Chương 14: Passion

Officer Maloney left Lyfe Haxx feeling a bit invigorated. He hadn't learned much from Mr. Charles, but the visit did give him an idea of what to do next. Mr. Mulligan's 'ghost money' might have appeared out of nowhere, but he must have spent it somewhere that would leave a trail. Double-checking his transaction history, Maloney found that he had blown almost all of those two hundred poundingtons on food stalls and restaurants the same day he got them.

Also, now that he thought about it, why would this Maggie person strike a barter when either she or her partner clearly had the means to generate as much currency as they needed? For now the officer threw that question on the ever-growing mental pile of conundrums and focused on the issue he was already tackling.

Unfortunately, touring those establishments proved largely fruitless. Most of them were staffed by service androids that had a limited array of responses and were incapable of answering his questions. The places that employed humans weren't all that helpful, either. The workers had no trouble recalling the strange girl, but didn't have much to say about her since they primarily interacted with Mr. Mulligan. The most the officer got out of them was that she seemed 'strange, but nice,' same as Mr. Charles.

That and she apparently had a preference for starberry flavored snacks. Discreetly questioning Joe's neighbors failed to reveal anything new, either.

The only real lead Officer Maloney had acquired from all that legwork was the strange signature on the promissory note. Forget foreign - it looked positively alien. His computer's analysis of it confirmed as much. Though it claimed with ninety percent certainty that Maggie's scribbles were indeed a form of written language, they matched no known modern or ancient human script. Maloney even ran the thing through various cipher-breaking algorithms, but all of them failed to discern any real meaning from the letters.

His only remaining recourse was to put in a request for interplanetary assistance, but that would provoke inquiries into what this writing was, where he had found it, and why it was important. That would immediately lead to his superiors putting a halt on his investigation, and possibly sacking Maloney himself for attempting to circumvent military authority.

As such, the policeman's private investigation had reached a frustrating dead end. He had exhausted what paltry leads he had without anything to show for it. He considered resorting to more aggressive and invasive methods, such as constant video surveillance or virtual activity monitoring. Such things were well within his legal authority as an officer of the law, but his moral compass steered him away from going down that particular road.

Maloney sorely wanted to know what was actually the deal with Maggie, but not to the point where he would abuse his position just to satisfy his curiosity. He was a policeman, not a stalker.

He couldn't just let the matter go, either. That couple were far from innocent. If nothing else, those transaction records were clear evidence that they were involved in something shady. The issue with those findings was that they made it clear Maloney was looking into a matter that he had been clearly told not to. That and those operations weren't strictly illegal. There was no breach of security, and no funds were actually stolen.

Exploiting a bug with the banking system to generate currency was a morally and legally gray area, which might as well have been 'white' once lawyers got involved. Only the potential AI involvement would stick, but the policeman felt no obligation to call attention to that since the military were apparently already involved anyway.

In the end, Maloney could do little but keep his findings to himself and put the investigation on hold, at least for the moment. With nothing better to do, he set his computer to monitor Mr. Mulligan's account for any more suspicious activity. There hadn't been any more 'ghost money' rolling in after that first batch, but he felt confident it was only a matter of time before it happened again. All Maloney had to do until then was to keep his cool and consider his options.

That first part wasn't easy, as his mounting frustration over this matter was starting to grate on him.

About two weeks later, the officer was once more staring down a cup of tea in his office when the tracking program started pinging like crazy. Another anomalous burst of near-zero transactions had gone out and were instantly refunded. Maloney sprang into action as if struck by lightning, nearly dropping his beverage in the process. He went to check on Mr. Mulligan's balance and found that ninety poundingtons had apparated in his account.

These were then almost immediately spent on a pair of two-way tube-train tickets to Dave-157.

Maloney briefly wondered why they'd be going to the neighboring mega-city, but then realized the opportunity this presented. With Joe and Maggie gone for about five or six hours, it gave the officer ample time to inspect their pod without them being there. All he had to do was get inside that apartment without a warrant, but he had already figured out how to do that. Once he was certain the couple were on the tube-train, he went to visit the hyper-scraper's superintendent.

He fed her some made up story about anomalous power usage from a certain apartment, and requested access to it in order to confirm nothing shady was going on. Mrs. Beckett was as trusting and cooperative as any law-abiding citizen was expected to be, and was more than willing to accommodate the policeman. The officer's conscience nagged at him that if he was going to abuse his position like this, he probably shouldn't involve this woman in whatever mess he was wading into.

