Crouched over on an old wooden dock at the curved marina's edge was a young woman holding a fishing pole. An ocean catamaran was roped to the shifting dock, sails tied down, a tabby cat napping in the sun at the port of the boat. The three stood at the end of the dock wondering if she was indeed the pirate they were looking for until she noticed them. She set the pole down and walked over to them. Her skin was exceptionally tan with light blue eyes and light brown hair. She wore worn sandals and a loose black t-shirt and running shorts, her simple attire a distractive reflection of her massive amount of wealth.
"Can I help you?" asked the pirate as she planted herself in front of them.
"You Ceto?" Mirek asked.
She nodded.
"We heard you're looking' for some hired help."
"And who are you?"
Sawyer moved in front of Mirek before he could spit an insult that would get them turned away. "I'm Sawyer. I own a gun shop in the red-light district, Canyon Jack."
"Yes, I've heard of that place. And how did you come to hear of this job?" she crossed her arms.
"Your cousins," said Mirek.
Ceto perked at the stranger's intimate knowledge, the statement enough to prove the man was a reliable enough source for the job. She was good at keeping off the radar despite being the most dangerous and ruthless raider on the seven seas. Whoever the freaky stranger was, he was knowledgeable and knew how to keep quite when necessary.
"One moment," she said and turned around, and went into the catamaran.
"Who the fuck are her cousins? Is that code for something?" Sawyer asked Mirek.
"Figure it out yourself."
Ceto came back with an envelope in hand. "I have a package waiting for me at an inn called The Messenger. A woman named Betaine is holding it for me. Give her this envelope, and she'll know what it means." She handed Sawyer the package. "You bring back my order, and I will give you twelve thousand US dollars."
"That's it?" Mirek looked at the plain envelope. "What the hell are you having us get that's worth twelve grand you can't get yourself?"
"I am only here on business, and I hate this city more than any in the world. I do my best to stay on the borders as much as possible. You can assume the package is valuable. Do not damage it, and do not open it, or there will be no payment." Ceto turned around and resumed her fishing at the edge of the dock.
Sawyer looked at Rhea. "Go get the car."
"Delton's car?"
"Yeah. You got it working again, right?"
"Yeah, but he'd be pissed if we take it without asking. And he's not allowed to ride in it," she jotted a thumb at Mirek.
"The Messenger isn't that far. We'll get the package and be back before he notices. Unless you would like to return to Irvin empty-handed."
Rhea grumbled and headed towards Sockeye. The keys were kept in the kitchen in an empty jar in one of the top cabinets. Rhea had to climb atop the counter to get them.
"Do you know where you're going?" she asked Sawyer from the back seat, the car swerving through the streets.
"Of course. I know this city like the back of my hand," Sawyer smiled.
Mirek groaned. "I thought this would be more exciting. Instead, we're fucking runners."
"Why doesn't she just hire a runner?" asked Rhea.
"Guess she doesn't trust easy," said Sawyer.
"You haven't told me why you guys need a job," Mirek said as he continued to try to fold himself in the passenger seat, his long limbs not fixed for the space of an average-sized man.
"Rhea needs to pay Irvin eight thousand dollars in three days, and she lost her chance to get the money."
"You are the one that led him to my shop."
Mirek laughed at Rhea's misfortune.
As they went from Downtown and through the glamor of Mahkota, they entered the Talun district. Scattered apartment complexes and motels, smaller buildings, and more people sleeping on the streets. Filth sat on the curbs and strings of clotheslines and lights draped between windows. The mixture of cultural architecture resembled Asian and pacific compared to Western design's more significant contribution to Downtown buildings. The Talun district was a snake that reached across the island from the north and south coasts. It was the border between civilization and the Jin district—where only wild animals and plants roamed.
When they arrived at the edge of Talun, they hid the car down an alleyway and followed Sawyer on foot. Rainbow eucalyptus towered over buildings where macaques were making homes among the branches and leaves. Between empty one-story buildings housed a swamp-like freshwater environment, growing with each rainfall as water collected where shifty damp earth stopped construction. Flourishing colors of pink cattails, green horsetails, and stringy light papyrus grew among the decaying stone and water. Pitcher plants dangled with their massive mouths open to catch the many bugs and small animals that had the misfortune of venturing into their traps. In the center of the miniature swamp was a bald cypress almost one hundred feet high.
As they turned down another street they came upon a seventy-foot-tall soapstone statue molded into the land—a snake-like god stood over them with three heads, mouths dropped open stuck in silent screams. A serpent's body coiled around the lower part of his body; the stone was carefully carved to show scales that ran up the human-like torso. Mold coated his coiled hair, carved to look like he was submerged under water.
There were stone figures throughout the island's ambit, and no one knew how they came to be; their existence exceeded beyond the memory of any living being that had crossed through the island. The strange stone stumped even Rusakov, but he and other powers who trampled through the city left the ancient ruins alone. Most of it was superstition, but even the most ruthless felt there were parts of the island they should respect.
