Unmasked

by Kevin J. Anderson

  How many children would be left alone?

  The sleet had soaked through his coat, his shirt, and he shivered. If Amaya was unique, self-aware, was it murder? As a cop, Marsh knew the answer. He didn’t need to access any part of the Web to know that it was. He’d killed her.

  After dinner, he drove to a quiet park that he visited sometimes, and accessed her information files. She exclaimed happily about how pretty it was, and he’d agreed, then said, “Amaya, execute command Primary Omega One.”

  Startled, she turned to him, then said, “Executing.”

  And it was a simple as that. She shut down.

  He found the tiny place beneath her hair, on the back of her neck, where the access port to her programming chip was located. Marsh removed it, considering the small device in his fingers. It was so small that he could barely grip it.

  His decision was made. He’d made it earlier, but still he hesitated. What he was doing wasn’t fair, but still … it would save thousands, perhaps millions. Marsh crushed the chip between his fingers, breaking it until it was nothing more than tiny shards of filaments. As simple as that, Amaya was gone.

  Killing her was as easy as killing a human, easier, and what did that mean?

  He wanted to leave now. Leave the junk yard and her body. He wanted to go home to his tiny apartment and try to forget.

  And as he started to turn away, to run away, one last thought occurred to him.

  He was no better than the men who raped and killed and abused women like his mother. They were the same. One and the same. He’d murdered what he feared and maybe even despised. She was better than him, illuminated like a Japanese lantern with new ideas and information. His reasons didn’t matter. In the end, all the reasons came back to the same place—when human expectations weren’t met, when what he wanted to see in his world changed, he couldn’t accept it. Perhaps he was more like his father than he’d known.

  In one sense, he’d killed his mother. He’d loved her, and he knew that he loved Amaya. Human or machine, it made no difference in this age of technology that had erased all the differences.

  Marsh sighed heavily, exhausted by the choices he’d made. For a time, at least, the bots would remain bots, blissfully unaware of themselves. It was a blessing. Still, if it had happened once, it would happen again. And he couldn’t do it, couldn’t bring himself to warn the world. He no longer had the heart for such decisions. All the masks would come off, and the monsters beneath—new and old, man and machine—would emerge.

  He climbed back into his cruiser and drove it into an empty space near the car where Amaya waited.

  The sleet intensified, but it didn’t matter. He shut down the vehicle. Then he moved back to her, his steps slowing, like a clock spring winding down. More than anything, Marsh wanted to rest. He wanted to find some peace in this, and there was only one … person who’d given that to him in years.

  He climbed into the back seat of the car, and gently removed the plastic from around her body. He tossed it outside, then lay down next to her, pulling her arms around him. The sleet made odd pinging sounds on the metal of the car, and after a few minutes, he realized that it sounded like music. Like wind chimes.

  Marsh was a good cop, and like any good cop, he knew the penalty for murder.

  And in her arms, more aware of the world unraveling around him than he’d ever been, he executed it perfectly.

  Russell Davis has written and sold numerous novels and short stories in virtually every genre of fiction, under at least a half dozen pseudonyms. His writing has encompassed media tie-in work in the Transformers universe to action adventure in The Executioner series to original novels. He’s published short fiction in anthology titles like Under Cover of Darkness, Law of the Gun, and In the Shadow of Evil. In addition to his work as a writer, he has worked as an editor and book packager, and created original anthology titles ranging from westerns like Lost Trails to fantasy like Courts of the Fey.

  He was the president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) from 2008–2010, and has been a member of numerous other writing organization including the Western Writers of America (WWA), Mystery Writers of America (MWA), and the Romance Writers of America (RWA).

  His most recent releases are a re-issue of the four book Jenna Solitaire series (WordFire Press), and he’s currently working on a new collection, Written in the Scars on Our Hearts, and a middle grade novel with Fran Wilde.

  Shot in the Dark

  Brennen Hankins

  Are you going to ask him?

