“All units in the vicinity of Olive and Twenty Ninth Avenue, be advised, reports of prowler in Midvale neighborhood. Described as male black man, bearded, approximately six foot three, in a grey hoodie. Suspect described as carrying an object, possibly a crowbar. “
I floated in space, eyes closed, listening to the police chatter. Behind it, a dozen audio streams flickered in and out, my ears across the city.
“Ten four dispatch, unit two three seven responding. Potential suspect in sight, questioning now.”
My eyes snapped open on hearing the second voice. In response to my eyes opening, the main display lit up below me, a blue circle superimposed on a street map. I focused on it, cutting out the four smaller screens that hung in my peripheral vision. As I focused, the blue circle grew, the map zooming in. A small red dot appeared. Nearby were two blue dots, and as I brushed my gaze across them, two of my small monitors flipped their view, lighting up a light blue around their edge to mark them. A tug of my arm against the cords that held me in the air swapped the view, and turned the other monitors blue as well, two camera views each, one to my right, one to my left.
A voice echoed in my head, just left of center, a bit behind my ears.
“Azure, that’s in range of 2 and 4.”
“Yes Crimson, I can see that.”
“Also, two three seven is Ricks and Rollington.”
My breath caught, my heart pounded. “Shit. 2 is up.”
A flick of the finger, and the small monitors swung closer into the center of my vision, taking up more of my line of sight. With a practiced mental relaxation, I let my eyes disengage from each other, each eyeball focusing on one set of screens. This sounds difficult, and really, it is. At least, training yourself to do it is, and I don’t recommend walking like that. You’ll fall. I didn’t, for reasons that I won’t go into. But you will.
As hard as it is for every day life, for piloting drones, body held tight in a web of ribbon and cables, it’s freeing. The blue spots on the main screen changed, yellow and violet. The glow around the monitors matched, and yellow took off with a twist of my wrist, the silent quadcopter disengaging from the top of a gas station awning, arrowing towards the squad car, and it’s spinning lights that I could already see in the distance through the cameras of 2.
A wry smirk and flick of my nose set the flight path, and then I narrowed my left eye slightly, squinting. The drone’s camera zoomed in instantly. It was several miles away from me, but sometimes they felt like extensions of my body.
I could see a tall man standing a few feet from the car, hands up. A long slim object in his hand slipped from his fingers to the ground as the directional mic fed me the sounds of screaming. Both doors of the car were open, officers behind them, guns pointed at the guy’s head. From the scattering of light off the dropped object, it was definitely not a crowbar, but something wrapped in plastic.
“4 up.” A twist of my other wrist and the image on my right began to move as well. 4 was smaller, and faster, making quick time towards the scene. I looked closer at the man standing with his hands over his head, knees shaking in fear. He was well under six foot, dressed in a white button down and blue jeans. Clean faced, and I doubted he was old enough to need to shave. About the only thing matching the APB was that he was black.
“Crimson, you ready with the screen on 2?”
I waited for the affirmative. Silence. “Crimson?!”
“Are you sure about this Azure? I mean… what if you cause the cops to panic?”
“Crimson, Ricks just got off suspension for the last time she shot an unarmed black man. Luckily he pulled through. Look at that face…” I zoomed in on the smaller of the two officers, a wrinkle of the brow taking a short video clip directly to storage. Her face was contorted in hate as she screamed at the man to get down on the ground, but keep his hands up and not move.
“She’s war dancing herself up to pull the trigger. It’s now or never. Just like we practiced”
I didn’t wait for Crimson to respond. I sucked in my gut, focused on the feeling of turning my right leg and popping the knee. The harness kept me in one place, hanging in midair, my thoughts and motions controlling the drone. No actual movement was needed from the waist down, cables and sensors on my arms, neck, and down my spine took the smallest twitch of muscle and nerve, converting it to commands, as I floated, suspended by wires. With the motions of the cameras, sometimes I almost felt like I was flying myself, not just watching from a drone’s eye view.
