Transcript for 5.14: Juno Steel and the Sixteen Tons (Part 2)

No, I have. What?

And I hate to admit it, but... I have to admit it. I couldn't think of a single goddamn thing in the world where it's saying. My name is Juno Steele, I'm a private eye which means fast-thinking and fast-dog and are supposed to be my bread and butter. When I imagined this meeting with an array of... I guess I thought I'd just figure something out. Open my mouth and let my wits spin my way out of this mess and then an array of, and I would... Well, you... I don't know anymore. And the way he was looking at me like, something he was having trouble cleaning off the bottom of his shoe... wasn't helping.

Well, the way you're going, it's not worth the hell of a lot, all right? Throwing away your life on.

Look, I'll just say it. There's no way they're going to bring slipback to life, Norayev.

Because it's insane! How many years have they been telling you that this is going to happen? How many years have they been stricken you along while you make them feel the rich?

And how long has it been in its final stages? How much longer will it be there? How many more years until you get to live your own goddamn life again?

Of course I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it, I've read it,

Look, I shouldn't have said that. I'm sorry. I got overwhelmed. You don't want to see you anymore, Juno.

Yeah. I can't you? So I guess I'll just go now.

I chased an array across the galaxy, and I'd failed spectacularly. It was just over. Naray have took us up a long staircase, then through a sliding door into a familiar hallway. When I looked back at the door after we passed through it, I saw nothing but one of those wall panels, with a poster that read, sleep when you're dead. I wonder how many secret passages like that ran through this place.

Yeah, I heard you the first time.

Do you hear someone in the direction we're headed?

Yeah, okay, I get it. Jeez.

Yeah, okay, so she's pretty mad because I might have locked her in one of the workrooms. So, what do we do now?

Come on, Nary. If you're really just gonna let me die, really? You know, look at this face. It's the face of a guy you'd want to see dead because I wouldn't be nearly as pretty dead. Nary, have you?

I've gotta way out, alright? That's so good I know you'll trust her, too. Rita.

Of course there is. Rita can hack it to the building systems remotely if I call her on the comms without that. She's locked out.

You don't come through the front door, anybody can get in.

And in order to do that will need a comms. I think I heard one of the exact same add-accombs that when they're calling the straddle.

See, I don't know if you know this kind of insider tech. Back when we were on the car blanche, buddy taught me a thing or two about pickbocking. And this makes you an expert of those. They tricked a pickbocketing. It's less than how you hit your hand. In their pocket and more and how you distract them from your hand in their pocket. Is this making any sense? Would you like me to go slower? So all we need is a distraction. And we're good. What distraction do you propose? I'd be a little too dangerous for me to distract myself. Unless... Is that clock accurate?

Why? We got five minutes to find Mr. Doblin, get into position.

We'll figure that out when he gets there. We're going after him, follow me.

After sneaking about a minute in the wrong direction, or I have pressed on a panel of wall and it's slid open again. You brought us into another hidden hallway, looked around quickly to see if any other identical executives were anywhere near, and did something I hadn't seen him do since we crashed the Outguard Express years ago. He pulled a plasma cutter out of his pocket and cut a neat doorway in in your bio. Then, with motion's quick and sharp as whip cracks, he grabbed the panel he'd cut away before it hit the ground and coated its sides in a strange, slick substance. He sealed it back in place behind us after he passed through its carved out passage into the space between the walls. He did all this with a smoothness I recognized for my year of leaving together. It was the way he moved when he'd rehearsed a tricky maneuver in his head for hours, playing exactly the way he'd hold himself as he picked a lock dangling upside down, or just how he'd cock his head to make it through a moving laser field unsinced. But it was also the way he moved sometimes when he made a joke, and that's how I always knew he was unsure about it, watching carefully to see if it would land. Then it hit me like a mega-hafer that I'd probably never get to see him do that again. It hit me in the stomach, specifically. I remember I felt my breakfast bruise over.

Is that the one with all the death they play musical chairs with? I believe so, yes. Good. You told me once it with pockets on your side, you get it just about anybody's crowd, right? I could what? Crowd on your side, anybody's pockets, I mean, sorry. I'm a little distracted.

Just cut into the roomies and it'd be ready to move. Why? Because everybody swaps desks on the hour. He cut a square out of the wall in three clean straight strokes. It was barely big enough to crouch through, but he pushed it open and crouched low enough to squeeze through. He turned towards me and said,

But why don't have time, just do it? It'd be slipped into the crowd so smoothly I lost sight of him within a few seconds. I had the advantage of knowing where he was headed though, so I kept my eye on the only person in that crowd not moving. The executive they called, Mr. Doppel. I saw him a moment later, lurking near Doppel's pocket, so long as he moved fast, he should have been in and out of there unseen. but there's just one problem with going unseen and it's that nobody can see you including the CMP worker trying to hustle to a new desk who tripped right over Narayev knocking him hard into Mr. Doppel. The executive was about to see Nareiv in the whole string of events that would follow unraveled in my mind. They caught him with his hand in their pockets. They certainly wouldn't be working with him anymore. And so it all just happened the way Nareiv said it would. They dropped the slit project and everything he'd worked for for decades would go straight down the drain. All because he'd taken the time to make sure I got out of the scene P offices without a laser hole between my eyes. It would be my fault, in other words. I didn't think I could live with that. So, I set myself up to die with it instead. Hey, Doppel!

