Everyone held their breath and waited to see what would happen next.
Ryan’s mouth twitched. “A lazy coward?”
“Do you need me to say it in Mandarin?” Jia mocked.
He swung a fist at her head. Jia threw up her arm and blocked the blow with ease, then slammed her palm into his throat.
Ryan stumbled and fell to the floor, gasping and clutching his throat, his eyes wide.
Jia scoffed. “Oh, stop acting like such a baby. I didn’t hit you as hard as I could have. It’ll hurt for a few days.” She looked up and to the side. “Or maybe a few weeks, but I didn’t break anything. I could also beat you until you were unconscious, but I’m not doing that either. I think I’m showing rather admirable restraint, considering you just tried to assault me and are ruining my evening.”
Ryan coughed and staggered to his feet. “You can’t get away with this.”
“You think somebody’s going to haul me in from a 1-2-2 bar?” Jia pointed at him. “You swung first. I defended myself. I exercised proper restraint. Maybe if you had put as much passion into your police work as you did that punch, you would have been somebody worthy of respect.”
“Give it up, Ryan,” shouted Halil. “You’re just embarrassing yourself now.”
“You’re siding with her?” Ryan tried to sneer, but a cough ruined it for him. “You hated her as much as I did. You told me so. Is that why you stopped hanging out with me?”
“You’re a sad sack now. Look, I respect the time you put in, but Jia’s a good cop. She’s doing solid work. We were wrong.” Halil slapped a hand on his chest. “I was wrong.”
Several other officers and detectives nodded and murmured agreement.
Ryan rubbed his throat. “I can’t believe this.” He spun around, glaring at the gathered crowd. “She gets a little famous, and you’re on her side?”
“No.” Jia offered him a pitying smile. “They’re not on my side. They’re cops who care about stopping crime. No more, no less. Obviously, you don’t care about that anymore. I don’t know what you hoped to accomplish by confronting me, or what small piece of anatomy you’re overcompensating for, but if you come at me again, next time I might break something. Maybe even that small piece of your anatomy.”
Laughter exploded from the gathered crowd.
Ryan flipped her off. “Screw you. You’re not worth it.” He eyed everyone as he stomped toward the door, kicking over a barstool before heading out of the bar.
“You should have let me have my turn,” Erik complained. “But I don’t think he’ll be coming back here.” He grimaced. “Were you serious?”
“About breaking something important?” Jia picked her glass and pounded back the rest of her beer before eyeing the door he had left open. “I doubt he has much use for it anyway.”
Erik grinned. “Good thing I’m on your side.”
“Yes.” Jia nodded firmly. “It is.”
Erik sat back down, hoping she would do the same, not head out. “I see you went with your first instinct.”
Jia shrugged. “Like you said,” she agreed, finally sitting. “It’s better than shooting him.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Jia stared out the window of the MX 60, happy Emma wasn’t saying anything about what had happened in the bar.
Erik and Jia had left a few minutes after the showdown, and he was now taking her back home—although she could tell he wasn’t going via the direct route. Technically, Emma was flying, but he had said something to the AI before Jia got inside, so she assumed the impromptu Neo SoCal tour was his idea.
She finally broke the silence. “I think I did the right thing.”
Erik looked at her, no concern or disappointment on his face. “So do I. My only regret is that I didn’t get to punch him. But doing what you did, especially where you did it, was important. If you think about it, you were just doing what cops are supposed to do.”
“Throat-punching people?” Jia smiled, unsure of where he was going. “I must have missed that part at the police academy.” There was a primal thrill in physically taking down her annoying old partner.
Erik chuckled. “Sometimes, but that’s not what I was getting at. Cops don’t start trouble. They finish it when someone else starts it, even if they have to get rough. You can’t keep the peace without taking down those who disturb it.”
He looked out at the flows of flitters crossing each other, a constant line of people and their machines linking every tower in the metroplex like blood cells flowing through invisible veins and arteries. Society and technology as fractals.
“And sometimes,” Erik continued, “you can only talk to someone through your fists, and the best thing a person can do is get it over with when that’s needed. I thought something like this might happen, and the only real surprise was where it happened and that it took so long. But you heard the others from the 1-2-2. They have your back.”
“Jared doesn’t like me,” Jia commented. “He’s far from the only one. He’s just the loudest.”
“Most of those bastards used to be loud, and now they’re quiet. That means more people are on your side, and more people are afraid to go against you.” Erik scoffed. “You’re not blind anymore, and you know the truth. There’s corruption in the UTC, but it’s not impossible to fight it. It’s tainted Earth and Neo SoCal, including the department, but we have been fighting it, and doing so successfully. There are still a lot of pieces of trash in the 1-2-2, but you’ve got the momentum. We’ve got the momentum.”
“Does this end with me throat-punching Jared?”
Erik chuckled. “In my version of a perfect world, it does.”
Jia smiled, a quiet snicker escaping. Most of the concern had left her eyes. “I honestly thought the other day he was going to go for me.”
