Hurricane #31: The Studio (Patreon)

Webb looked appraisingly at the Rockhopper Studios building as Irsaw pulled up to it. “I’m not sure what I expected a recording studio to look like, but this looks more like…a strip mall.”

Irsaw stopped the car and got out, the rest right behind them. “I believe that’s precisely what it is, given that the studio has retail neighbors in the same building.”

“You find space where you can.” Serrano shrugged. “Marvinsound is a custom building next to the owner’s original ranch house out on the edge of town, and it’s great, but studio time there runs twice as much as Rockhopper.”

Agent Ward looked around appraisingly, too, clearly with entirely different things on her mind. “It’s not a secure location, but the studio space looks like it was built as a department store. You can see the road behind the building slopes down. So loading docks in the back, with storage space on a lower level.”

“So a lot of space to hide the, ah, quantum router, and any supporting infrastructure.” Webb readjusted her glasses. “I wonder whether it’s been installed with the studio’s permission.”

Irsaw was opening their briefcase, pulling out the same radar-dish gadget that Serrano remembered from when they’d first met at her old apartment. “I’m sure they’re aware something is down there, if Agent Ward’s information is correct. Which we can check…” They fiddled with the device. “Now.” The moment they pointed it at the studio, it beeped, and the hyena lifted their brows. “Well.”

“So my information was correct.”

“Indeed, Agent Ward.” Irsaw put it back in the briefcase. “That doesn’t mean the studio is involved as anything more than landlord, of course. They might well have been given a cover story.”

Serrano nodded, looking around as she and Sarah took the lead toward the entrance. That van parked near the front door looked awfully familiar. “Well, we have one, too.”

“We do?”

“Yeah. I have a plan.”

Sarah sighed theatrically as Serrano opened the front door. “Now I’m worried.”

“Shut up.”

The door opened onto a room that looked less like a foyer than a break room, with a vending machine, coffee machine, and a few seats around plastic tables. The front desk had clearly been picked up from a used office supply store. A capybara in ripped jeans and an unreadably faded black T-shirt stood behind it, writing in a notebook. She looked up, earrings jangling. “Hey.”

“Hey, Donna. What studio are the Spikes in?”

“Three. I didn’t think you were on this session, though, Serrano.”

“I’m not, other than backup.” She gestured at the wolf. “She is, though.”

Sarah’s eyes widened slightly.

“Oh.” Donna’s brow lifted, and she looked Sarah up and down. “Cool. Okay, you two sign in and head back.” She shoved a notebook toward the coyote.

Serrano signed in and pushed the notebook toward Sarah. “Sergeant Eddie’s renting out space here, right? Is he in today?”

“No idea. His crew’s got their own entrance.”

“Okay.” Serrano glanced over at Sarah, whose signature displayed terrifyingly good penmanship. “We need them to come with us. Can she just say she’s a party size of four?” She jerked her thumb at Ward, Irsaw and Webb.

The capybara studied the three more intently, then looked up at Irsaw, the hyena dressed in their typical steampunk fashion. “Are you a mad scientist?”

“I prefer the term ‘esoteric researcher.’” Irsaw beamed.

Donna stared silently for a few more seconds, then shook her head. “Sure.”

Sarah penned in “4” in the “party size” column.

“Okay. You know the way, and you know the rules.”

Mrs. Webb pushed her glasses back up. “What are the rules?”

Donna had already gone back to her original work, and didn’t look up when she answered. “Don’t touch anything you don’t understand, don’t enter a studio when the ‘recording’ light is on, don’t fuck anything up.”

“Ah.” She cleared her throat. “Simple.”

Donna snorted. “You’d think, huh.”

Serrano had already started walking away. Sarah hurried to catch up. “Your plan is claiming I’m a singer?”

“Hey, you keep claiming you’re a singer. I’m just leveraging that.” She looked back at Irsaw. “That detector gadget thingy can, like, help us triangulate in on the actual router, right?”

“I think so, yes.” They stopped and unlocked the briefcase.

“Serrano?”

Everyone looked down the hall. Carl, the Spikes’ keyboard player, stood there with a soda can in hand.

“Carl. Uh, hey.”

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Studio tour. My friend Sarah might want to cut a few demos, so she wanted to see the equipment and all.” She gestured at the wolf.

“Just coincidentally at the same time we’re here?” The serval crossed his arms.

“Yeah, in fact, just coincidentally. You’ve gone out of your way to make sure I know I’m not really part of the band, Carl, so I guess I haven’t been keeping track of your fucking calendar.”

“Uh huh.” He started to turn away with a scowl, then stopped and stared at Irsaw’s open briefcase. “What is that?”

After a moment of everyone looking at one another, Irsaw closed the briefcase. “It’s an, ah, sound pressure meter. I was just checking the battery level.”

