Watching Yute (2 page)

"Cass-id-y. Stanton." He put the pad
and pen away, smiled, and nodded once. "Have a good evening,
Leftenent Cassidy Stanton." He turned and began to walk away. "Oh,
which way to the VIP room, by the way?"

~~~

At the end of the shift, Cassidy and
her partner Leftenent Greg McKinney were checking out at the M.P.
station.

“
Hey Stanton,” Greg said to
Cassidy, stuffing some of his bulkier equipment into his little
locker, “You think that guy that took down your name is going to
cause problems?”

Cassidy opened her locker and paused in
thought. “I didn’t get that vibe. Even if he does, it’s not like I
did anything too out of line, really.” She opened her locker and
saw her personal terminal ther with a blinking little red light. A
missed call. “…. shit.”

“
Hm?”

“
Eh? Nothing.” Cassidy said,
staring at the little terminal. Cassidy turned aside for a little
privacy and leaned on her locker, staring at the little terminal in
her hand. ‘Missed call: Brandy. Message waiting.’

She sighed, and stared at the text.
Finally with another resigned sigh, she pressed the icon on the
screen. Brandy popped up on the screen. She was at home, in the
kind of shirt Cassidy knew she wore around the house, oversized
button ups. “Hey Cass.” She sounded tired and looked ready for bed.
“Um…” an agonizing sigh and pause. “Is this the third message I’ve
left this week without hearing from you? You’re hard to get a hold
of. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be an inconvenience.” Brandy sat
there silent for a couple moments more, gazing down. “I…. yeah,
well. Call or don’t, I don’t know.” She sighed again, and the
message ended.

Damn it. Brandy really wrote the book
on the passive aggressive bit. Cassidy had to admit, even for a
long distance girlfriend, she had been less than attentive. But
work... duty... She stared at the terminal again, and considered
calling Brandy. But it was late in Densfarn now. She tossed the
terminal back in the locker and headed to her barrack. Brandy would
be asleep.

She wouldn’t want a call
now.

It had nothing to do with not wanting
to face her and feel guilty. Again.

“
Oh, are you still with
her?” McKinney asked innocently.

“
Yeah! Of course! You
eavesdropping?”

“
Sorry, just thought I heard
a familiar voice. I haven’t heard much about her in a long time.
Are things OK?”

“
Yeah... !… yeah, things are
fine. No news is good news, right?” It wasn’t. Brandy’s messages
made it clear, but Cassidy was barely admitting it to herself, let
alone having McKinney in on it. Not to say McKinney was a bad guy
or anything. It just wasn’t his business. She put it out of her
mind, but her mood was decidedly worsened, and she mostly kept
quiet.

~~~

Jacob Kirison awoke.

He opened his eyes, and stared at the
ceiling of his apartment for a moment. Soon it sunk in that he was
woken by the beeping of his terminal. A message had arrived. He
slid over and sat up, coping with the horrid, near paint-peeling
properties of his breath. A night of hard drinking can do that. He
also seemed to remember deciding that a jar of minced garlic would
be a fun snack at some point.

Yup, another glorious
morning.

Make that afternoon. It wasn’t a
critical distinction lately. Kirison stood, picking up the terminal
as he wandered from the pull-out bed to the kitchenette in search
of coffee. After recovering from a particularly dramatic yawn, he
thumbed the button to check the new message.

The weathered looking, joyless face of
a man aging before his time appeared. “Kirison. The department’s
being shut down, it’s finally official. We did our best over here,
but it’s no big shock. All things considered, you did a decent job
though all this. I’ll keep you on the short list, and if anything
pops up that suits your skill-set, I’ll call you. At least you’ve
got a decent little severance coming your way. Anyway, I’m sorry it
had to come to this. We can only blame Coll.”

Cute. Well, it was true that it wasn’t
a big shock. After the recent disasters caused by an ex-colleague,
Kirison knew his career path was shriveling out from under him. The
parliament couldn’t pass enough knee jerk, extremist laws fast
enough. Understandable maybe. Mr. Book was right though. Jonathan
“Erebus” Coll was the one who ruined the fun for
everyone.

