Bander paused.
“It was out front before, now it’s gone. But she’s still here.”
“Serene-41 must’ve–”
“Bander,” Remmell said, shaking his head as he inched forward, “it’s over. Put the gun down. Let’s talk. I just want to talk. You know you have nothing to fear from me. I’m not strong enough to hurt you or overpower you. You know this. I just want to talk.”
Bander’s shoulders slumped a little and his arms softened. Remmell stepped closer. “This is my fault,” he said softly. “Let me make it up to you. Let me help you.”
Remmell reached out slowly toward the gun.
“Don’t trust him, Remmell,” Salvi warned.
“Ssshhhh,” Remmell said softly, reaching out and placing his hand over the gun in Bander’s hands. “It’s alright. Mr Bander knows I’m going to help him. Don’t you?”
Bander looked at him and relinquished the gun. “You mean you’re going to subjugate me.”
In one swift motion, Bander pulled out a blade from the back of his trousers and slashed it across Remmell’s throat.
Salvi gasped in shock as Remmell threw his hands up to his neck. His eyes flashed wide as blood spurted over the doctor’s hands. Gargling and choking, with blood running down his arms like water, he sank to his knees.
“No, no, no! Bad man, bad man!” Pragge’s voice sounded as he ran into the room, heading for the caretaker.
Bander dropped the knife and swiftly dodged his advance, belting him hard across the head with the baton he still carried in his left hand. Pragge groaned in pain, raising his hands to his halo, and fell to the floor in a heap.
Salvi saw Remmell fall flat to the ground, then looked back as Bander leaned over Pragge and belted him some more, as the Subjugate cried softly in pain.
Horrified, Salvi saw her chance and ran at Bander. He saw her coming around the desk and grabbed the gun that had spilled from Remmell’s hands. He raised it at her, but she grabbed his wrist, twisted it and disarmed him. The gun fell back to the floor, but his baton soon swung and caught her in the back. She yelled in agony and he swung again, catching her across the back of her legs. She stumbled to the floor in pain, and he grabbed her by the hair, yanked her head back and thrust the baton across her throat, then heaved her up to her feet. Salvi struggled hard against him, her feet kicking Remmell’s lifeless body as they moved past, but Bander dragged her over to Solme’s desk and slammed her face down on it.
He leaned over her, pulled the baton away from her throat and pressed it across the back of her neck, as he venomously breathed, “I should never have left a Serene to do a man’s job!”
Salvi struggled with all her might to push herself off the desk, but Bander was just too heavy. Her eyes caught on the stone statuette of Mary on the corner of Solme’s desk. She grabbed it and swung it back into Bander’s face. She felt the deep thud of the connection and Bander moaned, stepping backwards from her. She turned around, saw blood running down the side of his face, and tried to run for the door. He shook his head as though trying to clear the pain and grabbed Salvi. She swung her elbow back at him, but he pulled her back then launched a fist into her face. It connected with her cheekbone with a force that spun her sideways. Bander slammed her back onto the desk, panting heavily as his blood dripped onto her face.
She heard fast heavy footsteps then. Something collided with Bander and knocked him right off her. She stumbled away from the desk and saw it was Moses. He’d rammed Bander right into the wall and now they were wrestling. Bander found his baton, however, and began beating him back. Salvi searched frantically for her gun, but before she knew it Bander had snatched it and fired into Moses.
“No!” Salvi yelled, as Moses stumbled back, holding his gut. The blood pooled quickly, and he collapsed back onto the floor, tripping over Pragge’s unconscious frame.
Salvi looked around for another weapon; couldn’t see where the Mary statue had fallen, but her eyes caught on Solme’s cross on the wall. She snatched it and smashed it against the desk, breaking the wood, and ripped the silver Christ off it. Then she ran at Bander’s back as he stood over Moses, and stabbed it in. Hard.
He yelled in pain and threw an arm back, connecting her in the side of the head. She stumbled, smacking into the wall and fell to the floor. She saw Bander’s feet beneath the desk as he moved over to the second door and locked it, then strode back toward her.
