Eye of the Monster

"I know it's been hard for you," Dawson continued, ignoring the girl's objections. "I know you've been abused. But I can make it better. You haven't done anything wrong yet--I know this is true because if you had, you wouldn't be struggling with it now."

Dawson took a step forward, prompting the girl to take one back, pointing with the L36 like it was a magic wand that could keep away good will. "Shut the frag up! You don't know a fragging thing about me!"

At that moment Dawson lunged forward, using the superior reach of her arm to grab the barrel of the L36 and rip it out of the girl's grasp. She cried out and stumbled back, shielding her face with both hands as Dawson looked at the weapon.

The safety was still on. She ejected the clip and saw that it was loaded with 9-millimeter rounds which she quickly scattered across the floor with motions of her right thumb. Without looking she pulled the slide off the pistol's body and then dropped all three pieces onto the floor.

She looked back to the girl cowering at the end of the hall. "Willing to talk to me now?"

The girl fell onto her backside and tried to crawl away. When she ran out of space to retreat, she clumsily pulled the cyberdeck off of her back and bared her teeth at Dawson.

"Let's see how fragging talkative you are with your chrome burning hot, fraggin' pawn!"

Her fingers tapped furiously over the keys on the cyberdeck. Dawson put her hands on her hips and stared at her.

After several seconds, the girl's brows drew low. "Wha... how... Why isn't your cyberware showing up?!"

Dawson said, "I haven't got any."

Sheer terror stole across the girl's features then and she dropped her deck to her lap, covering her head with her arms. Dawson sighed and closed in on her, gently seizing her by the shoulders.

"Come on."

"Nooo! Let me go! I didn't do anything! Let me gooo!!"

Forcing the girl to sit upright, Dawson questioned her more sternly. "Hey, look at me. What's your name?"

The only response was frag you! Dawson pursed her lips.

"What does Reymont intend to do to me?"

Frag you!!

This was going nowhere. She seized the girl--who weighed next to nothing--under the arms and stood up with her, walking over towards the water fountain and setting her down gently. Then she ripped out one of the longer water hoses and tied it around the girl's wrists, binding them together and tethering her to the old machine which was attached to the wall.

"I'm going to go downstairs," Dawson explained, "And make a telephone call to Lone Star. I'm going to tell them I think I have a suspect in custody and they're going to send a patrol car here. I'm not going to be here when they show up, but you are. Now you can take your chances with them or you can take them with me."

Frag you!

"If you change your mind," Dawson said, "Just call out. I'll hear you."

As she got up and made for the stairs, the girl started to cry.

When she reached the first floor Dawson took off her hat to run her hands through her hair. Replacing it she walked towards the monument where the matrix reception would be best and began reaching into her pocket to retrieve her commpad.

A suppressed bang traveled out through the cool night air. Dust from the cracked and faded concrete flared up just in front of Dawson's right foot.

She stopped in her tracks. That had been a shot from a Ranger Arms SM-5, the most accurate rifle in the world. An assassin's weapon. Whoever had just shot at her had missed on purpose.

Dawson put her hands up in the air.

She had them up for about ten seconds when a pair of headlights appeared in the driveway of the shattered building. A long black Chrysler 300 flowed smoothly and casually up to the walkway leading into the open-air lobby, stopping as if its passenger hadn't a care in the world. A bruiser with a CAS tattoo emerged from the front of the limo and made his way to the rear, opening the door for Kane Reymont to get out.

Every time she'd ever seen Reymont, Dawson had wanted to shoot him. He had a shootable face, like the kind that belonged to people who only played villains in old films. But rather than make an honest career as a heel in entertainment, Reymont had decided to do wrong in real life and for that she hated him. The man was carrying a can topped with orichalcum the size of a fucking hand grenade. Few people would flaunt such wealth in any context, let alone in public. Megiddo would have scoffed at the garishness of it.

She kept her arms up as Reymont and his bodyguard approached. And like all the most wicked people, he smiled with good cheer as he came close.

"Detective," he boomed sweetly, "Fancy meeting you here. You are a creature of habit, are you not? Warned, over and over to let sleeping dogs lie and yet here you are, unable to give up the chase."

"Someone has to protect this city," Dawson shot back. "I'd think you and the rest of the city council would appreciate my dedication."