Blue and red lights flared up on the underside of 4, flashing along with a brief wail of a police siren. I watched the officers from behind, 4 hovering a good dozen feet away, ten feet in the air above them, and also watched their front from 2, still hovering silently in front and to the left of them.
Ricks jumped a little, then visibly relaxed. “Henry, I got him covered, who’s with us?”
Rollington turned, confusion on his face as he failed to see the squad car he had heard. The flashing lights caught his eye, and he looked up, nearly dropping his gun in shock. “What the fuck!? RICKS!”
She turned her head as I watched from two angles. It was a bit disorienting, but starting to feel natural after weeks of practice, having more than two eyes, and mobile ones at that. From 2, I saw her head turn, and jerk back with surprise. From 4, I saw her look me right in the eye, and panic. She stood, swinging her pistol around. I winked twice rapidly, and a bright white light flared. Both cops raised a hand to shield their eyes, guns pointing towards the ground.
I clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth. A small part of my brain paid attention to the feel of dermal tape across my face, tracing the route of the signal it picked up from muscle movement, shooting to the brain of the hive being that I became while strapped in. The speaker on 4 activated, and I spoke. My words were translated in real time, converted, and sent to the drones, no longer my voice. Two voices in unison, a deep and a high one, not quite an even step of notes apart, discordant. I worked hard on that voice, not only to make it impossible to reverse engineer my real voice, but to make it… creepy.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
“Officer Janet Ricks. The man is over six feet, and not dressed like the suspect you were told to watch for. Put your gun away.” A click of the tongue and the speaker was off. “Crimson, on my mark.”
The officers stood there a moment, stunned. Confusion quickly turned to anger, and Ricks swung her pistol at the light. Even knowing it wasn’t really me, I had to fight back panic at seeing the barrel’s dark center in my camera eye. “What the fuck is this!? Get that drone out of here! This is”
I never learned what she thought it was. A few deft movements and all the lights were on, bright spots directly in the eyes of the cops. At the same time, crunching, screeching, and wailing noises emitted from 4. I hoped it was enough to cover the sounds of 2.
The microfiber screen deployed. This isn’t one of my designs, or Crimson’s. I admit to stealing this from an unrelated project. But it works so well. Arms dropped out of the bottom of 2, telescoping several feet in each direction. Weights along the bottom of the screen were shot towards the ground by pneumatics, the fans of the drone angling out to avoid ruffling the fabric while still staying upright. A line on my screen showed deployment was successful, the screen flat against the ground.
The fabric itself was perfectly reflective on both sides, and stiffened under an electric current. Hair thin lights came to life as I activated Program NOTITS. From the cops’ perspective, if they turned around, the man disappeared, the flexible organic sheet showing an image of the street, empty.
His view was a bit different. He still saw the cops through the screen, an image of them at least. Overlaid was a bright scrolling text, accompanied by waving and pointing hands.
'RUN. They can’t see, turn around, and run to the No Parking sign. Turn left.'
As the words scrolled, an image of the sign itself appeared, to make sure he had his bearings. He stood for a minute, blinking in confusion. Just as I was about to trigger a second message, he turned on his heels and took off. I watched from 2 as he made it to the sign, grabbing it in one hand to slow and spin him, before darting off down an alley that I knew led to a main street that had no other units approaching.
Just as he reached the sign, Ricks turned, shading her eyes and waving her gun in the general direction that the man HAD been in. “Shit, where the fuck, Henry, the fucker’s gone!” He turned as well, and I cut 4’s light and sound show, sending it zooming back to its base location. The lack of sound and lights was as much of an attention getter as the sound and lights had been originally. The human brain is a funny thing, it can program itself to ignore things very quickly, and while you no longer really sense them, you still know the moment they are gone. They spun again, and Ricks actually started running after the dark dot disappearing into the distance. I twisted fingers and bobbed my head, and 2 went dark as well, the screen rolling up into the unit with a zipping sound that I hoped would go unnoticed.
