Chapter 11
The house of odd things
Deborah Stone was good at her job. The best she knew, actually. But that wasn't telling much, since she preferred to stay away from people and used to keep to herself. Also, nobody was all that eager to invite TI specialists to the fancy parties to show them off.
But still, she could get any job in her field she would want. If only she wasn't in somebody's debt. The problem was, it was hard one to pay off. So she was stuck in this merry company. Not that it wasn't a bad job. It was like family tradition, to tell the truth; her mother was working here, her grandmother and now she. Through Deborah really, really hoped she would end up with more peaceful kind of job than her mom. There wasn't supposed to be a lot of action in front of the computer screen...
It all started with rather odd request from the guy she was working under – not really the biggest player on the chessboard, but one close enough to the top to be wary off. And he was the one her family was indebt too. So there was just no way Deborah could say no, even if the job suddenly seemed to have way more shades of grey to her liking.
She actually decided to leave her hermit lifestyle for a moment just to check how things were going outside her computer room, to listen on chatter between all the other workers on their coffee breaks and during lunches, fishing for something more than just press. Deborah never was truly fond of that sort of media, knowing well enough how easy it was to misguide them, to make them drop one topic, feed false information and so on. People and rumors were way more likely to give her the truth.
After hearing about sudden resignation of CEO, some sort of shady deal with criminals of all possibilities and not pleasant things said about CEO family life she retreated back to the safety of computers, exhausted. People were nasty little creatures, she decided once again. They should stay outside, behind the doors. At least she understood now what the game was about.
As usual, Deborah did what she was told to, because as usual it happened to be the best thing to do at the moment. She might have be introvert and basically not liking humanity as a whole, but that doesn't mean that she was some nasty bugger finding pleasure in others misery.
The only thing she found actually bad was pulling off one all–nighter after another, sitting in the front of computer screen way past her working hours, watching out for some stupid little shit who decided to hack into the database. It was really tempting thing, to just hack back and fry everything to the crisp. She totally could. Little shit was good, but not good enough.
The doors suddenly creaked and Deborah jumped, completely surprised. Then she cursed and turned around, ready to tell whoever dared to enter her sanctuary what she had in mind. But it was her sort of a boss, so she decided to swallow it for now. Curses were not working on him anyway.
"Oh," Deborah raised eyebrow instead, deciding to be at least as irritating as he usually was. "It's you."
"Me," Toivo Valo nodded. "How's work?"
"Pretty neat, but then you showed up," she snickered. He looked as his usually crappy self, a scarecrow with dark rings under his eyes. She was curious how many people confused him with some sort of a hobo. She was curious how many of these people tried to give him money for food.
"Aren't you bit harsh?"
"You do know that I'm actually doing pretty illegal shit here, right?" Deborah grimaced. "If somebody finds out, I'm totally screwed."
"You're too good to be just found out."
"Murphy loves to be troublesome. And you from all people should know that."
"So what about the kid?"
"As you said, he actually managed to get in. Twice." Deborah grimaced. "And he seemed to be pretty desperate too. Any other person would leave after seeing that crap that's supposed to be company's data files."
"He's one of these people. "Toivo smirked. "Always want to do things, always on their own."
"Yeah, I managed to get the idea," she groaned. "I hadn't sleep, because I was guarding this crap. Damned teenagers, going on without sleep all night like it's nothing..."
Toivo just shrugged his arms in rather demonstrative way. Theatrics. He always loved that sort of stuff and if he only saw a chance to do something irritating he was always all over it.
"What are you planning to do anyway?" Deborah asked with a sight. Trying to make Toivo not do something was similar to trying to force gravity work the other way around. It was simply not happening.
"Oh, right now I'm just trying to look at the whole chessboard," he smiled slightly. "It' getting pretty interesting."
"And with the kid?" Deborah tilted her head. "He might be son of the big boss and all, but are you sure we should let him mingle in the whole situation?"
"Of course! I want to know what's he's up to. And what's he's able to."
She just shook her head.
"The games you keep on playing… someday you would end up trying to outsmart a dragon, Toivo. And the dragon would bite off that dumb head of yours."
"Ah!" he laughed out loud. "But my dear, dragons are afraid of me!"
