Taken by surprise again, she noted.
“You wanna die?” Abenayo shouted after the junkie. “Stop now or I’m putting you down!”
He kept running as if he hadn’t heard her. Tera knew he had, however. His pace became over eighty-percent more erratic after the threat. She was even detecting a quickening in his pulse. The poor guy’s heart sounded like it would give out any second.
Abenayo slowed for just a moment to deploy a gun barrel from her wrist. A small holographic sight appeared where a human might wear a watch and she raised the limb to eye level, her fist stretched outward like Superman in flight.
“I’m not telling you twice!” she yelled.
The perp kept running.
Abenayo stopped, took aim, and fired a single shot.
The man dropped, skidding face-first along the street. He screamed out as a bit of blood splashed onto the pavement.
Tera ran past Abenayo, who “holstered” the weapon back into her forearm. As the rookie got closer, she could see that her partner had shot the perp through the thigh, rather than “putting him down” like she had threatened to do. That wasn’t to say he was fine; the round had put a golf ball-sized hole in his leg. From the looks of it, though, it missed his femoral artery. Even with the shoddy medical care available in the slums, he should survive.
“I told you!” Abenayo barked at the writhing man as she made her way over to him. “I told you what was going to happen and you didn’t listen, did you?”
Tera started providing the perp with medical attention. She pulled one of the instant suture kits from her belt, slapped it down on the man’s gushing wound, and pressed hard until it sunk into place in the perp’s flesh. He screamed in agony.
“Richard Mariner, you are under arrest,” Abenayo said. She knelt over the injured man and zipped his wrists together behind his back with one of her tether cuffs. “You will be given a trial by the Council of Shell City to either prove your innocence or guilt. You are charged with one count of domestic abuse, three counts of narcotics possession, one count of evading the court —”
“I didn’t do nothing!” the man cried between pained sobs.
“— and one count of evading arrest,” Abenayo finished. She tugged on the perp’s wrists as she hoisted him up, and Tera could see the discomfort in his eyes. “You got him, Alvarez?”
“Yeah,” Tera replied, almost as if pulled out of a daze. She reached out and secured the criminal. He stumbled a little as she pulled him in front of her, but she caught him before he collapsed.
A crowd of slum dwellers started to gather around the scene. All eyes were pointed at the two I.I. cops and the crying, pathetic man in their custody. They spoke among themselves, but none of them addressed the officers.
“I can’t go to the camps,” the man whimpered, just loud enough for Tera to hear. “I’d rather die. You can’t send me there.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Alvarez!” Abenayo scolded.
Shit, Tera thought. Forgot the hardest part of the job: no compassion.
“This way,” Tera told the perp, tugging him along as she started to lead him to the nearest hyperloop station.
She sighed as the man stumbled again and she kept him upright.
This is going to be a long walk, she thought.
Abenayo radioed into headquarters while Tera started to escort the prisoner. The senior officer disconnected with a scowl on her mechanical, plastic-covered face.
“Alright, everyone, get the fuck outta here,” she ordered the crowd as their murmuring only increased. “Show’s over.”
There were some disappointed groans from the slum dwellers as they started to disperse. Good entertainment in the ghettos was a hard thing to come by, but they all knew better than to mess with a pair of Council police officers.
Game On
The magical ax glowed in Ethan’s hands as he made a left turn at the end of the hallway. The sound of dripping water and distant chains rattling met his ears. He took each step slowly, uncertain what dangers were waiting for him around the corner.
The dungeon corridor he was in was dark, the only illumination coming off the blade of his enchanted ax. Still, it wasn’t bright enough to see more than a few feet ahead.
Just before Ethan reached another turn, he thought he could hear the sounds of monsters farther down the way he was headed. He muttered a short incantation to himself to bolster his strength before going after the noises. A small shimmer of color encircled him as he finished the spell.
Then, with a deep breath, he found the courage to take the turn.
There was nothing. He was surprised.
Then he heard the sound of scuttling. It was the cacophony of a hundred or so dead nails clicking on the stone floor from somewhere within the darkness. Ethan stopped short and concentrated on the motion. He knew the sound and knew what kind of a fight he was in for.
He gripped his ax tighter and squared his shoulders, bracing for the wave that was about to rush over him.
Ghouls, he thought.
With bated breath, he waited. Then he saw them. By the dim illumination of the enchanted ax, he could see the pale, featureless faces of at least half a dozen of the dungeon’s denizens. They were shaped like people, but with longer arms. Where there would be fingers, elbows, knees, and a jaw, there was instead bone, sharp and deformed.
Ethan started his backswing just when they came into sight. The corridor wasn’t particularly wide, but he still had enough room for a devastating blow. He swung with a roar and chopped three of the ghouls in half with a single strike.
This didn’t perturb the other undead monsters. They didn’t care when their comrades fell — they wouldn’t be down for long, anyway.
One of them took a swipe at him with its sharp, bony claws. His armor deflected it, but that would only go so far. It wouldn’t matter how much plate armor
