Chapter Text
Alexander Grimaldi Hugo L’Orange was a reclaimator. By trade, deed and title.
As such he held an invaluable if not unique place in society at large. If a particularly solitary one.
Reclaimators, perhaps as an effect of the nature of their business, if not the rarity of their profession, did not easily take to companionship. This was due to numerous reasons to be sure. The long absences, the rare breed that could handle isolation, the danger, the years of study and research, the seeming quiet nature most reclaimators developed. It caused them to often delay romance and family planning well into their silver years, when their bodies could no longer easily bear the hardships of the job.
Such delays had benefits and downsides. One bonus is that, if a reclaimator was successful, money would be no issue, and family was as much a retirement plan as it was a quest for legacy or love. The downsides are the sheer difficulty in relation to another human that had never experienced such things as a reclaimator had. The disjointed perspectives they held. The quiet natures they often had.
Alexander often heard, on the rare occasion he returned to inhabited civilization, that many were only able to achieve marriages of convenience or essentially loveless unions for the sake of notoriety, procreation, or financial boon. Alexander found such unions left a foul taste in his mouth. He would prefer solitude to such artificiality.
Not that he himself was at an age where thoughts often turned to musings of retirement or legacy. He had had a rather successful career, true, better than most his age, but he was still rather spry and tough, his mind still sharper than most. The sharpest in the business, one could argue.
It was that sharp mind that allowed him to unravel the mysteries of this ruin he often referred to as his city. His home away from homeland.
Of course, to call it a ruin was inaccurate. One often repeated and labeled upon it, but to do so would reveal ones ignorance. After all, people still lived here. Even descendants of the original inhabitants.
Granted, most stayed within the protection of the few intact domes the city was famous for. Hell, they were quite the draw for tourists. The last of the great metropolis cities. The mad experiment. The fabled city of amnesia.
Paradigm.
Now a home for ghosts, tourists, and treasure hunters.
Still, for a ruined city, it held up well. What was left of it.
Only 20 percent of the original city remained, at least above ground, anyway. Down below it was another world entirely. One that was still a dangerous mystery. One that even managed to claim the life of his mentor. Beneath the ruins lay a seemingly endless maze of tunnels that stretched far beyond the confines of the city. It was rumored that some tunnels may have once even crisscrossed the continent.
But that was an adventure for the others. For now, Alexander had the trail of a new treasure. The treasure trove of the city’s fabled negotiator, Roger Smith.
That was what had him traversing a part of town outside the domes that tourists were discouraged from entering. Outsiders called the place ‘Hush Town’. Alexander had been here enough times to know what the locals called it.
Heaven’s Fall.
Now where that particular name came from, and the story behind why they called it that, was still a mystery. And tolerated as he was in this place, he was still an outsider, a foreigner. He didn’t dress like a local, he didn’t sound like a local, he didn’t walk like a local.
He was dressed in a piecemeal sort of outfit. Not quite a uniform, but not quite civilian. Practical like military garb but lacking any form of flourish, rank, or identity. Brown cargo pants, tied about his legs tight with leather puttees and strapped holsters for tools and pouches. Heavy reinforced mountaineering boots with armored toes and heels. His hips girded by a climbing harness that he felt naked without after wearing it for so long.
His torso was dressed in a brown denim shirt, worn in with the lines of his pistol holster, form fitted around his c96 and its stock. Over all of this he wore a vented bomber jacket that was patched and reinforced in key areas and places he had torn on his adventures. He carried along his waterproof rucksack, lean and strapped down tight, a bedroll attached, hanging over his left shoulder for now.
Topped off by a pair of adjustable lighted goggles currently sitting atop his sandy blond hair that he had paid a fortune for five years ago in Salut. Goggles that had proven to be worth every franc.
Admittedly his attire and his friendly demeanor, often accompanied with a gentle smile he had been taught to often have to reassure strangers, made him look much younger than he actually was.
Whatever that number was.
It wasn’t that he didn’t know, it was just one of the many things he lost track of that he didn’t find too important. Maybe he’d take time sometime later to figure it out.
