‘I’d advise you not to answer that, Mrs K,’ one of the suited lumps said.
‘Thank you, Dougall.’ Kennedy lit a cigarette and pushed the pack towards Flynn. ‘Dougall’s my lawyer.’
‘You think I give a fuck about lawyers?’ Flynn rose to his feet, anger boiling over. This case was full of loose ends, and half of them pointed to this bitch. ‘I got cops out there ain’t learned the rules yet. I got soldiers, if I ask for them. I got a motherfucking invasion force at my back. Don’t you go throwing your lawyers in my shit.’
She blew a smoke ring in his face, tapped her cigarette against the ashtray.
‘Are you threatening me, Detective Flynn?’ She was icy calm. ‘After bombardment and invasion, you think I’m scared of some fat copper in a crumpled suit? If you could use those soldiers I’d be in a cell by now, with a wee bag over my head and the electrodes charging. If your boys didn’t care about lawyers they wouldn’t care about coppers either, and you’d be out of my face.’
She rose, staring him straight in the eye.
‘If you ever feel like threatening me again, just remember, there’s only one detective in this city, and I have many, many…’ She waved towards the hulking brutes behind her, ‘lawyers.’
They both sat back down, glaring across the table. Flynn silently cursed himself for losing his temper. This was the sort of behaviour that had got him sent out here.
‘I apologise,’ he said through gritted teeth.
‘Course you do, love.’ She waved her lawyer over. ‘I don’t want us getting off on the wrong foot, detective. I pride myself on cooperating with the police. Perhaps Dougall here could clear up your confusion.’
Dougall slid with surprising grace into the seat next to his employer.
‘My client would like to make clear that she is not involved in any form of criminal activity.’ His accent was crystal clear, harder and sharper than the Greykirk natives. ‘That said, hypothetically, if someone had been paying Mr McCray in cash for such activities, they would have had no need to control him through an addiction to illegal simulations, as you seem to be implying. Rather, such an addiction would destabilise Mr McCray’s mind and make him a liability, leading to a number of unwanted telephone calls as he sought work that his employer was no longer willing to provide. Hypothetically, of course.’
‘Hypo-fucking-thetically.’ Flynn nodded. It was hard to argue with the man’s logic. ‘So also hypothetically, you got any idea where McCray might have gotten illegal sims?’
‘You’re a smart man, detective.’ Kennedy grinned. ‘You can work that one out for yourself.’
Her coms unit buzzed, and a moment later so did Flynn’s. He raised it to his ear, heard a voice so urgent it put him straight on edge.
‘Sir, James McCray just shot up a patrol on Seventh and King.’ It was one his officers, her voice strained. ‘Three soldiers injured and a jeep ruined.’
A memory of Superintendent Culver sent a chill down Flynn’s spine. ‘One more fuck-up,’ Culver had said. ‘One more fuck-up and you’re gone.’
In his youth Flynn had been quite a runner. Not anymore. He puffed and sweated his way past the military ambulance on Seventh and King, up towards the Old Pretender. The map on his coms unit showed the quickest route from the crime scene to the pub, but he didn’t think McCray would go that way. He’d been paranoid when Flynn met him, jumping at shadows in his mind. His slow pace across the city showed he was taking back routes, places full of rubble and ruins to hide in.
Flynn ran off the main street and through the remains of an apartment block. Pausing to catch his breath, he clung to a steel pole jutting out from the shattered concrete. This was his beat now, broken people and broken buildings, but he’d be damned if he’d lose this too.
Kennedy had been right. He worked it out the minute he looked at the map. Talbot had been the first death, but not the start of McCray’s current path of destruction. That had come afterwards, at the place he’d gone looking for help - Kennedy Compacting. Rejected again by Kennedy, he was heading back to the crime scene, to revisit whatever happened at the Old Pretender. To a man looking to lie low, his mind wrecked by cheap thriller sims, both his own apartment and the ruined corners of Seventh and King were natural hiding spots along the route.
