Chapter Forty One

Rick

In the morning, at Cris’s bedside, Gerald wakes up to the emergency staff responding to another alarm. His heart races as half a dozen people in full gowns shove their way in around and push him back. All he sees of his friend, before being ushered out, is a glimpse of his mostly purple face under a mess of apparatuses keeping him alive. His heart sinks, and all he can think of is why they didn’t just take their damn money and disappear like Cris originally wanted. He just couldn’t let it go, and now it’s all his fault.

He’s been told, how many times already, that his partner doesn’t have much of a chance of living. They’ve removed a good amount of his skull, some of his brain, and used every extreme measure modern medicine has to offer. This will likely be the moment that finally takes him. From out in the hallway, he can hear the two tall surgical robot arms that were at the bedside rapidly move into action. He can only imagine what the nightmarish implements are doing with him.

While he stands in the hall, overcome with more grief than in all his life, he looks around himself helplessly. Down the far end of the glossy white corridor, both of the investigators that had replaced him and Cris are heading his way. Their rifles are hanging at theirs sides on their slings, but their hands are still ready to reach for them. All he can manage to do is stay upright while they come for him.

He imagines Cris dying all alone while the two of them drag him off to a cell somewhere. They stop in front of him, but surprisingly look a little more supportive than he was expecting. While kirk holds back with a stiff posture, Rick puts his hand on his shoulder and offers earnest condolences.

“We’re not hauling you off anywhere bud. We just need to know what happened, ok. Can you give us a little more than what you did last night?” Rick doesn’t mention that he’s already viewed the security footage of everything from the alley and the parking lot.

Gerald turns a little to his right, to look down the hall where there’s a small waiting room off to the side. “Yeah… Yeah we can go ahead and sit down.” He just wants it to all be over with.

While Rick sits down with him, Kirk heads off on his own to get the three of them some coffees. “We got a pretty good look at the woman that did this to Cris, but we’re not exactly sure how she did it. Cris was… something went wrong before she even attacked him. Do you have any idea who these two women are, or why they did what they did?”

He knows damn well Rick has seen more than what he’s letting on. There’s not a square inch of Welan city that’s not on video. There’s going to be no fooling anyone. “The woman that got to Cris goes by the name of Five, Five-Two specifically. She’s one of Space Security Service’s robot assassins, and this isn’t the first time she’s killed like this. The other woman is Valerie Morgan. She’s one of the ex-Werker scientists that made the robots like Five. She’s at SSS as well, where they’re making more of those things.”

Rick lets out a deep breath through his nostrils. He’s very skeptical of the robot claim. It sounds absurd. He saw the woman on the footage. She was no machine. She was scared. If it’s true, it makes sense why he would try to gun her down on the spot. Clearly, he should have. Regardless, he doesn’t like how Cris handled her. Robot or not, it was violent, and personal. He intended to take the woman alive, and she clearly fought for her life to make sure that didn’t happen.

He gives Gerald a little bit more information, to see his reaction. “I’ve been informed by the staff here that Cris had a high amount of drugs in his system when this happened. It was nearly enough to kill him. You want to tell me about it? Did he have a problem?”

“No. No fukin way! Cris is as straight-laced as they come man! You know that! That little Five bitch had to have done that to him. I don’t know how, but she had to have. I told you guys what kind of gangsters those people are. IS this what has to happen for you to finally understand that?”

When Kirk makes it back, he hands the two of them their drinks, but still doesn’t sit down. There’s not much compassion on his face, mostly suspicion. By how quickly he is drinking his coffee, it doesn’t look like either of them will be sticking around long. It’s clear they have somewhere to be.

Rick wants to believe Gerald, but he didn’t see how Five could’ve done it, not on the video. The whole thing was weird. It looked like Cris had a few screws come loose all of a sudden. He’s never seen anything like it. He keeps thinking about the recording from the cruiser and how quickly things escalated. It was in no way a simple traffic stop. Somehow, the two women knew it was Cris and Gerald before they were even pulled over. Worse, is that they weren’t going to call any of it in. Seeing two women take on investigators like that, without any hesitation, has him worried about what else SSS has in store.

Rick looks up at Kirk, and then back down at Gerald. “Alright. We’re not gonna keep you any longer. I don’t imagine you’ll be leaving Cris’s side anytime soon. We’re gonna go and deal with this. General or no general, a line was drawn in the sand and they’re the ones who crossed it this time. The fun and games are over.”