Not now, now he was happy for more than just disarming the locals. Now he was nearing the end of his hunt.
He hoped, anyway.
Months of research and interviews. No less than four expeditions underground, solo, obviously. Now he was nearly certain he had found it. All thanks to that wonderful android he had met and his senile cryptic clue.
“Find the Widow Smith.”
It was so odd though, wasn’t it. In light of the lament of his caretaker. The android had been more or less incoherent due to his age, yet that one clue rang true from him direct and cogent.
The Widow Smith. Alexander assumed he had meant Roger Smith’s widow. But that itself was a bit puzzling as he dug further. He scoured the Paradigm archives for weeks but never found any records pertaining to a marriage record for Roger Smith. Was an alias used? And if so, why? It would fit with the scant records found for Paradigm’s top negotiator. The man known as Roger Smith was notorious for being very private, particularly after the cryptic event only ever referred to by oral retelling as ‘the year that wasn’t.
That particular puzzle was only a headache to unravel. Records were no use and all there was to go off of was conflicted and contradictory retellings several generations removed from the primary witnesses. Even children alive from the time were dead and their children quite old, leaving no reliable accounts to trust that the event even happened at all. Even androids, what few remained from that time, couldn’t be relied upon without contradicting each other, sometimes even themselves.
It was getting late in the day. Night fall came rather early to Paradigm due to it’s gloomy weather patterns. Of course, ask a local and they will tell you the oft refrain of, ‘It used to be much worse’. Something about the artificial nature of the Megadome that encompassed the city-state of Paradigm. A Megadome that seemed to be failing with the unyielding march of time.
Or was it? Ask a scientist and they’ll tell you not only could no one figure out just how old the Megadome was, but just how the inconceivably massive dome was still erect. It predated the Gran Republique by centuries to be sure. Chute des Anges, his hometown, by 150 years at least. How it survived the fourth cataclysm is anyone’s guess.
Alexander had his own theory. All likely to be scoffed at by historians, he was certain. But his own research through the Paradigm archive and his own small treasure trove of reclaimated records, especially the large box of recovered commercial advertisements (an all to often overlooked, if admittedly exaggerated source of account.)
His theory was that Paradigm and the Megadome predated even the second cataclysm. Maybe the dome was constructed to protect against the black rains of that dark age.
Well, that was the theory anyway. His teachers in programme school would have certainly chuffed and chided his theory for certain. Unpatriotic, unfounded, lacking in reliable evidence, entirely too fanciful. A crackpot theory.
Well, crackpot theories sometimes contained gold. Or even better.
He hoped this trail would lead to one or the other this time. He was growing fatigued with the seemingly endless misdirection and empty rooms already picked clean of the past.
It was an unassuming building, from the ground at least. A drab replica lying somewhere uninspired between neo-classical and art-deco that seemed to eschew the favors of either, again, at least from the outside. The building was dingy, a bit rundown though not through the fault of it’s design. Like so many buildings in the city, it seemed to weather the endless caustic rain and pollution by only graying into the background instead of melting away.
Supposedly, it was a bank at some point in its life, though he couldn’t find any records of it ever having been. Only the twice retelling of a great-grandfather’s old story conveying as much. But a twice told story was better than a conflicting one.
The doors were boarded up, of course. It was hard to find a building in this part of town that didn’t have boarded doors and windows. It seemed to be the most common construction activity outside of the domes. It was perversely reassuring in its way, seeming to signify a sense of preservation, of hope that maybe one day, the city might swell and breathe again with life.
Alexander liked that thought. But then, he always liked the thought of the relics of the past living again. That was the whole reason he became a reclaimator after all.
There were no lights, no sound coming form the building. Only the psychic beckoning call to his soul, urging him to trespass within halls untread in decades. To commune with ghosts and breath dust undisturbed by mortal beings since the boards were placed.
His pulse quickened a beat, the hairs on his arms and neck bristled with the electricity that ran along his spine. A smile came to his lips and he readied his torch and his pry-lance from its scabbard.
