The factory looked old but well kept. It was clean and had plenty of warning signs, most of which depicted fire and in its many ways it might cause havoc in the premise. The factory within was mostly an open area. The machines did not move. It was quiet. Only the ventilation system was active. Jasom and I saw nobody to greet us at the front desk, which was nothing more than a long counter by the front door with a sign that said 'Please Wait.' Aside from the sign, the desk was bare. It didn't seem like the factory was open for business.
"Hello!" Jasom yelled. His voice echoed around us.
We heard a door creaking open and slamming from the other side of the factory, followed by hurried footsteps that grew louder each second. It was a tall man all dressed up in a yellow hazard suit stained with blotches of black oil. The top was off, revealing his face and scraggly beard.
"We're closed!" the man replied impatiently. "Orders aren't taken till next month!"
"Are you in charge here, sir?" Jasom asked back.
"He's busy!"
"We need to talk to him," Jasom insisted. The man frowned and shrugged. Then, he pointed to a flight of metal stairs against the wall. It led up to a walkway towards a visibly, elevated office corner. We could clearly see the word 'MANAGER' stenciled on the translucent glass on the door.
"Thank you," Jasom said, but the man was already on his way back to whatever it was he was doing.
I led the way up. Jasom followed as he admired the motionless machines below. The sight of them didn't impress me much. I had seen more massive and sophisticated equipment back in the Magitek Lab Omega. Another door was located a few yards away from the manager's office. I assumed that it was an emergency exit to a short flight of fire escape to the alley.
As we approached the manager's office, we noticed that the door was slightly ajar. Smoke was coming out from the slit. Jasom and I glanced at each other in unease. I pointed to a small fire extinguisher conveniently mounted on the wall, just in case. I noticed that there were several of them all over the factory.
As we got even nearer, I became surer that the smoke was not due to a hazardous flame. At the distance we were from the office, we would've heard the fire, or felt its heat. Instead, we smelled cigar smoke.
Jasom relaxed his stance. He pushed open the office door, revealing a thick fog of cigar smoke in the small room. It was hard to see the interior because of it. The first movement we noticed came from behind what looked like a small desk--too small to be an office desk.
"Who the hell are you?" said a startled, throaty voice.
"I am General Chere of the Imperial Army, and this is my aide, Lieutenant Jasom Keep."
The man stood up from his chair and leaned forward against the desk. The smoke in front of him parted like curtains allowing his head to be exposed in the artificial light, like a turtle poking out of its shell. His head was huge, balding, and red. He had dark bags under his bloodshot eyes, and his lips were as fat as the cigar he was puffing. He eyed the both of us with great scrutiny and furrowed his thick brows as he had come to a decision.
"And I am Princess Dorothy of the Faeries," he said, snorting.
"Good day, Dorothy," I said. "We would like to ask you a series of questions about this establishment and your... products."
"I'm busy. Make an appointment," he grumbled, sinking back down on his chair.
"Please extinguish your cigar, Dorothy. It's against code," Jasom said sternly.
"Like hell, I would!" the man said defiantly. "Now get out of here before I call security!"
Jasom threateningly raised the fire extinguisher right at the man's face.
"You wouldn't dare!" the man said through gritted teeth.
"Try me, princess," Jasom replied with a toothy smile and a wink. Jasom was flaunting authority and loving it. He was adjusting quite well to his new position. I was glad.
The manager wore a smirk on his face. He took a long puff from his cigar and blew a deliberate stream of smoke into Jasom's face.
Jasom half-turned and pulled the trigger on the extinguisher. Nothing happened. The manager burst out cackling with glee. There was a distinct squealing sound at the end of each cackle that sounded doubly irritating.
"Those extinguishers are just for show, you idiot!" Then, he continued laughing, holding his cigar on one hand.
My blade sliced through the fog of smoke and split his desk in half. The manager gave out a yelp in alarm. He fell off his chair when he attempted to get up in haste. My blade was back in its place before he hit the floor.
The manager yelled out a name. We didn't quite catch it because his yell was accompanied by a fit of coughing. Jasom dropped the fake extinguisher and grabbed the manager by his collar. I stepped around his broken desk, picked up his chair, and righted it against a wall closest to Jasom. Jasom forcefully sat him upright on the chair. His face was red.
