by Kelly Brewer
A marvel, the miles of cables, walls of speakers, and banks of lights that had to be synchronized and operated for a two to three hour show was incredible. It was truly a spectacle few could appreciate.
He scanned each face, each nook and cranny under the stage, looking, feeling for any anomaly. A hurried glance or furtive gesture that would betray a guilty conscience. Everyone was focused on last-minute details and sound check.
Drums roared, guitars wailed, bass boomed in a cacophony of discordant sounds. It added to the building excitement. Outside, fans could feel the sound system’s vibrations and cheered, even though the show was hours away.
Facial recognition would identify Lathrop, and they would have their man.
Theoretically.
CHAPTER 71
marked
Hours later the gates opened. Fans surged in, and Detective Grisholm went with the flow, letting himself be swept along through the western gate. Mooney was working the east side of the stadium.
They were just one of the crowd.
Grisholm let his head go where it led, brushing for and against, his gut feeling a southwest current. Cutting diagonally across the flow, he watched faces and mannerisms, listening to the excited chatter.
Ticket checkers were twenty yards ahead.
Lines moved slowly, checkers and wand operators working quickly and politely.
A lane switch about seven yards out, he swapped diagonals, now bearing southeast. Sensing, he took his time, head on a swivel, bumping shoulders, smelling perfume and beer.
He pulled his ticket three yards from ticket checkers.
No hurry, ebb and flow, shuffle feet, listening to conversations around him. Then a sudden pull left one lane and a shrouded figure held out a hand for his ticket.
Time. It stopped. The hand was alien.
Reddish-brown.
Undulating.
Grasping.
Sharp.
When it released the ticket, he noticed blood. Had it come from the horrific hand?
No.
There was a small incision on the heel of his own hand, under his ticket stub. A thin, burning gash. He stared at the blood. With great effort he turned to look at the strange figure surrounded by oblivious people. No one seemed to notice it. When the cruel hand reached for another ticket, the person’s gaze fell, they offered it, and the wraith raked a wicked slit, the person slouching away.
The figure waxed and waned in his vision.
He felt lost.
He could no longer raise his eyes.
He could not look at the face of the hand.
He dropped his ticket stub and was moved on with the others, numb, speechless.
What just happened?
He could not remember.
He ambled into the crowd, looking for…
Steve…
looking for…
look for…
for…
CHAPTER 72
Rule the Galaxy
Showtime Saturn. Mactron played his heart out. You get back what you put in. Playing was effortless. Every muscle was loose and tight at the same time. Patterns, scales, movements, highs, lows, darks, lights, all warped into the phantasm of 414,876 fans. A sea of love, a high tide, a playground for his mind. He felt the music much more than he heard it. Ox’s power drumming was a mountain that he leapt over like a mountain lion. Kyle spoke to him without saying a word.
It was so real it was unreal.
The fans were orgasmic. He had never seen them so into it, amazed by all the amazement. Baby! Incredible.
He felt simultaneously both large and small.
Gushing admirers were so eager, they spilled over the guardrail. More followed, followed by security.bots. They were much gentler and stronger than human security. Punches did not affect them much, nor, it seemed, did teeth. One guy was gnawing the robot arm that restrained him in the pile in front of the barricades.
It was becoming quite a pile-up!
It was then Mac noticed a familiar face up front. Detective Grisholm was partying! Too many nights chasing everything but skirts.
Loneliness will catch up to ya!
Mac walked over to where the cop was flailing like a rag doll. He flailed like a huge shark clamped down on his mid-torso, then dropped him over the rail to the floor. More bodies came over on top of him as the set ended in a roar, trailing off in wailing screams and rising house lights.
Peco played well. He was almost as good at being Moore as Moore was. Really quite stunning how quickly and seamlessly he had filled the role. Mac hoped Moore was watching and catching the drift. He was replaceable.
Peco was amped, and he got caught up. Mac watched him go sailing out into the clamor, guitar and all. Should have waited for the group bow, stage front, but no problem kid, go for it!
His bleach-blond hair disappeared over the wall into the frenzy. Security was focused on the extra bodies flowing over the front wall. Only a few went out front, struggling to reach Peco, who had yet to rise from the crowd. Kyle, Ox, and Mac smiled at each other and gathered in front to watch the first-time diver arise and conquer.
They never saw him again.
The pile contorted in distress. Fans began to break and run from the clot that had closed in on Peco.
Some were screaming.
Some were bleeding.
Or had blood on them.
One robot finally reached the knot and began to untie arms and legs. As one fan was pulled back, he had a handful of blond hair and scalp. A second robot reached in, pulling out another fan holding an arm that had Peco’s armband on it. Blood sprayed the robot and the fan turned his fury on the machine. A human-robot wrestling match brought the maniac to his knees, then flat, crunched facedown, still kicking.
Kyle and the others began shouting at human security, “Refocus the metal army on Peco’s position!”
One guard hit the panic button. Something under the stage untangled forward. Robo caught another gear and bodies began flying into low-hanging safety nets that opened up and caught them.