He stepped up to the boarded doorway and ran gloved fingers along the edge, his years of experience working the puzzle before him of how to crack the opening in the gentlest way possible. Then, with a pat, he set his pry-lance, a long, precision tool that merged the functions of a sword, a pry-bar, and a climbing pick. There was only the sound of the nails surrendering their hold, once, twice, and twice again before he had made a sufficient hole to access the door behind. A door he found to be, sadly, glass, painted-over, and broken.
This was an ill-omen. It could signify that he had been too late and the treasures had long since been pillaged. Still, no sense in turning back now after coming so far already. He snaked a deft hand in past shards of glass in and up to find the inside latch.
With a noisier than comfortable grind and click, he had access, and pushed the inside door in. It gave with some effort, Alexander suspecting a rather stiff closing mechanism to be the culprit. That was, until something gave way and he heard the banging of something metal as the mechanism broke and fell to the stone floor inside.
“Merde.” he cursed.
Oh well. Onward.
He snaked his body through the opening inside.
Rising to his feet on the far side of the portal he had clumsily broken, he scanned his surroundings, bringing the beam of his torch into use. He was in a lobby, unsurprisingly. All around him were furnishings covered in sheets and tarpaulin. But a sharp enough eye, and his was quite sharp and well trained, could easily spot the trappings beneath of a bank lobby. The tables, chairs, teller counter, even the small counters used by customers to do their last minute paperwork for their transactions.
The oral tales were true it seemed. A good sign.
He pressed on deeper into the building, making his was around the counter to the office area beyond, a foyer the led to an impressive art-deco staircase.
Up was not his first impulse to explore. No he wanted a way down. Down was usually the best place to find the kind of treasures he desired. Particularly the kind of treasures that could be found if Roger Smith turned out to be the hero Alexander had wanted to find since his boyhood.
But where was the stairway down? Perhaps the way was left purposely obtuse to dissuade nosy patrons? But what of the bank’s own employees then? Surely they needed to get around the building as well. It wouldn’t do logically to keep the entrance to the stairs that accessed the lower levels to be hidden.
Alexander heard a noise above him and swung his torch’s beam to look.
Nothing. Rats maybe. Likely a pigeon.
He pressed on around the perimeter of the large staircase in search of an obvious way down. Finding no sign, he ventured into a hallway leading deeper in, hoping for maybe a less obvious way to appear.
He continued down past empty small offices along a wood and glass hallway that was almost out of place in the design of the rest of the building. Perhaps because…
Another noise. One from out in the foyer.
Once more he swung his torch to see.
Once more...nothing.
But he could have sworn he heard the noise of a shoe on the stone floor.
Seems the ghosts were rather restless in here.
On he pressed along the hallway until he found that the hallway had looped around and back into the foyer. All without finding the staircase down to the lower levels.
“Well Mister Smith.” he mused aloud, he was so often alone that it never made much difference to keep all of his thoughts internal. “I suppose since you’ve kept your secrets this long, that it would go without saying that you wouldn’t make this easy for me. Did you take down the signs yourself?”
The ghosts in the darkness kept silent.
He walked forward towards the base of the stairs, lost more in ponderance than set on observation of his surroundings.
Could this just be an old bank? Could the building have been confused? Worse, could the Smith mansion have been destroyed in the same way most of the rest of the city.
!!!
Okay, this time he definitely heard something. And this time he was sure it was bigger than a pigeon.
…
…
Alexander switched off his torch and listened. Anything. A footfall. A breath. A scrape.
He tightened his grip on his pry-lance. He wasn’t eager to get in another fight. Certainly not so soon after his recent trouncing by those connards from Chalumeau Company. He was lucky they didn’t figure out what he was really after in the underground.
He flexed his muscles, his arms still sore from that fight.
Where are you?
He stepped forward, trusting in the soft rubber of his climbing boots to mask his footsteps as he silently crept from his previous position in the darkness. He was attempting to get into a position different from where he had all but shouted his location from, hoping to throw off whomever was stalking him in the inky blackness.
To his left? He froze.
No. Maybe…
He spun and flipped on the torch.
