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Chapter 1
The sun never really rises on Olympic City. When the smog is spread so thick across the sky that you never even see the difference, there's no use for words like day and night, light and dark; there's only dark, and darker.
It makes me wonder how anyone in this god awful city knows when, or how to sleep. I've been listlessly staring up at the water stain on the ceiling of my bedroom for hours, not awake, but not asleep either. Like the city around me, I'm trapped in perpetual twilight.
It's the same every so-called morning; the alarm clock blares at me until the angry hammering of my neighbour's fist against the drywall coerces me into motion. I make my way into the tiny washroom of my downtown apartment, and examine the sallow face in the mirror.
There was a time when I would have considered myself handsome; copper brown hair, decent bone structure, a full set of my own teeth. After nearly two years of sleepless nights and sunless days, the bruise-black rings under my eyes and pallid complexion have given me the guise of a walking corpse.
After an ice cold shower and once-over with the electric razor, I wander back into the bedroom to get dressed for another inauspicious day on the job. I put on the usual: a dark grey flannel suit, pinstripe shirt, and black tie. The police I.D. on my dresser says my name is Edward Cullen; that's Detective 1st Grade Edward Cullen to the degenerates of Olympic City.
I've been wearing this badge for almost ten years now, and every day I put it on, it seems to get a little bit heavier. I was only days out of high school, living in my backwoods hometown of Forks, when I moved to the city to join the force. I was going to 'make a difference' and do some good. Just thinking about the cliché gives me a headache.
Opening the fridge reveals the finest in continental breakfast cuisine; half a jug of sour milk and a carton of two day old Chinese food. I eat a piece of what I hope is sweet and sour pork before throwing both containers in the trash, and heading for the door. Some days, I need a shot of bourbon just to go out and face this rotten city; thankfully, this doesn't seem to be one of them.
As I approach the elevator on the 8th floor of my apartment building, a mess of yellow tape and a hand-written sign inform me that the lift is 'OUT OF ORDER'. I turn and deliberately head towards the stairwell before I have a chance to reconsider that whiskey.
I pause for a moment after stepping out into the cold concrete jungle to pull a stick of nicotine gum from my overcoat pocket. I figure that there are enough lowlifes out there trying to kill me regularly; I don't need to throw cancer in the mix to help them out.
Parked before me is the only thing in my disconsolate existence that I'm proud of: my jet black Charger, complete with OCPD tags and the finest in confiscated anti-tampering technology. I know it's a bunch of macho bullshit to feel like this about a car, but every man needs his vices. This car is my sanctuary against the infectious darkness of Olympic City, my war chariot.
Some people say that a city is like a living, breathing organism: it grows, it consumes, it adapts. I agree with them so far as they both get sick. Olympic's particular disease has a name; a mouthful of science jargon that I can't pronounce, let alone spell. Like everyone else, I simply call it hemo.
Heralded as a revolutionary universal antidote, hemo was supposed be the next leap forward in medical technology, one that would make penicillin look like herbal tea. Broken bones, third degree burns, or a rare degenerative brain disease? Hemo's got you covered. Hell, even aging was no match for the wonder drug.
As it turns out, some things are too damn good to be true; imagine that. I can almost picture the advertisement in my mind: Side effects may include hopeless addiction, hostile paranoia, and irrevocable insanity. I'm told that the euphoria is staggering, but most people get more than they bargain for.
Infinitely more addictive than heroin, vastly more potent than cocaine, and undoubtedly more dangerous than meth, hemo has replaced everything as the street drug of choice in Olympic City; they might as well be selling that other shit at convenience stores, and still the junkies wouldn't bother with it. One hit of the good stuff, and you belong to it.
Hemo might have been just another chapter in the war on drugs, if not for the consequences of overindulgence. If you ingest too much of it, or someone sells you a bad dose, it can start to break down your mind, and your body soon after. Before long, you're just the husk of a human being, picking through trash cans and attacking both strangers and loved ones alike, looking for a fix.
