by Jamie Davis
A few minutes later, Cass checked on Shelby. It seemed to be working. At least she’d stopped pacing the room and sat down to work.
Cass’s advice and constant support helped Shelby get through the next two worrisome days. That was how long it took for her to get word of Eric’s whereabouts.
Cass came out of her second class Tuesday morning when a voice message pinged her system from Shelby. “They found him. He’s in police custody. He finally reached out to Mom and Dad to arrange his bail.”
Cass listened to the voice message playing over her implant’s internal system then called her girlfriend.
Shelby picked up right away. “Cass, Mom and Dad need us to go down and bail out Eric. Dad wired me the money. Something’s going on with them and they can’t travel here without getting into some sort of trouble themselves. They’re under police investigation, too, because of their association with Eric.”
“How can the police bring them in on this?” Cass asked. “They had nothing to do with the demonstration. They weren’t even in the same state.”
“I don’t know. Somehow, they’re putting pressure on him through them.”
“All right, I’ll go down with you to the police station. I assume he’s at the central booking area where we were before.”
“Yes, I think so. I’ll meet you back at the room. I’m headed there now.”
Cass picked up her pace heading across campus. She figured, based upon where her classes were, that she’d beat Shelby back to the room. She was surprised to find Shelby there ahead of her.
“How did you get here so quickly?”
“I ran all the way here. I wanted to make sure I was here when you got here. We need to go right away. I don’t want Eric to spend one more minute in that jail cell.”
Shelby headed out the door and Cass followed her, pulling the door shut behind her.
“Shel, slow down a little bit. He’s fine. We finally found him.”
“You and I were upset about being in jail and we were only in the cell for a few hours. How do you think he must feel?”
Cass reached out over the Mantle as they left the dorm and called for an auto cab to meet them out front. When they walked down to the curb, it pulled up.
“There’s our ride,” Cass said. “Come on. We’ll head downtown and get Eric right now.”
The two girls got in the auto cab and sat back while it drove them down to the police station. They were not prepared for what they saw when they arrived.
“What the hell is going on here?” Shelby asked as they got out of the cab.
There were people lined up all around the police station. Some sort of demonstration was going on and Cass couldn’t figure out what it was.
Then, she heard it.
“No subs, not here! No subs, not here!”
The crowd’s chant was one she’d heard before. Her father had once called it the Sapiens battle cry. The words labeled the people here outside the police station as Sapiens sympathizers if not actual movement members.
The chants washed over Cass and Shelby as the two of them stood alone at the curb while the cab pulled away into traffic.
“No subs, not here! No subs, not here!”
“Shel, someone must’ve let them know prisoners from the cyber-rights demonstration are being held here.”
“We can’t bring Eric out into this mob.”
“I agree,” Cass said. “We should try to find another way into the police station. It’s a bad idea for us to push our way through this crowd.”
The shouts grew louder around them. People still hadn’t noticed the two of them standing at the back of the group.
Shelby grabbed Cass’s hand and shook her head. “I’m going in there. You don’t have to come with me if you don’t want to, but I have to go in and get Eric out.”
Cass studied the angry crowd. No one was looking in their direction right now, but she had a feeling that this particular group of people would spot their implants right away if the two of them weren’t careful.
“Shel, let’s be careful,” Cass said, leaning in so Shelby could hear her over the shouting. “Stay close together and keep your head down. Let’s try not to jostle anybody and draw attention to ourselves.”
Shelby nodded and together, hand-in-hand, they worked their way forward to the front steps of the police station. About halfway through the crowd, someone noticed them. With every step the pair took, more people around them turned and directed their shouts at them, yelling into their faces as they pushed and jostled the two women.
“You’re not human. Go home.”
“Get out of here, sub. You’re not wanted around here.”
Shelby and Cass kept their mouths shut and continued to press forward. The crowd let them through, but not without jostling them some as they passed by.
The two of them finally made it to the steps of the police station. The shouts and screams of the crowd grew louder as they moved into the open and were spotted by others in the mob who hadn’t seen them yet.
“Come on,” Cass called out over the wash of angry sound. “We need to get inside before the crowd decides to do more than shout at us.”
Together, the two raced up the steps, bursting into the lobby of the police station.
There was no one else inside but a desk sergeant on the other side of the glass window. Shelby walked up to him and waited while the female sergeant slid the glass window to one side.
“Yes, miss?” The sergeant asked. She didn’t stand up to talk with them, remaining on her stool and eyeing them with a bored glance up from her computer screen.
Shelby leaned on the counter. “I’m here to pick up Eric Moore. I have his bail money.”
The sergeant tapped a few things on a keypad while she stared at the screen in front of her. After a moment, the woman nodded and looked up at Shelby.
“He’s in custody at the prison ward at County General.”
“The hospital?” Shelby asked. “What’s he doing in the hospital?”
The sergeant shrugged. “It just says that’s where he is. You still pay his bail here and I’ll give you a ticket to go pick him up.”
