Those Who Walk in Darkness so-1

by John Ridley

  "Hell yeah." Big smile."When I was working Valley."

  "What happened?"

  Yarborough's smile got doused."You're looking at all that's left of that Valley MTac. Nothing you can do about telepaths. Not a goddamn thing."

  Guilt. Heavy, hurtful, ugly. Yar had lived while others had died, and now he had guilt for doing nothing more wrong than somehow keeping alive. And Soledad got exactly why he didn't talk about going against a telepath; the guilt he felt, she knew very well.

  Yarborough took a beat, recovered a little, got back to being a BAMF. Telepath couldn't put him down, he boasted. He hadn't met the freak that could.

  Then he asked Soledad about her gun, about how she was able to take out the pyro.

  She explained things to him, the tech that went into her piece: a modified O'Dwyer VLe. The first all-electronic handgun. No moving parts. Nothing to wear down. Nothing to ever get jammed in the middle of a shoot-out. Not even a magazine. Not a regular one. The bullets were stacked in-line in the barrels—yeah. Barrels. Soledad's piece had four—and fired electronically. Four shots in less than 1/500 of a second. A recoiling barrel meant the rounds would fire at one aim point before there was any recoil effect. Audio/visual settings confirmation. Distance-to-target meter. Electronic lockout. Digital download and upgrade capacity…

  On and on and Yar got all juiced just listening. It was the future Soledad was carrying. And once they got healed up, with the new side arms Soledad had, they were going to kick some serious freak ass.

  Except, Soledad thought, for what Bo had told her. There might be, there probably was going to be, trouble about her gun. Soledad wasn't on so many drugs anymore. The thought of trouble started to worry her. She didn't share the worry with Yar. Yar was happy with his new wounds. Why spoil things?

  They talked on a while more. Yarborough talked on, told stories. Every one an adventure, and every adventure ending with a mutie down and him victorious. Soledad couldn't be sure of the ratio of truth to fiction, but for the minute that was unimportant. The stories were spun well, exciting, and they made her think at least for a second that normal humans had a chance in their war against the metanormals.

  When she left Yarborough's room, when he was worn out from recanting and the sedatives a nurse had given him, Soledad felt invigorated. Felt almost good. Except for her limp and throb from her burns. Except for those.

  Easy. Visiting Yarborough had been easy. Almost fun.

  Visiting Reese…

  Soledad stood looking at the body, wondering how many more seconds of searing heat would've left her in Reese's place. She wondered, too, if it would've been better for that thing to have fused the arteries that ran up and down her throat, to have out and out killed her rather than put her in the phantom zone between life and death where it put Reese.

  Down the hall: A nurse walked. A door opened. A draft swirled through the corridor, finding Soledad. It lifted her flimsy gown and played with her flesh before dissipating to still air.

  Did Reese even dream? Soledad thought she remembered hearing that people in comas don't dream. But she only thought she remembered that.

  And weren't you supposed to talk to them, the comatose? Couldn't they hear you, and if you talked to them, wasn't that supposed to help make them better? Help them heal? Soledad thought she remembered hearing that too.

  But if they— Soledad checked herself. Reese she was thinking about. Not they. They had no name, and they was faceless. Reese had a name and a face, and Reese was alive. Forget the machines and apparatus and contraptions, Reese was still alive.

  So if Reese couldn't dream, if she couldn't hear herself in her own mind, how could she hear anyone else?

  And what do you say to the comatose? Come on, you can do it. You can get healthy. You can exist again if you want.

  Soledad thought about that, and thought it was like talking to a plant; like coaxing it from brown leaves to a bright green. Couldn't do it. She couldn't talk to Reese like she was some other form of life: alive but without expression. She couldn't talk to Reese like… as if she were the way she was: a thoughtless, senseless husk.

  All Soledad could do was mumble something the content of which even she wasn't sure of. The voice she heard, her voice, was new and different. The burns on her throat had deformed her vocal cords. She liked to think she sounded raspy. Adult and mature. She figured she just sounded like she had throat cancer.

