CHAPTER THREE

Alan was bored. When he had left his secure, but low-paying, job at the Clematis Pollen Mining Corporation to join up in this gang, at the urging of his friend Vic, he had been promised "Excitement, Adventure, A never-ending flow of Kyler, and all the leaves you can eat!". Well, thought Alan, all they'd asked him to do so far was distract punters so that Vic could clobber them over the head with his Flit-ball bat, then frisk them and run down an alleyway. This wasn't much of an adventure, and it was about as exciting as watching nectar drip through the vats at the mines. This wouldn't have been really all that bad, had they been allowed to keep the wallet, the rings, the jacket, or indeed anything, but Gali's little right hand man, Paco was always waiting three or four streets away, to liberate them of their hard-stolen possessions. All in all, Alan mused as he and Vic waited for their next "Customer" on Michelin Road, he would have been better sticking it out at the mine. His stomach rumbled loudly, distracting his attention for a second, the buggers had lied about the leaves as well. Regular footsteps pulled him out of his self-pitying musings, and he looked up to see a beautiful sight. The man walking along the road towards them was wearing the most beautiful suit Alan had ever seen, Cocoon-silk shirt, expensive and well tailored jacket, he didn't even want to think about how much the shoes would have cost. Alan nudged Vic, hard, in the side, and pointed out their latest quarry. In less than a second they were mobile, Vic, respectable as usual, pulled into motion in a walk which would allow him to meander several paces in front of the sharply suited gent, whilst Alan hung back just far enough to be convincing in his call. The procession walked until they passed an alleyway, when Alan coughed, and assumed the appearance of a passing office worker.
"Excuse me," he called to the figure in front of him,
"Yes?" the figure turned as he spoke, and Vic began to creep up on him.
"Have you got the time, please?" Alan spoke politely, giving the impression of a polite, educated businessman, whilst allowing Vic time to approach the victim, "Sorry for asking, but my watch has stopped."
"Oh, no trouble," the smartly dressed caterpillar looked at his watch, as Vic took his bat out of his jacket and swung it back for what looked like a home run, "It's exactly one second before I duck, and your friend hits you with that bat."
Vic swung, halfway through the speech, narrowly missing the caterpillar's head as he ducked. Vic, having swung his bat to full extension without connecting, was off balance, and it only took a gentle tug from the moving arm of the caterpillar in the sharp suit, to send Vic tumbling directly into Alan. The bat never connected, but the momentum of Vic's body knocking himself and Alan over. The Caterpillar in the sharp suit picked Alan up with one arm, easily pinning him to the wall, and pulled a vicious looking pistol out of the holster hidden inside his jacket. The gun was placed under Alan's jaw, as the caterpillar deftly flicked off the safety catch, and engaged the extreme danger and possible fatality catch. Vic, trying to roll away unseen, was caught by a foot inside an expensive shoe, pressed into his back with extreme speed and force.
The caterpillar smiled at the two muggers, both of whom were looking at him with faces which mixed many emotions, partly anger, partly shock, partly frustrated rage at the fact that a sap in a suit had got the better of them, but mostly pure, naked terror.
"Now that I've got your attention," Remiel said, in a voice that suggested that he bore little regard to his captives' safety if they were unhelpful, "Take me to Gali."
Twenty minutes later, the trio were walking swiftly down Barnett Grove, an area of the Miller's Rest industrial estate surrounded on both sides by large, menacing concrete buildings. The leading two in the trio had pistols pressed into their spines in such a way that a sudden movement would have been suicide by proxy. The trio were halfway down Barnett Grove, when the leading pair slowed to a halt, outside a large, locked up factory.
"This it?" Remiel asked, curtly. Alan and Vic nodded. "There a password?" Remiel continued, Alan nodded, "It's-", he began, before being interrupted,
"Don't tell me the password" Remiel spoke in a low voice, "I don't need to know it, tell it to the guard when we go in."
"You'll never get away with this" Alan said, in a quiet voice so Remiel could hear him, but no-one else could, "The guard knows everyone in the building"
"Easy, say I'm a new recruit."
"Won't work, new recruits are brought in under armed guard."
"Exactly my plan," Remiel grinned, and, keeping one gun trained directly in-between Alan and Vic moved his right arm into a half-nelson position. "You," he said, pointing his other gun at Alan, "Your friend know the password?"
Alan nodded, Remiel jerked the gun backwards slightly, "Move round, make it look like you've got me in an arm-lock, If I feel any pain you're dead, understood? Good. You," Remiel switched his attention to Vic, "Walk in front of me close enough that they don't see my gun in between your shoulder-blades. We're going in."
The tight procession approached the hard steel door of the warehouse. Vic tapped out a complicated staccato rhythm stolen from a song that had been popular 5 years ago. A panel slid back in the door, and an aphid's face looked out, saw who was there and said "What they doesn't know..." and paused as if expecting an answer.
"...Doesn't hurt them." Vic replied and the door swung open. The single file group went inside, the door slamming shut behind them.
"Who's this?" the doorkeeper asked, scrutinising Remiel with one of the most intense gazes he had ever been subjected to.
"New recruit." Alan said behind Remiel, "Brought him in to be joined up"
"Ah!" the aphid cried, glee in his face as he saw the sheer size of Remiel, "Fresh meat! We'll need to train him up, but I think this could make an admirable grunt. I'll need to have a word with the recruiting sergeant, excuse me for a second."
The aphid turned away to use the phone, and was therefore unable to see the descending handle of Remiel's gun, as he was pistol-whipped to the back of the head, hard enough to cause concussion, but not to damage.
"Right" Remiel said, returning his tazer to a more normal holding position and training it on his two captives, "Gali's office. Where?"
"His office is on the fourth floor, but he won't be in it, he's debriefing the crack squad in the mess hall." Vic replied.
"Thanks." Remiel said, shooting both caterpillars in the centre of the chest with the tazer pistol. Their prone forms fell to the floor, motionless except the occasional twitch