Shelby grunted and took her credit ID out, handing it over to the officer. “The money is all there. You can take it from that account.”
The sergeant took the credit ID chip and ran it through the system. She handed it back to Shelby after a few seconds and then gave her a hard copy of the release paperwork.
“I’ve also attached the receipt to your credit ID should you lose the paperwork.”
Shelby folded the paper and slid it into her jeans pocket and then put the credit ID back in her other pocket. She turned to leave, but Cass put a hand on her shoulder to stop her. She pointed at the crowd outside. They could hear the hate-filled chants here inside the police station lobby.
“Why don’t I find another way out of the building for you two,” the desk sergeant said. “There’s no need for you both to leave through that mess out front.”
“Thank you,” Cass said. “We appreciate that.”
The sergeant smiled and said, “Wait there, I’ll have an officer lead you out through the squad entrance. You’ll be able to walk up the ramp from the parking garage to the street beside the station. That should take you out where there are no protesters.”
“Thank you,” Cass said.
True to her word, a few minutes later, an officer appeared to escort Shelby and Cass through the police station. They went down a long hallway to a stairwell, following it down to an underground garage.
Police vehicles lined the spaces on either side of them as the officer led them through the garage. He stopped at the exit ramp up to the street.
“You can go out that way.” He stopped at the bottom and watched as the two girls kept going. There were no signs of any protesters at the top, although the sounds of their chanting and shouts reached them from the front of the station.
“Come on Cass, we have to get to the hospital. I d
on’t understand why they didn’t report him as being there when I contacted them before. There’s nothing in this paperwork that explains what is wrong with him.”
“He was in police custody,” Cass said. “Maybe the hospital records didn’t show him as being there because it’s in a different system.”
Shelby had already called ahead for an auto cab. They waited a few minutes, watching the sidewalk leading to the front of the building for any sign of protesters heading their way.
The cab soon pulled up and they jumped in. The vehicle pulled away from the police station and headed across town to County General Hospital. Cass wondered how Eric had gotten injured as they went. The people in with Shelby and her in the jail had nothing worse than bumps and bruises.
At the hospital, Cass and Shelby walked into the main lobby, unsure where to go and ask about Eric.
Cass pointed to an elderly woman with a name tag sitting behind a counter ahead of them.
Shelby walked up to the woman sitting there. “Excuse me, I’m looking for my brother, Eric Moore?”
“Just a moment, dearie. while I check the database.”
The woman accessed a tablet on the desktop and tapped in a few commands. She looked up after a second and said, “I don’t have anyone here registered under that name. Are you sure he’s a patient at the hospital?”
“Yes, he’s here. We just came from the police station. He’s in police custody or something like that?”
“Oh, why didn’t you say so? I don’t have that information here in this database. I’ll contact someone who can help you.”
Shelby took a step back while the woman contacted someone over the local comm system. Cass put an arm around Shelby’s waist, pulling her close.
“It’s going to be all right Shel. I’m sure he’s fine. He might have gotten a little roughed up by the police, but they have good doctors here. They took good care of him.”
“I hope so. Eric likes to put on a façade, but he’s not as tough as he thinks he is. I’m afraid he said or did something that made the police angry when he was arrested.”
“Let’s not worry about that right now. Look, here comes someone.” Cass indicated a man in a police uniform walking across the lobby from a bank of elevators.
“I understand you two ladies are here to see a prisoner?” The police officer asked as he walked over.
“Yes,” Shelby began. She fished in her pocket and pulled out the receipt from posting bail. “We’re here to pick him up. We posted his bail at the central district police station.”
The officer reached out for the paper. He read it over before handing it back to Shelby.
“Wait right here. I’ll have him escorted down to you.”
The police officer left, heading back towards the elevators.
Cass turned to Shelby. “See, that wasn’t so bad, was it? Eric will be here before you know it.”
Shelby returned her smile.
Cass liked what she saw in that grin. There was a glimmer of hope in her eyes for the first time in days.
It took almost fifteen minutes for them to bring Eric down to the lobby. Cass saw him first and couldn’t contain her horror as she gasped out loud when she spotted him.
He looked awful.
The bruises all around his face and head gave him a puffy, swollen appearance. His arm was in a sling and he rode in a wheelchair pushed by a hospital orderly. The police officer walked behind them.
Shelby heard Cass’s gasp and turned around. As soon as she saw him, she ran to her brother.
“Eric,” Shelby called out. “What did they do to you? You bastards will pay for this.”
“Shelby, calm down,” Eric said through swollen, cracked lips. “You’re going to get yourself arrested if you’re not careful.”
Eric had trouble with some of the words. It was clear his mouth had something wrong with it. He didn’t open it. Instead, he talked through gritted teeth.
“Eric, what’s wrong with your mouth?” Shelby asked.
“Broken jaw,” he said in a raspy voice. “The doctors had to wire it shut. It’s one of the reasons I’m here in the hospital.”
