Chapter 79 – What Was Lost

I flicked my lockpick to the side, and the lock clicked open. My tail gave a happy twitch as I stood up in front of the door. “Got it.”

We’d already dropped Ghostscale off at the hospital where Harkness himself showed up to keep watch over him. This case must really be something to have a lieutenant playing guard dog. Made me wonder why Quinn and I were still on the case rather than someone specialized in solving crimes. Like a PK detective, for instance.

His info brought us here to one of his stash houses. Lenfield Apartments was… interesting. The entire place was dingy, and I felt like Quinn and I were about to be mugged despite wearing Harbor clothes. He claimed this was his only stash, but I didn’t believe that for a second. No way an Anarch known for thievery only had one stash.

Ghostscale complied with us surprisingly well, which made me second guess ratting on him. He genuinely didn’t know who hired him as far as I could tell. Everything was through a third party gang, which complicated things. Especially since said gang was the Ignis Brigade. If we wanted to make a move on them, we’d need to take our time and plan things out. They weren’t the kind of people we could just go question without any issues.

There were five underworld organizations that everyone knew not to mess with. There was the Hades Syndicate, Black Diamond, Ignis Brigade, and a couple others that kept to the central cities. The Pikers were dangerous, yeah, but they were a local, city-level gang versus the ones that stretched around the UCS.

Since we couldn’t do anything in that direction for the time being, we could at least retrieve what was stolen. Or half of what was stolen, anyway. Ghostscale already made the hand off with Ignis, and he hadn’t been considerate enough to take a picture of it before doing so. Apparently, he’d been hired to steal Arnest’s paint brush.

I turned the knob, and pushed open the door to the apartment. There was just enough light bleeding in from the hall so that my eyes didn’t even have time to adjust before I found the light switch. A fluorescent light flickered to life in the kitchen, and cast light across the small apartment building.

”We probably could’ve just asked the landlord for the key.” Quinn followed me into the apartment. “Would’ve been easier?”

“We’d have to find the landlord first.” I was ninety percent sure this place was a drug den. The scents bleeding out of some of the apartments suggested as much, anyway. There was a high chance the landlord bolted the moment the two of us showed up in our Harbor gear.

My eyes flicked around the cluttered apartment. There was all sorts of random junk just lying around. Most of it looked kind of valuable? I wasn’t totally sure, but the couch was covered in rifles, smgs, and handguns. Those definitely had quite a bit of value on the black market.

“He said it was in the bedroom.” Quinn moved past me into the apartment with her nose scrunched up in disgust. She picked up a hot-pink SMG covered in kiss mark stickers. “Who would do something like this?

“A teenager?” It looked like something that green-hair bitch would like. I kicked the door shut with my foot and locked it behind us. “Definitely need to get some QRF down here to start confiscating this stuff.”

“Why? You don’t want to leave a ton of firearms in a drug den?” Quinn set down the hot-pink SMG and shuffled to a short hallway in the back of the apartment. Boxes of stuff were left haphazardly stacked around the hallway like Conway had a serious hoarding problem. “What could go wrong?”

“The druggies start up a rebellions?” I followed after her into the master bedroom. There wasn’t even a bed in this place. He was using it purely as a storage facility. At the center of the bedroom sat a jury-rigged easel with a painting on top of it. I whipped off a tarp covering the painting.

The painting depicted a beautiful bear Apex playing with a little kid at a park. The right side of the painting was taken up by the side profile of Professor Arnest staring at the duo with warm, longing eyes like he wanted to reach out and hold them close. Each stroke of paint was filled with a deep sadness. Despite everything that could be said about the man, he really was a master painter. Even I was feeling something looking at it.

My ears lowered, and I stared at the smiling faces of Arnest’s family. The pure grief radiating off the painting was enough to stir up a resonating response deep inside of me. Mom, Dad… in my mind’s eye, their faces slowly started to come back to me. They were blurred and distant, though, like they were lost behind a layer of fog.

A soft sense of yearning filled the corners of my heart. I almost wished I was right there alongside the three of them for a moment. I shook my head, and looked away from the painting before that feeling could fully take root. If I had to choose between living an idealized life with my parents still alive and the present with Sylvie, it wasn’t even a choice.

“I see why Ghostscale stole this.” Quinn stopped beside me to stare at the masterpiece. “How much do you think this would’ve gone for at an auction?”

”I don’t know. You’d have a better idea than me.” I would guess quite a lot, though. It was the last work of Professor Arnest, and the one he died trying to—

| Happier Days

Type: Curio

Anomalous Property: Wish You Were Here

Effect: Induces profound longing for those the viewer has lost. Continued observation intensifies the effect until the viewer joins the painting. |

My tail shot out straight, and my ears perked up alertly. I glanced through the biosystem’s readout and forced myself to look away from the painting. What did it mean by join the painting? Unless… maybe Arnest didn’t have a heart attack after all?

