“I don’t think it’s about covering things up anymore,” Erik replied, jerking the flitter above a line of barely moving civilian vehicles. “Once the department made that announcement, he had to figure we would close in on him quickly. If he believes half the crap he’s been saying, he needed to graduate to the real deal.”
“Despicable.” Jia’s jaw tightened.
“Don’t worry. We’ve got this guy. Have any idea what he might be carrying, Emma?”
“There are multiple human thermal signatures insides,” she announced. “Ten.”
Erik grunted. “He’s got friends or fellow cultists.” He accelerated, the black dot in the distance growing rapidly. “Good to know.”
Jia frowned and looked around. “What’s your plan? If you use disruptor bullets, you might be able to bring him down, but there’s too high a chance of him crashing into a tower or platform.”
“He’s running, so let’s hope he runs until we can find someplace. As long as he’s in the air, he’s not on the ground shooting someone.” Erik’s hands tightened on the yoke, and his lips curled into a sneer. “There’s no way I’m letting this bastard get away after shooting a man right in front of me. Emma, could you route some laser comms through the drones?”
“I’m sorry, Detective Blackwell,” Emma replied. “The ones I’m controlling lack that ability.”
The MX 60 continued to close in on the fleeing cargo flitter. The suspect’s vehicle whipped over air lanes of traffic. Several other flitters almost collided, one coming so close, its grav emitters almost scraped the top of the trailer.
“In a sick way, you’re right,” Jia murmured, anger etched on her face. “We’re giving him exactly what he wants.”
“For now.” Erik turned the yoke to avoid an idiot who was ignoring both the lights and the emergency vehicle transponder signal. “Prison isn’t that thrilling. Getting shot by me isn’t that thrilling. Or maybe it is. I suppose he’ll find out soon enough.”
The cargo flitter dove under a walkway filled with people. Traffic was thinning, but there were still far too many towers and platforms to avoid collateral damage if they brought him down hard.
Erik kept his MX 60 a few meters above and to the side of the cargo flitter in case of a sudden stop. The suspect vehicle didn’t turn.
“Damn it,” Erik muttered. “Is he going to ram right into the tower?”
“There’s not enough time to shoot him even if we wanted to,” Jia observed. Bile rose in the back of her throat.
The suspect’s vehicle zoomed right toward an open lower walkway stretching between two close towers. People scattered, fleeing in either direction as the large vehicle descended. It whipped around, the trailer shimmying.
Erik pushed on his yoke, heading toward the walkway. He pulled up at the last minute, his vehicle bouncing. Jia wondered if the grav field had just saved the car from damage.
“Don’t need a drone now for laser comms.” Erik tapped a few commands on the console screen of the vehicle. “This is the NSCPD, Leem King. We’ve got drones on you. You’re not escaping. You’re supposed to be a real human, so own up to the fact you just committed a real crime. You got anything to say?”
The Leem King leaned forward and opened the driver’s side door. Something small fell from the cabin. A bright blinding flash appeared and vanished in an instant. A billowing cloud of blue smoke consumed the cargo flitter.
Erik threw open his door and kept it open, crouching behind it. Jia dug out his TR-7 and a few magazines and tossed them on the driver’s seat before opening her own door and crouching behind it, her stun pistol out.
“The smoke isn’t obscuring their thermal signatures much,” Emma reported. “The ten men are exiting the back of the vehicle. The driver is near the front.”
A bullet slammed into Erik’s door, bouncing off with a spark. He grabbed the TR-7 and jammed in a magazine before returning fire. Jia added several stun bolts to the mix. A barrage of bullets erupted from the smoke striking the MX 60.
“How we doing, Emma?” Erik asked. Another few bullets smacked into his door.
“Minor damage, but nothing that can’t be fixed. I am grateful almost every day for that particular modification. Wait. The driver is now moving toward the back.”
Jia hissed. “If we wait for reinforcements, he’s going to get away. If he’s covered his tracks this well, he might be on the way to the HTP by the time we figure out who he is.”
Erik grinned. “But we’ve got something they don’t.”