“Shit, there’s another!” So much for hope. Rollington spun and aimed on instinct. A double wink of my other eye flared up lights, but not as strong as 4, 2 is made for the screen more than for distracting. Rollington squeezed off a pair of shots while squinting against the glare, and my sound feed from 2 went dead, the report at close range overwhelming the mics. The camera also flared bright in my vision from the flash. I hadn’t tested them against gunfire going off nearby, something I would make a note to do later, once my adrenalin wore off. The camera came back live just in time to give me vertigo, the drone spinning in yaw. A sharp lift and twist of my neck both popped a vertebrae I hadn’t realized had tightened, and sent the drone straight up.
I wasn’t sure if Rollington had actually nicked it, or if the passage of the bullet had simply been enough air pressure to screw with its flight, but it was spinning on a flat vertical, so it held position while shooting skyward, still spinning. I broke my eye away from the screen, my stomach threatening to lose the donut I had just eaten a few minutes ago from the motion.
At 100 yards, I realized that the light was still on, and killed it. Taking full manual control, I slowed the spin and brought 2’s flight stable again, just as 4 sent notification that it had redocked and was charging.
“Azure?”
The uncertain sound in my ear reminded me that I wasn’t alone in this endeavor. “Crimson. Status?”
“I spotted the kid on 3, ducking into Covey’s. He took off his jacket and tied it around his waist, bought a hat and a soda, and walked out.”
I chuckled, wondering how my voice sounded to Crimson through the modulation on his channel, slightly less creepy than my Drone Voice, but no less impossible to trace my real voice through. Another thing I had never tested, how laughter would sound. Or sneezing, damn, what if I coughed or belched? I would have to test that later. “Smart kid.”
“Yeah. I also had 12 on scene, a bit late to help, but, I got some great footage. Check it out boss.”
I shuddered when he called me boss. It always annoys me, but I don’t dare tell him that. Not while I’m Azure. A spot on my monitor lit up and I focused on it. Grainy video started, 12’s cameras weren’t the best, being tuned more for nightvision. I watched Rollington pick up the object the kid had dropped. The camera zoomed in as he took a large bite of the partly unwrapped stick of jerky, and walked back to the squad car. He was popping the trunk as Ricks came back into view, having given up the wild drone chase. I could see them talking to each other, but no audio at this distance, as he pulled something out of the trunk and tossed it on the ground.
My brain imagined the clatter as a slim rusty crowbar bounced twice on the blacktop before skidding to a stop. Rollington took another bite of the jerky , the large W on the wrapper catching the light, as Ricks took out her phone, taking a picture of the crowbar. She pulled out a pad to start writing notes as Rollington leaned over and started talking into his shoulder walkie.
“NICE catch Crimson. This will make some interesting online viewing soon.”
“Thanks boss. Also, status report on 2 says quad three fan is off balance. Did it get hit?”
“Not sure.” I typed in a few commands, and 2 zoomed higher into the sky, winging towards the middle of the city. “I’m sending it home, I’ll take a look at it later. I think this was a first good run, no need to push our luck.”
“Understood, time to head home ourselves to dock and recharge.”
I smiled at the metaphor, and flipped several physical switches. The harness lowered me into my chair, cables disconnecting, support wires retracting back into the mount hanging across the ceiling of the van. A few quick flips of fabric covered up the connector bands on my arms, and I took off the headset, pulling the buds out of my ears. Another switch flip, and a panel in front of me opened, my chair sliding forward on tracks to lock into place in the driver’s seat before closing behind me. With the panel locked behind me, I forced the mental shift away from Azure, and back to myself.
In a dusty, abandoned parking lot, a single worn sodium lamp swayed high overhead, the pale yellow light flickering across a white van. In the driver’s seat, a figure sat, one hand on the wheel, one on a set of grips that attached to the pedals below. They squeezed the grips, releasing the brake, and with a light press of their thumb to push the accelerator, they pulled out onto a small local street, the whizzing headlights of city traffic a block ahead.