“Goddamn Moses,” he said, through gritted teeth, panting. “He lost control tonight! Just couldn’t stop him!” He charged at her and she raised her hands in defense. One blow to her broken forearm made her scream in pain. He grabbed a handful of hair and pulled her upwards. She punched him in the gut with her good arm and he buckled a little, gave a winded sound, but he yanked her back over to the desk and threw her atop it.
Salvi landed on her back with a whump and kicked at Bander as hard as she could, one foot landing in his face, but he soon caught her legs and pressed them down. As he did, she saw the silver Christ flash from behind him. It was still sticking out of his back. He must not feel it any more with the adrenaline flowing through him.
He lunged forward, hands reaching for her throat. She tried to block them but he hit her swollen forearm and pain shot through her. If she’d questioned whether it was broken before, she no longer did. His large hands clasped her throat and he squeezed hard.
“SALVI!” someone called from outside the door, banging on it.
Bander’s eyes went wide and he looked up to the door.
“SALVI!”
It was Mitch. It was goddamned Mitch!
Her own eyes widened and she tried to call back, but Bander’s hand tightened and squeezed the air out of her throat.
“Guess we gotta skip the main course and go straight to dessert, then,” Bander said, looking down at her and tightening his face as he leaned all his weight on her throat. “No witnesses…”
She heard loud furious thumping against the door as Mitch tried to ram his way into the room. Salvi tried with all her might to pull Bander’s hands away, but it was no good, his grip too tight, the weight too heavy, her broken arm too weak.
And as her vision became spotty, she knew that she would soon be dead.
But then she heard more voices. Saw light pour in from the corridor. Heard gunfire. Saw Bander’s shoulder open up and splash blood over her. He let go of her throat and stepped backward. She gasped for breath and cast a glance to the doorway. Mitch stood there with his gun raised.
Bander growled and lunged for Salvi again, but she raised her legs and kicked hard. They hit their target and Bander stumbled back into the wall. As he hit it, he gasped and looked down at the middle of his chest. There, poking through, was the silver crucified Jesus.
As his chest pooled with blood, Bander coughed, before his face fell flat and his body slid down to the ground.
Mitch rushed in, gun still aimed at Bander, but the caretaker didn’t move. The man was dead.
Salvi continued to gasp for breath, coughing and choking, sliding on the desk in the BioLume that still covered her. Within an instant Mitch was hovering over her, wrapping his arms around her, pulling her up to sit. “It’s OK, Salvi,” he told her. “It’s OK. It’s over.”
She clasped him weakly, desperately, trying to regain her breath. He continued to hold her, rocking her, as he stared at Bander’s dead body and looked around at the limp bodies of the Subjugates and Dr Remmell on the floor. He glanced back at the guard from the gate, who stood in the doorway with Serene-41. The guard scanned the room bewildered, before he quickly moved inside and checked Remmell’s pulse. Then he moved to Moses, kneeling and pressing his hands against the Subjugate’s bleeding body.
“Get a guard and go wait for the ambulance!” the guard ordered Serene-41, who still hovered by the door. The Serene gave a bow and scuttled away. The guard glanced over at Remmell’s dead body, at Subjugate-12, unconscious from a bleeding wound to his head, before turning back to Subjugate-52, who
breathed heavy gasps of pain.
“Hold on now,” the guard told the Subjugate. “Help is on the way.”
Chapter Twenty
Atonement
Salvi awoke slowly and found she was in a hospital bed and it looked to be morning. Her body ached the more it awoke, and she suddenly realized just how much Levan Bander had thrown her around; how much the adrenaline had fought off the pain at the time. Her right arm was in plaster from her fingertips to her elbow, her throat was sore and dry and scratchy, the side of her face felt like a balloon, and her whole back was stiff and tight.
A soft tap on the door caught her attention and she saw Hernandez and Bronte standing there.
“Hey,” she said.
“How you doing?” Hernandez said, walking in. In typical cop style they stood either side of the bed.
