by Jaxon Reed
Seana Xie cut him off.
She said, “Oh, great. Here we go again. Another history lesson in policing, just what I needed this evening.”
“Hey, I let you drive the car. You can indulge me on my history lectures.”
“You let me drive? That’s awfully kind of you, Officer.”
“No problem. So like I was saying, in the old days they had radios in the cars. But you could pick up the signals, right? They had these civilian radios they called scanners, and any Tom, Dick or Harry could buy one and listen to the police.”
“Police scanners. Sure, I’ve read about those.”
“Only the cops, they didn’t like the idea of their banter being heard all the time, right? The bad guys could go into a store and buy one of these things and listen in, find out if the police had been alerted and such, you know?”
“Right. I can see where that’d be a problem.”
“So, the cops invented code phrases to help confuse casual eavesdroppers. It served to shorten common phrases for the sake of clarity, but it was also a barrier for outsiders listening in to understand what was going on.”
“Like what kind of phrases?”
“Well they had the ‘ten codes.’ Like, ’10-4’ meant okay. Or, ’10-20’ meant location. And, ’10-16’ meant it was a domestic violence call. Then they had simple number codes, like ‘Code 8’ was a call for help. ‘Code 3’ meant an officer was responding with lights and sirens, and so forth.”
“Uh-huh. We still have those, to an extent.”
“Not like they did back then.”
“So what precipitated the great change in communications, Professor?”
McNeese said, “Well, for one thing departments switched to encrypted radio communications. No one could listen in anymore.”
“That would do it,” Xie said. “No more need to talk in obscure codes all the time.”
“Radios got a lot clearer, too. No more static. They became good enough to hear as if the person was standing right next to you.”
Their conversation was interrupted by PLAIR’s voice coming through the car’s speakers.
“All units, Black Goggle Gang getaway car sighted in Eastside at the following address. AOJ requesting uniformed assistance. Proceed with caution.”
Xie flipped on blue and red lights and manually took the car higher in the air, pointing its nose east as an address flashed across their windshield before turning into a small circle.
They flew across the urban landscape as fast as the vehicle would go. The dot on the windshield steadily grew larger, showing the distant building’s location and proximity.
She said, “So what would that have sounded like in old school cop radio speak? Is that a ‘ten code,’ or what?”
McNeese shrugged his broad shoulders.
He said, “I have no idea.”
-+-
Stormy drove the invisible car through the air, flying lower than normal. It was easier to avoid traffic that way.
She sped away from the spaceport, heading back toward Eastside. In the backseat, Edge moaned in pain.
“Shut up,” she said, concentrating on flying.
Edge grit his teeth. She risked a quick glance over her shoulder to try and see how badly he had been hit. She noticed he had injuries to the chest, and was bleeding.
That’s not good, she thought. She wondered if she would be disposing of his body once they reached home.
The car flew in under the replication field over Eastside, and she approached their building, maintaining invisibility.
The clamshell door opened on the roof and she stopped, hovering over the entryway.
She lowered the car vertically, its feet popping out as she landed in the garage. The door closed above them while she turned off the car’s camo unit, making it visible once more.
She popped the top and climbed out, then reached in to help Edge.
“Come on,” she said. “I’ll open a medpack for you. One shot of nanobots coming right up.”
He groaned and painfully pulled himself out of the car, leaving a trail of blood along the way.
38
A grand total of 41 police vehicles surrounded a three story building in Eastside in the air and on the ground. Twenty were AOJ vehicles and 21 were OPD squad cars. More arrived by the minute.
The 21st AOJ vehicle arrived carrying Applegate. He fingered the implant under his ear, about to address everybody.
For one thing, he wanted to know who had authorized this show of force. He also wanted to know what information led them to believe members of the Black Goggle Gang were inside this building. Finally, if indeed gang members were in there, he was determined to take control of the situation.
But before he could speak, a voice came over his implant and, thanks to PLAIR’s coordination efforts, every other officer’s and agent’s implant as well.
“Thanks for joining us, AD Applegate. Everyone, my name is Gina Wilcox, AOJ AD. We have been surveilling this area for days now, as a suspected hideout for the Black Goggle Gang. Tonight we noticed a rooftop door opening and closing. This was, we believe, the gang using a camo unit equipped vehicle to travel undetected. Several city blocks here also remain under an electronic reflection field, giving false aerial and satellite views from above.”
Applegate opened his mouth again, but stopped.
Several thoughts raced through his mind. A reflection field? How did she find that?
Wilcox continued.
“PLAIR’s scanners indicate two humans of unknown identity inside. She is also indicating the presence of black market implants, active in one of them, that she recognizes from the spaceport earlier today.”
“And that clenches it,” Applegate said out loud with a frown. Wilcox had found reasonable suspicion to demand entry.
Her voice came back over everyone’s implant again.
