Referring to Vin’s causticity: “So what’s the deal? Takes me getting just about run over to get you back to your old self?”
Rubbing at where his prosthetic and stump met: “The days of being my old self are good and gone.”
And whatever trace Soledad had seen of the used-to-be Vin, cocky Vin, get-that-last-word-in Vin evaporated. Returned in brief, gone quick. By Soledad, bitterly missed.
She said to Vin: “You could come over with me. Real easy, you could get detailed to DMI.”
“To do what?”
“To work intel. To get intelligence on freaks.”
“Yeah, but for me; why?”
“Because you should be doing something. Because it’s been eight months, and you should be—”
“You want to get married?”
Soledad managed: “. . . Married . . . ?”
“Do you want to marry me?”
In this second go-round, Soledad couldn’t even muddle out the one-word response she’d given the first time Vin asked.
“You don’t want to marry me. You don’t want to . . . You talk about what’d help me heal—”
“It’s not that I don’t want to . . .” No conviction there. Soledad quit talking, didn’t even try working past what Vin knew, what she knew was the truth.
“If you’re not going to marry me, and believe me, the question was more for shock value than meant as invitation, but if you’re not going to really be part of my life, then don’t try to orient my life.”
Soledad wanted to say something counter to that, but short of “Yeah, I’ll marry you,” what counter was there?
Vin told Soledad he’d be back later to see her. He’d be back to quietly kill time with her as she’d done with him when the situation was exactly flipped. Exactly, except Vin’s leg’d been chewed off, not busted by an SUV.
A kiss to Soledad’s forehead. A squeeze of her hand.
The sounds of the hospital bled in through the open door, then died off as Vin left the room.
Figuring there couldn’t possibly be anything on TV worth watching, Soledad passed time looking at the flowers Vin had bought downstairs, brought upstairs.
Her thought: Painkillers’d be real good right now.
What’s the difference, the joke goes, between an MTac cop and a DMI cop?
You can see how fucked-up the DMI cop is.
That’s the kind of interdepartmental ribbing that beat cops, SPU and SWAT cops think’s funny.
It’s not funny.
But like most jokes that trade on stereotypes, it’s true. Kinda.
We’re fucked-up, MTac cops; inside we are. Any MTac who’s honest would tell you that.
Normal people—in the physical sense—who want to earn their pay busting superpeople . . .
You can say to yourself: Somebody’s got to do it. Somebody’s got to protect all of us from all of them. Yeah. You can say that. But most people, most cops included, would respond: Somebody, but not me.
There’s something in us, people like me, that makes us respond: Okay, I’ll do it. There’s something in us that is, honestly, off. Not quite right. For some it’s too much macho in their DNA. For some it’s fatalism. Me, I feel guilty for my survival, and that guilt’s informed or misinformed every other thing in my life. The choices I make. The ones that I do not.
Vin, for example. Why can’t I just tell Vin I like him? Why can’t I accept that I like him? When he asked me to marry him, why couldn’t I just say . . .
Because I feel guilty. Because I won’t let myself be happy. Because I can’t commit.
For starters.
Yeah. MTac cops: fucked-up on the inside.
On the flip side . . .
DMI cops, cops who work the Division of Metanormal Investigations, you can see how they’re fucked up. Mostly, they’re ex-MTac cops who’d survived going up against a mutie, but just barely. Routinely, DMI cops had burned flesh, scarred flesh, were absent limbs or eyes or extremities. They limped. Sometimes they wheeled themselves. But they wanted to stay in the game. Fight the fight to the bitter, bitter end.
There was no way they could work an element, serve a warrant on a freak. But they could work with the brain boys who kept tabs on the freak community, gathered information to use against the freaks: identify freaks who thought they were passing; living as normal when there was nothing normal about them. Track the comings and goings of such freaks. Who they socialized with. What their abilities were. Most important: What were their weaknesses?
