"Shut up."
My eyes dart around wildly, shining my torch into the black corners. One eye half trained on my perp, the other following the light's beam that keeps coming up empty. I hear the clink of metal snapping, then feel a nuke dropped on my back in the shape of a palm. On the ground, fighting the pain, I flip over and look my assailant in the eyes.
"You're in over your head, skin job. Of course, I'm sure you knew that the moment you got 'assigned' to all of this. You've been programmed to think monsters are a thing of the superstitious past and evil must be punished. I'm not evil, Detective McLusky, I'm just hungry.” He smiles. Fangs?
"Why did I drag you into this further than you needed to be? Simple answer: I'm bored. Bored of life, bored of existing, bored of playing by the rules, bored of being safe, bored of the shadows and most of all, bored of… hey, are you even paying attention? Or did I scramble some circuits with that last one?"
I try to move myself upright against the opposite wall, "You didn't scramble skag, nut job. I don't know who you are or what you're on about, but…"
"Detective, your singularity to a cause belies you in more ways than you can tell. I'm giving you the rare gift of insight and all you can think of is playing cops and robbers."
Bang goes my gun and a hole to the left of the heart opens up on this guy.
"GAAAAAH. Can you please stop ruining my favorite shirt?" his face contorts into something flat out inhuman. Bestial rage in a dead face. Eyes blazing in cold flame.
Through the shirt hole I scope his skin melding back together with a startling lack of blood.
"You're making me starve, detective. And when I get hungry, I stop being very nice."
"What. The hell. Are you?"
"I’ve been trying to tell you. You keep interrupting."
"Cut the bull, vampires aren't real. You're just another psycho who scoured the net for a new serial killer angle."
"Listen to yourself, man. I mean, really, come on. It'll make your 'life'," he made the quotation marks with his fingers, "soooo much easier if you’d accept what your eyes see."
"All I scope is some whackjob with a lot of gene splicing that clearly left you in need of a neuroboot."
"Detective, I got my-–reboot, I guess-–a loooong time ago. You can't stop me, but please, still try. I'd hate to not have more talks like…"
BLAM! BLAM! Agonized yawp.
Shooting out his knee caps dropped him to the ground. I slam the butt of my gun into his temple. Out cold.
I drag the body out of the alley and vid the empty corner of the street where my squad car should be. This night is one ridiculous defeat after another. I dial up dispatch for back up, keeping quiet about my missing squad car. I'm told they'll get there when they get there.
I'm stuck with this spliced up freak, with uncharted regenerative skill, who also claims to be a blood sucking creature of the night. That's going to force R&D to reevaluate detainment tech.
I turn around and my perp is gone. Guess it's another night playing the game. He couldn't have gotten far. He's toying with me and said he's hungry. He needs to kill again, like an addiction to murder. There's gotta be someplace nearby where he can get a fix.
I run frantic through crowded streets. It's the prime time for nighthawks and it's gonna make his life easier while making mine exponentially harder. Masses teeming about as I scan down each alley. I pass streets searching for bars, clubs, restaurants, any place he can score a victim. About to ready give up at 52nd East and Grid, I vid a couple duck into some alley.
I'm a salmon going to the spawning grounds, swimming through the crowd. All their faces washed in a neon splash, looking dead to the world and unaware of my urgency. All they know is some guy is pushing them out of the way. It's not like I even look like a cop to them. I'm just some prick in an unnecessary hurry.
I blunder into the alley, and I'm already too late. Some dazed out dame is turning white and that pale scrawny bastard is going to town on her neck.
"Freeze," I shout and there's that dead face again, hissing in pure rage.
"Man alive. What are you doing?" Is all I can muster as my resolve drops, followed by my heart, then my gun.
It goes back to feeding in a near frenzy I've never known in a person. Her eyes had rolled back long ago and the ravaging gulps of blood have died to slow, dedicated drinks.
This car crash of a scene ends as her body rag dolls to the back alley grit. The thing in the black jacket stretches to full height and without turning around, speaks in a haunting, echoing voice.
