The man in the security footage was ripping whole chunks of machinery out of the ground with his bare hands. Nuts and bolts went flying as the parts were ripped out.

  "Motherfucker," I muttered under my breath.

  "Mhm," hummed the woman beside me.

  The thing he was taking apart looked like a sewer that had been built above ground. It ran around the entire warehouse, and was connected to something that looked like a gold plated chandelier.

  The man, John Peabody, was average height, about two inches taller than me I'd say. He had short, dark brown hair, cut into and styled into a neat side part. His build was not at all suggestive of someone that could rip metric tons of metal out of the ground. If anything, he was a bit lean.

  "This guy was your boss?" I asked the woman beside me.

  "He was until last week," she said. Her name was Beatrice, a short black woman in a dark gray work skirt. She had gorgeous curly hair. She had also been Peabody's second in charge.

  The footage ended when Peabody put the last hunk of the above ground sewer thing into a red hauler and drove off.

  "That hauler looks brand spanking new. Didn't even have plates. Any idea where he got it?"

  She shook her head.

  "Any idea where he was going?"

  "Nope, that's why my people called your people. Something I'm still wondering about, by the by."

  "Meaning?"

  "I mean, you're not a cop, or a fed."

  "I'd be downright offended if you thought so."

  "Mmm," she hummed, tightening her lips. "So who are you exactly then?"

  I handed her my card. It shimmered in hues of neon green, red, and a splash of blue, the colors of a quetzal bird's feathers. It read: Mouse Mercantile Group, at the top, followed by my title and name: Traveling Merchant, Fernando Alvarez.

  "You're a door to door salesman?"

  "On paper, something like that, yeah."

  "And in reality?"

  "A problem solver."

  "Mmm," she hummed in that tight lipped way again.

  "Usually we're a bit more proactive in finding work. Though occasionally, like today, there are people that need people with certain kinds of expertise."

  "Sounds real shady. I'm not entirely convinced I shouldn't just call the FBI. Or maybe even the Army. I mean... you saw what I saw."

  "I did in fact see what you saw," I said, stroking my chin. "Your old boss must be pretty durable on top of being inhumanely strong. Regular human skin would have torn and ripped open under the duress it would take to carry all that, and that's not saying anything about his unbroken bones."

  "I see what you mean by certain kinds of expertise," she said, her hand coming up to cup her chin. "I wouldn't have thought of that. What did strike me as odd, however, is that the ground didn't crack open while he was carrying my computer away. The floors are high strength reinforced concrete, but still, they should have crumbled underneath all that weight being concentrated on the ends of his two little feet."

  I nodded.

  "Good observation," I said.

  She smirked, smug.

  "So, how does this start?" she asked. "Do you dust for finger prints in the area or...?"

  "Well first I'd like to take a look around, if you don't mind."

  "Be my guest," she said, shutting off the security footage with a click.

  She guided me outside, stepping out of the little security office, and onto a railing that overlooked a now completely empty warehouse. As we did, she stopped to mention something.

  "This information, about Peabody, it's not public yet. Got it?"

  "No one else here knows? Where do they think your building-sized whatever went?"

  "Everyone else thinks it was moved over the weekend. Orders from the tippy top are to keep it that way. If investors knew the tech they'd spent billions on was stolen it would be very bad."

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  I hummed an unsympathetic hum, and moved on.

  "That thing that looked like a ripped out sewage system, and that gold plated chandelier, what were they? What did Peabody actually steal?"

  "The 'chandelier' was our quantum computer. The ring of pipes was our qubit calibrator. The quantum computer was just a prototype, more of a proof of concept. The real revolutionary piece of tech was the calibrator."

  "What makes it so revolutionary?"

  "Do you know what a qubit is?."

  "Assume I don't," I said.

  "Qubits are bits that, in theory, can be read in four different states, meaning each quantum bit, or "qubit" has twice as much computational power as a regular binary bit. One, two, three, four, versus: one and two. Thing is, that a qubit can't be used more than once, since the properties that make a qubit a qubit disappear once it's used."

  "So... the calibrator was able to make re-readable bits?"

  "Basically, exactly. It would have allowed us to make real working components, quantum CPU's, Quantum Ram, you name it. It was the first step in our next computational leap!"

  Beatrice finished her explanation beaming with a mixture of pride, joy, and a not small amount of wonder. She was clearly very passionate about her work.

  "About your boss, Peabody, what can you tell me?"

