ABC - Penance

Police Headquarters, Central District, Spitfield

“Jackson Dwyer, Age thirty three, wanted for Armed Robbery and Theft of Proscribed Items!” I called out to Ghost, yelling through the connecting doorway between our offices. He didn’t reply immediately so I yelled it out again, word for word, at a higher volume.

“I heard you the first time, Alvarez” he rebuked me, appearing in the open doorway like an apparition. “I have excellent hearing you know”

“Yeah, but bad manners” I responded. “You should have answered me the first time!”

He replied with one of his dour looks so I gave him a happy grin in return. That just made him look sourer, like I had pissed in his water bottle or something.

“Hey, be happy” I admonished him. “The raid on Iron Gully is going to earn us lots of kudos from the top brass. We busted open a Wrecking crew and captured a wanted felon, all in one day. That asshole Dwyer had been looking for a smuggler to get him out of the Zone, so it was pure luck that we caught him too!”

Ghost came into my office, taking a seat opposite my desk. He was still dressed in the armour weave jumpsuit that went under his Tactical armour, a figure rendered in black on black. With his lightly greyed temples, tanned visage and stern expression he was like the poster guy for Asian action heroes.

“Our actual mission to Camp One was a complete bust, Alvarez” he reminded me. “You got a fleeting glimpse of Jacob Tan and Professor Anderson. In return the Head Warden and his conspirators closed down their research and escaped into hiding”

“Yeah, but we got some good leads” I answered with diminished enthusiasm. “I’m beginning to understand a little more of what is actually going on”

Ghost watched me with his flat expression, his mis-matched eyes seeming to look into my very soul.

“Is that so?” he replied in an even tone. “Would you care to elaborate?”

I thought about it for a moment, then reached into my lowest drawer of my desk. The device I placed on the desk top was a small dark plastic cube about five centimeters to a side, with concave indentations on the outer faces. Ghost recognised what it was immediately and lifted a dark eyebrow over his organic eye.

The square object was a Scrambler, used to stop listening devices and scanners from hearing conversations within its field of effect. They were pretty reliable and covered about a five meter diameter space. The only downside was the electromagnetic field they projected set my teeth on edge and were probably causing my partner’s Enhancements to act skittish too.

Ghost seemed unperturbed after I activated the device, but I felt like my back molars were being shocked by a PCD. I hated these things but I had no doubt our offices were bugged, if not by Archimedes or the Commissioner, then by Jericho-Three at the very least. Maybe all three of them in fact, watching over us like a triumvirate of evil snoops.

“I think Warden Acres, Professor Anderson and Jacob Tan are all part of a secret group called the Darwin Society. Governor Rackman told me a little about them but he was holding a lot back. This group has ties somehow to the Wonder Bar factory, the SAND network and whatever research they were doing up at Labour Camp One”

“That may be true” my partner responded. “What do you think they are planning on doing?”

I gulped and met his eyes with as much honesty as I could muster, to try and make him believe my wild theory.

“I think they are somehow planning to release a second Virus into the world. That guy Anderson, my belief is that he was one of the original creators of the first Virus. He has been sitting in that prison for nearly three decades as some kind of penance for what he did, but now the Darwin Society has dragged him into their schemes once more”

Ghost didn’t blink or give any sign of disbelief.

“How does Jacob Tan fit into all of this?” he asked me. “He only dropped out of Jericho’s group last year. I doubt he could have been working for this Society at the same time”

“You’re right” I agreed. “When I spoke to him, Tan seemed to tell me he was actually a replacement for Samuel Thane. Like he was just one of a chain of people who had filled the role and he was the latest”

“Was he being driven by an AI?” the ex-Guard asked me. It was a pertinent point, as Jericho-Three had told us Tan had a Quantum Processor in his skull, one of those linked to the Archimedes Network. If the processor was still connected to the network, Tan could be controlled directly like a puppet, exactly the same way the AI could run a Guard clone.

“No, I think there was something else that was using Tan as a puppet. Whatever the hell it was, the same thing was inside of Samuel Thane”

“Another AI?” Ghost wondered aloud. I shook my head no, without knowing how I knew that. I kept thinking about those black filled eyes he had shown me, the dark substance reminding me of the black oil I had seen in Thane’s body.

“Something different. Something that might not even be created by humans”

Ghost lifted his head, eyes reaching up to the heavens beyond this building, as if he was searching the planets of our solar system.

“You mean something alien? From one of the off-world colonies?” he asked me, still looking upwards. “That sounds like Science Fiction”

I had to laugh at that and he dropped his head to regard me solemnly.

“We live in a world of Artificial Intelligences, spaceships and robots” I smiled at him. “It’s all Science Fiction if you think about it. Why can’t there be Alien creatures out there, controlling their human puppets with some kind of black nanotech?”