"Ohh, rest assured," Reymont said, "We have the best interests of the populace at heart, Miss Dawson. Even if they don't fully realize it."

"You'll never convince me you have a heart."

At this Reymont only grinned indulgently. "In a month's time I will own this city," he declared, "And in a year I will own all of California."

"You're even more deluded than I thought," Dawson marveled. "San Francisco hasn't had a mayor since the occupation and California hasn't had a governor since it was kicked out of the union. You think you're going to change that, even if you manage to lie your way into saying it was your funding that caught Ionfist?"

"Now detective," Kane said chidingly, "I would think you of all people would appreciate a strong leader in a time like this. People are in the market for simple solutions, not idealism. Miss Culdite understands that, and I hope your friend Detective Brandt soon will as well."

"And Presscamp?" she said bitterly. "He's one suckerpunch from singing your name, Reymont. Everyone is going to know the Yakuza paid you to get him out. It'll be you in the chair next when that goes public."

Reymont only chuckled again, stroking his bearded chin. "Such details will be sadly glossed over in the coming weeks, detective. The cost of restoring order to San Francisco will be high, but restored it shall be. You, however, will not live to see it."

A third man appeared from the stairway where Dawson had come down. Bearded, wearing a hat and circular classes, dressed in what looked like hand-made leather clothing and a coat. And he had in his hands the SM-5.

He trained it on her as Reymont started to walk away, his grinning bodyguard in tow.

"Deal with her," Kane said to the man. He pulled the slide back on the sizable rifle which he then pointed her way.

Reymont got back into his limousine and it was driving away in minutes, leaving the two of them standing in the midst of the monument with about thirty feet between them. Far too much distance to try to rush him, and not nearly enough cover to run from a gun that accurate. The very notion of getting into a scramble right now with her ribs so recently broken was not an attractive one.

The man lifted the rifle into a firing position and started to walk towards her.

She called out, "Can't hit me from over there?"

He replied in a raspy voice, with a heavy Texan accent. "My Pa told me once that if'n you're gonna take everything from someone, look 'em in the eyes while you do it."

He moved slowly, mindful of the sensitivity of the rifle in his hands and watchful of Dawson's motions.

-

Up above on the second floor Bells was chewing on the old plastic hose binding her wrists together. She was about halfway through getting out when the sound of whirring rotor blades caught her attention.

She shrank from the noise and looked around frantically. Floating about ten feet above her was an old Lone Star drone, the kind that shot concussion grenades and sprayed bio-med gel all over cops who got hit in the head with rocks or something similar.

Frag! If she could access the cyberdeck hanging on her lower back she'd fry the thing and get the hell out of here! That cowboy could deal with the pawn on his own, no doubt, and then she'd still get paid...

Something on the drone's forward display flashed and there was a flash of static in her visual feed and a wave of dizziness through her head.

"Ugh... W-what..."

A hack! The drone operator was trying to hack her! If she could reach her cyberdeck she could fight back, but with her hands tied she was fragging helpless!

Another flash and rumble between her ears, this time accompanied by an image.

That pawn... That looming cop with the hat...

Flash.

Something was pulling at her senses. Flooding them.

More images of that woman... without a shirt... Her hair, flowing around her shoulders.

Flash.

Muscles, beaded with sweat. A feeling of warmth, and safety, and completeness. Like curling up beside a heat vent on the street on a cold night. Bells needed it. Her awareness of her surroundings faded almost immediately.

Words entered into her visual feed, pulsing and strobing. Blocking out her view of the world in front of her.

I am totally loyal to Impulse Dawson... I'm a model citizen by her standards... I believe entirely in everything she says is right...

Bells went limp against the water fountain, drooling from one corner of her mouth.

-

Dawson had gotten to shoot an SM-5 once, during the occupation. It was an almost criminally accurate weapon, and definitely a comically fragile one. If you turned it too fast on a stand the barrel would warp and you'd have to spend an hour recalibrating it. But if you had someone on the business end you could kill them without breaking a sweat.

So why then was the man in the hat and glasses sweating as he edged closer to her? For a hitman he was being surprisingly reticent.

He spoke in his raspy voice. "What're you to him?"