"Wise creatures."
xxx
Jack decided it was pretty safe now to contact with Kimiko. He wasn't online for three days. Well, he wasn't playing games online. She didn't need to know about all the work he went through during this short break. Besides, he was a good boy, he actually slept at night. Yesterday. After he woke up in front of the computer, with half of his keyboard imprinted on his face, critical error flashing on the screen and all. After that he decided it was time to go to bed.
He woke up still in his clothes, with awful taste in his mouth, dizzy and uncomfortable. And in desperate need for a shower. Ew. He really should have done it sometime earlier. And he probably should dye his hair once again, because the roots definitely started to showing. Looking like crap would not help him at anything. So he spend over an hour in the bathroom, trying to get himself to somewhat decent state while not leaving red strains on everything. It was really hard to clean these and his robots usually were unable to spot all the things or clean them of completely.
After returning to somewhat decent state, he found himself standing in the middle of his evil lair, not sure what to do next. Returning to work so soon wasn't something he wanted to do, not really. His mind was still fuzzy from all these numbers and dumb math. And playing a game meant that Kimiko would probably catch him red–handed and tell him all these not nice things yet again.
Jack groaned at the computer but turned it on anyways. There were things to do and he needed to talk to Kimiko anyway. If she happened to be online. He definitely didn't fell like calling her on the phone. Phone counted as desperate measure and he definitely wasn't desperate now.
Apparently, today was his lucky day.
"Can I ask you guys for something?" Jack sighed, after she answered the call.
"Sure," Kimiko said. Then added quickly. "Unless it's something crazy, then I'm just going to hit you for being stupid."
"Yeah, yeah," he rolled eyes. "Nothing like that. Just keeping an eye on a guy."
"May I ask why?"
"It's complicated?"
"Not that we haven't time..."
"I just... look, the whole deal with the PandaBubba? It's more complicated than it see?
"Oh?"
"I learned that it wasn't my dad fault that the fat bastard showed up. I know it's somebody in the company playing around, but I don't know who."
"And you want us to observe one of your suspects?"
"Or an ally. That's the problem," Jack sighed. "I can't read that guy at all."
"Okay," Kimiko murmured. "I'm going to talk to the boys. They gong restless here anyways, a little trip to the city wouldn't hurt."
"Just don't lose Omi again."
"You are actually remembering that?"
"Hard not to, we did a Space Jam there!"
"And you lost."
"It was awesome anyways!"
"You're in the game only because of the showdowns, aren't you?"
"Who isn't? You never know what to expect in these!"
xxx
Pulling out any information from Jack was like pulling out rotten tooth. It took long, was plain uncomfortable and the whole process was just painful. She ended up with not even half as much information as she wanted to get out of him, exhausted and with unpleasant headache. And she wanted to strange Jack, because he was awkward, uncomfortable and an absolute idiot.
But he at least asked for help instead of jumping straight into trouble without thinking. That was progress of some sort. If Spicer keep that up maybe he would finally grow out of his fascination with Chase Young and trusting people like Wuya with his well being. At least Kimiko hoped so. Because sooner or later he's going to get hurt. And more than that time with PandaBubba too.
"I think it would be better if he stop showing up at the showdowns at all," Raimundo murmured, when she told him.
"That's nasty thing to say," Kimiko huffed.
"Don't take me wrong!" he said quickly. "It's not because I don't like him. It's just getting more and more dangerous. We get stronger and Chase seemed to have liking for testing us whenever he got occasion to do so. Sooner or…"
"Yeah, I know," she sighed.
"If only he learned something," Raimundo continued. "Picked up fighting style, something! These robots are growing old."
"And irritating. Definitely irritating," Kimiko smirked. "But with the right Wu, Jack is still surprisingly challenging."
Raimundo rolled his eyes.
"Oh, don't give me that look! Unless you finally discovered how he created that storm back in Texas."
"Still no clue," he shook his head. "He probably just didn't know that the Shen Gong Wu are not supposed to do that sort of stuff."
"You are telling me that he did all these things because he didn't know that he wasn't supposed too?" Kimiko was staring at him with eyes wide open.
"Well, he seems to be pretty rebellious…" Raimundo shrugged. "But if you really want me to be serious… I have no idea either. We should probably just ask him, or something."
"And you really think he would answer honestly?"
