The Worthy Enemy

"Don't let anyone in," she instructed, "Not even me."

"Hey," Avalanche complained, "You can't leave without giving me a kiss!"

Despite Shelara trying to hold her back, the troll lumbered up to Not-Dawson and loomed over her. The dark-haired woman regarded her apologetically.

"I think that would be a bad idea," she said.

"Don't care!" Avalanche lunged forward and wrapped Not-Dawson in a hug that held her still and allowed her to place her lips directly over the woman's mouth. They turned slightly to the side and their noises of affection sounded so genuine that Alenia began to feel a stab of envy.

Avalanche's eyes opened up in surprise a moment later; she stood up straight and pulled back from Not-Dawson's face, her lips formed into a perfect 'O' around a prehensile meat tendril emerging from the woman's open mouth. It retreated from the troll's throat alongside a small stream of drool, settling back into Not-Dawson's mouth and taking on the appearance of an ordinary tongue.

The troll's two cocks were standing at attention. Not-Dawson looked at them with an impish smile and palmed both just below their heads, then pressed a single digit between them at the base, making Avalanche squirm and hump thoughtlessly in her direction.

"Maybe not as bad an idea as I thought," Not-Dawson said. The elves were staring in stunned horror as she turned towards the door and made her way out. Avalanche remained standing in place, touching her mouth with one hand and one of her erections with the other.

Jastira was the first to speak. "I... I think I know which one is the fake."

= = =

Dawson stopped briefly at the display board in the lobby of the precinct building to examine the CFS Most Wanted list. Pickers was #8 now. Above him were a couple of Cutters who looked like complete fools destined for a career going in and out of prison. Their photographs showed one smoking four cigarettes at once and trying to drink from a bottle; the other had a glass in his hand and looked marginally smarter, but not nearly as smart as he probably considered himself.

At #2 was a drone-captured still of the armored suit people had dubbed Neon Justice. A stupid name, and a stupid obsession on the public's part. #1 was the infamous Bloody Tusks warlord, Ivan Ionfist. The image for him was a still taken from footage of a raid on a California Rangers armory three weeks ago of the ork flipping over a truck with one hand. They'd stolen a ton of military-grade equipment and Ionfist hadn't surfaced since. He was letting his minions terrorize San Francisco while he plotted whatever his next big score was.

An older Japanese fellow in shabby clothes was seated on a bench beside the display board and paid keen attention to Dawson. So keen she felt he must have recognized her, though she was sure she hadn't seen him before. She nodded and he nodded back, smiling slightly. Strange.

When she arrived at Sokoth's office doorway he didn't stand. "Come in," the ork said, tersely. "Close the door."

Once she was in, he gestured to the couch along the wall across from his desk. "Sit down." He knew she liked to stand, so this must have been serious indeed. Sokoth looked to have gotten no more sleep than she herself had been getting lately.

"Where were you last night?"

"At home," she said, "In bed." That was true, eventually.

"Got anyone who will swear to that who doesn't sleep in that same bed?"

Dawson didn't let her concern show in her voice or face. "Am I wanted for something, Max?"

For a long moment he simply looked at her, as if trying to judge her sincerity, or perhaps something even deeper. "Got something you should see."

Sokoth tapped a few buttons on his desk and produced a flat holographic projection of a video feed. It appeared to be a security camera's view of the interior of a convenience store, where two men dressed in the terrible Cutters fashion were busy ransacking the place. A third was pointing a gun at the shopkeeper standing behind the counter.

The holographic readout produced a few details of import. It identified the name of the store as Cranby's and listed its address, named its insurance company and also produced a pop-up box displaying the SIN of the shopkeeper along with a small on-file portrait. It was the man she'd seen in the lobby, smiling at her. The three Cutters were tagged as SINless.

"This was last night?" she guessed. Sokoth nodded.

The footage kept going and soon a fourth person came into view. A tall, broad woman with dark hair, totally naked. One of Dawson's brows went up, then both when the pop-up started to display information.

"Recognize that SIN?" Sokoth questioned.

"Yeah," Dawson said, "It's mine." The portrait on-file came up as her own.

"Quite a resemblance, too. At least I assume it is--I won't lie to you by saying I never wondered what you looked like naked but this isn't how I wanted to find out."

The Cutter gunman pointed his weapon--probably a Colt America L36--at the woman from short range. She immediately grabbed the gun from his hand and disassembled it. When he tried to stab her with a balisong she used her knee and elbow to break his arm, putting him on the ground. That was what Dawson would have done.

"You can't think this was me," Dawson said evenly.

"Oh no, I don't," Sokoth said. "Keep watching, this is the best part."

One of the Cutter bagmen decided to try his luck and took a swing at the woman with his prosthetic arm. She grabbed him by the wrist, held him by the elbow and then opened her mouth too wide and bit clean through the limb without any apparent difficulty.

Fucking hell. "That's not in my arsenal."

"I know Knight Errant likes to cook up some pretty inventive weapons but you've never seemed the type for combat braces."

The rest of the video was fairly straightforward. The three cutters scrambled out of the store only because the woman let them run and then a short time later she walked out wearing a faded leather jacket and denim pants, stopping only to pick up a knife from the floor and stow it in her pocket.

"She didn't hurt the shopkeeper?" Dawson asked.

"No, he's fine," Sokoth said. "He said she was extremely polite to him, even apologized for making a mess. He also said she introduced herself as a cop."

Dawson sat back against the wall and thought for several moments. "Who else has seen this?"

"Just myself and the officer who took the report. I wanted to run it by you before I sent it down to insurance, see if you had any insights to offer."

