SINthetic

by J. T. Nicholas

  Thea stared at Hernandez. “But...where will I go? What will I do?”

  “I. Don’t. Care,” Hernandez ground out.

  It was no kindness, I realized. The nanny had no legal status, no way to earn money, no rights whatsoever. Kicking her out onto the street was as likely to be a death sentence as it was anything else.

  Could I blame Hernandez? I had no doubt that Thea had lived a hard life—far harder than anyone should. I understood how that could make her hate those who claimed to be above her, to seek out any revenge that she could. But I couldn’t blame Hernandez, either. This woman had done nothing as Melinda’s daughter was taken.

  There was no flicker of emotion in Hernandez’s eyes as they bored into her nanny, still seated on the couch, looking, for the first time, scared and worried. She had been neither when Hernandez had leveled a gun at her chest. That look of fear, of hopelessness, prodded me to action. “Can you find Silas?” I asked. It was a shot in the dark, but the albino tunnel worker had hinted at a vast network of synthetics, and she had, after all, known his name.

  “Maybe,” she said.

  “Then go to him. Tell him what happened. Tell him Detective Campbell needs his help. Tell him that we need to find the people who took Arlene. They’re the same people he’s looking for.” If we could find them, and Fowler, maybe I could finally have some answers. “Tell him you need a place to stay.” I paused, thinking. “Tell him I would consider it a favor if he helped you.” I wasn’t sure if that would have any weight with Silas, or if it would even be needed.

  But it was all I could offer, so I did.

  Chapter 23

  We waited.

  There really wasn’t much else we could do. Kidnappings were new territory for me. In addition to being another crime that had seen a remarkable decline with the advent of synthetics—though custody-related kidnaps still happened from time to time—it was generally the territory of the feds. They showed up, of course, men and women staying true to the stereotype with their dark suits and humorless expressions. Neither Hernandez nor Mel had called them, but it was procedure. It would have been one of the first things someone down at the precinct would have done. It was a bad idea—mostly—to have cops involved in investigations into their own, or those involving their families.

  That didn’t stop most of the NLPD from showing up, of course. Hernandez’s fellow officers from Guns and Gangs came out in force. Not just those from our precinct, but from all around the city. Captain Harris showed up, her uniform looking as pressed and pristine as ever. Other officers—some I knew, some I’d never even seen—until the entire place was beginning to resemble some sad shadow of a policeman’s ball.

  The show of support should have been reassuring. It wasn’t. We’d been doing far too much lying with respect to this case for it to be anything other than nerve wracking for me. How long before the truth came out and all these officers realized this happened because I refused to stop investigating the deaths of synthetics? Endangering another officer’s family—even indirectly—through that particular activity was sure to spell the end of my career. I was surprised to find that the thought of my looming unemployment didn’t really bother me much. If I could get Arlene back and find the scumbag who had been butchering synthetics, then the rest of the job could go fuck itself.

  “A moment, Detective?”

  I looked up from my reverie to find a dark-suited man with a crew cut staring back at me. One of the feds, no doubt. “Yeah?”

  “We need to get your statement.”

  I knew this had been coming. A pair of feds had taken Hernandez off into another room, while the tech weenies started working whatever voodoo they worked with her personal screen and the various screens throughout the house. “Right. What do you need?”

  “Just tell me what happened. I’m Agent Thornton, by the way.” He offered his hand, and I shook it. He was shorter than me, stocky. Close up, I could see that his crew cut probably had as much to do with his thinning hair as it did any desire to keep up the image.

  “Detective Hernandez and I were following up on an inconsistency at a local forger. That interview led us to the docks, where we discovered a body.” And got shot at. I left that part out. “We returned here to find the door kicked open and Detective Hernandez’s daughter missing. The nanny, a synthetic, was unable to provide any meaningful information beyond the vehicle description we called in and the fact that she was taken by a white male.”

