Tunnel Rat

Chapter 237: Conversation between two people unused to having friends.

With greetings out of the way, Belinda and Milo settled down to an awkward silence. Finally, after sitting quietly for a moment, it became apparent to Belinda that she'd have to start poking at him and try to figure out what was going on in his head. "I'm guessing you know something about my Uncle Victor? And that worries you? Or is it something else?"

Milo took a deep breath. "He's certainly part of it. I know a lot about your Great Uncle, Victor Seimovich, and what he's done. You can find out a lot about him with a good computer and a few hours of searching. How much do you know about him? About his real business?"

She shrugged her shoulders, glad she'd guessed right. "I know he isn't the best person. No, that's wrong - He's a bad person, but he's always been good to me. I heard a lot about him when I was younger. He talked with people on the phone or with his employees who followed him around. Always in Russian, and they just assumed I didn't understand. It was a fun game I liked to play, at least until I understood what he was talking about. At some point, I think he realized I could understand a lot of what was said, and he was more careful. It's not something I ever talked to him about, and the one time I asked John, he just said, 'We don't talk about what Uncle Victor does.' After that, it became something I knew about, but it didn't affect me, and I could pretend he was just Uncle Victor.

But if you're worried that he's in the habitat, don't be. He hardly leaves his apartment. Something big happened before he came here, and he's being very careful about where he goes."

Milo picked up a rock, considered how useless throwing rocks at a stalactite was, and threw it anyway. "Let me tell you about the last bad thing he did, and you judge if we have to worry. When the new game started, he had places all over the world where he put people in pods to work in the game and sell their labor. But not the new pods, the old crappy ones that could hurt people using them. And these were worse. They were broken, with no maintenance, and stored for years when they should have been destroyed. The people he used were desperate. Refugees, people from habitats, and people accused of crimes he paid bail on. It was a huge operation, with tens of thousands of people. The old Mark 2 pods were bad when they were new, and you can't legally use them because of the flaws. People were dying every day working for him. And they couldn't quit."

Belinda was staring at him. "Victor did that? What happened?"

"The authorities found out. They saved a lot of people. And found a lot of bodies. One of those places was at the bottom of this hab. It could have Big Butch, or any of our friends in those pods, dying so Victor could make money. And Victor and the people working for him didn't care. Everyone else that they caught went to jail except Victor. So yeah, I worry that he's here. You should, too."

"I'm not saying I don't believe you, but it's hard for me to understand that someone would do that."

"You don't have to take my word for it. I sent you the files as a message in the game. They're nested inside twenty layers of memes about kittens, dumb jokes, and pictures of Butch and Brad sleeping while Min decorated them with a pink marker. Tell me what you think."

Belinda spent a minute finding the message and going through layers of stupid cat pictures. The first two newspaper articles and a report from Interpol were enough to convince her. One report from Poland showed a stack of dead bodies in a freezer. She quit reading after that.

"Oh my god! That's horrible." She stood and paced, arms crossed. Milo gave her time.

She stopped and looked at him, panic in her eyes. "Wait! Daddy is doing the same thing! The entire idea behind Manpower is people in pods working for the corporations! Is he involved with Victor?"

Milo shook his head. "No. I think Victor discovered what John planned to do with Manpower and copied it using illegal pods, forced labor, and hacked logins. John makes some money renting labor. Victor made 100 times as much and had a bigger operation. He killed people while making a profit. What your father is doing isn't bad and at least gives people jobs.

"It's safe?"

"Your stepdad is doing something similar, but safe and legal. He has to use Mark 7 pods. They heal people instead of killing them. And the workers have a contract, a pretty good one. I'm not worried about Manpower. I'm worried about Victor Seimovich and you."

Belinda smiled. "I'm flattered that you're worried about me. But Victor won't hurt me; I'm the only family Uncle Victor has. And I can handle Daddy. We argue, but I can usually get my way eventually."

Milo sighed and tossed another rock. Belinda grew restless as he didn't talk for a minute.

"Talk to me. Why are you worried about me?"

Milo sighed. The damned knots weren't going to cut themselves. "You turn eighteen soon. What happens then?"

"That's why you don't have to worry about me! My trust funds have enough money so I can live independently and take care of myself!" That day couldn't come fast enough for her.

