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Aloysia Bloodfur Vice Captain
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 Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 4:36 pm
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Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 4:43 pm
Prologue
“Are you serious?”
The doctor wiped his gloved hands on a towel. “There have been very few occasions in which I have been more serious.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “But they said it wouldn’t happen.”
“They said there was a very small chance of it happening -”
“No,” I corrected him, desperate, “they said it wouldn’t happen. They said it only happened to previous technology. They said mine was so updated that it wouldn’t happen. They said -”
“They lied,” the doctor said simply. “It’s happening.”
I stared down at my hands. The pale skin, the strong fingers, and the very curve of them looked suddenly helpless. This was a fight I couldn’t win with my hands. “What’s going to happen to me?” I finally asked.
The doctor spoke with a voice I appreciated. There was no pity, no apathy, and no messing around - only an honest, businesslike tone. “One by one your organs will shut down. We can replace these organs with TECH, depending on which organs shut down first, but once it reaches your brain there won’t be anything we can do.”
I looked up at him to actually see his face, suddenly realizing my head had dropped onto my chest in fatigue. I studied him with my organic eye - at the doctor’s insistence, I always turned my EYE off in the examination room. It interfered with all the computers and machines that surrounded him. I tried to think of something to say, some way to tackle this problem and pound it into pulp.
Nothing came to me.
After a long hesitation the doctor spoke again. I could see the unwillingness to do so in his face. “There is one other procedure we could try -”
“Do it.”
“But -”
“I don’t care.”
Sighing, he pressed a button and brought one of the many machines whirring to life.
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Aloysia Bloodfur Vice Captain
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Aloysia Bloodfur Vice Captain
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Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2010 9:12 am
Chapter One
Ding!
Demitren Corning smiled ruefully as the secretary for New York City Law Enforcement Headquarters, Offices, and Laboratories (NYCLEHOL) handed him his card back. “Keep that safe,” she advised him. “You’ll need it to punch in every morning.”
“Sucks to be an intern again, doesn’t it?” he said ruefully as he took the card and tucked it in his inner coat pocket.
The secretary smiled. “You’ll live.”
He gestured to the right with his thumb. “Is she as tough as they say?”
“Who’s ‘they?’”
“Previous interns. The ones that didn’t last longer than a week.”
“She’s tougher,” the secretary said grimly. “She went easy on them.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Demitren smiled. “Anything else I should know?”
“She hates her job and is more than likely to bring it out on you.”
With mock serious Demitren tipped her a salute. “Here goes, with God!” he declared heroically. He walked down the hall to the right with the secretary laughing behind him and a smile on his face.
When he finally found the door that read Veteran Consultant, he knocked on the door. “Get in here,” barked a woman’s voice. With a hesitant glance around himself and a whistle for luck, Demitren opened the door and let himself in.
His first glance of Jenosa Parkings was of her side profile. She was standing with her right side facing him, watching a holographic screen scroll through a list of names. He took in her shoulder-blade-length brown hair, brown eye, pale skin, and athletic build with a sweep of his eyes. Unlike everyone else in the office building, she was dressed for street patrol work rather than a desk job. A black patrol woman’s jumper suit with its sleeves rolled up accentuated the muscle and provided several handy hiding places for whatever weapons she probably had. Her face wasn’t unpleasant, but the expression on it was one of concentration and determination that didn’t belong in an office. He coughed to let her know he had entered the room.
“I know you’re not sick, so keep the noises to a minimum,” she told him, and she pivoted to face him.
Demitren blinked, unable to keep himself from reacting. The left side of Jenosa’s face was almost completely made of metal. Hair still framed it, and her chin, mouth, and nose were still organic, but her forehead, eye, and cheek had been replaced. In place of an organic eye was a bright pinpoint of red light, which he was certain was beamed on him right now. Seeing the rest of her body, he realized that her left arm was also of metal from halfway up her forearm to an inch past the elbow. There was no way of telling what else about her had been replaced with TECH - Technology and Equipment Containing Hyperactivity.
After a moment of studying him over Jenosa still hadn’t spoken, so Demitren did. “X-raying through my clothes?”
The look on his face made it obvious that she wasn’t the flirty kind. “Checking to see if you want to kill me or not,” she corrected him.
“There can’t be that many people who want you dead,” Demitren said, “to make that your first assumption with every newcomer.”
In answer the woman pointed to a dark burn mark on the wall behind her. “Last week’s intern,” she explained.
“At him or you?”
“At me. He missed.” Evidently deciding that he had passed the test, she sat down behind her desk in a swivel chair, slouching slightly as she watched him warily. “Let’s see your resume.”
“It’s in your inbox.”
“I want a hard copy.”
“Don’t trust computers?”
“Don’t trust you.”
Demitren shrugged and pulled a slightly-crumpled and badly bent package of paper out from his other inner coat pocket. With a look that clearly said she wasn’t impressed so far, Jenosa took it from him, flipped past the cover page, and began reading choice bits. He got the feeling that her organic eye was reading, but her TECH eye - whatever those things were called - was actually watching him and analyzing his reactions to what she read. “Demitren Corning. Majors in psychology, sociology, and teaching... Good Gog. You don’t mean to tell me my newest intern is a teacher, do you?”
“I taught at a university.”
“Then why the heck are you interning for a patrol job?”
“I’m interning for an analysis desk job, not on-the-street law enforcement.”
“Same difference. Answer my question.”
Demitren shrugged. “I got tired of telling people the same age as myself to do things I myself had never done.”
“So you decided to come complicate my life. Thank you, I’m so honored.”
“Aw, really, it wasn’t actually anything to do with you,” Demitren said, trying to lighten the atmosphere. “They just happened to put me with you by chance. I nearly swooned when I found out -”
“I suggest you shut up now. You’re still in school?”
“I’m working to get my doctors in sociology and psychology.”
Jenosa continued scanning the resume. Demitren invited himself to sit down in the other available chair and waited.
Finally, Jenosa took the papers and slammed them into a desk drawer. Sitting up straight, she folded her hands on the desk and looked Demitren in the eye. “How much do you know about me?”
Demitren thought for a moment. “Not much. You got into law enforcement at the age of fifteen by lying about your age and education. They didn’t find out until you were nineteen and they couldn’t do anything about it. They wouldn’t have, anyway, because you’d already solved three cold cases and intercepted five criminals with your partner, the legendary Daren Sweanar, who retired five years ago at the ripe old age of forty-seven. You were promoted year after year until you got offered the job of chief of patrol, but you declined because you preferred to actually be patrolling. But for the life of me I’ve never managed to figure out how you got landed with a desk job five years ago. You were born sometime in... uh, December, in the year 2205. You’ve got a scar between your shoulder blades from when you were seventeen and got on the wrong end of a drug dealer’s knife, and you once threatened to kill your boss but lived to tell the tale.”
For a moment Jenosa simply stared at him in silence. Then she took her hands off her desk and leaned forward. “You call that ‘not much?’”
Demitren shrugged. “I worked as a reporter for a magazine to pay for college.”
The woman leaned back in her chair and closed her organic eye. “Great merciful Minerva.”
“Sorry.”
“Do you actually have any qualifications for this position?”
“Well, not your position...”
Jenosa rolled her eyes. “For the position you’ll be applying to?”
“Sociology and psychology?”
“You taught it.”
“Meaning I know a lot about it.”
There was a staring competition between the two for a while, then Jenosa sighed. “Let’s get this over with, then. You’re my intern. I’m the boss. You call me Parkings or Jenosa, but call me Miss Parkings, ma’am, or Miss Jenosa and I will blast you into the nether world, got it?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Do you know how to use a computer?”
“Monitor or holographic?”
“Either.”
“Both.”
“Great. You’ll be on the computer, then. Boot up that one there.”
For the rest of the morning Jenosa made him familiar with the files and applications on the office’s computers and network. She brought him up to date with the whole building, and sent him on his lunch break. She preferred to eat lunch in her office. He left her with her sandwich and her holographic screen, which resumed scrolling through a list of names she seemed so interested in.
In the cafeteria Demitren ate his own packed lunch with the secretary from that morning, whose name he found out was Sunny Hills. “My parents have a bad sense of humor,” she explained over her salad. Sunny bought her lunch at the office’s cafeteria.
“Better than none at all,” he replied. “How did Jenosa get stuck here if she was such a crack-job patrol woman? She’s not even thirty-five yet.”
“She’s thirty exactly,” Sunny replied. “She got here when she got the EYE. They forced her to quit patrol work and work in the office.”
“How’d she get the EYE, anyway?” Demitren asked, twirling his fork in his Chinese meal.
Sunny thought about this as she chewed celery. “I don’t really know. I’m not allowed to see her medical records and I don’t have access to her old patrolling ones. But from what I can figure... You remember the serial arson case about five years back?”
“The one Jenosa solved.”
“Yeah. It was only a couple of months after Daren Sweanar retired, and she had already been given the new partner. In her defense he was a rather young and inexperienced guy. Anyway, she lost patience with him -”
“Really? That sounds unlike her.”
Sunny giggled. “They were patrolling, had a pair of leads on the arson case. She ordered him to investigate the smaller of the leads, sent him to a warehouse where the gasoline was stored. Then she went to follow the other lead on her own. Long story short the arson criminal cornered her, locked her in, and set fire to the building. Then he found out that she’d blockaded his escape route first, so he got caught. But by the time the fire department found her, her left side had caught on fire.”
Demitren nodded. “Her face and her arm.”
“Well, the rest of that side, too, but most of it they were able to save or just re-grow. The face and the arm got burned the worst, so those got TECH replacements. And when they decided to give her an EYE, she was forced to retire from patrolling and take up a job here.”
“But why?” Demitren wondered through a mouthful of noodles. “You’d think an EYE would be more helpful on patrol than in an office. Wouldn’t it? What, EYE stands for Extraordinary...”
“Extrasensitive-Something-Equipment,” supplied Sunny. “I forget the ‘Y’ word. And sure, an EYE would be amazing on patrol. But it’s actually more complicated than that. First of all, she had been reckless and stupid, going alone and abandoning her partner. It may be a bit extreme for an experienced patrol woman to lose her job for just that, but it’s a factor. Second of all, this was around the time when people got it into their heads that old blood should be replaced with new blood. Remember? The public voted to change the president of the United State’s term of service to only two years around that time. That whole preventing-corruption-and-stalemate crap. The people wanted new patrol men and women, and this was an excuse to get rid of one of the old ones.
“Third, an EYE may be amazing for patrol, but it’s also fairly useful in an office. Now let me see if I’ve got this right... Right. The EYE scans a document, then by electronic impulses sends the image of the document to a computer receptor transplanted into the brain. That computer takes the image, converts the electronic impulses from the EYE into new electronic impulses, and sends the new ones to various parts of the brain. Those parts of the brain then instantly receive what the document looks like, what the information on it is, and what the information means, and it’s all instantly memorized. Think of it as really, really good photographic memory. Then we don’t spend so much time reading documents and filing stuff, you only have to look at it once.”
Demitren watched as she explained all this to him. When she was done he finished slurping a noodle and cleared his mouth. “Small wonder she hates her job. Any chance of her getting back on the streets?”
“I certainly hope so,” Sunny said. “It would be a lot easier.”
“What do you mean?”
Standing, Sunny went to dispose of her tray. “I think you’ll find out.”
***
Happy to be alone I turned back to the screen. I already had it memorized, thanks to my dear friend the EYE. But I can’t stop watching it. I keep hoping that seeing it over and over again will make something pop out at me.
It’s been a long time since I was put on a case. They top guys finally decided that since they couldn’t restrict me to memorizing files, they might as well allow me to be active in the worst of their cases. But what terrible timing. To finally have a case, and only just be started, and find out that I had a time limit to solve it.
A time limit the top guys didn’t assign me.
I put a hand to my forehead in small protest against how unfair it all was. And speaking of unfair, why the heck did I have to suddenly deal with an intern? Sure, he seemed pleasant enough. Light brown hair of a decent length, a decent body build, and - according to my EYE - all the right genetics to be on the job. But the fact that he was capable didn’t mend the fact that he’d be hanging around me for the next deities-know-how-long.
‘Maybe when I die they’ll ask him to write a eulogy as a coworker.’ I smiled, imagining the funeral. ‘“Uh, well, she was my boss... And she hated her job... and she threatened to shoot me every five minutes...”’
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Posted: Thu Jul 15, 2010 8:34 am
Chapter Two
The next two days were spent making Demitren familiar with the NYCLEHOL facilities. He learned several useful things: what the difference was between the NYCLEHOL and the NYCLE (the organization of patrol men and women that patrolled the streets of NYC), how the NYCLEHOL computer network worked, and where the restrooms were.
On Wednesday Jenosa decided that he was ready to start being her real intern. “I don’t want you hovering over my shoulder like some kind of creeper kid,” she told him. “Stand next to me and speak your mind or don’t waste my time.”
“I’ve got no problem with that.”
She ignored him. “Usually Veteran Consultants such as myself -” her tone of voice was sour as she said this “- aren’t assigned cases. But due to a little persuasion on my part, they’ve agreed that due to lack of important activity I can handle this.”
Demitren snorted.
“I know you’re not sick, so enough with the noises.” Jenosa activated the holographic screen she was always watching. Instead of the scrolling list of names, several windows started darting back and forth across the screen, depending on where Jenosa and her remote control cursor wanted them to go. “It’s a kidnapping case,” she started, “and the worst one I’ve seen in years. Victims are children, both genders, ranging in ages from three to twelve. Forty-nine have been taken so far with the same note for ransom. The note’s exactly the same, but the paper and ink suggest that the ‘napper has been printing it from several sources to keep us from narrowing down a location.”
“Back up a second,” Demitren said. “Forty-nine children missing?”
“We’re up against a professional,” she agreed. “It’s nerve-racking that he’s come this far. The worst part is we can’t profile him. There’s absolutely nothing in common between these kids. Some are orphans, some live with one parent, some live with two, some live with other relatives. All social classes, all backgrounds, all ethnic groups, all ranges of education, talents, and personalities. In fact, there’s only one clear thing they have in common.” She brought up a window that began a slideshow of the missing children’s photographs. “They all have very dark brown hair.”
Demitren studied the children for a moment. “I can see how profiling would be a problem.”
“We do know it’s a male, though,” Jenosa added.
“How’d you figure?”
“First, the age of the children. Women usually only kidnap babies or toddlers.”
“I thought you said some were three.”
“Only one three-year-old,” Jenosa muttered, pulling up the list of names she had stared at, which Demitren realized was a list of the victims. “Two four-year-olds. Four five-year-olds, eight six-year-olds, ten seven-year-olds, ten eight-year-olds, five nine-year-olds, five ten-year-olds, one eleven-year-old, three twelve-year-olds.”
Demitren nodded. “Ah. Fewer young ones, more older ones.”
“Barbaric numbers just the same. Second reason we know he’s a man, the residences of the victims show signs of forced entry. Alarm systems were destroyed with a hammer - or fist - rather than just being turned off or hacked. The situations with older kids show signs of struggle suggesting a large, power fully-built being. And in the case of one twelve-year-olds, he drew the girl’s blood on accident but didn’t bother cleaning up.”
“You’re saying that if it had been a woman, she would have cleaned up the blood?”
“Yes.”
“All right, then.”
“Third reason is the ransom note. A woman would be more likely to write an individual one each time, taking notice of each child. Then again, so would some men, but a man’s more likely to be this impersonal.”
“If it’s so impersonal, why haven’t you mentioned the possibility that it could be a group?”
“We haven’t, really, but it seems unlikely.”
“Can I see the ransom note?” Demitren asked.
Jenosa shot him a look. “I was going to, without your helpful prompting.” With her remote she selected a window and maximized it for Demitren to read:
“One hundred thousand dollars. I don’t care who pays. I’ll keep the child alive. When you’re ready to give me the money - in cash - e-mail 4310@quickmail.com.”
“Smart of him to use quickmail,” Demitren noted.
“We’ve gone over quickmail’s network backwards and forwards, but there’s absolutely nothing with the e-mail address to link it to anything or anyone,” Jenosa said irritably. “That’s the worst part about free e-mails. This guy just made one that he didn’t use for anything else, didn’t supply his name because he didn’t have to, and boom! He’s home free.”
“And he’s not much of a letter writer,” Demitren said disapprovingly. “He demanded one hundred thousand dollars with every child, with the same note?”
“Yeah.”
“So, does he want one hundred thousand dollars for all the children, or per child?”
“Does it matter? No one’s agreed to pay. None of the parents have that much money, and the big-shot companies that have enough cash don’t want to... what was the phrase? ‘Play into the kidnapper's hands.’” She snorted. “Technically as ‘veteran consultant,’ I’m only supposed to be advising people on how to handle the case. But you and I are going to take care of this one.”
“Really?” he asked, looking at her with a smile and a cocked eyebrow.
“Don’t get any ideas. You’re my intern, I’m the boss. We’re not partners or anything fancy like that,” she snapped. “Got it?”
“Crystal clear,” he said. “When do we start?”
“I already have,” she said. “Since last week I’ve been interviewing the families of the children, or if they haven’t families I’ve been interviewing their caretakers. Today we’re interviewing the last three.” With her remote she selected a window with a child’s profile on it. “Five-year-old Tomat Dwelling. Dark brown hair. Tan skin. Average grades, class clown but no real trouble, plenty of friends, freckles, brown eyes. Was alone in the house with the family dog while his mother was working her weekend job, his father was grocery shopping, and his sister was at a friend’s house. The back door was splintered and broken so the kidnapper could force his way in. No one saw him because the back yard has a huge fence around it. The alarm didn’t go off because the outside network had been found and smashed in with a hammer. Dog was found tied up and beaten, but not killed. The note was printed on plain printing paper and taped onto the TV screen, where the boy was playing video games. Been missing for a month.”
