“What are we doing here?” asked Celia. Instead of responding, Cutter sank into the shadows of a narrow alley.
Celia toed the edge of darkness.
As bright an idea as she had thought at the time, Valerie’s eyewitness testimony provided no new clues. With no leads to speak of, Cutter had driven them here. To this darkened alley.
She could not figure out what this place had to do with Valerie Von Medvey or their case.
“Jack…” she called out.
The darkened alley answered back. “Paying a visit to an old friend.”
Celia mustered up fleeting ounces of courage and crossed the threshold, leaving daylight behind. A loud squeak startled her and she jumped back. At her feet, a rat scurried through a few wrappers and disappeared behind a dumpster.
At the end of the alley, Cutter was staring at a steel door. Probably a foot deep judging from the over-sized rivets used to bolt it in place. A door like that wasn’t needed for security. Celia guessed it was an indicator of the clientele this place catered to. Any less and even having a door installed would be pointless. An exposed hole in the wall would serve the same purpose.
Cutter knocked—shave and a haircut.
Instead of two bits, a slot slid open at eye level.
Two eyes appeared. Grime wedged between every crease and fold of skin. “What’s the magic word?”
Cutter shoved the barrel of his ZeroTwelve pulse pistol between beady eyes. “Hugo around?”
It happened so suddenly, that the only response from behind the door was: “Fuck me.”
“I’d rather not. I’ll settle for opening the door, though. Slowly.”
A latch slid through a rusty cylinder. A few clanks later, and the steel door eased opened on whiny hinges.
Cutter marched ahead, barely paying mind to the sweaty ape standing guard. Celia looked up at him. At his thinning hair. Sweat cut trails through years of grease on his cheeks and forehead. A disgusting trail map of grime.
The shop was almost as poorly lit as the alley. Every dozen yards or so, a strategically placed desk lamp lanced the darkness with a shaft of light illuminating various portions of the shop. Workspaces showcasing tools of the trade.
Wrenches. Soldering irons. Welding faceshields. Half a dozen iron mallets and its bigger brother, the sledge hammer.
There was a musty smell that made Celia wish she could turn off her olfactory sensor like the Black and Whites could.
From the end of the hall, a high pitched whine grew louder with each cautious footfall. Cutter walked toward it without hesitation, casually holding his ZeroTwelve at shoulder level. He seemed unconcerned with what they would find when they rounded the corner.
Celia, on the other hand, had plenty of reason for concern.
To her, Cutter was a mystery on many levels. Not just his nonchalance, his behavior so contrary to those around him, contrary to her notions of a police officer, but also that there was much he didn’t tell her.
She had accompanied Cutter for the better part of six months now, shadowed his movements, but there were things he kept from her. Times he intentionally ditched her. Places he would go.
He had his secrets.
Like this place.
She found it ironic that Cutter constantly reminded others about their partnership, constantly reminded people how much of an asset she had become. But the truth was he only broadcast their partnership when it meant he didn’t have to get a new Black and White in her stead.
A real Black and White that would accompany him everywhere, during business hours, or not. Unlike her, who was six years old (well, actually it had been five and a half since date of manufacture, but don’t tell that to the programming in her head), a Black and White would have opinions about Cutter’s taste for procedure.
She often found herself wondering how much Cutter really liked her, or if he simply preferred taking advantage of her apparent naivete.
Truth be told, he didn’t need to. She found him interesting and likable in his own Cutter-ish way. She wished he knew that around her, he didn’t need to keep secrets.
But he did anyway.
They rounded the corner into deafening inhuman noise, the roar of a jet engine Dopplering up for flight.
Two overhead lamps blasted a dome of light, spotlighting a figure hunched over an operating table. Blue sparks flew from a cybersaw, cast off miniature meteors fizzling into darkness.
On the operating table, a patient, for lack of a better word, gritted his teeth around a thick hunk of leather. He wasn’t much more than a torso and head. His left leg dangled off the table. Restraints bound it at the thigh. Three similar restraints, used to bind his other limbs, were currently empty.
Fear registered in the living stump’s eyes.
Not from the surgery.
Or the crazy man, hovering over him, dissecting him a limb at a time.
He had seen Cutter.
Clawing at the air with his nub lopped off above the elbow, raspberry red from the cauterizing agent, he pointed at Cutter. Or sort of in his general direction. It was difficult to tell exactly what he was pointing at.
