He pitched back and dropped me just as I heard the shot ring out. I saw his leg collapse into a Z shape between the right knee and ankle as the flesh and bone were torn away and he fell to the ground. He rolled over on his side, staring bug-eyed at his leg.
I found my weapon and limped over to it. I knelt down and picked it up, then vomited.
I watched the steam rising off it, waiting to see if there was any more coming.
After they were done scraping the kid off the dock, maybe we could pull something off him. The department would never foot the bill to buy up exclusive rights in order to sit on the footage. If it was bad enough, they could file an injunction and put a freeze on it, but not before it aired.
Two men were cuffing the shooter, while a third tended to his leg. Another man was approaching the body of the kid, not looking optimistic.
“You’re a dead man,” the shooter growled through his wrecked mouth, glaring up at me.
“I know.”
“He knows who you are,” he said. I was about to ask him what he meant by that when one of the men jammed a tranquilizer into his neck and he went limp.
“Have the medics pin his leg back together and make sure he doesn’t bleed to death,” I said. “Then I want him back at HQ and three keycards deep before anyone else sees him or talks to him.”
“Got it.”
I started making my way back to my car before the aftershock of the stims kicked in and knocked my body chemistry far enough out of whack that the ignition’s safety catch would refuse to let it start. By the time I fell into the driver’s seat, my stomach felt like a pound of ice was sitting in it and I was sweating despite the freezing cold. When I pressed my thumb to the ignition, the light flashed yellow, but it started.
Leaning back, I routed around my emergency systems and manually popped the last stim. A few seconds later, the aftershock backed off, but it threatened to come back, the worse for waiting.
Ice and grit crunched under the tires as I pulled out and aimed for the home office, which was the next best thing to home.
2
Fuse
Calliope Flax—Stark Street Police Station
“…where it seems some number of revivors were impounded by the FBI,” the guy on the TV said. I was squatting on the floor of the jail cell with my head back on the bricks and leaned against the bars that penned the boys from the girls. My face and head throbbed like hell.
I opened my eyes and looked up through the bars at the TV on the wall, which showed the front of some building. Blues flashed, and a crowd pushed at a line of cops to try to get pictures.
“No official statement has been made,” the voice continued. “Witnesses, however, recorded the removal of several revivors…. No word on how many total were recovered, or what they were for, but this was clearly an organized raid on a major operation. Lead investigator Nicolai Wachalowski was not available for comment.”
“On the subject of revivors,” another guy said, “a bill that would allow corporations to utilize revivors to fill a portion of their manufacturing jobs, the so-called five-percent bill, was voted down yesterday by a fairly wide margin.”
I shut my eyes again, wishing at least the hangover would let up. The last thing I remembered from the bar was that I’d shot some pool with the guys. A bunch of college snots showed up at some point, rich-bitch fight groupies and pretty-boy wannabes. One thing led to another, I guess, and here I was, waking up in the slammer.
“How about that shit?” a voice said near my ear. I rolled my head against the bars that one of the college boys had sat down on the other side of. Pretty boy had a dark shiner under one eye, but besides that he had skin like a baby. His hair and clothes said he wasn’t from here and didn’t belong here.
“How about what shit?” I asked. He pointed at the TV, where some old guy with white hair pissed on about something.
“This is a requirement moving forward in order to remain competitive in the global market,” he said. “End of story. The bottom line is, the representatives are afraid of this bill because revivors don’t earn wages, so they don’t pay taxes, but what we are talking about here is a very small percentage of the overall workforce, even when compared to the percentage of overseas positions.”
“Big-business interests,” the news guy said, “including such corporate powerhouses as TeraSine and CyberTech, vow to continue pushing for what they are terming labor reform.”
“It’s bullshit,” pretty boy said.
“What the hell do you care?”
He shrugged. “Could affect you.”
“If those assholes give all the shit work to dead guys, I’ll be screwed—that it?”
“Well, it didn’t pass,” he said.
“Score one for tier three.”
I was hoping he’d beat it, but he didn’t. Out of one eye, I could see him looking at me.
“You’re Calliope Flax,” he said.
“It’s Cal, asshole.”
“Right, Cal.”
“What do you want, an autograph?”
“I’ve seen you fight.”
“You watch the chick fights?”
“I’ve watched you fight.”
“Most guys only tune in to silicone.”
“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with how you look,” he said, and just like that, I’d had it with his smooth skin and his good looks. I clubbed the bars in front of his face and made him jump as everyone looked over.
“Settle down in there!” one of the guards yelled. The kid held up his hands.
“I didn’t mean—”
“Shut up,” I said. “Whatever you’re selling, I don’t want it.”
My head hurt and I was in no mood. He seemed to get it and stopped talking, but he stayed put. I thought I would hit the bunk, but I was too whipped to want to get up. He took something out of his sock. A phone, I thought. He kept it near his crotch and punched in numbers with his thumbs.
“They’ll take that,” I said.
“I know.”
He kept at it for a minute, then snapped it shut and stowed it back in his shoe.
“Call your mom?”
“Posted bail.”
“Yeah, right.”
“The code contacts a remote ’bot,” he said. “I send the GPS coordinates so it knows who to contact, then it contacts their server, looks me up, queries how much the fine is, and posts it over the wire. It’s
