SINdicate

by J. T. Nicholas

  “Hernandez.” She picked up on the first ring, voice clipped and business-like. I had waited until I knew she’d be in her office.

  “Alternate two,” was all I said, before hanging up.

  It took only a few minutes for Hernandez to call me back, the indicated screen buzzing. I picked up the burner—one to which only Hernandez and, presumably, Silas had the number. “Campbell.”

  “What is it now, Campbell?” Hernandez asked without preamble. “You better not have gotten Tia in trouble, pendejo.”

  “She’s fine. But I need your help. Again.”

  “Shit. You know, some of us still got a regular nine-to-five job to do, right? Brass is all up in my ass. Three-quarters of the department is out looking for you. The rest of us have to pick up the slack.” The words were harsh, but her tone was not. Instead it held a mocking lilt, the kind of tone I always imagined a sibling would have used. “What do you need?” she asked, her voice taking on a more serious note.

  “A gun I can trust at my back.”

  “When and where?”

  Hernandez was good people.

  * * * *

  Silas procured a car, though I did not bother to ask from where. He hadn’t disabled the GPS on this one, though I assumed he had at least tampered with some of the other systems. He punched in the address, and the clunker pulled away from the curb.

  It was a bright, humid New Lyons morning, after the initial surge of rush-hour traffic. The protests were still raging, but they were all focused either downtown around the government buildings or in the richer commercial districts where, should a riot break out, the inevitable looters would be able to get something worthwhile. We had no problems making our way through the streets, and since we were going deeper into the city, no real concerns about checkpoints or roadblocks.

  Still, I kept my head tilted down, with a large screen held in both hands in front of my face, as if I were reading a book or watching a vid. In truth, the screen was blank, but I didn’t want to risk one of the many traffic cams catching a good shot of my face and flagging us. Silas wore the same large overcoat and battered fedora he had worn the first time he’d broken into my apartment, and he, too, kept his head tilted slightly down, masking not only his features but also his unusual skin tone from the eyes in the sky. So far as we knew, no one was looking for him, but paranoia had become a way of life for both of us. Maybe it would have been smarter to leave the city entirely, but Silas’s network, such as it was, was here. And we were safer on ground we both knew, ground where we at least had an idea where the danger might come from rather than risk venturing into unfamiliar territory.

  A liquor store occupied the bottom floor of a ten-story building; the upper floors appeared to be BLS housing—what would, in another time and place, have been called a tenement building. There were a number of people out and about, and as we approached, I caught sight of more than one grinning death’s head tattoo that proclaimed the wearer to be a member of Los Locos Muertos. The liquor store appeared to be doing a brisk business, despite the early hour, and men and women of all ages and descriptions lingered in the streets. We drew hard stares from the gathered people, who recognized us immediately as outsiders.

  As we neared our destination, I verbally directed the car toward the alley behind the building. Hernandez was supposed to meet us here, but so far, I hadn’t seen any sign of her. I kept my eyes glued to the rear camera as we turned the corner. Sure enough, a group of three or four people had broken off from the others and was following us. “We might have trouble.”

  Silas, too, had noticed the men. “I will not be much help in a fight, Detective. Perhaps we should keep driving?”

  I considered it. The alleyway was tucked between two nearly identical buildings on a block made up entirely of the same. I knew from my days on the force that the neighborhood wasn’t one that received great coverage from the eyes in the sky, and the locals in Basic Living housing tended to put paid to any cameras installed by businesses or government entities. The irony, of course, was that the people living on the BLS, while eschewing the surveillance devices the government insisted were there to keep them safe, engaged in self-filming to the same degree as every other part of New Lyons. Driving unannounced into the group and moving immediately out of view was one thing—no one would have had the time or presence of mind to start streaming. But if we circled this neighborhood waiting for Hernandez to show up, it wouldn’t be long before every screen in the area would be pointing at us, sending a feed streaming into the ether. It would only be a matter of time before it tripped some local or federal algorithm searching for the erstwhile Detective Jason Campbell.

