Angel hummed a merry tune as she drove her new, bright pink company car through the streets of Paradigm City. Although it was late afternoon, this domeless section remained nearly deserted, with only scattered clumps of rubbish giving any evidence of the chaos that had reigned the day before. Not a good neighborhood to be in, but her confidence was restored to the point that she could imagine herself to be the baddest thing in it. Well, maybe. As she stopped for a red light, she looked over and was startled to see Colonel Dan Dastun of the military police wandering down a sidewalk looking like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. She froze for a moment, then thought again as she let out her breath. Really, she ought to take off before he noticed her. But she did have fences to mend, and Dastun had been kind to her once . . . .
"Time for some more diplomacy," she purred, and looked for an inconspicuous place to park.
[-]
"Well, boys, lookee here!" an ugly voice sneered. "The head of the Paradigm City military police himself, Dangerous Dan Dastun, wandering onto our territory without an escort!"
Dastun cursed as he watched the members of one of the city's more notorious street gangs circle and surround him in an alleyway. He'd been so intent on looking for a cybernetics store he'd heard was located in his this neighborhood that he'd walked straight into an ambush. He was outnumbered five to one and his assailants were all armed. Even if he managed to draw his gun, he'd probably be dead before he could use it.
"What's the matter, Danny boy?" another one of the gang mocked him. "Can't call your tanks down on us?"
Suddenly a shot rang out, then another, and another, and three of the gang members howled and clutched their now empty hands while their own pistols lay on the pavement. Dastun ducked behind a garbage can and drew his weapon as bullets began whizzing over his head. He managed to get off a shot at one of the gang before their leader, also disarmed by the mysterious sniper, yelled for a retreat. Then the punks were gone, as fast as they'd appeared.
"Are you all right, Colonel?" A decidedly feminine figure with a smoking gun in her hand stepped into the light.
"You!" Dastun exclaimed as he saw his rescuer.
"My, my," Angel tsked. "Such a way to greet someone who's just saved your life. And here I was hoping we could be friends."
"I owe you one, all right," Dastun muttered, patting his jacket pocket to make sure the small box with Instro's chips had stayed in it. The box was there, but he realized to his horror that the list was missing. When he'd drawn his gun, it must have flown out.
"Are you looking for this?" Angel said, picking up a piece of paper that she saw on the ground near his feet.
"Give me that!" He reached to snatch it away from her, but she pulled it away too quickly.
"These are android parts," Angel frowned with concentration as she scanned the page. "Very specific android parts. What do you want with these?"
Dastun said nothing, but held out his hand for the list, which Angel returned after a final curious glance. She noticed he had not yet put his gun away.
"You know, Colonel," she said, "I can probably help you obtain some of these items, if that's what you need."
Dastun's face was stern. He hesitated before speaking again.
"Before I can accept your help," he grumbled, "I need to know one thing."
"And what's that?"
"When I last saw you a few weeks ago, in that old church, were you trying to save R. Dorothy Wayneright, or were you going to help Alan Gabriel kill her?"
Whatever reaction Dastun was expecting from the cold double agent, it wasn't the one he got. Angel froze for a second as if paralyzed, and then her entire body shuddered. She dropped her gun on the pavement and buried her face in her hands.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" she moaned. "I would never assist a monster like Gabriel! I meant to stop him . . . but then . . . I . . . I didn't . . . ."
Dastun didn't know what to make of this emotional display, but he wasn't in the mood to have the street gang come back and take advantage of it. He scooped up Angel's gun and barked at her to walk with him back to where he'd left his police car, while he kept both weapons out, ready for more trouble. She went along with him, almost mechanically. As they got to his patrol car, he shoved her on the back less than gently to make her get in, and was surprised at her gasp of pain.
"You injured?" he demanded. He knew she hadn't been shot, but he could see a small bloodstain forming on the back of her shirt. "Do you need to go to a hospital?"
She shivered and shook her head.
"It's nothing," she said.
The hell it was, Dastun thought to himself. But he wouldn't have time to wonder about it until he got them both into a safer neighborhood. As he drove, Angel slowly regained her composure and stared out the window.
"So are you going to arrest me?"
"What for?" Dastun handed her back her gun. "Disarming a bunch of thugs who probably would've killed me? That's not the way I operate."
"You always try to do the right thing, don't you?" Angel asked. She refused to meet his eyes. "I wish I could be like that."
"No one's stopping you." He pulled the car over. "Or are they?"
She shook her head.
"Agent 340 is dead," she told him. "I'm not even sure she existed in the first place."
"What do you mean by that?"
Dastun listened in horror as Angel began to describe the movie set she'd come across, the realization that her memories of a happy childhood had been lies, implanted in her by the Union. He was even more horrified when she suddenly turned her back to him and pulled up her shirt to reveal the angry red wounds on her back.
"Courtesy of Vera Ronstadt," she gasped, as pulling the fabric away caused one of the lash marks to start bleeding again.
"Hold still," Dastun said. He pushed a button on his dashboard, and a small first aid kit popped out from underneath the glove compartment. "This should help."
Angel felt him spray something on her back, and the pain began to lessen almost immediately. She sighed with relief.
"Thank you, Colonel." As she lowered her shirt and turned around, she saw Dastun looking at his list again. "I wasn't lying to you before - I know where some of those parts can be found. I can get you into Paradigm's labs. You aren't exactly going to find components like that in a hardware store. But why did you ask me about . . . ?" She gasped again as she made the connection. "They're for her, aren't they? For Dorothy?"
He nodded.