"It’s funny how they built you to take me down, yet gave you so very little knowledge. Are you able to believe now, detective? Now do you understand what you've been made to chase? I'm not a story. I'm not a boogeyman made to frighten children." Without a step or a sound, my quarry turns to face me, "I am real, but you'll never believe it. You're not built that way. Because of your inability to believe with your eyes, this makes me far more real than you.
"I am no one's toy, but I play with you whenever I feel like. How does that make you feel, little toy? Dressing up a tin soldier with a badge and a load of hard boiled detective clichés, fighting for what? For what? Justice? There's no such thing as justice when it comes to nature. Humans kill for food quite regularly. Life feeds life."
Dual-fisted impact from above. Brain feels like popcorn sizzling on a summer day porch job with errrrrrr. WHat the HeLl? I… wHAt… can't… whaT…
"What's the matter, little toy?"
Speech still sounds like sounds *pop* Recog with wHat *snap* then SMACK head almost off, fist or truck Up *crackle* whawhawhawhat? Left-side primary audio/visual inputs destroyed. Rerouting to Primary *hiss* right, backup and tertiary sensors… .
"*static*…ot as*buzz* ..rable as I expect…"
Calibration complete.
"The world's a dangerous place for you and your kind. But then again, you should be noticing right about now, they aren't your kind, are they, detective? I wonder, whose personality they plagiarized when you were made."
Voice becoming more distorted. Thoughts more narrow. Eyes… *static*. Critical error. System compromised. High tension at wrist. Pressure threshold critical. Rend and tear. Damage in upper left appendage. Status: connection severed. Damage from blunt force to left side of facial structure. Rent skin. Hull compromised. Full body collapse. Cue crying program EC48-13. Trigger pain receptors. Hands and knees. Quadrupedal. Nigh prone. Warning: system critical error. Power at 59%. Blunt force trauma to occipital zone. Left arm malfunction. Reason: Limb missing. Visual ID of limb in possession of assailant. Assailant distance 10cm.
"Who*Static* am*crackle*I*hiss*?" *bit-crushed low resolution cough and sputter*.
"You are a toy, nothing more. And one day, we must all put our toys away and become men, Detective McLusky. And I know someone’s watching this. I hope the glorious Metro PD shan't make this mistake again in the near future. How many more of your toys do I have to break before you stop throwing them at me? Now, say goodnight, sweet p-p-prrrrrrrriiiiinnnnnncce."
Extreme trauma to occipital zone. Multiple accounts of blunt force trauma. CPU hull breached… system ..ror…sh…..g…dow….
two
Planet Scorched Earth
[HW2096CE]
It was hard to tell the last time Jerome left his squat. Since losing his sanitation job at the cloning plant, Jerome became somewhat of a recluse. Most daylight hours he spent getting up the nerve to go to the door. Each time making plenty of false starts for the knob, only to cower in defeat.
By night, he stimmed his supply of DeMos to remain ever vigilant. In between JumpUp bursts, Jerome peers through holes in the tarp covered windows. Any sudden noise, and he’d hug the wall like a convict caught in the yard searchlight.
Jerome had been a performance artist from South Hollywood at one point in his life. He failed to make it in the straight world, finding his ambitions weaker than his passions. Shooting skag and juicing his way up the I-5 lan
ded him right outside SEA206, hosing organic matter into reclamation vats for Pharrel Inc.
Outside, headlights illuminate the tarps. With a JumpUp inhaler between his teeth, Jerome peered through a flap. He freaks at the sound of car doors, blasting more stimulants into his lungs. He crawls on all fours beneath the glassless windows, sifting past kipple as he searches for anything like a hiding spot. Gravel, beneath multiple sets of feet, crunches closer to the squat. Jerry’s eyes widen like cornered prey. A knock thuds on the rusty door, freezing him in his tracks.
A foot kicks the useless door inward. Three bodies fill the entrance, the invading cold night air charged with hot tension. The hulking mass leading the charge zeroes in on Jerome, slaps the inhaler from his lips and pins him to the wall by his shirt.
