+J.M.J.+
The Shadows Between the Neon
By "Matrix Refugee"
Author's Note:
I didn't want to leave you languishing for a week after last chapter's cliffhanger (didn't want Cecie to be languishing in the Rouge City lock-up, either), hence, Chapter V! And now a word from our sponsors: This chapter is brought to you by M&M's Halloween peanuts, by Yankee Candles autumn collection, and especially by Tewksbury, Massachusetts' Livingston Street Terror and its original music by local composer Daniel Hildreth, "Violent Variations on Terror", which I loved so much I bought the CD. Move over, John Williams, Mwahahahahahaha!
Disclaimer:
See chapter I. However, I borrowed the name of the detective from 1998's Dark City and I modeled the character somewhat after William Hurt, who played Burnstead in the same movie (I even borrowed the character's accordion.).
V October 28, 2159
Copywriter Taken into Custody; Local Author Accused of Mecha Murders
ROUGE CITY--Cecilia "Cecie" Martin was taken into protective custody last night, charged with destroying the fourth Mecha found damaged in the city. Miss Martin protested her innocence and seemed in shock as security guards Bob Stanger and Leslie Tiessen led her to the Rouge City lock up. So far the only lead linking Miss Martin to this destruction is a complaint she expressed against the victim, a German import locally known as Kurt. The Mecha, a bondage artist, had once pinned Miss Martin to a wall four years ago.
"Cecie couldn't do this; she'd cut her own arm off before she'd harm a Mecha," commented Karl Vautrin, a friend of Miss Martin's present in the crowd that surrounded the crime scene on Harlot Square. "I've known her since she moved up here [in 2155] and she's always been deferential toward Mechas."
City Manager Destiny Rohrschact has been said to have called in a detective to investigate this rash of damage. Ms. Rohrschact was unavailable for comment.
Cecie couldn't help reading this item as she sat in one of the cells of the Rouge City lock up beneath City Hall. A security Mecha stood opposite the cell door, reading a newspaper as slowly as an ordinary human. She sat hunched on a box close to the bars of the cell, away from the others: two Orga hookers whose red-rimmed eyes and purpled nostrils suggested they were stringer snorters, a guy who kept bragging about all the smart safes he'd broken into, and a teenaged boy in a red halter top and a black leather microskirt, who'd tried feeling her up. It didn't help that her skirt was sliding down since they'd taken away her belt when they booked her.
She had to turn her back to the security Mecha to avoid seeing the photo on the front page: Hal's shot of her arrest. They could call it taking her into custody, but she knew what it was.
Don't p--- on my leg and tell me it's raining, she thought.
She heard footsteps in the corridor and the buzz of the smart lock opening.
"Walter, we'll take care of this," said a voice in the corridor. She turned around. The security Mecha had stood up, blocking the passage of the newcomers, but it stepped aside.
The warden of the lock-up, a bulky man in a military blue suit, approached the cell; behind him were Flyte and Vautrin and a man she didn't recognize: a clam-faced, slightly round-shouldered man moving into late middle-age, his sandy-brown hair hardly grayed, yet receding from his high, intelligent brow; calm, gray eyes and a strong if ordinary face, the kind women call "good-looking in a fatherly way".
"Cecilia Martin? Stand up, please," the warden ordered. He unlocked the door of the cell with a smart key. 'You can come out now; these men are here to help you."
"How'd you get yourself caught?" Vautrin asked.
"A simple case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time," Cecie replied.
"The guards based your arrest on too circumstantial evidence," the warden said.
"They may as well have arrested everyone on that plaza," the third man said.
The third man led her to a small, windowless room with a two way mirror on one wall, a deal table and two chairs stood in the center of the floor under a caged light. He offered her one of the chairs. "Have a seat, Miss Martin; or would you rather I called you Cecie?"
"Miss Martin will do, but I'm afraid I didn't catch your name."
"I'm Isherwood Burnstead, Camden Police Detective. I'm also with the Sex Work Division of the Federal Trade Commission," he said, sitting down opposite from her. "The City Manager sent for me to investigate these Mecha destructions."
