The Girl Who Kept Running

18. Trying to Catch Fish With Nets of Gossamer

24 September, 2050

Nicklaus killed off the 3D game on his phone. At thirty, he already felt too old for the modern tech's shenanigans. His attempt to soothe his throbbing temple by snuggling against his pillow took him straight to the sweet valley of sleep. 

A shuffle in the room woke him up. It was Maud, sitting down at the desk with his PC, by the foot of the single bed Nicklaus was lying in. 

Nicklaus let out a sigh. In the confines of his personal time, the fact that he was crashing in Maud's den for a week always slipped his mind. His own apartment in Orangetree was being salvaged from a flooding caused by busted plumbing. 

"What are you looking at this late, Maudie?" 

Maud turned his head with a snark face. He had begrudgingly allowed his coworkers to give him a nickname for convenience, but he drew the line at Maudie. There was just too much sugar in the sound of that name. He decided to put off airing his disapproval as Zallago's arm bulge was in full display glistening in the yellow light of the bulb.

"It's only 4pm, dude. It's half-day remember? I gotta work at something. Go back to sleep or whatever." 

"I think I would go for a bite if you don't mind."

"Yeah, sure. But I won't be buying groceries anymore. So serve yourself. And leave my Gatorade alone."

As Zallago creaked and heaved the bed and left the room, Maud closed the door after him, though he didn't dare lock it. He would never admit, but the figure of that Russian-Italian screamed violence even if the man pretended to be sweet in person. 

Maud had duly filed his report of coming up short in the search regarding that brown girl yesterday. The supervisor was still troubling him about it though. A source had reported someone inquiring about Nicklaus and co's activities at St. Felipe Crescent and the description seemed to match the illustration they had given him before. At work, Maud pretended to be busy with a networking problem at another branch to avoid using the company's network. If he was being forced into something morally dubious, he at least would like to be a few steps ahead of the agency. 

Maud opened the Tor browser and applied his pet image search algorithm to rake through all the public records imaginable as well as forums, message boards, and directories embedded deep on the darknet. Next he added each of the cities that this person was allegedly associated with - there were quite a few - for more focused searches. 

Nothing. 

He opened his photo editor then and set to work. He used some of his predesigned options for simple disguise changes such as hair color and style, accessories and make-up, etc. He would feed each tweaked look it into his searches but none led anywhere. Next, he morphed the original image with various possibilities of reasonable plastic surgery, but again to no avail. At last he switched back to the original trying to think outside the box. 

"Hey, isn't that the brown chick? I thought you were done with that."

Nicklaus had slipped back in. It was no use being secretive with him now. Maud turned his rotating chair towards him.

"What's your idea on this whole thing? Where do you stand?" He pointed toward the screen with the girl's image. 

"I'm with you, man," Nicklaus replied. "I mean, it's just creepy. Except …" Nicklaus crunched into an apple as he plopped down near the foot of the bed. 

"What's that?"

"I mean, maybe if her parents were some huge defaulters or fraudsters and they left things to her or something." Nicklaus shrugged a shoulder as he munched some more.