“Dammit!” Justin kicked the front door, then whipped out one of his double-barrel power pistols. “It’s locked!”
“No need for that,” Shades told him, stopping his hand. Just in case someone was here, he wanted to avoid damaging anything. Digging in his personal lock-picking kit, he came out with a hairpin; a few seconds’ probing did the trick. “There’s an easier way. Not breaking… just entering.”
“Could you teach me how to do that?”
“We’ll see.” Shades replied, not sure if teaching him to pick locks was such a bright idea. Just the thought added a touch of guilt to the giddy thrill of being an intruder. As for his own behavior, he couldn’t figure out who was encouraging who here. He just hoped the place was as deserted as it looked.
Justin led the way into the roomy entryway. The carpet looked rather pricey, yet was tracked with dried muddy footprints. In the coat closet were a couple of dusty jackets that evidently hadn’t been touched in a long time.
“I don’t see any signs of recent occupation,” Shades observed, noting how long-undisturbed this entrance appeared. Even the footprints looked as if they had dried anywhere from days to weeks ago. “But whoever was here last obviously had no idea how much this carpet cost.”
Justin shrugged. As if he cared about carpets; he wanted something he could carry off. “I want to see what this place has to offer.”
The next room was even bigger, and those muddy footprints crossed the beige carpet into the next room. They followed the trail into that room, where it veered sharply to the right, and into a door leading to a downward flight of stairs. But that was not really what drew their attention.
“You mean like that?” Shades intoned.
The tracks steered wide around an overturned sofa, and next to it a coffee table whose glass top had been shattered. It only took a moment to notice the bullet-holes that riddled the wall to their left. As if fired from the door leading to the stairs, rather than straight ahead.
“Like… that…” Justin trailed off, and Shades could almost see dollar signs ring up in his eyes as he looked past the ruined furniture, spotting a large gold coin lying in the middle of the mess. Jumping over the tipped couch, he all but pounced on it. Picking it up and testing its weight in his hand.
Shades stood as near as he dared, fearing that his companion might turn on him if he got too close. A closer look showed the coin to be over four inches in diameter and so thick that its smooth rim was clearly inscribed with characters of unknown origin. The first side Justin examined depicted a pentagram with a dragon’s face in it, its snout and four horns extending to each point. Between the star’s points were five more of the unidentifiable symbols. Justin flipped the coin over, revealing the face of a cartoonish, but demonic-looking, caricature of an old Oriental man. The edge of this side marked with more of those vaguely Asian-looking characters. At the top of it was a tiny hole with an equally tiny ring through it.
“Don’t tell me you actually want that thing…” Shades looked around, even though he was sure they were still alone. Though he was partly fighting his old instincts from back on Earth— there, this would be considered a crime scene, with that much rapped-about yellow tape— and he also just found this whole business a little creepy. For some reason causing him to wonder just what the authorities found back in Lakeside the morning after. “That’s practically stealing.”
“Practically?”
“Just making sure we aren’t deluding ourselves,” Shades replied. Already knew Justin was going to take it; not like it was tied down or anything. “I still don’t like it.”
“Who the hell are we even taking it from?” Justin demanded, wishing Shades would stop being so jumpy. For some reason, it felt as if the temperature in the room had just dropped a couple degrees, but he shrugged it off as just a draft from the now-open door. “Nobody’s home, remember?”
“All I’ll say is that somebody was here with the ugly stick,” Shades commented, not liking this scene one bit. It was bad enough that for the love of money people could get pretty nasty, but that wasn’t all. He felt wrong standing in this place. It was enough to know that something ugly had happened here at some point, but it was a sense of that ugliness still lingering, perhaps even lurking around, that did it. This was much harder to shrug off than his unwelcome feeling at the docks.
“Ya know, I could probably fetch a good price for this somewhere,” Justin remarked, paying no attention to Shades as he stuffed it in his jacket pocket. “Come on. Let’s go see if there’s any more of this stuff in here!”
“You do that.” With his eyes, Shades followed the footprints to the stairs, very curious as to who had left those rude tracks. That, and he was quite frankly getting tired of Justin’s company. He had an idea what Max was up to, leaving both of them alone, and at first decided to put up with him for his friend’s sake, only now he just felt bad for Max. “I think I’ll see what’s down here.”
“Fine. No way in hell I’m goin’ down there.” Of late, Justin Black had become rather leery of underground places. Then he turned to resume his scavenger hunt for more valuables in the many rooms beyond.
Is it just my imagination, Shades wondered as he headed for the stairs, or did somebody turn down the heat?
“Just remember,” Justin called after him as he entered the next room, “I get a fifty-percent cut of anything you find!”
Shades shrugged and headed for the stairs. He looked down four flights of descending steps. The carpet on the stairs was dark, short and rough, so those muddy prints vanished by the second landing. Seeing all of this by the light of the skylight window hanging above the stairwell entrance, he commented, “Deep basement…”
He stood there for a long moment, listening to Justin’s fading footsteps, trying to figure out exactly what he was trying to prove to himself, before he descended. At the second landing was a mirror; as he looked at his reflection, he decided that his fiercely determined expression looked a little silly, even to his own eyes. Almost mocking him, it seemed. Right then, he wasn’t so sure he wanted to be a hero, though he would be content to know in his heart that he at least wasn’t a coward, either.
After his unsettling experience with the Harken Building, anyone with any sense would have turned around and walked away; Shades descended the rest of the way to the first door.
He checked it, and again finding it locked, whipped out one of his improvised lock-picking tools and went to work. As the heavy door swung open, he saw the unlit hallway beyond. Before he realized what he was doing, he was fumbling along the inside wall for a light switch.
Even after he flipped on the lights, the rows of doors lining both sides of the hall made him step back in spite of himself. Shaking his head— half in fear, half in disgust— at more Harken memories, he backed away. It wasn’t until he was up to the next landing that his mind caught up with what his feet were already doing. Understood what he instinctively wanted to know.
When he reached the top, it did much to ease his mind to find the room with the overturned couch again. Right where he left it. Tried not to sigh too loudly at this proof that he wasn’t in another maze again.
Still, he peered down the stairs, where shadows filtered the daylight shining down from the skylight to where he could barely see the bottom, and he knew it would be a few more moments before he summoned the nerve to resume his exploration.
Author's Chapter Notes:
not breaking, just entering
