The Easytown Box Set

by Brian Parker

  “Forrest!” Drake shouted. “Are you alright?”

  I patted myself down before answering. “Yeah, I’m good to go, buddy.”

  “They shot all the workers,” he stated blandly.

  I risked a quick glance around the container. The six workers that the drone had detained lay on the deck bleeding along with the two men in handcuffs. The other two workers who’d made a break for the gangway were both face down on the deck several feet from my location. I’d thought the fuckers were shooting at me, but they were shooting the workers instead.

  “How many of you are there?” I asked the woman.

  “What?”

  “How many of you worked down there to manufacture the synthaine?” I clarified.

  “Uh…” She ran through a list of names, counting them on her fingers. “Eight, plus me.”

  “Is there another shift like yours?”

  “No. Just us.”

  “Son of a bitch,” I mumbled. Karimov was trying to set himself up for success while he was in prison. I’d heard of prisoners getting filthy rich while they were locked away, then living high on the hog once they were released.

  If he could have all of the scientists or workers—I wasn’t sure of their role—killed, that left him with the sole knowledge of how to produce the drug. As long as he hadn’t killed anyone himself, he could be out in ten-to-fifteen years. And the fucker would be back on top, filling the void in the lives of the hundreds of thousands of synthaine users.

  “Do not move,” I ordered, grabbing the woman’s wrist. “You are the target, not the cops. I mean, they’ll shoot us if they get the opportunity, but if you pop your head up, you’re dead. Do you understand?”

  She nodded while her eyes stared beyond me at the two dead workers she could see from our position behind the crate. “They’re all dead?”

  “Hey!” I snapped my fingers in front of her face. “I need your help.”

  “What?” she asked in annoyance.

  “How many of Karimov’s people are there on this boat?”

  “Karimov’s people?” She seemed confused. “Oh! Let’s see, there were one or two guards at each stairway and the two cyborgs up here manning the big guns.”

  “So, eight to sixteen, plus Karimov?” I asked for clarification. She nodded. “Are there any hostages or workers who are being held against their will?”

  Her eyes drifted back to the dead men on the deck. “Are the cyborgs dead?”

  “What does it matter?” I asked. “I need you to focus. Is there anyone else in the boat who isn’t a hostile?”

  “Um… No. I don’t think so. Are the cyborgs dead?”

  “What’s your obsession with the ‘borgs, lady?” I tried to imagine what she’d gone through for however long she’d been held and forced myself to answer her question. “One of the cyborgs is dead. The other is incapacitated.”

  “Where?”

  “Over by my partner,” I replied.

  “You need to kill them,” she said so fast that I almost couldn’t understand her. “They’re planning to blow up city hall.”

  “What?”

  “Karimov is going to blow up city hall. The bottom of this ship had a ton of explosives that they were gathering incrementally for months so no one would notice.”

  “I think we’ve put a stop to that,” I said smugly.

  “Don’t be so sure. The explosives were moved a few days ago. Only Karimov has the detonation code.” She gestured toward the tower. “He could be entering it now!”

  “Shit.” I turned toward Drake’s position. “Drake!”

  “Yeah, Detective?”

  “What’s the thermal read?”

  There was a pause and then, “Fourteen signatures in the tower, all but three of them are outside in a shooting position.”

  I glanced down and saw a shoe on the deck. It was one of the woman’s. “Sorry, but I need to borrow this.”

  “Hey!” she cried as I tossed it out into the open. Several rounds burrowed into the decking.

  “Fuck. Drake!”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think they have autotrackers.”

  “No shit,” he replied.

  “Not good.”

  “Nope.”

  “Chief Brubaker,” I said into the radio.

  “Brubaker,” he replied instantly.

  I explained the situation to him and the scientist’s assertion that everyone else remaining alive were hostile. Then I asked for permission to use the drones.

  “I’ve gotta call that up.”

