I think that's what led me to Newtown, to open my own private investigations practice. Of course, it only made sense that I opened up my shop Riverside alongside the Rejects and Fighting Dead gangs. After all, that's where the crime is, right? So it's here that I settled.
All had been going well. I had a decent-sized nest egg from my numerous clients (naturally, all were people who could not go to the regular militia), a good-natured (and naturally good-looking) assistant-slash-secretary, and a nice low-rider hovercycle I'd "appropriated" off a gang while working on a case. Naturally, the Coalition was a thorn in my side from time to time, but a few well-placed bribes here and there work wonders.
Then came the case that destroyed all that.
It was high noon, and I was resting my eyes in my office after having downed a sandwich. That's when she entered the room.
The first thing that struck me were the legs. Now, please don't take that in a sexist way. I mean that literally... She kicked me. Hard. And right in the grommets.
"What... was... that... for?" I asked her, doubled over.
"That was for ruining my marriage, you lousy asshole." Her voice was melodic, like a summer waterfall. I remembered it from someplace. Then it hit me. No, not her foot, that I'd already received. No, this was a memory; from the only wife-watching job I'd ever pulled. The gal was Trouble. With a capital T.
"Okay, so I followed you with a camera for a few days, Mrs. Marrissa Mundry. Why else are you here?"
"The rat-bastard that hired you to follow me is trying to kill me."
Warning bells went off in my head. Her husband was Col. Eric Mundry, of the 20th CS Mechanized Battalion; real bad news. The only reason I'd taken the wife-watching job was because he'd threatened to shut me down. From what I'd seen, he not only had the pull to do it, he never makes threats he doesn't follow through on. No bribe could get me out of that.
"What makes you think he's trying to kill you?"
"Can you think of anyone other than him that would set a car bomb, cause my apartment to suddenly have a street-side view, or let a Psycho-Stalker 'accidentally' get away from his keepers?"
"Sounds like hell. But what do you want me to do about it?"
At this point she gave me a look that could've melted SAMAS armor. Please bear in mind, I'm not one to turn down a job, but I didn't really feel qualified to get involved in someone else's marriage problems. Especially when one of the quarreling spouses is a CS Army officer looking to bump off his beloved.
"Find proof that the bastard is behind this."
"Uh-huh. As for payment...."
At least, I didn't feel qualified until she told me how much she was willing to pay.
"I'll pay you five times your going rate, plus expenses."
As Ms. Warshawski was so fond of saying, "Step number one, follow the money." This led me to do some investigating into Marrissa's finances. I had to call in a favor owed to me by a Newcomer teller at the First Newtown Bank to get her credit statement.
Thank Hermes for Direct Deposit. Looks like she'd pulling in a hundred grand a year from UTI. She's no spendthrift, either; she'd saved up nearly two mill over the past few years. On the surface, if she was telling the truth, my "friend" the Colonel was after her money.
But things are never how they look.
Later that day, I pulled my hovercycle up to the front door of UTI's headquarters in the newer part of Newtown. The building was a five-story red brick building with thick tinted glass panes. Just looking at it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The company was owned by the Newcomers, and to be honest, I don't trust them. Stiff-necked puritans with tons of money and technical know-how. All that spells to me is Trouble.
The lobby was a nice place, though. After flashing a fake ID at the receptionist, I was in with one of Marrissa's co-workers.
Just my luck, her co-worker was a Juicer. I'm not one to judge, I've known a few druggies with hearts of gold. Of course, I've also met more than my share of assholes. I had to see which this one was. Fortunately(?) for me, he was wearing a nametag that read "Tiny".
"So, umm... Tiny... just what are you working on here?"
"That's classified."
I flashed him the Coalition military ID I'd forged some time back. "Not to me, it ain't." All the while, I was hoping the bruiser didn't know the difference between real and fake IDs.
"Phoenix chip," he told me. "Don't quite know how it works, but I've lived seven years already, with no signs of Last Call."
"I see." DAMN! This druggie should've be six feet under by now, if he's telling the truth. "What else does this chip do?"
"Damifiknow." Shit. Didn't get much info out of this guy. I thanked him for his time, then decided to come back later to snoop around.
While I was waiting for night to come, I swung by Marrissa's apartment in town. Fortunately, she was out. I picked the lock and let myself in.
Niiiice digs, I thought to myself. Marrissa definitely did things with style.
It took me a few minutes, but I managed to find a notebook with some handwritten journal entries buried in her dresser. I snapped a few photos of the pages, then returned the journal to it's home.
Once again, thank Hermes, this time for one-hour photo booths. I didn't understand any of the technical diagrams, but there was a note in one of the margins that caught my eye. "Control circuit?" Seems our girl Marrissa discovered something she shouldn't've. Tsk tsk, that naughty girl.
Part of me wanted to confront her with it, but I also had this morbid curiosity about this Phoenix chip. If the chip did have the ability to control Juicers, as well as extend their lives, who would be the ones doing the controlling? In a second, it came to me. The Coalition, of course.
But I needed proof.
Nightfall came, and found me dressed as a window-cleaner on the UTI building. Idly, I wondered why nobody ever suspected the window-cleaner in those old movies. Fortunately for me, hardly anyone ever locks an upstairs window nowadays.
I managed to make my way through an upstairs hallway unobserved, and crept into the lab from before. It took me all of five seconds to unlock the filing cabinet, where I started rummaging through the files on the Phoenix chip, making sure to make photographs of anything I thought would be relevant. No indication as to the nature of the controlling chip, or of the controllers, for that matter.
When the lights came on, I knew I was in deep shit.
"Well, it looks like we have ourselves a burglar." The voice was cold and heartless, almost emotionless. It was also a voice I knew well. Colonel Mundry. "Stand up and turn around, son."
"Good evening, Colonel," I said as I did as ordered. "I've been meaning to talk to you." While I did so, I took in the number of grunts. Eight of them, and all with C-12 assault rifles pointed at me.
"Is that so?"
"I was going to call you tomorrow morning, as a matter of fact. Perhaps, if you let me go, we can meet at my office at, say, eight o'clock?"
"Nice try, Somerset. I've been keeping my eye on you. Shouldn't've accepted my ex-wife's job."
"That's what they all say." This had barely escaped my lips when I felt something hard and blunt hit me in the back of the neck. I dropped to the ground, unconscious.
"He's come around, Colonel." Figures. Mundry probably co-owns this place.
"Good. That means the implants are a success."
"Implants?" I managed to moan. "The Phoenix chip?"
"No. You're not a Juicer, so the chip wouldn't work on you. But, you know too much. So we've taken steps to insure that nobody believes you. They'll believe you're crazy. Which, given time, you will be."
I frowned. "What do you mean?" But I had my suspicions.
The cyber-doc held a mirror in front of my face. My eyes flickered over my worn features to rest on my shaved head, and the cylinders protruding from red welts on the skin.
That's when I started screaming....
I didn't stop screaming for a whole hour. By that time, I'd come to what was left of my senses, and closed up my shop. Of course, I made sure to give Marrissa my report -- and my bill. The look on her face when she saw the price of the implants was priceless.
"You discovered he wasn't involved at all, and expect me to pay for this implant procedure?!"
"It occurred while working on your case, so yes."
"You're insane!"
"Not for another couple of months," I explained. "I'm still a little sensitive on that issue."
"What happened to your cash?" he asks me. I give him this quirky grin.
"Most of it went back to the cyber-doc. I figured, he did the operation, he should at least get paid for it."
He slides a drink down the bar at me, and I easily catch it.
"That takes guts. Drink up."