PARLAYBUFFET

In the wake of his pell-mell assault, battered but intact, Theo took to confirming his kill. 

He found Submachine Gun breathing his last, bleeding out from a beehive of ragged-red holes and splayed out behind his erstwhile cover. 

Weapon at the low ready, Theo locked his unflinching eyes with the man’s own as those last seconds of life seeped away. They were always pleading, in the end. He should have finished him off. Instead, he tasted iron as those eyes glazed over into emptiness.

Four suspects neutralized, one apprehended. Nothing like a battle won.

He took in the rest of the warehouse, free now to inspect the haphazard collection of shipping containers, crates and boxes laid out around the warehouse– his reason for being here in the Far East. 

As Theo undertook one last sweep of the interior, the adrenaline drained out of his hands to leave him feeling sapped, in what was a familiar post-action experience. Confirming the all-clear, he made his way to the front of the building to a set of controls installed by the heavy doors, and smashed his fist against what looked like the open switch.

The cargo shutters rolled up with an electric hum, the rising slit letting in muted orange light interspersed with pulses of blue and red. 

The afternoon had given way to the long shadows of twilight. Where there was only their single car parked out front when he went in, now there wasn’t a stretch of concrete out there that wasn’t occupied by police cruisers, their lightbars flashing dazzlingly. 

Theo was taken aback by the transformation. It seemed implausible that any of the ruckus they were making had only just now registered in his hearing. Funny how hyperacutely you could put the smallest details into focus during combat, and drown out the rest of the world, he thought.

Shadowed figures, forced to listen to his ungodly racket inside for near a half-hour, nervously levelled guns as the opening doors revealed the lone profile of a man dressed in tactical casual.

Theo held his phoney badge up in response.

There was a holler, and he spotted a woman waving them off, charging towards him with lethal intent. Still, it seemed like Maho had calmed down by just a bit since he last saw her. Theo resigned himself to telling her what she already knew, and to let the results speak for the rest. 
She stopped just shy of knife range as he spoke. 

“They resisted arrest.”

Maho’s glare at that moment could probably have melted icecaps. For a moment it looked like she was about to spit venom to go with it, but thought better of that. When she did reply, it was all business.

“Report.”

“All clear ma’am. Five suspects, like your man said– had to take down all but one of them. Your boys can come in and secure the premises. “

Maho signalled to a figure that resolved itself out of the light as Tokura, giving rapid-fire orders before turning to Theo again. Around her, a swarm of local law enforcement swept into the warehouse.

“You said there is one alive? We might just salvage this operation. Take me to him.”

Theo complied. As she followed, Maho’s mask of anger twisted to one of horror when the magnitude of the carnage inside became clear.

There wasn’t a continuous surface below eyeline in the warehouse that hadn’t been scarred by the firefight, and it soon became clear that a proportion of their target containers were shot up to all hell. Theo heard similar language come from local lawmen who almost lost their footing on the blood-slicks.

Now they were all over the place, policing corpses, searching for documents, prying open the storage crates and containers to get at the contents. There was always a risk of an unnatural reaction, but in the balance it was acceptable.

All of it needed confirmation as being the “antiquities” they were after, and it was all the more important to start getting them shipped out of town as quick as possible. 

And if the men lying dead on the ground hadn’t managed to see what their insides looked like on the outside in the process of transit and handling these things, then the chances of that happening to some poor policeman was low enough. 

“How is his condition?” Maho said. 

“Stable, last time I checked. I have him secured in one of the annex rooms. Grazed him when his buddy tried to make a shield out of him– he should be able to talk, but it’s another thing entirely if he will.”  Theo replied.

“You said his comrade tried to make a shield out of him? Like taking a hostage?”

“Yeah.”

“Then it is possible he could be an innocent.”

“Could be. Could just as well be his buddy throwing him under the bu-I mean, his friend was just that ready to sacrifice him.”

“I will do the talking. Stay by the door.” 

“Roger.” 

The live one was conscious by the time they’d reached the room where Theo had left him.
In accordance with his instructions, Theo didn’t proceed any further in after Maho than to lean on the door frame.

Now that he got a better look at the suspect, the overall impression was a lack of impression; he was an unremarkable guy, aside from the drying blood. Put him in some fresh clothes, and he could just as be the hundreds of other Japanese Theo had passed by on the way here. 

