Earth 2320. The Sandoval Corporation.

 

He found the building itself to be cold and impersonal, and it didn’t in any sense seem to reach out to potential visitors in a warm and welcoming way. It rose one hundred stories above ground, and the sides were sheer and gray, and you couldn’t even be sure that there were any windows anywhere on the structure. At the very top in bold white letters, the words “Sandoval Corporation” sprawled across the side almost the entire width of the very top floor. “Someone is definitely in love with their own name here!” he thought to himself as he removed the unlit cigar from his coat pocket. His eyes moved silently up and down the building as he bit off the tip and slowly lit it. Glancing down at his watch, he knew that he was a little early, and it would be another five or ten minutes before the officers from the building’s security force would arrive to usher him to the vault, some four floors beneath the surface. “Strange place for a vault” he thought to himself. “ you’d think that they would’ve put it on the top floor to make it harder to get to.” moments later, two human males pushed open the double doors of the lobby and emerged from the Sandoval building. One was a large black male that was thick and muscular all over, he had a hard face with very dark, almost brooding eyes that seemed to carry a flash of anger in them. The other was a very short, and a bit on the plump side, and seemed rather unassuming, at a first glance, he had thin, short brown hair that he kept neatly trimmed into a crew cut, and he had these nervous looking hazel eyes that didn’t speak in the same self-assured manner as his posture. Both wore standard blue security uniforms.

They almost cautiously approached him, with the shorter, pudgy fellow extending his hand in a luke warm welcoming gesture. “Mr. Clinch? I’m officer Todd and this is officer Gilbert.” he said, nodding to the larger black man with the dark angry eye’s. “We are going to be taking you down to the vault where the robbery took place, Lucas Thorne will be joining us there momentarily. This way, please.” he gestured towards the doubled paned lobby doors. Magnus stubbed his cigar out onto the sidewalk as he followed them into the lobby, where he took notice that the inside was as sterile as the outside, the walls were stark white and seemed more like the lobby of a hospital than a place of business, there were a total of three large potted plants that looked strangely out of place in various corners of the long white room and even though he couldn’t actually feel it, the dark tiled floors seemed as cold and impersonal as the rest of the building. He followed behind them as they moved quietly down along a short hallway to the elevator that would take them four floors down to the vault. He stepped in behind them as Officer Gilbert push the zero button, it made a faint whirling sound as the elevator motor kicked in, and he felt the floor shift slightly as they began to descend to the vault floor. The double doors whisked open and Magnus saw the familiar form of Lucas Thorne standing in the open vault with two other officers, seeing Magnus he turned to face him fully offering his hand to go along an uncomfortable smile. “Mr. Clinch, so good of you to join us, welcome to the Sandoval building.”

He stepped into the vault, stopping beside of Lucas Thorne, who turned now and instructed the officers to wait outside. He led him to the back of the vault, where a large hole appeared directly in the middle of the floor. Magnus knelt down and peered into the hole. He could hear Lucas Thorne’s voice echoing in the empty vault behind him; “I don’t know how they pulled it off, quite frankly I didn’t think that a simple hare and a mole could tunnel through five feet of concrete and steel reinforced flooring.” he said. Magnus produced a small penlight from his pocket and slowly descended into the tunnel. it was about four feet in diameter and could easily house two fully grown human males. He stopped to closely inspect the hole in the actual floor.  

“They used diamond tip nano bits. It probably took them five or six hours just to get through the floor. But the rest of the tunnel took them some time. They were down here at it for at least two weeks. I’ll have to follow it to the opening, then I can start tracing them.” he told Lucas Thorne.

He looked down into the tunnel before turning back to face Lucas Thorne.

“I’m going to follow it back to where it started, I probably won’t be back today, gimme your cell number so I can contact you if I find anything.”

Lucas Thorne handed him a small business card. Magnus Clinch disappeared into the dark tunnel.

