9: Game Over
Monday 10th August, 1998
It was three in the morning. Raccoon City's few skyscrapers were still towers of light, but the rest of the city's windows were dark - even the people in downtown were asleep now.
Unusually, the residents of Masefield Park seemed to have turned off their lights before going to bed, leaving their neighbourhood dark and silent. Few of the streetlights worked now; the power company had given up trying to restore normal service in the area after two employees got carjacked, three more were mugged and another never returned at all, and now the only real illumination in this street came from the buzzing neon signs of the bars and the strip club.
But in a run-down apartment building, one light was still shining at a third-floor window. An observant passer-by would have noticed that there were more cars parked outside the building than usual, although they wouldn't have paid undue attention to it - the locals always took great care not to see or hear anything unusual out here, for fear of what might happen if they did.
There were no passers-by at this time of night, observant or otherwise. This fact seemed to satisfy the scowling young man who was hanging out of the third-floor window, training a shotgun on the street below and smoking a cigarette as though he hated it.
"Chris," came a weary female voice from inside the apartment. "You're going to fall out if you lean out any more. Just get back inside and close the window. You're letting all the cold air in."
"I'm not moving," said Chris stubbornly. "I'm staying out here to keep an eye on my car. I know this neighbourhood and I know how easy it is to lose a good car out here. Even if it's still here in an hour's time, it won't have wheels, and if it still has wheels, then it won't have a stereo. And if it still has a stereo, then it's a goddamn miracle, because nobody asks where used car stereos come from out here. Besides, if you're stupid enough to leave your car unattended in a place like this, then it's your own damn fault you lost it in the first place. You might as well write "Steal Me" in the dirt on the rear window and leave the keys in the ignition."
"Nothing's going to happen to your car, Chris," said Jill, in the weary tones of someone whose patience was being severely tried. "Brad says he paid his protection money this month and that everyone else in the street did too. If anything, it's probably safer where it is right now than anywhere else in the city."
"Look, Jill, I just finished the last payment on that car," growled Chris. "If anything happens to it, I want to make sure that somebody gets hurt."
He shifted position slightly, and said almost as an afterthought:
"Besides, after what happened just now, I'm not taking any chances. If anyone from Umbrella comes anywhere near this place, then they're going home with a shotgun shell in their ass. Nobody sends death threats to one of us, or to our families."
"All right, you win this round," said Jill, sighing. "Just don't fall out, okay?"
"I won't."
Jill turned away from the window's rustling blinds and took in the rest of the living room.
Brad's apartment was as shabby on the inside as it was on the outside. There were damp patches on the ceiling and gaping cracks in the walls, and the furniture was old and badly worn. She hadn't expected much from the place, considering the general state of the neighbourhood, so it hadn't come as that much of a shock to find the apartment in a state of disrepair.
What had shocked her was how clean everything was. The paint may have been peeling from the walls, but there wasn't a speck of dust in the place; every surface had been scrubbed until it gleamed. The smell of furniture polish and glass cleaner was everywhere, and there were careful little touches - a new rug on the bare floorboards, a vase full of fresh flowers, some neat stitching along the side of a cushion - that may not have said a word to Brad's landlord but spoke volumes to Jill. They told her that Brad was the kind of quietly conscientious person who, though too shy to ask for better living quarters or even some basic maintenance, was a great believer in the maxim that you got what you were given, and he took care of what little he had.
There was a sort of meeting going on in the room, and it centred around the threadbare green couch, where Amber sat in tears. Jill felt a stab of sympathy for her friend; she knew only too well what Amber was going through.
"Why would they do this?" Amber was sobbing into a handkerchief. "I'd understand if it was me, but Jason? What has he done to deserve this? He's only nineteen! He's still in college, for crying out loud! He's no threat to them!"
"Well, Amber," said Barry uncomfortably, while Brad fussed over Amber, "I hate to say it, but this is exactly why we didn't want to get you involved in all this. We were afraid that something like this might happen, and we wanted you and your family to be safe. Now that you're mixed up in this case too, we can't guarantee your safety any more. We'll do our best, of course, but I'm afraid that you and your brother are in just as much danger as we are now."
"We're sorry, Amber," Jill murmured. "We didn't want this. This is all our fault. We should never have agreed to let you help us."
"No, Jill, it's my fault," said Amber tearfully. "I should have known that something like this would happen. You warned me it might, and I didn't listen. It was selfish of me to put my family in danger like this. But - but I couldn't stand by and let you struggle on your own. You're my friends. And Umbrella has to be stopped. I'm not giving up."
"But - " Barry tried to interrupt.
"No!" said Amber loudly, silencing him right away. "If I back out now, they've won! And I'm not going to let them win, not after what they did to Joseph!"
"But what about Jason?" protested Barry. "Amber, you may be willing to put your life at risk, but now there are innocent lives on the line too!"
"There are innocent lives on the line already," said Chris shortly, from the window. "A whole city full of them. Maybe even more. Never mind Amber's brother, the whole town is in danger. If we don't stop Umbrella, he'll die anyway, and so will everybody else!"
Jill glanced over at Amber's brother. Jason Bernstein had his sister's bright green eyes and the same strawberry-blond hair, in an untidy mop of long curls that almost covered his eyes. He was slightly shorter than his sister and looked a little more robust, with muscular arms and legs; Jill remembered that he liked baseball and had been good at sports when he was in high school. He was still wearing his pyjamas - a pair of old boxer shorts and a t-shirt that said "Prevent Hangovers - Stay Drunk" - and hadn't understood why he'd been dragged out of bed in the middle of the night and driven here, but answers had not been forthcoming and he had soon given up questioning his situation. He was now lounging in the cracked leather armchair, watching television and completely oblivious to the argument going on around him.
"… this is about more than just one person, Barry," Chris was saying forcefully. "This is about protecting everything and everyone that we hold dear, and the only way we can do that is by shutting Umbrella down for good. What, are you going to let family matters get in the way of your duty again? Look what happened the last time you put family first!"
"Now just you wait one moment," said an indignant Barry.
"Chris, shut up! This isn't accomplishing anything!" Jill shouted.
Chris turned back to the window, looking resentful. Jill cleared her throat, and continued.
"Barry's right to be concerned," she said levelly, and saw Barry nod in agreement. "Just because we're willing to put our lives at risk, it doesn't mean that we have the right to do the same to our families. But Amber's right, we can't give up, no matter what they try to do to us. The very fact that we're in this situation now is proof enough that they have to be stopped. They have no right to do this to us, or to anybody."
"So we need a plan," said Brad, who had just returned from the kitchen with a plate of cookies and several mugs of coffee.
"Thank you, Brad," said Jill, taking one of the mugs. "Yes, exactly. We need to figure out how to carry on with this mission and keep Amber's brother safe."
"And keep all our families safe," interjected Barry.
"Quite right," agreed Jill. "Barry, are Kathy and your girls still going to Canada?"
"I'm making arrangements," replied Barry, taking a cookie from the plate. "Kathy has relatives up there, out in the country. She and Moira and Polly should be safe with them."
"Not everyone has family living abroad," pointed out Rebecca, who had been sitting at Brad's old upright piano and idly picking out tunes for the past ten minutes.
"Good point," said Jill. "Chris, what about your sister? Does Claire have anyone that she can stay with?"
"If any of those scumbags even go near Claire, it'll be the last thing they ever do, because they'll have to get past me first," replied Chris, without turning his head from the window.
"Okay… Rebecca, what about your sister?" said Jill, quickly moving on. There was no point arguing with Chris; everyone knew how protective he was of his little sister.
"Leah's backpacking in Australia with her boyfriend," said Rebecca, wiping a few drops of spilled coffee from the piano keys. "She and James are always on the move; even I don't know where they are from one day to the next. I think they'll be all right. And my parents are flying out to India next week - my dad's doing some research on the elephant population for work, and my mom's being sent out to work at a children's hospital in New Delhi, so they'll both be out of the country for a while."
"Well, that's good news. Brad?"
"If Umbrella knows what's good for them, they won't go anywhere near my mom," said Brad, with deep sincerity. "She may be a cranky old lady and half-deaf, but she keeps a shotgun under her bed in case of burglars. I'd hate to be the guy that messes with her."
"What about you, Jill? Are Adam and Sarah okay?" said Barry.
"Yeah, my brother's gone back to rehab with some sort of made-up condition," said Jill. "Personally, I think he just has a fixation with young Swedish nurses. And my sister's in university well out of the state. I've told her to stay on campus and not to go anywhere on her own. That's all I can do. So, what are we going to do about Jason?"
"How about the Witness Protection Scheme?" suggested Rebecca. "They could give him a new identity and send him somewhere safe, right?"
"In theory, yes," said Barry. "Problem is, Amber's brother hasn't actually witnessed anything. And since we don't have any concrete evidence that this death threat is from Umbrella, or anything other than some kind of sick hoax, we can't prove that his life really is in danger."
Rebecca looked disappointed. Sighing, she placed her small, slender fingers on the piano keys and started to play a tune from the music book perched on the piano. Jill winced as the first few notes rang out, and not just because the old Bösendorfer was slightly out of tune. However, she did her best to ignore it and carried on talking.
"Then perhaps we could - "
"HEY!" Chris bellowed suddenly, and the others jumped.
"What is it, Chris?" said Barry, getting up and hurrying to the window.