“If Halil hadn’t gotten in his way, he might have, but it doesn’t matter since you took care of Castille while you were drunk and he wasn’t. That means if Thompson had gone for you the other day, he would have ended up on the floor.”
“Probably, but I’m not sure that’s a good thing.”
“Why?”
Jia turned her hand over several times, examining the palm and back. She’d delivered a solid blow without hurting herself. “I think a showdown in a bar isn’t the same thing as assaulting another officer at the station. There would be consequences.”
“You have the right to self-defense, especially on the job. The breakroom is one of the places they record. All the evidence would be on your side. You’d also have two witnesses.”
“Would you have tolerated people brawling like that in your old unit?”
Erik looked almost wistful. The expression didn’t sit well on his face.
“I didn’t have that kind of problem with the Knights Errant,” he admitted. “It was an elite unit, and I made sure everyone coming in was compatible. I’m not going to say I never ran into that problem in my career, let alone when you consider that the branches don’t always get along.” He paused and considered his words. “But the problem here was Monahan since he let the rot fester. The blame always stops with the person in charge, and he was a bad captain.”
“What about Captain Ragnar?” Jia liked his leadership, but was he doing enough? From her perspective, investigations were proceeding, but she might be too focused on her own concerns.
Erik shook his head. “You can’t fix problems overnight, especially when they are deeply rooted. Ragnar’s doing his best. As long as he’s supporting you, whiners like Thompson can’t accomplish much. Eventually, it’ll get to be too much for them.”
“And they’ll leave on their own,” Jia concluded.
“Yeah. Exactly. You don’t even need to throat-punch them.”
Jia laughed. “I was thinking that everyone hated me because I was forcing people out.” She stopped, then added, “I’m still forcing people out.”
He shook his head. “I’m your partner. We’re both forcing people out this time. The more rank-and-
file cops we have on our side, the better. Captain Ragnar could be replaced at any moment, and if he does get replaced, I want to make sure the average cop in the 1-2-2 is ready to back us and not be idiots like Thompson or Castille.”
“I hope it doesn’t come to that.” Jia swallowed. She didn’t regret hitting Ryan. Even if she hadn’t been defending herself, he had brought it on himself. She also couldn’t deny that she had become far more aggressive in every situation in recent months, including her investigations.
She hadn’t worried about it much during her last few confrontations because they were all matters of life-and-death, but her old partner wasn’t going to kill her. That didn’t stop her from being eager to hurt him.
“What’s going on in there?” Erik asked.
“Huh?” She turned, surprised.
Erik tapped the side of his head. “I’m your partner. If you’re having trouble, let me know. I’ve seen a thing or two over the years, and I know how bad things can mess people up.”
Jia sighed and averted her eyes.
“I’m starting to wonder if I’m getting out of control,” she murmured.
“Out of control?” Erik didn’t look convinced.
Jia nodded. “This isn’t about Ryan. He had it coming, it’s just, it’s hard for me not to want to be aggressive with suspects and witnesses, and I’m more tempted to go for my weapon these days. Everywhere I go and everyone I deal with, it’s like I know they’re a criminal just waiting for their chance. That kind of aggressive hypervigilance helped me with the stalker, but it’s not always a good instinct to have in other situations.”
“Violence is the answer to everything?”
She let out a long sigh. “I’m not saying I’m ready to shoot every random suspect we talk to, but I don’t know if this is healthy. I’ve gone from worrying about shooting people to planning to shoot them first.”
Erik’s brow creased. There was no judgment in his eyes, only worry. “How long have you been feeling like this?”
“A while, but it’s gotten a lot worse in the last few months.” Jia pulled back her jacket to reveal her holsters. “If it’s not these, then it’s this.” She held up a fist. “I keep thinking to myself, ‘That scumbag is holding something back, and if I don’t do something, somebody’s going to get hurt.’”
“That isn’t unusual,” Erik explained after a few seconds of silent consideration. “I saw similar things with a lot of my newer soldiers when they got their first taste of anti-insurgency operations. I talked to a psych a little while ago, and I learned that this kind of thing can happen to people in any situation where they have to deal with the darker side of humanity and violence is involved. It’s a type of PTSD.”
“Have you felt this way?”
“Not exactly, but let me make something clear. It’s not a matter of mental fortitude or other ignorant suggestions like that. I’ve got my own issues, and they’ve taken over my life. That’s why I’m here as a cop, after all. But I’ve been wondering and worrying about you for a while. Things have looked better in the last few weeks, but we haven’t been dealing with the same kinds of cases or stresses.” Erik kept his tone even and soothing. “Before that, I had to pull you back from the brink several times.”
Jia’s jaw tightened, and a nasty taste rose in the back of her throat. “You thought I’d go over the line?”
“It’s not like I haven’t seen good men and women lose it before,” Erik explained. “I gave you a lot of heat about being naïve, but a lot of newly minted soldiers are naïve, too. They go through Basic, and they’re taught, trained, and conditioned to hate anyone who would harm the UTC.”
