by James Knapp
There was a loud bang, and the female retreated back into the bathroom. Shadows played on the wall as two uniformed SWAT men barreled around the corner.
“Here!” the one taking point shouted. Without hesitation, he aimed and fired, causing the revivor’s head to pitch to one side, spraying oily black fluid. The grip on my wrist released as it staggered away from me.
The SWAT officer fired again, and it dropped to one knee, then fell onto its back. The two men approached me as I rubbed my wrist. I moved over to where the revivor lay, trying to get back up as fluid pooled around its head. I aimed the gun and fired, putting a bullet between its eyes. I fired three more rounds and the top of its head broke open, spilling black guts out onto the floor.
“Whoa, whoa!” the officer said, holding up one hand. “You got him, chief.”
“That is not a pleasure or a labor model,” I said, pointing at it with the barrel of the gun.
Something was going on here. Tai was into something that went way beyond what I’d gone there to bust him for; something he’d managed to keep secret.
I turned and saw Tai being dragged into view down at the end of the hall. Two more officers forced him against the wall, and when he tried to turn around, one of them kicked out his leg and forced him onto his knees.
“Hands behind your head.”
“Starting a war?” I asked him.
He grinned. “Keep your doors locked,” he said in a low voice, glaring at me. He didn’t look angry, just serious.
“Shut up,” the SWAT guy said. I turned and started down the hallway.
“You hear me?” Tai called.
“Yeah.”
I passed the wall where Tai had pinned me, and saw his knife lying a few feet away. I approached the squad leader.
“There are ten revivors out back,” I said to him, “plus one in the bathroom.”
“Looks like our guys picked up another ten,” he said, “plus the rest of Tai’s men. You all right?”
“Yeah. Process Tai and the others, then load them and the revivors into the truck.”
“Roger.”
“Were your techs able to get a connection into his computer system?”
“You should have access now.”
I scanned and found the socket, then opened a connection to it and brought up the system in my field of view. I turned the antisecurity software on it and waited for it to drill down and disable his firewall. Tai’s stuff was encrypted, but nothing fancy. I cycled through his files, which mostly consisted of inventory—the specs and identifications of revivors he had brought into the country, which ones had been moved already, and which ones were still on order. No pickup location was spelled out, but there was a series of docket numbers, and it didn’t take long to match them to receiving ports at the Palm Harbor Shipyard. It looked as if they were being smuggled in among legitimate cargo from a bunch of different sources. I couldn’t tell from where, but it was a good start.
I headed back to the reception area, where the SWAT team had gathered the revivors. They had been grouped in rows and were now kneeling, with their hands behind their heads. Most of them were female and had cookie-cutter versions of the same body modifications. They were all dressed in cheap paper hospital smocks.
As I headed out the door, I turned back and saw one of the men bring in the one from the bathroom, nudging it forward with the barrel of his rifle. It looked at me like it recognized me. The man forced it down onto the floor with the others, and I turned and headed back to the elevator, putting in a call to the assistant director.
Noakes.
This is Noakes.
Agent Wachalowski reporting. Four suspects apprehended. Twenty-one revivors recovered. It looks like they’ve been bringing them in via Palm Harbor.
Where are the revivors now?
SWAT is loading them into the truck. We uncovered some pretty serious firepower here as well. Weapons, ammunition, and other military equipment. SWAT is cataloging it; you’ll have the list shortly.
What are we looking at?
Whoever wanted it knows his stuff. There’s enough to arm a small militia.
Noakes didn’t respond right away.
Get the seller down here. We need that information.
They’re moving him and the revivors now. From Tai’s records, it looks like something was just brought in to the shipyard. I’m on my way there. If we’re lucky, no one has picked it up yet.
A team will meet you there. Find out where that stuff was going.
I will.
The doors opened, and I crossed into the lobby. Across the foyer, I could see someone standing in the shadows near the exit. He wasn’t in uniform. I pinged the squad leader upstairs.
You guys have anyone in the lobby?
Negative. Two outside; the rest are up here.
The figure moved toward me, and when he stepped into the light I could see he was young, maybe college age. He had tangled brown hair and uneven stubble. He wore sneakers, running pants, and a gray hoodie. He wasn’t carrying a weapon.
“What are you doing in here?” I asked him.
“Agent Wachalowski?”
“Who are you, and what are you doing here?”
I scanned into the soft tissue of his face and saw some bioelectronics fitted behind the eyes. He was here gathering footage. I was being recorded.
“I hear you’ve got some revivors upstairs,” he said.
“Be careful what you admit to,” I said, moving past him. “There’s only one way you could have heard that.”
As I pushed past, he followed, keeping pace with me.
“Come on, you can give me something, can’t you?”
“Sorry, I can’t,” I said. “And listening in on even unsecured communications like that is a felony; you know that. The SWAT guys are on their way down, and if they find you here, you’re going to be arrested.”
There’s a reporter down here looking for footage. Clear him out before you bring the revivors down.
Roger that.
“It’s already out,” he said. “You can’t keep it a secret. Just give me fifteen seconds’ worth.”
