Bone Wires

by Michael Shean

  Gray grabbed the gun and shoved it into the stomach pocket of his new hoodie, zipped it up and pulled the hood over his face, and got the fuck out of there.

  When he got to the car, Angie still slept. She was curled up in the corner of the front passenger seat, looking much more like the pretty young girl she was, and not the world-hardened woman she tried to be. He knocked on the window; she stirred, waking up and seeing him there. The look on his face had her up and unlocking the car in no time, her eyes wide and staring; he opened the driver’s side and reached in to pop the trunk without a word, went to put the backpack in the trunk, then came back and dropped into the driver’s seat. It was only when he reached for the steering wheel that he realized that his hands were shaking.

  “Dan,” Angie said, her voice very cautious and soft. “What happened?”

  Gray closed his eyes for a moment as he socketed the key cylinder into the steering column and started the car. “Vice was waiting for me,” he said, and was shocked at how calm he sounded as he drew the car out of its parking spot and headed carefully toward the exit of the parking structure. “Moody and another guy named Gauge.”

  Angie was quiet a moment. “You’re wearing new clothes,” she said, noticing it for the first time.

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you kill them?” She asked, but her tone made it clear that she knew the answer already.

  “Yeah.” He drew the car up to the exit, looking both ways before pulling out onto the street. “They were going to kill me. And you.” Gray grit his teeth. “Or worse.”

  “Oh.” Angie curled up again, this time drawing her knees up to her chest in the fetal position. “I…I don’t know what to say.”

  Gray didn’t either. They were pretty much fucked, now, or at least they were as long as they were in the New City. They’d have to go somewhere. The Verge, maybe. Somewhere. Or rather, he would have to go somewhere. She didn’t have to get dragged into this any further. “I’m going to drop you off at your apartment,” he said as they proceeded down the street. “You don’t need to be a party to this.”

  “What?” She sat up again, staring at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m going to drop you off,” he repeated. “And then I want you to call the police. Get yourself clear. We’re gonna stop at a cashpoint terminal, and I’m going to pull as much cash as I can from it – then I’m going to give you the majority of it. Get away from here, go to college, just…please, get the fuck away from all of this.” This wasn’t what he wanted, but he needed to save her – protect her. It was never even a question, just hard fact for him. “I’m not going to take no for an answer, either, so you might as well not fight with me. Maybe I can get this straightened out, come back to you.”

  Angie didn’t say anything for a little bit. She sat there staring at her knees now, tears glittering in her eyes. He’d made her cry twice now, and Gray knew he was beyond forgiveness for it. “And if you can’t?”

  “Well.” Gray took a deep breath. “Then at least we had this time together.”

  “I love you, you know.” She whispered it now, her eyes closing tight. He knew she would do what he asked of her.

  “I love you too, honey. Here, we’re coming up to the cashpoint.”

  He stopped the car and got out, ran across the street to the terminal sitting there, and withdrew an entire paycheck’s worth of cash before coming back to the car. Angie was still sitting there, tears falling onto her lap.

  “Here.” Gray counted out a couple hundreds for himself from the cashpoint’s envelope, then pushed the rest into her hands. She took them, but she didn’t say anything.

  They drove for a little while longer, closer and closer to White Center, to her home. Where he’d never see her again. He thought about her being gone, how he’d never sleep with her again – he thought about how much he loved her now, how her scent filled the cabin, easing him, making him feel so good even through the agony and trauma of the night. Finally, when they were heading down Sixteenth Avenue and the last leg of their journey, she spoke.

  “I killed him, you know,” she said. “Ron I mean.”

  He took a deep breath, let it out again. “I know,” he said, and it surprised him a little to realize that he had always known, deep down. But it didn’t surprise him a bit to know that he didn’t care.

  “He was trying to give me money,” she said, “And I wouldn’t take it, saying I wouldn’t have part in blackmail except for what he was forcing me to do – and he got angry, and he slapped me. I didn’t know what to do, so…I pushed him against the wall. He hit his head, and…” Angie closed her eyes tightly again, the tears coming once more. “I didn’t mean to, but he was dead, and then I heard someone coming, and I–”

  “It’s all right.” Gray shook his head. “The money had a bomb in it. A ribbon of plastic explosive set to detonate at a specific temperature.”

