The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 1 (The Fallocaust Series Book 2) (20 page)

Fuck patience!

The next morning I woke up very clean from the twenty minute cold shower I had to take after me and Garrett’s ‘almost had sex but didn’t’ time on the balcony, one that was so joyfully interrupted by Teaguae Dekker. I was not impressed and I hoped that dumbass chimera knew that.

With a kiss on his cheek I got up. I let the suave one sleep and after I got my morning coffee from Saul who as usual let himself in.

Saul was well... Saul was great, and I think he hated me, but he was great either way.

Solomon was Garrett’s bodyguard and right-hand man for like the last ten thousand years. He was fifty years old, with a bald head and an angry grey goatee. The dude had eyes that told you he had not taken an ounce of bullshit in his life and he had no desire to start.

So naturally I had to take advantage of that.

“Morning Sully,” I said. Even though I was still tired I tried to make myself as cheery as possible.

Saul glanced up from his coffee mug; he had today’s bulletin in his hands.

“I’d keep that slap-happy look on your face, Garrett’s in for a long day.” He licked his fingers before turning the page. “Another worker got blended up in one of the factories last night. Third incident this year and he hasn’t sent the repairs over that he promised.” Saul took a bite out of his sandwich. He was a bachelor and that’s all he ate, any leftover dinner from the previous night got made into a sandwich. Today’s sandwich had lasagna between the bread slices.

Yeah, he was that bad.

“Too bad it wasn’t a rat meat factory right?” I said with a chuckle. “You could slap a label on it ‘may contain traces of arian’.” I laughed at my own joke, but Saul just ignored me. He didn’t find me nearly as funny as Garrett.

“On top of that, Garrett’s got meetings back-to-back. I’d go back in there and start doing your duty; it’s going to be a rough one.”

Do my duty?
I stared at him blankly for a moment. His dead fish eyes stared right back at me before he shook his head and went back to the bulletin.

“Have you ever gotten your brain scanned, kid?”

“I’ve gotten it knocked around like a bouncy ball before, does that count?” I said opening up the fridge. We usually grabbed breakfast on the way to the office but I was hungry now. I liked having two breakfasts.

I grabbed a banana and sat down with my coffee, before I heard movement in the bedroom. I leaned back on my chair as I munched away on this weird yet tasty genetically engineered fruit. I liked it, but god damn did I ever puke up a storm the first time Garrett properly fed me. My body seemed to go into food shock. I had never had real cheese before and I had eaten a lot of it.

Back-to-back meetings...
I took another bite. I had already cleanly checked the apartment and I hadn’t found the papers Elish had wanted me to find. Garrett rarely took his work home with him; just his laptop and it wouldn’t be on there.

But if he was going to be away at meetings all day...

If I was some sort of undercover secret agent this would be the part where I spin some classic lie as to why I wanted to accompany Garrett to work. Something so clever everyone watching would be so impressed. Singing high praises for my intellect and daring, such a sneaky fuck going undercover to snoop through Garrett’s office.

But well, this was real life.

“Garrett, I want to come to work with you today.”

Garrett popped his head out of the bedroom, his hair slicked back and wet from the shower and his still dripping chest bare. “I’d love that! We’ll order hamburgers for lunch.”

So easy.

I pulled on my leash and made growling noises, sometimes if he left me in the car for too long I started to bark. Saul hated it and had threatened to shoot me like a dog on many occasions but Garrett still thought it was hilarious. I even had a bag of chocolate for treats, purely because he was buying into the joke just as much as I was. I’d even learned a few tricks.

I took my place in my corner as people came in and out to meet with him. I had a stuffed beanbag chair thing in the corner, plus some handheld video games and books to read. When the people came in they all got put away and I had to stare forward looking invisible.

The men and women who came in were all shapes and sizes; I even saw several fat ones. There aren’t really fat people in the wasteland; we kind of tend to eat them or they get left behind to get eaten because they’re slow.

Garrett was in president mode. He was such a stern and formidable businessman it was fascinating watching him at work. President for a reason Garrett took no bullshit and I watched in awe as he called out several people on lies or false facts. He knew the workings of Skytech in and out, no matter how much information his clients and workers had he always knew more. No wonder he didn’t have a social life, he was too busy keeping up with all the work.

It did make me admire him and appreciate how loose and relaxed he was around me. Once again my mind pricked with amusement at how smart Elish had been hooking the two of us up. We seemed to feed perfectly off of each other, both of us at our best when we had the other one around. Jade’s super aura magic really was indispensible.

I stifled a yawn as Garrett rattled on to Mr. What’s-his-name and started counting the tiles on the floor. I was supposed to sit pretty but I got bored easily, I could never entertain myself by staring at walls like Reaver. I needed stimulus but at least I got treated nicely. To curry Garrett’s favour everyone always complimented me and said nice things and I was okay with that. Sometimes I even got gifts. So far I’d gotten chocolate, a new Game Boy game and offers of a serval cat from Joaquin Dekker.

Then after we shared lunch, the person I had been waiting for arrived; the one with the hair up his ass about the blended factory worker. As I had hoped he wanted to personally show Garrett the problems. The factory itself was on the island only several blocks away. I complained of an upset stomach from the hamburgers and some fatigue so I was left to my own devices in the office. After summoning Saul from his place near the entrance of the building the three of them took off in a car, leaving me behind in the locked office.

As soon as I heard the door click a rev of anxiety started to turn over in my chest. The icy cold feeling you got before you did something stupid. I waited with an ear out for any sign of re-entry and when they had been gone for almost five minutes I rose.

