Back at the restaurant, Shilo twirled the key around on the tabletop. Such a simple and easy method of protection. Jill was helping him with the last part. Shilo suspected it was out of curiosity. But he wasn’t sure yet if it was in him, or the case.
The room the key would unlock was in the back of the restaurant and Jill had convinced the wait staff that she needed to see the kitchen before she could order dessert. Jill pushed the limits with threats of inspections and leaving nasty reviews to talking up the influence her family had. It was their first idea and one that Shilo thought would fail, but the manager finally relented to allow them a view of the kitchen. Jill had her sister’s charm and persistence.
Shilo slipped away as Jill began talking at great length about her family recipe and how the chef was missing key ingredients in some sort of baked dish. The door was guarded with cloaked gunks. Shilo had noted that and the sowbu’s intel was inline. Also a thermal camera watched the hallway.
The key wasn’t as old-fashioned as Shilo first suspected. The key had a digital fingerprint, which made more sense to him. Shilo’s outfit masked him from the thermal camera. The sowbu’s tech had a nice counter to the cloaks. Beyond disrupting the cloaks, it did one better, causing a short and stunning those in the cloaks. The downside being it disrupted energy shields in addition to stunning cloaked individual.
But this just meant for Shilo that the cloaked guards would be stunned and conveniently still cloaked while possible energy shields were down. He was sure silent alarms would go off, but no matter to that, he wouldn’t be here long enough for a response team to arrive.
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The key opened the door, and the room behind was filled with other valuables. Shilo took a few photos and tripped on a third cloaked gunk. The disrupter had stunned them as well. The gunk groaned and Shilo hurried about his business, worried about how long they would be stunned. He found the box with the tech plan’s; High Jam Logistics logo was marked on the side.
Shilo thumbed through the plans and worry settled into his gut. This wasn’t a device to make terraforming cheaper. Maybe it could be used that way, but it could also be used to distribute chemical weapons. It wasn’t a world builder, but a world ender.
Shilo set one detonator on the device and triggered it for a delay, and he walked out to find Jill had convinced the chef to allow her to cook. Shilo swooped in and pulled her close. “Time to leave.” They quickly left and could hear the fire alarm sound off as the dining guests voiced their concern. Shilo was soon lost in the sea of patrons escaping the dining rooms.
Shilo met with his sowbu contact and showed the destroyed contents of the room with the tech piece marked in the fire report from the station—not explicitly as anything beyond damaged goods. Retrieving the crime scene photos was trivial, that only took a phone call with his old contacts at the station. It had been much harder to make sure the fire report was listed as accidental. Considering the contents of some of the other items in the room, it had been possible.
There was enough evidence, until the fire damage, to start investigating the hoshaness families’ ties to criminal enterprises—a lead that Shilo would follow on another day. His contact agreed that it was worth starting an investigation.
He was just happy the sowbu seemed content enough that the plans were destroyed. I guess this was a case of if they can’t have a doomsday weapon monopoly, at least no one does either. Shilo added to his growing list of mental notes to investigate where High Jam Logistics was getting their funding. Mysteries for another day. For now, Shilo was only considering where he would take a vacation and what music he would listen to during his hard-earned break. Most likely, he’d spend a week alone in his apartment.