"I didn't destroy those Mechas."
"That's what we're trying to find out."
She looked into his face. He seemed sympathetic enough, but that could just be his mask. "I couldn't kill a Mecha. I…I'm in love with one. I couldn't kill any of his kind."
"I don't think you did either. I'm here to clear your name by cracking this case.
"Now, do you know anything about this at all? Have you seen anyone suspicious before or after you found the bodies?"
"I've been keeping an eye open since I stumbled on the first one, for Joe's sake. I'm a writer; I notice things, people's behaviors and mannerisms.
"Now, what I'd like to know is how did you find out I didn't kill Kurt?"
Burnstead smiled calmly. "That was easy: Kurt carried a riding whip; he'd have used it on you: you'd have bruises, welts, maybe cuts about your face and neck, maybe your clothes would be torn. You haven't a mark on you. Whoever did in that Mecha would have their clothes soaked in lubricants and hydraulics: you haven't a spot on you."
"The only eye keener than the eye of a writer is the eye of a detective," she noted. "Do you have any idea what you're looking for?"
"Why would you need to know?"
"I want to help you, for Joe's sake."
"I have two possible profiles: one may be a malfunctioning Mecha, the other may be a disgruntled former client. There are a lot of other possibilities, but it's too soon to start jumping to conclusions. I've taken something of a personal interest in this case."
She smiled thinly. "Oh, saving the damsel in distress?"
"No, Flyte pointed Ms. Rohrschact toward me: he and I go way back, as they say."
"I guess I should thank him for getting me out."
Vautrin and Flyte met her in the warden's office when they let her out. Cecie could have hugged Flyte when she saw him, but she restrained herself.
"How are you doing now, girl?" Flyte asked.
"I've had better nights, but it'll get better," she said as a clerk handed her the box containing her belongings: her belt, her datascriber, her wallet and her satchel, which someone had buggered, probably searching it for the murder weapon. It was a beat to death satchel that would have given way sooner or later, but they'd speeded up the process. "Thanks," she said, putting a hand on Flyte's shoulder.
"I couldn't let you get pinned with the blame," he said.
"As soon as we read the news in the paper, we dropped breakfast and came down here," Vautrin said. "Hope my waffles didn't turn to rubber."
She could only smile as they led her out into the light.
They met Frank and Bernie in the front atrium of City Hall. Bernie hugged Cecie close; Frank put a brotherly arm about Cecie's shoulders.
"What happened? How did you get into this mess?" Bernie demanded, trying to shake Cecie.
"Bern, let off; she's just had the worst night of her life," Frank warned. "Hey, Cecie: I'll treat the both of you to breakfast after Mass. Then you can tell us what happened."
"You already know."
"We need to hear it from you."
They walked out together into the cool, white light of the growing day.
Cecie noticed an unearthly clearness to the light, like the kind of glow that creeps around the edges of the window shade on the morning of the first snow of winter.
When they stepped out onto the front steps, Cecie found the city covered with a quarter inch of wet snow. The neon lights glowed pastel hues off the mist of flakes that still fell.
"Snow?" Cecie asked. "I don't remember the forecast calling for snow."
"It was quite a surprise when we came up here," Frank said.
Later, in Arabica's, Cecie told them her end of the story at length.
"I guess it really was a hot time in the old town last night," Frank said when she'd finished. "After you got tossed into the clinker, there was a car accident downstairs. This kid lost control of his cruiser and smashed into a concrete piling. He survived, but I think he wishes he hadn't: his old lady of a mother shows up and starts hollering at him. The kid almost chocked himself on his neck brace trying to get off the stretcher and strangle her."
"I saw that coming," Cecie said and told them about the domestic disturbance she and Joe and Julien had nearly walked in on.
"I wonder if his mother was all over him because she'd found out he was seeing a Mecha," she concluded.
"Or maybe he was and she started prating about how the rash of destructions has been the hand of God at work purging the world of these machines of iniquity," Frank said.
"Sometimes I wonder if God isn't using Mechas to phase us out or to trim back our numbers," Cecie mused.
