The Sapphire Shadow

by James Wake

  That was true, in a sense.

  “Disperse immediately!” A voice on a loudspeaker, fighting to be heard over the crowd she was picking her way through. “Disperse or we will use force!”

  They were already arresting people. A long line in cuffs, on their knees in front of an apartment building, heads bagged. Jackson only caught glimpses of them through the people around her, glimpses of the entrance blocked off by security cars and paddy wagons.

  “That’s my home!” a woman next to her screamed. “You’re taking away my home!”

  “Fuck the Domes!” a man roared. “Fuck ‘em!”

  A squad of APS officers streamed into the building, passing their faceless brethren coming out with more residents. Smoke poured from a window seven floors above, orange flames licking and fading as rain snuck through the broken glass. Other windows were spitting out bricks and bottles and who knew what else, all crashing down on the APS picket line.

  Jackson ducked her head low under her hood, one hand wrapped tightly around the pistol in her pocket. She was in civilian clothes, off duty. Everything was fine. No one here knew she was a cop. No one here knew how many times it had recently been her stomping into apartments, kicking down doors and telling people they needed to vacate the premises.

  All she had to do was keep walking, slide through this mess. Only a few more blocks to her apartment. A few short blocks. Close. Worryingly close. She looked up at the glass sides of towers all around her, ads replaced with customer-service announcements.

  DUE TO REVISED FLOOD-RISK ASSESSMENTS, they read, LEASE RATES FOR TENANTS IN THIS AREA HAVE BEEN INCREASED. WE APOLOGIZE FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE.

  She flinched at a loud crash near the apartment building. A recliner had been tossed down to the street, where it exploded into pieces.

  PLEASE CONTACT AN AGF HUMAN RESOURCES AGENT FOR HOUSING OPTIONS TO FIT YOUR LIFESTYLE!

  Cheers broke out at the exploding chair. People around her were hurling things now; the Domes were being attacked from two sides.

  The glass flickered, all of it, Cheshire looming huge over the mob.

  HR WILL ARREST YOU

  FIRED? ——> EVICTED ——> DEPORTED

  HOMELESS? ——> FIRED ——> DEPORTED

  THE GAME IS RIGGED

  Should never have left her apartment. As Jackson tried to cut across the crowd, she got caught in its current, pushed back, a herd moving as one. Away from the building being emptied out, away from her path home.

  “Damn it, I’m not… Move it!” she yelled, shouldering her way against the tide. “Outta the way!”

  “Disperse! Move back!”

  In less than a breath, she was staring down Domes. Pushing against the crowd one moment, falling out of it the next.

  “Hands! Show us your hands!” The APS picket line was surging out, forcing the crowd back. Most of them had riot shields up, but a few pointed sidearms at her.

  “I don’t even live here!” she screamed, yanking her hands out of her pockets. In one palm she held her badge up high.

  “Don’t move!” The line of shields swept past her. A handful of gun-toting Domes stayed behind.

  “I got caught in the mob, guys. Same team,” she said, lowering her badge to eye level and holding it out for the nearest faceless Dome. He slapped it out of her hand, sending it clattering onto the wet sidewalk.

  “Hey! What the f—” She took a step toward him but froze when they raised their weapons.

  “Get that out of my face,” he said. His helmet stared at her for a moment, scanning her. “Jackson, Alice. Due to be unemployed. Proof of replacement occupation?”

  “What? I’m just trying to walk home, I didn’t—”

  “Negative. Proof of transit outside the city?”

  Also negative. A gruff voice in her head reminded her that she had thirty days to secure one or the other. By the letter of the law anyway. She didn’t bother saying any of it. Waste of breath.

  “Frisk her,” the Dome told his partner.

  “I’m armed. Right-hand pocket.”

  “Gun!” several Domes yelled at once. Jackson shot her hands up high again, wondering how itchy their trigger fingers were. Her snub-nose pistol was ripped from her jacket, her otherwise empty pockets patted down.