It’s a hard little game trying to figure which muties to leave be, keep under active surveillance in hopes they’ll lead you to something good—good being a boss mutie—and which muties are too dangerous to let walk around like they were free, white and twenty-one. The wrong pick, bad information getting passed up the line concerning which freaks were at worst a nuisance and which were a clear and present danger . . . that could be somebody’s life.
Not a mistake that happened often.
Most of the men and women in DMI were there because of somebody else’s bad intel or incorrect choice. Being a victim of stupidity makes you want to keep anybody else from suffering through the same.
DMI didn’t suffer stupidity. They didn’t tolerate slacking. They were arrogant about their work. They were more important—more self-important based on who was doing the talking—than MTacs. All MTacs did was shoot. DMI gave the MTacs an edge when it came time to pull their triggers.
Whatever.
You could go back and forth forever over who’s the spearhead of the fight against muties. All I know, I’m not ready to give the fight up.
For a while, at least, I’ll be working DMI.
Utilitarian, but as a style choice rather than a necessity of budget. Soledad hit the DMI headquarters in West LA and was, in return, hit with a mix of awe and resentment.
The awe: This is Soledad O’Roark. This is Bullet; the girl with the gun who’d been an operator on an element that’d taken out a telepath. Taken it out, mostly thanks to the gun. Hers. The one she’d made. She’d been BAMF a record number of occasions in a record short span of time. This was one of the best cops ever to wear a shield.
The resentment: Who’s this girl, this slummer come ’round because her leg’s bad—temporarily bad—and who’ll go away soon as it’s good again? Who’s this MTac grunt who thinks she’s got the smarts, the skills to work DMI?
Some of the resentment wasn’t so territorial. Some of it was just garden-variety bigotry. A woman cop? A black woman?
The mix of awe and resentment fluctuated from person to person. And while Soledad could do without the awe, she was surprised, from even those who admired her, to a person they all carried some resentment toward her.
“Don’t worry about it.” Abernathy passed a hand in the air, shooed away Soledad’s concerns. Abernathy—his first name, rarely used in-house, was Benjamin—was, or would be for the time being, Soledad’s CO. Her lieutenant, her “lieu.” He was physically, Soledad thought, an unremarkable man. That wasn’t a slight. There was just nothing about the guy—his size, the cut of his hair, the way his features were arranged on his face; nothing biological or self-generated—that would make you give him, if you passed him on the street, a second thought. Except, except if you heard his voice. His voice was opposite his slight stature. It was deep and rich and booming. The voice of a beefy soul brother, not a negligible white guy. Should be singing some R&B. Should’ve, at least, been doing voice-overs for movie trailers.
“It’s not personal,” Abernathy said regarding Soledad and the cold shoulder she’d been getting hit with tag team-style from the minute she set foot in DMIville. Abernathy said: “Can’t take it personal. DMI cops, their life is about being suspicious.”
Soledad: “Even when there’s nothing to be suspicious about?”
A shrug. “You spend your days doing surveillance on the corner pharmacist or a soccer mom who’s actually a freak that can take out a city block without producing a sweat, sus
picion’s a hard habit to shake.”
“I can deal with a little negativity. Compared to actually having to be the one to take down that pharmacist or soccer mom, it’s nothing.” Soledad wasn’t so much displaying machismo as she was giving support to the whole of G Platoon.
Abernathy said: “There are bad habits all around. MTacs included. Again, nothing personal.”
Cold. Distant. Unable, unwilling to allow people into their lives because their lives were, generally, short-lived. MTacs had bad habits to spare.
“I don’t,” Soledad said, “take it personally. Mostly.” And mostly, Soledad didn’t. She didn’t take personally the ice, the propriety glances. Except for the cops that hit her with their straight-up old-school bigotry. Soledad personally wanted to kick that bunch in the teeth. Otherwise, long time ago, Soledad’d decided she wasn’t in the give-a-fuck business.
Abernathy: “Would you mind?”
Just that said. Soledad knew what Abernathy was talking about. She pulled her O’Dwyer, removed the clip from the back. No need to eject a shell from the chamber. Didn’t have a chamber. Handed it butt-first to Abernathy.
