by John Ridley
Soledad stood, stared at him.
The guy kept up his search oblivious to, or unconcerned with, Soledad.
"Help you?" she asked in a tone that wasn't really asking much of anything, but more like saying: What are you doing?
The guy, the eggshell guy, remained oblivious. Or unconcerned.
Soledad cut straight to the subtext."What are you doing?"
No longer oblivious but still unconcerned, the guy held up identification.
"IA," Soledad muttered."So it's like that."
"It is like that." The guy closed a drawer and opened another. Had himself a look around. Finished, he raised his head. His eyes weren't blue, or green or hazel. They were some other dull color."Let's you and I talk."
Interrogation room. Morbid gray. Two-way mirror. A table bolted to the floor and a couple of chairs. Same room Soledad had used how many times, early days in SPU, to sweat perps who sat across the table, to wear confessions out of them? She sat, this time, on the other side of the table. The get— sweated side. The get-worn-away side.
The eggshell guy, his name was Tashjian—only distinct thing about him—sat where Soledad would have in times past and made a show taking a casual stroll through a jacket, her jacket. But all he was doing was looking at it, not reading it. No doubt he'd dug through Soledad's records like they were a boneyard long before he ever pulled up a chair with her. The performance was for Soledad so she could watch him fake-read, and he could watch her watching him to see how she took it.
She took it no different than if he was looking through an L. L. Bean catalog. She didn't care.
When Tashjian got through with his one-man show, he said: "O'Roark."
"What?"
"Nothing, I was just reading. Your name; I was just reading it here. Soledad O'Roark. Odd."
"My name?"
"Yes. Odd."
He couldn't get past her name without throwing darts? This was going to be fun."My name is odd?"
"Not the name. God, no. Who am I to talk about… The spelling. Don't normally spell 'O'Roark' like that. Guess it doesn't matter. Not like you're Irish."
That. Soledad knew what he was getting at: her being black but having an Irish surname. Like that was as unusual as having a third eye. It was only more games. An IA rat trying to light a fire to see what would bubble up. Soledad just took it. Like a slap to the face, she just took it.
Tashjian: "So you shot a mutie."
"You know I did."
"I know. But pretend I don't. Pretend I'm ignorant. Pretend I don't have a file on you thick as a phone book."
"Yes," Soledad roboted."I shot a freak."
"With that gun of yours. Hell of a gun, that gun of yours."
Like everything else about Tashjian, his voice was just there. Not squeaky, not monotone, not angry or accusatory or hey, buddy-friendly. You could read nothing from the way he talked at you. Just then, Soledad couldn't tell if the crack about the gun was a poor attempt at compliment or some kind of bait, so she let it pass.
"Where'd you learn to put together something like that?"
"It's in my jacket. My jacket you've already read."
Like he didn't even hear: "Where'd you learn to—"
"Northwestern. I majored in emerging technologies."
"Well, that's handy. You studying emerging technologies, learning how to make special weapons, then going on to join an MTac. Oh, hold a second…" Tashjian made a show of just then recalling something. Shuffling through Soledad's file for a paper he knew the precise location of: "Says here you did your grad work in metanor-mal psychology. Is that right? Did you do that?"
"Why are you playing these—"
"Did you?"
More of the robot voice: "I did my grad work in metanormal psychology."
"Well." That's all Tashjian said for a minute. Just that word, then nothing, as if he was taking a second to process this overwhelming flood of information he already knew. Then, again: "Well." And:
"Seems to me like you had it in your mind for a long time you wanted to be a freak hunter."
"That so unusual?"
"Some kids grow up wanting to be firemen. Some wanting to be chemical engineers. Some kids grow up wanting to go after freaks. Now, I think it's as unusual as hell to want to be a chemical engineer. But as far as going after superhumans to earn your pay… Let's find out if that's unusual."
Sarcastic: "And how do we do that?"
"Here's how: Why?"
