Skyway Angel

by James K. Douglas

  When the hoses were finished and my wrist was properly immobilized, the printer arms retracted and the gel began to drain back to wherever it came from. Once the semiliquid was cleared, a quick spray of warm water cleaned the residue off of my arm, followed by a quick blow dry that left the remaining hairs fully fluffed and standing on end.

  “There you go,” the doctor said, watching the box lift off of my arm. “All done.”

  Kenneth brought the platter around again, saying, “Don’t rush the young man. He’ll be done once he’s full.”

  With a smile, I took another Steak au Poivre. It was just as good as the first, but this time I verbally thanked Kenneth.

  “April filled us in on a lot of what happened,” the doctor said, “and some of it we saw on the news.”

  I swallowed my bite. “Yeah, this whole thing got a little out of control.”

  “You’re a hell of a fighter,” Kenneth added. “I did a little boxing when I was younger, and you really held your own. Where’d you learn?”

  “Some of it was security training. I used to be a security officer before I lost the arm. A lot of it has just been personal training, teaching myself how to use and control the arm. Bionics are often just as likely to hurt the user as anyone else.”

  “Oh!” the doctor interjected, “have you heard about that spinal bionic? AlterBionics just announced it the other day.” He turned to Kenneth. “What was that little girl’s name, the one who received the first one?”

  “Sarah Donovan,” I answered, a slight smile spreading on my face.

  “Do you know her?”

  “No,” I said, “never even met her.”

  A gentle chime came from the direction of the front door. “It’s Cassdan,” April said, from the monitor.

  “That’s my cue,” I said, avoiding using my left arm as I stood from the chair. “I’d better get moving, but thank you both so much for your hospitality.”

  “It’s nothing,” the doctor said.

  “We enjoyed the company,” Kenneth added.

  The door slid open as I approached. Cassdan wasn’t smiling, but he looked more relaxed than I had seen him recently. I joined him in the hallway to talk business.

  “Lannemir finally showed up,” he started the conversation. “When things started going down at Ultramarine, the higher ups picked her to be in charge over there. Because of her previous investigation, they figured she knew what to expect, and how to handle it. It wasn’t until our live broadcast from the apartment that she had an excuse to get over here and handle this end of it.”

  “I suppose that’s the best excuse we could have hoped for,” I responded, “after she hung us out to dry.”

  “No kidding. But still, she's useful. I gave her everything I gathered from the backhack, which, by the way, led straight to the Ultramarine security chief’s terminal. The detective says she’s got it handled from here, and I figure she’s more equipped to deal justice than we are. Our names are going to stay out of the papers, and that suits me fine.”

  “Me too.”

  “So, I guess that brings us to the matter of payment.” He reached into his pocket, pulling out a white card with a data chip imbedded in one end. “Here you go. Just plug it into any ATM, and it’ll deposit your fee.”

  “I almost hate to tell you this,” I said, taking the card from him and sliding it into a pocket, “but I considered giving you this one for free. We’ve done a lot of good today, and I don't quite feel right getting paid for it.”

  “Oh really? Was it the damaged wrist that changed your mind?”

  “No. I just have a low tolerance for lies, Cassdan.”

  He cleared his throat. “Uh, lies?”

  “You didn’t even know Angela, did you? I’d be willing to bet that you never even met her.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  I started to pace the white tiles of the hallway floor. “On our first trip up to Angela’s apartment, you already knew that Future Computational Systems was planning to dissect April to find out what went wrong. That strongly suggests that you and April had been talking while I was on my way over. And yet, April said you had never been in the apartment before. You seemed quite familiar with her system, but supposedly only had a passing acquaintance with Angela, which I know because you claimed you two were only just catching up.

  “But if that’s true, your involvement in this case makes no sense at all, until I factored in that April called you ‘Cass.’ That’s a rather affectionate sounding nickname. The only people I’ve ever heard call you that so far are April and Rey. Add to that the fact that you seemed to take it personally when I suggested that she might be a suspect, and it’s starting to look like you’ve known April for a while. You’re not exactly a social person, Cassdan. Things like that stick out.”

  “So what?” he deflected. “April and I knew each other. I never lied about that.”

  “Not directly, no, but you didn’t bother mentioning it, either, and you didn’t even know the names of any of Angela’s other friends, nor did anyone at the playhouse seem familiar with you.”

  “Like you said, I’m not very social.”

  “The way I figure it, you and April have been close for a while. I don’t know how you met, but she knows you well. I’m guessing she called for you the minute the DDOS attack started, but by the time you got to the apartment building, the attack was over, and Angela was dead on the ground outside. April sent her emergency report to F.C.S., and they scheduled her dissection. So, you quickly worked out a plan, one that involved me watching your back while you tried to find a way to save April. All we had to do was find the real killer, and prove that April had not, in fact, allowed one of her residents to commit suicide.”

