by Jamie Sawyer
The cop went back to that dark rectangle of the drain entrance and we waited on the verge until he was ready to see us.
That turned out to be a lot longer than we’d expected.
Several hours passed. No one spoke to us.
Day turned into night.
The skyline became a dirty orange blaze, the sun setting uncomfortably on another day. Seemed to do nothing for the heat but a breeze began to filter down the exposed drain – sending off a fine skeet of grit. Overhead, warning beacons on the Skyshield occasionally flickered: a reminder of the UA government’s unwavering vigilance. That hadn’t seemed to deter the little man in the storm drain, whoever he was.
The flashers kept flashing: reds and blues, more imposing by night.
Carrie had given up complaining about my decision to call in the cops. Instead she was just hungry and tired, and had decided to focus on that. I tended to agree with her on both counts.
The cop in the trench coat eventually separated from the rest. Putting on his best and brightest ‘I’m a cop, but I’m okay’ smile, he approached us.
Carrie sat beside me, hands clutched in front of her knees, feet together. She looked a lot younger, all of a sudden.
“I’m Detective Romero,” the man said. “Pleased to meet you both.”
He held out his hand and I gingerly shook it. I’d seen adults doing that so it seemed the proper response. He did the same to Carrie but she edged backwards without explanation.
“You kids did the right thing calling us,” Romero said, nodding along with his own spiel. It was obviously working for him, even if Carrie didn’t buy it. “What you found is very interesting and important.”
He twitched his nose, rubbed it. Like all of the other cops, the boss wore a full filter: plugs jammed into both nostrils, a white-fabric face mask dangling loose around his neck. His voice sounded a little muffled behind the gear.
“Don’t you kids got filters?” he asked. “You should be wearing them outside. Whole lot of fallout in this sector, especially at night.”
We both shook our heads, mutely. I vaguely understood that fallout was bad and should be avoided, but not much more than that.
“Well, let’s see if we got some in the car. I’m sure that we do. Come with me and we’ll have a chat.”
Detective Romero was a slight Latino man; maybe once handsome, but face now lined heavily from too much hard work and exposure to the Detroit elements. Not as old as my father, not a young man either – Romero was clearly a seasoned officer. His clothes looked like him: weather-beaten, downtrodden. His black-leather boots were badly scuffed, and his trench coat was battered and lacerated.
One of the harness-bulls – that was what my father always called the beat-cops: in their heavy armour jackets, with their mirrored protective glasses – stood over by the lead air-car. As Romero approached, he nodded, and the uniformed cop opened the car. The gullwing door cracked with a creak of the hinges.
“You ever been inside a cop car before?” Romero asked me.
“No,” I said.
“Then this’ll be something new.”
He ushered me into the passenger side. Carrie scrambled into the car behind me; the front seat was easily wide enough to accommodate both of us. Romero went around the other side of the vehicle, opened his own door and slipped into the driver seat. With both doors closed, it felt like we were in a protective cocoon: warm, safe from the outside world.
This must be how cops feel, I thought.
“Guess this must be kind of nerve-wracking for you?” Romero asked. “Finding that body and all.”
“I don’t know what that means,” I said. “But it wasn’t very nice.”
Romero laughed: a not-unpleasant sound, but not convincing either.
“You kids see the robot?” Romero said, pointing out past the windshield at the metal support bot. “He’s always a hit with the kids.”
“Yes,” I said. Copying my sister, I added: “It looks kind of stupid.”
Romero laughed. “Well, you know, he is a little stupid. That’s the thing about robots; they don’t think like people do. You tell Big Ron – our police bot – to do something, he’ll do it for ever. He’ll do it until his batteries run out.”
“I guess,” I said.
“You’re not much older than my nephew,” Romero said.
The car dashboard was an enticing combination of flashing diodes, tri-D projections, and exotic controls. Taped above the main police scanner was a creased and stained photograph: Romero and several young children. The picture looked old. He held two fingers together; kissed the tips, then touched the picture. I noticed that his hands were worn and tired. A sector tattoo – some police unit badge – coiled around his wrist.
“That’s him,” he said, referring to the photograph. “His name’s Diego. Gone off-world now, to the Cloud Cities. They say it’s real nice up there.”
Romero fished in the pocket of his coat. Pulled out a chocolate bar, broke it in half. He passed the first chunk to me then leant over me to give Carrie the second. We both took it and started eating immediately. Even at eight years old, I knew a bribe when I saw one – but I was so hungry that I didn’t care.
“You kids ever think about going into space?”
Carrie and I both shook our heads.
“That’s a shame. I’m sure that you’d both like it. They say that Mars is lovely right now. Been terraformed and all.”
“Okay,” I said, finishing the chocolate.
“Now, let’s talk about what happened,” Romero started. “First, you don’t got to worry: you’re not in any trouble.”
“I told you, Carrie,” I whispered.
She nudged me in the ribs. “Shut up, Connie.”
“That your name – Connie?”
“Conrad. And she’s Carrie.”
“That so?”
“Yeah. I’m Conrad Harris. She’s my sister.”
