by M. H. Mead
He patted his pocket to make sure the bulge from his datapad wasn’t visible and smoothed his hair over his ear. Kensington’s was a no-tech zone, and he didn’t want to get kicked out for using a phone implant. He watched out the window for five minutes, and when he didn’t see a green Mustang, he joined the line and ordered a cranberry nut muffin to go. Del-Kel would be pleased.
Outside, he didn’t see a single green car.
Talic was good. He was only seen when he wanted to be seen. For some reason, he wanted Andre to know he had a hot tail. Until Andre knew what the reason was, losing Talic once only meant there would be a next time.
“MOVING TARGETS?”
“Okay.” Andre smoothed the closures on his body armor, wondering how SWAT could stand wearing this stuff all the time. He supposed impact-weave was like anything—do it long enough, you get used to it.
At least he wasn’t wearing a ridiculous kin-cloth suit like Danny Cariatti. The suit acted as light-duty body armor, but man was it ugly. No matter how you tailored it, it had an unmistakable sheen, broadcasting to the world that here stood a cop. If the suit hadn’t given Danny away, the bloated pockets would have. He always said that when you’re training for the street, you dress for the street. So Danny carried all of his police paraphernalia into the target range while Andre looked and felt like a ninja.
Danny punched in his passcode for the second sublevel. The only sense of movement in the lift was the indicator. The stillness was unnerving in contrast to what was about to happen. “Random spacing?”
“All right.”
“Surprise targets?”
“How bad you wanna lose?”
Danny laughed. “I handed you your ass last time.” He punched in his passcode again, this time for the door, and looked up for the retina scan. Lights glowed green and menus appeared. “I guess if you’re not up to it . . .” He hesitated with one stubby finger poised above the screen.
Andre sighed. “Let’s get this over with.”
“You did it to yourself, you know. If you’d gotten here last week—”
“I’ve had stuff to do.”
“And I don’t? Some of us have our cases and yours, too.”
“That wasn’t my choice.”
“I finished all the paperwork on that Riverwood killing. You’re welcome. I got myself to the range last week, too. Twice.”
“Fine.” Andre unfastened and refastened the velcro at his collar. “Surprise targets.”
Danny selected the program and waited for the calm voice to direct them to range door seven. Warning signs admonished them to stay behind the yellow safety lines of the chamber. The graphics were frighteningly realistic and training accidents had occurred. The lieutenant took target practice very seriously and his jocular manner vanished as they approached the door. It blurred and writhed and became the entrance to a seedy apartment.
“The usual wager?” Andre asked, his voice intentionally normal.
A terse nod from Danny as he drew his weapon. All business. He tapped the barrel against the peeling wood.
Andre raised an eyebrow. “You should get out more.”
“Concentrate.” Danny made little waggling motions with his gun. “The captain could review this.”
He was right. Andre unholstered his Smith & Wesson Guardian and checked the load indicator. It was full—thirty Trufly rounds. He tapped the laser sight on and the red dot appeared on the floor. He tapped it off. Danny never used the dot-sight during range practice. It was one of the few pieces of tech he disdained, saying that it was one thing to let a computer ease your way, quite another to let it make decisions for you. Andre bookended the thought with a matching irony. The smart-fire feature of the Guardian was something Andre liked but, when he shot with Danny—which was most of the time—he did without.
“You ever clean that thing?” Danny asked.
“My weapon,” Andre answered, “is freshly cleaned and spotless.”
“Try not to shoot me with it. I might catch something.” Danny kicked open the door, went low through the opening and angled right with a smooth grace he rarely displayed in any other situation.
“Bitch, bitch, bitch,” Andre clucked. He slid through the door and went left.
The room looked larger than Andre knew it to be, with too many deep shadows. The subsonics that the range used to create the tension and unease of reality hovered on the threshold of consciousness, amping up their nerves. While the descending elevator had conveyed the illusion of motionlessness, the range was the antithesis of stillness. Everything seemed in motion, malleable, changeable. The safety line pulsed across the walls and floor.
He and Danny were usually well-matched. Maybe Andre could distract him. “Did I tell you Talic is on the task force?”
“Talic from Specials?” A figure appeared from the well of darkness in the corner, holding a shotgun raised in Danny’s direction. The glint of bared teeth on the face of the man, a tight smile. A duet of pings as they both shot at him. The shotgun was supposed to be an older model—louder than their service weapons. It jerked up and spat fire at the ceiling. Andre focused his concentration as two more figures appeared, darting to either side as if to flank them.
Danny chose to crossfire. Andre dropped to one knee to emulate him, but not before his own target got off a single burst of automated fire. He watched the target fold and collapse to the floor, and waited for the flash of red that would indicate he’d been hit. Nothing. The computer had missed.
“Lucky,” he breathed and raised his voice. “So what do I do?”
“About Talic?” Danny led them off down a simulated corridor, peering ahead into the flickering light.
Andre covered him and followed. “I don’t trust him.”
“You still holding onto that Internal Affairs thing? It’s been what, three years? If Talic was still pulling shit like that, someone would have nailed him.” The doorframe ahead showed someone looking and ducking. Danny trained his weapon low, waiting. “You fix what you can fix, everything else you let go. You had no evidence.”
