ineffectively at his head and chest.
'I'll get the left, you get the right,' said Lisa to Brian as she stepped forward.
'Sounds good,' he replied.
They moved in, gripping their tanners in their left hands, keeping their gun hands free in case the tanners proved not to be effective. Sometimes with dusters the electrical charge didn't work all that well.
'Drop it, asshole,' Lisa barked at the man with the armrest.
He didn't even look up, he just continued to kick and hit with a fury, sending little sprays of blood upward with each blow. He was yelling at the man as he went about killing him. 'You wanna spy on me, motherfucker? You wanna spy on me?' he demanded, over and over. Yes, this guy was dusted all right. He and his friend had probably gotten it into their heads that these three welfare class public housing residents were members of 'them', that shady group those in dust psychosis always convinced themselves were after them.
'Put the club down, asshole,' she yelled a little louder. 'And I mean
Again the man did not even seem to hear her. Mentally sighing she stepped forward, cocking the hand with the tanner backward. She had to be careful to not actually shock the assailant while he was touching the victim. If he were, the electricity would course through the victim's body as well. Granted, the electricity would not actually hurt the victim any worse than he was already being hurt by the piece of plastic, but cops were not allowed to inconvenience or cause pain to anyone that was not a suspected criminal. Years of civil law precedence had been established in that manner. A cop that caused pain to someone, even in the act of saving them, could be sued successfully. It was insanity but it was modern reality.
'I hate this fucking job,' Lisa muttered, as she swung the tanner sharply into the man's right knee. It struck right at the junction, hard enough to cause the leg to buckle but not hard enough to cause any physical harm. If she actually broke the man's knee he could sue her for excessive force, pain and suffering, and a civil rights violation. She did not key the tanner as it struck him, using it as a club only. The man did not fall but he stopped hitting the victim and surged just enough off balance to allow her to step forward and, holding the tanner with one hand at either end, give him a shove. He stumbled backward three steps and then hit the broken lounge chair, falling into it and breaking it even further. Plastic splinters went spraying out across the room.
'You bitch!' the man screamed, a mad glint in his eyes as he tried to scramble back to his feet. 'They was followin' us! They was fuckin' followin' us!'
'Lay on the ground!' Lisa barked, backing up a step and holding her tanner out before her once more. 'Get down on you stomach or I'm gonna zap your ass!'
'No!' he returned, continuing his efforts to stand up. He was hindered by the fact that he was tangled up in the chair. 'Them motherfuckers was followin' us. Gotta kill 'em, gotta fuckin' kill 'em!'
She yelled at him to get down one more time and when he failed to obey her she put the end of the tanner against his chest and pushed the discharge button. Thirty thousand volts surged out of the end and into his body, overpowering his nervous system. Whatever damping effects the chronic use of dust had did not seem to be present in this case. He stiffened up as if in seizure and then crashed to the ground, his hands splayed out before him.
'Could use a little help over here, partner,' Brian grunted from her right side.
She turned and saw him struggling to pull the other duster off of the woman. He had his tanner wrapped around the man's neck and was trying to yank him backwards but the duster would not release his grip on her. Again the easiest, sanest course of action would have simply been to zap the man right there where he stood but the contact would have resulted in a liability incurring shock to the victim.
She gave a nervous glance towards the man she had just dropped — there was no telling how long he would remain unconscious — before hurrying over to assist her partner. If was for damn sure that none of the concerned bystanders were going to help him. They would stand and watch impassively as the two dusters tortured and killed him, drinking Fruity as they did so.
'Get his arms, Lisa!' Brian barked. 'Get his arms and I'll be able to pull him free!'