She selected another window. “Eight-year-old DJ Walling. Dark brown hair, fairly dark skin. Poor grades, a tendency to have temper tantrums and talk back to the teacher. Not a lot of friends. Birthmark next to his left eye. Brown eyes. Lived in a hotel with his mom. Someone found a duplicate key card and got in without having to break in. People in the rooms next to them heard the child screaming, but didn’t think anything of it because he often did during his tantrums. The note was printed on a piece of paper used to wrap a fast food cheeseburger in, and the ink was from a different kind of ink cartridge. Been missing for two weeks.”
Another window, another child’s photo. “Twelve-year-old Samantha Dean. Dark brown hair, obviously. Pale skin. High grades, excellent behavior, small circle of friends, no blemishes on the face, green eyes. She was alone in her mother’s apartment while the mother was at work. Her father lives in New Jersey. The door was beaten to splinters, same as the Dwellings’ was. Alarm went off briefly, but it got smashed with a hammer immediately. No one really heard it nor really cared, I guess. According to the neighbors the alarm was a cheap thing, just sounded like a kitchen timer.”
“Wouldn’t anyone hear a door being beaten up?”
“Not over their rap music. Anyway, this is the house they found the blood in. It’s a match to the child’s. Signs of a struggle. Apparently Samantha put up a fight. Note was printed on paper with the local sanitation department’s logo on it. Ink came from the first ink cartridge. Been missing eight days.” Jenosa turned off the screen and grabbed a shoulder bag with the NYCLE logo on it. “Come on. We’re taking NYCLEHOL transport to the suburbs, then the city, then downtown.”
Demitren flashed Sunny a salute as they walked by her desk and waited a couple of minutes out front for the NYCLEHOL transport: a shuttle bus with the NYCLEHOL logo on both sides that smelled like unwashed cats in the inside. Jenosa sat in the passenger seat, leaving Demitren by himself in the back. The driver smoked heavily, the seats were sticky, and for some unexplained reason the shuttle was only authorized to use certain roads - which made the ride longer. Needless to say it was a relief when the shuttle, forty minutes later, managed to find its way to the suburbs and pulled in front of the Dwelling house.
Jenosa rang the doorbell and flashed a badge to the man who opened the door. “I’m sorry we couldn’t be here sooner,” she said.
The man shrugged. “Nothing you could do about it, anyway. Come in.”
He introduced himself as Mr. Dwelling. He had brown hair that was graying, a clean-shaven face that looked like it needed more sleep, and a clean shirt and pants. The house was orderly and freshly cleaned but quiet. Demitren noticed a teenage girl with long brown hair looking at them from the top of a staircase. When he waved to her she disappeared behind the corner of the wall. He thought she had been crying and figured she must be the older sister.
Mrs. Dwelling was in the kitchen doing bills. Mr. Dwelling made introductions, then invited them to sit down around the kitchen table.
“I wish I could do more than just ask questions,” Jenosa said.
“We’re just happy you’re trying to help,” Mrs. Dwelling said. Her voice was weary.
“Take notes,” Jenosa told Demitren. He dug a notebook and a pen out from her bag and got ready. “This is my intern,” Jenosa explained. “If he interrupts or does anything offensive I’ll take care of him myself.” Demitren grinned.
“We already know the basic details of the case,” Jenosa said. “My job now is to try and find some reason as to why your son was chosen. The kidnapper knew about how your alarm was situated outside, knew the child would be alone in the house. He had picked your boy for a reason. We need to know what this reason is, so we can find what other children have it and prevent them from getting kidnapped, and then to use this reason to track him down.” The parents nodded.
“First off,” Jenosa began, “what age group did your son hang out with?”
“Only kids his own age,” Mrs. Dwelling said. “There was the occasional affiliation with his teachers and with adults he saw as caregivers, but his friends were his classmates.”
“What after-school activities did he participate in?”
“He’s on the local soccer team,” Mr. Dwelling said. “And he collects action figures. On days when we were celebrating something, like a good report card, we’d take him to the store and let him buy a new one.”
“Did he ever talk to you about a stranger, while at soccer or anywhere else?”
Mrs. Dwelling shook her head. “He never mentioned anything strange.”
The interview continued. Tomat took the bus to school, had never wandered anywhere on his own, had always been under constant supervision, didn’t bother talking to strangers when they were out in public, played the same video game (the newest version of Blasted Worlds), and wasn’t particularly good at soccer, but played because his parents thought it was good for him. He pulled pranks on his sister, sometimes talked back to his parents but never meant to hurt them, loved to play fetch with their dog, and had never tried to commit a crime, no matter how minor. After several questions Jenosa stood and asked if they could look in his bedroom and in the room he had been taken in.
Jenosa pulled out two cameras and handed one to Demitren. “Take pictures of the room from all angles,” she detailed him. “I want to be able to see every inch of this room eventually. I don’t care if you think it’s minor or unimportant. If I find out there’s so much as cracked plaster in here that you didn’t take a photo of, I will have your guts for a clothesline.”
“Understood,” Demitren assured her, turning the camera on and looking it over to find all the appropriate buttons. Then he entered the bedroom.
It looked perfectly preserved, as a memorial to the day Tomat had disappeared. Demitren understood that this was normal for parents who lost children. Clicking about the room, there were three things Demitren noticed: one, the shelves all contained action figures from the Blasted Worlds video game. Two, Tomat was not a very neat person. And three, he had a certificate from “AEIO Learning Center” hanging on his wall.
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Aloysia Bloodfur Vice Captain
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Aloysia Bloodfur Vice Captain
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Posted: Thu Jul 15, 2010 8:36 am
Chapter Three
As soon as Demitren told Jenosa about the “AEIO Learning Center” certificate, she uttered an angry oath, took a deep breath, put on a patient face, and went back to the kitchen, where she politely asked about it. Mrs. Dwelling explained that Tomat had been a member of its program for part of the school year. “But why didn’t you tell us about it when I asked about after-school programs?” Jenosa asked.
Mrs. Dwelling looked fearful and close to tears. “He stopped going months before he... disappeared. It couldn’t possibly be important.”
“Everything’s important when we’re in the dark,” Jenosa fairly snapped. Then she softened again, said that she would not stop looking, thanked the parents for their cooperation, and pushed Demitren out to get back in the shuttle van.
“‘AEIO Learning Center?’” she asked aloud when they got driving again. “What is that, anyway?”
“It’s an after-school tutoring program,” Demitren explained. “You go there to get extra learning help.”
“Tha’s righ’,” added their driver as he looked both ways, looking for an opportunity to turn. “I brough’ m’ three-year-old there t’ help ‘er learn t’ write. An’ m’ sister took ‘er ten-year-old there to work on ‘is fractions.”
“You can go every day after school, or every, say, Thursday after school,” Demitren continued. “You pay per session, and either they develop a special learning program for each child - or you just bring homework you’re having trouble on.”
“Tha’s righ’,” the driver helpfully said. “M’ neighbor down the street brings ‘is autistic child there ev’ry day. Been doin’ so fer seven years now, an’ they really help!”
“What does ‘AEIO’ stand for?” Jenosa asked.
“It’s just a clever little name,” Demitren supplied. “Their TV commercials goes, ‘AEIO Learning Center... All that’s missing is U!’”
She stared at him. “I don’t get it.”
“You know... U? You? You? The letter U, the word you... ?” He glanced at her completely bemused face. “Never mind.”
The fact that Law Enforcement hadn’t mentioned AEIO Learning Center in their reports made Jenosa furious. Angrily she took out her mobile phone, dialed the appropriate number, and gave the person who answered a piece of her mind! After about five minutes of listening to her tirade the person on the other end began assuring her that they were very sorry, that it would never happen again, and that they would from now on look for every little detail. Jenosa replied by saying dang right they would, and she started her ranting afresh. Her irate mood wasn’t helped by the fact that the shuttle was now stuck in traffic once again. “Why don’t you just exit here and take the 4-30?” she snapped, referring to a road built in 2179 that over passed all other roads - and some buildings - at a staggering height of forty stories.
“Can’t,” the driver said. “This vee-hic-le ain’t authorized t’ use them roads.”
“I don’t believe this,” she snapped. “First the shuttle gets stuck in traffic, then Law Enforcement doesn’t include a vital piece of information in their reports, and to top it all off, I’m stuck with an intern on my heels!”
Demitren nodded, his face a mask of concern. “I sympathize. I, too, am stuck in traffic, no one told me the van was going to stink this badly, and I’m stuck with a boss who hates my guts.”
Jenosa looked at him for a minute, her lip twitching. Then she turned to face front again, and Demitren couldn’t tell if she was too angry to reply of if she didn’t want him to see her smiling.
An hour later they managed to find the hotel where DJ Walling and his mother stayed. Ms. Dijone, as she was called, opened the door enough to snap at them that she’d rather not see them right now, thank you very much. Jenosa continued knocking on the door, asking again and again to be admitted, and was refused every time. Eventually Jenosa yelled through the door that if Ms. Dijone didn’t answer their questions, DJ was as good as dead, and his mother reluctantly let them in.
In order to be out of the irritable mother’s way as soon as possible, Jenosa took her own notes through the interview and let Demitren take pictures of the hotel room as she did. He covered every inch, even getting on his knees to take pictures under the beds. He noticed that while Tomat hadn’t been very neat, DJ and his mother had no idea what organization was. There were trading cards of an Alien Race video game scattered under the bed, and those looked to be the most orderly things in the room. And in DJ’s pile of school things he found a half-finished workbook of math problems that came from a different publishing company than those of his school’s textbooks.
Back in the van Jenosa shared with him her notes from the interview. DJ had always been a tantrum-thrower; it was his way or no way at all. DJ collected Alien Race trading cards but had never played the video game. DJ didn’t really have friends; he traded cards with other boys his own age, but was as disrespectful to them outside of the trading circle as he was to adults. He had never mentioned anything strange, but he complained a lot about the guy from the store where he bought trading cards. Apparently he was always asking DJ how he was doing. He walked down the street to take the public bus to school, only spoke to strangers to criticize them, had once tried to steal a set of trading cards and had thrown a tantrum when he got caught, and spent a majority of his time pouting around the room. His pouting periods got more frequent and more violent as he was forced to be alone after school: his mother worked until nine at night. Most importantly, he spent every Friday afternoon at the nearest AEIO Learning Center.
“Doesn’t sound like a kid I’d want to hang around with,” Demitren observed.
“He’s a brat,” Jenosa announced, tapping her notebook irritably. “He has no real desire to be anything but lazy. He probably wouldn’t even bother with the trading cards if it weren’t for the fact that his trading circle is the closest he’ll ever have to friends.”
“Soun’s lika lonely life,” the driver murmured sympathetically.
“Can’t you turn onto the 4-30 here?” Jenosa demanded.
“Ans’er’s th’ same,” the driver sniffed. “Ain’t authorized.”
Jenosa slumped on her seat in a bad temper.
Thirty-eight minutes later the shuttle finally made it to an apartment building that looked as though it hadn’t been loved in fifty years. Loud barking, rap music, shouting, and sirens peppered the air as Jenosa and Demitren walked up the stairs to the floor where the Deans lived. “No wonder Samantha put up a struggle,” Demitren muttered. “She’s probably grown up with eat-or-be-eaten survival skills.”
“Don’t say anything like that to the people here,” Jenosa hissed. “It’s more than my job’s worth to drag your carcass back to base.”
Arriving at the Dean apartment, Jenosa knocked on the door. It opened just enough so that a furtive green eye could peep out at them. Jenosa flashed her badge, assured Mrs. Dean that she wasn’t in trouble, and they were here about her daughter. A trifle less nervously Mrs. Dean opened the door enough to admit them.
Demitren was amazed at the state of the apartment. He had half-expected a smoke-infested room, housing vermin and insects, with drug dealers in the corners and addicts on the floor. As if the home was making an effort to contradict his bias, everything was spotless. The furniture was secondhand, but well-kept. The room they were in was clean of all animals and illegal objects. The air even smelled sweet. Jenosa seemed to be as surprised as he was. “You have a lovely home,” she told Mrs. Dean.
The other woman smiled. “I’m right grateful for your sayin’ so. Samantha and I make the best with what we got.”
They sat together in what served as a living room, but Mrs. Dean told them she slept on the couch. “I let Sammy have the bedroom,” she said. “She tried to make me change my mind the day doc told me ‘bout this bad back o’ mine, but I just laughed.”
Jenosa smiled. Demitren could see that she already respected Mrs. Dean and thought of her highly. Jenosa began the interview with the usual questions, and the graying old woman answered. Samantha was friends with girls her own age, being too smart to get close to the boys on their side of town. She wasn’t in any after-school activities, choosing to concentrate on her schoolwork instead. She was never anywhere without adult supervision, and would even refuse to follow her friends if it meant being out of sight of adults she trusted. She sometimes would chat amicably with strangers but never told them her name or where she was from. Her one leisure activity was collecting paperback penny novels – “Not very good ones,” Mrs. Dean said, “but Sammy said they were fun to read and anyways, she could read better ones just by going to the public library.” The only time Mrs. Dean heard a cross word from Sammy was when she was sticking up to a bully for making fun of one of her friends. Sammy had a weakness for cats and almost wandered off with a stranger when she was nine because he told her he had a box of kittens she could play with. There couldn’t be a more law-abiding citizen anywhere on the block.
Demitren took notes diligently from where he was sitting on the couch. Mrs. Dean spoke calmly from a rocking chair, while across from her Jenosa was listening intently perched on the rocking chair’s rocking footstool. Both members of the NYCLEHOL were liking the Deans more and more with each detail. Jenosa asked her next question. “Did your daughter ever mention anything strange to you? Like a stranger trying to talk to her, or someone she knew acting oddly?”
Mrs. Dean leaned her head back in thought, then nodded. “There was one day she mentioned something, a couple months back. Is that too long ago?”
Jenosa shook her head. “Nothing’s too long ago.”
Mrs. Dean nodded again and closed her eyes. “Sammy was part of the AEIO learning program for a while. It was a safe place for her to study and it helped with her grades. One day she came home and said there was a leak in the plumbing, so a man was called to come and fix it while they were studying.”
She was interrupted as Jenosa suddenly leaned forward in a bout of coughing. Mrs. Dean and Demitren waited for her to stop, but it didn’t happen. After a minute they both became alarmed as Jenosa leaned farther forward until her head was in her lap, coughing into a fist and holding her stomach with her other hand. Pausing long enough to ask where the bathroom was, Jenosa continued coughing as she went into the next room. After a few seconds there was a pause, then Demitren heard the sound of Jenosa spitting into the sink. There was another pause, and he heard her spit again. Another minute passed, both he and Mrs. Dean heard water being run to wash out the sink, and Jenosa came back, looking briefly worried. “I’m sorry,” she said, sitting back down.
“Are you all right, dear?” Mrs. Dean asked.
Jenosa dismissed it with a wave of her hand. “I’m fine. Please continue.”
Mrs. Dean relaxed again, and Demitren realized they had both gotten tense with worry. He went back to taking notes. “When the repair man showed up,” Mrs. Dean said, “Sammy said he took a long time to fix the leak and clean the floor. He was lookin’ at all the kids, she said, but she didn’t like it. Said he came over to her and started touchin’ her hair, talkin’ ‘bout how pretty it was...”
Back in the shuttle van, Demitren and Jenosa were fairly quiet, digesting everything Mrs. Dean had given them. They had left her looking far more peaceful than they had met her, with her wholehearted wishes that Jenosa’s cough get better and that Demitren get a fine good job someday in their ears. But what seemed the strangest about the whole encounter was her description of the repair man Samantha had seen at the AEIO Learning Center - but Demitren couldn’t figure out why.
The other thing that was distracting Demitren, however, was the fact that Jenosa was looking less and less thoughtful and more and more annoyed with each second, until she broke the silence. “I can’t stand it anymore. When was the last time this vehicle got an oil change?”
This was so random that neither man replied for a moment. “I dunno,” the driver finally answered. “Why?”
“It needs one, badly.”
“’Owdya know?”
“I can hear it, ding bat.”
Demitren sat forward. “I can’t hear the engine, or anything else for that matter.”
Jenosa sighed, was silent for a moment, then spoke again. “I suppose you’ve heard where I got this?” She tapped her finger under her EYE. Demitren nodded. “Well, my ear got damaged, too. They managed to re-grow the outer flesh thing,” she said, tugging at her lobe, “but the inner ear was irreparable. So instead of an eardrum, I’ve got a computer that intercepts sound waves and translates them for me.”
“Sounds useful.”
“It’s annoying. By ‘sound waves,’ I’m not limited to the English language. My left ear can understand everything from Spanish to computers.” She glared at the driver angrily. “And I’ve been listening to your van this whole time, and it’s in terrible need of an oil change! I can hear it complaining.”
“Complaining!”
Her glare was directed at Demitren. “Machines don’t really feel emotions the way we do. They don’t act based on them. They do, however, feel some primitive form of emotion: they can tell when they’re all right, which is happiness, and when something’s wrong. That’s how I knew you weren’t sick when you entered my office. The computers acknowledged the presence of a moving being with no defects apart from allergies, and felt ‘reassured.’”
Demitren stared at her. “And the van’s complaining that it needs an oil change?”
Jenosa shot a nasty look back at the driver. He looked back at her with injured innocence. “Maintenance ain’t my job, I’m just th’ driver!”
“And you’re a lousy one at that!” Jenosa snapped. “We should have been back at base an hour ago! If you would just...”
