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 nights 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 Burnsteads room
in the Graceley, a
folder containing her copies of Hals 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 theres 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 a couple
other guards, they went up to Hals 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 dock in the top 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 Martins 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: four 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
shed heard about. Frank was out covering the news, but he came in shortly
after
her.
"I feel like Im 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,
his EMP, and the parts he hadnt 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 dont do anything else to get
yourself caught,
he thought.
* * * * *
Joe came at Cecies 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!" Cecies 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 Ive 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 wouldnt 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. "It may not
be feasible for me to be out anf about."
"I've got an idea: You're both the same size and you look
about the same."
Cecies 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
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.
"Dont 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, youll 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
Frankensteins 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 couldnt 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."