She bent down next to the victim and put her hands on the duster's forearm, yanking at it with all her strength. Like most cops that worked the dangerous areas, Lisa was a physical fitness fanatic. Her work-out regiment was augmented by her own volunteer work with the MPG, who's physical agility requirements, even for non-combatant positions like Lisa's, were stringent. The duster, though quite a bit larger and in the midst of psychosis, was no match for her. His arm popped free into hers, releasing its grip upon the woman's throat. She twisted it upward, putting it into a lock with her right hand so she could make a grab at his other hand. Before she could do this however, the duster released that grip on his own and swung his fist upward, striking her sharply in the face.
Pain exploded in her head, centered on her nose, and she staggered a little, seeing stars. She felt wet blood running down her face.
'Motherfucker!' she yelled, jamming the elbow of her free arm into the duster's stomach hard enough to cause tingling in her funny bone. The duster coughed and gasped as the air was expelled from his lungs and fell backwards, pulled that direction by Brian. Lisa kept her grip on his arm as Brian spun him around and slammed him to his stomach onto the filthy carpet of the lobby. She twisted the arm up further on his back while kneeling down and placing her knee on the back of his neck to keep him from rising up. Brian, releasing his grip on his tanner and allowing it to roll to the side, kneeled on the man's back. He grabbed the free right arm, which had been flailing around trying to strike something and twisted it up to join the left one.
'I got the cuffs,' Brian told her, reaching to the rear of his belt and pulling out a set. In the last hundred and fifty years of law enforcement technological advances, the basic set of wrist restraints had changed little. Though they were now unlocked not with a key but with a command from the arresting officer's belt computer, the mechanism was the same as cops in the early twentieth century had utilized. He snapped the bracelet first on the wrist that he was holding and then the one that Lisa was holding.
They stood up, each breathing a little harder than normal with the effort. Brian picked up his tanner and holstered it. The duster, dismayed to have his arms immobilized and still trying to refill his lungs with air, began to kick his feet up and down, desperately trying to make contact with one of them.
'Chill out with that shit,' Brian told him, 'or I'll hobble your ass too.'
The duster, though not exactly in his right mind, whatever that might be, was coherent enough to know that he did not want to have his feet tied together and attached to the handcuffs. More than likely he had experienced that particular form of restraint before. He let his feet lie still.
Lisa looked over at the first duster, the one she had zapped. He was moaning now and beginning to stir. Picking up her own tanner and holstering it she hurried over to him and kneeled down on his back.
'You got him okay?' Brian asked, taking a few steps in that direction.
'Yeah, he's still pretty much out of it,' she replied, quickly grabbing his twitching left arm and applying a cuff to it. She twisted it up behind his back and then grabbed the right arm, bringing it into position and joining it to its companion. He offered no resistance.
Done, she stood back up. Her face was throbbing rhythmically, with the beat of her heart, from the blow she had received. She brought her fingers up to her face and touched the nose. Her fingertips came away bloody. 'Asshole,' she spat, wanting to go over and deliver a kick to the restrained duster, knowing she would do no such thing. A cop could end up bankrupt and in prison for doing something like that.
'You okay, Lisa?' Brian asked her as he ran a scanner over the prone body of the first duster. The scanner was low-yield ultrasound device that identified and inventoried everything in the possession of a suspect.
'Yeah,' she said, reaching down for the transmit button on her belt computer. 'It's just a bloody nose. I'll make it.' She keyed her radio. 'Four delta five-nine,' she said into it, speaking to the dispatch computer back in the communications center, 'we have two in custody, three victims down. Send us two dip-hoe carts for medical treatment of victims and a full homicide assignment.'
'Copy that four delta five-nine,' said the cheery female voice of the computer. 'Two suspects in custody. I'm responding two health and safety carts and a homicide assignment right now.'
'And,' she added, 'inform the watch commander that physical force was required for the arrest. One subject immobilized with a tanner and one struck with an elbow.'
'Notification will be made,' the computer assured her.
Lisa shook her head in disgust, hating herself for feeling worried about the blow she had given to the scumbag duster and hating the department for making her feel worried about it. Any use of physical force at all required a report and notification of the watch commander. That was routine. But any use of force that was not