"Hey, you!" Chris was hollering to someone down below. "Yeah, you! Don't think I can't see you down there! Get away from my car, you little bastards!"
Barry could just make out some shapes in the darkness. They appeared to be quite small shapes, child-sized, but they were lurking dangerously close to Chris' new car. When they looked up and saw the shotgun, the feral street kids instantly scattered; as one of them ran away, Barry saw him drop the key that he'd been about to scrape along the side of the car.
"Yeah, that's right!" Chris shouted after them. "Go on, get out of here! And don't come back!"
He withdrew his head from the open window and turned around to beam triumphantly at everyone else in the room.
"See, Jill? I told you," he said, rather smugly. "Those little punks would have keyed my car if I hadn't been keeping an eye on it. Now if you'll excuse me, I want to make sure that they don't try and double back…"
"That's the reason why I'm single again," muttered Jill, as Chris returned to his post. "It's just a mercy he couldn't find a grassy knoll…"
Amber had to bite down on her tongue to stop herself from laughing. Barry sat down again, reached out to take another cookie, then stopped and looked embarrassed as he saw the stern look on Jill's face.
"Oh yeah - the diet," he said hastily, and withdrew his hand. "I forgot."
"Oooh… busted!" said Rebecca, giggling.
"So, about Amber's brother - " Jill tried again, but she was cut off once more, this time by a snore from the armchair. Jason, tiring of the televisual entertainment on offer, had rolled over and gone straight back to sleep.
"Can I turn that off?" said Amber, pointing at the television, which was showing some disturbingly graphic images of aliens ripping a human apart limb from limb, all in superbly-rendered 3D. "It's not that I mind video game violence, per se, but right now I'm really not in the mood for survival horror."
"Sure," said Brad. "Go right ahead. The remote's over there."
Amber picked up the remote up from the top of Brad's new games console and stared at the buttons in quiet incomprehension. Why couldn't they make all these things exactly the same, she wondered. This one bore absolutely no resemblance to any of the ones she owned; she had no idea which one the "Off" button might be.
"… expect "Alien Death Explosion IV" to be on the shelves by the end of next week," announced the show's host, a young man with a death metal t-shirt and a long ponytail. "Coming up next on Game 24-Heaven, a quick preview of "Escape From The Mind Police", the latest release from Underground Games. We'll also be joining Magda Ernst and Kristen Kunstler at the 10th Annual Girl Gamers' convention in Düsseldorf, and after that we're going to test all the latest consoles - to destruction! All this and more, after the break…"
"Push the red button," called Brad. "It's on the bottom right."
"Oh, right," said Amber, and pushed the button. The commercial for Raccoon Mountain Beer disappeared abruptly and the television screen darkened.
"Thanks," said Jill, who was looking slightly distracted. "Now, does anyone have any ideas about what we can do to - "
She stopped again. At first the others wondered why, but then they saw the terrible look on Jill's face, heard the music that Rebecca was playing in the background, and realised what was wrong.
"Rebecca," said Barry warningly. "I think maybe you should play something else…"
Jill had gone pale and her hands were starting to tremble slightly.
"Why?" said Rebecca, who was still playing a slightly imperfect version of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. "What's wrong? I've been trying to get this piece right for months and we don't have a piano at home any more. I really need the practice. I know it took me ages to figure out back at the mansion - "
"Goddamn it, Rebecca, will you just shut up?" Jill yelled, finally losing her temper.
Rebecca looked startled, but she closed the piano lid right away and turned around on the stool to face the others.
"Sorry," she said, shrinking back in her seat as Chris turned to glare at her.
Jill buried her face in her hands.
"It's all right, Rebecca," she said dully, without looking up. "Just… don't play that again. Please. It brings back too many bad memories."
"Okay," said Rebecca. "I won't."
"All right," said Jill, composing herself again. "We need somewhere safe for Jason to stay. Any ideas?"
"He can stay in my apartment," offered Chris.
"I don't think so," said Jill sharply. "Your apartment's disgusting. It hasn't been tidied once in the past year, you never open the windows, and it smells like old socks. In fact, it smells like your old socks, which is even worse. If Umbrella doesn't get the poor kid, then all those undiscovered germs back at your place probably will."
"All right then, where is he going to stay?" said Chris sulkily, and he sat down on the coffee table, not noticing the loud creak from the table or Brad's pained expression. "Brad only has one bedroom, Barry's wife won't want to let a complete stranger stay in her house, and Rebecca's parents won't like the idea much either. Jill, you're about to move again and that's no time to have guests staying with you. He could stay with Amber, but she needs somewhere to stay herself until the exterminators make sure she's spider-free."
"They'll need a lot of somewheres to stay," corrected Barry. "Amber and Jason are both in danger and it won't be safe for them to stay in the same place too long. They'll have to keep moving. Ideally, they should stay somewhere different every night."
"Every night?" said Amber, feeling her heart sink. "For how long?"
"It depends, but I'd say at least two weeks, to start with," said Barry. "Once they get sick of following you around town, you can start going back to your place."
"All right," said Amber eventually, after some thought. "I have a few friends who would probably let Jason sleep on their couch for a night or two."
"What about you, Amber?" said Barry.
Amber shook her head.
"I'm not leaving my apartment," she said. "As soon as the spiders have gone, I'm going straight home."
There were various cries of amazement and disbelief from the STARS members.
"What?"
"You're kidding!"
"What are you talking about, Amber?"
"Are you crazy?"
"They'll kill you!"
"They've killed me already, Rebecca," said Amber bitterly. "They did that the day they took Joseph away from me. The only reason I have to carry on now is to stop them from getting away with murder. After that, I don't really care what happens next. If they want to try and take me out, well, they know where to find me. But I am not running away from them. Not now, not ever. I'm not giving those sons of bitches the satisfaction of seeing me run."
She looked across the room at her sleeping brother. Her expression softened, and she almost smiled. She then turned back to the STARS members and took in their horrified expressions.
"Don't worry about me," she assured them. "If the worst comes to the worst, then at least I'll be with Joseph again. But if something does happen to me, then please take care of my brother."
"We'll do our best," said Jill.
"But it's not going to come to that, is it?" said Rebecca anxiously. Her blue eyes were twin pools of emotion, brimming with hope, optimism, uncertainty and dread. "It isn't, right?"
"No, Rebecca," said Amber, shaking her head. Her eyes had come to rest yet again on her brother, who looked so peaceful when he was asleep. "It isn't."
It had been almost enjoyable at first, joining in with the STARS' mission to take down Umbrella, almost like being privy to some sort of big, exciting secret. It had been great fun to thumb her nose at the company by secretly passing information to her friends, playing at being a revolutionary. Vive la Résistance!
But now the fun was over. Umbrella had made it quite plain tonight that this wasn't a game any more - this was real life, with real danger, and people that she knew and cared about were going to get hurt.
No more games, thought Amber grimly. From now on, this is war. Either Umbrella goes down, or I do…
xxxxxxxxxx
Thursday 13th August, 1998
"Hey, Amber! You seen Rita today? She's meant to be on patrol with me this afternoon," called David McGraw, as Amber walked into the west office. He was standing by the lockers and struggling into a bulletproof vest.
"She's not in today," said Amber, putting down the can of soda that she'd been finishing off on her way back from her lunch break. "Marvin said she called in sick this morning. I think she's got a cold."
"Looks like I'm on my own today, then," said David, shrugging. "And I have to go through gang territory too. Damn it…"
"Where are you patrolling?" said Amber, hurrying to help him.
"I'm working Little Estonia today," replied David, as Amber adjusted a twisted strap. "That's - ow! - Freewheelers turf, isn't it? Hey, will you watch it with that?"
"Well, if you held still for two seconds it would really help," said Amber, unmoved. "I wouldn't worry about it, David. The Freewheelers are a small-time outfit, pretty much harmless, and it's a quiet neighbourhood anyway. The only thing you really have to worry about in Little Estonia are the drains and being the next district over from Masefield Park."
"Yeah, that's true enough. Better take someone else along, though. Rules say two officers on each patrol, and I'm not breaking regs just to try and look brave. Think I should go ask Doug?"
"Doug? No, he's way too busy working on that burglary case. Go and ask Oliver."
"Oliver? Hell, are you kidding me? He can't stand the sight of me!"
"All right then, go find Todd and Travis. One of them'll be free this afternoon, probably Travis, but I'm not sure what the rota is today."
"All right, I'll check it out with them. Thanks, Amb."
"No problem," said Amber, standing back. "Look after yourself out there."
"I thought you said it was a quiet neighbourhood," said David accusingly.
"It is, but look after yourself anyway," Amber told him. "Keep an eye out for anything unusual, too. A couple of our contacts are saying that a bunch of no-good failed entrepreneurs seem to have come into a lot of cash lately. It might be nothing - maybe one of their money-making schemes actually worked for once - but you might want to make some enquiries, see where they've been getting all that money from."
"In Little Estonia? I'd say a shady business venture, probably borderline legit, but nothing actually illegal," said David thoughtfully. "Might be hard to find out what they're up to. People out there are reluctant to talk to the cops unless there's something in it for them, and that's not the way we do things around here. But I'll ask a few questions and see what I can dig up."
"Okay. Thanks, David. Have a good trip."
"Yeah, I'll catch you later."
