by Matt Doyle
“No, I will destroy both of them. And by falling while doing so, I will become a-a martyr for those like me who wish to instigate change in this world.” He pauses and closes his eyes with a sigh. “Ah, but I will not be the only casualty in this war.” Gary nods to the big guy and says, “Get the bag.”
Mr. Suit and Muscles walks to the hall and hauls a large black sports bag into the room. Gary’s avoided using this guy’s name. That has to be intentional. Maybe he’s gonna leave before the police arrive, then play the concerned neighbour or something like that once Gary’s in court?
The nameless muscle drops the bag to the floor with a muffled thunk. He unzips the bag and throws a familiar-looking Lycra suit at Lori. Next, he removes the three pieces of metal that form Ink.
“Get changed,” Gary says. When Lori doesn’t move, he says, “We can make you watch while we kill M-Miss Tam, if you wish? Or we can hurt you. Maybe even both. Change now and I can promise you that this will be quicker than if you don’t.”
Lori starts to sob, but does what Gary says. She moves herself to the corner of the room, and starts to peel her clothes off. Thankfully, neither Gary nor the other guy complain when she turns to face the corner and hide herself as best as she can. As soon as she has the bodysuit on, she takes the metal spine and whips it over her shoulder, but it takes three attempts to get it to take to the plugs. Once it locks into place, the top tube opens out, snapping closed around her body. She flips the mask down herself, then works her way first into the back legs, then the front legs.
“Now come here,” Gary rasps.
It’s strange, but seeing her creep across the floor the way she is, I can tell that this isn’t really Ink. When I saw her in the suit before, Ink had a natural feeling of strength and confidence that Lori only shows in flashes. At the same time, this isn’t Lori either. Even at her lowest points over the last few days, she’s never looked so defeated. Everything about her body language says that’s she’s given up.
“If she bites,” Gary says, addressing the big guy but keeping his attention on Lori, “shoot her.” He leans over and slides a small box out from the side of his chair. “I have a habit of stockpiling my stimulants. Did you know that the lubricating oil you have to put in the Tech Shifter suits also contains a small trace of certain strains? They are modified, of course, but they help with the immersion, or so I hear.”
“What are you doing?” I ask, just as the sirens start to sound outside. Better late than never, I guess.
Gary opens the box and pulls out a syringe. “You were wrong, M-Miss Tam. My plan was never reliant o-on Lori taking action. If anything, her doing so was a problem. For things to work as I wished, I needed control over the proceedings. You both becoming involved added an unknown element into the mix. One that could cause things to happen quicker than was convenient. I also did not anticipate M-Mr. Hollister being as open as the transcript of your meeting indicates.” Gary coughs loudly and forces a deep breath in. “Ah, but then without that…”
Gary looks down at Lori, his eyes a mix of pity and determination. “M-Mr. Hollister’s openness was truly inspirational. I t-trust, Lori, that you feel guilt over what happened to y-your brother, yes? Believer or not, you must atone for your sins. You are going to overdose, just like Eddie. It seems only fair, wouldn’t you agree?”
Gary unsheathes the needle in his hand and studies the contents. “You, M-Miss Tam, as you might have gathered, were to die in a hit ordered and paid for by M-Mr. Hollister. Now, you will simply die here. Perhaps I will be able to claim it was self-defence, hmm?” He glances up at the big guy again, nods towards me, and says, “You may kill her now.”
The man takes a step towards me, his hand going to my Glock. I wait for the tip of the barrel to be showing, then push myself to my feet, swinging an uppercut at his jaw. It causes him to stumble but doesn’t drop him. I snatch at my gun, ripping it roughly from his hands, and unload three rounds into his chest. I swing the gun around before he hits the floor, and fire a shot into Gary’s leg. He cries out in pain and drops the syringe to the floor. From the way he’d been gripping Lori’s masked face, I’d guess that he’d intended to inject the stimulant directly into her eye.