  Soledad had been standing in ICU so long the drone of life support had faded down to Muzak. It was time to go. But how do you leave someone who may or may not even know you're there? How do you leave someone who may be serene on the outside but screaming like the buried undead within?

  Soledad slid fingers, gently, along Reese's shoulder—skin soft, body warm. There was still life there. There was still hope—along Reese's tattoo of the bold words.

  And then Soledad left.

  What is this? You want to tell me what this is?"

  "It's my gun."

  Soledad tried to read Rysher. Rysher was hard to read. He looked weary. Sort of. Not quite angry. Mostly he looked pained. But it was just hard to tell. Rysher'd spent a lot of years navigating the politics of the LAPD. He'd floated their currents all the way to lieutenant of G Platoon, the Metanormal Tactical Unit. Big title. Lot of responsibility. You're in charge of the people who keep superhumans in check in the second largest city in America. You don't get to a spot like that by having a weak poker face, letting everybody know exactly what you're thinking and how you're feeling. At the moment, consciously or unconsciously, he betrayed nothing. Soledad couldn't tell for sure if Rysher's look was pained or quietly furious.

  "I know it's your gun, Officer. Specifically what is this?"

  On his desk, where the lieutenant's finger pointed, was Soledad's case: her side arm and its clips. Six of them. Color-coded. Blue, green, yellow, orange, black and red. The red clip—phosphorus-tipped bullets—she'd used to chop the pyro. Effective but obviously not enough killing power. Maybe she needed to hollow the points, up the damage quotient to compensate for the speed lost by the friction of the burning slug against the air as it…

  Soledad realized she'd been thinking when she should have been listening.

  "I'm sorry, sir. I didn't—"

  "I asked you to tell me what this is."

  Soledad glanced at Bo. Bo, arms folded, leaning against the wall, didn't look ready to involve himself in things. For the minute he wasn't Soledad's sergeant, element member. He was a spectator. Nothing more, nothing else.

  "It's an O'Dwyer VLe."

  That got a laugh from Rysher. Part bemused. Part dismissive."You're kidding, right? Metalstorm can't get DARPA to approve this thing past the experimental stage. HIT has written it off, and you take it out on a call? How did you even get one?"

  "They sent it to me. Metalstorm granted me permission to make modifications provided I gave them the rights to all patents that resulted from my work."

  Rysher, walking through things slowly: "On your own. You go out, get permission from an experimental contractor. Then, spare time, you modify a weapon?"

  Rysher turned to Bo, looked to him. As always, Rysher gave nothing. Bo, maintaining his disinterested-observer status, returned nothing.

  "My undergraduate work was in emerging technologies at Northwestern. I staffed A Platoon in the armory for more than a year, where I was trained in modifying both SWAT and MTac weaponry. This is not a hobby, sir. I'm fully qualified."

  Under her clothes, from under her arm, along the side of her body, Soledad felt a single drop of sweat crawl down her flesh.

  Light eked through the window, past drapes faded dull from years of collecting sunlight. It lit the walls, fake wood paneling, and reflected off of plaques to Lieutenant Rysher and awards to Lieutenant Rysher and honors to Lieutenant Rysher and photographs of suits and brass giving Rysher those plaques and awards and certificates. Soledad was featured in one of the pictures. Her and Rysher, him shaking her hand, the day she was
accepted to G Platoon. Soledad still had sense memory of his strong grip that transferred respect. Rysher'd welcomed a lot of cops to his command over years of service. Out of all of them, that he should choose to hang a shot of him and Soledad in his office… Rysher was proud of Soledad. Had told her that on many occasions, and not just when he was handing her wall dressing. A lot of times, just passing her in the hall, he'd take a minute to stop, talk, catch up with her, then having done so end things with" I'm proud of you, Soledad." That's what made sitting in his office breaking things down for him hard. Whatever the situation, if Rysher was pissed at her… that wasn't good, but she'd deal. But, decent as he'd always been, what Soledad couldn't deal with was letting Rysher down.

  Rysher, holding up one of the clips, the red one: "This is what you used on the pyro. Phosphorus, right?"

