“You gonna shoot?” he taunts, refusing to budge, “Shoot.”
I fire into the ceiling. The old man flinches and cowers as dust cascades down.
“Watch it!” he snaps, “You could damage my equipment.”
Maybe I’ve found a button to push, a motivation to make him cooperate. “I imagine repairs would set you back,” I chide. “Your family too, I bet, even with you gone.”
He sneers, resenting me and what I represent. I stare back coldly, unable to judge him for hating me so. But he relents. “I take you through the house, you leave?” he asks, “No more questions?”
“If I don’t find anything.” A lie. I can’t let this case drop without some explanation of where the body went. Not on something as big as a human cadaver.
“Fine then,” he says, “Come along.”
His knees crack, and he grimaces, clutching his lower back as he stands up. He navigates the blocky jungle of equipment with surprising ease. Keeping my weapon ready in case the old codger tries to spring anything on me, I struggle to follow behind him, bumping my head and elbows against the metalworks.
He waits for me at the exit, then leads me across the warehouse floor and up the steep ramp to the surface. The rolling winds scathe me as I follow him out the door and across the baked alkali field. Arriving at the house, he holds the door open for me.
“Thanks,” I say, trying to avoid antagonizing him despite the weapon in my hand, “but you first.”
With a resentful shrug, he steps inside, and I stay behind him as he leads me into the two-room home. The ceilings are low, the walls claustrophobically tight. A thin layer of dust covers the floor and the worn, beat-up furniture.
The old man hobbles into a corner in the kitchen area. “Nothing, see?”
The place is a dusty mess, but nothing sticks out as criminal. Of course, if this man has sold that dead body to a black market buyer already, the only likely evidence would be calcium tabs, and those would not be sitting out in the open. I search through the refrigerator and kitchen drawers but find nothing suspicious. I check quickly under the shabby furniture, then go to the door to the other room.
Cautiously I open it. I keep cover behind the wall as I sweep the room with my gun, but I see no threats. Only three small beds, one against each wall, and a couple of dressers. I step into the room and pull the dresser drawers open, rifling through each. I should go slower, search more thoroughly, but I don’t like this place. My work takes me to the slums and run-down tenements and shanties of Oasis City literally every day, and this place is nowhere near the most frightening of them, but I’m on edge. I know it’s probably just my own hang-ups about this type of job, nagging at the frayed edges of my subconscious, but something feels wrong here.
The drawers yield nothing but tattered clothing of various sizes. I leave them and turn to the beds, checking underneath each, and under the mattresses and sheets, leaving each undone as I move on to the next. As I pull aside the blankets on the last one, I gasp, stunned.
On it lies a little girl.
2
Maybe six or seven years old, she’s curled up on her side in a fetal position, shivering and sweating, one of her legs twitching. Her brown hair is dull and thin, her cheeks sunken. She has no teeth, her bones are frail and brittle, and her ankles and forearms show the mottled purplish spots of a calcium deficiency. One of her knees is red and swollen, as though broken. She’s clearly alive but very sick.
I holster my gun and touch her delicately on the shoulder, and she shudders and flails at me, a snap reflex. “Shh,” I whisper, trying to calm her even though my own heart is racing, “It’s all right.”
But I’m sure it’s not all right. Something’s wrong with her, something more than hypocalcemia. I could call in an investigative medic, run the girl through some tests and maybe get her some help. She won’t get calcium for free, but if she’s suffering from some other medical condition, the crew might treat it. In the end, I doubt it will matter.
I look around the room, not quite knowing what I’m looking for. As I kneel down and peer under the girl’s bed, however, I see something.
Syringes.
They’re empty, scattered about on the floor. I reach under the bed and pick one up, careful to avoid the needle. A single-dose unit, empty. Not government issued—black market stuff for sure. Thin, gold metallic stripes line it—probably a branding mark. Underground dealers sometimes use such insignia, usually to build market trust in their products’ authenticity and set themselves apart from the many sellers pushing fake or watered-down calcium gluconate or chloride.
I count seven syringes, including the one in my hand. The stuff must be fake.
“Where did you get these?” I ask. Trying not to sound hostile, I add, “I can help you, but I need you to help me first.”
I hear something creak behind me and look over my shoulder. The old man is stepping through the door, an axe in his hands.
I drop the syringe and turn to face him, nearly tripping over my own feet. He brings the blade up over his head and swings it down hard, and I throw myself aside. The killing stroke barely misses. The sharp edge digs into the floor just centimeters away from my arm.
“No!” the little girl rasps. “Grandpa no!”
The miner pulls at the axe handle, trying to get the blade free from the packed-clay floor. I sit up and grab his left wrist. I hit his forearm hard with my own, and I feel the bone snap like cheap fiber board. He shrieks with pain but grimaces to stifle it, refusing to give up. I try to pull myself up, but he leans in and rams me hard with his shoulder, knocking me back down.
He pulls at the axe with both hands. I draw my sidearm. “Back up!” I shout, “Hands off the weapon!”
The blade jerks free. Stepping toward me, he heaves it high and swings.
I fire.
The crack of the gunshot fills the little room with echoes. The bullet cuts a tiny hole in the front of the man’s neck and a big hole in the back, spackling streams of blood and bits of flesh out onto the dusty wall behind him. I jump up, scrambling to avoid the axe as it tumbles out of the miner’s hands. The old man’s lifeless body tilts forward and collapses face-down on the floor.
I catch my breath for a second, hoping that the little camera at the end of my gun—the one they put in the barrel of every Collections Agent’s firearm—got a clear image. Either way the paperwork will be hell; there’s always a suspicion of corruption when an Agent offs somebody.
I take a blanket from one of the empty beds and toss it over the body to cover the ugly, ragged wound gushing blood from the back of the neck. The little girl in the bed stares at me, wide-eyed. She says nothing, but she is shivering and sweating. I put my hand on her, trying to comfort her, and this time she doesn’t thrash at me.
“It’s okay,” I say. “I’m going to do my best to get you help.”
“Grandpa… ”
“You saw I didn’t have a choice.”
She nods, afraid.
I pick up one of the syringes from the floor and show it to her. “Where did this come from?” I ask, trying to sound calm. I give her a few seconds to respond, but she doesn’t. “You need to tell me, so I can try to help you.”
Slow breaths issue heavy from her weak lungs. “Doctor.”
“Doctor?”
She nods again.
“These are not government issue. What doctor gave these to you?”
“My brother… ” she says, weak. “My brother was sick. Grandpa took him to a doctor.” Tears well up in the little girl’s eyes. “He didn’t come back.”
I glance at the body on the floor. A dark red stain is growing on the blanket. “Your brother didn’t come back?” She nods, crying. Trying to put the pieces together in my head, I hold up the syringe again. “Where?” I ask, “Where is this doctor?”