Bernie nearly dropped her coffee cup. "Cecie! You mustn't say such things. God promised Noah He would never again destroy mankind."
"No, but He might allow our species to be culled back through a slower, more lingering chastisement," Cecie said. "What I'd like to know is if the person who's doing this might not mistake an Orga for a Mecha. It's happened."
"Yeah, I worked for the paper in Trenton a while back, when I'd first started," Frank began. He looked around, then leaned over the table closer to them and continued in a low voice. "Don't let Joe hear about this, but they had me cover the Flesh Fair when it was playing there. They somehow picked up a guy who just happened to be a Mecha rights activist. He'd been in the woods, counting the derelict Mechas there, trying to collect them and take them to a refuge, but the Hounds got to 'em first. They scooped him up with the Mechas. Poor bloke got chained to a rack; they tore him limb from limb in the ring. The Johnson almost got shut down, wish to God he had. I wrote a few emails to the editor under various names, agitating for it."
"But the Flesh Fair is still up and running," Cecie said.
"Maybe the killer is connected to…that," Bernie hedged.
"That's one of a million theories on the streets," Frank said.
"Can you do me a small favor, Frank?" Cecie asked.
"Sure, as long as it won't offend Bern."
"Can you get Finkelsteen to free up some space on the op-ed section for the next paper?"
"Maybe. What you got in mind?"
"I'm just going to set the record straight. But that's for later: today I have to recuperate from last night's jolt."
"You deserve it, you need it," Bernie said.
Frank stifled a yawn with the back of his hand. "I could use a decent forty winks myself. I didn't get in till after three this morning: Hal held me up, said he wanted to dither with the photos before he brought 'em to Finkelsteen. I told him to bring the dang camera to the news room, but he said he couldn't trust the system: he'd had too many bad experiences with bugs and viruses, he didn't want to risk his camera during the flu season. Last I knew, he'd found some little nook to crash in."
"I'd better get home and crash in a better way," Cecie said.
The Sweitzes parted company with her at the door of Arabica's. She gathered her coat around her, trying to warm her chilled soul.
As she crossed Main Plaza on her way home, the snow still fell softly. The service droids hadn't yet cleared the plaza, which lay white and sheening lightly where passersby had left black footprints.
A shadow fell over her; she turned.
Joe stood beside her, his black satin umbrella in hand, open over them both.
"Have you survived your ordeal in the lock up?" he asked.
"Barely," she said. She slipped her arm through his and rested her cheek on his shoulder.
He folded her close with his free arm. "But who cleared your name?"
"Mr. Flyte showed up: he's helped bring in a detective to investigate the Mecha murders."
"And that explains his absence at this morning's inspections," Joe said. "He had gone forth to help set you free. And what of this detective?"
"He seems like a sympathetic sort: sympathetic to Orgas and Mechas in distress. I offered to help him, to repay him for helping clear my name."
"The more pairs of eyes he has to assist him, the more quickly he cam find the killer; perhaps I can offer my keen vision to help in his efforts."
"I think it would be best for everyone if you stayed put where you'll be safe."
"And leave the ladies of the city to starve on the swaggering of Julien and the crassness of Alex?" Joe said, chin lifted, head up, eyes snapping wickedly.
She was tempted to say, 'we could do without Alex', but if anything happened to him, she didn't want someone to implicate her on hearsay.
"Just be careful. Did you set you DAS on high like I suggested?"
"I heeded your advice. And, I must needs add, Julien took it to heart as well." There was an odd lilt to his voice. He glanced over his shoulder.
"Don't tell me it altered him," she said.
"Alas, it has, and it reveals areas of his programming he would not wish to have disclosed." He held out his hand to her. "Come with me…and you shall see."
She let him lead the way along the street to the small, columned plaza before the Isola da Capri. She spotted Julien posed sensuously against a pillar, but she noticed something odd about his pose. He stepped away from the column with something like a shudder; after a few seconds, he leaned back against the column. The cold of the simulstone must have set off something in his sensors.
"I didn't think the cold got to you guys," she said.
"Not unless our DAS has been set high. Does not the cold burn your flesh?"
"That's true."
