by William Cray
“Variable?”
“Some use black market hacks to genetically enhance themselves for various purposes, mostly sexual. I don’t get it but it’s becoming the vogue thing now a days.” Floss said.
The dome came into view below them. Even in the light of day, the interior was shrouded in long shadows. The darkness highlighted the crash of police lights against buildings inside the dome as they passed over. The lifter circled above the area once outside the dome, looking down through the opaque hexagonal structure of the bubble, then turning to the downwind side of the domes exterior edge, near a ground level landing pad. Floss yelled again, pointing to a covered landing area. “We’ll have to catch a ride to the scene. This lifter isn’t certified to fly inside the dome so we’ll catch a car to the crime scene. One should be waiting for us.”
After touching down, the overpressure system blew out any loose contaminates on the landing pad and the lifter doors slid open. A snap freeze struck Duran’s lungs from the exit into the unheated landing pad, the air painfully cold but breathable. The two ducked into the waiting atmospheric equalizer and within a minute they were in the temperate and breathable atmosphere of the dome.
A uniformed NMCPD officer in a disposable environmental isolation suit over his uniform, waited for them. A breather mask and filter covered his nose and mouth. He escorted them to the black police cruiser just inside. Climbing in the waiting car they sped down the domes narrow avenues, past the automated police barricades restricting non authorized traffic, finally turning down the Industrial Way exit, and heading deeper into the dome. The black cruiser turned onto a narrow street, then decelerated as they approached a gaggle of marked police cruisers and unmarked cars at ground level. The cruiser slid down the street and settled next to a blue and white NMCPD police van. As they got out the driver offered them both an isolation suit. Floss declined but Duran noticed him touch his chrono, checking radiation levels. Foss was obviously conscious of the time he spent exposed, and maybe he had a fixed time limit as well.
All the uniformed officers wore clear plastic isolation suits as they stood at various locations around the scene. One of the cops approached. Floss flashed his badge and the clear-coated cop pointed them towards a low concrete and plaz building that looked like an old corporate apartment, telling them as he pointed, “The crime scene is in the basement.”
As they headed in that direction, near the transit buildings side entrance, a blue and red NMCPD van arrived, and pulled up next to the entrance. The coroner had arrived to collect the unfortunate. Duran and Floss went into the side entrance of the Metro Alloy Apartments, past two uniformed officers, who were busy mounting frame locks on the door.
The entry way was dark and lined with trash and contaminated with dust. The hall was decorated with faded green pastels giving it a sickly color, looking more like an old hospital than the doorway to someone’s home. Duran surmised that the area had been a lower-middle class dwelling for factory programmers or other functionaries.
As they passed, several officers with their hoods back questioned a few of the buildings squatter occupants who shifted nervously back and forth. Their questions were met with blank stares.
They didn’t trust cops. Why should they? Their existence in the Zone was illegal to begin with, and the cops only came in from the safety of the trench when the activities of the Zone interfered with the rest of the city’s sense of security.
Duran could see dim lights coming from the squatter's apartments. “How do they get power?”
Floss pointed to the ceiling. “Most of these buildings have low voltage solar collectors and battery packs for night, plus they leech off the main lines into the trench from the other operational Energy Generating Plants on the surface around the Stratospire.”
Floss continued after they sqeezed past another officer. “A while back there was a plan to cut off the power grid and shut this dome down completely, but the cost was too prohibitive. Poor planning when the city was booming. Same with the water. The reservoir was here long before people lived in the trench so the water lines run up to the domes. Unfortunately Hab Eleven contains the primary utilities hub, so rerouting or shutting it down would cost more money than we have without Imperial subsidies. There’s an entire gang controlled utilities industry here with payoffs to city managers down in the trench. Humanitarian groups provide some food and basic healthcare for squatters. They prevent the city managers from shutting off basic life support for the entire contaminated sector and finally closing it down. It’s the only reason people can still survive in here.”
