Well, I'm getting at least one review per chapter so far. That's definitely better than a nail in the head, so I guess I'll keep feeding this back out there. Thanks again to those who're reviewing and please take a minute or two to give me a little feedback if you're reading this; that's the only way I can improve as a writer, after all.
By 3:30, Leon had made it to the place Takashi had told him to meet her, the stop where the maglev passengers said the woman had exited. Rolling up to the ramshackle station, really just a hole in the ground with stairs and overhead cover, Leon saw her waiting for him. Indeed, he could hardly have missed her.
She sat on one of the benches in full line-trooper gear, minus the helmet, which was cinched to a D-ring on the tactical load bearing vest she wore, and her long, straight, raven hair hung down past her shoulders freely. On her right thigh, she carried a Webley .657, basically the automatic version of the Earth Shaker revolver he preferred, and on her left she carried an old, scarred, N-Police style .357 revolver, loaded, he knew, with solid brass-core armor piercers. And across her lap, cradled like a beloved child, she held one of the 12.7mm heavy anti-boomer rifles typically used by ADP snipers, a gun that was almost as long as she was tall. At her feet was a black issue gym bag with 'ADP' stenciled in large blue letters, hopefully containing a set of less conspicuous clothing.
As Leon shut the road chaser's door and sauntered up, he noticed, as he always did after not seeing her for a while, the fine, white tracery of scars on her face and neck that made an otherwise stunning visage merely attractive. He remembered the incident that had necessitated the massive cosmetic surgery that, even with late 2020's medical technology, had been unable to completely restore her. Like everyone else in the ADP, Leon chalked her survival up to her infamous luck. The saying had gone for years, "Don't hang around with Ami. Death always misses her by a hair, and hits her partner center mass." Just one of the reasons she, like Leon, had been promoted beyond the level where she could do anything truly effective anymore.
In his case, the last straw had been his stubborn refusal to give up on the Raven's Garage murders. Not only had a fellow ADP officer been killed, and a teenaged kid maimed for life, but the woman that he had slowly been growing to realize he loved, as opposed to simply lusted after, had been slaughtered as well. And on top of that, he knew that there was a hell of a lot more to the killings than he could tell anyone. Leon knew full well that Priss was a Knight Saber after that hellish night in the Kanto Dump, and it didn't take a genius to do a little math. One known Knight Saber plus three other dead women equals a grudge-hit against the Sabers. The only real shock there had been realizing that Nene was, and most likely always had been, a Knight Saber as well. But, when he'd thought about it, it made a crazy kind of sense, and explained a lot of the odd things he'd noticed about her over the years.
No, Leon just hadn't been able to give that one up, despite a lack of leads and a curious pressure from upstairs to close it up. He'd been able to bullshit his way through as long as Chief Todo was still around, but the whole boomer-terrorist takeover of the ADP tower, which had almost cost the life his niece, had taken all the wind out of his sails. He'd retired in early '34, and the spineless, washed-up piece of corporate shit that they'd put in his place hadn't even had the guts to confront Leon on the issue. Instead, citing Leon's outstanding case record, and long-standing service with the department, he'd had him appointed Assistant Chief of Police in Charge of Personnel and Logistics, a brand new position made up just for him. The translation was that Leon had been put in charge of beans, bullets, and personnel actions for the entire goddamned ADP, a job that, while vitally necessary, bored the living hell out of him. And effectively kept him off of the streets. After all, he'd more or less been handed the lives of every member of the department in the form of equipment procurement and pay and benefit issues, so, as much as he hated the job, he had to make sure it was done right. And the damned chief knew that.