Cecie glanced sidewise at Joe, her lips curling in a mischievous smirk. Joe returned the grin. He glanced down at the snow, then looked at her.
"Shall we have a go at it?" he asked in a low voice.
She replied by stopping down and grabbing a handful of wet snow. She stood and tossed the wet wad toward Julien, but not right at him. Julien flinched and looked around.
"Sacre bleu! Who threw that snow?"
Joe caught up a handful and tossed it over Julien's head so that it splattered at the smaller Mecha's feet.
"Mon dieu!" Julien turned around. Joe and Cecie quickly turned to each other, Joe leaning seductively close to her.
"Quelle belle innocence," Julien snarled. "Two black cats have feathers in their mouths."
"How can you say with certainty that Cecie and I threw the snow?" Joe asked, eyes open and innocent as he gestured toward the other passersby on the plaza.
Julien let out a harassed growl and turned away from them, nose lifted slightly as he strode down the street, a bantam with ruffled feathers.
"Now we are alone," Joe said, lowering the umbrella over them. "May I see you safely back to your hotel room before you are mistaken for another criminal?"
"Sure, thanks, but just to my door, okay?"
His sultry face cooled into a pensive look, but he still offered her his arm.
At the hotel door, she let him kiss her, but she broke away almost abruptly and opened the door just wide enough to fit her body through. Joe reached out and caught her hand, but she managed to slip through his grasp, snapping the door shut in his face.
Just my luck, I'll have to fix the evidence myself and they had to bring in an expert, the pantywaisted motherf---ers; no, thanks: not my idea of damage control, but it'll put a whole new angle on the case…
Burnstead moved among the tables in the temporary "morgue" in the subbasement of City Hall, just above the lock-up, a tech at his side. Four tables stood by side, each bearing the sheeted form of a Mecha. To the tech, Burnstead looked like the typical rubber-heeled detective, with no idea what the "death" of a Mecha entailed.
"I trust you checked to see if any parts were missing" Burnstead asked the tech.
"Yes, there were a few parts missing which we couldn't account for," the tech said, a little surprised. "Several conductors were missing, along with a breathing simulator pump, a voice synthesizer frame, a genital control pump—"
"Could be the work of a malfunctioning Mecha or someone with a damaged lover model," Burnstead said, lifting the dustcover from the body of the most recent victim, a KR-636-Z.
Thankfully, Burnstead thought, they had left the unit unwashed. They hadn't tried to patch it up, either. He'd seen too many Mecha corpses when a rookie tech had tried to make it presentable, destroying evidence in the process.
He examined the gaping chest cavity: the right breath simulator pump had been carefully removed, the work of someone who knew what they were doing, not some rage-maddened anti-Mecha activist, or a jealous rival or an angry spouse. An expert had done this: Orga or Mecha.
He plugged a secondary power unit into an access dock at the back of the Mecha's neck. He reached behind its ears and pressed the faceplate release switch.
The plate cracked and opened, uncovering the metal understructures.
The neural cube dock gaped. Empty.
"Did you know about this?" Burnstead asked the tech, pointing to the empty slot.
"We didn't open the unit, but we ran an x-scanner over the face to see if there was any other damage. The cube was there then."
"What time did you run the scan?"
"Just as we got him in, about 20.30 last night."
"What about the others?"
"As far as I know, we scanned them as they came in. If the cubes were missing, they'd have noted that on the report."
Burnstead removed the power supply from the KR unit and turned to the next unit, the RP. He lifted the sheet, plugged in the device and opened the plate.
Nothing in the neural cube dock.
"Mother of God," he murmured. He removed the power supply and went to the next unit, the DR model, and opened that one's face.
No neural cube.
He approached the fourth, the first unit to be destroyed in this serial kill. He practically tore apart the halves of the plate as they parted.
Gone.
He looked up at the tech. "I want to see all the sign in tables from the security computers, the tapes from the security cameras, any security records whatsoever. Someone just stole the most important evidence."
Cecie slept through most of the day, but she woke up late in the afternoon to find the snow had melted. Saturday night: Joe would be booked solid, no chance to get him on his own.