“It looked like some kind of…transmitter ray gun thing.” He glared at Serrano. “Is this gonna screw up the recording? You point it from another studio, and it shoots electrical interference or scrambles bits or some shit?”

“Three Fucking Lords, not everything is about you.”

“You’re unbelievable, Serrano. Literally unbelievable.” He threw his hands in the air. “I don’t even know if I believe that wolf is a singer. She looks like—like—”

“A swimsuit model crossed with a bodyguard,” Jake said, poking his head out of the recording studio.

Sarah lifted her brows. “Is that meant to be a compliment?”

Jake grinned. “It is. Hey, Serrano.” The maned wolf looked back at his bandmate and tilted his head. “I mean this in the nicest possible way, Carl, but could you stop waving your dick around and get back in here?”

The serval’s ears flattened. “I think we should take a break and go help Serrano with her tour, see if her friend actually knows what she’s looking at. Since this totally isn’t a stunt to screw with us, she won’t mind, right?”

Sarah’s ears lowered, and she marched toward Carl. The serval’s eyes widened, but he didn’t manage to get a word out before she slammed him up against the wall by the door, sliding him up to her eye level by wrapping a hand around his neck. “I think what I’m looking at right now,” she said flatly, “is a musician who’ll find it very difficult to sing with a crushed windpipe. Did I get that right?”

“Ms. Wylde,” Webb murmured. “Let’s not let him drag us into a fight we don’t have time for.”

The wolf looked at the flailing, wide-eyed serval. “I don’t think it’ll be much of a fight.” She let him drop to the floor.

Carl gasped, rubbing his throat. “What the hell are you?” he wheezed.

“A soprano with a five-octave range.”

The serval swallowed, and bolted back into his recording studio. Jake blinked rapidly several times, looking between Carl and Sarah, then grinned. “I’m kind of terrified and can I have your number?”

Sarah glanced at him and gave a slight smile. “We should get going.”

“Uh, yeah.” Serrano waved. “Catch you later, Jake. Hope the session goes well.”

“You too.”

They hurried down the hallway toward swinging doors marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. Serrano looked up at Sarah. “Do you really have a five-octave range?”

Sarah coughed. “About that, yes.”

“Why do you get uncomfortable when I ask you about music?”

“I don’t know. It’s just…” She waved back down the hallway as they stepped through the doors into a small, concrete-floored storage area, full of metal shelves stacked with old audio equipment. “You take this seriously. For me, it was just something I tried for a few years when I had the chance.”

“Okay, now, come on, you’ve got to start talking. We started at ‘maybe karaoke if I get drunk’ and now we’re up to ‘I did this for a few years between jobs as a faerie warrior princess.’”

“Still not a princess.”

“Don’t change the subject. When you say you ‘tried,’ what exactly—”

Sarah held up her hand, ears going up. Serrano went quiet. A half a second later, it became clear why: she’d heard a metal utility door on the far side of the room open.

Sergeant Eddie stepped through, decked out in his typical can’t-miss-even-though-you-want-to rhinestone and denim style. The wolf turned and stared at them, eyes widening.

“Fancy meeting you here, Sarge,” Serrano said.

His gaze traveled around the rest of the group: the scowling wolf woman, the stone-faced vixen, the towering hyena, the all-business mouse. “What’re you doing at Rockhopper, Ronni?”

“Just thought we’d come check out your second office. Through that door, I guess?”

The wolf’s ears lowered, and he chewed his lip for a second. Then he ducked back through the door, slamming it behind him before Serrano could grab it.

The group hurried forward almost as one. Webb paused for a half-second, then gave the door a dainty-looking kick. It blew backward off its hinges, burying itself in the opposite wall, just above the staircase. They heard Eddie howl in terror from the landing below.

“Whoa, careful,” Serrano said. “If you’d gotten there a couple seconds earlier, you’d have turned Sarge into paste.”

“I apologize. I know you’d prefer to do that yourself, Ms. Layotl.” The mouse hurried past down the stairs, Irsaw and Sarah close behind.

“Damn straight.” Serrano dropped in behind Agent Ward.

A door slammed open below, and a moment later a shrill buzzing alarm went off. A fire alarm. Serrano’s ears skewed. She could hear it coming from back above, in the recording studio halls, too; this wasn’t the alarm just for Sarge’s secret lair, it was all of Rockhopper. “Carl’s gonna blame this on me, too,” she muttered.

“If it’s any consolation, Miss Layotl,” Irsaw called back, “I’m sure the sound of Mrs. Webb kicking the door open was at least as disruptive to any recording.”

Mrs. Webb looked back, exasperated. “Should I endeavor to be a quieter wrecking ball?”

Irsaw raised their hands in apology. Before anyone else could speak, the gunfire started.