"Because I ha—"
Tashjian's eyebrows gave a slight spike.
"Metanormals are a clear danger to our society and I've made the decision to dedicate myself to upholding the Executive Order enacted regarding—"
"You were going to say hate."
Nothing from Soledad.
"You were going to say you hate them."
Nothing from Soledad.
"Look, you hate them, you hate them. I hate them too."
"You're not being investigated by IA. You don't have to worry about somebody twisting up everything you say."
"Not much to twist up. Fourteen years since May Day, good luck finding anybody who doesn't want to see every freak put down. Yeah, the bleeding hearts, but some people don't eat meat either. Go figure."
Nothing from Soledad.
Tashjian closed up the file, flipped down his pen."Honestly, Officer, on the record, I'm happy for your piece. Happier if it went to work on every freak left in the city, then started working its way toward New York. Christ, not like we didn't give these things a chance. Thirty days to get out of the country, they can still turn themselves in anytime for deportation. And then they get paid on top of that." A little spark, finally, to Tashjian's voice."They get paid, what?"
"Fifty thousand dollars."
"Fifty thousand dollars in reparations on top of whatever they make selling the hard assets they can't transport. And with all that, you still got the lousy LA Times writing a piece about the freaks' civil rights every other week. They want rights, get out of the country. Go to France and get some rights."
"The Times is an also-run," Soledad tossed in."They've got to be contrary so somebody'll read them. Nobody's reading them anyway."
"However it is, ground zero, May Day, was just north of here. Could've been here. So you see where I'm coming from, Officer? And you can see I'm just asking: Why?"
"Why what?" Soledad had lost the question.
"Why dedicate yourself to hunting freaks?"
"I guess… I was very affected by what happened in San Francisco."
"You weren't born there."
"No, I wasn't."
"Have family there?"
"No."
"Friends?"
Soledad just sat for that one, not even bothering with an answer.
"Cold?"
"What?"
"You cold? Turtleneck, day like today, I figured maybe…"
"Why are you doing this?"
"Asking questions, that's all."
"I've done the drill enough times. Cops don't ask questions for the sake of asking."
"I'm not here to do bad things, Officer. I don't have to be. I'm just here to collect information. Maybe I'm even here to help."
"Yeah. You're my new best friend who was digging through my desk while my back was turned." Fingers became fists. Soledad's hands, living a life of their own, acted like they wanted to take a swing at Tashjian.
"I am trying to help, trying to see things your way. You make it hard when you sit there behaving like some poor, pathetic vic."
"You know what…"
"You made this gun, right? Modified it. Chose to carry it. You chose to go around the regs. Far as I can see, what happens now, you did this to yourself." From his pocket Tashjian took a pack of gum. Wrigley's Big Red. Spicy stuff. Carefully he selected one, tweezered it out with his fingers. Undid the wrapper. Chewed it. Setting the pack on the table, he flicked it to Soledad, who flicked it right back.
Tashjian: "It's a little hard to understand, th
at's all I'm saying. You can see that, can't you; it's a little hard to understand this obsession you've got."
"It's not… So is every cop on the force obsessed? The second you put on a uniform and try to uphold the law, does that make…" Soledad trailed off, not seeing the point in trying to state her case to the top of Tashjian's head. His face was down, buried in Soledad's jacket, which was apparently too engaging to put aside.
"That's just such an unusual way to spell 'O'Roark, '" he fascinated."Never seen it spelled that way before."
Soledad stared at Tashjian.
Stared at him.
She said: "I screwed up. I know I did. So if I've got to, I'll take what's coming to me. But meanwhile, there're freaks running around free as they please, and you'd rather fuck with me than go after them. So do your job, do what you have to. But I don't have time for this, I don't have time for your bullshit questions or your bullshit games." A hand whipped out to the file. The papers inside flipped up, snowed down."I got work to do."
