Friction

by R S Penney

  He told the story as best he could, going over the details of what Alex had told Harry. The young man who had sold him pot was incredibly strong, incredibly agile and more aggressive than a bull that had been kicked in the balls. Something about that didn't feel quite right. Wesley Pennfield had a symbiont, but that guy was nothing but a block of ice. Calm and collected. He supposed it could be as simple as a difference in personality. Pennfield was worlds apart from the average street dealer. But that left him struggling to answer the difficult question of how a street thug got his hands on a Nassai. He wouldn't know more until he interrogated Alex.

  On the tablet screen, Anna grimaced, shaking her head with a sigh. “Another Pennfield,” she muttered under her breath. “So…If this guy does have a symbiont, how do you plan to track him?”

  Jack set his elbow on the counter, resting his chin in the palm of his hand. “Ooh, I don't know,” he said. “I figure I'll take out an ad in the paper. Single white Keeper seeks man with symbiont for kinky fun. Must be able to go all night.”

  Anna giggled.

  The moment of levity was over before they could even enjoy it, and she looked up at him with a serious expression. “Promise me you'll be careful,” she said. “And if you need me, don't hesitate to call.”

  “I promise.”

  “Take care, Jack.”

  “You too.”

  Anna vanished to be replaced by the symbol of the Justice Keepers – a four-pointed star on a circle of blue – leaving him alone with his thoughts, and once again, he was forced to conclude that the best thing that had ever happened to him had flown away in a shuttle three years ago. And he had been feeling lost ever since. Summer offered comfort in her own way. He paused for a moment to consider putting himself into a meditative state and striking up a conversation with her.

  Then he decided against it.

  He was exhausted, and the only thing he really wanted at the moment was the sweet embrace of his pillow. So he refilled Spock's dish with kibble and went to bed. “Good night, Summer,” he whispered to the symbiont.

  Chapter 5

  The Interrogation Room was pretty much what you'd expect: walls of gray cinder-blocks with a window that looked out on the observation room. A long metal table was positioned beneath a lamp that provided a little too much light.

  Alex Clemons was a hefty kid in an Ottawa Senators jersey, his pasty face marked by a nasty bruise on the cheek. Curly blonde hair was left in a state of disarray. The boy really needed a shower. “Can I go?”

  Pursing his lips, Jack narrowed his eyes. “You can do this, Alex,” he said, nodding once. “Just tell me the story step by step.”

  Alex scrunched up his face, turning away from Jack. He covered his eyes with one hand. “What the hell do you know?” The squeal in his voice was genuine. “Ricky said he would kill me if I talked.”

  Biting his lower lip, Jack closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, trying his best to remain calm. “No one's gonna hurt you, Alex,” he began. “You have my solemn promise that so long as you're here, you're safe.”

  The kid shot a glance over his shoulder, squinted eyes fixed on Jack. “But I won't always be here, will I?” he growled. “Just leave me alone. You wanna bust me, go ahead and bust me, but I'm not talking.”

  Jack got up.

  He turned around and found Harry watching him through the window. The other man wore a tight frown. “Kid,” he said through the intercom speaker. “You help us find Ricky, and it'll go easier on you.”

  “Listen to him,” Jack said, turning back to the kid.

  Alex shut his eyes, tears streaming down his cheeks as he sobbed. “I'm not telling you that.” He put his head down on the table's surface, burying his face in folded arms. “Please! Just leave me alone!”

  The terror was real. Jack didn't consider himself the best judge of body language, but a few years of interrogating criminals gave you a feel for this sort of thing. Alex was afraid for his life.

  Whoever this Ricky was, he was dangerous. More and more, Jack was beginning to suspect that they were dealing with a traitor among the Keepers. Or perhaps another Pennfield. That left him with chills of his own.

  “All right, Alex,” he whispered. “We can stop.”

  The kid looked up, blinking at him. “You mean it?” he mumbled, sitting up with a shuddering breath. “I can go?”

  “Back to your cell.”

