Jazz, Monster Collector in: Broken (season 1, episode 17)

by RyFT Brand

me of something?”

  Samuels turned sideways in his chair and scratched at the invisible skin on the back of his neck. I looked away. “Look Cole, I came here in the capacity of a friend, not as a captain of the enforcer corps, and I’m not going to accuse you of anything, but you’ve managed, whether directly your fault or not, to get yourself into an awful lot of hot water here, more than ever before. You’ve made some very powerful beings very angry, and you can’t hide down here forever. Now I’m doing my best to keep the corps off your tail, but I have limited access right now due to my condition and sooner or later, probably sooner, it’s is going to catch up to you. I want to help you, I really do, but I told you before that you’d have to choose a side and that time has come.”

  “Hey!” Parry shouted, and, in a flailing of limbs and a ring of the metal chair banging up and down, got himself off the floor and standing. “I want to help too.”

  “Good,” I said and jammed the recordstone tablet in his belly. “Take this upstairs and see if you can get it unlocked.”

  “Sure,” Parry said trying, and failing, to cover the pain he was feeling from where the tablet bumped his belly, then he hurried out. Parry was a good secretary, but he was made of marshmallows.

  “What about me?” Inspector Samuels asked.

  “Can you see if any Draconians have been confined on weapon charges—or on any charges at all?”

  “Draconians?” DJ and Samuels exclaimed at the same time.

  “I know what you told me, Cole, but the lizards are all pacifists. They haven’t been violent in decades. Hades, they’re just about the most ardent proponents of peace on the planets,” the inspector said.

  “Does this have to do with the necromancers you fought?” DJ asked.

  I nodded. “That, and the armored warriors that attacked us three weeks ago.”

  “Attacked you? Jazz, come on, be serious,” Samuels said.

  “Come on, Jazz,” DJ said. “I don’t know what got the Dracs on your enemy’s list, but those armored attackers were way too big to be Draconians, even for their warrior class. I mean those guys were huge.”

  “No,” I said, “their armor was really huge.

  “I don’t know; it’s still a stretch.” DJ ran a hand through her long, straight black hair and I got the feeling she was trying to keep her patience with me. “Look, are you sure this doesn’t have more to do with what happened to Mickey. I’m sorry to have to say it but you might be deflecting here, applying your guilt on the lizards?”

  “So,” I said ignoring DJ and turning back to Samuels, “will you look into it?”

  Inspector Samuels sighed. “I want to help you Jazz, I really do. But you keep asking me to inquire about one impossible theory after another and it’s starting to cause the wrong people to question if I’m right for this job anymore.” I think his eyebrows rose, but it was more a vibe as his hair had become translucent too, or maybe was gone altogether, I couldn’t tell. “Remember that ancient red dragon you claimed to have spotted? That gained me weeks of uncomfortable stares.”

  And your invisible skin doesn’t? I wanted to ask, but held my tongue.

  “Look, I really want to help you, but if I’m going to stick my neck out here, you’re going to have to give me some hard evidence,” Samuels said.

  “Fine,” I said and dug into the pocket of my long, pleated skirt. I set three, bright green, oblong discs on the table.

  DJ took one and stared at it. “This is a lizard scale.” She passed it to the inspector, but looked at me. “Those are what you picked off the street after we were attacked.”

  Samuels turned the scales over in his fingers. “You’re sure these came from your attackers?”

  “Positive,” I said.

  Samuels scratched at his forehead and for a second I thought I caught a glimpse of skin there, but it was just a playing of the light. “The Lizards you fought underground, who’s chamber we never did find by the way, you said they raised a black dragon.”

  “They did raise a black dragon,” I said.

  Samuels huffed out a breath. “I’m sorry; I’m trying here, Jazz, but a dragon, really? I think someone would have noticed.”

  “Like we said,” I said, “someone from very high up.”

  “No way,” Samuels said authoritatively. “The dragon council was disbanded long, long ago.”

  “I’m not suggesting anything different,” I said.

  Samuels tapped the scale against the table and glared at me.

  “What are you suggesting?” DJ asked.

  “I’m not suggesting anything,” I said, unable to conceal my gathering impatience. “I’m merely showing you my cards.”

  Samuels clenched the scale in his fist. “So what do you need from me?”

