Detective Garcia's private log
Some people talk about getting lost in a crowd. That’s my problem; I get lost in a crowd. No, really lost. So many people, pressing in, I become them and I forget about me. I lose myself. I become them all.
The maintenance tech who’s running late, who keeps obsessively checking the chronodisplay in the corner of his vision, as if that can change anything? That’s me. The punkrock girl with a shiny new flechette gun in her pocket, walking tall like she’s on top of the world? That’s me too. The kid who just found out he got his girlfriend pregnant, and he doesn’t know how he’s going to support either of them? And the girlfriend, who’s afraid he’s just going to run away to Sublevel? Me again. I’m all these voices, all these fragments, all at once. I’m seeing what they see. And then Tomoko puts her hand on my shoulder, and for a brief moment I’m her. I’m looking at me, and I’m scared because my partner is wigging out on me in the middle of a crowded street, and there’s no telling how many Iwakura goons are out there watching, but I keep a cool face - I’m not going to let them – or me - see the worry. I see my face – not so bad looking, if he only shaved and got some real sleep for once.
My face. Me.
I shake it off, and I’m back in my own head.
Tomoko’s been my partner since before the Iwakura Syndicate kidnapped me. We go way back, all the way to our Academy days. Lots of shared memories, which also makes it easier to find myself when I see through her eyes. And even though she’s got her hand on my shoulder, I don’t need these damn mind-leaking mods to see the relief flood into her features when she realizes I’m back. I give her a smile, but I know it looks half-hearted. I can still see through her for brief second before I shake her hand off.
Now that I’m back in my own skull, we can get on with the business of finding our contact here in Mezzanine. And once we find him, and he tells us what he knows about the Syndicate’s warehouse in the area, then I can turn this over to the heavies in Mezzanine Ops/TAC, head back to Upper, ditch the uniform, and hit the bar. Have a few drinks with my fellow ULSErs, swap stories with the oldtimers, compliment Tomoko on her new hairstyle – it really does look good on her – and stagger home. If I drink enough, I can drive away all the voices from the crowd, still buzzing around in my head. Only trouble is, it drives me away too. But at least I when I’m drunk I don’t dream other people’s dreams.
I think Rachel thinks I’m cheating on her. With Tomoko.
Our contact is a short, nervous man, one of the guys who does repair work in the service ducts between Mezannine and Upper. He stumbled across a series of unlisted access hatches and backdoor routes that the Iwakura use for smuggling contraband between levels. He told his supervisors, who buried the reports; they’re almost certainly on the syndicate payroll. Then he did a brave thing – he snuck through the very same ducts and came up in Upperlevel, and went straight to ULSE. Said he had information about the Iwakura – and he wanted to make a deal. He was realistic about it, too. Some people come swaggering in, thinking that this or that piece of trivia is worth a mansion in the Enclaves. This guy, though, he knew his information was solid, and he knew we wanted it. All he wanted in return was an access pass so he could move his wife and kids out of their M-level cubbyhole. He’d already saved up credits for a little run-down flat in Upper before he came to us – he just needed the pass.
ULSErs respect a guy like that. Reminds us of us.
And there he is, right on schedule, leaning on the door to his family’s old cubbyhole, the last one in a long row of identical cubes. He’s met me a few times, but he hasn’t met Tomoko in person before. I can tell he’s scared. He nods nervously, and waves. Poor guy, I think. He has a right to be scared, too – going up against a Syndicate for your family’s sake? That’s not an easy thing to do. But Tomoko does her best to set him at ease; she’s a good looking woman with an earnest face and a crisp uniform; the very model of a friendly neighborhood cop. She’s got this way about her that makes people relax a bit.
Not that you care, but I’m not cheating on my wife.
My contact takes a deep breath and tells me that he’s sorry, his information feed went flatline before we showed up, and he’s got nothing for me today. I shrug; I guess the Ops teams won’t have an exciting night after all. I give him a new commchip in case he needs to contact me again, and turn to go. Only when I give it to him, my gloves brush against his hand for the barest instant, and I can see why he’s so scared. With really strong emotions, it doesn’t even always take physical contact; thoughts just leap from someone else’s body, resonate in my nerve endings, travel up my spine and get broadcasted right into my consciousness.
My contact is scared, because there’s a pair of Iwakura thugs in my cubbyhole right now, holding a gun to my wife’s head. She’s bound and gagged, and on the floor. My kids are somewhere else, thank God. The goons are standing tall, in their expensive polyfiber suits. They told me to go out there and tell the cops there’s nothing to report, and maybe they’d let her live. So I told him.
No, wait, wait - He told me. Him; his; it’s his fear, his wife, his cubbyhole. Not mine. I’m not him. I’m not the one whose wife is being held hostage. I’m just another cop on the beat.
Sometimes I think I’m tempted to. I think Tomoko’s tempted, too. I try to respect her privacy. I try not to go digging around in her head, but there are some things you just can’t avoid.
