“Name it,” said Noops. “I owe you one, Slam.”
“Dan.”
“Dan. Shizz. Yes. Sorry. Shoot.”
“Who did it?”
Noops’s smile remained locked in place, but his eyes were no longer providing backup. “Did what?” he asked.
Dan gestured down at himself. “I don’t remember much,” he admitted. “There was a case, I think. Some kind of trafficking thing. Women? Kids, maybe? It’s kind of hazy. I had a lead, but you didn’t want us to check it out.”
“It wasn’t that I didn’t want to,” Noops explained. “It was just… it was thin. As leads went, it was really thin, and there was that whole drugs thing going on at the time, and… It was thin.”
“That’s when I first suspected,” Dan said. “See, the tip-off I had, it pointed to Polani. He was the one bringing those people in. And when you tried to steer me away, that’s when I first guessed you were reporting to him. No, when I first knew.”
“Come on, Slam…”
“That name is dead. I am dead,” Dan said, his voice becoming a low, rumbling growl. “There was a gunshot wound. Right here.” He tapped the center of his chest. “I don’t remember much, but I remember that.”
He ground his teeth together. His fingers creaked as he flexed them in and out. “And I remember the hole in the ground. It was cold. I was cold. Shivering. And then the soil started to fall. Shovelful by shovelful. I tried to get up, but my hands were tied. I screamed. Don’t even mind admitting it. I screamed, but they ignored me.”
Dan’s fingers stopped flexing.
“You ignored me.”
Noops shook his head. “What? No! What are you even talking about? Come on, man, you know I’d never do anything to hurt you. You said it yourself, we were partners.”
“It was you, Noops.”
“Uh, no. No, it wasn’t!”
“I saw you pouring the concrete.”
Noops’s face lit up as he saw a way out. “There was no concrete!” he exclaimed before realizing, too late, that what he’d thought was an escape route had been a dead end all along.
Behind him, the map zoomed in to focus on a single sector of the city. Dan ignored it.
“I told you we shouldn’t get involved,” Noops said, his voice flat and level as he resigned himself to the truth. “I warned you we shouldn’t go poking around, but you didn’t listen. You were too fonking stubborn. That was always your problem. Too fonking stubborn for your own good.”
“So, Polani ordered it?” Dan asked. It was the only answer that made sense, but he wanted to hear it, anyway. “Polani had you kill me.”
Noops shifted uneasily. He put his hands on his hips in a way that tried to subtly bring the gun that was slung there into easy reach. “Come on.”
“Say it,” Dan said. “You owe me that much.”
“I can’t…” Noops began, but then he looked up at the ceiling, shook his head, then dropped his voice to a whisper. “Yes. Polani ordered it. OK? Happy, now?”
“Ecstatic,” Dan replied, although his demeanor didn’t really support the statement. “Why did he bring me back? And how?”
This time Noops’s response seemed genuine. “How should I know? That wasn’t us. We – I mean, he – wanted you dead, not… not…”
He gestured to Dan.
“Whatever you currently are. I don’t know how you came back, but it was nothing to do with us.”
“Match found,” Dan said.
Noops blinked. “Huh?”
“The search,” Dan explained, indicating the map screen. “Match found.”
Noops started to turn, then thought better of it. Barely taking his eyes off Dan, he made another series of tight circular gestures on the desktop and a 3D map rose up from the surface. “We don’t have a live feed, but this was his last known location,” Noops said, indicating a warehouse-sized building in the center of the holographic image.
Dan made a show of very slowly opening his coat again, and took out the cracked datapad. “Can you send it to this?” he asked.
Noops flicked a finger and the datapad let out a soothing chime. “You got it.”
“Thanks,” said Dan, slipping the device back inside his coat. He buried his hands down deep in the outer pockets, gave the room a final look over, then shrugged. “Guess I’ll be going.”
“Great. I mean, yeah. Probably best you do. You know, prying eyes, people might start asking questions, whatever,” Noops said. He gestured towards the door with his left hand, the right one still hovering around his hip. “Please.”