David left the room, but the door barely had time to shut before it opened again. In walked Kenny, carrying two jugs of coffee and a yellow box of doughnuts on a tray. He was humming happily to himself and looked lost in thought - he didn't even notice the friendly greetings from Marvin and Tim as he passed by.
"He's in his own little world today, isn't he?" said Marvin, looking up from his work and smiling at Amber. "Must be in love. Mom said I always used to go around in a dream like that when I was dating Sophie Buxton. She was the most beautiful girl in high school and I nearly didn't ask her out because I was so scared she'd say no. I couldn't believe my luck when she said yes; I was walking on air the rest of the year."
"What happened?" said Amber, finishing the can of soda and tossing it into a wastebasket.
"Oh, her dad got a job out of town and the family moved away," said Marvin, with a touch of regret. "She promised to write every week, but after a while we lost touch. You know how it is."
"That's a real shame," said Amber.
"Hey, it happens," said Marvin serenely, as he wrote his signature on a form. "I'm just glad I knew her even for a short while. I'm sure she's happy now, wherever she is, and - "
There was a yell and a crash somewhere off in the distance, and Marvin jumped, surprise suddenly disturbing the expression of peace on his face.
"What the hell was that?" he said, looking up at the ceiling in perplexity.
"Guess someone upstairs must have dropped something," said Tim, entirely unperturbed, and he passed another form across his desk to Marvin. "Can you sign this one for me, Marv?"
"Sure," said Marvin, taking the piece of paper.
There was another crash, this one much louder, and Marvin and Tim's heads shot up.
"Sounds like someone really needs to be more careful," Tim remarked. "I just hope it wasn't something that breaks easily. Hey, Marv, you remember the time that rookie officer tripped on the top step and dropped that projector downstairs?"
"Yeah, I remember," said Marvin. "That thing must've hit every step on the way down. Completely smashed. That poor guy ended up confined to desk duty on half-pay till he'd finished paying for it. Those things are expensive, too."
However, this crash didn't seem to have stopped; they could hear a loud rumbling sound, like a large, heavy object tumbling down the stairs. Marvin, Tim and Amber exchanged looks.
"Please tell me that's not another projector," said Tim, groaning, and put his hand over his eyes. "Man, the Chief's going to have a fit…"
There was a cry of alarm from somewhere downstairs, accompanied by one very final crash. The three officers stiffened, then scrambled out of their seats and rushed towards the door to investigate. They hurried through the evidence room and pushed aside a very surprised Elliot Edward, who had been filing something in one of the drawers. Amber was the first to reach the door. She yanked it open, peering out and down the hall. Marvin and Tim craned their necks, trying to get a good view, then gasped in horror.
Lying sprawled at the foot of the stairs was a large and very tubby police officer - an older guy with a moustache, whose face they all recognised instantly. Kneeling next to him was a frightened-looking Kenny, who had set down the two coffee jugs and the tray with the doughnuts and was trying to help the injured man.
"Oh, man," said Tim quietly. "That's Officer Elran, isn't it?"
"He looks really hurt - I think we'd better call somebody," said Marvin, who was starting to look worried, but then he shook his head. His expression changed, and suddenly he looked more like the normal Marvin; the calm, professional Marvin who always knew what to do and always kept his head in a crisis.
"Tim, you go to the front desk and find out where Officer Chambers is, she'll know what to do," he ordered. "I have to find Officer Ryan and tell him what's happened, he'll have to fill in an accident form and put this down in the log book… Amber, go make sure he's okay!"
The two men hurried away. Amber, who up until then had been too stunned to move, took a few very hesitant steps forward.
"Elran…?" she said quietly.
For one terrible minute, she thought that the man was dead. As she got closer, though, she could see that he was still breathing. His face and arms were terribly bruised, and blood was spurting from a badly cut lip. He was probably going to have a black eye tomorrow, too, but right now she was more worried about the possibility of concussion and broken bones.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" a woman was shrieking upstairs, and Amber looked up. Jill was standing at the top of the stairs and yelling at Chris, who was scowling darkly at the scene below him. "What's going on with you, Chris?"
Amber's heart skipped a beat. Chris? Chris Redfield had done this? He'd been acting strangely lately, she knew that, and he'd always been rather impulsive, but pushing someone down the stairs was something she'd never expected of him.
Kenny looked terribly shaken.
"Officer Valentine…?" he said, looking up, with a faint tremor in his voice.
Jill seemed to calm down at the sight of the younger boy. The anger in her face morphed gradually into a look of gentle, almost motherly concern.
"Kenny, can you please make sure Elran is all right?" she told him, then turned around and began scolding Chris in a furious whisper. She'd barely finished her first sentence when, to Amber and Kenny's amazement, Chris winked at Jill and walked off, as though nothing had happened. Amber simply couldn't believe her eyes.
What the hell was that all about? she thought. Did I blink and miss something important just now, or has that guy gone completely crazy?
Jill seemed to be thinking the same thing - she stood at the top of the stairs, speechless with anger and utterly dumbfounded by the way her team-mate had simply shrugged off his behaviour. Kenny, meanwhile, was bending down on one knee and examining the fallen officer for injury. To Amber's profound relief, Hugo Elran gave a sort of spluttering cough and placed his hand on top of Kenny's.
"I'm okay, sonny," he croaked. "Let me just get to the bathroom to get cleaned up…"
"But… are you feeling up to it?" said Kenny uncertainly.
"Oh, don't you worry about me," said Officer Elran, with a chuckle, brushing aside the teenager's attempts to help him. "There's a lot of fat on this body to keep me well-cushioned!"
He chuckled again as he attempted to sit up, but this didn't seem to allay Kenny's concerns; he still looked worried and fearful.
Jill ran downstairs to help, her eyes widening with shock as she took in the full extent of the man's injuries.
"Oh my goodness," she said, going pale. "I'm so sorry for what Chris did! I swear, he can be so irrational at times… always acting on impulse…"
"Oh, it's not his fault, Jill," said Hugo hurriedly, as Jill fussed over him. "It was mine. I was walking by and I didn't watch where I was going. I bumped into Chris as we were rounding a corner and accidentally splashed him with some hot coffee."
"That sounds like an honest mistake to me," agreed Kenny.
"It most likely was!" said Jill quickly, although the look on her face told Amber right away that she didn't agree with this hypothesis one little bit. "I'm so sorry, Elran. I'll make sure Chris gets a good talking-to!"
She and Kenny helped Officer Elran to his feet.
"Don't you worry about a thing," she reassured him all the while. "Let's get you to the First Aid station. We keep a couple of First Aid sprays around the corner in the photo lab, here. Can you help him out, Kenny?"
"Uh, sure," said Kenny, and he gestured towards the coffee and doughnuts that he'd put down on the floor. "If you could take these to the STARS office for me…"
Jill thought for a moment.
"Actually," she said, with a quick glance at the coffee, "maybe you'd better get that up to the office real quick. I'm sure Chris will be needing something to cool him down a little. I'll take care of Elran."
Kenny didn't seem to relish the prospect of delivering refreshments to an irate Chris, but he nodded and picked up the coffee jugs. He tried to pick up the tray with the box of doughnuts as well, but looked as though he was struggling to re-establish the careful balancing act that he'd been maintaining earlier. Deciding that someone needed to lend him an extra pair of hands before he dropped something, Amber hurried forward to help.
"Here, Kenny, let me help you with those," she called, but Kenny shook his head.
"That's okay, Officer Bernstein," he said, putting down one of the coffee jugs so that he could adjust his grip on the tray. "I can manage."
"Are you sure?" said Amber.
"Really, I'll be fine," Kenny assured her, picking up the jug again. "Though I think Officer Valentine might need some help with Officer Elran, he fell down the stairs and he - "
"Took a pretty nasty tumble," said Amber, effortlessly prising open a gap in the sentence and filling it with her own words. "Yes, I saw what happened. Go on, Kenny, you run those upstairs and I'll go give Jill a hand."
Kenny nodded gratefully and went upstairs with extreme care, so as not to spill any coffee or tip the doughnut box off the tray. When his footsteps faded out of earshot, Amber looked at Jill, who sighed.
"I honestly don't know what's up with him," she said, as she and Amber led Officer Elran in the direction of the darkroom. "Ever since we came back, Chris has been acting like a completely different guy. He's been acting so… I don't know whether it's because he's wound up about all this stuff, or if he's just cranky because he's not getting enough sleep, but - oh, I don't know. I just wish he'd snap out of it, that's all."
"Same here," said Amber. "Elran, are you sure you're okay? That eye's looking pretty nasty. Maybe you should go home."
Jill looked at Officer Elran suddenly. Amber had heard it said that you could see someone's soul in their eyes, and their innermost thoughts written in a fleeting expression. One look had been enough for her to understand what was going on in Jill's head; the quiet desperation in that one little glance had shouted out the words that the woman didn't dare speak.
Please, Elran, go home - don't let anybody see what just happened. Don't let them see what Chris did. If they find out, then they'll call him dangerous and psychotic and then we're all done for.
