Genrenauts: Season One

by Michael R. Underwood

  When push came to shove, Mallery didn’t take any options off the table.

  She’d left trackers in the glossy headshots she’d given the troupe with her resume on the back. She’d also snuck a camera on the door coming in. That should give Roman and Shirin GPS signals they’d need to track the troupe members over the rest of the day, plus an eye on the studio.

  Once she was out of the building, she called it in. “And we’re in. Leah, I’m going to need a monologue and three skit scenarios for four players. That doable?”

  Mallery nodded to a waiting Roman across the street, who dumped his newspaper in the trash can and trudged his way across the snow-laden street to rendezvous.

  “Hey, good job!” came Leah’s voice over their in-ear comms. “And yeah, no problem. Just let us get done with the morgue here.”

  “Have fun talking to the dead.”

  “This isn’t that kind of story region, right?”

  “Just screwing with you.”

  “Cut the chatter,” King said, and that was that. Mallery rolled her eyes at the team lead’s wet blanket-ness and picked up the pace, excited and nervous to brainstorm with Leah again. But the sooner they wrapped up the mission, the sooner they would get out of the in-between place. Sometimes, in-between was fun. She’d drawn out the in-between place on purpose a few times, reveling in the frustrating uncertainty, mined it for pathos.

  But that was a long time before. Her brush with death had given her a lot of time to reflect on life. How much time she’d wasted in gray areas. Now, she wanted more certainty. For both their sakes, and for the mission. When things were unclear, people got hurt. Right on cue, a passer-by bumped her still-recovering arm, sending lances of pain up and down her arm. She swayed and put a hand on Roman to steady herself, gritting her teeth.

  Certainty. Certainty was good.

  “Those comedians are a rat king of tangled emotions,” she told Roman, comms off. “Let’s get untangling.”

  * * *

  Leah had never been to a morgue, but since this was a TV-land morgue, it was exactly as she’d expected. Dimly lit, very empty, and incredibly clean. The room smelled of Freon, metal, and latex. It was operated by a single ME, one Doctor Consuela Lombardi, a curvy Mexican-American woman a hand shorter than Leah. Doctor Lombardi’s dark hair was pulled back into a Gordian knot of a bun that must have taken twenty minutes but looked amazing.

  Doctor Lombardi pulled back a sheet revealing the body of Dwayne Smith, a wound at the back of his head.

  Leah’s stomach started to riot, and her throat clenched up. She took a step back, raising a “one second” hand. The ME handed her a bucket. But this time, she didn’t need it.

  “The oven had nothing to do with it, as you can see.” She replaced the sheet. All of the burns were post-mortem. Lack of abrasion or frostbite on his front suggests he fell back, not forward.”

  Leah jumped in. “What could cause that kind of wound? A club? Baseball bat? Mobster with a baseball bat is a thing, right? Evil White Sox fan?”

  “Other way around. This is the south side, Sox territory,” the doctor said. “But as for the weapon, I don’t think it was a bat or wrench. The shape of impact doesn’t match.”

  “Were you able to pull any fibers or particulates from the victim’s clothes or the wound?” King asked.

  Leah noticed the distancing language, the short shot of the wound. Happily, this story was apparently echoing the less-gory parts of the genre as opposed to the “how extreme can we get in the violence we show on TV horse race that the networks and especially premium cable shows carried out.

  Which led Leah to wondering. Were they really just in a case-of-the-week structure, or was something else going on there? Some way that theft at the stand-up troupe could connect with this crime. Most of the odd-couple detective shows were episodic, but the cable shows had been going serial, drilling into one case for a six- to thirteen-episode arc. Something else to ask King.

  “So, what kind of shape was the weapon or whatever?” Leah asked, flipping through her mental Clue Rolodex.

  “Circular, maybe two inches wide,” the Doctor said. “From the angle, he was falling as he hit or it hit him.”

