ABC - Penance

Wonder Bar Factory, Westborough Industrial District

“You don’t think they use the shit to make the Basic Bars, do they?” I gasped to Ghost.

“Course they do” he replied in my earpiece and I started gagging all over again.

I had dropped Minke in the South Bank retail district after we had both changed our clothes. She had gone shopping in her sweat pants and one of my spare shirts, while I was now dressed like an Inspector in the Police Auxiliary. A dark blue suit, cut to a men’s style, with a long armoured coat over the top. I kept it open at the front, partly due to the steamy heat but also so I could reach my shoulder holster.

Ghost was somewhere to my rear, propped up in an abandoned factory and watching me through his telescopic sights. In front of me was the Wonder Bar Factory, a sprawling complex of low roofed laboratories, huge chemical tanks and busy warehouses.

If you ever bought a Basic Bar, or one of their other twenty seven processed protein bar varieties, they all got made right here. In theory, every bar was made using vat-grown algae and cultured proteins, mixed with a selected range of chemicals and additives. The final products were widely distributed throughout the Zone and into other countries, a true success story for the parent company.

My electric sports bike was parked in the Visitors lot, close to the front office labelled Reception. To my left was the employee car park, filled with a mish-mash of cheap electric two seaters, scooters and e-bikes. Beyond that, adjacent to the Wonder Bar factory, was the Westborough Sewage and Recycling Plant.

The stink haze wafting from the facility was truly eye watering. Yet what had me gagging was the thick, meter diameter sewage pipe that ran from the waste recyclers and into the Wonder Bar manufacturing labs.

“Seriously Ghost, I know the bars taste like shit but this is going too far!”

I could hear him sigh at me over the comms link. More importantly I had that weird itch in the middle of my back, telling me he had his gun sights on me.

“They use the processed sewage to fertilise the algae tanks, Alvarez” he explained in his emotionless tone. “Just like any other agriculture facility on the planet”

“Are you sure?” I questioned him, but by now I was beginning to believe him. I had watched a couple of old films where they used recycled humans to make protein, which seemed an awful lot of effort. Using recycled shit to grow plants and algae did seem to make a lot more sense.

Either way, I was never eating another Basic Bar in my life.

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“Inspector Alvarez, welcome to Wonder Bar” said the receptionist, a perky young man in a bright blue skirt suit. His hair was dyed to a shade of blue that closely matched his outfit and his nails were in a contrasting vibrant red.

The guy was better looking than me and wore the dress like he was poured into it. Some people you want to hate on sight, yet his smile was infectious and I found myself smiling back.

“Thanks, ah… Myles” I replied after hastily reading his name tag. “It was good of your Accounts Manager to meet me at such short notice”

“Yes, well, there has been a slight hiccup there” Myles told me, standing up from his desk and joining me on the white tiled entryway. His heels clicked on the floor like tiny gunshots as he walked, his hips sashaying in time to the tempo they set. “Mr Felstead has been unexpectedly called away on a family emergency”

“Since this morning?” I asked. “That was sudden”

“Family emergencies are like that, Inspector” Myles reminded me, oozing charm and rather nice perfume. “In his unfortunate absence, I have scheduled you to meet with Ms Prendergast from Human Resources. I believe she can answer any questions you have”

“Thanks Myles, you’re a champ” I replied pleasantly. He showed me to a waiting area, nicely decorated with a holo-screen in one corner showing all twenty-eight flavours of Wonder Bars. He left me with a promise that Ms Prendergast would be with me shortly.

For all his charm, Myles was a liar. I had watched every Wonder Bar in all their holographic glory fifty times over and in no universe I could imagine was fifteen minutes classed as ‘shortly’. I had paced up and down the carpeted floor, noting the discrete surveillance cameras in each corner, patiently recording my impatience.

I had taken a call from Ghost, worried about a lack of activity, so I had assured him everything was fine. The door into the waiting room was not locked, so I went into the main corridor and looked left and right. To my right was the Reception area and the fabulous Myles, so I went left.