“Quinn.” I turned back to find my Guardian totally spaced out. Her eyes held a deep yearning, and her hand kept twitching like she wanted to reach out. I grabbed her shoulder to roughly shake her. “Quinn!”

“Huh? Huh, what?” She blinked a few times, and her eyes settled on me. She seemed to realize what I had a moment later. She turned her back on the painting with a frown on her face. “I… something’s wrong with this painting.”

“I think it's an anomaly.” I grabbed a blanket from the side, and tossed it over the painting so neither one of us would be tempted to look into it longer.

”A human-made one?” Her head tilted to the side. Her short blue hair swayed in the dim light of the bedroom. “I guess… it’s not impossible.”

Most anomalies had no clear source, but every once in a while there were ones made by people. Most of the time it was totally by accident. That was a field of research heavily restricted by the UCS, so I wasn’t too clear on all of it. Either way, an anomaly was an anomaly. Some were useful, and some weren’t. This one in particular was just a straight hazard.

“I’ll call it in.” Quinn shuffled back out toward the living room. I looked around for any hint of another anomaly just in case I missed another one, and followed after her.

— — —

Several hours later, my bike came to a stop outside of a specific building. So this was the place? I sat up in the seat of my Redline, and slicked my soaked hair back behind my head. It didn’t look like much. I figured someone as highly vaunted as the Grail Knight would be somewhere a little less… run down? “Are you sure?”

”The signal is coming from underground, Operator.” Vigil spoke up from his position tucked into my hood. The plushie peeked up over my shoulder so he could keep an eye on everything. “This unit is sure.”

”Okay.” I pulled into an alley, and pulled out Redline’s key. The bike instantly pixelated underneath me.

Honestly, I really didn’t want to come out here tonight. I spent several hours with Quinn at that dingy apartment while we worked with the QRF and containment. My hands roughly rubbed at my eyes, and I barely managed to suppress a yawn. I promised Vigil, though. That meant more to me than a little sleepiness.

I stepped out onto the dark streets. The building in question was a boarded up market. The entire building was smothered in years of graffiti. The front door was all boarded up still. I could just bust through them, ‘course. I alertly checked up and down the street. There was no point drawing more attention than I needed to.

Instead of going through the front door, I moved along an alley toward the loading bays at the back. It was easy enough to pry open one of the heavy metal shutters and roll underneath them into the back of the market. My strength hadn’t been building up for no reason.

The inside of the market’s back warehouse was almost pitch black. A rat scurried away somewhere, causing one of my ears to twitch up sharply. What were the chances I ran into another Reaprat? Or some other Calamity that lurked through this place.

”I bet you a Vitae we get ambushed by something.” My eyes adjusted to the darkness. Everything turned into a blurred mess of washed out shades, though I could still make out what was what.

”This unit wishes to up the bet to two that we won’t.” Vigil’s voice pushed back some of the unease spreading through me.

“Two, huh? Greedy little guy.” I reached back, and pulled him into my arms. If I lost that’d put him at four Vitae? Honestly, it didn’t really mean anything. “Fine. Any idea where we’re going?”

”There’s a storm sewer maintenance room off to the back of the warehouse.” A thin beam of light pushed out of Vigil’s eyes, and lit the way forward.

I followed the silver wolf plushie’s instructions, and worked my way to a staircase tucked away in the back corner of the facility. A heavy metal trapdoor used to block it, but the door had been levered open at some point in the past.

We moved down into a damp passageway with several rooms going off of it like this was some kind of subterranean bunker. Most of the doors were open, leaving plenty of potential ambush points. I stopped before each one and carefully listened for any signs of movement before proceeding forward.

An extremely faint trail of displaced dust ran through the place, though. I followed in the footsteps of whoever came before me and worked my way down the halls. The path ended at a locked door.

Unlike the rest of the place, the door actually had an electronic lock on it. An electronic lock that was still turned on despite the powerless state of the place. “Can you get this open?”

“Affirmative.” Vigil’s eyes pulsed with red light. The lock softly hissed, and the access panel flickered green. “Proceed.”

The sealed door opened up into a medium sized chamber absolutely filled with electronics and devices I could recognize. About a quarter of the tech matched the stuff that was on the downed ship out in the Mire. The other three quarters were things I could find all over Silverport.

A mattress lay off the side with a neatly folded blanket on top of it. There was even a small kitchen set up complete with a microwave and water pump. It seemed someone had spent some serious time down here if they got all of that set up.