The office I was in was really an entire apartment in itself. It was breathtakingly beautiful, in colours of ebony black and trimmed gold. The walls were marble and the floors so clean I literally ate off them. The art on the walls looked like little TVs too, that’s how realistic they looked, and the furniture as well was restored with all the handles and knobs needed.

Back in Aras I had to jimmy my underwear drawer open with a butter knife.

Through my hours of sitting pretty I had spotted several places I wanted to root through, mainly his filing cabinets. There was also a half-open door that seemed to lead to more storage.

I think I had my work cut out for me. I was looking for files way back twenty years ago and then some, since it took time to spit out a functioning Reaver. I knew I was looking for files on Kreig though, that would save me what would’ve normally taken me fifteen years to sort through.

Too bad Garrett wasn’t obsessively organized like Elish obviously was or it would’ve made things easier. Instead I was staring at folders and folders of half-labelled gibberish. Town names and lab names I didn’t recognise, numbers that made no sense.

Oi, this was going to take a while.

The guys were counting on me though... this was my part in this big movie. I was the field agent getting insider info that would help our little rebellion become stronger. I couldn’t fuck up my only job. Elish had hand-picked me for this.

Aw man, Garrett trusted me here though... I was only human, I still felt bad about it.

I flicked through the first door of the filing cabinet but I got the impression this was factory stuff since I recognised Tamerlan, which is where Tinkerbell was from. So I closed that drawer and moved on to the next one.

I only glanced in it for a moment before I immediately sensed I wouldn’t find anything here. No, I can’t see him keeping old files out in the main office. My eyes flicked to the half-open door and with a quick look around I quietly padded over to it, my leash dragging behind me like a forgotten skip rope. I picked it up and tucked it into my black pants.

With a jitter in my veins that remained no matter how far away I knew Garrett was, I softly opened the door and flipped the light on.

My shoulders slumped as I realized how big the room was and how many filing cabinets were in here, wall-to-wall with stacks of paper that crawled up the ceiling like centipedes. This was going to take a while... at least it would give me time to think of a good excuse if they came back. Either I saw a rat or I had a headache and wanted to find some place dark. That sweet suave chimera would believe me; I had him wrapped around my finger.

Another pang of guilt... I banished it into my loyalty to my friends. They were counting on me.

I wasn’t here to find a boyfriend. That was only a fringe benefit. I was here to find out how to get into Kreig; then Elish would take me back to my friends, that’s what he promised.

I flicked through the files, starting counterclockwise. The first cabinet seemed full of more factory shit, then Skytech research; the third cabinet though caught my interest. The file folders were crimson red and labelled in black marker saying ‘chimera information’.

The first file folder I had was for Artemis Dekker, with silver hair, royal blue eyes and standing a respectable six foot two. I thumbed through the next one which was his twin brother Apollo, and the next which was for someone I was familiar with: Garrett Dekker.

I pulled that one to the front and memorized the location, I wanted to look through it sometime and see if I could get some hints from it about things he liked. I skimmed through the rest, recognising a few names but I didn’t see Reaver. I did though find Lycos Dekker, it wasn’t Kreig but it was close. I pulled it up and closed the file drawer; I sat down with it and started looking through it.

Lycos Dekker, born 193, blond hair, hazel eyes... I grazed through the stuff I already knew and to the back pages. It hadn’t been updated that was for sure, attached to it was his death certificate, saying he had died in Kreig in 211.

I carefully looked at several attached pieces of paper on the folder but they were regarding his schooling, his teachers and...

My eye stopped on a familiar name.

Professor: Perish Dekker.

Facility: The College of Skytech, owned by Elish Dekker.

It was so odd to see the proof that Leo, the mayor of Aras, had been involved with these guys all this time, mind boggling really... and Elish owned that school, eh? I wonder if that’s how Elish got involved in Reaver’s creation. Those two definitely had some sort of history before that lab explosion.

I quietly closed the file folder, ignoring the strange feeling in my gut. The feeling that kept me up at night, knowing this stuff stretched back for years, long before I was born. It made me wary of Elish, even if I trusted him. I felt like a small fish in a big pond doing tasks that would impact the entire world.

I let out a breath and wiped the sweat from my forehead. While looking through folders I hadn’t even realized I was stress sweating.

I decided to ignore it and move to the next file folder.

And the next, and the next until...

“There was a farmer who had a dog,”
I whispered as I opened the sixth cabinet. Inside were blue folders stuffed to the brim with white papers, the first one I saw was Donnely and that indeed was a lab. The second was Gosselin, which I knew had a lab years ago.
“And bingo was his name, oh.”

With a quiver in my gut that churned around until it formed a pit, all of this suddenly became very real. I could feel my pulse start to quicken and my chest start to flush with ice water. I pulled back the folders and when I saw Kreig my heart started to eat out of my chest.

I pulled it out; it was heavy. I sat on the floor and opened it up. I licked my dry lips with an even dryer tongue.

Chimera X

Scientists on hand: 1

    Lycos Dekker

Project name: Chimera X attempt 1 T-093C

    Failed at 3 weeks 2 days. No heartbeat.

Oh shit, Chimera X. That was Reaver’s code name. I lifted up the first several pages and saw attempt after attempt fail. I wanted to look through those badly but I needed that key card first.

More booklets of chimera info... I pushed it to the side and found a paper-clipped book of random numbers, none of which made sense. It was all math and science and that had only been tutored to me by Leo when I was younger and schooling stopped at ten then you had to start apprenticing for a real job.

Then I felt something hard and square outlined the bottom of the booklet, I turned and saw a credit card looking thing stuck in a translucent plastic sleeve.