  I reminded him of the imminent detonation of a ton of explosives somewhere in the city and the fact that four police officers and a non-combatant were pinned down by gunmen with autotracking rifles.

  “Goddamn it, Forrest,” he reacted, deliberating for a moment with himself or with the FBI man in the room. “You’re authorized to use the drones,” he sighed.

  I gave the instructions to the drones to target all heat signatures in the control tower. They zipped around, changing position every few seconds, firing hundreds of rounds into the tower. The drones followed their orders exactly, terminating every heat signature they discovered.

  It was over in three minutes.

  When the firing stopped, the woman beside me breathed out heavily and removed her hands from her ears. “Is it over? Are they… Are they dead?”

  “Drake, status?”

  “According to the thermals, every hostile is down,” he shouted back.

  “Yes, ma’am. They’re all— Urk!”

  I stared down at my stomach where the woman’s hand was wrapped around the handle of a knife embedded there. She withdrew it and stabbed me again. Then, she jabbed it into my chest and I fell sideways to the deck.

  Through a blurry haze I saw her take my service pistol and fire several rounds in the direction of Drake and the SWAT officers.

  There were cries of pain and alarm from where my partner hid. Then, far away, I heard a splash where she’d jumped the remaining twenty-five feet or so to the water.

  My head lolled to the side and I saw a giant running toward me.

  “Hold on, Forrest,” the giant said. “Hold on. We’ll get you out of here.”

  I had a brief moment to wonder why the giant hadn’t crushed my head in his vice-like hands before the blood loss took me and I died.

  TWENTY-ONE: FRIDAY

  “Ugh… Thon of a bith.”

  “Zach!” a familiar voice cried. “Oh, thank the Lord you are awake.”

  “Amir?” I tried to say, but the tube in my mouth made it sound like ‘Amhee’ instead of his name.

  “My friend, do not try to talk. You have been intubated and in a medical coma for almost a week.”

  “A weeth?”

  I had no memories of what happened beyond getting stabbed. Did that woman stab me or had I imagined it? I wondered. Everything was so fuzzy.

  “Hold on,” Amir said. “I will get the doctors.”

  It took him a few tries to stand from the chair he’d been in, but then he made it to his feet and set a cup down on the table beside my bed.

  He was gone for several minutes, and then returned with a man wearing a lab coat with a stethoscope around his neck.

  “Mr. Forrest,” he said. “Glad to see you’re back with us. You were dead when they brought you in here. Can you believe that?” He held up a hand. “No, don’t try to talk. You’ll tear your vocal chords with that tube in there—and you’ve suffered enough.”

  He picked up the chart at the end of the bed and tapped a few keys, writing on the surface with a stylus he’d pulled from the side. “If they hadn’t flown you directly here, we couldn’t have done anything for you. As it is, you coded three times after we got your heart restarted and fecal matter from your intestines got into your bloodstream, causing an infection. You’re very lucky to be alive, Mr. Forrest.”

  I gestured for the chart. He hesitated, and then handed it over to me. “You’ve got to understand, we did ev
erything we could.”

  I stared at the screen. The only thing written on it was the note he’d just taken about me waking for the first time in five days and being mentally alert.

  “Wuth?”

  He looked at the chart. “Oh, sorry.” He took it back and tapped the screen in a series of movements, then handed it back to me.

  Zachary Forrest

  35 y/o Caucasian male

  NOPD

  Admitted 24 May 2099

  DOA

  Louisiana Health Department passive monitoring profile: Previous risk of stroke and/or liver failure. Positive lifestyle changes in 2099 contributed to improvement and subsequent removal from monitoring service.

  Defibrillation 5 min. Patient revived. Intubated. Began IV transfusion.

  Coded on way to OR. Revived.

  Began repair to collapsed left lung, patient coded again. Revived.

  Attempted lung re-inflation. Failed.

  Left lung replaced with supplies on hand.

  Began repair to perforated lower intestines. Patient coded.

