"With the death of Rayyan Minhas, a famous basketball player, the basketball team for Pakistan has decided to return home to mourn. And so, the season playoffs with the NBA have been ended. Now we’ll return to the CEO of Bhatti Enterprises, Ahmed Rehman Bhatti, who on a somewhat related note, was friends with Rayyan Minhas and designed a custom Neural Chip for him…”
Adam listened in on the police’s radio, hearing about the day's news. It seemed banal, except for the death part, but it was a welcome distraction from having to explain to the policeman that they had not broken in (lies) nor tampered with the crime scene (more lies). The dragon stared balefully at them, clearly put off by their presence.
“So what were you doing here?” Asked the officer.
“Oh, you know. We were picking berries, drawing art, and had a bit of wine,” replied Qasim.
“You drink wine?”
“Yes. I mean, no. It’s an expression.”
“Say the truth and only the truth. Why were you there?”
“We were messing around.”
At that, Adam glanced over. Qasim was making weird hand expressions, giving off the feel of an extremely nervous man. His erratic jumping up and down contrasted with his build. The cop was indifferent. He wore the traditionally grey uniform, with an AK-47 at his back and a Glock 44 at his left side. The Glock was pointed upwards, a choice or a mistake of someone who wasn’t quite right in the head. He had a solid mustache, fitting of a certain red plumber, and was wearing sunglasses. At night.
His dragon was a different story. The orange Komodo Dragon has inflated muscles and a large snout. All of which was dwarfed by the sheer range of its cybernetics. A jetpack for scaling houses. Missile launchers of low-grade explosive material to defeat foes in heavy armor. Its chassis could withstand heavy machine gun fire. And of course, at the front of its chest, an X-42, model Delta, a massive canon that emitted an energy blast.
The only non-lethal weapon a dragon had and it looked like its most dangerous arsenal. Life can be strange sometimes.
The cop’s muscles tensed as it started to rain. It was a drizzle, upsetting but not unbearable. The water would gather around at night and drain away by morning.
“You were messing around?” asked the cop. He took out a noteback, as though the sentences were not already being recorded on his phone.
“Yeah. We saw this big sectioned-off area and thought ‘Let’s take a look around.’ And then the female assassin showed up to slit our throats. Not the best idea I’ve idea but certainly not the worst.”
“What was the worst?”
“You don’t wanna know man. I told my friend over there and now he loses sleep over it. So trust me, you don’t wanna know.”
The police officer frowned. Taking a page out from the notebook, he handed it off to Qasim and walked towards Adam. The man had a certain feel to him, as though he was tired. Chatting him seemed like a bad idea if his twitchy fingers were anything to go by. Adam stood still, awaiting a line of questioning that would either lead to a bodybag or a life behind bars.
Qasim quietly tip-toed behind the officer, the Dragon noticing but not saying anything.
“Alright, let’s make this clear. Arresting you two bozos is below my time. And shooting you isn’t the right response to this. So let me hear this from you. What were you doing?” He questioned with an annoyed tone.
“We saw a sectioned-off area and decided to investigate. It was the home of a client of mine. I work in historiography.”
“Really? What was the client asking for?”
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“That’s a bit confidential, officer.”
“As is a crime scene. Hurry up, I don’t have all day.”
“He wanted to know about…his family history. If they had a series of hallucinations that made them believe they were heroes in stories when life was fairly mundane otherwise.”
“That’s quite specific.”
“When people get bored, they try to stave off the boredom. It’s a unique feeling, boredom that is. It’s not something that alters you, in any meaningful way, and at the same time, it is. Maybe I’m not saying it right but when people get bored, they tend to dream. That dreams are so unrealistic that no one would ever confuse them with reality. Here in lies the problem, what happens when you have a realistic dream? Nightmares can awaken a person in sweat, the fear causing their heartbeat to increase.
And then my client, a man with low blood pressure, starts having nightmares. They’re good for him, in a strange way. They raise his blood pressure. But the nightmares weren’t happening as a result of him watching a scary movie or witnessing a traumatic event. The nightmares were…sequential. As though one nightmare leads to another. He was remembering things. He was remembering terrible things. Slavery, rape, and terrors from another world.
He was remembering his past. The past of his ancestor.”
There was a brief silence. The three of them, minus the dragon, were standing on the side of a road leading into an apartment complex. Adam’s car was nearby, a bit further away from the police officer’s car. It was a standard blue car with red and blue headlights to signal the presence of an officer of the law. It also had a Helium-3 fuel tank and a keyboard in the form of a hologram at the front, allowing the officer and the person he was arresting to view the law leading to the arrest in real time, along with miscellaneous functions like music and art.
Qasim was now ahead of the car and behind the officer. He placed his hand against the officer's back pocket and that was all Adam could see, for a couple of seconds later, he pulled away and quietly returned to his starting position, the dragon observing him in silence.
“Well,” the officer spoke at last “Historical psychosis has been increasing these days but you’ll forgive me if I don’t take your word for it. Come with me down to the station and explain your story there. I’m sure the Commissioner will be more than welcome to see a brand new face.”
Adam sighed. Well, it might be a short life behind bars. He motioned at Qasim to follow, only to be stopped by the officer.
“Not him. That man looks like an idiot. He likely followed whatever hare-brained scheme you had. And if he didn’t, well, better one in jail than both. Let’s go.”
He opened the door to his car and Adam arose. He almost stepped inside but then he saw the bars. The bars separate the officer from the supposed convict. He stepped back out, only to see the officer leveling the pistol at him.
“You had a chance,” he stated mockingly. He pulled the trigger.
A long time ago, Adam would have begged for his life. But there was a very slim margin of error in the lock time of the pistol. Lock time or action time refers to the time interval, measured in milliseconds, from when the trigger of a firearm is activated until the firing pin strikes the primer, and depends on the design of the firing mechanism. A long lock time increases the probability of the shooter pulling the sights away from the target before the bullet has left the barrel, a common shooter error that can lead to poor hits or even misses.
Lock times were impossible for humans to react to. But it had been raining just now. And the gun had accumulated water, hurting its internal mechanics somehow.
At least, that was the theory. The time lagged long enough for Adam to grab the gun. He throat-punched the officer, preventing him from activating the dragon, and reversed the pistol's line-of-sight into his enemy's leg. In a second, the shot went off, wounding the officer. The dragon, now on full alert, readied its missiles at the police car.
“Hai Allah!” exclaimed Qasim. “He’s been shot! Dragon, we need to get him to a hospital.”
The dragon, docile as a dog, nodded. He jumped a fair distance to the police car, picked up the officer, and ignoring the cop’s protests, activated its jetpacks. With a flourish, the water beneath the jetpack evaporated and it soared into the air, leaving the duo behind. The cop car automatically activated its Lock and Key protocol, the doors getting closed on their own as the keyboard shut off from the outside.
“You know,” said Qasim nonchalantly “I half expected him to shoot us right then and there.”
“He couldn’t have. The Dragon makes sure of it. Once I started to get out of the car, the man could have claimed that I was resisting arrest and then shot me.”
“Why didn’t you get in the car?”
“The bars. There was a glass pane alongside them. As though to prevent noise from the inside from leaking out.”
“What does this mean?”
“It means that you and I are in for a long mess. Come along, I know a guy. He's seen this before.”
The duo walked towards Adam’s car, with Qasim striking a Jojo pose along the way as if to style on the police car. From the corner of his eye, something moved but by the time Qasim turned around, it was already gone.