Milo turned to her and thought hard about what he would say. "And what if, for medical reasons, a court declares that you aren't capable of handling that much money? That for your own good, you need a permanent guardian? Someone who can now access your trust funds and care for you. Maybe John. Maybe Victor. What then?"

She'd thought a little about that. "If daddy tries that, I'll fight him. A broken body doesn't mean a broken mind. I've passed enough courses by now to have a college degree if I wanted. A court would see that." Milo was staring at her, waiting, hoping she'd see the problem. "You're worried about Uncle Victor? Aren't you? He's not my guardian; Daddy is. Why would Victor get involved?"

"Because Victor is a bad man, trapped in a bad spot, and he needs your money to get back his power. His money is gone; yours isn't. With enough money, he can disappear all his troubles and be back in business. Don't think of him as Uncle Victor. Think of him as someone who lets people die of starvation while trapped inside faulty pods. And worse. Don't underestimate him."

Eyes wide, she shook her head back and forth. "No, that doesn't make sense! I don't have that much money! Daddy has control of most of it now, and I don't care. When I get the ten million dollars in my trust funds, I can do what I want. But that's nothing compared to what Victor used to talk about. He laughed at 'mere millionaires'; he had billions before he lost it."

"Your father is lying to you. Victor is lying to you. Maybe for good reasons? I'm not good at how family and money work. I'm still figuring that out. But there are records of financial transactions that give hints. Even at a low estimate, your father was worth 150 billion dollars when he died. Your mother was even richer. You are the only heir and get it all when you turn 18. Unless someone decides you aren't competent."

Belinda leaned back against the rock wall, thinking. That was a stupid amount of money. Was he telling the truth? Probably. She was conscious of how controlling her stepfather was and how little contact she had with people outside her bodyguards and doctors. He had moved them a lot, going from place to place, and she'd lost the few friends she had made. She could only hang out with her new friends because Eric had pushed Daddy hard to keep his promises. Now that she thought about it, he didn't even like her being online in the game lately. The more she thought about how he acted lately, the more she got angry. It was just like him to do this. Keep control of her and keep secrets.

"But how would he do that? I have doctors and nurses that would testify to my competence. Wouldn't they, or are you saying Daddy would pay them to say I wasn't?"

Milo let out a deep breath after thinking for a moment. "I don't want to scare you, but you have to understand what could happen. Declaring you mentally incompetent would be tough. All a judge has to do is talk to you. But what if something happens to you physically? You get worse. Have a mysterious relapse. Go into a coma? They control your records. They could show that you're physically unable to care for yourself. You've lived in different countries. What happens when some night you disappear, and we don't know where you are? All they have to do is add a drug to your pod to knock you out, and they could move you like a piece of cargo wherever they need. Pay a judge or a government to side with them, and you never wake up. It's been done before. I know of people it's been done to."

The bottom dropped out of Belinda's world. She hadn't played in weeks because of a problem with her new drugs, and now she wondered. She got better, then worse, in a constant cycle. Was it real? Or were they using drugs to control her? It sounded crazy and paranoid.

Milo continued. "Now, take that scenario and keep going. Who knows you? Who could sound an alarm about a missing heiress and something suspicious happening? How hard would it be to eliminate some people living in a habitat? Who would notice? It would be tempting to Victor, and that's who I'm worried about, to cover his tracks, just like he's done before. But John might do it too."

Belinda nodded. It hadn't seemed real before, just like something in a movie. Now? She felt horrible. She'd heard Victor talk of making people disappear.

"You're worried Victor will come after you, Butch, and all the rest. I can see that. But I promise. I PROMISE I'll do anything I can not to let that happen! I won't let Victor do something to you." She came close to him and suddenly hugged him. "Please believe me; I won't let them hurt anyone." Milo stiffened for a moment, then hugged her back awkwardly.

"And I promise not to let them do anything to you." The moment ended, and they backed away from each other and sat back down, facing each other this time. I Milo thought he was getting a breather, he was wrong.

"There's more, isn't there." If he was just worried about warning her about Victor, he could have done without all the drama. And there were too many odd things happening. ClawMaster, an unknown company that trusted Milo with a half dozen ultra-expensive sets of gloves. The new school, Butch and Mama getting jobs, money for the people testing the gloves. Milo was in the middle of it all.