It was a corridor like any other in a big office complex, with a tiled floor, pale grey walls with intermittent paintings and pot plants scattered along the length. I passed doors labelled as Stores, Human Resources, Meeting Room, Staff Breakout Area and finally Accounts. Ever present cameras were suspended from the ceilings, watching me amble down the whole length of the corridor.

There was not a sign of any other living human being, so I opened the door to the Accounts department. Inside were a collection of work cubicles, datascreens and touch pads lined up ready for use at each position. I could see old style printed files on some of the desks, a few personal touches like a framed photograph or coffee cup, yet no staff.

I wandered in and saw at the end of the open plan space was a separate manager’s office, fronted with glass. It had Smart Glass fitted, currently turned to an opaque grey, including the glass door. As I got closer I could see the name fixed to the side of the door – B Felstead - Accounts Manager. I tried the door handle and it was locked, so I walked back past the vacant work spaces.

On a hunch I paused at one and laid my hand against the datascreen. It still had some residual wamth, meaning it had been used in the last hour or so. The printed files on the desks were all kinds of accounting gibberish, incomprehensible to me. There was one section at the back which caught my eye though.

The Wonder Bar factory was a subsidiary of a Euro-Bloc based parent company located in old Germany. Looking at the handy chart I found, it seemed that the factory here in the Zone sent its products all over the world. A fair proportion were sold locally, but over half of the bars they made were distributed in Europe, the RUK and even to Northern-Bloc retailers.

Sales had been good, if I was reading the charts correctly. Who would have thought the stuff we crapped out here in the Zone had such a worldwide market?

I dropped the file back where I had found it and returned to the empty corridor. At the far end was an elevator bank with a smart key pad next to it. That was of no use to me, but to the side was the emergency stairs. This had no key system so I happily chose that door, finding a set of stairs leading up to the next floor but also a set leading down. If you ever want to hide something, underground is the choice of evil masterminds the whole world over. Down I went, the door closing softly behind me.

It wasn’t that I suspected the company of being involved in anything illegal. Sorry, amend that. All big companies do illegal stuff every single day. The question was whether what they were up to was dangerous to the citizens of the Zone.

I had no proof yet that Jacob Tan was actually working at this factory, or that what he was up to here was in any way a threat to Spitfield or the rest of the world. So far I was operating on gut instinct and that was enough to keep me walking forwards into the depths of Wonder Bar.

The stairs led me to another long corridor, this one white and sterile, lined at either side with windows that overlooked laboratories of some kind. I stopped and pressed my face against one window, seeing a long, open space filled with industrial sized Auto-Labs, each one about the size of small truck. Between the rows of boxy machines rolled white mechanicals, multi-limbed units that stopped and monitored the labs.

At one end of the laboratory I saw a single human, dressed in a complete bio-hazard suit as they checked some results on a datapad. Next to them was an open box, freshly extruded from an Auto-Lab, containing plastic wrapped bars. They were a good twenty meters from my position but I could tell they were Basic Bars by the colour of the wrappers.

Fifteen minutes watching that endless Wonder Bar loop on the Holo-screen had been good for something after all.

Movement flickered in my peripheral vision and I turned to catch a glimpse of a white coated figure disappearing through a doorway. This was only the third person I had seen so far in the whole place, including the magnificent Myles at Reception, so I set off in pursuit.

I passed a number of windows, each giving scenes of industrial processes at work. Like the first room, they were mostly run by gleaming white mechanicals with the odd human overseer in an enclosed suit.

The door that my quarry had entered was labelled as ‘Fermentation Tanks – Do Not Enter’. I tried the door and it opened inwards with a small puff of air, a brief breeze blowing past me. The interior was running at a higher air pressure than outside, presumably to keep contaminants from entering. I stepped in quickly and pushed the door closed, noting the ring of pressure seals that surrounded the inner edges.

It was a small control room, with data screens and virtual dials showing pressures and other information that meant little to me. There was no sign of my white coated prey, but there was another air lock style hatch against the inner wall. This was labelled as ‘Tank Access’ with a big old manual wheel in the dead centre to open it like in a submarine.

The wheel spun easily and I pushed the hatch open, stepping over the broad coaming onto a mesh walkway. Raised metal railings ran either side of the walkway to another identical hatch at the far end, about ten meters from me.

