“More,” she says, “I need more. I need it.”
“Where can I find him?” Lying to her, I add, “If you help me, maybe we can get you more.”
“He’s from in the city.”
“Where?”
“Next to the spaceport.”
I attempt a reassuring smile, undoubtedly failing badly. “Hold tight. I need to go, but I’m calling in people who can help you.”
“Don’t leave me,” she rasps.
“I have to.”
I do. I need to act right now, or the suspect and evidence could slip away. I pull the little girl’s blanket up to cover her, then leave the house.
Out on the exposed, dusty plains again, I turn away from the winds as I dial my phone and put it to my ear.
Myra answers. “Taryn, you discharge your sidearm? We got a ping.”
“Yeah. One dead, but clear now.” I hope the wind covers up the waver in my voice. As I walk toward my ride, I add, “I need a medical crew out here. There’s a sick little girl.”
“She’s not gonna get free calcium, Tar—”
“Just send a crew. I think there may be something else wrong. She’s been shooting counterfeit currency.”
There’s a pause on the other end as Myra punches in the order. “Crew’s on the way. You coming in?”
“Not yet. I’ve got a lead, need to follow up.”
“You pulled your trigger, Tar. Protocol says you gotta come in for de-briefing.”
“There’s an exception for risk of loss of evidence or recoverable material. Check it. I’m heading to a doctor’s office near the spaceport. Trace my signal.”
Before she can argue any further, I hang up, pocket my phone, strap my goggles on, and get on my ride. The engine starts as I grip the handlebars. Turning hard away from the mine, I hit the juice and speed back toward town. The setting sun to my right casts long shadows below the mountains as I race across the desert, back toward the skyline of Oasis City.
Dusk is washing the last light from the sky when I arrive at the doctor’s office closest to the spaceport. Near the eastern edge of town, this is an industrial and commercial area, well-kept, not poor, but not designed for aesthetics, either. The buildings are blocky and utilitarian, in a presentable but cost-effective state of repair.
Parking my ride in the otherwise empty lot, I glance at the rocket on the launchpad, which sits across a wide, flat tarmac behind a high wire fence. I’ve got no time for dreams right now, but I let the thought that some day I could be on the other side of that fence motivate me as I walk to the front door of the office. It’s still a few minutes before the close of business hours, and sure enough, the door opens, and I find myself in a little, empty waiting room.
The receptionist, a reedy man in his twenties, greets me from behind his desk. “Can I help you?”
“I need to see the doctor.”
The guy steals a glance at my sidearm in the holster on my hip. “He’s out. Care to schedule an appointment?”
“I need to look around. Collections business.”
“I’m sorry, miss, I can’t—”
I’ve had enough of this. The things I’ve seen today will pile upon my own buried issues and will wreck me emotionally as soon as I stop focusing on my work, and I’m not ready to let that happen, so I try the door next to the reception desk. Locked. On impulse, I pull my sidearm, step back, and shoot the knob. The bullet punches it off clean.
“Hey! Hey! Are you insane?” the receptionist is yelling at me as I lean into it and kick the door in.
It leads into a little hallway with an open, empty exam room and a closed metal door. “Doc? You here?”
No response.
Panicked and livid, the receptionist approaches in a huff. “What the hell are you doing? This is an illegal search!” he says. “You need a warrant.”
I actually don’t, not in these circumstances, but I don’t feel like explaining why. “Get out of my way.” I shove him aside and search the exam room, rifling through the drawers and finding only ordinary medical supplies. Nothing incriminating. I come back out into the hallway and try the knob on the other door, the metal one. Locked.
In the corner of my eye, I see the receptionist lifting something. Instinctively I whirl around, and I find myself facing the nasty end of a rifle.
Panicked, I shoot from the hip, firing off a few reckless rounds. The rifle blasts off two shots. The flare from the broad muzzle blinds me as the smell of burnt propellant stings my nose. I fall into the wall and duck down in fear, dizzy and expecting the end to come at any second.
But it doesn’t. The first sight that hits my recovering eyes is the receptionist on the ground, bullet wounds in his belly and forehead. Dead. I nailed a lucky shot.
Still trembling with adrenaline, I stand and approach the body, but a voice behind me says in an even voice, “Stop.”
I spin around and aim my gun at the newcomer. He wears a white lab coat and holds a pistol in each hand. Late forties, short, balding, and paunchy, pale of skin but otherwise healthy, he stares at me, his beady eyes unblinking through thick glasses. “Stop,” he repeats, his voice calm. “Put your gun down.”
I keep my sidearm trained on him. My heart pulses quick inside my chest. “You put your guns down,” I order through clenched teeth, with not a drop of irony. “You know you can’t shoot me.”
“I will if you don’t drop your pistol.”
“The Agency can trace my gun or my ride parked outside.”
“I just turned a jammer on. No signal in or out.”
I can’t help but let out a sigh. He probably thinks the jammer protects him. Even cheap AI can usually blank out any kind of signal—radio, laser, maser, encrypted, you name it. It’s made hundreds of years’ worth of advancement in automation worthless, if someone close enough feels like interfering with it. It’s why drones are unreliable, why starships have actual pilots, and why nearly all vehicles have a manual mode. “I shot somebody half an hour ago,” I tell the doctor. “I called in my status, and Dispatch traced my ride. If I don’t report in, backup will be here in twenty minutes, tops.”
“You’re lying.”
“Nope.”
He glares at me, trying to hide the fact that he’s rattled. “Twenty minutes,” he says, “plenty of time for me to disappear.”
“And go where?” A long, tense moment goes by as he refuses to flinch. “What’s going on here, Doctor?”
Left with no way out, he sneers at me. “Fine,” he says. “You win.”
Before I can stop him, he turns around and steps through the metal door. My only choices are to cover the outside of the building and call in backup or follow him. Hesitantly I choose the latter, ready to fight off some kind of trap as I step through the door, but none comes.
A thick, warm mist blankets the little room, spouted by a humidifier. The doctor stands at a metal work table on the far wall with a few metal briefcases sitting on it. I step closer. Body bags are stacked like rolled-up carpets in the corner. Four of them, all full. This doc can’t have them here legally, and my cut of a calcium haul that big will be worth around two years’ pay. A little bit of greed cuts against the revulsion and the horror.
“What the hell is this?”
The doctor doesn’t answer. He simply places his two pistols on the table, presses his thumb to the fingerprint lock on one of the briefcases, and opens it up, motioning for me to look inside. I keep my gun trained on him as I step close enough to see into the briefcase. It contains neat little racks of syringes, all full, all marked with thin gold stripes.
“A bribe.”
“Cal gluc in the front, cackel in the back,” he says referring to calcium gluconate and calcium chloride. “Take your pick of forty in exchange for your silence.”