Or it would've been that. That was except for his eyes. They were lit with a fire that Theo had seen at the other end of his sights many times before.

It wasn’t necessarily an indicator of exposure to the unnatural. The Unit's veterans from the desert wars could readily attest to having seen it before in the real fanatics: true believers in whatever creed compelled them to strap a six-year-old with his weight in homemade explosives and send him out into a crowd of their own countrymen. Theo was already familiar with the look, but something told him that Maho was in for an education.

On their arrival, the unremarkable man shrank in fear at the sight of Theo, scrabbling uselessly with his legs to get away. He looked like a beaten mutt cowering from a whip. Maho gave him some side eye at the captive's reaction, to which Theo shrugged.

“I didn’t hit him that hard.” 

Maho said nothing to this; instead she righted a fallen chair and set in front of their captive. She brought out a phone, and Theo knew she was recording. It was standard operating procedure for interrogations. Evidently based off her theory that the unremarkable man was an innocent caught up in all this, she elected to start soft.

Maho approached him with gentle exhortations in their native tongue, only for the wretch to attempt to spit in her face. The glob of rheumy phlegm fell far short of its target, but it did convince the other party that he wasn’t interested in pleasantries. Theo stayed where he was, but didn't let it pass without a retort.

“He is one of them.”

Bloodshot eyes looked to him, then back to Maho. The man had apparently found his reserve of courage; his eyes took on a sullen defiance, and flecks of spittle flew from his lips with each sputtering statement in slurred Japanese.

Theo could barely make out what the man was saying, but what he lacked in diction he certainly made clear with his attitude. 

“Fools all of you, batting at the truth that lies beyond the reach of your flickering torches. Foolish you are, truly, to trust yourselves to such meager light!“

“…and its visage will sear away the feeble minds of the unworthy!”

There was a lot more to his tirade, but his talk was thick with constructions that Theo couldn’t parse with his limited command of the language. If Maho was more comprehending, Theo couldn’t tell through the back of her head, and she had yet to say to say something after the spitball. At times, it sounded like he was reciting poetry, almost.

“My friend, my friend. Pay no attention to my form. Look and you will see my marvels…”

Increasingly the captive lapsed to stark raving; he was agitated now, his furious spasms threatening to tear the pipe that held him back. The thing was about to go. Theo, baying to finish what he started, moved to intervene before anything could happen to his liaison. 

“Right, I clearly didn’t hit him hard enough.”

“That is enough!”

That was Maho who spoke after him, and though her voice was barely above Theo's, it stopped the captive’s raving fit cold. She fixed the man with her stare and returned his spite with her biting chill of a voice. Theo thought he could smell something odd, but then it was gone, and Maho had started talking.

“You’re still young. Whatever meager profit you sought from this venture can’t possibly be worth a lifetime lost in prison. We can offer you a better resolution.” she said. 

Straight out the textbook, Theo thought. Fishing for a certain reaction, she seemed good enough to get it, and Theo relaxed. The captive did not react as expected. What he did next took Theo off-guard for a moment, but that was enough. 

The madman suddenly blanked all expression from his face, as though he were already dead.

“You have nothing to offer me.”

A crunch. Theo, realizing his mistake, rushed him. He had patted this guy down, but he hadn’t anticipated that these bastards would have death pills!

He was too late; the madman had already swallowed even as Theo grabbed him by the head with one hand and dug at his throat with the other.

Foam began to bubble out of the captive’s mouth, his eyes began to roll up in their sockets. There was a final horrible gurgling noise, and the man’s death rattle lingered long after his body had grown still.

Theo let go when it became clear that the captive was a goner. When he turned back to Maho, he saw then why she hadn’t done, said anything in those last moments. Maho’s earlier airs were gone, replaced with an expression hovering between shades of anger, nausea and disbelief. Luckily, Theo was just close enough to catch her when she stumbled in an attempt to get up from the chair.

Just his luck. That really rattled her good. He helped as she tried to steady herself, even as Theo hoped that he hadn’t been saddled with an unblooded operative all this time. This woman was ordering him around just a few minutes ago; the sight of her now only seemed to confirm his broader reservations about this joint operation. Even more than back in the States, this country stank of complacency. Wherever he went, it was the same malaise. 