  Soledad gave a nod.

  Rysher held up the yellow clip.

  "Synthetic slugs. For metal morphers."

  "Synthetic slugs don't give you enough velocity." Rysher put that square. He wasn't just some brass behind a desk. He'd spent a long time, a lot of years, going after freaks. He knew what he was talking about.

  So did Soledad."The gun has DTT auto targeting for distance modulation. Because the weapon is electronic, it can modulate the discharge with the synthetic slugs, fire them at a higher velocity relative to distance from target." That was technical mumbo jumbo. The point: "It moves the slugs fast enough to put down its target."

  The green clip.

  "High-density muties: invulnerables, impenetrables."

  "What good is a bullet if it can't penetrate?"

  "The slug is a gelcap. Contact poison. Exposed to the flesh, it arrests the nervous system in less than twelve seconds."

  That one, the green clip, Rysher set down carefully."Little something for everybody."

  A shrug."Nothing for intangibles, sir. I've been working on it, but freaks that can shift planes, manipulate density…? I haven't figured out anything for them yet. Or for telepaths."

  Bo made a move. Slight. But he'd been so still, quiet, his slightest action was magnified by expectation. Soledad, Rysher, they both looked to Bo. He did nothing more than adjust his stance. Make himself comfortable.

  Soledad tugged at the collar of her turtleneck, self-conscious.

  Rysher said: "What were you thinking? How could you… Why would you do this?" He was so full of lament you'd think he was asking Soledad why she shot his dog.

  "How could I do what, sir?"

  "First time I heard about you, everybody was saying you were good cop."

  "I am a good—"

  "You worked hard, you angled for MTac. I had hopes for you. High hopes, O'Roark."

  O'Roark. Her last name. Soledad couldn't recall a time, in private, Rysher didn't use her first name. Now O'Roark. No" Officer" in front of it. Just O'Roark. Distant. Cold.

  Soledad said: "And I haven't done anything that—"

  "The hell you haven't." Distant. Cold. Getting more so by the second."You used ordnance that aren't approved, aren't certified."

  "The weapon works, sir."

  "It's not even out of the experimental stage of development."

  "It's… no, sir, it's not. But I have tried for two years to get the weapon certified."

  "Tried how?"

  "I submitted schematics, proposals, test results to A Platoon."

  "And when you didn't get the response you wanted, when you wanted it, you decided to field-test your piece on your first call."

  "No, sir."

  "You packed that thing by accident? Sure wasn't an accident you had it hidden in this case. If you'd carried it in the open—"

  Soledad began an answer, got tripped up at the starting line. Then: "It was meant to be a backup. If our element had no other option—"

  "And you decide that? A probee on MTac, and you decide how to handle a call."

  "What was the alternative? Do nothing while that freak put four people in a coma instead of one? At least that. I did my job. Sir."

  No matter the respect she had for Rysher, in the moment, Soledad almost forgot to tack on the honorific.

  Made no difference. Rysher wasn't listening. He was sitting, thinking. His fingers working at the spot where his temple met his brow.

  Bo: "Sir, what's Officer O'Roark's status."

  Rysher took a few seconds. His fingers kept up their work."I'm taking her off active duty."

  … No…

  "For now she's going to be riding a desk."

  "No!"

  "You're no good until the doctors give your leg a clean bill anyway. Beyond that—"

  "I… sir, I don't… I didn't do anything that I deserve to be—"

  "You yanked open the furnace door. Made it hot for all of us."

  "I did my job."

  Rysher gave a long study to Soledad. For the first time his expression revealed his feelings. He looked like he pitied the girl.

  Rysher said: "You really don't see it, do you?"

  "I didn't empty my clip into a kid with a shank. I chalk a righteous shooting, shot one of them, and I get sat down?"

  "Your piece wasn't certified. Nobody told you to carry that thing. Technically… nothing technical about it. Your piece is illegal. No matter what kind of work it did, it's illegal and you used it anyway. You did things the way you saw fit."

  "As a last resort. Better that than let cops die."

