“You must be joking,” Jacobin said to himself.
“Kill that alarm,” came an authoritative voice from downstairs.
The reply was inaudible from where Jacobin stood, but it did not matter. Quickly, he put his weapon back into his shoulder holster and raced up the stairs to the fourth floor loft. There was another exit to the 237th floor hallway there, but the security systems would not be neutralized. Not knowing who he was dealing with, he was not certain if he had the time to try and upload the code into the hallway monitors. If it was the police who had busted down the Williams’s door, they would be locking down the building shortly. Taking only a moment to decide, he quickly took off his jacket and shirt, leaving only a black undershirt. The clothes he wadded into a ball, hiding his plasma pistol within and he hit another button on the glasses tinting them black. Opening the door and stepping into the hall, he tossed the clothing into one of the handy garbage incinerator chutes and strode toward the elevator, looking like a man about to step out into the evening and head to a nightclub or discotheque.
5
The door to the bathroom had been slightly ajar when the lights went out and Michelle had peeked out to see if Tanner was messing with switches, trying to create some mood lighting. The room was jet black save for the little bit of neon from the streets outside sneaking through the drawn shade. She did not know why, but a nervous tremor starting at the base of her spine made her swallow back the interrogative she was going to call out to Tanner. Just then, her bedroom door swung inward and she saw someone’s silhouette. There was a whirring sound of something powering up, and then the room filled with silent flashes as bright beams of energy blew apart her bed. And the man in it, she realized in horror a split second later. Fear paralyzed her; she could not take her eyes away from the ghostly visage in front of her.
Michelle wanted to scream as the unknown intruder made his way forward to inspect the wreckage of her bed. At last, she pulled herself slowly away from the door, backing around the sink and crouching between a shelf and the commode. As she hid, she felt her hip brush against something on the back of the toilet and sensed something falling in the pure darkness. Terror gripped her as she knew she had just revealed her location.
Alarms exploded all around her as the lights came back on. She never heard her makeup box hit the floor in the cacophony and neither did the intruder apparently. When she looked again, the shooter was gone. Moving slowly, she crept her way out of the bathroom, still wrapped in a towel and made her way toward the bed. The thought of defense crossed her mind slowly and she reached out to a shelf to grab a large trophy for an equestrian event she had won when she was twelve. Michelle brandished it like a club and looked back to her door, waiting for the intruder to return again, but he did not.
Moving slowly, not wanting to look but knowing she needed to, Michelle reached out and pulled back the blood soaked, burned out bedspread. Her hands instinctively went to her mouth to stifle a gasp of horror. Tanner’s face was gone- melted by the heat of the plasma shot. A violent spell of nausea hit her and she doubled over, vomiting onto her carpet. She heaved over and over again as tears began to stream down her face.
“Do you hear that?” she heard a voice call from the hallway.
“In here.”
The sense of sickness vanished and she gripped the trophy harder. The door swung open and a short, squat heavy set man with a thick jaw and three days stubble walked through it. Michelle let loose a primal scream and hurled the trophy through the air. The golden horse atop it struck the man right in the face and he cried out in shock and pain.
“Are you all right?” a man called from the hallway.
“No, I’m not all right!” the short man thundered. “She hit me right in my teeth. Son of a bitch!”
The second man stepped into the room and sized up the completely unarmed, mostly naked woman. He was tall compared to his companion and better dressed, clean shaven and young looking. Slowly, he pulled a weapon from his suit jacket- it was not a pistol, Michelle realized, but rather it was a shock stick.
“We’re not here to hurt you,” the tall one said calmly. “Now, I must ask you to co-operate with us, so I don’t have to use this.”
“Maybe you should have thought of that before you shot Tanner!” she screamed in reply.
“Shot? Who’s been shot?” the short one demanded through his hand as he tried to rub the teeth that had been hit by the trophy.
The tall one sniffed the air. “Plasma residue,” he said darkly as his eyes fell to the bed and he walked over to it. “Good God,” he exclaimed as he pulled back the comforter. “What the hell is going on?” he demanded, staring daggers at Michelle.
She finally collapsed to the ground, the tears beginning anew. “He killed Tanner,” she whispered. She repeated it over and over.
She barely heard the tall one’s next few statements. “Paul, you better call this in,” he said. “We need the police now.”
“Whatever you say, Gil,” he grumbled.
He turned back to her. “Ma’am, my partner and I are licensed private investigators and fugitive retrieval specialists here in the Seaboard district.” He flashed out an official looking ID card. “We were here to place you under arrest under a warrant that was issued at 4:30 this afternoon by Terran Interplanetary Security and the Ministry of Justice. We were going to bring you into the police ourselves, but considering…” His voice trailed off.
Michelle curled herself up into a ball as the tall one found a blanket on top of her antique hope chest and wrapped it around her shoulders. Her stare was a thousand yards away, and Gilbert could not help but feel a little sorry for her. She looked so pitiful, but she certainly wasn’t the first person to murder a lover and feel regret about it afterward.