Both paused as Emma took the flitter down a couple of lanes and hung a lazy left turn into a more suburban area, the buildings older but well-kept.
Erik continued, “The soldiers who come from secure families on the core worlds have often never experienced anything bad, not the kind of violence you see out there on the frontier. They came from paradise. They’re patriotic and want to defend our paradise, but knowing there are bad people out there isn’t the same thing as encountering them. Being shot at by them. Seeing their victims. The deeper you have to go into darkness, the harder it is for it not to cling to you.”
Jia laughed bitterly. “So, it comes down to me being a corp princess?”
Erik shook his head. “No, it comes down to you facing real danger and real garbage. Monahan and his lackeys did everything they could to ignore the problems because they were lazy cowards. While it might scare you, you still dive in head-first because you want to make sure other people don’t have to deal with it. The wolves are always out there, Jia, and someone has to be the shepherd staring into the darkness. That’s what we are—shepherds with guns.”
Jia thought about that, lost in the view out the window. “But how do I deal with it, Erik? You’re right. The only reason it hasn’t been too much lately is because of our cases. What happens the next time I run into something that sets me off? If I attack a suspect, it’s not just my career that’s at stake.” She paused. “Well, that and the suspect, of course. However, I could throw off a case and help some antisocial piece of filth escape justice, and I’m not sure I would be able to forgive myself.”
Erik locked eyes with her, his expression stern. “I need you to be honest because I have one big question before we continue.”
She eyed him, lips pressed together. “I just admitted to almost being out of control. I’m not going to lie now.”
“This is important.” Erik’s voice firm. “The most important thing. Do you want to continue being a cop?”
“I want to keep helping people by tracking down bad people.” Jia shrugged. “I think the best way to do that is by being a detective. There are other things I might be able to do, but it doesn’t matter since every career I can think of would run into the same problem—me dealing with human garbage and being pissed.”
Jia noted Erik’s look of relief. “You thought I might quit?” she asked.
“I’m your partner, but I’m not a telepath. You can get surprisingly complicated.” Erik grinned weakly. “And if I'm selfish, you’re a great partner. I know you can beat this, so I didn’t want to lose you, but I also was ready to support you if you didn’t think you could continue.”
Jia smiled, the ray of support carving through the darkness she felt. “What now?”
“There’s no easy, quick fix,” Erik explained. “But you’ve done the most important thing. You accept that you have a problem, and you haven’t gone over the line. That means you’re going to need to work on your perspective and practice further restraint.”
She considered his words. “How do I do that?”
“Counseling is the best solution for someone still in active service like you are. They’ll help you work through some of these issues and articulate better strategies. I’ve looked into it, and I have my past military experience. Most people, with effort and practice, can deal with things, and it’s not like you’re running around shooting innocent people. I think you’ll be able to deal with it without help after a short while.” Erik gestured idly to a passing tower as if it contained the secrets to her mental health. “If you don’t want the department to know, I could point you to some people.”
Jia shook her head. “No. The department might have its problems, but it’s not the enemy. I’ll go talk to Captain Ragnar. He needs to know what’s going on. If I want him to know about the conspiracy, it seems silly to not tell him about this.”
Flitters zoomed by in multiple lanes.
“You can go faster, Emma,” Jia told her. “I think we’re mostly done here.”
“I was just trying to give you time, Detective,” the AI responded. “Your partnership with Detective Blackwell maximizes his efficiency, and I need that to make sure he is of optimal use to me.”
Erik snickered. “You could just admit you were worried about her too, Little Miss Crystal Heart.”
“Spin it however you want, D
etective.”
Jia smiled. It was good to have friends, even if one of them was an egotistical AI.
Chapter Forty
March 2, 2229, Neo Southern California, Shadow Zone
Erik stepped out of his flitter into the garbage-strewn alley. Piles of metal, plastic, and decaying food lay everywhere. “Abandoned” was a nebulous idea when there were animals and unfortunate people who found dark corners to hide.
Colonel Adeyemi stood in front of a medium-sized armored cargo flitter, a vehicle roughly twice the length of the MX 60. A few soldiers stood on either side of the officers, all wearing deep scowls.
The colonel had abruptly contacted Erik an hour earlier and told him to get his butt to coordinates in the Shadow Zone. None of the men wore uniforms, but their stances, haircuts, and builds made their military background obvious.
Even if the man wasn’t his commanding officer, there was no reason to refuse. Colonel Adeyemi wasn’t going to contact Erik about a trivial matter.
A rancid stench choked the area, and Erik put an arm up to his nose. He understood the colonel’s need to meet in out-of-the-way places for better operational security, but their encounters involved increasingly disgusting and decaying locations.
Meeting out in the wilderness was a possibility, but it might be harder to explain if someone corrupt, high-ranking, and suspicious learned about it. Face to face meetings were dangerous as it was, which was why they’d been relying more on the colonel’s prototype quantum communication system.
“You’re lucky you can’t smell, Emma,” Erik muttered. “The stench is like the entire metroplex threw up in here.”
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