We call them bloodwraiths. The hemo in their systems won't let them die, but they're not really alive either. Most of the time, it's more humane for us law enforcement types to just put them down, but being the good civil servants that we are, we follow along with the script of our little puppet show. It'd almost be laughable, if it weren't so tragic. Four out of five doctors will tell you: when an infection gets this bad, there's no treating it… You just need to amputate.
As I pull into a parking spot in front of the station, I can't help but hope that I might get to take it easy today. My partner and I just took point on the bust of a major hemo lab on the east side of town, and I wouldn't mind filling out paperwork on it for the next twelve hours.
Making my way across the bullpen, I'm only marginally aware of the din of telephone rings and angry voices on the killing floor; business as usual. I raise my eyes from the ground just in time to react to a football that's spiralling towards me. I tuck it under my left arm, and keep on walking. I know who it belongs to, and I'm headed that way already.
My partner of four years, Emmett Masen, might be the last decent man left in Olympic City. No matter how much shit-shovelling there is to do, he always comes out smelling like a rose, with a wide grin and a wisecrack to make you forget your own funk. He had been a linebacker at Washington State, and looks every bit the part: broad shoulders, square jaw, short curly black hair, and muscled from neck to heel. If you saw him at a bar, you might be inclined to take a swing at the bouncer first.
He's wearing a tan dress shirt and white tie that I recognize as my Christmas presents to him last year. The rich leather firearm holster across his shoulders sits empty; he's using the butt of his gun to crack walnuts on his desk.
"Hey, Ed. You look like crap today," he says to me with a jovial smirk, sweeping the shell fragments into the trash can by the desk. You have to give it to the guy; he really knows how to cut through the bullshit.
"Well, good morning to you too, partner." I reply, tossing the football back into his lap with unnecessary force. I reach up and tousle my messy bronze hair, as I slump down into the hard wooden chair across from Emmett.
No sooner am I seated at my desk, than I hear my name called out from behind me.
"Detectives Cullen and Masen, could I have a word with you?" asks the smooth and articulate female voice over my shoulder.
"L.T. wants us." Emmett informs me, already on his way over to the corner office. I squint my eyes shut and massage the bridge of my nose for a moment before rising out of my chair to follow him.
Lieutenant Esme Crowley, or Old Crow as she's affectionately known around the precinct, is the very reason they invented the term 'a wolf in sheep's clothing'. Short and thick, with a tight bun of greying-blonde hair, she could pass for your mother. Make no mistake; she busts balls like your mother-in-law.
Crossing the threshold into her immaculate office, I can already tell how this conversation is going to go by the severe edge in her eyes. I lower myself into the chair next to Emmett's, and brace myself for a lashing.
"So, gentlemen," she begins, her voice as sweet as honey. It would almost be relaxing, if I didn't know about the swarm of bees that usually follows it.
"Which of you would like to offer suggestions as to what the hell I'm supposed to do with twenty thousand gallons of hemo? Shall I send it down to evidence, so those crooked pieces of shit can funnel it back out on to the street for their own profit? How about we take it down to Quileute Park and set it on fire, hmm? Maybe the noxious fumes will produce a hemo raincloud, so we can all go bat-shit insane."
Ah, the proverbial sting.
I look over at Emmett; he's got his fingers laced behind his head, staring up at the ceiling and rocking quietly on the back legs of his chair. I stick my elbow in his ribs before the lieutenant can find something sharp to throw at him. To this day, Esme holds the department record for the most formal complaints concerning police brutality, a title of which she is very proud.
"Let me make myself clear, you two: I don't give a mouse fart in a hurricane about the product. What I need are the players, the ones pulling the strings."
"We made some arrests, L.T." I contend sourly.
"Let's have a look, shall we? The highest profile grab we made yesterday was…" she scans the contents of a dossier for a moment, "Mike Newton, fantastic. I'll go call a press conference. The public can rest easy knowing that Mikey Newts is no longer prowling the streets."
I tilt my head back and take a long, deep breath; I know she's right, that Newton doesn't mean anything in the big picture, but a pat on the back now and then would be nice.
She seems to detect my frustration.
