We burst through the doors of the police station and felt a dozen stares bear into us. We froze. The musketeers inside the station all froze. The citizens froze, the jailers, the prisoners, even the janitor.

It was built like a typical police station. A central desk manned by a cop and a duty-bound civilian. Except the cop was dressed as a musketeer. In the large, open room, there were several other desks for administration, here staffed by guards wearing black armor. All along the walls were cages, some filled, some empty.

This was a bad idea. A terrible idea. Because in one of the cages was my old body, the War Machine armor with its back panel open and its insides empty, now dressed in a sailor girl outfit and chained up in one of the cages.

"Can I help you?" said a nearby voice. It was familiar. It came beside us, at the desk right beside the door.

I looked over and saw him: a musketeer cop with a mustache and long hair over his eyes. It was him. The stoner-narc shopkeep helper.

Did he recognize me?

He was leaned back with his jackboots on the desk, sort of relaxing on the job. He stared longer than comfortable at me, then narrowed his eyes and tilted his head a bit. "Have we... met? You look awfully familiar."

Vil stepped in my way. "We're looking for a man named Johnny Jigsip."

He didn't reply. He dropped his boots back to the floor and leaned over the desk, eyes digging into me. "Standby a second." He stood up, marched around--boots thumping against the hardwood floor--and up to my face.

If I had sweat glands, I would've sweat bullets. Not because I was scared of this puny human, but because I didn't want to fuck up the mission.

"Hey, buddy. I asked you a question," he said.

I had to disguise myself further. But how? My voice! These guys found my normal voice irresistibly sexy last time, so now I knew to be as unsexy as possible. It was a near-impossible feat, but I was the doer of the impossible!

"Uh, ahem, mmmyes!" I said, trying to sound like a geriatric butler. "Forgive me, my good man. I do not believe we have--and I say--we have never met before this time--mmyes!"

"So, wait, what? Have we met or not?"

"No."

He stepped back, crossed his arms, looked me up and down. Then, he eased back again and took the longest, deepest, most animalistic sniffs I had ever seen a person do.

He paused. I froze. Even the cops in the room were watching.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

"Sorry," he said. "I might've had you confused with someone else." He laughed and turned back to Vil. "You want ol' Johnny, eh?"

Some of the cops in the back chuckled at the name.

"Yes," Vil said. "If he's here, I believe we can discuss bail."

The musketeer clicked his tongue. "Sorry, buddy. You're about a day too late."

"A day too late?" Vil stepped closer. I could feel his impatience. "Did someone bail him out already?"

"Whoa, now, buddy," the musketeer said. He dropped himself back at his desk and resumed his relaxation posture. "Nobody picked him up. We moved him, you see." He stretched his arm over to open a drawer--wrong drawer--then opened another. He dug around and pulled out a thin stack of papers to filter through. "Yeah, here it is." He showed us. The text was too small to read, but it seemed vaguely official. "An executive order to move him to--" he flipped it back to read, "...warehouse 14. Yikes. That one."

"Where is warehouse 14?" Vil asked.

The musketeer lifted an eyebrow and hit him with a half-smile. "You're not from here, huh? Or maybe you're just too young." He clicked his tongue again. "Man, I'm getting old. Warehouse 14 is the old heretic housing center. They use it for torture and interrogation now." He laughed. "Poor ol' Johnny's probably cut an' dry by now."

Vil drew out the bounty paper and slammed it on the desk. "We need him. Now. Consider this your new executive order."

He snatched the bounty and looked it over. Then, he sighed. "Fuckin' bureaucrats. Every goddamn time, changing their minds. Oh well. Head over that way," he pointed through the wall, but we got the gist, "and walk across the empty lot. The merchants keep most of the bulk goods in the line of warehouses. Obviously, he's in the 14th one."

Vil snatched it back. "Thank you." He sprinted out, and I started to follow.

The musketeer laughed behind us. "Just pick up what's left of him. Maybe you'll get partial credit."

The rest of the station laughed, but we paid them no mind.

We ran around the building, through the empty, grassy plot--an old soccer field, probably--and found the warehouses. They were in a big line, and these buildings were huge, almost big enough to fit a small castle inside--and there were about twenty of them in several rows.

Luckily, they were all marked with painted-on letters on the side. The first row counted up to five, so we ran further in. Here, merchants and shippers were delivering goods to and from with their horse-drawn carts, some loading and unloaded as they would do at the docks. It was an industrial zone, but the sheer size of these structures made us feel tiny. Even the main doors were large enough to sail a ship through.

The sun was setting, and as we ran to the next row, I could see that these buildings cast long, long shadows further than a stone's throw across the grass. Soon, we came upon it. Warehouse 14, it read. The numbers were faded, but the side door was cracked open. The inside seemed impossibly dark, almost like a doorway to the abyss.

Vil slowed to a fast walk as we approached. "Redrim," he said. "Be ready."

I was ready, more than he'd expect.

Vil cracked open the door. Sunlight poured in and caught the swirling dust around us, and we peered inside.

And I felt a cold chill at what we'd found.

There, right in the middle of the warehouse, lit by an overhead light way up on the ceiling, was a solitary table, dwarfed by the open space and scale of the place. A pristine white table cloth covered it, and on it, a candle-lit dinner.

There were four chairs.

Two occupied.

On the left, Johnny, probably. He had a bloody sack over his head, and he was bound to the chair, but he was breathing.

On the far end, a woman. Flowing blonde hair, strange white uniform, and cleavage I couldn't forget. She smiled at us with those deep-red lips.

The door slammed shut behind us. A bolt clacked--we were locked in.

A trap.

The woman aimed her glass of bubbly champagne and hit us with a million-gold smile. "Oh, Redrim. You're late."