Author's Note/ Disclaimer: I know I said it would be a week, but I decided the one chapter was just too bare to stand alone for that long. So here's the next segment for your reading pleasure. I'll have another one up soonish, and then we'll get into the once a week cycle. Oh, yes, there's some Joe stuff coming up, and I've never written Joe before. There are some people who would eat my head off if I screw it up so if anyone wants to beta chapters for me, give me an email (sarcasmo2004@aol.com). Again, none of the content from A.I.: Artificial Intelligence is mine. It belongs to Dreamworks SKG and Warner Bros., copyright 2001. All of the original characters and text go my way, copyright 2002, Warson Heyn. Don't take it without asking. But feel free to ask. Oh, yes, and please send me feedback. I crave it. It's like an addiction. But without the whole... addiction... thing.

I'll shut up and let you get on with the story now.

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"Fear is that little darkroom where negatives are developed."

~Michael Pritchard

"S H A D O W T O W N"

By Warson Heyn

Part II: 'Sweat'

Day One: 1629hrs

Leo arrived at the old World's Fair Grounds less than ten minutes after the phone call. He brought along with him about twenty hunters from the office who would be helping gather clues and search for the missing men. Leo stepped up to the place where Russell Freeman was standing, right next to the strange green graffiti. It was the third time he'd seen it, and he didn't like it. He didn't like it at all.

"I'll never look at teddy bears the same way again," Leo mumbled.

"Leo?" said Russell glancing at his just-arrived supervisor.

"Yeah?" Leo said as he lit another cigarette and placed it between his lips.

"I'm a little freaked out."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

Leo took a long drag of his cigarette. All of the major cigarette companies now produced, by mandate of law, carcinogen free brands. They had by this point perfected them to where every aspect of them from size to flavor and all was exactly the same as the other "old-school" cigarettes. Still, Leo wasn't interested. He had smoked the cancer-sticks for sixteen of his thirty years, and he wasn't about to change that now.

He glanced out into the darkness. This sector of Shadowtown used to be like a big park before the Tables were built. There was plenty of open space and grass, plus all sorts of giant street-sculptures everywhere. Once, the giant Space Needle had towered skyward less than half a kilometer from where they were standing. But it had been dismantled piece by piece and sold to some architectural firm from Tokyo. Leo imagined the Fair Park must have looked plenty nice in daylight, but now, in eternal darkness, the Grounds were eerie and foreboding. And with all the lights the Flesh Fair boys had brought with them, the place was about to be lit up like a giant target sign for whatever was snatching up the hunters. This, Leo also didn't like at all.

"Leo?" Russell said.

"Yeah?"

"Got any ideas as to what in the hell is happening out here?"

Leo shrugged and sighed. He glanced around. About half of the boys he'd brought along were heading out in small groups to search for the other hunters. They held twice as much firepower as they usually carried with them in case anything should happen. The rest of them had gone off to try to help the three men that were found at the site.

"Leo," Russell said again after a pause.

"Yeah?"

"...Is that all you've got to say? 'Yeah?'"

"Yeah," Leo said glancing at Russ. "Why?"

"I think you have something more to say."

"Yeah? And what's that?"

"I think you're a little freaked out too."

"Well, I'm not," he lied.

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not."

"I can tell."

"What?"

"I can tell."

"No you can't."

"Yes I can."

"How?"
"You're sweating."

"What?"
"You're sweating. You're a little freaked out."

"So I'm sweating.... it's hot out."

"Leo."

"Yeah?"
"It's forty-five degrees out here."

There was another long pause. Leo eyed Russell with a look of half contempt. Russell could win any argument, including those he had with Leo. That was part of the reason he was so good at what he did. He was level-headed and smart. And sometimes Leo hated him for it. Leo stamped out his cigarette. He turned towards a group of guards standing around a member of Team Six who was sitting on the ground. He hated it when Russell won arguments with him.

"Russ," Leo said.

"Yeah?"

"I hate it when you win arguments with me."

"Yeah. I know."

Leo walked over towards the circle of men. He pushed past a few guards to get into the center where the Team Six hunter sat half-conscious on the ground. He held an ice pack up to his head, and was quite dazed. "Leo?" he said, turning to face his boss, "Shit, man, my head hurts."

"Alright, Jacobs," Leo said quietly, "lift up the ice for a second."

The guard slowly raised the ice-pack off of his forehead. Besides the reddish patch where the cold bad had rested, there was no mark whatsoever on his head.

"It was a shock gun," said a young voice that Leo didn't recognize. "Got him right in the forehead. He doesn't remember a thing." Leo turned and rose to face the boy who had just spoken. He was young-- no more than nineteen --and wore a blue jean jacket with the Flesh Fair logo embroidered on the breast pocket. There was a camera slung around his neck.

"Who are you?" Leo asked him.

"Rob Keller," replied the boy with the camera. "They sent me from up top." He gestured up at the black steel ceiling above them. Up top seemed to mean the Flesh Fair Arena on the Table above.

