Nina

It was the day after the battle and she was on her feet as ordered, limping down to the underground parking garage where all the Wreckie vehicles were kept. Every step ached as if her insides had been redecorated. As she descended a flight of stairs, she tried not to look at the massive parking garage with countless rows of vehicles in front of her. The sheer scale made her dizzy. The thick air smelled of rubber and gas, almost enough to make her retch. When she made it to the ground floor, she found Red parked in the front row, his DeVille now restored to its hideous baby-barf yellow. She couldn’t help but smile when she saw that his nameplate was suspended above his spot.

She eased herself into the passenger seat holding back her grunts. Red eyed her large fountain drink nervously as she set it into the cup holder but didn’t say anything. She took a long, noisy slurp on it while Red backed out of the spot.

He navigated a maze of interchanges and ramps until they got to a large roundabout where each exit had the name of the continents printed on them. On subsequent roundabouts he took the North America exit, followed by the United States exit, followed by the California exit and finally the San Francisco exit. They drove through an old tunnel with pockmarked redbrick like a Victorian sewer. After a quarter mile they ended up in a room with a brass arch, about seven feet wide against a stone wall. It was trimmed in intricate Art Deco-inspired patterns and fluting that gave the otherwise dark and depressing underground a splash of style.

Red waved at the guard who was sitting in a chair to the side of the gate reading a magazine. He slid a key into a console next to him and then pulled a large lever down. The brick wall disappeared into a field of absolute black, like the void of space without stars.

Nina braced herself in her seat as the car approached the gate. “That’s cute, a manually activated gate.” She leaned her head out of the window gingerly so as not to hurt anything, unsure if the car was going to fit through.

“This gate is from 1870s, so yeah, it is due for an upgrade.” Red pushed a button on the driver's side door. The mirrors folded in as he slowly approached the gate perfectly centered.

“Well, it’s the nicest jump gate I’ve seen,” Nina mumbled.

“London’s even more impressive,” he said, as he concentrated on driving the car into the emptiness of the gate. The hood of the car slowly disappeared into the darkness, then the dashboard, and finally themselves. After a faint buzz on the skin, they arrived in a dingy cement garage. A buzzer went off and an automatic garage door clanked up in front of them. Grey skies filled with San Francisco fog greeted them.

Nina took a big gulp of her soda bracing herself. He was an asshole, but she was glad he was on her side. “Thanks for saving my ass yesterday. I was about spent when those two Sovs hit me with that beam.”

Red nodded. “You did better than I expected.”

“What, did you expect me to get killed?” Nina shot back.

“Nigel, at least four Sovs, and god knows what he was shooting at…yeah, those are long odds.”

Nina bobbled her head side to side. Those were long odds, come to think of it. “But how? How did you get out of it with only some bruised ribs?” Mom had been right though. Red was tougher than nails.

“Experience.”

“Well thanks, I owe you one.”

“Don’t worry, you’re about to pay me back.” Red gave her the first genuine smile Nina had ever seen from him. Then in the blink of an eye all evidence was erased.

After a slow drive through the fog, up and down the hilly city streets they swung into an underground garage beneath a modern grey skyscraper downtown. Red pulled into the lone spot in the bottom of the parking garage behind a large fenced power generator for the building.

Nina tried to get out of the car without grimacing in front of Red, only to stumble as she stood up.

“You up for this?” Red asked, with what she thought was a tiny hint of concern buried under the “I’m a loner” facade.

“Yeah, Doc says everything is back in order.” Nina wiped a burst of pained sweat from her forehead. “He said the aching is just the nerves figuring it out.”

Red walked around to her as she continued to lean on the car, waiting for the aching to subside. “Here.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small tin and dropped a small glowing pill into her hand.

“What’s this?”

“It's black market, so don’t ask, but it’ll take the edge off.”

Nina dropped the pill in her mouth and took a sip from her soda. There was a tingling like electrical pop rocks in her mouth and in a few seconds her whole body felt like it was vibrating softly, but more importantly, the pain dulled. “Wow, that actually works.”

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“Here.” Red pressed the tin into her hand. “Don’t form a habit.”

Red went to the trunk and retrieved a large white cardboard box with thin metal handles on top. Written on the side in large red, calligraphy-style letters was, “Uncle Bob’s Ultimate Takeout Box”. It made the box look like a large version of a small cardboard Chinese takeout box. “So, what’s in the ridiculous takeout box?”

“All part of the drill with Reggie. Come on, we don’t want to be late, it makes him even more impossible.”

Nina limped after Red to an uninviting, dimly lit corner. Beneath a flickering fluorescent fixture was a metal door with no handle, like the outside of a one-way fire escape exit. Red tapped his knuckles on the door twice. She looked around for a camera but there was just dust-covered trash in the corner and an empty fire extinguisher box on the wall.

“What a dump,” Nina said.

The door buzzed and clicked then slowly slid open leading to a long dark hallway.

“Close the door behind you,” Red said as he walked in.

