" Dark Matters: Volume 6
By Brock Marsden
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Copyright © 2008 by Brock Marsden All Rights Reserved. Author’s Note: Dark Matters: Volume 7 will be released June 3rd, 2008 online and on the Kindle platform. Visit http://brockmarsden.blogspot.com and subscribe to the site feed to find out how I'm managing here on EarthThatWas and to receive reminders when the next volume is released. Cover art credit: Photo © Pavalache Stelian | Agency: Dreamstime.com
Chapter 10 I looked at the officer and his prisoner and knew something was terribly wrong. The officer had large sweat circles on his uniform but the building was cool. The prisoner looked human but there was something to his step, an energy, that I didn't expect to see in a prisoner. Then I realized something else wrong. The prisoner wasn't cuffed. "Brice " I've seen a lot of things move fast but the prisoner was incredible. He spun around, grabbed the cop's head and twisted his head around with a powerful jerk. And he kept going. The cop's head twisted clear around and the tissues tore. The prisoner roared and wrenched the cop's head free. Blood sprayed up in a shower, drenching him and he laughed. That's when I saw the prisoner's eyes clearly. The whites were gone. His eyes were pure blood red. The cop's blood covered his front. I'm fast but I knew right then that this guy was faster. I moved and it felt like I was running through tar. Everything happened in an instant and I couldn't keep up. Brice grunted and flew backwards several feet. Then I saw that he was cradling the cop's head. The prisoner must have thrown it at Brice. Officer Dow foolishly rushed forward and the prisoner brought down the night stick he must have taken from the cop on
Dow's right shoulder. It didn't just break the shoulder. He brought it down with enough force that the stick cut into Dow's shoulder several inches. Dow fell to the floor screaming. The prisoner brought his foot down on Dow's chest. The ribs shattered and Dow stopped screaming. There were other screams. I dropped and did a leg sweep that should have laid the guy out on his back. It felt like I had hit a tree trunk. My leg was on fire. I rolled and his kick caught my coat. It lifted me up and sent me sliding into the wall. The impact nearly knocked the wind out of me. I started to get up as the prisoner went for Loki. Two steps. He took two steps and I had my hands under me. He thrust the nightstick forward and I had a foot beneath me. The nightstick impaled Loki. It pierced his sternum and came out his back. Loki twitched as he fell. Dyami swung at the guy with a fist bigger than his head. The prisoner ducked under the blow as if it was in slow motion and stiffarmed Dyami. I didn't hear anything break but Dyami went down on his back. I was nearly on my feet when the guy stopped. Brice fired his gun and the shot hit the guy square in the chest. He didn't seem to notice. Instead he pulled out a bulb from in his shirt. He stuck the small end in his nose and squeezed. Then he tossed the bulb away and shivered. I knew what we were looking at now. This redeyed freak was on Burn. He ran towards the doors. I took off after him but he was faster. He didn't stop when he reached the doors, just turned his shoulder to them. They burst aside with twisted frames. Another officer stood in his way and fired. The shot caught the prisoner high in the shoulder. The next instant the prisoner took the gun from the officer and crammed it down the man's screaming throat. The officer dropped, his feet kicking against the floor. As he fell the prisoner lifted his nightstick away as easily as picking a flower. But his delay had given me the time I needed. I launched myself into a kick. I hit him squarely in the small of his back. The blow should have crumpled him. He did stagger but then he spun, swinging the nightstick. I
bent over backwards and the nightstick passed through the air above me. As I straightened he didn't press the attack but charged the outer doors. Another officer coming in reached out and had his arm shattered for his trouble. I gave chase. The prisoner stopped on the ramp outside. In the sunlight his skin looked nearly translucent. I eased closer. Captain Brice stumbled out of the building and trained his weapon on the man. A shudder went through the prisoner. I held up a hand. "Wait," I said, afraid I knew what was going on. Then it happened. At first even I couldn't really see it in the sunlight. Not until it got a little stronger. A faint blue flame swept over his body. It grew quickly and he started to shake. For an instant he was surrounded in a wispy blue aura of flame. Then the flames dug in and orange and yellows flicked across him. A second later and he was a torch spewing black smoke into the sky. He dropped to his knees and continued to burn. He never even screamed. Eventually someone came with fire extinguishers and they fought to put him out. The flames were stubborn and didn't give him up easily. When the fire was finally out there was very little left of the man, just a twisted black lump. # "Can you imagine more of those things in the city?" I asked. "That's what we could be facing." Captain Brice and Detective Booth were sitting across from me. There were several empty cups on the table. I had a large Torlian coffee in front of me. I know but it had been a hell of a day. Brice didn't want to hear what I had to say. "We got the shipment at the warehouse," Winnie said. "It's all impounded now." They had discovered a large quantity of Burn in the warehouse. The bulbs were packed inside the fish. So far they hadn't found any records to