Dan started to turn, then stopped. The question – the other question, he had been afraid to ask – forced its way free. His voice, when it came, was a dry husk of a thing, like crackling leaves. “And what about Vanshie?”
Silence.
Then, “Vanshie?”
“I looked for her,” Dan said. “Not right away, but after. I looked for her.”
“And?”
“And you tell me.”
Noops, to his credit, sounded almost remorseful. “Look, I tried to talk him out of it. I told him Vanshie knew nothing, but… you know what he gets like. He’s like you. He’s a stubborn son of a bedge. You know what he gets like.”
Dan clenched his jaw and kept his hands down deep in his pockets.
“But I did right by her. I mean, I figured I owed you that much, right? I did right by her, Slam. Really put my neck out for her,” Noops babbled. “I swear she didn’t feel a thing.”
Death had dulled Dan’s brain chemistry, but hadn’t stopped it completely. Provoked enough, it could still produce sufficient levels of adrenaline and noradrenaline to make Dan’s gut twist and coil in rage, for example. Like here. Like now.
“Polani,” was all he managed to say.
“It was nothing personal. He assured me of that. It was a business decision, that was all, OK? Nothing more. He could’ve made an example of her, but he didn’t. She didn’t even know it was happening.” Noops held out a hand, as if trying to guide a potential jumper down from a ledge. “Don’t do anything stupid, OK?”
Dan closed his eyes, nodded once, then opened them again. “I’ll try,” he said. “But you know what I get like.”
One of his pockets exploded. At almost exactly the same moment, the bottom thirty per cent of Noops’s face where it met his throat did likewise. His protective visor engaged too late to do anything but catch the blood spray before it could arc across the room.
Noops gargled for a half second or so, then he fell backwards against the map screen and slid into a sitting position on the floor. He was dead before his knees had even started to bend.
Dan stood over him, watching his old partner’s blood pooling on the floor. Pulling Mindy from the remains of his coat pocket, he returned her to her holster.
“You didn’t feel a thing, Noops,” he muttered. “Figured I owed you that much.”
Turning, Dan made for the door, but the squawking of Noops’s comm-unit made him stop.
“Noops, we have a C-Eleven-Dash-Delta in progress at Ronsco Elementary in Sector Five.”
C-Eleven-Dash-Delta. Dan knew that one. Hostage situation. Multiple casualties.
“It’s another of those weird ones you asked me to tell you about,” the voice on the comm continued. “Bodies split open, organs all gone. Real nasty stuff. Witness report says the suspect identified herself as ‘the Inhabitant’, although we have no match for that name. She’s now holed up in the school. You know, with the kids and whatnot? Anyway, we’ve got a lot of worried parents assembling unlawfully outside the premises. Boss wants them moved on ASAP. I’m arranging it, and also sorting a clean-up squad to dispose of whatever’s left when it all blows over. But you said you wanted to know. About the organs thing.”
A pregnant pause followed. Dan took another step towards the door, but that was as far as his legs would take him before his feet rooted themselves to the spot.
Kids and whatnot.
“Noops, you
reading?”
The arm was limp and heavy as Dan squatted beside the body and raised Noops’s wrist comm-unit to his mouth. He cleared his throat before hitting the ‘respond’ button.
“Noops here,” he said. “I’m on my way.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A sleek Tribunal cruiser hummed to a stop at the mouth of an alleyway. The passenger door rolled upwards, revealing a figure in riot armor and a blood-smeared helmet sitting in the driving seat.
“It’s me,” he said. “Get in.”
Ollie poked her head out from behind the dumpster, then Artur poked his head out from behind hers.
“Deadman?” Artur said, his fuzzy eyebrows almost raising all the way to the top of his forehead. “Have ye lost yer feckin’ mind or something? Ye do know that’s a Tribunal car ye’re driving, right?”
“I know. Get in. I’ll explain on the way.”
Artur tugged on Ollie’s ear. “Well come on then, peaches, ye heard the man. What are ye waiting for, a written invitation?”
Ollie scampered out of cover and over to the car, keeping low. She jumped into the passenger seat, and Artur hopped off her shoulder onto the dash. Ollie wriggled uncomfortably as the door closed and the car pulled away from the plaza and into traffic. Artur scrambled into a cup holder that was indented in the plastic dash, and wedged his legs against the sides.