When Nina pulled the door shut, a large metal bar shot across the frame of the door with a clank. A sudden flash of light was followed by complete darkness. Then, from what appeared to be an open black sky above them, a cascade of orange glitter started to fall, landing on the ground in front of them and lighting their path to a door at the end of the hallway. It gave the impression that they were walking on a sparkly orange walkway through space.

“Wow,” she said, involuntarily, as they made their way towards the door at the end of the hallway.

“You’re lucky, it used to be real glitter, I would find that crap in my clothes for months. At least now it’s all holograms.”

A loud friendly voice boomed, “Welcome. Huanying. Bienvenido…” and on it went in language after language until they reached the end of the hallway and a fanciful door covered in red padding trimmed with gold. Next to it was a large button with a gold cursive R that sparkled when Red pushed it.

“Ew,” the same booming voice said in a more lascivious manner. “You really know how to push my buttons.”

The elevator doors opened with more red padding and gold trim inside. On the wall there were two buttons, another large gold cursive R and a small plain button with a G on it. Red sighed loudly and pushed the R button, which sparkled and again was followed by the same voice. “Now that you’re in me…let me take you for a ride.”

The elevator shot upwards. Nina’s tender insides felt like they were trying to make a break for the floor. An uncomfortable few seconds was followed by a head rush from the elevator slowing down. Nina gripped the handle on the side of the elevator to steady herself.

The doors opened into a cavernous white walled three-story-tall room, the center was dominated by a massive two-story glass chandelier of dozens of glass globes flickering a rainbow of light. Tall windows lined one wall looking out on the buildings of San Francisco that appeared to float above the white fog below them. A wall to wall four-inch-thick flamingo pink shag carpet covered the floor. The threads of the carpet were so thin that each step Nina took caused a wave to ripple through them like a breeze blowing grass in a meadow.

At the opposite end of the shag rug, seated behind a desk of blue granite covered in bright green moss, was a man in a well-trimmed white suit. Filling the wall behind him in bright pink neon the words ‘The Answer Man’ were written out.

The man looked up from his computer. “Welcome back, Red, and this beautiful creature must be Nina.”

Red barked, “Can we see Reggie now?”

“Now, now, you know the rules, payment first. Both of you, please, join me in the studio and Reggie will be with you as soon as you are done.” The receptionist glided across the pink carpet to a white door in the white walls, making it invisible at first glance. Behind it was another large room full of all manner of art supplies including paints, canvases, clay, large blocks of wood, and sheets of metal.

“Payment?” Nina was still confused. What the hell was she supposed to do with art supplies? How was this payment?

“Oh, Red didn’t tell you? Part one of the payment is you must create a unique work of art for Reggie. This allows him to better understand his clients. He calls it, Glimpsing Your Soul. You can make anything you want. The only rule is that it must be true to you. So, no faking it dearies.”

“That is kind of sweet,” Nina said, with a little smile. And weird.

“Glad to hear it, because you’re the one doing it.” Red grinned again as he pulled a newspaper out of his jacket pocket and sat down at a table in the corner of the studio.

The receptionist huffed, “You’re such a grump, Red, but I guess some things never change.” He spun around and drifted out of the room.

Nina took a quick look around. “I don’t get it, why the art?”

“Reggie likes to think of himself as a man of culture and not a socialite blowhard so, just throw something on the paper and let’s get on with it.”

Nina wandered, perusing the art supplies before picking up a large sketchbook off a shelf. She rummaged around until she found some pencils in a cup on a large drafting desk. She could feel the pill container in her pocket and figured, why not. She popped another pill, felt the tingle amplify, and went to work.

The next twenty minutes of silence were broken only by the scratching of pencil on paper and the rustle of Red’s newspaper.

“Gorgeous!” Nina jumped at the voice behind her. “Absolutely marvelous, though your subject leaves a bit to be desired.” Standing behind her was the owner of the familiar booming voice, a tall, heavyset man, his snow-white hair tied up in a bun, his suit dark purple with satin black lapels and shiny silver trousers.

Red put his paper down and stood up.

“Let’s talk, Reggie.”

“Always in such a hurry this one, and so serious all the time.” Reggie put out his hand, “Hi darling, I am Reggie, as if you didn’t know by now, am I right?” Nina shook it politely. “Red, you really should look at this, this is definitely top ten, going to make the wall, that is for sure. Go ahead, show him, dear.”

Nina looked at her brown penciled sketch of an angry looking man in a baggy suit reading a newspaper. Even if she didn’t understand it, she felt the decades of pain and loss weighing down on her subject. She felt her cheeks flush as she showed Red an emotional mirror of what she thought of him. “Eh, it’s not that great,” she mumbled.

Red walked over and looked at the picture. He stared at it for more than a few seconds and she thought she saw the smallest drop of moisture form in the corner of his eye.

Red cleared his throat. In a low almost whisper of a voice he said, “I…that’s good.”

Reggie put a hand over his mouth in astonishment. “If I didn’t know better, I would say you have touched the soul of the soulless, my dear.”