In Ami's case, it had just been a matter of terminal success. One of the first officers to sign on with the department almost eight years ago, she'd been a member and later the Team Sergeant for ADP's short-lived ASWAT program, which had preceded and eventually replaced the disastrous Police Cyborg program. The problem was, she and her merry band of misfits had been so effective, they'd scared someone high up on the food-chain. And so, like Leon, they'd each and every one been offered 'better' positions, some of which were accepted and some of which weren't, but the end result was that ASWAT was quietly mothballed, and mostly forgotten by all but a few. Like Leon, Takashi carried rank and authority theoretically just less than the chief's own, but in practice, they were shut out from all of the department's critical decision-making processes, except where they concerned their own narrow fields. For her, the ADP's one and only Sergeant Major, the title she'd insisted upon, that was training and tactics at the Kobe ADP Academy, where she'd been the commandant for the last four years.
As he approached, Ami said, "Hey! How's it hangin', McNichol? You enjoying your new job as much as I enjoy mine?"
With a grunt, Leon said, "Yeah, you could say that. And I see you're your usual fashionable self tonight. Isn't all that shit a little conspicuous for this neighborhood?"
Ami laughed, and said, "A girl can't be too careful, now can she? There are some awfully talented muggers down this way."
Leon snorted and said, "Shit! You probably know half of them and arrested the other half at one time or another! I should have figured that you'd decide to sit and wait for me alone down here."
She shrugged, and said, "Yeah, well, I didn't really think the line troopies needed to hang around for this. We're likely to be discussing some shit that they don't need to hear or spread, I'm guessing."
"Yeah, could be," Leon agreed. "So what else have you dug up?"
"Not much," Takashi admitted. "Just this." And, unzipping her gym bag, she produced a carefully sealed large plastic evidence bag containing a soiled and much abused ADP dress uniform.
"Huh!" Leon said. "Where the hell did you find that?"
"In a dumpster a few blocks down that way," she said, jerking a thumb in the direction of Timex City. "What? Did you really think I just sat on my ass here for a half-hour? I get enough of that up in Kobe."
Taking the bag from Ami, Leon turned it over slowly, examining the contents through the plastic, and then said, "Well, this is about the most messed up dress uniform I ever saw. There's all kinds of shit on this. Mud, blood, grass stains, you name it. What the hell did she do, drag herself through a ditch?"
"Or maybe a grave yard?" Ami said facetiously.
Frowning, Leon said, "That's not even funny, Takashi. Nene's dead, and this thing's running around with her face. Somebody's got a sick sense of humor, and I plan on finding out who."
Ami looked down, and said, "Shit, I'm sorry, Leon. You're right, it's not funny. She was a friend of yours, and some things are sacred even when it comes to cop-humor. But while you're looking at that uniform, tell me one thing. What do you see that's missing there?"
Still frowning, Leon examined the sealed bag again, turning it this way and that, and finally he said, "Huh! The damn badge is gone. You sure it wasn't in the dumpster?"
Ami shook her head and said, "Yeah, I'm sure. Sucker was a mess, but I took a pretty good look, and you know I don't miss much with this iron eye." For emphasis, she activated the active laser sighting in her right eye, one of the very few pieces of cyberware she possessed, lending it an eerie red glow.
Leon flinched, having forgotten all about it, and said, "Aw, knock that shit off, will you? You know how I feel about that crap."
Ami shrugged, and said, "I've always been a big fan of what works, Leon. And this works for me. But anyhow, I'm pretty sure the badge wasn't there. And it wasn't in any of the nearby cans or dumpsters either. So what does that say?"
"What does it say?" Leon replied. "Hell, how do I know? Maybe it just says that the crazy bitch chucked it on top of a building or down a storm grate so that nobody could get a look at it. What else would it say?"
Considering, Ami said slowly, "Well, I know how I feel about my badge, McNichol. And I think I know how you feel about yours. I've chucked mine across the chief's desk a few times over the years, but I don't think I could ever just throw it in the garbage. Do you think maybe she felt the same way?"
A wary expression on his face, Leon said carefully, "Just what the hell are you trying to say, Takashi? Didn't we already cover this one? Nene's dead. End of story. Shit, I should know! I was the one who pulled the sheet over her head before they loaded her up in the coroner's wagon, for Christ's friggin' sake!"