My contact turns around and goes back inside and shuts the door. Tomoko and I go into the alley around the side of the building. Once we’re out of sight, I string an F/O wire from my neural jack and give the other end to Tomoko, because if this is an Iwakura ambush, they’ve probably got the area rigged for wireless surveillance. She jacks in; two hostiles with hostages, I say. Standard two-man breach and clear. She doesn’t ask me how I know, bless her. She just nods, and circles around the block. I know generally where the thugs are in the building – the cubbies are tiny, there’s not a whole lot of options. Besides, the cubes in this part of Mezzanine are standardized in layout, and back when I was with MLSE, we did endless practice drills storming these things.
Thirty seconds, and Tomoko’s back, flanking the entrance to the cubby, right in its blind spot. She slips a tiny pellet under the door which emits a tiny flash of light, way below the visible spectrum. Meanwhile, I’m putting a clip full of hollowpoint rounds into my service piece and disengaging the safety. Castigator would be better, but I can’t risk them punching through the ferrocrete walls and hitting a civilian in next cubby over.
The sonar ping shows me a flashframe still image of the whole situation. One thug is peering out the peephole in the front door; Tomoko’s in his blindspot. The other is holding an imported .44 to the wife’s head while my contact pleads with him. Tomoko and I broke our hardline when she ran around the building, so we fall back to hand signals. She nods and preps a flashbang. I count down on my fingers; three, two , one…
The problem is, we’re partners. We’re with each other all the time when we’re on the job, so we bump into each other couple of times a day. In the lunch line at the cafeteria, or sitting in the Archives room huddled over an old-fashioned surveillance monitor, or coming out of the narrow corridor near the locker rooms at the end of the day. She’s tempted; she’s in my head, so I’m tempted. Like I said, some surface thoughts don’t even need physical contact to pick them up.
I whirl and kick in the door; it catches Thug #1 clean in the face and he staggers back. Tomoko hurls in the flashbang and dashes in after it; the visible and EM burst temporarily fries Thug #2’s optics; that buys enough time for Tomoko to put a shot clean through his forehead. The one that got hit by the door tries to draw a gun on her, but I step into the apartment and empty my clip into his back. With a flick of my thumb, I re-engage the safety. Then the adrenaline finally kicks in.
Adrenaline makes you do stupid things, makes you break your own rules. One of my rules is “never ghost-dive into a dying man.” But I try it anyway. I drop to one knee by the man I shot, and even as he drowns on the blood spilling into his lungs, I string F/O from his jack to mine. The cable’s only for show, though; the real action is all analog. I press my hand against the back of his neck, skin to skin contact, and dive through his mind. I’m looking for the warehouse; I’m looking for the Iwakura bosses; I’m looking for anything that will help me get back at the bastards who kidnapped me and screwed up my brain. But there’s nothing to find, this guy’s just hired muscle.
And he’s dying.
I break out into a sweat as I yank the hardline and pull my hand away, but it’s too late; the last throes of his nervous system leap across the gap, and now my brain thinks I’m dying. My vision goes white, my mouth tastes like blood, and my heart stops. I slump against the doorframe, and sink to the ground, spraining my ankle on the way down, my medstat daemon dinging insistently in my ear.
“Fight it, Genny.”
That’s all she says. Fight it, Genny. Her hand closes around my twitching fingers, and I’m again seeing myself through her eyes. Damn, I look terrible. All the blood drained out of my face; just like a corpse. I squeeze her hand, watching the color creep back into my cheeks, and I feel a little guilty for holding the contact open so long. I pull myself up, push Tomoko out of my head, and limp back outside. I don’t even try to fake a smile. We’d both see right through it. Medstat logs show that my EKGs went flat for nearly three seconds.
I’m tempted too, I guess. But… I can’t even imagine what it would be like to be with someone, now that the slightest touch puts them in my head.
We were lucky; two bad guys down, and no collateral damage. Tomoko calls MLSE for backup, and soon after that a pair of heavily armed Ops guys hustle my shellshocked contact and his terrified wife out of the building and into a van. Another van is going to track down their kids. Clearance or no, we’re going to get this man to a safehouse in Upper, and we’re going to do it tonight.
Of course, that means more paperwork, more online AARs to fill out. It’s going to be pretty late tonight before I get off work, and even later before Tomoko and I leave the bar. Little Rebecca will be fast asleep by the time I get home. Rachel will be awake, waiting for me – she always waits, even though she usually pretends she’s asleep. I usually play along. I’ll grab a blanket and pass out on the couch, like I always do.
It’s bad enough that I lose myself walking through crowds. It’s bad enough even just shaking someone’s hand. But… to put my arms around someone, to throw away all the walls? I can’t. I just… can’t think about that right now.
And when I wake up in the morning, I’ll find that someone came out in the middle of the night and threw another blanket on. I'll fold up both blankets and put them in the closet, and then strap on my gun and head right back to the office.
