House of the Morningstar: Chapter 19
Created | Updated Mar 26, 2023
House of the Morningstar: Chapter 19
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I am very tired today and can hardly work because I was up all night. Maybe I will use some hours from overtime to get off work early today. I spent the night unpacking Bill's box, whch I 'borrowed' from the cargo hall in the late evening. The first problem was getting it open, which wasn't easy. I had to borrow a few different screwdrivers and a knife.
Inside the box were a few smaller containers and things wrapped into many layers of packing material. There were various small items of different shapes and colours. I couldn't make head or tail of them. Some had small symbols on them. One looked strangely like a cup. Quite pretty actually. Iridescent colours, almost translucent. There were also two rather large blue glowing cylinders with metal caps on both ends. Maybe the most curious thing was a transparent ball, half-filled with some wobbly mass. In it seemed to grow two small dark green leaves. I could see the tiny roots in the substance.
When I was finished looking at everything I packed it all up again as good as I could. I had the intention of returning it to the storage hall like I found it but in the end – maybe it was because my judgement was already clouded at this late hour – I covered the whole thing in old plans (white side out) and wrote Kelly's name and address in Katastropolis on it. When I returned to the storage hall the caravan had already made good progress with loading their vehicles, but they still were nice enough to take my box for transport.
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The Warehouse
Tanja Labovsky of the Katastropolis police was back at the Katastropolis transit hub after her visit on Ares Station. She had questioned some more people and got the chance to look at some security footage of the station and was therefore able to find out that Angela Morgenstern, 'Mr. Spencer' and his friends had left it in a private shuttle. This in fact surprised Tanja, as they didn't look like they could afford such a luxury.
A chat with the railway security brought her to the back exit of the old station, past a huddle of tourists who had an agitated discussion about how to get the ticket machine to work. As she stepped through the gate the ugly tiles of public transport under her shoes were replaced by the brownish paving stones of the back roads.
Several persons who had been gathered at a corner suddenly scattered and disappeared to all directions when they saw Tanja approach in her uniform. One of them however – a teenaged boy – was not fast enough and Tanja grabbed him at the collar. Despite his efforts to twist himself out of her grip, he had to accept that he would not get away. He was very anxious to tell that he was just passing through and had no idea who all these other people were and he had nothing to to with anything at all. However, he noticeably eased up when it became clear that Tanja was not interested in this at all – at least at the moment – and even became decidedly helpful when being shown a picture of 'Mr Spencer' and his friends.
The boy, who turned out to be called Geoffrey, was more than happy to lead Tanja to an old warehouse just around the corner, where he had seen the men several times. There was a large roll-up gate as well as a rusty metal door. Both were locked. The old doorbell was very obviously broken – with wires sticking out of the button – but after wiping over it with her sleeve, Tanja could read the letters 'William S. Technologies' on a small metal sign next to it.
As Tanja frowned at the sign and the locked door, Geoffrey suddenly cleared his throat.
'Um... what... what would you give to get in there?' he asked with a hopeful grin, revealing his braces. He jumped a step back when Tanja's glare hit him.
It was established that maybe Tanja not taking him with her to the station was enough of a reward. Geoffrey led Tanja around the block and to an abandoned corner shop, which still had a dusty roll of toilet paper behind the grimy window. To Tanja's surprise the door of the shop unlocked when Geoffrey connected the lock with his wrist-mounted computer. He pushed the door halfway open, which was all that was possible, and they squeezed through the gap. Past rows of empty shelves they went to the back of the shop, where in a storage room a panel was loose on the wall. Tanja took a hovering light out of her pocket and switched it on.
They crawled through the wall panelling for a few meters, then emerged through a concrete wall to what seemed to be an adjacent building. They were in a small room with a mattress on the floor. Someone had been sleeping here rather recently. Geoffrey motioned to Tanja to follow him on. He unbolted the door, and they left the room to go up a steep narrow staircase and through another hole, which was just large enough for Tanja to squeeze through. When she stood up again, she found herself behind a wall of boxes and old equipment which had obviously been thrown in a corner rather carelessly. She was already questioning whether this whole exercise was actually getting her anywhere or if Geoffrey was leading her into a trap, when they climbed over the obstruction and found themselves on a first-floor platform which was looking down into a large hall. It was illuminated by only a dim light which trickled through the dusty skylight which ran all the length from the roll-up door to the wall at the back.
They went down a large concrete staircase, leaving footprints in the dust, where nobody had been walking in a while. The floor at the bottom however had been half-heartedly swept, Tanja noticed.
In the middle of the hall, under the dusty skylight, there stood an old, scratched table and a single chair. Both were suspiciously clean as if they had been used only recently. A few more chairs – each of a different design – were gathered at a pillar to the side. There were also a few tables which were littered with empty bottles of water and Crypto Cola as well as take-out packaging.
After searching the hall for a while, Tanja sat down on the chair in the middle. Suddenly, her eye was caught by something someone had scratched into the table's surface: Eldorado.
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