  “I need you to show me the other guy’s hand, then we’ll know what’s worth betting on.”

  “Okay,” he said, stood, and shoved the scales in his pocket. “I’ll see what I can find out,” he said then left.

  “How about me, boss?” DJ asked.

  I smiled. “So, still calling me, boss?”

  DJ didn’t smile, but she didn’t frown either. “I won’t say that I agree with everything you’ve done, or the way you’ve done it. But I have no doubt that every move you made was done because you believed it was the right thing to do; and because you were trying to save us. As long as you’re fighting the good fight, I’ll have your back.”

  One of the hardest things I’d ever done in my challenging life was force myself to not cry just then. All I had was the strength to say, “Thank you.”

  DJ stood and tossed her empty vessel halfway across the room and into the waste bin. Nice throw. “So what are my orders?”

  I slumped back in my chair and thought. “Why don’t you give all my battle gear a good going over? Get everything cleaned, inspected, and fully loaded. I need to be ready for the biggest fight of my life.”

  DJ just stared at me for a long moment, stared like she was searching for what was really on my mind. I worked hard to not show her.

  At last she said, “Cool, no problem,” and waked out.

  I heaved out a load of tension with an exhale, then leaned my head on my hand and gave the pickle jar a solid plink. A single point of light appeared and whizzed though the goop. Alone again at last.

  “Aren’t you bored with that yet?” Uncle asked entering the room.

  No peace for the wicked.

  Uncle came up to the table and stared down at me with eyes that had grown cloudy over time. Much like me, Uncle didn’t go in for all the magical anti-aging processes most Mirthlings indulged in.

  “No. Not really.” I thought about giving the jar another shot, then just slumped back. “Yes, completely, totally, and painfully board. I am so scrudding board.”

  “Look what I found,” he said and dropped two billiard sized balls attached by a short cord on the table.

  “Hey,” I said sitting, and perking, up, “My old Whamos.”

  “I was digging around in an old parts box and there they were. I thought maybe you’d want to work on them. It’d give you something to do while you…what are you doing again?”

  I picked the magnetronic bolos up and held them, bouncing my hand up and down. “They’re too heavy. Besides, I could never get the fields balanced, good idea though.”

  “I always thought so,” he said in that placating tone he used when he was trying to make a point.

  “Okay, what’s on you mind, Uncle?”

  “You are,” he said. “Sitting around here for weeks on end, moping, sulking, and generally feeling blue. Seems to me you need to do something to break this spell you’ve put yourself under.”

  “I know,” I said. “I know what I should do. I should turn myself in. That would take the heat off of all of you, and could potentially move me closer to the beings who’ve been manipulating me.”

  “You could do that,” Uncle said scratching at the white stubble on his dark face. “But that doesn�
�t sound at all like the girl I know.”

  “Yeah,” I said with a snicker. “The girl you knew would have armed herself to the teeth, hopped inside her sentient flycraft, and made full frontal assault on the magisterial buildings.”

  “So do that then,” he said.

  I laughed—laughed really hard. When I finished I said, “Look, I might be reckless, and impulsive, and crazy, but even I wouldn’t attack the courts directly. I don’t know anyone stupid enough to do that.”

  When I stopped talking to take a breath I became aware of the distinct wine of a thruster engine in distress, then the sound of a heavy metal something scrapping against something hard, then something big slammed into something solid, shaking our buried submarine.

  “What the lower realms?” Uncle shouted.

  I bolted out of the room, uncle was close behind. I ran the narrow hallway, leapt and caught the ladder’s metal rungs then clambered up and out through the hatch. I grabbed the edge of the toilet rim that concealed the hidden entrance and heaved myself out and into Uncle’s garage as I drew my MacDaddy revolver from my concealed holster.

  One of the big, rollup doors for bringing in flycraft had a massive, oddly shaped dent. Something had smashed into it from outside. When Uncle caught me up he cursed.

  DJ and Parry appeared from the office door. DJ was carrying my Robotusen personal mini-missile launcher. The big gun looked huge slung over her little shoulder and Parry looked terrified.

  “Are we under attack?” DJ shouted.

  “Soon see.” I ran for the man door set between Uncle’s twin rollup doors. Outside, with his nose stuck into the rent metal door and