  "For how much time I spent with him? Surprisingly little."

  "I'm guessing he kept to himself then?"

  "No, not at all. Actually, he liked to share a lot about himself, it's just that, whenever he did it felt... 'fake' isn't the right word. Maybe 'curated' is better. Whatever he shared about himself, it felt intentional. He wanted you to have a certain image of him. It was kind of creepy actually."

  "Creepy how?"

  "It's hard to explain, and I'm worried you might think I'm making something out of nothing..."

  "I have a pretty open mind," I said, shooting her a look. "It's basically a requirement for my work. So trust me, whatever it is, no matter how small, if you think it's worth mentioning, then I think it's worth listening to."

  She nodded.

  "Heard. Well it's like this: One day, while we were working out some of the kinks in the calibrator, he just drops the fact that he's a long time financial supporter for an Axolotl preservation org, one that I happen to personally make donations to. He didn't have any reason to bring it up. He just sort of worked it into the conversation. Even before he dropped that little factoid about him, I could feel him steering the conversation a certain way. Does that sound weird to you? Or Am I crazy?"

  Beatrice shot me an almost pleading look. To be honest it did sound like making a mountain out of molehill at the time, but I wasn't one to discount feelings or hunches.

  "It's definitely something to think about," I said.

  "You see what I mean, though? That seems like an odd thing to just mention in the middle of conversation. It's like he wanted me to know we shared an interest. Only... I don't know how he could have found out that I'm an axolotl advocate."

  "What do you think was his goal in mentioning that?"

  "My best guess was that he was trying to get into my pants somehow, which doesn't really feel right, but Peabody was a known creep."

  We shared a look.

  "You'll see what I mean in a second."

  We reached the doors that led to Quantum Futures office space. Beatrice threw them open. Inside were a few other black women with curly hair, each at their own desk, who didn't look too dissimilar to Beatrice. In fact, many of them could be mistaken for her sisters.

  "Ah, I see," I said, seeing all of her colleagues. All of which could have been sisters. "He had a type."

  "We're all qualified quantum, software, and computer engineers, but yeah, he had a type."

  Scanning the office, I couldn't help but notice that many of the cubicles were decorated, and clearly in use, but also that there weren't enough people around to fill them all.

  "Lot of empty seats," I said. "Not much work to do with the computer missing I take it?"

  "That and something going around the office. For the past week and change I've had my colleagues message me saying that they were too sick to come in."

  "You don't say," I said, stepping into the office. As I did, my leather jacket started making a sound like static on a TV.

  Beatrice furrowed her eyebrows at me.

  "Don't worry about it," I said.

  "Mmm," she hummed in her scrutinizing tight lipped way. "Well this is our office, which is basically all there is to see now. I'd take you to the warehouse floor and show you around there, but... there's just lots of empty concrete floor space."

  "Understood," I said.

  We went around talking to some of her colleagues. They were all nice, though it was a bit uncanny talking to them all, like stumbling into a family get together where everyone forgot to invite the men.

  We continued making the rounds around the office, with our final destination being Peabody's desk. It rested on a floor that was raised just high enough to justify a two step staircase and a bent hand rail.

  "Workplace accident?" I asked, looking at the warped handrail.

  "Something like that. I bumped into Peabody once and sent him flying. He bent that rail on the way down. Somehow. I mean, I guess I know how he did that now, but at the time I thought our company had just cheaped out on building materials for the office."

  Seems odd that someone that strong could be sent flying like that, I thought. Unless being as strong as he is, he didn't want to risk somehow hurting one of his employees.

  "He worked closely with you guys?"

  "Like you wouldn't believe. He was a micro manager with an electron microscope."

  "That bad huh?"

  "He never worked on the computer directly, or qubit calibrator. He always had someone else work on it while he gave instructions from his desk. It would have been easier to just do the work himself."

  "Hmm," I hummed.

  Beatrice climbed the two steps to Peabody's raised office space.

  "That's pretty much the whole of Quantum Futures, unfortunately," said Beatrice.

  "Amazing," I replied.

  I joined Beatrice to stand on the raised area, and as I did the static sound from my jacket started to get louder, and ticked much more frequently.

  Oh shit.

  When I pulled out the thing making all the noise, Beatrice's lips parted.

  "Is that a Geiger counter?"

  "Yeah, and it's ticking way outside normal."

  "How much outside normal?" asked Beatrice, her eyes growing wide.

  "Enough that I don't think it's a flu that's been going around your office."