Chapter 17
By the time I’d finished with my story, Darius was no longer smiling. “Do you even know who you’ve gotten involved with?” he asked, his omelet untouched before him.
“No and I’m not involved with them. They’re just helping me out with Meredith.”
“Oh, you’re involved with them. If they ever find out who you are, they’ll own you for the rest of your life, which could be considerably shorter than if you’d just left them alone.”
I yawned again. Darius always did have a flare for the dramatic and usually I was all for playing along with him, but not today. Today I felt like getting the detector, finding the jewels, and going to my home for a long nap.
“You need to pay attention,” Darius snapped. “These people are horrible. I’ve heard of them and –”
“Cut to the chase. Who are they?”
“They’re the Planet Mafia.” Darius looked at me expectantly, as if waiting for me to react.
The name rang some bells, but I, for the life of me, couldn’t remember who they were. “The Planet Mafia…?” I asked vaguely.
“You don’t know who the Planet Mafia is, do you?”
“No, I don’t. They sound familiar, but…”
“They should sound familiar. These are the guys who took out Ozi when they thought he was snitching to the berries.”
Ozi had been a close friend of Darius, so close they’d almost been brothers. Unlike Darius and I, Ozi had always been deeper into the game, willing to do anything to make a dollar.
“That must be why the name sounded familiar,” I said, trying very hard and failing to keep the image of Ozi’s emaciated and broken body out of my mind. “But wasn’t Ozi involved with the PM’s?”
“Same people, shorter name. They’re on every habited planet, running ninety percent of the slaves, drugs, and overall crime which happens. And you had to get involved with them?”
“If what you say is true how could I have avoided them? Controlling ninety percent doesn’t leave a lot of room for anyone else.”
Darius didn’t say anything. His eyes were unfocused and teary. He must have been thinking of Ozi. Even after three years, the memories stirred up feelings and emotions which shook him to the core.
“Thinking about it won’t make him come back,” I said quietly.
Darius’ pained eyes met mine. “I know. But did you have to get involved with them?”
“It’s not like I did this on purpose. I had no idea who those guys where when I saw them contacting Meredith. They could have been with any mafia. And, as I keep telling you, they have no idea who I am.”
“They might now,” Darius said, taking our plates.
“What do you mean?” I suddenly felt scared.
“What did I take out of you?” he asked instead of answering my question.
“A piece of metal…” My answer was almost a question. It had to have been just a simple piece of metal. What else could it be?
“Take a better look at it. It’s not just a piece of metal.” Darius brought the object in question to the island and set it right in front of me.
I was loathe to touch it, but forced back my sudden revulsion. It was only a piece of metal. It couldn’t hurt me. It wasn’t alive, so why the reluctance?
When I finally picked it up and it didn’t suddenly come to life, I felt like laughing at my sudden foolishness. It was inanimate, as I’d known it was. Nothing to worry about.
I turned the hunk of metal around, looking at it, but not seeing anything about it that made it special or worrisome. “Well?” Darius asked, obviously waiting for me to connect the dots.
“Well what? There’s nothing here.”
“Yes there is. Look at the end that was sticking out of you. Don’t you realize what that is?”
I looked at the end he’d indicated, but I didn’t see anything except that it was a little thicker at that end than the end which had been inside me. “I don’t see anything.”
“By the Ancients you are blind at times. That is a microphone and video recorder. State of the art. It can transmit a signal to the other side of the planet with no problems.”
My skin felt cold.
A microphone.
And video recorder.
Then they must have… “If you knew this, why did you let me tell you everything? Now they know who we are! And where we are! Don’t you know what this means?”
“I’m glad that you’re finally realizing how serious the situation is, but you don’t have to worry about this one. I made sure it wasn’t working right after I took it out of you. You probably disrupted the transmission when you yanked it out of the side of the vent. But what I’m worried about is the others.”
“The others? What others?” I looked around the room as if I expected tiny microphones and video recorders to come popping out of the woodwork.
“The ones in that tunnel you used to get out. If there was a recorder in your vent, I’ll bet anything that there are even more cameras in the vents. You did say there was an abnormal amount of them, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then that’s how they probably keep track of what’s going on. The cameras tell them when there’s movement and they can follow where anyone goes.”
A sudden thought came to me. “It could also show me where she hid the jewels.”