It would be like Reymont, to keep his hired hands in the dark. She replied, "I'm a detective for Lone Star. I've gotten in his way a few times in the past. One time too many, I guess."

The man mumbled something below his breath that might have been Jesus. His mouth was quivering but his hands were steady as a statue's.

Dawson asked, "What does he have on you?"

"My brother," the man said, voice nearly breaking. "He's on death row."

She inclined her head slightly. "And Reymont promised to get him off it, that it?"

"He ain't promised me nothing," came the growled reply.

"Ah," she noted. "This is how people like him work, you know? You dip a toe in--kill one person for him to save another--and then what do you have to do for him to keep this from coming to light?"

"And it never ends," he concluded. His head shook desperately. "But he is my mother's oldest son. My brother."

"And you can't bear the thought of him dying on the chair," she supplied. The man barely contained a sob. "You haven't done anything yet. Fired a shot, nothing more. I can help you."

His finger worked on the trigger of the SM-5. "Help me how?"

"I know an attorney. A good one, and a moral one. If your brother is anything other than a mass murderer, he can appeal to get off of death row. It's not hopeless."

The man took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Who're you?"

Dawson tilted her head slightly to one side. "Not from San Francisco, I take it. My face has been all over the news trids."

"Don't watch no news," he said. "Don't trust no one won't tell me their name."

"Dawson," she said evenly. He licked his lips, swallowed audibly. She continued, "I can tell by the turmoil you've never killed anyone, because you wouldn't be struggling with it if you had. Take it from me, as someone who has killed a lot of people, you don't want to start."

Something glistened below the corner of the man's glasses, a streak of moisture escaping down his greasy cheek and disappearing into his bushy beard.

Slowly he started to lower the rifle.

For the second time that night a shot rang out. Not from the gun in his hands but from the front of the lobby, a loud and messy gunshot from an Ares Predator. The forty-five caliber bullet hit the bearded man in the shoulder, tearing a hole in his coat, grazing the flesh just above the bone and sending him toppling over. The rifle fell from his hands clattered to the ground below. His hat fell from his head.

Dawson shot a glance to the shattered facade of the building to see who had fired on him. Pickers was standing there with his gun in both hands, smartlinked to the datajack in his wrist.

"Idiot!"

She lunged forward and fell on the man who was lying on the ground clutching his shoulder. "It's alright," she said, "It was just a graze. There's a lot of blood but it's easy to stop." She reached into her coat to grip a fistful of her shirt, then sharply pulled to rip it free from her neckline. Then she pressed the bunched-up fabric into his hand, between fingers and shoulder.

The man's other hand groped around on the ground beside him.

Pickers came closer, Predator still pointed at them. "He's going for his gun!"

"He's reaching for his hat you fucking dumbass! That gun would be more likely to shoot backwards than straight right now!"

The man muttered something and Dawson turned her attention back to him. "What? Hey, I'm right here. What was that?"

"Tell my mama," he whispered, "I did my best."

"Hey! Don't talk like that, you're not going to die. No one is going to die here tonight, alright? You're going to be okay."

Her trauma kit was in the car with Instinct so there was nothing she could do for him right away. She looked over her shoulder to see Pickers was just a few meters away, Predator still half-raised and in one hand.

"Put that fucking thing away! What the hell are you doing here, Jason?"

Pickers sounded flustered. "I'm here to help you, Imp! Reymont was trying to trap you!"

"Yeah, I figured that out already. I don't know what the fuck you see that chrome eye of yours but I was in the process of talking him down!" She paused, then rewound to what he'd said. "How did you know what was happening here?"

He holstered his gun and hesitated before speaking. "Someone at Lone Star is a Humanis member. Reymont asked us to spy on a detective there and when he reported a meeting, you showed up the next day with a wound on your face. So he told me about it."

The clerk at the precinct building. What a tangled web San Francisco was.

"I recognize Reymont's brand of conveyance so I followed one of his limos here."

"Thanks so much for coming to my aid," she spat with deadpan delivery. "Next time wait to see where the ball is going to land on the wheel before you pull the trigger."

Dawson had a complicated opinion of Jason Pickers as he was today, but she would never have expected him to look embarrassed in a moment like this. He was always the I did what I had to do and Who the fuck are you to judge me? type. Instead he averted his gaze, clearly ashamed.