  Now for the part that was guaranteed to tie his stomach in knots and leave him with a nasty case of insomnia. Jack tried to tell himself that this was for the greater good, but frightening an already traumatized kid was pretty low. “You have a brother, don't you?” he asked. “Got busted a couple years ago for possession?”

  Alex studied him with a look of guarded skepticism, no doubt trying to determine how much Jack really knew. “Yeah, I got a brother,” he said carefully. “What difference does that make?”

  Leaning against the brick wall, Jack folded his arms. He frowned down at himself, shaking his head. “You owed Ricky money,” he began. “That's why he beat the crap out of you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “So if you're in here,” Jack went on. “And he can't get to you, who's he gonna take it out on? You still owe him money.”

  Mouth hanging open, Alex went paler and paler. He blinked several times, thinking it over. “He wouldn't…” the kid said, shaking his head. “He wouldn't. Stephen isn't a part of this!”

  “You think that matters to Ricky?”

  It was just the facts. Jack repeated that sentence like a catechism. In all honesty, he was probably correct; Ricky would harm Alex's brother. That didn't change the fact that he felt sick about scaring an already frightened kid.

  Jack gritted his teeth, anger warming his face. He shook his head in disgust. “So what's it gonna be, kid?” he asked, approaching the table. “You willing to help me put a stop to the violence?”

  Alex looked up at him with lips pressed into a thin line. He blinked, then nodded in confirmation. “Ricky runs an op out of an old house down on Lisgar,” he said. “Cooks up Synth, meth, and God knows what else.”

  A ring from his multi-tool alerted him to the presence of an incoming call. After checking the screen, he saw that it was from a Director Jena Morane. Something about that name tickled his memory.

  Jack frowned, shutting his eyes tight. “Sorry, lady.” Tapping the screen silenced the incoming call. “You can lecture me about insubordination some other time. Right now, I have work to do.”

  Alex was as pale as snow as he stared at the wall behind Jack. “Down on Lisgar,” he said. “But I'm telling you right now, if you go up against Ricky, he'll rip you into a hundred little pieces.”

  “You let me handle that,” Jack said. “Just give me the address.”

  A quick drive to a neighbourhood just outside the downtown core gave Jack some time to think. Alex's testimony hadn't offered any of the obvious tells that would confirm the presence of a symbiont. No stories of deflected gunfire or people who moved so fast they blurred.

  That didn't rule out a symbiont, however. Keepers were incredibly fast and strong, and this Ricky certainly fit that description. A growing sense of paranoia made it difficult to concentrate on the road. Where would these people get corrupted symbionts? Was this Jena Morane involved? She had called him twice on the drive down here.

  Pushing his concerns to the back of his mind, he parked his car along the curb of a narrow street and got out. Summer was on the alert for the presence of one of her kind. He could feel her wariness.

  Leaning against the side of his car with arms crossed, Jack shook his head. “That would be my luck,” he said, starting across the road. “Knock on the door and find myself staring down an army of evil Keepers.”

  A red-bricked house stood tall under a blue sky with fluffy clouds, wedged between two smaller buildings. By the look of it, you might have expected a little old lady to show up at the door when you rang the bell.

  Craning his neck, Jack
blinked at the house. “So, this is what passes for a drug opp nowadays,” he said softly. “Call me old-fashioned, but I was hoping to see some graffiti, maybe some shattered beer bottles.”

  He started up the driveway.

  Knocking on the door produced a lot more noise than he would have expected, and he was able to make out the sound of footsteps on the other side. Half a moment later, the door swung inward.

  A heavyset man stuck his head through the opening, squinting when the daylight hit his eyes. He was pale as a ghost with a fringe of scraggly beard along his jawline. “Yeah? What do you want?”

  Jack forced a grin, then looked away with a soft chuckle. “This is embarrassing,” he said. “I had this whole speech rehearsed, put on my cool face and everything. Then I spaz on the front porch.”

  The big guy frowned, flinching as if someone had punched him. “Get the hell out of here!” he shouted. “I don't have time to screw around with assholes who can't talk right.”

