Harsh Lessons (23 page)

Father inclined his head.  'You are in no position to make demands, Doctor, but I'll pass your request on to Eagle.  You realize, though, that in the event of a real emergency-'

'I believe both Leeth and I are prepared to take that risk.  Correct, Leeth?'

'Sure,' she agreed, bitterly.

Chapter 28 

Josh Taverner groaned, eyes fluttering open, and moistened his mouth, swallowing something he immediately wished he hadn't. 
What time is it?
  He tried to access his link, but it futzed out.  Sitting up on his bed, the room swam and he hunched forward.  Not sure if he was going to pass out or throw up.

In the darkness, he waved his hand, and felt the plastic bottle on his bunk-side table go flying. 
Oh, yeah.  Electrolytes
. 
I'd been gonna drink that before lying down.

«Lights» he sent; but nothing happened, and he swore.  'Lights!' he croaked.

His bedside lamp burst on, and he slammed his eyes shut against the glare.  Then carefully eased them open, and tottered forward to the bottle of orange-colored liquid, rolling to a stop on the concrete floor.  He downed it in long gulps, and felt the fluid race through him like spring rain.

Beside him, the massive bulk of the Asgard CrawlTank loomed like a friendly warning of Armageddon.  He patted it lovingly as he staggered across the floor of the echoing garage-slash-workshop.  With a flare of pain, he felt his neural links reconnect, and bit back a curse.

A little after two a.m., he saw. 
Tuesday?
  And the air was
still
hazy? 
Ganja-mana! 
Just how much did I smoke last… uh,
Sunday
night?
  He signaled the door open.

At the end of the short corridor the next door slid open at his silent command.  Across the tiny squad-room, from inside the glass-fronted fridge, a liter bottle of orange Nervade called to him like a chorus of angels.

Wonder how Sanchez and Henderson got on with that stakeout, Sunday
?  I could
murder
a meat pie.

Ten minutes later, pie crumbs dusting his lap, his nausea was gone.  Their comm links had been stationary now in the Dumps for over a day.  Guilt gave his actions urgency as he piloted the third drone into the Dumps, hoping
this
one wouldn't be shot down before he could locate Marta and Hendo.  Wondering if he should've already raised the red flag.

But what'd HQ do, if he did?  Just say they were idiots for heading into unsanctioned areas.  And probably wind up the precinct.

There!
  Okay, he had lock.  He buzzed the drone lower, wishing he'd thought to install UV cameras in them all.  He lit the scene up, sure now he'd see Marta and Hendo, waving up at him.

Instead, he stared, flummoxed, at a stretch of rubble.  No one at all in sight.

Phut
.  The camera died.  The signal from the drone lost.

'Shit! 
Felshing drekhead nilspecs!'
  He continued swearing, jumping up from his seat to pace the room.  Now what the fuck could he do?

Berlusconi?  Yeah, Berlusconi'd handle it.

-

Two hours later, puffing, sweating, and cursing, PASWAT detective and mage Sergio Berlusconi stared in confusion at the direction indicated on his tracker.  Why her fuckwit permanently-stoned mechanic couldn't have contacted him during daylight hours….  Marta and her partner had been off-net since the evening of the day before.

This was going to be bad, he knew it.

Studying the tracker, he tried to make sense of  what it was telling him.  He looked around through UV goggles.  The tracker said Marta’s comm-node was right here.

Shit.
  That meant it had been removed from its harness. 
Worse and worse
.  His powerful UV torch shone over an impossibly fucked-up jumble of rocks, the tumbled slabs of torn-apart highway.  Mud-filled crevasses gaped open even now, twenty years after the Big One.

Still no one in sight.

The torch and goggles were precautions.  Cutting yourself on a rusted, jutting length of rebar in the darkness was the least of the worries for any fool venturing here.  A lone person shining a
visible
light would have attracted predators.

He swung the light down, looking for the almond-shaped radio unit, crouching down with one eye still on the tracker’s screen.  He should be able to see it by now… unless whoever tore it from Marta’s harness had
buried
the fucker?