She knew so little about him, but some of what she knew didn't make sense. He was smarter than she was but younger. He should have been on one of the professional gaming teams, but he lived in the habitat. And then the Claw Master deal. How had he learned about the company? And he understood what the gloves did and how they worked. Most people in the hab couldn't program a food processor. She knew she couldn't.

"You're hiding a lot of things, aren't you?"

Milo threw a rock at a stalactite and then another.

"Right. Not talking again. Got it. You warned me about Victor and Daddy and what they might do to declare me incompetent to manage my money. I get it. But there's more. A lot more! What's the problem and why won't you talk to me? Is it something about Claw Master? Some sort of NDA? I'm not going to say anything. I've only got six friends in the whole damned world, and you're one of them. I'm not going to betray your trust!"

Milo set down the next rock. "No lies. Promise?"

"Yes. I promise. No lies."

He took a deep breath. "Rules are important to me. They help me deal with the real world. But I get tied up in knots when rules work against each other. I promised Mama I wouldn't lie. I promised you I wouldn't lie. I want to protect all my friends. But I also need to not talk about some things. Some of my friends...well, it's complicated. Like some of my secrets. I have to break some rules, and that's tough to do."

He paused for a second, then rushed onward.

"Your Dad and your doctors are hiding your medical records. ClawMaster asked for them after I told them about how the gloves helped you. The files they saw said you were totally healthy. Your pod is sending fake data. Your stepfather has to know about that. Do you know of any reason they might be doing that?"

"No. I can't. And I don't even know what's really wrong with me. I've asked, and Daddy always says it's unhealthy for me to think about it. That's such bullshit! I deserve to know. I hate him; I think I really do. He's trying to keep me from having friends and from playing games. He tried to get my gloves. I love my gloves! My arms were working, and I had to take them off and hide them!" She sat down and cried for a minute, then looked up at Milo. "You're right. I need to worry about John. He wants to be in control." She paused, gathering her thoughts and getting herself under control.

"So what do I do? You have more to say; I know you do. You have friends outside the habitat; it's obvious. You work for ClawMaster, know how the gloves work, and you got to pick your team of playtesters. Did you plan to get me on your team from the start?"

"NO! I mean, some of that is true, but I didn't know you were Belinda...I mean, that you were the Belinda I knew in the game. I saw it on the monitor and freaked out a little when I put things together. I don't like surprises like that. It had been a long day, and I needed to be alone, and then that guy attacked me and tried to steal my gloves."

"What? What guy? Why didn't you say something before?" Anger replaced everything else she was feeling.

Milo shrugged. "The guy that hassled me at the start of the day. He cornered me in the bathroom. I knocked him down and left."

Belinda took a deep breath and drove down the anger. She had to think. "John must have told him to get a pair of the gloves. The other companies were really upset at losing. Which means they might come after Butch, Min, and the others. This just gets worse and worse. Can ClawMaster help? I'm sure they don't want John getting a pair of gloves until they do their big release."

Milo nodded and smiled slightly, thinking of his friends who ran ClawMaster. "I think they can. They helped me a lot. They straightened out the adoption process and are the ones setting up the school. They might be able to help you as well. But this part is tricky. I can't tell you who they are. That's their secret, not mine. But they already want to help you. We need to get your medical records. It would help if I could look at the pod you use. Do you trust me on that? If I can get your medical records to my friends, they can tell you the truth. Then we can find out how the gloves help."

Belinda's face broke out into a smile. "Yes, I trust you with that. And I have a great idea of how to give you a look at my pod. Daddy promised me a clubhouse and a party. I'm going to find Uncle Eric and get him on board with my idea, and all of you can come over to my place to play games, eat cheesy-chili-corn-dogs, and play the video games we won. Daddy doesn't like the idea, so I won't ask him this time. It will be great!"

Milo nodded to her. "That works." He'd been planning to sneak through the tunnels into her section and do the work after he jiggled the security cameras. He was a little disappointed, actually, but her plan had food and games.

She stood up and reached out a hand to him. "I like this; let's keep talking. But I'm starving. There are some places to eat by the docks; we can have a nice lunch together. We can even have some fun on the way. There's a gang war going on, and I hear people are looking for you. I need a good fight to work out some frustrations."