Honestly, seeing the place felt all sorts of weird. All this time Vigil had talked about the Grail Knight, it slipped my head that he was just a person like the rest of us. A chipped coffee mug with a unicorn on it off to the side just drove that point home even further.

“Was he here?” I asked Vigil. The plushie remained silent in my arms as he likewise scanned the place.

All the wires and electronics throughout the room were hooked up into a central generator unlike anything I’d seen before. A cylinder half full with a glowing golden light sat on top of the generator. It was about the size of a fire extinguisher, and had a handle on top of the cylinder like a briefcase. “What is that?”

“Solium Power Cell… it’s liquid sunlight.” Vigil warmed in my arms. “They’re used to power Titans. Push the cell into the generator, Operator.”

“‘Kay.” I followed his instructions, and pushed the power cell in by its handle. It took me a second to realize it was a twist lock mechanism, but it smoothly slid in once I figured it out.

Power surged through the room, and monitors on the far side of the hidden away room flickered to life. Months old news articles, maps of the UCS, and all kind of information was pulled up on them. Lights overhead blinded me for a moment, and I lifted a hand to cover my eyes. Once everything settled down, my stinging eyes slowly got used to the new brightness.

Almost everything was covered in thick layers of dust. The Grail Knight obviously hadn’t been back here anytime recently. That ship… the Overseer said it crashed three months ago back when we were setting off, or something like that. The Grail Knight would’ve had somewhere around four months to figure out his next steps and move on from here.

I eyed the generator with renewed appreciation. Liquid sunlight, huh? Yet another thing I’d never heard of. Where in the world could something like that even be made? The Mire covered all of Arthis as far as I knew. It’d probably be hard to harvest sunlight when it couldn’t pierce through the fog and clouds most days.

“There.” Vigil lit up a computer with his eyes. “That is the source of the signal.”

”Should probably shut it off while we’re here.” We wouldn’t want someone else to find this. Someone like Bartmoss, who was actively hunting the Grail Knight. I sat down in the chair, and clicked around mindlessly on the computer. “Can you do it? And copy all of the data?”

The bot warmed in my hands. A wire poked out through his tail. Although he looked like the world’s softest plushie, it was easy to forget he was still a Titan Core through and through. “Plug me in.”

“Roger.” I set him down on the table, and plugged him into the computer. The monitors slowly started to shut off one by one as he did his thing.

A crystal tucked away behind the computer caught my eye. I leaned forward, and picked the hunk of rock up. It was small and opaque like a piece of quartz. “Is your Grail Knight a geologist?”

“Negative.” Vigil buzzed in my arms. “Set the crystal next to me.”

“‘Kay.” I pulled the plushie out of my hood, and plopped him onto the table. Honestly, I wasn’t totally sure what we were looking for.

Red beams of light erupted from Vigil’s eyes, and traced across the crystal’s structure. Where the beams crossed, light bounced off and cast a pale red glow throughout the room.

”What is it?” I poked at the crystal. It looked like an ordinary piece of quartz to me. Then again, that wasn’t saying much since I never studied rocks.

“It’s an Engram.” Vigil’s eyes glowed an even bright intensity, and he quickly scanned through the structure of the crystal.

”Um… in layman terms, maybe?” I poked the plushie’s head.

”It’s a hyper advanced data storage device similar to your thumb drives.” For a moment, his eyes flicked to me almost with annoyance. “It will take some time to decrypt the stored data.”

“Oh.” I eyed the piece of crystal. Honestly, it looked like any other rock that I could pick up off the ground. “Do we need to do that here?”

”Negative.” Vigil’s eyes swept over the rest of the room. The familiar red glow scanned through the junk like he was looking for treasure. “Operator, there is enough supplies here to partially repair me.”

”Back to your Titan form? No way.” I stared at the random junk in surprise. Was the Grail Knight trying to make another Titan from a bunch of scrap metal?

“It will take far more than this to create a Titan.” Vigil’s eyes pulsed twice as if amused. “This unit can repair some functions, though.”

“Oh…” My tail stopped wagging, and my ears pulled back ever so slightly. There went my dreams of cruising around the streets of Silverport in a massive battle mech. Still, some repairs were better than nothing. “What do you need?”

Lights swept across the space, and red lasers pointed out a dozen items spread across the room. “This unit requests you retrieve them before we leave.”

“Okay.” I had no problem with that. If my cute little plushie could be more helpful, then who was I to say no?

I moved around the room, and scrounged up everything he wanted including the Titan power cell. The power cell wound up being the largest item amongst the lot. Once I had everything, I snagged Vigil and headed back the way we came. For once, nothing went horrendously wrong—well, except me losing two more Vitae to the Titan Core.