Floss looked around, “If you call this surviving.”
Following Floss, Duran reached the basement stairway. A man wearing an isolation suit over a gray redcoat intercepted them as they started down. Floss exchanged greetings with the skinny Pac-Rim cop whose stringy blonde hair seemed out of place.
“Duran this is Detective Mukoa, New Meridian City P.D.”
Mukoa stood in front of them, shaking his head, his eyes downcast. “I've never seen anything like this. What is the world coming to?”
“What have you got?”
Mukoa continued to look down, still shaking his head, “Variable mother and her half born daughter, both deceased. We think electrocution was the final cause of death for the mother. The daughter… you can see for yourself. I don’t understand this.” Mukoa looked at his watch. “You better hurry, we'll be pulling out when the coroner is done.” Mukoa continued up the stairs, visibly shaken.
Duran followed Floss down the remaining stairs and around a left turn to the basement. The quiet shuffle of feet and the pop of a strobe flared ahead. Duran could smell the burnt flesh and decay from the stairs. Floss halted, turning away, his eyes watering. Duran could taste the stench. The foul air seemed to come from a time before.
As they entered the basement, they were met with muted murmurs in the partial darkness. The sound of someone wrenching out the contents of their stomach on the floor interrupted the hushed conversation. A booming voice blasted the weak and sickened soul who could bare the vile scene no more.
“You…Get the fuck out of here! You are puking all over my crime scene! Get out now! That goes for the rest of you too. If you can’t swallow your vomit and do your fucking jobs get the fuck out of here! And I mean right fucking now!”
A large, heavyset man pointed to the doorway as Duran and Floss emerged from it. The uniformed officer that blew his omelet stood in the corner spitting the contents of his mouth into the pool of vomit at his feet. He meekly headed towards the door, puke and snot running down the front of his isolation suit with the mask pulled over his forehead. Another man, this one a plain-clothes detective followed. The big man centering the room followed them with his eyes, until he saw Duran and Floss enter through the door. Turning his wrath on the two new usurpers he bellowed, “Stay out of the way Floss. We have to be out of here in ten minutes. I'll talk to you when we're done.” Then taking a second look he noticed Duran and shot, “Who are you?”
Floss responded. “Captain Delk, meet Special Agent Rory Duran, Ministry of Codes and Enforcement.”
Delk turned his bulk towards them, opening his mouth as if he was about to say something derogatory, but withheld it at the last moment. The room became silent except for the muffled hum of the imager. Four additional men remained stationed around the room. One was directing the imager, another kneeling with a pair of rubber gloves reinforcing the hands of his isolation suit, picking up and placing a common kitchen knife into a plastic bag, smearing the inside of the bag with the gore left on the blade. The men in the room shuffled silently around the object of their horror. Duran and Floss took a step to either side of Captain Delk, clearing their view to the morbid object in the center of the room.
Duran couldn’t define the mass of flesh in the strobe of the imager’s lights. At first, he couldn’t separate the two forms, but then realized the forms were entwined together in a collage of flesh and blood. The terror of his dre
ams manifested themselves in front of him through torn flesh and abomination.
Duran stepped forward in morbid fixation until Delk stopped him, extending his arm across the intervening support beam. Duran looked to the burned flesh of a young woman. Her eyes were black and bugged out of her skull, her hair was singed and her partially clothed body still smoked. This hadn’t happened long ago. The leads from the batteries that stored the excess power from the building’s solar cells ran into her body, still held there by her blackened hands. The tortured remains of the woman were only the backdrop to the true horror.
The charred flesh of a premature baby lay across her bloody stomach. The child's umbilical cord was wrapped around its pitifully small neck, strangling its unfulfilled life. The mother had a few minor deformities, but the child looked perfect, completely free of Phelman's curse, which only contributed to the tragedy before them. She had cut the child out of her womb.