  She looked at him, shocked. “You mean, he was going to kill me?”

  Gray nodded. “Yeah,” he said, guiding the car along. “You’d have been dead, and we’d never have met.”

  “But then you’d never be–” She stopped and let out a sob.

  He reached over with his free hand and stroked her thigh, saying, “It’s all right, sweetheart. This will be all over soon, and I’ll do my very best to make sure that we’ll meet again. I promise you that.”

  He dropped her off in front of her place. They didn’t speak again, though he thought it was best that way. As he pulled away, he watched her staring, knowing that he left with her the best parts of him that he’d ever had – what drove away was only a shell filled with rage. He’d killed two men, and probably destroyed his career and his life, all because of the fucking machine that he had been so enamored with, so driven to serve and exploit. And now what? It had eaten him instead, and would continue to do so until there was nothing left. Not unless he could do something about it. Either way it went, however, Angie didn’t need to be involved.

  As she disappeared from the rearview, he knew he had made the right decision. In time, so would she.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  It had taken a little over a half an hour from when Gray left his apartment to give up everything that was ever important to him. In that time, he had left his apartment after killing Gauge and Moody, dropped Angie off for what may very well have been the last time, and drove to the St. Marks’ where he had picked Angie up in the first place. He had taken the keys to her room before he’d dropped her off, and she wouldn’t be expected to check out until the coming morning. Gray would go there to hole up, to think about what he’d done, and where to go from there.

  And what had he done? Killed two men who were threatening his lover and himself. Righteous self-defense. That’s what he told himself to get him through the drive, to get him up the stairs to the little room, to collapse onto the bed and lay gasping as he stared at the ceiling. What he’d really done was kill two men who weren’t threatening him at all – just Angie, which he wasn’t altogether certain counted as self-defense or anything other than straight up second-degree murder. Nothing that went on in his apartment was outside of the standard menu of interrogation; strong-arming a suspect into talking was hardly uncommon, and it wasn’t as if ethics were the strong suit of Civil Protection in the first place. No, what he’d really done – if he were honest with himself – was protect the woman who he loved so fiercely, whose scent still hung in the air from when they’d made love on the bed in which he lay.

  Gray twisted himself up in the sheets, the sheets that smelled so much like the love he now thought lost, and felt hot shame and anger welling up inside of him. There were no tears, which surprised him, only a hardening anger that felt as if it might turn his flesh into stone. He lay there for a little longer before there was a knock at the door.

  “Dan.” Carter’s voice, calm and quiet, came in from the hallway. “Dan, it’s me. Brutus. Let me in.”

  And just like that the hard shell of anger c
racked, letting in fear. Gray sat up carefully, saying nothing. He reached for his bag, wondering if he should pull one of the guns out of it – but this was Carter, not Moody or some ass from Vice come to shoot him in revenge. Worst thing that Carter would do would be to arrest him, not that this was remotely positive.

  “Come on, Dan, let me in. I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you.”

  Gray got to his feet. Yeah, Carter was right. Going out the third floor window would mean a leg broken if he wasn’t ridiculously lucky – at least Carter was being polite. If this were a more modern building, his badge would just put him through. He could just kick through the old wood, anyway.

  “I’m coming,” Gray said, and he walked to the door. He stood to the side, by the doorjamb, and pulled it open. There were no shots, no gas grenades rolling in – just Carter, his expression neutral.

  “Hey,” Gray said, and stepped aside to admit him.

  Carter entered, followed by Megan Cinders, and then by Jack Marowitz. Before anyone realized it – the least of which being Gray himself – he had tackled Jack and had him flat on his back, hammering at his face with his fist. “You motherfucker,” Gray was roaring, his mind disconnected from his body as if by an invisible tether. “I’ll kill you! I’ll fucking kill you!” And it’s true, he would have, had Carter not taken out the stunner from his pocket and put a jolt into the base of his neck; the discorporation he felt was something new, as was the strangely clinical way in which he thought as he watched himself batter Marowitz’s face and then fall to the ground senseless as the stunner did its work. In the darkness that flooded in, he thought, Well, that’s twice today. I’ll wake up in a cell for sure.