Wylie.

~~~~~~~~

He recognized the sounds of the elevated train that ran between Seventh and Covington streets. The opening narrowed at the top as Magnus pulled himself up to street level and squeezed through the hole. He was in an alley just off of Prater street in the mission district, once out of the hole completely, he began to check the area surrounding the tunnel opening for any signs that would tell him if Theodus Hare or Pepus Mole had been there. He picked up a strange moldy smelling scent Just ten feet from the tunnel, the stench of mole urine.

“Haven’t seen you around in a while, Mags, but I figured that hole in the ground there would get your attention sooner or later, so I just waited.”  

He turned to face the squeaky high-pitched voice from the top of the fire escape on the large red brick building directly in front of him, it was a shadowy area where he saw it standing, a figure about three and a half feet tall slightly sloped at the shoulder, long thin head with fiery reddish colored eyes. Black, wiry fur covered its face and hands. It took him a couple of seconds to recognize it to be Wylie the Weasel, another street hustler who sold information to the police and anyone else in the mission district that could pay his often steep prices. Magnus pulled an unlit cigar from his pocket up to his lips and lit it.  

“Hmmmph! I follow this tunnel all the way from the Sandoval building, and what do I find waiting for me at the beginning? a fricken weasel. Imagine that. So what are you up to, Wylie?”  

“You and I need to talk, Mags, I have some information that you may find rather useful.” Wylie said. Magnus inhaled the thick cigar smoke as he eyed the weasel suspiciously.

“And just how much is this information gonna cost me?”

The weasel nimbly climbed down the side of the fire escape until he was at ground level. He slowly walked towards Magnus Clinch.

“Not this time, Mags. This is you and me we’re talking about here, this information I gonna give you for free. That piece of crap Theodus Hare and his little pal Pepus? I know about some of the key players in this little game of theirs, and I’m gonna give them to you, but under one condition.” Wylie said.

The large miger slowly moved forward towards Wylie the Weasel, his eyes narrowed slightly as he looked him up and down.

“What conditions Wylie? He growled.

The weasel slowly extended both hands palm up towards Magnus, smiling all the while. 

“You gotta take me with you, Mags, that’s all.” Wylie said.   

“Why Wylie?”

“Because Mags,” Wylie sneered. “I wanna be there when you take them down.” 

Magnus leaned forward looking down at Wylie, his paw slowly inching towards his head, finally he extended a foreclaw fully and raised it to Wylie's left cheek. Suddenly the weasel didn’t feel quite so confident. “I bring you along Wylie, you watch yourself, if I don’t like what I’m feeling from you, we’ll only have one order of business left to discuss. How I’m gonna kill you. So? You still want to tag along?”  

The weasels eyes narrow tightly. As he slowly nodded to the affirmative. 

“Well then.” Magnus said. “Where do we start?”  

Wylie led him along almost the entire length of Prater street out past the very edges of the poverty stricken neighborhoods and seedy storefronts of the Mission district, out of one back alley and down into the next until they arrived at Bleaker street, where Wylie motioned him into yet another back alley.

“That’s the one Mags. 4450, the gray brick ten stories, with the barred windows. The whole shithouse belongs to a big fat boar by the name of Girth, he’s a local fence, word is, he put the whole caper together himself, but he’s got some outside money financing the whole thing, somebody hired him to nab the rock, and in turn he contracted the job out to Theo and Pepus. He was supposed to hide the rock until the heat comes off and then move it at a later date. Even money says he’s already paid off Theo and Pepus and has the rock stashed somewhere safe, until the buyer gives him further instructions on where to drop it.” Wylie smiled confidently.

The large male Miger slowly walked to the edge of the alley to where the sidewalk sloped down into Bleaker street, he turned to face Wylie, his voice carried a less threatening tone than before, putting the weasel more at ease.

“I’ll go in alone at first, give me five minutes, and then you come in, I want to see how he reacts when he sees you, Wylie.” Magnus told him.

~Scratch. A.B.T. copyright © 2009~