“Stop.” Rangers’ glare hardened with disgust. He wanted to reach across the table and shake the boy. “Those aren’t your friends, kid, understand? Do you even know why they called you Dirt? Huh?”
Dirt shook his little gravy-slopped face innocently.
“That’s because they thought you weren’t good for nothin’. All kids are good for somethin’, even you. Understand me? And we’re gonna start over by giving you a new name. A good name, cuz I ain’t callin’ ya Dirt.”
“Really? A new name, Rangers? No foolin’?” Dirt gaped at him, gravy running down his arms now. Dirt was practically bathing in the stuff and getting it everywhere, and he’d never been happier than he was at that moment with Rangers at the diner. “Does this mean we’re a team now?”
Nearly spitting out his food, Rangers answered, “Get a grip, kid. I work alone.”
“Hey, not fair. I’m good for stuff, remember? You said—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know what I said, but you don’t want to do what I do.”
“Why not? You’re the hero of Gravity City. You’re Johnny—”
“WE INTERRUPT THIS BROADCAST TO BRING YOU BREAKING NEWS!” the voice boomed from the TVs.
Everyone in the joint clammed up and focused their attention on the screens. “Good evening, everyone.” The anchor’s face appeared on every screen in the room. “Famous Stardust Street starlet, Roxy Raven, was found dead in her apartment late this evening. We have no further details at this time. We now return you to your scheduled program.”
SCORE!
SCORE!
The game blared back onto the screens. The visiting team had scored, and suddenly the arena teetered on anarchy. Patrons all around hissed and moaned because they missed it due to some person dying.
“Clean yourself up, kid. We gotta go,” Rangers said, and tossed money down onto the table.
V
What glitters ain’t always gold.
Rangers and Dirt made their way to Roxy’s on Stardust Street within five minutes, blazing through every red light and nearly striking several pedestrians along the way. Rangers might have accidentally clipped the squeegee-bot for the third time this week down on 36th Drive when it ran out into the middle of the intersection to wash his windshield. The damn thing never learned.
There was already a scene brewing outside of Roxy’s apartment building when they arrived: a fleet of police cruisers, news vans, the meat wagon, a news chopper hovering above it all, and a crowd sticking around to get a glimpse of the corpse.
You’d think these people had never seen a dead body before.
Rangers parked around the corner, away from all the fanfare. “Look, you stay here. There ain’t nothin’ here you need to see, understand?” he told Dirt. “Keep the doors locked and the windows rolled up. I’ll be back soon. Don’t move.”
Dirt smiled. “Can I play with the radio while you’re gone?”
Rangers grumbled something before shutting the door.
“Come on! All of ya’s move back, will ya!” one officer barked at the mob, which was spilling over the sidewalk and onto the crime scene.
Rangers flashed his badge, coming in under the police tape, and the junior officers practically dove out of his way.
Rangers followed two cops up to Roxy’s apartment on the thirty-sixth floor. The Canine Droid Units were already making their rounds inside, taking turns sniffing and scanning each room.
“The neighbor didn’t hear anything,” Rangers heard an officer say to another in passing. “I got nothin’.”
“No need to be here, Rangers. It’s just your standard Saturday Night Special. Overdose,” Sgt. Beta mumbled, not bothering to look up from Roxy’s body when Rangers entered the bedroom.
“White noize,” Detective Fin Samconi said, holding up a little clear bag with crystal residue in it. “Turns out this one here is a little more high profile. One of the neighbors said the door was left wide open when they found her; says she was the head dancer at Buddy Crackers’ new club, Cosmos Cabana or somethin’. Roxy Raven. Name sound familiar?”
“Why didn’t you call me in on this first?” Rangers asked Beta over the sound of flashbulbs popping.
“If I ever knew where to reach you, maybe I would have.”
There she was, laid out on the bed in a white nightgown for the medical examiner to gawk at with his camera before tagging and bagging her. Rangers bent in over the bed to get a closer look at the body.
Yep, that’s her. Roxy was still an eyeful, even in death.
“This ain’t no overdose,” Rangers said.
“What makes you say that?”
“The dame was with me earlier at Blug’s,” Rangers confessed as he lit up a smoke.