  “Hey…hey! I have a license for that!”

  “Confirmed. Armed dissident apprehended,” he said. The one who had slapped her badge away. “All right, bag her.”

  Jackson’s mouth dropped open. “What?”

  One Dome stepped forward, cuffs ready. Another held a rough cloth sack. Behind them, a line of people on their knees, cuffed and faceless, ready to disappear.

  “Hang on,” she said, raising her hands. “Hang on a damn minute.”

  “Resisting!” another said, lighting up his shock prod.

  Part of her brain had a wry sort of chuckle at the poetic quality of the situation. How many people had she sent off this way?

  No. That had been different. They were criminals. They had broken the law. She hadn’t done anything wrong.

  “Dead or alive, lady,” the one with the prod said.

  She opened her mouth to tell them all they were making a mistake, but a gunshot cut her off, sending her ducking to the ground.

  More gunshots, chattering fire from above.

  “Cover!” a Dome yelled. “Cover now!” He sprayed bullets up at the windows, blindly and indiscriminately.

  More firing, all around Jackson, impossible to tell if it was more Domes or the mob or both. Bullets smacked into the pavement, sending everyone around her scattering.

  She had one clear, still moment, a fraction of a second to split and run. Two things caught her eyes. To her right, the Dome who had frisked her had dropped her weapon. To her left, her badge lay face down in a puddle.

  With no thought, no hesitation, she dove for the badge. She was already cursing herself as she scrambled to her feet and took off running, wondering why the hell she had done that. Everyone around her was screaming or running or both, gunfire still ringing out from above and from the crowd and the Domes around her.

  She heard the old familiar thoomp fwisssssssssssh of a gas grenade nearby. Jackson took a running, leaping dive, forcing her way through the wavering shield wall that cut off her escape. She landed hard among the mob on the other side, stinging fumes washing over her.

  More screaming. Shrieks. People cursed, footfalls running, some stomping over her. Jackson struggled up to her feet and knocked a man over as he ran. Panic was still beating in her heart. She took ragged breaths, retching from the stink of tear gas. She tried to flee with the herd, her eyes clouding up and going blind.

  She’d been on the other side of this many times. Should’ve seen it coming. Her eyes and lungs burned. The rain helped but not enough. No idea where she was going, slamming into people, holding her hands over her useless eyes.

  “Twenty steps forward. Then turn left.”

  That fucking cat in her ears. Jackson did so. Not much of a choice.

  “Ten more steps. Hang in there.”

  She didn’t talk back, just lurched the ten steps with her shirt pulled up over her nose.

  “Hands and knees.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Jackson said, but did so anyway.

  “Crawl forward five feet.”

  The blurry chaos around her grew dark. She was underneath something, no more rain falling on her back.

  “Don’t move. Don’t make a sound.”

  Boots stomped nearby. She couldn’t see, but she knew what it looked like: a reformed shield wall of Domes marching forward, shock sticks out and ready.

  “That was close.”

  Jackson didn’t say a word. If she had felt safe enough to speak, she probably would have told the cat thank you right before telling him to go fuck himself.

  “Clear ahead. You have ten seconds.”

/>   She scrambled forward and clambered to her feet the moment she felt rain again. A few seconds of flat-out sprinting took her out of the gas cloud. She found herself in a dark alleyway, echoes of the mayhem outside following her in.

  Still half blind. She wiped at her eyes, feeling lucky she’d spent years being exposed to the stuff. She remembered the first few times she got hit with gas, choking and puking and pouring water over her eyes for an hour before she could see again.

  Someone whimpered nearby.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Help!”

  Jackson blinked until she could sort of see. A man maybe? Civilian clothes. Lying against a dumpster.

  “I see you! Help is coming!” Jackson stumbled over. His shirt was soaked with blood.

  “Shot…” he mumbled, taking shallow breaths.