He writhed from side to side, trying to push himself away, his body betraying his brain’s idea of balance.
The big man delicately held the cybersaw upright. “You keep squirmin’ and j’or gonna mess up my work. You dun wanna be doing that.”
Wildly flailing, the human torso slid off the operating table and hit the ground with a thud. He hopped on one leg, a flamingo mating ritual, slipped on his own blood, and hobble-crawled out the door.
The big man turned. He was a giant ball of meat stuffed into overalls. He wiped his hand on his overalls, leaving behind two parallel streaks of grease.
Pushing his welding shield up, he dabbed a smear of sweat from his forehead with a rag so dirty that using it accomplished the opposite of its intent.
A steel plate covered the front quarter of the man’s dome, hiding his bald pate. A Manchu mustache rode his lip and connected into thick chops. He was modded in patchwork, bits and pieces here and there, like a tattoo artist that was his own living canvas.
[https://cdn.leonardo.ai/users/4646f3a8-eea2-40b9-8e51-a0ffde0c1ce1/generations/91f60d6c-5020-4dd2-bd37-c6399e194d5a/Leonardo_Diffusion_A_Manchu_mustache_connected_into_thick_chop_0.jpg]
At the sight of Cutter, the big man sighed. “The fuck, Five-oh? We had a deal.”
“Past tense, Hugo.”
Hugo shrugged. The cybersaw wound down, throwing off a final few sparks. “Whatcha got for me?”
“Just questions today.”
Hugo laughed. “Got some balls, I give you that. I should shoot you where you stand for scarin’ off my customers. I don’t let nobody come into my place of business and show me disrespect like that.”
“Can it, Hugo. You’re lucky to have business at all. Would take two seconds to run the boys in blue through this place.”
“Who’s the chica?”
Celia stepped into the light.
“She’s not your concern,” said Cutter.
“That’s some realistic shit there.”
“Thank you.” Celia beamed. “I like him.”
“No—” Cutter put a hand on her shoulder and stepped in front of her. “—you don’t.”
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
“C’mon now, holmes.” Hugo held his arms wide, palms up. The gesture made him look almost harmless. Like a big jovial bowl of jelly made from human entrails. A frighteningly scary Santa Claus. “Thought you were showin’ off the merch.”
“I am not merch,” said Celia. “I am his partner.”
Hugo roiled with laughter. “I’ll bet you are.”
She nodded. “I am.”
Hugo’s expression went blank. Slowly, the brow over his left eye raised. He looked like he was about to ask a question, but by the time his lips parted it was already too late.
Cutter pistol-whipped Hugo, dropping him to his knees. With a move more brute force than precise, Cutter swept Hugo’s legs out from under him, laying him out on the floor. He pressed the ZeroTwelve into Hugo’s cheek.
“Didn’t need to do that, holmes. We’re all friends here. See you still packin’ your piece. You know how difficult that was to track down? That’s some thank you.”
When Cutter didn’t respond, Hugo added, “You mind getting it outta my face?”
“A little. Why don’t you tell me what I want to know?”
“I don’t know nothing. I burly know who my customers are. They pay the bills. We ain’t got no complaints.”
“Somebody’s been hitting synthetics. Know anything about it?”
“News to me.”
“Really… You. Out of the loop? Why do I find that hard to believe?”
“Hey, all my shit’s legit. I jes’ order the parts and attach ‘em. Nothing wrong with that. If someone’s strippin’ synths for spares, I dun know ‘bout it.”
“Your shit is legit?” Several crackling pops echoed in the room, as Cutter rolled his neck, stretching a crick. “You’re feeding me that line?’
Hugo’s falsetto whine was replaced with an ice cold calm. “What do you want, Cutter?”
“I want to know if there’s a new supplier in town.”
“Would you believe me if I told you?”
“Probably not. So sell me.”
“You know how I operate.”
Cutter slid the ZeroTwelve down Hugo’s chest and jammed it between a hydraulic line in Hugo’s armpit.
“Hey!”
Cutter twisted. Oil sprayed, spattering Hugo’s face. His cybernetic limb flailed at irregular intervals, occasionally nudging the side of his head. A random bounce hit the base of an operating lamp and sent it spinning.
“Fuck you, Cutter.” Hugo struggled with his girth to sit upright, cradling his dislocated arm to his body. “Shit ain’t funny. J’ou know how hard it is to operate on your own arm?”
“Tell me what I want to know and we’re gone.”
