The Bridge Chronicles Trilogy

by Gary Ballard

  “What do you mean, think?”

  “I ain’t no doctor, homes! I don’t feel no neck thing.”

  “Feel the neck thing.”

  “I can’t feel no neck thing! I told you!”

  “Goddamnit, let me.”

  Danton’s shout distracted Bridge from the unfolding search for the neck thing. “Where is it, Bridge?”

  “Where is what, Officer Danton?”

  “The gun, Bridge. Where’d it go?”

  “What gun? I don’t carry a gun.”

  She searched his arm roughly, pushing his sleeve up forcefully, then feeling up and down his forearm, wrist and hand. She found nothing, of course. “Where did the gun go? You shot him with something.”

  “Do you see a gun back there, Danton? If not, then let me up.”

  She cursed under her breath, driving her knee harder into his back before standing up. He turned over and stuck a hand out for assistance, but she refused the hand with a sour scowl. He shrugged and stood.

  “He’s dead,” Chimuelo announced. “You fucking killed him”

  “Yes, I did,” Bridge admitted.

  Mu’s spell had worked perfectly. Mu had dubbed it a magic missile with a chuckle. Similar to the ward Bridge had used to blow up his apartment, the missile was an inert bubble of invisible energy stuck to the inside of Bridge’s wrist. As soon as Bridge spoke the password, ‘daylight’ the bubble exploded, firing a single particle of solid light into whatever Bridge aimed his arm at. The pyrotechnics it produced were purely illusory, but the missile’s effect proved itself all too deadly. Às NewOnce the missile had been expended, no trace was left of its existence. No powder burns on his sleeves or arm, no physical firing mechanism, nothing to tie Bridge to the death.

  “Of course, none of you can prove it, now can you? As Officer Danton has so ably demonstrated, I am unarmed.”

  The undercover cop cum gang leader raged. “Then how did that fucking hole get in his head?” Chimuelo stabbed an accusing finger at the body.

  Bridge remained silent for a moment, adopting a posture of mock contemplation. He snapped a finger dramatically. “Sniper?”

  “Bridge, are you admitting to hiring a killer to take out Nacho?” Soto asked, his shoulders betraying his hungry desire for any chance to scuttle these talks.

  “I’m admitting to not a goddamn thing. I killed him, sure enough, but there’s nothing you will find that could convict me of it, even in the kind of kangaroo courts Chronosoft could drum up. No shell casings, no bullet holes in any of the windows a sniper would use, no weapon on me at all, and no eyewitness who could testify truthfully to what the hell happened to that dead son of a bitch.”

  “That it, then,” Stonewall sighed. “Without Nacho, El Diablos can’t approve the deal. It’s fucked.” Soto’s face lit up like a Christmas tree, darkening just as quickly when Bridge spoke up.

  “Not quite. The leader of El Diablos would have to approve the deal.”

  “That’s me, and I fucking don’t,” Chimuelo growled.

  “Getting ahead of yourself there, Officer. The leader of El Diablos is the fittest, the strongest, the guy who can take out the previous leader one way or the other. Succession ain’t formal, it’s predatory. You want to lead El Diablos, you gotta take out the previous leader. Kind of like I did.”

  Chimuelo’s eyes reflected a curious mixture of confusion, rage and horrified understanding. Bridge had assassinated Nacho, and by El Diablos law, that made him the leader no matter who stood as second. “Unless of course, you want to admit to hiring me to assassinate the leader. I’m sure Officer Danton would love to hear a confession like that, am I right?” Danton glared at Bridge, her jaw set so hard she must have been grinding her teeth to powder. A swift nod gave Bridge all the backing he needed.

  “And as de facto leader of El Diablos, I hereby agree to this deal.”

  Chimuelo screamed. “You can’t do this! I’ll shoot you myself!”

  “You could try,” Bridge replied, raising a finger. “But you’ll find it hard to penetrate a technomancer’s force field, and I’m pretty sure somebody up in this bitch will plug you before you get the chance. Not that it matters, because we both know you didn’t spend almost two years undercover with this group of gÀ> is the fangsters to not get some kind of conviction, which you won’t get if you pop a cap in my ass gangster-style.”

