RinthCon Day 3 - Anisha Kelly

“I used to read Lupin stories,” Glen confided as they threaded a path through the visitors. Half wore skimpy, drab clothes, like Glen and Rivers, and the other half were costumed, probably for a stage performance or carnival. Artificial scimitars and grotesquely distended rifles abounded, hanging from people’s shoulders and belts. A rhythmic din vibrated under Anisha’s feet, a sound coming from everywhere and nowhere.

Glen said, “Lupin usually went for the high-end caviar–jewels and paintings and shit like that. Not straight cash.”

Anisha stood to the side to let a regiment of individuals in glossy white armor pass by. One set of armor was constructed of pasteboard.

“No offense to your merchandise, Mr. Glen, but I think that if Monsieur Lupin was interested in obtaining expensive spoils, he wouldn’t have visited this particular bazaar. But it’s not a bad spot for a standard robbery. Hundreds of people in ridiculous clothes, no security to speak of, flimsy bank boxes. I doubt the fellow is immune to the lure of ease.”

“Lupin’s not like that. He’s all about the thrill, the hunt. He’d be after the Saturn Topaz, not a wad of cash.”

“And that is?”

“A gemstone worth a fortune. It comes in at 8 kilograms. According to hotel legend, a mafioso by the name of Nix Slag turned one of the Saturn hotel rooms into his own offshore bank, or off-planet, more like it. The feds cleaned him out not long after, but they never found the Saturn Topaz. And that was thirty-five years ago.”

Anisha parsed through Glen’s speech for useful information and came up short. “Do you know what Lupin looked like?”

“He’s the man of a thousand disguises,” Glen gave with a sly grin. “No one could say, but dressed out of your era probably – frock coat, top hat, and monocle.”

To reach Mac Guffin’s electrical headquarters, they exited the vast room of sellers’ stalls and moved down a long grey passage, still lit by flickering white lights. The visitors thinned here. A few sat on the ratty carpet, knees drawn up against their chests, smoking and gazing flatly down the purgatorial hallway. Anisha considered again whether she might be dead. This place was both better and worse than she’d expected of the afterlife.

Room 143b was locked. Anisha slid a hairpin out of her chignon and rammed it into the keyhole. Her little brother Sergei had tried on multiple occasions to teach her to pick locks, but she never took the time to learn. He wasn’t a thief, of course, but the young protege of Major Remand, director of a French anti-terrorist agency.

“Let me try.” Glen sat on his heels. He unfolded the hairpin, then bent the tip into an s-shape. “Have another one of those?”

Anisha passed it over, feeling her heavy bun of hair sag at her neck. “How’d you learn to do this? Prison?”

“Almost. YouTube.” He fit the two hairpins into the lock, shifting them back and forth between short, dexterous fingers. “Ah!”

The door shuddered in the jamb, and he wrenched open the handle.

Inside, black metal panels were affixed to the wall, one hanging open to reveal a rectangle of grey levers and flat switches. A girl sat on a stool, back to the door. She wore a baggy pair of white linen pajama pants and a plaid men’s shirt, rolled up to the elbows. Her hair was brown and cropped at her ears.

“Anything stolen this time?” she asked, without turning around.

“Perhaps you can tell us,” Anisha returned.

The girl fell off the stool, then scrambled to her feet, clumsily. Anisha realized, with a chill, that her wrists were bound with a length of orange cord.

“Let’s get this off,” she muttered. The knots were swollen tight, resisting Anisha’s trimmed nails. “Who did this to you?”

“And why have you been messing with the lights?” Glen added.

“Same reason,” the girl said. “Three days ago this French asshole kidnapped me. He made me trade clothes with him and then posted me up in this closet. Put me on a schedule flipping breakers.” She pulled her wrists from between Anisha’s hands and gestured at grey levers. “Every six hours or so he brings me a water bottle or a boxed lunch and then gives me a bathroom break, through there.” A second doorway opened into a darkened passage.

“He didn’t hurt you, did he?” Anisha yanked at one last knot, and the cords fell away.

“Deeply hurt me. I sewed that costume by hand. A double-breasted vest in green paisley. A chocolate frock coat, with a notched lapel. Charmeuse suspenders. Felt Cahill hat–well, that I didn’t make, but it cost plenty.”

Fashion was expensive in purgatory as well as real life, Anish observed.

“I’m sorry, but were you cosplaying as Lupin?” A horrified expression passed over Glen’s face.

“No. Steampunk. I had a gas mask. He didn’t want it.” The girl pointed to a black leather contraption lying on the cement floor in the corner of the office. “Which is stupid, because it really makes the whole costume.”

Anisha reached for her pocket watch, then remembered that it had been stolen. “You said he comes every six hours? When is he due back?”

“I thought you were him. Ten or fifteen minutes?”

Anisha and Glen agreed to conceal themselves in the second passageway, which led to the bathroom. The girl, whose name was Clover, agreed to play dumb and rewrapped her wrists with the orange cord.

Anisha sat with her back against the wall. Electric light fell through the cracked doorway, cutting a yellow bar across the toe of her buttoned shoe. The question of Lupin rolled around her mind like one of Glen’s twelve-sided dice. He’d traded Clover a set of nightwear for her suit of men’s clothes. Suppose he’d been transported straight out of London, just like her, but unlike her, it occurred at night, while he was in bed. Finding himself in a new milieu, he would continue his same acts of daring burglary.

Glen wasn’t just blabbering about the Saturn Topaz. He was right. If he’d gone to the lengths of kidnapping someone, Lupin was after the Topaz. The cashbox robberies, the timed blackouts–they were nothing but a calculated distraction.

“You said you were going to incapacitate the man,” Anisha whispered to Glen. “How exactly do you plan to do that?”

“Don’t you worry.” Glen patted her arm. “I do Krav Maga. I’ve been subscribed to Killian’s Krav YouTube videos for nearly seven years. We’ll get your pocket watch back, no problem.”

He was a short, not particularly muscular individual, and Anisha did not trust his confidence. If worst came to worst, she might have to knock the man on the head with Clover’s wooden stool. Unease flickered in her stomach. She was less afraid than unsure. There had to be something she was missing.

The door handle to the electrical office jangled with brittle insistence, and the door swung open. Anisha leaned over to see a sliver of the lit office and the new occupant. Her eyes traveled from his shoes which were of black fishnet material, like Glen’s, up brown trousers, up the paisley vest to his face. Roguishly handsome, cheeks unshaven, tired streaks under his eyes.

She sprang to her feet and pushed through the door. Glen scrambled behind her, hissing warnings. In the office stood the slim figure of Major Remand, intelligence agent for the French Republic, and personal nemesis of Anisha’s younger brother.

“Bonsoir, Monsieur Lupin.” She had no idea what time it was. All she cared about was that she was catching Remand off guard rather than the other way around.

He stared hard at her and grinned. “Godamnit, Anisha.”