Beta shook his head at Rangers like he’d just stepped in a big pile of shit. It was better to let Rangers explain himself first than to say another word.
“It ain’t nothin’ like that, sarge,” Rangers added. “She came to me lookin’ for help. Big Otis and his boys tailed her into the bar. She was shook up good about somethin’.”
“Go on. You’re saying they did this?”
“Naw,” Rangers answered. “They couldn’t have. I had a little dance with the boys in the alley, and she took off. They did say somethin’ about watchin’ her for Tony Beepers, though.”
“For Jets?” Beta’s eyes narrowed. “Did they say why?”
“No,” Rangers answered. “But this sure as hell was a kill. And when I finally get a hold of Jets, I’m gonna—”
“Don’t think about doing anything stupid, Rangers. This is Jets we’re talking about, and we don’t even know if he had anything to do with this. We’re going to have to wait for forensics to—”
“Sir, we got somethin’,” one of the rookies from Squad interrupted. Murphy entered the room wagging something at Beta.
“What is it, Murphy?”
Murphy handed Beta a book of matches he’d found on the sofa with COSMOS CABANA imprinted on them.
“The victim worked there. We know that much,” Beta told him, and then tossed the book of matches back at the rookie. “It doesn’t tell us anything.”
“Right, but take a look.” Murphy shined a blacklight and showed Beta the book of matches again. “See? Traces of Vermicide, and we got prints covered in the stuff. It’s all over the apartment. Let me show you somethin’ else.”
The rookie pulled a tablet from his back pocket and called up the digital samples of prints onto the screen. “The CDUs just got these. The shoe prints are fresh; the Vermicide’s a little older. I’d say less than twenty-four hours old.”
“Last night’s heist,” Rangers threw in.
“Dealers have been cutting up the junk with the Vermicide,” Samconi added. “I heard it gets the addicts really cranked up, especially the droids. Maybe she got a bad dose of it.”
Roxy was no addict. These knuckleheads have it all wrong.
“But what’s the heist and the girl have to do with each other?” Beta wondered, and then to Rangers, he said, “And why’d they want her dead?”
“There’s only one way to find out.” Rangers turned and headed for the door with an inferno burning in his eyes.
“Rangers,” Beta called out after him, “don’t make this personal.”
“It’s always been personal.”
On his way back out on to the street, Rangers spotted the jerk who’d been digging into him on the news all week: Wally Bright of the XYZ2 News team. He was all smiles while getting ready to go live in front of the cameras. Rangers was going to leave it alone until he overheard the reporter announce Roxy’s death as an apparent suicide on live television.
That son of a . . . That’s it.
Rangers pushed his way back through the crowd to Bright, yanked the microphone out of the reporter’s hand, and clubbed him over the head with it. Wally Bright went down like a bag of hammers in front of the cameras. The crowd went wild. “How’s that for a headline, Numbnuts?”
Bright yowled at
Rangers from the ground. “Screw you, Rangers!” he sobbed, cupping his head with his hands. “I’m gonna ruin you! I’m gonna take you for everything you got! You’re a nobody, you hear me? A nobody! You don’t ever put your hands on Wally Bright…you don’t ever put your hands…Wally…ow, my head!” Wally Bright’s cries faded as Rangers made his way back out of the crowd.
Returning to the car, Rangers noticed the kid was missing. The passenger door was open and the radio was left on.
The kid wouldn’t have bailed, Rangers thought. “Kid?” he called out and then scanned the dark, empty street.
“Dirt? I’m leaving, so you better get your ass back here.” Rangers gave Dirt a minute to answer, but he didn’t show. “I said I’m leaving.” He gave it a few more seconds just to be nice. Another second. “Suit yourself, kid. I’m out of here.”
“Get in the car, pig,” Rangers heard the low voice from behind him. He felt the cold steel press up against the back of his neck, then another against his back, then a third against his ribs: A 12-Gauge propulsion rifle and two Magnum Blasters.
“Sinister Squid,” Rangers said, unsurprised. “I thought I smelled fish.”
“Shut yer trap!” Rangers heard him say before the barrel of the Magnum Blaster cracked him in the temple.
