And there was one other conversation to be had.
Eddi took another sip of her Pom. A merchandised version of pomegranate juice. It was supposed to be good for her, but she wasn’t sure how. The nutritional benefits were vaguely stated on the bottle. But Eddi was working on eating more healthfully as her physical activity was going to be greatly curtailed for the near future. Her ankle and wrist were quite jacked, and in her physical therapy she was still working on mobility. That is, a so-called therapist who was little more than the devil in disguise traveling among the unsuspecting under the obsequious name of Bonnie would spend about twenty minutes heating Eddi’s mangled joints while talking Eddi through the slight increase in degree she was going to manipulate Eddi’s injuries over the previous day. And then Bonnie would do the manipulating.
Eddi would do some screaming.
She’d taken a lot of hurt as an MTac, and more than she’d expected in her short time at DMI. She could remember grunting and groaning at various times. Couldn’t recall any out-and-out screaming. Not that she was a tough guy. She chalked up lack of shrieks to adrenaline, focus—getting hurt but not letting the hurt take her off her game. Or maybe she’d screamed like a girl time and time again, but had excised the memory to make herself feel tough.
She’d remember, always, tribulations under the touch of Bonnie.
Then came Tashjian. Walking up the street for his house, not breaking stride as he saw Eddi parked on the steps of his porch. No matter what’d happened last time she greeted him, what she’d done to him, no matter his ear was a fright—looked like the pull toy of a junkyard dog—he did not visibly react to Eddi’s presence other than to say, regarding her drink: “Is that stuff any good? I see it all the time, but I can never quite get myself to try it.”
“You’re a cool customer, know that?”
“How exactly should I react, Officer Aoki? Are you going to maul my other ear? Out in public, top of the evening, are you going to pistol-whip me again, threaten my life? It’s not that I wouldn’t put it beyond you. Killing me. But I think you’d pick a better opportunity than here and now.”
Eddi quietly conceded Tashjian was right.
He took up a spot next to her.
Eddi asked: “Were you trying to give Soledad payback for squirreling away from you before? You put her in a situation with bad intel hoping she’d get killed. I mean this was . . . this just worked out perfect for you.”
“I did not want Officer O’Roark dead.”
“Whatever you really knew about what was happening at DMI you held it back from Soledad. Held it back from me.”
“That’s assuming you regard Tucker Raddatz with complete trust.”
No doubt from Eddi. “I do. No matter how he was going about the job, right or wrong, I know for a fact his version of things is the true version.”
“He led a cadre inside the Los Angeles Police Department that was friendly to metanormals.”
“You’ve always known. I don’t have to tell you. All I’m trying to figure: Did you want Soledad dead, Raddatz dead, or best of both worlds, they cancel each other out?”
“There is one other possibility.”
A little laugh. Eddi settled back as much as the concrete would allow. This, Tashjian’s reality, she wanted to hear.
“There is the possibility I knew that Raddatz was, is, sympathetic to metanormals. There is the possibility I knew that whatever Raddatz and his cadre were proceeding against was . . . well, it was beyond them. Did I know, did I suspect the perp was a self-enhanced normal human? Absolutely not. Regardless, that Raddatz was working above his station was obvious. But how to help Raddatz without exposing the fact that he was aiding those he was supposed to be enforcing the law against? Send in another player. Perhaps the most formidable one in the Los Angeles Police Department. Give her enough information to make the situation seem plausible and hope against hope that once inside, if not converted by Raddatz, she would be in position to aid him. What I could not count on, but I guess I should have realized: There was something even superior to Soledad O’Roark. What I also could not count on, but I guess I should have hoped: There was someone superior to both. I did not plan on you, Officer Aoki. But I do thank God for you.”
Eddi heard that last part but didn’t take it in any particular way. Really, before Tashjian was halfway through with his spin Eddi already knew what she was going to come back at him with.
“The problem with that,” she said like she was stating the obvious (to her she was), “is that you’d have to be soft for metanormals.”