"Why not? We are chubby with him at the moment, right?" Raimundo said, then grinned. "Actually we are helping him and all, so there should not be any problem at all…"
"Rai, turn off your cunning side before you break something," Kimiko groaned. "Anyway, I think it would be good to snuff around that guy Jack told us about. If he's by chance the one who made the deal with PandaBubba…"
"Yeah, I feel you," Raimundo stretched himself lazily, then moved a bit, making a few slopes not even carrying to actually touch the ground. "He might know about the Wu and we definitely don't need another player in the game. Especially evil one."
"Yeah, that would suck," Kimiko agreed. "But if he really is evil, then we at least would know before he decide to show up, right?"
"So let's just go and learn as much as we can, shall we?"
She nodded and went to talk to the rest of their merry group, while Rai decided to snatch the Silver Manta from the vault. Taking Dojo on this sort of adventure was not the best idea. While they could explain a plane somehow, it would be way harder to be logical about living, breathing dragon. Besides, Dojo tend to be clumsy while in his miniature size and they did not planned on leaving anything suspicious.
The easier way to tell a thing or two about a person is to check out how the person in question was living. So the monks decided to drop into the apartment the suspicious man owned, hoping that they could find something of interest in there.
In the best case they would stumble upon incriminating evidence and save the day and Jack's family for the second time.
Naturally, there was no evidence for them to find. No diary or journal left somewhere like it happened on the movies all the time.
The apartment was placed into gated house estate but getting inside wasn't all that hard. Not when one had the Shroud of Shadows to hide under and Changing Chopsticks to change size of rest of the group, so they could hide with him.
The flat was placed high enough that the view outside was impressive. The architect definitely had the same opinion, since one of the walls was made entirely out of the glass.
"Woah!" Raimundo gasped, walking towards the window and looking at the city beneath them. "This is definitely something to look at!"
"I have no idea how much this place cost because of that view," Clay murmured.
"A lot," Kimiko shrugged. "Top floor, building like that, the security. But you guys saw the Manor where Jack's living, right?"
Omi wasn't interested in the view at all. Something about this place was making him mostly uneasy. It was like his tiger instinct reacted to something, but Omi couldn't tell what exactly. Because there was nothing at all that could attack him.
The apartment was bright even with the rather dark colors the walls were painted with. The furniture was made of dark wood with exception of a sofa which was dark red, just like the curtains and lampshades.
"Huh," Kimiko blinked. "Rather outdated look, if you ask me."
Omi ignored her and continued to look around.
A few books were on the shelves that doesn't looked like they were in anybody's hands recently, next to them various figurines of animals had been places. Omi spotted something that was a dog or a wolf, a few different snakes and a spider of all things possible. Why somebody would want to have spider at his home?
Besides the knick-knags there was a computer on the table next to the sofa, vibrant blue of all possible colors, sticking out in this room like a sore thumb.
Kimiko marched straight to the laptop.
"I'm going to get through it," she said sitting on the sofa. "You guys go on, I try to do something here."
"Sure thing," Raimundo nodded.
He made just one step to the next room and moaned loudly.
"Something happened, partner?" Clay asked.
"Yeah, something is definitely wrong with this dude!" Raimundo grimaced. "How can you live with something like that on your walls?!"
Clay blinked and then curiously peeked inside.
It looked like they suddenly entered disco ball. Both walls were covered with tiny pieces of mirrors, in many shapes and different surfaces, considering how they reflected differently. No mention the sickly green shade, because somebody decided it would be a great idea to paint the ceiling in grassy color.
"Okay," Clay nodded slowly, still gaping at the room. "This is crazier than drunken chickens."
Raimundo decided to not comment on that one, because that actually made some sort of sense. Animals had disturbing alcoholic tendencies. When he was still living at the circus he saw various creatures eating rotten fruits on purpose and then walking into the walls or bars of the cages, completely smashed.
He poked at the wall, and when he found out it gave hollow sound, he tried to move it. Then he discovered there was a closed hidden behind that side of the wall. The clothes hanging on hangers looked exactly the same.
"So, we found a wardrobe," Clay chuckled.
"It's just me, or this dude had to walk through this room of insanity every time he want to put on fresh clothes?"
"I think he do it every day," Clay mumbled. "There are normal doors here too. Bedroom, I presume."