She let out a slow breath. "I'm sorry. Thank you, Jason. I wasn't expecting any help and if I had been it definitely wouldn't have been from you. And that makes it better."

She used one hand to grab the bearded man's hat and put it on his chest. He took hold of it when he felt the leather in his fingers. "Hey," she said to him, "What's your name?"

He coughed as he spoke. "Dyne. Stapleton."

"I'm sorry my idiot friend shot you, Dyne. I hope this won't change anything, between you and I?"

The man turned his head to the left. He mumbled, "Rather die than be a murderer."

"Then you're too good a man for this world to lose you," she whispered.

She looked back up at Pickers. "Do you know what this man is?"

He frowned. "A loose end for Reymont."

"He's a witness. He's testimony. I'd be willing to bet he's a SINner if he's from where I think he is. That means he has to live if we're ever going to get a conviction."

At this Jason scoffed. "You've been in courtrooms too long if you think that's ever going to happen to someone like Reymont."

She stood up and grabbed Pickers by the collar of his jacket. "And you've been out on the streets too long if you think shooting people is the solution to all the world's problems. You came here to help me? Then help me. Take this guy to a DocWagon."

Dawson bent over to grab hold of Dyne by his waist and stand him up. Then she began shifting him onto to Jason.

"What? Why me? He's your witness."

"Because you shot him, and there's another one around here somewhere that I have to find. And apologize."

Jason was incredulous. "What? Come on!"

"Apologize, Jason!"

"Ah for... Hey man, I'm sorry. Alright? I'm sorry I shot you. You had your gun on my old friend and I... I was thinking with my heart, not my head."

Dyne swallowed heavily and then grumbled, "Apology accepted."

He let himself be passed to Jason's shoulder. Before ambling away, Pickers lingered and said, "I need to talk to you about something else, later. I... I have a favor to ask."

She reached into her left pocket and pulled out the Lone Star scrip, pushing it into Jason's available hand. "Make sure he gets patched up," Dawson said, starting to walk towards the stairs, "And I'll owe you one."

Pickers grunted. "Come on, man. I think I saw a DocWagon two blocks over."

Dawson doubted that the girl from before had the discipline or even the technical knowledge to put the L36 back together, and she didn't have the required athleticism to scale the building. But she probably had one thing of some potential utility, which was nothing to lose. Dawson knew all too well how dangerous that could be. She lef the Accelerator in its holster; even a low-velocity should could prove fatal to someone so malnourished. And she could intimidate without a gun.

To her genuine surprise the girl was right where Dawson had left her, tied up to the old water fountain and not moving. A strange feeling of Deja Vu fell over her as she approached quietly and she was reminded of a similar incident where she was approaching a decker who seemed to be in a tight spot. Young, desperate, on the edge. Treated like disposable trash by their supposed betters. The familiarity sped Dawson's steps and her heart was beating faster when she knelt down beside the girl.

She wasn't plugged into anything except her cyberdeck and it didn't seem to be melting. The girl was drooling on herself from one corner of her mouth and her eyes were shut, but her breathing was even and deep. It looked more like some kind of hack-induced trance than bio-feedback.

Touching the girl on the shoulder, Dawson spoke softly. "Hey. Hey, can you hear me?"

The girl's eyes opened at once, a far-away cast to them. She muttered atonally.

"I am totally loyal to Impulse Dawson..."

A blush spread across Dawson's face immediately. "What? Hey, snap out of it... Come on, wake up."

She snapped her fingers in front of the girls' eyes a few times. Her only response was another mantra.

"I want her to sort out all of my issues... Crave her touch... need her guidance..."

Instinct often pointed out that Dawson wanted people to see her naked and she wore clothes just to be polite. The creature knew her heart at every level and she had to admit that was true. She would display herself brazenly if she thought the world could handle it. But she imagined the embarrassment she was feeling now was the sort of thing that other people felt when someone saw them naked. She didn't want other people to know at a glance that she was a sexual tyrant.

Fucking hell... Where is she getting this from?

Hoping perhaps to keep the girl from droning anything else that risked exciting her, Dawson seized her by the chin and spoke in a firmer tone. "Listen to my voice. Wake up."