Daedalus Tale: Finder and the Sacrifice
(The full text of Tommy Morrow's case from the Daedalus forum condensed into one post for your consumption)
Clients didn't care about excuses, though the sun going black seemed like a legitimate one. Seventy two hours was his guarantee, and of course the elderly woman in the burlap dress arrived an hour before the big lights out to tell Tommy that her little girl went missing. “Went missing” wasn't accurate though. The moment his fingers touched the ruddy fabric of the little girl's teddy bear he knew the truth: CeeCee wasn't missing, she was taken.
He saw the struggle. There were two large men in black painters masks and goggles. They grabbed the girl, one around the legs, the other through the armpits. She bit the hand that covered her mouth; it caused no flinch from the man. The other man grabbed the teddy bear and through it onto the ground. The slight moment of contact between man and bear caused a name to flash into Tommy's mind. The name, Hanouth, wasn't the name of the kidnapper, but someone that he had very heavily on his mind. He also saw a bear picnic, a night crying in fear of the dark, a week of despair lost behind a toybox, and a brother experimenting with sewing needles. Then it was all gone. The bear hit the ground and the vision fizzled to only cold concrete and dirt.
“Can you, Finder?” was what Tommy heard as his mind released the images of painful kidnapping. He still felt the pinches and pulled muscles of the struggle when he tried to shake his mind clear.
What she said was: “Can you find her?”
“Yes I can,” he said without a thought.
Two long sundown days later, crouched in an alley near the sewage treatment plant, Tommy twisted a dropped ribbon between his fingers and knew the girl was inside. She was either inside, or had recently been inside. He turned his flashlight off two blocks back to mask his approach. It was hard to see, but the blackout was no excuse when a little girl was in trouble somewhere. Inside, a light swayed from an overhead hook and Tommy pressed himself against the wall, sticking to the shadows. He wasn't as stealthy as he used to be, but anyone could be quiet and still if they had to be. He quickly dipped his head around the corner and scanned the large room with a fast glance. He spotted one man by a table manipulating some chemicals and filling syringes one after another. He was wearing a mask, and from Tom's vantage point he assumed it was a painter's mask based on the vision he had seen off the teddy bear.
Once he moved back behind the safety of the corner wall, he examined his mental map of the room that the quick glance afforded. There was a torn and tattered mattress in the back just beyond man and table. On the mattress, a small figure rested on her side, bound hand to foot. She wasn't moving. Most likely knocked out. There was a lot of distance to cover between this man and the corner where Tommy hid. This guy was likely armed, but there was no way to be sure. That was okay though. Tommy was armed too. He pulled the revolver out of the holster under his arm. The .38 was older, old fashioned really, it was a slug thrower that Tommy kept clean and oiled, so even though it was out of date; it was still most effective.
He crouched down on the ground and ran his hand along the concrete floor. This was a technique he'd taught himself back when he was on the job. If he found a good spot, somewhere that this guy stopped walking for a few minutes, he might be able to pick up some additional information that might help. Like: What is Hanouth? What is the plan for the girl?
There was nothing on the ground though. Either the kidnappers hadn't come through this way or they just didn't linger for very long. Either way, Tommy was distracted suddenly. The man looked like he finished his little science experiment and was now headed toward the little girl with a massive looking syringe in hand.
“Now or never,” he whispered and stood.
With a quick motion, he launched himself out into the room and made sure that he was in a place where light could hit him.
“Hey scumbag! Not another step or I'll shoo-”
Tommy's words were interrupted by a sudden sharp pain to the back of his head as the second kidnapper rammed him with the business end of a baseball bat. As Tommy hit the ground, he thought of another important piece of information: Where was the second kidnapper?
The world... went blacker.
In his head, a light flashed back and forth. It wasn't in his head. When Tommy's eyes spread open, the darkness of the room was briefly broken by the familiar swinging lamp that he noticed earlier. His hands were bound together behind him and secured through plastic holes in the chair back. His head boomed in a painful pulse, and as his eyes adjusted to the light, the pain only got worse. He heard scraping sounds coming from nearby. Tommy accidentally sighed heavily as he saw the man in the painter's mask sharpening a long menacing looking knife. It didn't seem to get the man's attention though. He swiveled his head from side to side to get a lay of the room. The mattress that previously had the young girl on it was now empty. The chemicals and syringes that were on the table were all gone. Only the man in the mask and his knife remained.
