"Angry Rusty"

I followed the Suit out of the interrogation room and into the brightly lit hallways of the Las Vegas City Police Headquarters. He carried himself like an FBI Agent, arrogant and disdainful for the poor lesser mortals who could only qualify for mere ‘local’ law enforcement. He had the schtick down perfectly as he led the way past the Duty Desk and the overworked Sergeant answering two phones, working on several files simultaneously, and watching the rogues gallery of goons shackled to the steel and plastic chairs in what passed for a lobby.

I could feel the dozen sets of eyes following us as we left, half from the aforementioned goons, half from the various officers moving about the room. The Suit flashed his leatherbound credentials at the Sergeant and made a dismissive head nod in my direction indicating that I was going with him and that no questions were going to be asked, or answered for that matter.

The only cracks in this seeming armor of FBI-ness came as soon as we walked into the cool night air and towards the large parking lot where he had apparently parked. His shoulders seemed to droop just a bit, his swaggering walk seemed to soften. He still didn’t look back at me as we walked, he was moving quickly, obviously anxious to make it to his vehicle. I could make out the smallest hint of nervous sweat beading up around the stiff white collar of his shirt...something was not quite right. I knew the temperature was not higher than 60 degrees out here, but he seemed to be sweating now.

Looking around, I could see that the City didn’t bother to put HQ on the ever-so-famous Strip, land prices must be too high for such a non-revenue producing eneterprise. We seemed to be well away from all of the famous landmark casinos, and closer to the seedier part of town of strip clubs, small rent-by-the-week motels, and liquor stores on every corner. Close to where the others had rented a room, as part of that contingency plan we had set up only the day before.

The Suit was leading me to very un-FBI like vehicle, an upscale dark blue or black, but foreign made, SUV. Not the sort of vehicle that the Bureau leases for its agents. As he approached the vehicle, he used the remote control to unlock it, and indicated for me to get into the back seat, saying only, “You’ll find some equipment that you’ll want in the backseat there, as well as a supply of special ‘juice’ that Dr. Bernstein says’ll give you a nice boost of power.”

I looked at him before moving towards the rear door. “You’re not an agent, are you?”

He grinned, looking more weasily than anything else, “No. Please, I’ve got better things to do with my time, and my talents, than to play cops and robbers.”

“I don’t recognize you from my time in the Labs, how do you know Dr. Bernstein?”

He seemed to clam up, perhaps feeling that I was fishing just a little too much, “That’s none of your business Bones. I need to get your ass to the transport point and get back to my other tasks. Get in the car.”

I could see he was trying to bring back that hard veneer he had worn in front of the cops. But I could see it for the facade that it was now. He was nervous about something. I got in the truck and saw that there was indeed a bag of equipment to do a ‘flush and gush’ as well as a couple of unmarked bottles of a purplish liquid and a pair of my collapsible batons, cocky fucking bastards.

“So where you taking me to?” I asked as I moved the bag over and settled in right in the middle of the back seat. “I take it you are not driving me to see Drake?”

He got into the driver’s seat and shifted his rear view mirror so he could use that to keep an eye on me. He sneered at me, “Look, we’re just heading to a research facility on the edge of town that the Organization owns. There’s a Transit Point there that will send you to Florida.”

“Transit Point, what the hell is that?” I asked with more than a little curiosity.

He laughed. “You’re pretty fucking dumb aren’t you? Transit Points are like permanent portals that can take you long distances away, sort of like that shit they do on Star Trek man, except you don’t need a Scotty to operate them.”

“So how do they work? How do you know where it takes you?”

He started the car, put it into gear and backed out of the parking spot. We were soon on the major road heading west out of town. He took a little time before he replied. “There’s probably a reason why they haven’t told you about this shit. Let’s just say that it’s pretty damn complicated magick to make one of these things, but it’s pretty easy to operate one if you’ve been keyed to use it.”

I picked up one of the batons laying loose in the bag, making sure he saw me fondling it in the mirror. “You seem pretty damn comfident that I’m not going to hurt you, or try to escape, how come?”

His eyes grew wide, he stammered a just a little. “I-I-I’ve been told you are willing to come back now. Besides, it’s not like you can really escape. If you hurt me and escape again, they’ll just track you down with the...oh, well, you know you are pretty damn easy to find.”

Something clicked in my memory with his stuttering and the way he tried to avoid saying how exactly I could be tracked so easily...

“Th-th-this ch-ch-chip at the b-b-b-base of his sk-sk-skull will be our way of tra-tracking him.” That was the voice of the Tinker, talking to Drake before I had been ‘activated’.

“Why not bury inside his chest cavity with the Chakra, for extra protection?” That was Drake’s dry voice.