As the fourth floor approached, Remiel put on a slight turn of speed, and emerged from the stairwell at high speed. Remiel ran along the corridor checking every door quickly, most of the doors were just entrances to minor officials' offices. As the corridor progressed, the offices got more and more important, until Remiel reached a doorway which had had the cheap plastic door removed, and replaced with a dark hardwood, maybe mahogany. The small gold plaque upon the door said "Gali. Keep out or die." This warning must have had a profound effect on staff, as the end of the hallway looked decidedly unused, although the door itself wasn't locked. Remiel slipped in and looked around for a moment. By the looks of things, Gali's gang was quite major, merely judging by the quality of the furnishings. Gali's office had a Westfield carpet, a large mahogany Gilmour desk, with brass and gold trimmings, and a top of the range Cyclone 566 computer. After appraising the office for a few seconds, Remiel began preparing for Gali's return.

The office door opened slightly, and hit the thin splinter that Remiel had placed in its way as a wedge. After a few seconds forcing, the door swung open and Gali's bodyguard, a butterfly with black lightning motifs upon his wings19, walked in, cursing. As the door swung back, the string carefully tethered to the top swung the bottle of Inglesias wine from where it had been balanced on the picture frame, in a smooth arc centred on the light fitting, connecting with the bodyguards head, knocking him out cold. Gali, within the room by now, tried to make for the door, before running into the wall of wiry flesh which was Remiel.
"We need to talk" Remiel snarled at his captive aphid.
Gali's left arm shot to his side, Remiel's arm, stronger than that of the aphid before him, shot down faster, wrestling the gun from Gali's hip holster before the aphid's hand could reach it.
"Don't even think about trying anything like that again you slimy little bastard!" Remiel's voice was harsh and dripping with pure, spiky anger, "If I see one move from you that I don't like, I kill you without a moment's thought. Do you understand?"

Gali nodded his head, carefully and slowly, to make sure that his movement was not misinterpreted. The situation had put him mainly into professional soldier mode, do nothing to get yourself killed, but try your hardest to get out of the situation. The self control he exhibited in stopping himself overreacting physically did not, however, extend to his voice.