“Hey,” Tommy said, the sudden noise caused his head to pound a bit harder.
No reaction from the man.
The man finally turned. He brandished the knife, holding it up for Tommy's consideration.
“Nice knife. Is it for me?”
The man nodded. Though most of his face was behind a mask, his eyes seemed to be smiling. He wasn't wearing the goggles that Tommy had seen earlier when he touched the teddy bear.
“You must be from upstairs.”
“Why you say that?” An dim-witted, accented voice spoke muffled behind the mask.
“Two reasons,” Tommy said. “First of all, those chemicals you were playing with earlier aren't really common down here.”
The man walked closer, twirling the knife around in his hand. He looked like the sort who would enjoy this sort of close quarters murder.
“Well, someone from down here would know that quality of the furniture is sub-par at best.”
The man looked confused, until Tommy jolted upward and snapped the plastic back of the chair in half, freeing his hands. They were still tied together behind his back, so he needed to move quickly.
The surprised man in the painters mask lunged at Tommy and slashed at him. Tommy, who was expecting this, tipped himself sideways and crashed onto the floor, narrowly avoiding the cut. He lifted and bent his leg, then sprung his heel out at the man's knee, catching him squarely and causing an audible pop. The man shouted out and stumbled backwards, catching himself on the table. Tommy was going to try to pull his legs through so his hands were at least tied in front of him instead, but when he saw that the man was reaching across the table for something, he realized there was no time for that. There was a good chance it was a gun. This guy enjoyed knives, but Tommy was pretty sure that he'd use whatever he needed to.
Tommy rolled over onto his knees, rocked back onto his feet,stood quickly, and bolted for the man. Once Tommy was up he saw that it was indeed his pistol that the man was reaching for, but it had been knocked to the opposite side of the table, and with his now damaged knee he was having trouble reaching it. Either Tommy was faster than the man had expected, or he was focused on the gun, because when he struck the man hard with his shoulder, he lifted off his feet unprepared and landed roughly onto the concrete floor. The knife slid out of his hand and skittered across the ground.
Tommy ran to where the man lay and was about to wind up to kick him, but he saw that he was out cold. From the looks of it he had struck his head on the ground when he landed. Tommy didn't want to take any chances, so he kicked him sharply in the temple.
He hated knives. The problem with knives is that they are, by nature, an extremely personal weapon. A person can fire a machine gun into a crowd of people and kill dozens. It's much harder to hurls a slew of knives around and actually hit anyone let alone kill them. Knives took a certain level of intention, a need to feel death close at hand, especially for a man like the unconscious one with the mask on. He was the exact kind of sicko that Tommy was afraid of. When Tommy bent down and took the knife into his hands, he knew that this guy was the sort of person that enjoyed cutting people up.
The knife bit into his skin several times while he tried to blindly cut his bindings. Between the blinding headaches, and the flashes of gory memories lifting off the knife and firing into his brain, he could barely see straight. The moment he felt the ropes loosen, he dropped the knife to the floor and began to take in heavy breaths. He stumbled backward to distance himself from the blade; which to him was like some wild animal ready to pounce. The energy in that blade was as nasty as it got.
He dreaded it, but he closed his eyes and forced himself to look through his memories taken from the blade. He saw the plan. He saw other things too, but he saw the plan. Load the girl into a transport and ship her off to parts unknown. Another warehouse. A floating avalanche. A street sign with the word “Hanouth” spray painted over whatever it used to say. A seemingly endless series of needle. A scalpel. A chamber. Almost none of the images made sense. Aside from the last one.
There was a mostly empty street, pitch darkness, a man stood over a young girl. He was wrapping her up in blankets and tying her up so that only her head stuck out. This man was wearing a painters mask and a pair of reflective goggles. The girl was crying, or at least she had been recently. He had the knife in his hand and had the tip resting at the space between he chin and where the bundle barely protected her throat.
“We bleed you girl for Hanouth. Blood for life and all. You know this?” asked the man, muffled through his mask.
The girl blinked, shook her head no.
“Wait to bleed on street, and to feed the great science,” he continued.
Then he turned. The other masked man stood silently, that terrible smile spreading his cheeks out.
“Kill man, then ass get out here to go,” another man said as he handed the knife over to his partner.