Darius banged his fist on the island. “Is that all you can think about? Those damn jewels? What about your own hide? Don’t you have a care for it? They could be even now trying to figure out who you are, where you live, and who you’re connected to.”
“But they won’t find anything, will they?” I gave Darius a knowing look. Over the years, I’d become quite adept at wiping away most evidence of my existence, leaving behind just enough as to not create any suspicions. So, if the school wanted to verify my grades, they could, but if anyone wanted to know my current living address, that information was curiously absent from the system and all they would find was my last known address.
Even though we both knew all the steps I’d taken, Darius didn’t seem impressed. “They could still find something. You don’t know them. They have people everywhere who are willing to do anything to get the information their bosses want.”
I shrugged off his concerns. “If, and I do mean a huge if, they look at the video feed, all they’ll see are eight dirty, scared women, trying to get out of the tunnel. Nothing more. There’s no reason for them to dig into who we are and why we were there.”
“But you’re going back,” Darius said. “They’ll see you for a second time. This time not acting so innocently. They’ll know you’re there for some nefarious reason and hunt you down to find out why you were in their tunnel.”
“Not if I disrupt the video feeds and put them on a loop.” The idea had come to me even as I said it to him. That was the answer to my problem. Put the video’s feed on a loop, make as little noise as possible, find the jewels, get out, and put the video back to normal.
Darius didn’t look as impressed with my plan as I was. “You know they’re motion activated so there is no video to loop. And you don’t even know where the feed is being transmitted to. How do you expect to get in and out without them seeing you?”
I sighed aloud. He did have some good points and he was right about everything, but sometimes I think humans, as a race, make problems harder than they really are. “Who says we have to do anything? Alright, you’re right about them probably being motion activated, but that doesn’t mean they’ll know who I am. Especially if I cover up my face with a scarf or ski mask.”
“I can just picture it,” Darius laughed, his mood lighter despite the subject matter, “you skulking around dumpsters as you approach the entrance, ski mask in hand. Then, when you’re finally within sight of the door, pulling on the mask and walking as cool as a cucumber into the depths of the underworld.”
“What’s so funny about it? I intend to do just that, except for the skulking part of course. I’v
e never skulked in my life and I don’t intend to start now.”
“You can’t be serious. You can’t go back there! They’ll send someone after you! You’ll never get in and out safely!”
“I will if you come with me as backup,” I said. Darius looked surprised, as if I were asking him something foreign, but I wasn’t. We’d had each other’s backs for countless situations and everything always went alright.
Darius looked away from me to his windows and the beautiful view he had. I knew he really didn’t see the view. He just didn’t want to look at me as he thought. “I wouldn’t ask, but now I know who I’m up against. I’d like your help.”
He stayed silent, mentally trying to figure out the pros and cons of helping me. As time stretched, I knew he was trying to come up with some very good reasons not to help me. But I needed him, so that meant pulling out the big guns. Guns I didn’t want to use, but he’d given me no choice.
“You wouldn’t want anything to happen to me, would you?” I paused for a second. “Like what happened to Ozi.”
“Don’t go trying to use him to sway me,” Darius rasped, sounding suddenly furious. “That’s low…”
“It might be, but I need you. Are you in or out?” I forced myself to sound and look hard. He needed to know I was serious about my plan and I wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“I’m in, but only because I don’t want anything to happen to you,” he said looking very grim and angry.
“Fine. You have anything I could change into?” I did not want to continue to walk around in these clothes. If I could have burned them without drawing attention to myself, I would have, but burning clothes was illegal and now was not the time to trample over minor laws.
“We can’t go now,” he said, looking slightly panicked, but this time I understood his fears. Darius, for all his take-charge attitude, didn’t like to do anything without a plan. I, on the other hand, liked to go by the seat of my pants, figuring things out as I went.
“Why not?” Maybe he had a good reason to delay.
“Because…because….you obviously haven’t sleep in days and need to rest before we track down the jewels.”
“Wrong answer. I’m tired, but the longer the jewels are out there unguarded, the farther from me they could be. What if Meredith decides to move them? We’d never find them then.”
Darius was quiet for a second, trying to find some other excuse, but he must have failed to find any. “Fine, we’ll go now. I might have something you could wear.”
Darius stomped out of the room toward his bedroom and I followed, afraid he’d do something drastic, like jump out his window.