Annoyed now, Ami said caustically, "Yeah, I got that part, McNichol. And I was at the funeral, remember? I don't miss department funerals if there's any way I can help it. I'm responsible for training each and every one of them, and when they die, a part of me goes with them. But what if this thing, whatever it is, doesn't just look like her? What if it thinks it is her? Did you think of that?"
Leon took an involuntary step back, and said, "Aw, give me a break, Ami! Where the hell did you come up with that?"
Ami shrugged, looking slightly puzzled, and said, "Y'know, McNichol, I'm not too sure about that. But when I saw that badge was missing, unpinned, mind you, not ripped off, and then thought back to what I'd seen in the security downloads and heard from the perps, it made me think. What would I do, how would I act, if I thought I'd been murdered and come back from the grave? And in that light, it kind of made sense." Looking down, Ami continued, "Hell, I'm not saying that that's what's really going on, of course. I've seen some weird shit in my time, but nothing that'd make me believe that. But it sure is possible for some sick asshole to have rebuilt and reprogrammed a boomer to think it was her, now isn't it?"
Leon shook his head, and said, "Sure it's possible, but why the hell would anybody do it? And, more to the point, who in hell that's still alive knew her well enough to pull it off?"
Ami shook her head as well, and said, "You knew her a lot better than I did, McNichol. All I really remember about her is the fact that she had to re-start my damn academy three times before she finally made it through. And I'm still pretty sure she hacked the stress-firing course's scoring computer to pass. Anyway, it would have to be somebody close to her, and that somebody would have to know a lot about boomers. You know anybody who fits that bill?"
In his head, Leon suddenly pictured a young man, once handsome in an adolescent way, but now torn and scarred and bitter, a victim who, against all the odds, had survived. "Y'know," Leon said slowly, "Now that I think about it, there just might be somebody like that after all."
Below ground, in the maintenance bays and sub-basement levels, the heart of Raven's Garage had survived undamaged. The fire upstairs, perpetrated long after the murders by some anonymous pyromaniac, had left the sub-levels untouched, and apparently the murderers either hadn't known or hadn't cared about them. More likely the former, because for people as obviously obsessed with cyber-tech as they'd been, the sub-levels would've been a treasure trove.
Mackie led Nene, crow once again perched on her shoulder, through the various rooms, showing her some of the projects he'd spent the last few months working on. From time to time, he glanced at the crow curiously, and finally he said, "Uh, Nene, I've just got to ask this. What's with the bird?"
She frowned, considering, grasping for the right words to describe something she didn't really understand herself, and finally said, "Well, it's kind of complicated. It's my- guide, I guess you'd say. It- brought me back here, I think. And, in some way, we're connected. I-" She stopped, not knowing what else to say, and finally, shaking her head, said, "I can't explain it any better than that. I don't really know any more. I just know that it's important to me. Important for me, somehow."
Mackie nodded slowly, understanding perhaps less than he had before, and said, "I see. I guess." Then, shaking his head, he said, "No, I don't. But I guess it doesn't really matter, does it?"
Nene shook her head, and said, "No, it doesn't. All that matters now is equipping myself and going out to find those bastards."
Mackie sighed, and said, "Yeah, I guess so. If that's what you have to do, Nene."
She stopped, and turned to gaze at him with her disconcerting blue eyes. "Mackie," she said slowly, "I thought you said you wanted to help me. Don't you?"
He looked down at the floor, unable to look her in the eye, and said, "Nene, if you need my help, you'll get it. But-"
"But what?" She said, frowning and moving a step closer to him.
"It's just, I- That is- Oh, goddamn it, Nene, now that you're here, I don't want to loose you again. I know, you didn't come back for me, you came back for them. But Nene, whatever you've gone through, you don't know what it's like to live after everyone and everything you care for is gone! Christ, there's not a day that goes by that I don't ask myself, 'Why do you bother, shit-head? What's left that's worth going on for?' And Nene, I haven't come up with a good answer yet! I just keep going on because I can't imagine anything else."
