“And the children these days. So mistrusting. It’s society, isn’t it?”
Marine spoke, her voice serious. “I don’t care about any of that. I’ve come for—”
Darvish slammed his fists on the table. “We must have chats before business! Chats and tea! There are rules! Rules!” He was breathing fast, his eyes darting back and forth across the cheap table cloth under his fists.
He passed out the cups and I took a sip from it. If I were forced to describe the taste politely, I’d have suggested that he’d poured about six pounds of sugar into a bowl of water filled with heavily used athletic socks. I forced a smile to keep from vomiting and put the cup down.
“Delightful tea.” I choked the words out.
“Isn’t it? Some find the taste is not to their liking.” The words felt sinister somehow and he looked across at Marine who drank deep from the cup without flinching. I convinced myself that she had turned off her ability to taste things. It was really the only way she could manage a straight face with that shit in her mouth.
“We’ve chatted. We’ve had tea. Now business.”
“Oh, but the spirit of such things—”
“You don’t care for spirit. You care for rules. We’ve followed your rules, even complimented your tea. I want my favor.”
He looked at me after Marine spoke. “Yes. Yes, you did give compliments.” He shifted his eyes around, looking at nothing but lost somewhere in his own mind. “Fair play, then. What have you come for?”
She grabbed my stump and slapped it on the table. Darvish beamed an insane smile.
“Oh dear, oh dear. He has a need. And you have a favor.”
Marine stood.
“Let’s do it now then.”
Darvish stood as well, his eyes locked to Marine the entire time.
“A wonderful time for favors. Let’s begin.”
Chapter
ELEVEN
We were going down another set of stairs. Honestly, I was starting to get a little bit annoyed by the whole underground lair thing. It’s a bit ridiculous. I get it, don’t get me wrong. It makes way more sense to be below the ground as opposed to on a roof or something. There were drones all over the place. Whatever, I don’t care how much sense it makes. I don’t like it. I want a scenic view for once if I’m going to be marched into someone’s den of weird secret shit. Just put up some of that mirror film that makes it really hard to see in. Maybe put some blankets over the windows. It’s not that hard.
My bother over the whole underground lair thing really came to a head when we got to the bottom of the stairs. This creepy geriatric pervert had a massive entry way with a ten foot tall, crazy thick steel vault door. It was on actuating arms with a roll-away track as it was too heavy for any size hinge. The stairs came into the main room from a far side so you really didn’t see it coming until you rounded the final corner. It was a massive, spotless white cave aside from the dark gunmetal color of the vault door. Fifteen foot ceilings and we were, what, maybe thirty feet underground? No. See? This is ridiculous. Who built this? How does this sort of thing slide past a contractor as remotely okay? And what about the underground utility lines and shit? Can you just move those to the sides? Did this old psycho get a permit? He didn’t seem like the permit type. But then he loved rules almost as much as he loved seeming like a rapist, so maybe he did. Fuck me, who gave him the permit? Did they ask what he was going to do with a giant underground bunker? Or how he intended to build it? Was the city accounting for it in their plans? Why did everyone seem to have one of these? I had an apartment. A shitty one. With tin foil taped over the windows to keep spooky spy signals and the sun from ruining my private time. It worked for me, but I was getting seriously jealous. I bet Marine had an underground lair that she wasn’t telling me about. Who knows what she had down there. Probably a bunch of cool AI shit. Black boxes full of world destroying versions of herself that probably had bigger boobs. What a bitch, holding out on me like that.
“What’s something like this cost?”
“Hm?” That nasal, gravelly old man voice made me regret asking immediately. “Costs nothing to dig a hole.”
I remembered he had an array of simple robots out front of the place and figured it was possible he just had them do the work. We were definitely here for a reason, so I figured it was safe to assume he was resourceful. The door was another matter. Though I could kind of reason how he got the thing down here. Could have done it in pieces small enough to fit in the stairs. Or maybe even done it in the dugout area at the bottom. Probably need a crane to hold the thing up. It didn’t really matter, I guess. Logistically speaking, I didn’t have access to the sort of real estate necessary to have my own robot army dig out a tunnel for me to hide a giant vault of… what was in the vault?
Darvish made us stand back as he went to a single small keypad next to the massive rolling door. He was pressing buttons for what seemed like way too long. Easily a minute. Furiously pressing keys the whole time. He stopped just before the last one and looked over his shoulder at us, then back to the panel to press the final number. Klaxons sounded and warning lights in yellow and red flashed around the door. Hydraulics hissed to life and pulled the massive metal disc from its place embedded in the wall. It moved smoothly down
