Find It Inc.

Chapter 2

As the night wind races across the streets of Treeburg and young adults stomping home from a night drinking and some even flying into the street lamps (remember kids: don’t drive and fly) there is the light of an isolated square in an old-looking building. This square is the office of “Find It Inc.” with Boss J still at her desk looking over the contracts of the previous two clients while Boss K paces around deep in the areas of her mind where the darkest though run wide. K stops in front of the desk and stares blankly at J who, without tilting her head, says (and this is, of course, translated):

“What?”

K goes back to her pacing with her mind playing dark, demented games with her head. These thoughts of worry speed up the pace of K’s walk. K walks so fast that she begins to walk into things without noticing and the speed of worry begins to show on her face by the fast forming trails of sweat.

J watches in annoyance. Not again, she thinks to herself, K always gets herself work up but never this much. After some time J gets up from her chair and pauses until the pins and needles have escaped from legs stops K in her tracks.

“They will be fine. And you have to spend them out since we have not reached our quota plus this is a big break to put it all over the hedge” J tries to reassure K,

“But we never sent them out alone. I mean they were always in two groups with one of us on ‘stand by in case something were to happen to them. You were watching Jo while I was watching the other two, now we can’t possible watch all three of them at the same time because one will get left behind since there are only two of us” K explained, “we decided on this method in case something goes wrong we can come in and help them.”

J looks at K and with heavy breath says

“They will be fine, just rip the bandage and all will be done”

This gives no reassurance to K since she knows it is a bad idea. I mean the workload sound too good to be true but she cannot figure out what could go wrong.

***

Caz wakes up in her bed, in her room with her Dylan talking to someone on the visual phone. He sounds angry and impatient and Caz thinks that she finally has rubbed off on him. Caz turns over to find another comfortable spot in the bed to go back to her forgotten dream that she had. Her job has some perks and these are one of them. Well, the main one.

You see after a big treasure hunts the hunters get to stay at home for the day to rest and get their minds in gear. Treasure hunting is not only a physical activity but a mental one too. You need to use the good noddle to figure out how to get to the treasure and even how to find the treasure. Some clients tend to walk in and say that ‘there may be a treasure maybe somewhere’ and you have to figure out where the somewhere is. No easy task plus sometimes the treasure may not even exist or it is worthless. But they get paid either way.

As Caz is about to drift off back to sleep with the sound of Dylan’s smoothing- angry voice; Caz’s phone rings. Boss K’s name is flashing across the screen but Caz just ignores it thinking it is a bum call. She knows she has today off so getting the phone is no concern to her. Her phone rings a few more times which keeps interrupting her sleep and she imagined that K is just rolling around on her bum while at yoga, so something, with the phone in her back pocket. The ringing stops. Caz slowly closes her eyes.

She is shaken awake by Dylan, “Hey Love, someone is calling”

“It was a mistake, day off, night night,” mumbles Caz in response,

“I get that but they are calling you through my phone” whispers Dylan softly (which is kind of pointless since Caz is already awake). Caz rolls over and sits up gives her eyes, face and mind time to properly wake up as well as to take in what was just said. She looks over at Dylan who hands his phone to her. Caz put the phone to her ear and hears the expressionless voice of Boss K on the other side. A moment goes by while Dylan has to answer another call on the visual phone. Caz puts the phone down and gets out of bed.

In the kitchen where Dylan is putting on his black tie while talking to a hologram of Chocolate (his co-worker and life-long friend) Caz enters the kitchen and goes straight to the cereal. Dylan looks at her with a touch of confusion, “Why are you up so earlier?” he questions,

“Surprise work” says a milk pouring Caz,

Chocolate clears her throat to get Dylan’s attention which worked. Dylan looks at the hologram that raises her eyebrows in a ‘do you have a deal?’ expression, which Dylan nods his head to. The hologram then disappears.

“You ready for work?”

“Yep” says Dylan as he grabs his black briefcase and peaks Caz’s on the cheek. “Have fun” he calls back from the balcony window and he walks up the stairs that lead to the sky. Caz notices his back with the long sleeved white collared shirt that has two sleets by his shoulder blades that mirror each other in a diagonal. It looks like an ‘A’ without the middle. His black pants are spotless as they have to be since it is the uniform. He falls off the edge of the veranda only to come up again with his massage white wings taking up the entire wide window view. This was her favorite part of Dylan going to work. Caz pours a cup of filter coffee and wonders what manic stuff she will have to encounter at work today and why do they even have to go.

