Chương 84: Palmyra

The day kept crawling on without any opportunities to talk to Chris, though the hauls weren't as substantial as the early morning ones. Maybe those were a bit of a deviation from the norm. But I was still curious about the jetskis because of the sheer size of them. I ended up weaving down several different aisles until I found one that was not only labeled but specifically labeled with information related to jetskis.

I couldn't exactly inspect the eight crates I placed down due to them being so close to the loading bay. Would draw too much attention. The crate I found was for a single jetski. About the same height as me again, and the length seemed within proportion of the set of 4. The label specifically noted the height of the model being about fifty inches. That was a little over... four feet, I thought. So was the extra two feet packing material? Maybe. Not enough info for now.

Maybe I could get Jonesy to slip up somehow if it was actually something else, or get some clarity on if it was a genuine article. The big issue with apparently legitimate businesses that hire out criminals is you can't tell how legitimate the business actually is. All I could do for now was keep meandering and scribbling down inventory numbers for the clipboard, intermittently watching the office until maybe Chris would get ou- And there he was, just walking out the door. Now was the time.

I started approaching him, feeling my throat ready itself to call out his codena- THUNK"Haaaarrrryyy!" shouted one worker. Oh for fuck's sakes. Turning towards the source of both sounds, a forklift carrying multiple crates had tipped over. Rubbing my face, I approached the disaster.

"Is anyone hurt?" The forklift driver clambered out from his seat, dusting his sleeves off.

"No, I lucked out. Front left wheel on the fuckin' thing is about as useful as a bra on a bull."

"You weren't that lucky," an onlooker commented.

"Imagine the settlement you coulda' gotten if you broke a finger or something!" The forklift driver shouted out a "Well now I can't say that! Asshole!" This prompted some laughter from the onlooker plus some other crewmen. I just shook my head and got to tipping the forklift back on its wheels while the others took to stacking up the crates it had into short piles. Looking around as the forklift landed back on both wheels, I couldn't see Chris anymore.

I hoped he was in the break room since that was the only other room I knew to find. From there, I hefted up the two piles back onto the forklift.

"Go slower next time. I'm taking my lunch so you're on your own for half an hour." No reactions from them as they went about their milling, which was ultimately for the best. They were all growing on my nerves. One superpower and suddenly everyone's begging at your feet every minute. They're like toddlers. At least in the costume, it was my job to help the helpless. These guys were actively making themselves helpless for someone they had no idea was a superhero.

Made me wonder how they were when they weren't working. Made me dread what those around them were experiencing. When I'd end up walking in on an emergency involving one of them and their families. I hoped it would never happen. Making my way into the break room, I was met with some solace as Chris was standing in front of a microwave, arms crossed.

"Charlie," I said out loud as I approached him, looking around to confirm no one else was there. One person was reading a magazine, but seemed pretty distracted by it. The cover had a picture of Lady Liberty. The lack of coverage for her legs in her costume was greatly emphasized. He'd be busy. But just in case, I reached over to the TV, which was going over some mundane story about a girl who was falsely accused of buying alcohol, when it was actually bottled water. Suitably dumb enough to drown us out.

Chris looked back to me scratching the back of his head.

"Oh, hey, Harry. How's your first day going so far?" I shook my head, slipping into a seat at one of the other tables.

"Herding cats. How about you?"

"Only one cat I'm herding," Chris explained, pulling out a cup of noodles and bringing it to the table so he could sit across from me.

"Mostly papers, though." Dropping to a lower voice so that the volume of the TV would drown him out, he continued.

"Anything noteworthy?"

"No in terms of workers. It's only been one day, though. Did overhear on the news that they're talking about Sam." Chris clicked his tongue.

"Fudge, man. She doesn't need that." None of us needed it. But maybe looking one of her sins in the face would make her reconsider what she did to me.

"Means we're gonna be under more scrutiny," I added.

"Just hoping the ADU doesn't need any mad scientists."