  “Right,” Thornton said. “And where is this nanny now?”

  “Out.” My response was brusque, almost terse. It earned me a raised eyebrow. “Look,” I said, “Detective Hernandez was not happy, all right? Her daughter had just been taken. And the nanny hadn’t done anything to stop it. Couldn’t have, anyway, right? Synthetics being incapable of harming...humans.” I had almost let slip an “others” amid that, as in other humans, but managed to keep it in. “It seemed like a good idea to send her off on an errand, to give Detective Hernandez a chance to cool down. I doubt she’ll be back for several hours.” Actually, I was fairly certain she would never come back.

  I couldn’t tell if the fed was buying it, but I left it at that. He just nodded and moved on to the next question. It was a fairly routine interview, with none of the repetitive questions designed to catch the other guy in a lie. That was a small mercy—and professional courtesy, one cop to another. Thornton was wrapping up when my screen beeped.

  “Excuse me,” I said, waiting for his slight nod before walking away.

  I dug the screen out of my pocket as I went, and glanced down at the display. The number was listed as unavailable, and it was a voice-only call. I hit the Answer button and raised the screen to my ear. “Campbell.”

  “Detective.” I didn’t recognize the voice. Male, possessed of neither the exuberance of youth nor the feebleness of age. A smooth baritone that oozed confidence and self-assurance.

  “Yeah?”

  “It is imperative that you answer me honestly. Doing anything else will result in the death of the young miss.” My blood ran cold at the words. I probably should have flagged down the nearest fed, but something in that voice, that too-smooth voice, assured me that doing so would be the death of Arlene Hernandez. “Have the federal agents or the New Lyons police put any additional monitoring devices or programs on your screen?” the voice continued. “Beyond those that are standard for any officer?”

  “No,” I replied.

  “Are you currently in a position where this conversation can be overheard?”

  I glanced around the house. There were people everywhere, but they were still in the initial stage of doing that always preceded the long and arduous stage of waiting. Waiting for the call that I was currently on. They were all too distracted to be listening in. “Possible,” I admitted. “But unlikely.”

  “Good. Listen very carefully, Detective. You have poked your nose in where it does not belong. And you’ve had the bad manners to get Detective Hernandez involved as well, which I am certain she is deeply regretting.” I felt more than a twinge of guilt at that. The danger that Hernandez was in was my fault.

  “But I am a kind man,” he continued. “So I will give you this one opportunity to set things right. What I propose is a simple trade. You come to an address I will provide, alone. And when I say alone, Detective, I do mean it. You’ll be monitored from the moment you leave the Hernandez residence. When you arrive, I will release the child. You will then accompany me and we will talk about certain matters.”

  “You mean you’ll kill me,” I replied. I managed to say the words flatly, without any real inflection, though I couldn’t deny the tremor of fear coursing through me.

  “I genuinely hope not, Detective. I will, of course, if it comes to that. But I would much prefer not to.” There was a brief pause. “Don’t get me wrong. If you had died at the docks, this all would have been much easier, but tha
t event could have been written off as some sort of gang-related violence. We’re past that now. If you were to turn up dead, it would be messy, and might cause undue attention. My employers will risk that attention, if there’s no other option. But I’m hoping we can find another way.”

  Not terribly fucking likely. Whatever Mr. Fowler—if that was the asshole on the other end of the call—said, I was pretty sure the endgame was a shallow grave for Momma Campbell’s favorite boy. I smiled into the phone. “When and where?”

  * * * *

  Getting out wasn’t easy. At times like this, there were only two acceptable modes for officers—out kicking the ass of whoever messed with one of our own, or at their side providing support. I was going out to try to get Arlene back, but I couldn’t let any of the officers around me know that. Or Hernandez. Which put me in an awkward spot.

