Career Night on Union Station (EarthCent Ambassador Book 15) by E. M. Foner

Author:E. M. Foner [Foner, E. M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Foner Books
Published: 2018-08-01T06:00:00+00:00

Twelve

Samuel hoisted the intake bin onto the counter of the lost-and-found and began sorting through the collection of weapons and enchanted items brought in by maintenance bots on the prior shift. Ever since LARPing had become popular on the station, his part-time job had gotten a lot more interesting, though there was less time for study. He carefully examined each new item, in no hurry to begin his latest homework assignment. Then he returned the bin to its place, and after a moment of guilty hesitation, pulled out the next bin in line and repeated the process, even though he had seen the items on his previous shift.

An hour later the teenager ran out of ways to procrastinate and was calling up the first homework problem on his student tab when an athletic-looking woman in her early thirties entered the lost-and-found. Samuel turned off the screen with a relieved swipe and greeted her with his best customer-service smile.

“Can I help you?”

“My hammer is missing and somebody told me to try the lost-and-found.”

“Did you drop it when you were killed?”

The woman looked at Samuel like he was crazy. “No,” she replied slowly. “If I had been killed, I wouldn’t be here.”

“So you were too busy fighting to pick it up again,” Samuel surmised as he headed back down the counter for the intake bin. “I’m pretty sure I saw a weird war hammer in here.”

“Then it’s not mine because my hammer is just a regular hammer,” the woman said.

“You took a regular hammer into a LARP? No enchantment or anything? I’m pretty sure that the only hammer I saw was a weapon. Hang on a sec.”

“I’m just going to go out and come in again,” the woman announced, having reached the conclusion that Samuel was an artificial person who was relegated to working in the lost-and-found because he didn’t quite have all of his marbles. “You hit your reset button and we’ll start over from the beginning.”

“Sorry, what?” Samuel asked, having missed that last part as he ducked below the counter again. “Here it is,” he said, straightening up with the hammer in his hand, but the woman had vanished. He was vacillating over whether to return it to the bin or keep it out when she reentered the lost-and-found.

“Hi, I’m Mink. I lost my hammer.”

“Back again? I was worried you changed your mind because your hammer is cursed or something. That seems to happen a lot, but we won’t know until I run it through the cataloging system. Is this yours?”

“Yes,” the woman said, breathing a sigh of relief. “It was my father’s hammer and I really didn’t want to lose it. Wait. Where are you going?”

“We have to make a record of everything that gets claimed,” Samuel informed her, walking down the counter to the cataloging system. The woman mirrored his steps on the other side, keeping her eyes on her hammer. “Any last name?”

“Mink is it.”

“I’ve never heard that one before,” Samuel said, putting the hammer on the turntable and imparting a gentle spin.

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