  “I want to buy Crystal.”

  That simple declaration produced silence while the other man froze in the act of slamming the door. Did customers just come right out and say they wanted drugs? Jack would have expected a little song and dance.

  “Let him in, Bobby.”

  With a growl, the big guy stepped aside, revealing a narrow hallway that ran the length of the house to a small living room in the back. Light came in through a door that led to the backyard.

  A young man in black pants and a white tanktop stood with his arms folded, the grip of a pistol sticking out of his pants. God send he at least put the safety on. He had a handsome face with a strong chin and spiky black hair.

  Jack stepped into the house, shouldering his way past Bobby. Sadly Keeper training didn't really prepare one for an assignment like this. Oh, Leyrians had their fair share of drug crimes, but the atmosphere was different. Jack had to resist the urge to fall back on old movies for cues on how to behave.

  The young man turned his head, fixing his gaze on Jack. In the light of the patio door, he was almost a silhouette. “You want to buy Crystal,” he said. “Just how much do you want?”

  Thrusting his chin out, Jack narrowed his eyes. “You'd be Ricky,” he said with a nod. “My buddy told me to ask for you. He says your stuff blows his mind better than anything else he's tried.”

  “Who's your buddy?”

  “Jeff Glass,” Jack said, making up a name.

  Ricky turned around, marching back into the living room with arms crossed. “Can't say I remember him,” he muttered. “But then I was never real big on names. How much you wanna buy?”

  “Couple ounces?”

  All the while, Jack kept tabs on Bobby with Summer's assistance. He remained by the door, leaning against the railing at the foot of the stairs. If this went wrong, that guy would try to crack his skull open from behind.

  Ricky stood before the window, staring out at the backyard. His faint reflection in the glass displayed a hostile expression. “A couple ounces,” he said. “You know that's gonna cost you.”

  Grinning so hard it hurt, Jack closed his eyes. He shook his head and tried not to laugh. “I can afford to pay,” he insisted. “But I'm gonna have to see the stuff before any money changes hands.”

  “You think I keep it here?”

  In his mind's eye, Jack saw Bobby coming closer. The big guy was now standing in the middle of the hallway, clutching his sweater in both hands. Jack had to give him this much credit; he was quiet.

  “Why not?” Jack countered. “You're pretty tough.”

  The young drug dealer remained perfectly still, but the tension in his posture made it clear that he was ready to spring into action at any moment. “Now what would make you say a thing like that?”

  “I heard rumours,” Jack explained, slowly making his way into the living room. “Some guy named Alex stiffed you for money, and you beat him up pretty hard. Pretty much everyone is talking about it.”

  Ricky uncoiled like a snake, one hand reaching for the gun in his pants. He pulled it free, then tried to take aim.

  Jack spun and hook-kicked, one foot whirling around to strike the gun and knock it away. He came around, then slammed his open palm into the other man's chest. This sent Ricky stumbling backward.

  The kid went right into the patio door, colliding with enough force to crack glass. A wince twisted his features, and he let out a painful squeal. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Kill him! Kill him!”

  Jack seized the man's shirt.

  Applying a Bending to Ricky's body, he changed the direction of gravity's pull so that the drug dealer would fly toward him. Then he quickly stepped aside. Ricky went flying across the living room, colliding with his buddy.

  Both men dropped to the carpeted floor, landing in a tangle of limbs and groaning their displeasure. “Who the hell are you?” Bobby wheezed. “How the hell can you move like that?”

  “He's a Justice Keeper.”

  Covering his lips with the tips of his fingers, Jack felt his eyes widen. “Such terrible violence,” he said, approaching the pair. “What is the world coming to when a man can't sell illegal narcotics in peace?”

  “What do you want from me?”

  Jack closed his eyes, letting his head hang. “I came to investigate Alex's story,” he said. “But after this pitiful display, I've concluded that you couldn't possibly have a symbiont.”

  “He doesn't need a symbiont.”