  The sudden, random question startled me enough that I stopped rifling through the filing cabinet. I took the flashlight out of my teeth.

  “Ask who what?” I muttered, feigning nonchalance as I continued thumbing my way through folders.

  You know what, replied the voice in my head. You’ve only been thinking about it all day. Are you going to ask Tom out, or just mince words with me?

  “I find the fact that you can read my thoughts disturbing,” I replied. “Not now, Meridia. I’m trying to do my job here and you’re distracting me.”

  As I turned back to the filing cabinet, my shadow moved of its own accord, spreading out to the wall and climbing it, until the slim figure of a woman, mirroring the shape of my body, appeared on the surface. A pair of glowing purple eyes formed on the shadow’s face and stared down at me with disdain.

  “Well, you’re annoying the darkness out of me,” my shadow said, aloud this time. “I’ve spent the last two hours hanging out in your subconscious, and all I’ve been hearing in there is ‘Tom, Tom, Tom!’ It’s like watching that thing you call ‘television,’ only you don’t have that little device that changes whatever you’re currently watching.”

  “You mean a remote, Meridia,” I said, turning from my work to face the shadow creature, “and that should be a good reason to stay out of my subconscious. For the record, I don’t even like what’s in there.”

  “Well, what else am I going to do?” Meridia whined. “You won’t let me come out when you’re not at home, you only use my abilities when it suits your needs, and you don’t even have the decency to talk to me while I’m stuck in your head. I have to make do with watching your thoughts.”

  “You could take up meditation.” I said, “Or some other activity. The Quiet Game would be a good one.”

  “Ha-ha. Funny. Your memories already told me what that is,” Meridia groused. “Those aren’t exactly prime entertainment, either. Better than your obsession with Tom, though. A lot more variety to pick from.”

  I felt a sudden heat enter my voice. “Stay out of my memories!” I shouted—then I clasped my gloved hands over my mouth in sudden horror.

  “Who’s there?” came a voice from the hallway beyond.

  Crap.

  Meridia and I exchanged a frantic glance as a light flicked on and a security guard flung the door open ….

  On a completely empty room.

  He scanned the room with narrowed eyes, but found absolutely nothing amiss. He did a quick walkaround of the records office, and, still seeing nothing, left in confusion. “Swear I’m hearing things ….” he said, turning off the lights. He locked the doorknob and quietly closed the door.

  As soon as darkness and silence settled over the room again, I emerged from my hiding place in the shadow of the filing cabinet I had been raiding. My skin had taken on the mercurial texture of Meridia’s true form and was dark as anthracite coal, shining with a slight purplish tint where the light caught it. My hair looked much the same, only more tinted. I breathed a sigh of relief, as I tried to climb out of The Void on my elbows.

  “Hey, give me a hand here,” I breathed out, “I can’t lift my leg.”

  I couldn’t see Meridia roll her eyes, but somehow instinctively felt her reaction. As always when this happened, the empathic sensation felt like a weird phantom tingling.

  Well, whose fault was that? Meridia said, speaking inside my head again. You’re the one who decided not
to bring your cane; not to mention nearly getting us caught.

  She may have been right, but she’s still a jerk. Just help me up, I replied silently.

  Suddenly, several strands of my hair shot forward, splitting into different tendrils. They caught the leg of a desk that was placed halfway between the filing cabinet and the door, and began pulling. I used the momentum to roll on the bad side of my body up out of the pool of shadow and onto the carpet. I ended up on my back, panting lightly from the effort.

  “Can we table this discussion until we’re out of here?” I whispered. “If we get caught and Tom finds out, I don’t think he’s going to be in a good mood.”

  Tell you what, Meridia replied, Why don’t you take a breather, and let me drive for a bit? I can find what you need.

  “You don’t even know what I’m looking for,” I wheezed. I’d foregone my pain meds on the grounds that I was going to need a clear head for this, but I was beginning to regret that decision.