  Chimuelo’s face hardened but his gun hand faltered. The room drew one, two, three tense breaths before he lowered the weapon.

  Bridge turned back to the mayor with a grin. “I have one stipulation to my family’s consent, Mr. Mayor. Your undercover officer here, he stays right where he is.”

  “What? His cover’s blown. Everybody here knows he’s a cop. He won’t last two weeks.” Real concern for a fellow officer showed on Danton’s face.

  “Not if the leader of El Diablos decrees that he’s off limits,” Bridge replied. “And I do, by the way.” He directed his attention to the other Diablos bodyguards. “Chimmy Chim here? He’s my boy. Harm a hair on his head and you answer to me. Got it?” They exchanged confused looks, still trying to grasp the exact mechanism for the change in leadership, but they nodded their assent.

  “Why? What do you want with me?”

  “You caused all this. You got lots of people killed and it wasn’t even for anything worth a damn, like law and order, or justice or whatever. You did it to make him rich.” He pointed at the mayor. “Not yourself, not me, not the people whose houses he stole to do it all, him. Maybe you got told you were there for something different, you were going to bring down the city’s gangs, clean up the streets, whatever. You should have known better. Now you get to pay for that by being my bitch. So we clear?” Chimuelo nodded. Bridge looked back to the mayor, who surprisingly took his cue from Martel. All eyes settled on the mysterious executive who nodded solemnly.

  “Yes. You got what you want, Bridge.”

  Thames clapped his hands together and shouted, future riches dancing through his thoughts. As Soto’s bodyguards took possession of the Special Squad bodies, Bridge caught Aristotle’s eye across the room. The bodyguard’s usual disapproving stare was mixed with something else, something sad, an understanding of horrific cost of the pointed victory achieved today.

  Chapter 20

  March 12, 2029

  10:43 p.m.

  “How did you know I’d go along with this thing, Bridge?” Danton asked once the meeting began to break up. Standing in that warehouse, cooling breeze blowing through the open doors, making the drop cloths covering the skeletal frames of the construction scaffolds flap loudly, Danton gaƀt wve Bridge the stinkeye. “You put me in the position of having to cover up multiple murders, including that of a cop…”

  “Pscyho-freaked-out-cyber-nightmare cop,” Bridge corrected.

  “Still a cop. How did you know I wouldn’t just arrest you right here?”

  “I didn’t.” Seeing Danton’s skeptical surprise, he elaborated. “All I knew is this. No matter what you think about me, no matter how much you want to put a bullet in me for all the egregious shit you and I both know I facilitate, if you got orders to keep my ass alive, you’d do it or die trying. You’re one of those rare breeds that actually believes in all that law and order shit.”

  Bridge could never tell if the coloring of her cheeks came from anger or self-conscious embarrassment. “You’re a dangerous bitch, Gina Danton, and I don’t just mean to crooks like me. You’re the kind of earnest motherfucker that can get so caught up in an idea that you let that idea make you do really bad things. Like your boy Martel over there.” He directed a lazy finger towards the executive. “I saw you talking to him. What’d he say?”

  Danton glanced over at Martel with a guilty expression. “None of your business.” Seeing Bridge’s disapproving look, she replied, “He wants to talk about Special Squad with me.”

  “That right? He going to turn you into Spider-Woman?”

  “Fuck you, Bridge. No, he’s not going
to turn me into a freak show. But this city needs some upgraded officers, because the criminals sure ain’t turning down that kind of crazy gear. Somebody’s got to take down the cybered-up freaks. He admitted they might have gone a bit overboard with the first gen models.”

  “A bit overboard? I’m thinking if that’s a bit overboard, I’d hate to see a real overreaction. He might nuke the whole city.” Bridge leaned silently against the scaffold. “You going to take him up on his offer?”

  “All I ever wanted was to be a great cop. It ain’t like when my dad was coming up on the force. There’s shit he never dreamed of out there. If it takes cybering up, that’s what I’ll do.”

  “So this Bridge is a murderer thing? You get turned into a terminator, and my bad deeds go bye-bye?”

