Latency

by Blaze Ward

  Leigh might want out. New life. New world.

  New Greyson Leigh, but she didn’t even think that too loud around the man. He just might be able to read her mind.

  She watched him peel the sealed edge of the envelope and pull out a stack of papers.

  “Most of that’s crap, isn’t it?” she asked quietly as he randomly cut the document stack and then reassembled it.

  She was back to their first case together, when he did something similar to an oversized stack, just for a pair of cops who’d been watching them a little too closely from across a different restaurant.

  “Most,” he agreed with a hint of a grin. His voice was quiet under the pop music blaring over the noise of soccer moms, but she was used to reading his lips anyway. “Personnel files of the six of us working some aspect of this case.”

  “You looking for a rogue?” she asked slowly and carefully. He was pretty much reading her lips, too.

  “Yeah, but it won’t be here,” he grinned again. Just a flash and gone.

  She watched him work upside down as he flipped through sections and pages until he found whatever it was he was looking for.

  Leigh pulled a single page out eventually and studied it closely for a long moment. Probably photographing it into long-term memory, knowing the man.

  “Huh,” he said after a moment, handing it to her with a half spin.

  Rachel took it from his hand and studied it. Last six months showing every instance where someone had accessed Leigh’s file.

  Lot of traffic at the beginning, when he’d decided to finally keep the badge instead of telling them all to go piss up a rope. It fell to nothing five months ago.

  She looked at the bottom and noted the most recent request came from Edgar Redhawk, Office of the Metropolitan of the Eastern Metroplex. Before that, a week of activity as he got assigned to the case and things got updated routinely from the system.

  Most of the rest of it were just his work check-ins, showing him coming on duty and going off.

  Except for one entry in the middle that stuck out like a sore thumb.

  Rachel didn’t even mouth the word, aware that Greyson Leigh’s instincts had been correct.

  Again.

  What must it be like to live inside that man’s head? Was she going to turn into a female version of Greyson Leigh one of these days? Did she care?

  The job had always been paramount. Getting close. Getting hired. Getting to be a Hunter. Turning into management eventually. Maybe another Rutherford Parsons, or whatever the English equivalent was.

  Good thing she was already watching British television shows in her spare time to find the right model for herself.

  Rachel studied the name again and wondered. Detective/Hunter Fred Jansen. She remembered Leigh’s take on the guy, but she’d never worked with the man on a case. Just seen him in meetings and turned down the occasional proposition for a date that felt more automatic than interested.

  Jansen’s a better killer, but he’s not all that good a cop, a little too lazy to do all the legwork and building networks of informants.

  Leigh’s words, back on that first case she’d shared with him.

  Sharp with a nerve scrambler, but not a man given to chess or other games of skill over luck.

  Why had he accessed Greyson Leigh’s personnel file four weeks ago? Other than to maybe get a copy of a picture that ended up in the pocket of a killer, she could not think of one good reason to do something so obvious, except that the case was supposed to be leading people off-planet by now.

  Nobody would look.

  They’d be after some alien factory on some offworld colony, turning out illegal, custom Synth Chips designed to let a human participate in his homicidal fantasies, except that he was acting it out with a live firearm, instead of seated comfortably in his living room, mentally masturbating in privacy.

  You can hide in plain sight if nobody is looking for you.

  She felt a chill come over her as she realized that Greyson was supposed to have ended up dead from that first ambush. Maybe her, too, except that she wore body armor.

  But not the kind that would stop a .44 round at close range. Nobody used those. Just beams of various kinds.

  Had Jansen set her up to die as well?

  Rachel handed it back to Leigh with a growl she didn’t bother suppressing.

  He nodded in understanding.

  Criminals frequently made mistakes. That was how they got caught.

  It felt like a tiny thing. Subtle. Blink and you miss it.

  Whoever it was should have done better to make sure Leigh hadn’t survived that first encounter.

  Because now she was angry, too.

  12

  Jansen

  The night was cool and drizzly as Greyson pulled to the curb and studied the building down a block and across. Older neighborhood. Somewhat poor in an era where everyone was still recovering from the dislocations of the aliens arriving. Lot of older cars on the street, some of them predating the arrival.

  Greyson didn’t figure all of them ran, but people would hold on to them as long as they could. Buildings were the same way. Old and a little shabby but the place they had always called home. Smells from dinners cooked with a lot of grease would stick to the walls, even though the night was chill and damp in places. They would be there if he rolled his window down to sniff. Some things probably would last until the buildings were torn down.

  Greyson had considered all the different ways he might approach this situation. Fred Jansen had been just another Detective/Hunter in the Boston office. Not as flashy as Dominguez or some of the others. Not as quiet as Greyson was.

  A man doing what he needed to get by, but not much more. Greyson could sympathize, but he’d only started doing that after he’d gotten himself fired and had nothing to do with his days.

  Jansen was still a Hunter. Training. Running the streets. Working with various departments around New England when they needed his expertise.

  Not many people out there specifically trained to kill aliens, after all.

