by John Ridley
"… I wanted to tell you," Ian started."No matter how you took it, I wanted to tell you. I just wanted to be honest with you and I wanted you to know the truth. Soledad, if I had known what kind of cop you were from the very first, I wouldn't have…"
Soledad reached under her jacket, pulled out her off-duty piece. Seventeen times her finger jerked back the trigger. Seventeen slugs screamed for Ian. Every one of them passed harmlessly through his form with no more disturbance than a stone thrown through a thick billow of smoke.
Gun empty, Soledad went for the Jaguar, for her bags. She hurri-caned through them, found the small case that held her modified O'Dwyer. The first clip her hands found, they grabbed: the red-marked one. The one that had put down the pyrokinetic. Jamming it home, she fired at Ian.
Twenty-eight phosphorous rounds.
And the ghostlike Ian still stood.
The blue clip, the one for speed freaks; twenty-eight microchip-guided bullets. The orange, the green, the yellow clips.
Ian still stood.
In her blind frenzy to kill him, Soledad even emptied the clear-marked clip at Ian: the one she'd used against Vaughn. The one he had forced her to use against herself. Blanks and fake blood-filled gelcaps. Enough to fool a telepath. Enough for him to lower his guard, release his control of a" dead" cop and buy the cop time to kill instead of get killed.
Against an intangible they were just as useless as any other bullet Soledad had.
The rock face behind Ian was busted with gunfire. Chunks of it had been torn away by explosive-tipped slugs. A section smoked from hot lead. But that was the only damage done by Soledad. At the end of all that—anger having burned away her strength—she, like her gun, was spent. Empty clips and shell casings littered the road, and Soledad went to her knees among them. Beaten by lies. She dropped her head, was too weak to carry it.
Ian said: "I didn't want to hurt you. That's why I couldn't tell you."
In a low voice, but in a tone distinct and clearly audible: "I swear to God…"
"I know you must hate me; for what I am and for having lied to you."
"If it's the last thing I ever do…"
"But you have to know this, you have to feel it in your heart: Soledad, I love you."
She lifted her head. Intangible as Ian was, Soledad's look hit him and hit him hard."I will find a way to kill you."
Across the road the BMW was swallowed in flame.
"… Always did pick the wrong woman."
Ian turned and walked. And faded away.
Special arrangements were made for Soledad's new office. The basement of Parker Center. She could be alone there. She could go undisturbed by the useless chatter of others. Soledad liked being alone. She'd gone back to seeing the virtues of independence. Being by herself meant getting things done. Hours hunched over a computer, running specs in virtual field tests. Transferring the results to hardware applications. Long and hard and tedious work, and it was her passion.
Obsession.
It's what she was doing when a cop, a uniform who'd obviously wandered off the beaten path for no other reason than to get a look at the near-legendary Soledad, came to her office door and tried to strike up a conversation.
He started with: "Hey, Bui—," stopping himself very quickly."Sorry about th—"
"It's all right." She didn't bother to look up from the delicate surgery she was performing on a slug.
The cop, nervous: "That was a hell of a job you did on that telepath. The telepath and the metal morpher."
"Thanks."
"Shame about losing a man and all, but still, one out of four isn't… that's a solid way to come out of things. One and a half, I guess, the way Vin got…"
Soledad nodded.
"You know, I'm hoping to make MTac. One day."
Soledad said nothing to that.
"Yeah, I'm sort of friends with Eddi Aoki. You know, just sort of. And I was talking to her about it and she said, yeah, I should think about putting in."
Soledad nodded some more, but that was all the cop got from her.
The cop craned his neck, tried to see what Soledad was working on.
He said: "Heard when Eddi gets done with rehab, they're thinking about making her SLO on Harbor. That true?"
"Why don't you ask her, you two being friends and all."
"Well, we're more like… you know…"
Yeah. Soledad knew. Eddi had probably never on purpose said two words to the uniform. But he claimed he knew her, pretended he did, so he could be BAMF by association. He wanted to play games, that was okeydoke with Soledad. The cop was harmless enough. But if he was going to come around telling tales, wasn't like she wouldn't give him a hard time about things.
"Too bad you two won't be on the same element," the cop said."You'd make a helluva team. And if Reese was still alive—"
"Guess you knew her too, huh?"
"Well, I…"
"You're like Mr. Get Around, aren't you? You just know everybody."
The cop stammered some.
Soledad was glad he'd come by. Could use the entertainment. She checked her watch. Another hour of work…
Work?
She wasn't even on the clock.
Not work, then. This, this was, assuredly now, her life.
Whatever. However you called it.
Another hour, then she would head to the hospital, visit with Vin for a while, see how he was doing. She'd gone every day for the last ten days since her abortive trip north. She was starting to like hanging with Vin. He didn't talk much—when he did, he wasn't as glib anymore—and didn't mind that Soledad never seemed to have a lot to say.
That was nice.
For both of them the arrangement worked quite well.
Getting himself together enough to explain things, the cop said: "I just meant the three of you on one element, you would've been like… like…"
"Like the Erinyes."
"The…?"
"You know how to use the Internet?"
The cop nodded, and Soledad caught him doing so from the corner of her eye.
She said: "Google it up."
The cop did more staring at Soledad, at the chores her hands performed."What are you doing?"
"Working on something."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. It's a hobby of mine. A little something I spend all my free time cooking up."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. A bullet."
"What kind of bullet?"
"A real special kind. It'll be the best bullet I ever made. It'll be a bullet that can do one job and one job only." For the first time since the cop had struck up the conversation Soledad looked at him. She smiled."It'll be a bullet that can kill an intangible."
I have a name.
I've had it for a long time, but for a long time I didn't want it. A name, a flashy nickname, made me feel like one of them; like everything I didn't want to be. I've seen them destroy, both physically and emotionally. They've wrecked our cities and our souls with equal ease. As a little girl they killed my dreams, showed me how wrong I was to dream in the first place. They killed a cop—a woman—I hardly knew but wholly respected. And as a final swipe at me, they—he—killed what little caring and compassion I had left. He gave it to me, then he killed it.
There's no name for that kind of slaughter.
I have a name now.
They gave it to me: the ones I hunt, the ones who fear me. And if that name can be used as a weapon, if it makes them run and hide and spaz with terror, if it makes the normals feel like we have a chance in this war against the freaks, then I gladly claim it.
Has it come to that? Each side grabbing up whatever tool they can in the armed conflict against the other no matter how small the advantage it brings, no matter how seemingly insignificant?
Jesus help us.
There's no name for the insanity we live in. There's no one way to describe what life has become. It is confusion and chaos. It is amazing in the darkest sense. It is the world I
was born into, and all I want is to bring reason to where there is none, return order to where order no longer exists.
I have that now, order. Sort of. Sort of in my world, sort of in my life. I have order because I have a purpose.
I have a purpose. I have a name. My name is Bullet.
Notes
FB2 document info
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