Chương 83: Mirror

The shift continued in this sort of rote loop of me being called over to haul these heavier loads of cargo while onlookers made all sorts of cheers or comments. You'd think people would stop seeing the marvel in me lifting something heavy after the seventh or eighth time in the past hour, but no, they seemed to be more amused each time. At the close of the hour, the trucks seemed to stop coming in. Likely running on a tight schedule, others would come later. But that meant it was time to note down labels.

My "down-time" task, but really this was going to end up being pretty key recon. The first aisle I went down was the one with that long crate, purely just as an excuse to get another look at it. About twelve feet in length, maybe thirteen. About three or four feet wide, and about three feet "deep." Definitely big enough for parts of maybe a large boat, but I wasn't so sure if a canoe could fit in there. I wrote down the number, making sure it was also imprinted in my head just in case I had to lose the clipboard.

The following containers were a mixed variety of labeled and unlabeled. They all had barcodes with numbers, but some just didn't have any labels on them. The ones that did usually kept it simple. Some garble of letters and numbers plus a term for the part like "Livewell" or "Cleats" or "Driveshafts." I wasn't sure what most of those were, but they sounded appropriately boat part-y. What confused me was why only some were labeled and others weren't. Different manufacturing standards, maybe?

"Oh, I wondered who everyone was cheering for earlier!" I knew that voice. Snapping my gaze towards the person speaking, it was Tyson. What-"What the Hell are you doing here?" I asked. He raised an eyebrow.

"... Working? I just had to start my new lease and my other job's not paying enough." I shook my head, rubbing my face.

"No, I mean here specifically." His other eyebrow went up along with the first one.

"Oh, uh, Craigslist to be honest. Just was looking for something entry-level that paid." That didn't line up with what Jonesy told me. Was he in the HenchNet? I would've seen him before. That's not the important thing, though. There was another, much bigger issue I had to address.

"Okay then. Also, if anyone asks," I began.

"Call me Harry. No one knows my name here, keep it that way. And don't tell fucking anyone about my powers outside of this building." He nodded, chuckling at that request as he leaned against one of the shelves.

"Hey, relax. I haven't even told anyone about you poking holes in those two clowns' apartment door. And don't worry, I know you got that whole scholarship thing. Your real name's safe with me. And I guess the well ran dry on that scholarship if you're out here with me." I slowly exhaled.

"You could say that." I remembered the clipboard in my hands, and it reminded me of a potential opportunity.

"Oh, so is this your first day too, or?"

"Third. I'm just on inventory because I'm not forklift certified." More time than I've spent on it.

"So do you have any idea why half of these boxes aren't labeled?" He turned towards the shelf he was leaning against, squinting at one of the crates before leaning further to the side to look at another crate.

"You know, that never really occurred to me. I just was filling out the barcode numbers, and I probably just assumed the labels were on a side I couldn't see." That was possible. Maybe I was just overthinking. Actually, no, I wasn't thinking enough. Shit.

"When are you taking your lunch, by the way?"

"Not for a while, I take mine later so that I can sit by myself. Why, you wanna eat lunch with me?" No, but if Chris saw Tyson he'd probably pick out that him and May are definitely related immediately. I had to keep them as separate as possible.

"Nah, just curious," I said.

"Also, has anyone given you any trouble since you started here?" His eyebrow went back up.

"No, not really. everyone's been chill. Bunch of ex-cons, so they're probably all scared of going back in. Learned how to make burritos with a bag of chips and ramen from one of them, though." He laughed as he admitted that.

"Alright. Just let me know if any of them give you any trouble. I'm a lot scarier than you."

"Hey man, we're down South, old ladies cross the street when they see me, I gotta be at least a little scary." That prompted a bit of a laugh.

"Well then if you're being threatened by a bunch of retirees I'll leave you to handle them." We parted ways after that while I focused on gathering more numbers for my clipboard. As I made it to the end of an aisle, I could see the offices at the end of the warehouse. Jonesy's was the one I was in. Above it was a windowed office where I could just barely make out Christian's hair.

It took a bit of mental abstraction, but from what I could tell the door behind Jonesy was the one that led upstairs to the upper office. Was there no other way out? What happens in a fire, then? Jump out a window? Jonesy probably wasn't joking about paying off his OSHA guy. Made me wonder how much else was completely disregarded in terms of safety features. Really hoped Chris mentioned that warehouse burning down thing as a joke. No amount of strength puts out fires.

My bigger issue was I couldn't figure out when Chris would be going off to lunch. If we went separately, it means passing him that information would be even harder. He might even have a bathroom up there, so I might not be able to catch him on a break like that either. The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Needed a secondary option, since if we didn't look this up today, we might not have a chance at all.

Glancing around, I waited until most of the commotion had moved to the loading bay. With no one I could see looking in my direction, I quickly started reprinting the same information from the first sheet, marking down all the unlabeled ones. Unfortunately, there were quite a few, and I could hear boots and chatter moving further and further up the aisle. Re-covering the page, two men strolled out past me and off towards a different aisle, doing a U-Turn around me.

Taking a deep exhale, I attempted to start filling out the rest of the sheet, scribbling ou-"Hey, we need Harry for this one!" Just couldn't get a break. Rushing over to the loading bay, a large trailer was open with a substantially large crate within it, labeled JETSKI PREFAB x4. Laying along the truck bed it was as tall as I was. Last I checked jetskis weren't 6'3". Maybe padding room. But it was labeled. No reason to doubt it yet besides the size.

