SINthetic

by J. T. Nicholas

  I did. And worse, I understood that this wasn’t the kind of thing that could be kept from society at large unless most—hell, maybe all—of the country’s leaders, at the federal, state, and even city levels, were in on it. The level of corruption, the willingness to allow for the subjugation of an entire people… I suppose it shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. Politics was a dirty game, sure, but it was a game that politicians played against each other, not one that they were supposed to be perpetrating on the people. It was hard to believe that not one person had come forward.

  But then again, maybe they had tried...and maybe they had been stopped.

  “So if Walton Biogenics knows I’m investigating, they’re going to come after me. With what? Corporate hit squads?” I said it half-jokingly, but I knew guys from my service days who had gone on to work for private defense contractors, the kind of people who billed themselves as bodyguards and security forces but spent almost as much time fighting—and fomenting—wars in backwater countries for one warlord or demagogue after another. There wasn’t much they wouldn’t do, given a large enough paycheck and the chance to pull some triggers.

  “Yes,” Silas said, his voice dry and serious. “And I think you already know that.” He stood then, gathering his hat and shrugging into his coat.

  “Wait,” I said, jumping to my feet. “You’re going? But you’ve barely told me anything. What do these murders have to do with revealing that your people are…well, people? Why are these women being eviscerated? Do you have any proof that Walton Biogenics is behind the murders?”

  Silas ignored me as he walked to the door and waved his hand in front of the screen. It responded to him as it would to me, unlocking the various bolts. He pulled the door open with one hand as he positioned his hat on his head with the other.

  He threw one last glance over his shoulder. “Be careful, Detective. You have friends out there that you don’t know, but the same holds true of your enemies. And if they don’t know you yet, they soon will.”

  With that cryptic remark he left, leaving me to wonder two things. First, what the hell was that last remark supposed to mean? And, second, how had a synthetic—a synthetic!—overcome their programming to break into my apartment in the first place? If he could do that, what else could he do?

  Chapter 13

  I slept poorly and woke early, chased from sleep by visions of eviscerated women and faceless men in immaculate suits with stainless steel scalpels clutched firmly in their hands. A pale Silas, grown to impossible size, towered over us all, glowering down with a flat, disapproving expression plastered on his face, like a disappointed moon surveying the shambles we’d made of the earth. I couldn’t shake that image, that thought that the man was silently judging me, and that, whatever it was he was expecting me to do, I was coming up short.

  For some reason, that bothered me. It shouldn’t have. I was doing everything I could to solve the murders, to find out who was behind the deaths. Hell, if I had understood Silas correctly, I was doing what I could to help pull down a society in which I held a fairly exalted position.

  Maybe that was what was bothering me. I made a fairly stolid and unexciting rebel. I was a cop and a soldier—careers that instilled a sense of duty, responsibility and a deep respect for authority—and about as far from being an anarchist as a person could go. I didn’t see myself as the guy who stood up against the government and society, and shouted endlessly about all the wrongs being perpetrated around me. And yet, I was about to go into work, to continue running a clandestine investigation, misusing government resources to uncover something that, once uncovered, could never be stuffed back in the darkness and, dramatic hyperbole aside, might very well result in the end of the world as we knew it.

  Worst of all, as I stared blearily into the bathroom mirror, I couldn’t say for sure if I was upset because I was pursuing this path, or if I was upset because it had taken me so damn long to take the first steps down it.

  I scrubbed my hands over my face, then shook my head, trying to force the thoughts from it through sheer kinetic energy. I still had leads to run down, a faceless corporation hell bent on my destruction, and maybe a society to overthrow. It was going to be a busy day.

  Time to get to work.

  * * * *

  I started with the computers.

  It took a half hour to get the search running on the names Ms. Anderson had sent over. There was an art to effective searching, and it was an art that all cops—not just the Cyber guys—learned pretty damn quick. I spent that thirty minutes entering every piece of useful or related data I could think of into the search algorithm: the names, the dates of the disappearances of the Party Toys Inc. girls, the links to PTI itself, reentering the serial numbers, and, after a moment’s hesitation, the ties to Walton Biogenics. Linking the megacorp to an investigation might raise some flags later down the line, but I figured I’d deal with that particular crisis when it arose.

  “You’re in early.”

  I turned to see Melinda Hernandez standing behind me. She had a fresh bruise forming over one eye, but wore a smile that would rival any wolf for its satisfied hunger.

  “Sparring?” I asked, nodding at the eye.

  “Nope,” she said. “A cholo who thought beating on his gangbanging buddies meant he could take on a little girl.” She said the last two words with great irony and greater relish.

  “You didn’t kill him, did you?” I asked it half-jokingly. Hernandez was fully capable of killing a man with her bare hands, but even if it was justified, it would look bad in the blogs. Cops had guns for a reason, after all.

  “Nope,” she said again. “Broken arm. Wouldn’t have done that much, if the little bastard hadn’t sucker punched me. He’ll be OK, though.” Her grin widened to something that would have made that wolf jealous. “His reputation, on the other hand…”

  I chuckled. No matter how much we had progressed, some things never changed. Some guys’ pride could never take the hit of being beaten by a “girl.” Some of my better instructors had been women, and they’d taken great joy in showing the bigger meatheads in class that size and strength were no guarantee of victory.