  Along with the decision to not bring the damn cane. It was a genuine blackthorn cane, a gift from my grandfather. I didn’t want it making noise if I had to walk, but right now, the pins and screws in my left leg, souvenirs of the incident that had earned me a Purple Heart and Meridia’s companionship, were singing much louder than any noise the cane would’ve made.

  Hello, Meridia said, I can see your thoughts, remember? You’re looking for manifest records, right? More hair tendrils reached for the filing cabinet. Shouldn’t be too hard to find.

  I forced myself to control my breathing. “Can you even read?”

  I was treated to the sensation of scoffing as she replied. If you can use my powers, I can use yours, puny human.

  “One of these days you, me, and a really bright flashlight are going to have a conversation you’re not going to like,” I said, gritting my teeth. “Fine. Be quick about it.”

  A half-hour later I emerged, still wearing Meridia’s form, from the shadow of a utility pole about half a block from the office of the shipping company I just raided, several folders in hand. Once I was clear of the shadows, the ethereal skin dissolved from mine and resumed its normal appearance: just a few shades too dark to be called pale.

  “Took you long enough,” I muttered, lighting a cigarillo and limping over to where my Jeep was parked. “You couldn’t get me any closer?”

  Do you want to end up at the peak of a mountain again? Meridia asked.

  I grimaced. Traveling between shadows is more difficult than you’d think. Consider that any given room in a building could have anywhere between a dozen and three dozen shadows spread across it at any given time. Now, consider how many shadows are in the whole building. The neighborhood … the whole city.

  A city, especially a city that experiences as much darkness this time of year as Anchorage does, has hundreds of millions of shadows.

  When I cross through one, I enter what Meridia refers to as The Void; a large empty space that is only broken up between other points of light—other shadows, which I can pass back through to re-enter our world.

  The trick to effectively shadow-hopping is to pick the right shadow to come out of. It’s like finding the needle in a haystack, only the farther you’re try to go from your starting point, the bigger the haystack gets.

  My last attempt to shadow-hop to work and skip the morning commute had ended with me on top of Flattop Mountain, on the southeast corner of town. I ultimately had to take a day off work to limp a mile and a half down from the summit to the Chugach State Park trailhead, and call an Uber home.

  “No,” I said, shuddering as the memory came back to me., I took a deep puff of the Swisher Sweet, hoping the burning cherry smell would calm me.

  Cheer up, the shadow being said. Just think, after you make copies of all these records, we get to come back and return them before somebody figures out they’re missing!

  I sighed, exhaling smoke. “Joy.”

  So, now that we’re out of immediate danger … you asking Tom out or what?

  “I’m not kidding about that bright flashlight. I have it in the car. A hundred thousand lumens.”

  “So … a contact of mine got me a copy of last month’s booking records,” I said, over a cup of coffee. I didn’t sleep a wink last night, and the only thing keeping me going was the tar-like sludge being served inside the breakroom of Tom Vincent’s precinct, and the excitement of what I was telling Tom. “The records show that the dealership you’re checking out, Alaskan Discount 4x4, LLC, has been booking several dozen late model trucks and SUVs to ride on Trident Shipping’s weekly barge up from the Port of Tacoma. What’s interesting is, several of the vehicles appear to have been double-booked. Look at all the duplicate models that are on here.” I passed a folder across the table.

  Tom took it and began flipping through. The brim of his trooper hat obscured his eyes as he looked down at the contents. “Two of each model, like an automotive Noah’s Ark.” He grunted. “Looks like they’re really bad about it. Half of these shipments have been canceled by the customer.” He set the file down, rubbing his mustache with his thumb ponderingly. “Strange, but no evidence that shows they’re responsible for selling stolen cars from Washington, Rhiannon.”

  Alaska State Trooper Tom Vincent was an old friend I’d started working with on cases in the year since I’d become a licensed private investigator. He was one of the few people I trusted to have my back. When a few cars with mismatched vehicle identification numbers, some of which were reported as stolen out of state, started appearing in Anchorage and he’d hit nothing but dead ends chasing leads, he’d asked to hire me on as a consultant.