  He didn’t.

  Instead he woke up on the floor of the hotel room, staring at the ceiling for the second time that night. Staring up at Carter. At the very least he didn’t have a gun in his belt, and he didn’t look angry – stern, certainly, maybe a little sad, but not angry. Certainly not as angry as Gray’s fist, which throbbed with the pain that comes from repeatedly punching a man in the face.

  “He’s coming around,” said Carter to someone off to the right, and sounded as stern as he looked. Then he looked down at Gray again. “You get that out of your system, Dan? You gonna make me stick a stunner in the back of your head again?”

  “That’d be preferable to a bullet,” Gray muttered. The pain in his fist was only slightly greater than the pain in his head, which had leapt to life the moment his senses fully came to him. “Though with the way my skull feels, that might be just what the doctor ordered.”

  Carter snorted. “You’ve got nothing to say about bullets, young man, considering what you’ve just done.” He offered Gray an arm; Gray took it, and let Carter pull him to his feet. “Now, are you all right?”

  Gray felt equal parts grateful and chagrined – grateful that he wasn’t dead or in a cell, and chagrin for having lost control on Jack like that. The back side of that feeling was that he didn’t kill the fucker while he was at it, because there Jack was, sitting on the bed with a bloody face and a purpled nose. Megan was looking at it, very white in the face.

  “You broke him good,” Carter said, and he gave the slightest laugh before returning to seriousness. “That’ll take a hospital.”

  “It’s less than he deserves,” Gray spat, feeling venom boiling up inside of him again. “He told me he’d given me the only copy of those fucking pictures, and then it turns out he’d given them to Moody. It’s that fucker’s fault–”

  “That you killed Gauge and Moody?” Carter’s brows arched, and his voice was written over with imperiousness. Gray felt himself stiffen up a bit on reflex, like a soldier before a superior officer. “I was listening, Dan, I know what happened – I’ve been listening since we started this case.”

  Gray’s eyes widened slightly. “You?” Well, that answered that question.

  “Yes,” Carter bellowed, “Me! Jack gave Moody those files under my orders. Who the hell do you think you’re talking to, boy? I’m Executive Affairs; we only answer to the Board! EA is the law in this city, the real law – and you’re damned lucky that you’ve signed on with me, Dan, because anyone else would be on the short shot to the freezer for what you’ve done. Because now, ha!” Carter started to pace now, his eyes flashing. “Now I owe you.”

  For a moment, Gray might have been driven back onto the floor, and he wasn’t certain which of Carter’s statements were more likely to have done the job. He had ordered Marowitz to send Moody the pictures? And now he owed Gray? For what? Gray was quiet for a moment, standing there while his nerves reawakened and he was able to better think. “You needed live evidence,” he finally said, understanding sparking up inside his clearing mind. “Something that the recordings would provide.”

  “Moody was too well-connected to be able to dislodge for ruthlessness toward perps and scum,” Carter said with a nod. “But when it was clear he was willing to jeopardize civilians and fellow officers to get what he wanted, that directly connected him to behavior that would threaten the company and contract status. And anyway, there was a lot more in that recording before you arrived – they were going to kill that girl and put the blame on you for it.” He shook his head. “Remember, Dan, Civil Protection is a business; you can skate by for ethics violations so long as it doesn’t make the company look bad, but you get the fucking screws put to you if you fuck with the bottom line.”

  “Like Kate Murdock,” Gray said with a frown. He expected Carter to agree, but the other man only shook his head.

  “Not at all,” he said. “In fact, I just arranged to have her hired again. She’s going back into Pacification Services, this time as one of my agents. She had some very interesting stories to tell about how Pacifiers operate, especially in the Verge.”

  Gray shook his head. “I could have told you that,” he said. “But…I mean, I just killed those men.” He felt no guilt for the deed, and yet the words made it more real for him. He remembered the slug of lead he carried around for killing Lindsay Yin, however crazy she might have been. For these men, however, he felt absolutely nothing – whatever they had done, or planned to have done, he couldn’t summon up the anger. There was worse than nothing, there was a void inside of him. That scared him more than incarceration ever would.

