Normally Montalbàn’s nights would be colorful, bright, noisy, and sparkling with life. That particular night, while still lousy with warm bodies in search of confusion and vagrant snippets of loud music, was much, much brighter than usual. Most night clubs and pubs had had a sudden change of leadership, so almost all of them had been overhauled, to say the least. Large neon insignas had been swapped for huge hardlight holograms, loudspeakers for loudscreamers, strippers for prostitutes, pickpockets for scalpers. Every three venues, a new one had been freshly built, or, better, haphazardly put together by the chaotic genius of Nomad entrepeneurs. The lascivious partygoers around here, who sought to wash their worries away in a luxury waterfall of sweat, whiskey, superheroin (a.k.a. Marvel Drops) and other assorted fluids, bodily or otherwise, where instead drowning said worries in a pressurized jet of I-khol, sweetened ethanol, and Angel Tears (also known with a plethora of much more offensive yet religious names on Bakunin).
Agent Hallken stumbled out of the whirlwind of soft skin and hard music, his weaving shilouette framed by the rainbow colored crown of shifting madness around the nightclub he was leaving. The establishment had been built the day prior by welding together three megayachts at different angles and partially submerging them, to allow for an amphibious experience for all guests. A 20 ft tall holographic Asura (nakeder than expected) outside the main entrance was holographically “dancing” with an holographic dolphin, under the holographic letters which composed the name of the place: “The Blowhole”
Unable or unwilling to test the limits of the nightclub’s moniker, the cop had been imbibing with callous determination and he was now trying to find his way back to an horizontal surface with his name on it. Regrettably, the large quantities of cheap liquor he had consumed were not enough to numb his mind to his own worries yet, so he kept pushing his unsure feet forward, dragging his toes in the beach’s beautiful sand, flipping the occasional hermit crab over, and chasing his own spiteful thoughts.
“It. I’ths. IT. AHS” he gave up talking to himself and switched to mumbling, letting his thoughts do the self-loathing: ‘It’s as old agent Maracaìbo said. You can be a good agent, or you can be a career agent. you can’t hold the Brass responsible for their actions to other Brass. You’re gonna get Coppered’
He stopped walking, letting everything he was holding drop onto the soft sand, neon-tattooed crabs crawling franctically to avoid the falling shoes and the almost empty bottle of Tunguskan Liquor. He took a second to find his balance and started rummaging in his own pockets, in search of his badge.
‘Why did you have and go, to and, to. WHy did you tell the high top dogs bosses leader maximuses about Numiria being suspec sepsitorized, huh, you dolt?!’ He mentally scolded himself, moving his lips along an unintelligible dance of consonants ‘Of course they were in on it, damnit. You learned nothing in Bureau Noir’
His numb fingers finally closed around a cold, sharp shape in his breast pocket. Carefully, helping himself with a shaking movement of the legs, as if he was heaving some massive weight, he produced an O12 badge, the holographic writing shining as a star to his glazed-over eyes. Agent Hallken, it said. Not Investigator Hallken, not Special Agent Hallken, not Lieutenant Hallken. Twenty years of carreer erased over some girlie’s hot mess and some alien conspiracy.
He mimicked the gesture of spitting on the ground, his mouth drier than the sand he was standing on. ‘Fucking yougster girlie in command’ he thought, forgetting the part about the alien conspiracy, in his mind-quest of searching for a clever insult ‘What kind of name is Lady anyway. That’s like. A title. Like calling yourself Prince. That’s Dumb. I bet Nourkias also means something dumb like that. like Prince’
“Ff.FUcking Prince!” he managed out loud, winding up with the swiftness of a moving glacier and tossing his badge to what he believed could be the horizon. Bad form notwithstanding, the glowing piece of identification flew in a gracious arc into the tightly packed moving mass of almost naked partygoers, much like agent Hallken himself fell in a gracious arc into the sand, face first.
He felt, over the indistinct movement of the many bare chested personal-spaceless youths of all ages and genders, someone moving next to him, with purpose. He felt two pair of hands gently but firmly turning him on his side, in a safety position. He heard a young voice, screaming loudly to be heard over the loudscreamers blaring reggaetorca beats “What do you have againis Prince, sir? You don’t like classical music?”
Hallken looked up, or, better, he technically looked sideways, to the sky. A young Panoceanian man in his twenties and porcelain-doll-looking Yu-Jing woman of undefinable age were crouching next to him, keeping him in the correct position so he wouldn’t kill himself with his own puke, had he puked. “hrmghnbl” he said, meaning ‘I don’t have to vomit, let go’. The next second his police instincts kicked in “whr yghwhaddywuoannnnnnnnn” he mumbled “iontknowyyyy- ou.”
“Did you get any of that?” asked the Asian woman, looking at the young man, who nodded confidently and answered nonchalantly: “not a word. Come on, let’s bring him back to the safehouse, we can talk with him tomorrow morning”
Hallken felt the world spinning as the couple lifted him to the upright position and propped him up, one arm over each of their shoulders. The boy was a good foot taller than Hallken, and the woman almost two feet shorter, the copper felt… crooked. He chuckled to himself at the pun, while the trio started walking through the Rambla.
“Where.. Who” he managed
“We’re friends” said the young man “or, should I say, we’re clients, Investigator”
The O-12 agent had a moment of pause to the title. “Ha I Wsh” he mumbled, spitefully “’m AGNT”