Amber found it faintly ridiculous that the fate of the STARS could lie in the hands of a round, jolly man who looked like everybody's favourite uncle, but she knew that Jill was right. Hugo Elran was a popular and much-admired member of the precinct - he'd solved dozens of crimes of all shapes and sizes, and his expert opinion was sought on an almost daily basis. Plenty of people here took his word as gospel truth, and if he told them that Chris had violently attacked him because of an accidental splash of coffee, then that was what they would believe. The reputation of Christopher Redfield was already hanging in the balance; if something like this got out, then Chris would be finished.
"I don't know what you're looking so alarmed for, missy," said Elran, with a warm smile that was marred grotesquely by the blood dribbling from his split lip. "It's all right. Accidents happen. I'm sure young Redfield didn't mean to hurt anybody, though he's been acting kind of tense lately. Maybe he should ease up a little on the paperwork and take a vacation. That's the trouble with you youngsters - you spend too much time stuck in here instead of getting out in the fresh air."
"Chris isn't going to get in trouble, is he?" said Jill anxiously.
"Trouble? Oh my, of course not," said Elran, chuckling. "Not for a couple of bruises and a cut lip! It takes a lot more than a little tumble down the stairs to stop old Hugo Elran… just tell him to be more careful in future, that's all."
"I will," said Jill sincerely, and Amber could see the relief in her friend's face. "Amber, can you get the door for me?"
"What?" said Amber, snapping out of observation mode. "Oh, yeah, the door…"
She opened the darkroom door with one arm, still using the other to steady Officer Elran, and poked her head around the door.
"David?" she called. "Sorry to bother you, but Officer Elran took a pretty nasty fall down the stairs. Can we bring him in here for a few minutes and fix him up?"
"All right, if you really must," grumbled a man's voice from somewhere inside the room. "But don't touch anything."
The room was decorated in the same two-tone colours as the hallway outside, cream and dark green, though the cream had faded to grey over time and had never been properly repainted. Once a storeroom for office supplies, the room had never been intended for use as an office space, but the ever-industrious and borderline-obsessive David Ford seemed to have colonised it for his own use; in addition to the old iron chest in the corner, which had probably been there before Officer Ford was even born, there was a metal locker, a new storage unit with lots of shelves and drawers, and a desk and chair. These items of furniture had almost certainly been obtained from elsewhere in the station, and had been incorporated so neatly into the room that people had forgotten that the furniture had ever belonged anywhere else. It was now known to everybody as "David Ford's office", and he'd staked his claim to the room so strongly that it would probably still be called "David Ford's office" long after the man himself was dead and gone.
Very occasionally and very, very grudgingly, he'd allow others to share the room, but they tended to get uncomfortable and leave at the first opportunity; they felt as though they were intruding, somehow, by being in the room with him. Mostly, though, interlopers were greeted with a sullen, angry silence which lasted until the second they left. Even the Chief was reluctant to enter the room without permission, though these days he didn't seem to leave his office much anyway.
As Amber had expected, David Ford got up from his desk the moment he saw them enter the room. Picking up a sheaf of papers, he retired soundlessly, with a scowl, to the confines of the adjoining darkroom. Jill just shrugged, and searched through the room until she found a First Aid kit tucked away in one of the storage unit's drawers.
"Okay, Elran, this probably won't hurt a bit, though no promises," she told him, opening the green and white box. "It's been a while since First Aid training and I never was that great at it. I'll do my best, though."
The door opened and in came Rebecca, slightly out of breath.
"Hi guys," she gasped. "I got here as quick as I could. What happened?"
"Chris knocked me down the stairs," supplied Officer Elran. "An accident," he added, and Amber saw Jill breathe out again.
Rebecca looked startled.
"Oh dear," she said. "I'd better take a look at you. Where does it hurt?"
"Where doesn't it hurt?" joked Elran.
"That good, huh?" said Rebecca, with a small smile. "Well, let's take care of this lip first, and we'll see about the rest of you later. Jill, could you pass me that First Aid spray? We need to disinfect this cut…"
She squinted slightly at the instructions on the can of First Aid spray, then shook her head.
"It's no good," she said after a while. "I can't read this, the label's kind of stained and the light in here sucks. Let's go somewhere where I can actually see what I'm doing."
The resentful silence from the other side of the wall indicated that the young girl's criticism of the room was not at all welcome.
"Thanks, David," called Jill. "We're going to take Elran into the waiting room, where it's brighter. We'll bring this back when we're done, okay?"
There was no reply from the darkroom as Jill, Rebecca and Officer Elran left the office. Amber was about to follow them when she felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned round. David Ford was standing in the doorway, his auburn hair gleaming in the dim light, and for once there was the faintest suggestion of a smile on his face.
"Just a second, Amber," he said to her. "There's something I want to show you. Step inside a minute, I think you'll find this interesting. I wasn't going to show Valentine and Chambers. Those STARS members will probably only jump to even more crazy conclusions if they get their hands on this. You know how they are."
Amber decided to let this last comment pass unnoted, and she followed the man into the adjoining darkroom.
"So what is it?" she said, stepping over a box of photographic equipment and looking around the stark little room with genuine interest. It wasn't often that she got chance to come in here, and at Ford's invitation no less.
David just raised his eyebrows and beckoned her over to the end of the room. There was a large sink set into this unit - she wasn't sure what it was for, exactly - and on the flat work surface she saw a pair of shallow plastic trays, filled with the chemicals used for photographic development. She didn't really understand how the process worked and could only bow to David's expertise in this field, though she vaguely recalled something about silver nitrate from high school art classes.
A little clothes line had been strung up here. Attached to it were several sheets of wet, shiny photographic paper, their images already clearly visible. David carefully detached one of the new photographs from the line and handed it to Amber for inspection.
"What do you think?" he said.
Amber looked at the photograph. It depicted a crime scene at the First Raccoon County Bank, with a smashed window and a safe that had been blown right open. There was glass on the floor and a few pieces of scorched and twisted metal from the safe, but other than that, there seemed to be nothing unusual about the image.
"A little overexposed," she said critically. "I'm assuming this isn't one of yours."
"No, this was taken and developed by Officer Corey Dumont, one of the new kids from Forensics," said David, with the kind of pride that reminded Amber of the time her father had shown off her first painting from kindergarten to all his friends from work. "Pretty good, huh? I think he'll be good at this in a couple of years, with a little more practice. Nice kid. Takes his photography seriously. If you see him around, tell him he can work in here any time he wants."
Amber was impressed. Coming from a rabid perfectionist like David Ford, this was praise indeed, and she decided to tell young Corey just how lucky he was to have earned the man's respect.
"Was that all you wanted to show me?" she said politely, after a moment's silence. "It's interesting, don't get me wrong, and I'm glad Corey's doing so well, but why would that interest STARS? The only person that's going to interest is Doug Channing, since he's in charge of the burglary case."
"That?" David laughed. "Oh, no, I just wanted to show off my brightest new student's work. No, this is what I wanted to show you. Take a look."
He rummaged in a drawer and produced a manila envelope, which had already been opened. He slid out a selection of photos, picked out one and held it out to Amber.
"This was taken two days ago by a twenty-two-year-old woman named Bethany Rove," he informed her, as she took the photograph from his hand. "She claims to have been in the Brentford area when she saw this, although it looks more like Fairview to me. I personally think this is a fake, but I'm interested in hearing your opinion."
Amber's mouth opened.
"What… what makes you think this is fake?" she said slowly.
"Well, according to our files, Miss Rove has filed several fraudulent claims for sexual harassment against her former employers. Since then, she's gained quite a reputation for attention-seeking behaviour," said David, with a hint of disapproval. "She's a freelance photographer but formerly worked as a graphic designer, meaning that she's almost certainly an expert in photo-manipulation. I'd say she's been following the stories for a little while and now she wants to start getting in on the action so she can be part of the media circus, maybe earn herself a few bucks at the same time. Stuff like this is easy to fake and the papers won't care about the authenticity; they'll pay a fortune for pictures like this one."
"I'm not so sure," said Amber, looking closer. "Proportion, brightness and contrast are all fine, and there's no sign of pixellation. No inexplicable blurring or smudging, no obvious sign of cropping or covering up flaws, no uneven patches of colour or pattern where there shouldn't be. If this is a doctored photo, it's an extremely good one."
"Anything to say about the location?"
"It's definitely not Fairview," said Amber, holding the photograph closer for a better look. "The skyline's all wrong for that area. No, that's Brentford all right. Looks to me like the Box Hill area; the houses there are a lot like the ones on the outer fringe of Fairview, but the brickwork's a different colour. If this was Fairview, the bricks would be dark brown, but the colour in these ones is almost maroon."
"Box Hill, huh?" said David, scribbling down some notes on a notepad. "You know, I think you might be right. But as for the subject matter, I'm still saying it's a fake. Look at the guy in that photograph - that's selective colouring if ever I saw it. The background and the rest of the foreground are normal, but that guy's skin is kind of a blue-grey. The only time you'd see that colour on a guy was if he was lying on a slab with a tag round his toe. No, I'd say that's a tired-looking friend walking around and play-acting, fixed up in an image-editing program with desaturation and some clever use of the colour burn tool."
Amber looked closer again.
"You got a magnifying glass, David?" she said.
"Right here," said David, passing one over. "I always keep one close by when I'm working."
"Thank you."
Amber peered at the picture through the magnifying glass, casting the object over different areas of the picture to bring the fine details into clear view. Each brick, each leaf, each spot of old chewing gum stuck to the sidewalk was enlarged several times through the lens and brought sharply into focus. The magnifying glass spent several seconds hovering above the centre of the picture, lingering like a spotlight on the unpleasant subject of the photograph. It trembled a little in Amber's hand as she breathed in, very slowly.