Gary leans forward, pressing one hand tightly to the bullet wound, and grabs at the syringe again with the other hand. This time, I step forward and kick him hard in the face. He slumps back into the log-in chair, his nose a bloody mess and his breathing coming through in rasps.
I hear the thunder of footsteps coming up the hall. The cavalry is here.
Within seconds, Captain Hoover and three armed cops storm into the room. I let my shoulders sag and begin to relax, but Lori panics and tears from the room.
One of the armed men turns to give chase, and I say, “Let her go for now.”
The man looks at Hoove, who nods and turns to me. “Lori Redwood?”
“Yeah,” I say, and slump into one of the armchairs.
Twenty-Six
SITTING HERE READING the first news report to cover the conclusion of the trial, it’s easy to say that the days following Gary Locke’s arrest went by quickly. They felt like they dragged at the time though.
After I gave Hoove a rundown of what had been said, he got straight onto the phone to Inspector Bergesson and explained the mess that he’d been landed in. As our dear Captain brazenly told his superior, simply leaving this one alone was no longer an option. If the postings queued up on The Roots of Eden are Rotten were allowed to go live, then it wouldn’t be long until the public became aware of the harmonious working relationship that the local PD has with Devin Carmichael. The calls for action would be too much to ignore and that would mean they’d not only have to bring Devin in—and good luck with that—but that they’d have to haul every senior official in the PD through the mud in the resulting investigation. Rather than deal with such an inconvenience, Inspector Bergesson immediately authorised a site hack by the Data Monitoring Office. The account was frozen, the posts were copied and deleted, and I was dragged into the station to run through possible solutions to the problem of what to do with Gary Locke as a result.
Sometimes, good people can do bad things and still be good people after the act. I never believed that back in Vancouver. That was why things ended the way that they did. Would I be any different if I hadn’t left home? I doubt it. My father’s death shook me up, and if the right circumstances had come up, I’d have strayed from the path that I thought I was on. It took coming here for me to realise that there never was a straight and narrow path to begin with. It was New Hopeland that showed me I wasn’t a paragon of virtue, and that I was, in the end, no different from anyone else. So, embracing my doing-bad-things-for-the-greater-good side, I called Dean Hollister. I explained how I’d obtained his bank details and what I’d discovered. I explained what Eddie and Gary’s plan had been, and I explained what I thought would be the best way to make this all disappear.
To his credit, Hollister was happy to let my shenanigans with his bank statements slide as it essentially cleared his name. It took two days for the Data Monitoring Office to cobble together a program to trace the alterations that Eddie’s tool had made to Hollister’s records. In that respect, having his log-in chair set to unlock itself was the dumbest thing that Eddie could have done. Once we had the physical proof of what he had planned and what had actually happened, we hit the point where I expected resistance from Hollister. My view was that if we dug up the original intent and reopened the Redwood case, then the stuff that came out would mean Gary gets what he wants. That would have been the right thing to do, regardless of the result, but we didn’t have the luxury of doing the right thing. Life in New Hopeland isn’t perfect, but it works. If we wanted to make sure that it kept working, then we had no choice but to do the wrong thing, at least to a degree. To my surprise, Hollister agreed, which made me wonder just how many pies he really did have his fingers in.
The result of our scheming was that Hollister agreed not to pursue legal
action against me for my actions, and most importantly, he agreed to make a full statement confirming that he would not be pursuing any charges against Eddie Redwood, Gary Locke, or The Roots of Eden are Rotten. By then invoking his constitutional right to privacy, it became impossible to mention the particulars of his involvement unless the police thought it relevant to the case that they were going to pursue. The charges raised against Gary Locke needed to be specific for that to work. We settled on kidnapping and attempted murder. With Lori not answering her phone or her door, we were a little shaky on the kidnap part of things. What saved us on that point was the DNA on the clothes that Lori had left in the building, and the match that the forensic team found on both Gary and his cohort. This was confirmed as a match for Lori by using her hospital records. The charge of attempted murder was easier. Aside from my own testimony, Gary was so convinced that he’d won that he was happy to confess to his plan to kill both me and Lori. By doing so, he was eliminating those who sought to maintain the broken society in which we lived, and he was ensuring that the corrupt were exposed for all to see. Or so he claimed.