“Technically, if you’re not outside, you’re supposed to inform anyone you talk to if you’re going to record them,” I said. “Like you’re doing right now. If you want, I can slap an injunction on you, and the techs can take a crawl through everything you’ve got sitting in your buffers. How does that sound?”
That seemed to hit home, and he stayed behind as I headed across the parking lot toward my car. When I got in, I could see him still standing there like he wasn’t sure whether or not he should chance going back. In the rearview mirror I saw him watching me, probably still recording as I pulled out and drove away.
With the scene behind me, I took a deep breath. I realized my heart was pounding and I tried to slow it down. I couldn’t get the image of that girl revivor’s face out of my head.
The first time I ever saw a revivor’s face, it was dark out and hotter than hell. The revivor was a male, and when it came staggering up out of the wet grass, I knew for a fact that the man was dead because I was the one who had killed him.
The last time I’d seen one out in the grinder, I was being airlifted away in a helicopter, with a tube down my throat. It came lurching out of the brush, wet eyes staring right at me as we began to rise. Its teeth, stained bright red, were showing, and there was a terrible want on that waxy face that remained even as the gunner turned on it and made it dance.
Faye Dasalia—Shine Tower Apartments, Unit 901
“ Faye,” he’d whispered. I could almost still hear him as I roused from the dream, stirring in my cold bed.
“You’re a beautiful woman, Faye….” He’d breathed it into my ear, the stubble from his chin pricking the side of my neck. He had finally stopped, and was propped over me, smelling like sweat and that brand of deodorant he used. Even awake, I could almost still smell him. It was almost real.
“You deserve better than this,�
� he’d said, as he said every time. “The world should be yours.”
Stretching under the covers, I tried to shake it off. I didn’t want the world; all I wanted was to make it to first tier without getting shipped off to the grinder. I didn’t want the things I dreamed, no matter how many times I dreamed them. Sometimes I thought they happened because he was the only man I knew, but I knew him only because I worked next to him every day. We never had so much as a drink together, and he had never even been inside my apartment the entire time I’d known him.
Besides, I didn’t think of Doyle like that. It wasn’t even a departmental or career thing; I just didn’t think of him that way, and that made the whole thing all the more strange. Doyle Shanks was a friend and I liked him, but there was nothing else there. Not even the dreams could change that.
My phone was ringing. I cracked my eyes open and saw that neon was still seeping through the blinds, but otherwise the room was dark. It wasn’t morning yet, then. I wasn’t sure how long I had been asleep, but it hadn’t been nearly long enough.
The room seemed to spin slightly as I oriented myself, finding the dresser where the indicator light on my cell made a mellow green strobe as it rang again. Cold air rushed under the blankets as I groped for it and brought it close to my face to check the number; it wasn’t Shanks’s cell, but I couldn’t think of anyone else who’d be calling me.
They found another body. That was the first thought that came into my head. That would make a fourth. Four murders, all the same. I knew somehow that the case was going to go from bad to worse. I retreated back under the covers and flipped open the phone.
“Hello?”
“Ms. Dasalia?” a man asked. It wasn’t Shanks; I didn’t recognize the voice.
“Who is this?”
“Is this Detective Dasalia?”
“Yes. Who is this?”
“Detective, someone is walking in your shadow.”
Terrific. A precious handful of hours of sleep, cut short for this.
“Look—”
“Stop following me, Detective.”
That got my attention. I sat up in bed, pulling the covers around me. Fumbling with the phone, I began recording the call and started a trace. Had he actually decided to make contact after being virtually invisible for so long? Could I be that lucky?
“Who is this?” I asked.
“Did you hear me? I said stop following me.”
“Am I following you?”
“Yes. You will find another one this morning. Your partner will find her first, but I want you to let it go.”
“You want me to let you continue killing these people and do nothing?”
“Yes.”
Glancing at the screen, I could see the trace was coming up empty. The ’bot was having trouble following the circuit connections back to the source, for some reason.
“Why should I do that?” I asked. “Why are you doing this? Help me understand it. Is it because they’re all first tier?”
So far, that was the only thing any of the victims had in common; they all managed to make it to first tier without getting shipped off to serve. It was a category I hoped to fall into myself one day, but none of the victims so far looked like they had to work very hard for it.
“Your only way out of this is to wake up,” he said, ignoring me.
The trace had failed. Whoever he was, he could be anywhere. He was quiet for a minute. I listened but I couldn’t hear anything on his end. There was nothing to indicate where he might be. The line was eerily quiet, almost like a digital recording.
“What do you mean—”
“Try to wake up,” he said, and the line cut out.
I stared at the LCD for a minute, trying to make sense of it as the screen flashed and the connection dropped.
The time said 3:13 a.m. I’d been in bed for a little more than four hours, and I had one more hour of sleep coming that I wasn’t going to get. The cold was already invading my bed. It was time to get moving.
Stretching again, I felt aches in my lower back and other places that were harder to explain. One night I had watched people on TV debate the possibility that a dream could be so vivid, it could affect a person’s physical body. At least one of them believed it was possible that dying in a dream that was vivid enough could result in a person’s death. It made me wonder whether the same premise held true for an erotic dream, and if one were vivid enough, would it be the same as actually committing the acts? If it was, it was grossly unfair.