I was inside a huge spherical tank, the stainless steel sides rearing up over my head to meet at the centre. A broad inlet valve was located there, offset slightly to the walkway. At the opposite end of the walkway was the white coated figure, female I assumed by the size and profile although I could not see their face. They seemed to be operating a small control panel to the side of the other hatch, then closing it with a distinct click that sent echoes through the metal sphere.

“Hey! Do you work here?” I called out, unable to think of a better opening line.

The figure glanced at me, showing a face partially covered by a pair of Smart Goggles. A slim, angular face with a pointed chin and narrow ruby red lips. Definitely a woman, I could tell that much at least. She turned away and stepped though the second hatch without answering me.

“Hey!” I shouted again, like that was some kind of mantra to freeze my targets in place. The hatch slammed shut and I bolted across the walkway, my boots ringing out loudly on the mesh. I reached the closed hatch in time to hear the wheel turn on the other side and a distinct click of locking bolts sliding into place.

“Shit” I breathed to myself in sudden premonition. I raced back across the walkway and grabbed the wheel on the hatch I had entered by. It would not budge, no matter how much I swore and cursed the bitch who had lured me here. My fist rang out on the sturdy metal plating yet nobody responded to my knocking.

A new sound overrode my fluent curses and I looked up at the inlet valve atop the tank. It was sliding open, a stream of dirty green water and chunks of some darker material flowing from the valve. It splashed messily onto the curved base of the tank, giving off an evil smell that beat the stink coming from the sewage plant next door.

Looking downwards, I could see the base had a wide rotating paddle arrangement, now starting to slowly spin. There were raised ridges running around the lower half of the metal tank too, the liquid that splashed onto it starting to steam gently. The smell had been ferocious to start with and the heating was turning it into a fog of truly epic foulness.

I snatched the phone from my pocket and tried to call Ghost. There was no signal at all and I realised the heavily insulated tank was likely blocking every transmission. It was tucked back into a pocket again, hopefully to keep the rising humidity out of its circuits.

My hair was already plastered to my scalp, sweat stinging my eyes and running freely down my chest and back. I checked the rising level of the green sludge, still pouring from the overheard valve. It was still some meters below the walkway, yet drowning was not my primary concern.

I was going to be boiled alive in here, like a chicken in my Papa’s pressure cooker. That is, assuming the ass-flavoured fug didn’t kill me first.

Time to show my hand, or more accurately my boot.

With my hands braced on the railing, I lifted my feet and slammed them against the locked hatch, pouring power into my Kinetic Enhancer. The first blow bent the hatch frame and I heard a steady hissing from the escaping heated air.

I arched my back and drove my feet down again, folding the thick metal into a deep curve. My head was swimming now with the heat and I took a moment to dash the sweat out of my eyes.

Once more with my arms braced, I channelled all I had into my pistoning legs. They slammed into the hatch one last time, tearing it from the frame and sending the crumpled object spinning into the control room.

Wrapping my coat around me, I staggered through the opening and into the steam filled room. I was gasping now for air, as the steam was heavy in my lungs. My scrabbling hands found the outer door and I wrenched it open, feeling a wash of fresh air hit me from the corridor.

Like a boiled cockroach I took two steps into the safety of the clean white corridor and collapsed to my knees. My head was hunched over my chest as I sucked in the sweet cool air, glad to be alive.

“There you are!” trilled Myles and he click-clacked on his heels to my side. “Inspector Alvarez, please allow me to introduce our Head of Human Resources, Ms Prendergast”

I raised my blotchy red face to the immaculately dressed black woman who followed him, her glossy dark mane falling over her green-suited shoulder. She regarded me evenly with dark eyes and a thin smile creased her perfectly formed lips.

“Good afternoon, Inspector” she said with a faint trace of a European accent. “Have you been enjoying your tour of our facilities?”

I clambered to my feet and put my back to a wall, smoothing down my short dark hair. I reeked of fermented algae, an odour not unlike falling down into a septic tank.

“The tour was great but the toilets need a bit of a clean up” I responded.

Ms Prendergast smiled indulgently and gestured for me to follow her, one delicate nostril twitching ever so slightly at the smell.

I hated her so much right then it hurt.