Nene bit her lip in concern, feeling the raw waves of pain emanating from Mackie, and then slowly she took him in her arms as he began to sob again. As she held him, she felt something inside her shift, and she gained a new perspective on her situation. The dead, she realized, still cried out for vengeance, but it seemed she was needed by the living as well.
She stroked the back of his neck lightly, reassuringly with her fingernails, and said quietly, "Oh, Mackie, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I know what you've lost, but I didn't think about how it's been for you. I'm here now, though, and even if I can't promise that I'll stay, I can promise that things will be better after I've been and gone. No one, living or dead, is going to be able to rest until this thing is put right, and that's what I'm here to do. I'm sure of that now."
Mackie sniffed, and said, "I'm sorry. I'm acting like a big damn baby, I guess."
Nene hugged him tighter, and said, "No, you're not. And don't let that damn, stupid male ego tell you that you are. You're lonely, and hurt, and sad, just like anyone would be in your position. But remember this, Mackie. Touch me. Feel me. I died, but now I'm here. What does that tell you?"
His one natural eye widening in comprehension, Mackie said in a whisper, "If you're here, then… then the others, they must be- somewhere!"
Still holding him close, she nodded and said, "Exactly. Death isn't the end, Mackie. I don't really know what it is, I can't remember, but they're there. Waiting. I'm sure of that. And I'm also sure that they won't be able to move on, any more than I could, until the accounts have been balanced. Until those responsible have paid us what they owe."
"Fine, then," Mackie said in a voice husky with emotion, "When this is all done, take me with you. I've got nothing left here."
Nene gasped then as she finally realized the full depth of Mackie's agony, and fresh tears came to her eyes as well. "Oh, no, Mackie, you don't mean that! You don't know what you're saying. Trust me when I say, life is worth living. You're in pain now, but you have years and years ahead of you to put this behind. And you can! You just have to find something that's worth living for."
With that, acting purely on instinct, Nene slid her hand up to the back of Mackie's head, fingers twining in his hair, and slowly brought her lips to his. Surprised at first, he pulled back slightly, but as the kiss lingered and deepened, he began to respond, a rush of fire shocking him as it expanded throughout his body, igniting things in him he'd though long dead.
As both their passions mounted, they staggered sideways into the cold, concrete wall, and slowly sank down to the floor, still intertwined.
What followed was something that Mackie had dreamed about for years, but had never thought would actually occur. And after what had happened, to him and to them, he hadn't even been able to bear such thoughts for almost a year. But tonight, for a time at least, all his fears, all his pain, all his emotional scars were stripped away, leaving him open and ready to enjoy at least this brief bit of happiness. And, best of all, he knew it was the same for her.
As they rolled in the direction of Timex City, Leon driving, Ami reviewed the case files from last year's tragedy. Mercifully, she'd changed out of the line trooper gear, but Leon wasn't sure if what she'd changed into was any better. Instead of the lightly armored fatigues and heavy ballistic vest, she wore a faded old pair of blue jeans, a pair of scuffed black biker boots, a plain black t-shirt, and an elaborately decorated, much-worn black leather jacket, which, in addition to the silver ADP badge pinned to the front, held all sorts of gang-related accoutrements, not to mention the name and logo of the Kamaitachi, a minor go-gang that had inhabited the Fault region for as long as Leon could remember.
Shaking his head, he said, "Damn, Ami, you just can't leave the past behind, can you? I thought you'd gotten rid of that damn jacket years ago."
She snorted, and said, "Remember what I said about the badge, McNichol? This thing is just a different kind of badge. Everything on it tells part of the story of my life. I guess I'm just sentimental about shit like that."
Leon shook his head, and said, "Yeah, you must be. I see you're still carrying that old .357 too."
Ami frowned, and said, "You're damned right I am. And you know why."
He nodded, and said, "Jeena gave it to you, right?"