VI
The Gods of Gravity City
Rangers finally came to lying on cold, wet concrete somewhere, dizzy. He brought his hand up to his aching head. He shook it off and smiled. “You idiots still fall for the good ol’ bait trick, don’t ya?” He chuckled, allowing his vision to adjust to the darkness: the bowels of some refinery plant, the smell of Vermicide lingering heavily in the air. “I saw you tailing me after I left the diner, Squid. What took you so long to catch up?”
Sinister Squid stood near the mixing tanks holding a gun in each of his four hands: two down at Dirt’s head, and two akimbo, aimed at Rangers.
“Don’t worry, kid. I got you,” Rangers promised the teary-eyed Dirt. Rangers felt around for the Buster but only felt an empty holster dangling at his side. Sam Slick stood over Rangers with the Buster pointed at him, smiling triumphantly with ugly, black painted teeth.
“Lookin’ fer dis?”
“Hi, Rangers,” Tony Beepers yawned somewhere in the darkness. Rangers heard the heavy wheezing and whirring of Beepers’ body parts—the hydraulic legs and gears working inside his body as he strode up slowly behind him. “You know how this ends, don’t you?”
“Yeah. I go home with your head on my hood and this smelly bastard in my trunk before dumping his sorry ass back in the bay,” Rangers answered. “And you, Slick. I got something real special for ya this time.”
“Not this time, meat,” Beepers hummed. “This time you don’t get to walk away. You and the rest of those groveling humans is what’s wrong with this city and the smell of shit that clings to it. As soon as you return the Cynapse Crystal, I’ll be more than happy to end your miserable human life along with the rest of them.”
“What are you rambling about now, you stupid socket?”
“The Cynapse Crystal! Where is it?” Beepers’ thin metal frame lunged into view and smacked Rangers across the side of the face with his flimsy metallic fist. “The girl had it, and she was with you. Give it to me or watch the kid die!” he shouted, his digital irises turning from hot orange to an angry red.
Squid pushed the barrels into Dirt’s temple to show that they were serious.
An angry little girl could’ve hit harder than this tin-man. “Never heard of it,” Rangers said, wiping his chin.
Beepers drew a pocketknife and a bag of white noize from his dirty leather jacket. He flicked the knife open and used the tip of the blade to shovel a mound of powder up into his nasal cavity.
“Well, allow me to fill you in, then.” He sniffed, twirling and spinning the knife between his fingers. “You see, the Cynapse Crystal is the single most powerful AI micro-implant the droid industry has seen in years. Once injected into the bloodstream, the crystal continuously recalibrates and reconstitutes human DNA to become stronger, faster, and smarter than any machine, making them unstoppable once they finally become…Ultra-Novus. Only one crystal exists, Rangers, and it belongs to Dickey Jets. So where is it?”
“What was with the highway job last night, then?”
“The Vermicide tanker was simply a ruse Axon Research used to transport the crystal between labs.”
“And the girl?”
“A decoy, sent by Dickey Jets...to kill you.”
Rangers muttered something in return. Suddenly, his words sounded muddled inside his head. His shoulders weighed heavily, his skin crawled with pins and needles. He felt like a man in poisoned chains.
Sam Slick anxiously waved the gun at Rangers from above, still smiling with blackened teeth. Doubles of Sinister Squid and Dirt swirled in his vision.
“What did you see when you looked into Roxy’s eyes, Rangers? A lost little girl? Despair? Did she whisper all the nasty little things you wanted to hear? Help me. Help me, Rangers.” Beepers laughed. “Aaaand that’s when she gets ya! One prick of the viper’s kiss and it’s so long, sucker! You’re D-E-D, dead!”
Beepers brought his voice down to a whisper and leaned in close, eye to eye with Rangers. “No, but not you, Rangers. She spared you, and she needed to pay the consequences.”
“What do you mean prick?”
What did he mean by prick?
Rangers’ thoughts raced back to the bar. He saw Roxy’s face, now a ghost staring back at him. “Thank you, Rangers.” She nodded, and then curled her fingers firmly around his wrist. “Thank you, you’re a saint.”
