The Trafficker's Door

Jason’s coffee was getting cold. It was his third cup since he had set up surveillance a few hours ago, and he had to pee something terrible. He shouldn’t have had so many cups, but the simple, mundane task of sipping the bitter liquid was a balm to his jagged nerves.

He fumbled around in the floorboards of the back seat of the shitty little hatchback until his fingers found the cold metal of the thermos. He shook it, feeling the last dregs of the coffee sloshing around inside, and debated if he could piss in it without overflowing the canister. Best not, he thought. His wife would be livid if he pissed in her thermos. More importantly, he didn’t want to risk spilling and the car smell of hot urine. He sighed and chucked the container back into the rear of the car.

God, he had to pee, but he couldn’t afford to mess this up. He had a lot riding on this.

Jason had been the first office to discover Cryztal. He had been with the police department for a year and a half, working menial assignments with paltry compensation when one night he had been performing a security check of the South End shopping center and had discovered a guy beating the life out of another. He had trained his gun on the guy, screaming for him to stop, when the nightmare of a man turned on him. His face was awash with blood, crimson rivulets streaming from his nose and the corners of his eyes. Only a bullet in the shoulder had stopped the man from advancing on him, and it had taken an entire squad to subdue him. When he had finally been detained the small baggie of glowing lavender Cryztal had been found.

It was some nasty shit. Not like the party pills the college guys liked to snort that would warp your senses and sex drive, but heavy shit that would alter your brain structure. The drug was still undergoing testing, but it had been ascertained that the highly addictive chemical crystalized the neurons in the brain, destroying cognitive abilities, and what remained of the brain was slowly shredded by the neuron's sharp crystalline edges. The user didn’t die from the drug, at least not that they knew of, but slowly decayed into violent insanity. Which had become a real problem for the Avéro police department.

After the discovery, Jason had been offered a position on the task force responsible for tracking down the source of the Cryztal. Intelligence suggested that it was being produced in the Onyx Market and trafficked into the city through unsanctioned jump doors. Whether the substance was being moved by the Royan Mafia or the Zungri Cartel had yet to be determined. The promotion had come with a significant pay increase, though, which Jason desperately needed, given the rapidly approaching delivery of his daughter.

“Fuck it.”

Jason snagged the baseball hat from the passenger seat, the bill worn and curled from years of wear, and slipped it on his head, pulling it down over his eyes. He slid from the car and half-shuffled, half-jogged across the street, his dire need to urinate outpacing his need for stealth. He stole into the nearest alley several feet from the car. It was a narrow crevice carved out between two sagging brick buildings that cast a dim effect despite the bright autumn day. An overflowing dumpster marked the end of the alley, and empty takeout cups rolled down the pavement before snagging on discarded food scraps or sinking into the congealing puddles of rotten liquid.

Jason toddled over to a doorway in the right-hand wall and angled his body away from the street. The door was a heavy wooden thing with green stained glass in its uppermost portion. A nondescript faded sign marked the door as the entrance to some Irish pub, though who would patronize a hole like this was beyond him. He unzipped his pants and pulled out his dick.

A sigh of relief washed through Jason as the pressure in his bladder eased. He tipped back his head in pleasure as he finally released the coffee he had been holding for hours.

The squeal of rusted hinges pulled Jason from his momentary bliss, and he snapped his head forward, coming eye-to-eye with a startled young woman. Her large blue eyes were round and wide, and he felt his similar expression mirrored in them. Her eyes traveled down the length of him and then her pert angular face screwed up in disgust.

“What the fuck, man!” She screamed, jumping a step back into the darkened doorway. “Fucking sick!”

It was then Jason realized that his dick was still out and he had been pissing on her foot.

He rapidly tucked himself away in his jeans, offering a slew of apologies to the young woman as he did so, completely mortified. “I am so sorry! So so sorry! Let me make it up to you. I can help you clean up. I can get you some new shoes…”

He looked at the shoe in question. It was a thick-soled black leather boot from which the hilt of a knife protruded. He scanned the woman over with a critical eye, truly noticing her for the first time. She was small and lithe, clad in tight leather pants and a dark grey crop top. Her dark hair was shorn to her chin, and her youthful face was pretty but sharp featured in a way that made her look somewhat severe. A black duffle bag was slung across her upper body and she held the strap of it with both hands.

Jason straightened to his full height and narrowed an eye at the girl. “What do you have there?” He asked, nodding a chin at the bag.

The girl took another step backward into the darkened doorway, tightening her grip on the duffle bag.

“I think you need…”

The girl gripped the edge of the door and slammed it as hard as she could. Reflexively, Jason stuck his foot into the frame of the door, preventing it from shutting.

“God damn!” He bellowed, doubling over as the heavy wood crushed his metatarsals. He gripped the door handle tightly, breathing through the throbbing ache, and his vision filled with red. That little bitch.

Jason barreled through the doorway after the little delinquent. “Stop! Police!”

The space was dark as sin, the inky black swallowing the criminal as she fled. The smell of ozone was thick around Jason as he flew through the darkness after her, the pounding of his feet on the floor both muffled and booming as if he were simultaneously in a cavern and closet. Still, his pursuit was unobstructed, and he made contact with neither chair nor person as he ran. That was until he brushed through a curtain of what could only be described as cold spider silk and burst out into the sudden sound and bustle of the city.

