0x00: Law
I am the law.
I am the danger you fear when you have done wrong. I will find you and kill you before you have a chance to think. I am the defender of justice that will not bend. I will judge you because I am a Horizon Justice Force Judge. I try to tell myself the pep talk is working. I am lying.
I pause at the entry to the building, where the forensic specialists are slowly stripping off their jumpsuits for the last time, their job complete. Even now that most of the bodies and remains are gone, the smell has sunk into every surface. It would need to be bulldozed, plowed into the Earth, and burned repeatedly to remove the smell and the memory of what happened here.
This would be my third time inside the building, and while I could happily live the rest of my life without having to consider it ever again, I need to be sure nothing is overlooked.
I push through the door and into the lobby, keeping to the narrow strip of paper that forensics had laid even though it isn't strictly necessary anymore. That first night it had been dark in here when Jim and I had burst in, lured by the screams we'd heard, not knowing what kind of calamity we were stumbling into.
I had a rough day the day before and had gotten little sleep after the dressing down the chief gave me. He said I was on Red duty for the foreseeable future. Earlier that same day, they had shut down the north immigration gate because of an explosion on Sin street, and half the Justice Force was running around like vat chickens with their heads half grown. "The Orifice" was gone. "The fecal matter was slamming into the rotational air circulation device."
The tip came in anonymously. Jim and I were the closest responding units. We thought it might relate to the explosion the day before and didn't want to lose any evidence. That's what we were worried about then, a lack of evidence. It seems almost funny now, like the saint of irony herself had cursed this damnable gate into hell with the elegance of a Shakespearean tragedy.
The lobby that night had been dark and the smell only faint, but Jim and I were both seasoned. We'd both smelled decomp before. It took us only a minute to go through the small building, room by room, tac-comp out and simstim on. By the numbers.
A series of hallways later, inside an old storage closet, the trapdoor is absent now, and the hole looks obvious, rigged up with a safety ladder to allow easy access in and out. That first time, clinging to the wooden slats as we made our way into the dark, only our flashlights illuminating the unknown. At the bottom, we'd realized that the tunnels opened up and ran in both directions. Now there are signs, lights, and technicians pushing trolleys full of evidence, despite two weeks of collecting. Back then, it was dark, with only our footsteps echoing down the corridors, like the inside of a mausoleum.
I follow our original route, following the wall and finding that first door in the dark; now it is also gone, removed to be printed and checked, every inch examined. Inside, the cages are empty, the bodies and chains gone, but back then they had been full. Girls had begged us, pleaded and screamed as they saw us come in. The arms and the stumps reaching through the bars haunt me and I can see their ghosts crying out in the cages, even in this lit, clean room.
I turn away. Perhaps this has been a mistake, coming back here, trying to recapture that night. Unthinkingly, I move along the corridor and enter another of the rooms, this one a clean computer room where he had run some of his terrible genetic experiments. At least it doesn't hold any memories for me. A hand touches my shoulder, and I flinch and spin. It is a tech who shrinks back at my reaction.
"Sorry! I just need to get past." He carefully inches through, and I realize he has been standing behind me, speaking for some time. I have been lost in my thoughts. I watch as he disconnects yet another drive from the enormous banks of computers along the wall.
"Still downloading this stuff?" I try to normalize my voice, and make it seem more steady.
He turns and evaluates me, seeing my armor and recognizing me as a Judge. "Not much more now. The guys over at Genetek say they think we have about ten percent of what he was working on and they're hoping maybe ten percent can be reconstructed. If we could get his encryption keys, we'd be able to access it all. Then we..." He leaves it dangling in the air. That last significant problem: even after all this work, we still need the bastard's help.
I smile grimly. "I'm working on it." And I mean it. I've seen enough. I don't need to go through the tunnels, to see every inch of the place, as I had on my second visit. I don't need to go back to that room, just down from here where Jim had opened the door to that... that thing. I don't need to see every lab, every cage, every sick inch of the place as I had before, walking through in a space suit as they pulled bones from the very plaster of the walls. He doesn't deserve DCD. Not him. Not Jim.
I turn and walk out, back towards the ladder. I have what I need. The smell of the place is back in my nostrils. A smell of decomposing fat and necrotic flesh that feels etched into my brain, like a burning sigil of rage—smoke and ash tinged anger fueled by endless obsession and a memory that won't let go.
0x01: Rehab
"So? What did you learn?" Chief Justice Pratt's voice is agitated, like someone who is on a bad losing streak. He isn't exactly alone. He wears the same black armor as me, save the medal on his chest which reads "Chief Justice." He is also roughly 20 years older than me, and no better off for it.