I paid a visit to Devin shortly after we finalised things with Hollister, and let him know what had happened and that he wasn’t going to be dragged into it. Being in the business that he is, he already knew. I asked if he’d told me that he wouldn’t name a price to kill the guy who hired him because he already knew that it was a suicide. Apparently, he did. He’d worked with Hollister before, recently as it happened, so knew that the voice at the other end of the phone wasn’t his.
“Ya see, darlin’,” he said, “Hollister’s generally a good guy. He ain’t got enough skeletons in the closet for me to turn him down for work, but he’s got just enough that I’m not too worried if someone’s trying to mess him around. ’Sides, any fool could’ve traced the payment and seen who made the transfer. The truth would’ve gotten out one way or another. You just made the experience all the more exciting for the public.”
I called him a ham gaa caan and walked away. I should have probably called Charlie too, but like Devin, she keeps her ear to the ground enough to know what was happening. While I was motivated by the curiosity of whether or not Devin knew who had hired him, I didn’t have anything like that with Charlie, so stuck to avoiding her.
The case was rushed to court after less than a week, the system allowing it to be expedited due to the seriousness of the crime. No charges were levied on me for killing the man who kidnapped Lori for two reasons. One, it was clear from both my own and Gary Locke’s statements that I was acting in self-defence. Two, Bert’s recordings caught Gary ordering him to retrieve Lori. This helped prove that my client was in immediate danger, and as a licensed investigator, I have dispensation to apply certain levels of force in order to protect a client in these circumstances. As it turned out, the man was named Michael Vesper, and he looked familiar because he was the security guard I’d thought was ignoring us when Lori and I first visited Gary.
With the original case falling under a gagging order due to Hollister’s input, Gary found himself removed from court shortly after he started ranting and raving about Eddie Redwood. This, as it turned out, was part of Gary’s state-appointed lawyer’s plan of attack.
“Gary Locke,” he said, “clearly suffers from a clinical fanaticism, and this has seeped into his perception of the everyday world in which we live. As a result of both this and his sad addiction to synthetic stimulants, he is incapable of making the rational choices that are expected of most citizens. Gary Locke accepts responsibility for his actions, his statement makes that clear, but he is incapable of understanding the weight of them.”
Long story short, the final result was exactly what the news sites are now reporting. Gary Locke attempted murder and got rewarded with a private cell and a whole load of psychiatric treatment at public expense. What the reporters don’t know is that we ultimately achieved our goal here: he got jail time, and he didn’t get to deliver his message of rebellion. That, at least, is a job well done.
Twenty-Seven
IT’S BEEN OVER a week since the Paloma Brothers broke in, and I’m still a little jumpy every time that I hear a knock at the door. But hey, I made the news, so anyone who comes knocking should be expecting me to welcome them with a gun, right? Judging by the look on Plain Jane’s face when I shove the door open and swing my Glock out towards her head, I seem to be the only one thinking that.
I drop the gun back to the holster, and wave her in. “Jane, right?”
“Well, hello to you too,” she replies, breezing in through the door. She takes a quick look around and makes a beeline for my couch. “I hope you don’t mind me dropping by. Tobi gave me your address. He said that you helped him with that trouble he had with his bank account. Exes, right? Always trouble.” She sits herself down with far more elegance than I usually manage, and looks over towards the small metal beastie that’s just pulled itself up onto the armchair across from her.
“Bert, leave her alone,” I say, and he moves from staring menacingly to staring slightly less menacingly. I pack some cups away into the cupboard and ask, “So what brings you here?”
“Lori.” Jane sighs.
“I haven’t seen her since the night we arrested Gary Locke.”
“I have.”
I look over my shoulder at Jane, and she holds up a pair of house keys, jangling them lightly. Bert tracks the movement but obviously decides that they really are keys and not some sort of secret mini-bomb. He’s been really twitchy since that night too.
