Chapter Four
Ben frowned at Dani’s back until the door slid shut behind her. He glanced around, made sure Lopez remained distracted with the wounded maid, and then plucked at his jumpsuit collar for a quick sniff.
Nothin’. She was just messin’ with me. He took a deeper whiff. Right? Right.
He slipped over to the handyman and watched him work for a few minutes. Already a few gashes on the maid’s stomach had sealed over and her breathing had evened. Nothing more Ben could do here.
“You got this?” he asked.
Lopez nodded without looking up.
Ben cast a worried look over at Sherri’s body. He felt half-blinded without his ability to sense Corrupt energies anymore. There could’ve been charbeetles festering in her bowels, for all he knew, and the first hint he’d get would when they burned their way out to cover the room in flaming gunk.
He patted Lopez on the back. “Keep me in the loop, yeah?”
He headed for the exit and slammed face-first into the door, which had failed to open. Reeling, he slapped a hand to his nose. His grunt of pain echoed through the training room.
“Sonuva …” He bit down on the curse before the foul-filter activated. After making sure his nose remained intact, he glared at the door and tried a variation. “Son of a bloody biscuit!”
The substitute swear didn’t help alleviate the pain nearly as well, but it was better than nothing. Maybe Dani’s tactic wasn’t a bad idea. He needed to expand on his vehement vocabulary to get around the spell in more creative and satisfying ways.
Lopez looked over in concern, but Ben waved him away, trying not to flush with embarrassment. He eyed the uncooperative door as he eased his hand into a side pocket, and then groaned when he touched glassy shards.
“Aw, crap-on-a-stick.”
After dumping the shards out onto the floor, he knelt and stirred a finger through them, seeing if there was any chance of restoring the access sigil. No such luck. It must’ve been shattered during the fight; not a glimmer of imbued energy remained.
“For Purity’s sake …” He grabbed his handheld radio and tuned it to the proper channel before clicking the button to speak. “Janitor Ben reportin’ a little equipment malfunction. Monty, you readin’ me?”
Static crackled for a few seconds before a voice cut through.
“What’d you break this time, Ben? We’ve had a bet running.”
Ben glowered at the speaker. “It’s my access sigil. Smashed to glitter.”
“Yeah? What were you using it for? Hammering nails into your thick skull?”
“Har. If you’re wantin’ me to drop by and dole out the details, I’m gonna need a way to actually get to you. Whattaya say?”
“I’ll requisition a new one. But it’ll be a day or two.”
“You’re kiddin’, right? I need a sigil to just walk around here. I’m not sittin’ in one spot for two days until you can chant a new one.”
“Hey, I’ve got a laundry list to work through that’d put a dry cleaners at a tar pit to shame. You should’ve taken better care of the one you were issued. And you know this new one will—”
“Come out of my pay. I figured.” He leaned against the wall. “Fine. Dock me whatever’s due, but can’tcha get it to me before I starve to death? Or gotta use the little boy’s room?”
“I’ll send someone to get you,” Monty said. “Keep your britches bleached.”
“Do you know how much that’d itch?” Ben asked, before hearing the click which signaled Monty had gone off-channel. He sighed and hooked the radio on his belt. Francis had provided the first access sigil after Ben lost his powers, since all of HQ’s doors and glassways activated only when a Cleaner’s Pure energies were sensed—a security measure to keep Scum from infiltrating the place, and also how management tracked everyone in the facility.
He pushed aside the temptation to call Lopez over to open the exit. Never a good idea to interrupt a handyman’s healing. Sitting beside the door, he snagged Carl’s spray bottle and held the water sprite at eye level.
“Learn any new jokes lately, buddy?”
An hour passed as Carl regaled him with humorous one-offs, which often involved birds for some reason, especially seagulls and pelicans. It was one aspect of elemental humor Ben had never quite comprehended.
Then footsteps sounded outside right before the door slid open.
“’Bout time.”
Ben jumped up and nearly rammed into the heavyset woman who planted herself in his way. Putting a thick fist on a thicker hip, she slurped from a steaming coffee mug, which read This is Not Your Day. Dark brown eyes stared at him with hostile curiosity. Ben smoothed down his uniform as he recognized the other janitor, and Carl burbled through a series of shapes which roughly translated to: Don’t even think of trying to blame me for this one.
They sized each other up while Ben tried to figure out the best way to break the ice—or iceberg in this case. He settled for a smile and wave as he secured the spray bottle on his hip.
“Heya, Lu. Good to see you. Alive that is. And not tryin’ to kill me.”
Lucy didn’t twitch an eyelash. She’d been around since he and Karen first joined the Cleaners, and had worked with them on countless jobs over the years. They’d developed a comfortable camaraderie which had been lost after the job which left Ben infected and Karen deceased. Like everyone else, Lucy had kept her distance after he got out of quarantine.
The last time they’d been toe-to-toe, she’d headed up a team intent on keeping him and Dani locked down—albeit on Destin’s orders before the former Chairman had been exposed as Corrupted. Ben had exchanged a few blows with her before pulling a downright dirty trick, even for an old dog like him. He’d kissed her. Of course, instead of slipping his tongue down her throat, Ben had given her a mouthful of Carl so the elemental could choke her unconscious.
Not the sort of thing anyone would hold a grudge about, right?