"Enough. I'm ready to pronounce sentencing. I got this." Pratt shakes his head as I stand up to go.
"No, Scott. You don't. We both know that you don't. You are out of control. You can't even keep your hands from shaking. You've had a death wish ever since..."
"Don't. It's not like I don't know. Lilly left too. I don't know if she's coming back." Just saying her name sends pangs of sorrow through my system, reverberating coldly, like chains clanking in an echo chamber from which there can be no escape.
"That's rough, Scott. You know I can't let you continue like this, though. It's gonna be the end of both of our careers if I do." His voice seems distant now. Somewhere in the city, a grandmother gasps her dying breath, and a daughter sobs for her loss. Elsewhere, a father scolds his son for his poor grades. I'd rather be there. Anywhere but here. I'll burn this city to the ground if I have to.
"So, what? Gun and badge? After everything I did for you? You know I won't go down like that, Chief. You know I can..." I let the sentence dangle, a noose around his neck.
For a moment, he just stares at me, his eyes ablaze with anger. I can feel the gears grinding in his head. Finally, he speaks, but this time with the presence of a vector thrust rocket, "Can bring down this entire operation? And to what end? Throw the entire city into chaos? Watch it burn to the ground?" The desk in front of him bursts into flames from the sheer heat of our combined anger, which quickly spreads across the carpet and consumes the contents of the room hungrily. Smoke fills the room, blotting out the light. If only it really would.
Unfortunately, he is right: I am as neck-deep in this as he is, and the nuclear option doesn't solve the problem. He's calling my bluff, so I can't back down now. Get what you want. The only thing that matters now. If I'm able to...
"Chief. You know what happened. He was retiring with double honor pay in a year. I just got off my beat is all, Chief. Anyone would. It's just going to take a few good busts and I'll be on top again."
His frown is indecipherable. After a pause that feels like a small eternity, he speaks. "Is that what it's going to take to get you straight again? Don't take me for a greenie Preston. They didn't clone me yesterday."
I study his features carefully, looking for some clue as to the right thing to say next. Nothing is forthcoming. "What is it going to take, Chief?"
He says matter-of-factly, "Rehab. A psych evaluation. You have given me no other choice." The virtual flames lick higher and higher.
"It can't wait that long, Chief! You know that! I gotta get in there and..."
He interrupts me before I can finish, "And what? Kill him? Judge him for his crimes?"
"Chief! You know what he's done! You know!" My anger is a laser shooting out of my eyes, burning everything in its path.
The Chief isn't having any of it. "And that's exactly why we need that code, and you in rehab! He's no good to us dead. Neither are you."
"You are gonna what? Huh? What do you think is going to happen if you try to burn me?"
"Scott, that man is guilty to the core. He's never going to see daylight again, but the board will not understand how we destroyed humanity's greatest hope. You know what happened to Elliot's wife! It's not happening! You need to get your head straight, Scott! He lives, you go to rehab, and that's an order! Am I perfectly clear, or do I need to get the Johnson file out for review?" The room suddenly doesn't have any air left in it. The noose was never around his neck, it was around mine, and he has just dropped the floor out from underneath me.
I pause and struggle to take a deep breath. I know I have only one way out of this. "So rehab, and an eval, but I keep my rank. No desk time."
He nods slowly, his gaze locked on mine. I nod back, then draw the Enforcer from its holster, remove its battery pack, and set both on the desk. I do the same with my badge, then push it across the surface of the synthogany desk. He takes the gun and battery and secures them in a drawer behind his desk, but the badge remains on the desk. He looks me over before speaking slowly, "Good. I'm glad you made the right choice. I know this has been hell on a swivel, but you did the right thing. Frankly, I wasn't sure you were going to."
That stings, but I understand why. I have been losing it ever since... ever since Jim died. The drinking has gone from occasional to constant, and the nightmares haunt me in my waking hours. I know I am falling apart at the seams, and so does he. He has me dead to rights. I stand up slowly, but he isn't done yanking the strings just yet.
"Scott, there's one more thing." I look over at him slowly.
"What." It is a statement, not a question.
"Scott... I need that code. We're going to be in a world of hurt without it. The board just will not understand how we fragged that hard. I can only pull so many miracles out of my ass, so if we don't figure something out right here and now, there may not be much to come back to."
He is right, but being right isn't enough. "I don't know it, Chief. I wish I did."
He pauses, letting the wish hang in the air, then says quietly, "He broke his silence while you were away. Asked for you by name. Said you were the only one he would talk to. Said you had been bad or something. What did you do, Scott? What is he talking about?"