Finally, the robots peeled to the center of Peco’s knot, but he was consumed. Pieces of him were being flung about among the red, raging, un-Happy campers, who then turned on each other, slipping, ripping, dripping, and adding their blood to the puddle that had been Peco Jones Jr.
Security bots quickly, brutally, subdued the raging cluster.
His shattered guitar lay in pieces on the floor. Entangled, writhing, vampire cannibal zombies and a goddamn mess where their friend had landed shocked the onstage onlookers.
Moore joined the others, trying to direct the battle, but the crew laid hands on them, pulling them back away from danger and stupid heroics. Peco was dead. Reluctantly, they left the stage when the second wave of security.bots rushed to the front.
The robots rapidly subdued the rabid clot of gore-covered victims. A third wave formed a wall between the incident and retreating concertgoers.
Medi.bots moved in and began gathering and sorting body parts. DNA scans helped separate matching parts into labeled bins onboard the sterilizer.bot. Janitor johns and a sterilizer were already mopping up fluids.
Peco Jones’ bin was mostly empty.
When the nets deployed, Ro-mans stationed in Dock’s VIP suite remotely disabled all other recording devices in the facility. Any bootleg recordings would be a blur of unsubstantiated evidence. Gina/Dock arrived to inspect and document the carnage.
There was no general panic. It had happened quickly, robo covering efficiently. The audience assumed “Moore” had been swept away by the blitz of robo-security before he could moonwalk, so they left, buzzing about what a great show it had been. The crowd was not even aware the murders had happened.
Tomorrow the stories would be of the great success DockInHaus Productions had achieved for Sa
turn Complex. But for a few exceptions, everyone had had a real good time!
Gina/Dock viewed the bodies in the nets behind the robo wall.
(Baby.That Happy stuff is some potent shit! All dead. I was sure I saw Detective Grisholm get slung by his feet into one of the security nets)
(Yes, there he is on the right side. see the head dangling through an opening in the net? shame. he’d gotten so close)
(Grisholm had, in fact, located the perp. He’d drifted directly into… it. he’d walked right to his death. that last-minute lane change was sublime. the detective had great intuition, but you cannot confront them unshielded! Gina.baby come find me, let’s blow.)
(Coming.out)
Taking an aero-taxi back to his ship after containing the mess, he felt respect for Grisholm’s bravery… and the cunning of his enemy.
Damn they were powerful! Mind fuckers in the worst way!
His favorite kind of people! True kinsmen!
Together, he and they would rule the solar system.
CHAPTER 73
STEVE
Detective Mooney had a different experience that night. Facial recognition spotted Lathrop when he walked through the east gate. He was not hiding. In a trance, ticket in hand, he was alone in the crowd. Mooney was first to get close and follow him.
Cautiously, he commanded over comms, “Don’t rush, don’t rush. He’s moving slow, he’s surrounded. Just observe, see what we can learn.”
Steve Lathrop, the unfortunate nephew of a recovering Darius Lathrop, was in no hurry. Indeed, he seemed oblivious to his surroundings. Bumping off of others around him, he was off-balance and disoriented. The detective felt if he stopped him, Steve would give up without a fight.
But where was his accomplice? Let the man reveal himself first. Mooney hung back and directed the team to observe only. The wandering suspect seemed incapable of physical violence.
Steve never took notice of the band playing. He drifted with the current of the crowd, never speaking to anyone, never stopping. Mooney thought he smelled piss after a dark stain appeared on the back of Lathrop’s light colored jumpsuit.
He was a dead man walking.
When the concert ended, Steve’s friend a no-show, the detective made eye contact with guards nearby and made his move. Walking with the flow of departing fans, he approached the suspect from behind and pulled Lathrop’s sleeve gently.
Steve did not turn around and followed the tug obediently. Mooney guided him towards a cluster of security guards who quickly surrounded them with rapid escort into a windowless guard shack nearby. Steve never resisted nor made a sound. The arrest was without incident.
Mooney and one other officer entered the room with him. They patted him down without protest, plunking him into one of two chairs adjoining a cold, metal table. They removed a few coins, a concert ticket, and one small packet of red substance from his front shirt pocket. Mooney noticed several fresh wounds on his skin. Some were scabbed over. He remained silent, pale, and unfocused.
Mooney sat down across the table from him and asked him his name several times.
From a long way off, Steve eventually said, “Steve.”
“Are you here alone?”
“Yes… No.” He stared past his interrogator.
“Who’s with you?”
“Nobody… Everybody.”
“Can you give me a name? Who’s with you?”
Silence.
“What are you doing here?”
“Dying…” He blinked once.
“Why are you dying?” Mooney thought he looked translucent.
“They don’t need me anymore.” He reached into his empty shirt pocket, searching for his packet of Happy-stil.
“Who doesn’t need you anymore?”
Silence.
“I want to help you, Steve. Let me help you. Who is with you? Why are you dying? How did you get here? Where have you been? Is someone with you here tonight?”