  “No,” I said at last. “I’ll just have to deal with them.”

  The car glided to a stop in the alley, and I immediately got out, waving for Silas to do the same. I gave rapid instructions to the vehicle, ordering it to take up a cruising pattern around the neighborhood. I certainly wasn’t going to let it park and remain here unmonitored—no matter what happened in the next few minutes, we would be going into the sewers, and any frustrations that the BLS-ers couldn’t take out on us would certainly be taken out on our vehicle. I also wasn’t going to send it to some safe, and distant, part of town. If we needed to get the hell out of Dodge, I wanted our getaway vehicle close by.

  I glanced to where the three men were just rounding the corner. “Stand beside me for now,” I said to Silas. “Don’t say anything. Just stand there and look intimidating. They probably won’t know you’re a synthetic, but keep your hat low and your head down, just in case. If something happens, move to the side and drop back. Unless it looks like these fuckers are going to kill me, don’t try to get involved. I need you functioning when we go into the sewers.”

  Silas nodded and did as instructed as the car pulled smoothly away. The first image the BLS-ers had of us was two big men, standing side by side, waiting calmly for their approach. I’d learned a long time ago that, when dealing with any would-be thuggery, first impressions were important. At least half of surviving any encounter like the one we were about to have was convincing the attackers that you weren’t prey.

  The three hesitated for only a second before strutting toward us. The cop part of my brain started collecting facts. The first, likely the leader, was black, two inches over six feet, and wiry. Young, perhaps twenty-one, twenty-two. Wearing jeans and an oversized jacket. The jacket made me nervous—there weren’t many weapons that couldn’t be concealed beneath it. The other two were white, one maybe five-ten but carrying a lot of muscle and wearing a tight-fitting T-shirt with no jacket despite the cool weather. The third was short, barely topping five-six, and wearing an oversized hoodie. He moved with the jerky twitches of an addict in need of a fix. On the back of each hand, the tweaker had a grinning death’s head tattoo. At least one, and probably all three, belonged to Los Locos Muertos.

  “You’re in the wrong neighborhood, suit,” the leader said in a deep bass as the three stopped maybe a foot from us. That was good. If anyone was dumb enough to reach for a weapon, they were already close enough for me to do something about it. I felt the weight of my own pistol secured in the holster at my waist. My suit jacket—I still couldn’t shake my standard detective dress—concealed it, but not perfectly. The BLS-ers were either too unobservant to notice or didn’t care.

  I tilted my head to one side, then the other, and settled my weight onto the balls of my feet. I didn’t immediately respond, instead looking the leader directly in the eye. He met my gaze, but I could see the slight nervousness there. Things weren’t going how he had expected, and he was smart enough to sense that something was up. I was walking a tightrope with this encounter—my face had been plastered all over the net, and if any of these three recognized me…

  The leader was opening his mouth, but I cut him off. “This doesn’t concern you,” I said in a low, quiet voice, just above a whisper, forcing him to lean in
involuntarily to hear me. “Turn around and go back to your friends. Nothing we have is worth what you’ll have to go through to get it.”

  “Yeah, man. Yeah,” he said. “Sure. You come here to BLS-land in your fancy suit with your own personal synth in tow, and you expect us to believe you ain’t got nothing. Right. We’ll just turn around and walk away.” Shit. So much for them not noticing that Silas was a synthetic. It had been three on one from the start, but I’d held on to the hope that at least they might think it was three on two.

  The leader turned as if to put action to his words, drawing looks of confusion from his two companions, who seemed more than ready to jump into the fray. I didn’t buy it for a second, and when he spun back around, right hand leading in a wide haymaker, I was ready. Instead of stepping back, I moved at a forty-five degree angle to his line of attack, stepping closer to him. My left hand shot forward, heel of the palm catching him on the point of his bicep, stopping the wild punch cold, while my right palm crunched square into his nose. I used the momentum of his swing, grabbing his arm and the back of his neck, and pivoted, turning his head and right elbow around each other like a giant steering wheel. He went down hard, but I didn’t have time to follow up and finish him. His two friends were already charging in.