"I don't have any idea, Chief." I am lying.
0x02: Game
He likes to smile. It is a warm and genuine smile and it revolts me. He'd given me the same smile hunched over the operating table, the girl's eyes staring out in silent agony as she lay immobilized and helpless on the table. He'd turned to face me and given me that smile, that sick grin as if I was an old friend who had dropped in on him and not a crazy man operating on a fifteen-year-old girl in a makeshift hospital. His lips quiver in his white, angular face, and his beady black eyes stare back at me mockingly. This is one sick piece of shit, and I fight the urge to just get in his face and scream until he cries like a blubbering baby.
I keep my expression neutral, walk around the table, and sit down. I am glad I don't have my gun, and they weld the chairs to the floor. Small flares of anger keep telling me to leap at him and kill him; how sweet it would be to watch as the life chokes out of him. I'm not even sure if the guards would try all that hard to pull me off him. He's already killed three times in prison, two inmates and a guard. Perhaps the door would have been 'sticky' or they would have taken a moment to notice the commotion, but that isn't what I want. I want to nail this bastard and judge him myself.
Seventeen long minutes had passed until that first yell from the backup; seventeen minutes until I had called out, my voice breaking, just as the greenie's had. He'd been brave, walking along that passage, past the remains of my partner and that... monster. He and his partner had been happy to pull Jim out, take him away and by then others were arriving. I'd led them in, deeper and deeper, and we went room by room, each holding a fresh horror or a medical puzzle. I didn't know yet that Jim wouldn't be coming back.
"Judge Preston, how nice to see you again." His chains clank as he tries to pull up and offer me his hand to shake. I ignore it and drag out the tac-comp.
Over twenty interviews have been conducted with this man by professional interrogators, and he has given us nothing. We have no identity beyond him being a doctor, no idea who he actually is, where he has come from, or how he knows to do what he does. The materials had been purchased from hundreds of suppliers, all from anonymous bank accounts with different names; simply keeping track of all that information would have required a team of accountants, but we have found nothing relating to any of his money yet. The vast bulk of computer information is still encrypted, of course, and we aren't sure how he did that either. Quantum computers in orbit have been trying to force their way in for three weeks and have had no luck. That is enough time to have cracked any known encryption in the world, but his is holding steady. This man, this monster, has so far defeated us at every turn.
I wish I at least knew his name. "Hello, Mr. Doe."
He smiles that grin again. "Please, Judge, call me John." He inclines his head thoughtfully to the side as if I had been offering him respect.
"You've asked to see me." I pause. "Here I am." Give him nothing. Make him earn every word.
His feet clank, and he looks down, almost in surprise at not being able to cross his legs. "It's amusing, really. You've spent all this time trying to work things out about me and if you had only asked, I would have just told you."
I pull up the case on my tac-comp and turn it around so that he can see the first photo, an outside shot of the abandoned building. "So tell me. Who are you?"
He leans forward. His voice is high-pitched and strained. "My name is unimportant, but I am here to usher humankind into the next phase of evolution, one where we are free of the constraints of our bodies and our souls." He moves back again. "The work I have done will be of more benefit to the human species than any other in history." He seems satisfied with himself.
"Then why don't we start there?" I skip forward to pages of dense medical information. "This portion here is one section you left unencrypted, and I am told by oncologists describes a protein that locks onto and then reprograms cancer cells to fix them." He glances at the page I offer and nods. "But the information you have given is only enough for us to see that the mechanism works, not enough for us to recreate it, and every doctor they go to seems to think that it's impossible."
He nods again enthusiastically, and I try to see any sign of the game he is playing, but he seems sincere. I continue, "but they also found dozens of samples in your cold storage, enough to treat hundreds, maybe thousands, of people." The bile in my stomach boils and steams with hate as I speak. This man is a demon, not a savior.
"Yes, that should be quite convincing for them, I would imagine." He sits back, the small smirk still playing about his mouth.
"It would be, but they won't try it on humans until they know how it works. If you want to convince us, then you'll need to give us more." I blank the screen on the tac-comp and set it down firmly on the table.
He turns his head away and looks back at me with a look of guile. "The scientists won't try it, but someone has, haven't they? Come, come now, detective, let's not start lying to each other now."
I grit my teeth. Does the bastard know, or is he guessing? He is in solitary and they have monitored every interaction since he arrived and so it is probably a guess, but I need to foster trust if I have any hope of success. "Yes, a janitor stole a sample and gave it to his wife with end-stage cancer. She was pregnant with his child and he just couldn't take it."