Looking down from the screen in front of her, she said, "Yeah, that's right. It was her old duty weapon back in her Tokyo PD days, before the Quake. She gave it to me the day I graduated from the academy, and I've carried it ever since. If it wasn't for her, I would've never joined the ADP. I'd either still be running with a go-gang down in the Outer District, or more likely I'd be dead by now. I owe her a lot."
In a subdued voice, Leon said, "Yeah, you're not the only one. You ever talk to her anymore?"
Ami shook her head, and said, "Not in quite a while. She was never the same after that shit that happened to her back in '29. After she quit the department, we kept in touch for a while, but she just dropped out a few years ago. I was gonna ask if you'd heard from her."
Leon shook his head, and said, "Naw, same story from my end. I haven't heard anything in years."
They were both silent for a moment, thinking about their lost friend, and then Leon said, "So, find anything interesting in that file?"
She nodded, and said, "Yeah, a couple of things. But tell me something. Why the hell didn't the loop ever get closed on this? There are still leads to be followed in here, and that Stingray kid gave damn good descriptions of the assailants. What the hell happened?"
Leon sighed, and said, "Ah, shit, you know how these things work. The perps were all freaks from the Outer District, and even we don't have any pull down there. All the kid ever got was nicknames, and I doubt any of those bastards ever had a real ID to track down anyway. I went down there a few times, tried to get some people to talk to me, but nobody would say a damned thing. It was like chasing ghosts. And then there was the pressure from above."
Ami frowned, and said, "Yeah, I heard something about that, but I never did get it. Why the hell were they pushing you to close this so fast? A cop was murdered, for Christ's sake, and not even in the line of duty. Don't they give a damn?"
Leon sighed, and said cynically, "C'mon, Ami, you've been around more than a day. What do you think?"
"Yeah," she agreed, "you're right. All the powers-that-be care about is their own agenda. But why would they want this swept under the rug?"
Hesitantly, Leon said, "I've- got a theory about that. But it's sure as hell nothing I could write into a case file."
Ami frowned, and said, "Ok, care to enlighten me?"
Leon shook his head, and said, "It's based on some information that's damn confidential. I think it could still be damaging if it got out."
Ami rolled her eyes, and said, "Oh, give me a break, Leon. Even if you didn't know me well enough to know I don't screw over my friends, we've both got enough dirt on each other that neither one of us is going to talk about anything if the other doesn't agree. So spill it, McNichol."
Looking down momentarily, Leon came to a decision and said, "Oh, what the hell. I've been keeping this to myself for too damn long anyway. One of the victims, Priss Asagiri, was a Knight Saber."
Ami's eyes widened, and she said, "Say what! And you know this how, McNichol?"
Leon sighed, and said, "It's a long story. But I know. I saw her once, in a hardsuit, without her helmet. She never knew about it, of course. You're not the only one who knows how to keep their mouth shut."
"Son of a bitch, Leon!" She said. "And how long have you known this?"
He shrugged, and said, "About a year and a half now, I guess."
Ami shook her head, and said, "Well, I'll admit, I only know a couple of things that might be that big. Did you just plan on taking this one to your grave with you someday, or what?"
Leon nodded slowly, and said, "Yeah, something like that. But you see the light this throws on things?"
Ami considered for a moment, and then, eyes widening again, said, "Oh, shit! You're saying that this was a hit of some kind! And four Knight Sabers, four dead women…!"
"Yeah," Leon said slowly, "The math adds up, doesn't it? If you wondered why nobody's seen the Knight Sabers for the last year, the answer's staring at you from that screen."
"Well, I'll be damned," Ami said quietly. And then, frowning, she said, "But if that's the case, then you're saying that Nene-"
"Was a Knight Saber too," Leon finished, and then said, "And probably always had been. Kinda' hard to swallow?"
Ami nodded, and said, "You could say that. But she did have talent when it came to computers, and the Sabers sure as hell had a good hacker on their team. Son of a bitch! No wonder they always seemed to be one step ahead of everything we were doing! She was sitting right there in the command center feeding them information the whole damned time! On second thought, McNichol, maybe it's not so hard to swallow after all."