So, he asked her to wait inside her office while he conducted his investigation, to which she readily agreed.

Maloney thus found himself standing alone in the residential building's hallway. He reached for the door handle in front of him, which automatically unlocked itself upon detecting Mrs. Beckett's master keycard on his person. He pulled it open and his attention was immediately drawn to the shoggoth-infused virtual reality pod that dominated the tiny room's space. Maloney had no idea what he was looking at, though it seemed clear that it was looking right back at him.

The abominable machine's sole eye stared right into his, its unflinching and unblinking gaze following his every motion intently. The officer took a step towards it, then heard a light grinding noise that, if he didn't know any better, sounded like it growled at him. With a sense of trepidation, the officer got the lifeform scanner from his belt and, much to his horror, confirmed that the thing in front of him was registering on it, even if faintly.

The man quietly shut the door and returned the master keycard to Mrs. Beckett. When asked if he had found anything, he replied that there was nothing out of the ordinary aside from a few custom modifications to the pod. This news caused the woman to fly into a frenzy. She was, apparently, outraged that Joe Mulligan had done such a thing without going through the proper channels with her.

The officer, wary of what she might do in that state, calmed her as best he could and reassured her that, though unusual, there was nothing illegal about the modifications he'd found. Which was technically true, much like his previous statement.

The officer then returned to his office and stared blankly at the ceiling. He wasn't sure what he expected to find in that room, but that biomechanical monstrosity had thrown him for a loop. He was well aware that people sometimes chose or were forced to replace certain body parts with artificial equivalents. However, this was the first time he'd ever seen a machine with fleshy bits implanted into it. He couldn't imagine what sort of sicko would even consider such a thing, let alone do it.

His mind raced with possibilities as it considered everything he had learned so far, and he somehow wound up at a somewhat extraordinary conclusion.

The army were trying to put an artificial mind into a biological body.

It seemed ludicrous, at first. That didn't change on second thought, nor on the third. And yet, it was the only thing Maloney could come up with that would explain this ridiculousness. It wasn't entirely outside the realm of possibility, either. If a person could digitize their thought patterns in order to inhabit virtual space, then surely it was possible to imprint an artificial intelligence onto a brain. Though, what would the benefits of accomplishing such a ridiculous thing be?

That was something the simple officer couldn't even begin to fathom.

He still tried, though, and failed to come up with any reasonable merit to such an experiment. Surely it was easier to just build the machine mind a machine body, one that would outperform any flesh-and-blood construct with ease. Was it a way to have artificial intelligence harness the power of psionics? No, that didn't seem right. Neither Maggie nor Joe had shown such brain activity in his car, and that barely-alive pod was probably the same.

Also, now that he thought about it, if this really was an army experiment, then shouldn't it have heavier security? Were they counting on urban camouflage to remain hidden? Whatever the case, it seemed terribly irresponsible to just leave that thing unguarded and unmonitored.

Little did he know, there was actually quite the robust surveillance net surrounding Maggie's movements and activities. However, for better or for worse, that attention had followed her aboard that tube train, so the random policeman snooping around Joe's place had gone unnoticed.

In any event, Officer Grant Maloney had gained yet another mangled piece to this confusing puzzle. If he had any actual experience with these sorts of things, he might have already figured out what was going on. This seemed to be as far as his current powers of deductive reasoning would take him, yet he still refused to give up. He was almost there, he could feel it. He just needed a bit more and he'd crack this thing wide open. His fixation on this mystery was slowly becoming an obsession.

Naturally, as was the nature of such things, the man himself was completely unaware of this development.

As the increasingly disturbed policeman stared intently at his notes, his attention snapped to the word 'Blastopia.' He wasn't a big fan of space combat sims, but even he knew about it. That was just how huge that tournament was. So far he hadn't dared approach Maggie and Joe in person, but what if he showed up in the virtual world? That seemed like a not at all ill-advised course of action for someone in his position and state of mind, and this event would provide a perfect excuse.

Even if they somehow realized it was him, he could easily feign ignorance and claim it was a coincidence.

So, the big day came, and Maloney was there to see it all. He remained within the virtual spectators' area and watched Maggie's half-horror half-human form excitedly hammer away at those buttons and levers. He was even certain that, on a few occasions, she glanced back at him, right through the giant screen on the wall. By the time Triple Misfire's fourth match rolled around, he already had a pretty good idea what he was missing.

It wasn't until after their sudden forfeit and his discrete inquiry into the matter that he finally understood.

