Interlude 2: Alexander Spencer

4:23pm, 29/01/2019, The Office of Alexander Spencer, Spencer Shipping International, Spencer Towers, Penrith.

I was always grateful for this view looking out over Penrith’s central business district, the harbor and the Great Lake beyond. The lake could be treacherous and sometimes hidden behind great banks of fog, but today the water was like glass and I could see far beyond Premonition Island with its rocky cliffs and lighthouse that stood guard of Penrith’s historical harbour.

Remembering to be grateful for all the good you recieve was an important lesson. Letting yourself become Jaded by success or your surroundings not only wasn’t becoming of a man, but it blinded you to what was important. Things like integrity, honor, truthfulness, justice, generous charity and temperance, the virtues my family had built their success on. Virtues I had tried to uphold.

My family had built their wealth on the lake, shipping lumber, ore, grain, processed goods, even people. With time and as Penrith grew from a port settlement, we grew too, investing in the city’s transport infrastructure and in the mid 19th century we built the first train line connecting Penrith to the growing web of rail on the East Coast, ensuring the city’s prosperity. 

Spencer Shipping had grown into a truly international transit and shipping conglomerate reaching far beyond Penrith and the great lake that birthed it, into rail, road, air and sea. Penrith over time had been rocked by cycles of boom and bust that brought in both opportunist companies and hopeful families, when things were good and then when things went bad, running away, taking the jobs with them and leaving behind the destitute.

Through all that the Spencers had stayed, choosing only to set up branch offices in prosperous cities like New York and Los Angeles, remaining in the city on the lake they were grateful to. I was grateful to my forebears, being able to stare out at the lake kept me calm, helped me make decisions that could make or break a company. The sort of legacy I was carrying on my shoulders didn’t allow for mistakes.

My personal life had been scarred by such mistakes. Mistakes that had cost me my marriage and more. For nearly eighteen years I had done as my forebears had done and poured my lifeblood into the company, running away from the failures in my personal life. I should have known something else would eventually fill that void.

Since the first night of the Emergence, I had often found myself staring out at the lake hoping for answers, whether here at the company my family left me or at the family home to the north of the city.

With the Emergence the opportunists, parasites that they are, had swooped in again and I found it deeply troubling. 

Years ago Yelmorn had moved their research, development and testing departments here, away from prying eyes and now since the Emergence they had been both given sanction and contracted by the Government Task Force for the Emergence to investigate Emerged individuals and other phenomenon. 

Yelmorn had hired private military contractors for exploratory expeditions into the mysterious ruins now in Seattle and in Penrith they had established contracts with the local police and a private prison that had turned itself into a containment facility for the Emerged. Where these parasites were allowed to infest, corruption would fester and the city, my city, would suffer.

Yelmorn had already approached Spencer Shipping, requesting our logistical support for their local operations in return for not just payment, but access to any of the benefits of their research.

Allowing the early discussions for such a cooperation to take place, I had used the chance to investigate, running their books by forensic accounts for irregularities that could provide clues to their actions, hiring investigation firms to root out all their unnamed holdings and try to uncover the truth of their operations. Yelmorn seemed to be accomplished at covering their tracks, but the little I had found was disturbing.

They were seeking out bidders interested in buying access to DNA, bone marrow, tissue samples and other medical as well as experimental data on Emerged individuals, as well as headhunting people who may be able to replicate any findings. As bad as this was, nothing my employees had uncovered could prove anything untowards or actually illegal, but it was a start. I would later dictate a polite letter of decline, they had already given me everything I wanted from the negotiations.

What I needed to do was talk to that woman from the OMR. She obviously knew something, maybe even had witnessed something based on the hit they placed on her. Saving her life, while letting everyone think the hit had succeeded had been a mess. I don’t know if we could have pulled it off, if I hadn’t already had people watching her. 

My men, reliable as ever had been the first on the scene with an ambulance and they had spirited her away. Thankfully the knife wound only resulted in internal bleeding, a pleural effusion leading to a collapsed lung and an extreme cardiac arrhythmia. It was honestly remarkable, the blade hadn’t damaged the heart. Only narrowly avoiding major damage, the blade barely scraped her heart causing a dysregulation of cardiac rhythm. 

After cooling her down, stabilizing her wounds, reestablishing sinus rhythm, draining the pleural cavity and re inflating her lung, they issued a radio call stating she had gone into cardiac arrest.  After that we swapped the ambulances, one ambulance delivering her to a private facility under an alias, another carrying a fresh arrival from the morgue was met at the nearest hospital by a doctor in our pay and declared dead on arrival. 

She wasn’t in safe waters yet, but I was confident she could pull through. Through I was prepared to call in a few favors is necessary to ensure she recovers, you don’t get this rich, or stay this rich without making sure a few well placed people are in your debt.

Once she was stable and awake, I hoped to talk with her. There were few who had access to the Penrith Centre for the Confinement of Dangerous Emerged that could be trusted not to be complicit in whatever was going on and her record spoke for itself. 

Hopefully she could help me crack this conspiracy open, so it could be dealt with openly, or if that was impossible, well the Emergence had opened new avenues for seeking justice… Heroes, vigilantes and even individuals such as that ‘villain’ Unbowed, had their own sense of justice and it could be used, cultivated and directed. 

The corners of my mouth couldn’t help but creep up into an amused smirk. 

On that note I checked my in-pile. There they were. I gave the documents with all their legalese another read over, double checking all the minutiae and signed with a slight slourish, establishing a new charitable trust to help fund the Penrith local branch of the Heroes Organisation for Mutual Assistance and Resources. I would likely have to throw a few galas and charity balls to encourage my vapid peers to part with the contents of their wallets and keep it topped up.

I chuckled at the thought of what those morally rigid hero-types might think if they learned more about their generous benefactor. That would be an absolute riot, I wonder if they would keep the trust’s money or reject it, not to mention if they would come after me directly or just play a game of cat and mouse.

As much as I want to head out, crack knuckles on skulls and force a breakthrough in the case tonight, I think instead I will exercise my patience.  Showing up at 2 Limbo 2 Furious might be more productive, grab a drink and maybe overhear a few rumors. Barb might have a terrible sense for naming things, but she makes a French 75 just how it should be made. The speakeasy is certainly a step up from the old Limbo and thanks to my assistance, she let me install my own private chair.

I’ll need to change on the way there. Well,  if I don’t want the headlines I’ll be reading tomorrow to be, ‘Penrith’s Prince of Shipping seen at illegal bar for Emerged. Is he hiding something?’ or some other tabloid rubbish. They could never even imagine the actual truth. I was used to leading double lives to get work done and even as an escape, but they paled in comparison to this one.

Walking across the room, I stood in front of a blank section of wall and rolled my shoulders as I watched an opening dissolve out of the wall before my very eyes, revealing a hidden room. Grabbing a biometrically locked suitcase, I purposely strode to my private elevator as the missing section of wall appeared behind me. 

I was the prince of this city and soon it would be time my enemies know it.