"Yeah, that's how I figured it," Leon said. "So now do you get why they wanted to wrap this up so fast?"
"Yeah, I get it," Ami said ruefully. "Who-the-hell-ever had this done has pull upstairs, and they don't want anybody sniffing out their trail. Goddamn it."
"Exactly," Leon said, and then added, "Hence my little promotion when I wouldn't drop it."
Ami nodded slowly, and said, "So what now, McNichol?"
Leon frowned, and said, "What do you mean, what now? It's history, Ami. After this long, the trail's dead. Right now, I just want to figure out if the Stingray kid has anything to do with this damn Nene-bot and wrap that shit up."
"Fukabayashi." Ami said, apparently a complete non-sequiter.
"Excuse me?" Leon said, bewildered.
"Masami Fukabayashi. That's the name of the guy the Stingray kid was calling 'Tin Man'. He likes 'Tin Man' because it's descriptive of both the fact that he's about 90 cyberware, and that, as far as he's concerned, he doesn't have a heart."
The road chaser squealed to a stop as Leon slammed on the brakes, and, looking at Ami incredulously, he said, "You know the son of a bitch!"
Ami nodded, and said, "You could say that. I spent a couple of years trying my best to kill him, back in my biker days. He put a knife through my boyfriend's heart in a bar fight, and I didn't take kindly to that. By the time I finally caught up to him, he'd gone to work for some Triad I'd never heard of and one of the fringe benefits was a full-body rebuild. If Jeena hadn't been after him at the same time, and showed up when she did, he'd have killed me that night. That's how we met, by the way. Just another thing I owe her for."
Leon shook his head, and said, "Son of a bitch. And the others?"
Ami looked at the composite images put together by an ADP CGI tech, and said, "Delilah. That's the only name I ever heard of her using, but she's a regular at a place charmingly known as The Asshole of the World. It's a little dive bar smack in the middle of the Canyons, and it's a watering hole for pit fighters and their managers, a place where they can arrange fights." Clicking to the next image, she said, "Moe Shapoor. He used to hang out there too. He's a washed up ex-boxer from the States who came over here in the late 2020's to see if he could jump-start his career by cybering up. His career didn't go anywhere, but he did make a new reputation for himself in the pits. And both of them used to do odd jobs on the side if the price was right." Clicking once more, she frowned, and said, "This one I don't know. Razz, the kid called him? And he's supposed to be a boomer, right?"
Leon nodded, and said, "Yeah, that's what he said. And, judging by his description of the integral weaponry and enhanced musculature, I'd guess he was probably a 23C."
"Sounds about right," Ami agreed. "Pre-cursor model to the 33C's, if I remember right. Still a heavy android, but not quite as strong, tough, or smart as the 33's. Good enough that some are still in use as bodyguards and cheap muscle, though. The price went way down after the 33's came out."
"Yeah," Leon said, "That's about it. And from what the kid said, it sounds like this one went rogue and then disappeared into the Canyons. I looked through the old cases to see if I could find any matches, but I couldn't find a damn thing."
Ami nodded, and said, "The kind of people who own those things usually don't file police reports." And, smiling smugly, she added, "So, like I said before; what now, McNichol?"
Leon sighed, and said, "First, we check out Raven's Garage. Judging by where that uniform was dumped, it looks like she might've been heading that way. I still want to find out what's going on with that first."
"And then?" Ami asked.
Determination setting in on his face, Leon said, "Then we make a solid case for re-opening the Raven's Garage murders. In light of new investigative leads, of course."
Ami nodded appreciatively, and said, "Y'know, McNichol, I used to tell Jeena she was full of shit when she said you'd be a decent cop some day."
Leon laughed, and said, "Yeah, that's what I used to tell her when she said the same thing about you."
"Huh!" Ami said. "I guess she knew what she was talking about after all then."