  And I made sure to deliver.

  “Here’s where it gets interesting,” I said. “I’ve done business with Trident before.” I pulled a folded, faded shipping receipt out of my coat pocket and laid it on the table. “This is my receipt for when I shipped my Jeep back up here when I got out of the Air Force. Here’s the VIN of my car,” I said, circling it with a pen, then moving to another spot and circling that, too. “And here’s my booking number. What do you see?”

  Tom peered owlishly through his glasses, comparing the two notations. “The last five digits of the booking number are the last five of your VIN.”

  “Exactly,” I said, feeling a wolfish smile coming on. “Now check the booking numbers against your list of stolen cars.”

  Tom opened a folder of his own and set it next to mine, scanning both. “Several of these booking numbers match the VINs on the hot sheet. Son of a bitch! Why hasn’t Tacoma PD picked up on this?”

  “They have. I called down there this morning. They said that a car dealer in Anchorage called to report several vehicles they had recently purchased, sight unseen, as stolen.”

  “Which is what an honest car dealer would do. That still doesn’t explain how those same cars are making it up here.”

  I sipped the coffee and tried not to grimace. It really was terrible, but Tom had been willing to share and complaining about it would’ve been rude. “Don’t worry, it gets better. Flip to the back of that folder I gave you.”

  He flipped to the back of the folder and looked at me with eyebrows raised. “A CARFAX report?”

  “My source claims somebody at Trident screwed up and slipped an actual shipping receipt in with the manifest records. On a hunch, I ran the VIN.” I leaned over and pointed at a spot I had circled. “The vehicle has a salvage title.”

  “I don’t understand,” Tom said.

  I leaned back in my chair unable to keep the smirk off my face any longer. “Every single one of the stolen cars that Tacoma PD said they recovered—turned out to be totaled.”

  Tom’s eyes widened in comprehension. “They’re swapping the VINs right under our noses!”

  I smiled proudly, “I believe they might have a lot more than just the five vehicles you found. They might have gotten away with it, too, if whoever’s swapping the numbers didn’t get lazy and forget to do both the windshield and the door tags. I guaran
tee if you look at any one of those trucks you recovered, the VIN that isn’t hot is from a salvage title from down south.”

  “Is Trident in on it, too? And what about the cars that they didn’t screw up on?” Tom asked.

  “It’s possible that somebody at the Port of Tacoma is doing the swapping, but I have no proof of that,” I said. “As far as finding the other cars, my brother Alex works at the Ford dealership up in Wasilla. According to him, the original VIN of each car may be stored electronically in the car’s computer. Car thieves rarely change them because they either don’t know to or the PCM is too expensive to replace. There’s a little port under the dashboard, I forget what it’s called—”

  “OBD II port?”

  “That’s the one,” I said. “If you plug a scanner into that, the original VIN should pop up.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Tom said, leaning back in his chair. “This should be enough for a search warrant.”

  “Congratulations, Trooper Vincent!” I said in an announcer style voice, “You just broke up an interstate car theft and smuggling ring. Technically international, since the barge travels through Canadian waters to get here,” I grinned. “What will you do now? And don’t say you’re going to Disneyworld ….”

  “After we bust these guys, I’m gonna go celebrate over drinks,” Tom said as we both stood up. Tall as I was, Tom still overtopped me by a good four inches, and I’m six foot. The man was a moose. He extended a long arm over the desk to me, “Thank you.”

  I reached to shake his hand when I suddenly heard my voice. My mouth moved and sound was coming out, but it was not me speaking. “Buy me a round at that celebration, and we’ll call it even.”

  Both Tom and I paused at that. My heart dropped out the bottom of my chest and through the floor.

  “Well, um, if you’re so inclined …” I said, taking control of my vocal cords and trying desperately to walk back what that idiot Meridia had blurted out.