“They want… everyone dead. Everyone dead, everyone dead… ding dong, the witch muzt diiie!”
Lathrop screamed the psychically seared message in his head.
Mooney and the guard tensed, but Steve barely moved, only opened his eyes wider, tearfully. The translucence intensified around him, and a haze set in in the tiny room. Two, small, piercing white lights, like eyes, flashed above Steve’s head. Mooney and the other officer choked at a sudden, overpowering, sweet chemical smell.
Steve smelled it too, then smiled, lifting his arms as if to welcome what came next. The glow around him burst into flames, engulfing his entire body. He lifted his arms to heaven, praising the end.
“It’s finally over.”
He grinned through the fire at the horrified men, grateful.
The other officer hit the vent button to release the smoke and pulled out a pocket fire extinguisher. Fire was very dangerous in the controlled atmospheric environments of man-space and every cop carried one. Medical-grade foam covered the burning man, who fell to the floor and only then reacted to the heat. He screamed again.
EMS.bots swung open the doors and swooped in, scooped the screaming, foaming man up and rushed him to a first-aid station, located every 100 feet. Mooney and the officer closely followed.
The fire and the man were out, but the danger had not passed. Mooney sensed something exit the room with them.
“Look around! Do you see what that was?” he shouted at the officer.
Around and around the area they looked for the haze. Mooney spotted it, a distortion in the air quickly receding south from his direction.
Grabbing the fellow officer, they bolted in that direction but it evaporated into the shadows above. He had nothing, except a heart-pounding realization that something had looked at him… and wanted Steve dead before he could say another word.
The suspect had been attacked right in front of him!
He ran to check on him. EMS.bot lifted the detective and a human doctor into the hovering ambulance with the badly burned, semiconscious torture survivor.
Steve smiled the upside-down smile of a hard Happy addict. Blood and tears streamed from his face, simultaneous with crazy laughter.
“I’m not dead, I’m not alive. You can’t fight, you can’t fight them, you must fight them!”
Mooney pleaded, “Fight who? Steve? Fight who!?”
“The fucking aliens!!!” Steve wailed, passing out from pain and morphine.
The bot closed the doors and the flashing ambulance quickly receded over the departing crowd in a cacophony of sirens.
Mooney called Tamer from the back of the ambulance. He wanted to talk to Doc Hadjii, and he knew Kyle kept in contact with him.
Tamer told him about Peco.
“It’s pretty bad timing. Can it wait?”
Mooney pressed, “I need that antidote! I found our suspect and he is near overdose.”
“Damn, hold on.”
Kyle answered a few moments later. “Hey, what’s up?”
“I need to speak to Doctor Hadjii right now. I need the antidote immediately! Can you help?”
“Absolutely, I’ll have Tamer get you in touch with him. Franco had a small sample of it here being prepared for local production but I doubt there’s any left. What happened?”
“I’ll fill you in later. Thank you!”
Tamer got the doctor on a three-way call with the detective who described what happened. Then he made an urgent request.
“Kyle mentioned you are working on an antidote for this Happy crap. Franco’s lab has already digested the sample you sent. I have Steve Lathrop in custody, the one you sent me the picture of! He seems to have ingested the drug and he’s been badly burned. I need him alive. Do you have any antidote prepared? I need a dose right now!”
Hadjii responded with reluctance. “We just produced that first s
ample. Who knows yet if the cure is worse than the poison? Franco’s team is testing it for us.”
Mooney answered incredulously, trying not to sound too dramatic but failing. “We may lose more than a human life.”
He paused, not believing what he was about to say.
“We may lose our first witness of First Contact!”
The doctor didn’t hesitate.
“I’ll send another sample to Kyle’s dark matter 3-D printer. It is already calibrated to this formula. Give me an hour.”
Mooney didn’t think Steve had an hour left in him.
CHAPTER 74
Poor Peco
That was something you could not unsee.
Kyle, Ox, Mactron, Moore, Lulu, Bonbon, Mynas, Angel, Tamer, and the girlfriends quietly stood together in the meeting room aboard Angel’s craft, staring at a small container of bloody remains. The morgue was out of room and had had the box sent to Angel and here it was, on the kitchen table. They were all thinking the same thing, staring at the small, opaque box.
Poor Peco.
He went out like a man, in a blaze of glory, had done his best, given all to the cause. No one deserved to die like that.
Moore was conflicted. Peco was a friend and ally, though he’d been very angry about the substitution. They’d spent many hours discussing tone, tremolo, tatas, and had shared a few hits of dope at early rehearsals. Mark was stabilized because Peco stepped up.
It should be him in that little box, slaughtered like a goat by a Tasmanian devil, whatever that was.
It was another sobering moment for him.
Kyle watched the faces. He heard the silence.
He considered their situation and said, “It’s time to go. Freeze the remains and have them transferred home. I think he lived with his mom.”
Tamer said, “I have the address. I’ll take care of it.”
He picked up the box and they could hear the contents sloshing. Mark turned and vomited into a wastebasket. Gemini.bot helped him to his room.