+J.M.J.+
The Shadows Between the Neon
By "Matrix Refugee"
Author's Note:
To add to the suspense, and to be a real pain at the same time, I divided the Halloween chapter into two halves, A.M. and P.M. If everything pans out, I may get P.M. up this week as well, but don't hold your breath (unless your breath is "only" from a breath simulator!).
Disclaimer:
See Chapter I
VIII October 31, 2159 A.M.
Rouge City Broadsheet
Brief Blackout Darkens Danse Macabre
About 21.00 the power went out in the area around Main Plaza, briefly plunging the revelers at last night's Danse Macabre into darkness. Officials at the power station on the Lower Deck blame a technical difficulty with a computer monitoring the power supply for this area…
First thing in the morning, Cecie went to Burnstead's room in the Graceley, a folder containing her copies of Hal's photos of Florent under her arm. She almost thought she had reached the wrong room: when she got to the door, she heard soft accordion music playing inside, a haunting ripple of sound, undulating and quivering, the wail of a lonely soul in a waterless place.
She knocked again. The music stopped and the door opened.
"Miss Martin, what brings you here?" Burnstead asked.
"I've more to tell you about last night,' she said.
He opened the door wider and stepped aside to let her enter. He let her have the chair; he sat on the window seat, next to a large accordion inlaid with ivory.
"I heard music before I came in; what was that?" she asked.
"It's called 'Scenes from a Mirage'; fellow by the name of Klusevic wrote it back in the late 20th century. Music helps me relax my mind when I've got an especially tough case: not listening to music, mind you, but playing it."
"That stands to reason: it's a right brain activity that gives the rational left brain a chance to rest and reboot."
He smiled slightly. "I like that analogy." Growing serious once more, he said, "Now what did you have on your mind?"
She told him about the night she and Frank and Joe had shadowed Hal.
"I think he's in on the murders; I think he's using Jay to commit these murders," she concluded.
"Smart criminals have used the less competent to do the actual dirty work for them, but there hasn't been a case of someone using a Mecha as a cat's paw," Burnstead noted. "Do you have any hard evidence to suggest there's a link?"
She opened the folder and took out the copies of the photos of Florent's body.
"Look at the angles of the shots: this one is much sharper than the angle of this one. And look at the grain of the image."
"It could just be different cameras. But this, this first photo, has the kind of quality of image you expect to get from a freeze-frame from a Mecha neural cube. But where would a newspaper photographer get that kind of image?"
"We asked that question ourselves," Cecie asked.
"In that case, perhaps I'd better look deeper into this," Burnstead said, reaching for the phone.
By noon, Burnstead got the search warrant from Camden. With Stanger and another guard, he went up to Hal's room at the Do As You Like Hotel.
McGeever didn't open to Burnstead's knocks. They unlocked the door with the manager's key.
Hal was nowhere to be seen in the room. On the desk stood a closed laptop with a locking device on it, a chain clamped it to the desk. Next to it stood a photo-quality digital printer and a neural cube reader, a device about the size of a toaster with a small dock in it for a neural cube.
On the dresser lay a Mecha repair kit: screwdrivers, pliers, sealant tubes and a small welding torch.
"Now why would McGeever have a Mecha repair kit? Does he have one hiding somewhere?" Burnstead asked.
Stanger opened the door of the closet and peered in.
He put his head too far around the door.
Something that looked uncannily like Miss Martin's friend Joe bolted out from the depths of the closet. It grabbed Stanger by the neck, lifting him from the floor and shaking him until his eyes started out and his lips and tongue turned blue.
Burnstead's hand went for his stunner, but the thing dropped Stanger and went for him, aiming for his knees. The Mecha knocked him to the floor, punched him in the ribs and butted its head into his throat. He tried to rise, but the thing pushed him down hard, cracking the back of his head against the hard floor. He blacked out.
When he came to a few moments later, Burnstead felt in his coat pocket for his cellphone. It was undamaged. He dialed 911.
"The Do As You Like Hotel, room 102: two men injured, one may be dying," he told the dispatcher.
He looked toward the door, where Digby, Stanger's partner had been guarding the door. The young man lay face down in a slowly widening pool of red.
"Make that two dying."
About 15.00 in the afternoon, Cecie went down to the Langiers to tell them what she'd heard about. Frank was out covering the news, but he came in shortly after her.
"I fell like I'm party to all this,' Frank said. "Hal's my friend, after all."
"You can't get personally involved: you'd put yourself at risk," Phila said.
"I don't want to see Hal get killed in all this mess," Frank said, rubbing the back of his neck.
"Then we wouldn't have to worry about him hitting on us," Phila shrugged.
"Dammit, Phila! This is no time for that holier than thou crap!" Frank snapped.
"He has a point," Bernie said. "Hal's in an awful mess and there's no telling if he'll come out of this alive."
"What about the two guards?" Kip asked.
"Last I heard they'd both been air-lifted to Camden in serious condition," Frank said. "There's a chance one of them might not make it there."
"Then we may have a possible murder on the horizon," Cecie said.
"You thinking what I am?" Frank said.
"Maybe, if you're thinking we should have a talk with Hal and get him to give himself up," Cecie said.
"You'll need to be carefully armed, though," Kip said.
"You still carry your stunner?" Phila asked.
"Yeah, but I don't think Kip was thinking of just that," Cecie said.