“I’m good,” she said without really thinking. The look on Hernandez and Bronte’s face didn’t seem to agree.
“You look like you got worked over pretty good, Salv,” Hernandez said. “Lucky that fucker is dead or I’d be paying him a visit right about now.”
“Oh yeah,” Bronte agreed in his baritone voice.
Salvi tried to smile, but her mouth hurt too much. “It’s OK, I already took care of him.”
“Yeah, we heard,” Bronte’s said with amusement. “A crucifix, Salvi?”
“Well, I just kinda finished him off,” she said. “If Mitch hadn’t shot him…”
“Yeah,” Hernandez said, pursing his lips. “Mitch.”
Salvi looked at Bronte. “Can you give us a minute?”
“Sure thing,” he said. “I saw a coffee machine down the corridor.” Then he flashed a smile. “Right near the nurse’s station.”
Salvi tried to smile again, as Bronte walked out the door. She looked back at Hernandez.
“I know what you’re going to say,” he said.
“You were wrong about him,” she said.
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Hey, look, if he toes the line, he ain’t got a problem from me.”
Salvi sighed. “You were wrong,” she said again.
Hernandez stared back at her, then gave a nod. “I was wrong.”
She smiled.
“You just get back on your feet, alright?” Hernandez said. “Anything we can do, just say the word.”
“Tell Stan I’m fine.” She gave him a confident look.
Hernandez gave her a wink and a cheeky smile, then left the room, just as a nurse came in with a bunch of flowers.
“Flowers?” Salvi asked.
“Aren’t they lovely,” the nurse said, handing them to her.
Salvi moved her body delicately to check who they were from. She found the card and turned it toward her. They were from Preacher Vowker and the Children of Christ. The message read:
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God. Ephesians 2:8
Salvi stared at the message, then shook her head.
“No,” she said to the card, to the image of Vowker in her mind. “God didn’t save me. I did. Mitch did. The Subjugates did.”
“I’m sorry, honey?” the nurse said.
Salvi handed the flowers back to her. “I think these will look a lot nicer in the nurses’ station.”
“Oh, really? You’re sure?”
Salvi nodded.
“Why, thank you,” the nurse said with a smile. “That’s so lovely of you.”
She took the flowers and left the room, and Salvi closed her eyes again. Content.
The crucified Jesus may have been Bander’s death nail, but Salvi had been the one to drive it home.
Salvi watched as the doctor tapped the small glass pane in his hands.
“We’ll need to keep monitoring you,” he said, “to make sure the exposure you had to the BioLume does not have any long-term effects. But you should be fine given you had the special cleansing shower when you first came in. I think regular checkups every month to start with should suffice, unless you experience any unusual symptoms before then.”
“So, I can leave?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, signing off his pane. “If you prefer to recover at home, I’m happy to approve that. But you must rest, Detective. I’ll not approve your return to work for at least a couple of weeks. Even then, with that fractured arm, you’ll be stuck on a desk for a while.”
“That’s fine,” she said. “Home is good.”
The doctor gave a nod. “I’ll go see to it.”
She watched him walk out of her room, thinking of her apartment as he did. Her cloud, her cushioning from reality. But then she suddenly remembered the last time she’d been there, with her bed defiled and the footage running on her TV. A shiver went down her spine at the thought of Bander roaming freely in her apartment, but it soon dissipated with thoughts of Bander’s body slumped dead against the wall of Solme’s office.
Another knock on her door caught her attention. She looked over and saw Mitch standing there.
“You up for a visitor?” he said.
“Sure.” She nodded.
He moved into the room and came to a stop near the foot of her bed. She’d been in hospital for almost two days now and this was the first time she’d seen him since they’d brought her in. She remembered being on a stretcher, remembered him holding her hand, but they’d given her painkillers and when she’d awoken in hospital he was gone. But she’d seen Ford, who’d told her that Mitch had been busy wrapping up the case for them.
“How you doing?” he asked, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his coat. He looked tired. Worn. Like he hadn’t slept in days.
