by Dan Stout
The poor kid thought he was saying the right thing. As Bryyh turned to him, the color drained from his face, making the brown tortoise shell coloration on his head plates and neck stand out more than usual.
“No, Detective Ajax, you are not ‘on it.’ You are the farthest thing from ‘on it.’ You’re so far from it that I don’t even know how to describe the distance between you and anything at all. This,” she lifted the folder in one hand and rubbed her temple with the other, as if fending off an approaching migraine, “is an OCU requisition request for your Gillmyn. And this,” she swapped the folder for another piece of paper, “is a request for comment from the Union Record. Asking if our hero detectives have any leads on the brutal gang murder. Low profile, gentlemen. You remember those words?”
Apparently we hadn’t managed to escape the scene unnoticed after all.
“We were next door,” I said. “We couldn’t just ignore it.”
“You mean you don’t have the patience or self-control to call and get an okay from me before walking across the street.”
“Since when do we need to get permission before responding to a page from Dispatch?”
Her eyes widened. “Since when do you respond to all your pages?”
I jammed my hands in my pockets and tilted my head. “If we called in, we’d have had this exact argument before you eventually told us to go look at it, only to get the scene pulled by OCU anyway. I thought you wouldn’t want to be bothered with it.”
“Oh, I know exactly what you were thinking.”
“How would you even begin to—”
“Because I’ve known you since you drank out of a sippy cup!”
Bryyh held my gaze. For the first time, I noticed how tired she was. She’d looked like that at my mother’s funeral, when she’d handed my old man the tightly folded twin flags of Titanshade and the AFS. I dropped my eyes first.
I stared at the floor, listening to her exhale through clenched teeth and step away from me, followed by the creak of her chair. By the time I raised my head she’d taken a seat and Jax stood cross-armed and unhappy. He didn’t like this either, but at least he had the sense to hold his peace.
Bryyh flipped through a few pages on her desk. “You found a manna vial on the scene?”
I ran my tongue over my teeth and fought another spike of irritation. Our report was still sitting on my desk. She’d checked in with the tech crew. Curious about a random body, or checking on how we’d behaved in the field?
“We found a vial,” I said. “Someone might have sold it as manna. We don’t know yet.”
“You’ll have to file a CS report,” said Bryyh. “Anything that even looks like manna’s being added to the controlled substance list. In the meantime, I can’t stress enough that you need to stay out of the limelight.” Another rattle of her braids. “You two . . . I can’t keep the heat off you if you call attention down on yourselves.”
I shifted my feet, and noticed Jax doing the same. The mayor and the AFS had spun the discovery of manna as stemming from a raid guided by city hall. It was a story that played loose with the facts, and that was why Bryyh insisted we stay out of the papers and off the news. Our mere existence was a liability to people of power and influence, and that meant that Bryyh had to fight tooth and nail to keep us from being thrown under the bus. I appreciated that. But I’d also reached that point in my life where I’d been a cop longer than I hadn’t been, and six weeks cooped up in a hospital or behind a desk was a long time to be away from the only thing I knew how to do well.
“I don’t know, Cap.” I rotated my shoulder with a series of audible pops. “Trying to be invisible makes it kind of hard to do our jobs.”
“Welcome to reality. Avoiding controversy is part of your job, now,” she said, “same as getting dragged in front of a doctor on a weekly basis.”
We didn’t respond, and Bryyh narrowed her eyes.
“You do remember that you have your medical today?”
Jax nodded; I shrugged. The weekly exams were the smallest of headaches compared to a full month of paperwork.
“As for this Jane Doe . . .” Bryyh leaned forward, elbows braced wide on her tidy desktop. “If it’s an OCU problem, don’t let them dump it on us. If it’s ours, don’t let them take it.” She stared past us, to the blackboard that perched at the head of the Bullpen, its layers of ghost letters holding the names of suspects and victims that had been erased and rewritten countless times. “I don’t want OCU taking a civilian case and letting it fall through the cracks because it’s not mob related. No family deserves that.” She glanced at her watch. “I’ve got a meeting,” she said. “You are not to take on any cases without my say-so. Understood?”
Neither Jax nor I said a word. Neither of us was happy with Dungan’s game, but neither of us was going to rat him out for it, either.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Bryyh turned away and pulled open her filing cabinet. “When I say I’ve got a meeting, that means you leave.”
We slunk back to our desks. Jax finished off the last of his Lemonales as I flipped the murder book open and closed.
“Well,” I said. “Bryyh says not to let go of Jane.”
“Great,” he said, a wavering bass undertone making his sarcasm clear. “Maybe we can use that to justify this situation with Dungan if we ever get called out for it.”
He stayed on his feet, clearly not eager to dive back into the stack of NICI’s missing person reports. That suited me just fine.
It was time for our medical, anyway.
5
FLUORESCENT LIGHTS FLICKERED AND HUMMED in the fourth floor meeting room that was converted once a week for our medical check-ins. We were the first of the subjects to arrive, an unusual occurrence. I usually strode in late, with Jax ushering me ahead. Arriving early let us watch the room being set up.