"Hello honey, is dinner ready?" The Brute's scarred face matches his tone.
Jerome shudders out his words, "R-Ralston, n-n-n-no call?" Ralston growls, tightening his grip, "I thought we were p-p-p-partners, man," Jerome coughs wet, feet kicking the air. "C'mon man, w-what's this all about?"
"What this is about," a slim figure in an ultra-sharkskin suit joins Ralston in threatening Jerome, "is you cost us our meal ticket." He pushes Jerome's chin upwards on a pistol fulcrum, "For good," the firing chamber primes with a distinct tone.
Ralston growls in his throat, "I really don't want to, but I'm willing to give you a few seconds to explain yourself. Before we use you as the meat substitute you're no longer supplying me and mine with."
"Y-y-you guys wanted too much," Jerome's eyes tear up. "I couldn't keep that much hi-hidden from the b-b-b-books. They deuced me, man. Ralston, Finn–"
Gun metal strains into Jerome’s underchin, "It's pronounced, F'n. An' I'm not in the mood to hear of yer canning stories," he gurgled.
Jerome releases Ralston’s arms to show palm, "Okay, okay, whatever, just let me go." Ralston drops him on the floor. F'n’s pistol trained at the top of Jerry's head.
Jerome scurries into the nearest trashy corner, "I thought you guys got what you wanted from me. I've been holed up in here, fraggin' freaked out of my mind. I tried to help you guys, why are you doing this to me?"
"I said I was going to give you a few seconds to explain yourself, you're wasting them," Ralston towers over Jerome.
The third member, a well manicured woman hidden behind Netshades, caught a whiff of something and made a face, "Someone's here."
"Where? Under the piles of trash?" F'n says.
The wolfish woman snoops around the cramped loft, sniffing, "Not sure. I just know someone else is here. Feel it in my womb."
"Well, keep it in yer baby basket," Ralston says, returning his attention to Jerome. "We're hungry, Jerrykins. We know you still have something to lose. Even though you don't seem too concerned with losing things," Ralston laughs like a dirty uncle.
Jerome says, "The plant closed down, man. Times are tough. Global matter shortage and skag."
"That doesn't sound so much like our problem as yours," Ralston lunges for Jerome, snagging him by his hair.
"It's your problem too, man. C'mon, man. Lemme go. I can't help you anymore. Man." Jerome held onto his frohawk, straining against Ralston’s grip.
Ralston looks to F'n, who holsters his pistol. The well manicured woman continues to inspect the room.
"Fine," removing his fingers from Jerome's kinked hair. "Just remember what I said, prickhole. Despite what this little hovel indicates, you still have something to lose and we know it," Ralston pins Jerome to the wall with his body. "Our arrangement still stands and we plan on collecting. We know where to find you."
Ralston and F'n left Jerome shaking against the wall. The sharp dressed woman narrows her eyes at a porcelain unicorn lying in the slag near Jerome, shrugs, and follows after her group. In the doorway, she takes another look at the atypical white statue, "You should fix your door."
After the sound of their car fades, Jerome swears at the top of his lungs. Rattling off a phone number, he paces about the room, waiting for the other end to answer.
"Hey, can you talk? …Well… no but… hey, hey, can you slow it down a click? Hey, can you listen? Chica… are you free to come up to the loft? … It'd make me feel a lot better if you could come to the loft… Yeah, I've got some Up, but can you score some more? I think we're going to need it… No, I can't really tell you why… Well, of course we're going to–-look, Chica, just get up here. I need you with me, some skag might be going down and you need to get off the streets… Chica… Chica… no. Listen. J-just fragging get over here and b-bring some Up."
Jerome broke the connection. He snatches a JumpUp inhaler from a pile of trash, takes three hits, and his eyes go screwy as he loses himself to the Neuronet.
