Later that same day, Maxi found herself in her uncle’s office, where she debriefed him with what she had gleaned so far. Her uncle watched with a blank expression. It was hard to get a read on the guy. Lo had the knack to seem totally engaged with her without giving away any hint of emotion. It wasn’t that he was cold. The man seemed warm and inviting. It was more like she couldn’t escape the feeling that he was analyzing her.
Perhaps it was more that she was analyzing him, and not gleaning any more than she already knew. Her mother gave her explicit instructions not to trust him, yet here she was, sharing all the details of her investigation. Sure, he was the one who gave her the quest, but he still wasn’t completely off the suspect list.
After she finished her debrief, she decided to ask more about her dad. “So, when was the last time you saw my dad?”
“Around the last time you saw him,” Lo said. “He said that he had found the Printer that Never Jams, then disappeared.”
Maxi remembered the day he left. He and her mom had argued. There was a nasty fight. Her dad had told her that he’d be going away for a while. He packed a small backpack, headed out the door, and was never seen again. At least not until the closed-casket funeral following his “encounter” with a subway.
“Did you fake his death?” Maxi said. “It was a closed-casket funeral.”
“I know. I was there,” Lo said, and after he looked her in the eyes, he added, “You probably wouldn’t remember me.”
There were quite a few of her father’s business associates who had shown up to the funeral. She remembered her mom being quite protective of her, shooing away any people who tried to talk with Maxi, saying that she was in mourning and to leave her alone. In hindsight, Maxi realized that it was just her mom not wanting Maxi to get mixed up in the Company.
That’s what Maxi had to figure out about her uncle. How much of her mother’s distrust of him was because he deserved it, versus how much of it was just her mother’s hate for the Company? Maxi understood her mother more than she ever had while growing up. Her mom had just seemed to be an eccentric parent with strange rules about what Maxi couldn’t and couldn’t do.
But now, it made so much more sense. The Company had destroyed Tara’s life. Her brother was a Company man, so therefore, something to be reviled. While Maxi wasn’t throwing her mom’s advice to the wind, she was her own person, and often, when her mother thought something was a mistake, Maxi would do it anyway because she had to find out for herself.
The more her mom attempted to shield her from life, the more Maxi wanted to experience it. When she was a girl, if Tara told her the pool was too cold and advised her to go in slowly, Maxi would jump. If a late-night movie was “too scary”, Maxi would sneak out of her bedroom to catch the end of it.
“What happened to him?” she asked.
“He most likely died in an off-grid dimension,” Lo said. “We don’t know where he went because he disabled the security system in the elevator that he used. All we know is that it came back empty, covered in a significant portion of his own blood.”
“He’s dead?”
“Presumably. Let’s just say it was enough to easily convince anyone of his death.”
“And what do you believe?”
“I believe that your father had a talent for doing what he wanted, regardless of the consequences to himself or anyone around him. Much like a certain daughter of his. While I don’t know what killed him or if he is dead, I do know this – he and your mom were on thin ice before he died. They were one step away from a divorce.”
“I know,” Maxi said. “I was there.”
“But what you don’t know is that your dad did it all to protect you. Your entire world dying...it leaves emotional scars. He didn’t want that for you, nor did your mom, so they rented an offsite apartment. Paid the premium for more time away from the Company. It was all to give you an approximation of what they thought was a normal childhood on Earth.”
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“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“It was all fine and dandy, they both made enough credits to approximate a good middle-class life, but your mom and dad disagreed about one fundamental issue that eventually tore them apart. While your mom wanted to hide the truth from you, your dad wanted to tell you when you were a teenager. He wanted to train you for the war to come.”
“War? What war?”
“The end of the world. There’s always an apocalypse around the corner, be it grutomaton or otherwise. As soon as the first reports of printers exhibiting the signs of the virus started coming through, he wanted to put you in boot camp and prepare you for the end of the world. Your mom wanted nothing to do with it. It’s what eventually tore them apart in the end. There’s a lot of trauma from what happened. Most marriages can’t survive the trauma they went through.”