  I managed a few minutes with Hernandez, and let her know that I was going to try to find Silas and see what he knew. That had been my plan, before Fowler’s call. But I couldn’t tell the captain, or any of the other NLPD, and certainly not the feds, about Silas. Or Fowler. Or any damn thing that would be helpful. At least not without putting the girl at risk. And if I so much as hinted to Hernandez that I had a shot at getting her daughter—or the guy that nabbed her—there was no force on earth that could have stopped her from coming with me. So I just sort of...left.

  I’d catch hell for it later. You didn’t walk out on a crime scene, particularly one the feds had taken control of, without so much as a by-your-leave. But I figured that no matter how this night ended, my career was over anyway. I couldn’t go back to pretending that the bodies dropping in the streets weren’t human, that the assaults and abuses were all A-OK because, after all, synthetics were just things. I couldn’t go back to enforcing the laws that allowed it to happen.

  But I needed to find Fowler. I needed to find out what the hell was going on with the missing women—the eviscerated women. And most of all, I needed to get Hernandez’s daughter back. Even if it meant trading my life for hers.

  We’d arrived in Hernandez’s car, which was a problem. Mine was still back at the precinct, and I couldn’t take one of the cruisers parked outside. They’d respond to me well enough, but my location would be logged, and Central could send an abort-and-return order to the vehicle at any time.

  So I started walking.

  I’d catch a cab, but didn’t want to do that right in front of Hernandez’s house, either. Better if people thought I might still be hanging around somewhere. A cab would be noticed. I went about two blocks before I finally pulled out my screen and called for a car. I did it the old-fashioned way, typing in an address from the nearest house rather than letting them sniff my GPS coordinates. I couldn’t disable that feature of my screen—that would trigger all kinds of alarms with the tech guys—so after I ordered the cab, I shut the device off entirely and waited.

  I didn’t have long to wait. The car, a two-seater electric box barely half the size of my police-issued cruiser, pulled to the curb maybe five minutes later. It was painted bright yellow and the company’s name, URide, stood out in bold black letters. There was no driver, of course. Cabs had gone fully automated years ago, long before driverless cars became mainstream for the rest of the population. I popped the passenger door and sank into the chair. Once I’d shut the door and engaged the safety belt, the cab immediately pulled away from the curb.

  I wasn’t familiar with the address Fowler had provided, so I hit the Navigation button on the dash. A map of the city appeared on the windshield, outlining the route and highlighting my current position. Traffic information, speed limits, places of interest along the way, all of them blossomed to life alongside the blue line. A few quick swipes and I had isolated the destination—and isolated was the operative word. It wasn’t all that far in terms of absolute distance. I’d arrive in about twenty minutes.

  The location rested in the heart of an old commercial district that had seen nothing but decline over the past ten or fifteen years. As I got closer, the tidy strip malls and grocery stores thinned, giving way first to ill-kept thrift and liquor shops and, eventually, to abandoned and boarded-up storefronts. By the time the cab neared its final destination, even those had thinned, leaving me in the middle of concrete wasteland.

  I’d seen few enough people along the way—some homeless despite the government stipend, some desperately holding on to a crumbling house or store. A few dealers lingering on street corners. No one who looked like they’d give two damns if I got myself murdered, particularly if they knew I was a cop.

  The cab stopped in a parking lot in front of an abandoned commercial complex. All the signs were long gone, all the windows broken. It had probably been thriving twenty years earlier, but fewer and fewer people bothered leaving the comfort of their homes for something as mundane as shopping. Brick-and-mortar stores had been a dying breed for a long time, now, but in this part of New Lyons, they seemed a little more serious about it.

  I scanned the lot, but I didn’t see any other vehicles. I already knew that Fowler had a penchant for long-range shooting, and there were plenty of perches that would afford a wonderful view of the parking lot. But the cab would grant me little enough protection if he was sitting somewhere with a high-caliber weapon. I was committed. I hit the button that told the cab to wait there and keep the meter running—it would sit as long as there was juice in the batteries and credit in my accounts. Then I climbed out of the car.