  All she had wanted was to get a bite to eat and not to drink alone. Something about being in a room with other people made it okay, even if she wasn’t talking to any of them. She reached for the trauma kit on her belt—a sad routine by now—then felt incredibly stupid when she realized she wasn’t wearing one.

  She tore off a damp scrap of her shirt instead, pressed it to his torso, and felt around for the wound. There. A sucking hole punched into one of his lungs. Fucking baton rounds.

  “Nonlethal, my ass,” she muttered.

  “Help…help…”

  “I gotcha, buddy. Keep talking,” Jackson said. “What’s your name?”

  “Help…”

  With a quick swipe of her fingers, she opened an emergency line in her comms. An automated voice answered. “Auktoris Blue, medical services for the greater metro area! Please state the nature of your—”

  “Gunshot wound! Ambulance now!”

  A few seconds of waiting. The chest beneath her hands shook, fought back against her pressure.

  “Jackson, Alice,” the automated voice said. “Our records indicate that your insurance status is terminated. Please select payment information for this service.”

  She had no glasses, no HUD. “What? It’s not even for me. A man is bleeding out!”

  “Installment payment plans are available. Please indicate your consent for one of the following repayment schedules…”

  The voice read off a long list of figures Jackson didn’t listen to. The man’s hands, weak and flailing, were grasping at hers. Blood seeped into the cracks between her fingers. She tore another scrap off her shirt and pressed it on top of the first.

  The voice was still going.

  “Operator?” Jackson said. “Help? Ambulance now! Please!”

  “You have selected the short-term, high-interest Elite CustomerCare Advantage package. One moment, please.”

  “No! Ambulance! Now!”

  “We’re sorry, but our services currently are not supported at your present location. You will be billed for this consultation. Goodbye.”

  Click.

  Jackson never actually had to call for an ambulance as a civilian—as one of the police, she’d always had a direct line, on the inside. Now this man was going to die, whoever he was, and she was going to sit here and watch, and that was all she could do.

  “Hang in there, pal,” she said, patting him on the shoulder. It wasn’t the first time she’d watched someone bleed out. She knew she was supposed to lie, tell him he would be fine and help was on the way.

  Jackson never could do that. Once, she had looked a man in the eyes and told him this was probably it. Her fellow soldier had nodded, given her a short, curt “Thanks,” then died.

  That had been worse somehow. That one had stuck with her.

  “Help is on the way,” she heard in her ears.

  Footsteps down the alley. Two people ran up and crouched next to her, dark and blurry. Jackson had half a mind to shove them away—faceless, with some kind of red logo on their chests and arms.

  “Don’t move,” one of them said.

  Something sweet-smelling was sprayed on Jackson’s face, soaking into her eyes. A few burning blinks later, she could see again. The two figures were civilians with patches on their coats—a white square with a red cross in the middle. Raggedy and homemade. Home-printed gas masks covered their faces.

  “How long have you been applying pressure?” one of them said.

  “Uh…I…uh…” Jackson mumbled.

  “Step aside, please? Thank you, ma’am.”

  They took over, slapping real bandages on and strapping an oxygen mask to the man’s face. He was still responsive. That was good. Jackson took a few steps back, wiping her bloody hands on her jacket.

  One of the medics had a pin on his coat. A grinning cartoon cat face.

  Jackson turned around, staring at the cat still leering down at her from the side of a building, peeking down the alley.

  “Guess I owe you one, huh?” she told it.

  Nothing, only the medics behind her counting out the man’s weak pulse. Cheshire winked at her, then flickered out of sight.

  “We need to move him quickly,” one of the medics told her. “Can you help?”

  “Sure,” Jackson said. Something caught her eye before she could turn around—a fancy white scooter, banking through a sharp turn and screaming into the alley.

  “Hey! Wait! Help!” Jackson said, jumping and waving at it. “We got wounded here!”