Demitren left her to it.
***
I was two hours late for my appointment with the doctor thanks to that oaf and his lack of “authorization” to drive on proper roads. Dismissing my intern for the day I started to run toward the doctor’s office, wondering all the while I did: why had I told the intern about my EAR - Extrasensitive Auditory Receptor? It certainly wasn’t part of the job description to inform amateurs which of your organs weren’t organic. I wasn’t comfortable with sharing anything about myself with this new guy, and I became resolved to make sure I told him nothing else.
In the examination room I turned the EYE off with a simple thought process and waited for the doc to finish with his usual checklist. “I spat blood today,” I told him. “While I was on duty.”
He looked up from his clipboard. “Really? Lie back on the table. I’m going to let the FAS look you over.”
I did as he asked, letting the Full Anatomy Scan run up and down me several times before flipping over to my back and letting it do the same. I heard the machine decide it was done, heard it decide to fold back into place, and heard it conversing with the main screen, which agreed to display the information to the doctor. Both machines felt a sense of urgency, but didn’t panic, because machines can’t feel panic.
Doc looked it over and nodded. “Well, your windpipe needs new lining.”
I groaned. “Now?”
“Don’t worry, it’s a small surgery, not as big as your EYE or elbow,” he told me. “If we put you under now, you’ll be out by midnight, and you’ll be ready for work tomorrow.”
I agreed. A bit later as we were waiting for the surgery room I asked, “All my organs are going to shut down, right?”
“Yes.”
“Does that include my skin?”
He nodded. “It’ll start flaking off eventually.”
“So at one point, all my skin will be replaced with metal.” He nodded. I frowned. “I don’t want to die a complete cyborg.” He just looked at me with understanding, not having an answer to the problem. Angrily I slammed my fist down onto my lap. “I always thought I’d die by bullet,” I said through gritted teeth.
“If that’s the way you want to die,” Doc said grimly, “I suggest you provoke an old enemy really soon.”
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Posted: Fri Sep 17, 2010 4:17 pm
Chapter Four
Demitren came to work the next morning and, as Sunny punched him in for the day, asked her, “Did you know about Jenosa’s ear?”
Sunny glanced at him. “The left one? Yeah, it got replaced with EAR TECH. I did say her whole left side got burned.”
Demitren shook his head as he took his card back. “Makes you wonder, the fact that I’m working with someone I know almost nothing about.”
“Compared to most, you know plenty,” Sunny told him. “She’s not keen to tell people about herself and it’s rare for anyone to get close to her.”
“Guess Daren Sweanar’s a rare one, eh?”
Sunny smiled. “Her partner? Of course. They worked together for ten long years.”
“What was his secret?” Demitren asked. “Some kind of superpower where everyone was forced to like him?”
“Oh, come on, Demitren. Just because she’s a little cold to you doesn’t mean she’s not human. Daren didn’t need superpowers to get her to be a friend to him.”
“Bet he had to knock her out once or twice.”
“Look, just go to work, ‘kay?” Sunny said, turning back to her desk. “I promise you she won’t kill you.”
“I just don’t like working with secretive people, that’s all,” Demitren muttered as he waved good-bye and made for Jenosa’s office.
When he got there he knocked and let himself in without waiting for an answer. As he expected, Jenosa was staring at the holographic screen as it scrolled through the list of kidnapped children. “Took you long enough to get here,” she muttered.
“Sorry.”
She looked at him. “So, what did we find out yesterday?”
Demitren knew this was meant to test him as an intern as well as refresh both their memories. He thought hard before answering. “We know that the last three children were members of the AEIO Learning Center some time before their disappearances.”
“And I just finished calling the other forty-six families,” Jenosa put in. “Same with them.”
“So the AEIO Learning Center is a big suspect, particularly its repair man.”
“I called the AEIO headquarters,” Jenosa said. “They have several locations in New York City, but they all use the same force of repair men, who are all based at the central headquarters. Headquarters are located on Byzone Street.”
“We also know that the kidnapper has a quickmail e-mail address,” Demitren mused. “Is that it?”
Jenosa nodded glumly. “I think so. We’re missing so much.”
Demitren furrowed his brows. “One thing bothers me, though. Samantha’s description of the repair man.”
“What about it?”
“It doesn’t fit the description of the kidnapper,” Demitren explained. “These children were taken by brute force, left with an impersonal note. The repair man took great care in singling Samantha out and stroking her hair. That doesn’t sound the same.”
Jenosa nodded. “I see where you’re coming from.”
“You think there might be more than one person involved?” Demitren asked eagerly.
“I’m not thinking anything yet,” Jenosa snapped. “I’m not Sherlock Holmes; I bend my theories to the facts, not the other way around.”
“I’m... pretty sure that was Hercule Poirot, not Sherl-” He noticed Jenosa’s glare. “Okay, okay. So what’re we doing now?”
“You tell me, you’re the psychologist and sociologist.”
“I’m not a psychologist or a sociologist,” Demitren said, confused.
“You’re studying to get your doctor’s degree in both, aren’t you?” Jenosa said, exasperated. “And you’re interning for a position as a desk-job criminal behavior analysist. And you're interning me so you can see how investigations are done around here. As long as I’m stuck with you I’m going to see that you get proper training.”
Demitren shrugged and thought a bit. “Well... Try to think of something else the children have in common. The kidnapper chose them for a reason.”
“Exactly,” Jenosa said. “The AEIO has to have loads of other kids with brown hair, but he didn’t bother with them. There has to be something else they’ve got in common.”
Demitren shrugged. “Well, let’s start with Tomat and see if something sounds familiar with the other kids.” Jenosa didn’t object, so he pulled out the photos he had taken the day before and began shuffling through them. “Well, he played video games.”
“And a very violent game at that,” Jenosa snapped disapprovingly. “Fancy letting a five-year-old play the newest version of Blasted Worlds. Doesn’t matter, though. DJ collected video game trading cards but didn’t play the games,” Jenosa said. “And Samantha didn’t play games at all.”
“So that’s not it, then. He was a class clown.”
“DJ was a brat and Samantha was a teacher’s pet.”
“Way to stereotype, boss. Well, he played soccer... but neither of the others did. He had a dog; neither of the others had pets. He collected -”
Jenosa shot up a hand to silence him. “Say that word again.”
“Collected?”
Jenosa touched her forehead and closed her eyes in concentration. “Collected... collected... Why does that ring a bell?”
Demitren shrugged, not wanting to interrupt any brain waves she had going on.
Unfortunately for them, the office intercom didn’t share his views. “Will janitorial staff please phone 1094? Janitorial...”
Jenosa slammed her fist against the wall. “Lost it. Dang it!”
Demitren shrugged. “So what do we do now?”
Jenosa sighed and slumped into her swivel chair. “Well, I don’t have any more assignments from the top today. Seems like all we can do is print out hard copies of the evidence so far and stare at them.”
Ten minutes later the pair was engrossed in packets of papers; the list of missing children, the ransom note, and the children’s profiles were included. Demitren had been staring at the ransom note for a majority of the time when he suddenly sat up. “I think I’ve got something.”
“What is it?” Jenosa asked, watching as he activated the holographic screen.
Taking a pointer that allowed the user to draw images on the screen, Demitren maximized the ransom note so they could both see it. “The e-mail address. 4310@quickmail.com. Notice anything weird about it?”
“Not really.”
“The numbers. Why didn’t he just do ‘1234’ or ‘anon’ or something simple like that?”
“Wasn’t allowed to use them because somebody else already had? Sick sense of humor? Ran his fingers blindly up and down the keys?”
“Possible, but I don’t think so. It just came to me now looking at it. I don’t know why I didn’t notice it before. I’m a member of an online dating service -”
Jenosa gagged. He paused, realized what he had just said, and reddened. “Yeah, well, um, anyway, and instead of putting our names down we... We use usernames. The point is, sometimes people think it’s really clever to replace a couple of the letters with numbers. Like ‘l0v3g1r1’ did...” He reddened again. “Well, anyway, here.” He wrote the letters A, E, I, and O under the “4310” part of the e-mail address. “See where I’m going?”
“I haven’t the slightest clue.”
“There’s a kind of resemblance between these numbers and these letters. See? ‘4’ kind of looks like ‘A’, ‘3’ is sort of a backwards ‘E’, ‘1’ could be ‘l’ or ‘I’, and ‘0’ - well, obviously ‘0’ is ‘O’.” He finished writing and showed her the board. “So, 4310@quickmail.com really is...”
“AEIO,” murmured Jenosa. “AEIO Learning Center.”
“Exactly!” Demitren exclaimed, pointing at her like she had just won a game show as he set down his pointer.
Jenosa looked at the e-mail address, shaking her head. “That confirms it, then.”
“Confirms what?”
“That we’ve got more than one guy on our hands.”
“Um,” Demitren rolled his eyes about the office, thinking, “why?”
Jenosa pointed at the e-mail address. “The kidnapper - that guy who battered down doors when the families were away, who disabled alarm systems with a fist, who got the kids away efficiently, who left behind the impersonal notes all printed on different papers in different inks - there is no way a guy that much of an expert would do something so completely obvious!”
“Oh,” Demitren snorted, “so in order for me to discover something, it has to be ‘completely obvious.’”
She faltered. “That’s not wha-” Pausing, she blinked, pointed at him, opened her mouth, shut it again, and squinted her organic eye at him angrily. “I’ll get back to you on that.”
“Take your time,” he said casually.
“Shut up.” Jenosa turned back to the board, ignoring the smirk that covered his face. “So we’re likely looking for two guys: the one who does the kidnapping, and the one who set up the e-mail address.”
“Next question,” Demitren mused. “How do we find them?”
***
I hated admitting that an intern had found something before I could, so when he went off for lunch today - probably to flirt again with that secretary - I ignored my own lunch and settled down to find something on my own.
I decided to use a process that had worked before. I thought about all aspects of the crime that had to be important if I was committing the crime myself, and then asked myself if that aspect of the crime had been covered by the reports.
I started with location. Reports about where the victims had been were thorough, so I moved on to people involved, victim, alarm systems, animals, other threats, escape routes, and emergency access into or out of the residence. I got nothing, so I started the list over, trying to be more detailed. That was when I came across time.
The crimes had all happened at different hours, according to the reports. And I realized something as I went through the times. Every single kidnapping had happened on the weekend, either on a Saturday or a Sunday.
This gave me two options: one, the kidnapper was too busy to kidnap on the weekdays. Or two, the kidnapper knew these children would not be alone on a weekday.
I set about trying to eliminate the possibilities by checking to see if it was true that no child would be alone on a weekday. To my joy I found my notes on DJ Walling - the child whose mother worked until nine at night. DJ was alone every day after school, so the fact that he was taken on a weekend instead supported option number one.
This didn’t help much, of course. Every job I had ever heard of, with the exception of NYCLE and NYCLEHOL, allowed days off on the weekends. Finding just one man, let alone two, who had weekends off... Well, in NYC, this was difficult.
That being the case I continued. I briefly thought of the violent methods used in the kidnapping, but brute force could suggest either a man whose job required it, or simply a man who worked out a lot. So I was looking for a pattern with the children again.
When Demitren had said “collect,” it made parts of my brain start buzzing. I was trying to remember something my EAR had translated. Unfortunately the EAR computer did not record as well as translate, so my brain was going to have to remember on its own. Collecting... Collecting...
My brain was stuck on it. Shrugging, I decided I could at least do something small and seemingly pointless, as it was my lunch hour and I wasn’t being paid to do efficient work just now. I flipped through Demitren’s notes to remind myself what it was that Tomat collected and booted the monitor computer, intent on searching what stores in NYC carried Blasted Worlds action figures.
***
Demitren had leftovers for lunch, and he stared hopelessly at the soggy mess. “Should have wrapped everything individually.”
“It’ll look like that by the time it gets to your stomach,” Sunny said over her salad.
“Doesn’t mean I want to eat something that looks like it’s already been eaten,” Demitren sighed as he plunked himself down at the table and picked up a spoon halfheartedly.
“What did you pack, anyway?” Sunny asked, gazing at the mess with interest.
“Soup, biscuit, peas... Bunch o’ junk,” he replied, spooning some of it up.
“What kind of soup?”
“Chicken vegetable.”
Sunny shrugged. “Think of it as an exploded and cold chicken-pot-pie, then.”
Demitren smiled at her. “It’s about time I heard someone look at life with a sunny disposition.”
Sunny clucked her tongue and shook her head. “Bad pun, Demi, really bad pun.”
“Sorry.”
“And besides, I know Jenosa seems to be a bit of a grouch, but she’s not that bad,” the secretary told him, taking a bite of lettuce.
Demitren tried to take a bite of his own lunch and pulled a face. “Bleugh,” he gasped. “I forgot about the cheese and cream onion dip.”
Sunny made a face back at him. “Well, it’s your own fault for being unable to pack a decent lunch,” she told him. “Cheese and cream onion dip with chicken vegetable soup, biscuit, and peas? Are you at a barbecue or an Irish potluck?”
Demitren sighed. “Now I have two ladies on my case. I can’t do anything right, can I?”
“Nah, I wouldn’t say that,” Sunny protested, pushing her tray between the two. “Have some of my salad. I’m not too hungry anyways.”
Demitren shook his head and picked up his spoon, continuing gallantly to pick at his own lunch. “So what can I do right?”
“Well, for one thing, Jenosa hasn’t threatened to shoot you yet.”
“Only if I called her Miss Jenosa, ma’am, or Miss Parkings,” Demitren said through a mouthful of mush.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full. I usually don’t mind, but your lunch today is disgusting,” Sunny said. “So if that’s the only time she’s threatened to shoot you, then that speaks in your favor. And rumor is you’ve met her tongue-lashing with ready wit.”
“Eh?”
“A transport driver came back yesterday bursting to tell people about the whole ‘stuck with an intern / boss hates my guts’ exchange. By the way, what’d she do to you for that?”
“Nothing. She stared at me a bit and just turned away.”
Sunny smiled. “So you didn’t offend her by that. Keep it up and you might find her sense of humor.”
“I’ve a better chance of finding a radish in this mess than I have of finding a sense of humor in that woman,” Demitren said, gesturing to his lunch.
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Aloysia Bloodfur Vice Captain
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Aloysia Bloodfur Vice Captain
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Posted: Fri Sep 17, 2010 4:18 pm
Chapter Five
The next day was fairly uneventful as far shuttle vans were concerned. When Demitren entered the office he found Jenosa sitting in her swivel chair and looking unhappy - not angry, just unhappy. “My leg hurts to stand on,” she said.
“Need me to do anything?” he asked.
“Kind of you,” she said sarcastically. “I’ll see the doctor after the work day.” She spent that day digging through her mind, trying to find why the word “collect” was so important to her, and Demitren tried his best to help.
“Well, I got a list of all the stores that carry Blasted Worlds action figures,” Jenosa sighed, “which included every WallMart, Target, TECHcorp, souvenir shop, newsstand, and collectors' shop in NYC.”
“How do we narrow the list down?” Demitren groaned from his perch on the corner of Jenosa’s desk.
“Well, the newsstands, souvenir shops, WallMarts, and Targets only carry some of the more popular characters: Diamere, Brut, Moe, Dr. Croc, Rafe, and so on. TECHcorp gets a little deeper, including Dagmoir, Damonik, Hydra, Bergoth, Joysia, Xavier, and the like. But only the collectors' shops include the rarest characters, like Skylark, Mr. Fowl, Vandyke, and Petula.”
Demitren’s brows furrowed. “Do you play the game or something?”
“Huh?”
“You know all the characters’ names.”
Jenosa pursed her lips. “Well, I was staring at inventory lists for hours! What did you think the result was going to be?”
Demitren shrugged. “So what’s next?”
“Well, your photos of Tomat’s room showed that Tomat had almost all the characters, even including Lucinda/Lucas Gobiidae, who are very rare indeed. So he’s been getting his at a collectors' shop.”
“Let me guess: you called his folks and asked which one.”
Jenosa shrugged. “It was all I could think of to do at the time. And their answer was this one.” She pulled up a window onto the holographic screen. “‘All Things Unique,’ run by a Mr. Arnawld Judgby. Privately owned. Stocks action figures, glass figures, dolls, trading cards, comic books, paperbacks... bunch of junk.”
Both people suddenly stopped and looked at each other. “Say that list again?” Demitren said slowly.
“Trading cards and paperbacks,” Jenosa muttered. “Of course! I knew there was something about collecting!”
Demitren hopped from his perch, upsetting a pile of papers as he did. “I’ll call Ms. Dijone and ask where DJ got the trading cards,” he declared.
Jenosa dived for the phone and started dialing. “I’ve got Mrs. Dean and Samantha’s paperback novels covered.”
Demitren sprinted from the office and flew down the hallway, skidding to a halt in front of Sunny’s front desk. “Can I borrow the phone?” he gasped.
Minutes later Jenosa hung up the phone as Demitren walked in, red-faced and breathless from excitement. “All Things Unique,” he said, holding up a piece of paper where the name was written with its location and its phone number.
“Same here,” Jenosa said. “And don’t you think I’d already have the address and phone number?”
Demitren shrugged. “I didn’t want anyone to think I was using the front desk phone for a personal phone call, so I wrote something down.”
Jenosa picked up the phone again. “Forty-six more children to go. Get on the computer and skim through photos taken of the other children’s living spaces. When you find one that’s got a collection, I’ll call their family.”
“Sure thing,” Demitren said, typing in his password for access to the files.
It was a success. The three-year-old’s parents encouraged collecting as some kind of developing-interest exercise (“Load of old rubbish,” Jenosa muttered as she got off the phone), so the toddler’s many colored rocks came from ‘All Things Unique.’ One four-year-old collected comic books, and another dolls.