"No, definitely not a fixer-upper," she reported, and put the magnifying glass down on a nearby shelf. "Look at the colour on his shirt. If you pick out a red and use it with the colour burn tool, it'll look pretty good but on bright white surfaces you can spot some very faint traces of yellow and orange around the edges. It's dark red from edge to edge here, no sign of any lighter shades."
"You can fix that up, though," pointed out David. "She probably noticed it and just cleaned up the edges a bit."
"True, but I don't think that's what's happened here. This looks real," said Amber.
"But that can't be right," said David suddenly. "It's not possible. This has to be fake, it must be. Even if she hasn't done any editing, that must be - I don't know, fake blood or something. There are some pretty good brands of stage blood on the market now."
"Not that good," said Amber firmly. "We used fake blood for a school play once, and it stayed runny for a good long while. In this photograph there are definite signs of clotting. And what about that neck injury? Even on a computer, that's pretty hard to fake."
"You'd be amazed what they can do with make-up these days," said David, although the conviction in his voice was starting to weaken.
"Do you really believe that, David?" said Amber, raising her eyebrows.
"Look," said David impatiently, and he folded his arms. "This isn't real, because the subject matter isn't real. This might be a real photograph but that's a fake injury, because a real injury like that would have killed somebody! They wouldn't still be walking around afterwards!"
"Wouldn't they?" said Amber sceptically. "These days, David, you can't tell what's walking around the city. I think we should give this woman a call and ask her a few questions about what she really saw that day. You might not want to hear the answers, but I know I'm interested in what she has to say about all this. Dig up her details for me, will you?"
"Oh, no," said David, narrowing his eyes, and he snatched the photograph from Amber's hand. "No, you don't. You've been hanging around with the STARS too long, Amber. Valentine's probably been feeding you all kinds of crazy crap. Look, this is clearly a hoax and I see no point in following it up!"
"All right then," said Amber patiently, holding out her hand. "Give me the photograph and I'll file it in the evidence room with all the other fabricated photos."
"Actually, if you don't mind, Amber, I'd like to hold onto this for a little while and keep examining it," said David quickly. "I want to find out how she fixed this up."
"If this is just a hoax, then why are you so interested in it? And what's wrong with me following up a line of inquiry, even if it is probably going to come to a dead end?" said Amber. "What are you so afraid of?"
"I'm not afraid of fake zombies!" snapped David.
"What about real ones?"
"There aren't any real ones!"
"A lot of people might think otherwise," Amber pointed out. "If someone is setting up pictures like this and sending them out to the police and the media, this could start spreading panic through the city. We could end up with riots on our hands. Even if this isn't true, it has to be investigated, so we can put a stop to it before it escalates into something worse. Now please give me Miss Rove's details, so I can conduct an investigation into this incident."
"Miss Rove is a fraud and so is this photograph," said David angrily. "I'm only keeping this for professional interest, so I can see how she made it! I see no reason to waste even more police time by conducting pointless investigations into obvious fakes! Don't we have enough work to do?"
"There have been real attacks, David!" said Amber crossly. "People out there are terrified of whatever's causing them, and whether you like it or not, there are rumours of cannibals and even zombies going around! Anything that might be encouraging them has to be investigated, so we can start getting to the bottom of the attacks and keep the public calm! Now if you just - "
She jumped as David Ford slammed his hand down on the worktop.
"I've had enough of this!" he snapped. "Get out of my darkroom!"
"David, look, just - "
"OUT!"
Amber glared at him for several seconds, then stormed out of the darkroom. When she was safely at the door of the office, she raised her voice and said:
"I don't see what the point of asking my opinion was, Ford, because you've obviously made your own mind up about all this! You're certainly not interested in anything I have to say! I suggest that if you don't want my opinion in future, then don't ask for it!"
She slammed the door behind her and started walking away in the direction of the evidence room.
"Stupid, stubborn jackass," she muttered. "What's the point in asking me what I think when he won't even listen to the answer? That guy really needs to stop spending so much time in the dark. I swear those chemical fumes are messing him up in the head."
For a moment, she wondered why David had sounded so angry at the suggestion of zombies, and why he'd been so insistent that the photograph was a fake. Then it struck her - the man was frightened. He didn't want to believe that the photograph was real even though he must have known that it was; he'd only asked for her opinion because he thought she didn't believe in zombies, and thought that her own disbelief in zombies would have provided him with some comfort and reassurance that nothing was really wrong with Raccoon City.
Poor David. He's burying his head in the sand, hoping that it'll all go away if he keeps ignoring it and pretending it isn't real. He wants people who don't believe in zombies to tell him that there aren't any, so he can believe it too. No wonder he's always in the darkroom - he's in there hiding from real life, with his photographs to remind him of the outside world.
There was a distant tinkle of breaking glass, and then the sound of running footsteps along the upstairs hallway; Amber paid these very little attention until she heard someone racing down the stairs and was almost bowled over by a startled Kenny.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," she said, grabbing the younger boy by his shoulders. "Where's the fire, Kenny? Come on, there's already been one accident around here today - you don't want to cause another one, right?"
Kenny shook his head hastily.
"Sorry, Officer Bernstein."
"That's okay, Kenny," said Amber, smiling. "Just take it a little slower, that's all. There's no rush. Hey, I know you like it here, but I've never seen anyone that eager to get back to work before! You put any more enthusiasm into your work and you'll explode."
Kenny smiled weakly at the comment and reached for the handle of the door that led to the briefing room hallway. However, just before his fingers closed around the handle, he hesitated and turned around.
"Officer Bernstein?" he said.
Amber had been about to carry on towards the evidence room, but she stopped and said:
"Yes, Kenny?"
"I saw Chris just now and he's still really mad about something," said Kenny. "I don't know what. But what happened just now with Officer Elran, by the stairs… that wasn't really an accident, was it?"
Amber looked Kenny right in the eye. There was no use lying to him, she thought. People often treated him as though he was a child, but he was fifteen years old; he was old enough and smart enough to see right through phoney explanations, and she wasn't about to insult his intelligence by lying blatantly to him.
"No, Kenny," she said quietly, and she shook her head. "I don't think it was. But please don't go spreading that around. You're a high school student and I'm sure you know how much damage gossip can cause. I'm not expecting you to lie, or to keep secrets on someone else's behalf, because honesty is important. I just don't think that mentioning this incident will do anybody any favours, least of all Officer Elran. Nobody likes being reminded of their own misfortunes, especially the painful and embarrassing ones. You're a sensible kid, and I'm sure I can rely on your discretion. Right?"
Kenny nodded.
"Right," he said.
"Thanks, Kenny. Have a good day," said Amber.
"You too, Officer Bernstein," Kenny replied.
When he had gone, Amber looked up at the stairs and sighed. Since Jill and Rebecca were busy seeing to Officer Elran, and Barry had taken the afternoon off for "family reasons", which almost certainly involved organising an extended family vacation to Canada, it was probably down to her to find out what was wrong with Chris, and why Kenny had left the STARS office at a dead run.
She really hated her job at times like these. Still, she reminded herself, somebody had to do it. Amber gathered up her courage, breathed in, and climbed up the stairs.
xxxxxxxxxx
The first noise that greeted Amber when she walked in through the door of the STARS office was the sound of broken glass shifting underfoot. The second was a sad little splash, the result of stepping in a large puddle of what appeared to be cooling coffee. She picked up a plastic handle, the only remnant of the coffee jug, and sighed.
"What the hell is your problem, Chris?"
Chris was hunched over his desk, reading an old newspaper. He looked up from his desk, saw who was speaking and looked back down again.
"Look, Amber, I'm not in the mood for this," he muttered. "Please go away."
"So what mood would you be in for this?" said Amber, putting one hand on her hip. "A happy, receptive mood? Look, Chris, if you were in a happy, receptive mood then I wouldn't have to talk to you about your goddamn attitude problem. What in the name of all that's good and holy possessed you to push Officer Elran down the stairs? You could have killed him!"
"All right, I overreacted," said Chris sharply. "I'm sorry, okay? I'm just having a really bad day. On my way back from lunch I heard a pair of those dimwits from the west office telling each other complete lies about Jill and Barry, and that brain-dead moron known to civilised society as John Fulham telling everybody who would listen that I was a crackhead."
"Pair of dimwits… you don't mean Elliot Edward and Neil Carlsen, do you?" said Amber.
"That's exactly who I mean," said Chris, incensed. "Let me tell you that I was pretty pissed-off about that, but I didn't say anything, because Jill was with me and I didn't want her getting upset. So we went back upstairs to work and then Elran comes out of nowhere and before I know it, me and my new shirt are covered in scalding hot coffee. When that happened, I just saw red and punched him in the face. I didn't even think about what I was doing, and I know I never meant to send him falling all the way downstairs… is he all right?"
"Pretty beat up," said Amber. "But he'll be okay. You're just lucky he thinks it was an accident. If he didn't, your career would probably be over right now. Assaulting a police officer is a serious offence."
"I know," said Chris, sighing heavily. "God, I'm such an idiot."