"I really want to see the faces of the agents when that dude decide to sell this place." Raimundo shook his head, then grimaced. "Damn! These mirrors are making me dizzy!"
"Yes, it looks like the surface of most of them is deformed in some way or another..."
"Yeah, straight out of amusement park," Raimundo mumbled. "I'm afraid to check out rest of this place."
"You are wise to do so," Omi joined them.
"Oh?" they both blinked. "Something buggin' you?"
"Indeed," the little monk nodded. "There is something vile, but I am unable to tell, what."
"Don't worry about that, this place could make anyone uneasy..." Raimundo grimaced.
"Then let's go and we can be done with it."
If the wardrobe was odd, the bedroom definitely took the cake in plain bizarre.
There was only a single bed in the room, covered in colorful, ethnic looking blanket. And masks. Lots and lots of masks on every wall, almost touching each other, different in colors and shapes, every single one of them turned so it could face the bed.
"Okay," Raimundo said slowly. "Okay. There are masks on the other side of the doors too, right?"
"Yup," Clay nodded, looking as uneasy as Raimundo was feeling.
"How can somebody sleep in a room like this?"
"Lonely, definitely," Raimundo snickered.
Omi blinked, confused a little, but then shook his head.
"I do not think these masks are the thing that made my tiger instinct so uneasy," he said slowly.
"How can something like that not be evil?"
"These are just items. They... just are there," Omi shrugged.
"Then what do you feel, little partner?"
"Presence, a strange one too," Omi frowned, looking for right words. "It is like somebody is creeping upon you. And not just some person."
"Woah, Paranormal Activity territory!" Raimundo suppressed flash of annoyance. Of all the things he experienced as a Xiaolin monk, he was still uneasy around supernatural and never managed to even feel the presence of magic like Omi did. Even Clay was better than him at that sort of stuff.
"No, not a ghost," Omi shook his head and Raimundo grinned. Hours spend on educating their little friend in popculture finally were paying off! "Something more like... Hannibal Bean, I think."
"The Bean had something to do with that?" Clay gasped.
"No, no!" he shook his head. "It just feel similar."
"Huh," Raimundo blinked, trying to remember if there was another Heylin demon mentioned somewhere in the archives. But what the hell a demon would do with a guy who works at company? High position and all, but the demons usually were not interested in bank accounts.
They retreated back to the main room. Kimiko was poking through the books, laptop turned off and forgotten lay on the table.
"You finished?" Clay asked.
"Everything is in some different language," she shrugged. "I don't know it, so I just made a copy for myself to go through a translation program at home."
"Found something interesting in these books?"
"LaVey?" she snorted. "This is actually hilarious, there is commentary on almost every page and all. He even pointed out mistakes in the seals, but I don't really understand that part."
Raimundo blinked then moved towards her to check the book out too.
There was set of drawings that were supposed to bring some misfortunate events on your enemies or something like that and next to it sharp, pointy hand-written letters were standing proudly next to it, asking why the demon ever should supposed to do thing like that because of a random scribble. And then pointing the mistakes - several ones - but he didn't really get the logic behind the whole thing either.
"Well, whatever, we can always tell Jack that this dude who worries him so much is a random Satanist or something, " he shrugged. "And totally crazy. No sane man would live in a place like that."
"Yes," Clay sighed. "If it was possible to pin a piano to the ceiling we would definitely found one there."
"That bad?" she blinked.
"Just go check out the wardrobe,"
So she did.
"Woah!" she gasped. "Wicked!"
"The bedroom looks even worse!" Raimundo said happily. He would definitely have nightmares after seeing that place and if he was to not sleep well, then he was all about sharing his pain with others.
She naturally checked it out, because Kimiko was always really curious person.
"Have anybody found the kitchen?" she asked, when she came back after a short moment.
"No,"
"Why somebody would hide his kitchen?!"
"You're asking me? I'm not living in this crazy place!"
"Well, we definitely can't ask owner about it."
"I don't think we will find anything of interest in the kitchen anyway," Clay shrugged. "Jack said that everybody at the company is now crazily overworked, so there's not much time for cooking."
"Yeah, the books were a bit covered in the dust too," Kimiko nodded. "You should probably create a little bit of wind here, Rai, before we head out. I don't want this guy to know that we were here."