Gerald is no longer torn apart by grief, so much as he is pissed. “Oh, now you say the games are over?”

As Rick gets up to leave, he and Kirk share looks. They already know how it’s going to play out. The two of them are going to get pulled farther into an epic debacle they’ve only seen the very tip of so far. Whatever Cris and Gerald have been up to, it’s about to full-scale blow up in their faces. He imagines Sy, already waiting for them with a cigar in his smug face, ready to tell them how things going to go.

After retracing some of the route Valerie and Arma had taken, Rick decides to cruise around the space industries sector for a few minutes. He and Kirk find everything in the area to be strangely quiet. There’s no equipment being moved around like usual. With what’s going on up in orbit, everyone appears to be on some kind of lockdown or something.

He already knows that what happened to Cris is not going to go anywhere at SSS. It’s not even relevant what Five is, robot or not. Both she and Valerie were clearly in danger before they were even pulled over. They were being hunted, and they knew it. All he wants to know, is why, what the hell is going on, and how to stop it. When he parks out front of the SSS building, he patiently considers his options. As much as he wants to believe his fellow officers are as true to their oath as he is, he wrestles with the shameful feeling that they may not be.

While Kirk waits in the car, he reluctantly goes up to the front door and stands there. When he reaches up to knock on the armored glass, he pauses, wondering why he’s even bothering. He lowers his hand and looks back to Kirk, in the cruiser with slumped shoulders, considering simply leaving. It’s depressing. Unexpectedly, there’s a quiet click from within as the door unlocks .

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

He waits there casually as he watches the murky shade of someone approaching the dark glass door from the other side. When it slides open, Sy is there alone, standing in the large lobby with his hands in his pockets. Neither of them have smart remarks for one another this time. They nod at one another, only saying each other’s names before heading upstairs. When he takes a seat in one of the studded leather chairs in front of the desk, Sy leans against the dark walnut countertop over by the decanter in its shelf. It’s not a time for drinking, so he doesn’t offer.

Rick leans forward in his seat, with his elbows on his knees, and hands folded. “As I’m sure you’re aware, one of your employees has had a run in with one of our investigators, Cris. You want to tell me about it? You know what she did don’t you? An assault on an officer like this… well… the murder of an officer like this, cause that’s what it’ll turn out to be, changes things. I felt we had an understanding, after last time, and we honored that. But this… this happened downtown Sy. Do you understand at all how serious this is?”

Sy tries his best to express a shred of compassion, or even respect for Rick. The man’s brother in blue did just die, but he expected him to have figured it out by now. “Look, I really didn’t want to have to go through this with you guys again. I don’t want to sound like a dick, but honestly, this is such a bunch of shit.”

Rick stiffens up, and almost shouts at Sy. “Killing a cop! And investigator! This is a bunch of shit to you!”

“Rick, we are an organization of hired goddamn gunslingers here, all of us! We are the space cowboys, the pioneers, the defenders of the space frontier! This small time Sherriff shit is not particularly of high importance when we’re up there ceasing the fucking red-planet for our country! You understand? I have personally gunned down foreign nationals in a fight for the moon! I tried to tell you that Cris and Gerald are rogue, and I told you guys to not fuck with us! You gave them their badges back and let them openly stalk our people!”

Fired up, Sy stands from the edge of the counters and glares at him. It’s hard to push the letter of the law when it’s been so disgraced. “Yeah, well, just exactly who was hunting who this time? You’re girls were not exactly sprung upon whil’st out on a grocery run, now were they.”

“Those two fucks have been playing with a lot more than just fire here, and for years! We have humored them and dealt with this bullshit for how many years now? Ten, fiteen, almost twenty? They literally signed up with a competitor and tried to kill three of mine so they could pirate a billion dollar American shuttle.”

Now Rick knows he doesn’t have a leg to stand on. “Why didn’t you say anything about this? All you would have had to do is call man!”

“What could you have done, not given them their badges back? Big deal.” He trows his arms out wide, accidentally giving Rick a show of the polished magnum pistol under his jacket. “They were contracting on a foreign continent dude. None of what they did has any legal bearing here.” He can’t believe he’s going to say it, but he does anyway. “We were going to kill them either way. It’s was our only choice, our only way of making sure we are safe. They came all the way back from Africa for one single purpose, to kill as many of us as they could.”