Rhea stared beyond the serpent where only green could be seen. A terrene that was both thrilling and haunting. She felt compelled to abandon thought and venture into the unknown. Find answers to questions. But she felt there was something that didn't want to be found. She looked back at the statue. She swore one of the heads had moved, the far right head angled a little in her direction. Rhea felt herself shying away from the dangerous gaze that was growing to be too real.
"They say there are Komodos in the west," Mirek said to Rhea, tracing her gaze to the vegetation beyond. "I keep waiting to see one daring enough to venture beyond their habitat, finally put up with all the shit we've been doing to their home."
"You've never seen one?" Rhea asked.
Mirek shook his head. "But I bet they're out there."
Rhea didn't doubt it. The island's square mileage larger than Maluku, about two-thirds of it colonized. There had been numerous attempts for expansion, but it was a slow process with the land becoming uneven, older trees refusing to be uprooted easily, and marshlands softening the earth. With almost 8700 square miles of uncharted territory, there was room for undetected life. Even ancient dragons.
Sawyer led them away from the district border, realizing he was not headed in the right direction. Moving into the depths of the district, there were shops, buildings, and art. Rhea eyed the open window stores. She never cared for most of the shops Downtown. Rifles, shotguns, rapiers, falchions, semi-automatic firearms, katanas, scimitars, crossbows, sickles, shears—shopping for people looking to inflict harm. But where less menace roamed the streets, there was more to see than violence and gore.
As they went down Newnham Lay, Rhea caught sight of the music shop the Green Witch had told her about. The Jumping Monk Music Emporium was painted on the glass, behind housing guitars, saxophones, harps, tubas, cellos, flutes, trombones, clarinets, trumpets, French horns, and much more. Her heart jumped when she saw a viola, its body perfectly carved ebony and tight glistening strings. The sight of an instrument she thought she would never see again; she was shot into memories of another life.
"Rhea! What are you doing? C'mon," Sawyer shouted from ahead, he and Mirek about to cross the street. Rhea could barely pull herself away, but she got her feet moving and put a stamp on her memory of the shop's location.
"I thought you said you knew where this place was," said Rhea. They had been walking for almost forty minutes, with no Messenger Inn in sight.
"I do…or I did. It's been a while since I've been here," Sawyer scratched his head.
Rhea sighed. She glanced at her right wrist where the quartz watch her father had made for her ticked away the time. Soon Delton would arrive to find his car gone. And then, she may be kicked out on the street.
"You suck," Mirek shouted, pushing Sawyer out of the way. "I'll find the damn place."
"Like hell, you can't even read dipshit."
"I'll figure it out. It's better than you trying to find it."
Rhea groaned and looked around, trying to find a sign that might help get them out of the Talun labyrinth, when she noticed eyes on them. Standing across the street in drained red sneakers was a teenage girl with long blue hair watching them with honey-colored eyes. A blazing sun was tattooed on her left shoulder.
Ignoring the two bickering men, Rhea crossed the street, about to ask the girl for directions when she took off, nodding in indication to follow. Rhea called after her, but the girl said nothing, only stopped for a moment before running down the nearest alleyway. Rhea acted on the impulse, following her as she weaved through the buildings trying not to trip over trash cans and people. The blue-haired girl bounded over obstacles and took quick turns Rhea struggled to keep up with. The girl jumped and flipped over a dumpster and ran across the street right before a car sped past. Rhea ran across the street and nearly got hit BMW swerved and blared its horn at her. The thought had crossed her mind that this could be some sort of ambush, but she had no other hope left to advise caution.
Finally, the blue-haired girl stopped, and Rhea saw she was standing in front of a stone building with wood doors and cobblestone steps. It was a building that could appear welcoming and warm, and the sun was continuing to shine above the city, but there was an unseen shadow that Rhea could sense beneath the stone and wood. She found more and more structures in Samadoya were unintentionally gloomy and dirty and in search of dissipating light. There was a gentle glow radiating from foggy windows, and many tiles atop the pointed roof were missing. Three chimneys were sprouting from the frayed roof, two of the three puffing black some from their mouths. The curled font above the entrance read: The Messenger Inn. Rhea turned to thank the girl, but she was gone, running back the way she came.
Rhea opened the double doors to the inn, leading her to the ground floor, equipped with a vast koi fishpond in the space's center. Instead of chairs, numerous colorful and cotton-stuffed pillows around low-set tables where few lounged and smoked and discussed private matters. Altering colored hickory wood was panned beneath her boots. Incense smoked from holders placed in corners, and thick stone pillars cut through the lounge to hold the structure that did not imitate its macabre exterior. Though the inside expressed the structure's worn age and poor construction, the gentle lanterns and soft embroidered pillows lightened the atmosphere. It was a place some could find cozy. There was a hall in the far-left corner that led to the three stories of rooms above. Echoes came from the hall. Rhea could not make out sinister or not, but she knew this quiet environment did not last long beyond the ground floor. Along the wall, she saw a mouse running along the wood into one of many tiny holes lining the walls, the unmistakable chunk of a human thumb gripped between its teeth.