“Miss,” the orderly asked. “The police officer said I’m to turn him over to you. But we should probably put him in a vehicle directly from the wheelchair. He’s not really up to walking right now.”
Shelby glared at the police officer standing behind the wheelchair. He responded with a grin.
Cass pulled Shelby away from a possible confrontation with the cop so they could follow the orderly pushing Eric towards the doors outside. As they drew close, Eric reached out to hold Shelby’s hand in his.
“I’ll call and order a cab,” Cass said. She accessed her comm system and called up an auto cab for them outside of the hospital. They waited with the orderly in silence for the five minutes it took the vehicle to show up.
The orderly helped them move Eric into the front passenger seat then smiled and wished them well. He walked away with the wheelchair, leaving them alone on the sidewalk in front of the hospital.
“Let’s just go home, Shel,” Eric said. “I’m tired and I want to sleep in my own bed for a change.”
“Eric, we have to do something about what they did to you. We have to tell someone and take them to court or something.”
Eric shook his head. “We’ll talk about it in the morning. Right now, I just want to go home and get some rest.”
As if to punctuate his statement, Eric laid his head over to the side against the seatbelt restraint running up from his shoulder and closed his eyes.
Cass reached out and gripped Shelby’s hand, her fingers between Shel’s and holding it tight. She smiled, trying to reassure her girlfriend as the car drove them back across the city towards Eric’s apartment.
Chapter 23
Eric’s apartment was small and surprisingly neat considering a guy lived there. “If I didn’t know better, Eric,” Cass said to lighten the mood, “I’d think you had a maid or something. Are you sure your mother doesn’t come by and pick up after you?”
Eric groaned. “I just don’t like things that are a mess.”
“Which is why you’re going to let us hang here for a couple of days and help get you squared away, big brother,” Shelby said. “You look awful and there’s no way you’re going to be able to do any shopping or take care of yourself while your arm is in a sling and you can barely walk.”
“I’ll be all right, Sis. Really, I will. The docs gave me a dose of quick heal. I’ll feel better soon. I just need some rest, that’s all.”
“Well, let’s get you in your bed and we’ll talk about it again when you wake up,” Shelby said. She nodded to Cass and the two of them held him under his arms as he walked on unsteady legs towards the bedroom. They got him tucked into bed and came back out to the living room.
Shelby leaned close to Cass and said in a low voice, “One of us needs to go down to the corner store and pick up some groceries. His jaw is wired shut, so I assume he’s going to have to have his food mashed up in some way so he can actually eat it.”
“We passed that diner on the way here,” Cass said. “It’s only a few blocks away. I’ll bet they have something like milkshakes there. They probably have mashed potatoes, too. We could probably get those for him to start and then figure out the rest later on.”
Shelby nodded. “Good idea. While you’re out doing that, I’ll do a search of the net and figure out exactly how we’re supposed to take care of him while he heals up.”
Cass hugged Shelby and then turned and left the apartment. She rode the elevator down to the ground floor and headed out to the street. It was time to get some shopping in.
She didn’t know what Eric liked, but she figured she could at least pick up the basics. Cass started a list using her implant as she walked towards the corner market. She’d stop there first and then hit the diner afterward.
Cass and Shelby ended up staying with Eric for three days. They both got permission from the
ir professors to miss class and work remotely. It wasn’t a big deal since they’d already turned in most of their assignments for the end of the year via the school’s net connection.
Once they had their school work squared away, it gave them a chance to help Eric embark on the road to recovery. He was much steadier on his feet the day after they got home and he improved a great deal every day until he was pretty much back to normal on the third day except for his broken jaw. He still had to eat all his food by way of a straw.
At the end of the day on Thursday, Eric convinced them to return to the dorm.
Cass remarked as they headed to the door, “Hopefully you can get some rest through the weekend. We’ll check back in with you then.”
“You’re not coming to the rally?” Eric asked.
Cass shot him a look then glanced at Shelby. They both thought this discussion had been settled.
Shelby took the lead after a nod from Cass. “Bro, you’re not going to any rally this weekend. Let the Sapiens have their stupid event. You don’t need to show up and prove anything to anyone. Stay home and get better. There’ll be other rallies and demonstrations to go to.”
Eric shook his head. “No. My injuries make it that much more important for me to be there. I have to prove to the police, the Sapiens goons, and everyone else, we will stand up for ourselves. We’re not going to be deterred by their treatment of us. Just because there are a few bigots in the police department, doesn’t mean all of them are that way. Most of them treated me well. I have to trust that someone will stand up for us at some point.”
“It’s a problem if the Chief of Police is one of those bigoted police officers,” Cass said.
“What do you mean?” Shelby asked. “How could you possibly know that?”
“Think, Shelby. It was the police chief who saw my name and called the station to have me let go. My father mentioned meeting with him. He’s obviously a friend of my father. The two of them met regarding the Sapiens’ march this weekend. He’s a sympathizer at the very least.”