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“I didn’t. They let me go.”

“That’s good, Mick. That’s…” Wiseman paused. His bushy eyebrows lifted. “You say that they just let you go?”

I lit a gasper. “Yeah. So what?”

“Mick, you dammed fool!” Wiseman ran to the bed and flipped the mattress over. A Thompson was stashed underneath. As he slammed the rounded magazine in place, Elvira ran to the door and peeked around the corner.

I laughed. “If you’re worried about a tracer, I already found it. The brass are tailing an empty cab right now.”

“That was just a decoy, Mick.” Wiseman finished loading the Thompson as he peered out the window. “The real tracker is probably inside of you.”

“Say what?”

Bright light flooded the room, and the thrum of rotor blades announced the arrival of an auto-piloted Hunter/Killer outside. Wiseman cursed and leaped back as a familiar voice blared over a megaphone.

Flask.

“Attention criminals: you’re surrounded with nowhere to run. You have thirty seconds to surrender.” Flask paused. “Better make it twenty.”

“Go!” Wiseman ran past me to the door.

I tried to grab him. “Dammit, Wiseman — you’ll never make it!”

It was too late. He grabbed Elvira by the wrist and they ran down the hallway. I hesitated for a second, then cursed myself for a fool and followed.

Black-suited figures in heavy body armor stormed in from down the hall. Heavy masks covered their faces, and they moved too quickly for armored men. That was because they weren’t men. They were android street sweepers. They did the only thing that they were programmed to do.

They pulled triggers.

Survival instinct is an uncanny thing. I didn’t have time to think. I just moved at the exact second they opened fire. My shoulder hit the nearest door, splintering it off of its hinges as my body weight carried me inside the empty room. Bullets whizzed by.

Someone screamed. It wasn’t Elvira.

The silence that followed was louder than the shriek. The only sound was Flask’s voice, ordering the street sweepers to stand down. I shakily stood and staggered to the door.

Elvira was dead. She didn’t have time to make a sound because she was riddled with bullet holes. Wiseman held her tightly, ignoring the slugs in his leg and shoulder that spread a widening stain of crimson across his rags. He rocked her with his head thrown back, his voice spent but his mouth still trying to find just one more scream. One more shriek to give voice to the anguish that broke his heart.

Literally.

He clutched his chest and collapsed, still holding Elvira with his other arm. I ignored all common sense and ran to them. The street sweepers encircled us, silent inhuman witnesses to the tragedy.

“Mick.” Wiseman’s bloodshot eyes looked up pleadingly.

“Don’t sweat it, Wiseman.” I tried to pull him away from Elvira’s body. “Stay down. Lemme get something to stop the bleeding…”

“Damn… the bleeding!” He pulled away with a wince. “Been… shot before. It’s… my heart. Got a… bum ticker. That’s the reason why I had to… get outta this place.”

His quivery hand found mine and gripped hard. “Too much… stress. This place is hell, Mick. I… had to leave. It’s the only reason why… I’d ever have crossed you over, Mick. Sorry, son.” Tears streamed down his craggy cheeks as he looked at Elvira. “I’m so…” He sagged over Elvira’s body as he exhaled his last.

I offered no resistance when the street sweepers roughly seized me and dragged me away from my friend.

~*~

Holding cells are like purgatory. An in-between place of waiting. You’re not sure whether you’re gonna to be locked away to damnation or be redeemed to freedom, so you wait. You try not to get your hopes up, but at the same time you don’t want to sink into depression. So you wait. You try to nod off, but every little sound wakes you up, thinking that your time of judgment has arrived. It never does. So all you can do is wait…

“I’m sorry about your friend.”

I looked over at Flask, who stood on the other side of the laser bars. He had this fake solemn look on his mug. A real mask of sincerity. He was good, ol’ Flask.

I offered my best sneer of contempt. I’m pretty good at sneering. It’s a useless talent for the most part, but sometimes it turns out to be the perfect response, especially to the kind of bunk that Flask spouted.

“I’m serious,” Flask said. “I wanted to take them alive. But once gunshots were reported, I was ordered to send in the sweepers. Command came from the top. Captain Graves was under a lot of pressure to catch that crew. Transit is one of the most secure departments in the city. To have a robbery in that division was unheard of.”

I stared at the ceiling. “Is that right? That explains the tail. Where’d you hide it? Wiseman said something about inside of me.”

“The nanomachines were in the water you drank. Takes a couple of days for the individual parts to come together and form the responder that we traced you with. No need to worry. By now it’s already passed through your digestive system.”

I nodded as I slowly sat up. “Becau the machines are protein based. I may not know much, but everyone knows about that, Flask. Still don’t see why you had come in with guns blazing. Wasn’t like the old codger or his moll could do those tin cans any real damage.”

The laser bars threw shadowed lines across Flask’s face. “Captain Grave’s boss came down hard on him, and Graves came down harder on me. It was an embarrassment that needed to be resolved quickly. This probably wouldn’t have ended any other way.”

I folded my arms. “Yeah, I’m sure you had a pretty rough day, Detective. Why confess to me? I’m no priest.”

His face flushed red. “Just want you to know that it’s nothing personal. Your friends knew the risks. They did what they thought they had to, and so did we. The main thing is: don’t do anything stupid, Trubble. I’d hate to find out the next stiff that the sweepers tag is yours.”

“What, you’re letting me go?”

“Yeah. You served your purpose. Most of the stolen property was recovered, and they’re calling it an open and shut case. We could book you for accessory, but we need the cell space. So you walk. Just… stay out of trouble, will you?”

“Hey Flask.”

He paused in mid-turn.

“You said ‘most’ of the stolen property was recovered.”

“That’s right. One of the transit passes is still missing. We figure it’s on the black market. Only a matter of time before we track it down.”

He walked away as a pair of hulking androids appeared right on schedule. I couldn’t tell if they were the same ones from earlier, but I doubted it. They probably all had the same face, modeled after some sour-faced supervisor in an understaffed production factory.

“You’re to come with us,” one of them said.

I held up my hands. “Yeah, yeah. I know the drill.”

~*~

About an hour later I hopped out of a cabbie. I was in the Flats, my familiar stomping grounds with Wiseman. I’d spent my last few dibs on a full scan by a streetcoat, just to make sure that I wasn’t still tagged. Turned out that Flask was right. All traces of the tracer were out of my system. I was clean.

I was also broke.

I pretty much had only the rags on my back and the Mean Ol’ Broad at my hip. A lot of mugs would have taken the easy route and pointed the heater at someone in order to tip the scales back in their favor. That wasn’t my style. I didn’t know much about myself, but I knew what Wiseman taught me. He’d get the stink face if I turned to crime to solve my problems.