She decided to go for a walk, do some peering about the city, listen in on people's moral gyrations and watch, from a healthy distance, their plunges into ethical dementia.
She followed her nose. If Phila knew what she was doing, she would be livid. Cecie could almost hear the kind of squawking altercation that would ensue.
"They'll suspect you again!"
"I offered to help Burnstead; he needs all the pairs of eyes he can get."
"But people will begin to talk."
"Does it matter? Do I care? No!"
"But what if the killer goes after you. I don't want to see you get hurt."
"So far, all the victims have been male lover Mechas. I'm female; I wear glasses: no Mecha does. And I'm hardly likely to be mistaken for a Mecha: I'm too natural looking. Besides, if anything happens to me, maybe it was just my time to go. If I didn't get killed, maybe I'd have had a heart attack. I'm not afraid of death."
"But what about…?"
Oh, get out of my head, Phila! Cecie thought, shaking her head.
She left the beaten paths lit by the rose and cerulean and gold and amber and violet and emerald neon and headed into the Red Zone, the City's closest equivalent to a red light district (come to think of it, the whole city was the red light district of the Eastern Seaboard). The softer lights and the holographic advertising gave way to peeling posters on the brick walls and sullen red and orange neon. Divey bars and strip joints and cathouses replaced the upscale clubs and bordellos.
She passed by a group of teens gathered around a packing case under a broken streetlight, snorting stringer, that gray green powder that smelled like a mixture of borax and raw sewage. She nearly tripped on an anything but discreet couple on the pavement of the sidewalk: a cheap, older model Mecha hooker grinding herself against some paunch salesman type.
She passed a group of Orga hookers congregating in front of a bar.
"Hey, look who's here! The Lily of Rouge City herself!" shouted one girl with orange and black spiked hair.
"Goin' slumming for a change?" yelled a second, covered in little more than a lot of black body paint with sequins stuck to it.
"Got tired of the Mecha?" taunted a third. Several others shouted various invitations and prices. She looked their way, acknowledging their presence and letting them know she was aware of them, but she said nothing to them. But for the grace of God, there am I, she reminded herself. But for the sins and crimes of men, they could be me.
A bum tried to feel her up as she passed him by, but she kicked him in the kneecaps. He shambled away, cursing, looking for less aggressive prey.
Cecie drew her coat closer about her; no wind blew, but the air still burned with cold, with a clammy tang to it. A mist had risen from the river, filtering into the streets and alleyways, filling them with a yellow-green vapor which glowed with the neon lighting, flashing red and pulsing orange. Shadows moved through the haze, bums in tattered clothes, half-naked whores of both sexes; a guy with USB jacks in his neck passed her, his eyes unblinking yet red-rimmed, clearly a Mech-Org.
She passed by the "Do as You Like" Hotel, a four story structure tilting over the sidewalk, ready to fall on the hapless passersby.
A short figure in a huge coat loped down the steps to the sidewalk, a bulge under his coat that might be a camera case, his Homburg jammed down on his head
She walked slower to avoid catching up with Hal. As soon as they came to a cross street, she turned down it.
She must have been getting closer to the river. The fog grew denser till it seemed to clot before her eyes and solidify into each passerby.
A low, electric whine rose in the near distance. Two white rods pierced the curtains of vapor. The whine grew louder, the hairs rose up on the back of her neck.
The gray bulk of an electric freight cart heaved past her. She sighed out loud; relief spread through her veins: Nothing to be afraid of.
But she realized she was quickly approaching one of the freight elevator hubs, Rouge City's closest equivalent to a dockyard. She felt for the stunner in her coat pocket and drew it out. She thumbed it on. The contacts crackled, a blue bolt of current leaping between them.
She looked behind her. No one except a drunk retching his guts into the storm drain. She turned to look ahead as she turned down another side street.
She guessed she was approaching a cross-street, a small plaza to guess from the amount of light, like a beacon showing the way back to civilization.
Someone cackled maniacally behind her; she turned to look: only a hag of a bag lady shuffling along, going in the opposite way.
Cecie turned back to the light.