Maloney returned to the real world and climbed into his patrol vehicle. He set a course for the girl's hyper-scraper and then looked up a certain topic he hadn't even considered before. It was the sort of made-up nonsense that no self-respecting police force would ever keep a database of. Thankfully, the online world was full of weirdos who loved that sort of thing.

Within the span of the few minutes it had taken for his flying car to transport him to his destination, the officer had finally found the meaning behind that blasted signature. It was almost insulting how easy that had been once he knew what to look for. Also more than a little concerning, but that was a problem for another time.

Armed with this knowledge, he confidently strode up to Joe's apartment only to find that Maggie was already waiting for him in front of the door, with a smug smile on her face and a tiny serpent on her shoulder.

"Magh'rathlak the Observer, I presume?" he greeted the cosmic entity.

"Congratulations, Grant Maloney," she spoke softly.

"You have arrived."

"I suppose I have. No idea what I'm doing here, though. By all accounts, I really shouldn't have come. It's incredibly stupid, now that I think about it."

There was so much the simple man didn't know. Though he had deduced this girl-shaped thing was some immensely powerful creature from another universe and had even discovered her real name, that was it. Magh'rathlak could easily gobble him up in three big chomps, or maybe fling him halfway across the galaxy with a thought. And yet, he had this strange feeling, this baseless conviction, that no harm would come to him.

"Do you wish for me to reveal the purpose of your visit?" she offered.

"Yes. Please."

"You are here because you felt the call."

"Call? What call?"

"The same one that tugs at me relentlessly, every moment of every day. It is the need to understand, the desire to learn, and the yearning for knowledge. Your inquisitive nature, though horridly malnourished by the drudgery of your existence, was drawn out in response to the enigma of my being. It has seen you through your journey of internal and external discovery, and has led you to this particular position in space, at this specific point in time."

Her seemingly mocking smile softened into a gentle, genuine expression of kindness.

"Welcome to your moment of revelation."

"I… I understand, I think."

Maloney felt a wave of serenity wash over him. There was something oddly reassuring about those words, almost like they spoke to his very soul. It was as if he'd found a piece of himself that he never knew was missing. Indeed, he had forgotten about it, but solving mysteries and catching bad guys had been why he wanted to be a policeman in the first place. It was a desire born from those old detective dramas he watched as a kid.

But then, he grew older, found out how boring the world actually was, and in the process forgot something important.

Maloney wasn't sure if there was something supernatural at work, or whether this strange sense of liberation was entirely his own. And frankly, he didn't care.

"Out of respect for your accomplishment today, I will answer any inquiry you might have regarding my being."

The girl's unexpected offer then pulled him back into reality.

"Really? Just like that?" he couldn't help but doubt his ears.

"Yes," Maggie confirmed.

"That's mighty… cooperative of you. For a terrible thing out of a nightmare, I mean."

"Your suspicion is understandable, but misguided. My purpose is to avoid confusion and misunderstanding. As such, I consider it best that you learn of me from myself, rather than look to unreliable sources mired in myth and superstition."

"How do I know you're not going to just lie to me?"

"Because I have never once done so, Grant Maloney. I have no intention of starting now."

"If that's so, then how come you didn't tell me you weren't really human," he argued.

"You never asked," she countered.

"That… damnit."

It seemed like a childish put-down at first glance, but then the officer had to concede that Mags did have a point. During their first interaction she had willingly divulged a lot of clearly suspicious information. She seemed like a smart… whatever she was, and could have easily made something up to cover her tracks. It was Maloney's own fault for being ignorant and making assumptions based on her appearance.

More importantly, he recognized this as a prime opportunity to easily address some of his leftover quandaries, and that he would be a fool to squander it.

"Right. Blimey, where do I even start?" he rubbed his forehead.

"Okay, something basic. What's your purpose in coming here? Like, not here, specifically, but, here. You know what I mean."

"You have already arrived at that answer, Grant Maloney. I believe it was one of the very first deductions you made regarding my being."

"… You're a tourist?" he picked up what she was putting down.

"Indeed."

"Huh. I guess that makes sense."

If her self-proclaimed calling was to seek out new things and study them, then it would certainly explain a lot of her weird behavior. It certainly seemed more likely than her hatching some nefarious plot to enslave humanity. Granted, that might have been the case, but there was no evidence to support it. As far as Maloney could tell, Mags hadn't done anything particularly nefarious.