“B-b-be-c-c-cause too m-m-much inter-f-f-ference w-w-with the metal, it-it n-n-needs to be f-f-fairly free of s-s-such pr-protection.”

“I see. So what range will we have on his location?”

“Un-un-unlimited range, it is-s-s G-G-GPS enabled, and w-w-will tr-tr-transmit even if th-th-the unit is d-d-d-deactivated.”

“So even if Rusty is severely damaged and inoperable, this chip will transmit his location to our OpCenter?”

“Y-y-yes sir.”

“And you feel that this is the best location for it?”

“Y-y-yes sir. Th-th-the chip is st-st-st-still protected by his sk-sk-skull, but is a-a- accessible for tr-tr-transmission and r-r-repair if necessary.”

“Very well.”

As these memories of that conversation flooded back to me, I let the baton lay in my lap and clasped my hands behind my neck, appearing to stretch back and relax. Once the driver seemed to be satisfied that my questions were over and had his eyes firmly back on the road, I used my fingertips to feel the base of my skull....There, I felt a lump that I didn’t remember from when I was alive. I had real sensitivity in my fingers, but the shape of it was clear, about the size of a couple of quarters stacked on top of each other, distinctly round and foreign feeling.

That fucking Drake, he was tracking my movements all the damn time. No wonder they always found my ass so quickly. No wonder they weren’t worried about me jumping this schmuck and bolting again. If I did, they surely would see my movements on their fucking computers and send in the goons to take out my friends.

But then again, how did I know these assholes weren’t already moving against the ORCs? I sincerely doubted that Drake and El Diablito and Papa Locks were just going to forget about the how those folks had helped me out. No, these assholes weren’t the forgive and forget types. Something was going on. And I was not about to let it happen without doing something about it.

We were out beyond most of the sprawl that was Las Vegas now and were slowing down, approaching a paved driveway that led to a gate in a fence. The driver leaned out the window, held up some sort of card to a proximity reader, the gate opened. We drove down the long driveway towards a smallish looking building, lit only by a couple of outside lights.

I still had my fingers on that lump, hands clasped behind my head. I dug my fingers into the flesh covering the lump, feeling the old dead skin part easily under my determined pressure, grasped the slick metal disk and twisted ever so slightly. It came off with a little click. I palmed the disk with one hand, brought it down into my lap, with my other hand, I tried to push the flaps of skin back into place, hoping I wasn’t leaking too much.

The truck stopped just outside a steel door. He looked back at me, trying to show some bravado, but clearly a little nervous. “Bring you shit buddy, there ain’t no coming back to the car if you forget something.”

I grabbed the bag with my free hand after shoving the baton back into it. My other hand held the damnable chip. I made sure to let him go first towards the door.

As he used the same proximity card to unlock the door, I pocketed the chip in my front jacket pocket, then I reach out and held the door open for him and nodded for him to go in first.

The dumbass was showing his nerves now, but clearly committed to putting on a brave face. He went inside the building, lights flickered on automatically with his movement into the room.

Inside, the room was a jumble of desks along the walls with numerous computers cluttering the tops. On the far wall there was another steel door with a thick window that looked into a smaller room, which was painted a very strange shade of lime green that was interrupted only by bright red runes in strange patterns. Next to the door was another window that looked into that smaller room, and underneath that some sort of control panel.

Dumbass went up to that panel, clearly anxious for me to get going to wherever in Florida he wanted to send me. I watched over his shoulder as he touched a number of symbols on that panel that seemed to glow at his touch. The last such symbol appeared be a set of palm trees.

“So where in Florida am I heading? Maybe I can catch a tan?” I inched up behind him.

“Nothing much to look at down there, you’ll be stuck in the middle of the Everglades.” He laughed nervously, turned aournd when he sensed me coming closer. “Y-y-you just need to go through that door there, it’s all set to go in 1 minute...”

I belted him across the mouth, careful not to break his jaw, but hard enough to send him sprawling.

“Hey! What are you doing...” He shouted as he fell against the door. “You can’t escape! They’ll find you!”

I reached down with one hand and picked him up, lifting him off his feet and slamming him against the door. He grunted in pain. I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out the disk, showed it to him.

His eyes went wide with shock and fear.

“I’m no one’s fucking pawn anymore, you pissant. Swallow this!”

“I-I-I can’t it’s too big!”

“You better swallow it , or I’ll fucking stick it down your throat for you with my goddamn fist!”

He took the disk, put it on his tongue, and with a little assistance from my evil glare, swallowed it in obvious pain and more than a little disgust.

I slammed his head against the door once more, knocking him out, then opened the door and threw him into the room, shutting the door quickly. I stepped back as a bright light flashed and then disappeared, leaving the room as empty as it was when we entered the building.