“Lethal injection. Bang. You’re dead. Gone,” Beepers said.
Lethal injection? The dame got me. I don’t believe it. That clever little…wait.
What?
Wait.
Whoa.
That’s…new.
“Shut up for a second, will ya? What’d ya say this crystal thing does?” Rangers tensed, suddenly feeling sparks in his veins, his muscles locking in place, adrenaline racing, everything slowing down in the dark as his heart pounded.
Focus…
Life exploded through him again. Wham!
Beepers was still talking. “…will make men like Dickey Jets a true god… stronger…faster…smarter—”
“Yeah, yeah, unstoppable,” Rangers finished the rest.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Beepers sneered. “Unstoppable.”
“So, if he wanted to, would he be able to do this?” With a single bound, Rangers leapt off the ground and snatched the knife from Beepers’ fingers, then hammered it between Slick’s eyes.
Rangers caught the Buster falling from Slick’s hands and fired at Squid, catching him twice in the shoulder. Squid recoiled and Dirt ran for cover behind a wall of pallets. Squid returned wild fire, accidentally striking Beepers in the back with bullets ricocheting off tanks around them.
Beepers collapsed. Rangers rolled forward and shot in Squid’s direction as Squid withdrew into the darkness.
Rangers caught Dirt’s eye and told him to stay down and stay put.
Rangers listened for Squid. He could hear him heaving in the distance, somewhere beyond the tanks. He could tell he was badly hurt. Two shots from the Buster. He should be dead.
“This won’t be the last time we meet, Rangers!” Squid vowed, and the echo of a door slamming shut followed. Rangers scanned the dark in case Squid tried to double back. No, he was gone. He was sure of it, but he wasn’t going to go after him tonight, not when he had a bigger prize to collect.
“How…?” Rangers heard Beepers whimper behind him. “Why you? Why would she implant you with the Cynapse? Why?” he cried. “You don’t deserve it!”
Beepers struggled to bring himself back to his feet. Fluids and wire spilled from his torso as he clutched his chest. Rangers tucked the Buster back into its holster and went to him.
“Why?” Beepers asked again, his voice choking and dying as he lo
oked up at Rangers. The light in his digital irises grayed and dimmed, racing around in his sockets, searching Rangers’ face, defeated. “I don’t understand.”
Rangers grabbed a hold of Beepers’ metallic skull with both his hands and began to squeeze, dig, lifting him back up off his knees.
“No, what are you doing? Let go of me! You won’t get away with this, Rangers!” Beepers panicked as he felt his head start to buckle inward.
Rangers pushed down on Beepers’ skull even harder. Beepers frantically fought and clawed at Rangers’ face, and his legs kicked beneath him with no hope for escape. “No! Please! Noooo!” Beepers’ electronic screams twisted into high-pitched squeals. “No—you can’t kill—”
Smash! Beepers’ head imploded in Rangers’ hands.
Beepers’ headless body crumpled at Rangers’ feet. “Yes, I can.”
“Rangers?” Dirt stood watching.
“Oh, damn it,” Rangers muttered. “Sorry you had to see that, kid. Are you all right?”
Dirt nodded, still shaking.
“A’right.” Rangers crouched down, plucked Beepers’ neuron chip out of the puddle of brain matter, and stuck it in his pocket. “Are you sure you still want to do what I do?”
Dirt’s face lit up and said, “Yeeaahh, that was so cool!”
It wasn’t the reaction Rangers was hoping for.
Twenty minutes later, Sergeant Beta and Squad finally stormed the refinery. There were no signs of Sinister Squid anywhere, but they did come across Rangers’ ride abandoned down the road, idling on a riverbank, with blood that matched Squid’s trail from the refinery.
The CDUs voraciously made their perimeter sweeps while forensics hauled Beepers and Slick away in the meat wagon. “CDUs in pursuit, headed your way,” the dispatcher echoed from the squad car.
An Axon field rep named Harry shined a light into Rangers’ eyes to see how much of his bell had been rung. “We’ll need to flush out the chip before it completely breaks down in your system. It’s still only a prototype, ya know. It’s not even—”
The Cyborg Chronicles (The Future Chronicles) Page 12
