Dirty Work: Volume 1

Red Rose - 4

The food was a complete rip-off; so much that I can't express my hatred for the money-pit of a shithole that Casey's BurgerBites was. I've never been back there since, and have had the beautiful opportunity to ward others away from the place. Sat on one of the three tables that were opposite the greasy counter, slammed up against the wall near a painting of what looked to be The Lounge in Region 2 but was actually so bad that it could have been a pile of vomit for all I knew, I pulled out the package and placed it on the side next to me. I wasn't scared of it attracting any attention because for all intensive purposes it was just a small parcel, and so I had the opportunity whilst ripping into an overly-expensive burger in cheap bread to wonder why it had been sent to Chorus.

I chased ideas around in my head for a good ten minutes before finding myself about ready to bite my own mental tail, the image of the box inside dangling on the end like a fishing line. I wasn't thinking of this just as a job anymore, or simply an errand, but a puzzle to be solved. I had never been bad at puzzles, and was beginning to use some of my older, more seldom-used mental faculties to try and wrench this small mystery open. I had no doubt that Grasslea would never tell me what the box was, or ever mention it again more likely, but it didn't stop me wondering.

Sipping a crap drink I decided that it wasn't another bluff, like my previous adventure had been. This, I was pretty sure, had nothing to do with the last outing. This thing had genuine importance to Grasslea, and so had decided to hide it somewhere. Sending it to Chorus had obviously been his way of tucking it away somewhere unrelated to him, but still within arm's reach. That the two had history I gathered, and trust to an utmost degree to boot.

It was hollow. That much at least the scans had shown for definite. Therefore it was the box itself that must be important. The fact that the boss didn't want it about him meant that he hadn't acquired it by the easiest or most legal of means, and getting rid of it in secret meant one of three things. He didn't want the police to find it, he didn't want someone else to take it, or he didn't want the people who had it originally to come and take it back.

Knowing Grasslea and his love for being in a position of complete control, this final option seemed to me to be the most likely. Sat there screwing up the cheap tissue paper the burger had come in, mopping a little dribble of grease off the table, I decided that, more than likely, the box was something that Grasslea had stolen off someone to be used as blackmail or some other kind of leverage, but not just yet. It needed to be safeguarded for a while before being used at the opportune moment. Sometimes you didn't win a pawn with the idea of holding onto it, but with the idea of giving it back for something of greater value.

I threw my rubbish in the bin and made my way out of the place, holding the door open to a man in a short leather jacket. He had a hood up, obscuring most of his face, but I remember clearly that the jacket itself had a red flower on the sleeve, I think a rose. He turned his head to me, though not revealing his face, before he passed into the light of the slippery counters of Casey's. I headed towards the Magna-Station which, thankfully, was not that far away.

Varstrom was finally beginning to quieten, something I didn't think would have been possible when I had wandered through it towards Chorus' place an hour or so before. There were probing lights from the nightclubs and pubs as usual, but most of the shops had finally closed their late-night welcomes, shuttered cold until the morning. They all looked lonely, the long lines of malls and stalls, clothes stores and Halo shops, repair places and furniture bargainers, all rejecting the blackened sky of Celestria's natural night and awaiting the rise of its twin suns and its artificial morning shade of darkened blue.

Under the fake trees lining one of the main boulevards a couple were kissing, the guy with thick curls of brown hair with his hand down the other guy's trousers. A group of students (from one of the nearby colleges, I thought) that didn't look like they were old enough to be allowed to stay up to watch anything past the watershed, tottered down swaying this way and that. A beggar in a sleeping bag laid his head against a slick shop doorway. I could have been in that position I thought to myself before hurrying on, determined to not let myself end up there after all.

I arrived at the station and leapt up the steps, noting a train coming in from my right. I couldn't make it out very well, having to squint to try and see what was on the front, but I was pretty sure that it was the train I wanted, heading to Region 24. A flash of red on the front of it confirmed it for me. I ran as fast as my legs would decide to carry me into the station's warm embrace.

My R20 day pass was into the slot and out again as quickly as the machine could note it. I was running towards the platform, feeling the traction between my shoes and the polished floor shifting every second, rising and falling away and threatening to spill me across the floor like I had been shot in the back of the head.

I threw myself down a stairwell, pushing past a guy with a jacket similar to the one the guy had worn going into the burger place. I only sub-consciously registered it at the time, because my mind was rather pre-occupied with catching a train, but the flash of that insignia on the back of the jacket, that red rose, must have stuck with me, because as I slipped between the train doors as they hissed shut, I remembered it. I hadn't seen that red rose on any other clothes before now, and something like that would have been easy to spot. Branding is glaringly obvious, just look at Halo for an example, and if it were a popular clothing range I would have seen it before.

I pushed it to the back of my mind however, ignoring my obvious paranoia, and sat myself down as the Magna began to pick up speed. I glanced at the clock down the end of the car and saw that I wouldn't be at my station for another two and a half hours. I had managed to grab a window seat, regardless of any good that would do when all you could normally make out was more lights spiralling up to Telcos and Stratis as they rose in the west and set in the east, and gazed out of it for a while. The lights flashing past soothed me, and five minutes into the journey I had dozed off.