Rhea took a seat at one of the low tables close to the pond and dropped onto a teal cushion. It surprised Rhea that the pillow was as comfortable as it looked. She was eyeing some of the discrete writing edged into the surface of the dark wood when a negro woman with dark curly hair came to greet her. "Bisa dibantu?" she asked.
"Saya mencari seorang wanita bernama Betaine," Rhea sputtered out. She asked if the woman knew English, and she smiled with a nod.
"Call me Betty," she said in the tongue Rhea understood. "And you are?"
"I'm Rhea. I came here to give you…" she trailed off, remembering Sawyer was the one with the envelope.
As if on cue, Sawyer and Mirek entered the inn, followed by the blue-haired girl who walked up to Betty and signed to her with her hands before looking back at Rhea.
"Oliver says she heard you were looking for my inn," Betty said, eyeing the two men who she immediately trusted more diminutively than the frizzy-haired woman.
"You must be Betaine," said Sawyer. "We came to give you this." He handed Betty the envelope from his jacket, severely crinkled but still intact.
She took it, sliced open the top, and read the documents contained within. "Please, take a seat and have something to drink while we retrieve the package."
Sawyer and Mirek sat down on cushions aside Rhea and Betty brought them belly-wash cider. Around them, residents engaged in quiet conversations with the trickling of the pond waterfall in the background. Rhea could detect more strange noises coming from the rooms above. Thumps of tossed furniture, screams and howls, scratching of nails trying to ply up the rotting wood of bedroom floors, and unsettling sounds like a knife scratching glass.
On the other end of the room was a man Rhea recognized—the dark-haired incendiary: Vibol Veasna. He had papers sprawled on the low table in front of him, pencil in his grip, which he twirled skillfully around his hand, his mind deep in research on the cargo shipping company he was currently unraveling. A man with leaves in his hair and shaking bones sat at a table where an inn worker brought him a plate of sate he gormandized in minutes. There was a woman playing chess with herself, rotating the board after each move. The table closest to them sat a thin man with dark hair typing away at a computer; his vitiligo skin condition created large pale white spots across his tan body.
Mirek pulled out a pack of cigarettes.
"This place isn't as nice as I remember," Sawyer mumbled as he grabbed a cigarette from Mirek.
"This place has never been nice," Mirek muttered.
"Hear about the Mendez's daughter?" Sawyer asked, enjoying engaging in gossip whenever there was the time. "Ran off with some pirate to Europe."
"I didn't know he had a daughter," said Rhea as she too reached for a cigarette from Mirek's pack.
"He's got a few illegitimate kids. The one who ran off is fifteen. Mendez is pissed. He had her saved to marry some rich asshole to help fuel the cartel in Central America. Probably going to set up a bounty on the guy or something."
"He already did," said Mirek as smoke came out his mouth and nose. "Whose head did you think I had in my hand? Dumb fuck thought he could sneak back into Samadoya to collect a treasure stash he'd hidden here."
"He's fucked up in the head, though," said Sawyer. "Mendez, I mean. The only empathy he expresses is for himself. You must benefit him in some way, or he'll knock you to the curb. Even some of his kids he's blocked out of his life because they had no desire to fuel his drug syndicate. He'll act like he gives a fuck, and tricks them into trying shit like heroin or crack until they slump into an addict haze. That way, he'll have more buyers."
"He'd do that to his own kids?" Rhea asked in slight shock.
"He'll do worse if he gets the chance," said Mirek. "Dude's a narcissist. I've heard he wears makeup and contacts to give himself a younger look. He thinks he's superior to everyone, and you cannot convince him otherwise. That's the thing about narcissism. There's no cure. No way to convince them they have a disorder, that reality does not revolve around them. They're stuck."
As the three waited, due to the lack of windows, they didn't notice a hysterical rain until the main doors opened and a wet resident entered, releasing the outside patter of water on the floor. A groan escaped from all of them. When it rained, it poured, and when it poured, bad things happened. Rain washed away all serendipity, bringing nothing but misfortune as the wet bled together with the city's toxins. What fell from the sky did not cleanse. It contaminated.
"Think we should wait it out?" asked Sawyer, putting his cigarette out on an ashtray positioned at each table.
"We don't have time," said Rhea. She checked her watch, and they had already lost the window in which to return the car before Delton arrived at Sockeye.
"And I don't wanna stay in this dump longer than we have to," said Mirek.
Finally, Oliver approached, placing a palm-sized sealed-tight wood box on the table. A thick waterproof padlock hung on the front. Oliver held up a pad with scribbled in English: Deliver this to Ceto by nightfall. Sawyer told Mirek what it said as Oliver walked off. Dreading that they possessed no waterproof layers, the three ventured out into the storm.