“There’s something on the seat,” Ollie complained, squirming and reaching beneath her. She pulled out an object roughly the size of a human hand. Roughly the shape, weight and texture of one, too.
“There’s a hand,” she said. “On the seat. There was a hand on the seat.”
“Yeah,” said Dan, taking the severed appendage from her and tossing it into the back. “Had to get through the fingerprint scanners. Seemed like the obvious solution.”
“Well of course it seemed like the obvious solution,” said Artur. “Because ye’re a frightening bastard, Deadman. A frightening big maniac, in fact. I thought ye had a friend or someone who was going to let ye in and out.”
“I did,” said Dan.
“Then why not just…” Artur’s voice stuttered to a stop. “Oh. Right. And, again, that brings me right back to ye’re a fecking maniac.”
“Wait,” said Ollie. “You cut your friend’s hand off? Didn’t he mind?”
“He didn’t object,” said Dan.
“Oh. Wouldn’t it have been easier just to bring the rest of him, too?”
“Actually, no,” Dan said. “No, it would not.”
He swung the car left as he changed lanes, and watched as the other vehicles parted to let him through. Man, he’d forgotten how nice it was to drive one of these things.
“Why not?” Ollie asked.
“He was heavier than he looked,” Dan replied.
“I thought you said you didn’t have friends,” Ollie reminded him.
“I don’t. Now hold on.”
The road ahead was blocked with five lanes of slow-moving traffic. Dan hit the sirens and mounted the sidewalk. Pedestrians dived for safety as the cruiser screamed past, reds and blues sweeping across the store fronts.
Much as he hated to admit it, he’d missed this. Other cars had never pulled over to let the Exodus past, and its distinct lack of blaring sirens and flashing lights had really limited his opportunities to tear across pedestrianized areas at high speed.
The cruiser tilted to one side as Dan roared back onto the road and powered across a junction. If it’d had wheels, two of them would’ve been off the ground. But since it didn’t, they weren’t.
“Look out!” Artur hollered, covering his head with his hands as a truck thundered towards them, horn blaring. Dan jammed the accelerator pedal to the floor and the cruiser zipped out of the truck’s path. Its air current hit the back of the car like turbulence, rocking it violently. Artur was tossed out of his little nook. He flipped twice, then thudded back down into the same spot, albeit now the wrong way up.
“It’s high time someone invented a cup holder with a feckin’ seatbelt built in,” he muttered, scrabbling back into a sitting position. “Where are we going, anyway? And what’s the big rush?”
“A school,” Dan said, taking a sharp bend too fast and skidding across two lanes of oncoming traffic. Ollie clamped her hands over her eyes. Artur swore a number of times, loudly and in quick succession.
“Relax. Nothing to worry about,” Dan told them, jerking the car back into the right side.
“Easy for you to say, ye’re already dead!” Artur pointed out. “Some of us don’t have that luxury. And what d’ye mean, ‘a school?’ Sure, I spent me whole childhood avoiding those places, I see no reason why I should change that now.”
“There’s a Malwhere… thing. The Inhabitor, or something.”
“Inhabitant,” said Ollie. She still had her hands over her eyes, and showed no signs of taking them away any time soon.
“Right. The Inhabitant,” Dan said. “It’s taken hostages.”
“The kiddies?” Artur asked.
Dan nodded, then weaved the car through some crawling traffic and gunned the engine again.
“What kind of a monster goes and takes a load of kiddies hostage?” Artur asked.
Ollie parted her fingers and peeked out with one eye. “That guy from the other day,” she said.
“Hmm? Oh, yeah. Nona’s father, ye mean? Yeah, he was a wrong ‘un alright, but – credit where credit’s due – he only kidnapped one child.”
Ollie frowned. “Didn’t he take three or four of them?”
“At a time, I mean. He only ever kidnapped one child at a time. Obviously, he nabbed a few over a period of, you know… I mean, I’m not defending him, like. He was a right rumbly bastard, and that’s the truth. But my point is… My point is…”
“What’s your point?” Dan asked.
