Standing in my kitchen, I munched on a banana while staring at one of those meal cubes. It was a new day, and I was starving. My determination to figure this mystery out on my own crumbled as my stomach growled.
I shot Jeanie a quick text to get her decision on our path forward. She hadn't returned the previous night or contacted me again since her last message. I'd give it a day before I started to worry, so I had just gone to sleep. My ravenous hunger the following morning reminded me I missed dinner.
"Place the cartridge in the center of the printer and select the meal." I read the instructions found online. There wasn't any reason to go over them again. I had already made the bananas, but I felt the need to double-check before doing it.
Apparently, the microwave in the kitchen was actually a 3D printer for food. It was super tech sold by the Science Council and the only way anyone made food anymore. The machine itself and even the cartridges were affordable for most people. The printing blueprints themselves were what cost so much.
The store I visited was a specialty shop for fruits. You could use generic cubes to print any snack or meal you had the blueprint for, but if you bought the cartridges designed for that particular food, the quality would jump up.
The silver edging around three of my cubes meant they were generic meal cartridges, while the gold marking the bananas showed they were a cut above. The cube itself would become the plate while its content transformed into food. The ding alerted me to my sausage and gravy biscuits being ready.
Sitting down at the small table by the kitchen, I used my phone to organize a few notes while eating. It had a voice-to-text feature that worked amazingly well. Jeanie and I needed to decide on a plan for the future. There wasn't any urgent business I needed to handle, so this was the perfect time to do a little solo planning. I'd go over everything with Jeanie when she got back.
"Long-term goals. Find out what happened to the Mars and Moon missions." I watched my phone as it typed out what I was saying.
I couldn't imagine them scrapping the Mars mission even after our failure. There might not be any publicly available information, but I was confident something was out there.
My first bite of the gravy biscuits was underwhelming. The flavor was very cheap, with watery and tasteless gravy. The biscuits weren't too bad, but they weren't good enough to save the meal.
"Restore Jeanie's body and bring my team back." This was a goal I could partially accomplish immediately. I could talk to my team members whenever I wanted by summoning a copy of their heads. It was a snapshot of their minds from the last time I had touched them, but that was shortly before going into stasis.
"Clean up the city," I added.
My first day in this metropolis put me in the middle of a brawl between two supers fighting over territory. Their boldness told me plenty about this place. This city needed a firmer hand to maintain control over its supers.
I'd seen the chaos caused by unrestricted supers. With each spread of the mist, new supers poured into other cities as refugees. The very existence of supers forces those in charge to be heavy-handed or risk anarchy.
"Establish a base." My team would need somewhere to operate out of once we were all back together. This apartment wouldn't do, especially with the Pawn hero team nearby.
"Short-term goals. Find a source of income." My first thought was to steal from criminals. It was a simple solution, and Jeanie could handle any electronic issues. This economy appeared to be all digital, which would be the perfect place for her to thrive.
"Investigate the missing persons cases linked to Pawn." Most of those I'd met from Henry's team seemed nice, but my gut told me something else was going on.
"Meet with Henry to accept membership." I decided to join them. Getting close was the best way to dig up dirt.
"Create a backup identity and safehouse." The sketch of me wasn't enough for identification, but things could easily go wrong. Looking into a high-profile super team just might blow up in my face.
"End the Snow Gang." This was my main focus going forwards. It would be the first step towards improving this city.
Closing out of the speech-to-text app, I stood up with my plate. After rinsing it off, I wondered what to do with it. If each cube created a plate when used, would I ever need to reuse this one? Shrugging, I left it in the sink.
A beep from my phone caught my attention. Jeanie had responded. She left whether or not to join Pawn in my hands. That was all I needed before moving forward.
Getting ready, I left the building. Flying would have been quicker, but I liked walking. This part of the city still wasn't heavily populated, so I didn't run into many people. After a few minutes, I arrived at the Pawn building. Instead of texting ahead, I wanted to surprise them.
Obviously, the doors didn't just open up for me. By the entrance, there was a touch screen that lit up as I got close. I tried the handle first to find both of the glass doors locked. They had opened easily for Henry when we passed through, so I figured there was an electronic key of some sort.
"State your name and purpose." The interface beside the door spoke. There was no person projected on it, just a red circle. It sounded like a younger male voice, but I could tell it was synthetic.
"I'm Morgan, a friend of Henry's. I was wondering if he was available?" Giving up on surprising them, I hoped not to be turned away at the door.
"Henry's out, but I'd like the chance to talk to you. Take the elevator to the bottom floor." For the most part, it was still the same voice, but the synthetic sound was gone. Someone real had stepped in.
The doors clicked open, so I stepped inside. The drones filling the lobby area felt more focused on me than the last time I came through here. Making it to the elevators, I called one and selected level B10. This building had ten sublevels judging from the buttons.
The door slid aside to let me out into a hallway. Heavy metal doors lined the walls, while the very last one at the end had the words Hub on it. I figured that was my destination, so I ignored the others.
I had an idea of who this was. Jeanie had added info on these lower levels in her bios for the Pawn team. A single member used half of these basement floors. The Hub door opened on its own as I got close.
"Morgan Adler." Sitting in a chair surrounded by computer screens was a brown-haired young man. He was trying to act relaxed, but I could see the tension in his body.
"You must be Rex." He was the youngest member of the Pawn team, their super tech guy. He was responsible for all the drones that covered the property.
The room was covered in monitors displaying camera footage and various forms of data that I didn't recognize.
"I'm assuming you've come here to tell Henry what you decided about joining our team." He spoke confidently, but his nerves were too obvious. "Would you mind telling me first?"
I felt a little bad for him, so I humored his request. "I'm gonna join."
Being close to the team would allow me to look into them more easily. I wouldn't stay forever. My own team was like family, so their revival would always be the plan.
"I see. And would this be for the money?" He glanced at one of the screens beside him before questioning me.
"It would be nice to get paid, but I want to help." I crossed my arms at this kid.
"That's good. Do you have any nefarious plans for this team or the city?" Once again, he glanced at the monitor.
"No." It was true as long as this team wasn't up to anything.
He sagged in his seat, exhaling with relief. The tension eased up.
"I apologize for being suspicious, but I'm not sure who I can trust anymore." He pointed at the monitor he had been keeping an eye on.
"I used a lie detector on you. I'm sorry." I had the inkling it was something like that, so I wasn't upset.
"I need your help. My team and maybe even the city itself is compromised. Someone is moving around behind the scenes, and I don't think they have good intentions." He looked worried, stressed, and ready to give up.
I had a choice to make. His machines may have facilitated it, but the boy gave me his trust. Even without it, I had a hard time saying no to someone in need.
"Tell me everything."
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