  I was vaguely conscious of Silas stepping back, giving me space and trying to maneuver behind me. At least, some still-rational part of my brain thought, if they recognized him as a synthetic, they wouldn’t try to attack him. Well, not until they’d dealt with me. If they did finish me, they might well try to beat or kill him out of pure spite, with exactly the same amount of regret or remorse they would have felt for trashing our car. That was almost enough to make me go for my gun—I could take a beatdown as well as the next guy, but if Silas died, the revolution almost certainly died with him. I really did not want to kill a bunch of bored, angry kids though. Not unless they gave me no choice.

  The one that looked like a meth head had closed the distance while the muscle-bound guy was circling to my left, looking to flank me. The guy I’d thrown down was still down, but he wasn’t out and would be back on his feet soon. I had to move quick. Fighting multiple opponents wasn’t like it was on the net, where the bad guys obligingly come at you one at a time, allowing for defeat in detail. The instant one created an opening, they’d all be on me. I was good—very good if truth be told—but even the best fighters in the world couldn’t reliably fight off three other people. That was the stuff of fiction, and the reason why weapons had been invented.

  Meth Head surged forward, throwing a straight kick with surprising dexterity and flexibility. The heel of his boot came shooting up toward my chest. I outweighed the man by at least fifty pounds, so instead of trying for something fancy, I put my trust in physics. As his foot lashed up, I lowered my arms in front of my chest, holding them tight to my body and close together. My elbows were positioned just beneath my solar plexus, and my fists, palms toward my face, covered me from chin to brow. I stepped forward, into the kick, stealing most of its power and catching the rest on the backs of my forearms. With my arms held tight to my body and the solid connection I had to the ground, I barely felt the blow. My opponent wasn’t so lucky, as the force of his own kick made him stumble backward.

  Again, I couldn’t risk following up and finishing the attacker. The muscle-bound thug was barreling in to try and take advantage of the moment when my attention was on his friend. He lowered his head and charged, arms outstretched before him, looking for a grab. The last thing I wanted was to get tangled up. One-on-one, I could probably beat the guy like a drum if we went to the ground, but my first attacker was back on his feet, and the second had stopped his stumble. If the big guy took me down, it was going to be boots o’clock for sure.

  As he reached for the backs of my legs, looking for a double-leg takedown, I sprawled and slammed both of my palms into his shoulders. I didn’t stop there, though. As soon as I felt the initial jar of contact, I pivoted, one hand slipping up to the back of my assailant’s neck and the other grabbing his triceps. I spun and heaved, and sent the big man bowling directly into the feet of the initial thug, who was charging toward me. The two went down in a heap of tangled limbs and curses.

  I went on the offensive, moving directly toward the surprised meth head, who tried to switch from an angry charge to a panicked backpedal as he realized he was coming in alone. I had height, weight, reach, training, and experience on the young man. It wasn’t even close to a fair fight, but then again, I was outnumbered three to one, so I wasn’t exactly feeling charitable. I threw a jab, which Meth Head blocked easily enough, and followed up with a cross, intentionally throwing it a little too slow and heavy. He took the bait, batting my fist down with his left hand, putting far too much force into the motion. I rolled my arm free, turning the feint into a short, vicious right hook, dropping all of my body weight into the blow. His overextended deflection of my cross left him with his guard completely down, and my fist crashed into his jaw below the ear.

  Meth Head dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes. He wouldn’t be getting up again.