  Something caught in Leah’s mind. She drew her phone and scanned through the pictures she’d taken at the crime scene. A half-dozen shots in, her phone showed her a two-inch round a copper circle covered with snow on the alley wall opposite the door to Lake Effect.

  Leah handed the phone to the ME. “Could it have been this?”

  Doctor Lombardi zoomed the picture and then nodded. “Quite possible. If he slipped and fell backward or was pushed into where that pipe juts out…CSI didn’t bring in any scrapings like that; they must have missed it.”

  Leah saw her opportunity and dove on it like a hungry five-year-old on a plate of cookies. Drawing her sunglasses, she flipped them open and, putting them on, said, “Sounds like the forensics team needs to get their CS eyes checked.”

  A YEAAAAAAH! sound played in her mind.

  Nailed it, she thought, pumping her fist.

  King nodded slightly in appreciation. Or at least, that’s what Leah told herself. But he moved straight on. “We’ll head back to the crime scene and take a sample. If we can measure where the pipe was, we can estimate where he was standing and, from there, how tall his killer was.”

  The ME considered. “It’ll be hard to be precise without knowing exactly how Mr. Smith was pushed or fell and hit his head on the pipe. But it should be able to give us a range.”

  “Thank you, Doctor Lombardi; you’ve been very helpful.” King drew his gloves from his pocket and turned for the door. His phone buzzed.

  Reading the message, King said, “Captain wants to check in. Says she has some leads for us.”

  Leah took her sunglasses off again (they were inside, after all) and waved awkwardly to the doctor. “Thanks for giving us details about a tragic death, I guess? What do people say to thank you without it being morbid?” she asked, her mouth moving faster than her brain, no doubt thanks to playing the archetype. Possibly cosmic backlash for her bad pun. But King had the stoic nod cornered, and if she was going to be the whacky investigator, so be it.

  The doctor said, simply, “They say thank you. And you’re welcome. Good luck.”

  The role was coming more easily, like when she’d downed a pair of energy drinks before a skit where she played a frenetic meter maid during the apocalypse.

  But the question might quickly become: could she stop herself when she wanted to?

  Leah pulled out her phone to jot down some more ideas for Mallery’s skit as she scaled the stairs after King and up to the bullpen.

  Where they were greeted by yelling.

  Chapter Five: Escalation

  The captain’s voice filled the floor as they walked in. King recognized that tone. This was Nancy’s rage voice. And given how long her fuse was, this had to be something big. Playing the paired archetypes with Leah was helping him keep himself together—it wasn’t like Post-Apocalypse World where he was all alone, fighting tooth-and-nail to balance between invoking the archetype and not going off the edge. Leah’s presence reminded him of the mission, kept him from falling into Nancy’s gravity.

  Which was substantial right now, as the captain continued barking orders like an XO in a war zone. “I want cars there in ten minutes and another three minutes after that. And get me the director of the hospital on the phone five minutes ago. She better have godlike insurance, because I am going to have someone’s head for this.”

  King steadied himself on a nearby desk. The whole room was off, like someone had run the place through a grainy blue filter.

  The breach was escalating. Again. It was rare for a breach to spread this quickly, but given their last few months, he should hardly be surprised. With the rate of breaches across every story world, “weird” was increasingly the new normal for the Genrenauts.

  This precinct was usually on the chummy side of the genre. But
the filter was straight out of a gritty cop drama, the kind where the line between cop and vigilante was razor-thin.

  He made a note to read the rest of the team in, get their take. His mental to-do list shifted, items rearranging on the fly. Check in with Preeti, get a read on the disturbance. Have her run a comparative analysis of disturbance vs. the escalation in this region.

  He pinged HQ, but the disturbance cut off his voice line. He sent a text message, calling for receipt confirmation.

  If the storm was getting worse, that could impinge on their return timeline.

  The captain continued to hold court as he pieced the situation together.

  “King, glad you’re back,” Nancy said. King and Leah wove their way through the beehive-busy bullpen. He already had a good bet as to what happened, but needed to let the scene play out.