Blissfully unaware of the dark things downstream of their shining city on a hill, scoffing when it got dragged right up to their faces, as if denial would make it all go away.
Dancing on the edge, and few ever thought to look down and see how close everything was to plunging into madness.

Theo shook his head. To see and believe was up to their chosen few. Whatever his opinions, the Program had sent him here to work with her people, and that made this woman a part of that few.

Gotta give my hosts the benefit of a doubt.

“His eyes... my country is no stranger to cults, even now, but they never–” she said, in a voice that sought to be steady but failed. Theo briefly wondered what she meant by that. He had been too busy reaching inside the mouth to notice anything about the man's eyes. He shrugged.

“Dime a dozen in our line of work, fanatics.” he replied. 

“What he said, do you think it had any significance?” she asked.

“Typical crazy talk, ominous, vague. Can’t exactly back it up now that their collection is in custody. Anyhow, these guys were a bunch of amateurs.”

Noticing her continued trembling, he added one more assurance.

“Don’t think too hard on it, I mean that.”

Even as he gave that advice, Theo ran back the madman’s rant in his head. Typical ominously vague crazy talk, he assured himself, but something scratched at the back of his skull.

His little pep talk seemed to do the trick, at least. Maho took in a few full breaths before she seemed solid again.

“Come on. Let us see our contact.”

***

Stepping over one of the suspects, he saw dead eyes set in a dead face, and was thankful that it wasn’t anybody that he knew. Assistant Inspector Tokura was catching on to something; something was afoot with his guests. He thought back to their exchange just before the foreigner had, ridiculously, went in by himself.

He was sure the DHI agent had understood him before Kirishima could even begin translating– the American could translate just fine for himself after all. Even more ridiculously, he managed to clear the building, looking none worse for wear afterwards.

Going it alone, and coming out without a scratch! Whatever was up with those two– it was definitely beyond his paygrade. Tokura knew better than to go snooping in on his betters, things one shouldn’t dig up. Never again. He wasn’t about to bring his suspicions up anytime soon.

He watched as his men set about taking stock of the evidence– hoisting, lugging and shifting the various containers of antiques. Two of them were lifting a smaller wood casket to their shoulders, when one of them misjudged and let his side slip. 

The unbalanced crate careened to the scarred floor, and Tokura scolded the bunglers by cuffing the top of their heads, in the Asiatic style.

“Be careful, morons!”

It was shortly after that when he spotted the spook pair making their way towards him, and Tokura suddenly felt that he had to take an extra-long drag of his cigarette.

One thing was for sure– it was going to be a long night.

***

Maho was still occupied with a few more matters of procedure, so she sent him on ahead with the car, telling Theo that’d she’d catch a ride with the locals once she was done. That suited him, since he was long overdue a little lie-down. 

Theo let the purr of the pulsating four-cylinder wash over him, and looked forward to a warm bath and a bed with a mattress. Talk about a reward– he was living large now!

Theo recalled the fancy official designation for these groups: New Religious Movements, or NRMs. Nothing overtly religious about this one– a bunch of smugglers getting a bit too enthusiastic with their hobby, hoovering up an American’s collection when he had to flee the States. 

That would be enough to settle the SHELLBACK connection. If they had the kind of money to get their hands on a black-market machine gun in Japan of all places, then moving that kind of cargo was simple. Some kind of splinter off the yakuza, maybe. In the end, it didn’t really matter to him. They were all OPFOR, an opposing force, as far as he was concerned.

The only goon who could be identified outright was the one he hadn’t zeroed, it just so happened. One of the lawmen had recognized him as a nurse for a local school. All the rest were out-of-towners, and they would take longer to make.

Motive, besides bringing the Program down on their heads? Leave that for the locals – all that mattered to him was that the artifacts were secure.

Fortunately, perhaps miraculously, most of the collection had escaped damage, some pieces suffering superficial scarring, but only a few broken up outright. That was enough to chalk it up to the suspects’ handling on Theo’s report. 

The artifacts were going to be passed on to the care of the Japanese without incident. Chances are that a lot of them would be false-positives. Even the storage boxes that Theo had shot up to get at the last hostile– Submachine Gun– turned out to be all foam peanuts.

If it was all packing material, then where were the things that had been packed inside now?