“An unhealthy attachment to beignets?” Jia asked, searching for her next shot.
“No, an AI with good tactical sense. On three, we rush to the back. Emma, you spin the car and start moving sideways. I know you can’t get decent speed that way, but we don’t need it. I just want you to hover as a moving barricade. Ready?”
Jia nodded.
“It’s always entertaining taking down idiots,” Emma declared.
“I thought you called them gun goblins,” Erik asked
“Semantics,” she replied.
“One,” Erik began, “two, three.”
The detectives darted to the back of the Taxútnta. Emma swung the MX 60 with precision, using the side thrusters to push it forward. Erik and Jia repositioned behind the wider barrier and popped up to squeeze off a few shots. Someone shouted in pain.
“Two are down,” Emma announced.
Erik squeezed off another few shots. “We’re making this too hard on ourselves. Can you highlight their positions and feed them to our smart lenses?”
“Ah, excellent idea, Detective. One moment. I’ve added a bright red dot above the driver. He was wearing a chameleon mask, so he’s likely to be the Leem King.”
Jia nodded as the colorful outlines of the suspects appeared, along with the red dot over one man creeping toward the back. “For all this talk of courage and thrill, he’s ready to run when things get dangerous.” She fired bolts into two men. Both collapsed. “We need to get close to him. There are too many innocent people farther down the walkway and on the platform.”
“Then let’s wrap it up here.” Erik downed a few more as both detectives continued moving forward. The enemies’ near-constant stream of bullets continued to spark and bounce off the MX 60’s armored exterior, but they didn’t land a single shot on Erik or Jia. The two of them were halfway to the cargo flitter.
“Yes, let’s end this.” Jia rapid-fired her stun pistol, jerking from target to target, not waiting to see if they fell. The Leem King ducked behind the truck as she downed the last man.
Erik nodded approvingly. “Nice.”
She jumped up and sprinted toward the thinning smoke. Erik hurried after her, taking the chance to reload.
Even though they didn’t have a direct line of sight, Emma’s AR contributions let them track the suspect as he ran away from the back of the truck. The detectives charged through the smoke, almost tripping over the stunned and wounded men.
A swarm of red and blue flashing lights approached.
“Emma, let Dispatch know our situation,” Erik ordered. “We’re going after the Leem King.”
“He’s more than a mere gun goblin, I’ll grant him that.”
The detectives cleared the smoke. The suspect continued rushing down the walkway. Although people fled and cowered, there were hundreds, if not thousands, of people on the platform. Many were rushing into one of the nearby tower entrances.
The Leem King shimmered and a half-dozen of the man appeared, all running in the same direction.
Jia gasped. “Huh?”
Erik snorted. “Holoclone. Old military tech, but it doesn’t fake a thermal signature. It’s why the military stopped using it. They’ll change position on occasion to make it harder to pick out the actual target.” He narrowed his eyes. “My tracking’s messed up. What about yours?”
Jia blinked her eyes a few times. She could see the dark, distant figure of the Leem King, or at least his clones, but his thermal signat
ure had vanished, along with the dot.
“Some sort of interference suddenly popped up,” Emma reported.
Erik growled. “How many tricks does this guy have?” He sped up, trying to close the gap. “It’s like he’s trying to piss me off.”
Jia matched his pace, heart thundering. They passed several people lying on the ground, their hands on their heads, whimpering. A few people stood, amused looks on their faces, watching the whole thing unfold as if they were in a cop drama.
“I can’t just take a shot,” Erik complained. “I can hit any of those clones fine, but if it’s not him, I’ll be sending out rounds that could hit a civilian in the distance. These bullets maintain lethal velocity for a long time.”
Jia hissed in frustration and pumped her legs. Sweat poured down the side of her face, and her heart thundered from her effort. They couldn’t let the suspect escape. He’d murdered one, maybe even two, people and spread his sick ideology over the net.
He’d purposely set down in an area filled with innocent people who he probably dismissed as nothing but fake humans.