“We are waiting for a judge to grant our warrant. As soon as that comes through . . . Okay, we have it. OPD personnel, I request you open fire on the top floor and make us an entry big enough for my car to get through . . .”
Applegate said, “What?”
He activated his implant and started to day, “AD Wilcox that is not—”
Seana Xie cut him off.
“AD Wilcox, Officers Xie and McNeese are happy to oblige. Everyone please pull back from the west side of the building.”
Before Applegate could say anything else, a squad car separated from the others and floated down closer.
The last thing Applegate heard over the neural net was Xie yelling in glee.
“Let’s rock and roll!”
-+-
Stormy broke open a medpack and pulled out a pneumatic syringe full of nanobots.
“Get over here, you big baby,” she said as Edge slowly made his way to the sofa.
He plopped down and threw his head back.
She raised an eyebrow looking at the burn marks on his chest, but kept her opinions to herself.
“These are military grade. They’ll have you up in no time.”
Stormy plunged the syringe into his shoulder and released the nanobots into his bloodstream.
He closed his eyes and sighed.
“What are we gonna do now, Stormy? We’ll never get the money we need for personal camo units.”
“Don’t worry about it. Hey, it’s just you and me. I was getting tired of Marx, anyway.”
She smiled brightly at him, and he gave a wan smile back, one sparked by an inkling of hope.
Maybe, he thought. Maybe they had a future . . .
WABOOM!
The wall on the far side of the garage burst open with the bolts from an OPD squad car.
Stormy ducked instinctively and reached for her gun.
Edge jumped up, suddenly full of vigor despite his injuries. He hurried back to the car and his heavy rifle.
A car shot through the hole and skidded on the floor, its belly scraping the tiles as it landed without feet popping out.
; It shuddered to a sideways stop and the canopy popped open. Three individuals inside aimed their guns at the pair.
“AOJ! Don’t move, you’re under arrest!”
Edge stood up, pulling out the heavy gun from the sports car’s rear seat.
He squeezed the trigger.
ThuppaThuppaThuppa!
His aim was wild. The first bolt hit the floor, the second blew a hole through the front of Gina’s car, and the third crept closer to the driver’s seat.
Boggs and Collier instinctively cringed in the back, but Wilcox calmly returned fire.
Thoop! Thoopah! Thoop!
All three shots hit home.
Edge staggered, struck three more times in the chest, this time with direct hits. He held both hands out wide and dropped the heavy rifle.
He dropped down on his knees, bug-eyed, blood running down his front.
Then he fell face forward on the floor, dead.
-+-
Ginger Storm had no weapons handy when the wall blew in and a car with armed AOJ agents intruded into her garage.
That probably saved her life.
Instead of trying to shoot at the intruders, she ran for the stairs.
Boggs and Collier saw her and started shooting.
Thoop! Thoopah! Thoopah! Thoop!
She zigged and zagged and the bolts missed. She bounded down the stairs, three steps at a time.
Gina activated her implant and said, “Ground units close in. One suspect on the second floor . . . heading further down. She’s on the first floor, now.”
On all four sides of the building, uniformed officers and a handful of AOJ personnel blew open doors and windows, streaming inside with guns ready.
But Stormy kept heading down.
Gina followed the black market implant in her mind.
“She’s headed to the basement!”
At the time, nobody asked how Wilcox knew this for certain. The police and agents listening in on the neural net dutifully headed for the stairs.
Back on the top floor, Gina grew worried the suspect would leave her range soon, especially now that she was underground.
She concentrated, and scrambled the woman’s implant.
At the bottom of the stairs, Stormy palmed a storage panel. It hissed open, revealing guns, knives and explosives.
She smiled, grateful for the weapons cache. Then Wilcox fritzed her implant.
Stormy yelled, grabbing below her ear in pain. She had a sudden realization about what happened in the café when Marx was captured by the police.
She heard voices and people coming down the steps.
“Somebody’s yelling down there.”
In desperation, she grabbed a dagger and made a slit under her ear, about three centimeters long. She ripped out the implant and threw it on the floor, stomping on it.
Then she grabbed a blaster and aimed up at the cop cautiously going down the stairs.
Thoop! Thoop!
He scrambled back up, dodging the bolts.
“Watch out! Suspect is armed!”
She looked at the weapons in the cache and pulled out an egg grenade. She pressed the plunger and tossed it up the steps. The cops retreated even further, yelling.
KABLOOM!
Stormy grabbed a lead-lined bag full of weapons, another full of egg grenades, and a third with some additional equipment and credit tokens.
Then she turned and palmed open a door leading to the sewers.
She stepped through, and left the hideout behind.
39
Everyone milled about on the ground floor while the coroner examined the body in the damaged garage on the third floor.
A seething Applegate stood between Wilcox and a wall of municipal police and AOJ agents.
Collier, ever perceptive of her surroundings, noticed.
She murmured to Boggs, “If looks could kill, Wilcox would be lying on the floor.”