  “That’s all speculation,” he said, staring at the floor.

  “True, but I seriously doubt that anyone who was actually close to Angela would have had the stomach to steal the eye from her mangled corpse, just to scan it for easy Skyway access.” I raised an eyebrow at him. “And I'm not just assuming that because you were the first person on the scene. I had a good look at the image projected onto your eyepiece. It looked exactly like one of April’s eyes when she was impersonating Angela.”

  His eyes darted to me, his jaw flexing at the back edge. He didn’t deny any of it, though. After a moment, he just looked away.

  A few seconds more passed, before he asked, “Would you have helped me, if you had known you were risking your life for a computer program?”

  I sighed and looked toward the elevator. “I guess we’ll never know.”

  “No, I guess we won’t.”

  I scratched the back of my head. “Well, there’ll probably be a new tenant in the penthouse in a few days. Tell April I know some people if Wink needs rehoming.”

  “Yeah,” he said, and nothing more.

  I left him there. He no doubt had some complicated thoughts and feelings about the way everything happened, but the right thing was done in the end. April had more or less been saved, and Angela got what justice we could give her.

  Sometimes, appreciating the little victories is all you can really do.

  Chapter 24

  I woke just before seven, like I do most days. I had spent a little over a week laying low, barely leaving my apartment and getting as much rest as I could, and yet my shoulder and wrist still ached. After a moment of staring at the blackness, I got up to pull on a pair of pants and do some stretches. The lingering tension in my neck and back from the fight were going away, but too slowly.

  “Computer,” I called out, as I rotated my shoulder joint, “good morning.”

  The lights in the bedroom came up to a low setting. “Good morning, Jackson,” the small voice box on the wall responded. “It is October twenty-third, seven-oh-seven A.M. It is forty degrees outside, with an expected high of fifty-one. You have no new messages.”

  “Good,” I said, to no one in particular. “Computer, lights full.”

  The lights throughout
my apartment came up to full illumination. Nikie raised her furry, orange head from the couch when I stepped through the living room and into the kitchen. “You sleep okay?” I asked her, switching on the food printer.

  “Me’ah,” she responded, one eye still half closed.

  As the food printer powered up, the “cartridge empty” light came on. I pressed it, causing the side panel to pop open, halfway ejecting the black plastic cartridge. Tossing it into the recycling bin under the counter, I drew another from the drawer and shoved it into place, clicking the door closed.

  The oven warmed in seconds. Thin hose arms reached out into the space to begin laying layers of biscuit. One of them let out a single, small chirp-like squeak as it moved into position. It wasn’t the first time my old printer had made that noise, but it was the first time I noticed how much it sounded exactly like a cricket. I eyed it suspiciously as it continued its work.

  Once the printer had finished its final crisping cycle, I opened the door and drew out the egg biscuits. Nikie waited patiently by her bowl as I doled out her portion.

  “Computer,” I called out, taking my plate to the couch to have a seat next to the circular window that looked out onto a burned building, “news channel.”

  Typically, I never watched the news while eating breakfast, but City Morning had been advertising that Dr. Marshall was going to be on today, and I didn’t want to miss the live broadcast. After a week of staying silent while the entire upper management of his subsidiary company was criminally charged, he had a lot of questions to answer. Accused of forced labor, forced labor conspiracy, and violating the Fair Housing Act, it was unlikely that a single one of them would ever see the outside of a prison cell again. Marshall, as usual, had come out looking innocent and clean.

  The screen came up, displaying a young-ish blonde woman sitting behind a glass table. Note cards sat in a slightly dishevelled stack in front of her, partially obscured by a large coffee mug with the show's name printed on it in block letters. “Thank you for joining me this morning, Dr. Marshall,” she began. “I know this is a trying time for you.”

  The camera cut to a slim, older man in a tailored suit, his hands folded on the table. “Thank you for having me, Tiffany. I’m eager to clear the air about this whole mess.”

  “Yes, with most of the corporate and security management of the Marshall Engineering subsidiary, Ultramarine Tech., being charged with what is effectively slave labor, I can imagine that your legal team has been quite busy.”

  He let out a practiced sigh. “Tiffany, this isn’t about legal strategy. What happened was a true tragedy, a perfect example of a few bad apples taking advantage of the good nature of others. I was told that there was to be a minimal amount of inmate labor used, to help these poor unfortunates get some time off of their sentences and a bit of cash in their accounts, but what was done to them was…” He paused, imitating the search for the right word. “It was such a deep injustice.”

