Chương 110: CDM 2, Chapter 46: Likeness Release

The speed with which the city went back to normal was jarring. For two weeks, people were glued to their screens, fearful of missing an important moment. When a dungeon surge seemed possible, we were united in a collective hope that everything would work out in the end. That moment was gone by the next morning. Or that's how Beth and Nathan describe it. I didn't see the outside of the CDM office until the day after that.

Because of the casualties and the tension of the near-miss, the agency needed another day after the gate closed to pack everything in. Despite my lack of seniority of any kind, I was pulled into debriefings where I was asked to recount the role I played. That should have been simple because I stayed in one room and worked on a government computer that logged every keystroke and mouse movement. But it wasn't.

My closest comparison point was my interview with customs when I returned from Taiwan, except this one was far more forceful. All of the enforcers ended up getting that treatment, and they were equally perplexed by the intensity of it all. I had done debriefs before, and they had all been ho-hum affairs. This interview felt like we were presumed to be guilty of lying. The worst part, for me, was how quickly we were dropped from updates. I went from three hours of tense debriefing right into an average workday.

Whatever those efforts hoped to divine, I might never get to know. When my part in the S-gate and its aftermath was finally over, Megan and I had our first day off together in a long while, so we went troll hunting. Nathan had found the origin of the doorbell cam footage of what could have been a troll and arranged for us to speak with the owner. When we knocked on the door, a woman with a shower cap and puffy bathrobe greeted us.

Instead of inviting us inside, out of the cold and out of the snow, she stepped onto her porch as she was and shut the door. She knew we were filming this, by the way, and signed a video release and everything.

"Have you seen signs of trolls before or since?" Megan asked while I filmed with my phone.

"People talk. Lots of people got stories about stuff they seen around here. I know I'm not alone."

"Was that footage the first time you confirmed it?"

"Uh huh. But listen, it's been a problem for months, but people tell us we're crazy. Dogs and cats go missing in the night. People don't make it home from the bar. Used to be you could see a few homeless from this porch. I know it's snowing right now, but they ain't been around since before the snow. Regulars. The kind of homeless you see every day. You don't talk to them, but you know them."

"Any ideas where a troll might nest around here?" She pointed across the street to an abandoned duplex.

"Been boarded up since I was a girl. There's all kinds of places like that around here. Used to be we complained about dopefiends squatting in them. Maybe trolls ate them too and moved in after."

"Do you know anyone else who has seen it?"

"Sure do. Krystal lives four doors that way. She seen it too."

"Thank you for speaking with us."

"Great, great, now you can get going." The woman disappeared inside. I was infinitely grateful that Megan was comfortable doing the knocking and the interviewing. This door to door stuff did not come naturally for me. In fact, I wished I had a proper camera instead of my phone just so I had something larger to hide behind. We walked four doors up the street and knocked.

A boy in Spiderman pajamas answered and yell-talked to us about how he wasn't allowed to open the door when his parents weren't home and that he definitely wasn't allowed to talk to us. When he made no move to shut the door again, Megan asked about Krystal. That was his mom. She was down the street at work. Work ended up being a corner bar, a classic local dive that smelled like cigarettes and old beer. Krystal was one of two people working there.

She tended the bar, and a cook in the back occasionally appeared to deliver something deep-fried or to stare at us suspiciously before disappearing again. In addition to ourselves, four other guests were present.

"I used to walk home at night," Krystal said.

"Then three dogs in a row went missing. Folks would leave them chained outside. Nobody does that anymore."

"We'd like to track it down," Megan shared.

"Where do you think we should look?"

"Last person that asked me that laughed in my face when I answered."

"Last person?"

"Yeah. He had a government ID. I don't remember from where, but I know it wasn't FBI or CIA. I'd remember if it was those ones."

"EPA?" I asked. She shrugged.

"I don't know. Sure. Sounds nice."

"We won't laugh," Megan assured her.

"We've run into trolls before. We know they aren't jokes." Krystal studied us for a long pause.

"My grandma told us this story about how when she was a kid, she and her sister found a tunnel in the basement of their house. They followed it five blocks and ended up in someone else's basement. She got whooped so bad for that, but the place burned down. It's close to here. It's a parking lot now. She used to wonder if she really saw that or if it was something she imagined."

"What kind of tunnel?"

"She said it was brick, and you had to crouch. I tell that story, and half the people say she imagined it, and the other half talk about people they knew who had the same kinda tunnels in their houses or had friends who did."

"What makes you think trolls are using something like that?" Megan asked. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

"Everyone has cameras these days. Seeing a door without a doorbell camera would be weird now, actually. Used to be rare. Everywhere now."

"It would have been caught on camera more than once if it was using the street you mean."

"Mmhmm." She looked over my shoulder.

"Jerry, I told you not to put your beer on the skill machines. You think I'm playing when I ask you not to do that?"

"Where could we find an access point to these tunnels?"

"I don't know. Around."

"Can you point us to a specific one?" Krystal shook her head.

"I'm just saying they're out there. That's all I know. Look, I got to get back to work." Outside the bar, Megan and I surveyed the neighborhood.

"What do you think about the tunnel story?" she asked.