Between his feet, a strangely smooth piece of stone glowed under the powerful UV beam, fine…
hairs
…? dusting it.

Berlusconi’s world fell away. 
No.

Hesitantly, he prodded the lump, and it
gave
as he pushed.

Fuck, no.  No!

With the end of the goddamned tracker unit, Berlusconi rolled the “rock” over.

For several seconds his mind refused to recognize the raw flesh, exposed striations of fat and muscle in the crusted, bloody surfaces.

Berlusconi collapsed to his knees, breath rushing from lungs that somehow couldn’t draw air.

It was Marta.

The second last thing Berlusconi had ever expected was to out-live his fitness-fanatic ex-wife.  The
last
thing he’d expected was to learn he still loved her; even after their stupid fucking messy divorce, all those years ago.

Why hadn’t her fucking partner, Henderson, protected her?  That was what partners did.  That was what
he’d
have done!

Tears puddling in the fucking UV goggles, he ripped them off, plunging himself into darkness.

For a long time, then, the hardened cop cried, hunched forward in the rubble before managing by degrees to drag himself together.

Forced himself to think.  To push aside the pain. 
For now.

The killers – Marta was tough, it'd need more than one to take
her
down –
might
still be hiding or disposing of her body.  Even now.  Though the… mutilated flesh looked dried-out.  Maybe lying here a whole day, now.

But why was the signal coming from it?

Shaking, he watched his hands go through the motions of extracting a plastic evidence bag, pulling on rubber gloves, and bagging… the remains.  Despite his best efforts, his throat constricted.

Holding it reverently, he unbent stiff knees and labored upright, fighting his too-generous weight.  Fumbling the UV goggles back in place one-handed, he moved back a few meters.

The signal stayed with him.

Disbelieving, he stared at the… evidence bag. 
The fuckers had jammed her unit
inside
her own flesh.

It was too much.  '
Fuck
tards!  You
hear
me, out there?  I'm going to hunt you down, and I'm fucking cutting you into tiny pieces!'  Roaring into the darkness, his voice rolled over the broken hills and mounds of the Dumps.  'I’ll fucking
kill
you!  Just like you killed Marta!'  And he meant it.  There’d be no jail cell for these scums of bitches.  If the murderers thought they were gonna get away with this, they hadn’t reckoned on a trained police mage discovering the crime within a day of it being committed.

And they’ve even thoughtfully left me a fucken’ great piece of Marta I can use for a Sending
.  He’d find her; then hunt down her killers.  There was even a slab of concrete close by where he could chalk out a Circle, before astrally projecting.

I’m coming for you, you fuckers!

-

It was almost dawn when BID agent Adam Garland took a call from his former partner, Detective Diego Berlusconi.

Sitting up in bed, noting the time on his internal clock – 5:12am – he came fully awake.  Berlusconi wouldn’t be awake at this hour, let alone calling him, unless it was an emergency.  He signaled the room light on and okayed a video hook-up.

Berlusconi stood by the shore of the Bay, but at the look on his face, Garland sat up straighter.  He’d only once seen Berlusconi with tears in his eyes, and that’d been five years ago, after his divorce.  Behind him, two police divers were hauling a male body, in a cop’s uniform, from the waters.

‘It’s the Golden Gate Park killer again, Garland.    And this time they took out-’ Berlusconi stopped, struggling for composure.  ‘They took out
Marta
.  And her partner, Henderson.’

Garland checked Berlusconi’s signal.  ‘You’re at the Lash Lighter cliffs?  That’s right on the edge of the Hunter’s Point Dumps.  I can be there in twenty.’

‘Thanks, G.  I’ve got a shaman on his way.  But I’ve got a feeling it’s gonna be a weird null result, just like in the Park.  It was the same killer.  I’m sure.’

‘Twenty.’

Garland signed off, threw on clothes, grabbed his gear and left his new and larger apartment.

He wondered if the girl, Sara, would have an alibi for tonight?  But would he ever know?  She’d disappeared off the radar even before he’d left Eagle’s office that day two months ago.  Hell, even the record of her arrest, and her Uncle, Harmon, had been expunged from the police database.