“I’ll live.” She smiled. “The doctor’s about to release me home.”
“Yeah?” Mitch asked, surprised.
She nodded again and the silence sat for a moment.
“How did you find me?” she asked. “How did you know I was there?”
“When I left you, I went to visit cyber. I asked them to look further into the U-Stasis account activity of our vics. I left them to it and came back to the bullpen but you were gone. I tried to find you but couldn’t and you weren’t answering your iPort.” He paused a moment. “So, I waited. I tried calling you again and again. When you didn’t answer, I’m sorry – but I traced your iPort again. It registered that you were in your apartment. Only, you didn’t move for some time. I thought maybe you were sleeping, but I checked with Ford and you hadn’t called in sick. So I went to your apartment.” He pulled his hand out of his pocket and showed her one of the key passes for her apartment. “I don’t know why, but I’d grabbed this when I left your apartment that morning.”
She nodded.
“I knocked, you didn’t answer,” he said. “So I went in … and saw what was there. At first I thought …” He scratched his head. “I didn’t know what to think. I thought maybe you’d filmed us … but then I saw ‘pure’ written across your bed, and your iPort and lenses left behind, your holo-badge.” He looked her in the eye. “And I freaked the fuck out. I had your apartment security scan their footage, saw you walking out alone. So I knew you were alive, but I didn’t know how long for. I saw the report Weston had filed, saw that you’d viewed it. It was risky, but I asked Riverton to give me the geoloc where you’d accessed it. It told me you’d accessed it from your personal comms unit in your Zenith. It pinpointed the access location as Bountiful, so I headed straight out there. But I drove around and couldn’t find you. I even went out to the Solme Complex but your car wasn’t there either.”
“Bander moved it.” She nodded to herself.
“Yeah,” he said. “So I drove back into Bountiful, didn’t know what to do. I knew if I called you in as a missing person, if you wound up dead … I was going to be the prime suspect. But I had no choice. Just as I was about to call you in to Ford, Riverton contacted me with the new report from Cyber. It showed Bander as being online in U-Stasis at the same time as both Sharon and Rebe
cca. Their activity status indicated there was interaction between them. We needed a further warrant to find out what that interaction was, but I thought it was enough to question him. I called the Solme Complex to find out if he was there. I got put through to Dr Remmell. He told me you’d been there earlier that day but that your car was now gone. But he thought Bander was still about, so I headed out there. Only, the guard on the gate wouldn’t let me in. When he tried to get Remmell, he didn’t answer. I think he was off undertaking his own investigations at the time.”
“Yeah.” Salvi nodded to herself again. “So how did you get into the Complex?”
“As the guard was trying to send me away, Bander called over his comms saying there was a code blue and that Subjugate-52 was on a rampage. He ordered the compound locked down and that no one was to leave. I thought if there was a chance you were inside?”
“So what did you do?”
He gave a slightly bashful smile. “I rammed the Raider through the front gates.”
“You did?” Her eyes popped.
He nodded. “I got inside but didn’t get far before the drone guard fried the electrics.”
“So, what happened?”
“The guard pulled his gun on me and made me get out of the vehicle. I did, but then we heard a gunshot coming from inside the main building.”
Salvi nodded again. “That’s when Bander shot Moses.”
Mitch nodded back. “I ran for the main door, the guard tried to stop me but I just yelled at him to call 911. The guy just kinda said ‘shit’ and ran for his booth to make the call. He realized that I wasn’t the threat.”
“So how’d you get inside?”
“The doors were locked, but I saw Serene-41 cowering inside. It took a little begging, but I convinced him to open the door. Once inside I just grabbed him and asked where you were. He pointed to Solme’s office but told me to use the other door down the corridor. Only I got there and it was locked. I had no idea if you were inside or still alive, so I just started ramming the door. But it wasn’t budging. Serene-41 came running up and swiped his damn pass. The door opened, I saw Bander choking you, and… I fired.”
The Subjugate Page 36