By the time she heard the door slamming behind her Soledad was well down the hall. Then Soledad was pressing her forehead to the wall, holding herself up. Catching air. Soledad could feel her body shaking. She could talk tough all she liked. Truth: That plain guy she'd just left behind; sitting across from him, knowing the kinds of trouble he could cause for her, truth was he put a hell of a scare into her.
A hand on her shoulder. Bo's.
"Howzit?" he asked.
"I'm good." Still shaking some, sweat on her palms; Soledad wasn't even in the neighborhood of good.
Bo saw but said nothing about Soledad's state.
They walked.
"IA come at you hard?"
Soledad looked to Bo: "You know?"
"Tashjian's been around. He asked me some about you."
"Could've warned me."
"IA asks questions, you're not supposed to talk about it."
"And I'm the only one around here who breaks regs."
"You just have to be careful about things."
"Careful why? Careful because I'm going down and nobody wants to get caught up in my wake?"
"You don't know how things are going to work out. You've got me backing you… Soledad." Bo caught Soledad by the arm, turned her to him."You're good cop. If you weren't, I never would've wanted you on my element. I'm backing you, Rysher's backing you. This is gonna get worked out. You were trying to do right and this… it's gonna get worked out."
It sounded good anyway. At least Bo knew how to put confidence into things when he wanted to.
He said: "Well, now maybe I can talk to Rysher; get you back on the job. Your leg's healed up, and you sitting on a desk isn't doing anybody any good."
Soledad appreciated that and told Bo so and thanked him in advance for whatever he could do.
And then Bo offered: "Maybe sometime you could come by the house. My wife's fierce in the kitchen, loves having people over to cook for. Don't know if you cook much for yourself."
Soledad looked up, over. A couple of detectives, older guys, staring at her. She turned some, shut them out.
To Bo: "Thank you, but I don't think I'd be good company right now."
Soledad thanked Bo again for trying to help out.
Bo walked away.
Walking away. Suddenly that seemed, to Soledad, like a right idea. She thought about bagging the rest of the day. Hell with it. Just walk away, go on home and veg. It was just paperwork waiting for her. But paperwork was now Soledad's responsibility. Hate it or not, she didn't know, honestly didn't know how to ditch her responsibilities. That, or work was all she had in her life. In a fashion it had been her life since San Francisco.
Either way, she headed back for her desk.
Bludlust was the worst of them. There were others, all bad. Thrill Kill, Death Nell, Headhunter. Even The Liquidators managed to snuff the Giggler, but that was mostly luck. Bad luck for the Giggler. But Bludlust was the worst of them.
We should have known.
The moment Nightshift first showed up we should have known if there were these… heroes with supernormal abilities, sooner or later there would have to be super bad guys. And there were. Plenty of them.
At first they were just a better class of perp; ripping off the US Treasury or Fort Knox instead of a 7-Eleven or a liquor store.
It got worse.
Kidnapping the pope, holding the entire UN General Assembly hostage, pointing a death ray at St. Louis. You believe that? A death ray? That's what Hatchetman called it.
Hatchetman and his death ray. Funny except the thing could actually kill people. Could but didn't, because Nubian Princess stopped him.
They were like opposite sides of a coin, the heroes and the villains; the names, the costumes. So very much alike except one side was virtuous and the other side would kill without a thought. It was all so unreal, good and evil going at each other, like watching theater. It was all so far beyond us. And every time the battles between the two sides would escalate, the weapons of destruction became more absurd as they got more deadly. Geothermal devices, antimatter projectors, chrono-temporal displacement units. Forget the freaky names, the mad science that went into them. Those things could wipe out thousands in one swipe. But always at the last second of the eleventh hour, from out of nowhere, in
would swoop The Stylist or Pronto or Nightshift or Civil Warrior to save the day.