Something stirred in the rubble up ahead. There was a clatter of falling masonry and a shape shifting in the shadows. Flynn caught the glint of a gun.
Fuck Culver, he thought, and fuck the military for making him rush out on this case. If they hadn’t been so damned set on giving him the chance to screw up, he would have had time to get a gun. Sure he could fetch the soldiers from Seventh and King. They’d be eager to help catch the guy who’d shot their buddies. Too eager. Flynn needed to talk to McCray, not just haul in his corpse. This wasn’t just about McCray any more. It was about how he’d got this way.
The shape shifted again. Flynn caught a glimpse of ginger hair in the light spilling through a shattered window.
‘Jimmy.’ He clambered over the rubble, trying to keep his footing with his hands raised in the air. ‘They call you Jimmy, right?’
McCray stepped out of the shadows, gun pointed at Flynn.
‘Fuck you, copper.’ McCray looked strung out, eyes wide, veins pulsing at his temples. ‘You’re with them, aren’t you?’
‘Who’s them, Jimmy?’ Flynn took a step forward, almost slid over onto his ass. It wasn’t enough that he was fighting his fear of that gun, now he had to fight the scenery too. ‘The army you fought against? Kennedy’s goons? Friends of your ex-wife?’
‘The swarm,’ Jimmy hissed. ‘They put them nanites in yer blood, take you over. You never know who’s on your side, not until the end of the chapter.’ He squinted at Flynn. ‘This the end of the chapter?’
Flynn’s heart bled for poor Jimmy McCray. The boy was even more broken than he’d realised.
‘These nanites, they in the story Jimmy? The story in the sim?’
‘Aye, that’s right.’
‘And Sergeant Talbot, Annie, she played the sim with you?’
‘Aye. But the nanites took her over, I had to deal with it.’ McCray’s hand wavered, eyes going glassy. ‘Have you seen her? She must have respawned by now.’
‘Annie ain’t respawning, Jimmy. I think you know that.’
‘I don’t know… I don’t know what you mean.’
Flynn slowly pulled his jacket open, making clear that he was just getting a cigarette.
‘Been hard on you, ain’t it, Jimmy?’ Flynn lit the cigarette with trembling fingers. One false move and this poor demented fucker would blow him away. ‘Lost the war. Lost some buddies in the fighting, I expect. That kind of shit, it ain’t something a good man’s built for. Fucks with your head. Course you wanted to escape your memories. Sims are good for that.
‘Then your wife started making demands. I know that feeling.’ Flynn raised his ring finger, showed McCray the barren space where his heart had lived, just like Jimmy McCray’s. ‘Wanted you to quit the sim. She didn’t understand. Then she left, the last good thing in the real world, and all you had left was work and the sim. Ain’t that right?’
‘I couldn’t…’ The gun hung limp by McCray’s side now, but Flynn held back. This could still turn bad in the blink of an eye. ‘Some guys coped by collaborating. Some coped by resisting. But me…’
‘You retreated to a place that you could control.’ Flynn flicked away his cigarette and took a cautious step forward. ‘Only you lost control, started seeing dangers from that place spill out into the real world.’
‘I couldn’t escape. It was like the war all over again. Nanites everywhere, watching, waiting, ready to kill me, ready to kill her, and I just…’
The gun dropped from McCray’s hand, slid down into the rubble as he slumped sobbing to the floor.
‘Annie!’ he wailed. ‘Aw fuck, Annie!’
Flynn laid a gentle arm around McCray’s shoulder as he pulled out his coms unit.
; ‘Beat officers to rubble near Seventh and King,’ he said into the police band. His police band. ‘And bring a sedative.’
The Old Pretender was still empty when Flynn burst through the door. There was just Wallace stood behind the counter, fixing up a black market sim unit, like the dozen plugged into the triangular sockets around the walls. He dropped his screwdriver as Flynn entered, and pulled a shotgun from beneath the bar.
‘I know what this looks like, detective,’ he said after an awkward pause.