Tomat’s age group included his Blasted Worlds collection, another boy’s Alien Race model collection, a girl’s doll collection, and another girl’s stuffed mice collection. (“Why stuffed mice?” Jenosa asked. “I mean, stuffed animals, maybe. Teddy bears, sure. Stuffed mice...”)
Three of the six-year-olds collected comic books, another three collected Blasted Worlds trading cards, and two collected Alien Race models. (“Why are all these young kids involved in violent video games?” demanded Jenosa.)
Five seven-year-olds collected Blasted Worlds action figures, one collected Blasted Worlds trading cards, three collected dolls, and one collected rocks. (“Have you ever actually played video games?” Demitren inquired.)
Six eight-year-olds collected Blasted Worlds action figures, one collected doll dresses, two collected stuffed animals, and DJ collected Alien Race trading cards (“Are you getting all this written down?” Jenosa asked Demitren as she dialed the next number).
One nine-year-old collected stuffed animals as the other four collected Alien Race trading cards. (“I played Alien Race once," Demitren said. "It wasn't that fun.")
Three ten-year-olds collected stuffed animals, one collected rocks, and one collected dolls. (“With a passion,” Jenosa observed after talking to the parents. “She has two hundred.”)
The eleven-year-old collected dolls, and two of the twelve-year-olds collected comic books. Samantha, of course, collected paperbacks. (Demitren was too busy writing to make comments.)
“We’ve got something,” Jenosa said, satisfied, as she hung up the phone.
This made Demitren look up from his notebook. “‘We?’”
“Of course, ‘we.’ You’re my intern.”
“So you admit that I’m helping with this.”
“I admit that you’re following me around.”
“Not the same thing.”
“Didn’t say it was.”
Demitren threw his hands up into the air in mock despair. “What’s a guy gotta do to get some credit around here?”
“Solve a murder,” Jenosa said seriously.
Demitren grinned. “I’m solving a kidnapping case. Does that count?”
“Depends on the victims.”
“They’re all children.”
Jenosa paused. When she spoke again her voice was quieter. “Yes, that counts.”
They were both silent. Demitren, for his part, was shocked by her reply. Being quiet was completely unlike her. He pushed it away to deal with when he wasn’t in the same room as her. “So what do we do now?”
Jenosa shook her head slightly, as if trying to refocus, and said, “Well, obviously, we should probably get a list of the employees of AEIO’s repair crew and of All Things Unique. I’ll get on that and we’ll go from there. Based on the e-mail address, it's safe to assume that the man who set up the quickmail address is an AEIO employee, which would make the kidnapper an employee of All Things Unique.”
"Makes sense," agreed Demitren.
Ten minutes later the list of AEIO repair employees got printed out, and Jenosa was on the phone with their employer. She put it on speaker phone so Demitren could take notes.
Mr. Jalden was a submanager of AEIO who didn’t have much influence in the whole establishment but did know everything there was to know about his employees - to an extent Demitren found extremely creepy. “We’re looking for someone who has an interest in brown hair,” Jenosa said. “He may speak very gently to children, particularly children with brown hair. He may touch their hair and tell them repeatedly how pretty it is. Ring a bell?”
“No...” Mr. Jalden said. “Bob’s dating a redhead, George’s wife dyed her hair blonde, Harry’s fiancé -”
Demitren interrupted hastily. “Then do you know anyone who may have had a loved one with dark brown hair?”
“Well...” Mr. Jalden mused. “Bob’s great-aunt Missy had -”
Demitren coughed. “I’m sorry, sir, I’ll be more specific. This loved one might have died or have been separated from the employee against his will. It’s most likely that the loved one would be a child.”
“Hm...” Mr. Jalden thought aloud. “Carter’s wife divorced him and took his kids with her, but only one had brown hair and it was a lighter shade. Talkein had a brunette girlfriend that he had been dating since middle school and then broke up with him in college. Alcoholic now. And Cretain’s children both died in a car accident. Twins, as I recall. Wife left him soon after. Said he was acting weird. Oh, and Taelor’s cousin died when they were fifteen. Drowned off Lake Erie. I guess he saw her brown hair floating in the water first and called for help. Helped drag her to shore, dragged her by her blue skirt. People said he hasn’t been the same since.”
Demitren jotted everything down. “That gives us a start, thanks. We’ll call you if we need anything else.”
“Well,” Mr. Jalden said pleasantly, “Anytime!”
Jenosa hung up the phone. “There is something wrong with that man,” Demitren said.
“Based on the fact that he knows Bob’s great-aunt Missy, or the fact that he knows Taelor’s cousin was wearing a blue skirt when she drowned?” Jenosa snorted.
***
I couldn’t wait for lunch hour to come. I needed to get away from him. There was something about him that made him different from the other interns. I tried hard to remember how many times I had threatened to shoot him, and then realized I hadn’t pulled my gun on him once yet. That realization was as weird as the pain that kept shooting up my right leg.
At first it felt like I was being unfaithful to Daren. I didn’t want to have another partner after him; we never could be the same. Then I realized this was nothing like the way it was with Daren. With Daren, we were strictly business. We got it done the way it needed to be done and saved the sitting back and talking for later. This new guy, however, kept talking all the time, and even weirder was that I didn’t seem to mind. It was like he was digging to find something in me, and that thing in me wanted me to let him.
I sat back trying to figure it out. I guess it was because I had met Daren when I was fifteen and still scared, but he always made me feel strong and invincible, like I could do anything. Now that I was thirty and had complete knowledge of my capabilities, I suppose I didn’t need someone who made me feel that way anymore. This new guy didn’t even come close to making me feel like a super hero. In fact, he almost had the opposite effect. I found myself starting to relax around him.
I shook my head. ‘Great. Now I’m thinking like some kind of weirdo.’ Maybe being this ill did something to your thought processes before it killed you. Speaking of being ill, that was probably what was wrong with my leg. Doc would probably have to do surgery on it that night, and I wondered how much TECH would be required.
I jumped as a sharp ding came from the monitor computer. Shaking the mouse to wake it up, I realized it had been my inbox. Daren had returned my e-mail. Eagerly I opened it.
Re: Bad news
Parkings,
Oh my god. Parkings, I’m so sorry. I never thought it would happen to you. I thought what you thought, that it only happened to outdated TECH.
I wish we could be with you right this instant. As soon as we can we’ll reserve a flight and head on up there. Get ready for us, Parkings. Sharron says we’re going to move in with you to “make it easier”, but I’ll try to persuade her otherwise. Knowing you, having someone cooking all your meals for you and everything wouldn’t tide over so well!
Sharron says to remind you that we love you and miss you. Chin up, Parkings.
-Daren (and Sharron)
I smiled. It sounded just like him. Since he and his wife Sharron had moved to Florida to spend their retirement in peace, we’d exchanged the few e-mails and sent Christmas cards. They were family to me, so of course they were the first ones to tell that I was dying.
***
Demitren walked up to Sunny with a mixture of his usual ‘I dare you to flirt with me’ face and a new ‘what the heck did I just walk out of’ face. “I don’t get her.”
Sunny creased her forehead as she closed her eyes in agony and faced the ceiling. “Now what?”
“She’s of a mindset that kidnapping children is equivalent to murder,” Demitren said as he sat across from Sunny. “Not that I don’t agree with her, of course, but it just seems weird for her.”
Sunny shot him a look. “Why? There’s nothing weird about that.”
“Well, no, but it doesn’t fit her type.”
Sunny rolled her eyes. “So, what would fit her type?”
Demitren opened his lunch. “Don’t get me wrong, thinking that kidnapping children is atrocious doesn’t conflict her let’s-go-out-and-bust-some-criminals type. But the way she lowers her voice when she -” He noticed Sunny looking at him. “What?”
Sunny smiled. “I think I just figured it out.”
“Meaning why she’s so weird? Tell me, I beg you.”
Sunny shook her head, her smile broadening. “No, why you freak out about her so much.”
“I don’t freak out about her.”
“Every lunch hour you’ve done nothing but ask me about Jenosa Parkings,” Sunny shot back at him. “‘What TECH does she have? Why is it so hard to get her to be nice to you? Why doesn’t she ever give you credit?’ And now you’re starting to notice how her voice lowers when she talks about certain things.”
“Oh, come on. I taught psychology and sociology, remember? It’s my job to know about lowering voices.”
“So that’s half the reason you’re so upset,” Sunny said. “Even with all your experience, you can’t figure out Jenosa Parkings. Bet I know the reason you can’t figure her out.”
Demitren sighed. “I don’t want to hear about it.”
“Suit yourself,” Sunny said, and she dug into her salad.
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Posted: Fri Sep 17, 2010 4:19 pm
Chapter Six
Nothing else happened that day. Jenosa glanced at Demitren ten minutes before closing time. “Weekend tomorrow. Don’t suppose you’ll be here?”
“Interns usually don’t work on weekends,” Demitren admitted. “Besides, I’ve got classes in the mornings.”
“And I just called in for a sick day. My leg needs a day off,” Jenosa muttered. “It’s a shame to leave the case alone for the weekend, though.” Demitren nodded in agreement. The two looked at each other for a moment, then Jenosa sighed and grabbed a piece of paper. “This is my address,” she said as she began scribbling furiously. “When you find the building, just give your gun to the security guard and they’ll tag it and keep it for you -”
“I don’t have a gun,” Demitren said, bemused.
Jenosa looked at him. “Then you better take NYCLEHOL transport to my apartment. It’ll still be open tomorrow -”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to explain why your carcass is outside my apartment building, stupid.” She handed him the piece of paper. “Tomorrow afternoon, at one. Don’t be late and don’t be dead.”
“Got it,” Demitren said, taking the paper and getting ready to leave. “Have a good evening.”
***
I doubted I would. As soon as I could I went to the doctor’s and reported the pain in my right leg. The FAS gave me a look-over, and my EAR heard it beep with concern. The doctor pursed his lips as he looked over the report. “Your leg is decaying from the inside.”
“Pleasant. Real pleasant.”
“We’ll replace it with TECH. All of it, I’m afraid.” I groaned, and the doctor smiled. “Now, it’s not so bad as all that. You wear your patrol jumper suit, don’t you? No one will be able to see the metal.”
“It won’t clank when I walk or anything?” I asked him.
The doctor sniffed, pretending to be offended. "My TECH don’t ‘clank.’”
So I underwent surgery that night and woke up without my right leg. I didn’t realize it at first - until the nurse pulled back the blanket to show me my new metal limb. I was happy to note that it was perfectly shaped - identical to my organic leg - but I was still self-conscious about it. The doctor only reminded me that I had overcome my self-consciousness about my EYE rapidly, told me that he had numbed my hip to give it time to adjust, and warned me not to move my leg at all that day. I was safely nestled in a chair in my apartment by twelve-thirty that morning.
I can’t explain why having TECH made me self-conscious. Maybe it was because I was losing flesh. You don’t realize what a comfort your own body is until you don’t have it. Maybe it was because I had never been a true “girl,” hadn’t indulged myself in makeup or any beauty to speak of. Call it vanity, but I thought my body didn’t need the primping. It was useful enough as it was, without someone else’s skin color or nose. So losing my organic parts maybe made me feel as though I was losing the parts of myself that I actually took care of.
I also noted that getting this leg felt worse than getting my EYE, EAR, and metal elbow had. I had two theories on this note: one, when I got my EYE, EAR, and elbow TECH, I was relieved for the pain of the burns to go away and therefore didn’t worry about the metal so much. Two, this time I needed TECH to replace organic parts I had lost to a disease, not to battle with villainy. Some part of me felt like this new metal leg was a symbol of how weak I was becoming.
***
When Demitren showed up twenty-five minutes later she buzzed him in with a remote and scanned him with her EYE to make sure he was unarmed, healthy, and prepared. “You brought a portable?” she asked him, referring to the portable holographic screen her EAR heard whirring with unhappiness (computers do not like it when their carrier runs up staircases) in his bag.
“It’s got the profiles of the All Things Unique employees,” he explained. “Why do you live in this neighborhood?”
“Huh?”
“You live a block in the wrong direction from where Samantha Dean and her mother live,” Demitren said in astonishment. “With your job you should be able to afford better living space than this.”
“Run into trouble on your way here?” she asked, bemused.
“No, because I took transport. Took us two hours to get here, by the way. Actually, I was only witness to five muggings, three attempted rapes, four stickups, six drug dealings, and nine gang fights on the way here. And those were all on this past block.”
Jenosa shrugged. “The rent was cheap, even if we do pay extra to have security at the door.”
“I’m sure it was.” Demitren sighed and sat down across from her. “How’s the leg?”
Jenosa had found that wearing her jumper suit, or any other pants for that matter, felt too funny on her numbed leg and hip, so she was wearing a skirt. She had covered her right leg with an afghan after propping it on a footrest. “Fine. Doc numbed it and told me not to move it.”
Demitren pulled out the portable and activated the screen. “Well then, let’s get started.”
The list of All Things Unique employees was harder to deal with than the list of AEIO employees. This time the store had agreed to provide photographs so that Jenosa could determine who had the physical prowess required to bust open doors. Demitren scrolled through the pictures on the holographic screen as she analyzed them. “How ‘bout this one?”
“Too young. Couldn’t punch a window screen, much less a door.”
“This one?”
“Nah. Not as pathetic, but still no.”
“This one?”
“Demitren, really, he’s in a wheelchair."
Demitren looked up. “You just called me by my name.”
She flushed, and looked angry. “So?”
“You never -” Demitren shrugged. “Never mind. This one?”
She paused. “Maybe... He’s possible.” She read the name. “Kynark Allen. Yeah, he looks it.”
Demitren pulled up his profile. “Gym membership, family... There’s really nothing here.”
“Still, he has the build, so we can’t eliminate him.”
“Understood.” He brought back the slideshow of employee photos. “This one?”
Ten minutes later Demitren hooked up the holographic screen to Jenosa’s home printer and printed out the three photos of likely suspects. “We’ve got three: Kynark Allen, Geog Nalak, and Jedosh Teclorn.”
“I still say we’ve only got two.”
Demitren sighed. “We agreed that Geog Nalak has the upper body strength, right?”
“I told you that Geog Nalak has the upper body of a wrestler. He’s got no lower body strength. He’s too unbalanced to pound a door.”
“But he’s in debt and he does have immense upper body strength. Besides, maybe that’s how he managed to get the kids away, he wrestled them into submission.”
“That wouldn’t explain the samples of Samantha’s blood they found.”
Demitren shrugged. “Sammy fought back, right? So maybe she grabbed something to defend herself with, and he grabbed it from her -”
Jenosa shook her head. “If that were the case, the kidnapper would have just left the weapon there with the blood. It’s more likely that the kidnapper came into the house with some kind of weapon, something he already had, to scare the kids into submission. Then, even though it had Samantha’s blood on it, he would have to take it with him, or we could have used it to identify him.”
“So you say it couldn’t be a wrestler like Nalak. Fine, but we’re keeping him in the list of suspects so people higher up don’t get mad at us, like how you got made at patrol for not including AEIO in their reports.”
Jenosa’s lips pursed, angry that he was right, and she slumped back in her chair. “Fine. And the other two?”
“Well, we talked about Kynark Allen. He’s so far been an upstanding citizen. The only reason he’s a suspect is because he has, according to you, the right muscle coordination.”
“And I know what I’m doing. But you’re right, there’s not enough criminal background for him. He even has his own kids. So it’s our third one...”
“Jedosh Teclorn. Was arrested for kidnapping five children once, but evidence suggesting another suspect cleared him. Case was never solved. Then he was tried for kidnapping six children later, but was found not guilty. You did say we were up against a professional. Has a gym membership, the right muscle coordination, and works at the counter of All Things Unique, where he has the ability to communicate with customers. Remember, Ms. Dijone said DJ had complained about an employee asking him how he was.”
“So this is the prime suspect.”
“Yep,” Demitren confirmed.
“Great,” Jenosa said, straightening in her chair. “I’ll turn it in to headquarters Monday, and -”
"You will?!” Demitren cried. “What about me? Did I have no part in this?”
“You’re just an intern -” Jenosa started to argue.
Demitren snapped the holographic screen off irritably. “Just an intern. Like some kind of stupid new kid? I’m older than you!”
“Are not!” Jenosa cried angrily.
“Am too.”
“Are not!”
“You’re thirty. I’m thirty-two. I’m older than you.”
Jenosa tried to find a witty retort, failed, and resorted to yelling angrily, “That doesn’t change the fact that you’re just an intern.”
Demitren threw his hands into the air. “And you even refuse to acknowledge the fact that I’m your intern! Why aren’t I good enough for you? Comparing me to Daren Sweanar, is that it?”
Jenosa was completely dumbfounded. “What -?!”
Demitren packed his bag angrily, leaving the photos of the suspects with her. “Well, I’ve had enough of this. You don’t laugh, you don’t smile, you’d rather I wasn’t here, you don’t acknowledge the things I do, and you drive me completely insane!” And he marched out the door.
Jenosa was completely baffled by his outburst. After a moment she exhaled a puff of breath, rolled her eyes, and picked up the nearby phone. “Security? Demitren Corning’s going to be trying to leave the building. Could you drag him back up here please?”
Two minutes later Demitren found himself back in her apartment held between two burly men. He crossed his arms as they unceremoniously deposited him and left, closing the door behind them. “And the point of having them drag me back here was?”
Jenosa’s eyes were bright with fury. “Doc said I couldn’t move my leg.”
“Why not?”
She snapped. With a burst of furious energy born from anger, she whipped the afghan off of her leg. Demitren saw for the first time, emerging from beneath the skirt she wore, a leg made of sleek black metal.