6
The place was already a zoo, Detective Lieutenant Pierce James thought to himself as he arrived on the third floor of the condominium. He was impeccably dressed in a light brown suit and an old fashioned gray fedora that no modern white cop would have been able to pull off. James took off a khaki colored overcoat and passed it to a uniformed security officer, who took it wordlessly.
A feisty energetic man with pale skin and shockingly red hair spied James and hustled over to him. “This is shit,” Palmer announced as he began to lead James through the scene.
Terry Palmer was a young detective, fifteen years James’s junior and still passionate about the job. That probably explained the shirt and tie that had food stains on it and looked like they had been slept in the night before. Palmer had probably crashed in his office chair. James sighed, remembering when he had that type of energy for solving homicides.
“Who called it in?” James asked as he stuck his hands in a black box set on a portable table that the Crime Scene Unit had set up. He felt his hands being covered in a latex sheen and turned back to Palmer.
The younger cop nodded toward two men who were talking to uniformed officers. “These two bloodsuckers,” he replied. “They broke into the place to perform a snatch and grab on the daughter of two Councilmen.”
“Local?”
“Nope, Councilors James and Madison Williams,” he answered.
“Fuck me,” James muttered. “We’ve got to keep the press out of this as long as possible. If they find out we’ve got a TARC member’s daughter here, we’re going to get filleted.”
“Tell me about it,” Palmer grunted.
“You holding these two?” he asked, pointing back to Gilbert and Paul.
“Nah, they’re licensed,” he replied, checking his notepad.
“Wait, you’re telling me that there’s a legitimate warrant and bounty on the daughter of two TARC members?” James exclaimed. “On what charge?”
Palmer locked eyes with him and answered, “Conspiracy to commit terrorism.”
A look of incredulousness passed James’s face. “This is shit,” he said at last.
“It gets better,” Palmer replied. “Follow me.”
James entered the bedroom behind Palmer and saw a room that any late teenager might have, especially if they fought a lot with their parents who were TARC members. There were a bunch of political propaganda posters on the wall, shelves full of old textbooks, political treatises and pictures of younger, happier times with her parents. Then there was the dead body lying fragged in the bed.
“Who the hell is this then?” he demanded.
“Tanner Rice, age twenty-one,” Palmer read off his tablet. “Student at William and Mary with Michelle Williams.” He nodded toward the girl getting medical treatment from a crisis counselor. “Apparently they are in some student organizations together. He came over here to discuss his politics if you know what I mean. And then this,” he added waving his hand in the direction of the body.
“You’re saying the girl did it?” he asked incredulously.
“Killed him without anyone hearing the shots, setting off the weapon alarms, or arousing any suspicion, and then took a shower,” Palmer nodded. “While still managing to get rid of the gun before the two bloodsuckers showed up.”
“How do you know that?” he demanded.
“Didn’t use it on them,” he answered. “Chucked that at them instead.” He pointed to the trophy lying on floor with a duct tape circle running around it.
“What’s her motive?” James asked.
“She didn’t get to finish?” Palmer suggested wryly, shrugging his shoulders.
James scowled at him. “You realize there are about ten thousand holes in your theory,” he pointed out.
“Yeah, but it sure as hell beats her story,” he replied. “An unknown assailant breaks into the apartment, kills the lights and then opens fire on Mr. Rice here. This mystery assassin becomes scared when the lights come back on and the two bounty hunters enter and vanishes into thin air.”
“Security cameras?”
“Nobody comes in after Mr. Rice and before the bounty twins,” Palmer answered. “There wasn’t anyone else in the condo.”
“Shit, this stinks,” James mumbled as he stared at the pretty young girl who was their best murder suspect.
“Yeah, like I said,” Palmer replied. “Look, she’s wanted on the terrorism count already. With shit that complicated, there could be an explanation for what happened here that you and I are never going to explain.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“We run her in on that beef and keep investigating,” he replied. “A murder rap is not going to be that big a deal when we drop the word terrorist into the mix.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” James sighed. “Get her dressed, slap some binders on her and let’s get her down to the station.”
“You got it boss,” he nodded and quickly grabbed a uniformed officer to start relaying instructions.
James took another look at Michelle Williams as the crisis counselor held up a blanket for her to get dressed behind. She looked so scared. Her makeup was running down her face and was smeared from her attempts to wipe away her own tears. She sure as hell did not look like a terrorist or a murderer, but what the hell did he know? If you believed the Gael, the terrorists were everyone and could be anyone. She fit the profile as well as anyone: idealism mixed with education and youthful desires to rebel. He sighed again. The Resistance just did not realize how futile it all was.
Chapter 5
1
Sitting in his small shuttle on the street level, Pascal Jacobin was cursing his luck. The police had arrived, but they were not the first on the scene. The building’s security station had been a bit chaotic, but he had been waved through without any commotion- he had an ID that said he belonged there and he was dressed far too nicely to be breaking into someone’s house (He had on thousand dollar loafers for God’s sake). After exiting the building without any fuss, he had waited a good six minutes before the first security shuttle arrived. The cops docked at a loading valet on the 200th floor. Another three minutes later, additional units arrived, docking at the 100th and 300th floors, with a few more arriving on ground level. Jacobin was tempted to take flight and see if anything was happening at the loading docks, but then he saw a black shuttle labeled CORONER landing right behind him, and he saw no further need. He would need to follow the medical vessel to the hospital to verify his kill, but breaking into a hospital was pretty easy, especially if he waited for later into the night.