I opened the only window in the room to clear the smoke and to take some fresh air. The window was in between two tall columns of file cabinets. Peering outside, I saw the two-story building across the alley. It looked old and abandoned. Most buildings here were only two levels high--not counting the roof, of course. The sun from above cast a modest but sufficient beam of light. It was nearing noon. The alley was void of human activity. Garbage bins stood against the walls vandalized with colorful graffiti art. I saw a number of local peacekeeper units approaching the building from the north in their conspicuous vehicles. Backup had arrived.
The man in yellow hazard suit burst inside. The first thing he noticed was the ruined desk. Then his eyes saw his manager trying to catch his breath, still under the watchful eye of my aide.
I spoke before he could. "This building is now under military control. I expect to have everybody's full cooperation. Are there others in the building?"
The man hesitated. He could not fully comprehend what had just happened. "N-no, ma'am. We're just here to clean up."
"Very well. Please proceed to the entrance and show the kind peacekeepers the way here."
The man left without question. The door was left ajar. I didn't bother to close it as it helped clear away the smoke in the room. I turned my attention back to the manager with an expressionless face. He eyed me more cautiously now, still catching is breath a bit. He was pudgy fellow, with untidy shirt, faded pants held up by green suspenders, one of which had snapped off.
"Nasty stuff, Princess Dorothy," I started. "You should quit before it kills you."
"Who are you?" he gasped.
"We've told you who we are," Jasom answered for me, glaring down at the man.
"What do you want with me?"
"I order you to surrender all information within the past month concerning the manufacture and distribution of your products," I said, cutting to the chase. "That includes your past orders, receipts, company and customer files, production reports, inventory, employee information--"
"Are you for real?"
"General Chere!" a woman said by the doorway, as if on cue.
I turned and saw Jennina Stromsburg herself. I smiled warmly. "Chief Stromsburg! I did not know that you would come personally."
She looked around the room quickly before responding. "I'm in this area quite a lot. It's not a tourist attraction," she explained with an understatement.
"Which is exactly why we require your assistance." I looked at the two men behind her. "I hope you brought more with you."
"They are downstairs awaiting orders. What would you have us do?" she asked, glaring at the manager in disgust. It looked as if she and the manager had had prior unfriendly encounters. "Do you want us to arrest him? What's he done this time?"
"We are still interrogating him. Military matters. But when we're done with him, you may arrest him for at least two counts of safety violations--"
"Let me guess," she interrupted. "Smoking in a fire hazard area and possession of fake fire retardant devices. That's only good for keeping him in jail for two hours before he makes bail and pays the fines. I hope you have something on him that'll keep him away for a much longer time. Mr. Bernac Marrow here is one person who wouldn't be missed by the local peacekeepers.
"Oh, you're breaking my heart, Nina!" Mr. Marrow said sarcastically.
"Be silent!" Jasom snapped.
"We'll do our best, Chief. Right now, I would like to have the entire establishment locked down and searched for more employees."
"You're not having the others detained, are you?"
Jasom turned his attention to the chief of police. Her insubordination made him uneasy. He was ready to speak in my defense.
"On the contrary, I would like to have them escorted home safely. Is this satisfactory?" I asked in a tone that neither sounded sincere nor sarcastic.
She eyed me intently for a couple of seconds. "You're the boss," she said finally, shrugging. Turning on her heels, she started giving out orders to her men. I was glad that she did not openly resent the transfer of authority and jurisdiction. I considered myself lucky.
"Where were we? Ah, yes. I demand full disclosure and full cooperation. Failure to comply will result in an untimely expiration," I finished.
"Hey, I know the drill! You can't just take away my license."
"We are Military. Not the local police," Jasom reminded him.
"And I wasn't talking about your work license," I added grimly. I could see the uncertainty in his eyes. His chauvinistic pride was fueling his resistance. He did not want to be talked down to by a woman, let alone a woman who was younger than he was.
"You can't--"
"Enlighten us, Dorothy. What can and can't a general of the Imperial Army do? Because we'd like to set the record straight for everybody," Jasom said firmly. He stole the words from my mouth. His Big Guy act was very convincing. I chose him for his open-mindedness. His improvisational skill was a bonus.
"And to think that we're only here to ask a few questions... I'd hate for things to get so drastic. It'd be such a waste of my time."
The manager may be bigoted. But, at least, he was no fool. He soon realized the significance of the matter. Perhaps, he also realized that he was to blame for his current situation. That he should've been more cordial. That his scathing attitude had turned a trivial visitation into a mountain of a problem.
