Mistrunner 3 - Chapter 22 - Not My Problem (Patreon)

I only met Caden a few times, but it was clear from the very beginning that he didn’t like me much. I think he was jealous of me, of his sister’s affection. Or maybe he just didn’t like the idea of seeing someone his own age actually succeeding. With me around, he had evidence that success was possible, and so, his excuses for why he’d never done anything note started to ring untrue.

Patrick Ward

Cyrilla Montague was a fastidious woman – normally. Patrick didn’t talk about her much, likely because it would have been weird if he’d gone on and on about his ex-girlfriend to his current partner. But what he’d let slip definitely supported my first impressions of the woman. However, when she pulled us into her apartment, the first thing I noticed was that it was in a horrible state of disarray.

Empty food containers – that had once contained the sort of cheap stuff only the incredibly busy, lazy, or poor usually ate – decorated the counters, and there were piles of discarded clothing all over the floors. More, her appearance reflected the state of the apartment, and calling her disheveled would have been a generous assessment. Her pink hair hung limp and greasy, and dark circles stood beneath her eyes, hinting that she hadn’t slept properly in quite some time.

Piles of junk, composed of disparate parts, wires, and raw materials meant for cybernetics, stood on shelves lining every wall. Clearly, the apartment was also Cyrilla’s work space, and not a well-kept one at that.

As the door slid shut behind us, Patrick managed to say, “What’s going on, Cy?”

I hated that he had a nickname for her.

“It’s Caden,” she said. “He’s in trouble.”

Patrick sighed. “What did he do this time? Another get-rich-quick scheme gone wrong?” he asked. “Or wait – he didn’t fall in love again, did he?”

“No. Maybe. I don’t know,” Cyrilla said, running her hand through her lank hair. She really as striking, though I never would have admitted as much out loud, especially not where she might hear. I hated her, and I didn’t want reality to get in the way of my carefully constructed perception of her.

“Just tell us what happened,” Patrick coaxed, reaching out to grip her shoulder. I flinched at the familiar, if innocent, contact. “Take a breath and go slow.”

Cyrilla did just that, taking a deep breath that came close to becoming a sob. Then, she just collapsed onto one of the apartment’s chairs and buried her head in her hands. After raking her fingers through her hair, she gave a quivering sigh before speaking. “It’s Caden, you know? He doesn’t know the world. Not like we do,” she said. Patrick sat across from her while I remained standing. Not only was there no room for me to sit – the place really was tiny and the main room doubled as a kitchen, living, and dining area. It reminded me of the domiciles back in Nova – the really cheap ones where nobody lived unless they had no other choice. Clearly, she had fallen pretty far from the position she’d occupied back in Nova.

Was that my fault? Or was it a conscious choice on her part?

After composing herself, she said, “I don’t know what got into him. One day, he was just gone, leaving only a note behind.”

“What did the note say?”

“That he loved me and that he’s fine,” she said. “Just that he’d finally found his place.”

“What does that mean?” Patrick asked. I remained silent, mostly because I had no idea what to say. I didn’t know the backstory, and so, I didn’t think I could offer anything of substance the discussion.

“I don’t know,” she breathed. “He’s run off before, but it’s always because of a girl. Or some kind of job. This is different, though.”

“How?” he asked.

“It’s these people he’s been hanging around,” Cyrilla said. “They’re…they’re not exactly bad. They help a lot of people around here. It’s just…I just get this strange impression of them. It’s like they have some ulterior motive.”

“Like what?” Patrick asked, glancing at me. We’d seen a lot since branching out into the world, and one thing seemed almost universally true: if someone seemed like they had an ulterior motive, then they probably did. And chances were that it wasn’t anything good. More than once, we’d encountered human smuggling rings that duped impressionable young people into thinking they were going to escape their boring – or sometimes outright depressing – lives. Only, when those young people reached their destination, they did so to realize that they were being fixed with a slave implant.

“They’re called the Pillar of Heaven,” she said. “I don’t know what their doctrine is. Not exactly. But from what I understand, they preach collectivism. They’ve even established a city a few hundred miles from here.”

“But you don’t trust them?” asked Patrick.