Kirison had a few projects that had
been on the back-burner for some time. Frankly, he hadn’t been
making much progress since the bad news was seen coming down the
pipe. It was kind of a motivation killer. The last year and a half
he had been mostly fiddling around on things that had little or no
application for the financiers, and even they didn’t care. They
were more worried about lobbying, appealing things, and liability
risk.

But today it was official. It was time
to clean up all those little projects, and send them to oblivion.
Kind of a waste.

~~~~~

:::C /03

~~~~~

A few hours into a patrol shift,
Cassidy felt her terminal wiggle in her thigh pocket. An incoming
call. Anxiety spread though Her. It was Brandy, it had to be. Why
don’t people call you to warn you that they’re calling? All of a
sudden, there they are, wanting an answer, and you’re totally
unprepared.

She just couldn’t talk to her now, she
simply wasn’t ready! What was she supposed to say about never being
able to call? Brandy would understand. It’s the career. Brandy has
a career too. She’d understand, right? No, Brandy manages to call.
The look on Brandy’s face in the last message returned to Cassidy,
and the anxiety built up. Her mind went two directions at once. One
side doing just her job, the other side just silently freaking out
inside.

Mercifully, the wiggle of her terminal
stopped. She took a deep breath, unnoticed by her partner, and
relaxed a little.

A short time later the terminal gave a
single wiggle. A message was ready. The anxiety rattled its way
back up and grabbed Cassidy by the throat.

“
Greg.” Cassidy choked
out.

“
Y.. yeah?” It was not
typical to use a first name.

“
I gotta... I gotta take
five. Can I catch up with you?” She looked a bit pale, and left
McKinney with the impression that she was feeling ill.

McKinney spoke with a supportive tone,
“Yeah, sure, take your time.”

Cassidy kind of wanted to run. At the
same time, she kind of wanted to lie down right there on the
ground. The result was a slow meandering. She put the foremost
thought of Brandy aside, and found herself obsessing on her pace.
Too slow, and people would wonder what the heck she was doing. Too
fast, and they’d think she was in a hurry for important M.P.
business. Both results would be totally inconsequential, but
regardless, she tried very hard to walk the perfect medium
pace.

The nearest quiet spot turned out to be
a stall in a bathroom. She pulled out the terminal. Sure enough,
the little display read that it was a message from Brandy. Just
when she was starting to convince herself it might not be. She
closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

She felt as if she sent an order to her
hand to tap the icon, and hoped that her hand wouldn’t obey. “Sorry
Brandy, but I lost the ability to press buttons.” That would be a
good excuse. Sure.

Cruelly, her hand obeyed. She opened
her eyes to see Brandy sitting with her arms folded, elbows resting
on her knees. She was looking down in silence. Not good.

A pained, fragile sigh escaped Brandy.
The sigh reached out of the terminal speaker and grabbed Cassidy’s
lungs, making her unable to breathe. Brandy reluctantly started.
“Cass….” This wasn’t going to be good. This wasn’t going to be good
at all.

“
It’s…” Brandy swallowed
hard. “It’s obviously not working out.” She sighed, her voice
beginning to tremble a bit. “I guess we’re over.
Goodbye.”

The message ended, and Cassidy was left
staring at the screen, but seeing nothing. She was still waiting
for the message to say more. It didn’t seem long enough. Not long
enough for a breakup from a year and a half relationship. It hadn’t
sunk in. She was alone, silent, but safe behind the levies of
shock, safe from the flood that had just assaulted her.

Outwardly she did her best to be calm,
but her tightly shallow breathing, clenched jaw, and eyes staring
into nothingness betrayed the surge of screaming panic
inside.