  “Officially, yep. You’re in the clear. Unofficially? I know what you did. Don’t expect I’m going to forget it, or that I’ll ever trust you for anything again.”

  “Didn’t know you ever trusted me in the first place. My advice? Don’t ever make that mistake again. It’s only going to get somebody hurt.” He tossed a mock salute at Danton with two fingers and walked over to where Aristotle stood with the Panthers.

  The mountainous bodyguard grabbed Bridge in a bear hug and squeezed until Bridge could feel his ribs contracting over his lungs. “Ok, big guy, ˀng over hstop touching me!” Bridge wheezed.

  “Sorry, Bridge,” Aristotle replied. “Just ecstatic to lay eyes on you. I knew reports of your death were exaggerated, as the man says.” The smile across the big man’s face flooded the room with light. “Where’s Angela? You two really had me perturbed.”

  Bridge’s gaze locked on his shoes. “It’s just me, big guy. She wasn’t part of the scam.”

  The full weight of Bridge’s words hit the bodyguard like a shotgun blast to the face. His smile evaporated. “How? Why?”

  “We’ll talk about it later, brother. So you with the Panthers now?”

  “Sort of. Stonewall thought it would offer me the most efficacious camouflage. As it so happens, it has presented me with the opportunity to perform some magnanimous acts of kindness.”

  “Your man is natural-born evangelist.” Chahine had heard Aristotle talking and approached the two. “He missed his calling as a preacher.”

  “Oh, he’s done more than enough preaching for the both of us,” Bridge chuckled. “You want to keep him?”

  Aristotle’s eyes reflected a mixture of hope and fear. “Are you firing me, Bridge?”

  “No, brother, you got a job whenever you want it. But it sounds to me like the Panthers could use your help doing some of those good works you’re always on about.”

  “Preaching to the brothers about non-violence takes a special gift,” Chahine explained. “You’re damn good at it. We could use an intelligent black man whose made it out of the shit to turn some of the young brothers off the path of violence.”

  “You ok with that arrangement, Bridge? I will have to be confined to the autonomous zone.”

  “I could always use a man inside,” Bridge replied. “I think I used up all my goodwill with Stonewall and Los Magos.” Bridge looked across at Stonewall as the Mexican strode out of the warehouse without saying goodbye. The burning, angry glare directed towards Bridge told him all he needed to know about Stonewall’s goodwill toward the fixer.

  “Whatever you need, Bridge.”

  “You’ll regret saying that, brother.”

  Epilogue

  April 30, 2029

  2: 34 a.m.

  Bridge waited in the giant sewer tunnel a mile on the Los Angeles side of the autonomous zone, trying hard not to dissect the various fetid smells of the water slowly rippling down the center of the tunnel. He wished he smoked just so he could mask the stench. His shoes were already ruined by his three block trek underground. Next time he’d wear boots or something. Maybe put on some of those shoe-protecting nanoskin sprays. These shoes cost more than he used to make in a week, but the first royalty checks had come in this week and he’d needed something legit to spend it on.

  The premiere episode of Gangland had been released on the GlobalNet earlier tonight. The initial download numbers were staggering. At least 40% of all Los Angeles residents had streamed the broadcast live, with another 10% having paid to download it for later viewing. National and even some international numbers had come trickling in, each showing similar levels of success. Thames had called Bridge personally to congratulate him on their shared success, lathering such accolades on Bridge that his bunghole felt waxed to a sparkling shine. It always amazed Bridge how bundles of money smoothed out all the worst resentments.

  The residents of the city had unofficially dubbed the Los Angeles Valley Autonomous Zone, formerly known as the Warehouse District and the Arts District before that, “Gangland.” The press conference announcing the establishment of the zone had been a circus, one Bridge had delighted in watching. Soto had hand-picked all the journalists allowed at the conference, choosing only the most softball-tossing corporate-friendly sycophants, and even then he’d had to face tougher questions than expected. Even corporate drones balked at the idea of a free-for-all zone filled with violent sociopaths and every manner of illicit good or act. Of course, their editors back at the office had done their appointed tasks, sanitizing the conference as much as possible to make the LGL’s plan appear as non-threatening as possible. The week prior to the premiere had been filled with the kind of talking head punditry that accompanied a media-manufactured controversy, the pointless nattering, overwrought moralizing and sensationalist discussion providing all the free publicity for the show’s premiere a television executive could want.

