess. I tuck my hard hat under one arm immitating the other workers, folding my safety glasses to hang them from the pocket at the front of my overalls, and join the line to the lunch buffet.

I hesitate when it’s my turn to swipe my cloned city-monitor, but the light flashes green without any worries. I grab a tray and curiously look over the selection of food. There’s a few drab brown stews with assorted vegetables, rice - but not cooked in the style I'm used to with long, loose grains - and some small containers of mixed condiments. I get a small serving of the stew, sticking mostly to rice and load my tray with a couple of the sauces before grabbing a plastic spoon at the end.

I slide up the bench to sit next to Everett, who is already polishing off his first plate. He scratches his nose, leaving a streak of red, and looks at my tray as I sit.

“We in the wrong place?” I ask aloud.

Adrian replies, “No, this is it. Our contact is still here.”

“Then we ask them?” I ask.

“No. This is a sub-operation in a larger contract. We can’t compromise our insider,” says Adrian rather sharply.

“Where’s our contact work?” asks Everett, keeping his voice low like mine.

“I said you’re not compromising them,” reminds Adrian.

“I’m not making contact. They might not have used a public toilet block depending on where they work.”

Adrian's sigh sends the Vespa’s wings fluttering in my ear. “They're the head chef here.”

I dip the end of my spoon into the condiments one after another tasting each one. One is cool and creamy, with black seeds in it that are bitter when they pop in my mouth, the rest are too spicy so I put them aside.

“Could be toilets in the back of the kitchen?” I ponder and put a mouthful of the stew in my mouth.

Everett rubs his chin at that thought. I suck in a mouthful of air around my food and cough, funneling in a few mouthfuls of rice after it. On que he raises an eyebrow as I fan my mouth.

“Too spicy!” I mutter.

The corner of his mouth twitches upwards. He passes his plastic cup of water over to me and I gulp it gratefully. His symbiont bobs its pedipalps on his shoulder in a gesture that looks like it's laughing at me. He leans on one hand, covering his mouth with his curled fingers, cobalt eyes fixed on me.

I section off the curry and any rice it has already touched and continue eating just the plain rice, pouring over the creamy condiment that I liked. I must look like a desperate, wild thing cause Everett also passes me over the container with the leftovers of the same condiment from his own tray.

“Anything to say?” he asks between his fingers, still covering the lower half of his face.

I sniff cautiously and fill my mouth with another spoonful of rice. “Ta.”

He looks away, and uncurls his hand, drumming the table with his fingers instead as he thinks. “My bets are a block out back for the kitchen staff, or maybe an office block if our contact has work between meals? Ordering and such.”

“Can you talk silently, when you're ‘locked in’?” I ask, somewhat distracted by filling my hungry belly.

His mouth doesn’t move, his voice just speaking in my ear like Regina did in the cell at Murasaki, “Careful what you say. Yes, but then you’d be sitting here looking more like a cracked cog than you already do.”

“Who says that wouldn't be an accurate assessment?” I bite back.

He exhales quickly through his nose and returns to normal speech, “Oh, you are definitely cracked.”

I pause, spoon between my teeth. He flees from my study, his eyes slipping away from mine, and turns his attention up to the double doors behind the lunch buffet.

“Wait here,” he demands, slowly rising from the table, “Finish your food. Listen for my orders.”

I suspiciously lower my spoon and watch sideways as he makes his way back to the buffet line, hands tucked in his pockets and symbiont perched on his shoulder with its legs tucked close.

“Give me a distraction,” whisper his words in my ear over the connection Adrian maintains through the Vespa.

“What kind?” I ask aloud.

There’s a pause as Adrian must relay my words, “Something to get all the eyes looking away from that door for a few minutes.”

“Don’t go nuts,” adds Adrian, “Sub-operation, remember. We’ll be back here.”

I tap my spoon against the side of my bowl, looking around the mess hall for something. I’m too far back from the aisles to trip someone without obviously getting up and moving. I’m not really the type to start a fight. I guess I could fake some kind of medical episode, but that might get me swept up in something I won’t be able to get out of, or our IDs actually checked by a medical team. Pooka’s claws clench my shoulders tightly in anticipation. Let me.

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We stretch our wings, the shift of feathers and particles of our mass generating an arcing energy between the tips of our pinions, jumping in electrical crackles as we gather a charge within our swirling interior. Like a screaming bolt, we release the energy towards the ceiling with a crack of light and the acrid smell of ozone.

The light bulb above us explodes in a shower of splintering glass and sparks. Several others follow it in quick succession to shouts and ducked heads. Then the electrical surge spreads outwards plunging the mess into darkness broken with only a few blinking red status lights about the hall before those dim as well. A shudder follows at the sound of something several buildings over exploding.

The crowd of the mess momentarily freezes, then voices rise above the darkness calling out with the natural clarity of practiced supervisors and team leads.

“Everyone alright?”

“Must be an electrical fault. Don't panic. Be careful of the glass.”

I tentatively shift, nervous of the glass shards around me from the light bulb. I squint over at the buffet and Everett is already gone. Shit, I’m not being left here. I toss down my spoon and push back from the table, wincing as pinpricks of pain fire off in my palm. I brush my hand against my sleeve to try and dislodge any glass dust, and push between the slow moving crowd in the opposite direction of its flow.

“This is not a drill, please proceed to the emergency assembly point. Can someone go get the emergency captain hats?”

