Jia nodded. “That’s what I think. The only thing I can’t figure out is why Leonard would do this. The PR angle I get, but what about Chau? That diary entry suggests she stumbled onto something.”
“I think it’s time to ask Leonard to chat at the station.”
“And if he refuses?” Jia raised an eyebrow.
“Let’s grab a few officers,” Erik suggested. “The show of force will convince him this is real, and maybe he won’t be stupid about it.”
Jia chuckled. “Given how arrogant that guy is, I suspect he’ll do something very stupid.”
Erik grinned. “Then maybe I’ll get my wish.”
“Which is?” she asked.
Erik flexed his fist as he smiled at her. “To punch that smug bastard in the face.”
Jia starting walking toward the captain’s office.
Rough…
Chapter Twelve
Erik, Jia, and four uniformed officers exited the elevator and headed to the reception desk in front of a hallway sealed by a large locked door.
The receptionist ignored them for a moment as she tapped on headshots in the data window in front of her. Different-colored borders appeared around her selections.
Jia cleared her throat loudly and patted the badge on her jacket. “Excuse us. This is official police business.”
The receptionist stared at Jia, her lips pressed into a tight line. She sighed, an annoyed look on her face. “I thought we had something worked out where you’d only arrest people at their homes.”
“I don’t know anything about that.” Jia frowned. “That’s not my policy.”
“Who is this concerning, Detective?”
“We need to talk to Leonard Carl,” Jia barked. “Now.”
“Fine. Fine.” The receptionist waved a hand dismissively. She entered a command on her PNIU before narrowing her eyes. “He’s in Meeting Room Twenty-Two with Rena. Do you need me to—”
“No. We were there the other day.” Jia nodded to the uniformed officers. “You stay here in case he gets past us.” She turned to the receptionist. “Don’t let him know we’re coming.”
The receptionist shrugged. “He’s kind of an ass. Do what you want. I had a bet with some of the receptionists that he was on Dragon Tear, so I’m not surprised you’re here.”
“He has access to Dragon Tear?” Jia asked.
That provided another link between Leonard and Chau.
The receptionist shrugged. “I’m not saying I’ve seen it. I’m just saying I’ve heard he likes to party pretty hard. If he wasn’t the man who brought Rena to Euterpe, I bet he would have been fired years ago.” She waved her hand, and a small grid appeared at her side. She jabbed her finger at a number. The door sealing the hallway slid open with a hiss. “Enjoy.”
Erik snickered. Jia nodded, satisfied. The detective hurried past the receptionist into the corridor.
“You sure you can get there?” Erik asked.
“I didn’t want a babysitter,” Jia replied, “even if she seems to dislike him as much as we do.”
A red line appeared on the smart lenses, providing a clear trail on the floor.
“I certainly remember how to get there,” Emma explained. “I’m also monitoring the local flight area for any signs of the flitter registered to the pretentious parasite.”
“Good. I’m hoping he didn’t see us coming.” Jia shifted from a jog to a run. Their circumstantial evidence might not be enough to arrest Leonard Carl yet, but she doubted he was used to dealing with experienced detectives. She had no doubt he was behind everything. The only piece of lingering doubt was motive.
Killing a woman because she found out about a PR stunt seemed too much, and Jia doubted Chau’s diary entry would have been so vehement about something so petty. Something else was there.
They just had to find it.
“What if we’re wrong about him?” Erik asked as they turned a corner. His synchronicity of thought was no longer disturbing to Jia. It had been happening more and more in recent months. That was what being a good partner meant, at least to her.
“We could be, but I doubt it. Unless he can cough up some immediate evidence he wasn’t lying about a stalker, he’s already in trouble. I’m sure once we start looking into his finances, he’s going to have to come up with some quick explanations.”
A shrill klaxon cut through the air.
Erik and Jia halted, looking around the long hallway.
“Dangerous security breach in progress,” announced a recorded female voice. “All employees should shelter in place. Security bots and teams are being deployed.”