  Nancy rolled her shoulders back, tension playing across her face and body. Angry, she was like a caged wolverine. “Some asshole took a shot at the officer outside DeeZee’s room. The place is on lockdown, and I’ve got cars converging on the hospital. That shooter is not getting away.” She raised her voice again. “Do you hear me! No one gets away with taking a shot at one of ours!”

  King looked over his shoulder to catch Leah moving slowly through the crowd. She didn’t have the years of experience force-of-personality-ing her way through scenes, and to a normal person, a room full of agitated cops being yelled at by their boss would be rather intimidating.

  “We’ll head right over,” he said. “See what we can see.”

  “No go, King. My people are going in because it’s their job. This is no place for civilians.”

  King crossed his arms, settling into the gruff detective archetype, feeling the flow of the scene and going with it. “I’ve seen more action than your ten-year sergeants, Captain.”

  “But she sure hasn’t,” Nancy said in Leah’s direction. “And you’re not on my insurance.”

  Even twenty years on, Nancy wasn’t as hidebound by genre limitations as folks who were born on this world. She fit into the genre’s rules but didn’t use as limited a playbook. Usually, this was great, as she was more open-minded.

  But it also meant that where another captain would have said, “This is highly irregular, but I’ll allow it,” she dug her heels in. It was the smart call, the right call for a real police captain. And that sensibility did her officers credit, helped keep them safe and close cases. But sometimes, her real-world senses could end up working against her, causing breaches all on their own. She both stabilized the region and put it into jeopardy. Not enough to justify pulling her out and risking a fatal case of dimensional sickness. So far. King didn’t want to think about what he’d do if that order came down from the High Council.

  In his heart of hearts, he sometimes wished that one day, she’d remember who she was in one of those breaches, would remember him, and would come home safe.

  Poison hope, he told himself. The kind of hope that sneaked up on him in the hour of the wolf to gnaw at his resolve.

  But her logical response to the case threw a major monkey wrench in his plan to track down this interloper and write them out of the story permanently.

  He could press the issue, play the personal connection. Someone would need to investigate the hospital crime scene. Someone on his team. He’d send Roman. De Jager could adopt a federal cover, or infiltrate another way.

  Leah slid into position beside him, derailing his train of thought with her well-cultivated energy.

  “Where do you want us, then? Lombardi ruled out the oven, said it was blunt force trauma to the back of the head. We were going to head back to Lake Effect to try to suss out exactly how Smith was killed, maybe clarify the profile.”

  The bullpen emptied out as officers scrambled to their cars. Nancy threw on her own coat. “You do that, King. I’ll call you when we have the shooter and you can get second crack at them.”

  “Second?” Leah asked. “What about…”

  “Second.”

  King shot Leah the back-off signal. She got the message.

  A part of him pulled toward Nancy, toward going all in, leaving the team behind, to bet everything on the case and see it through, no matter the cost.

  To be with Nancy again. He could do so much good here, working cases side-by-side once more. All he’d have to do is let go. He’d spent decades holding on, holding on so tight.

  Let go, a voice whispered in his ear.

  “Boss?” Leah asked.

  King cracked his knuckles and focused on the rookie’s voice.

  The pull faded. He looked at his ex-partner once more, and said, “Give em hell, Nance.”

  The captain’s smile was fierce, a lioness on the prowl with her pride. “Always.”

  King unburdened some of his worry on their way back to the street. “This is getting worse by the minute. When a breach escalates, it’s usually because the same force or happenstance that caused the original breach created a snowball effect, continuing to derail the story. Like a shooter continuing to hound their target. If the shooter had killed DeeZee, we’d be looking at a hard breach. Permanent damage. The world would force another partnership to fill the gap, and the ripples on Earth would be massive. We cannot let this escalate again.”

  Leah went pale.

  “I’m bringing in more assets on this.” King set Roman on the case on their way out, with Shirin running interference and backup. This breach had become their priority. Mallery could handle herself, even injured.

