Scene 24

Malcom glanced anxiously around the small café, expecting at any moment that someone would walk in and recognize him and force him into some inane conversation about the highlights of his Tournament career or what it was like to be a Gladiator. He disliked hanging out in lower-class public places, but this was apparently where Anna wanted to meet him and, reflecting on the puzzling events of his life over the past few weeks, his curiosity had gotten the better of him. He took the note out of his pocket now and read it again, searching the cryptic scrawl for some detail or clue he might have missed the first ten times he'd read it.

You are being used as a pawn in a much larger game. We're not doing it. If you want to know who is, meet me at the Shortwave Café on 49th and Franklin at 6. DO NOT go to FenTech. Be careful trusting anyone, especially yourself.

Anna.

No matter how many angles he studied the problem from, it just didn't seem to line up. It was like looking through a pair of binoculars with one of the two lenses out of focus. Why should he trust someone who was an opponent of his in such a high-stakes contest as the Tournament? What could they possibly gain by helping him?

For some inexplicable reason, he felt inclined to believe most points in the note, especially the part about staying away from FenTech. It rang true with his gut feeling, even though this seemed to defy simple logic. But… be careful trusting himself? What the hell? He felt that something huge was looming just around the corner of his world, barely out of sight, something he might have caught a glimpse of in his dreams. He was ignorant of many things that he felt urged to figure out, and quickly. Trusting Anna was a risk, but what other option did he have? Everyone else seemed to be knowingly keeping things from him.

Where the hell was Anna, anyways? It was already 7 pm, and it seemed unlikely that she could have gotten stuck at the arena for that long after the match. What if something had happened to her? A disturbing thought, to be sure. He distracted himself by taking another look around the café, a well-kept rustic brick place scattered with outdated inventions mostly from the communications revolution of the 20th century, such as telegraphs, radios, huge clunky desktop computers and printers, and many different styles of telephones. It was actually pretty fascinating, almost like a museum. The majority of these machines Malcom recognized only because he'd seen pictures of them in books at school. Once things in his life normalized, maybe he should take a break from Rudy's and check out more of the older places in New York.

¨Sir?¨ Malcom jumped slightly, then tried to disguise it by turning quickly to face the waiter who had snuck up on him. ¨Yes?¨

¨Uh, my manager says that, well, if you're not going to order, you're going to have to, uh, go someplace else, because, well, you know…¨ The pale youth petered out miserably, scrupulously avoiding eye contact. The kid must recognize him, he thought, but what a jackass of a manager! Didn't he know who was sitting in his restaurant? He bit down his indignation. Anonymity was better right now. He glanced at the ceiling for a moment, appearing to think, then turned to the waiter. ¨Well, I guess I'd like that thing you guys make.¨

¨The thing?¨

¨Yeah, the one with the stuff. You know what I'm talking about, right?¨

¨Uh, well, I…¨ the waiter stammered as he scribbled something on his notepad.

¨Great! I hate it when I sit down in a restaurant and the staff can't take a simple order. Really ruins my day. Thanks, kid.¨ He glanced over at the distressed youth's notes:

1 THNG W/STUF

¨That's it. And bring me a drink, one of those sweet things, but not too sweet, and maybe a little bitter. Excellent. Off you go.¨

As soon as the waiter had fled, he got up from the table, taking one more glance around the place. No sign of Anna, just some oriental guys playing cards near the bar, a family digging their way into bowls of spaghetti, and a weird-looking bald dude wearing outdated armor and a breather on his face sitting by himself in a booth, who glanced away suspiciously as soon as Malcom looked towards him. Who the hell dressed up like that to go eat? Was he being followed? It was definitely time to leave. He'd just have to get in touch with Anna later.

Malcom walked briskly towards the door, contemplating his brief interaction with the table-waiting staff of the Shortwave Café. He felt kind of bad, since the kid was probably a fan of his. But man, was he ever in a lousy mood, and he figured he had some good reasons to be what with all the things he had on his mind, not to mention losing the TDM championship and simply being tired out from the match. Right now he needed to get home, see his daughter awhile, rest and relax… tomorrow he would be thinking more clearly.

Outside it was pouring buckets of rain, a perfect complement to Malcom's bitter mood. He savored the dreariness for a moment before turning right to head down the side of the street, failing to notice through the darkness and downpour the light industrial jet coach that pulled silently out from the curb behind him and rolled along, lightless, about ten meters back. He also failed to hear its doors open when it stopped, disgorging three ghoulish figures in glinting full suits of armor, their yellow mechanical eyes burning in the night. It was a premonition rather than his physical senses that finally caused him to turn around. The hair suddenly stood up on the back of his neck and a fleeting chill passed through his bones, giving him just enough warning to see the gauntleted hands reaching out to grab him and the sleep-sprayer being thrust into his face, before the dimness of the night and the yellow suffusing glow of the street lamps and the watery roar of the rain all faded into a grey hum.

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Hunter watched from the café door as Malcom's limp form was tossed into the back of the coach like so much baggage being packed for a camping trip. He waited as the vehicle pulled out and took off, lurching into the air with a thrust from its lower turbines, then moving up and away with increasing speed. Only after it had disappeared into the night sky did he step into the street, pulling out his handheld and switching it to Geographic mode, then selecting the special function of ¨Position Tracker.¨ An overhead street map of the city appeared, centered around a blinking red dot that flickered across streets and buildings, continuing towards the massive industrial area south of the city.

Hunter put away the handheld and jogged down the street, ignoring the water that splashed across his bald head and down into the cracks of his armor, dribbling through and running down his body. He needed to find a local translocation booth as soon as possible, get to the main New York terminal, and be ready to translocate to the wherever that Corrupt light industrial jet coach stopped. When he'd stuck the tracking device on their coach back in Vancouver, he hadn't really been expecting the night to amount to much, but the kidnapping of Malcom that he'd just witnessed indicated that he'd stumbled across a lead into the same operation Anna had been investigating. It was an opportunity he couldn't afford to miss.