"You got it: I'll be right back." Saying this, he went out and came back carrying something that looked oddly like a large staple gun.
"Kip, how did you…I thought EMPs were… you know," Cecie said.
"I got a license for one, which covers the family: You kinda count," Kip said.
"Hold on, I'm gonna do some warming up before I use that thing out there," Cecie said, going out.
Hal had come back to his hotel room to find the door sealed and surrounded with yellow crime scene tape. He tore away the tape and broke off the locking device by kicking it. He shoved open the door and went in.
Nothing had been disturbed. Thank life, he thought.
The closet door stood open.
"Damn Mecha, you got yourself arrested," he muttered.
As if in answer, the pager clipped to his jacket trilled. He took it out and read the display.
Jay. Usual spot. Nightfall.
He sighed with relief. Jay wouldn't be paging him if he wasn't free. Hal set about quickly packing the essentials: laptop, disks, repair kit, his stiletto in its leg sheath, a small EMP he'd rigged from spare parts, and the parts he hadn't had a chance to install in Jay.
He found another no-tell hotel in the Red Zone and checked in. He could hide out there until the time for the appointment. Just don't do anything else to get yourself caught, Jay, he thought.
Joe came at Cecie's call; Bernie let him into the front room and through the house to the back yard.
"She's out in the alleyway, but you'd better be careful going out there," Bernie warned, leading him through the kitchen to the back door.
Bernie opened the door for him. He started to step out onto the strip of mossy grass between the buildings.
"Stay back, Joe!" Cecie's voice warned, from off to his right.
He looked off in that direction. Cecie stood poised, feet apart, the skirts of her trench coat pushed back. In her hand, she grasped a very strange-looking gun.
Something flew at her from the left. She raised the gun quickly. A bolt of hot white-blue energy exploded from the muzzle of the gun and struck the object. It fell to the ground, shattering into metal fragments even before it hit the moss at her feet.
"What was that about?" Joe asked, shrinking back into the doorway, eyes wary.
"That's why I didn't want you to come too close," Cecie said, holding up the gun on the flat of her palm. "This is an EMP, an electromagnetic pulse gun. I figured we might need it tonight, so I've been doing a little target practice on a few cheap toasters."
"Sorry to be wrecking some of your distant relatives, Joe," Frank said, at the other end of the alley, the ground between him and Cecie lay strewn with fragments of broken toasters.
"But why then did you throw it toward her?" Joe asked.
"That would give me a little practice hitting a moving target, in case Jay should try to attack me."
Frank looked at his watch. "We've got three hours to get ready. Hal and his accomplice will be on the move: I wouldn't be the bit surprised if they try to sneak out under cover of darkness."
Cecie looked from Joe's face to Frank's. "I just had a thought: what if Hal has an EMP?"
"Hmmm, I didn't think of that," Frank said.
Joe had a concerned eye on the fragments of toasters on the ground. "I may not be feasible for me to be about."
"I've got an idea: You're both the same size and you look about the same." Cecie's eyes went from Frank to Joe.
"What?" Frank asked, a little confused.
"What if you switched clothes?"
"My wife wouldn't like it," Frank said.
"But to what purpose? To what end?" Joe asked.
"Saving your very functionality," Cecie said. "You saw what it did to the toaster."
"What would occur to Frank if he were struck by that bolt of energy?" Joe asked.
"Probably nothing—unless he has a pacemaker."
"Which I don't," Frank said.
"The energy might make your hair stand on end, but nothing would happen. Go ahead: hit me with a bolt," Cecie said. She quickly took off her digital watch and took her scriber and her cellphone from her pocket, handing them to Joe. She handed the EMP to Frank.
He took aim and pulled the trigger. The bolt struck her full in the torso, staggering her back a few steps.
"Are you all right?" Joe asked, stepping toward her.
"Don't touch me," she warned. She leaned herself against the metal frame of the fire escape ladder.
"You'll want to give that bugger a torso shot. You hit him too low, you'll take out his lower functions, but he'll probably be glowering at you. Hit him too high, and you'll knock out the neural cube, but he'll be clomping around like Frankenstein's monster," Frank said.
"How do you know? Have you EMP'ed a rogue Mecha before?" Cecie asked.
"I'm just theorizing," Frank said.
"There's one problem," Frank added. "Joe's skin is glossier than mine."
"Maybe we can work a little wax into your skin," Cecie said. "Gel your hair back, no one except Bernie would know the difference. It can work; we'll be in the dark anyway, so that'll help narrow the gap."
"I hope this crazy plan works," Frank said.
Burnstead recovered quickly, he'd only had a few bangs and bruises; he wished he could say the same about his partners.
Security guards were posted on the entrances to the highway tunnels out of the city, stopping at every cruiser, checking the passengers to see if any of them matched the descriptions of Halloran McGeever or "Jay". More guards were posted at the monorail station. The lion and his jackal couldn't go far.
The question is, Burnstead mused, which one is which?
This was bad trouble indeed! Now they had the police men after them….
"Never send a machine to do a man's job," Hal muttered, sitting by the phone in the new place, waiting for Jay to call him.
To be continued…
Literary Easter eggs:
"Police men"—This is not a typo, it is a reference to Roy Batty's similar complaint in Bladerunner (For that matter, there's a lot of Batty in Jay.).
"Never send a machine…"—This is a rotated version of a line from The Matrix: "Never send a human to do the job of a machine."