"I--er... perhaps we've gotten off on the wrong foot," he awkwardly admitted. We could tell that he was not used to apologizing to anyone.
"Then let's get right on it, Dorothy,"
"Yes. Let's. My real name is Bernac Marrow."
"But, of course, it is," I said. "And this is your factory, is it not?"
"Yes, miss."
"General," Jasom corrected.
"Er... yes, General."
"Mr. Marrow, where are your people?" I asked only due to my curiosity. I thought I'd delay the real questions for a bit.
"It's our downtime, m-General."
"Downtime? Is there a malfunction, sir?"
"Not exactly. We just hadn't had much product orders for quite a bit. We get downtimes, at least, once a year. Though, admittedly, nothing like this."
What began as a question for my curiosity turned out to be a great opener.
"What do you mean, Mr. Marrow?"
"We hadn't had any orders from our usual customer for about five months now."
"Indeed? Where do you keep your financial report?"
"Er... I believe I have a copy of the past six months in my desk," he said, pointing to the mess in front of him.
I looked at it. A small drawer was open, spilling cigars still in their sealed wrappers. An almost empty bottle of whiskey sat on top of a thin stack of documents. I retrieved the documents ignoring the other contents. I took my time reading the summary. Jasom started rummaging in the file cabinets.
The files were neatly ordered. It was unseemly for a manager to be cutting corners with the safety code. I figured that he had a secretary. Needless to say, our work could not have gone faster. Our search for information started out slowly at first since Jasom and I had never seen volumes of paperwork before. It took a lot of asking what each figure meant on which color-coded sheet. Mr. Marrow answered all the questions in exasperation but with restrained intolerance.
Jasom took notes. I, on the other hand, absorbed the information with less effort. My mind was remarkably clear and focused. I juggled with production orders, costs, income, expenses, and inventory in my head, shaping the graphs and charts, memorizing the peaks and the dips. After a good hour of looking, and hundreds of impatient sighs from the manager, I found the break in the graph.
"According to these records, you had accumulated a surplus of finished explosives nearly five months ago." I looked up from the documents and waited for him to confirm.
He sighed loudly, as if bored. "Yes, General."
"Is that normal?"
"It is, General. It's not illegal or anything. The Military isn't very specific about their needs. It's different each day."
When I heard the word 'Military,' my eyes went back to the summary. The documents made absolutely no mention of product orders made by the Military. Instead...
"What's Mart?"
"M.A.R.T." he corrected. "Military Archaeological Research Team. Don't you know your own territory?" he said. He was a tad too late to bite his tongue. If General Fencross were in my place, he would've thrown the man out through the glass window. It was a pity that I needed him alive.
Jasom's face grew sterner. I didn't think it possible. "Don't make me hit you, Dorothy," Jasom said.
"I'm sorry!" Marrow said quickly. He meant it. "There's a massive mining operation to the east. Been digging that area for quite a while now."
"What are they digging for?" I asked, risking further hints of my ignorance of the matter. I just didn't care.
Mr. Marrow shook his head. "I don't know. They don't tell us. We're on a 'need-to-know' basis, and we don't need to know," he finished, possibly quoting what he was told.
Apparently, the powers that be all thought that I didn't need to know either. "The surplus, Mr. Marrow," I reminded him to continue his explanation.
"Uh, yeah... Since unit orders from the Military are irregular, we'd raised our production quota a bit. The surplus didn't stay in our storage for longer than a week. So we really had no problems dealing with the manufacturing code."
"Manufacturing code?" Jasom asked, readying himself to jot down some notes on a tiny notebook from one of his pockets.
"We have a limit of how much explosive material we can store for a certain amount of time. If that limit is reached and our deadline arrives, we are forced to send them to a decomposition facility for safe disposal and recycling of the material... at a costly fee to me." The manager added the last phrase bitterly.
"What happened?"
"The Military stopped buying, that's what!" he said, raising his voice, sounding upset. He talked as if he were a victim. "They annulled our binding contract, and our number one customer was gone. Talk about what the Military can and can't do!"
"Watch it," Jasom warned as he noticed Mr. Marrow's temper grow.
"Sorry," the manager said, subdued. Then he continued. "They cancelled their orders leaving us with 15,000 pounds of T.N.T. Our surplus limit is 4,000. One minute, we were counting our chickens. The next minute, we were looking to get rid of them. Sending all 11,000 pounds to the decomp-facility would bankrupt us. In the old days, we dug holes and stored them there. Now, we gotta be 'environmentally conscious' about it according to the blasted local safety laws!"
