Mercury - Part 11

Part 11 – A Friend of Mine

INTERVIEW 001 – 13/07/2028 (PART 3)

(Two figures sit across from each other at a table. The first is a man in about his thirties wearing a business suit, the other is a mouse recom of about nine years of age.)
JUPITER: (laughs cheerily)
BIO-TECH INTERVIEWER: (looks disturbed) "That was a human life, Jupiter. Not something to laugh at."
J: "Oh, but I've wanted to see that life snuffed out for years! It's just so nice to see it."
BI: "Jupiter... Mr. Marcus was a friend of mine."
J: "Should I apologize for your taste in friends? I don't care."
BI: "..."
J: (shrugs) "If it's any comfort, I don't like you very much either. Just more than him."
BI: "You constantly affirm your abysmal empathy scores, Jupiter. Let's talk about what we just saw."
J: "Sure. You just saw stage two of the plan execution: Seven gets broken out by Three."
BI: "You said there were only six markers?"
J: "Mars was Two. He was played in the planning stage by Uranus. Who better to get into someone else's head, right?"
BI: "Right. Which markers belonged to everyone?"
J: "It's in alphabetical order. You figure it out."
BI: "I see. I'm curious, what was stage one? Does it have something to do with EXPERIMENT 207?"
J: "Very good, Mr. Arthurs! I wasn't expecting you to make that connection yourself! Uranus and Mercury broke me into the chemical room. He had been talking to the security for months prior to this, and he knew exactly what to say to bring them to tears. To make them want to confide in someone. With the security on watch distracted, I made it in. Mercury picked the lock."
BI: "Mercury? It-"
J: "She."
BI: "Stop that, Jupiter, or else you will receive punishment. It doesn't know how to pick locks."
J: "Really? I guess maybe I have to review my memories and empirical experience in light of this assumption you have. I didn't know about medical drugs, either, and yet I could decide what chemicals and drugs had which properties. In EXPERIMENT012, you showed us a library. We were four then. You remember that, don't you? Terra was there, too, back then."
BI: "Only you and Neptune took books. The rest of the series and Terra chose toys."
J: "Mercury didn't decide on anything. She was too indecisive, you said. But she wasn't. She was already thinking of escape. Mercury laid down the foundation of the escape before Neptune's plan even began. She just glanced through books that might help, committed the info to memory, but never settled on a single book, which you marked off as indecisiveness. Your memory tests for her probably seem a bit silly in retrospect."
BI: "And you chose a book on veterinary medicine."
J: "Right. I thought I was going to be able to have a career someday, instead of being stuck here until the day I die. How young and deluded I was. But that was all part of Saturn's game. She was given a list of all of the abilities that the markers had, everything we knew. She's so good at finding out exactly how the rules work and how to use them. It's a shame she never seemed to have a clue what was really happening, but that will come with time."
BI: "I'm impressed by both your recall and Mercury's. That was a long time before the escape, and a fairly brief exposure. But moving on, how is it that-"
J: "I don't feel the need to tell you anything else."
BI: "What? You can't-"
J: "I've told you everything you want to know. Or at least implied it. Now all you have to do is review some old security tapes."
BI: "Jupiter... stop cutting me off. And we don't have the tapes. You stole them."
J: (laughs) "I didn't. Mercury did."
(Bio-Tech Interviewer gets up and walks out of the room. The camera stops running while Jupiter gets up and starts wandering around.)

***

"Bitch," mumbled Samara as we left the brothel, carrying shopping bags labelled with some high fashion clothes. Or I was carrying the bag. I guess it looked more correct that way. Sam was just crossing her arms and looking generally annoyed.

"Uh, what?" I said, raising my eyebrow at Sam. Usually, when one of my contacts is amiable and helpful, I tend not to begrudge them anything.

Samara just gave me an annoyed look, "She just grates on my nerves, the way she talks, and moves and how everyone always fawns all over her. It drives me batty." She didn't stop here, but continued with an imitation in a higher pitched voice. Given that Sam's voice was reminiscent of a child's, this sounded a bit funny. "Oh, let's all worship Nova! Oh, you're so wonderful Nova, despite being vacant and boring!"

I rolled my eyes but I avoided pointing out that Samara and Nova seemed to sport similar mannerisms. This would have been suicide. "She is very beautiful. Are you jealous of her, Tamara?" Speaking of suicide...