“Didn’t you used to refer to them as freaks?”
“I think if it was to your advantage, you’d have sympathy for them. You’ve sold your soul so many times the devil wouldn’t want it. But there’s no advantage to backing them. There’s nothing for you to gain, no reason for you to be on their side. So I think you’re full of shit.”
“Eddi . . .”
His being familiar with her sounded very weird to Eddi’s sensibilities.
Tashjian said: “There’s so much to be gained, and there is so very much to be lost. Revelation is coming . . .” He turned his head slightly, peeled back the bandage that covered his ear. The ear Eddi had mangled with her dentition. Gave Eddi a real good look. Tashjian put forth the slightest amount of effort—a kid making faces on the school yard—and the torn, misshapen lobe filled itself out, formed new cartilage and flesh and blossomed fresh. It held an intact shape for a moment—for just a moment—then reverted to looking as Eddi had re-created it.
“The truth,” Tashjian said, “will set us free.”
Tashjian took Eddi’s Pom bottle, took a drink of the stuff. The twist of his lips said he didn’t particularly care for it.
Eddi kept up a stare at his ear.
To Eddi: “I will see you later, Officer Aoki.”
Tashjian got up from the steps, got himself inside his house.
I’m not going to say . . . I’m not going to say I’m stunned. I quit being stunned years ago. I quit having my sense knocked from me that day about three months after San Francisco when the government announced that they were going to stop trying to do any DNA testing to identify remains because there basically were no remains to get tested in the devastated part of the city. I’d lost my father, but I’d never really have any . . . closure is a word I’ve come to hate. The psychologists always sling that around as if at some point you can shut the book on tragedy, on loss. Do this and you can break with your hurt. Do that and you can move on from the past. Anyone who talks about closure is either some unfeeling bastard or someone who’s never once in their life truly suffered loss. My intimate relationship with the incredible will forevermore be unaltering.
So something getting the best of Soledad, Raddatz working with the metanormals, a human making himself over into a metanormal, Tashjian being a metanormal. Me using metanormal over the F-word . . .
None of that is incredible to me.
It’s only daunting.
Like Raddatz’d said: Power always is. And information is power. And I had a lot more, a shitload more info than most people walking around.
What to do with it? That’s the question.
You don’t go into the fight asking questions. You can’t. You can’t hesitate, you can’t think too hard. There’s a call to duty, you do your duty. You trust the people who are sending you to do the fighting, the killing, have already spent a lot of nights not sleeping but up thinking. Worrying. Considering.
Then the fight goes on a little too long. Then you start asking questions. You start thinking the people who sent you to do battle don’t have one idea in hell what the battle’s about. Or maybe they know too well what they’re doing. Maybe their fight isn’t really what you’re fighting for. It’s not about Archduke Ferdinand or the Tonkin Gulf or WMDs.
Excuses. Not reasons.
But by the time people like me start asking questions it’s way too late for going back. All there is, is slogging forward i
n the normal as we know it.
So the struggle continues. Of course it does. Probably will beyond my lifetime. But in my lifetime how do I engage—how do I reengage—the struggle? Who am I fighting for? What am I fighting against? Even if I knew what the end objective was, I’ve got no idea what I’ve got to sacrifice to achieve it: the law or morality?
As I write this, I feel, I feel like a pugilist between rounds. Beaten about badly, trying to get bearings. Knowing no matter my hurt, when the bell sounds I’ve got to take center ring.
Okay.
That’s okay.
Every other round I took to the fight with my fists, my balls and my father’s knife. They’ve gotten me this far. But next time I go do battle I’ll have one thing more.
I’ve got Soledad’s gun.