  The sound of a woman's voice sent a spike of fear through him, and he looked up to see a newcomer standing in the front hall. Tall and slim, she wore gray cargo pants and a black shirt under a trenchcoat.

  Her face was pretty with high cheekbones and sharp dark eyes, and her auburn hair was cut short. “So this is what it takes to get a word with you,” she said, striding through the hallway. “Gotta hand it to you, Kid. You're stubborn.”

  “Who are you?”

  “My, how quickly we forget.”

  The memories were there in a flash. This was the Keeper who had come to retrieve Anna three years ago. “Jena Morane,” he said. “I should have figured it out by the fact that you keep calling me.”

  “There some reason you don't answer?”

  “Plenty of reasons, all of them good,” he shot back. “Why don't you tell me how you managed to track me down?”

  Jena stood with arms folded, smiling down at herself. She shook her head with a soft sigh. “It wasn't hard with a little detective work,” she answered. “Suspension or no suspension, you're not the kind of guy who can give up the fight.”

  Jack was cognizant of the two men lying on the floor. Until now, they had remained still, but Ricky seemed to believe this moment of distraction was a good time to make his next move. “Stay down.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Touching fingertips to his forehead, Jack massaged away a headache. “And if you were a petite blonde, I might take you up on that,” he muttered. “But at the moment, the best you can hope for is some cuddle time with your lackey.”

  Slipping her hands into the pockets of her trench coat, Jena approached him with her head down. “I called Detective Carlson,” she said. “He told me where to find you. I was hoping to catch you before you got here.”

  “Why's that?”

  “Because the drugs these boys are taking amp up strength, agility and resistance to pain,” she said. “The only reason you didn't have a desperate fight on your hands is that neither one of them has dosed in the last six hours.”

  Jena squatted at the edge of the living room with hands on her knees, smiling down at the two men. “You boys have been dabbling, haven't you?” she said. “How very, very naughty of you.”

  She looked up at him with a tight frown, blinking slowly. “If you want answers,” she said softly. “You'll just have to sit down and have a chat with me. I'm thinking tomorrow afternoon on Station Twelve.”

  And just like that, he was pulled back into the world of Keeper politics.

  Chapter 6


  The small section of Jena's desk – now tilted at a seventy-five degree angle to form a computer screen – displayed the image of a copper-skinned woman who sat with her back to a wall lined with paintings. Raela had always been pretty with big dark eyes and raven hair that fell to the small of her back. “Are you settling in?” she asked.

  Seated in a big comfy chair with her hands on the armrests, Jena grunted. She wore a pair of black cargo pants and a white t-shirt. Her hair was cut boyishly short.

  Jena closed her eyes, shaking her head with a sigh. “As well as I can be,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “These people are bizarre, and we both know that I was never meant to be a bureaucrat.”

  She swiveled around.

  Her office window looked out upon a field of stars that twinkled against the inky blackness, stars that drifted slowly to her right as though someone had grabbed the night sky and twisted it around. In truth, that was an optical illusion caused by the rotation of the space station.

  Chewing on her lip, Jena let her head hang. She felt her eyes drift back and forth. “I don't know why they picked me, Rae,” she said. “But if I had to guess, I'd say Slade was trying to put me out to pasture.”

  “Could you turn around?”

  She obliged the other woman, spinning around to find Raela glaring at her through the heads-up-display. “You've always been too quick to dismiss your leadership skills,” she said, nodding once. “You may be a loner, Jen, but you know how to make people get the job done.”

  Jena frowned, then pressed a palm to her forehead. “You're just trying to get my pants off,” she muttered. “Which I'm quite willing to do without flattery.”

  “Jen.”

  “Okay, okay,” Jena grumbled. “I concede the existence of my impressive leadership skills. Now, can we move on?”

  “Have you assembled a team?”

  Trailing her fingers across the tilted glass pane that served as a monitor, Jena flung Raena's call window onto the surface of the desk. Now the other woman appeared to be staring up at the ceiling, though the image on her side would not have changed. Icons on a field of blue replaced the window.