"I'd say that's a pretty accurate assessment," agreed Amber, pulling up a chair and sitting next to Chris. "But what gets me was the way you winked at Jill like that. What did you do that for? That doesn't say "accident" to me, that says "Hey, it's okay, the idiot got what he deserved". You could even say that it said "premeditated", which is probably what a lot of people round here will say if this gets out."
"I wasn't winking at her," said Chris shortly. "My eye's been twitching all day. It's getting really bad and it's starting to drive me nuts."
"Starting to?" teased Amber.
"Oh, Amber, give me a break," said Chris, turning away. "I know you're Jill's best friend and you hate my guts because I messed things up so badly with her, but can you just get over it for ten minutes? From the way you're acting, anyone would think it was your heart I broke, not hers."
"Anyone who hurts a friend of mine has it coming to them," said Amber simply. "But if Jill can mostly forgive you, I guess I can start doing the same. All right, let's call it quits for now and be civilised."
"Thanks."
"The eye-twitching is down to too much caffeine, too much stress and not enough sleep. Coffee is not a substitute for rest, Chris. The twitch will go away when you start looking after yourself a bit better. I warned you about that, and I'm going to warn you about it every single day until you actually pay attention. Do you hear the words that I am saying to you, Chris? Look. After. Yourself."
"Jeez, Amber, anyone would think you cared about me," said Chris dryly.
"Don't flatter yourself," laughed Amber. "All right, all right, that was a joke. Don't glare at me like that. I was kidding. I do care about you, Chris. You may have been the worst boyfriend in the entire history of dating, but you're still Jill's friend and that makes you sort of my friend too, whether I like it or not. That means it's my job to care. And what a wonderful job it is, when you're getting yourself covered in coffee and losing your temper in so many pointlessly dramatic ways. Do you have any clean shirts?"
"No, I don't! Why do you think I'm so pissed-off?"
"Never mind, you can change when you get home. I'm sure you have a couple spare in your apartment."
Amber thought about the state of Chris' apartment.
"Well, possibly," she added. "And coffee stains aren't the end of the world. You didn't get burned, did you? You said it was really hot."
"Only a couple of little spots. Nothing bad."
"You're sure?"
"Of course I'm sure!"
"All right, all right… I'm just asking. Look, maybe you should go home for a little while. You can change your shirt, get some sleep and have something to eat, and come back later when you're feeling better."
"You think I should?" said Chris.
"I would," said Amber. "Jill's furious with you and she's probably going to give you hell when she gets back."
"Oh, God," groaned Chris. "Forget the rest of the afternoon, that's a good reason for me to stay at home for the rest of the year. You're right, I am better off at home. I'll come back tomorrow when she's calmed down."
"Good idea," agreed Amber. "Oh, and I hope you're going to clear up that mess."
"What mess?"
"That mess," said Amber, pointing at the smashed remains of the coffee pot on the floor and the coffee stains on the back of the door.
"Oh, that mess," said Chris, as if noticing it for the first time. "Yeah. I'll ask Gus to do something about it."
"No, you will not," said Amber sternly. "That poor guy does enough work around here as it is, and he's been on his hands and knees scrubbing the jail cell floors all morning. You made the mess, you clear it up."
"All right, fine! I'll clear it up and then I'll go home. Happy?"
"Ecstatic," said Amber, rolling her eyes. "I'll see you tomorrow, Chris. Try not to kill anybody on the way out, okay?"
"Will do. And see if you can keep Jill busy for a few minutes while I clean this up. They must be on their way back by now, and as much as I enjoy Jill's company, I really don't want to run into her on my way out…"
xxxxxxxxxx
"… I'm sorry, ma'am," Bernice was repeating stubbornly, as Amber opened the door. "There really isn't anything we can do. Our officers are all extremely busy and right now we just don't have the manpower to offer your daughter special police protection. Have you tried contacting a private security firm?"
"I don't want a security firm, I want the police!" the woman insisted, clutching the edge of the wooden reception desk. "These people are extremely dangerous and I know they mean business! Please, you have to help me!"
It was the end of her shift and Amber had been on her way out of the building, but the snatch of overheard conversation had been so arresting that she couldn't help stopping to look at the source - a slender and frightened-looking woman in her forties, with dark shoulder-length hair and blue eyes. She was dressed in neat office attire, with sensible black court shoes, and her hair had been tied back into a neat ponytail. Amber also noticed that her mascara had run slightly and her glasses were starting to mist up.
"… don't tell me you don't even have one officer to spare to keep my little girl safe?" the woman was protesting feebly.
"Ma'am, I'm very sorry, but if you want a criminal investigation then you'll have to give us some more specific information," said Bernice, with more than a touch of impatience in her usually calm and friendly voice. "If you're not willing to divulge any information you might have as to the exact nature of the threat, or to tell us who you believe to be responsible, then I'm afraid there really isn't much we can do."
"But if I tell you, they'll kill her for sure!" said the woman, sounding almost hysterical and close to tears. "If they know I've told you anything… I'm not risking my daughter's life! She's my only child and she means everything to me! I can't let anything happen to her!"
"Mrs Hartley - "
"Doctor Hartley," corrected the woman automatically.
"Dr Hartley, I'm sorry, but if you're not prepared to help us then there's very little we can do to help you," said Bernice, sighing. "However, we're hoping to recruit extra officers soon, and hopefully then we'll be able to offer you some assistance. Until then, you should give serious consideration to hiring a bodyguard for your daughter and making further improvements to the security at your home. If you change your mind and feel able to contact us with information regarding this matter at a later date, or if there is any change in circumstances that gives you further cause for concern, we will of course begin an investigation and do our best to offer extra protection to you and your family. If you'd like to give us your details in the meantime, we can put them on file and perhaps raise the matter of extra patrols in the neighbourhood with the Chief - "
"Oh, forget it," said the woman hopelessly, taking off her glasses and wiping her eyes. "I don't know why my husband and I bother paying our taxes, because you won't even help us when we need you most… all I can say is that if anything happens to my daughter now that you've refused to protect her, then I will personally - "
"Ma'am, at this point I must draw to your attention the fact that the RPD is not prepared to tolerate any threats made against its employees," said Bernice wearily. It had obviously been a long day, Amber thought. "And I should also add that - "
"That the entire police force is a complete and utter waste of space!" the woman burst out suddenly, slamming the palm of her right hand down on the wooden counter. "You won't help me, or my little girl, so who are you going to help? We're not the only family in grave danger, you know! If these people get their way, then we're all going to hell in a handbasket!"
"Ma'am, if you don't calm down, I'm going to have to ask you to leave," said Bernice shortly.
"Well, you won't have to ask twice," snapped the woman. "The hell with you all. I guess I'll just have to sort out this whole mess myself, as usual…!"
Fuming, she left the foyer, rudely pushing aside a rookie officer on her way out. The front doors slammed shut behind her. Bernice glared at the closed doors, then returned to the pile of papers that she'd been annotating, in a mood that looked nothing less than filthy.
"Rough day, huh?" said Amber on her way past the desk.
"Don't even talk to me about it," came the decidedly grouchy reply.
"Boy, that good," murmured Amber to herself, as she left the building. "We should all be so lucky, Bernice. Maybe you ought to try dealing with David Ford and an angry Chris sometime, give you something to really complain about…"
She stepped out into the warm embrace of twilight. The air earlier had been thick with summer heat, but the onset of darkness had brought cooler air with it, which Amber was glad of; the west office had been uncomfortably stuffy that afternoon.
It was still light, and after getting herself hopelessly lost on the subway that morning, Amber had no intention of repeating the experience, so she decided to take a shortcut through the back streets of the neighbourhood.
It's quite a walk, she thought to herself, as she turned right in the courtyard and cut through a small grassy area on her way to the side gate. But what the hell. I could do with the exercise, and it'll give me a chance to see what's been going on in this part of town lately.
The gate's rusting hinges screeched as she pulled open the gate and closed it again behind her. She was now standing in a street lined with various small businesses, mostly closed for the night. Further down she could see a liquor store, one of the few stores still open this late, and on the left side of the street was the pavement café, Le Jardin Des Ratons, the umbrellas on the tables now furled and the chairs stacked neatly on top of the tables. It had been closed for about an hour, but there was one light still on somewhere in the building; Amber guessed that the owner was probably in the back, doing paperwork or counting up the day's takings.
The street was completely deserted, and she couldn't decide whether it was eerily quiet here or merely very peaceful. She eventually decided that it was peaceful and carried on towards another gate, this one set in a wall at the far end of the street. It led to a dark alley, but one that had never held any fears for her. She'd taken this route countless times, at all hours of the day and night, and not once had she ever encountered any problems.
Graffiti had been daubed all along the brick walls of the alley. There were slogans and some crude pictures - some of which were very crude indeed - but mostly there were names, and dates, stretching back across the decades.
The older graffiti had either faded to near-invisibility or been obscured by newer tags, but Amber could still spot a few familiar pieces, here and there. She knew that officially she was meant to adopt a zero-tolerance attitude to vandalism, but secretly she quite liked seeing the graffiti in places like this. It served as a kind of transient record of the city's more recent history, a temporary testament to those who had gone before. Kids would hang out here with their friends, write their names on the walls to prove that they were there and that they existed. Then they'd grow up, get jobs, marry and have children of their own, and forget all about the times they'd spent in this place, but their names would stay here, so the next generation could read the names on the wall and remember the kids who had been there before them. People came and went, but the names and dates endured - for long enough, anyway.