  Greyson turned to Rachel, waiting patiently in the passenger seat.

  “Straight up like a bull in a china shop?” she asked.

  “People make mistakes when they panic,” he replied. “Don’t even really want him as prey, so much as watching which way a man like Fred Jansen runs when he feels the walls suddenly start closing in.”

  “Who do you think he’ll lead you to?” she asked, growing more interested now.

  More focused.

  Anybody but Rachel, he might have said aroused, but he didn’t think The Kill was the sort of thing that turned her on.

  Not that he’d ever asked.

  More lethal instead, maybe.

  “I have a list,” Greyson said. “Half the names are just John and Jane Doe, one through whatever.”

  “And the other half?”

  “People you might remember,” Greyson admitted grudgingly.

  “How many of them used to have badges like ours?” Rachel pressed.

  “Most,” Greyson said simply. “Just don’t know which one might be our mastermind.”

  “You think there’ll be fingerprints to trace?” she asked, unbuckling her harness now in prep for the stalk itself.

  “We’re supposed to be dead right now,” Greyson reminded her. “And other detectives are probably already on a starship to someplace where they can trace dead ends to a factory that never made these chips in the first place.”

  “Unless one of them is being set up as part of a side gig,” Rachel smiled.

  “Maybe,” Greyson granted. “Maybe they’re subtle enough to insert that, but I’m willing to bet you a toonie that anything you find is a red herring at this point.”

  “Then why bother?” Rachel asked.

  Greyson unbuckled as a way to gain a few moments to think.

  “Misdirection at the top level,” he said. “Remember, that they had my picture says there are inside connections. That’
s the only thing here that feels real. The rest is all just bullshit designed to send people off after crap leads until the case grinds down to dead ends, because you missed the important elements at the beginning.”

  She started to open the door and paused, turning back to him with a fierce look.

  “Does Jansen know he’s been set up?” she asked. “Or is he another red herring? Maybe a fall guy for someone? Does he start shooting immediately or run?”

  “That’s why we’re here,” Greyson said, opening the door. “That’s his favorite bar down the block. Fred never had much of a social life, as I recall. Sits and watches the game, whatever game it is, and drinks cheap beer. If we knock on his door at home, it’s automatically a hostile situation. Fred’s a killer, when he needs to be. He’s just not a particularly deep thinker.”

  “So we just walk in like neighbors and say hi?” Rachel opened her door and looked around as she stood up. “What’s he likely to do?”

  “Panic,” Greyson smiled as he joined her on the sidewalk and started walking. “Run, if we’re lucky.”

  “Lucky?” Rachel asked.

  “Honest men got no reason to bolt, Rachel,” Greyson reminded her. “That’s almost as good as a verbal admission of guilt, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

  He watched the impact of those words on her face. Just like her backing him accidentally into a corner and getting Greyson to admit that getting on a starship might be a bad idea.

  Rachel flinched pretty hard and looked up at him with a glimmer of awe that she quickly suppressed. Greyson wondered how long they would dance around the topic of his humanity before she finally confronted him.

  To outsiders, it would probably have the look and feel of an unspoken seduction and romance, like out of one of those romance books she was reading. The ones with a cop and an alien.

  He suppressed his own shudder. Rachel didn’t need the weirdness of a real cop/alien relationship on top of everything else.

  She turned a stone face forward and walked. Greyson did the same, wondering how it might look to a random stranger. If the sexual tension appeared thick enough to stop a nerve scrambler beam to anyone else.

  They continued in silence.

  The front door of the neighborhood bar was glass, covered over with stickers and ads for beers and things that someone had stuck on both the inside and outside over the years.

  Decades?

  He pulled the heavy door open and felt the dull roar of conversation spill out over him, along with the smell of tobacco and other things you smoked. Bodies that hadn’t had a shower today. Clothes maybe on their second day as well.

  Grime, in all its flavors, wafted out on the warm air from inside as it blew in his face.

  At one time, smoking had been everywhere. Then they tried to eliminate it indoors, driving the smokers out into the snow or rain for their fix.

  Eventually, the forces of abstention lost all their momentum and enforcement of the prohibition of tobacco or marijuana today was mostly honored in the breach. A secondary charge that a cop might add on if you were being a pain in her ass for something else.

  The killing blow had been vaping, about the time he was a teenager experimenting with youthful rebellion. Fluid in a charged chamber that you sucked down into your lungs and absorbed.

  Almost as bad as tobacco, at the end of the day, but harder to detect unless you went all strident on people.

  Not worth the effort.

  The inside of the bar had some pretty hardcore fans sucking at the smoke and vape fumes. It hit Greyson like a blanket of wet dog fur when he stepped in.

  The noise of the fans wasn’t all that rude, but it would cover a lot of conversation, especially with the basketball game blaring from every corner of the place.

  He stepped in and looked around. Bar on his left behind the basic rope separator to keep juveniles at bay. Kitchen beyond the end of the bar. Tall and short tables down his right. Longer tables tall enough for bar stools or standing, back on the right. Hallway beyond everything, leading to the bathrooms, if Greyson had to guess.