Material and machines streamed in, carried or wheeled by a mix of nurses and soldiers dressed like nurses. The latter were a not-so-subtle reminder that the military was still in full control of the manna strike, as well as everything—and everyone—who’d come in contact with it.
An unexpected bonus of our early arrival was that the watered-down elevator music we were usually subjected to was also absent. Instead, the attendants had the radio tuned to WYOT, painting the room with a healthy dose of reverb-slathered guitars and thunderous drum riffs.
As the last chords faded the DJ broke in, his baritone crunching like a semitrailer crossing tightly packed snow. He told us we were halfway through a Super Rock Block before adding, “And remember, babies . . . keep your eyes to the skies. There’s more happening on the ice plains than they want you to know. Stay tuned and stay true, and Handsome Hanford will play it straight with you.” Hanford might spin the best tracks, but he also bought into the most ludicrous of conspiracy theories. Lately, his patter had devolved into paranoid melodrama involving espionage, mind control, and otherworldly Families visiting from beyond the stars, all covered up by mysterious and unnamed governmental agencies.
By contrast, I was sitting in the grip of a very real government agency and bored out of my head. After my stint in the hospital, I—along with everyone else who’d been at the manna strike before the military took control—had been enrolled in a preemptive monitoring program. The medical team came out every Trice to listen to our heartbeats, draw our blood, and make us piss in cups, all while assuring us it was in the name of the greater good.
The radio had switched to a public service announcement. A rendition of the AFS anthem swelled as Colonel Marbury, the head of the military encampment, assured us it wouldn’t be long before the drilling freeze was lifted and we’d all share in the bounty of the strike. It was a PR campaign designed to distract the city from how much longer than expected it was taking for the strike to deliver commercially viable manna. The AFS was betting everything on the patience of the public, and thos
e were long odds to play.
Before the strike, manna had only been found in the bellies of whales. It had fueled the first industrial revolution, but our ancestors had no more restraint than we did. Within a few generations whales were extinct and manna was a rare commodity. Until now. The discovery of an underground reservoir brought its own questions, primarily whether it was safe to use and how much was available to exploit. Not necessarily in that order.
The room setup was complete, but Hanford was back, responding to Marbury’s appeal for patience. “. . . disrupted migrations, weird animal behavior at the strike site. What else aren’t they telling us?” A soldier-nurse silenced the radio, and a moment later the dull tones of elevator-quality smooth jazz filled the room as we waited for our fellow lab rats to arrive.
One by one, the dozen or so patrol cops who’d been first to respond to our distress signal at the manna strike filed in. Regular cops who’d become inadvertent test subjects. If we lived, and seemed mostly sane and healthy, the exploitation could proceed apace. But if anything seemed off about us—anything at all—the people who controlled the nation’s purse strings had every reason to want us hidden away.
One of the patrol sat next to Jax. A broad-chested Mollenkampi who greeted us with a nod and a gruff, “Fellas.”
“Hey, Andrews,” said Jax. “You were going to see Busque in the hospital. How is she?”
A knot formed in my gut. Karma Busque was another of the lab rats, a patrol who’d begun to have especially vivid nightmares. She made the mistake of telling the docs, and now she was hospitalized, undergoing further observation “for her own safety.”
“Yeah, they finally gave me permission to visit.” Andrews emphasized his words with a low, disturbing hum. “They had her on so many pills she barely recognized me.”
Busque’s treatment was also a warning to the rest of us: Don’t have bad dreams, don’t have weird experiences. Anything or anyone that might cause issues with the adaption of the new manna would be paved over on the road to progress. And that included imaginary cobwebs and unnaturally strong junkies.
I shifted my legs, doing my best not to look at the array of medical equipment laid out on metal trays. Of us all, I had been the earliest and most intense test subject. It was very important that I not share any concerns or uncertainty while under examination.
Andrews had already moved on to another topic. “Hells, my brother-in-law moved in with us. Used to work a remote rig and never bothered to keep an apartment because his off-shift time was so low. These layoffs and drilling freezes . . .” He coughed a low, resonant note. “If we don’t get control of the oil fields back, the whole town’s gonna be out of work.”
Another of the patrol, a human named Clarice, chimed in as she found her seat on the far side of Andrews. “Yeah, but when we do, though? It’ll be sweet living after that.”
That was a mixed bag of truth. The riggers might want to get back to work, but the companies were focused on deep-depth surveys, hoping they were sitting on the next manna reserve. After all, the oil wells had already been on the verge of running dry. Maybe manna really was the future of the industry.
The last test subject came through the door. A detective whose blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail that scraped the collar of her blue dress shirt, she said her hellos to the rest of the lab rats. Seeing her, my day got a little worse. Her name was Hemingway, and she’d been on my team once. She and her partner Myris had gone with Jax and me on the final raid on the Rediron drill site six weeks earlier. Of the four of us, Hemingway, Jax, and I had been wounded, lucky to get out alive. Detective Myris hadn’t been lucky. She’d been torn apart by a mob of drug-addled roughnecks. Now, Hemingway was faced with two empty chairs, one by me and one across the room. She opted for the far seat, pointedly avoiding my eyes.