She narrowed her eyes. “You know Caden,” she said. “He’s a lot of things, and I think he’s a good person – under it all – but he’s not really the type to work for the greater good. There’s something weird going on with those people. I know it. And the worst part is that he completely cut contact. Like, he won’t respond at all anymore. It’s like he dropped off the face of the Earth. He’s not –”

Just then, the door slid open. I reacted quickly, yanking Ferdinand II out of my arsenal implant and wheeling around to face what I thought was an attacker. As I turned out, the intruder was a teenage girl with vivid blue hair and matching makeup. She was dressed in a pair of grease-spattered coveralls.

She threw her hands up, screeching, “Just take whatever you want! Don’t resist, Cece!”

“Don’t shoot!” Cyrilla said at the same time as she reached for my gun. That was a big mistake, and she ended up with one of her arms twisted behind her back as I kept my weapon trained on the newcomer.

“What the hell is going on?” I demanded.

At the same time, Patrick asked, “Cece?”

Meanwhile, Cyrilla whimpered in pain. I hadn’t yanked her shoulder out of socket, but I knew precisely how much pain she was in. During my training, my instructors had favored pain as the best way to really nail a lesson down.

“Ten seconds,” I said. “That’s how long you all have before I just cut my losses, start shooting, and leave this weird town behind. Ten. Nine. Eight…”

I didn’t get any further before Cyrilla hissed, “She’s just my girlfriend!”

“Just?” asked the blue-haired girl. “I’m justyour girlfriend?!”

“Cece?” muttered Patrick again.

That’s when I let out a sigh of annoyance and let Cyrilla go. As I did so, I said, “That was really stupid, you know. Never reach for someone’s gun like that. You’re lucky I didn’t put you down by reflex alone.”

“Can anyone explain why there are two strangers here?” interjected the girl. “And what the hell, Cece? Do you ever clean? I swear –”

“Stop,” I said, still pointing my weapon at the girl. “Who are you?”

“I’m Tate,” she answered. “And I should be asking you the same thing.”

“Maybe. But I’m the one with the gun,” I said.

“That’s…a good argument,” she admitted.

“So…”

“Oh. Right. I’m Tate. Cece and I have been together for…six months, maybe?  But considering I’m just her girlfriend, that might change,” she said. “That one, little word has a lot of meaning behind it, doesn’t it. Just. Like I’ll never be anything else.”

“That’s not what I meant, and –”

“Stop,” I said again. “I am not getting into your little relationship drama. What I will do is ask why any of this is our problem, though. I get it. Your brother up and ran off with some creepy people. But I really don’t see how any of this is my problem.”

Cyrilla looked at me like I’d gone crazy and said, “Wait – that’s not why you’re here?”

“Uh…no?”

Before I could say anything else, Patrick said, “We’ll look into it, Cy. I won’t promise we’ll find anything, but if we do this for you, I want your help with my project. That’s the deal.”

“Of course. I’d have helped you regardless. You know that,” Cyrilla said, a shadow of her old composure returning.

At the same time, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tate mouthing the word, “Cy”.

“Pick,” I said. “I don’t think –”

He gave me a pleading look and said, “We’ll talk about it in a little bit, okay? Just trust me.”

Of course, that was easier said than done. I did trust Patrick, and more than anyone else I knew. However, doing so went against every instinct I had. Still, I just nodded and said, “Alright.”

It was a simple response to what would probably turn out to be a complicated situation. But I owed him the benefit of the doubt.

After that, things settled down, and Cyrilla gave us the rundown on the so-called Pillar of Heaven. There really wasn’t much more to it, save the details of where they’d set up a small operation meant to cater to the dregs of any urban society. They offered counseling for drug addicts, free meals, and even a safe place for the homeless to spend a few nights. On top of that, they had a well-known slave implant removal operation, much like the Nats had cultivated back in Nova.

Once she’d finished, I said what I knew Patrick was thinking. “None of this seems bad,” I said. “They kind of seem like the good guys.”

“Except for the fact that people keep going missing,” Cyrilla said.

Tate, who’d decided to help herself to some questionable leftover food, gestured with a pair of chopsticks and said, “That’s what I’ve been telling her. Caden was a screwup, but people change. They get better. Maybe he found a purpose.”

“Caden doesn’t care enough about anyone but himself to have willingly devoted his life to that kind of cause,” Cyrilla said.

Patrick added, “That’s more like the guy I knew. Maybe he changed, but…”

“People never really change. They evolve, but they don’t just do a one-eighty like that,” I said.

Tate adopted a sullen expression, but she dropped the argument. Getting ganged up on by three other people would usually cut off any argument. Finally, Patrick and I had exhausted the opportunity for more information, so after he and Cyrilla made arrangements to work together on his project, we left the depressing apartment behind. The moment the door shut, I could hear the happy couple start shouting at one another.