"What the hell's the matter with you, man?" he snapped, although instincts of self survival turned the snap into a whisper, "You get yourself into a place where you're entirely surrounded by people who will defend me to the death, then try to kill me with a wine bottle. OK, ten out of ten for style, but negative points for good thinking. Once I'm dead, you'll never get out of here."
"That's not likely to help you much, though, is it?" the sneering reply came as Gali's gun was thrown into a corner, and a large, dark, high calibre pistol was put into it's place, "But, just for the record, I haven't decided whether you live or die."
"What?" even at this moment of terror, with the muzzle of a gun inches from his face and in a likely firing position, Gali could not get over the casual nature of this remark. "You break into my building, by Dave knows what means, make your way into my office, clobber my personal bodyguard, - do you know how much it costs to hire butterflies in this city - take me hostage, and finally point a gun to my head that could tear a hole through an entire leaf-stem, and you don't know what you're going to do? This would be hilarious if it wasn't so pathetic. You really had no idea what you were going to do with me?"
Remiel shrugged, "I just hoped it would come to me on the way"
"This is just sad. You want me to go away for a few minutes, maybe come back when you've made your mind up?"
"Shut the fuck up!" Remiel's hand tightened on the gun, and the other hand reached to his jacket pocket, where a pair of handcuffs was withdrawn, "Don't ever make fun of me again. If I didn't have such total control of myself, you would have been a red mist settling on your carpet before you'd had a chance to clear the door-frame, and sod the consequences. My sense of justice stopped me, but I don't know for how long."
For the first time since he had encountered this brutal, angry caterpillar, Gali paused for thought. "Justice? What is it you think I did?" he asked.
Remiel stood for a second, smiling gently, "You really don't know, do you? Have there been that many crimes like this, which you honestly cannot remember? I'll try and fill you in. Your gang ever work downtown? For instance near Patton's alley?"
Gali shrugged, unable to do anything but tell the truth when faced by such an unusual question. "I've operated in a lot of places."
"Were you working it on the fourteenth of Pre-chill?20"
"That's a long time ago, that's almost fifty days, and I'm a busy man."
"Were you working it?"
"Let me think, yeah, I guess I was, but so what?"
"Remember anything about that evening? Anyone you met, perhaps?"
"I got to think about this, the fourteenth... I took a patrol out, in Banderas rags, that was our game back then, dress like Banderas, and you put the fear of god up every bastard in the place, and we met up with these two guys in this alley..."
"Patton's alley?"
"Yeah, like you said, and I put my patter to these guys, acting the bad Lieutenant, usually works a treat. I wanted to look as if I was in control without giving myself airs and graces about the whole thing, know what I'm saying?"
"I don't give a damn how you commit your crimes, just tell me what happened."
"Well, these guys seemed to be buying it, then..." Gali paused, as if suddenly recalling something.
"What? What is it?"
"This guy, really big, you know, looked like he was about a week away from joining up for metamorphosis, refuses to play along with it. He grabbed my power glove and starts attacking my men. He knew how to use the damn thing. For a while it looks like we're losing, this guy's really going to work on us, we don't even have a chance to get off a tazer shot, then all of a sudden the strangest thing happens. One minute this guy's throwing my colleagues from side to side like they're sacks of leaf-cuttings, the next he drops to the floor. I don't know what happened to him at this point, maybe his big stupid heart gave out, but whatever it was it knocked him flat on his ass like he'd been hit by an iron bar. I was mad as hell by this point, as you can imagine, and I grabbed my glove back, and gave it to him, full in the face, fifteen seconds at the highest setting. I calmed down after this, but not enough just to leave him there, that would be really stupid. I picked the big lunk up, shoved him straight into a fast-flowing xylem, just to leave no evidence."

Gali's voice ran to a halt as he saw the index finger of the large caterpillar's gun hand tighten on the trigger. A look had now sprung into Remiel's eyes that knew nothing of the compassion that had stopped him from killing Gali straight away. The hammer moved backwards, almost to firing position, and stayed there for two long seconds without moving.
"This is the moment I was waiting for." A sudden, terrifying calm had entered Remiel's voice, a calm which was much more disturbing than his previous violent outbursts. "I needed to see whether or not I needed to kill you, and for a long time there, for the last few seconds after you finished talking, you were dead, no question, but something stopped me. To kill you, I'd have to degenerate myself to your level, and you know what? You're not worth it."
Gali looked up in anger, "Hey, fuck you! Who the fuck do you think you are, coming in here trying to judge people like this. I wasn't the one who started something, everything was smooth until your pal decided to wade in there. No one ever gets hurt if they don't act funny. He started trouble, he got trouble. What do you want, an apology? You can fucking whistle for it!"
A look of sudden disgust crossed Remiel's face, and he threw the handcuffs at Gali, who caught them instinctively. "Put them on" Remiel snarled,
"But I thought..." Gali began
"Put them on"
Gali reluctantly snapped the cuffs onto his wrists. After he had held them up, on Remiel's request, for inspection, his arms dropped back to his sides.
"I don't know what you think you're going to achieve by this, man." The aphid said, as Remiel approached him, "You'll never get out of this building alive, especially not if you've got me prisoner"
"I suppose you're right," Remiel conceded stepping within arm's reach of his captive, "But that's not really any of your concern, is it?"
Remiel's arm, moving since part-way through what he had said, connected with astonishing force with the back of Gali's head, knocking the aphid out cold. Remiel grabbed the aphid under one arm, like a rugby ball, and ran for the door.