Routine it got to be. And, sure, maybe a few people would get killed along the way—a few of us lowly nonendowed normals—but there was nothing new about that. When weren't people getting killed by criminals? How much difference did it make if it was a junkie with a dull knife, a banger with a MAC-10 or Body Count with a sonic resonance device? Dead is dead, and that's as bad as it gets. And at the end of the day the heroes always, usually, beat the villains because the heroes were smarter than them. Better than them.
Better than most of them.
But Bludlust, he was the worst of them. A genocidal serial sociopath.
Shrink mumbo jumbo.
He got off on killing lots of people. Lots and lots of people at the same time. And with his freak supernormal brain he had the smarts to do it. He'd go after a bus, an airplane, a city block or a building. Usually he was nick-of-time-stopped by Pharos, the best of the metanormals. Handsome with his blond hair, golden suit and white cape. He was iconic, angelic. He was the perfect foil to an inhuman beast who could barely keep fed his appetite for destruction. Their battles raged back and forth so commonplace we got used to them in the same way you get used to earthquakes or tornadoes. Nothing you can do about them, right? You just live with them. Besides, the superheroes would take care of us.
Right?
San Francisco. Symbolic. It was where Nightshift, the original meta-normal, first appeared. Bludlust—with some kind of crazy megaweapon— was holding the whole city hostage. Again. Barely rated live coverage on CNN. And at the last moment Pharos raced to the rescue. Again.
And then something happened that had never happened before. The thing, the device, weapon: it went off.
The first day of May.
One second San Francisco was there, the next, half, three-quarters of it was a burned-out, scarred-over, heat-fused piece of rock that looked as if
nothing had ever existed there before. Like nothing would ever exist there again.
One second, one fraction of a moment in time, and the world changed.
Bludlust was eventually caught by the metanormals. He was executed by us normals. No trial, no appeals. He was put to death. It was his fault. His fault, and maybe Pharos's fault. If he hadn't fought Bludlust, if he had just let us pay the ransom…
Maybe, we got to thinking, it was all their fault the metanormals, good and bad. Running around like demigods in their rainbow wear. Who asked them to fight for us? Who asked them to save us? Who needed them?
The president, the Executive Order: Any person or persons who displays, uses or is known to possess abilities that are metanormal or sup
ernormal shall be rendered immediately persona non grata without rights or expectations of rights until deemed by a court of law to be entitled to such rights as provided by the Constitution of the United States.
Political mumbo jumbo.
Kill freaks is what it said.
Most of the muties took their thirty-day grace and went off to Europe to live. Europeans didn't care what happened in San Francisco. They were glad to have the freaks around to save the day.
Fucking Europeans.
But a lot of the freaks stayed, went" underground," living among us like they were" us." They stayed because they were afraid they'd be killed trying to get out of the country, stayed to make a statement. Stayed because they thought they had a right to live wherever they wanted.
Sorry, freaks. The EO says you've got no rights.
After San Francisco—that's all anyone ever had to say,"after San Francisco." It had become a new obelisk on the time line of humanity— after they had destroyed the city, when police started forming the MTacs, I followed them, read about them in the papers and on the Net. Read about them getting killed off going against pyrokinetics, telekinetics, energy conductors, levitators, invulnerables and, especially, telepaths. After following
their exploits for a couple of years there were two things I was sure of: I wanted to join an MTac, and I didn't particularly want to die. So I studied freaks; studied their psychology, their physiology. How they think and how they functioned. And I studied technology. After I'd done all that, I made myself a gun.
Michelle ate.
Vaughn watched, pained. Emotional not physical.
Michelle bit into her chili cheeseburger. With her tongue she lapped up a half-torn pickle that hung from the edge of the bun. She managed to curl it up into her mouth, smiling at her accomplishment. Smiling about being outdoors and among people too. That's what caused Vaughn the pain: Michelle's smile. She should be smiling, but she should be smiling in Asia de Cuba or Orso or some other overpriced faker of trend, not sitting in a plastic chair half hidden out back of Pink's.