I wait at the double doors back to the kitchens while workers in white aprons emerge, following the crowd and their orders, then push through to follow Everett.

The kitchen has been abandoned in the evacuation. Cutting boards and knives discarded, scraps of vegetable peels and trays of food hastily covered with towels. I glance curiously around the ventilation hoods and shelving, moving back further down a hall and beyond into the other end of the building. Pooka follows on foot, wide paws and hunched shoulders of his hyaenid form trotting along behind my footsteps.

A hand emerges from a corner and drags me in, a second hand racing to my mouth to stifle my gasp of shock.

“That’s too much distraction,” hisses Everett, “I told you to stay put.”

“You left me on my own? What was I meant to do?”

He growls, grabbing my wrist and pulling me after him, “C’mon then.” He drags me as he looks through each of the doors to dry goods storage, cleaning supplies, where he grabs a mop, and serving utensil closets. Finally, a bathroom that he pushes me into first, then follows after.

“Start at the end, I’ll start here,” he hisses, launching me down the row of the stalls by my hand and jamming the mop handle through the door behind us. Voices are calling now, seeking stragglers in the evacuated mess. Overhead an emergency alarm begins to sound and the sprinklers spit a few times as water pressure builds and the fire suppression system comes to life.

The smell of chlorine fills the air, and I’m soaked within moments. I shift the lid on the tank of the toilet in the furthest stall and almost put it back in place in my rush when I spot a black plastic sleeve wedged between the flapper and side of the tank wall. “Hey!” I call out, raising my voice and placing the metal tank lid on the toilet seat out of the way. I plunge my hand into the water in the back of the tank and retrieve the sleeve, shaking the water off it. “Hey, I’ve got it.”

“Give it to me,” he snaps, not even waiting for me to offer and snatching it up from my hands. He tears the sleeve open, hunching over it to protect the contents from the sprinklers and tips a data stick into his palm. It’s sequestered into a pocket within the blink of an eye and Everett has a hand on my shoulder shoving me back towards the door.

“Where’s the evacuation assembly area?” he asks, pushing me ahead of him.

“What-”

“It was on the back of the door on the way into the mess, there was a diagram. Quick?”

Fuck, I did remember passing it. The cold is beginning to reach my skin now, sapping my body heat and quickly draining the fumes of energy I’ve been running on. I’ve been on edge so long now I’m not sure what my blood pressure feels like without the constant tension. Everett pushes me round another corner to a loading bay, the electronic motor for the shutters is dead. I separate from him, already spying the red pull cord to disengage the motor. I give it a tug, watching the mechanism jump, and snap the cord back and forth trying to work out how it disengages, before giving it a good tug to release the latch. Everett pulls a grab handle at the base of the metal bay door and rolls the door partially up, red sunlight streaming in along with the acrid smell of a chemical fire. Pooka trots under the door ahead of me, and Everett leans close as I drop down the waist high jump from the loading bay to the red dust outside.

“You see a map, you pay attention to it next time.” He slides down after me and lets the shutter drop behind us, then his eyes widen, “What did you do to your hands?”

I look down at my palms, and ribbons of blood are dripping from a network of tiny lacerations. “Ah shit,” I curse, tucking one under each armpit, “It’s nothing. I cut them, it’s not that bad. It’s the water everywhere.”

Pooka stuffs his nose into my armpit to sniff the blood, sending a shiver down my spine as his cold touch makes my freezing skin even worse. I bite my lip to keep my teeth from chattering.

Everett sighs one of those huge sighs that tells me he regrets ever making my acquaintance and pulls a handful of napkins from the mess from his pocket, tugging one of my arms free, then the other, and sandwiches the pile firmly between my hands. I expect him to just release me to care for it myself, but he continues to hold my hands around the napkins, cupped in his own. His touch is surprisingly soft. His cobalt eyes flicker slightly as he stares at my hands within his own, lost in thought. When I look up, the top of his head only comes to my eyeline.

“You are truly cracked. Adrian, time check?” asks Everett aloud.

“You’ve got an hour and half to get back to the train, Rhett. You need to get moving.”

There’s a flash of panic in Everett’s eyes and he looks between the demountable buildings, black smoke billowing from near the block that looks like it was the offices. I take the distraction as a chance to tug my hands free, his fingers curling as he releases me. He doesn’t seem interested in going to blend in at the evacuation area he’d been quizzing me on now he’s thinking.

“I think you blew the batteries with that stunt,” he mutters, “There’ll be emergency crews here shortly - and actual humans checking IDs likely as they do a roll call. We can’t wait for this to clear up, we need to get out of here. Adrian, we need an exit?”

“Emergency crews are already shutting down the road to let vehicles and symbionts through. Stealing a vehicle won’t get you out. You need to go cross-country here.”

“That’s not an exit,” hisses Everett.

There’s a sly hint of amusement to Adrian’s response. “You have an exit. Regina didn’t get you a new asset for no reason.”

I remember on the bus, the plodding Bos and Loxodonta with their hosts riding them, walking between the ore piles and conveyors. “Pooka!” I say aloud, bending over my shoulder to see where he’s walked off to.

Everett starts with genuine surprise at the name, repeating blankly, “...Pooka?”

I lift one hand free to check my wounds, they’re already barely bleeding, it was mostly just such a mess from the water. Can you change into something that can carry us?

Pooka’s eyes glow with fire, genuine joy radiating back to me. Yes! We will run and flow, like wild wind, like rapid currents. Gallop with me!