In the foyer of the building, three bodies lay, one of them with a blossoming bruise to the head, the other two with slight scorch marks to their clothing in the middle of their chests. For many long moments, silence reigned supreme, before a gentle, almost inaudible moan issued from one prone form. Moments later this was followed by a slightly louder one, and the source of the sounds began a waking ritual, the customary counting of arms, legs, tails, fingers, toes and so on, to make sure there was nothing extra and nothing missing. It took about three seconds for the body to check itself, before it became apparent that sooner or later movement would have to enter into the picture. The first thing that happened was a short period of agonising pain, as the body tried to sit up, before common sense intervened, and told the body to start on something smaller. The fingers of the left hand looked likely as a place to start, first a twitch from the middle finger, then a gentle flexing, to rid the hand first of numbness, then of pins-and-needles, as circulation began to return. As the ability to move was slowly restored, the memory decided to bide its time, as there were more pressing matters to contend with, for instance identity. The figure, now able to move without too much pain, lay back for a moment and let the last few moments of consciousness wash through its system. As far as could be remembered, the last thing it saw was a massive green shape clubbing a figure it knew, and then turning a gun towards the two people who had let it in. This green shape had got into the building because of the figure that was now remembering these events. Total recall washed back over him in one go, as it so often does in these cases.

Alan groaned and buried his head in his hands. He hoped that the caterpillar had killed Gali, because if he hadn't then Gali would be on the warpath totally, and there would be hell to pay.
A cacophony of sound along the corridor attracted Alan's attention, and he ran to face whatever it was that had been so loud, aggravating his headache. Alan stopped and realised his mistake, as the large caterpillar who had accosted him and Vic earlier ran down the corridor, closely followed by the entire building guard. Alan made the intelligent decision to get the hell out of the way, and ran.
Remiel pushed his way past the caterpillar who he had previously shot, allowing himself a moment to be glad that he had not hurt him too badly. Remiel burst into the foyer at a dead run, sprinted to the door and cursed when he realised it was locked. Gali's gang members were pouring in from all sides now, and there was clearly no way out. An aphid with a mean looking rifle pushed his way to the front of the group of ten who surrounded Remiel. Remiel vaguely recognised him from the video, and knew him to be Gali's aide de camp. The aphid, whose name, incidentally, was Rodriguez, had his rifle trained on Remiel, as did the other guards.
"Please let go of Gali." Rodriguez began in a cold voice, "It won't make any difference to the outcome, but I don't really feel like risking shooting him."
"I want to get something straight here" Remiel said, pressing the solid Projectile gun into Gali's neck, "I'm not going to give Gali over to you, you're not going to let me out of here alive. I'm not going to leave without taking him with me, you're probably not going to shoot me while I have him"
"That is where you are wrong." the grin on Rodriguez's face was that of a petty official who has revealed that he can be the most evil man in the entire world, should he need to be. "I don't care too much for Gali, I always thought him to be a self opinionated little shit with an overdeveloped sense of his own worth, but it was his gang. However, if some crazed gunman were to bust in here, take him hostage, and somehow he died in the fire-fight, then I'd mourn for him, then take control of the gang. Am I making myself clear? Feel like a fire fight?"
"Oh well," Remiel said philosophically, "You win some, you lose some. You wouldn't deny a dying man a last drink though, would you?"
"You touch anything and you're dead. In fact, put that bottle on the ground and roll it over here."
Remiel removed the bottle from his pocket, lowered it gently to the floor, and then pushed it as far as he could towards Rodriguez. The aphid picked it up gently but with obvious distaste.
"Leafburner? Do they still make this shit? This stuff rots your brain, friend. In fact, if you weren't about to die I'd warn you off it for the good of your health!"
Remiel looked up in obvious discomfort,
"Come on, man, one last drink. I know I'm screwed, but just let me have one last drink"
Rodriguez looked amused
"Fuck you, how should I know what you've got in this bottle? If you want this drink so badly, I want to see you lap it off the floor. Don't cut yourself on the broken glass."
With this, he tossed the bottle towards the ground about halfway between himself and Remiel.

As the bottle shattered, thick white vapour started pouring out, and as it was inhaled, there was the sound of falling bodies. Remiel, moving carefully, so as not to dislodge his delicate and fragile breathing filter, loaded an explosive cartridge into his gun, aimed at the door, and pulled the trigger. The gun let out a sharp retort, the only audible sound except for the noises of confusion and unconsciousness, and the doorway blasted outwards. Remiel ran outside, the aphid under his arm, and made off towards the nearest police station as fast as he could move.

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Copyright 1999 Ian Rennie, for Remiel Productions.