“But - But you weren’t injured,” he gasped. “I saw you yesterday. Why do you have TECH?”
The anger fading, Jenosa sighed. She suddenly felt unsure of what she had just done. Finally, she asked, “What do you know about a Virus?”
Demitren put his bag on the floor, his head cocked in confusion. “Which kind?”
She shook her head. “No, Virus with a capital V.”
“I’m... not aware of it.”
“Count yourself lucky.” She paused, figuring out how to explain it. “Do you know what ‘TECH’ stands for?”
Demitren furrowed his brows in concentration. “Technology and Equipment Containing Hyperactivity.”
“Do you know what hyperactivity even is?” He shook his head, and Jenosa grimaced. “It’s the machine equivalent to the force of life. Hyperactivity, when artificially created with a surge of electricity to the right places in the right ways, makes a computer or a machine more like a living thing.”
“I don’t understand -”
“Well, look at it this way. A computer without hyperactivity can function on its own, responding to changes appropriately - but only if you program it to, first. A computer containing hyperactivity could encounter a completely new situation, one it’s never been programmed for, and use its previous knowledge with its hyperactivity to adapt to the situation and fix it.”
Demitren shook his head. “How?”
Jenosa shrugged. “No idea. What I do know is, it makes the machine like an organ. It continuously communicates with parts of itself and with parts of my own body in order to be able to handle everything it comes to. Our organs do this by reproducing cells constantly, letting the DNA pass on to a new generation. TECH just does it by programming itself over and over again, every second. This makes the TECH like a part of my body, not just something connected to it. With hyperactivity, I don’t have to worry about mechanics. I can go into the shower. The TECH doesn’t need to be mended and reprogrammed at a garage. It handles itself, just like parts of our body would.”
“Versus the old machines they used to build to replace limbs,” Demitren mused, “where it didn’t communicate with the rest of the body. It was its own little machine, just there to replace the gap. Sounds convenient,” Demitren said when he had thought about it. “But what about it?”
Jenosa sighed. “Well, you know that organs reproduce cells. And in that time, the DNA is translated into RNA in order to be duplicated, and all that other biology junk.” Demitren nodded. “And you also know that sometimes, when the DNA is being translated for the new cell, there’s a mistake.” Demitren nodded, still confused. “So that mistake, the genetic mutation, passes on to the new generation of cells, because that new cell with the genetic mutation then reproduces into daughter cells, which reproduce into more...”
“That’s one of the causes of some cancers.”
“Right.” Jenosa put a hand to her head, not really wanting to tell him more, not really wanting to stop. “Well, since TECH has hyperactivity in it, it’s constantly reprogramming itself. And sometimes the newest program turns out wrong. But instead of being a new cell, it’s a new series of electronic impulses, telling the TECH the wrong instructions. The wrong instructions, the bad program, is called a Virus. And because it’s made out of hyperactivity, the machine equivalent of life, it isn’t limited to machines.”
Demitren’s eyes widened as he understood. “It spreads to the organic parts of your body.”
Jenosa nodded. “I got a Virus. In my EAR. Thank whatever deities may be that I didn’t get it in my EYE; the EYE’s connected to too many parts of my brain, I’d be defeated instantly. Instead it just spread from my EAR to my sinuses, via the bloodstream. That’s how they diagnosed me,” she said, “but Doc did say there was one more thing they could try... He didn’t want to do it, though.”
“What?”
Jenosa closed her organic eye. “They took my EAR out. Wiped it out, reprogrammed it, and put it back in again. After they replaced my sinuses, of course. Doc hoped that it would eliminate the Virus.”
“Did it work?” Demitren asked, but he already knew the answer.
Jenosa shook her head. “It got my windpipe next. I spat blood. And now it took my leg.” She opened her eye and shrugged again. “My organs are going to shut down one by one. And then it’ll reach my brain, and there’ll be nothing they can do.”
Demitren felt weak in the knees. “You’re dying?” She didn’t respond, and he sank to a seat beside her. “Oh my god,” he murmured. “I’m sorry.”
“I know you are,” she snapped. “That’s not what I want.”
“Then why did you tell me?” he asked, head in his hands.
“Hell if I know. Maybe because I wanted you to know why I act the way I do about the case. I’ve only got so long to find those kids.”
“Who else have you told?”
“Daren and his wife.”
Demitren shot her a look. “Daren’s married?”
She looked at him in bemusement. “You didn’t know that?”
He blushed. “No... I kinda thought, you know, that you had a thing for him -”
“Blerugh!” Jenosa gagged. She looked positively revolted.
“So, you don’t?” Demitren asked, hoping she wouldn’t shoot him.
“Tell me you didn’t just say that,” she begged. “Tell me you didn’t just say I had a thing for Daren. He was married the day I met him, you idiot! And what would you care, anyway?” she asked, suddenly suspicious.
Demitren started blushing furiously. “I dunno. Maybe because I figured it was weird that somebody managed to get friendly with you? You have a tendency to, well, you know... uh, yeah.”
Demitren wilted under Jenosa’s stare. Slowly, she asked, “What have you been smoking?”
Monday morning Demitren still didn’t know what had occurred between them. He marched up to Sunny’s desk and, as he handed her his card to get punched in, said, “All right, spill it.”
“What?”
“Why do I freak out around Jenosa Parkings?”
Sunny smiled. “Curiosity eating you, or something else?”
“Stop it."
She shrugged. “You like her. Don’t you dare argue with me!” she said mischievously as Demitren opened his mouth. “You’ve had a crush on her since you first saw her in some news story, I’ll bet. I’ll bet as soon as the option for a job that would let you work with her opened up, you left your teaching career solely for that. You walk in here knowing more about her than everyone else, you stalker!”
“Uh -”
“Then you spend every lunch period talking about her. You know what I think? You’re so used to being able to flirt with girls, being attractive but keeping them just out of reach so they don’t actually fall for you. Then Jenosa shows up, the woman you’ve actually got a crush on - don’t you dare argue with me! - and you can’t even make her smile. You’re frustrated, so you start freaking out.”
Demitren’s mouth opened and closed helplessly. Finally, he shook his head and smiled at the secretary. “I think you’re jealous.”
In reply Sunny showed him the ring on her left hand. “Got proposed to last night.”
“Great for you!” Demitren exclaimed, genuinely happy for her.
As Sunny handed him his card back, Jenosa came running from the direction of her office with her bag slung across her back. “Don’t bother getting settled. We’re investigating another kidnapping. Come on, we’re taking my motorcycle. Transport’s too slow.”
There was something in her voice that told Demitren something huge had happened. “Wait, what? Why?”
“There’s something different about this kidnapping!”
“What?”
“The child’s still there!”
Flashing Sunny a salute, Demitren ran after his boss.
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Aloysia Bloodfur Vice Captain
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Aloysia Bloodfur Vice Captain
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Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2010 3:01 pm
Chapter Seven
The choice of Jenosa’s motorcycle over NYCLEHOL transport was a smart one; Jenosa had taken the 3-40, cutting their driving time to a third of what it would have been. Though Demitren had feared he wouldn’t be able to look over the side of the 3-40 road to the city far below them, it turned out that he didn't have to worry about it. He had been occupied enough with trying to keep a safe seat on the motorcycle without touching Jenosa, who had been driving it.
Jenosa pulled up to the apartment building where Law Enforcement cars were flashing their lights and reporters swarmed the edges of the yard. Cameras were flashing and the atmosphere buzzed with “I’m live at the house where someone attempted to kidnap...”
Demitren hopped off the motorcycle, noting, “There’s a NYCLE logo on your motorcycle.”
Jenosa patted the handlebars fondly. “This was my bike when I was a patrol woman. Assigned to me my tenth day.”
“Wouldn’t they take it back when you retired?”
Jenosa paused, blinked, and replied, “Well, they let me keep it.” Demitren chuckled and she punched his arm. Hard.
"I'm confused," Demitren said, rubbing his arm as he followed his boss. "Up until now he's only kidnapped on a weekend. Why's he kidnapping on a Monday morning?"
"Panic," Jenosa replied. "Think about it. If you had already kidnapped forty-nine children and came to the conclusion that you had to kidnap a fiftieth, you'd be anxious to get it over as soon as possible, wouldn't you? I mean, come on, fifty kids. That's a lot. He's getting desperate for the money and, filled with panic, breaks his regular schedule. Lucky for us, that usually leads to a slip-up like this. If you're applying for a criminal behavior analysist desk job you should know this."
"Oh," muttered Demitren, humbled.
Jenosa walked up to the Chief of Law Enforcement, flashed her badge, and received two headsets, complete with an earphone for the right ear and a microphone that looped from the left. She handed one to Demitren as the Chief explained, “This will put us in contact with NYCLE headquarters. Helps spread communication faster.”
Jenosa put hers on, flipped the switch to turn it on, and said into it, “Veteran Consultant reporting to headquarters. Grut, is that you?”
Demitren turned his set on in time to hear a crackling, static-filled young voice say, “Um, my name’s not Grut, it’s Bern.”
“Dang it, they ‘retired’ him too,” Jenosa muttered. “Veteran Consultant’s intern, are you there?”
“You can see me right here,” Demitren said. He heard Bern laugh. Jenosa punched him again.
With Jenosa in the lead, the pair headed into the apartment building, where mother and seven-year-old daughter were trembling and weeping with relief. The girl had rich dark brown hair, brown eyes, and tiny hands, which were gripped around her similar-looking mother. Demitren’s heart went out to them, knowing they had just gone through one of the most frightening days of their lives. Evidently Jenosa was of a like mind, because though her voice was firm when she shooed the patrol men and women away, it softened sufficiently as she spoke to mother and child. “Thank whatever deities there are that your child is all right,” she said, gesturing to Demitren that he should take notes.
The mother nodded vigorously, clutching her child tighter. “We’re so grateful.”
Jenosa launched into her questioning. “Names, please?”
“Kaethy Daelin,” the mother said. “This is Saira Daelin. She’s seven.”
“Is she a part of the AEIO Learning Center program?” Jenosa asked.
The mother looked shocked. “Yes, she is -”
“And does she collect things from All Things Unique store?”
“Ease up, Jenosa, you’re startling her,” Demitren muttered.
“I just need to check that we’re dealing with the same kidnapper,” Jenosa snapped at him.
The mother nodded. “Y- yes, she collects stuffed animals.”
Jenosa relaxed. “Okay. Come on, let’s go sit down. You both need to rest.” Mrs. Daelin nodded and led them into the building, where NYCLEHOL lab assistants, NYCLE patrol men and women, and the occasional rogue reporter were swarming. Jenosa told them to scram as they passed and in a few minutes they had achieved a level of privacy in the Daelin living room. Demitren had noticed that the front door was splintered and one of the railings on the stairs leading up to the second-floor apartment was damaged, as though something heavy had fallen into it. He took notes.
Jenosa began the interview. “Perhaps you better start, Saira,” she said kindly. “Can you tell me everything you remember? Your mommy will help as you go.”
Saira nodded, sniffed, and sat down on the couch next to her mother. “Mommy had to go to work,” she began. “So she told me to play with my stuffed animals in my room and to not answer or unlock the door, and don’t answer the phone. I kept my light turned off, too.”
“I wouldn’t leave her alone unless I had to,” Mrs. Daelin broke in, as if trying to make an excuse for what she had done. “But the babysitter’s leg is broken, and I can’t call in sick or I lose my job -”
Jenosa put her hand on the mother’s knee. “Hush, Mrs. Daelin. We understand. That doesn’t matter. Go on, Saira.”
Saira sniffed again and rubbed a hand across her nose. “I was playing in my room, and then the door started banging. I ran out here to see what was happening, and the door was banging back and forth, and suddenly the door broke into a bunch of pieces...” She sniffed. “And... and a giant man came in, holding a big metal thing... And he told me... to get in the bag...”
“What bag, sweetie?” Jenosa asked quietly.
“He had a giant bag...” Saira said. “On wheels. He told me to get in it, and kept waving the metal thing at me.”
Her mother broke in. “Around now might be when I got back. I had driven for about fifteen minutes before I realized I forgot my purse. I came back and started up the stairs, then saw that man there with the door battered open. He was holding some kind of a plumber’s tool, and he had a giant white cart thing with him... the kind of thing a door-to-door laundry man would have. You throw sheets and stuff in it and then wheel it all to the Laundromat...”
Jenosa nodded. “And it would be big enough to hide a child in.”
Mrs. Daelin nodded. “He had Saira by the shoulders as I started running up the stairs. He was forcing her into the bag with the plumber’s tool. I started shouting, and he let go of Saira and came at me, trying to knock me unconscious or just run past me down the stairs, I guess. He was swinging the plumber’s tool around as he did so.”
“I thought he was going to hurt Mommy,” Saira interrupted. Her voice broke, she sniffed, and her chin wobbled.
Before her mother could do anything and to Demitren’s complete surprise, Jenosa had stood, wrapped her arms around the little girl, and picked her up, spinning her around in the air as she cradled the girl’s head in her shoulder. “It’s okay,” she repeated softly, holding the girl tightly as she cried. “It’s okay, it’s okay...”
Mrs. Daelin stood as though about to take the child from Jenosa, but Demitren put a hand on her shoulder. “Let her,” he said. “This way, your child will learn that Law Enforcement are the people who make everything better, and not just the people who come after a big scary event.” The mother nodded but remained standing, ready to take her child back.
After a moment the child’s sobs quieted, and Jenosa stepped forward to hand her directly into her mother’s arms. They sat back down, Saira on her mother’s lap. “Please continue,” Jenosa said.
“Anyway I tried to trap him on the stairs, while I was yelling for help, but he kind of pushed past me. He fell as he did so, broke the railing on the stairs.” Demitren nodded, remembering the damage they had past. “Then he scrambled out the door. I chased him, but he jumped into a white van and drove off.”
“A white van?”
“Yeah. It looked like something a plumber or electrician would drive.”
“Did you get the license number?”
“Unfortunately, no,” the mother said apologetically. “But the parking lot has surveillance cameras. Maybe you can get it from there.”
Jenosa thought for a moment. “He took the giant white bag with him?”
Mrs. Daelin shook her head. “No, he ran off without it.”
“Then where is it?” Jenosa asked. “We didn’t pass it on the way to your apartment.”
Mrs. Daelin looked scared for a moment. “I don’t know -”
“Never mind, I’ll bet Law Enforcement took it,” Jenosa muttered. “Stupid amateurs. All right... Mrs. Daelin, Saira, did either of you see the kidnapper’s face?”
They both nodded. “He wasn’t wearing a mask or anything,” Saira said. “Shouldn’t he have?”
“He should have, sweetie, but let’s be glad he didn’t,” Jenosa said. She turned to Demitren. “Do you still have those pictures?”
Demitren smiled and dug through his bag for a moment. “Got ‘em right here,” he said, pulling out the pictures of Kynark Allen, Geog Nalak, and Jedosh Teclorn. He showed them to the Daelins.
“Did he look like any of these men?” Jenosa asked them.
Both faces lit up with recognition, and two fingers pointed to Jedosh Teclorn’s picture. “That’s him,” Saira said.
Five minutes later Jenosa had located the missing “giant white bag” and had chewed out the patrol man who had taken it away. Then she and Demitren had researched the address of Jedosh Teclorn, the gym where he had a membership, and the addresses of nearby relatives. Their first stop, however, would be at the AEIO headquarters. “I’m willing to bet,” Jenosa explained, “that Jedosh Teclorn’s working with our mystery AEIO repair man. Then all Teclorn has to do is borrow the repair man’s van, and he’s golden. Think about it; who would notice a repair van on the street? You see them all the time and just figure ‘oh, they needed something repaired.’ Even if no one’s home, because sometimes the repairs need to be done on the outside, right? And he’d just wheel his giant white thing out to the back and they’d figure it’s got tools in it or something. And he won’t even have to bother with dark clothes or wearing a mask, either, because who notices a repair man? It’s perfect.”
“So we’re going to the AEIO to find the right repair van?” Demitren said. “Brilliant. Did the security cameras catch the license plate?”
Jenosa shook her head. “Bad angle. I was hoping we’d catch him there dropping the van off, or at least be able to track him from there.”
“Good plaapffffff.” Demitren sputtered as, when turning her head to grab her motorcycling helmet, Jenosa’s hair brushed across his face.
“Oh, sorry,” she said. “Hold this for a minute, will you?” She passed him her helmet and proceeded to braid her hair. When she was done she noticed him watching her. “What?”
“Uuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhh...” he droned. “Nothing...”
Jenosa shot him a look of distrust and took her helmet from him. “Well, put your helmet on, we’ve got to get going.”
Demitren shook his head as he mounted the motorcycle and Jenosa started zooming through the city, trying to find the shortest route to the AEIO headquarters. Seeing Jenosa with a braid in her hair had brought a memory back unbidden from the back of his mind, of a day fifteen years ago...
He had been seventeen, and his parents had spent dinner talking about that new pair of Law Enforcement patrol, Jenosa Parkings and Daren Sweanar. The two of them had cornered a murderer in his basement and had managed to knock him out, saving the life of his next victim. It had earned them both honors as heroes, but on the day of the ceremony when they were expected to receive these honors they had both been missing. Searches revealed that they had both gone instead to the funeral of one of the other patrol men, who had been shot in the lung. Out of curiosity, Demitren had actually picked up the newspaper to read about the pair. In the picture, Daren was smiling, and a fifteen-year-old Jenosa - though the world believed she was nineteen - looked ready to kill.
Her hair was in a braid.