"What's going on? And why isn't Roger Smith doing this?" She asked. "Has something happened to him too?" She paled when he didn't answer her at first, then resumed an outward appearance of calm as he described the situation.
"Roger's the best friend I ever had," Dastun said. "I may not understand his taste in women, but I know he cares about Dorothy – even more than he cares about that walking pile of whip-ass he keeps underground. I'll do whatever it takes to help them now."
"Including trust me I hope?" Angel asked. "I know you don't have any reason to, but I owe them that much. Because of my jealousy, I would have let Alan Gabriel commit murder. I can't forgive myself for that." She pulled a Paradigm Corp Security I.D. out of one of her pockets. "Let Casseey Jenkins make up for Agent 340's misdeeds. Please."
"You're serious?" Dastun stared at her hard and this time she did meet his eyes without flinching. "Paradigm Labs. Right." He started the car up again, and headed toward the one location in the city he dreaded most.
[-]
Norman fretted and chewed on the edge of his mustache as he tried to keep an eye on the security screen showing Master Roger's bedroom while simultaneously tending to his appointed task of repairing Big O. Whatever unremembered powers had placed Norman here had also left him a veritable warehouse of spare parts for the huge megadeus. Unfortunately those parts could do Dorothy no good at all, and to make matters worse Master Roger's fever had not abated in the slightest. Over the past few hours, it had risen even higher. The butler had had no difficulty persuading Dorothy to stay by Roger's side so he could surreptitiously monitor them both at once. Indeed, he doubted anything less than a megadeus could have pried her loose from her current position. But there was frustratingly little Norman could do to help either of them, so now he tended to the biggest patient of them all.
The black megadeus didn't look any better than his dominus at the moment. Big O's red helmet had been completely shattered off by Big Fau, and there was a gaping hole near the pilot chamber. The chamber itself stood a cluttered mess of empty oxygen tanks, saltwater puddles and tangled cables. Norman thought it nothing short of amazing that the damaged megadeus had made it all the way back to the mansion without breaking down itself.
"Hopefully no emergencies for a while, my fine fellow," Norman muttered to his charge. "You don't look ready for any more 'basement cleaning' either." As Norman began his repairs, he got the sense that Big O was alert and watching him. No – not him. The megadeus' optic receptors were focused on the same security screen that Norman kept glancing at. "Yes," Norman said. "I'm worried too. But I'm sure Colonel Dastun has everything in hand. We must hope for the best."
[-]
"I don't believe this!" Angel exclaimed as she surveyed the scattered mess of Alex Rosewater's former lab, and followed the observation with a string of curses.
"I take it this isn't what you expected to find," Dastun said, knowing the look of a toss-and-grab job when he saw one.
"No! Where the hell was security? Did Alex kill them all?" She began poring over the wreckage and grabbed a box that she put some small components into. "We need these . . . and these . . . what else? Give me that list!" She practically barked at Dastun.
The officer handed it over and began looking around the lab, not wanting to get in her way, and not sure he'd recognize what they were searching for even if he came across it. He shook his head, depressed at his own incompetence. He was glad he had a partner who knew something about technology at least, but wasn't there anything he could do?
"It isn't fair," Angel moaned twenty minutes and a mountain of laboratory trash later. "This lab should've had everything we need, but only half the items are here." She looked ready to cry with frustration.
"That's still more than I could've found on my own," Dastun said. "You did your best."
"My best isn't good enough." She put a hand over her eyes. "My one chance to make up for what I've done, and it's hopeless!"
"Not yet it isn't," he growled. "I'm not giving up this easily."
"Well what are we going to do?" She kicked at a pile of clutter. "I wasn't kidding. You're not going to find memory core components just anywhere."
"I know." Dastun scanned the walls and ceiling of the room they were in. "The lab didn't look like this the last time you saw it, did it?"
"Of course not! This must have just happened! Maybe during those riots the other day."
"Then there could be some security recordings of the thief – aha!" Dastun exclaimed, finally locating the well-disguised camera lens he was looking for, and tapped the wall next to it. "You're the espionage expert. Get me whatever this thing filmed."
It wasn't hard for Angel to trace the security camera back to its data storage unit, and retrieve the data. She and Dastun went back to his patrol car with the parts they'd gathered and the security recording, and Dastun popped the recording into the small computer mounted in his dashboard. He fast-forwarded through 'empty' sections showing the lab in an orderly, neat state, then put the recording on slow when a figure came into view. The lanky, gaudy figure of a man in bright yellow clothing, with bright, curly blond hair danced around the lab, grabbing, ransacking or knocking over everything in sight.
"Beck!" Dastun hissed angrily at the recording.
"Who?" Angel asked, trying to get a better look at the monitor.
"Beck," Dastun repeated. "Aka Jason Beck aka Beck Gold aka the biggest pain in the ass in Paradigm Penitentiary history. Professional thief, bank robber, kidnapper and extortionist. He's committed so many crimes the judge sentenced him to 273 years of hard labor, but he keeps breaking out of jail." He gritted his teeth. "Beck's also an old enemy of Roger's - and he's the main reason Dorothy's in such bad shape now. He helped Rosewater grab her."
"It looks like he grabbed the parts we need too," Angel observed. "I suggest we pay a visit to Mr. Beck and get them back."
Dastun stopped the data recording and banged the dashboard with his fist.
"Easier said than done," he muttered. "We have to find him first, and he's a slippery character. Dangerous too."
"I'm not afraid of danger, Colonel," Angel grinned. "And I think I know just the person who can help us find him."
[-]