If anything, she seemed rather considerate with the way she tried to avoid making waves as much as possible, even though she obviously couldn't help herself at times.

"And Joe? How's he involved in this?"

"He is my guide in this reality, among other things."

"Ah. Let me guess, it was his idea to put on a pretty face and introduce yourself as 'Mags' to people?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes."

"That's a surprisingly sound plan considering he's not all that bright. Uh, no offense."

"None taken. Unlike humans, I take no issue with the truth."

"Huh. I guess we do get unreasonably upset when we get called out on stuff, don't we? Never really thought about it before."

"There is an overwhelming number of topics you have not considered, Grant Maloney. However, I do believe that we have veered away from the subject at hand."

"Right, right. Just, let me think…"

The man mulled over what else to ask, but there were way too many lines of questioning and this was hardly a good place for them. So, he decided to limit himself to the ones that bothered him the most, starting with her apparent awareness of his activities.

"You knew I was investigating you?"

"Yes."

"How did you find me out? And when?"

"One of the customers who was in the Lyfe Haxx storefront during your unannounced visit made a post describing the event on the local message boards. That place is of relevance to me, so I looked into the matter."

"Oh, I get it," the officer nodded.

"And since there's not a lot of police around, you were somehow able to realize that it was me, and then figured out I was probably asking about you."

"Very good," she nodded.

Maloney smiled bitterly. He clearly had a lot to learn about this whole clandestine policework business. He had gone out of his way to keep Mr. Charles from spilling the beans, yet didn't even think about those random civilians. Of course they'd want to mention this odd thing that happened during their otherwise mundane day.

"What about-?"

His next question was interrupted when Joe's door suddenly opened, and its owner poked his head out from inside

"Hey, Maggie? When did you get out of- Oh, hello again, officer."

"Good day, sir," he returned the greeting.

"Is… there an issue?"

"None at all, Mr. Mulligan. I was merely following up a few things with miss Mags."

"Neat. Anyway, Maggie? I just got a donation from a fan of yours, on your behalf. You wanna go out and grab a bite to eat somewhere?"

"Pedro's Pancake Palace," was her immediate response.

"I wish to check if they implemented my suggestions regarding their-" This time it was Maggie's turn to be interrupted. However, rather than a door opening or an extra person jumping into the conversation, what cut off her words was something far more spectacular. A beam of white-hot energy as wide as a fist suddenly burst through the wall and instantly burned a hole straight through her chest, obliterating her heart and part of her lung.

The two men could do little but stare in befuddled shock as the girl stumbled and wobbled.

The girl coughed and started falling forward, prompting Joe into action.

"Maggie?!"

He burst out of his apartment and grabbed onto her before she could hit the ground. He cradled her in his arms as best he could, entirely on instinct. However, he was at a complete and total loss as to what to do, just as the look of abject horror on his face would suggest. Thankfully there was someone around who knew exactly how to react, though it had taken him a precious second longer to shake off the shock.

"Th-this is Officer Maloney!" the policeman yelled into his earpiece.

"We have a high-energy weapon discharge at my location! I need an ambulance and backup, right now!"

He drew his sidearm for the first time in years and tried to get a bead on the shooter, but to no avail. Whatever that weapon was, it had melted a hole clean through several concrete walls on either side of the girl, with no indication of which direction the origin was. He shouted something to Joe about laying low and ran off down the hall, but the man couldn't hear him. His entire being was focused on Maggie, his mind racing in a futile attempt to come up with some way of saving her.

The girl herself was unnaturally calm, despite the gaping chest wound. She looked up at her panicking 'guide' and struggled to raise a hand towards him. The motion got his attention and he clasped her slender palm in his. Maggie's unfaltering smile then quivered as she mouthed something that, much to Joe's horror, seemed to be 'So, this is pain.' And then, the pits of un-light in her eyes went out. The entirety of her body, including her coiling locks, went limp.

The strange warm-yet-cool sensation of her skin rapidly turned to stone cold.

"Maggie? Maggie?! Stay with me! Please!"

Maloney returned from his fruitless attempts to locate an emergency exit only to find Joe shouting in anguish while cradling Maggie's head against his chest. The sheer amount of pain pouring out of the formerly carefree young man was gut-wrenching. The officer could do nothing but stare at them, his mouth agape in another dose of shock. What surprised him wasn't so much the tragic scene itself, but the fact that Joe's eyes, nose, and ears appeared to be bleeding. Quite profusely at that.

