“Bingo.”
He found a pistol, which he set aside, pulled out a crumbling notebook and two small rectangular boxes.
Ripp walked over and grabbed one of the boxes. He opened it and took out a data drive.
“Old data cards,” Ripp said with new excitement, turning the data drive in his hands.
Ripp found a slot that the drive fit and inserted the old data card into his scanner. Most of the files were corrupted, but some were accessible, and dozens had the title Theonicorp Deliveries.
“Have I told you I loved you today?”
“In every look you give me,” Gus said as he patted Ripp on his shoulder.
Ripp scrolled through the remaining files.
“You ever hear of Ana… gath… ics?”
Gus looked at Ripp with a twisted face.
“No. She sounds pretty though?”
“I swear I’ve heard that word before.”
Ripp made a copy of the files on his Pigeon then encrypted them.
“Let me see that other one.”
Gus tossed him the other box. He opened it and connected the data card. There was nothing on it. Ripp stuck it in a pocket anyway with the hope that he might be able to retrieve something from it later and closed his Pigeon display.
“Let’s go get paid.”
Ripp and Gus sped back to Nucrea. Ripp tried desperately to remember where he had heard the term Anagathics before, but couldn’t.
“You think I was too hard on Lilly?” Ripp asked through the comms.
Gus wanted to say yes, and considered telling him about the conversation he and Lilly had before they left Nucrea, but decided against it.
“You just want to keep her alive. Nothing wrong with that. I think she’d love to hear about the water park, though.”
“Yeah, she’ll get a kick outta that. We need to pretend like we don’t know anything about a missing Nucrean Soldier Unit until we can figure out why they were coming after us.”
“Lips are sealed.”
“I was too hard on Lilly, wasn’t I?” Ripp admitted to himself. “Let’s give her a share of the payout,” he said with a smile.
Gus loved the idea and was reminded of the complex man Ripp was.
“Small compensation for two days with Bean,” Gus added.
They both laughed.
They had survived an assassination attempt, for who knows what reason, Gus had his highly coveted and illegal Nucrean transport, and as far as they knew, Lilly and Bean were just lounging on a rooftop sipping ice-cold water, anxiously waiting for their return.
Twenty-seven
Bean’s shanty was simple, and despite her consistently disheveled appearance, was surprisingly clean. Gus closed his eyes, fists clinched, and tried to calm himself.
“What do you mean she’s been gone half a day?” Ripp yelled, no longer trying to hold back for Bean’s sake.
“I’m sorry, Ripp! We looked everywhere! She’s probably in a ditch somewhere cut up in a zillion pieces.”
Bean started to cry a horribly off rhythm sob that sounded more like choking than crying.
“Oh hell, I’m sure she’s fine, just don’t do that.”
Ripp rubbed her sweaty shoulder, wishing that he hadn’t.
“Not your fault, Bean,” Gus added in an attempt to help stop the sobbing. “She has a way of disappearing when she wants to.”
Gus sat next to Bean and took over the efforts of consoling her as Ripp stepped away to check his Pigeon.
He scrolled through the feeds and clicked on a video uplink from Lilly the night before, titled, Just Getting Started.
He watched her take down the two dirtbags in the alley and caught himself smiling. The awkward sobs intensified.
“Bean,” he yelled loudly, trying to shake her out of the hysterical state, she was in, and hopefully put a stop to the awful sobs.
Bean and Gus both look at Ripp, startled at the outburst.
“She’s alive and well. Just stay put. Gus and I are gonna go see Nun,” he said, shifting his eyes to Gus.
“Oh, that’s great news,” Bean said, wiping a very wet face with a dirty sleeve as she leaned on Gus.
Gus jumped up, realizing what Ripp was implying, and almost causing Bean to fall over.
“That son of…”
“We’ll be right back,” Ripp said as he smiled the biggest smile that he could fake.
“Okay,” she replied, slurping her runny nose.
Twenty-eight
The roar of Ripp’s modified century old Mustang, echoed across the tundra of the Fringe. The shatterplow technology on the front was barely clearing the rocks and obstacles in time for the front tires to keep level traction.
Ripp shifted into a higher gear and kicked the pedal to the floor, pushing the beast to its limits. The engine screamed, but the only thing that mattered was getting to Lilly before it was too late.
Nun’s office was a dark red hue except for the blue light rising out of his holo-desk. Nun leaned forward into the light making his features demonic.
“She came to me. I had a contract and she asked for it. That’s what your kind does and last time I checked, she’s your kind.”
Nun glared at Gus, who was pacing back and forth, pulling at his hair.
“Come to think of it, she practically begged for it. Said she had something to prove to you and Ripp. So whatever is going on between you three is to blame, not me.”
Nun leaned back in his chair and tried to free his arms from the restraints again with no luck.
“No more talkin Nun. She just better be alive when Ripp gets to her.”
Nun knew he could push the situation because there was no way Gus was going to make it out of his building alive. His guards were waiting outside the door, ready for the order to breach, but for now, Nun was willing to let it all play out.
“She can take care of…”
The sound of the chambering shotgun cut Nun’s comment short. The dead cold expression and the fury living inside Gus’ eyes suddenly became all too real for the untouchable market baron. Nun decided it would be in his best interest to sit back in his chair and quietly focus on his own hopes for Lilly’s wellbeing.
Twenty-nine
Ripp, Gus, and Lilly had been all over the area surrounding Nucrea except for the foundry in the old engineering industrial park. Lilly remembered that Johnny’s dad had searched the place, and said there was absolutely no reason to go back.
“Foundries dealt in junk,” he would explain. “With all of the new material technology that had been developed in the world, metal was obsolete as a viable resource, unnecessarily heavy and too costly to refine. As a runner, if you ever come across a foundry or any type of metal working plant just keep on searching, unless of course it’s a munitions factory. Then you need to take whatever you can carry and keep returning until there ain’t nothing left, or until you die.”
This was definitely a plain old metal foundry, but Lilly was happy that she finally had a contract of her own and in spite of all the logic concerning the whole situation, she felt amazing.
Nun’s box wasn’t specific about what it was she needed to bring back, just anything that was labeled Theonicorp.
She followed two metal tracks that ran from one end of the long building to the other. On the tracks were three wheeled buckets, filled to the top with metal scraps. She tried to make sense of how the foundry worked as she looked around at all of the equipment.
A metal staircase led up to a small office directly above a group of offices on the main floor. The stairs seemed intact, but she knew that would make more noise than she dared. There were a couple of Fringers she had to sneak past to get in, so loud noises weren’t an option.