  Only so many ways to arrange a space like this, and bars tended to run cheap on interior decorating. Except for all the electric light beer logos, what people who had no chemistry background called neon.

  Rachel was right behind him as he started forward, counting noses down the bar, since most of the stools were full.

  He was just about to the bar itself, and the tall woman tending, when movement on his right caught his eye.

  Greyson turned to see Fred Jansen standing in that back hallway, like he’d just come out of the bathroom and frozen.

  They made eye contact and Greyson watched the man’s face turn white. Fred’s eyes got huge.

  He turned and bolted for the back door without a word.

  “Fuck!” Greyson barked under his breath.

  Just about as good as a verbal admission of guilt.

  He’d really hoped that Fred was only tangentially guilty. Maybe done a favor for someone without any understanding of what the long-range implications might be.

  But Fred seemed to be in it up to his neck.

  Greyson turned and started running, bouncing off a stranger who had just stepped the wrong way. The man turned with a curse and growled at Greyson.

  A fist started back, when Rachel stuck a gun in the man’s face.

  “Hunter Bureau business,” she snarled up at him, like a Chihuahua threatening a grizzly bear, flashing her badge at him. “Move or bleed.”

  Not exactly the most subtle way to do it, but the stranger flinched under the tone. Or the palmstunner she held in her hand with the calm certainty that he was only worth shooting because he was in her way.

  Her look promised that he’d be like shit she needed to wipe off her boots afterwards.

  She might have been spending too much time around ex-Army assassins.

  Or something.

  Greyson nodded a polite understanding to the grizzly bear and slid past him, only accelerating when he was clear. Other heads had turned this way, but nobody rose from their stool. No hands vanished into pockets for a weapon.

  Greyson drew his own palmstunner now and pursued.

  He would be fine shooting anything right now.

  He could always apologize later, if he had to.

  From the way Fred Jansen had bolted, Greyson didn’t figure that would be necessary.

  13

  Runner

  Rachel was off in Greyson’s wake, pausing only enough to put her badge away because the tables were too close together for her to keep up.

  Nobody in the place wanted to be shot tonight, which was good. She wasn’t feeling charitable. Especially not that big punk.

  Jansen hadn’t even asked what they were up to. Just run at first sight. She hadn’t spotted the man until he turned and went for the back door.

  They were out that door now.

  Dark alley with a few pools of light where she figured she’d find cooks having a smoke during a quiet stretch of the evening. Maybe just bums tonight.

  Other bums. The kind that didn’t even have enough sense to live in one of those cribs the government would make available for you.

  Some people simply refused to be helped.

  Not that Rachel Asher had any idea what that might be like.

  Movement in this alley was going to draw fire. That was the joy of a palmstunner.

  Up ahead, Greyson was moving faster than a fifty-year-old should be able to, but he had been in good shape when she first met him, running up and down stairs instead of taking elevators, just for the work out.

  Now, nobody knew what good shape would mean.

  She had youth and rage on her side, and could keep up. Jansen was the one she’d be expecting to run out of gas first.

  In that fool’s mind, he probably figured he only had to run faster scared than Greyson Leigh could chase him angry, not understanding just how fast angry might be tonight. And Rachel didn’t figure she had the
will that Leigh did.

  A shadow exited the alley on the left onto a street.

  Leigh was already after him. Rachel followed, drifting a little to her left as she did.

  Palmstunner had a greater range than a nerve scrambler did, and she didn’t want Jansen to be hiding in a dark spot just around a corner on them, where they might get close enough that he could shoot them both before they could react.

  Rachel considered running with the nerve scrambler in her off hand, but that would suggest malice aforethought later, rather than the heat of the moment. Plus, she needed her right hand free for doors or whatever else.

  Like punching people.

  For an old guy running, Greyson moved on silent feet, but she’d heard enough about his youth to understand just how lethal the man had been at her age. She was happy just keeping up.

  Jansen was the one losing ground.

  They got to the corner and Greyson slowed abruptly. She was feeling rambunctious, so she went wide around the corner, wondering if she was drawing fire for her partner. And if it would hurt.

  Dark street. Side street kind of place, where light industry closed up chain link fences at night. The kind of barriers topped with loops of razor wire to keep the tweakers from climbing over and causing property damage.

  No beams in her direction.

  Whew.

  Jansen hadn’t decided to make a last stand.

  Not yet anyway, she amended the thought.

  Man still seemed of the opinion that he could get away from them.

  From her.

  From an angry Greyson Leigh.

  Yeah, good luck with that, princess.

  Rather than bunch up, Rachel went ahead and looped wide as she gave chase, crossing the street between a pair of parked cars to the far side of the road.

  What did Fred drive?

  They hadn’t stopped to run that information, afraid that it might tip off whoever else back in the office might be on Fred’s side.

  At least enough to warn him that Greyson Leigh was coming.