That brought a smile to my face.

“She really does have a type,” I remarked as we stepped into the elevator that would take his back to the ground floor.

“Huh?” he said.

“You and Tate,” I said. “You have to have noticed the similarities, right?”

“She’s a girl.”

“So observant. That’s why I love you,” I said. “Nothing ever slips past those eagle eyes of yours. My point is that you’re both young, pretty, and –”

“I am not pretty.”

“I think you are.”

“Men aren’t pretty. I’m ruggedly handsome.”

“Sure, sure. That’s what I meant.”

After that, we reached the ground floor and quickly found her way back to one of the robot-driven taxis, which took us back to the docks where we boarded the Leviathan. After seeing the state of Cyrilla’s apartment, I was very much glad to be back within the ship’s familiar confines.

“So,” I said once we were alone again. “Care to explain yourself?”

“Not really?”

“Well, do it anyway.”

“Fine. So, when I contacted Cy, she was kind of…distraught,” he explained. “And I might have offered to help. You know, in exchange for her help with the suit.”

“So, she didn’t demand it as payment?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Not as such, but I think she was going to,” Patrick answered. “Like, I get it, too. Her brother’s a screw-up, but he’s still family. That means something. Besides, it’ll give you something to do, right? While Cy and I are working, you can look into the whole thing.”

I sighed, but I didn’t immediately responds. As much as I didn’t want to leave Patrick alone with Cyrilla, I knew I couldn’t exactly hang around. For one, it would drive me insane from boredom. For another, me hovering over their proverbial shoulders wouldn’t be terribly productive. And finally, I felt certain that Patrick would start to resent me for lack of trust if I insisted on remaining attached at the hip.

“So, what do you think?” he asked.

“That you shouldn’t volunteer me for things without my permission,” I said.

“Mira, I didn’t –”

“I’m just joking,” I lied. In truth, I was annoyed even if I knew the reasoning behind his actions. It wouldn’t have been so frustrating if he’d just told me, but I knew making a big deal out of it was a good way to start an argument that would do neither of us any good.

“I should’ve told you,” he said, guessing the source of my irritation. “It’s just awkward, you know? I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

It wasn’t, but I would get over it.

“We can go. We don’t have to do this,” he offered. “I can figure the suit out on my own. Jerry up in Vancouver has a solid workshop, and he owes us one.”

“Jerry’s an alcoholic with a gambling problem who’s constantly in trouble with one group or another,” I said “Cyrilla’s a better option if you want to get this thing done without adding a bunch of issues.”

“Like a missing brother and a creepy cult?”

“Are we sure it’s a cult and not just a group of people who want to help their fellow humans?” I asked. He looked at me like I’d said the dumbest thing imaginable. “Yeah. You’re right.”

There were probably some such organizations out there, but in my experience, there was almost always some sort of nefarious purpose behind those sorts of groups. Individually, people were more than capable of kindness, but groups of people were far less inclined toward that sort of thing. Or maybe that was just my cynicism showing through once again.

In the end, looking into Cyrilla’s issue was probably a good way to distract myself while we were in Fortune. At worst, it would be diverting, but there was also the chance I would do some good. I’d certainly never claim to be a great person; I just as selfish and self-interested as anyone else in the world, and my actions usually reflected that. But I tried to do the right thing whenever possible.

And looking into the Pillar of Heaven probably fell into that column. Hopefully, I’d find that they were just a charitable organization who wanted to make the world a better place, but I wasn’t holding out any hope for that.

“I’ll start the investigation tomorrow,” I said.

“Just an investigation. No blowing things up.”

“Hey – you’re the one who dragged me into this. You can’t tell me how to do my job, now. Speaking of which, any chance Cyrilla’s going to pay me? Or am I doing this pro bono?”

“You saw her apartment. I don’t think she’s in a position to pay anyone anything,” he said. “Which is weird, because she lived in a much nicer place before.”

“Maybe she’s got a drug and/or gambling problem. She seems the type.”

“No she doesn’t, Mira.”

I shrugged. “You never know. A woman her advanced age? She probably has to do whatever it takes to keep the existential fear of looming death at bay,” I said.

“Mira…”

“Fine,” I said, sitting down on the edge of our bed. “I’ll keep the age comments to myself. But I reserve the right to go back on that if she annoys me in any way.”