I got up, hating the way my joints cracked as I stood and stretched. Since the tenant below had moved out, the floor was always freezing and I had gooseflesh head to toe in seconds. I snapped on the carnival glass lamp next to the bed, found my slippers, and shrugged on my robe, pulling it tightly around me. The floor squeaked under my feet as I made my way in a haze into the kitchen.
I’d spent the previous night comparing everything I knew about the victims, trying to find some kind of thread that tied them together, but so far I had come up pretty much empty. The murders had a ritualistic quality that made me think the selection of the victims should be significant, but none of them appeared to have anything in common at all, except their first- tier status, which wasn’t much to go on.
I poured a small glass of water from the filter and set it in the microwave, then took a single sugar cube from the little jar on the table. Using a dropper from the bottle next to it, I squeezed two amber drops onto the cube and watched the liquid bleed through the white granules. I was still staring at it when my phone rang again.
“Hello?”
“Dasalia, it’s me.”
“Shanks,” I said. The microwave dinged, and I winced as I reached in and pulled out the steaming glass.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“They found another one,” he said.
Your partner will find her first….
“Female?” I asked.
“Yeah. How’d you know that?”
I plopped down at the kitchen table, put the sugar cube on my tongue, and tipped back the glass. The cube dissolved as the hot water scalded my mouth, and I swallowed the bittersweet liquid in one hard gulp.
“We’re being watched,” I told him, blowing out a hot sigh. “I just got a call announcing the new victim.”
“The killer?”
“He implied he was. Have the officers look around; the call came literally less than five minutes ago. He could be watching you now.”
“On it.”
“Who’s the lucky girl?”
“Her name was Mae Zhu,” he said. “She was found in her car when they went to tow it. Same wound. Same chemical signature.”
Those were the only two constants in each of the murders, and the only two links we had to the killer. One was the unique shape of the wound pattern, and the other was a faint chemical trace that indicated he either worked with explosives or carried them somewhere on him.
“Send me the address.”
My phone beeped and I checked the incoming message; this murder had happened right in the middle of the shopping district.
“Any witnesses?” I asked.
“No one saw a thing.”
“I’ll see if any security cameras picked anything up,” I said. “I’m leaving now; I’ll meet you over there.”
“Okay,” he said. “Sorry to wake you.”
“I was up.”
“Your eval is today. Don’t forget.”
I sighed. I’d forgotten about the psych evaluation. I didn’t have time for that. There wasn’t enough time as it was.
“I’ll meet you over there,” I said.
I hung up and leaned back in the chair, feeling the warm, tingly feeling spread down my arms and legs as the stimulant kicked in. It was a sorry substitute for sleep, but it was better than nothing.
Try to wake up.
Pressing my palms over my eyelids, I felt my eyes aching behind them. That wasn’t my problem; I spent m
y whole life awake, it seemed. If it wasn’t for the sedatives, I’d never sleep at all.
My foot had started tapping as a surplus of energy surged through me, cutting through the fog and bringing me back to life. I had to get moving.
I’d showered the night before, so that was going to have to do. I brushed my teeth, bundled up, and grabbed my maglev chit off the countertop. When I made my way outside, it was still dark and bitterly cold. Sometime during the four hours or so I’d been in bed, it had snowed, leaving a thin white blanket over everything.
I pulled my coat tighter around me and started making the arrangements to have the security footage piped over. I headed down the sidewalk to the subway station, hoping victim number five would tell me something the other four hadn’t.
Calliope Flax—Arena Porco Rojo
“Calliope …Flax …is …down!”
A judge was screaming through the amp, but fuck if I could hear anything else with my ear in the canvas and the rest of my face full of sweat, muscle, and tit. No one ever called me pretty, but if that bitch wasn’t XY, she was a freak. She was too thick and too hard, and to make weight she must have flushed out both ends for a week, because no way was she in my class. She was slow, though, and leaned too much on her size. I was seeing black, and all I knew was when I got loose, her size wouldn’t save her.
I couldn’t see her, but my palm was in her chin and I pushed until she had to move. When she went back and turned, I jammed my thumb deep under her jawbone so she couldn’t back come down and pin me like she wanted. I grabbed her jaw and twisted, and she had to get off and deal with me or I’d break it. When she did, I let go and kicked back, but I cracked into the chain-link pole at the edge of the ring. She came right back, but I got a foot in before she bashed me in the face with her big man hand, pushing me into the chain so hard I felt the skin split above my eye and blood run down my face.
She leaned down on my foot, mouth hanging open and face red, as she tried to crush me. Sweat stung the corner of my eye as a string of spit blew around on the end of her fat bottom lip. Even with my leg there it was hard to keep her back, so when she went to change position, I locked my legs around her waist and tucked her in close. She saw where she was going but was too late to stop it, and I didn’t give her a chance to tense up. I put the vise to her ribs full force and she screamed, face red and veins popping. For one split second, her brain was stuck on that and just that. I could see it.