indicate where the fish had been going to be shipped. Most of the crates were just fish. I shook my head. "Jonas wouldn't have sent Loki and the others to the warehouse in the first place if he was worried about that shipment." "They could have had orders to eliminate Marshall and then take the shipment out themselves," Brice said. "If that had been the case they wouldn't have made such an entrance. They'd have done it quietly. I don't think that this guy is that stupid. He had to know that a big entrance would attract the police. He had an officer inside to make sure that if you did get any prisoners they would be eliminated." Brice hit the table. "You don't know that!" "No?" I shot back. "Then how do you explain that prisoner getting a bulb of Burn? Is your security that lax that it could be smuggled in? Besides, even if the guy had the Burn in his cell what good would it do him? No, that officer brought him the Burn and then brought him out to meet you just as you were bringing in Loki. The prisoner had already dosed before we ever saw him. He was jittery when they got to the desk. Plus he wasn't cuffed and his eyes were red. You can't really expect me to believe that the officer wasn't in on it?" "But why would he do that?" Winnie asked. "He was the first one that Jenks killed." "Jenks?" "The prisoner," Brice said sourly. I looked back to Winnie. "That's right. Probably because Jenks had been in contact with Jonas. He probably knew that an officer was going to bring him some Burn. I'm sure he had instructions about what he was supposed to do." "But he overdosed," Brice said. "Jonas must have had that bulb filled with pure Burn. Jenks never had a chance." "Right. He took out the corrupt cop, Loki and then everything else was just to try and get out. Sunlight accelerates the impact of Burn on the system.
When he got outside it was enough for him to combust." Winnie nodded. "That's why we usually see Burn users at night." "Right. It lets them take a higher dose without combusting. But that takes us back to my initial point. I think Jonas is planning something bigger. He didn't just kill Chrissy Winston out of jealousy or to hide the Burn. She must have known more about his business than was safe. He was going to move into a new stage and decided to take her out. Taking her brain was just a paranoid response to make sure we couldn't retrieve anything." "Retrieved memories are never clear anyway," Brice said. "Maybe not, but Brock could be right. If he was going to kill her he was probably already paranoid. It probably made sense to him to make sure we couldn't even try to retrieve any memories." Brice banged his knuckles on the table and got up. He stalked to the corner of the room. Winnie leaned across the table and took my hand. Her skin was soft, warm. I'd always liked Winnie. She always seemed a decent sort. Tough cop, but she wasn't afraid of being nice. She didn't see a kind word as a sign of weakness. "So you think that Jonas has decided to step up the game. Enough so that he was willing to take the loss of the warehouse? To kill Chrissy Winston in order to cover it up?" "That about sums it up." "But Brock, it doesn't make sense." Her lines deepened as she smiled. "Everything that he has done has just made us sure that we know he is behind it. If he wanted to cover things up you'd think he'd be more subtle than that." "He's taunting us," Brice said. He turned around. "The sonuvabitch is taunting us. He knew we had connected him to the Winston girl. Now he's just flaunting it in our faces. He wants us to know it is him. For some reason the bastard doesn't think we can touch him." "Maybe he's right," Winnie said softly. Brice came back to the table and put his palms flat against the surface.
"He'd better not be right, Detective. He's been playing us and I want him caught. We've already lost too many officers on this. Good people gone. This is what you get when we let individual rights get too far out of control. It opens the door damn wide and it is hard to shut." He was looking at me when he said the last part. Dyami had asked how I had communicated with Brice earlier and I'd tried to explain. Right now Brice was sending me another, familiar message. If he had his way Moreau Pods would be illegal as well. Loki hadn't helped our case much. To Brice a Moreau was nothing but a junkie. I stood up. "If there is nothing else I'll be going." "Why now?" Winnie asked. "Why is he doing this now? Did he just wake up one morning and decide that today was the day?" I didn't have an answer for her. Captain Brice shook his head. He looked over the table at me. "Go on, Marsden. Get out of here. Let us know if you find anything out." What was I going to do? I left. When I got out to the waiting room there wasn't any sign of the carnage that had happened only a little while ago. If you looked closely you might have noticed that the police officers were more surly than usual. The people waiting for help or those waiting to be processed were a bit more subdued. And why not? Those that had been here earlier had seen people slaughtered in front of them. And the inevitable aftermath of bodies being picked up and carted away. The only sign of anything remaining was a sign warning that the floor was slippery when wet where the blood had been mopped up. Dyami was sitting with his back to the wall. When I came out he stood up and loped towards me. "Brock! Are you alright?" His voice sounded different. I looked at him and saw that there was no collar but he did have a shiny new translator arm band on his left arm. He turned the new device towards me. "Do you like it?" "It's fine. It seems to be working. You're not talking the same."