“I heard rumors. So what?”
“Let’s start there.”
Normally, Celia kept close eye on Cutter’s unusual interrogation techniques. She learned a lot about the human psyche from watching him browbeat suspect after suspect. There was a catalogue of tricks he used to coerce information from a suspect that none of the precinct’s training manuals mentioned, and was completely absent from her assimilated Black and White programing, as well.
But her focus was elsewhere.
At first, she didn’t know what to make of it. Humans would have called it a figment of her imagination if she possessed one. The shadows beyond the operating table were a black void. The scattered lights in the room aided in blinding her, rather than illuminating the area. But she swore, on the edges of the shadow, she saw something move.
“Jack…”
She stepped into the shaft of light cutting an odd angle through the room, created by the operating lamp turned on its side.
Cutter was busy pressing Hugo for info, his full weight on top of him. Even with his arm partially decommissioned, the large man was imposing. But somehow, being closer to them felt like the safest place she could be.
“Word is, it’s not about hardware,” said Hugo. “No new inventory has been circulating. I mean, nothing—nothing outta the ordinary. No new suppliers have shown up on the scene or nothin’.”
A chrome gleam extended from the shadow, like the proboscis of a deep sea monster feeling out its surroundings. It delicately tapped the concrete. Here. There. Tap-dancing around the leg of the operating table and toward a metal drain in the center of the room. It touched the lip of slatted metal and instantly withdrew.
Celia watched intently at the spot where it had vanished.
Seconds later, it returned, timid as ever, tap-tap-tapping its way into the light. This time, however, it brought a friend. A second chrome proboscis extended, examining the area in a similar manner to the first.
“Jack.”
“Not now!” Cutter snapped, turning toward her, and catching full view the strange happenings at their feet. “Oh.”
A small battalion of tools was neatly arranged in rows on the concrete floor. Wrenches. Soldering irons. Welding masks. Cybersaws. Half a dozen iron mallets. And its bigger brother, the sledge hammer.
Only the tools hadn’t been there when they first entered the chop shop. And certainly had not been there when Cutter and Hugo were tussling on the ground.
“That’s not good,” said Cutter.
Hauntingly jovial laughter echoed. “J’ou gone and done it now, holmes. J’ou upset them.”
It definitely wasn’t her imagination.
A half dozen chrome proboscises erupted from the tools, like spider legs. The front line of wrenches scuttled toward them, metal clanking against concrete. Cutter kicked at one, but it ducked behind a welding mask using it as a shield. A soldering iron raised up on its electrical cord like a cobra and lashed out at them. Cutter deflected the blow away from Celia, but the attack singed his forearm. Ribbons of smoke swirled off the cuff of his leather jacket, now more than simply weather worn, battle scarred, as well. The stale cabbage stink of lubricants and rotting tech discovered a brand new unpleasant stench as it mixed with the fragrance of smoldering cowhide.
Cutter shoved Celia behind him. The soldering irons took high positions wrapping around the operating lamps. They swayed to and fro, looking for an opening to strike. Without looking at Celia, Cutter reached backward, placing his hand against her arm. He walked backward, guiding her, making sure she stayed protected and out of harm’s way as they moved.
The wrenches and welding masks charged along the floor. Cutter increased his pace backward until they were up against the wall at the far end of the operating room. A wrench flew at Cutter hitting him in the collarbone.
“For fuck’s sake!”
Several more spinning wrenches struck him in the arm and chest. He blindly swatted at them to little avail.
The welding masks led the charge, twisting to their sides, loading wrench after wrench into their concavities, prepping to catapult them at the detective. Cutter roared in pain and swiped low, ducking an attack from an overhead soldering iron. A welding mask parried, and thrust forward, shaking Cutter’s footing. The wrenches dodged around wild swipes, loading themselves into the welding masks, or failing that, simply flinging themselves at the detective.
Celia had never witnessed such an attack formation, not in a modern city, not where violence tended to be much quicker and more violent—results of laser beams and the sheer brute force of technology—but she had seen similar formations described in her databanks. A formation straight out of Greek mythology.
An iron mallet hammered Cutter’s foot. He cried out in pain, doubling over.
“Jack!” shouted Celia. “Watch out!”
She was pointing behind him.
The mallet was a distraction. Setup for the big guy.
Cutter turned. The look on his face was somewhere between shock and mild amusement. Celia couldn’t tell if he was about to laugh or have a stroke.