Eventually recovering a little focus,
Cassidy called Brandy back. In the short eternity while the
terminal made the connection, that reluctant part of Cassidy inside
was screaming at the other half to hang up. She didn’t have
anything planned to say. Apologize? Should she maybe say something
about-

‘
BLOCKED’

Blocked?! Brandy’s not taking her
calls? What? She can’t just block her without a chance to say
something for herself! She didn’t even have a chance to…

But she did have a chance. She had
plenty of chances. Plenty of chances over the last.. month? Oh god,
was it more? Chances to call back, even if it was just to leave a
message, or wake her up.

But it was too late now. The terminal
slipped out of her hand and clattered on the floor. She stared down
at it resentfully. It wasn’t kind enough to break on impact. After
a time, and a long sigh, she picked it up.

Well… maybe Brandy would lift the block
after a while. Maybe. Aw geez, what to do? Well, she could always
snail-mail her or something. Call her mom maybe. Geez, no, that’s
creepy.

With another deep sigh, she stowed the
terminal. She started to head out of the washroom, and caught her
reflection in a mirror.

Well, son of a bitch. She was
crying.

~~~

“
What do you mean there’s no
available manpower?!” Kirison squawked at his terminal.

“
It means there’s no
available manpower, maybe? What part of the department being shut
down isn’t clear?” Kirison’s former supervisor, the joyless Mr.
Book was pretty clear.

“
Well, that’s the whole
thing!” Kirison wound up his rebuttal. “We can’t just leave
projects sitting out there, we have to shut down
properly!”

Mr. Book leaned in closer, a hint of a
smile cracking though. Maybe it was a sneer. “Kirison…. All
projects have been shut down quite nicely already. All. Official.
Projects.”

Kirison’s face became a bit joyless as
well. “Well... Well... I still have things I need to
close.”

Mr. Book relaxed a little and took on a
bit more of an official air. “If you’ve been doing something
illegal, after all the anti-Erebus legislation-”

Kirison jumped, “No! Shit no! Nothing
like that! It’s perfectly harmless!”

“
And legal?” Mr. Book was
getting closer and closer to smiling. Kirison was entertaining when
he squirmed.

Kirison did his best to display a
proper posture and expression. “Well. No.”

“
Kirisonnnnn……”

“
Oh come on now! You know as
well as I do that the new laws are ignorant knee-jerk reactions.
Surely endeavors to non-weaponized applications-“

“
Come on Kirison. I had as
much riding on this department as you,” Kirison knew that was bull,
but he didn’t interrupt. “but given all that’s happened in recent
years, this knee-jerk could have been a lot stronger.”

“
Well fine, whatever. But
the point is, I still have a project running out there and I don’t
have the kind of expertise to extract it quietly. And if it gets
found out, and they trace it back to me and you, and everyone up
the chain…”

“
Ah!” the joyless man
outright grinned for a moment. “You’re wrong! This project of yours
is unofficial, and has nothing to do with me. Everything I had my
hands in was one hundred percent legitimate and on the books! And
when the law came and said stop, I did! We all did! And now you
want a team from me for something you did behind our
backs?”

“
It’s not like the project
wasn’t going to go towards the company anyway! I just-“

Mr. Book’s face returned to its normal
joyless state. “Look, just clean it up.”

“
I can’t, I need a
team.”

“
It’s not like I don’t
sympathize. You’re a smart man, and a hard worker. But I don’t have
anyone to give you.” Mr. Book cocked his head slightly. “I do know
someone who might, however. People we dealt with in the early days.
Do you have a pen?”

~~~~~

:::C /04

~~~~~

Cassidy awoke, and the memory of Brandy
breaking up with her came slowly, but firmly. It was enough to make
her pause as she was getting out of bed. She couldn’t pause for
long; she had duty to get to. The irony of that wasn’t lost on her.
She didn’t seem to have time for her when they were a couple, so
why should she let crying over her get in the way of work now? She
certainly did enough of that yesterday.

That realization had come to her the
night before, and it still managed to make her feel like a selfish
bitch for taking Brandy for granted. She reached for her terminal
and called Brandy again. Still blocked. It was worth a shot. Focus.
Put yourself together, and get to work.