“My point is…” Artur threw up his arms. “I’ve lost me train of thought now. Thanks a bunch. I was probably about to say something really profound, and now it’s gone forever.”
“We were talking about the kids,” Dan said.
“Oh aye! That’s right! The kiddie snatcher. Now I remember what I was going to say. Let’s go kick the feckin’ shoite out of the bastard.”
“Well now,” said Dan, swinging the cruiser onto another street. “That is certainly profound.”
A barricade of armed Tribunal officers had been set up in the road ahead. They stood with their backs to the school building, staring impassively at the throngs of wailing men and women they were holding back. The parents, Dan assumed. If they didn’t back off, the Tribunal would start spraying stun shots into the crowd. Causing a public disturbance brought stiff penalties, and the way the parents were howling and sobbing was undoubtedly disturbing to witness.
“Keep your head down,” Dan said. Ollie nodded, then waited for Artur to comply. “You, I meant. He’s hiding in a cup holder. I’m not overly concerned about anyone spotting him.”
“Oh. Right,” said Ollie. She leaned sharply forwards and thonked her head on the dash, but tried very hard to pretend she hadn’t. “Better?”
“Let’s hope so,” Dan said. He flashed the cruiser’s headlights. The barrier of cops parted, and two of them beckoned for the car to drive through. Engaging the helmet’s visor so it covered his face, Dan waved an acknowledgement as he prowled through the gap and rolled on up to the school’s front gate.
There were more Tribunal grunts standing around here, none of them doing anything useful. From their uniform and general demeanor, Dan knew this had to be the clean-up crew the dispatcher had mentioned. Their job wasn’t to try to save the kids, or even to catch the hostage-taker. Their job was to pick up the pieces, hose the place down, and ensure everything got back up and running as soon as possible. The school would receive a bill for their services, of course. The Tribunal wasn’t a charity.
Dan rolled down his window as he brought the car level with one of the lower-down grunts. He’d deliberately picked someone of lesser
rank, as they were always easier to push around or confuse with technical jargon that they should all have learned by now, but invariably hadn’t.
“What’s the status?” he asked.
The clean-up crewman had been busily trying to dangle a trail of saliva all the way from his mouth to the ground. It sprang upwards as he sucked in again, become just a bubble on his lips as he peered into the vehicle.
“Uh, yeah. It’s pretty bad, I think, sir,” said the grunt. His nostrils flared as he caught a whiff from inside the car. He swallowed a couple of times, but said nothing. “I mean, I don’t know the whole story about what’s going on, exactly, but they’re expecting a pretty sizeable clean-up job. They’ve got three different crews here. They must be bracing for something big.”
“Are we inside?” Dan asked. “Have we made contact?”
“Don’t think so. Uh… Made contact with who?” the cleaner asked. “Sorry, they don’t really tell us much. But no, there’s no-one from the Tribunal in the building. As far as I know.”
He pointed into the car. “Is, uh, is she dead?”
Dan glanced to his right, where Ollie was still folded forward with her head on the dash. Her attempts at hiding had not gone unnoticed.
“No. She’s just resting,” Dan said.
“Right. It’s just… something kind of smells pretty dead in there.”
“Yeah. It’s not her,” Dan said, then he raised the window and the car crept ahead through the open gate.
While not having a job Down Here was a criminal offence punishable by death, education was no longer compulsory. It had been, once, until the Tribunal-run local government had decided that knowledge was a potentially harmful thing, and the fewer people who had it, the better. Besides, there were lots of jobs that children could do better than adults – cleaning narrow spaces, or programming video recording equipment, for example – and so schools and libraries had been quietly closed until only a handful of educational facilities remained.
The schools that had kept their doors open had seen their funding slashed year on year. If the Tribunal couldn’t kill them with a single blow, they’d damn well bleed them to death. If it hadn’t been for the whole Malwhere monster element, Dan would’ve suspected the Tribunal had set the hostage situation up itself. What better way to destroy a school’s reputation than with a spot of mass kidnapping and child murder?
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