Boggs looked over the crowd and watched the other Assistant Director glaring at Wilcox and nodded.
He said, “She keeps wrapping up cases. I’m sure that gets under his skin.”
Menzini walked up the stairs from the basement, the cowlick covering his forehead bouncing as he climbed the steps. He found Wilcox and grabbed her attention.
The other two agents came closer so they could hear. So did Applegate.
Menzini said, “The munis and a few of our guys are down there in the sewers chasing after her, but I bet they never find her. Looks like she had an escape route already planned. But, she did leave us a parting present.”
He held up a preservation bag with pieces of the bloody implant in it.
“There’s more than enough DNA here for an ID.”
Wilcox said, “She probably won’t show up in PLAIR’s database. But send the info over to me when you get it, and I’ll take it from there. Maybe RNI can help us out again.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Wilcox turned to Collier and Boggs.
She said, “Good job, you two. I think you can call it a night. I’ll stay here and wrap up the scene. You can submit your reports in the morning.”
Boggs and Wilcox both smiled at the prospect of leaving early and postponing reports. They turned to head out for the long walk to their cars back at Wilcox’s place.
As they went out the door, Boggs said, “Want a drink, Collier? I know a good place.”
“You buying?”
“Yeah, if I have to. The first round, anyway.”
Collier’s lips twitched up.
She said, “Only the first round?”
“I imagine, after the first round, you could probably talk me into buying more. I’m a softie.”
“Okay, I’ll play along. What’s the name of this dive you’re bringing me to?”
Boggs perked up since she seemed agreeable.
He said, “It’s called Skullduggeries.”
“What kind of name is that? Sounds creepy.”
“Not at all! You’re gonna love it.”
They continued their conversation walking out the door and down the street.
At that moment, Director Fonteneaux showed up to examine the scene in person.
Applegate approached her and said, “Can I have a word with you, ma’am? Alone?”
Fonteneaux said, “Sure. Let’s find a private space.”
A minute later, the door swished shut behind them and they stood in a downstairs study by themselves.
“What can I do for you?” Fonteneaux said.
Applegate said, “I know for a fact that Wilcox is a droid.”
“Is that so? How do you know that?”
“She got shot in the raid on Goodman’s house. There was no blood. Not like there should be, anyway.”
“That sounds like weak sauce, Assistant Director.”
“I know what I saw. She’s a droid. And if she is artificial and not a human, you are in big trouble for violating the Droid Mandates.”
Fonteneaux said nothing. She smiled slightly but maintained her silence.
Emboldened, Applegate continued.
“You are going to get rid of her. And we’re going to go back to doing these investigations by the book. Everything is going to be routed through my office for approval from this point forward, or I’ll expose everything.”
Fonteneaux looked around the study and found a chair. She walked over to it and sat down, crossing her legs.
She said, “Did you know, Assistant Director Applegate, I found a bug in my office when I moved in?”
It was his turn to stand mute, staring at her.
“The audio files it collected streamed to an anonymous link on the neural net that fed into a secured node inside one of the gaming worlds. Games are lightly regulated, you know. They were used during the war to establish contact with the Resistance, from what I understand. They can also be a good place to store digital artifacts someone doesn’t want traced back to themselves.”
She touched her implant, and her personal holo appeared in
the air between them.
“The audio files were stored in a locker inside the game Honor Guard, accessible only to someone with the proper combination. You know how these things work. In the game, the area looks and feels like a real storage facility.
“Did you know we can go back and see who accessed certain locations like storage areas in a game? I didn’t, not until we started investigating this. It turns out that the important thing is you know which node was used to enter the game, and where. That’s the difficult part, but we were able to trace it. Can’t tell you how, but we do have a data trail that is admissible in court.
“In-game visitation records to particular points in the virtual word are much easier to obtain. The game companies store everything like where a player goes and what quests they attain, and so on.
“That particular locker in that particular storage facility was accessed eleven times over the past 19 months. Ten times, it was accessed by anonymous players on public nodes. Difficult to pin to a specific person in real life. But on one date, for some reason, your personal login was used.”
He stared at the list floating in the air, with his name showing underneath a date and location code.
She said, “Maybe you got careless. Maybe you forgot. Maybe you had too much to drink that night, I don’t know. But for whatever reason, the last time you went into Honor Guard, you didn’t use an anonymous node. You used your own login. While you were in-game, you visited this particular locker. The one with storing recordings from my office.”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his neck.
He said, “Records can be forged.”
“Except these weren’t, and they were collected by PLAIR directly from the gaming company. The node used correlates with your location in the real world that night. She will so indicate, if you ask her.”
Fonteneaux stood up then, and walked closer to him.
She smiled sweetly and said, “I think you and I need to come to an understanding with one another, don’t you?”
A cold bead of sweat broke out on his forehead.
-+-
A quarter hour later, a chastened and much more submissive Assistant Director Applegate decided to leave. He looked for Wilcox to tell her.