The Word Cloud

I have written much more of this, but in mini-chapters. So, after being inundated with a request, here is the second bit! ~C

An hour later, we stood in front of a thin metal door in the side of a warehouse on the old docklands waterfront. The morning sounds of the city - horns, vehicles, screams - were muffled by the downy blanket of fog that had settled in the wake of the rain. The rising sun’s pink glow, diffused by the vapour lounging over the Puget Sound, lent the scene a surreal cartoon quality. The building was outwardly derelict, but despite the faded paint and boarded up windows, the doors were in good repair, if scuffed. The sea churned behind me, salmon coloured in this strange light, slurping at the dockside and at the hull of an old rusted container ship berthed and forgotten further up the wharf. Clifton grinned happily at me.

“He’s home; I can hear music in there.”

“Who’s home?” I replied, irritated, “You haven’t explained what the fuck we are doing here. Do we really need another body on this job?”

“He’s in the same situation as you, near enough - he needs a break and I owe him a favour from way back. He’s sound, and he can do the wet work for us; used to be a medic in the UCAS army. I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel up to being elbow deep in a mans brain. I met him when I went merc, on a job in Aztlan. Lots of money waitin’ for a merc in those days. Now it’s all corps and under the table wheeling-dealing, none of the good honest guerrila warfare you used to see.” He spat. “Come on!”

Clifton raised his boot, winked at me over a gleeful smirk, and, before I could raise an objection, dealt the solid metal door an almighty kick. The lock burst in a cloud of rust and metal shrapnel as the sheet metal crashed inwards, and Clifton strode in yelling, “Wakey wakey, you lazy fucker!”

There was a gunshot.

Suddenly full of adrenaline, I scrabbled for my Ares Predator and rushed in after him.

It was dark inside the warehouse. The floor was rough concrete littered with chippings and a few scraps of paper and other detritus. Along the left hand wall were a set of metal shelves packed full of small boxes of a huge range of ammunition. Clifton stood stock still, with his back to me and his hands in the air, by a concrete pillar a few metres inside the door. Ten metres beyond him was a single arm chair with a small table in the middle of the floor in front of a TV. A little way behind this was a spiral staircase leading to a mezzanine of industrial metal flooring. To the right of the stairs was a bench on which sat a microwave, a small gas camping stove and several unwashed pans. The low shelves nearby probably contained ingredients from time to time, but were currently bare. At the far left, on the other side of the stairs, a huge tarpaulin covered thing, about two and half metres tall and four times that in length, squatted in front of some roll-over metal doors in the front wall of the building. From somewhere in the building came the tinny strains of some troll thrash metal band.

“Careful there, boy,” said a quiet voice, low and rumbling and in a texan accent.

I froze and looked up. A huge figure wearing only a too small yellow t-shirt was leaning on the edge of the mezzanine railing. He had a pistol nonchalantly trained on us, held in a huge tatooed hand. The t-shirt read “Say hello to my little friend!”. Given his tactical advantage, not to mention his state of dress, I thought it ominously appropriate.

“Who are you? You made one hell of a mistake bustin’ in on me at this time in the morning”, he said matter-of-factly.

Clifton’s voice was less confident; “Cut it out, you daft sod, it’s me. We have a job for you.”

I noticed a bullet hole, still smoking slightly, in the concrete a few centimetres above Clifton’s head.

“Say goodnight”, said the man, and raised his gun.

Clifton’s eyes widened in shock.

Click.

“HAHAHAHA!”, the man cackled, tossing the gun over his shoulder, and throwing his head back.

“You sick bastard!”, Clifton exclaimed, sagging, and letting his arms fall to his sides, “you actually had me going! Put some damn trousers on, you worthless excuse for a metahuman.”

The man nodded and, still laughing, wandered out of sight, booted feet rattling the metal structure as he did so.

Clifton poured himself into the arm chair while I pushed the remains of the door shut, or at least as close to shut as possible. After a minute or so the immense man reappeared, clumping down the stairs.

He pulled a cigarette from behind one massive ear, retrieved a matchbook from the pocket of the combat trousers preserving his new found modesty and tugged a match free. He struck it on a beam and lit the cigarette with one flowing movement. “So tell me, what’s this all about?”, he said around the glowing cigarette. He shook the match out and exhaled a huge smoke ring.

I pulled my whiskey bottle from the inside pocket of my jacket, and took a swig as Clifton recounted our earlier meeting with Mr Johnson. The big man listened impassively, smoking the cigarette with gusto. When Clifton had finished, the man threw the stub on the floor, and stamped on it. “And who’s the elf?”

Clifton turned to look at me, “Willem, this is Dex. Me and him go waaay back, don’t we Dex?”

I nodded, slipping the bottle back into my pocket, taking care to expose the butt of my Predator. It never hurts for new acquaintances to know you are armed.

“He’s the one who got me in on this job. It might open up further opportunities if we play it right,” he continued, “We need a medical man, and I remembered that I owed you. You in?”

There was a pause as Willem lit a fresh cigarette.

“Does the pope shit in the woods?”, he said, a wicked smile creeping slowly across the enormous visage. He strode to the low shelves in the corner, and, as he turned, tossed something at me. I caught it reflexively. A small glass. I looked up to see Willem holding a further two. “Let’s drink to it, seal the deal! Come on, elf.”

Reluctantly I poured out a marginally sub-lethal measure each, and we drunk to the job.

“Right, the details”, Willem said, wincing in the whiskeys aftershock, and looking at the glass accusingly, “We are planning to catch and subdue the dwarf, and then extract his headware memory. We have to do this, preferably, without anyone seeing it, him or us. We can kill the dwarf, which might be easier if we want the memory, and dump his body. We probably need to do this close and personal, less mess and less noise. And then we take the memory over to that address and hand it over to our employer, job done, kudos all round and hopefully more work and nuYen. What have I missed?”

“We need transport, some sort of van or large car would be best. A GMC Mule or a station wagon.”, said Clifton, thoughtfully.

“Don’t worry, I have transport. It’s big enough that we can extract what we need without having to bring the target back here.” Willem indicated the large tarpaulin covered object.

I wandered over to the tarpaulin while he talked.

“All we need to know now are times and places. Reconnaissance in other words. You say he works in Downtown, and lives in Tacoma? That’s a lot of ground to cover, and potential places to trap him”, Willem continued, lighting his third cigarette.

“This is your ride?”, I said, interrupting the flow, “what is it?”

“Pull the tarp off and see”, Willem answered, pride colouring his voice.

I hauled at the acres of covering, until sitting before me was a huge, bright red vehicle, all blocky plates and chunky tyres with an evil looking stance. It appeared to be some ex-military light armoured vehicle, or a secure transport van.

“Beautiful ain’t she?”

“Willem, can you see anything wrong with using this, this... thing, for a job like this?”, I said.

I could see Clifton stood behind the big man, staring at the monstrosity with grinning wide-eyed surprise, tinged with horror.

“What do you mean?”

“We are supposed to be discreet, catch this guy by complete surprise like lethal, anonymous shadows. Drive this and we might as well play loud metal and launch fireworks which spell out ‘We’re gonna open your skull you little dwarven sod’ in the night sky! My point, Willem, is that its not exactly inconspicuous, is it?!”

“It’s fine, he’ll never suspect anyone driving this thing to be a danger, it’s too easy to spot.”

I opened my mouth to deliver another tirade, stopped as my tongue framed the first syllable, and closed it again. Willem grinned.

“Ah, shit.”, I said after a reflective moment, “Gimme that bottle”.