  As they stepped out into the snow, the gritty-cop-drama filter gave way once again to the softer cinematography of cable and prime-time cop shows.

  Something else to go into his mission report. Breach signs manifesting this way, for an entire precinct? Probably something to do with the way Nancy resonated with this dimension. Slightly off kilter, magnifying and muting narrative flow with her personal story gravity.

  Escalating breach or no, sidelined or no, they’d run this case down until it was finished.

  * * *

  Back at the alley outside Lake Effect, Leah and King found the pipe without difficulty, leading to King going full-on PI, bringing out a tape measure and jotting down trajectories and arcs in his notebook.

  “And what should I be doing?” Leah asked as he worked.

  “Work on the profile, free-associate. But mostly watch my back.”

  “Watch your back. Got it.” Leah paced the alley, keeping King in view while watching her exits. Her training hadn’t included courses in “Bodyguarding Detectives Absorbed in Thought” or “How to Spot Snipers in a Snowstorm,” so she just made it up as she went, trying to hold on to the sense of fitting in the moment, the story momentum she’d been tapping into.

  When she fit in, it was like driving in lanes carved into a road by carts over decades. Easy to stay on track, unless you needed to do anything other than just follow the beaten path.

  A few minutes later, King closed his notebook and looked up.

  “So?”

  “Our killer is probably between five-ten and six-one, give or take boots.”

  “Pretty tall for a dame,” she joked in a Bogart voice. “Think her legs go up to here?” Leah set a hand at her rib cage, all but dropping her conversational filter. “Which should make it much easier to run our profile, right?”

  King pondered. “Unless the first killer and the shooter aren’t the same person. Why up close for Smith and from up there for DeeZee? Did they not know Smith’s timetable? Crime of opportunity or something?”

  “We still don’t have enough information. After we bring this data back to Doctor Lombardi, let’s get De La Cruz’s case files and try to build a suspect list out of local hoods, run the mob angle with Tatiana as our main lead. Preeti’s confirmation message said that the disturbance is getting worse, so they’re going to pull all of the field teams as soon as windows appear. If we don’t move fast, we may have to scrub the mission.”

  “And then what? We come back when
the storm clears up?”

  “Presumably,” King said, heading to the street. “Ops is calling this the biggest dimensional storm in years. Once the eye comes, we bust out of here, but we may not be able to turn around and catch this breach before it’s grown again. And that means a lot of spillover.”

  Leah stomped her feet to get her blood pumping. “So, let’s put the pedal to the metal and wrap this up.”

  With the intensity of the blizzard, walking the three blocks back to the precinct was no easy feat. They passed several taxis, wheels sludging through the weather at a fraction of a mile an hour.

  By the time the pair stepped into the precinct, King was pretty well livid. So, Leah went into full-on jester mode, trotting out material from her stand-up sets.

  Which would normally work. King liked her comedy; it was part of why she’d gotten the job, after all. But that was normal King. Not Gritty Detective King.

  Gritty Detective King’s idea of stress relief was rooting around Detective De La Cruz’s desk until he found a bottle of rum and then taking a long. Long. Drink. Straight from the bottle.

  Oh great, we’re into full-on Chandler-ian Alcoholic Detective mode. Just. Freaking. Great.

  If she hadn’t been motivated to close the case soon, she sure was now.

  Chapter Six: Herrings, Aisle Three

  King tore through the case files in a controlled panic. Every moment they didn’t close the case was another inch closer to failure, to danger, to cascading ripples across the world. It had been years since his team failed to clear a case, storm or no storm.

  He took another swig from the bottle and opened Detective De La Cruz’s dossier on the local mob enforcers.

  Spinning the file around, he jabbed a finger at a portrait. “We go through the notes and lineups and pull out anyone five-ten and above. Look at stomping grounds, priors, and MO. We should be able to pull together a short list and go knocking on some doors. I’m betting that we have twelve hours or less to solve this case.”