Time drew out slowly and hours passed, but Jacobin was patient and his eyes tracked everything. The press had arrived and was being kept out of the building. A few more officers had thrown up cordons to keep them at bay. Pointless trying to limit the press, he thought to himself. Soon enough they would have their story: rich student daughter of powerful blah blah blah horribly murdered by blah blah blah. It would make the news for a few days, then the Gael would cover it up. The Resistance would claim a quiet victory, and the world would keep on turning.
Finally, he saw the coroners coming out of the lobby pushing a hover sled through the overly ornate gold plate doors. The flash of digital imagers and holographic cameras snapped around the body like fireworks. As quickly as the coroners could, they slid the hovering gurney into the back of their shuttle. Jacobin prepped his shuttle to take off as well, but immediately killed the engines when he saw the police emerge with a young redhead in handcuffs.
“Son of a bitch,” he growled.
Quickly, he punched in a long sequence of numbers into the screen of his shuttle’s computer panel. “Cipher griffin four-four-two-one,” he barked at the static filled screen. The screen shifted to black, but Jacobin knew someone was listening. “The mark has eluded. Repeat the mark has eluded.”
“Stand-by,” a voice replied. “Patching to CL.”
The Cell Leader appeared in silhouette against a dark blue background on the screen. “What the hell happened?” he demanded.
“The party got crashed before the job was complete,” he reported. “Collateral damage down.”
“Dammit, man,” he replied. “It’s one girl.”
“I didn’t know the local bounty hunters would come swooping by her place looking for an easy payday,” he spat back. “The Gael hadn’t posted any of the others this quickly.”
“She’s number one hundred and eleven on the Aurora List. Out of one hundred and eleven, Mr. Jacobin,” he replied. “Guess they couldn’t hold their wad.”
“Look, I can still get to her,” he said.
“She’s not in police custody?” the Cell Leader asked.
“No, she is, but I can hit them en route to the station,” he answered.
“Jesus,” the Cell Leader swore, then sighed and asked, “What do you need from me?”
“Their likely course and a roadblock where it’s most advantageous and least conspicuous,” Jacobin replied. “And fast. They’re leaving now.”
“Working,” the Cell Leader said. “Okay, we’ve got Gillespie in the area. She can rig a fire show at 42nd and Constitution. Industrial sector- no witnesses. It should give you a clean shot. Don’t fucking miss!”
“Roger,” he replied as he punched the ship’s throttle.
The police shuttle was already getting out of his eyeshot, but he had programmed his boat to follow it from a safe distance. Meanwhile he turned around in his seat and reached into the storage area behind his ship’s two seats, pulling out a long cylindrical bag and placing it into the seat next to him. According to the GPS system, he had five minutes until they reached Constitution. It was more than enough time he thought to himself as he began assembling the weapon.
2
“Sorry about the press,” Detective Pierce James muttered as he shut the shuttle’s hatch and nodded at Detective Terry Palmer to take off.
Michelle did not reply. She was sitting in the back seat of the police skiff, her mind reeling from everything that she had seen. Detectives James and Palmer had both been unfailingly polite when they had questioned her in her bedroom, but her answers had been cold and distant. Nothing about what had happened made
sense to her, and Michelle felt she was missing just as many pieces to the puzzle as the detectives felt they were.
They told her that she had a warrant out for her arrest on suspicion of terrorism- that is what the two men who showed up first had been doing there. They were two of the luckiest bounty hunters in the world- showing up at her house on the highly unlikely chance that a wanted fugitive would be found at the address listed in the Nucleus’s directory. She supposed she should thank them, interrupting her would-be assassin before he had confirmed that she was not the one lying dead in her bed. Palmer had grumbled something about bureaucratic inefficiency- if the police had known about the warrant before the bounty hunters, the government wouldn’t be out of a quarter of a million dollars.
Perhaps that was the most outrageous bit of it all, she thought, suppressing the mournful laugh that was rising in her throat. Not only was she a terrorist according to the Ministry of Justice, but her capture was worth more than bounty hunters would get for taking out an entire cell of Resistance members. On top of that, the warrant specified Alive Only. The Gael generally did not care what condition Resistance members were in when they were brought in, even if it was just a smoking corpse. Why would they want her alive?
That being the case, why was there a man in her apartment trying to kill her? He couldn’t have been a bounty hunter as he wouldn’t miss out on the chance to pick up his cash. The police had told her that there was no evidence of another person in the apartment, so the man was obviously very good at what he did. That led to a whole slew of other questions beyond why anyone would want her dead- who wanted her dead so badly that they would hire a highly skilled professional hitman to kill her? Perhaps it had something to do with her parents, she thought. They could be trying to send her parents a message by killing their only daughter.
111 Souls (Infinite Universe) Page 5