Tommy's eyes flew open. The partner was waiting for this guy. That meant he didn't leave yet. He stood up and ran over to the table, giving the man on the ground another kick to the head for good measure. He grabbed his pistol from the table, made sure it was loaded, and moved instinctively in the direction of the door. He knew the partner was out this way, and he was already too tired, and he was too close to running out of time, to let this guy get away now.
When Tommy swung the door open, he saw the partner lean forward expectantly and then pause as he saw that it was not his partner who exited the building. The man's movement stuttered for a moment, like he didn't know whether to draw a weapon or run. Tommy pointed his pistol at the man. It was a distance, but Tommy was a damn good shot. The guy didn't know that though, so he turned and ran. He turned the corner of the transport he had parked and running.
“Don't move!” Tommy yelled, but he didn't wait to fire. The shot rang out, ear shattering in the quiet darkness, and struck the man in the calf. He collapsed onto the ground like a sack of rocks. He cried out, but the sound was stifled behind the mask the man wore.
Tommy quickly ran up to the man who was writing on the ground, trying to crawl away beneath the opened transport door. Under normal circumstances it would have given Tommy pause to see this relatively helpless man on the ground. He wasn't a killer, after all. The problem was that when Tommy touched the knife he had not only seen the events, and heard the plan, but he had seen the man on the ground's thoughts. He had knew how many times he had done this kind of thing before. How many young girls he had killed. How many young girls he had done worse too. He saw it all briefly, and though it would fade eventually, the pain they felt was fresh.
“Auuugh. Take her. Just take her and lea-”
The girl, wrapped up tightly in a cocoon of blankets, was still in the back of the truck. Tommy took off his coat and wrapped her up in it so as not to touch the blankets that had likely seen better days.
“Are you okay sweetheart?” he asked the girl.
She said nothing, only stared at him with big pretty blue eyes. She was either in shock, or this was just how she reacted to people. He thought back to the playful girl that he saw through the vibes in the teddy bear. She had fun, she laughed and played, but never spoke. Sure she kicked and screamed when they took her, but who wouldn't do that?
He left the dead man beside his transport. He had a feeling that the nature of their work wouldn't allow the still living partner to just leave his counterpart behind when he finally woke up and realized what happened. Tommy wasn't concerned about the police either. They didn't ask questions about stuff like this; not in this neighborhood. A dead man was just another pile of trash to take out. Little kidnapped girls were just dead ends waiting to be forgotten. There was no need to clean up after himself. There would be no investigation. He had been brushed off so many similar cases when he was on the force that he didn't feel the need to even wipe his finger prints off the handle to the transport's rear door.
He had maybe three hours until his client was going to meet him at his office, so Tommy brought the girl back there. He sat her on his sofa in the waiting room and gave her a drink of water. She seemed oddly trusting-shock probably-because she never even made a sound while she waited. She was a perfectly patient little lady.
Tommy, on the other hand, applied and icy gel pat to the back of his head where he'd been hit earlier and tried to avoid falling asleep at his desk while they waited. He dabbed some liquid bandages onto the cuts on his hands while he watched the girl as she flipped through the old smudged tablet table in front of the waiting room sofa. She was playing an old Pac-Man game that he had loaded on there; she was probably the first one to do anything with the tablet it in maybe five years.
He was going to ask he some questions, but before he could open his mouth the door swung open and his elderly client walked in. She had a surprised look on her face when she saw the little girl sitting on the sofa.
“Cee Cee child!” she cried out and ran over to the little girl. This was the first time that Tommy had seen an emotion actually cross the face of the little girl. It was a mixture of relief, fear, and excitement all at once; an interesting reaction.
Tommy hadn't noticed the tall thin man in the doorway at first. He skulked by the door frame just barely in sight while the old woman comforted her lost little one. He was balding, with pointed features, deep set eyes, and a mouth that had the toothless wrinkles of old age. He was dressed in a long white tunic top and black pants. Tommy thought he looked like some kind of deranged chef.
“You did it. You really found her, Mr. Morrow,” said the old woman.
She touched Cee Cee on the back of the head, kissed her forehead, and spoke quietly to her. “Go with grandpa while grammy talks to Finder, dear.”
Tommy offered the little girl a smile. She returned it, which briefly gave him a warm feeling inside.
“Buh bye,” she said in a small voice.
He wiggled his fingers at her. “Bye bye Cee Cee.”