He looked the piece over, asked a couple of questions about it, and Soledad went into what’d become a standard speech on her sidearm. How Metalstorm had agreed to let her modify it, how the governor had okayed her field-testing it. Soledad skipped over the history of the field test: the disciplinary action against her and the trumped-up IA investigation that’d preceded it, her almost getting hung out to dry for getting a cop killed—a cop she admired, respected. A cop whose death she had nothing to do with, whose passing had changed her life. Whose tattoo, an exact duplicate of, Soledad wore on her left shoulder. Five simple words: WE DON’T NEED ANOTHER HERO.
All of that Soledad gave the go by to. She didn’t need to bring it up. Abernathy knew about it. At least knew a version of it. There wasn’t a cop on the force who hadn’t heard the rumors filtered through the blue wall that’s supposed to shield fellow cops from acrimony from the outside. Truth: All it does is make a cell where accused cops can get gang-raped from the inside by intimation and allegation.
So let others speculate and wonder. All that mattered, same as her encounters with a fire freak and a speed freak and any of the other freaks she’d gone against, Soledad’d survived that departmental attempt on her life as well.
Abernathy handed back the gun.
“I don’t believe you’ll be needing that much here.”
“Never know.”
Nodding to her assertion: “No, you don’t. But the use of deadly force is the last thing events should come to. Here we watch, we wait, we note. We fight with our heads, not our fists. The grunt mentality stays with MTac.” Abernathy wasn’t accusatory. He was even. And that voice of his, he sounded like he was reading copy for a public service announcement.
“Don’t have a grunt mentality,” Soledad said. “With MTac or otherwise.”
“That business with IA—”
“Was never carried through. An OIS that was investigated as required.”
He was probing. Soledad knew Abernathy was testing her same as any lieu would an operator being rotated in who had a . . . a situation in their package. They’d want to know, not so much the details of the event, but could the cop coming off the situation handle himself? Herself. Or are they burned and bitter, full up with anger they’re just waiting to spew at a moment that’s inappropriate? Inappropriate, in a cop’s world, is a moment that gets someone killed.
“I guess the concern is,” Abernathy said, “you have a history of independent action.”
“Independent thought and independent action are two different things.” Soledad was composed, quite controlled. Soledad said: “I’ve been point on any number of MTac elements, and on all of them my record speaks for itself. I know how to work as part of a team. But I also believe in thinking beyond the box. That’s got its own rewards, and it’s got its own risks. But when it comes down to us versus the muties . . . yeah, you play things smart, but it’s no good for cops to go at things overly cautious. That’s just as dangerous as being a hothead.”
“If you do say so yourself.”
“I do. But would you want a cop jobbing for you who’s not willing to take a stand?”
Nothing from Abernathy.
A moment more.
Abernathy said: “I don’t mean disrespect when I talk about the grunt mentality. It’s not an attempt to put down G Platoon. It’s just, I don’t know, call it departmental hubris. We all work together, yes. Nice, as company lines go. But as far as DMI is concerned, it’s just a line. Three-quarters of the operators here are here because the grunt way of thinking got them shattered. Now they’re ready to use their heads.
“This is not G Platoon. This is not MTac. I have no doubt once your leg heals you have no intention of continuing on with DMI.”
No protest from Soledad.
“But you are here now. If you want to be effective here, now, then forget about G Platoon. They’re not your family. We’re your family. It’s this family that has your back.”
No flinching around with her gaze. Soledad gave Abernathy a stare hung on a taut tether eye-to-eye. “While I’m here, I’m here, sir. But I’m always going to be MTac.”
What Soledad got for her forthrightness was sat down at a desk in an office empty of light that was natural and colors that weren’t primary. What she got was a hard drive full of e-files that had to be cross-referenced with paper files that were prime for an incinerator. Most of the files were left over from surveillances that were shut down, a warrant having been served on a suspect. The suspect, the freak, probably dead by way of an MTac element. Occasionally, a freak was brought in alive and ended up housed at the SPA. The euphemistic way of saying they were incarcerated at the California state Special Protective Area located in the heart of the Mojave.