Rick sits back in his chair, disappointed in having lost all his steam. “Fine. I’m gonna arrest his dumb ass when I get back anyway.” He turns his eyes up at Sy. “That’s not why I even came out here anyway. I left Kirk in the car, so it’s just the two of us. I want to know what’s going on with the robots. Everyone on the planet saw your man up there in space, or whatever he is. You gotta level with me on this one man. You clearly don’t’ have it contained. I can quiet some things down, but the optics are not good. One of your folks still took down a Welan City investigator. The precinct is going to want to see justice.

Sy would rather tell Rick that he’s going to have to take the fall, for the mistake of giving Cris and Gerald their badges back, but he doesn’t have to. The real answer is much bleaker than that. He kind of likes Rick, and he doesn’t actually want to see him take the heat on something like that.

“Sure, I suppose I can give you Five, get you your justice.” He gets a kick out of the sudden change of look on Rick’s face. “I mean, we’re just gong through the motions right. That’s all justice really is anyway. It’s fake, by the book, anemic garbage.”

“Bullshit. You’re not gonna just give her over.”

“Sure I will. I mean, if you want me to. Then it’ll be real, right? You’ll have that whole giant new can of worms you’ve always wanted. As Aaron would say, you can hang her by her neck, or whatever you do these days, and pat yourselves on your backs. Just give us her body back when you’re done. That shit’s not cheap.”

Rick is dumbfounded. “Uh…”

Sy interrupts him. “I don’t know when you’re gonna get it through your thick outdated skull, but this mind copying slash immortality thing we have going on, will steam roll your asses flat if you don’t watch your ass. Fuck around and find out. The rules have changed. Your rules don’t mean shit anymore. They’re not even applicable anymore. We can outrun you, outgun you, outwait you, and outthink you. I like you man, and I feel you are the responsible kind of law man this world needs. So I’m being honest here when I say that I want you to be on the right side of this when it comes full circle. We are not the bad guys, but we will choose our lives over all else.”

Rick can only think back to the time before he was promoted at the precinct. He remembers Cris and Gerald. They used to be the real deal. They were the embodiment of truth and honor in their day. Now, they’ve been run through the Welan city garbage disposal and shit out in the drain. They aren’t even recognizable as good men anymore. It breaks his heart. He wonders if maybe the two had learned the hard way that the law will never really get the job done. It scares him to think that the others were right, that SSS is nothing but a scourge on the world. Either way, they’re about to get a hell of a lot more powerful.

“I want to talk to them. I want to talk to Five, Valerie, all of em.”

Sy cringes a little, putting his hand on his chin. “Mmm, I don’t know. I mean, you could maybe talk to Five, but Aaron and Arma are heading off to Mars, so that’s not gonna happen. Look, Five had to do what she had to do. I’m sure you’ve seen it on video by now, as resourceful as you are. I saw the alley footage myself. Cris was going to brutalize her. She didn’t want to do it, but she had to. Trust me when I say that Five is the gentlest, kindest, most understanding one out of all of us. She was absolutely beside herself when she got back. It was pretty traumatizing. She’s not a robot, ok, she’s as real as you and me, and she feels all the same as we do.”

He and Kirk did see the video, and how Five reacted when she ran away. He only wishes Sy weren’t so arrogant. He could probably reason with the man well enough if he didn’t have such spite for him.

“No, that’s fine, not right now anyway. I don’t see how it will do any good. I believe Gerald is the more pressing matter for the time being. I’ll be back though. I need to know what this is, what damage it can do, and how we need to respond to shit like this. I don’t want any more surprised Sy. Can you keep a friggin lid on this shit for a little bit?”

“Alright. When you’re ready, I suppose I can give you a little look and see. But damnit, you can’t be running your mouth around town, and I mean it. I’ll cut your ass off like gangrene if I smell anything on you.” He gives Rick a sincere handshake and even pats him on the side of the arm. “The coming change isn’t going to be easy Rick, but I do mean it when I tell you I’d rather work with you on this than fight you. Think ahead of this while you still have the chance.”

When Rick gets back to the cruiser and opens his door. Kirk looks up at him amused. “That didn’t take long. Did he pretty much shit all over us and run you off again?”

He sits down and shuts the door about as gently as he ever has. Thinking about what Sy told him has kind of taken a lot of his gusto away. He gives Kirk a small smile and shakes his head. “No actually. I don’t believe we even called each other names. I don’t know if it went better or worse than what I was hoping for, but I bet I could probably walk back across the parking lot without being shot dead. I don’t know what in the hell we’re gonna do with these guys Kirk, but we definitely need to get Gerald under lock and key first.”