Demitren hated to admit Sunny was right, but her argument was hard to argue against. That newspaper article and photo had been the first of his collection about the pair. His parents were happy that he had found some proper role models, and his friends didn’t know about the collection. He began memorizing facts about Jenosa, but the facts about Daren Sweanar didn’t seem to stick to his memory as well. And even though Jenosa always looked as though she was about to kill the photographer, Demitren continuously looked at her newspaper pictures, trying to make sense of her. When he and the world found out that she was younger than him by two years, his heart had jumped, and he had spent weeks wondering why. And to pay for college, he put down offers of other jobs so that he could work for a newspaper. He was not really a reporter, only an assistant to one whose articles never got famous enough that they were able to interview Jenosa, but he was always the first on a scene where she was, and he saw her in action many times.
And now, fifteen years later, he had managed to become her intern. And some days after his first day, she was back on her patrol motorcycle, chasing a criminal, doing what she loved.
And her hair was once again in a braid.
Demitren shook himself. He couldn’t deal with this right now. There were forty-nine children out there who needed to go home.
A crackling in his ear reminded him that he was still wearing the NYCLE headset. “Veteran Consultant, please report your location.”
Jenosa looked around herself, gathering information. “I’m at the intersection between the 2122 Barrelway Tunnel and the entrance to the 4-30.”
“What?! Why?”
“Fastest way to AEIO headquarters, of course.”
Bern sounded horrified. “Veteran Consultant, you are asked to be reminded that you are no longer a patrol woman and that you have an intern in your care. Please return to NYCLEHOL base immediately.”
Jenosa reached up and under her motorcycle helmet. There was a click.
“Veteran Consultant? Hello, Veteran Consultant? Come in. Veteran Consultant?” Demitren laughed into his microphone, and Bern asked, “Did she just turn her headset off?”
“Yep,” Demitren said as they turned onto the 4-30.
“Tell her to turn it back on this instant!” Bern demanded.
Demitren laughed even harder. “You want me to tell her to do something she doesn’t want to do? This is Jenosa Parkings we’re talking about. I might as well tell a wall to do a handstand.”
“But she can’t do that!”
“Jenosa Parkings can do whatever she wants,” Demitren said matter-of-factly. Jenosa turned slightly in her seat to look at him, and for the very first time, he saw her smile.
It gave him a very fuzzy feeling.
Fifteen minutes later Jenosa pulled into the parking lot for AEIO headquarters, tore off her helmet, gave Demitren her badge to flash at anyone who cared, and shook her arms slightly. Two guns came loose from their holsters in her jumpsuit, slid down her sleeves, and landed perfectly in her fists. With one in each hand, she ran ahead of Demitren, scouting out the repair center.
It wasn’t hard to find. Demitren showed a badge to a security guard, who told them immediately that one of their vans had just pulled in. Jenosa warned him to not speak to anyone until she and Demitren had left, twirling a gun for emphasis. Then she and Demitren barged into the garage where the vans were stored.
Every van was parked neatly in place. “Damn,” Jenosa muttered.
“He’s gone?”
“All I know is I can’t see him,” Jenosa muttered. “Security didn’t say anything about anyone leaving, did he?”
“Um, no -”
“All right.” She flipped Demitren one of her guns. “Put that badge away, we won’t need it. Can you shoot?”
“Er -”
“Doesn’t matter, it’s loaded and ready. Just pull the trigger and pray you have a sense of aim.”
“Wha -?!”
“Stay there.” Jenosa took her own gun in both hands and went around the border of the garage. When she came about full-circle, back to where Demitren was standing, she looked disappointed. “He hasn’t left. He’s still here, and hiding. He’s not in any driver’s seats or passenger seats in the any of the vans.”
Demitren shrugged. “So do we look in the back of all the vans?”
Jenosa shot him a look of despair. “Waste of time. Plus it puts us in several awkward positions where he could always jump out and take us from behind.”
Demitren didn’t personally see how that was possible. “If you say so. So you want to know which van he’s hiding in?”
“Any bright ideas?”
Demitren thought for a moment. “Use your EAR.”
“Huh?”
“I dunno, listen for a van complaining or something.”
Jenosa stared at him, then walked around the border of the garage again. This time she paused at every van with her left ear inclined toward it. Finally she stopped at one longer than she had at the others. Getting Demitren’s attention with a hiss, she pointed at the van and gestured that he should meet her at its back. Then she moved on to the other vans, inspecting them as well. Demitren supposed she was throwing Jedosh Teclorn off or something.
He met her behind the van she had pointed at. Silently, she indicated how he should hold his gun - he held it very gingerly - and with one hand, she forced the back of the van open.
Jedosh Teclorn came out fighting. With a hammer in one hand and a wrench in the other, he tried to knock them both over by sheer ferocity. Demitren almost fired, but managed to regain control of himself and settled for grabbing the hammer by the handle before it hit him. He managed to twist it out of Teclorn’s grasp, mostly because Teclorn was preoccupied at the moment. Jenosa had dropped her gun and grabbed the hand holding the wrench with both hands. She kneed him viciously in first a very painful spot - Demitren almost felt sorry for him - and then, as he curled over in pain, in the face. Teclorn tried to slap her or grab her with the hand Demitren had disarmed, but Demitren grabbed it again and bent some fingers in some painful directions. Jenosa had, meanwhile, managed to twist Teclorn’s other arm behind his back and kicked him savagely in the knees, knocking them out from under him and forcing him down. Demitren twisted the arm he had so that Jenosa could grab that one as well - which wasn’t easy, because Teclorn was flailing and kicking in haphazard directions. While Jenosa held him down by distracting him with pain, she yelled, “Get something to tie him with, now!”
Demitren, who figured this would be common sense anyway, dropped his gun and jumped into the repair truck. He dug around for some cord, and found a little bit, which he threw out for Jenosa to use while he looked for more. What he found instead was a long plumbing tool, which Jenosa examined as she caught. “A plumber’s snake?” she asked, incredulous. “That’s the best you could find?”
“I’m working on it!” Demitren snapped as he dug around.
“Working on what?” Bern’s voice sounded in his ear.
Demitren jumped, suddenly remembering that he was still wearing a headset communicating to headquarters. That jump caused his hand to brush a roll of duct tape, which he threw out to Jenosa. “Anything else?”
“Keep looking,” came the reply, but after a few minutes of fruitless searching Jenosa called, “Never mind. He’s tied.” Demitren let himself down from the truck to discover that Jenosa had tied Jedosh Teclorn’s hands together with the cord, allowing enough of the cord to go slack so that the hands could be pulled three inches apart. She then taped the hands with the duck tape to a supporting pole in the middle of the garage, one hand three inches higher than the other, and both done obnoxiously securely. It was obvious that Jedosh Teclorn could never hope to wriggle loose that way. As for his feet, Jenosa had used the plumber’s snake to keep his ankles tied and duck tape to secure his legs to the ground. In summary, Jedosh Teclorn was so thoroughly restrained that had he been Houdini he wouldn’t have been able to escape.
“How the heck did you do that?” Demitren gasped.
“Do what?” Jenosa asked, bemused.
“I didn’t hear you restraining him at all... And you did it alone...”
Jenosa shrugged. “I’m good at what I do.”
Demitren swore under his breath, then spoke into the microphone of his headset. “Veteran Consultant Intern reporting. We have Jedosh Teclorn at AEIO headquarters, repair van garage. Requesting backup to take him into custody.” Jenosa nodded her consent.
“You what?! Okay, fine, sending back up... I thought I told you that you had been ordered to -”
Demitren smiled at Jenosa and covered his microphone with a hand. “Bern’s blabbing again.”
“Why don’t you just turn that stupid headset off?” Jenosa asked in reply.
Demitren shrugged. “So I can hear if they try to tell us something important, or in case we get separated... You know, an emergency.”
Jenosa couldn’t argue with that, so she pursed her lips and turned her own headset back on. “Backup coming?”
“Yes,” Bern’s voice said.
“Good. Permission to question Jedosh Teclorn.”
There was a pause. “Permission granted.”
Jenosa gave a sigh, though Demitren couldn’t tell if it was one of satisfaction, weariness, or resignation. Jenosa walked over to her gun where she had dropped it, just two feet away from the pole where Jedosh Teclorn was secure. Picking up the gun, she fingered it in her hands for a moment, staring at it like an absent-minded child at a toy. Then with another sigh, she straightened.
The Veteran Consultant was two feet to Jedosh Teclorn’s left, her feet shoulder-width apart, and standing so that her front faced the same wall as his did. Taking her gun in her right hand, she lifted her arm to the side and brought the muzzle mere inches from the side of Teclorn’s head without changing her stance. When she spoke, her voice was casual and almost conversational - but with a ring of steel in it. “You’re going to tell me where the children are, and you’re going to tell me now.”
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Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2010 3:03 pm
Chapter Eight
Demitren took advantage of the lull from physical activity to observe Jedosh Teclorn more closely. He looked exactly like his picture from the All Things Unique employee records, except that he was now wearing the jumpsuit typical of company repair men and plumbers.
Teclorn rolled his head to his left so that he could face the gun more easily. “I ain’t got nothing to do with children,” he spat back at Jenosa. “I was just stealing this van and some tools for cash.” As he spoke, his eyebrow twitched once.
Jenosa didn’t move. “You were identified by the victim of an attempted kidnapping as the criminal.”
“Case of mistaken identity.”
“You’ve already been arrested for two sets of kidnappings.”
“And found not guilty in both,” Jedosh Teclorn shot back. “You can’t possibly have any story that would make it seem like I need to kidnap those kids.”
“Oh, I think we could,” Demitren cut in. His voice was cheerful, as though he was commenting on a summer holiday he had gone on last year. As he spoke, he paced about a bit, but Jenosa never moved. “Perhaps the story goes like this: you’ve gotten down on your luck. You need some more cash to feel secure, but you’re stuck at a cash register in some old hobby shop. Then one day this guy comes along. Maybe he’s a customer, or maybe you meet him at a bar or some place. Anyway, all he talks about are these kids at the place where he works, AEIO Learning Center. He goes on and on about how beautiful they are, how beautiful their brown hair is, and probably how he wants to be able to protect them, to always have them where he knows they are safe. Soon you get an idea.
“You promise the guy that you can help him get those kids. The deal is, you pick the kids up, and he takes care of them. His schedule allows him more time to make sure they’re in good care than yours does. And obviously he agrees. He’s so concerned about having these beautiful kids in his care that he’ll do anything, legal or otherwise, to get them. Not that you’re concerned about the kids or his weird fascination with them, of course. You just want the ransom money.
“So you bring the guy to All Things Unique and fast-forward through security cameras or something. One way or another, he picks out one of your customers as one of the beautiful children. So you pay more attention to that customer and prepare to kidnap them. It’s easy, since you have access to their phone number - it’s a requirement to give a phone number when making a purchase, isn’t it? - and then can look up their address. Then all you have to do is stalk their house in your free time, and within a month or two, you’re ready to kidnap the child. You borrow this guy’s van, tools, and uniform, and you’re golden!
“But nothing happens, so you repeat the process with a different child. And again, and again, you kidnap more children. He takes care of them for you, you nab the next one he gets his eyes on.” Demitren finally stopped, and eyed Jedosh Teclorn with what appeared to be mild curiosity. “So, the question is, who exactly is the guy with the fascination with brown hair?”
Jedosh Teclorn snarled, “You’ve been thinking about this a lot. Impressive. But you can’t prove I’m the kidnapper.”
Jenosa spoke up. “Carter. Cretain. Taelor. Which one is it?”
Teclorn looked downright stunned; his right eye flickered. “Who?” he asked, but Demitren detected a bit of strain in his voice. “I... don’t know any of them.”
Jenosa pressed the gun against his head. “I know how to shoot people so it hurts but won’t kill them. I can also tell when people are lying.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I don’t like liars.”
By the time backup arrived, Jedosh Teclorn had given a full confession, which Demitren jotted down on a notepad and had handed to Teclorn for him to reluctantly confirm. As the kidnapper was taken into custody Jenosa demanded the patrol men to not gag him, and to keep their headsets on in case they needed to communicate through them and through headquarters to Teclorn. Then she and her intern went running out of the garage to another AEIO headquarters building. “Cretain,” she muttered, looking over Demitren’s notes and scanning it with her EYE as she ran. “Cretain Fiile. The one whose children were killed in a car accident.”
“And his wife divorced him because he was acting strange,” Demitren muttered. “It fits. Jedosh confirmed that he had a fascination with keeping the brown-haired children in his care so he would always know where they were, and that they were ‘okay.’ If he hadn’t been in the car when his children got killed, therefore not knowing where they were at the time of their death, it would make sense that he would focus his mentality on being aware of where people were at all times. And he probably feels guilt at not being able to protect his children.”
“Most people don’t kidnap kids after their own are killed,” Jenosa muttered as she skidded around a corner and wrenched the door to the building open.
“This one happens to be fragile,” Demitren said shrugging. “So we’re headed for the AEIO basement?”
“Jedosh said that’s where the children were, didn’t he?”
“Yeah. I just find it odd that an after-school tutoring program needs a basement.”
Jenosa nodded in agreement. “I’m beginning to think that the whole ‘learning center’ is a cover-up for a bigger operation. I mean, a learning center with its own repair man force? This is starting to sound like some government conspiracy in disguise.” She halted, whipped her head around in search of a sign of where to go, and found one. “To the right, set of doors on the left of the hallway. Come on.”
“Can’t you run any slower?” Demitren complained, panting.
“Oh, good Gog, Demitren, you are such an office employee.”
“You just called me by my name.”
“No I didn’t.” Jenosa slid to a halt in front of two double doors. Grabbing the handles of both she pulled them open, and the two dashed down the stairs and into the room.
No one was there. “Crap,” Demitren swore, “he lied.”
Jenosa shook her head. “No, he didn’t, not during his confession anyway. Throughout his entire confession his blood pressure never changed, not once. And he didn’t resort to any... oh, dang it, what’s it called?”
“What’s what called?”
“You know, when somebody lies they always have some kind of signaling habit, like brushing away their hair or something.”
“Like Teclorn could brush away his hair with his hands duck taped to the pole.”
“You get the point. He didn’t lie.”
Demitren paused. “Wait a minute, how did you know his blood pressure never changed?”
“My EYE, of course,” Jenosa said, as if this were obvious. “It completely analyzes all it sees on microscopic levels.”
“Perfect. Don’t suppose it could see footprints of children?”
“Footprints?”
Demitren shrugged. “Well, if Teclorn didn’t lie about the children being in the basement with Cretain Fiile, then they obviously must have left this place without him knowing.”
“I’m not so sure...” Jenosa muttered, looking around and reaching for her gun again. “I mean, keeping kids in the basement... Others would have to use this basement, right? So it’s not like they could leave the kids hanging out in the open. They might still be down here, hidden.”
“So... search?”
Jenosa snarled, “Have you looked at this place?!”
Demitren put his tongue in his cheek and looked around. The basement was huge, stuffed with junk, and in no particular order. He looked back at Jenosa. “So, we call for help and start a search party?”
“Sending for he-”
“No you don’t, Bern!” Jenosa shouted into her headset. “I am NOT going to let some bunglers mess with this!”
“Let’s hear your idea, then.”
Jenosa fumed for a moment before Demitren piped up. “Use your EAR again? I don’t know, listen for a computer commenting on the number of kids or something.”
Jenosa dropped the hand with the gun in it and closed her eye, concentrating. “I don’t hear any computers down here...” she mumbled, “but I do hear... large mammals.”
Demitren raised an eyebrow. “Large... mammals.”
Jenosa lifted her gun again and tossed the other to Demitren, who yelped and juggled it about in surprise. “Yep. Either AEIO has really large rats, or they’re storing live animals to prepare for the next meat shortage. Come on.”
Demitren forced his fingers to hold the loaded and ready gun. “I wish you wouldn’t give me this -”
“Shut up.” Jenosa began picking her way around the piles of junk to the back of the room. As they passed the piles Demitren looked at them curiously: some old workbooks, an easel, a couple of markers with no ink, plumbing equipment, a snapped screwdriver... Finally they both made it to the very back wall. Demitren watched as Jenosa fingered the edge of a wall panel with her free hand. Balling the hand into a fist she knocked lightly on the surrounding wall, then on the panel itself. The sounds were contrasting; the rest of the wall sounded sharp and deep, but the particular panel Jenosa had singled out bent under her fist and sounded soft and light.
“They’re behind here,” Jenosa muttered. “Alright, you point the gun for me, okay? Shoot if it looks like he’ll harm a child.”
“He won’t, he’s too obsessed with them,” Demitren said nervously. “I don’t want to shoot a gun.”
Ignoring him, Jenosa took her gun in a two-handed hold and shifted so that her right shoulder faced the wall panel. “Everyone in there!” she shouted, “Get back!” Then she threw herself at the wall.
The panel came down with a sound between a crash and a flap, with Jenosa on top of it. Demitren jumped as a masculine voice roared in pain, and dropped his gun as a girl’s voice cried, “You didn’t give him a chance to move!”
“Trust me,” Jenosa moaned, “that fall hurt me more than it hurt him. All right, Cretain Fiile, get up, you’re under arrest.”
Demitren was counting children as Jenosa handcuffed Cretain Fiile, who was moaning, “I did not kidnap them! They’re mine, they’re my beautiful children, it’s not a crime to protect them, is it?”
“He’s always saying that,” a girl mused allowed.
“Thirty-three, thirty-two... Is he?” Demitren asked.
“All day, every day,” the girl said. “Don’t bother counting, we’re all here.”
“If I don’t count my boss will barbecue me,” Demitren said. “Thirty... thirty... Did I count that boy or not?”
“You did,” the girl said. “He moves a lot, sorry.”