  It zipped right past them, accelerating through the narrow alley. Moron. A young woman was driving. She’d get herself killed slamming around at that speed.

  “Are you helping or not?” one of the medics said. He was unfolding a stretcher, telescoping it out from a tiny package into a full-size frame, like the ones they used to carry during her days in the army.

  “Yeah, I gotcha,” Jackson said. “Hey, uh, what’s with the pin?”

  “Really?” the one without the pin yelled. “Not really the time!”

  They lifted the victim onto the stretcher together, moving on count.

  “You mean Cheshire, right?” the medic with the pin said. “I just think it looks cool.”

  “How’d you guys know I was here?” Jackson said, lifting the back end of the stretcher while the two medics took the front.

  “We have an app.”

  “Yeah, this guy pinged us.”

  “Oh,” Jackson said.

  * * *

  So much commotion. It was still nowhere near curfew, gray sunlight fighting to filter down through the rain. Nadia should have taken her time going home, taken the long way around the moment she’d seen the APS trucks.

  She did not. Instead she revved the throttle, lifting up on the handlebars until she was level with the drones hovering over the riot.

  The cat himself glared down at her from a nearby building. Of course.

  Burning pain crept into her nostrils as she coasted along the top of a cloud of dense white gas. Beneath her, Domes surged forward in close order, beating down and cuffing anyone unlucky enough to be stumbling around blindly.

  So confident, all bunched together with their guns and gas and toys. Nadia had seen plenty of them fall at her hands, shrieking and yelping and begging for it to stop. Even now, they didn’t scare her.

  Unless they were kicking down her office door, shooting her with no suit to stop them.

  She scowled, banking and diving into a nearby alley. Someone yelled and waved at her to stop, but she didn’t even look down. If the cat had intended to sell her out, he would have done so long ago. At this point, he was guilty of aiding and abetting, a co-conspirator.

  Her scooter screamed through a tight corner, climbing with its engine shuddering and begging her to calm down. Nadia pouted at it and cut the brakes in. She’d gotten so used to blasting around on her stealthy black steed at night.

  Panicked fleeing below her still, people sprinting for their lives, dragging the wounded along. She was already in a bad mood. No need for them to throw all
this in her face as well. The Sapphire Shadow had never asked anyone else to get shot in her name.

  And yet.

  Whoever Cheshire was, wherever he was, the two of them needed to have a long serious talk.

  She weaved through a few more alleys and emerged onto a main street that bustled with activity. Protesters were camped below, but these were a very different sort. Properly masked, all of them, many bearing shields, a few wearing makeshift armor. Hardened veterans, ready to make a stand.

  Nadia couldn’t stand to stay and watch. They were always swept away eventually. But neither could she quite move on yet. Cheshire’s face made an appearance on a few shields. As did her own visage, her lovely glowing eyes a recurring motif.

  How dare they? As much as she appreciated their rebellious nature and was flattered by the imitation…the blue eyes were her thing, thank you very much. This fight was her own. She didn’t need copycats getting themselves hurt, didn’t need help from an unruly mob.

  There were signs among the crowd.

  RESIST RENT EXTORTION

  WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS

  I JUST WANT MY HOME BACK

  Not a word about the Sapphire Shadow. Scowling, Nadia opened the throttle and leaned to turn away.

  She almost dumped herself over.

  Were her eyes fooling her? It couldn’t possibly have been…

  With a deft shifting of her weight, she righted the scooter and yanked it into a 180. Her eyes scanned the crowd below her, looking for the coat that had jumped out.

  Nothing. There was simply no way she wasn’t seeing things. It wouldn’t have made any sense.

  Her eyes kept looking all the same, until they proved their case. Nadia’s mouth fell, motioning through some words unbecoming of a lady such as herself.

  A plain green army jacket, with the hood of a purple sweater poking out. Her face was gasmasked, but Nadia squinted down at the young woman—what she would give for the zoom factor on her goggles right now—until it was confirmed.