"Plausible," I answered.

"Really? Secret tunnels are plausible?"

"I sent you the article about the tunnel trolls in Mexico."

"Still."

"Cities are a mess of things built on top of each other. Do I think there's a network of tunnels crisscrossing all over the city? No, but I think it's possible an old storm drain or something got buried and bricked over." Megan seemed conflicted for a moment.

"Okay, I can give you that. How close are we to where the CDM cam saw a troll?" I pointed.

"Other side of this hill. Half mile, maybe."

"Do we know how far trolls roam?" I shook my head.

"Their anatomy has been studied like crazy, but I didn't find anything useful about the habits of wild trolls. They like dark places. They tend to be solitary. You need fire to stop them from regenerating. End of research." We started to walk down another street. On that single block we counted 7 homes that appeared to be abandoned. Some were only boarded over, while others had sat long enough that they had begun to collapse into themselves.

"I don't like the idea of searching every one of these basements," I said.

"Could be any of them. If nothing caves in on us, that's a lot of trespassing."

"Yeah, that's not a good strategy. We should keep talking to people." So we did. We knocked on doors and asked about trolls for the next two hours. A third of the people we spoke with believed the troll was around and said so with complete conviction. Another third thought it was silly, and the final third told us to fuck off when they heard how dumb our question was.

"I guess now we do some more digging," I proposed.

"Maybe there are city plans or something that would tell us where the tunnels are."

"If there are tunnels."

"Alright, fair."

"If we do an SOC, odds are good that we find something to kill," Megan began.

"I like the concept of this mystery investigation angle, but we could do this for days and still find jack."

"Do you want to abandon it?" She shook her head.

"Not yet. I'm only saying I'm worried about that."

"You're right that we need to be smart with our time," I said.

"We're about to sign a contract. We have to be smart."

"You'd think finding a monster in the middle of a city would be easier than this. I mean, how does a troll keep their cover for days let alone months with all this around?"

"Hello?"

"It's Frank."

"How are you, Frank?" Nathan shot me a confused look from across the living room. I shrugged.

"I know it's late, but I'm at Milly's. Might be a good idea for you to come down here and get Beth." It was 10: 30 p. m.

"Did something happen?" Frank let out a deep sigh.

"Man to man, she's drunker than a skunk. I've got her sitting down, but it's not a secret she's underage. Wrong person sees her, and she's got a lot of trouble she doesn't need."

"On my way." I hung up the phone.

"I'll be back in a bit," I said to Nathan.

"What's going on?" Nathan asked.

"Beth is drunk at Milly's apparently."

"Beth? You mean our Beth?" I nodded.

"You can bring her back here if you want."

"Hopefully she's not that bad," I said.

"Need back up?"

"No, thanks. See you in a bit."

"Alright, bro." When I came into Milly's, Leah, one of Beth's work friends, rushed me to the corner where Beth sat. I think it was Leah, at least. It was the same girl she went to Erie with. I'm pretty sure. At any rate, Beth had her head down on the table. Frank gave me a pitying look. When she looked up at me, it looked like she had been crying.

"Dorion, I ruined everything. Frank is going to fire me." Behind her, Frank shook his head.

"I told her she wasn't fired. Not like she did this in the shop or something." Leah leaned in.

"Jonathan's parents showed up. They had a bunch of questions."

"Were they mean to her?" She shook her head.

"It upset her, though. I told her to take a couple shots to relax. This is my fault."

"Come on," I said, coaxing Beth to her feet.

"They were so sad, Dorion."

"I know." To Frank, I added, "Thank you for calling me. This really isn't like her."

"It's fine. I already knew that." When I finally got Beth into the passenger seat of my car, a feat that took several long minutes of negotiating with Beth and the open car door to achieve, I asked, "Do you want to talk, or would you rather I just take you to my apartment?"

"Part meant," she whimpered and slurred. After a few minutes of driving, she added, "I can't believe I did this. They started asking me if I'd heard from him or if I had any idea where he might have gone. His mom… Dor, she talked like there was still hope. It was so sad. I fucking lost it. Why can't I be tougher than this? Why am I such a baby?"

"You're not a baby."

"Oh God, and Frank saw too. Only way it could have been worse is if mom and dad decided to show up. What am I going to do? I can't go to the shop tomorrow and look him in the eye. No way. I ruined it."

"Frank seems like a reasonable person," I said.

"I don't think he's going to hold it against you."

"Him being nice about it is even worse."

"I'm just saying. I saw the guy, and he seemed fine. You'll feel better after some sleep."

"When will I be okay?" she asked.

"I didn't know him that long, right? It was a few months. He's been gone almost as long. Why aren't I better? Why am I still so fucking fragile?"

"I wish I had answers for you. For what it's worth, I don't think it's unusual for you to still feel sad about it. I know I do. It will blindside me in the middle of the day."

"Really?"

"Yeah. And I didn't know him nearly as well as you did. It's sad when a good person is gone, and I don't know if it ever really stops feeling sad."

"You knew him."

"Not like you did," I countered. Beth rolled her head to look out the window.

"I guess that's true. You didn't fuck him."

"Jesus Christ, Beth."