“Who said I was blaming them? What about your trauma? You seem to have done well for yourself.”
Lo Key became stern. It was the first real hint of emotion from him that didn’t seem staged. “I can still hear the screams of my family. Not everyone was lucky like yours.”
“I’m sorry,” Maxi said. However, she didn’t feel lucky. The whole thing seemed like a nightmare to her. In some ways, she was thankful to her mother, because when she was a teen, her biggest worry was whether she’d make the latest raid on whichever MMORPG she was playing at the time. On the other hand, had her dad won the argument, maybe she could have trained and been the top PI right about now, slaying monsters on the front lines.
In the end, perhaps stumbling into the path of a Generalist was the right path for her. She didn’t have a branch handing out orders, as almost all the Generalists were as close to independent contractors that the Company would get, and she seemed to be doing good with just using the Company training.
Still, Maxi wanted to find out what happened to her dad, not only because her search for the Printer of Never Jamming crossed his path, but perhaps she could get better insight as to why. The fact remained that he’d rather she thought he was a deadbeat gambling-addicted drunk than tell her the truth.
As if Lo had heard her thoughts, he said, “I’ll tell you what. Figure out which of the Power Twelve is throwing the raids, and I’ll get you access to your father’s file.”
A new message appeared in her glasses. “A Favor for Lo Key” updated. Reward: Access to Henry Breakwaters’ investigation file.
“It’ll take me some time to requisition you access,” Lo added, “and I don’t want you to get distracted.”
“It’ll help locate The Printer of Never Jamming if my father really did find it,” Maxi said.
“Perhaps, but you need to survive the month, first.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Only if we don’t find that power player, they’ll have another chance at you during the next raid.”
“If there is a next raid.”
“There is always a next raid. Now, unless you have anything else for me, my suggestion is the sushi bar.”
“The what?”
“The one in our cafeteria. It’s a little pricey, but it’s one of the few things worth the credits.”
“Are you trying to tell me something?”
“I’m telling you to go get lunch.”
Maxi shrugged and went towards the elevator at the front of his office. She pressed the button and walked inside. She was about to call her Office Pool when she decided on the cafeteria instead. In the short time she had known her uncle, he wasn’t the small talk type. Either they were having a useful conversation, or he was dismissing her because he was busy. Which meant that there was something he wanted her to see.
It didn’t take her very long to figure out what that something was. One of Hellboy666’s personal assistants was at the bar filling up an entire cartful of plates, much to the irritation of others in line. Maxi knew the person worked for the power Auditor because Hellboy666 was a bit of a social-media-aholic.
The woman at the sushi counter was the same short-haired Korean woman in an all-white business suit who was in the background of lots of his photos. She was often holding a phone, or a pad of paper, or something that screamed “personal assistant”. Seeing the amount of sushi she was purchasing; it was definitely a lunch run for his entourage.
After the woman filled up her cart, she pushed it towards the twelve elevators at the entrance to the cafeteria. She went to the Tier 1 elevator, which was vacant, and pushed the button. Maxi made a split-second decision, raced up to the elevator and yelled, “Hold that door!”
Maxi stepped inside next to the dumbfounded assistant, who was probably used to no lines, waits, or traveling companions during her time working for her boss. Maxi didn’t give the girl any time to think about it. Maxi said, “Where are you going? I can enter the destination.”
“Hellboy’s office,” the assistant said, “but it doesn’t really work like that. The elevator system–”
“Hellboy’s office it is,” Maxi said after pushing the button. The elevator lurched as it took off. She had known that it would work with the assistant in the elevator. When Maxi had tried to access the offices of other players, Terry would politely remind her that she didn’t have permission. This white-clad assistant did, and so long as she was in the elevator, it would take Maxi where she wanted to go. However, she was going to have to start a drinking game, as the elevator dumped her off in a location that she didn’t expect.