"Well, you are in a populated area, sir," Jasom reminded him.
"Forgive me, boy, but this didn't used to be a populated area. My father started his business here, and the place was deserted. It was the perfect place to build a factory. Years later, people moved into the area. Where was the local safety law back then? The stupidity of people is more hazardous than my explosives.
"Anyway," he continued, "decomposition, disposal and recycling of explosives cost more money than to make 'em. Talk about your backward world!"
I decided to finally drop the big one. "So who was the buyer?"
The manager's eyes widened. "I didn't say there was a buyer."
"You're still in business. It's slow business, but you're still here. You must've gotten rid of them all. If you couldn't find a buyer, then how did you get rid of the surplus? Somebody must've taken them."
"I... uh, I can't tell you."
I frowned. And so did Jasom. Mr. Marrow swallowed.
"Let's not talk about what you can or can't do in front of a general of the Imperial Army. We are very good motivators."
"I don't know who took 'em. I swear!" he said defensively. "Keep reading the report. You'll see."
I looked at the summary in my hands and turned the pages. They all looked the same except for one document. It was a filed police report. Intrigued, I read it. I was shocked at the police report. I had to read it twice to be certain. Finally, I looked at the manager in disgust.
"Burglary? How could you let thieves get away with 15,000 pounds of explosives?!"
"Look around you!" Mr. Marrow began. "Did you really think that two people could run this place even at downtimes? I had to fire people. Security personnel! I had to cut safety corners!" he said, motioning to the fake extinguisher on the floor. "If I hadn't done so, this place would've gone out of business. I just had no choice but to let my security staff go."
"You fool," Jasom muttered, shaking his head in aversion.
My mind raced. His story was not complete. Something in his excuse did not quite fit in even if I were to take it seriously.
"But that's just the tip of the iceberg, isn't it? You let them steal it!" I said accusingly, with a stabbing finger. "You figured that having those explosives taken away would cost you nothing at all since you wouldn't have to pay for the safe disposal."
"It wasn't my fault!" he said through gritted teeth.
"Of course, not. How very convenient for you."
Mr. Marrow's face turned red. Instead of getting more defensive, he held his ground. "How dare you?! How dare you place all the blame on my company? The Military and I had a contract. We lived on that contract. That contract fed us and kept us alive. And then the Military rescinded it at whim, refusing payment and compensation of the Early Termination Terms of Agreement. To top it all off, the Emperor locked us all in and restricted trade to the outside world.
"Where was justice? The local police watched us like a hawk for any violation--waiting for a cigarette butt to hit the floor so they could pounce and slap us with fines. Meanwhile, the Military did us wrong. But, unfortunately for us, the Military is above the law! My workers were honest people! When I fired them, they threatened to get their due one way or the other.
"Suddenly, I'm the bad guy! My former employees, the local police, and now the Military are hounding me."
"Oh, don't think that you're the only one struggling through this! People are dead because of your moral disregard!" I returned, decidedly opposed to the idea of giving him my sympathy.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"It wasn't really theft, was it? No, no! A thief may get away with 100 or 200 pounds of these dangerous materials. A street gang may take 500 or maybe 1,000. But 15,000? That wasn't theft. That was an operation. You made a secret deal and made it look like it was a case of burglary. Who was it?!" I grilled.
"I don't know what you're talking about!" Mr. Marrow shouted back.
"Talk, Dorothy. An accessory to grand treason is--"
"Oh, now I'm a traitor! This is just beautiful!"
"Only if you do not cooperate," I said more calmly.
He laughed. "You have nothing on me, and you know it! If you think you can squeeze from me information that I don't have, you'd best work on your detective skills harder."
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a break in the sunbeam. Then there was movement from outside the window, across the alley and on the rooftop of the next building. It was a silhouette of a man holding a crossbow, preparing to shoot. I couldn't see his face clearly.
"Get down!" I shouted as I pushed Mr. Marrow with all my might. He toppled over, his feet in the air, but otherwise in a better defensive position than before.
The arrow whizzed through the window, over Jasom's head and right through my right arm. I felt the arrow at full force. The impact was strong enough to create an exit wound. The iron bolt stuck on my arm. I cried out in pain. When Jasom heard me, he moved quickly and pulled me to the side, out of the assassin's line of sight.