Ajax followed my gaze and hummed a note of consolation. Voice low, he said, “She doesn’t blame you,” which wasn’t quite a lie. Hemingway understood the risks that came with carrying a badge. That didn’t mean she didn’t have emotions.
I considered going over to talk to her, but that was when our personal mad scientist emerged from behind the white cloth partition.
She was a Gillmyn, like the dismembered gangster found in the wash on Ringsridge Road, although unlike him she had a webbed fin bisecting her skull. The doctor was tall and lean, her skin a rich range of greens, while her primary distinctions from males of the species were longer fingers, narrower features, and bright yellow irises. There was no hint of breasts or curve to the hip. Gillmyn had no need for such mammalian traits. The handwritten name tag on her coat told me she was a sudden addition, and the flaring of the layered gills along her neck told me she was uncomfortable speaking to large groups.
“Good afternoon, officers,” she said, her voice a breathy huff. “My name is Dr. Baelen, and I’ll be working with you for the next several weeks.”
She gave no explanation of what had happened to the doctor who’d overseen our exams for the last month. Just a simple assertion that she was in charge, and an expectation that we would accept it without question. The good doctor was accustomed to being obeyed.
Baelen paused, and a sound from the entry door caused me to turn. DO Guyer had slipped into the back of the room. I hadn’t laid eyes on the divination officer in weeks, since she’d been loaned out to Vice. Her normally meticulous hair was pulled into a tight bun and the circles that rimmed her eyes were as dark as the fabric draped over her shoulders. She didn’t wear her sorcerer’s cloak unless she was doing some kind of magical work, so I figured she’d come straight from a crime scene. She made her way to the remaining empty seat, beside me, as Baelen adjusted placement of the roll-out cart. I took advantage of the moment to lean over to the DO.
“Glad to see you,” I said, and meant it. Guyer could be a smartass, but at least she could carry on a conversation.
She rubbed blood-shot eyes and grunted a reply.
Well, sometimes she could carry a conversation. I tried again, scratching my chin and trying to cover my interest. “If we get a break, you got time to take a look at a casebook with me?”
She responded with a weary shrug, but before I could press her further the medical master of ceremonies held up a webbed hand, demanding our attention.
“Most of the tests you’ve participated in have been relatively passive,” said Baelen. “I’d like to change that. Please view this as an opportunity to contribute to the overall efficacy of this study.”
The rest of us stared at her blankly. Baelen didn’t bother to hide her eye-roll. Our new doctor didn’t have much of a bedside manner.
I wondered what her Family specialties were; no one could be an expert in the physiology of all eight sentient species, and the differences between humans and Mollenkampi are trivial compared to the bison-sized Barekusu or tunnel-dwelling Haabe-Ieath. Most doctors tended to focus on the Families most common in their geographic location, leaving specialists to deal with the occasional outlier.
Whatever her expertise, Baelen now held our futures in the palm of her webbed hand. She scanned the room, settling on Guyer. “Officer?”
“Looks like I’m up.” The divination officer moved to the center of the room. “Okay, you all know the routine here. I understand we’ve got something a little different today.”
The TPD observers we’d had for the last month had been untalkative, mostly sulking at being expected to babysit a bunch of cops who’d happened to be in the right place at the wrong time. Guyer seemed to have been recruited into a more active role.
To her right, Baelen secured the wheels of a cloth-covered cart in the center of the room. I gripped the edge of my seat. One thing I’ve learned over the years: whether it’s in the morgue or a courtroom, nothing good ever comes on a cloth-covered cart.
Baelen said, “Part of what we’ll be doing is conducting a study of animal activity near the manna
strike.”
The same nonsense we’d heard on the radio from Handsome Hanford. That wasn’t too much of a surprise; conspiracy theorists and government officials often have about the same grasp of reality.
Baelen pulled back the cloth to reveal a crime scene writ small. The bodies of two animals lay on the table. One was an ice hare, large rear feet pulled tight to its chest, caught in the moment of death as it sank its back claws into the creature that had killed it—a leamu. The latter’s distinctive bulging eyes had glossed over, but even in death it was a formidable creature. Its long serpentine body half my height coiled across the table, its final prey in the leamu’s single pair of muscular limbs.
Considering the presence of a divination officer, I could only wonder at what the Hells we were about to witness.
Baelen held her clipboard like a child clutching a favorite toy, hiding its face to her chest and checking it frequently.
“Ordinarily a divination officer connects with the echo of a recently departed. But here—”
“I’d only get some snarls and chattering,” Guyer said, managing to pull a chuckle out of her audience.
“Yes, indeed,” Baelen said. “So we will attempt something in a different direction.”
She gestured to one of her assistants, and a soldier-nurse came over carrying a metal work light and extension cord. Clamping the lamp to the side of the table, he ran the cord to a wall outlet. A moment later the overhead lights cut out. When Baelen flicked on the lamp, the shadows of the animals projected on the near wall, black silhouettes etched on stark white paint. The dense body of the hare was a round blob, while the leamu’s white and gray blend of scales and fur was reduced to a single, serpentine curl.
“If you’ll all gather around. Closer, closer.” As we complied, Baelen stepped back, until she stood outside the circle of light. “Please proceed, Officer.”