"Jealous? You really are thick, Larry," said Sam, using my alias now that we were in earshot of any of these undercity people. "Where are we going, now?"

"To introduce you to my contact. Actually, I expect to bump into him in only a few minutes," I said, looking down at my watch. The favour I did for Lewis a few years back was a pretty big one: as well as being an architect, he was tangled up in an undercity gang, the Red Triangle, as a drug porter. A rival gang, the Mad Dogs, abducted his boyfriend, Daniel, to try gain some leverage. I agreed to free the captive kid for free... or, more accurately, in exchange for a favour from Lewis. I knew that he was training to be an architect at the time, and that it may be useful to use that favour in the future. I also kind of felt bad for them. They were both nice kids. Lewis sure didn't know how to react to stressful situations, though.

Samara nodded at me and said, "Your contact, your pain in the ass. I don't really want to deal with anything that's-" She was cut off by my reaching my hand out to grab the ferret recom, who came running from around the corner and swinging him around to slam him against the wall. The slim ferret was pretty light, and I was pretty strong.

"Mr. R-" squeaked the ferret recom, before I interrupted him. Samara just stepped back passively and observed the interactions.

"Just call me Larry right now, Lew," I pressed him a little harder against the wall and asked, "So, what are you doing back in the undercity, here? I thought you were going to cut your ties from the Triangle?"

"I was just, um, see I was just going to pay a visit to a friend down here," said the Ferret, and I narrowed my eyes at him. I knew that both the Red Triangle and the Mad Dogs would have loved to tear me limb from limb for all my meddling, but that would've been an unfortunate distraction.

I brought my face close to Lewis' and said very deliberately, "Kid, I am the wrong guy to piss off. If you leaked any information to those gangs about my being here, you're not going to take things like eating without a feeding tube ever again for granted anymore."

Lewis nodded his head quickly and squirmed, "Oh, geez, oh, geez, I wasn't going to tell them anything about you, Mr. Ra- Mr. Larry! I swear!"

I dropped him to the ground and Samara approached him, acting a little more amicable. She leaned down to put her hand on Lewis's shoulder, "I'm sorry for my friend. He's been having a rough day. What's your name, kid? I'm Tammy."

"Lewis," said the ferret recom, looking quite bewildered and scared, "I was just..."

"Listen to me," said Tamara, her voice softening and becoming soothing. I continued to stand over them, fuming. "He's not going to hurt you, not so long as I'm here. Please just let us know what you're doing down here. People don't come down here for a jog."

Lewis looked up to me with wide, scared eyes, and then back on Sam. "I was scared, I didn't want to lose my job and me and my boyfriend are getting kind of serious, but he's going to school and I need the money... And stealing information like that is bad!"

I rolled my eyes at Lewis and said, "Sure didn't seem like you're getting serious with him, the way you were trying to dance with me back there at the club." I knew from my previous experience with Lewis that, when placed under stress, he tends to do things that are really stupid, but this didn't stop me from being angry with him.

"It... it's an open relationship, but he'll always be the one for me..." said Lewis meekly before looking back towards Samara, "I... I didn't tell anyone anything. I was going to maybe go to the Triangle, see if they'd protect me from you for a little while, so I could keep my job..."

"And back out on your word? I put my neck on the line for you kids, and this is how I'm going to be repaid?" I growled and shook my head at him. "And you'd have to do drug runs again, I'd bet. Not exactly a stable lifestyle."

The ferret recom looked towards the ground and shrugged, "I... I didn't mean to do that to you, I just didn't know what to do." He looked so pathetic and scared. I still wanted to punch his teeth in. "I didn't tell anyone that you're here. But I overheard a couple of the Dogs saying they saw you."

I nodded slowly and said, "They still don't know my name, right, kid? That's all that's important."

Lewis nodded his head quickly, "I never told anyone anything like that. Like I told you when you first helped me, I'd never tell your name to anyone."

I looked at him coldly, or at least I suspect I looked cold, "Yeah, well, we know what your word is worth. Anyways, I should have no problem keeping out of their s-"

"Hey, it's him, guys!" Four wolf recoms in their mid-20s appeared at the opposite end of the tunnel. I could make out the black tattooing around their eyes: MD. Great. Just great.