“That’s nice. Having a sister or a brother is nice. Family is important. How was the sweet?”
“Good,” I said.
“Glad to hear it. Like I was saying, you don’t got to think you’re in any trouble. You did the right thing calling us. You kids probably know that we don’t got to answer call-outs from the Metro any more.”
I nodded. I didn’t really understand why that was but the change had happened some months ago. The cops just stopped coming out this way; stopped answering calls for help. The politicos talked about better resource management, about “handing the streets back to the people”, but mostly it just meant that the police had given up on the Metro.
“I made an exception, because you two sounded like good kids,” Romero continued. He was staring out of the windscreen, looking at the cordon now formed around the drain door. “It’s important that you understand what you saw down there. That you realise what it actually was.”
I nodded. Swallowed down the last of the chocolate. It left a greasy aftertaste in my mouth. The man’s voice had changed: developed a harder edge. I’d heard that change in an adult’s voice before, and I didn’t like it one bit. It was the voice that my father used when he was angry. It was the voice that he used when he spoke to my mother, before she had died, when I heard them talking through the bedroom wall.
Romero fidgeted in the driver seat. His trench coat bulged at the chest – obviously fitted with flak armour plates but also something else. He pulled a pistol from a concealed holster. Slammed it onto the dashboard.
“You kids know what this is?” he asked. He removed his hand from the weapon and let us get a good long look.
“Yeah,” Carrie whispered.
“Our daddy – dad – has one,” I said. “He’s in the Army.”
The gun was big and silver. Multi-barrelled. Shiny like it had been looked after, polished. I’d seen more than enough guns for my age. But while I’d seen them around, I didn’t know what it really was: other than dangerous and threatening.
Which was, I guess, exactly what
Romero intended it to be.
Carrie’s body had gone rigid beside me. She was never good at hiding things. Her fear was like the worst contagion and I felt my heart rate quickening too. We were in a closed space, trapped in the car.
Is he really going to shoot us…?
“Like I say, you need to understand what you saw down there. It wasn’t what you think, for starters.”
“What did we see?” Carrie asked.
Just as I’d been hypnotised by the flashing lights outside, now she was hypnotised by the silver gun. Her eyes were pinned to it as she spoke. She was asking a smart question, I figured, because it told us exactly what we were supposed to think.
Romero laughed. “Nothing, really. Some kook in a soldier’s costume. A prank in bad taste, is all. What would the Directorate be doing in the downtown? Doesn’t make sense, does it? Important thing is: what you saw wasn’t real. What you saw wasn’t a proper Directorate soldier.”
We sat in the cop car for a while.
All I could hear was Romero’s heavy breathing.
“Now, some of my colleagues down there suggested that I might need to take you to an all-night surgeon. A proper head-man, get you wiped. I told them you weren’t like that. I told them you were good kids.”
“We are,” Carrie said.
She sniffed loudly. I couldn’t bring myself to look round at her, because I suspected that she was crying. Not my Carrie; crying in a cop car.
“So there’s no need to take you to see the psychosurgeon, get a mind-wipe. All right? We got an understanding?”
“Yeah,” Carrie answered for both of us. “We understand.”
“That’s a deal then, and we don’t go back on deals. Did either of you take anything from the drain?”
“No,” Carrie said. “Nothing.”
I didn’t disagree with her.
“Good. Make sure this stays between yous two. Don’t tell anyone else, all right?”
“Yeah,” Carrie repeated.
“That’s real important – the most important thing of all. No talking about it.” He tapped the gun, sitting just above that creased photo of his family. “You seem like good kids. I’m sure that you won’t talk. But if you do, I’ll know it. I got people on the streets, even if I don’t answer call-outs. I hear any chatter, I’ll know it was yous that talked. I got your names now; I know you.”
Down in the storm drain, two of the forensics officers were carrying something bulky between them. It was a black body bag, I realised. They quickly moved between the drain and a waiting ambulance, doors shut immediately. Had to be the soldier. Gone in seconds. The robot was up and walking now, with big imprecise strides: eyes panning the storm drain. The thing looked frighteningly unpredictable.
“Cease and desist,” it blurted in an electronic voice, loud enough that we could hear inside the cop car. “Disperse immediately.”
Other officers were already clearing away the yellow crime tape, erasing any physical evidence that they had been here at all. The street people responded to the threatening cant of the metal man, and they had evaporated just as quickly. They wouldn’t talk, for just the same reasons as us: because they were scared.
The radio crackled, and Carrie and I jumped.
Romero laughed again. “So glad that we got that all cleared up. You kids want a lift back home? It’s getting late. On a warm night like this, street dogs’ll be out.”
“No,” I said. “We’ll walk.”
Carrie and I attempted to walk from the drain quickly and naturally, in a wasted attempt to maintain our dignity. I’m sure that it was pretty obvious we were shit-scared. As soon as the reflections of the flashing lights were no longer visible on the sidewalk, we broke into a frantic run. Took whatever back-routes we could to make ourselves invisible although no one gave chase. The cop’s message had been received loud and clear.