Jia’s PNIU came alive with a short-wave transmission from one of the officers at reception, Kino. “Detective, this room just sealed, and we’re hearing a security warning.”
“We’re in the hall, so it didn’t seal,” she replied. “You okay otherwise?”
“Yes. The receptionist is freaked out, though. She says this isn’t a drill.”
“Hold position,” Jia ordered. “If security shows up, tell them this is a police matter now. I doubt this is a coincidence.” She burst into a run and yanked out her stun pistol. “He knows we’re here.”
“Yeah.” Erik drew his pistol as he caught up with Jia. “He’s stalling, which means he must be trying to make a run for it.”
Jia rushed around a corner. “We passed the previous intersections, which means we’ve got him. Oh, that’s annoying.”
Panels in the wall and ceiling flipped over to reveal six-legged security bots with long stun rods. The machines, the size of a small dog, boiled out of the new passages like angry insects defending their hive. Jia shoved her stun pistol into a holster and grabbed her slug-thrower. Erik’s pistol came to life. It took a few bullets before the first target collapsed in a sparking, smoking mess. Jia pointed her gun and tried for careful shots, but it still took two bullets to down one security bot.
“Do what you need to stop this, Emma,” Erik ordered. “I’ll claim it was police emergency hacking later, but I doubt Euterpe’s going to make too big a deal out of it. It’d be bad PR for them.”
“Very well. Give me a moment. I’ve requested additional reinforcements from the station too.”
He ripped open another security bot with careful shots. “And here I thought bringing the big gun would be too flashy. That’s the lesson: always bring the biggest gun.” He slammed his metal fist into one of the bots who had slipped his notice, punching through the head with a slug to finish it off. “You never know what you’re going to have to shoot.”
Jia laughed. “Isn’t that the laser rifle?” She shot a bot off the ceiling. It fell and collided with another on the floor, leading to a tangled mess of metal limbs.
“Biggest gun with the most shots, then,” he amended.
The pair backed up and continued sending rounds down the hallway.
Experience and tactical-center practice firing at weak points made individual security bots easy kills, but additional units kept emerging from the exposed security tunnels. The alarm continued to shriek, and fortunately, despite the doors lining the hall, no one emerged and risked getting shot.
Twitching, smoking, and sparking bodies began to pile up. Their brethren surged over them, treating them as inconveniences, showing no awareness of or concern about the destroyed machines.
Erik reloaded before taking down another bot with a tight three-shot cluster. “I didn’t bring a platoon’s worth of ammo with me.” He carried on the conversation as if the two of them were discussing the latest large movie release. “Got plenty in the flitter.”
“I know what you mean.” She blasted two off the wall, which tripped several on the floor. “I’m down to a magazine and a half.”
The alarm fell silent, but the bots continued their unrelenting advance. Several more bots fell to bullets before Jia reloaded.
“Last mag!” she called, her heart pounding now. She shot the closest bot scuttling toward them on the floor. It made it another m
eter, smoking before collapsing.
Erik’s gun went dry, and he brought back his left arm. “Smashing will have to do.”
The bots halted. Jia stopped firing. The machines hesitated for a moment before climbing on the walls and heading toward the security tunnels.
“Sorry for the delay,” Emma explained. “The security system is fairly sophisticated, but I’ve canceled the alert response.”
“Any security teams coming?” Erik didn’t want to beat up a guard, but he wasn’t about to let himself be slowed down while his suspect escaped.
“No, they seem to realize that something’s gone amiss. A high-level override code was used to activate the system just now.”
Erik pushed a downed bot out of the way with his foot. It scraped the floor. “Do you have eyes on Leonard Carl?”
Emma laughed. “I’m not a fleshbag. I never have eyes on anything, but internal tracking indicates he and Miss Winston are still in Meeting Room Twenty-two. There are no cameras in the room.”
Jia scoffed. “He must have thought the bots would stun us. He’d make his run then.”
