Pilot (17)
Dave awoke squinting at an unfamiliar light fixture.
He had no idea where he was. For the first time today – or was it tomorrow now? – he didn’t even have a clue. His arm still hurt, but he noticed now it was wrapped in a tourniquet proper. He wondered if he was going to have to pay for that, and who had put it on.
Under his arm, draped around the rest of him, he found a blanket. He was on someone’s pastel blue couch, which sat behind a coffee table. From this, he might have concluded he was in someone’s living room, if it hadn’t been for the great expanse of space yawning at him through the window.
Well, depending on how big this spaceship was, he supposed he could still be in someone’s living room.
The rest of the room was a little sparse. His couch was facing the only door. There was a desk and chair set up on an adjacent wall, with a bulky but expensive-looking computer set up. The only other things in the room were his bloody button-down and tie, which had probably been taken off to apply the tourniquet. Those lay at the foot of the couch.
Dave felt around under the blanket. His pants were still on. Finally, something was going right.
The door slid open with a clean, hydraulic hiss. A Dalmatian who Dave recognized as (Officer?) Kessel walked in carrying a laptop under his arm. "I’m glad you’re conscious."
Now that he wasn’t dizzy or bleeding out – as far as he knew – Dave could get a better look at Kessel. He was tall, about as tall as Officer Wilkins, with a slightly smaller build. Outside of that, there was no indication of the kind of authority Kessel seemed to command back at Julia’s. He had on a white turtleneck with a black button-down T-shirt, he wore dog tags on a chain around his neck, and he really could have used a haircut – essentially, he looked like he could be Dave’s older brother. Dave had no idea what to make of this.
He decided he had more pressing concerns. "Where am I, officer?"
"You’re on my ship. We’re somewhere between Mars and Jupiter right now. And drop the ‘officer,’ because I’m not a cop."
That cleared up very little. "So what are you exactly?" Dave asked, trying to sit up. It hurt.
"Try not to move too much. I’ve done a lot for your arm, but it’s still going to be a while before your arm is back to normal. Anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. But, to answer your question, my name’s Daniel Kessel. It’s probably best to consider me cop-adjacent. I work pretty closely with them, but I’m not exactly one of them.
"That’s why we’re out this far," Kessel continued. "This really isn’t in the wheelhouse of the Mercurian cops, but it’s pretty comfortably in mine."
"If you don’t mind me asking, what’s your wheelhouse?"
"I’m kind of a legal bounty hunter. And that," he said, opening up his laptop, walking to the coffee table, and setting it down, "is what brings you to my ship. You’re about to help me finally shut the lid on this Gutierrez case."
"Gutierrez? You mean Kara?" Dave asked.
"The very same," Kessel answered. He’d been typing something in, and now he turned the laptop screen around to face Dave. "Here’s us, and here’s Kara."
The screen showed a large black canvas, presumably a map of space, with a blue dot – "us" – and a red dot – "Kara."