"She's fine, isn't she?" The grin is back. I long to cleave it off his face with an underpowered laser scalpel until he couldn't beg for mercy. He deserves no less.
"Yes, she has gone into complete remission. The cancer was gone in two days." I try and fail to keep my voice calm. The sigil of rage burns too brightly.
"So are you ready to make a deal yet, Judge? Are you ready for the singularity?" his smile is broader than before and I look away as I growl through grit teeth.
"What do you want?"
Behind the glass, they are recording everything, and I don't bother to take any notes. The list goes on and on, and I watch him as he speaks. His eyes lock on mine as he recites out what I am sure he has planned long in advance. The demands vary from access to medical supplies and records to his charges being changed, dropped, lessened, and adapted. Somewhere in the middle of the list, I stop even listening; he is playing with us. He wants murder and assault changes changed to traffic violations, but all the way through he insists that he should be found insane and detained in an institute for life. All this is window dressing. He knows we can never release him, no matter what he offers. He will die. I will make sure of it.
His eyes don't move as I speak. "We need some sign of good faith, something to get this agreed, Mr. Doe." I keep my eyes locked on him and my voice level.
He holds my gaze for a moment longer with his angular face and void black eyes, then looks away with a laugh. Have I won or has he? "Of course, my dear fellow, I would expect no less." He shuffles forward as far as he can and his voice takes on a high-pitched girlish tone. "Judge Preston has been a very naughty boy indeed, and for his crimes, he will pay." He leans back, and the grin returns.
What does he know? Again, give him nothing. Not a micron. "What the fuck does that mean?" I can feel my brow dripping with sweat.
"Why, it's the encryption key, judge! I'm sure that one of your brownies can figure out how to apply it. Just repeat it 100 times, and see what happens." Behind the glass, there is a thump as if someone has knocked over a chair. Neither of us looks away at the noise.
I stand and pick up the tac-comp. "You know that if this doesn't work out that they'll double tap you."
He fakes a shocked and hurt expression. "Who, me? I think not, Judge Preston." I watch him. Around the corners of his mouth a twitch comes in, and I wonder if this is the only expression he hasn't practiced, hasn't got just perfect. I turn and leave, the bile rising in my throat.
He calls after me, "Be seeing you soon!"
Outside, the mood is ecstatic. The chief seems to feel that I have single-handedly wrestled the information from him mano-a-mano. He keeps saying, "The board will kiss you for this!" I try to disentangle myself as quickly as possible and storm out of the Hall of Justice. This prison is wearing on me, and I need to get out. Too many locks, too little light. Too many memories, not enough air.
0x03: Grave
I go the slow way with the radio on mute so it wouldn't constantly remind me. It adds almost 20 minutes to the route, but it doesn't matter. It allows me to stop at the graveyard, but once I am there, I sit in the car for half an hour and try to will myself to get out. At last, I find the strength and push on and up the hill where he would be waiting for me.
The gravestone isn't there yet—it won't be for another few months—and it is just a featureless lump in the grass for now, but I can feel Jim there, waiting for me. After sitting for an hour on the grass, I stand up. I want to talk, to say something to him. To say he is the best partner I ever had. To say I am sorry. To say I wish it was me instead of him.
I promised his wife at the funeral. I promised her, I would make sure that the monster would pay, and now that seems possible. Why don't I feel happy then? Why do I feel like I have been played, that I am the loser in this game? How much does he know, and how?
Degenerative Clone Disorder, DCD for short, is worse than cancer. It is a death penalty, and all the money in the world doesn't seem to be enough to cure it. It results from being cloned too many times. A copy of a copy of a copy. You can get it coming out of the clone tank, but it only becomes a problem when someone with it records again to update their memories. Something about the synchronization of the data makes the clone unviable. The result is a genetic scramble, and the laws require all clones with DCD to be erased out of some misplaced and misinformed fear of it spreading to other clones. Would he be able to cure that, too? Would he be able to... I can't bring myself to complete the thought. Jim is gone, and I need to accept that. Somehow. That monster is to blame, and he will pay. Of this, I am certain.
I stand wordlessly at the foot of the lump for I don't know how long, replaying that night over and over as if I am watching a simstim on a loop. The lobby, the hallway, trapdoor, and tunnels. I signal to him to open the door while I cover, but then... I shudder. The ebony black slime-coated creature hits Jim so hard that he flies backward and smacks into the wall with a sickening crunch before slumping to the ground. He lies there, eerily still, in a heap of Horizon Justice Force armor which oozes thick red blood into a pool on the floor.