  Dr. Grantham made decision to replace heart. External stimulation started.

  Patient placed in medicated stasis while DNA imprinted on commercial grade heart muscle.

  Repaired intestinal perforations.

  25 May 2099

  Fecal matter discovered in bloodstream, infection present.

  Administered antibiotic (Ceftaroline) for infection.

  26 May 2099

  Patient’s heart arrived 6:12 a.m.

  Heart muscle replaced and operational.

  Patient medically sedated and regenerative genetic stimulation begun.

  27 May 2099.

  Patient experiencing severe infection in extremities.

  Infection spreading. Three rounds of antibiotics (Ceftobiprole) administered.

  Patient diagnosed with septicemia.

  Liver failure. Decision to replace liver.

  Ordered liver from ORGCO 2:47 p.m. Requested immediate delivery.

  28 May 2099.

  Replacement liver arrived 8:09 a.m.

  Infection reduced in upper extremities; spreading in both legs – severe necrosis.

  Replaced liver.

  Decision to amputate before necrosis spreads further.

  Amputated patient’s left and right legs below the knee.

  Necrosis no longer detected.

  29 May 2099.

  Patient awake, first time in 5 days. Cognitive function appears to have returned.

  “Futh me,” I groaned.

  “Oh, it isn’t that bad, Mr. Forrest,” the doctor replied, taking the chart off my chest where I’d let it fall when I finished reading. “Lots of people have replacement organs these days, that’s not a big deal. And the fact that we were able to save your knee joints means we’ll have a much easier time grafting prosthetics to your body. With your own knee joints, your time spent learning to walk again will be greatly reduced.”

  I gestured for him to come closer. He leaned in and I gripped his lapel as tightly as I could manage.

  “Dwugth.”

  “You’ve had plenty of drugs recently, Mr. Forrest. It’s time to start weening you off of them.”

  “Fuck oo, bathawd.” I groaned and released his coat.

  TWENTY-TWO: WEDNESDAY

  “I’m fucking pissed off, that’s what’s wrong, asshole.”

  “Mr. Forrest, please refrain from cursing at the therapy droid,” a voice emitted from the speaker beside the treadmill track.

  I leaned heavily against the railing I’d been using to hold myself upright. “I’m not getting the hang of this and your overgrown, talking vacuum cleaner isn’t doing much besides saying, ‘You can do it.’ Seriously, my AI in college was more advanced than this stupid thing.”

  “Millions of people have learned to walk with prosthetics, Mr. Forrest. Are you saying that they have more willpower and coordination than you, a big, bad police officer hero?”

  “That’s your pep talk?” I grunted, shoving up from the railing and lifting my leg. The processors in the artificial legs measured the force of my leg lift, calculated the height and automatically adjusted the dorsiflexion of the foot to strike the floor with the heel first, then flexed to make the foot perfectly horizontal. As more weight was placed on the limb, the CPU sent signals that caused the foot to carry out the process of plantar flexion, slowly lifting the heel from the flat surface to push off with the toe.

  At least that’s how it was supposed to work. I’d been outfitted with the latest athletic tech prosthetics, and each leg was five times more powerful than a normal human leg. The computers in the legs seemed to work correctly, but the rest of my non-cybernetic body was all out of whack, threatening to topple me with every step without the railing there for support.

  “Give it time, Mr. Forrest,” the voice replied. “You’ve only been attempting to walk on your new legs for a day. You’ll get it. Before long, you’ll get the hang of it and will be chasing after criminals, saving the city once again.”

  “Shows what you know,” I grumbled.

  It’d been easier to just let the hospital staff continue to think I was the NOPD hero cop who’d saved hundreds of lives over the course of my career than letting them know that I was a disgrace to my precinct—actually, that was bullshit. I wasn’t a disgrace; the system was a disgrace. Everything I’d done had been to keep the city and her citizens safe.