“He’s with Rena.” Erik frowned. “Maybe she played us?
“I don’t want to believe that, but you could be right. Let’s go.” She held out her slug-thrower and pulled out her stun pistol. “So you have something with ammo.”
Erik took the gun with a grunt. “This better not end with that bastard siccing a yaoguai on us.”
They advanced through the hall strewn with robot carnage. A nearby door opened, and a gray-haired man stuck his head out the door. He gasped when he saw the guns and ducked back into his office, slamming the door.
Jia spoke toward the door. “That’s for the best. Police business. We’ll have the situation under control in a couple of minutes.”
Erik and Jia arrived at their destination. Emma’s red guidance line disappeared.
Jia pointed her weapon at the door. Erik moved to the access panel. He held up three fingers, dropped one, dropped another, and dropped the last one before opening the door.
They’d been expecting a panicking Leonard Carl, or maybe a few security guards on the take. Even a yaoguai wouldn’t have surprised them much. They didn’t expect to see an empty room.
Jia crept into the room. There wasn’t enough space for anyone to hide.
“Some sort of optical camouflage?”
“Now you sound more paranoid than me,” Erik replied. He kicked over a few chairs.
Jia pointed to an undamaged chair. Two PNIUs were stacked on the seat.
Erik cursed under his breath. “Let me guess-those belong to Leonard and Rena.”
“Your supposition is correct,” Emma replied.
Erik frowned and squatted by a chair. He nodded at a few dark spots on the floor. “Looks like a trickle of blood.”
Jia’s stomach tightened. “If Rena didn’t know about it, she’d make a nice hostage.”
Erik growled and stood. “This blood isn’t fresh. If the receptionist didn’t notice him leaving, or he went out a side entrance, we’re going to have to hit a bunch of camera feeds, and all that will get us is when he left.”
Jia shook her head and offered him a tight smile. “Does Leonard strike you as the kind of man who could pull off surgery?”
“No. Why?”
“He said Rena had a tracking implant.” Jia held up a hand. “I’m not all that familiar with them, but from what little I’ve read, they’re not usually placed anywhere they’re easy to remove, such as limbs. Just in case a kidnapper decides…well, you know.” She mimed cutting off her hand with an invisible knife. “Everything that’s been done smells of desperation, including hiring a delivery man to stall our investigation. I don’t think this guy’s a criminal mastermind.”
Erik jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Let’s get to Reception and have that receptionist connect us to someone important enough to give us Rena’s tracking feed info.”
“And if they refuse?”
Erik grinned. “Then I get the big gun and ask again.”
Ten minutes later, they sat in the MX 60 speeding toward a Euterpe-controlled studio level in a nearby commercial tower.
Both wore tactical vests now.
The rather concerned Euterpe vice-president who’d showed up to talk to them didn’t resist or threaten. Instead, he immediately gave them the necessary codes and frequencies before pledging the company’s full support. The risk of PR was outweighed by the risk of losing their prized singer to a criminal manager.
“Several other units are en route,” Emma announced. “Some will arrive before you do.”
“No problem with that,” Erik replied, his grip tight on the yoke. He chuckled and shook his head. “This didn’t go down the way I thought.”
Jia nodded, her face set in grim determination. “With us, does it ever?”
“This idiot should have just given up. He probably took dirty money, and things got out of hand.”
“I’d say.”
Erik turned toward their destination. Red and blue lights of police flitters converged on the building in the distance. The flight patterns of the flitters grew erratic as they got closer to the building. Several bright flashes erupted from the building.
Emma sighed. “Detectives, several units are taking heavy fire from the building. They can’t get close. They are requesting TPST support.”
They approached the building and the police flitters, some of which flew away from the building smoking and headed toward parking platforms on nearby towers.
“Tell them we’re on the way,” Erik announced. “We can’t wait for TPST if he’s got a hostage. If he’s desperate, he might kill her.”