A sledge hammer bounded toward them like a giant lop-sided bunny rabbit. It had used the front waves of smaller tools to weaken their defenses, and waited for the opportunity for a direct strike. Hopping on the end of its handle, it moved with an erratic wobble, a poor but frightening effort to counterbalance the massive weight held at its head.
Cutter rolled forward, as the sledgehammer fell, cracking the concrete behind him. For a few seconds, it lay in the crater, motionless. Then, with immense effort, it began to right itself. From its lumbering movement, it had to have a dead-blow head. Thick steel forged around a hollow, filled to capacity with steel shot to minimize rebound. A design insuring maximum transfer of energy to whatever it hit.
In this case, Cutter.
In his escape, Cutter had rolled into the lower level of oncoming tools. They hammered and clawed at his ankles. With a sweep of his leg he cleared a semi-circle around him. But his rapid evacuation had left Celia trapped in the corner with the sledge hammer between them.
It rose up onto its handle. With an awkward hop, it thudded closer to Celia.
“Hey!” Cutter yelled at it. “Over here!”
It turned toward Cutter, but because its center of gravity was so far from its actual center, it overshot its mark and ended up facing ninety degrees to Cutter’s right. It corrected, again overshooting, but not quite as exaggerated as before. It swayed left and right, swinging like a horizontal pendulum, zeroing in on Cutter.
With the world’s slowest approach, the sledge hammer thumped and thudded into striking distance.
Cutter was successfully backing it away from the wall, away from Celia. Unfortunately, he was also backing himself into the assortment of deadly tools clambering at his ankles, filling in the semi-circle of empty space he had created only moments ago.
The sledge hammer reared back its head.
Cutter lunged forward and grabbed it high on the handle beneath the mallet head—what some might consider its throat. Wildly, it lashed side to side, but Cutter held tight. If he lost his grip, he would lose his advantage, and have to start all over again. The sledge hammer swung in a wide arc. He held tight, following the sweep of motion with his torso, but it cost him his footing, and the momentum took him with it.
He crashed to the floor, his breath knocked from him. The sledge hammer thrashed violently, trying to break his grasp, but he held it firmly by its throat. For a second, it paused, and Cutter momentarily found his breath. The reprieve was not nearly long enough. It whipped to the right, forcing itself under his body, sending them into a death roll, like an alligator trying to drown its prey. They flopped on the floor, and Cutter had no choice, but to hold on for dear life. The only apparent benefit to Cutter was that the move seemed to have prevented the other tools from advancing.
Celia dove at the spinning pair, pinning the head of the sledge to the ground, halting the death roll.
“Now, Jack!”
In the blink of an eye, his ZeroTwelve was unholstered, leveled at the tool. A red particle beam singed the air. The blast scarred the wooden handle, cutting a gash through it. The mallet head toppled and laid lifeless, but the handle continued to flop across the floor like a headless fish. A heavy thonk of wood echoed off the concrete, growing in pace, pitch, and volume, until it suddenly ceased, and the handle remained as motionless as the head it had once been attached to.
Winded and exhausted, Cutter dragged himself to Celia and collapsed.
“Jack…”
Erm, he groaned.
The wall of welding masks parted and two cybersaws, the heavy artillery, pushed to the front-line. A high pitched whir cut through the clanking and scratching. The body of the cybersaws spun, spitting off blue flecks of energy.
“Alright, Hugo…” said Cutter. You’ve made your point. That’s enough.”
Hugo stepped into the light. “Not for me it isn’t. Cost me a paying customer. How much j’ou think that’s worth, holmes?” The tools idled, vibrating to the rhythm of their internal motors. For the moment, no longer threatening attack, but not exactly dormant, either.
“An arm? A leg?” Hugo kneeled down next to Cutter. “An eye, perhaps?”
“Knock it off.”
Without warning Hugo swelled, his head rolled back, pointed toward the ceiling, and the room filled with raucous noise. The walls rattled with laughter, creating a perfect amphitheater to capture the resonance of his voice. This wasn’t just his place of business. This was his theater, a stage where he performed his art.
He waggled his pointer finger in a come-hither gesture. “Let’s see ‘em.”
Reluctantly, Cutter raised his hands, letting the ZeroTwelve hang from the trigger guard. Celia made a similar gesture, minus the weapon.
Hugo relieved Cutter of the ZeroTwelve.
“The hell is all this, Hugo?”
“Insurance.”