Something moved against the glow. A black cloud condensed in the swirling vapors, coming toward her, seeming to take one step back for every three it took forward.
Her feet froze to the pavement. Her heart thudded against her breastbone and her pulse banged in her temples so hard, she swore everyone could hear it.
The black density elongated, transforming into a tall, dark figure. She heard no footsteps. The figure seemed to hover along the street. She shrank back against the clammy brick wall at her side.
The build, the shape of the head, the mold of the figure, the cut of the garments made her think of Joe. What was he doing there? She almost stepped out to warn him off.
Joe would have had Julien at his side. Something about the gait was not right. The stranger moved stiffly, the strides too long and decisive to be Joe's elegant strut. The stranger walked too mechanically, relentlessly.
Could he see her? If he was Orga, he would have a hard time seeing a girl dressed in black hiding in the shadows against a brick wall. If he was a Mecha, he could see her clearly in the dark. He might even be able to smell her and sense her pheromones.
The figure kept walking toward the spot where she stood, no indication that he had seen her. She smelled an oily reek coming from him, the same odor she had smelled near the bodies of the destroyed Mechas.
She made out a badly healed—or sealed—slash across his right cheek. The eyes above stared straight ahead, glancing unblinkingly neither to the right nor to the left, two pale gray-blue orbs nearly white in the dim light, empty of all emotion, like the eyes of a corpse or of a lemur.
He approached the spot where she stood and kept on walking, not acknowledging her at all.
She watched him continue up the street, his form diminishing into the distance and the fog as he walked. The vapors swirled in behind him and hid him from sight.
She made herself walk normally till she reached the plaza, Hooker Square, the line of demarcation between the Red Zone and the more "respectable" areas.
Once on the sidewalks lit by the softer light, populated with the less seedy revelers, she quickened her pace, not running, but trying to put as much space between her and the Red Zone as she could.
Burnstead sat in his room at the Graceley, poring over the list of employees in the City Security headquarters who had accessed the storage room they were using as a morgue for the destroyed Mechas, trying to see if he'd overlooked anyone. No one knew anything about the missing cubes. He'd searched their apartments. No sign of the cubes, not a trace. There was no way to account for them.
He'd met with the two newspaper guys, Sweitz and McGeever, the good-looking kid with the scriber and the skinny toad-snake with the camera. They'd asked him the usual questions; McGeever somewhat ghoulishly insisted on photographing him near the dead Mechas.
Off the record, Sweitz had asked him if he'd discovered any clues from the Mecha corpses.
"I just discovered someone has removed the neural cubes from the Mechas," Burnstead replied.
Sweitz's eyes got big. "Whoa, someone was pretty thorough."
McGeever shrugged. "Bugger knows his stuff, knows how NOT to get caught, otherwise the techs 'ud see his mug on the cubes when they scan 'em."
"They were stolen from here some time last night."
"Oh boy, the plot is really thickening," Sweitz said.
He was about to get up and take up his accordion, which he always played when he needed to step back from the facts and do a little thinking. Someone banged on his door. He got up, keyed the lock and opened it.
Miss Martin stood there, her face ashen. He let her in.
"What's wrong, Miss Martin? You look as if you've seen a ghost."
"I only wish it were that simple," she said, sinking onto the chair he offered to her. "I just saw a Mecha that looked very much like the one the police in Nova Francisco and Omaha are looking for."
"Are you sure?"
"My knees were knocking together, but my head was clear."
A time to be constructed, a time to be destroyed.
A time to destroy.
As she finished talking, the phone rang. Burnstead reached for it and picked it up.
"Hello? Burnstead speaking."
"This is Stanger; we just found another Mecha over near 7th Street, not far from the Red Zone."
"I'm coming right over."
He hung up and went for his coat.
"I guess I'd better stay put," she said.
"I'm afraid so."
"Another one?"
"Yeah, I don't want to have to rescue you again."
To be continued…
Literary Easter Eggs:
The snowfall—We had a brief, freak snowstorm the day I drafted this chapter, dumping about a half an inch of wet snow in our area, but it melted within a few hours, once the sun came out again. Snow on colored leaves, only in New England…