“Damn,” Ashton murmured. “Is it really going this badly?”
“Worse,” someone else said. “I didn’t have all of my case notes written into a report yet, and I can’t find the folders with all my notes.”
“My forensics tools have gone missing.”
“The special desk chair for my disabled hip hasn’t shown up yet, either.”
“Shit,” Ashton cursed. “All right, I get this picture. Lemme go talk to the moving company supervisor.”
In short order, Ashton discovered that Carter had been trying to sort it out, and was headed to talk to the movers’ supervisor when his little inadvertent acrobatics demonstration occurred. A quick, gentle discussion between the supervisor and the two errant young movers had them apologizing profusely. It was then that Ashton and the supervisor discovered that no one had shown the two young men how to read movers’ layouts for something as complex as a high-rise building, and they were totally confused and tended to get lost inside the New Headquarters building as a result.
“Well, that explains everything,” the supervisor said, eyes growing wide. “C’mon, guys. Come with me and I’ll give you a hand in sorting things out, and I’ll teach you how to read this shit on the way.”
By the end of the day, missing items were starting to turn up.
“I think we got this now,” Peabody told Ashton at the end of the shift. “By the time the night shift finishes unpacking and putting away, we’ll be in great shape.”
“I think you’re right,” Ashton agreed.
That night, Cally and Nick called the Carters. Maia answered, and promptly invited the young couple into a VR simulation of their den.
“Hey, Maia,” Nick said. “How’s Lee after his aerobatics demo today?”
“Grumpy, ‘bout like you’d think,” Maia noted, shaking her head. “You might wind up temporary Director fill-in tomorrow, honey, because I dunno if he’s gonna make it outta the bed without a hoist. He is stiff.”
“I can imagine,” Nick noted. “I saw him do his flip, and shit, Maia. That scared me. And I probably wouldn’t be any better than he is right now, if it had been me.”
“Well, I’mma take good care of my man,” Maia said, her cinnamon face taking on a soft smile. “I called his doctor as soon as you pinged me, Nicky-son, and he came over as soon as I got Lee home. Your staff physician Withers took a shit-ton of x-rays and scans and determined it was all just some pulls and bruising, and his personal physician added to the prescriptions Withers gave him, then sent the lot to our pharmacy in VR, and they delivered about an hour ago.”
“So he’s gonna be okay?” Cally asked.
“Yeah, baby, he’s gonna be okay. I got some dinner in him, then the pills, and I’m gonna rub him down with a couple different tubes of prescription cream before we go to bed tonight. He’s got ice packs all over him right now, though. And damn, am I hearin’ about that, child! You’d think he was on a glacier someplace. Naked.”
They laughed.
“Quit talking about me,” came a distant voice from somewhere, though Nick had no idea how Carter had tapped into the VR channel without knowing which one it was, and they laughed again.
“It’s fine, baby, it’s just Nick and Cally,” Maia responded, calling over her shoulder. “They called to make sure you were okay.”
“Oh. That’s all right, then.” The voice sounded closer, almost on par with Maia’s.
“You just rest and get better,” Cally called.
“Yeah, we got this,” Nick added.
“There was some problem with the damn movers, and I was going to get that straightened out,” Lee replied, sounding normal by that point… but still out of sight, rather as if he were only on an audio call. “How much of the move actually got finished today?”
“All of it,” Nick said. “I figured out pretty fast after you’d gone that there was a problem, though it took a little longer to determine what the problem was. And then I had a little come-to-Jesus meeting with the supervisor and the two college kids he had working for him. Turns out they didn’t know how to read a building layout – at least not one as complex as ours – and they were apparently getting lost and having to leave whatever they had wherever they could, while they went off and figured out where they even were.”
“Oh shit. That makes sense out of a whole lotta stuff.”
“Yeah, ain’t that the truth? Once the supervisor realized the problem, he started going with ‘em, and training ‘em on the job, and that pretty much took care of things,” Nick elaborated. “We got everything where it needs to be, and the night shift was gonna finish unpacking and stowing things, and by tomorrow we should be good.”
“So I don’t have to crawl in tomorrow?”
“Nope!”
“And baby, we can get this taken care of without you having to go in tomorrow at all, given how much you hurt,” Maia said. “I can stay home and help you; as the ICPD section lead, Harry Quan can go over to New Headquarters and help Nick, while Win Peabody and Pete Stone run IPD Investigations. Gene Demetrius can head ICPD Investigations, and Stefan Gorski can help him. It’s all good.”
“This system we developed,” Lee murmured then, “it works, doesn’t it?”
“It sure does,” Cally vouched.
“Really well,” Nick agreed.
“Good. Y’all keep on talkin’, then. I’m gonna take a nap, I think.”
“You’ve earned it, and then some,” Nick asserted. “We got this, I swear.”
Multiplication
Well inside a week, Carter was back in the office, and so was Peterson.
Which was good, because two days later, Ashton got a priority call.
“Nick, it’s Maia. Cally’s gone into labor a little earlier than she’d worked out with her doctor, and her water broke. Pete, Rog, and Rich are