But freaks going to the SPA was very occasional. Mostly, when it came time for freaks to get arrested, freaks didn’t do things the easy way.
The files, the cross-referencing, it was busywork.
For all the talk of brainwork, of how special DMI was, how DMI was the secret weapon in the war on freaks, Soledad had been handed paper to shuffle. Duty buggery. Glorified secretarial fare, and that shit was what Soledad hated more than any single thing. Worse than being useless, it was the imitation of usefulness. For most cops their living nightmare was to get caught gun empty in the middle of a firefight. For Soledad . . .
So what was this? Was this a test too? Was this Abernathy having a look-see at how much banality Soledad could take? A gauge of how committed she was, despite her assertion of always being an MTac, to the job at hand?
That was a good thought to Soledad: that she was getting fucked with. That she was worth fucking with. That she rated some kind of initiation made Soledad feel special. Unique. Not, at least, like a cop too thick to be trusted with brainwork.
Soledad looked up from her papers. Outside the door was a guy she guessed to be in his early forties. Sandy-blond hair. Hazel eyes. One hand. He had one hand. His left. A prosthetic hook was the terminal device on the right. He was in the corridor lined up in the doorway staring at Soledad.
Soledad said: “Yeah?” And she said it to mean: Yeah, what do you want? Yeah, what do you need? Yeah, there’s a black woman on leave from MTac working in your joint. What about it?
The guy’s stare didn’t beg any of that, but whenever presented with the air of confrontation, Soledad usually took things to the extreme.
The guy walked on, no words for Soledad.
Should’ve, Soledad thought, should’ve put in for HIT. Too late now. Not because she couldn’t still get the transfer. Ego wouldn’t let her leave. Leave and have others think she’d been chased off by the stares, the cold shoulders. The busywork DMI passed off as intellectual endeavors.
Soledad had the tenacity to survive all that was presented to her.
Soledad put all of her formidable tenacity into finishing
her e-files.
The message on Soledad’s integrated cordless phone digital answering machine was from Soledad’s mom. Same hi-how-are-you-just-checking-in message Soledad had been getting, had been dodging, for six weeks. A month and a half. Little more than that. Soledad didn’t feel like, could not take, talking with her parents. Loved her parents, her parents were great. Just couldn’t handle at the moment the stress of their regard. The near-daily worry they heaped on her about her life, her work . . . Soledad could very much do without a repeat of five years previous when she’d been clipped by a car while out running. Her mom on the first flight out from Milwaukee, around all day every day for eight days solid to help Soledad recuperate when there was little or no recuperating to be done.
Her own fault.
Soledad knew the current state or her relationship with her parents—strained, distant, vague—was her doing. And it was as obvious as it was natural that the more Soledad pushed her parents off, the more clingy they became.
They clung to their daughter.
They held on tight to the little girl who inexplicably cried every time someone sang Happy Birthday and defiantly painted all her white Barbies black, shaved the heads of all her black Barbies ’cause “they look more kick-ass that way.” Too young to even have a word like “kick-ass” in her lexicon. Soledad’s parents hugged in absentia the young woman who—when others her age worshipped pop stars and teen heartthrobs—was in awe of the Nubian Princess, the greatest of the superpeople. Her opinion. And Soledad’s parents quietly, daily, prayed for Soledad, the woman who shut down on the first day of May years prior when half the city of San Francisco and her citizens were removed from the planet along with Soledad’s faith.
They loved her, Soledad’s parents were there for her, and all Soledad had to do was reach out to them. Offer herself up as the daughter her parents wanted her to be.
Easy.
Sure.
If you could resurrect a city, 600,000-plus people. If you could basically hop in a machine that bent time and could carry you back to a moment before the demigods who should have guided aspirations instead sparked fears, then maybe Soledad could trade her solitude for effusiveness.
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