  “It certainly was,” she said, moving the top card to the bottom of the stack. “Now, let’s talk about Thomas Tomlinson. As the head of the Free Information Resistance Network, he was at the forefront of breaking this story, but the following day he published an article on the F.I.R.N. website, titled A is for Apathy, claiming that you and your company are ultimately responsible for the actions of Ultramarine. Do you have a response to that?”

  “Please, Tiffany. It’s beneath you to defer to that ‘alternative’ news source. You’ve seen what kind of person he is, using that faked video of Ms. Vidales to get his way. What kind of person plays with the public’s emotions like that, and right in the middle of the real Ms. Vidales's memorial service?” He paused to take a breath. “While I do feel a certain amount of responsibility for not keeping a tighter watch on such a new company, I can assure you, and your viewers, that neither I nor anyone at Marshall Engineering knew anything about the unlawful actions of the Ultramarine management, and I am personally appalled and saddened that the head of security misused our prototype to murder Angela Vidales, Marshall Engineering’s own beloved spokesmodel. The Remote Peace Keeper was designed to protect human life, not take it. It’s the next natural step in inner city policing.”

  “Really?” she said, with a slight cock of the head. “Tell me more about this new system you have planned.”

  Getting sick of the practiced pandering, I was just about to put on something else, when Marshall said, “I truly wish I could get into it right now, but I’m afraid I have other business to attend to. But, tonight at eight we’ll be having a big premiere for the new R.P.K. system. Perhaps you can join us?”

  “It would be my pleasure, Dr. Marshall,” she said, the camera switching to a wide shot to catch them shaking hands as he stood from the table. The second he was gone, she turned back to face the close angle camera. “On the lighter side of this morning’s news, Future Computational Systems has lost the lawsuit it filed against its own creation, the A.I. apartment management system known as April. In a late session last night, Judge Scott Vandergriff upheld the final will of the Marshall Engineering model and spokeswoman Angela Vidales, which left all of her worldly assets to her dog, Wink, and named the A.I. system the sole care provider, under the specific condition that she not be altered or replaced. F.C.S. had contested the retinal scan signature on the document, and insisted that their property, the A.I., was being taken from them illegally. Citing that the A.I. was a computer program, and therefore easily replicated, the judge said that F.C.S. was not being financially harmed, and noted that a retinal scan was no easier to fake than a signature, fingerprint, or facial I.D.”

  I burst out laughing, nearly dropping my food to the floor. Nikie looked at me like I was a crazy person, but I couldn’t help but be impressed with Cassdan’s ingenuity. He knew it was just a matter of time before F.C.S. attempted to dissect, reprogram, or simply erase and replace April, so he found a way to buy her some time.

  It would only be fifteen years at best before the little dog passed on from old age, but they would be very good years, living in the lap of luxury. I had no doubt that, between her financial planning skills and whatever budget Marshall allowed for the upkeep of the building, April would easily be able to keep Wink in fancy dog food for as long as he hung around.

  I enjoyed the rest of my meal with a smile on my face, setting some aside for the nuns that would be making their alms rounds soon. For the sake of decency, I went to the bedroom to find a shirt to wear. Having been a bit too lazy with the laundry on my week off, I settled on one from the dirty hamper and pulled it on.

  On the way back to my cozy couch, I was stopped just short of the doorway by the ringing of my phone. It was a weekday, so Jennifer was either at work or on her way there, and Cassdan had left me with a separate phone to take his calls on, one that no hacker could trace. I reminded myself to check with him about when he wanted that old brick phone back.

  Potentially, it could have been my Aunt Lou, or even a former client having an emergency, so I opened the drawer in the side of my bed and stared down at the phone laying on its charger. The face of the phone only said “Restricted Number.” Typically, I don’t answer if I can’t tell who’s calling, but I found myself reaching down to pick it up. Maybe I was bored, or feeling too much like a hero. Either way, the only thought in my head was that someone might need my help.

  I lifted the phone to my ear, and said “Hello?”

  “Am I speaking with Jackson Bell, the professional bodyguard?” asked the woman’s voice.

  “You are,” I said. “Who am I speaking to?”

  “Mr. Bell, please hold while I secure the line.” There was a brief moment of static, and then a click. “Line secured, sir. You may proceed.”

  Another voice came on, a man’s, stern with age and authority. “Mr. Bell, I’m calling to secure your services.” He sounded different over the phone, but this wasn’t the first time I had spoken to Dr. Marshall. “My life is in danger. Someone is trying to kill me, and…” His
voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. “And, you may be the only person I can trust.”