  “Why are you here so early?” she asked again. “I thought your shift didn’t start until nine.”

  “Needed to get a data search going,” I admitted.

  Hernandez nodded. “Might take all day. Anything I could help with?”

  I thought about that. Hernandez was a good cop, and a genuine, caring person. I didn’t know her stance on synthetics, or even if she had one. With my reputation, it was a topic I tried my best to avoid. How would she react if she knew I was pursuing a murder case that by definition wasn’t murder? I could use her insight, though.

  “The case is pretty sensitive,” I hedged. She frowned. Cops weren’t supposed to keep things from other cops. I sighed and went with tactful honesty. “Look, the brass probably wouldn’t want me pursuing it, so I’m doing it on the sly. If word gets back to them…”

  A fierce grin split her face. “The brass can kiss my ass,” she said. “I got reamed pretty good by the captain for the broken arm thing, even though it was a clear case of self-defense and well within department guidelines.” She gave a strange twitch of the lips that was somewhere between a grimace and a smile. “The cholo’s already whining about excessive use of force.”

  “Generalities only,” I said.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Hernandez waved a hand as if shooing away my conditions. “Shoot, already.”

  “OK. I’ve got a murder, a strange one.”

  “Didn’t hear about it,” Hernandez said. “Strange ones make the news.”

  This was the problem with working with cops. No matter how much they intended, even wanted, to listen to what you had to say, they had a habit of picking out every inconsistency, every nuance, to try to catch you in a lie. It was bread-and-butter stuff, an automatic
reaction for anyone who made detective, but it was annoying as hell when they did it to you. I frowned at her and she chuckled.

  “OK, OK. No interruptions, Detective. No interrogations. Carry on.”

  I snorted. “So, I have this murder, a strange one,” I said again, glaring at her with mock anger. “A little digging, and a little outside help, and it looks like it might just be the tip of the iceberg.”

  “You talking a serial killer?” Hernandez—despite her earlier promise—interrupted. I couldn’t blame her, not really. Synthetics, and the unique legalities surrounding them, hadn’t had the same impact on serial killings that they had on other types of violent crime. Serial killers had their own psychosis and it demanded “real” human suffering. But confirmed serial killers had always been vanishingly rare, and any detective worth their salt wanted to be the officer to bring one to justice.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I don’t think so, at least not in the way you mean. I’m thinking something more along the lines of corporate-sanctioned murder. Killing to keep your business secrets safe.”

  Hernandez nodded. “Wouldn’t be the first time in history that a corp has shed blood for profit.” She frowned thoughtfully. “That why you don’t want the brass to know? You investigating a corporation that’s in with the department?”

  I could have lied to Hernandez then, and she would have accepted the lie. It was easy to think that an international company with their vastly deep pockets and questionable scruples would happily buy influence with politicians and law enforcement agencies the world over. It was easy to think that, because it happened every day. Hell, from what Silas had said, it had certainly happened as part of this case. Walton Biogenics had to be in bed with the government, which meant they had at least some influence over law enforcement. But that involvement wasn’t why I was reluctant to let the details of the killings—the fact that no one but a few would consider the victims to be victims—come to the surface.

  I had very few friends, on the force, or off it, and I wasn’t going to risk Hernandez’s friendship by lying to her. “No,” I said simply. “I mean, there’s a chance that the company involved has their hands in the precinct…but I haven’t come up against that yet. There are other reasons, though.” I didn’t go into them, and for once, Hernandez didn’t ask. So what could I tell her, really, that would give her enough information to offer her insights, but without dragging her in too deep…or confirming my synth-symp reputation?

  “My murders have pointed back to a genetics company,” I said. “I’ve got a source within the company…” Silas wasn’t an employee of Walton Biogenics, but if they created him, I figured it wasn’t too much of a lie to claim he was part of the company. “He tells me that they’ve discovered that some of their products are defective and might end up causing…let’s call it, unexpected side effects.” Like anarchy and chaos and the downfall of society as we knew it. But I left that part out. “Rather than issuing a general recall, the company has started identifying those who may have used the defective products and is…eliminating them.”

  Hernandez had gone from smiling to frowning to looking slightly disgusted as I spoke. “That’s horrible,” she said. “Innocent people being killed by a corporation because the corporation screwed up?” I wondered, briefly, if she would be as disgusted if she knew the dead were synthetics. I hoped so, but I still couldn’t bring myself to tell her, to risk exposure. To risk the investigation being shut down. To risk losing a friend. “You sure you can’t go to the brass about this?” she continued. “If there have been multiple murders, and if they’re still doing it, you have to alert the city.”

  I shook my head. “I’ve got no real proof, Mel,” I said. “The corporation in question ensured that the bodies were destroyed before any real evidence could be gathered from them. And it hasn’t happened all at once. I’ve got eight confirmed deaths, but they’re spread out over years.”