She smiled once again and headed out the door with the tall man.
Tommy looked back at the old woman who settled herself into the seat across the desk from him. She had a different look in her eyes. It might have been relief, or it might have been something else. She looked a lot younger suddenly, less frail, and certainly a lot more authoritative.
“Thank you for living up to your name, Mr. Morrow,” she said.
“Just doing my job,” Tommy replied.
She opened the small bag she had dangling from a strap around her shoulder. On Tommy's desk she clapped a small stack of credit chips. They were fresh, brand new plastic, and unscratched. He wondered where a little old lady like this comes up with that kind of money.
“Can I ask you a question, Finder?”
“Sure,” he said, taking the stack of creds in between his fingers.
“Why did they take her? For what purpose? Did they say?”
Tommy paused and considered this for a moment. He did know. He saw it in the knife, in the minds of two psychos. “You don't want to know.”
She shook her head. “I have to know.”
Tommy sighed and leaned his elbows on his desk. He didn't want to think about it, let alone talk about it, but she was still a client until she left the office and the customer is always right.
“They were two con men, but more than that, they were insane. The problem with insane con men is that they actually believe whatever scenario they've created, so it makes them even more convincing. They were paid by a neighborhood down in old town, group collection, to perform a miracle. The residents of Hanouth, whatever that is, apparently aren't taking the lack of power to their neighborhood very well. They've been struggling since even before this most recent blackout. So these two guys tell them that they have a way to bring the lights back on for good: sacrifice a little girl and give her blood to the cracks in the street. Their theory is that the girls blood with 'heal the connections' and 'repair the damages that time and neglect has wrought.' They thought Cee Cee was special, that her blood bridge all the broken connections that are keeping these folks off the grid. They were going to kill her, Madam, right in front of everyone.”
The woman didn't even look surprised, which kind of worried Tommy. After a moment she spoke. “At least she is safe now,” was all that she said.
Tommy furrowed his brow. “The worst part is that they were planning to inject her with some conductive materials. Meaning, their plan would have worked. Lights might have flickered on for a few seconds, and that would have been enough for them to get more cash. It was all about money.”
“I'm just glad you found her in time before any of that could even happen,” the woman said.
“Yes indeed...” Tommy said, stacking and unstacking the credits on the desk idly as he spoke to her. It was only after a moment that he realized something. He wasn't picking up any pieces of her information from the credit chips.
The two of them stared at one another for a long moment and Tommy could see something in the woman's eyes. She knew about him. She knew who he was and what he could do. He looked down at her hands, and as old and wrinkled as the rest of her was, her hands were smoothed out. She was wearing gloves. They were perfectly clear, so at first glance they were just her hands. With those, she wouldn't pass her memories and thoughts onto the things that she touched. The only reason to take those precautions was to keep him out of her head.
“I'm sure you've got somewhere to be, miss... Don't let me keep you,” said Tommy.
“Oh yes of course. You're right,” she said and got to her feet. “Thank you again, Finder. You truly are a miracle worker.”
Tommy stood as well, manners and all that, and walked around his desk. The woman reacted to this and began to move a bit quicker to exit the room. He reached out quickly and grabbed her hand.
Although she was wearing gloves, the gloves were touching her skin, and their purpose was specifically to deceive him. Because of that, the memories that were transferred in that second were the exact thoughts that this woman was trying to keep from him. In an instant he saw similar sights as he did when he touched the teddy bear at their first meeting. There were bear picnics, tea parties, frightened nights, joy filled days, all viewed through the eyes of the old woman, and all viewed through the glass of a laboratory observation room. There were also needles. Hundreds of needles. And reports on the energy generating properties of the little girl's blood. She was an experiment.
The woman wrenched her hand away. She had a look of fear in her eyes. She didn't know what Tommy had seen, but she could guess.
She was aghast. “Why did you do that?”
“Because I had to know,” he said and turned to walk back to his desk.
“But... But you aren't going to do anything about it?” she asked, a mixture of caution and curiosity.
“What can I do?” Tommy asked. “You paid me. My job is done here,” he said, trying his hardest not to seem as pissed off as he was.
“I see,” she said. The woman looked as though she was going to say something else, but she held her tongue and simply walked out of Finder's office.
Tommy sat still for a moment, fingers clenched into fists. He needed a drink.
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