There in the beam, he saw a ghost standing before him on the last steps of the foot of the staircase. Pale, flawless, alabaster skin. Auburn hair cut to just below her ears. Dark eyes that looked youthful and tired at the same time. Her face wore a stone-cold expressionless look with a set jaw that almost gave the impression of contempt. She had a petite, slender, feminine figure. She wore a black, long-sleeve dress that was knee length with a poofy A-shaped skirt and dark tights or leggings.
She was beautiful. A strikingly lovely poltergeist. Alexander wasn’t sure if it was this reason that he froze or the fact that this ghost had snuck up on him so easily.
It couldn’t be fear of the supernatural. No, he had always fantasized about meeting an actual ghost before, even though he didn’t really believe in them. Getting to talk to one and hear a genuine first hand account of history from one who had lived and died sounded so fascinating to him.
This shock was compounded with a flash of silver in the torchlight, and instantly he found himself staring down the blade of a rather large and very sharp looking straight-bladed saber.
He swallowed dryly.
If he was about to be killed by a ghost, at least he could take solace in the fact that he would die doing what he loved, killed by the prettiest ghost he could have imagined.
“If you are here looking for valuables to rob, I’m afraid all you will find is this blade.” the ghost said, curt, succinctly and completely monotone.
Strangely...tinny. There was a detectable warmth and youth to her voice despite the sharpness of her delivery and slight reediness to it. But underneath there was something his brain caught that was familiar. Something one would only catch from a lifetime of listening to the like. Something easily ignored or entirely unheard by a duller sense.
It was a sound that triggered a warm memory of his father. His gentle instruction seated beside him at his desk, dutifully guiding him through his supplementary education.
Wait, was this ghost…?
“You would be wise to unhand your weapon and raise your hands, mute burglar.” The fantôme féminin spoke.
“I’m not a burglar, madame.” Alexander said, calmly as he could muster, and raised his hands slowly, palms forward. “And despite my earlier apprehension, I could not bear to bring harm to a young lady.”
Her eyes shifted to his body, then back to his eyes.
“The pistol you have at your torso speaks to the contrary.” she said. “Or would you have me believe that the c96 beneath your shoulder is a comically oversized cigarette lighter?”
“ What was that?” he thought, catching something in the movement of her eyes.
“A necessary precaution in my line of work, I’m afraid.” Alexander defended. “I am, in truth a reclaimator, madame. If you will permit me, I can produce my license. I keep it in my breast pocket.”
“Do not move, or I will run you through.” she said, pulling back the sword in preparation to thrust forward.
She reach out with her opposite hand and correctly guessed which breast pocket he meant, pulling out the laminated card within.
His ears detected a sound that triggered another brief flashback of his childhood. One again of his father holding him close when he was quite young.
She pulled it closer, then glanced at the card.
Her eyes clenched his suspicion. He relaxed his hands.
“I never said that you could relax.” she shot at him. “This card could easily be a forgery.”
“Your eyes are sharper than that, madame.” he replied. “And you won’t kill me. Unlike most burglars, reclaimators are quite well educated. Educated enough to know that androids can’t kill.”
The blade thrust forward in a flash, slicing his ear. She then twisted the blade and pressed the flat hard against his head and cheek, tilting it.
“A common misconception.” she said. “Also your logic is quite flawed. For what purpose would I bring the sword if I could not use it?”
He could feel a slight trickle of blood down his lobe.
“Madame, I swear to you I mean you no harm.” he tried to defend. “Nor am I here to rob you. I am a reclaimator here in pursuit of my trade. I was mistaken in my belief that this house was abandoned. I apologize for that error. I was led to believe this was once the home of Roger Smith. It seems that I was wrong.”
The name elicits a reaction from the android woman. A reaction that could be called subtle in a human woman, but one that was quite emotive in an android. Alexander was quite experienced in reading such cues from the normally inexpressive features of such beings.
Was he mistaken?
“Where did you learn of such a rumor?” she asked him, her voice making no real detectable change in demeanor. “Who told you this was so?”
“No one, directly.” Alexander admitted. “Such is often the case of such things from so long ago. Finding first-hand witnesses is nearly impossible. So I go with stories relayed by descendants. Sometimes, if I am fortunate, I read the journals they leave behind.”