"I'm not? Weird. How was I talking before?" "Different. Clumsy, some of the time." "Must have been the translation matrix. I thought it was just you." "What?" "Well you seemed to kind of slow. I thought maybe all humans were just lower on the GIC. But then I looked it up and humans have a GIC score comparable to Eyotans. So then I figured it was just you." I couldn't believe him. "You're seriously telling me that you thought I was stupid." Dyami's massive head dropped a bit. "I didn't understand. For one thing if you were as limited as you sounded you wouldn't have made much of a detective." "Thanks." "What's next? Do they have any ideas about what happened here?" We were attracting attention. I started towards the door way. The doors themselves hadn't been replaced yet. It felt good to get out into the warm salty air. I walked around the scorch mark on the ramp and took out my comm to call a cab. After that I turned back to Dyami. "They don't know what is happening. It seems like Jonas has decided to step up his operations. It looks like he is planning something big." "But why would he draw attention like this? You'd think that if he was going to do something illegal he'd want to keep it quiet. The rest of this just makes us all hunt for him more." "Detective Booth pointed that out. The Captain thinks that he is taunting us. The guy acts paranoid but at the same time he acts like he can't be caught." "That doesn't make much sense." I looked again at Dyami. "This is a little weird." "What?" "You. Sounding different. It's like you've just changed into someone
else." "I understand. You hardly seem the same either." He reached up and touched the arm band. "The officer that helped me with this tried several models until she found this one. She said that it suited translation between our language matrices the best. The old was a generic model. She said that's why there were the odd artifacts in the translations." I shrugged. "Hopefully this one will last a little longer." "Right. So what's next anyway? Where are we going?" The cab was coming up the road now. I glanced at the scorch mark on the ramp and then started down. "Back to the office." "The office? Why?" "Paperwork. The key to any investigation is paperwork. At least that's what Shanley says and since it is his agency we follow his rules. Besides he likes to meet at the end of the day and compare notes. That way if one of us has to cover for the other we're up to date on the active cases." "That makes sense. Will we eat soon?" "Hungry already?" Dyami got into the cab and settled back against the wall. He rubbed his big head, digging in with his thick fingers. "Yes. Plus my head hurts." "Being knocked out will do that to you. You're sure you don't have any serious injuries?" Dyami dropped his hands. "I'm fine. It's been a long day. Are all of your cases like this?" "Not all, but it happens." Shanley was already at the office when we got back. He also already had dinner for us all. Boxes of Chinese covered the table in the staff room. "Hey guys, come on. Eat and tell me about your day." "What's all of this?" Shanley beamed. "I thought what with two new cases and our new intern here that I could afford to treat everyone."
Dyami tipped one of the boxes towards him with a finger and sniffed. His wrinkles deepened around his eyes. "What is it?" "That's fried rice. It's called Chinese food. It's a traditional human meal. Help your self to whatever seems good. Here, you can use these chop sticks." Dyami took the chop sticks but they were tiny in his hands. Something the size of knitting needles might have suited him better. Shanley wasn't going to be deterred by that. It was funny to see the older whitehaired man showing a being three times his size, one covered in orange and black stripes, how to hold chop sticks. To Dyami's credit he proved to be pretty nimble with the chop sticks and soon had a pot sticker out. He popped it in his mouth. His eyes widened. "Delicious. Thank you Mr. Walsh." "Shanley, son. No one calls me Mr. Walsh unless they are a bill collector. And I don't like bill collectors." Shanley turned to me. "What happened to his voice?" I settled down and grabbed an egg roll. "The explosion took out his translator. We got this one at the police station." "Explosion?" Shanley settled back in his chair and deftly dipped a piece of chicken in the sweet and sour sauce. "You've got to tell me all about it. Just as soon as I tell you what happened today. I was having a devil of a time making any progress in this case. I've figured out that the pet wasn't taken from the home. There were no signs of entry or any other disturbance. It looked like she had gotten out on her own and wandered off. But how do you follo..."
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