She raised her pistol. Stun bolts weren’t great long-range weapons. They lost too much energy at range compared to bullets, let alone rifle bullets. There was a narrow window of opportunity given her distance from the suspect and his distance from the tower. If she waited much longer, there was a chance of an innocent person getting hit. A stun bolt was usually safe, but that wasn’t the same thing as always safe.
I can’t flinch, Jia thought. I have to take the shot.
Jia shouted in rage as she fired her first shot. Like before, she didn’t wait as she moved to the next target and fired. Her first shot passed right through the hologram. Her second went wide. She slowed and continued shooting. The bright white bolts continue to launch.
Her eyes widened as all six remaining Leem Kings collapsed to the ground.
Erik continued running.
She stared at the downed suspect and his holoclones, taking long, deep breaths. She wiped sweat off her forehead as her partner arrived at the stunned, masked man some distance away and kicked his weapon out of reach.
“Good job!” Erik shouted. He knelt and pulled out a binding tie. “I’ll admit there are a few situations where a stun pistol comes in handy.”
He finished securing the prisoner and grinned down at him, his smile feral.
“Thrilling enough for you, Mr. Real Human?”
Chapter Twelve
Jan 15, 2229, Neo Southern California Metroplex, Police Enforcement Zone 122 Station, Interrogation Room
Erik grinned at the young blond man sitting across from him. “Comfy?”
The suspect shrugged. “I wish my hands weren’t tied, and you made me sit in that cell for a while. If you didn’t know, It’s not very comfortable.”
“We didn’t just do that blood test for fun. We wanted all the Dragon Tear out of your system before we interrogated you. Getting high on Tear is not the smartest thing to do when you’re about to go on a criminal rampage.”
“Oh. That. I figured I’d try it. I never had it before, and some was available.” The suspect sighed. “It’s kind of overrated. Drugs trap you, make you fake, but I couldn’t know until I tried.”
Jia glared at the man. “We advised you of your Article 7 rights, but let me make something clear. We’ve run your DNA, so we know you’re Maxwell Worthington, age twenty, and we know you only came to Earth six months ago to attend school in Neo SoCal. We also found a few interesting reports. There were a lot of strange incidents in Aurora on New Pacifica shortly before you left. A mysterious underground man calling himself the Zitark Shaman pulled similar garbage. No murders, though. Had to up your game now that you’re back on the mother planet?”
Maxwell smiled. “I’m not admitting I’m either this Leem King or the Zitark Shaman, and I don’t think you can hate either of them for what they’ve done.”
“I’m a cop, and you broke the law. Not only that, you killed someone.”
Maxwell leaned forward, his smile shifting dangerously close to a smirk deserving of a punch, or at least a good slap. “Can you kill someone if they’re not alive? Besides, can you prove it was me? All those men who shot at you were paid anonymously, or I suspect that’s the case. I bet you checked that already anyway, being good little fake human cops and all. I’m also betting you have no way of directly tying that gun to me, and I guarantee it doesn’t have my DNA on it.”
“Farouk Gamal was alive, you antisocial monster,” Jia snarled. “Until you put a bullet in his brain. We’ve got camera footage of you taking the shot. We chased you, remember? We know where you fired from and when.”
The man shook his head, his smirk widening. “You saw someone wearing a chameleon mask taking the shot. Not me.”
“The same mask you were wearing when I stunned you.” Jia scoffed. “Do you really think you’re going to get off with that weak defense? We have clear footage of you from the moment you fired to the moment we took you down.”
“No, you don’t.” Maxwell clucked his tongue. “I seem to remember some smoke. Maybe one of those deadly mercenaries took the shot.”
“We had thermals on you in the smoke, idiot,” Erik mocked. “We’ve got you dead to rights. You got too cocky, and you’re going down.”
Maxwell licked his lips. “Have you ever considered you might be the one who’s too cocky, you cog in the system?”
“Why?” Jia shook her head, her face a mask of disgust. “Your father is a senior vice-president at Hermes. You were all but guaranteed a good career. Your stupid pranks were one thing, but you just killed a man.”
