The 2nd Floor

Having dismissed my men and given them a short introduction, it was clear to me they’d been briefed as to my purpose here. I turned to Fredericus.

“What now?”

“You must meet the others. Come upstairs”, he beckons.

We climb a shoddy, creaky wooden staircase to the second floor. The layout is very similar to what I’m used to; a row of wooden doors leading to separate office rooms. Right by the stairs is a door with “CHIEF” labeled on it with a placard. Fred gingerly opens the door for me.

I’m struck by the sight of a pristine, extremely dusty chief’s office. It’s in perfect condition, but hasn’t been touched in years. Spiderwebs and a solid layer of dust pervade the room. A large mahogany desk, stacked with moldy and dilapidated paperwork sits in the center, with some small couches and two large bookshelves mirroring the walls.

“We left it exactly as it was, for you.” He seems embarrassed at the state of it; it must have been an order to leave it as it was. Of course, cleaning it must have been lost in translation. Freaking elves, man.

I decide to leave that issue for later. The next room is significantly larger. The door is labeled “ARCHIVES”. The door creaks open and I get a good look at it. A room of books, much cleaner than expected. Floor-to-ceiling archival bookcases fill almost the entirety of the space. On the floor, I see something long and thin, and scaly. It moves, slithering out of sight. What in God’s name was that?

A pair of pitch black, shiny eyeballs peers at me from around one of the far bookcases. With a terrifying slithering noise, the archivist comes into view. It’s a giant snake. Not even a demi-human, just a giant snake. His forked tongue slips out of his mouth and I hear a skin-crawling “HISSSSS”. My hand naturally lands on my holster for a moment.

“This is Zetsssubo, our archivist”, Fred explains.

“Nicccccce to meet you, ssssir.”, says the snake. He’s eyeing me intently. Too intently.

I see a tiny creature scurry out of sight. Then, a pointy green ear comes around the corner of a bookcase. A tiny goblin. Another one is behind him, above his head. A third one pops up above the other two. They must be on some kind of step stool.

“Theeessse are my asssssissstantssss. Pay them no mind. They will not sssspeak to you.”

“Nice to meet you, Zetsubo”, I croak, barely concealing my discomfort.

“Zetsssubo welcomesss you.”

“Okay, Fred, let’s see the other offices.” We make a quick escape. I’m thoroughly unsettled.

We come to a door labeled “RESEARCH”. This door opens smoothly, as if well-oiled. I’m met with a single desk in the center of the room, surrounded by empty space. Surrounding the desk are floating blue squares. Magical screens. A large office chair is at the desk, and the screens are constantly cycling through what appears to be live footage of the surrounding areas, scrolling text, and graphs.

The chair spins around. Seated within it is a tiny red slime. I turn to look at Fredericus. He glares at me, as if I’m being rude. I look directly at this little slime, which is barely bigger than a whoopie-cushion.

I introduce myself.

“Hi, I’m John, your new Chief.”

My head rings, an intensely strange and disconcerting feeling spreads throughout my body.

“GUTEN ABEND!” I hear, in a crackly, old-timey voice that seems to come directly from inside my skull.

“Guten abend?”

“SUMIMASEN! The last guy spoke Dutch.” I speak English. Was that Japanese? Isn’t ‘guten abend’ German?

My head rings again. “My name is HUE. I am the real time intelligence expert here. Nice to meet you, John.”

“What are all these screens for?” I ask, to try and get this over with more quickly.

My head rings again. This is very unpleasant. “Real time intelligence. I can monitor anything that happens within the city from here. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“Very nice, thank you, Hue. Much appreciated.” We make a quick retreat from Hue’s office. Faintly, I can hear his crackly, old-time radio voice laughing as we shut the door.

“Tell it to me straight, Fred. Why do we have a slime working here?” I probe.

“Hue is a gift from Volcan, the Slime Lord of the adjacent district, to give us a fighting chance. He insists on telepathy despite being able to speak normally. Try as we may, we can’t convince him to do anything he doesn’t want to.” Fred sounds more out of it than I am. It’s clear he avoids the slime’s office as much as possible.