About the Author
John Ridley is a triple-threat writer of novels, film, and television, plus he is a regular contributor to NPR on their “Morning Edition.” Ridley gained considerable attention for his first novel, Stray Dogs, which was made into the motion picture U Turn directed by Oliver Stone. Ridley followed with the critically acclaimed, Love is a Racket, Everybody Smokes in Hell, A Conversation with the Mann, and The Drift. His science fiction titles include Those Who Walk in Darkness and its sequel What Fire Cannot Burn.
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THOSE WHO WALK IN DARKNESS
by John Ridley
AVAILABLE WHEREVER BOOKS ARE SOLD.
Nightshift was the first. He showed up and overnight the world changed. I was young then. Younger. And all I cared about were rock bands and movie stars, and didn’t give much thought to the significance of things like his arrival. Except that it was cool, he was cool. In time, that, like everything else, would change too.
In the first weeks after he hit the scene the papers and news shows were fat with rumors and half-truths and speculations by experts.
Experts?
How were there going to be any experts when there’d never been anything like him, it, before?
It was his physiology, they said. It suggested that he may not be of this . . . They said he was the by-product of government experiments which caused his body to become . . . Mental superiority allowed him to project an aura which resulted in . . .
On and on. All that anybody really knew was somewhere in San Francisco, night after night, he . . . it. It was out there. Stopping a bank robbery, a gang drive-by, keeping a kid from getting flattened by a runaway truck . . . whatever.
And then, just as quick as he appeared, Nightshift got mundane. Oh, he kept a jewelry store from getting ripped off again? Another car jacking busted up? Well, sure, I mean it’s good, but . . . .
I got used to it. I got used to them. We all did. And we all went back to being concerned with other things . . . rock bands and movie stars.
Like I said: That would change.
San Francisco. The dead. The EO that made them all outlaws.
We blame them. They deserve blame. But maybe it’s our fault too. We never should’ve let them do our job for us. We never should’ve relied on them. We never should’ve slept while they stood guard; spectators at the foot of Mt. Olympus.
No.
Hell no. What happened was their fault and theirs alone. And for what they did they’re all going to pay the price.
EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM.
Jesus Christ.
It was the thought pumping through Soledad’s head. A phrase. A prayer. Something to chant over and over to keep her mind off what was coming.
What was coming was what she’d spent her whole life working toward. Her whole life: only twenty-six years, nine months. But most of that was spent at Northwestern studying, at the police academy and on the force training, working her way from beat cop through SPU up to MTac—prepping for this moment: her first call.
Jesus. F’n. Christ.
The others in the APC, the others riding with Soledad, they looked calm. Serene, kind of. Mostly they didn’t look like cops racing through LA traffic, lights and sirens at full tilt. Except for their weapons and body armor—none of it worn to regulation. Bo and Soledad the only two who bothered with Fritz helmets, and Soledad was pretty sure Bo sported his just so she wouldn’t come off like the only weak sister in the bunch—they looked like people out for a Sunday drive. Not one of them seemed to carry the thought odds were, end of the night, all of them would be dead. Maybe that was the key, Soledad considered, to getting through this: don’t think, just do.
Soledad adjusted the strap of her breastplate where it cut into the flesh of her underarm. Probably designed by a man, it didn’t particularly fit a woman.
“Don’t bother.” It was Yarborough—Yar—playing cocky, giving Soledad shit for concerning herself with things like body armor, things that might keep her alive. His bravado was his tender. He spent it easy: a lazy grin, a wink tossed for no reason. He spent it heavy in the body armor he didn’t wear, same as if he were among the rare breed too cool to die. “Might as well take that shit off. Doesn’t do any good.”
Soledad looked to Reese. Didn’t mean to. Had told herself no matter what, especially this first call, never in a moment of doubt look to Reese. Soledad thought it was a sign of weakness, like looking to your mom when the corner bully went calling you names. But the action was reflexive. Reese was the only other woman on the element, one of the few female MTacs. So Soledad looked to her, as if femininity equated fidelity.
Reese, deep in her own thoughts, just stared straight ahead paying no attention to Soledad or anyone else.