I stayed watching long enough to see Doppel turn when an array of bumped into him a moment before and find nobody there at all. Then I ran, because there were about 20 security guards trying to cram into the little opening array of it carved out, and I wasn't about to see what they'd do to me if they caught me. But here's the thing about when 20 guys all tried to cram into the wall at the same time. They can't. The little gap in the wall didn't hold them for long, though. And soon I could hear the whole crowd of them chasing behind me. I didn't know the facility as well as Nareiv did, and it wasn't exactly easy to navigate while trapped inside the walls, but I tried to remember the direction phaser had taken me earlier that day. Once I thought I saw one of the wall panels Nareiv had moved. I tried removing it, but I couldn't get it to budge.

That's one way out. I was only a few doors away from the Zero Gravity Playroom. I didn't know what Nerf had planned in there, but I didn't have time for any other options either. Nerf wasn't there, but I wasn't alone for very long.

You're cut through, aren't you?

I was completely surrounded. And it occurred to me for just a second. That maybe Narayov was done with me and this is how I was going to find out. Maybe he was going to let them catch me and let that solve his Juno steel problem for good. I didn't even notice the tall lean figure standing by the control panel in the corner of the room. Not until he turned a dial on that panel and I felt my feet start to lift off the floor.

We're in a top floor, one of the other executives here.

The secret passage out of this office is in the zero-aggressive playroom?

If I have any of them in Blaster, I'd show her how to use it. You think you could clear the dogs for this week? Do I think? I don't know if it's been that long since we were together. Really?

Yeah, still a super-sold on this whole sports thing. This is the first nail, though. We're ready.

Good! No, Raven, I have done enough zero G thief training with the Arinkos that navigating around the Playroom was no problem. The guards hadn't, though. Nobody ever got to take a break to use the playroom after all. And that made them sitting ducks, just floating there, waiting for us to catch them. The thing about moving in zero G is there's no way to move without pushing off something. You can't swim in the air because it's not a stence's water. So on the ray of took care of the goons along the way, I set my course towards Fraser. Using the guards floating in the air in front of her stepping stones to get there. Stepping stones, I pushed into a 50,000-volt trap. So maybe the metaphor doesn't hang together all that great, but you get the idea.

Let me show you how to use this thing.

That sounds so hard.

I... I... I... It's a shortage of time to call off the girls.

Looks like too little, too late, what's phaser. Enjoy your memory, but some of the things between the impression that you don't usually have to take those around here.

That was a handful. really you can turn the gravity on again and you like that secret exit and one secret exit I just found come in right up all right so you finally get out of it all right let's hold it all right we're bringing the secret test subject into a voting game I think that must be slid but

You want to go after him, no you? I have to. Then I'm coming with you. I'm coming with you. I mean, besides, I'm even more indicated in this than you are.

With the security team out cold, it wasn't so hard to make our way back to the underground base of the Dukana group. And maybe it was the silence we had to move in, but my nerves were ragged. Something bad was going down. I knew that by instinct. I just had no idea how bad it was going to get. I managed to hold strong until we saw the executive push slips body into a doorway at the end of the hall. We waited for him to come out. He didn't come out.

But something about that haul, the silence, the tension in the air, felt suddenly like I had things to say, and if I didn't get them out now, I might never get them out. I just want to say I'm sorry for not listening when you asked me not to come for all of it, but I just I care about you.

I know you can. You wouldn't have made it this far if you couldn't, but sometimes by yourself. All you can manage to do is keep up with the way things are. You know what I mean? You spend all your energy paddling to keep your head above water and you don't have any left to actually swim. You can't paddle forever and if you don't get to land eventually you're going to drown. I don't want that for you. So just know that whatever's on the other side of this door will help you with it. I want to be part of it because even if you never want to see me again, I want you to be okay. Juno. I just Please, Nariah. Please, let me help you.

All right. I stepped aside. Nariah opened the door and neither one of us was ready for what we saw on the other side. We saw Slip Jackson, of course. A thin shadow beneath a thin blanket. And next to him we saw another bed just like his, with another person lying on it and another and another and another rows of them stretching on and on down the corridor. People hooked up to machines that force their organs into operation. People who were dead and presumably waiting for their tickets back to life How many slipjacks and were they keeping in here, lost in the space between life and death, and how many Peter and Ares were they keeping on the leash, pushing them for everything they had, squeezing them dry over years, or decades. The executives, Mr. Doppel, and all the rest had stolen something more precious from Ares than he'd ever stolen for their sake. It's stolen his story. Nureyev had always thought of himself as a kind of martyr, a lone sacrifice on the altar of Slip Jackson. But that wasn't it at all. It was just a room. One of hundreds it looked like. Reduce to one little cog in the noconic root machine. I looked at Peter Nureyev then. Had the cold shock and hard anger in his eyes. I'd never seen him push this far before and frankly, I had no idea what he'd do. I only knew I'd be there to see it through.