Caz exits the main door of the building and sees a tired looking Frankie (yes, ghosts can be tired too) which is the normal since they do live (or after-live) around the corner from each other. They join paths and make their way down the road to the office. Good thing they live quite close to it while Jo has a long way to run to get to work, but at least it keeps her fit maybe Caz should do the same since almost dead from yesterday’s running. The two neighbors walked past the broken up body Gregg who is a ghost. Gregg committed suicide about ten years ago by jumping off the building and when someone tried to off themselves they do not go anywhere and stay as the last position they were since Frankie’s method was pill popping her internal organs are a mess but her external is not as much of a mess. The girls greet Gregg as he attempts to lift a friendly arm. Gregg got used to the pain and had great pleasure in noticing the small changes in the past ten years; then again there is not much to do it you can’t move.

Caz and Frankie spot Jo’s wolf form approaching them as they get near the building. The building is old-looking but the rent is cheap so a lot of small businesses (and some larger ones) have offices inside it. Caz holds the door open for Jo to hop inside and then she follows behind. They all take the lift to the tenth floor. Frankie would usually float up and Jo would leap up the stairs but today did not call for such activities so it was a crowded way up for Caz.

The hunters walk through the door to the floor where Caz sits crossed legs on the couch while Frankie leans against the window watching the daily commute of the working people. Jo goes to put clothes on and comes out wearing a bright pink shirt that has “don’t touch me; don’t look at me; don’t speak to me” printed on it. Frankie and Caz nod in agreement to the shirt. This has been the quietest day in the history of ‘Find It Inc.’ but what would you expect with no sleep?

Boss K summons them into the office which with dragging feet they go to. The hunters stare at Boss J’s empty desk and each one of them are wondering why they did not have another cup of coffee. K, as if reading their minds, starts the kettle with the boiling of the water being a sweet tune to the hunters’ ears. Boss J is usually late (some people are just like that plus if she was on time then something would go wrong, its Murphy’s law) so waiting for a meeting is not new to them but the lack of sleep is. J rushes in through the door with a thousand apologizes which all the hunters just quietly nod at. J takes a seat and waits for K to enter with the coffees. K does but relies that she never made one for J.

“We don’t have time, it’s fine, it’s fine” speeds by J, I guess less coffee would be a good idea for her because her eyes keep blinking in that strange way as if she is a lunatic with a caffeine addiction. Only half of that is true but I’ll let you guess with half.

“Whyyyyyyyy???” exclaims Jo with her head tilting back on the chair to let her sleepy voice travel as far as it can.

“There’s a good reason, good reason,” twitches J, “all will be explained, explained” and with those words she reaches into her draw and pulls out three files. This simple act makes the hunters sit up and widen their eyes. They are not used to seeing three files (that have their treasure hunting job inside from a client but if the file was too confusing they would meet with the client to get more details), they would usually get one file, rock/ paper/ scissors for it and off one of them goes and then a week later another file would come even if the previous assignment was not yet completed. That is what happened last time and it was only a coincidence that all three of them finished on the same day. Plus Frankie was bored so that is why she went with Caz. But having three files was unheard of in the short history of the company. J places the three files on the table and the hunters turn to each other to do their routine of rock/ paper/ scissors for the first one but J lifts her hand as an indication for them to not. This is new.

J looks over at K’s worried face and briefly wonders when she is due for a heart attack.

“Shall you or shall I?” inquires J, and K nods her heads in the direction of J.

J response with:

“What? I don’t read head nods. Must have missed that class in school”

“You tell them” are the words that come from the teeth of an angry and tense K.

J looks at the hunters who have little to zero idea of what is up with the tension. It’s not even the cool kind like s****l tension it is that stupid awkward tension.

“So…” begins J, “We have three new assignments to complete and… we have an actual deadline this time…”

The hunters stare with blinking eyes as if the words are new and unreachable. I mean, the words are new since there usually isn’t a deadline since no one can tell how long something will take. The hunters briefly look at each other and Caz leans forward in a cocky manner. “We don’t answer to deadlines” and leans back with an even cockier smile on her face. J sighs and tells them that they will most likely lose their jobs if they cannot meet the deadlines. The company is not doing well and another missed quota equals unemployment hence the pacing K that has been around for the past few months.