Duran stared at the horror, transfixed by its brutality and complete lack of any human connection to what he was seeing. He knew people did horrible things to each other. He had seen it, and even participated in it. But never a mother to her child. Not like this.
The others in the room stepped cautiously around the two tortured beings. The silent hum of the imager, the unsure sliding of feet on the coarse floor and the muffled coughs of the sickened occupants were the only sounds in the room. The dark and closed space was choked by the smell. Duran tried to concentrate, to reach out with his talent, and feel for the contamination of the Intruder. No human mind could be capable of this. He had to close his eyes to focus, but closing them did not take away the scene in front of him. After a moment he gave up. The dream was real. It was real. He knew that much. What was the connection?
The coroner made his way in with a gurney following behind, breaking the silent vigil. Duran waited for a loud outburst from Delk. But it didn’t come. Instead he held up his hand, stopping the man with the imager and his assistant. The man imaged a few more seconds, then nodded.
“Ok, Doc,” Delk said to the coroner, “It's all yours.” He barked at the remaining people in the room. “Everyone out, we've seen enough here.”
The forensic team turned and carried their equipment up past them. Delk, Duran and Floss remained. The coroner and their assistant started their morbid work of preparing the bodies to move. Delk looked at Duran, who continued to stare at the bodies.
“We got the call about a hour and twenty minutes ago from one of the geeks up stairs. He said the lights started flickering so he came down here to check on the generators. When he comes down here he finds the girl slow roasting on the batteries. She wasn't dead yet, but he figures the child was already deceased. He said the woman just sat there frying with the cable leads running into her open womb, like you see there.” He pointed to the electrical lead still in her black hands.
“Instead of shutting the power off he runs back upstairs, grabs his boosted percom and calls us, which is a minor miracle itself.” Delk continued. “The first unit got here about thirty minutes ago and shut off the power.” Floss watched as the coroner's assistant double-checked to see that the power was off before pulling the cable from her fractured hands. As he did, flesh pealed away with the now disabled line.
Floss turned away at the sight of the pink flesh beneath blackened hands. “How did this happen?”
Delk shrugged his shoulders. “The girl feels the labor pains and goes into contractions early. She comes down here because the light is better and tries to give birth by herself. She grabs a knife on her way out to cut the cord, only something goes wrong. The baby is not coming out because the umbilical cord is wrapped around its neck. She is still strung up on a Max high so she decides that she is going to have to give herself a C-Section with the knife. She fucks it up and winds up strangling the baby with the umbilical cord and in her anguish she grabs the power cables and kills herself.”
Floss shook his head in frustration, “Come on Eugene, you aren’t going to put that bullshit in your report are you?”
Delk shot back, “Don’t give me that Bad Max bullshit again.”
Floss fired back, “There is something out there killing these people. You need to wake up.”
“Where is the evidence, Lieutenant? You haven’t shown me anything concrete from your department. I've been tearing this shithole apart for three weeks looking for this phantom drug lab and have found nothing but a bunch of whacked out geeks using the same old shit. And now you’ve got M.C.E. involved?” He turned to Duran, a look of utter insult and displeasure on his face.
Duran remained quiet, watching the coroner and assistant handle the two deceased. They sloughed the mother’s arms away from the child and roughly straightened the woman’s body to fit easily in the body bag.
Delk shook his head. “Nothing but a bunch of burned out geeks.” He turned and walked up the stairs. “My time is up.”
Floss took one more glimpse back at the bodies, then followed him up.
Duran stood there, his focus returning, feeling for the Intruder. Nothing, emptiness. Only the shadows remained. Duran opened his eyes, watching the coroner grimace as he pulled the unborn infants blue and purple body from the ruined lap of the woman. Duran couldn’t watch anymore, the baby was coming apart. He went upstairs.
As they walked up the stairs he found a half opened pack of non-filtered cigarettes sitting on the railing. He picked them up and slid them into an inside pocket. He didn’t think the owner would be coming down here to retrieve them anytime soon.