Demitren turned to her with a face of interest. “Samantha Dean?”
She beamed brightly. “How’d you know?”
“You’re just like your mother.” Demitren bowed to her, which made her laugh, and he asked, “I don’t suppose you know how many -”
“Forty-nine,” Samantha said. “Thanks for finding us.”
“Thank my boss.”
“I intend to.” She glanced over her shoulder. “As soon as she’s taken care of Fa-” She paused. “Of Cretain.”
“He made you call him Father?”
Samantha nodded. “He’s... not well.”
Demitren put a hand on her shoulder and spoke into his headset. “Bern, didn’t you call for backup yet?!”
“They’re coming, geesh.”
Samantha patted Demitren’s hand. “Don’t worry, we don’t mind waiting.”
“Yes we do,” a fat boy grumbled.
“DJ?” Demitren guessed.
“Right again,” Samantha said, sounding annoyed.
Demitren left the children and went to see how Jenosa was doing. She looked the image of justice: she had forced Cretain Fiile onto his knees, and he was curled over until his nose touched the floor. His hands were handcuffed behind him, and Jenosa had planted her foot on the base of his spine. “Don’t hurt him too badly,” Demitren said, “he thinks he was doing the right thing.”
“It doesn’t matter what he thinks,” Jenosa said. Demitren was surprised at her voice; he had been expecting triumph, anger, or gloating, not weariness. “What matters is that he put these children in a dark world and frightening climate for his own perverse sake. I hate him.”
Demitren looked up as footsteps sounded, and a patrol man came into the room. “More are on their way,” he panted. “I’m here for Cretain Fiile.”
“Why are you here by yourself?!” Jenosa demanded, but Demitren put a hand on her shoulder and guided her away.
“Let him take him, Jenosa,” he said. “You found the children, you solved the case. You’re done.”
Jenosa reluctantly took her foot off of Cretain’s back, and the patrol man led him away still muttering, “They’re my children...”
The Veteran Consultant glanced around at the dozens of children, the youngest being cradled and the oldest, Samantha, trying to keep order. DJ and Tomat were arguing hotly over who would get home first, until the sole eleven-year-old clapped her hands over their mouths and told them to shut up. “They’re almost like their own family,” Jenosa murmured. “Bern, honestly, when is backup going to arrive?! These children need to get out of here.”
“Well,” Bern said nervously, “because they aren’t authorized to use certain roads...”
Jenosa sighed irritably and snapped her headset off.
“Did - Did she just -?”
“Yep,” Demitren said into his headset. “Sorry, Bern.”
Poor Bern continued to mutter incredulously about Jenosa as she started walking toward the children. “Come on, let’s start walking them out oursunh.”
Demitren watched, puzzled, as Jenosa put a hand to her chest and winced. There was a pause, as if they were waiting for something, and suddenly Jenosa was on her knees with a cry of agony. She fell from there to the floor, curled against herself, coughing and gasping with her eyes squeezed shut and her arms wrapped around her chest.
Demitren ran and fell on the floor beside her. “Jenosa? Jenosa! Jenosa, talk to me, are you there? Jenosa!” He straightened and began yelling into his headset, his voice rising to be heard over her chokes and coughs. “Veteran Consultant down! I need medics here, now!”
***
I woke up in a paper dress.
My EYE came on instantly, but when my EAR heard the computers complaining about interference I shut it off. Blinking, I propped myself on my elbows to look around.
“Huuhhng.” There was another flash of dull pain between my rib cages, and I put a hand to my heart to wait for the pain to go away. It did, ebbing little by little, and I allowed my hand to fall.
Before I could get a proper look at my surroundings, three people surrounded me. I had trouble distinguishing their voices at first. I managed to catch some phrases, though.
“Okay, Jenosa, I’m just going to check on your -”
“Parkings! You’re all right!”
“Oh, dear, we’ve been so worried...”
“Jenosa, I’m just going to -”
“Atta girl, Parkings!”
“Does it hurt much, sweetie?”
“Jenosa, I’m -”
“Knew you’d take ‘im down before you got ‘it, girl!”
“I’ve brought you some clothes -”
“Jenos-”
“You came out on top again, girl!”
“Now don’t fret -”
“Excuse me! Do you mind? I’m trying to get a look at my patient!”
When the arms enveloping me fell back, I realized I was looking into three familiar faces: the doc’s, Daren’s, and Sharon’s. I realized the paper dress I was wearing was a hospital gown. I smiled brightly as the doctor took my arm and checked my blood pressure. “Hey, you two.”
Daren and Sharon smiled back. “We told you we’d come as soon as we could, didn’t we?” Daren said, punching me lightly on the shoulder.
“Could you two back up a bit?” the doctor asked. “I need to let the FAS go over her one more time.”
I lay back as the computer went over me, and listened as my EAR heard it beep with deep worry. “What’s up, doc?”
“You’re heart’s taking its sweet time healing over,” he muttered, inspecting the screen where the results were displayed.
“My heart?”
“Sweetie,” Sharon said, stroking my arm, “the Virus attacked your heart. There’s... there’s some holes in it.”
“Only one big one,” Daren said, as if it made a difference.
“You were blessed,” Sharon said. “That sweet boy kept you safe until help arrived, and then he stayed behind to help the children go home.”
Sweet boy? I looked around the room. “Where’s my intern?”
“Outside,” Daren said, “discussing your health insurance with the secretary.”
I blinked. “But I don’t have insurance anymore.”
***
“This is why it would be easier if she went back to patrol duty.”
Demitren and Sunny were sitting on a bench outside of Jenosa’s hospital room. He glanced up from a medical form to look at her as she spoke. “Huh?”
“I told you on your first day,” Sunny muttered as she scribbled at another form, “that you would find out why it would be easier if Jenosa went back on patrol. This is why.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Listen, when she started working at fifteen, she was a basic patrol woman: rode her motorcycle with Daren around her beat in the city to make sure no one was doing anything illegal. Because she would be in a position where she could, potentially, be shot by some drug store robber, the NYCLE provided her automatically, as it does with all its employees, health insurance. Over the years she and Daren got promoted, until they were not only patrol partners but part of an elite force; they solved cases and so on when they weren’t doing their two-hour patrol shift. Because they were dealing with bigger criminals all over the city, NYCLE stepped up to provide life insurance. But when Jenosa got ‘retired,’ they deposited an amount of money into her bank account for future health problems regarding the TECH she got. And since she was made a Veteran Consultant - an office job where she was only supposed to sit in her office and advise elite patrol men on how to solve cases, all health insurance was dropped to the absolute minimum. But you know as well as I do that we can’t keep Jenosa doing just desk jobs, she keeps insisting on putting herself in situations where she’s likely to get shot or something.”
“So...?”
“It would be heaps easier if she went back to patrol work,” Sunny grumbled, “because then she would have the insurance she needed to deal with this, and we wouldn’t be stuck doing the stupid paperwork!”
“Calm down,” Demitren said, “you’re scaring me.”
Sunny took several deep breaths. “Okay... okay. So let’s figure all this out -”
“Wait, I thought you said NYCLE ‘deposited an amount of money into her bank account for future health problems regarding the TECH,’” Demitren said. “Where is that now?”
“She spent it,” Sunny sighed. “Do me a favor and ask her what for when you go in there to see her, okay Demi?”
“Speak of the devil,” Demitren muttered as the doctor opened Jenosa’s door and asked him to come in. Handing some health forms to Sunny and promising he’d help as soon as he came back out, he followed the doctor inside.
After acknowledging Demitren’s presence, Jenosa introduced him to Daren and Sharon. Demitren surprised himself by not feeling jealous as he shook Daren’s hand. In fact, he even viewed Daren as a nice, past associate of Jenosa’s. Huh.
Then Jenosa got his attention by asking about the children. “Every single one home,” he reported. “Some not feeling well, but all okay.”
Jenosa sighed and leaned back in her bed. “Thank goodness.”
“Samantha filled me in on Cretain’s behavior, for my own criminal behavior files,” Demitren told her in case she was interested. “Guess he washed their hair himself, wouldn’t let them do it without him. Constantly told them he loved them and was protecting them. He never really worried about discipline or education or conversation so long as he fed them, washed them, and could see them; that was all he wanted.”
“Good Gog,” Jenosa said. Her face looked as though she’d tasted something rotten. “I hope he didn’t take care of his kids like that back when he was sane.”
Demitren was once again struck by her ferocity and fervor towards children, but decided now wasn’t the time to talk about it. “I doubt he did,” he assured her. “In layman’s terms, when you become obsessed, you often ignore previous priorities. Well, glad to see that you’re okay. Sunny’s waiting outside, we’re working on paying your surgery bill right now.”
Jenosa sat upright in bed. “Surgery?! What surgery?”
“Calm down, dear,” Sharon said, taking Jenosa gently and pushing her back into a lying position. “You haven’t had the surgery yet.”
“But you’re going to need one,” Daren said grimly. “Your heart isn’t growing back properly. It’s deteriorating. Doc’s going to replace it with a HEART - Heat Energy Air Receptacles Transport device.”
Jenosa sat back up. “No. No. NO nononononononononono. I am not getting a TECH heart. I refuse. You can’t make me. You can’t make me!” Demitren leapt forward and grabbed Jenosa’s shoulder as she began pounding at the wall behind her bed, Sharon trying in vain to calm her, Daren watching understandingly as Jenosa continued to cry out, her voice of fury giving way to one of weak protest. “I don’t want a metal heart... I want to die with a real heart...”
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Aloysia Bloodfur Vice Captain
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Aloysia Bloodfur Vice Captain
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Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2010 3:04 pm
Chapter Nine
Demitren knocked on Jenosa’s hospital door the next morning and opened it. He opened his mouth to speak, a greeting on his tongue, when he froze, and incredulity covered his face.
“You’re knitting?”
Jenosa looked down at her pale hands, which were working on a purple sweater. “Yyyyyyyeeeeeaaaaaaaaaah... I’ve been able to knit since I was ten. Why?”
“It... it just doesn’t seem to be -” Demitren searched for the right words “- right for your profile.”
Jenosa looked at him oddly, glanced back at her knitting, then sighed. Rolling up her knitting she set it on her side table. “All right, then. What else doesn’t fit my profile, might I ask?”
Demitren pounced on the opportunity. “Well, your view of children, for starts.”
This time Jenosa shook her head and blinked. “Wha- ?”
“You’re supposed to be this big, tough law enforcement woman, aren’t you?” Demitren pressed. “Able to restrain Jedosh Teclorn with cord, plumbing tools, and duck tape by yourself in a three-minute span. Threatening to shoot people, yelling at NYCLE officers, taking off and chasing criminals when you’ve been forbidden to. So how come you get so emotional about kidnapped kids? Pick Saira Daelin up and cradle her? Get concerned about how Cretain Fiile raised his children?”
Jenosa stared at him for a while. “Why does this bother you?”
Demitren pointed at himself. “I’m applying for a job as a criminal behavior analysist. If I can’t understand the workings of an upstanding citizen, how can I expect to profile the merest criminal?”
Jenosa closed her organic eye for a moment, then gestured at a chair to her right. “Sit down.”
Demitren sat.
Jenosa opened her eye, readjusted her seat on the bed, and sighed. “Do you know why I lied about my age and applied for job as a fifteen-year-old?”
Demitren shrugged. “I always kinda figured you were bored.”
Jenosa laughed - Demitren shivered -, then her face grew more serious. “Not quite. I was well occupied with raising my brothers and sister.”
Demitren choked. “Come again?”
His boss stared at the ceiling. “When I was thirteen - I would have been fourteen in a month - my parents were killed in a car accident. They were going to my dad’s office party. My aunt was given custody over us, but - ...well, she worked so much...”
Demitren knew a thing or two, and according to his knowledge the tone in Jenosa’s voice indicated a lie. Whatever her aunt was busy doing, it wasn’t work.
“So I took care of my younger siblings,” Jenosa said. “But one day my parent’s lawyer arrived and informed us that our inheritance had been confiscated...”
Demitren’s eyes widened. “The government self-bailout?”
Jenosa nodded. “Right. The economy collapse of 2220; the government needed money to rebuild itself, and unwilling to raise taxes, it just ‘confiscated’ money from small, powerless families. Biggest scandal of the century, and my family was one of its victims. We all cheered when the men responsible were arrested. I was just disappointed I couldn’t do it myself.”
‘Which might explain her choice of work,’ Demitren thought.
“So, at the age of fourteen-and-a-half, I dropped out of high school,” Jenosa continued, “and went out to get a driver’s learner’s permit and eventually license. It was easier than I’d thought it would be. I just walked in and told the people I was eighteen - that way, I didn’t need a guardian’s signature anywhere. I’m not sure why they believed I was eighteen, though.”
Demitren thought briefly of mentioning her forceful nature and scary facial expressions. He bit his tongue instead.
“By the time I was finished taking my driving tests,” Jenosa sighed, “I was fifteen, which meant my new identity was nineteen. So I applied for a job as a patrol woman with the nearest branch of the NYCLE, and after a few months of doctor visits and training I was assigned as Daren’s partner. Daren’s old partner had just left for a better job, and since the two of them had never been ambitious Daren had been a lowly patrol guy for years. But we started working all right together, so little by little our salaries went up... Still, my pay went towards keeping our apartment, since it was the safest one we could afford, and education and food.”
“Back up. ‘Safest you could afford?’” Demitren smiled. “Was that -?”
“Yes, Mr. Curious,” Jenosa said, rolling her eyes, “Same apartment I still live in. I kept my siblings in there, and my aunt when she was home. But it was our home more than hers. We lived together, helping each other. I was so proud when Whendie got accepted into college...”
They spent the next stretch of time with Jenosa narrating the story of her life working to raise her three younger siblings, and with Demitren absorbing every detail. Throughout the narrative Demitren reflected on his own bias: he had assumed that Jenosa had always been the tough cop, the woman who handled all crime on her beat with an iron fist and a swift, deadly accuracy. To him, Jenosa had always been the patrol woman with the ‘sic-’em’ face, the guns in her sleeves, her furious energy that amounted to mania towards cornering crime. Listening to her now, he realized that Jenosa Parkings the patrol woman was not who she always was, but whom she had become out of necessity, facing the need to raise her siblings in place of her dead parents. A girl who only cared about children’s welfare had adapted to the circumstances, losing none of her original love of children but adopting the mindset and behavior of a crime-fighting heroine for their sake. Demitren pointed out to himself that if he wanted to get anywhere as a criminal behavior analysis, he would have to look beyond first impressions and explore other personality possibilities.
Returning to a more present issue, Demitren noted that Jenosa seemed excited to be talking about her siblings. The more she talked, the more she seemed to remember, and neither noticed as an hour ticked past. While Jenosa paused to take a drink of water, Demitren asked, “Where are your brothers and sister now?”
Jenosa continued drinking her water, not saying anything, but when she put the small cup back down on her side table Demitren felt a change in her manner. She was more like the restrained, formidable Jenosa he was used to. “The oldest... Whendie died bedridden with illness. Several complications, a bunch of viruses and bacteria that she picked up from her volunteer work around the city. I couldn’t afford the most expensive health care, so all I could do was make it painless, really. My younger brother, Rhoannie, died overseas in somebody’s suicide bombing. And Taelken... car accident, just like Mom and Dad.”
***
My intern was sitting rather silently now, and since I was getting uncomfortable I reached for my knitting and started again. I don’t see why he thinks it would be weird for me to be knitting, but then again I don’t much understand him anyway.
For one thing, what is it about him that makes me blab about my whole life story?! The only thing I really hadn’t talked about was the day people found out I was younger than I said I was, and I didn’t have to talk about that because he probably knew all about it anyway. It was in the papers. I was on patrol when a drug dealer shot me in the shoulder, and while I was lying knocked out in the hospital Daren and the rest of NYCLE were trying to find my medical history from childhood to see if I was allergic to a numbing drug they wanted to give me. But they couldn’t locate anything other than the results of my various checkups with the NYCLE doctor - the same doctor who had diagnosed me with the Virus. So when I finally regained consciousness, I found Daren and my boss standing over me, demanding if I had ever gone to a doctor before coming to work for them, and forcing me to admit what doctor that was. Then they contacted that doctor, who informed them of my real birthrate, revealing to the world my true age, blah blah blah.
But that’s all besides the point. The point is, I had just spent deities-know-how-long telling him about myself and my family, when I had already made it clear to myself that I didn’t want to tell him anything else about me. I mean, why was it that his merest suggestion or question made me suddenly determined to explain everything to him? Why did I so often feel like... I don’t know, like I wanted him to know everything about me?
It was official. I was going nuts. And seeing him the way I was seeing him today didn’t help matters. After all, usually I viewed my intern through my EYE, which analyzed him at a microscopic level and informed me that he was adequate for the job. Trust me, looking at people through a red-tinted screen inside your head that keeps beeping and popping up little bubbles filled with facts will keep things very businesslike. But since I was surrounded by the doctor’s computers, my EYE was off, and I was forced to look at him with my organic eye. This meant I no longer knew his blood pressure, temperature, lung capacity, height-to-the-milimeter, or visual capability - in short, I was forced to view him strictly as a person.
That took the business edge off a bit.
I discovered that if I was going to keep thinking about him, I was going to have to deal with a bunch of tricky feelings that I wasn’t used to, and rather than face these and find out why the heck I had them, I found it easier to just stop thinking about him. So I concentrated on my knitting until he said, “Oh, by the way, I was sent in here to ask about a sum of money that we can’t find.”
I shot him my ‘what-the’ look. “Huh?”
He pulled a piece of paper from his inner coat pocket and scanned it. “Apparently when you ‘retired’ from NYCLE five years ago they put a certain sum in your bank account to be used regarding any complications in relation to your TECH?”
