Chapter 10: Chapter 10: D.I.M.

Chleo hid in the ruins of her parents’ room, the door resting on the frame broken off its hinges.  She could hear a conversation outside, the low timbers of Will’s voice scrambling through the small window.  There were maybe one or two others.  Occasionally, a word would break through.

“...  suspicious…”

“Nothing.... ordinary.”

“... … relos… professions… here often?”

“... … … ‘ometimes ...”

“... … helpful… … … questioning… … …”

Chleo waited in silence.  She wished she knew what had shaken Will.  She was used to his face blank.  It was his default if anything new or troubling happened.  He only showed what he was feeling when he was comfortable, but his eyes had never been quite so… dead. It was unnerving and scared her more than she cared to admit.

What had he found?

She sat alone in the dark waiting for him to come back and explain, something that seemed less and less likely as time went on.  The conversation faded.  She reached a hand into her pocket clutching her mother’s watch, feeling the slight ticks as the seconds rolled by.  

Waiting was always her weakness.  She had no patience.  Her mom always blamed her dad.  When she was ten and her parents promised they would start teaching her mechanics, they took her to Monty’s garage during one of the routine maintenance checks for her dad’s steam bike.  

She overheard him and Monty discussing a new motor piece that would help increase efficiency and speed as her mom poked around the higher end wagons waiting in his queue.

“I’m tellin’ yeh, Jack,” he said as he flipped open his new watch.  It was the size of his fist and hard as a rock.  Her mom gave it to him as payment for servicing their equipment for the year.  He placed it on the ground and started cranking one of the gears. “It’ll get yeh a couple extra kilometers an hour, at least.”

Metal sprang from the watch cover as he cranked, reaching toward the wagon he was servicing.  The more he cranked, the more it built on top of itself bit by bit until it was lifting the wagon halfway to the ceiling.

He looked up amazed.  “Don’t rightly know how she does it,” he said scratching his head with a wrench, “but I’m sure glad she does.”

Chleo’s dad laughed. “It’s all about finding the right materials.  You don’t want to know what we went through to find enough Melting Metal.”

“Well, as long as DIM approved, I ain’t askin’ any questions.  Makes life a right sight better bein’ able to look at things from my feet ‘n not my back.”

Her dad snorted. “Don’t worry, Monty.  They won’t knock down your door any time soon.  When do you think you can get to the new gear sequence?”

“Oh, about a month, maybe two.” He shrugged. “Won’t be much trouble once I have the right pieces.”

Riding her dad’s bike was one of her favorite procrastinations.  If it could go faster with a few new gears, there was no way she was waiting weeks, much less months.  As soon as they reached the Shack, she started searching the piles.  Within days, she had the gears machined, sequenced, and framed.  She popped it in the motor and showed her parents.

Her mom started lecturing about rushing the measurements and listing the number of tests the piece needed to go through before coming within inches of the bike. 

“What if it fails while you’re riding?  You’ll get the extra few kilometers per hour then blow the whole engine,” she said, flicking her dad on his shoulder. “She gets this from you.”

He just smiled and bumped Chleo’s fist.

“That’s my girl.” He winked.

He snuck her out to test it later that night…  they blew the engine.

Chleo leaned her head against the bedroom wall.  Where were her parents?  She watched a few more seconds tick by.  Where was Will? She closed her eyes and focused.  

“All you need is your next move.  Once you have that, make another.  Then another,” her mom’s voice echoed in her head.  “There’s always something you can do.  You just need to find it.”

What was her next move?  She preferred her plans detailed with contingencies for contingencies.  There wasn’t enough time to make one.  Her mom’s watch continued to tick away in her hand.

Three hundred seconds, she would count three hundred seconds before leaving her spot to find Will.  He gave her five minutes for something to happen behind Joe’s, he couldn’t blame her for giving him the same.  She let out a breath.

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“One, Two, Three, Four, Five,” she muttered under her breath, “six-”

Footsteps pounded into the Shack.  Adrenaline spiked under her skin.  She held her breath.  

“Please be Will,” she thought aloud.

The bedroom door banged to the ground.  Two figures followed through, flame-containing torches pitching the room in gold.  Chleo squinted at the sudden change.  Her hand reached up to shield her eyes.