  “Look,” Gray said, “Where do we go from here?”

  “That depends.” Carter looked past Gray to where Marowitz and Megan sat. “Well, Meg?”

  Gray turned to look at them; Megan had a device in her hand, a chrome wand with a holographic display projecting out of its upper surface. Graphs and figures floated there, spelled out in bright green light. Megan looked between the two men and nodded. “Definitely,” she said. “He’s definitely dosed.”

  “Dosed.” Gray looked back to Carter, confused. “What does she mean, dosed?”

  Carter’s face had become grim again. “Do you trust me, Dan?”

  The words came out of his mouth before he had time to think of them. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, do you trust that I’m not going to dump you in the freezer straight away?”

  Gray looked into Carter’s face for a long moment. “Yeah,” he finally said, though he didn’t feel it entirely. “I do.”

  “Then put your arm out.” Carter reached into his pocket, producing a flat silver case, like an old-fashioned cigarette pack.

  “What is it?” Gray put his arm out, eyeing the case as if it were going to bite him.

  Carter opened the case and produced a large dermal patch from inside. “Just a little thing to settle you,” he said, pulling the protective membrane from the back of the patch. “Pull your sleeve up.”

  Gray looked at the patch for a long moment, considering. Did he have much choice? No, he really didn’t. “All right,” he said, pulling up the sleeve of his hoodie and exposing his forearm, wrist-up. “Here.”

  “Good man.” Carter sealed the patch against the skin just below Gray’s wrist, then took a step back. “Ho
w does that feel?”

  “How does–” But the sensation was on him all at once. It was strange, really; he tasted metal in his mouth, and his limbs felt slightly wooden – but the anger was gone, and so was the pain. He stood there for a moment as waves of calm came down over him like warm water, and then there was no sensation at all.

  “I feel…very strange,” Gray said.

  “That’s the Solunex,” Carter said. “You’ll feel better in a minute.”

  “Solunex,” Gray repeated. The word sounded oddly…musical, like each syllable rang a chime in his head. He stared at Carter, unable to speak again as the tones rang in his head – until all once they vanished, and he found he had sensation once again.

  “Solunex,” Carter said when Gray had snapped out of the fugue. “Yeah, it’s an antipsychotic, among other things. You okay?”

  Gray blinked twice. “I…I think so,” he said. “What was that all about?” It was as though he was a different person, one that he recalled only in distant memory. “What’s going on?”

  Carter looked past him again, at Jack and Megan. Jack sat sullenly, holding the ice against his broken nose. Megan seemed to be calming down a little, though that ceased when Carter said, “Meg, why don’t you tell him?”

  Megan’s dark eyes danced between Gray and Carter for a moment. “Do you recall,” she began, her tone very cautious, “The drug that we found on the Spine Thief bodies?”

  “Yeah.” Gray looked down at the patch on his arm. “This isn’t it, is it?”

  Megan shook her head. “If it’d been Solunex in their system we’d have picked it up – anyway, it would have had very different effects. I don’t know where that chemical’s come from, but it’s a form of neurotoxin. Very complex, very advanced.”

  “A neurotoxin.” Gray eyed the patch on his arm again. He had a very sinking feeling. “What does that stuff do, anyway?”

  “Well from what we can tell,” Megan began, “It dopes you – remember, I said that it did? – by affecting the Type Four cannabinoid receptors. It breeds a sensation of intoxication, but it also makes the affected party extremely open to suggestion. That is to say, it’s kind of like the so-called zombi drug. The drugs are tailored; each dose is tagged for two specific parties – a master and a slave, for lack of a better term. After a sufficient level of exposure, the ‘slave’ subject will do anything the ‘master’ asks, even if they’re not in the same room. Delayed programming is possible. The problem is, of course, that it apparently causes mental instability in its subjects, often of the most violent kind, when the possibility arises that the ‘master’ may be threatened. And then, in some subjects…”