"The good news is I don't think tree-wizards would have any use for her. Outside of hostage situations, but she's probably in the safest position of anyone in that building besides us. They'd have to get into her lab, and that requires getting past Agent Tank," he said with almost a laugh. Chris didn't know about Tancred's power. Why was he so confident?

"He's still just a guy."

"Yeah but he's got the phone number of those Patriot Project guys. I ended up getting a bit of information on them from Billy. Those guys are super scary. The one for Virginia was interesting."

"... Virginia has one?"

"Maybe? All of the Patriot Project supers are named after state capitals. So there's an Agent-""-Richmond," I interrupted, the thought dawning on me.

"So what's interesting about him?"

"No one's ever seen her use her powers. They're confidential. I don't think Tancred would tell us about her if we asked." Every time Tancred's named someone from the Patriot Project, it wasn't exactly good news. Wasn't sure if Chris knew about the fact Tancred threatened to bring in a superhuman who could've killed him just to deal with Technofiend. Wasn't going to risk setting that off. I needed him stable.

"He's always willing to blurt cryptic nonsense out to me, I'll see if I can goad something out," I assured him.

"I don't expect much, though. They might just use the state capitals generically." Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"That'd mean there's only fifty members. Unless Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the Trinity Islands also count. And any other American territories. Agent Palmyra Atoll?" He asked, prompting me to raise an eyebrow.

"What the fuck is that?"

"It's an island the United States owns, about a thousand miles south of Hawaii. It's owned by The Nature Conservancy, I went on a field trip to their headquarters in Arlington. Random little fact's stuck with me for..." He looked off to the side as he mouthed out some math.

"Ten years now."

"Okay, I guess," I stated in hopes maybe that worked as a reasonable end to that topic.

"Regardless, I'll look into that another time. What's more important right now is actually in the warehouse. Are you able to look up any product numbers that are listed on barcode labels?"

"Can I? That's like half the job so far. Why'd you ask?"

"There's some huge crates that aren't labeled. Just have barcodes on them. Same case for some other crates too." Reaching into my jacket, I pulled out and offered a folded up note containing the barcode numbers.

"I detailed everything I could with what little time I had for the ones I found in one aisle. It might just be nothing, but I want you to look into it for me." Chris gave me a thumbs up, shoving the note into his pants pocket.

"Will get to it lickety-split. After lunch though. I'm shocked you're not eating," he said, pointing to the empty table in front of me.

"I'm just going to have a big dinner. Besides, those bathrooms killed my appetite." He put on a smug look.

"I have my own bathroom in that office."

"Yuck it up, asshole." He laughed at that, and the rest of the lunch went by in silence. When I returned, I was already back to hauling shit around. The forklift operator tapped me on the back as I was moving a much more normally-sized box. After turning to face him, he started talking.

"Oh hey, dude, I really appreciated it with the forklift. I got another job that's not on the Net, but like, it's for guys on the Net. You get me?" I nodded.

"Right, we do it once a week, end of the week. I'll message you the place on Facebook, just look out for a message talking about a good spot for a wrestling watch party." Another nod from me.

"I'll keep an eye open. What's the job, anyway?"

"Just some stand-and-look-scary shit. We're there for two hours, you get two hundred at the end. You'll get it when you get there." Another nod from me as we parted ways. The day continued to crawl along fruitlessly until I hit the eight hour mark, going off of my phone's time. With that, I trudged over to Jonesy's office, where multiple men were lined up to collect their money from a similar shift.

I watched through the window as he procured a wad of bills for each person, handing them over in almost robotic motions until I was able to finally get in. I was quick to blurt out a "I didn't think we were getting paid daily."

"A lot of these guys aren't certain they'll stick the whole week out, so we're doing daily pay in those cases. You planning on lasting the whole week?" I nodded.

"Yeah. Was just here to pick up Charlie." He pointed a thumb at that door I was looking at earlier.

"Through there, up the stairs."