Finally, we reach the last door. “ARMORER”. Time to see the kind of equipment we’re dealing with. To my surprise, as I poke my head in, I see Maahnn, the head dwarf, behind a typical armorer’s desk; standing upon a stool, with a plexiglass protective screen and the prototypical iron gate separating the office from a cache of weapons. The little guy immediately stands at attention.

“At ease, Maahnn.”, I sigh.

I can immediately see the problem here. The armory is nearly empty. What it does have is an assortment of clubs, axes, and dwarven equipment, even a freaking pickaxe. There is one old-school police baton sitting on a hanger against the wall, and next to it, an even older-school wooden “billy-club”. Some old leather utility belts are hung beneath it, and I spy a set of radios in the corner, gathering dust.

Maahnn lets us into the armory proper to more closely inspect the goods. The radios in the corner are absolutely ancient; they must be from the 1950s. Big, brick-like dinosaurs, and a central radio receiver that hasn’t been touched in decades. Stowed away up top, I see the outlines of two revolvers. I reach up and inspect them. Maahnn rushes over, as if to warn me about how dangerous they are, but I give him a steely look; he backs off.

The first one I grab is almost a museum-piece. An old school Colt that must be more than a hundred years old. It’s dilapidated, the cylinder coated in a layer of surface rust, and in sorry shape. I pop the cylinder open; empty. A quality piece, but ancient. I set it aside on the shelf in front of me. Now the other one... A newer Smith & Wesson, but it’s still ancient by duty pistol standards. This one must date from the 1950’s. A marking down the side of its snubby barrel reads “38 S.&W. SPL”; the grip trimmed in nicely textured wood and the frame in beautiful blued steel. I think it’s a “Chief’s Special”, their most famous model at the time. Whoever carried this must have been around in the big-band era. Real cowboy stuff. How on earth did it get here? It’s empty, too. I decide to stow it in my pocket.

A cursory investigation of the armory reveals, as I saw when I came in, it’s basically empty. There’s not even enough equipment for one officer’s kit, let alone what we need. Maahnn apologizes profusely for the state of things, and I try to explain it’s not his fault.

Fredericus turns to me. “There’s one more thing you should see.” I dutifully follow him down the stairs, and down another tiny, sketchy staircase to the basement. He casts a light magic orb which follows us down a particularly creepy looking hallway. At the end is a fancier-looking, but still dilapidated wooden door. It creaks open to reveal a pitch-black large open room, which is soon illuminated by the magic orb, blinding me for a moment.

What I see takes my breath away, but not in a good way. From floor to ceiling, I see 8 large, cylindrical holding tanks, with a metal base at the ends, illuminated a pale green color, filled with bubbling liquid. Inside these tanks are skeletons. Not just any skeletons, skeletons wearing police uniforms. Old police uniforms. As we slowly walk down the line of tanks, I see what looks like a cop from the late 1800s, big trench coat with double-buttons and that strange bucket-shaped hat they wore. The next guy, a slightly newer uniform. Then, a WWII US military policeman, complete with the helmet reading “MP” and an M1 carbine in his hands. I spot a California Highway Patrol trooper from the 1950s, his revolver mounted off-hand on his left hip. These guys have that more familiar brimmed hat.

I’ve stumbled into a mausoleum. They must be the former “chiefs”. Almost half of the tanks are empty.

“Fred, what is this?”

“This is the final resting place of our former chiefs.”

“Why are there some missing?” I ask, glaring at him.

“Some were killed in a way that did not leave a body to recover. The others refused to be buried here and preferred a barbaric burial within the ground outside the city. One accepted our offer to reanimate him after his passing.”

“Reanimate him?” Not good.

“Here he is now.” I hear a very slow, creepy, clinky shuffling. The orb illuminates a skeleton in a raggedy Sicherheitspolizei uniform from the 1920s. His hat is extremely strange, some sort of brightly-badged black, shiny cap, wearing very tall boots.

“HALLO!”, he hisses, attempting to be friendly. He sounds extremely German.

Yeah, nope, we’re getting out of here.

“Thanks for showing me this Fred, but let’s go.” We quickly scurry up the stairs, leaving that literal “skeleton in the closet” alone. I can take walking lizards, orcs, slimes, but I draw the line at zombies.

I find myself standing, again, looking at my dusty “new” office, my face in my hands. It makes me sneeze. Ugh.