“Well, hello there,” one figure said, a hint of mocking in his tone.  Her eyes adjusted, and she let her hand drop.

“Evening,” she said softly. Will wasn’t with them.  Her stomach sank.  

Slowly, she stood studying them.  They mirrored her gaze.  A man stood next to a woman, the glow from their torches flickering off their faces.  Large ears sprouted from the man’s head like cabbage sprouts ready for harvest, his glasses resting on his nose with lenses magnifying his eyes to comedic proportions. His lanky arms and unsteady gait led her to the irrational belief that he pulled side gigs as a clown.  

The woman was plain, average weight, average build with long, dull hair that seemed to rebuff the flames’ light as efficiently as one of Minnie’s barmaids with a grabby customer. They both wore the black trench coats of D.I.M. agents over their typical village clothes.  Perfect.

“Does there seem to be a problem agents?” she asked surrounded by the destroyed remnants of her parents’ room, down feathers sticking to her pants and puffing in slow circles around her head.  

Their job was to find illegal machinery.  They were there to accuse her family of something, period.  Reporting her parents missing wouldn’t do more than rattle a hornets nest.  They would probably use it as an excuse to take her in for questioning.

“Where are your parents?” the woman asked.  She was straightforward, blunt.  Her partner shot her a look, most likely a reprimand for talking out of turn. She continued anyway, “We need to speak with them.”

“They’re out.”

The man raised his eyebrows.  

“At this time of night?” the man questioned.

“Why not?  You’re out,” Chleo said.  D.I.M. agents weren’t a group to trifle with.  They earned their positions by prosecuting commoners and in most cases persecuting relo’s who smuggled elusive off-world gadgets.  Word was, the black market thrived on Luna until the king instituted the elite agency.  Now, no one quite knew what they were looking for, only that a visit would probably cost a hand or foot.  Sometimes there seemed to be cause, others… well, agents weren’t made without arrests.

Still, the faster they left, the sooner she could start looking for her mom and dad.  There wasn’t anything illegal about what they built.  Her parents always ensured their permits were in order.

“ID.”  The man’s eyes narrowed as he held his hand out.

Gritting her teeth, she rolled up her sleeve to show her wristlet.  The cloth covered her forearm with buckles framing a simple, gear-shaped ID badge.  Her name was displayed in the center outlined by the royal family’s seal, a seven point star.  He grabbed her arm and pulled it closer to the light.  The yellow proclaiming her a relo glittered in the flame.  

The man pulled out his own wristlet. His sported the same design in red to denote the king’s uniform.  He fit the grooves of his gear-shaped badge to hers.  The two edges fit together. He pressed his thumb to the edge of his ID and began to turn it.  The names Rupert Miles and Chleo Mathews spun in unison.  Chleo stared, her palms starting to sweat.  Surely, they weren’t looking for her.  When the badges completed a circle, her heart dropped.

Each ID was issued its own combination of gear cogs as unique as a fingerprint.  An officer’s badge was the only type capable of changing.  They needed a way to identify victims, or in her case, suspects.

Confirming the cycle with another turn, the agent dropped her hand like a sin, wiping his own on his jacket.  Chleo tried to hide a sneer.  He nodded to his partner. She took a step toward the doorway, blocking it.  

“You’re coming with us,” he said pulling a watch from his pocket.  It was one of the commissioned pieces for all uniformed officers.  Chleo wondered if he knew her relo mom built it.  Her teeth clenched.  He flipped open the face and unclasped the chain.  The pieces twisted and melded together creating cuffs, and soon he was using her mom’s work to restrain her hands behind her back.  Life on Luna was the worst.

“You can’t do this.  I haven’t done anything.” She made a last ditch plea, predicting deaf ears.

The agents ignored her.  Call her Nostradamus. 

They hauled her out of the Shack, Chleo desperately trying to think of a plan that wouldn’t result in a conviction and as a result a loss of her hands or feet.  Her eyes landed on Will cuffed and tied to the back of their wagon.  A breath caught in her throat.  What was their next move?  She needed both of her hands to build.  She needed both of her feet to walk.

She glanced at the man leading her by the arm.  His cabbage ears and oversized eyes were exaggerated in the torch light.  She gulped.  Suddenly, she understood why some people feared clowns.

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