"Thanks," I replied before making my way through the door, closing it behind me. The stairwell was painted-over brick. Off-white. It went up, hit a flat point, and then turned to go further up. Reaching that flat point, a bit of curiosity got to me and I pressed an ear to the wall. Wanted to see if I could hear anything on the other side. Might be a good escape vector. The hiss of water pumps. Must be where most of the utilities are. Maybe the bathroom for the upstairs office used them.

Not worth too much thinking about now. Heading up the next set of stairs, I pushed into the office. There was Christian, alongside this mousy-looking older woman with curly black hair and glasses that were thicker than dinner plates.

"Oh, you must be Harry!" said the woman.

"Charlie's been telling me so much about you!" My eyes flicked over to Chris, who shrugged. The woman continued, "I was surprised to hear you did ballet growing up! But I see it now, your footsteps look very controlled." Chris was very lucky at that moment that I was unable to throw him out the window or into the next state over.

"Different period of my life. Charlie, come on, shift's over. We're heading out." Chris nodded, picking up his stuff and making his way for the door. Once we made our way through the door, into that stairwell, I spoke.

"Fucking ballet, really? You couldn't just say 'I don't know' or something to any questions?" The redhead threw his hands up defensively.

"I think in alphabetical order and she was asking what you did as a kid and I couldn't think of anything that started with A so I thought ballet!"

"... Not baseball, or basketball?"

"S comes after L!"

"You cannot be that fucking particular about the alphabetical order."

"I am when I'm trying not to raise any suspicion in a warehouse full of criminals!"

"We could take them."

"Do you want to take them?" I shrugged.

"At the moment? No. We'll talk more outside." When we finally made it out of the warehouse and through an emptier part of the parking lot, I finally started speaking.

"Got offered an off-Net job for security by a hench. I don't think I'll be able to justify you showing up there," I explained. He sighed and nodded.

"Yeah, probably not. Kind of regret the whole book-keeping cover. I'm not really doing anything here."

"Means you don't have to worry about deceiving people. And you're already doing some important shit with those books. Speaking of which, did you find out anything about the barcodes?"

"Oh, yeah!" He perked up quick with that, pulling his backpack out and digging out some papers. He flicked through them as he spoke.

"So most of them are actually listed clearly in the system. They're parts for boats and jetskis. The long box one is actually a set of 'soles' which are apparently what the floors on boats are called."

"So I was doing all that intrigue for nothing." Chris raised a finger.

"Not for nothing. One of these boxes, the one you wrote down as...

'Super small box, 10 of them' only was listed in the inventory as 'Duplicate assembly tools.'" I furrowed my brow.

"Sounds like it's already solved."

"No, every other set of duplicate tools says what they're for. This boat, that boat, whatever. This one doesn't have any. Did you hear any like... rattling or whatever in any of the boxes?" I thought back to those boxes. I never actually picked any of the unlabeled boxes besides the long ones up, they were already stocked and I never saw anyone move them over. They had to have been moved there earlier.

"No, actually. I can give them a feel tomorrow if they're still there."

"You sure you wanna risk them not being there tomorrow?" I shook my head.

"They're wedged pretty deep into the aisles. If they're being shipped, I bet we've got at least a day or so." He clicked his tongue, slipping the papers away.

"Not huge on that. But we shouldn't report it yet. Better to get all the facts before we go into a wild goose chase. Anything else?"

"Jetski crates. I moved over thirty goddamn jetskis. The boxes were all as tall as me. That feels suspicious."

"Could be sitting on two foot tall pallets." I clicked my tongue.

"Why do none of the big boxes catch your suspicions?" Chris raised a finger as we neared the gate.

"Think about it like this, Leo. Everyone cares about the big boxes. Those draw a lot of attention from any mail carrier, they might even have Customs come in to take a look. Small boxes? You could shove a bunch in a truck and so long as the most important small one is missed, they'll all pass through just fine." Well. That just made me wonder how many other small packages I wasn't paying attention to.