“I will concede that is possible” Ghost agreed. “I have seen enough strange things out in the Hole and the Wasteland not to wonder about what goes on in the shadows”

He seemed reflective, almost pensive and I wondered how much hanging around me was changing him.

“If even some of your theories are true, whom do we tell about it?” he enquired. “The first V-Bomb is considered the greatest crime ever committed against humanity. A crime that has never been attributed to any one group, at least not that could be proven. If this Darwin Society was behind the first attack, every one of them would be executed. I can’t see any government offering them amnesty, especially if they are planning a second Virus”

“You’re right” I said quietly. “These theories are a death sentence for anyone who is caught up in them. Which means they will be ruthless in protecting their secrets, knowing what fate awaits them if captured”

“So how do we proceed, Inspector?” he asked me.

“That’s the bit I don’t know. I want to chase up the stuff Rackman told me but doing so could put us in danger. More importantly, it could put my family in danger”

Ghost gave me a thin lipped grimace, his eyes hard and glinting.

“You survived the first Virus, Alvarez” he told me. “Most of humanity didn’t get that chance. If this Darwin Society are planning another Viral strike, who will survive this time?”

I thought of Papa, of Jan and sweet little Amy. Minke and Mabel, even my implacable partner seated in front of me. A new Virus could kill all of us, or turn us into the Changed. I thought of dear Georgia and all the suffering her life had given her in exchange for her Ability.

My own Ability as a Kinetic Enhancer, had that been worth the death of millions of other human beings?

“I have to stop them, no matter the cost” I said at last. Ghost nodded his head approvingly, his eyes losing that hard edge.

“We have to stop them, partner” he reminded me.

“Yeah, both of us” I agreed. “Just don’t blame me if you get killed trying to chase my weird theories”

“It’s Okay, Alvarez. I’ve got nothing better to do anyway”

=====

Alvarez Apartment Building, South Bank District

It was late that night and I was incredibly tired, probably too tired to be riding a Police motorbike home. I could have called an Auto-Cab, yet some perverse side of my personality insisted I wanted to ride a bike to my apartment.

Trixie had pulled some strings and I was allowed to sign out one of the patrol bikes used by the Street officers. I had asked if she could find me an unmarked one, a nice zippy little machine used by the Undercover squad. That request was rejected out of hand, the ex-Guard telling me down the phone line to be happy she found me a bike at all.

It was a monster of a machine, smaller than Ghost’s hybrid yet bigger than my last sports bike. There was a cowling at the front, mounted over the leading wheel and handlebars, with a layer of lightweight armour blended into the plastic. The whole machine was painted blue, with POLICE AUX emblazoned in white lettering across the front and similar lettering on the rear panniers.

I was too tired to be embarrassed by the machine, simply enjoying the thrill of racing it down the mostly empty night time streets. I even hit the lights and siren one time, forcing a slow moving truck with a human driver to pull over to the side of the road, then I raced past him with a manic grin on my face.

His confused face could be glimpsed for a moment as I accelerated past the truck, giving him a jolly wave as I hit nearly eighty klicks in a fifty zone.

I arrived at my apartment building close to midnight, navigating the bulky machine through the narrow back roads that led to the underground parking lot. My headlights flashed across the gateway that barred access to the ramp, showing me a young woman shielding her eyes from the glare.

“Minke?” I called out. “What the hell are you doing out here?”

“Waiting for you to get home” she answered me, her face breaking into a huge grin. Without asking for an invitation she ran to the bike and climbed onto the back, throwing her strong arms around my waist. “Papa said you would be coming home tonight and that you had lost your smart-keys. I’ve been waiting here to let you in”

I rolled the bike forwards, my booted feet skimming the ground until we reached the security card scanner. Minke leaned out wide and waved her card over the device, which beeped approvingly. With a low grumble the metal gate rolled aside, allowing me to touch the throttle and slowly drive us into the parking lot.

Once I parked the bike and turned off the engines, Minke hugged me extra tightly, her face pressed up hard against my jacketed spine.

“I really missed you” she spoke into the silence, her voice only slightly muffled by my new Police issue jacket. I patted her hands where they lay clasped across my stomach, feeling a happy warmth seeping into me.

“I missed you too, kiddo” I told her. “Come on, I am dead tired and need a shower. Let me go because I stink of bullets and bad guys”

“I think you smell great” Minke assured me, but she did release her grip on my waist. I grabbed what few possessions I had brought back with me from my travels out of the side panniers, then directed an interested Minke in how to hook up the recharger for the bike.

That done, we headed side by side to the elevator and from there to the third floor. It felt good to be home.