Rash'Tor'Ri (Soulguard Book 4), page 23
"True enough," he said. "But you found her for me, Kade. I can never thank you enough for that. And now I'm about to be a father."
"You deserve it, man," I said. "Take good care of 'em."
"Will do," he said. "I'll be by your table in a few. Had a little episode we have to deal with. Someone didn’t like my reservation policy."
"I'll talk to ya then," I said and made my way to the booth in the back that was conspicuously empty.
As I slid into the booth, I could see two people with an interest in me. One was an older gentleman in an old suit. The other was a young man who had a perpetual snarl on his face.
I motioned to the older gentleman, and he made his way toward my booth.
"Mathew Kade," I said with my hand outstretched. "I understand you have a job for me?"
"Yes I do," he said. "My name is Cedric Hale. I need you to find my daughter for me. She disappeared three days ago, and I haven't been able to find a single clue as to where she has gone."
I motioned for him to have a seat
"What made you search me out for this job?"
"I worked for a company called Obsidian," he said.
My eyes narrowed.
"I'm not here to let your secret out, Mr. Kade," he said. "I know what you were. I know what happened to you. It's amazing that you were able to rebuild your psyche into something more than a drooling vegetable. Yet you did. You have the skills to find my daughter, no matter where she is."
"You know a lot about me, Hale," I said, "and I'm not very comfortable with that."
"When the end came, I know you were still in the Imprinter and it scrambled your brain," he said. "I also know, you spent three years inside the Obsidian building, under treatment for serious mental illness. No one even knows how you did it, Mr. Kade. Treatment did nothing and then one day you just stood up and became Mathew Kade."
"I'm not here to blackmail you or any such nonsense," he said. "I just know what you were capable of before the Fall. If you have a fraction of that capability, you can find my daughter."
A commotion on the floor caught my eye, and a bottle was hurled across the room. I was on my feet and caught the bottle in my left hand.
For just a second, I was someone else. The young man with the perpetual snarl was staring into the cold dead eyes of someone entirely different from the man that had sat at the table. His eyes widened in fear and he ran into the crowd.
In a moment I sat back down.
Hale was smiling, "A fraction."
I stared at him in silence.
He placed a coin in front of me. I looked at it in surprise. It was a solid gold coin from the Old World. Probably worth ten thousand script now.
"This is a down payment," Hale said. "You find her, you get another. Return her to me unharmed, you get three."
"I'll see what I can do."
"Thank you, Agent," he said softly.
I nodded.
He passed me a folder and I opened it to see a picture of a pretty young red-haired woman. She appeared to be late teens or early twenties and that could be bad. This Fallen world is hard on young beautiful people.
Warlords could swoop in with their troops and steal people at will. They were Warlords because the held the weapons or tech that gave them control over those around them.
There had been incidents for years. I had a great disdain for the term, Warlord. They were the ones who had found some advantage and abused it, for the most part.
There were a few good men, such as Wilderman, who held the reigns of fourteen city blocks. He provided protection to those who lived in his domain. He taxed his people but he also provided true protection.
Miles to the East, there was Joanna Kathrop. She held sixteen blocks and ruled with an iron fist. She had found a cache of weapons and provisions in her area several decades back. Her cadre of loyal soldiers backed her and she established her rule of that area.
There were others, both good and bad. The majority of them were bad. They ran single and double blocks. The Warlord that controlled the area where strike Zone was located wasn't the worst, but he was far from the best.
I turned the page and found the sector that Hale and his daughter had lived.
"You were under Yamato?" I asked.
"Yes," he said, "he took down the Bishop a decade ago."
"Yamato's always been fair," I said. "Did you take this to him?"
"He couldn't help me," he said. "She was traveling across the city."
"What the hell was she doin' travelin'?" I asked. "Was she in a caravan?"
The Caravans were the only semi-safe way to travel the city. You paid for your ticket, and the Caravans paid their tax to run through the Zones.
"She was going to the new College, set up by Kathrop, in a small Caravan," he said, "run by a man named Drekk. He claims she never showed up for the last leg of the trip."
"Drekk," I spat the word out. "I've heard of Drekk. If you want to travel anywhere, you have to use the Accredited Caravans. You can't use people like Drekk."
His face fell, "We didn't know about this until it was too late. We aren't rich people, Mister Kade."
I looked down at the coin still in my hand, and looked back to him with one eyebrow raised.
"The life savings of both my family and the family of Seran Yoto, her fiancée."
"Poor would not be what I would call this, Hale," I said. "There are people right in this room who won't see this much wealth in ten lifetimes. You dwell inside the Scraper. You have running water and electricity. Don't you ever try to pass yourself off as the poor. It's insulting."
He nodded
"Who set up the Caravan?"
"I set it up through a man in the Scraper. His name is Denton. He owns a supply store on the bottom floor."
"Ok," I said. "That's where I'll need to start. I'll be there first thing in the morning."
"But the Caravans don't run at night..."
"Some people, it's safer to leave alone, Hale. When you get back to the Scraper, tomorrow, I'll have some answers for you."
"How will you cross three zones tonight?"
"I'll walk, Hale," I said. "Corporate Agents can take care of themselves."
"You haven't been an Agent for twenty years."
"You're right, there," I said, "I'm something else, now. I'll see you tomorrow night at your Scraper."
I stood and walked away from the booth. Jared was beside the bar, talking to several suits.
"Yo Jared," I said, "I'm on a job for a few days. Ya can fill the table if ya need to."
"Be careful, Matt," he said. "Last time Jenny took a week to get you patched up.
"I'll try, buddy."
I had a feeling about this one. Things looked bad for Maddy Hale. Drekk wasn't known to be trustworthy.
Life can be dangerous in this Fallen World.
This is a sample chapter in This Fallen World, the beginning of a series of novellas. If this peaks your interest, it and the second in the series are available on Amazon.
Christopher Woods, Rash'Tor'Ri (Soulguard Book 4)