The targets came out of doors both right and left. Andre tagged the left in the shoulder and it spun into the hall. Danny one-shot his target and then finished Andre’s.
“Hey, get your own!”
“I did.”
Andre nudged him aside. “If someone higher up wants to close a case, I can usually let it go like a fart in the wind. But something like this—”
They were suddenly busy. Figures with evil smiles and the oily glint of half-glimpsed weapons boiled out of the shadows. He missed. Danny hit. He hit. Danny missed the figure at the far end and Andre nailed it.
The corridor was clean. “I’m telling you,” Andre heard breathlessness in his voice and forced himself to take a slow inhale and let it out evenly. “Talic has someone covering his ass. You don’t think it’s strange that I blow a big case and then get promoted to Homicide? Even you said it was sketchy at the time.”
Danny’s eyes didn’t leave the target area. He elbowed Andre. “You can’t have it, you know.”
“Have what?”
“A replay. You can’t undo what happened three years ago.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Andre’s finger twitched against his trigger guard. He scanned the corridor. Where were all the goddamn targets?
“Listen,” Danny said. “You can let that hair lay across your ass sideways forever or you can forget about it, but you can’t undo it.”
“This is not about the Sufek Reem case, okay? This is not about before. This is about right now. I’m trying to interview an informant this morning and I see Talic, playing shadow.”
“You requested backup?”
“What do you think?” An official Request for Backup could be very routine, but it was always well-documented. Only Internal Affairs could covertly surveil another officer without reprimand. “Talic tried to play it off like I was the one blowing cover.”
“He talked to you while you were in posi
tion?” Danny’s still searched the shadows restlessly, but he was chewing at his upper lip. “Did you file a Breach?”
“You’re the only one I’ve told.” A Breach of Protocol form was serious. Maybe more serious than he wanted to handle. One form filed and the cold war between Andre and Talic would immediately go hot.
Danny inclined two fingers at Andre, then waved them ahead.
It was Andre’s turn to lead off and he took another deep breath. Calm. Calm and keep it quick. The next corner opened out in both directions and Andre caught Danny’s nod out of the corner of his eye.
Andre duck-looked left, back to wait, duck-looked right—target!—back. There was a shot and the flash of a holographic bullet a few centimeters from his head. He flinched and Danny spun around the corner and dropped the gunman. Andre shook his head to clear it and followed. The distance spacing was supposed to be random, but so many of these were up in his face before he knew it. He wondered if Danny, knowing Andre was better at the long-shot, had fiddled with it. He dismissed the idea at once. Danny, cheat? Not likely. Targets loomed out of every shadow of this new and crowded room and after missing once—losing another to Danny, he caught himself aiming.
No. Don’t aim at a target. Look at the whole room. See it all. The target is part of the whole. He fired, pivoted, fired again, the Guardian taking one target after another as cold certainty swallowed the adrenaline panic of his nerves. The chaos of the room resolved into a slow-motion dance where the targets seemed to appear wherever he happened to be pointing his weapon. Brass casings showered onto the floor with a barely registered chiming and Andre’s feet slid forward in a trained shuffle to keep from stepping on them. The holographics were gruesome, but even the spatters of immaterial gore and piercing cries of brief pain made his stomach churn only in a remote area of his consciousness. The tiny numerals below his gunsight counted down. 15. 14. 13. 12.
Motion from the corner—”Safe!” Andre cried, jerking his gun at the ceiling. The figure was an old woman with a cat cradled in her arms. Her eyes widened behind gold-rimmed spectacles and she darted back into her simulated apartment.
More targets. More gunfire. More death. 3. 2. 1.
The single remaining target grinned at them from behind the figure of a teenage boy with wide and eloquently frightened eyes holding out his hands in a plea. Andre caught a flicker of motion in his peripheral vision—Danny flanking to the left. The figure clutching the hostage shifted ever so slightly as if to keep his eyes on Danny, and the curve of his head was silhouetted.
Andre fired his last shot into the shadow space above the killing grin. When the head snapped back in reaction, Danny fired into the torso, leaving the hostage figure standing clear and unscathed. It waved cheerily and vanished. The safety line expanded to fill the room and a disembodied voice spoke around them. “Reload to continue program.”
Danny raised his eyebrows. “Nice finale, partner. Another set?”
Andre let out a deeply held breath. The chill calm that had settled over his mind had burned away in the abrupt cessation and he became aware of the sweat soaking his skin beneath the impact-weave. His stomach knotted with deferred tension and his wrist ached from fighting the recoil of the Guardian. He leaned against the wall and sank to his haunches. He safed his weapon and returned it to the holster against his ribs.
Danny secured his own gun and squatted beside him, his brow furrowed. “You okay?”
“I just need a break.” Andre stood and turned for the door while Danny checked the scores.
“Sonofabitch.”
Andre swung back and looked at the board. He had won by seventeen points.
“I owe you a dollar.” Danny pointed to the breakdown. “You scored bonus on that ‘safe’ call.”