Maxwell sighed. He looked at Jia with pity in his eyes. “I’m not confessing to anything, but let’s say that if a man is born in privilege, he is in a better position to see the corruption of the world.”
Jia frowned, and her jaw tightened.
“You two are cops,” Maxwell continued. “You can’t deny the UTC is sick. Neo SoCal is supposed to be a shining beacon at the heart of humanity, but it’s filled with gangsters, terrorists, and self-serving corporations pulling the strings of the government for their own corrupt purposes.”
Erik chuckled. “So, what…because there’s crime already, you get to kill who you want? Try again. That’s about as convincing as the Grayhead drivel we had to pull out of our brains.”
“I’m not confessing to anything,” Maxwell insisted. “I’m just saying that a smart person, a man with resources and intelligence, might have had an epiphany wherein he realized the best way to save society was to engage the few people who aren’t fake, who aren’t cogs in the corrupt system, by making them face their fears and awaken their true selves. To help them become real. In a war for the heart of humanity, there will always be casualties. The man you keep complaining about sold his dignity for money. He was fake, already dead.”
Jia scowled at Maxwell. “You were the one setting up hoax crimes to feel like a big man, at least before you turned to murder. Aren’t you the fake?”
“Whatever you think you understand about the Leem King is wrong.” Maxwell sneered. “Sometimes people need to be lied to in the short-term to help accept a long-term truth. The Leem King has been leading people to awaken. He knows it. He’s found ways to reach the people, and they reach out to him.”
Erik shook his head. “Too bad, your alien highness, your kingdom is done.”
“Admitting nothing, I’ll note that I’ll be out of this place soon enough once my father arrives.”
“Money can’t buy your way out of a murder charge,” Jia answered.
Maxwell laughed. “You fake humans don’t get it, do you? You’re upholding the corrupt power structure, one that rests on money. You’ll see soon enough. You’ll realize only real humans can accomplish anything.”
News drones swirled the outside of the police station, both smaller cameras hovering around reporters and higher, larger models.
A stern-faced female reporter looked into her camera drone
. “The police have admitted that they have arrested Maxwell Worthington, the son of Jacoby Worthington, a senior vice-president of the Hermes Corporation. The younger Worthington is implicated in a shocking and brazen daylight murder, in addition to allegedly being the mysterious Leem King whose bizarre stunts have recently taken a potentially murderous turn.”
“We’re showing the drone footage in five, four, three, two, one…” murmured a remote tech into her earpiece.
The viewers were treated to a drone image of Jia and Erik as they advanced behind the MX 60, firing at the criminals.
“As you can see,” the reporter continued, “Maxwell Worthington was captured after a daring high-speed chase that ended in a gun battle on a commercial tower walkway. The Obsidian Detective, Erik Blackwell, and his partner, Lady Justice, were involved.” A crackle of activity caught her attention. She turned, and her eyes widened as she pointed to the cameraman. “We’ve been waiting for this moment.”
The drone turned toward the crowd to capture a frowning dark-haired man in a suit stepping out of a black luxury flitter.
“We have the confirmed arrival of Jacoby Worthington,” announced the reporter.
Jia groaned. She stood outside the interrogation room, watching the news stream on a data window from her PNIU.
“I don’t get it,” she muttered.
Erik shrugged as he took a sip of coffee. “What? We expected his dad to show up. Maxwell said he would.”
“Not that. This Lady Justice thing.” She rolled her eyes. “You came into the department under the Obsidian Detective Act. It makes sense that they call you the Obsidian Detective.” She eyed him as if she wondered if he’d had something to do with it. “I didn’t come in under a Lady Justice Act.”
“Just roll with it. It’s not so bad. It’s not like they’re calling you something worse.” Erik grinned.
Jia frowned as her PNIU chimed. She tapped it. “Oh. Great. Now my mother’s sending me a message. She’s watching the stupid news report, and asking, ‘Is this why you couldn’t give me a call?’” She typed a quick message. “I was supposed to call her to schedule dinner, but she can wait. Parents.”
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