Damned spooks
.

And he was one of them, now.

Chapter 29 

From their first day in the Department, he and Leeth had hardly been welcomed.  Merely accepted – at best.  But that gradually changed in the weeks following Leeth's attack on Nelson.  For the worse.

Slowly, the agents had become more distant.  Less forgiving.

Harmon presumed that, since Nelson programmed the agents' MetaLife, he was subtly adjusting their attitudes.  He wondered whether Father and Mother knew that.

All that, however, retreated into the background as he sat in Father's office.  Wondering if he had heard correctly, but recognizing how neatly this new initiative fit into the developing pattern.  They would blame him for their pain and suffering, naturally.  Isolating him further, and by association, Leeth too.  Making it far easier for either or both to be discarded.

The question was: was this simply Nelson's revenge, or a more deadly testing of his own skills?  To see whether he could escape the trap being built around them?

Or was it something more subtle still?  Hurting the agents, then healing them.  Over and over again.  Such simple stress could be used as the first step toward unlocking magical potential – if there were any.  Eagle knew Leeth herself was proof of that: proof of Harmon's theory.  But he had seen no sign of such potential within the agents.  And even if there were, with all their cyberware….

'Well, Doctor?  Do you have a problem?'

The man's body language gave no indication of any qualms at what he'd just suggested.  Harmon shifted his senses to the
Imaginal
, Percepting the man's emotions.

Calm.  Perhaps a faint concern, but more directed at how Harmon himself would react.  He shifted his perception back to normal sight.  'Let me confirm: this new robot gun will shoot and injure your own agents, and you wish me to heal them afterwards?'

'Correct, Doctor.'

'You realize an unlucky shot could damage areas of the body I may be unable to heal?'

'The SHUTZ unit can be programmed to avoid designated target areas.'

Harmon tapped his fingers against his chair's armrest.  Was it possible Father didn't anticipate how the agents would react?  'Gunshot wounds must surely be quite painful.  You realize they will blame
me
for their suffering?  They already do to some extent, due to the new training programme with Dojo – those exercises are only feasible because I bring you magical healing capabilities.  Capabilities the Department did not have before.'

Father nodded.  'You are the psychologist, Doctor.  I leave it to you to consider how I should present the exercise to the agents.'

'I doubt
any
presentation could entirely eliminate the perceived blame.'

Father stared at him coldly.  'I see no reason why the agents must
like
you, Doctor, for you to do your duty.'

I see,
thought Harmon.  He stared back with equal chill at Father.  Abruptly he stopped his tapping as a new thought opened a hollow expanse in his stomach.  'Will these exercises involve Leeth, too?'

'Of course.'

'That's absurd!  She's only just started training with firearms.  She can't be ready for something like this!'

'I am the judge of that, Doctor, not you.  She has been showing great promise and improvement with Dojo.  I plan to accelerate the more physical aspects of her training.'  Father's face closed in.  But after several seconds, he unbent.  'For Leeth, we can lower the difficulty of this exercise.  Initially.  The purpose is to give experience under fire rather than improve marksmanship skills.  Or do you have reservations about her courage?'

Harmon's jaw clenched; and with an effort, unclenched.  'No.  None at all.'

'Good.  In that case, give some thought as to the areas of the body to rule inadmissible as targets.  We can provide you with all the data you require, if you are unfamiliar with such wounds.  Up to and including real victims to heal.

'Speak to Nelson when you've decided.  I think that's all, for now.'

Harmon stood, staring unblinkingly at Father for several seconds.  Still hunting for a way out of the corner which Father had painted him in to, considering the cold brutality behind it.  In the end, shaking his head in disgust, he left the room.
 

Chapter 30 
 

Leeth had been pacing outside the “Aegean” room since eight forty-five, but even pressing her ear against the door, all she could tell was that Father and Uncle were inside, and not talking much.  She thought they sounded cross with each other.

At last, she heard the others approaching – Emma’s heels, James’s soft but sure tread, and Preacher’s quiet, scuffing steps.  She waited, alert, as they arrived.  James and Emma acknowledged her with small nods.