One of the workers griped out a "You know, if Harry weren't here, how the fuck were we gonna get this out? It's too long for the forklifts." Another worker hummed in thought.

"The regulars probably have a crane operator or somethin'. The rafters have rails on 'em, but I don't see any crane head." I appreciated the useless commentary as I awkwardly shimmied the crate out to actually pick it up. It definitely did not make me want to throw the entire crate at them. While they chattered away, I managed to finally drag the cargo out and awkwardly set it over my back. This was the kind of weight threshold where I was starting to feel a bit of actual resistance. Mostly on purpose.

If I could keep my strength a bit more undertuned, the comparisons between Harry and Hercules would be a lot harder to make. Plus I just needed the exercise. Took about ten minutes of collective deliberation and arguing over the fact it didn't fit on any shelves before Jonesy came out and told us to just leave it in an open spot near the aisles. He never did answer if there was supposed to be a crane. When I took a deep breath of relief, that solace was punished with the revelation of another crate.

And after that, a third. This continued for about eight crates. I was finally working up a bit of a sweat, and struggling to not push for more strength.

"Who needs thirty fucking jetskis?" I blurted out, wiping the sweat off of my face. No one bothered to answer for a good thirty seconds.

"... Because it's the Summer?" proposed one worker. Frankly, I should've probably cursed him out for that. There would have been no good answer for me at that moment, but that one just annoyed the Hell out of me. But if nothing else, working me ragged gave me an excuse to retreat to the bathroom. That's where I could finish off my plan. It took me a few minutes and a constant weave through people carrying other boxes to do it, but I ended up reaching past the break room, right into the bathroom they had.

The room was the most clinical shade of blue you could get from a material that wasn't hospital scrubs. The only things that weren't blue were the stalls and sinks, which were white and silver in that order. The tile floor was sticky. You could hear the water pumps hissing and roaring. And the stench made me reconsider. Not just this little scheme. Not the job. Not the undercover mission as a whole. Everything.

I pondered how hard it would be to find a mad scientist that could help me time travel and undo every decision that got me here. Sam might be able to, but I wasn't really interested in helping her. The only fortune to be found in this room was that the stalls were empty. I could stow away in one as I went through the documented barcodes and re-printed them for a note to pass to Chris. It was hard getting it all noted down, the stench made my eyes water, but after a couple of minutes I finished off the copy.

Yanking it out from the clipboard, I folded it up afterwards and slipped it into my jacket, finally clambering out of the stall. Still empty. Just me and my reflection in the mirror by the sinks. I locked eyes with that reflection. At the clean clothes and washed hair and the richer color on my face and the little bit of built-up fat and muscle from eating so much more every day. It felt strange. I never realized how dead I used to look before, seeing myself so alive now.

Was that what Chris saw when he was telling me about how different I was now compared to then. Was this what everyone else saw? Tancred? May? Sam? And was how I looked before what made them act like that with me? I'd be pretty pissed off like Tancred gets if I was the one trying to drag a corpse out of the gutter. It didn't justify how much he's lied to and misled me. But maybe that was the way he got when he saw someone like me. Getting too sentimental.

I rinsed my hands and face off before heading back out into the breakroom, where two guys on lunch were watching a small TV.

"-our sources were very certain that the head of R&D behind The New Sentinels was Dr. Samantha Way, the same young genius who was part of those infamous court cases over clones just half a decade ago. Reaching out to The New Sentinels' representative, they have refused to comment." One of the workers, sporting a thick beard, spoke.

"That's news to these people? They got a guy who put a hole in someone's fuckin' chest!" Thanks for the reminder, asshole.

"Eh, but they were part of those tree terrorist guys." said the other one, who was clean-shaven.

"My sister was at the park when they attacked earlier. They were gonna kill her. Frankly any dead tree bastards is a good thing. Fuck was he supposed to do, do a kumbaya thing with it? You do what you can to stop the threat!" I wanted to explain that I wasn't exactly aware of seeing it like that and couldn't be rational enough for it. But on the other hand, why the Hell was I getting shit when the SIT and SC guys were allowed to kill? Gonna keep that one in my pocket for the next Tancred argument.

He deserved something to throw him off his game.

"Is he a cop, though?" Nope.

"He's gotta be something like that," remarked the clean-shaven one.

"Why else would the cops be working with them?" Because my boss probably saw a chance to re-marry their boss. I wasn't exactly sure why else he chose Charlottesville. Yeah, the ADU and the drug ring are pretty substantial threats, but all signs indicated they had a pretty limited idea of potential threats in the area. That, or they were withholding more information than I realized. Then again, that was my default assumption elsewhere. I might as well keep it here too.

Striding out of the breakroom, acting like I didn't just overhear unnecessary gossip about myself, I rushed back for the loading bay to see if they needed more crap to be hauled. I was rather abruptly interrupted by Jonesy, who was standing in the way.

"You gotta let people know when you're off to the John. The fifteen minutes you took there was fifteen minutes of money wasted because we were stuck trying to work with just forklifts. They were calling for you the whole time. Don't do it again," he warned, resulting in a tension in my neck. I just gave him a nod before saying "Won't happen again, boss," which he accepted enough to meander back to his office. Great. Last thing I needed: actual scrutiny from the guy I'm working an undercover op against.

I needed to get this shit over to Chris, and fast.