"Look, you're good cops, I wish I had ten more like you, but let's get something straight: if we're ever going to make a dent in this hemo epidemic, we need big busts with big faces attached to them. We need the King of Hearts."
The King of Hearts is the media nickname for the criminal mastermind responsible for most of the hemo trafficking in the city. Most people don't believe he exists, or at least doubt that it's actually one man running the show. I'm not sure what the lieutenant believes, but I suspect she'd be satisfied with a plausible fall-guy to make her look good on the evening news.
"Yeah boss, we're on it." Emmett drawls out in a patronizing tone.
The daggers she's staring now tell us it's time to leave. I lift Emmett up under the armpit, and shuffle him out the door before we catch any more hell.
"Seems to be in a pretty good mood today, maybe I'll go back and ask for some vacation time." muses Emmett, once the door is firmly shut behind us.
"Yeah, she's all sunshine and lollipops, that one." I reply wearily.
"Aw, don't listen to her, partner. As long as we keep pulling cards out of the deck, eventually we'll get the King of Hearts, right?"
The city might not have one, but at least Emmett has a sunny side.
I decide it's too early to head back to my desk, so I wander over to the coffee machine to pour myself a cup. In an attempt to draw this out as long as possible, I start gazing aimlessly around the room. The new kid, Ben Cheney, is herding another crowd of junkies over to booking. He still doesn't quite grasp that we don't have room for them, and that most of them will be back on the streets before quitting time. I'm sure he'll get wise to our revolving door policy soon enough.
I get the impression that most of these addicts are so strung out that they don't even realize where they are, anyway. To them, it's either the same pleasant dream or harrowing nightmare that it would be outside these walls. One pair of eyes, however, are aware and purposeful, with a tiny crease of concentration between them… and they're staring right back at me.
They belong to a woman standing in the herd of junkies, and immediately my police reflexes start going to work, as if the sketch artist is waiting in the other room. Five-five or six; it's hard to tell with the black stilettos she has on. The low-cut dark blue blouse and thigh length khaki skirt she's wearing show off the body of a swimsuit model, and the colours look great against her alabaster skin. Her chestnut hair is loosely pulled into a messy bun, letting a few strands dangle freely next to her full, luscious li-
"Fuck!" I exclaim, as the scalding hot coffee begins to overflow onto my hand, causing me to spill everywhere. By the time I get back from the men's room with an armful of paper towels, the woman is gone, but her stare is still etched into my mind's eye.
One of the more fortunate side effects of hemo abuse is the effect it has on one's eye color; it paints them a startling bright red. It makes for easy police work when you can skip all the sobriety drills and field testing kits by just looking at their faces.
Her shocking scarlet gaze is still piercing me as I sit back down at my desk.
This mystery woman was also a poster-girl for the primary benefit of hemo, the reason it was created in the first place. Taking hemo will smooth out most of your imperfections, and even ward off the effects of aging while it's in your bloodstream.
Replaying the encounter in my head, I conclude that the expression she wore was one of recognition.
It's common practice these days for pimps to get their girls hooked on hemo, to keep them looking like young supermodels by carefully limiting their dosage. It's possible that the mystery woman was one such unfortunate soul, and that she had recognized me from a past roundup.
I can't lie to myself, there's something to be said for the way some of these addicts look, but it's us versus them, and they're on the wrong team. Too bad, though…
By the end of the day, my brain is thoroughly numbed from all the paper pushing. Be careful what you wish for, I suppose.
As I come through the door of my apartment, I don't even have the energy to shed my clothes and make it to the bed. I get there without passing out, but I don't want to close my eyes. When I sleep, I have dreams. More accurately, I have one dream. If you wanted to be even more accurate than that, you could say that I have one nightmare.
I switch on the TV in an effort to stave off dormancy. The mayor is smiling and waving, surrounded by his impotent yes men, talking about a 'cure' for the hemo epidemic. Good luck with that, chief, I snicker to myself.
I can't fight it off any longer. The TV is still filling the room with an electric glow as my body slides sideways onto the pillow, drifting off into a deep slumber.