  As I closed the door behind me, my fingers itched to hold the butt of my service weapon. I refrained from drawing it, though. If Fowler was out there with a rifle, that would be the perfect cue for him to open fire. Arlene couldn’t afford that kind of mistake. Instead, I waited, standing by the car and trying to be as nonchalant as possible, despite the sudden, nearly overwhelming desire to be moving, doing. Something. Anything.

  Across the parking lot, from deep in the shadows between two derelict buildings, a pair of headlights flashed.

  The brief flash of light revealed an alleyway that hadn’t been visible in the gloom. It also sent my heart rate into overtime and my hand flashing toward my gun. I controlled both impulses as best I could, and forced myself to take a deep breath. I turned and made my way, one slow step at a time, across the open expanse of concrete and toward the other vehicle. If Fowler—assuming it was Fowler—wanted me dead, he couldn’t have chosen a better setup. The abandoned lot left me with nowhere to run or hide. And the alleyway provided him an excellent view over all of it. Even if he managed to miss with a shot or two, he’d have plenty of time to spray and pray before I had any hope of finding cover. Every instinct I’d developed as a soldier, as a cop, screamed at me to turn back, to take cover. Arlene was probably dead already, and throwing my life away would not only fail to bring her back, it would also ensure that the Walton Biogenics cover-up continued. It was pure idiocy to move into that alleyway.

  I kept walking.

  Chapter 24

  Every ounce of sense and self-preservation called at me to pull my weapon, to be ready to fight or run. I ignored it and did my level best to walk casual. The alleyway was dark, the high walls on either side blocking out the streetlights. The faint moonlight managing to trickle in from above did little to illuminate anything. My eyes were still adjusting, but about halfway down, I could make out the front end of a black sedan.

  A scrape and a flash of light nearly made me jump. I realized half a heartbeat later that it was a chemical match flaring to life. The flickering orange lit up a face, as it moved to the tip of a cigarette. I recognized the face. It belonged to the man from the surveillance video outside of Manny’s Barber Shop. White, middle aged, strong. Sort of distinguished. A remarkable face, really. The face of a killer.

  “That’s far enough, Campbell,” the man said, taking a long drag from the cigarette.

  “Mr. Fowler, I presume?”

  “One name among m
any,” he said with a curling exhale of smoke.

  “Where’s the girl?”

  “In a moment. I have some questions for you first.”

  I grit my teeth, but there wasn’t much I could do. “Ask.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “You left a trail.”

  His smile was practiced. False. “I left a half dozen or so trails, Campbell. I’m curious which one you found.”

  “Manny’s Barber Shop. Why leave trails?” I didn’t know if he’d bother answering, but I figured I’d slip the question in anyway.

  “The documents. I thought so, given that you’ve been calling me Fowler. Still, it’s good to know for sure. To answer your question, I lay the false trails so I know who is looking for me. None of them are terribly hard to find, once someone starts digging. But that’s the point. Part of what I’m paid to do is find those who are willing to look too closely into our blissful little utopia.” The bastard actually dropped a slow, lazy wink at me. Something about it felt wrong, like it was a gesture learned rather than felt.

  “So you know?” I asked. I needed to find out where Arlene was, what this asshole had done with her. But I needed answers, too.

  “About the so-called synthetics? Of course I know. I wonder, though, if you do.”

  “And you kill them? Gut them? Why?”

  He laughed. A chill ran down my spine. I wasn’t sure if that chill was because the man before me was himself something truly less than human...or if it was because he personified all that we had become, a callous, narcissistic, self-indulgent husk lacking any capacity for true empathy. “Because I can, of course. Oh, also for money. Walton Biogenics pays me very well to keep their dirty laundry out of sight. And they provide me with a steady list of people to remove. But I would do it anyway. And, as far as the law is concerned, it’s all perfectly legal.” His smile now was positively beatific.