The MX 60 zoomed closer. Bullets streamed from rifle barrels poking out of several windows of the target level. They pelted the flitter, rattling the vehicle but not penetrating the reinforced armor. Small investments of time and large investments of money could pay off when a man least expected it.
Erik had never imagined being shot at by a crazed singer’s manager when he added the armor to the MX 60.
“So he’s got help or more bots.” His eyes flitted from location to location on the building. “Can you see any entrances at this level, Emma?” Erik asked. “I don’t want to have to try to fight my way out of an elevator or access tunnel.”
“Drone, camera, and public records information don’t suggest any such thing.” Emma let out a long, weary sigh. “I do however see a rather large decorative window that is wider than my body. Your reinforcements should minimize the level of damage but do take care not to kill yourself and ruin my body. Just follow this side and go to the right.”
Jia stared at Erik. “You’re not seriously going to ram your flitter into a building, are you?” She eyed him. “That’s insane, even for you.”
“I’ve done worse.”
“That’s the problem.”
Erik cracked a grin. “No, I’m not going to run us into a building. I’m going to ram us through a window.”
She eyed him. “Oh, excuse me. That’s very different.” She threw up a hand. “What was I thinking?”
“Exactly.” Erik skimmed the side of the building as the enemy continued to blast him with their rifles. He kept the bottom of the vehicle angled away to protect his thrusters and grav emitters. If the enemy had a missile or a laser rifle, they had a chance of doing something other than annoying him and giving his mechanic Miguel additional weekend work.
“Purposely crashing,” Jia muttered, bracing herself. “Always a good strategy.”
Erik zoomed away from the building before spinning the MX 60 toward the bay window extending from the building. Several helmeted masked men in tactical vests were inside the room, a wide observation deck filled with couches and chairs. The flitter continued forward. The men turned and sprinted away.
The MX 60 slammed into the window, shattering it. The shards blasted into the room as if fired from the shotgun of an angry giant. Erik killed the thrust, but tha
t didn’t stop the flitter before it smashed into a wall with a crunch. Their seatbelts kept Erik and Jia in place.
“That was fun,” Erik muttered, shaking his head.
“At least we’re not dead,” Jia observed.
“There’s minor damage to some of the emitters and thrusters,” Emma reported. “Additional structural damage and minor power system issues, but we should be able to fly out of here without aid. In addition, some of the gun goblins appear to be retreating from the windows along the level, but all other police flitters on site have been forced away due to damage.”
“Yeah.” Erik released his seatbelt. “Now the guys inside have actual people to shoot at. Can you still detect Rena’s tracking signal?”
“Based on what they gave me at Euterpe, yes,” Emma replied. “I’ll give you an arrow and a suggested path, based on the blueprints for this level.”
Jia pushed open the door and stepped out. Her shoes crunched on the window fragments littering the floor. “Erik?” He looked at her. “This time, bring the big gun.”
Erik reached over to the passenger well to open the hidden compartment. “Definitely.”
Chapter Thirteen
Erik slapped a fresh magazine into the TR-7 before handing new pistol magazines to Jia. She had drawn her stun pistol, but if they got rushed by another bot horde, she would be ready.
“TPST has provided an ETA of five to ten minutes,” Emma reported.
“We’re not waiting for TPST, are we?” Jia asked.
“No way. If that blood was Rena’s, she didn’t go willingly.” Erik jogged to the door. He spared a glance for his scratched and dented flitter. He hoped the self-repair systems could handle the damage but crashing your flitter into a building wasn’t recommended for a reason. “Can you access the floor systems, Emma?”
“I’ve already attempted to do that,” Emma replied. “This is rather clever. Someone activated a deep diagnostic mode for the bulk of the systems on this level. The particular operating framework for this level is such that to stop it, I’d have to reset the entire system, and that would disable everything for a good ten to fifteen minutes. Terrible design. These gun goblins or the pretentious parasite know what they’re doing.”
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