  The leader and Muscle-Head were back on their feet, staring at me with more than a little trepidation. They were pissed—I could see that easily enough. But they weren’t stupid. So far they hadn’t so much as landed a solid hit on me, and I’d bloodied the leader’s nose, tossed the bruiser around like a rag doll, and knocked the third out cold. The leader, with his hard eyes and oversized coat, worried me the most. Tight T-shirt wasn’t carrying anything more serious than a knife, but big coat was giving me a strange look, and his right hand was hovering way too close to his waistband for comfort. I was all but certain he had a gun tucked away beneath that coat, and if he went for it, I wouldn’t have much choice but to respond in kind.

  Blood was streaming freely down his face, and he made no effort to wipe it away. “We gonna kill you now, motherfucker. Then we gonna kill your synth. Then your motherfucking family. Your whole world.”

  I wasn’t really paying attention to the threats, though he at least seemed angry enough that recognizing me from the screens seemed more unlikely now. I kept most of my attention focused on his shoulders, waiting for the twitch of motion that would indicate he was going for a weapon.

  “Or,” I said conversationally, “you can pick up your friend and walk away. While most of us still have the ability to walk. You come at me again, or pull that gun, and I’ll put you down permanently.”

  His eyes widened at my reference to his piece, but he didn’t deny it. At least I knew what I was facing. I flexed my fingers and did quick mental math, trying to determine my best course of action if he went for the gun. I doubted the gangbanger spent much time doing holster work, much less drawing from concealment. I could probably pull my weapon before he did. But probably wasn’t a whole hell of a lot of comfort when bullets were about to fly, and I knew I could close the few feet between us before he could bring a weapon to bear. But only if I moved first. And only if the muscle-bound guy didn’t get in the way. Too many probablys. Too many ifs.

  I saw the leader’s shoulders shift beneath his coat, caught the slight narrowing of his eyes. Shit. The jackass was going to go for it, and someone was going to die.

  “Perhaps now is a good time to point out that law enforcement appears to be arriving on the scene,” Silas said from behind me. His sonorous baritone carried clearly, shattering the silence as effectively as any gunshot. I didn’t take my eyes from the two in front of me, but Silas must have pointed, because they both looked somewhere fifteen or twenty degrees past my right shoulder, deeper into the alleyway. Idiots.

  I didn’t know if Silas was trying to buy me an opening or if the cops really were coming on scene, but damned if I was going to let the chance slip by. I tensed, ready to lunge forward and try to take out the leader before he could reach his weapon, then heard the familiar woop-woop of a siren being pulsed. The gangbangers turned tail
and ran, ignoring their unconscious friend lying in the alley. Honor among thieves and all that.

  Though, to be honest, I had more than half a mind to join them. As much as I didn’t want to shoot a couple of wannabe thugs, I wanted to harm one of my former brothers or sisters in blue even less. If the cops recognized me—and they would—things were about to go from bad to worse.

  “Chill the fuck out, Campbell,” a familiar voice called. “You’re not even looking this way, and I can hear you thinking about killing me all the way over here.”

  “Hernandez,” I said with a relieved sigh as I turned to see the detective standing beside her personal vehicle.

  She surveyed the scene and shook her head, dark locks bouncing around her shoulders. Her eyes took in my slight dishevelment, the quickly retreating backs of the gangbangers, and the unconscious form lying on the ground. “Did you kill him, Campbell?” There was no accusation in her voice, only a mild interest. Her day job was dealing with people like Meth Head, Big Coat, and Muscles, and she had a hell of a lot less sympathy for their plight than I did.

  “I only hit him once,” I said, kneeling beside the man. I checked his pulse: strong and steady. I peeled back one eyelid and watched the pupil respond to the intruding light. “He’ll live,” I said with a shrug.

  “Good. Less paperwork. Now, Campbell, what the fuck am I doing here? And why are you fighting with one of the lieutenants in Los Locos Muertos, anyway?”

  “Ouch. So they were bangers?”

  “Big time,” Hernandez confirmed. She gave me a smirk. “Shit, Campbell, even kicked off the force and hiding from every law enforcement agency in the fucking world, you still managed to get caught up in some other drama. You’re amazing.”