“I told you it was a bad idea,” Carrie hissed at me, as we slowed down – a block or so away from home. “You going to listen to me next time?”
“I might. But no one will know that we called the cops. They didn’t want us to tell anyone, so they won’t tell anyone.”
“People will know. We stink of cop.”
“No one will know. The stink will wear off.”
“You even ate cop food.”
I laughed. “So did you. And you were crying in that car.”
Carrie rubbed at her eyes. Both were red-rimmed. “I had something in my eye, shithead.”
“We didn’t get the nose-filters.”
“Fuck nose-filters. Only pussies use filters. Fucking cop pussies.”
Carrie shook her head and tutted.
I stopped, watched her walking ahead of me.
“What?”
“Nothing. You just remind me of Mom sometimes.”
Carrie bit her lip, sighed. “That’s not a good thing. Mom was a stupid dipshit who got herself killed by the Directorate.”
“Don’t talk about her like that.”
“Jonathan is no better.”
“You still think about her?”
“All the time,” she said. “I wish I could forget. Sometimes remembering is more painful.”
She put a thin arm around my shoulder, hugged me tight. She smelled of sweat and fear but the human contact felt good. That was what I missed most about my mother, I decided.
We walked on through the plaza.
“Did you believe that cop?” she asked me. “About the soldier, I mean?”
“I don’t know.”
Carrie fumbled in her pocket and produced something. She pressed it into my hand.
“That look like something a kook would carry around?” she said.
I stared down at the scrunched-up and clammy banknote for a long time. I didn’t recognise the writing, nor the etched and ignoble face that was printed on it, though I’d come to do so one day. Eventually, I’d know both the image and the text very well. The UA had mostly filtered banknotes out of circulation – the unicard was the only official currency. Even so, I knew that this was something else completely.
A Chino banknote.
In the distance, the street dogs howled and howled: hungry and angry and left behind. Old Joel trilled a song in the shadow of the tenement. By now he was too drunk to bother with us.
Carrie ran ahead of me, feet pitter-pattering on the steps of the stairwell as she went.
“You’re too slow, Con!” she shouted, and I raced to catch up with her.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE DIRECTORATE
Pitter patter, pitter patter.
Rain on a tin roof.
A child’s feet on stairs.
No. Something else.
I awoke with a start.
Cold.
Dark.
The capsule had drained of cryogenic liquid, but only recently: I could still smell the cloying odour and feel the frost on my skin. It limed the glass canopy just inches from my face. Such that I could see, the world beyond was still dark.
Has the ship woken up? Why am I awake?
Thawing liquid dripped in heavy rivulets down the canopy interior. I shivered. I was naked. Still wired to the capsule I’d called home for months – or was that years? Time had passed, but how long was conjecture. A feeder tube – responsible for pumping my stomach with nutrients during the long night – rattled against the side of the capsule. I wanted to call out: to attract some attention, get help, an explanation. But an animal instinct instructed me to stay quiet. That sixth sense that you can’t justify following; that you can never adequately describe. The same sense that you learn to trust when you’re under fire.
Except that I wasn’t under fire.
I was in a hypersleep capsule—
There was a light above me. A brief stab of illumination. I reacted by closing my eyes.
Instinct, that wily old beast, told me to stay the fuck alert.
Voices outside. Harsh, disciplined.
Speaking a language that I didn’t und
erstand.
My skin began to prickle.
More lights. I recognised rifle-lamps.
That meant soldiers, aboard the ship.
Then more noise. Boots on deck plating.
So multiple soldiers.
Oh shit.
A figure stood above my capsule. Through the layer of frost and excess cryogen, it was nothing more than an outline. The lamp beam stopped moving, focused on my capsule now.
A black-gloved hand reached for the canopy. Wiped at the frost, cleared the layer of condensation left by an age in the sleep.
I could see out.
He could see in.
Horrifying clarity hit me.
A soldier, wearing full vacuum gear: a helmet with attached combat goggles. Those two bug-eyes stared back at me. Red light played across the inside of those lenses – relaying data to the wearer.
For a long second, the soldier and I just looked at each other. That gear? It wasn’t Alliance issue.
I knew those eyes.
Directorate.
An alarm sounded.
It took me a few seconds to register the noise – to appreciate that it was real, not a waking dream or nightmare. An alarm is a bad noise, my subconscious insisted. If you want to live, you’ve got to wake up. Even in my drug-addled state, that made sense. Hands balled into fists, I started to slam against the inside of the canopy. Again and again. So hard that my arms ached.
Got to get out of here! Got to get—
Nearby, someone was shouting. It sounded like the noise was coming through water: distant, fuzzy. I couldn’t make out the words, but didn’t stop to try. Getting out of the capsule had become my priority. While I struggled to understand what was being said, I could easily understand the tone: desperate, panicked.
Inside my hypersleep capsule, I was still attached to the unit by a plethora of cables and pipes, plugged in at the base of the spine. My vision was blurred; eyes aching from the abrupt awakening. Everything was so white. The strip lights above were too bright for me to handle. I pounded both fists against the plastic canopy again. It was frozen cold, heavily frosted so that the outside world was just a haze.