  Bridge had watched the premiere live, and had to admit the whole thing made for exciting television. The Bottle City Boys fulfilled their role as cameramen and directors with unexpected proficiency, capturing the visceral feel of street combat while managing to provide adequate meta-context for the events with the practiced efficiency of the best sports broadcast. Stonewall’s Los Magos had planned and executed a lightning raid against one of El Diablos’ warehouses in the southern tip of Gangland. Casualties had been light, but the Boys had captured at least three good deaths on camera, as well as many of the various less serious injuries. They’d capped the whole raid off with a spectacular explosion, all captured in glorious high-definition from multiple camera angles. A final cliffhanger showing a few members of AsiaTown ambushing the victorious Los Magos ensured there would be repeat viewers next week. If every week turned out to be as well produced as the premiere, money would fall from the heavens like rain.

  As he stood waiting for his appointment in that sewer tunnel, hoping against hope that his visitor could make it out of Gangland without getting spotted, he replayed parts of the show on his internal HUD. Mu stood watch a few hundred meters away at the bottom of the ladder they’d used to enter the tunnel, surveying the scene with multiple invisible nanocameras flying undetected around Bridge’s position. Mu had been unhappy about Bridge’s deal with the Bottle City Boys, but a quick scolding by the Council at Bridge’s behest had put the technomancer back in line. At some point, Bridge knew he’d have to read Mu into his special relationship with the Council, or else be forced to switch bodyguards to keep the wizard out of the loop. He had gotten too used to Mu, too reliant on his abilities, so he knew the former would be his only option. The kid deserved to know a little of the truth eventually.

  The zone itself had been prepared with startling speed. The entire area had been walled off within a week, giant concrete barriers twenty feet tall with concertina wire along the top now separated Gangland physically from the rest of Los Angeles proper. The subway lines had been cut, new tracks laid bypassing the area completely. All roads leading in and out were closed off by CLED-staffed checkpoints, and all entrants into the zone were photographed, identified and tracked. Only those who had entered legally were allowed to leave, keeping the Family members buttoned up in the zone at all times. Potential recruits to
the gangs could enter as they wished, but if they earned the ink, they were forced to stay. Recruits came in droves, every wannabe thug coming from miles around for the opportunity to do their gangster shit without repercussions. Bridge did fantastic trade providing certified fake ID’s, provided by Chronosoft on the down low, allowing normal citizens to partake in the illegalities of Gangland anonymously… for a price. Bridge kicked back a portion to Chronosoft, a portion to the Families, and kept the rest himself, adding to the money he was already raking in for his silent turn as an uncredited producer. Gangland closed for business late Saturday afternoon and opened back up on Sunday morning, to keep those normal citizens out of the crossfire. It wouldn’t do to have regular jagoffs capped on live television.

  Certain areas were off limits, of course. The Citizens Brigades took over a few buildings in the north zone, and the warehouse where the original meet had taken place became the epicenter of the television production. A few of the corporate TV crew worked in the building during the broadcast, buzzing around the stacks of crèches that were supposed to house the Bottle City Boys. Unknown to the crews, the crèches were completely empty, serving merely as dummy terminals for the Boys, who operated in hiding from multiple Glowbugged locations with the help of the technomancers.

  The Panthers steadfastly refused to get involved with the violence, of course, setting up a fortress on the East Side of the zone as an outreach center. Despite their pacifism, they maintained a well-stocked arsenal, vowing only to use it in self-defense. Aristotle stayed with them, preaching the doctrine of non-violence to anyone who would listen. He would often be found wandering the zone, offering guidance and advice to the young black men who came looking for drugs or violence. Bridge could tell how happy this made him. Aristotle once said, “If I can be the guy who does for someone else what my grandmother did for me, it’ll all be worth it.” For once, Bridge let the doe-eyed optimism go by without sarcastic, cynical commentary.