Her lips curved upwards in a fond smile of recognition as she saw the names painted on the far wall of the alley. It had been years since they'd inscribed their names here, but the paint was still as vivid as it had always been. More vivid than it had any right to be, after all these years…
The memories were a little blurry around the edges, but if she half-closed her eyes and cast her thoughts back, she could still see the twin boys standing there, angelic-looking and as blond as sunshine, one grinning mischievously as the other concentrated, the tip of his tongue protruding just a little as he finished the last letter.
Alex and Joel. And standing next to them, the stocky figure of Mikey, running his hand nervously through his short dark hair and worrying about what his mom would say if she found out he'd been writing on walls - because his name was there too, written small and cautiously on one of the other walls, half-hidden amid all the other names and as unobtrusive as white paint on an old, stained red-brick wall could possibly be. It sort of defeated the purpose of graffiti, but Mikey always had been the kind of boy worried about taking up too much space in the world, or receiving any more from life than he thought he was entitled to. Oh yes, Mikey had been a worrier, though he had a life he could be quietly confident in now.
"You worry too much, Mikey!"
That was Kevin's voice, ringing in her ears, although the words were ten years old now and had come from a much younger boy, leaning casually against the wall, drinking a bottle of dime-store soda and half-laughing as he spoke. His name had been there too, painted in thin letters but spread halfway across the long wall - Kevin was the type who liked painting his name big, perhaps a little bigger than it needed to be. He'd been growing his hair long at the time, and he'd taken up smoking for a little while because he'd thought it would impress the girls, but he'd stopped when Amber had told him matter-of-factly that he was an idiot.
"You're going to get sick from the smoke, you know. It'll get stuck in your chest and kill you dead. You do know that, don't you?"
That voice had been hers, loud and piercing, with a slight lisp due to new braces. She'd never known when to keep her mouth shut, but the boys had never minded much. Alex and Joel would argue back sometimes, or pull on her pigtails to make her yowl if she was really being annoying that day; Mikey would look anxious and try to reprimand her as inoffensively as he could, but Kevin usually just laughed and let her comments pass him by.
She'd written on the wall that day too, giggling nervously and looking over her shoulder every five seconds, wondering if she'd get into trouble but not really caring too much, as long as her mother never got to hear about it. Like Mikey, she'd tried to half-hide it amid all the other scrawled names, but like Kevin, she couldn't resist making it stand out among the rest at the same time. It had been one name among dozens, but she'd painted it a little bolder to make it count, to make sure that it wouldn't be covered up easily.
And it hadn't been, either. She could still see the letters written there, small and faded with time but still clear - "AMBER B", with a date in the late Eighties that she didn't care to examine any closer, because she felt old enough just remembering the day she'd first written it. Mikey's was a little indistinct with age, time and another layer of graffiti laid over the top, but Kevin's still stood out, and Alex and Joel's names looked as though they'd been painted yesterday - maybe they'd come back to go over it again the last time they came home to visit, she thought. Neither of them had really grown up, and it would be just the kind of thing they'd do.
The E in her name was a lot paler than the other letters, and Amber wondered why this one had faded more than the rest. She almost wished that there was something she could do about it, but police officers didn't paint graffiti on walls, and that was that.
She turned to walk away and heard a crunch underfoot. Looking down, she could see a small piece of chalk that had broken beneath the weight of her footstep. She picked up one of the fragments and held it between forefinger and thumb, then looked thoughtfully at the wall.
Well, it was chalk, after all. Surely that wouldn't be a crime - she and her colleagues were allowed to do chalk outlines on floors, weren't they? And since graffiti was a crime, then it probably wouldn't hurt to draw an outline around part of the crime scene…
Feeling a little guilty but secretly thrilled to be keeping a piece of a happy childhood memory alive for a little longer, Amber pressed the tiny point of chalk against the brick wall and started filling in the faded letter. She had almost finished when she heard a shout go up behind her.
"Hey!"
Amber jumped, and the chalk stub flew from her fingers as she whipped her head round to see who had shouted. Red shame was already starting to flood her cheeks, undeniable proof of her guilty conscience.
Standing at the far end of the alley, eclipsing Alex and Joel's names, were two familiar-looking teenagers in street clothes. One was a short boy in jeans and a blue hooded top, his blond hair almost invisible beneath a navy-blue Yankees cap. The other, a girl, had chipped red polish on her fingernails and the worst dye job that Amber had ever seen - her hair was platinum blonde, but the mousy roots of her hair were showing, and there were darker streaks that looked completely out of place. She was wearing a bright purple halterneck top with blue denim hot-pants and shabby sneakers, and the trailer-trash look was finished off with gold hoop earrings, several thick gold necklaces and two over-large gold rings, none of which appeared to be made from real gold.
"I thought the pigs didn't want graffiti everywhere," remarked the boy to his friend, grinning at Amber's obvious embarrassment. "Turns out they're as bad as us, huh, Tiff?"
"Oh, shut up, Ritch," said the girl disapprovingly. "It's only Officer Bernstein, and she's not a pig. She's nice to us. So's Officer Ryman. They're the only ones who even bother to treat us like actual people, so hush your mouth, unless you want her to leave you in a jail cell the next time we all get hauled in for doin' nothin'."
"This one used to be mine," said Amber sheepishly, feeling her blush deepen as they stared at her - they were obviously awaiting an explanation. "I did this when I was a kid back in the Eighties. Officer Ryman's got his name here somewhere too. We used to hang out with a couple of other downtown kids and we all wrote our names in this alley."
"Is that right?" said the blonde girl, with a broad grin. "You get in trouble for it?"
"Nah," said Amber, relaxing. "Nobody really cares about this place, to be honest. This is Paint Can Alley; all the kids used to write their names here back in the day. They still do, by the look of things. Street Rats, right?"
The girl nodded abruptly.
"Yeah, but you know that anyway," interrupted the boy, before his friend could speak. "You must've seen us enough times."
Amber smiled.
"Yeah," she said. "Uh… let me think, you're Ritchie, aren't you? Ritchie Hale? And your friend's Tiffany Ward, am I right? And you both live in upstairs apartments on Hinterland Avenue, a few doors down from Marco Alvarez and his brother."
The boy and girl both looked taken aback.
"Wow, you really do know all the skaters," said Ritchie, with a touch of startled admiration.
"I should think so too, I've lived in downtown all my life and I used to hang out with the PriMadonnas a lot when I was a kid," said Amber.
The two teenagers looked even more amazed.
"The PriMadonnas? Whoa," said Ritchie, trying not to let his jaw drop. "You ever meet that guy, the one that died?"
Amber shuddered briefly as a memory surfaced, but she pushed it back down. It wasn't something that she wanted to remember.
"Dmitri Marovski," she said. "Yeah, I knew him. Nice guy, kind of moody, but he was the best damn skater I've ever seen. It was his life, and I guess it was kind of his death as well. They still call him the Dark Skater?"
"Yeah," said Ritchie. "People say his ghost still hangs round the spot where he got killed. An' if you see it, you die too."
Amber snorted.
"People say lots of things," she said. "But I don't believe in ghosts. Dmitri's dead and buried, and his soul's gone to wherever it is that souls go. Heaven or Hell, I don't know, that's up to him, but don't you go telling stories about that poor boy. You let him rest in peace."
Ritchie just shrugged.
"You on duty, Officer B?" said Tiffany, changing the subject quickly.
"No, I'm on my way home for the night," Amber replied.
"Cool. You want to hang with us for a while?" offered Tiffany, and Ritchie turned to glare at her, but she just shrugged. "Hey, Ritch, chill, she's like an honorary skater anyway."
"No thanks, Tiffany, I've had a really long day and I just want to get to bed right now," said Amber, inwardly touched by the invitation. "But thank you for asking. I might take you up on that some other time."
"Sure," said Tiffany. "You an' Officer Ryman can hang with us whenever you want."
"Thanks," said Amber.
Tiffany and Ritchie nodded, and Amber followed them as they went back the way they'd come - there was a right turning at the end of the alley which was blocked by a dumpster, but they just climbed over it and kept on going. Amber clambered over the waist-high dumpster - was it even a dumpster? She didn't really know what it was - and carried on until she reached the overpass.
To the best of her knowledge, the overpass had always been there. It ran along the end of the defunct red-brick building like a balcony, with steps at either end leading down into the alleys. Perhaps it had started life as a fire escape, but now it was mostly used as a shortcut. Later on, someone had had the bright idea of using it for advertising space, so now both the side of the overpass and the end of the building was covered in billboards and hoardings for products and local businesses.
Oh… and of course, it was a good place for the skater kids to hang out. Tiffany and Ritchie had just joined three more of their compatriots, who were lounging against the brick wall and passing around a bottle of tequila. Amber quietly decided to have a word with their mothers at some point, but said nothing, instead preferring to give them a cheery wave.
"Hey guys," she said warmly. "How's it going?"
The other three Street Rats greeted her with considerable enthusiasm, perhaps more than they usually would have. Amber put it down to the tequila.
"Great!" exclaimed a tall, handsome Hispanic boy, whose jet-black hair had been cut surfer-style, to match his baggy jeans and open red Hawaiian shirt. He started to giggle helplessly, but then his giggles gave way to hiccups.