‘Illegal weapon,’ Flynn said, shaking with the rage he would not let control him. ‘Illegal electronics. Banned sims that could fry some poor fucker’s brain. Oh, this looks like all kinds of nasty shit.’
‘Well, maybe.’ Wallace stepped around the counter, eyes never leaving Flynn. ‘But in days like these, who really cares? Only one detective in town, and if he goes missing…’
Wallace gestured towards the back door. Flynn raised his hands and followed his lead, Wallace backing away before him. As they approached a tangle of data cables Flynn took a sharp step forwards. Wallace jumped, tripped over the cables and fell.
Flynn whipped out McCray’s gun and fired. The shotgun went flying and Wallace screamed as he stared at the cauterised stump of his wrist.
‘Poor fuckers round here been through the war,’ Flynn said when the screaming subsided. ‘Ain’t no way I’m letting a motherfucker like you prey on their weakness. I’m arresting you for threatening a police officer, electronics smuggling, instigating an attack on a military patrol, shit, any last thing I can fling your way. Gonna solve half a dozen capital crimes on my first day. Gonna get Culver off my back. Gonna get me a fucking medal. And you, motherfucker.’ He hauled the wretched landlord to his feet. ‘You’re gonna hang.’
There was silence on Second Street as Flynn led Wallace out of the pub and into the back of Greykirk’s only police car. As he shoved the landlord along, Flynn felt a sense of righteous anger, and of satisfaction in a job well done.
Or done as well as he could around here.
He looked at the buildings in the grey dusk, empty shells smiling down on him as he brought justice to their town.
‘Guess this’ll do,’ he said, rummaging through an empty pack of cigarettes. ‘For now, at least.’
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I live in northern England, where the grey skies provide an excellent incentive to stay indoors and write. In my spare time I dream of being a pirate, but then who doesn’t?
If you enjoyed this then please leave a review of it in the store where you got it - it’s just about the most helpful thing you can do for a new author like me.
If you'd like to read more of my stories, you can get a free copy of my steampunk collection Riding the Mainspring by signing up to my mailing list.
You might also like my other books:
Short stories:
Lies We Will Tell Ourselves - the future is uncertain and the truth even more so in these science fiction short stories.
By Sword, Stave or Stylus - fantasy short stories featuring a shadow-draped ninja, a gladiator painting in manticore blood and a knight so stupid that he just might win.
Riding the Mainspring - a collection of steampunk short stories featuring moving buildings and incredible machines.
From a Foreign Shore - history and alternate history short stories, featuring Vikings and a statue that refuses to die.
Mud and Brass - a mudlark inventor balances love and vengeance in a steampunk short story - *free in most ebook stores*.
The Epiphany Club:
Guns and Guano - Victorian adventurer Dirk Dynamo joins an expedition to a remote island as he begins a hunt for the lost Great Library of Alexandria - *free in most ebook stores*.
Suits and Sewers - Dirk’s journey takes him into the sewers below London, pursuing ninjas in search of a stolen artefact.
Aristocrats and Artillery - As war descends on Paris, Dirk seeks the third clue to the Great Library.
Sieges and Silverware - Dirk’s adventure takes him to Germany, where strange things roam in a castle under siege.
Dead Men and Dynamite - At last Dirk has all the clues, but can he find the Great Library before his enemies do?
For more information on my books, including details of new releases and free stories, please sign up to my mailing list at this link.
You can read free stories from me, as well as thoughts on books and writing, on my blog at http://andrewknighton.com/ . I’m also on Twitter where I go by the name of @gibbondemon .
Thanks for reading!
DEDICATION AND THANKS
This story is dedicated to Dan Prebble, my idea of a hard bitten, hard living hero.
Thanks go as always to Laura Knighton, without whose love and support I would not be doing this, and to Russell Phillips, whose guidance and encouragement help keep me going.
Cover Design by James, GoOnWrite.com
Silence on Second Street Page 2