“Yeah, so?”
“We can’t find it. You have less than that amount in the appropriate bank account.”
“I spent it on my windpipe lining and my TECH leg,” I said.
“Windpipe lining?” I saw him do the calculations in his head. “You mean, that day at the Dean apartment -”
“Yeah. It was deteriorating, starting to bleed,” I said. “So I used that bank account to pay for it. Then my leg started rotting and I had to pay for that TECH, too.”
He looked back down at his paper. “Oh.”
“Why are you trying to find it, anyway?” I asked, bemused. I feel bemused around him a lot, come to think of it.
He looked at me pointedly. “To pay for your operation, of course. You can’t live with a heart with four dents and a hole in it, boss.”
I felt my insides curl and freeze. “Look,” I snarled, trying to use anger to hide fear, “I told you yesterday, I don’t want a metal heart. Can’t they regrow the tissue?”
Demitren shrugged. “I’ll ask again. But either way, we’ll need to pay for it. I’ll bring this up with Sunny.”
“Who’s Sunny?”
This time it was his turn to shoot me a look. I interpreted it to mean ‘pay-attention-to-people-you-recluse.’ “The secretary you hand your card into every morning to be punched in for work.”
“Oh. Why are you bringing it up with her?”
“It’s part of her job to-” Demitren sighed. “Look, just... just knit and relax, okay?”
As Demitren started to leave I remembered something I had wanted to bring up with him. “Demitren?”
He spun around. “You just said my name.”
“Stop saying that, okay? Listen, you should think about a change of career.”
This time he looked seriously at me. “Why?”
“You’ve got more of a mindset for a detective than a psychologist, really,” I said. “You’re good about what kind of mindset would be required for certain actions, but you don’t expand very far. Most criminal behavior analysists I know go on and on about the guy’s childhood, mental diseases, all this psycho-jargon. You know what mindset a guy has to be in while committing the crimes, but don’t spend much time with the whole ‘what-childhood-incident-led-him-to-this.’ Your style’s better, more straight to the point. And besides, you came up with the 4310-AEIO thing, using my EAR to find the guy in the van, the AEIO certificate in Tomat’s bedroom, all the hobby collections... Just think about it, okay?”
He looked truly startled, then smiled. It’s not so bad of a smile, I suppose. “I’ll think about it. Thanks for the compliments, boss.”
“I didn’t compliment you,” I protested, “I stated the facts.” He just laughed at me. “I did!” I shouted as he left and closed the door behind him, still laughing.
“Weirdo,” I muttered as I returned my attention to my knitting.
***
Daren, Sharon, Sunny, Demitren, and the doctor were all in Jenosa’s hospital room later that day, finishing up the insurance business. With a dramatic flourish, Jenosa signed the last sheet of paper and sat back with a sigh of relief. “There. Finished!”
“Actually, one more matter of business,” the doctor said. “Your HEART.”
Jenosa put a hand to her chest. “It’s been aching a bit, and I feel sore here, but -”
“No, I mean the TECH HEART,” the doctor said. “Jenosa, your organic heart’s hole is getting bigger as we speak. You’re going to die of blood loss. You need a new one.”
The people in the room watched as panic crossed Jenosa’s face in a series of phases: first, her face froze. Then it turned red. Next her eyes got wide and she inhaled sharply. The whole thing took two seconds and it would have amused Demitren if he couldn’t feel the irrational fear behind it. “I told you,” she said, “I want to die with a freakin’ organic heart in my chest, okay? Is that too much to handle?”
“Try to understand, honey -” Sharon began.
“Listen, I do understand,” Jenosa snapped. “I just can’t change my own mind, got it?”
“Why does this bother you so much?” Daren asked, sounding thoroughly incredulous.
“Because,” Demitren said cheerfully, “she doesn’t want to die a complete cyborg.”
Everyone turned to stare at him, and Jenosa rolled her eyes. “Okay, listen, psychologist -”
“I’m serious,” Demitren said, putting his hands in his pockets. He was hoping that if he acted cheerful, Jenosa wouldn’t kill him for saying what he was about to and everyone else would stop pressing the issue. “We teach people in our society that the heart is the center of our being, right? ‘Do what your heart says,’ ‘Let your heart guide your mind,’ ‘The heart is always right.’ Well, suppose you were faced with the choice to give up your heart. Wouldn’t it feel like giving yourself away? Like, after your heart is gone, you won’t be a person anymore? You’ll feel like you’re losing yourself, wouldn’t you?”
He smiled at Jenosa and hoped it looked genuine. “Now, you know the soul isn’t actually contained in one’s heart muscle. But still, subconsciously, hearing someone say ‘your heart needs to be taken out’ is bringing up the fear that you won’t be human after the surgery. Instinctive, really, and perfectly understandable to not want to be a cyborg.”
Jenosa looked flustered, which Demitren interpreted as ‘stop-being-right-it’s-embarrassing.’ “Are you quite done?” she demanded.
“Yep,” he said. “Sorry for embarrassing you. Now, doctor, Jenosa was wondering if you couldn’t regrow the heart muscle.”
“We already -”
“Ehnnn.”
Everyone’s head snapped back to Jenosa, who had clutched at her chest with the mutter of pain. Sharon started to reach for her, but the Veteran Consultant put her other hand out, stopping her. After a moment she straightened and let her hands fall. “I’m okay. Sorry, sometimes it just... twinges.”
The doctor pursed his lips, but continued. “We already looked over this option. The four weak spots we could regrow, possibly. They aren’t really decaying so much as collapsing. But the hole can’t be regrown. It’s too badly done. You remember the condition your elbow and eye were in before we replaced them. This is twice as bad; a hole in your heart will affect the whole body eventually. Besides, now that the Virus is in your heart, it’ll travel to the rest of your healthy organic body twice as quickly. It may have infected your entire self already.”
“What other procedures -”
Sunny was interrupted as Jenosa lurched forward into her lap, coughing and hacking as she clutched at her heart. The doctor rushed forward and tried to force Jenosa to sit up straight, but she continued rounding over until the coughs slowly quieted. It was three minutes later when she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and nodded to show she was okay.
Sunny took a deep breath, then started again. “What other procedures do you know that have been used or considered for a case like this?”
Doc shook his head. “Patients who refused TECH asked for medicine to prolong their life a bit. Then they put their affairs in order.”
“Great,” Demitren muttered.
Daren looked around at all the computers and machines that surrounded them. “Well, do you know of any other kind of technology we could use? Some other gizmo?”
“Gizmo?”
“You know, some other piece of machine or computer that would -”
Daren didn’t get to finish. Jenosa began to cough again, but the coughs were littered with cries of pain, causing her to jolt and twist as she lay on her hospital bed. The cries and coughs grew increasingly worse, and everyone realized it wasn’t stopping at different times. Sharon was the first to realize it, her quiet and concerned “Honey?” being drowned out by Jenosa’s cry of “AAAGHULPHHHAAA!” Demitren’s eyes widened in horror and he leapt for the bed, trying to reach her, but the doctor blocked him as he sprang to Jenosa, his hands grabbing her shoulders as she shot upright in her bed. Her organic eye was rolling to the back of her head, blood began to dribble down her chin, and Demitren heard Sunny scream as bruises magically appeared on her arms.
***
The attack took me by surprise. In what must have been an instant I lost hearing in my organic ear and sight in my organic eye. I turned on my EYE in desperation and tried to speak to tell the others what was going on, but when I opened my mouth all that I could make were sounds of pain. Around then I realized that my heart was a lump of molten metal, and it was pulsing painfully, pressing inwardly against itself, and allowing itself to be pierced by sword after sword. And in moments, the pain shifted from agony to a kind of sensation so powerful I couldn’t put it to words. It was pain I had never known, and the force of it sent me into a sitting position. I saw the Demitren trying to reach me, and saw the doctor block his path as he tried to help me. I saw Sharon sinking into a chair, saw Daren gripping my bedside, saw Sunny put a hand to her mouth, and moments later my EAR heard her scream.
I didn’t understand what was going on. The pain was increasing, to levels I had never known. Even the fire that had taken my elbow, eye, and ear hadn’t hurt so badly, and this pain was beginning to take its toll on my very mind. In my mind’s eye I saw Demitren, saw his face - laughing, yelling in anger, showing concern. A movie reel of my intern began to play in my head.
I fought against the doctor’s hands and felt my grasp on reality slipping away. I realized I was fading, backing away from the world. I remembered the feelings I had pushed aside to never deal with and realized I hadn’t wanted to do that, I had wanted to understand what they were. I realized that, while I was at peace with Daren and my old boss and Jedosh Teclorn and Cretain Fiile and the rest of the world, I had left too much undone with my intern. I hadn’t told him anything. Hadn’t told him that he confused me, that he bothered me, that he had managed to make me laugh at things I had never found amusing before, that he was so different it scared me and aroused my curiosity. I felt my EYE turn off and my EAR began to dim to a hum, my own cries of pain ebbing away. Demitren. His name was Demitren. The one human who understood how I felt about children and hearts was named Demitren. And I wanted to tell him that I hated him, and that he made my life so difficult, and that he had been an unneeded pain in my life. I wanted to thank him, to let myself laugh a little more often, to braid my hair a couple more times because for some reason it made him react in a really curious way. As my violent cries and convulsions reached a dangerous level, a level I could hardly feel, I realized I wanted -
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Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2010 3:07 pm
Epilogue
Demitren slowly inserted the key in the door to the Veteran Consultant office and turned it. As it clicked open he pushed on the door and felt for the light switch, his hand slapping the wall fruitlessly for a moment or two before he brushed against the switch and flicked it on. The lights in the ceiling and the desk lamp flickered to life, their dull glow strengthening little by little until the office was properly lit.
Putting the key and his hands in his pockets, Demitren looked around at the office, thinking not for the first time how weird it was to be here without Jenosa. The room seemed oddly silent, too large and too empty. Suddenly anxious to fill in the empty space he reached for the computers and pressed their buttons, turning them on one by one until the air was filled with the electronic hum he was used to.
It didn’t help.
Sadly Demitren pulled up his small straight-back chair, the one by the monitor computer, and sat in it for the first time. When Jenosa had been here he had been too busy to actually sit in his chair. But now her chair was empty, its comfy fake leather and swiveling wheels with no purpose to them. As he waited for the monitor computer to finish booting he reached for the holographic screen and turned that on as well, hoping that being able to see something would replace the loneliness of the empty room. While that was charging he turned his attention to the monitor screen, which was now displaying his desktop. He double-clicked on the mail icon and sifted half-heartedly through the emails, not really paying attention to any of them. Unable to distract himself that way he pulled up Solitaire on the holographic screen and started playing, imagining that Jenosa was watching over his shoulder and making fun of him as he lost to himself over and over again.
It was no use. The office was just too lonely and too arid without Jenosa Parkings in it. It was so much like a tomb that, after losing his sixth game of Solitaire, Demitren slumped back into his straight-back chair. Like a movie in his mind he watched as Jenosa coughed and bellowed in agony, her EYE blinking rapidly as her organic eye disappeared inside her skull. Dark bruises appeared in the skin closest to her chest, and Demitren recalled the doctor yelling something to the nurses about the heart finally bursting, bringing more of her arteries with it. Then finally Jenosa had quieted, had stilled, and the doctor had softly laid her back on the bed, letting her head grace the pillow as the bright pinpoint red light of her EYE faded ever so slowly away.
Demitren shook his head, and realized his eyes were watering. Telling himself that he wasn’t crying, he just had dust in his eyes, Demitren reached for a tissue and blew his nose. Then he returned to Solitaire.
Five minutes and two and a half games later, the door opened and a face appeared in the doorway. “You’re not being paid to play card games, you dolt. Turn that thing off!”
Demitren smiled in relief as his boss stepped into the office at long last. “Took you long enough to get here,” he said, shutting off the holographic screen.
Jenosa Parkings slammed the door carelessly behind her and stomped over to him, arms crossed over her chest. “Daren and Sharon say I have you to blame for the fact that I’m still alive?”
He heard the question mark in her sentence and smiled self-consciously. “Well, when the doctors determined you were still alive and wanted to know what they should do with you, I asked Daren what he had been about to ask the doctor just before... you...”
“Get to the point,” Jenosa snapped.
Demitren shrugged. “Daren was trying to ask the doctor if there was any other kind of technology that could be used, instead of a HEART. Doc thought about it for a while, then said there was one thing. The call it a ARTEREE - Assistant Receptacle Transport Evaluator Regular Environment Equalizer, or something like that. I can’t remember properly -”
“I don’t care what it stands for,” Jenosa said, rolling her eyes. “Keep going.”
“Anyway,” Demitren said, happy that Jenosa seemed to be normal, “this ARTEREE thing would, basically, be enough machine and computer technology to mend the hole in your heart and maintain the heart’s healthy functioning, but it wouldn’t replace your whole heart. It’s sort of like a... a janitor for your heart. Makes sure it’s still running properly, helps fix it if it needs to be fixed, you get the idea?”
“You mean using a piece of metal to plug the hole.”
“Basically.”
“Honestly, you take so long to say a single sentence,” Jenosa sighed. “Anything else?”
“Well, the doc also said that the four dents in your heart could be regrown if they were very careful. So I... said that they should try it.”
Inwardly Demitren reflected on how insistent he had been, and how he had practically grabbed the doctor by his collar and picked him off the floor saying something along the lines of ‘Do it. Do it now. Do it now or I ****in’ kill you.’
Jenosa seemed to think about it for a moment, then nodded her head. “Well, thanks, I guess. Glad my heart’s still mine, I suppose.”
Demitren sighed with relief and saluted. “So, the medical drama is over for now. What do we occupy our time with now that you’re healthy?”
Jenosa snorted. “That’s not something ‘we’ need to be worried about. You already have a new job.”
“What?”
His boss jerked a thumb behind her. “Outside there’s a bucket of the janitor’s strongest paint remover. Get a gas mask on and start scrubbing Veteran Consultant off of my door.”
“Why -”
“When you’re done with that, go to the front desk. They’ll page the janitor, and you can get a bucket of gold paint and stencils from him. I’ll use my EYE to help you place it dead center on my door - can’t have you bungling up the whole job now, can I?”
“What whole job?”
“You’re going to be repainting the sign on the door, stupid! I’m not Veteran Consultant anymore. The guys at the top finally figured it out that I’m not meant for a strictly desk job,” Jenosa snapped. “The new sign’s going to be ‘Veteran Investigator, Nonrestricted,’ so make sure you really clean off the paint from the old sign.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to just move offices?”
“For your information, they made this job specifically for me!” said Jenosa haughtily. “There is no other office. Any more questions?”
Demitren smiled broadly as the importance of something she had mentioned occurred to him. “You got a nonrestricted level job? You’re allowed to do field work? But that’s awesome!”
“Convenient, more like,” Jenosa said, closing her organic eye briefly. “And if you take my advice and work towards being a detective instead of a behavior analysist, you’re probably going to end up... well, working with me.”
Demitren paused, then inclined his head toward her. “You mean, being your partner?”
“It’s not definite. Now get going! Once that sign is done I’ll give you the folder.”
“Folder?”
“Containing the details of our next case, stupid! I want you to look it over tonight, and we’ll discuss it tomorrow.”
“We?”
“Yes, we,” Jenosa sighed impatiently. “You’re my intern, aren’t you?”
Demitren let this all sink in, then smiled even more broadly. Laughing, he suddenly gave in to an impulse and grabbed Jenosa by her waist, lifting her an inch and swinging her in a half-circle before dropping her and wrapping her in a hug.
“What the-” Jenosa stiffened, not pulling away but not returning any form of affection either. “Demitren, you idiot, let me go!”
He did, turning red in the face and shuffling his feet awkwardly. “I’m... just happy that you’re okay, I guess.”
Jenosa seemed completely shocked, and it took a moment for her to reply. “You’d better hope that the sign on the door is okay when you’re done with it, intern.”
Demitren laughed again, turned, and started out the door. “You know, boss, you’re one heck of a girl.”
***
“And you’re one hell of a guy.”
The words had left my mouth before I realized it, but thankfully after he had left the office. I felt completely rooted to the floor, my mind working furiously to figure out what had just happened. I had just been hugged by someone I barely knew. I had just been hugged by Demitren, this guy who made my life way too confusing. What had just -
My thoughts were interrupted as I realized my EAR was hearing something I hadn’t heard before. It took me a moment to understand what I was hearing, then suddenly it was all too clear. The computers were laughing at me!
I shot around the room, turning the machines off one by one. The monitor computer, Demitren’s computer, retreated into its sleep with respect, but the rest whined and cried in protest as they were turned off. Feeling better, I slumped into my swivel chair and put my feet on my desk, happy to be back and happy to be healthy. I wasn’t cured of the Virus, but I had a second chance at trying to figure Demitren out, and I had a job that was far better than that of office employee.
The sound of Demitren scrubbing at the door made me smile. Boy, was it good to be alive.
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Aloysia Bloodfur Vice Captain
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Aloysia Bloodfur Vice Captain
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Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2010 3:17 pm
The end.
I open the rest of this topic to criticism, but not compliments. I can't do anything with compliments.
And if you're not a guild member, post in the Guestbook.
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Posted: Mon May 02, 2011 9:34 am
Already posted there...
I read "Organic Hearts, Metal EYEs"... I honestly could not see anything wrong with it. I liked how it read the flow of the story, though a bit chopped up flowed remarkably well. I would have liked to see a bit more construction of the universe that the story was based in and the various scenes that were involved but, in any case all I can say is that It was a well put together tale. and I honestly would like to read more of it.
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