  "Just trying to save lives?"

  "Yes, sir. I was just trying to—"

  "Freaks used to save lives, O'Roark. Freaks used to do what they wanted no matter what the law said. Do you see?"

  She saw.

  Soledad just then saw the total picture. Clarity of vision had come late to her. Really it was just denial falling away, some truth getting through.

  Rysher: "After May Day, after the freaks wiped out San Francisco, the president issued an Executive Order. Muties are enemies of the state."

  "I know."

  "MTac platoons were formed with one job: enforce the letter of the law. Protect normal humans."

  A little anger. At herself."You're telling me what I know!"

  "You know, yes, but do you understand? Do you understand why things are the way they are? There's order, and there is chaos. The freaks are chaos. MTac is order. When we fall apart, there is nothing left."

  And Rysher just lets that hang.

  And Rysher said, said to Bo: "Take her, get her set up."

  Bo took Soledad by the arm. Minding her limp and her cane, started to guide her from the office.

  She moved like she was sleepwalking.

  "O'Roark."

  Soledad turned back to Rysher.

  "I know you were just trying to do right. I have to be… I'm going to be straight with you."

  "Yes, sir."

  "The situation is problematic."

  "Yes, sir."

  "It's problematic, but don't worry. Not too much. We've got some good boys in this department. We'll try to fix things for you."

  Bo got Soledad a desk—a standard-issue municipal desk among a field of desks in Parker Center—and the duty-bug pencil pushing that went with it, the boring core of police procedure.

  Forms and requisitions and 66s and want cards.

  No matter she'd just been reassigned, forms and requisitions and

  66s and want cards waited for Soledad when she arrived at her new position. They were waiting for her like from day one, whatever else Soledad had planned for herself, they were what she would eventually be coming around to. They slothed on her desk, a drowning pool of the mundane. Looking at them, at a distance, she felt their wasting. This is what trying to make a difference had bought. Wasn't supposed to be this way. The way it was supposed to be…

  "Bo… I meant what I told the lou. I only took the gun along as a last resort. I'm tired of seeing people get killed, cops get killed. I just wanted to do something about it."

  Honest with the facts: "Well, you sure pissed your chance away."

/>   Bo started off, left Soledad to the rug she'd been swept under. He stopped, turned back. Trying to paint a decent picture of the situation: "It'll work out." Not much conviction there. Bo headed off.

  Forms and requisitions and 66s and want cards. Been a long time since Soledad had been near the basics of cop work.

  Soledad looked around, looked at everybody else working a desk: Too young to have climbed off of one. Too old to do anything else. A couple who were too much trouble to be let out onto the streets. It was a funky little zoo of cops too-something to do anything but what they were doing: shuffling papers.

  Welcome, Soledad.

  Forms and requisitions and 66s and want cards.

  She roboted her way through them for what seemed like all day.

  A glance at her watch. It was only midmorning.

  A couple of hours since she'd taken a tumble from MTac to working a desk. She sucked a breath. A couple of hours, just a couple and things had changed that much, that bad, that quick?

  A couple of…

  And from a desk where was there to go? Down? Out?

  Jesus had she screwed things. Jesus.

  Screwed, yeah, but they could be fixed. Rysher said he could fix them. Soledad would do everything she could to help. She promised herself this: She did not survive an encounter with a pyro just to get taken out by some technicality. Her and her gun had put down a flamethrower. Her and her gun had saved a whole element… except for Reese, her and her gun had. So to hell with the rules and regulations and dotted i's and crossed t's and…

  And Rysher was right.

  And Bo was right.

  She'd fucked up. No other way, no gentle way to put it. Soledad had fucked up. She hadn't tried to skirt regs. Not on purpose. Not really. She'd only tried to fulfill a simple mandate given to herself years ago: get rid of every single metanormal freak of nature that existed.

  But judgment on her actions wasn't about saving a few lives. It was about law and order, and the bold words tattooed across Reese's shoulder.

  First call, and Soledad had come out no better than the mutie they'd gone after. She was no better than the things that she hated.