FISHING FOR FEATHERS

Job 10: Turtle Soup

Bentley leaves Carmelita in charge of his computer, since Murray is sleeping... actually, Carmelita may be the better choice even if she is a cop. Either way, Bentley's trusting her with his life as he makes his way through the jungle and to the hole in the wall.

Which is almost suspiciously unguarded. Either these guys have horrific short-term memories, it's a trap, or they just don't care. And it's not a trap.

He pulls out his binoc-u-com when he reaches his mission start point. "Okay, Carmelita, I'm about to go in. ...are you there? Carmelita?"

"Oh! Sorry, Bentley." Carmelita turns to him. "Sly just told me he saw General Tsao going through the checkpoint at the wall. He's going to keep an eye on him, give us a heads up when Tsao gets back."

"That'll make my life a little easier," Bentley admits, adjusting his glasses. "I may be in there a while."

"What are you looking for?" asks Carmelita.

"While we were in the basement of the tower in Egypt, Khamen and I found a giant black orb of some sort chained in the center of the room," Bentley says. "When we destroyed the chains, it rose up, and the whole tower—as well as everything in it, everyone in it, and even that huge fissure from the earthquake—disappeared."

"Huh," says Carmelita. "I've never heard of anything like that in Interpol."

"Believe me, I'm well aware," says Bentley. "I've read through your files numerous times."

"You what?!"

"Look, Carmelita, the point is that I'm going to see if there's another of those things here," Bentley says. "If there is, and I can figure out what it is, and what it does... that may give us some answers."

"Okay," says Carmelita. "But watch your back in there. Whether or not General Tsao's in at the moment, I get the feeling he's got some tight security measures. The things I saw when we arrested him and searched his palace for additional evidence..."

"I do have some idea," Bentley says, and puts his binoc-u-com away.

Under the circumstances, it is entirely reasonable for Bentley to wheel himself in the front door... so that's exactly what he does. There aren't any guards there. Patrolling the beach, sure, and the path to get to the beach, of course, but not on the door to the tower itself, or even inside the tower. Someone's been slacking. Then again, Tsao's always considered himself invincible; the thought of needing redundant security probably never occurred to him.

That thinking stops the second Bentley tries to take the sloped path to the basement... and has to stop at the top. It's a straight shot down, of course. It's also an obstacle course of lasers.

Time to bring out something we haven't seen yet in this game, but veterans of the series will remember well: the RC car. This remote-controlled gadget can go forwards by holding the X button, backwards by holding the square button, and turn with the joystick; it allows Bentley to see anything in front of it; and, probably most important, it has a gun that can be fired with the R1 button. Bentley may not know what he's going to find down there, but unlike his chair, the car is small enough to go through.

And into a bona fide obstacle course, curse it. It's nothing compared to the mess Penelope had to deal with in Tsao's treasure temple—a little detail Bentley hates being grateful for, since he never could match her RC skills—but more than enough to have his palms sweating on the controller. Sure, he may beat the others at video games nine times out of ten, but this sort of finicky detail work will never be in his comfort zone.

When he gets the car to the bottom of the stairs, he finds a large button to drive it onto. The lasers in front of him flicker a few times before disappearing. "Excellent," Bentley says, and wheels his way down.

It's a lot faster when you don't have to worry about laser security. And when you're not a remote control car about three inches long. At the bottom, Bentley looks around. Another black orb is nowhere in sight... but there is another hallway, heading off into the unknown.

Bentley wheels his car off the button, letting the laser security reassert itself so no one can follow him down. "How you doing over there, Bentley?" asks Carmelita over the binoc-u-com.

"I've made some progress in my explorations," Bentley says, putting the car in a corner so it'll be difficult to notice. "This place is bigger than the basement in Rajan's tower."

"All right. General Tsao seems to be making a tour of the town," says Carmelita. "And I'm drawing you an official warrant for your actions today."

"Do you have the authority to do that?" he asks.

"Went out of my way to get it last month," she snaps, "after that last debacle. But it's not supposed to be for a case I'm on. I'll get suspended from the force if this gets out."

"Just calm down," says Bentley. "No one's gonna find out that you—what? Went time traveling after criminals? Puh-leeze."

Carmelita chuckles. "You may have a point, shell boy."

Bentley turns his attention back to the hallway then. Or... not quite a hallway. It has walls and a roof, but water instead of floor, lapping gently with the waves of the ocean. Floating in the hallway, bobbing gently in place, are rounded floating platforms, raised in the middle, with hexagonal patterns on them; Bentley has to jump from one to the other on his way across. The water steams gently, indicating that it's not directly from the ocean: this has been heated.

About halfway down the hallway, a ladder leads up—not that Bentley can climb it. There is, however, a slowly spinning wheel going from the water to the top. It scoops up water with long-handled buckets and deposits the water at the top; Bentley balances on one of the handles as it goes up. The water is being deposited into a gutter of sorts that flows down one side of the rest of the hallway, which has a new obstacle: giant knives, their blades stretching the width of the hallway, pounding into the ground at intervals that only make sense to them. "I really don't like the look of this," says Bentley.

The end of the hallway opens into a large, round room. The gutter of liquid deepens into a moat that Bentley has to jump over; it circles all the edges of the room. A fan-like device in the center of the ceiling connects to a number of long wooden sticks, with wide flat ends that extend down the walls and into the moat. The water is murky and green, with various items floating in it that can't quite be made out.

None of that matters to Bentley right now. In the center of the room, chained top and bottom to each of those sticks, is another light-sucking black orb. "Fascinating," Bentley says, adjusting his glasses. "Now, let's see what sort of readings I get off this."

There's a 'time passes' sort of cut, then it shows Bentley wheeling his way up the ramp to the tower's main floor. "General Tsao's on his way back to the tower," says Carmelita. "You done in there?"

"I'll be out in just a moment," says Bentley. "But I'm going to leave my RC car in the basement. We may have to get back down there in a hurry."

JOB COMPLETE

Bentley does a victory pose before using his mechanical arms to give himself a shell massage.