It wasn’t the street in Avéro that he had just left, though. This city was darkly lit except for the stars that twinkled overhead and the neon signs that burned brighter. The brick buildings had been replaced by ones of sandstone, their tightly packed structures creating an enclosed feeling in the alleys between them. The night market, for he could see now that this was what it was, was heavily crowded with people laughing and yelling.

Jason spotted the girl slipping between the bodies of the crowd several feet ahead of him. She stood out like a black stain against the richly colored fabrics of the shoppers. He pushed through the throng after him, shoving the masses bodily as he moved, outcries in a language he could not comprehend trailing after him. She was fast and agile, her heavy boots throwing up sprays of glittering sand as she fled. Just ahead of him, she slid through the doorway of an unassuming building, and Jason, hot on her heels, followed her in.

A chorus of gasps greeted Jason as he burst into the brothel. Fat half-naked men sprawled on jewel-toned pillows of satin with pretty young women clad in strips of gossamer draped across their laps. Several of the courtesans eyed him warily from the shadows while others purred to him with full purple lips, their breasts pushed toward him in an effort to entice him with their wares. The men largely ignored him, their attention fixed on the beautiful purchases in their laps.

Somewhat reluctantly, he tore his eyes from the women and made for the lone hallway at the back of the den. He walked down the hall slowly, his fingers hovering over his gun, and peered through the thin, sheer curtains and into the rooms as he passed. They were small, windowless quarters, containing minimal furniture aside from the necessary fixtures on which the patrons writhed upon.

Jason found the girl at the end of the hall in a darkened alcove, trying, unsuccessfully, to get a toe hold on the rocky wall in order to reach the small window above.

“Drop the bag!” Jason commanded, training his gun on the girl's back. She rounded on him with wild eyes, a knife held out before her. She looked ready to strike, like a trapped animal in a cage who knew they were about to be eaten.

“Stay back!” She yelled, thrusting the knife into empty air.

“Drop the bag, and I won’t shoot.”

Her eyes darted around the alcove wildly, looking for any sign of an exit, but there was none. The small room offered no way out aside from the doorway that he stood in. Jason could see the realization wash over her face, followed by the crushing weight of defeat. She slid the bag off of her shoulder and dropped it on the floor with a heavy thud.

“Slide it over.”

She kicked the bag with her foot, sending it skidding across the dusty floor, and slid down the wall to sit on the floor, wrapping her arms around her knees. Keeping one eye on the girl, he squatted down and pulled the duffle bag towards himself.

Cautiously, he unzipped the bag, and a lavender light radiated from the Cryztal within, casting a purple haze about the room. He let out a low whistle, amazed at the sheer quantity of the drug.

“Where did you get this?” He asked her. The girl refused to answer him, only staring at him with silent malice. “Who do you work for?”

“I’m not telling you anything,” she said.

“You know, you’re going to go away for a long while. If you cooperate and give me some answers I might be able to get you a lighter sentence. Maybe even immunity.”

The girl barked a bitter laugh. “I’m already as good as dead. I’m not telling you shit!”

“What do you mean you’re as good as dead? Are you worried about an employer, maybe? Or someone from the Onyx Market?”

“The Onyx Market?!” She laughed again, but this time with a note of surprise.

“What do you know about it?”

“Not much,” she admitted, her stubborn resolve crumbling slightly.

“Well, tell me what you do know,” he said gently. She eyed him skeptically, a muscle flickering in her tight jaw.

“We’re not permitted in the Onyx Market,” she said quietly, as though afraid to be overheard.

“Who’s we?”

“The runners.”

“The runners? Like the people who traffick the drugs.”

She gave him an annoyed look but nodded. “Only the Echelon are allowed in the Market.”

“Okay…” Jason said slowly, contemplating. So they weren’t in the Onyx Market then. But where were they?

“Do you know how the Cryztal is made?”

“And how would I know that?” She snapped, rolling her eyes. The motion sparked some memory in him, and he realized for the first time how young the girl actually was. She couldn’t be more than fifteen years old, sixteen max. Curled in on herself like that, nervously twisting the lace of her boot, she looked frightened. He thought of his unborn daughter, and a pang of sympathy washed through Jason. He needed answers, though.

“How are the jump doors being created?” She flashed a glance at him and shrugged her shoulder. The gesture seemed off, though, and he could tell she was lying.

“You know how to create them.” He said evenly. “You created the one back there in the alley.”

“All runners can create jump doors.” She said matter of factly.

Good. This was good. He could have her create another doorway back to Avéro and turn over the confiscated drugs. He could broker arrangements with the department for some sort of protection for the girl from whichever gang would be after her in exchange for her testimony and compliance.

“But I’m not making a door for you,” she said cooly, as if able to hear the plan he had been formulating. “You are going to stay in this dimension until the Cryztal kills you.”

She unfurled her fingers, exposing a small mound of powdered, glittering Cryztal that glowed radioactively in her palm. Before he could comprehend her meaning, she blew the powder into his face. It felt as if shards of glass had been rubbed into his eyes and the lining of his nose, coughing and sputtering as the drug seared his throat. He saw her quick movements as she bounded to her feet and snatched the duffle bag off the floor, felt the wind of her body as she flew through the doorway behind.

He stumbled to his feet, wiping scalding tears from his eyes. Blinded, he crashed after her, through the dark, smokey brothel. He could just see her bleary, darkened form burst through the front door, cries of alarm trailing after her. He raced behind her, falling through the doorway and into the noisy street of the unnamed city. He looked around for frantically, searching for her dark presence in the sea of color and sand, but she was gone.