“So you interrogate locals.”
“No.” he responded, suppressing his offense. “To interrogate implies force, coercion. I ask. I offer compensation for their time. I help with problems in exchange. I sit and listen. I thank them for their story, correctly remembered or not. I do not interrogate.”
“A burglar who steals stories?”
She had offended him again. Still, even with a sword to his head, it he was to die, he would die a gentleman. So he let go of his flash of anger.
“I am not a burglar.” he said calmly, looking her right in her unblinking eyes. “My name is Alexander Grimaldi Hugo L’Orange. I am a reclaimator. I greet you humbly, my lady.”
With that, he crossed an arm over his midsection and bowed. Though, perhaps foolishly, as the sword then cut into his head a little, causing him to wince.
When he returned upright, he caught the faint flash of something akin to a shocked puzzlement that just as quickly vanished back into what was becoming apparent to be her usual impassive if ever slightly annoyed expression.
Alexander waited for her response. For a period of time that blew right passed uncomfortable.
He cleared his throat, hoping to illicit a response.
To which he received none.
“Was I also mistaken to believe that I was in the presence of a lady?” he finally asked.
He caught the faintest of an eye twitch, he must have irked her with that.
The ghostly android woman withdrew her saber to her side then grabbed the hem of her dress. In one motion she smoothly curtsied tugging on her dress and bringing her sword up in a salute, the blade pointed up, the cross guard level with her eyes that never left his own.
“I am Ms. Dororthy Wayneright.” she spoke. “I am the caretaker of this house.”
She returned to her original position, her blade parting the air sharply as it snapped to a low forward ready position.
“You are trespassing here.” she told him. “I must insist you leave.”
Another dead end.
Maybe.
“I will comply, Madame Wayneright.” he said. “But, before I do, would you entertain a small request?”
“Quite impudent to ask for something from me, trespasser Alexander Grimaldi Hugo L’Orange.” she barbed.
“I cannot deny this, madame.” he replied. “But if you please, I was told to seek the Widow Smith. I was led to believe that she once held vigil over this, the home of her fallen husband. Was this ever true?”
Now she became expressive. Not in a way a human woman would, no, but in her unique way, she suddenly spoke in cryptic volumes. Was she hurt? Saddened?
She opened her mouth to speak, then stopped. Then again, only to have the tiniest of gasps escape her lips.
“The Widow Smith still holds her vigil.” she finally spoke.
Alexander’s expression of shock was far more pronounced. As was the slight smile he couldn’t quite suppress.
“Truly, you say?!” he said excitedly. “Simply miraculous! Tell me, would it at all be possible to speak to the lady? To hear her story?”
“You impose one selfish request after trespassing upon this house, and then you beg another?” Ms. Wayneright shot with increased volume. “Again, such impudence! Do not doubt that I will still run you through! Even in spite of the mess it will make of the floor. You have more than overstayed a welcome you were never granted. Now leave!”
Alexander backed away, bowing slightly.
“I will, madame.” he relented, though still buzzing from the revelation. “However…”
“However?!” Ms. Wayneright repeated, a slight hint of annoyance in her word.
“Tomorrow I will return.” he said. “Properly this time, and with further token of apology. And I will humbly call upon the Widow Smith to seek audience with her.”
“She will not see you!”
“Then I will continue to impose upon her lovely housekeeper until she does.” he smiled. “Until then, madame, I bid you goodnight.”
With that, Alexander left the Smith manor.
Dorothy watched him until she was sure he had left, then set about shoving a massive desk in front of the doorway, confident that no ordinary man could possibly move it and regain entry this way. Sometime soon she would have to have it bricked over.
Perhaps the other entrances as well, if this arrogant charmer insisted on disturbing her solitude.
Yet another frustrating man. It was enough to make her start to despise humans.
Still, there was something nagging her about this man. Something she couldn’t yet quantify. Something familiar.
The memory of a loving touch faintly brushed across her circuits.
“If not for your damned rules, my love.” she spoke to the ghost upstairs.
No side.