“I should give it to Talic,” Andre said.
“Talic?”
“See the whole.” Andre found a laugh. “He was on my mind and I was remembering a lecture I heard him give during weapons training. ‘Don’t aim,’ he said. ‘See it all.’“
“Good advice,” Danny said cautiously.
“You mean, you think I’m not seeing it all.”
Danny held up a hand. “Hey, I didn’t say that. But maybe Talic was ordered to tail you by someone with more juice. Who did you say was running your task force?”
“Sofia wouldn’t—”
“Yes, she would, if she thought you needed babysitting. It’s the same action either way, but since you hate Talic and you like Gao—”
“I don’t like her! She’s . . .” Andre shook his head, unwilling to continue. He unholstered his weapon again and pulled the spent clip.
“She’s what? Hot? Smart? Too good for you?”
“Annoying.” Andre slid the second clip into the Guardian and watched the display scramble back up to thirty. “She’s the most by-the-book cop I’ve seen. She makes you look like a slacker. Plus, she thinks that being a Downriver cop makes her tough.”
“Is she?”
“Is she what?”
“Tough.”
“I doubt it.”
Danny gestured to Andre’s weapon and cocked his head toward the now-closed door. “You sure you don’t want to go another round? Work out your shit?”
Andre weighed the gun in his hand against the sweat sticking to his back and the swirling confusion in his brain. “Fuck that.” He shoved the Guardian back in its holster and jumped into the elevator, casting a last look at the target range door. “My shit is worked. If I ever need to kill more people than that at one time, I quit.”
NIKHIL SPRINTED THE TWO blocks from his house to Topher’s, hoping that Topher had the air-conditioning on. The sun had set two hours ago, but it was still at least twenty-seven degrees out. The entire Great Lakes area had been gripped in a prolonged Indian summer, prompting worries that maybe they hadn’t conquered global warming after all.
Nikhil pulled his t-shirt away from his body, fanning it out. If he weren’t so late, he could have walked the two blocks, enjoying the scant breeze. But his economics class had run over, and then Melissa wanted to talk about tomorrow’s test. He’d missed the commuter’s sweet spot and ended up taking the bus home.
Topher’s driveway seemed longer than the two blocks of sidewalk he’d already run. This yard was easily twice the size of his. Nikhil had thought his own house enormous when his dad bought it five years ago, way too much space for two people. It was part of the reason he’d decided to go to a local college and live at home. He didn’t want his dad bouncing around that huge house all alone.
And here was Topher’s house, bigger yet, for just one person. Sure, he filled it up with bodies when he had meetings or parties, but it seemed awfully wasteful the rest of the time.
Well, it wasn’t Topher’s fault that he inherited property and money. At least he was trying to do good with it. Nikhil hopped onto the porch and knocked the coded knock.
The door cracked open and a mousy girl peered out at him from under heavy bangs. “Name?”
“Nikhil LaCroix.”
The door opened fully and the girl turned without a word and walked toward the back of the house. She barely came to his collarbone and was famine-victim thin.
Nikhil shut the door behind himself and followed the girl. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”
“Wilma Riley.”
“Pretty name.”
“To you, maybe.” She led him to the basement, where the meeting had long-since broken into cells. Topher had furnished his basement with several round tables, making it look like a restaurant or a conference room. Two of the tables were taken. Topher sat across from Sandor Bay, vice president of the Council for Economic Justice. Wilma took a seat next to Sandor, sliding her chair as close as possible.
On the far side of the room, five men and one woman hunched together, talking in whispers. Datapads and other gadgets were spread on the table like treasure maps, and they poured over them, looking for clues. This was the techie branch of their organization, and
the few times Nikhil had talked to them, he’d understood less than half the conversation. He thought the only woman in the group might be in one of his classes, but the lecture halls were big, the semester had just started, and he hadn’t had the chance to ask her. He didn’t know the other members of that cell at all, not even their names, which was exactly the point.
He popped into a chair next to Topher. “What did I miss?”
Sandor slid a hardcopy booklet across the table. “Literature.”
Nikhil picked it up and flipped through a few pages. The booklet looked expensive—professionally printed, with a glossy cover and an inside layout full of bullet points and graphs. The cover read Working in Harmony for the Common Good. Decent title. Much catchier than the subtitles inside, which said things like, “Principles of Distribution” and “The Failure of the Kelso-Adler Theory.” Nikhil scanned a few more pages. Human potential . . . the economic fault of the income gap . . . universal access to the future ownership of productive wealth. It looked like a single-viewpoint version of his economics textbook. At least the booklet was a short six pages.
“Tangible,” Nikhil said. “How many of these did you make?”
“One thousand,” Topher said. “You and Sandor are going to pass them out on campus.”
A round of subdued laughter from the techie table caught his attention. The girl at the table bumped her fist with one of the guys.
Nikhil pictured himself trying to hand out booklets to students who wouldn’t take them, or worse, take them and throw them away. All this time, he’d been waiting to do something important, and this was the job Topher gave him? “I did what you wanted,” he blurted. “I got my fourthing license.”
“That’s great. You should start handing out pamphlets in the area near the business school.”