At the top of the stairs he came up on Floss and Delk having a heated discussion over what sounded like jurisdiction. As Duran approached, the two got quiet.
Duran didn’t hesitate in interrupting, assuming the role he had been tasked to play in order to accomplish his mission. “Captain Delk, was anyone seen near the victims prior to their deaths?”
Delk looked at him. “Like who?”
“I'm looking for a third individual. Someone who wouldn’t fit in.”
“No one fits in down here Agent Duran.”
“Ask your men to check on it please.”
Delk nodded indifferently, “What do you think I’ve been doing here for the last hour? You think it was a murder too?”
“I'm not ruling anything out Captain.”
Delk folded his arms across his chest. “Is M.C.E. assuming responsibility on this case?”
Duran responded flatley. “I'm here on another case that may have ties to this one, but,” he continued. “The Ministry is actively following this case. It has the attention of the Commonwealth. Anything you and your department can do that results in the resolution of these terrible acts, suicide or not, will be recognized by the M.C.E. and Parliament.”
Delk nodded. “I'll forward our reports to your office. But I don’t give a damn who recognizes what, as long as I don’t have to come down here anymore for this shit.”
Duran forced a smile, “Please send your information to me through
the Constabulary. That will keep everyone in the loop.”
Having to relay all his information through LTC definitely rankled Delk, but he recognized he didn’t have a choice that wouldn’t come with consequences. Delk grumped, “I'll send my report.”
“Thank you Captain.”
Delk turned before leaving. “You know Duran, I was down here the other night for your partner.”
Duran looked back, stone entering his veins for an instant.
Delk continued, a smirk on his face. “You sure he wasn’t fucking around, trolling for some weird pussy with all the animals.”
“You have something to add to his investigation?”
“Maybe. One of my narcs peeped him. Maybe smashing ass with one of the local starlets down here one night last week outside the clubs. Know anything about that?”
“No.”
“Ok. Well, I’ll put the tag in with my reports. Maybe you can learn something from it. Imperial assholes stick out down here in the Zon
e. They’re an easy mark, jigjobs or not.”
Jigjob was a derogatory term for the cyborg soldiers sent by the Emperor to put down the Red Revolution. After the rebellion had been crushed, lone operators remained behind to infiltrate separatist cells, giving them up to the loyalist hit squads that performed the Emperors street justice. A lot of loyal Imperial soldiers were smelled out and killed, some publicly. They called them jigjobs because they were often ripped apart and left in pieces to be swept up.
Duran didn’t rise to the bait, but it burned inside him.
The three men stood in silence as the coroner and his assistant transported the mother and her child by on a small lift cart. The cart slid into the van and the coroner’s assistant slammed the doors shut.
Delk quipped, “I wouldn’t want their job now.”
Floss shot back, “When they are done with the bodies, they don’t see them again Captain. Every morning I go to work I see pictures of all of them right in front of my face. This has got to end.”
Captain Delk inflated, about to let out an enormous outburst. But instead he said, “Don’t you think I know something is going on Lieutenant. But I deal in facts I can take the magistrate. Right now I don’t have squat that connects these people. If you or Codes and Enforcement has something concrete, then I'm the first one on the bandwagon.”
Floss stared back. “It's there, but it will take more than an hour at a time to find it.”
Delk motioned with his arm to the surrounding platoon of cops as he turned and headed back to his car. Ten seconds later only Duran and Floss stood on the street outside.
Duran turned to Floss. “We should go.”
Floss shook his head, “Not yet. I want to check a couple of things unless the radiation concerns you.”
“I was more worried about you Lieutenant.”
Floss glanced his wrist meter. “I’ve got time.”
They poked around the crime scene for another half hour, checking out the generator room before going through the victim’s apartment. The apartment was a wreck, but geeks weren’t known for their cleanliness. There was nothing that could shine more light on the deaths.