  “So, all you really have to go on is the word of one employee? And, I assume, he’s not the most reputable of sorts.” It wasn’t a question, but I nodded anyway. “Not the most reputable” described Silas pretty well, and the fact that he was a synthetic would make him not only suspect in the eyes of most, but render any official statement completely useless.

  “I’ve confirmed the deaths,” I said. “These people all died or disappeared, and all in unusual circumstances. I’ve also got some names associated with the most recent deaths, people who I think might be the operators for the company in question. They all had contact with the deceased or missing at or around the times of death or disappearance. That’s what I’m looking into now, places where these people—or maybe just one person, if the names are aliases for the same hitter—may have crossed paths with some of the victims.”

  “Trying to find more crime scenes,” Hernandez said with a nod. She tilted her head slightly. “You’re not telling me something, Campbell. What is it?”

  I sighed. I knew Mel, and I knew that if I told her of Silas’s warning, I was going to have a hard time getting rid of her. At the same time, she was a good cop, a good detective, and once she sniffed a lead, she wasn’t going to let it go. I decided to come clean. “The guy, my source? Well, he came and saw me again last night. Gave me a sort of vague warning. Pretty much implied that if this company found out I was poking around the edges of their scheme, they wouldn’t hesitate to have me killed.”

  “They’d take out a cop? And you believe him?”

  I shrugged. “Most people wouldn’t consider my source to be reliable at all, but yeah, I believe him.”

  Melinda frowned at me, and I saw her concern in the furrowing of her brow. “I don’t suppose I can convince you to go to the captain?” she asked. She didn’t bother waiting for a response—she knew me well enough that she knew that wasn’t going to happen. “No, of course not. Look, hermano, investigating something off the books is one thing, but if it’s going to get you killed...” She hesitated. “Are you absolutely sure there’s something here?”

  I was. I wasn’t sure that Hernandez would see it that way, though. Still, I needed help, someone I could call on for backup if I thought I was walking into a tight situation. “I’m sure.” I felt dirty as I said it. I wasn’t lying, but I wasn’t exactly telling her the whole truth, either.

  “OK, Campbell.” She gave me a hard, eager smile that said she wasn’t going anywhere. “What can I do to help?”

  Chapter 14

  “I think I have something, Campbell.”

  I had given Hernandez the list of names that Party Toys had provided me. I already had my searches running, but the computer work was only part of the job of a detective. Melinda had a lot more friends on the force than I did, which meant she had a more extensive network of people willing to provide information. And with her work in Guns and Gangs, she had a much deeper pool of street informants as well. I hadn’t really expected her to get results, though, not when looking into what I suspected were a bunch of corporate hit men.

  “Already?” I tried to keep the note of surprise out of my voice. By the patronizing grin she gave me, I failed. “How?”

  “I have my ways, Detective,” she said with an air of mystery. “I have my ways.”

  I waited, but she wasn’t going to make it easy. I sighed. “OK, Hernandez, we’ll do it your way. What did you find out?”

  She hitched one hip up on the corner of my desk and waved at my computer. “Open up your e-mail.”

  I did as ordered. There wasn’t much there—no active cases meant no test results or inquiries coming in—but I did see an unread item from Hernandez. I opened it up. There was no body, just a link. I recognized it as a link to the secured server where surveillance footage was stored. I looked at her.

  “Well,” she encouraged. “Go on. Click it.”

  I clicked on the link, and a window popped open. The video was from a stationary camera, single point of vi
ew, directed at the front of what looked to be an old-fashioned barbershop. “What am I looking at?” I asked.

  “This shop is owned by one Manny Santiago. We watch him for Guns and Gangs. He’s sort of a shared resource that a lot of the gangs use. He’s kind of an identity theft savant. Mostly electronic, but he can do old-school paper, too. He gets a lot of traffic from criminals wanting new identities after we get onto them and from illegal immigrants of all flavors.”

  “Why haven’t you busted him yet?” I asked.

  She grinned. “He’s good, mano, but we’re better. We tumbled onto him years ago, and sicced Cyber on him. We’ve penetrated his network, and we can pretty much keep tabs on every ID he cranks out. Mostly, we leave the small-time stuff alone, and only go after the big fish. Sure, it means some illegals get papers that maybe they shouldn’t, and some misdemeanors go unprosecuted, but it gives us a way to keep tabs on the really bad guys.” She grinned. “The hardest part is convincing the big bads that we found them some other way, so they don’t green-light Manny and put him out of business the old-fashioned way.”

  I nodded. I didn’t like it, but policing was always a tradeoff. More often than not, you leaned on the little fish until they gave up progressively bigger fish, promising their freedom in exchange for the next guy up the food chain. “What’s he got to do with my case?”

  “Keep watching.”

  The time-lapsed video had already shown a steady stream of customers going into and out of the barbershop. Almost all of them were black or Latino, with white faces few and far between. And regardless of the race, they all wore clothing associated with street culture. Which made the affluent-looking white male in an expensive suit who showed up after a few minutes stand out like the sorest of thumbs.

  “Well, well, well. Who do we have here?” I wondered aloud.