"And why exactly was Rob Keller sent down here, because I really doubt it's to keep me company."

The boy fumbled idly with the straps on his camera. "To... take pictures."

"Then go away and take some pictures. Leave me and my men alone," Leo spat as he turned back towards the guard on the ground. He bent over and looked at the place in the center of Jacobs' forehead where the shock-gun had hit. He pressed his finger to it gently. Jacobs winced.

"Shit, Leo..." Jacobs mumbled "What the hell happened?"

"I'm working on it, man," Leo said. Suddenly, the concrete around him was lit up with a brilliant flash of white light. Leo snapped his head back around to see Rob Keller holding the camera up to his head. It whirred quietly as it reloaded the film.

"Did you just take a picture of me?" Leo demanded.

"What?" asked the boy with the camera.

"It's a yes-or-no question." Leo snapped, taking a step towards him. "Did you just make that camera record my photographic image on a slide of film?"

"There's no film. It- it's a digital camera…"

"Did you take the goddamn picture?!"

"Y-yes..." said Rob Keller. The small crowd of guards around him exchanged worried looks and stepped backwards. It was a bad idea to be too close to the boss when he was about to lose it.

"Why'd you do that?" Leo barked.

"I'm just trying to... help." Photographer Rob Keller had just gone very, very pale.

Leo fished into the inside of his jacket. "Fifteen second head start," he said.

"What?"

Leo pulled out a silver revolver and brought it up to eye-level with the photographer. "Fourteen..."

About one hundred meters away, Russell Freeman had just finished describing the distress call he'd received to a Flash Fair guard with a notepad. He turned around when he heard people yelling and running over by where Jacobs had been found. Thirteen seconds later he heard the first shot.

"Aw, damn it, Leo," he muttered. He started running over in that direction, and he could now plainly make out Leo's figure firing the gun. As Russ charged headlong at him, he fired another two shots out into the blackness. Within a few moments, Russell knocked him to the ground with a textbook football tackle, and sent the gun clattering across the concrete. Russell stood up and glared down at Leo. "What the hell are you doing?" he shouted.

Leo lay on the ground with the wind knocked out of him for a moment. He was laughing between his gasping breaths. "What'd you... do that for?" he gasped. "I coulda been shooting... whatever got Team Six... for all you know." He put his arm across his stomach and winced. "I think you cracked a goddamn rib."

"Doubt it." Russell said, his arms folded across his chest. "What were you shooting at?"

Leo got up on one knee. "Punk kid with a camera... from upstairs."

"Oh, now that's intelligent."

Leo turned up to Russell and smirked. "They were blanks Russ. I was just scaring him." He climbed slowly to his feet.

"I hope you feel special, Leo." Russell turned around and faced the men scattered across the concrete park. "It's alright, everyone," he shouted. "Get back to work. Leo's just being an ass." He held out his hand to help Leo stand up. "That was pretty stupid."

Leo took Russ's hand and got to his feet. "Well, how the hell was I supposed to get anything done with Jimmy Olsen flashing his goddamn Nikkon in my face?"

Leo picked up his gun and walked over towards where the boy had dropped his camera. He brought his heel crashing down on it. The camera smashed into a hundred pieces. "Well, that's finished." He gestured for Russell to come to his car. "Come on," he said, "the boys will take care of everything else here."

They walked over to the black car with the white moon panted on the hood.

"I don't like that they're sending their boys down here, y'know," Leo said.

"What?" Russ asked.

"That kid with the camera, he said he was from 'up top.' Those arena boys should mind their own damn business."

"I thought you would want all the help you could get."

"Well, what they sent wasn't help." He held up the trashed remains of Rob Keller's camera.

"Why exactly do you have blanks in your gun, Leo?"

"I carry two guns: one hot, one with blanks." He opened the driver-side door of the car. "Sometimes you want to scare 'em, sometimes you don't, y'know?"

"Yeah. I know."

"And Russ?"

"Yeah, Leo?"

Leo sighed. "I'm a little freaked out."

"Yeah," Russ said, getting into the passenger seat. "I know."

* * *

Mecha hunting was less of a spectacle in places like Shadowtown. There, "hounds" weren't on electronic motorcycles with big lights and guns, and there certainly weren't cameras and giant balloons everywhere. Instead, the process was more of a straightforward hunt.

In Leo's Shadowtown district, for example, there were nine teams of seven members each who would, either at a tip or at will, go to different sectors of the city and search for the rogue mechas. They traveled on foot, and were armed with small electro-magnetic weapons used to slow down, subdue, and eventually, deactivate the mechas until they could be caged and brought up to the arena on the Table. These teams could bring in anything from five to fifty total rogues a day. It was Leo's job to keep the whole process well-oiled, and Russell's job to oversee the actual hunters.

And now, someone had decided to start messing with their men. Whatever was going on, it wasn't good.

Upon arriving at the offices on Pike Street, the two men went straight into Leo's office to begin discussing the possibilities, and what was next for their team. It would be several hours before either one would come back out.