At last, Lucy took a heavy swallow of coffee and licked at the black grains between her teeth. She spoke with the lightest of Latino accents, which Ben knew only surfaced when she was holding down her emotions something fierce. “Why is it anytime an internal emergency is reported, I just know you’re involved?”
“Y’know, I’ve been thinkin’ the anti-Ben bias is kinda becomin’ a thing ’round here …”
She looked past him. “What’s this I hear about a maid trying to bite people’s giblets off?”
He turned and waved into the training room. “Why don’tcha take a look?”
Lucy craned her neck to see better. She sucked in a breath.
“That bad?”
“One dead, another hangin’ on, thanks to Lopez. No idea what triggered it yet, not that I have much to do with that kinda work anymore.”
“Right. Well, I’m sure if it was important enough, they’d have sent a memo around to all the grunts by now.”
“Right. ’Cause grunts always get them important memos.” He hopped to one side and spoke to the space he’d just occupied. “So how’ve you been, Ben?” He hopped back. “Me? Why thankya, Lu, for carin’ enough to ask. Things’ve been shook up a might bit since we last butted buckets.” Ben lifted his arm to display himself. “Came out a little worse-for-wear, as you might see. But everythin’ else is in the right place, doin’ the right thing.”
Lucy appeared unamused. “And the girl? Whatshername?”
“Dani. She’s doin’ just fine. You two should get reacquainted. Mebbe go get your toenails painted and have a slumber party.”
Lucy pressed her plump lips together. “They won’t release the official reports, but everyone says you got rid of Destin.”
“Not so much got rid of. More like—”
“Rumor also has it the Board offered you the Chairmanship and you gave it over to Francis.”
Ben tried to edge around her, but he would’ve had to leave his skeleton behind to squeeze through the gap between her and the door jamb. Her gaze and stance didn’t budge. In another life, he could’ve pictured her as a drill sergeant. And not the shouty type either. One that could make the military minions want to demote themselves just by going still and fixing them with a particular look.
“Since when’re you goin’ ’round trustin’ rumors? Look, I got an appointment—”
She took another slow chug of her drink. “Same rumors also say you’re powerless now, since you’re needing an access sigil and all that.”
“I …” Ben sagged. “Gossipin’ just ain’t good for company morale.”
Frosty humor twinkled in her eyes. “I could have some real fun with this.”
“Now that’d be downright immature of you, don’tcha think? Ain’t you a big girl?”
She drained her mug and then peered at the contents at the bottom as if divining her next move from the settled patterns of the grinds.
“I’ve always been against cruelty toward helpless animals,” she said.
“Should I be feelin’ relieved or insulted?”
A shrug. “Eh. Room for both.”
They stood side-by-side, Lucy lost in dark thoughts while Ben tried to figure out how he should feel toward her. Ben studied her out of the corner of one eye, and then realized she’d been doing the same to him.
She grimaced. “What?”
He stepped out into the hall, and the door slid shut behind him. “Just ain’t seen you since our, uh, little encounter in the Recyclin’ Center.”
She tugged a few snarls out of her mess of black curls. “Yeah. Went on a rotation in Seattle. Bunkered down with a couple plumbers who’d run across a rotworm nest. Finally managed to flush the suckers out.”
“Whatcha back here for?”
“At the moment? You.”
His brows popped skyward. “Me? Look, Lucy, that pucker sucker-punch I laid on you? I know it kinda knocked you flat, but that was the point, and the only point, lemme tell you. ’Sides, technic’ly we weren’t swappin’ spit, since Carl—”
She whacked his arm hard enough he winced.
“Stow it. A bunch of us were in Supplies getting restocked when you put in your call. Monty ordered us onto volunteer duty and I pulled the short straw.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah. Ah. So don’t think I won’t leave you locked in the first broom closet we come to if you make this any more difficult than it has to be. Where do you need to go?”
He started walking and she moseyed after.
“Employee Records,” he said. “I had an appointment to dig into some of the archives.”
“A real appointment or one you’ve made up as an excuse to get a guide?”
“Real one, believe it or not.”
“I don’t believe it.”
He paused and laid a hand over his heart. “Aww, I’m hurt.”
Her finger thumped his chest. “Not yet.”
“Listen, Lu, can’tcha just get me there and see? I promise, cross my heart and stick a cherry in my eye, that if I don’t got a right and proper appointment, you can march me straight to the nearest broom closet.”
She studied him for a moment and then tilted her head down the hall.
“So what’re you looking for?” she asked as they resumed walking.
“I stashed some dirty mags in there before everythin’ went britches over bonkers for me and wanted to see about gettin’ ’em back.”
She latched onto his arm and dragged him toward a side hall.
“Closet it is then,” she said.
He managed to yank lose. “Sorry, Lu. I was just tryin’ to get a chuckle outta you. Used to be that weren’t so hard. But here’s the truth.” When he touched a breast pocket, the folded picture he’d slipped in there crinkled. “I’m lookin’ for anythin’ that might mebbe tell me what actually happened on my last job with Karen. Somethin’ that’d finally help me find out what them Scum did to her.”
She paused, and a look he couldn’t identify flickered across her face. Pain? Anger? Did she think he chased a lost cause? Even Francis, with the authority he wielded, hadn’t been able to provide Ben with much beyond what the public records already stated. He tried to meet her eyes, but she glanced aside.
“Lu? Somethin’ wrong?”
She plodded ahead, and he hurried to match her.
“Let’s just get this done before this coffee wears off and puts me in a really bad mood,” she said.
“Yes’m.”