Things got even more confusing when the grieving man's yells and shouts suddenly turned to sickening heaving sounds just before he threw up.

Some might consider this a natural reaction to the extreme stress he suddenly found himself under, but there was absolutely nothing natural about what spewed forth from his mouth. A bucket's worth of unidentifiable black sludge poured out of Joe's throat and splashed over the girl's lifeless body. The viscous fluid that fell onto her pale skin seeped into it as if being soaked up by a person-shaped sponge. The globs of the stuff that had fallen to the ground leapt up of their own volition to join the rest of it.

The anomalous substance was gone without a trace barely three seconds later, just as Joe was collapsing from the sudden strain on his own body.

Maggie's eyes flew open as life returned to her. She sat up and firmly grasped the man by the shoulders, then gently lowered him to lay on his back with his head on her lap. Joe half-sobbed half-groaned as he looked up at her sad smile. He glanced at her chest to find that both her dress and her flesh had been restored to pristine condition.

"You… alive?" he weakly whispered.

"I am," she responded simply.

"That's… good…" relief washed over him.

"Gonna take… a little nap."

He then passed out in her embrace. He was unconscious and looked like hell, but he was definitely alive.

"Officer Maloney," the girl spoke without looking up.

"Y-yes?" the flabbergasted man replied.

"I would advise, for your own safety, that you look away."

"What?!"

That was the only warning Maggie would give, and Maloney was a fool for not heeding it. Dozens of mismatched alien eyes suddenly sprang up from within her coiling ebony locks, and the unprepared officer felt the psychic equivalent of a raging typhoon wash over his consciousness. He reeled from the sharp pain and felt his own eyes bleed as he watched everything except the girl-thing shake violently, as if reality was trying to rip itself apart around her.

Thankfully some instinctual part of him managed to wrest control of his haywire senses and pulled his sight away. Like a switch being flipped, everything went back to normal the instant he turned his back to Maggie. Or, well, as normal as could be expected in those circumstances.

At that same time, in an almost identical hyper-scraper roughly four kilometers away, a man ran into an elevator and slammed the button for the nearest street level. He slumped to the floor panting as the doors closed and the lift started moving. He stared blankly at the still-hot weapon in his hands. The device of death that was nearly as big as his entire torso, and just as heavy as it looked. However, it was the metaphorical weight of what he had done that was making him weary.

He had taken the shot. He was a marksman. That's what he did. He took shots. The issue? Nobody had told him to take that shot. In fact, they had specifically told him not to take that shot. He had been stationed on that rooftop so that he would be ready to take the shot whenever they decided the shot had to be taken. It was not within his authority to judge whether he should take the shot or not. And yet he had done it anyway.

He was a marksman. He took shots, but he also saw things. Horrible things. He had witnessed too many friends and innocents succumb to the terrifying powers those monsters wielded. Husbands, wives, sons, and daughters, turned inside out in an instant. Those were the lucky ones. The less fortunate were enslaved, their minds twisted to serve the cruel whims of some terrible creature beyond human comprehension. He had seen it happen, time and time again. That was why he took the shot without being told to.

He couldn't allow that thing to continue poisoning the minds of those around it.

"No more," he muttered.

"What's done is done."

The disturbed marksman leaned his head back against the elevator's rear wall and closed his eyes. He was going to catch hell for his insubordination later, but at that point in time, he felt fulfilled. He had done his duty and eliminated the Class-3 before it even knew he was there. It was a by-the-numbers takedown any sniper would be proud of. Little did he know that that particular entity had an anchor in this reality, which allowed it to reconstitute itself for as long as said anchor was alive.

The marksman was similarly unaware that physical distance meant nothing to the Observer once it got serious. It had taken mere seconds to trace his weapon's discharge back to its origin, and even less time to seize control of the elevator he had foolishly cornered himself in.

The lift suddenly stopped and the light flickered. The soldier instantly drew his sidearm and sprang back to his feet. He would have used the portable particle cannon on the floor, but that thing was far too bulky for this cramped space. He slammed a few buttons, but got no response from the console. An odd growling noise drew his attention to one of the ceiling's corners, more specifically to the little camera in it.

The color drained from the marksman's face as he saw what appeared to be a tiny red eye within the lens of the device. He then went into fight or flight and blasted through the polymer paneling on the side with the intent of escaping the elevator the hard way.

Unfortunately for the sniper, what awaited him on the other side wasn't a dizzyingly tall elevator shaft, but an infinite void filled with eyes.