I unload the clip of my Enforcer straight into its horribly misshapen body, and it jets black fluids from its grotesque headless mass, but it only rocks back from the force of the bullets ripping through its flesh. As soon as my clip is empty, it charges me. I get the new clip in as it grabs me and lifts me off the ground, pressing me back against the wall. I can feel my armor strain and crack loudly as I unload the clip into the center of its mass, where I realize the head actually is in this nightmare configuration of what I can only guess was once human. The right eye explodes with the first shot, and I continue putting round after round into the hammer-shaped scar on its grotesque face as the creature crushes the life out of me. Just as I think I am going to lose this battle, the thing relents and falls backward, twitching on the floor briefly, before lying still.
I try to catch my breath and administer first aid to Jim, but the armor prevents me from even seeing the location of the wounds. It just oozes blood and stains my hands, mocking my efforts. Jim just has a vacant look on his face, and it doesn't look like he is breathing. That's when I hear the scream coming from farther down the hall.
That girl, the fifteen-year-old, bleeds to death on that table while I hold him on the floor, waiting for backup. I would have shot him right there if I had the presence of mind to grab one of Jim's clips. All the time he speaks to me in his high-pitched voice and explains what I would need to do to seal off the blood vessels until they could get her help. He offers to walk me through it all. I hold him down, screaming into the radio while watching the blood pool on the table and then spill to the floor as her immobilized, but not anesthetized, body slowly gives up. It isn't until the next day I get the news about Jim's clone.
And back to the beginning. The lobby, the hallway, the trapdoor, the tunnels. The door. Jim. The thing. The scream. Her dying. DCD. And again. And again. Torture doesn't describe where I live.
Finally, I break down and cry. It is a primal, ugly cry. The kind of cry that destroys beauty and kills happiness. The kind you can't stop, even if you want to.
After exhausting myself, I slowly turn away and walk back down the hill. Back at the HOJ, the party is in full swing. The radio informs me that the code phrase has done it, and already there are reports of petabytes of data unlocking with information on everything from cloning to cyberpsychosis, and the talk is that if this all works as well as the cancer drugs, then this could hold the key to the next fifty years of medical advances. All those girls chopped up and sewn together... my partner... but right now I am the minority of people who seem to care.
Whisky and brandy seem like a good idea. I need to forget. At home, it is cold and empty. Lilly is still at her mother's. She promises she'd be home soon. I haven't been easy to live with recently—too much whisky and not enough sleep—and when the sleep comes, I am as likely to wake up screaming as I am to get a rest. It isn't like this before. I wasn't like this before. I am not... broken. I keep telling her I am getting better. I am lying.
I strip myself of my armor and sit down in front of the TV, wearing only my boxers. After a dinner of whisky and cigarettes, sometime around 3 am I finally fall asleep, the TV flickering and the bottle clutched like a baby to my chest. It isn't sleep but oblivion, a deep dark hole into which I am falling, leaving the world behind forever.
0x04: Gone
The buzzing wakes me, my phone on the arm of the chair, flashing red. It is also 6 am. Less than 3 hours of sleep, but still better than usual. My whole body aches and there is a burning sensation in my lower back. I look around for the whisky bottle, but can't find it. I have left the radio on mute, something I suddenly regret.
I try to sound alert as I answer, but the alcohol makes my mouth gummy and I barely grunt out a hello. The chief sounds alert and awake. It surprises me, as I thought he would have been as drunk as I was last night.
His words send a chill down my spine. "They've taken him!"
My vision goes dim, and I feel the weight of the world crush me into the ground. I don't need to know who he is, but it is the 'they' that terrifies me. "Who has jurisdiction to do that?" The adrenaline has cleared my mouth quickly, but my universe is spinning.
"No fucking idea and I can't get any of those cocksuckers to tell me!" The cold fury in his voice is unfamiliar, but I recognize it in my own as I reply.
"I'll be there in twenty." I hit the end call button and shoot up, my back complaining loudly. I take two shaky steps, and an explosion of realization forces itself upon me; the whisky bottle I had spent the night with is sitting on the table across the room, and two empty glasses sit neatly beside it. Those were not there before. I look back at the room. Nothing else seems out of place.
Slowly, I approach the bottle, my heart now thumping loudly enough in my head to be heard. Underneath is a slip of paper and in neat handwriting, "Judge Preston" is across the front.
I check the small utility toolbox built into the midnight black armor heaped unceremoniously on the floor, and pull out two latex gloves. With shaking hands, I pull them on and slip out the note. Inside, the same handwriting is neatly in the center of the paper.
"Be seeing you soon!"