“I tried her at home. She wasn’t answering.”
Jane drops her hand, and there is concern on her face. “She can’t answer right now. She hasn’t come out of Ink yet.”
I turn around and cross my arms. Including the night she ran off, that’s nine days she’s been wearing the suit, assuming that she hasn’t been taking it off for periods between visits. Even then, that can’t be healthy.
“That’s a long time to be Tech Shifted.”
“Yes, it is. You know, she called me that evening. She was feeling a bit low because you sent her away, or something like that. She told me about how you two were flirting. It’s funny. When you turned up at the meet asking about her, I figured that you were some new lover. Then, when she wanted me to give you the door key, it kinda solidified that in my head. I was a little off the mark with that one, huh?” Jane laughs at herself, and continues, “Anyway, once she relaxed, she told me a little about what was going on, but didn’t really give me much in the way of details. I think that she would have, but someone knocked at the door and she had to let me go. From the way her voice jumped, I think she was hoping that it was you, but I guess it was the guy that took her.”
“I guess so.” I sigh. “Look, Jane…Lori told me that when she’s Ink, she’s running from stuff. Trust me on this. After what happened, and what we found out…” I shake my head. “She has a lot to run from.”
“I figured that much out myself. Right now, though, I’m pretty sure that she’s only eating and drinking because I’m stopping by and leaving stuff in a bowl for her. She’s retreated far enough that she’s pretty much become a stray cat.”
I turn away sharply and press my hands to the edge of the sink. I can feel myself blush again as I remember the last time that Lori had mentioned the word “stray”, and the stupid question that I’d followed up with.
“I don’t get what you’re expecting me to do.”
“For a detective, you’re pretty bad at spotting the obvious, aren’t you?” I look over my shoulder and glare at Jane, and she says, “Talk to her. I’ve tried, and she just won’t snap out of it.” She shakes her head sadly, and her voice drops. “She normally talks to me about everything. If she’s this far gone…None of us want to lose her.”
“If you’re that close and she’s not biting for you, then what makes you think that I’ll be able to make a difference?”
“Because you were there. You know what caused all of this.”
>
“That doesn’t mean that I know how to fix it for her.”
“No, but you could try.”
“I tried calling her,” I yell, my anger catching me off guard as I rail on her. “I tried stopping by her house. She clearly doesn’t want to talk to me either. You coming up here, trying to tug at my heartstrings, doesn’t change that.” The look of shock on Jane’s face extinguishes the flames enough for me to notice how heavy my breathing has gotten all of a sudden. I take a moment to compose myself, and mutter, “Sorry.” I should say more, but hey, I’ve stopped speaking already, so why continue?
“You’re really worried about her, aren’t you?”
“After what she’s been through? Of course I’m worried about her.”
“No, I mean really worried about her. Like, really, genuinely worried about her.”
“Yes, I’m genuinely worried about her. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“It’s just that…once I knew that you were sort of working for her, I kinda thought that…maybe…you flirting with Lori was just a way to keep a client on side?” I narrow my eyes and Jane splutters, “No, no, I mean, it wasn’t anything that you did specifically. Lori just has a habit of getting taken for a ride, is all. She can be pretty naive at times, and part of me was just expecting to be helping her drown her sorrows right about now.”
“You honestly thought I’d be that much of an asshole?”
“You wouldn’t be the first she’s taken a liking to. And besides, over the two times that I’ve met you, you’ve made insensitive comments that border on discrimination and yelled at me without provocation.”
“Hey, I apologised both times,” I remind her.
A cheeky grin grows on Jane’s face and she replies, “Well, yeah. But if you have to apologise, all that means is that you did something wrong to begin with.”
I roll my eyes and return the smile. “Maybe you just bring out that side of me?” Jane laughs, and I continue, “Seriously, though, I meant what I said. I’ve tried talking to her. She obviously doesn’t want anything to do with me.”