  “Oh, pish-posh,” the woman over the intercom replied. “You’ll get this. Look at everyone else. Even Agnes, a sixty-four year-old diabetic amputee, is walking just fine.”

  I looked up from the treadmill and through the glass that partitioned the various physical therapy rooms, all filled with other amputees performing various tasks that their droid companions ran them through. The ward was laid out in a large circle around a central office hub where the licensed physical therapist monitored everyone’s progress and allegedly input adjustments to the droids to assist with the patients’ recovery.

  Sure enough, through the glass separating the different therapy rooms, I could see that bitch, Agnes, walking just fine.

  I put my head down and continued to try to adjust to my new normal. I sure as hell didn’t want to be crippled for the rest of my life, so I had to get this. I couldn’t very well move on to the next stage of my life in a wheelchair; that would require me to be upright and mobile.

  After about an hour of listening to the physical therapy droid’s archaic AI try to give me instructions, I was able to take four or five steps without needing to run to keep from falling over and my balance was improving. “That’s enough for today, Mr. Forrest,” the human therapist said. “You’re covered in sweat and need a bath.”

  “Only if you’re giving it to me. Jorge is too rough below the waist,” I replied. In truth, I’d never even seen the therapist, so she could be hideously ugly, but I didn’t care. I was happy to be done for the day.

  “Now, now. That’s what we call sexual harassment, Mr. Forrest. Don’t they teach you anything at the NOPD?”

  “Apparently I’m a slow learner.”

  I used the rail to make my way back to my wheelchair and zipped through the facility to my room. When I got there, Sergeant Drake was waiting for me.

  “Drake! Good to see you,” I said, looking up at the officer towering over me.

  “Detective,” he replied. “You don’t remember it, but I was here during and after your surgery. How you doing?”

  “I’ve been better,” I admitted. Lifting one of my legs, I said, “That woman sure did a number on me, huh?”

  “Can we?” He gestured at the door to my room.

  “Sure, come on in. Mi casa es su casa and all that, right?”

  When we’d gotten settled into my hospital room with the door firmly closed behind us, Drake gave me an update to what had happened at the cargo ship.

  “Karimov is dead,” he stated.

  “Good.”

  “Everyone who was on
that boat, except the woman, is dead.”

  I’d figured as much. “Even the cyborg we’d arrested?”

  “Yup. Killed by your service pistol.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “The woman is Tanaz Karimov. Sister—”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” I interjected.

  “Nope. The woman is Farouk Karimov’s sister. When everyone was killed on that boat, it made her the single heir to the synthaine fortune. I assume she knows the formula as well.”

  A sinking feeling descended in my stomach. “There wasn’t an explosive switch or anything like that with Farouk, was there?”

  “No. She played us.”

  “Mother fucker!” I kicked my leg, the CPUs adjusting the foot wildly for the unexpected movement.

  “Yeah. Chief Brubaker was livid when we ran a facial recognition scan of her from the drone footage.”

  “The dress-shirt thingy,” I groaned. “Now it makes sense. She probably gave that as a gift to Terri Solomon, not her brother.”

  “Probably.”

  “And the unexplained attempted hit on Karimov at Liquid Genesis… It was her. She was the one in cahoots with Solomon.”

  “Given what we know now, it probably was. She’d likely used that as a way to kill him and when it didn’t work, she continued working with him like nothing had happened.”

  “Holy fuck,” I cursed. “Corrigan had been weird about the use of the name Karimov when we talked.” I remembered him saying something about ‘bosses’ and not a singular boss. He’d been working for both of them and I’d thought he was only working for Farouk. “The son of a bitch was playing both sides.”

  I pointed at my stomach. “Corrigan said Karimov was good with knives, used them to kill the competition. He was talking about the sister, not the brother.”

  The fragments pieced themselves together in my mind. The dark-haired nurse… “She killed him. Tanaz killed Corrigan to shut him up.”