*
Chica's dilated brown eyes were full of curiosity at the state of Jerome's door as she crossed the threshold. Jerome was lolled on the floor, dead to Base Plane Reality, living out digital fantasies inside his head. Chica toes at him a little to vid how lost he is. When Jerome doesn't respond to external stimulus, she grabs his inhaler, shakes well and takes a blast of Up. At the sound of the inhaler puff, Jerome comes alive.
"Hey, what the fra–oh, Chica, skag girl," Jerome sits himself upright, Chica helps him to wobbly feet.
"You really shou'n't leave your door open like that if you're gonna get so lost on the 'net, Jerry. There's fraggin’ psychos like, everywhere 'round here," Chica snaps her gum.
"Yeah, about that," Jerome rubs his face, nethaze effects still present. "Hey, you got that Up?"
Chica scoffs, "What? That's it? No, 'hey Chica, how you doing baby? I love you so much, and I'm soooo fragging happy you came when I called.'"
"Yeah, yeah, sorry," Jerome's eyes unscrew themselves. "I need you to do something for me."
"It's always somethin’ wit' you," Chica crosses her arms, blowing another bubble.
Jerome's face hardens, "This is fragging important. I'm telling you this for your safety, babe, c-c'mon, lay-lay off my b-balls, 'aight?"
"Oh, 'it's important,' what's important is me selling this," The airhead points to her bubble sections, "to make money for yo' stupid ass."
"Ch-Chica, just," Jerome growls with a stamp of his foot. Chica shot him with her gaze, deflating Jerome's tantrum. "Chica, really I need you off the streets. There's these guys I did some sly with back at the grow farm that ain't done with my services."
"But you don't work there no–"
Jerome broke the redundant whore off, "–We covered that. Listen, babe, these dudes, like, these dudes, they're the reason I met you."
Hooker red lips say, "What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means, these are the people that killed my ex-girlfriend," Jerome says so matter of fact that you fling the unicorn straight at his head. It sails between their stupefied faces and shatters against the stove that never worked anyway.
Jerome gapes at the pieces and where he thought it came from, "Did, I just? Did you?" Your statuette wasn't doing you much good anymore, but it's a shame you missed.
"What the frag is going on? Is that the Up?" The world's smartest street walker blinks. Sobering herself with a shake of fried orange hair, "Yo, frag this Jerome, are those shards fo'real?"
Jerome gawps at the head until he pinches the horn. Chica makes an about face and hustles her skanky ass out of the squat.
"Yo, where you goin'?" Jerome trails her, early symptoms of temporary lovesickness in his eyes.
"Away. Away from you," Chica shouts from the stairwell, "I tol' you I hate this place an its weird ass vibes. And now there's slag flyin' through the air an all that? Frag. No. Chica ain't down wit’ that skag."
"W-w-wait, what the frag, man? I'm trying to save your life," Jerome emphasizing every syllable.
"Not in this dump you ain't," You wonder how Chica's faring on the gravel with those trashy platforms, with a hint of hope she breaks an ankle.
"They're going to k-kill you if you leave," Jerome shouts down the stairwell, "they'll
fragging eat you alive."
Her awkward steps crunch away as she calls Yellow Cab. Jerome grabs at his hair and drops the loudest F bomb stifled frustration will allow. Jerome slams the door behind him, repeatedly kicking the ruined knob. Each blow punctuated with a unique curse. Worn out, Jerome slams backwards against the abused door and slides to the floor.
*
"…And it's always so fraggin’ cold in this place. And my mom won't give me any money. And I haven't made a decent piece since I moved to Das Komplex. And I don't have any real friends…" Is but a fragment of Jerome’s last hour.
After this display, it's hard to remember what drew you to this hunk of slag. Where are the flashes of charming under a veneer of artistic detachment? What happened to poetic oration about nothing on a skinny mattress, sharing cigarettes till dawn? Even though he was a ©id, he could look you dead in the eye and make you believe he cared. His true self shines through when he thinks the room is empty.
Jerome regresses into childish crying that makes you wish you could slap his face and yell, "Get a hold of yourself and grow a pair." But instead of forgetting about that whore and going to fix his problem like a man, he's whimpering and whining like a tiny, little, baby.