"Jeez, Raphael, you've had way too much of this shit," said one of the other boys scornfully, taking the bottle from his hand and downing about half of what was left in one long swig. He couldn't have looked more unlike his friend - this boy was wearing a thrash metal t-shirt and black jeans covered in chains, and his hair had been dyed bright red and gelled up into spikes - but that was the beauty of the Street Rats, thought Amber. There was probably no other group of people in the whole world so culturally diverse, but somehow they all got along beautifully. As a model for a truly fair and tolerant society, they were exemplary, except maybe for the tequila-drinking and fist-fights with the uptown kids, who seemed bent on making life even harder for their counterparts in downtown than it already was.
"Mitch," said the third person, a pretty, willowy blonde girl with a thick French accent. She was wearing a baby-blue dress, strappy white sandals and a cute little blue beret, and looked about as far from being a skater as it was possible to get. "Have you any more of the tequila left?"
"Sure thing, Columbine," said Mitch, and he passed the bottle over to the girl. Columbine downed most of what was left with surprising and unladylike ease, then thrust the bottle in Amber's direction.
"Uh, no thanks, honey," said Amber quickly.
Columbine just shrugged, and passed the bottle towards Tiffany and Ritchie, who immediately began fighting over the dregs.
"Where are the others?" Amber asked, looking around. The Street Rats numbered at least fifteen, and there appeared to be no sign of the other ten.
"Playin' basketball," answered Mitch. "Apart from Jack. I don't know where he is."
"I do," said Tiffany, rolling her eyes. "He's with that uptown girl he won't ever shut up talkin' 'bout. Her parents hate the sight of him but he just ain't gonna give up chasin' her. Don't know why he bothers, he's never gonna get with that girl. But no, he won't spend any time with us if he thinks he can run off after Lisa."
Tiffany made kissy-faces at the air and the others all burst out laughing.
"Ah, Jack's all right," said Mitch mildly, as the laughter subsided. "Kind of a dreamer, but he's all right. Just hate to see him tryin' so hard to get that girl an' gettin' nowhere. He likes her way too much for his own good."
There was a general murmuring of agreement from the others. Amber took this as her cue to leave, and said goodbye. She saw Raphael wave after her, then he burst out laughing for no reason and fell sideways, to the amusement of the others.
The laughter followed Amber down the steps and all the way along the other graffiti-daubed alley, only dying away when she opened the gate at the other end and stepped out into the basketball court.
More laughter and shouts of exhilaration rang out through the air. Amber had been expecting to see a lot of activity on the other side of the gate, but she hadn't been quite prepared for the basketball. She managed to reach up and catch it just before she got hit in the face.
"Sorry, Officer B!" she heard somebody call. "Didn't see you there!"
Amber peered out from behind the basketball and saw a Hispanic girl in jeans and a peach shirt, brushing her dreadlocks out of her eyes.
"Sorry," she repeated. "Roland got kind of carried away."
"Hey, that wasn't me!" protested a brown-haired boy with glasses and a blue sweatshirt that didn't really go with his cargo pants. "That was Eduardo, wasn't it?"
"No way!" said a tall and rather moody-looking Hispanic boy, scowling at the other boy. "You blame me for everythin'. That was Marco an' you know it."
"Yeah, whatever," scoffed yet another Hispanic boy, whom Amber knew to be Marco Alvarez. "Alena, you gotta stop blamin' people for your screw-ups."
"But it wasn't my screw-up," argued the girl with dreadlocks. "That was one of you guys, you bumped into me an' put off my aim! I would've got that if you hadn't - "
"Oh, shut your face, Alena," an Australian girl with frizzy brown hair said shortly, and Amber suddenly remembered talking to her about who had started the fight between the uptown and downtown kids. "Just get on with it, will you? Officer Bernstein, can you throw the ball back to Eduardo? We'll start over an' maybe we can play fair this time, right?"
Amber tossed the ball back to Eduardo and the game began again in earnest. As the yells of "Throw it to me!" and "Hey, over here!" sounded out again, Amber took a moment to look around.
Surrounded on all sides by alleyways and cheap housing, the basketball court had always been a place of disputed ownership; the skater gangs had fought over this for years until someone had finally declared it neutral territory. Things had been a lot easier since this decision, and some of the gangs even played relatively friendly basketball games with each other instead of fighting in the streets, spraying over each others' tags or bickering over turf. A bunch of the artistically-talented PriMadonnas had spray-painted a colourful mural by the basketball hoop, entitled "Above Rim" and depicting a small green alien playing basketball. There was still plenty of gang graffiti on the brick walls of the court, but the message had changed since the last one was sprayed - the presence of all the tags in one place indicated that it belonged to them all now, and that everybody was welcome here, no matter which group they belonged to.
There were a few wooden benches set up against the walls. Cheering on their friends from one were a very handsome blond boy in jeans and a green shirt, and a pretty girl with big almond-shaped eyes and long golden hair, who was dressed in baby-pink from head to toe. She remembered their names as being Valerio and Almond - both very pretty names, although she wasn't entirely convinced that Almond was a sensible name for a girl. There was an older boy too, maybe nineteen or twenty, and Amber recognised him as Marco's big brother Antonio, a charming and well-dressed young man who was so laid-back that he was almost upside-down.
And then, standing next to the wall by the gate, was the other Street Rat. He had a dark complexion and was said to be from somewhere in Latin America, although nobody really knew much about his past. His real name - at least, she'd been told that it was his real name, though personally she believed otherwise - was in the police files, but apparently he never used it. Known to all as "Batman" and always dressed for some reason in orange clothes and a matching bandanna, the strange and enigmatic teenage boy never seemed to say very much, but she was aware that whatever he had to say was probably worth listening to.
"Hey, Batman," she said kindly, putting a hand on his shoulder. "What's up?"
The boy turned round, but his eyes seemed to be looking through her, not at her. He just stared at some invisible point in the distance, then discarded the empty can of spray-paint that he'd been holding. Amber noticed wet white paint glistening on the wall, and frowned.
"Batman, you really shouldn't be doing that," she told him firmly. "If I catch you or any of the others doing that again, I'll make you scrub that wall until there isn't a speck of paint left on it. I'll let it go this time, nobody's really going to notice an extra tag in this place anyway, but next time I - "
The next word froze in her throat as she saw what the boy had written. Across the wall, in large and desperate-looking letters, were the words:
"THIS TOO SHALL PASS"
She didn't know why, but something in the words unnerved her to her very core. Perhaps it was the apocalyptic, almost Biblical phrasing, or perhaps it was the strange sense of menace the words themselves conveyed. She had no idea what the words actually meant, but she had a horrible feeling that it wasn't anything good.
"Why did you write that?" she demanded to know, feeling stupid for being so scared by a piece of graffiti and for not having a clue what it meant. "What does it mean?"
The boy just shook his head, refusing to speak.
"Hey Batman!" called the others, putting down the basketball and gathering by the chain link fence that stretched along the far side of the court. "We're goin' home now! See you tomorrow!"
Batman nodded curtly in response to his friends, waved to the rest of the Street Rats, who had come down from the overpass shortly afterwards and announced that they too were going home, then he returned his blank gaze to Amber.
"I asked you a question," said Amber, her voice shaking just a little as she pointed to the new piece of graffiti gleaming on the wall. The frustration wasn't as bad as the terror of the unknown, but neither was helping her new state of mind very much. "What do those words mean?"
The boy shook his head again.
"You don't know? Or don't you want me to know?" said Amber, but Batman merely shrugged.
She was beginning to wonder if this was nothing but an attempt to freak her out, but that didn't make any sense. She'd met Batman a few times before and he'd always seemed friendly enough, if extremely quiet. Scaring somebody or trying to mess with their mind just didn't seem like the kind of thing that he'd do. No, this was probably for real, but what did he mean by it?
"What does this mean, Batman?" Amber tried again, with a more concerted attempt at patience. "What will pass? And what will pass after that?"
Batman still said nothing. He seemed to be in a trance-like state, but it didn't look as though it had anything to do with paint fumes or illegal substances - he just didn't seem to want to talk, or do anything except stare at nothing in particular while behind his eyes, his mind worked overtime.
"What will pass, Batman? Tell me what it means," she urged him, with increasing desperation.
This time, Batman shook his head and started to walk away.
"Wait! Batman, I want to know what this means!" Amber called after him. "Please, tell me what it means! What's going to happen? Is it something bad? Is there something wrong, something that you want to talk to me about? Because if there is, you know you can talk to me or Officer Ryman any time - "
But Batman had already closed the gate in the chain link fence behind him, leaving Amber to stand alone in the basketball court and wonder why the air seemed much colder and the dark sky suddenly more ominous and cloudy. She didn't know what was going wrong with the world that she thought she'd known and understood, and this was bothering her deeply.
"What will pass?" she said softly to herself, staring at the graffiti again as the wind blew through the basketball court, ruffling her hair and wafting a few fallen flyers from the walls across the expanse of concrete. "Is this a prophecy or a warning? What will pass… and in addition to what?"
Much later, she would wish that she had never asked the question. For now, though, she could only stare and wonder as the wind blew papers along the ground, chasing away all the little pieces of the past and consigning them to eventual oblivion in all the gutters and corners of the world beyond the walls.