Bo, jumping into things: “Leave her.” His voice had a drawl. Slight. Cowpoke slow. Soledad had seen Bo with a gun on the target range. His drawl was the only thing slow about him. “We’re supposed to be wearing it.”
“You’re not wearing your armor,” Yar tossed back.
The APC juked hard to one side to avoid a Toyota that cut across an intersection never-minding the lights and sirens of the MTac vehicle. Typical LA. Didn’t matter what the emergency was, everybody thinks they’ve got someplace to be.
“I did first call. First call I would’ve driven a tank if I could’ve.”
Yar laughed. Not like what Bo had said was funny, like what Bo had said was plain ridiculous; as if a tank would make any difference in the world when you were facing down a freak. Bo was senior lead officer of the element, the oldest. Soledad thought: hell of a career choice she’d made where forty was considered a long-timer. The same thought jerked her hand to the case resting next to her thigh.
“Whatcha got?” Yarborough asked, using his chin to point at the case. It was small, hardcover-book-sized, zippered, made from synthetics.
Soledad wondered to herself why Yar was paying her so much attention. She hadn’t been on Central long, but they’d all trained together, put in hours together. All that time Yar hardly looked in her direction. Here they were rolling on an M-norm, and all he could do was razz her every couple of—
“Whatcha got in the case? Bring a couple of books so you won’t get bored?”
The APC stopped. Not even. It slowed some, but that was signal enough: time to move. Bo was first out, the door barely open. Yarborough, Reese just a step behind. Soledad, affixing the case to her back, was right with them hesitating not a second, not any amount of time anyone could say she froze, she was scared, she wasn’t ready. Even if she was all that, no way she’d let anyone think it.
As she moved, Soledad’s eyes worked the scene, took in information and processed it on the fly. Downtown LA. Rail yards. A warehouse, boarded windows showing fire. Police cordoning off the area, keeping a good distance back.
A safe distance.
Inside the perimeter: a couple of burned-out fire trucks and squads, the reek of their molten metal, plastic and fabric strong enough to choke on deep breaths.
Outside the perimeter: Lookie-lous gathered. The good citizens of Los Angeles. They stared. They pointed. A couple had camc
orders ready to do some taping, hoping a cop got offed in some spectacular manner so they could sell the footage to CNN.
Bo wove his way to the officer in charge. Soledad got the name on the sergeant’s badge: Yost.
Bo, direct: “Whatcha got?”
“Pyrokinetic.” Yost was sweaty from more than the heat of the fires. He was wet with fear.
Soledad felt herself starting to share the dampness.
“Firestarter?” Bo’s eyes swept the warehouse.
Yarborough swept it with IR goggles.
“If it was a firestarter, you think any of us would still be here?” Yost answered. “Flamethrower, but it can toss ’em about thirty or forty feet. That’s what happened to the vehicles.”
Reese worked the action of her piece. It was like she wasn’t even listening to the back-and-forth between Bo and Yost. It was like all she cared about was putting a bullet in something.
Yost: “The freak won’t let the bucket boys put out the fire.”
Yarborough kept moving his goggles across the warehouse.
“Probably started it just to get them down here, work up a body count. Fucking freak.”
“That’s good,” Bo said. “Keep calling it names. That’ll get us home early.”
Yost mumbled something audible about MTacs being arrogant motherfu—
Yarborough: “Got him. Third floor, southeast corner.”
“One?” Reese asked.
“That’s all I’m reading. Hard to be sure with the fire.”
“Thank God it ain’t one of those mind readers.” Yost was getting sweatier by the second.
Soledad: “Maybe it is.” She hoped she sounded like she was just voicing a consideration and not bitch scared.
“Couldn’t pay me to go in there, I’ll tell you that.” Yost said it, then said it again. “You couldn’t pay me nothing to go in there.”
Bo said: “Throw some light up top, make a little noise for cover. You’d take pay for that, right?” To his element: “Mike check. One.”
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