She shrugged, genuinely stumped. "I wasn't at fucking Cranby's, I can promise you that. If anyone but you were showing me this I'd think it were a trideo and I should sue for the use of my likeness."

"Protocol says I should issue an APB for a person of your description because someone is out there walking around with your face, your skills, your biometrics and your credentials and they're not you. What am I supposed to do about that, Dawson?"

Taking off her hat and running her left hand through her hair, Dawson tried to set her mind to the task. "I... Well... First things first, we need to find whoever this is. Any sightings since?" Sokoth shook his head.

"She was naked but she didn't stay that way so whoever this was must have been in an accident or something."

Sokoth folded his hands over his desk. "You got a twin sister you didn't know about, maybe?"

Dawson made a face and exhaled through her nose. "I am as surprised by this as you are, Max. Maybe this is a work of magic or some kind of scheme to... I don't know, ruin my reputation or something. I've got a lot of enemies."

"Seems to me," Sokoth said, "She's out there making you look good. A regular walking billboard with bite even better than her bark. I'd offer her a badge if she didn't claim to already have one."

"I need to... I need to go home. That's the first thing I would do if I were in an accident. Get clothes, gear, heal up." She stood. "I need to check on my girls."

"We're not done," Sokoth said, looking up at her. "There's something else I need from you. I need you to figure out how this bastard Neon Justice is."

This topic suddenly seemed far less important to Dawson than it had before she walked in here, but she could tell it was still important to Sokoth. "What makes you think I can figure out something like that?"

"Because you've got an ear to the street, Dawson. You know people out there, people talk to you. They talk to you because they know you'll listen to what they tell you. They won't talk to us. So this boombox-carrying jackass that's making us look bad, if anyone can find him it's you."

Dawson tried hard not to bite her lip. If anyone were to look in the trunk of the Firebird they'd find the suit disassembled into its portable parts.

"I don't think I'm the right person to do that," Dawson said carefully, "But I can keep my ears open. Tell you if I get any leads."

"That'll do until we get this impersonator business sorted out. Brandt comes back from his three-hour-tour today, I'll stick him on this."

Fuck. Brandt was a competent detective. It wouldn't be long until he started connecting the dots.

All of this seemed completely insignificant now compared to the idea that someone was out there with her face and her SIN. She was opening the door to the hallway when Sokoth called out to her one more time.

"Things are bad out there, Dawson. I know you've got your duties to Knight Errant and your girlfriends to consider but we need all the help we can get."

She lingered in the doorway. "I won't leave you hanging, Max."

"I'm relieved to hear that," the ork said sternly. "I don't think my heart could take it if you tried to cut us out again like you did with the raid on Sabbath. We're in this together, Dawson. That's how the force works."

= = =

Dawson was on her way out of the precinct building when someone called out from across the lobby.

"Detective Impulse Dawson."

She turned towards the source: a Japanese man in his mid twenties, chestnut brown hair done in a tight pompadour style popularized by the yakuza of the last thirty years. His outfit was a padded white coat that extended far past his waist, stopping just above the tops of his boots; a belt kept the article tight to his body and gloves covered his hands.

He walked in Dawson's direction slowly, like he'd been anticipating the meeting for a long time though she had no recollection of his face.

"Do I know you?" she asked.

"We have never met before," the man said, his English fluent. "But I know you well... Detective Dawson. Before that it was Captain Dawson, was it not? Of Knight Errant Security Services."

She didn't like discussing this topic with people at the best of times and this was one of the worst in recent memory. "I'm in a hurry," she said to him. "What do you want?"

"My name is Goro Ishikawa," the man said. That family name... That she recognized. "You knew my father."

Goro's right hand tightened into a fist. Beneath the creaking of leather there was something else... the whining of servos moving. The dull click of actuators inside a cybernetic arm. A blade sliding out of its recess.

Dawson lunged forward, grabbing the front of Ishikawa's coat and forcing him backwards. A long steel edge erupted from his coat sleeve, extending beside his hand and reaching almost to the floor. Before he could lift it she drove him to the wall, slamming him against the Most Wanted board right next to Neon Justice.

Goro tried to lift his sword arm up but Dawson pinned it to the wall with one hand. Lone Star officers around them reacted to the sudden violence, guns coming out of their holsters and cries of alarm sounding.

"What do you want?" Dawson asked again, one arm across Ishikawa's neck.

"Satisfaction," he hissed. "For my father."

"I didn't kill your father," Dawson whispered, shaking her head.

"I know," Goro said. "You should have."

Her brows drew low as three cops burst out from the hallway leading to the processing area. "What?"

"Do you know what happened to him after the occupation, detective?" She didn't. "The Imperial Diet had him executed. Knight Errant shared the recording of his interrogation when they surrendered him. Not only was he a renegade in following Saito but you made him a failure. You and Thomas Gaines."

"Detective," someone called from several meters away, "What's the problem here?"

Dawson ignored the inquiry. "Your dad and his comrades lined kids up in front of ditches and fed them bullets," she said severely. "Execution was too good for him."

"He was a monster," Goro agreed.

"Then why the fuck are you upset at me?"

"You did not kill him," Ishikawa reiterated, "And the last accomplishment of his miserable life was to stain mine with his shame. If he had died, we could have made up any story we wanted. I could have been a hero's son but instead your mercy poisoned my future."

"You're not a hero's son," Dawson growled, "And if you've seen the video then you should know mercy wasn't in my playbook that day."

"It was a ploy," Goro sneered. "Gaines himself admitted as much!"

"Gaines might have been playing a trick but I sure wasn't. If my teammates hadn't pulled me off of him I guess you'd be Emperor Ishikawa right now instead of a traitor's bastard. Is that what you think?"

She took her right arm off of his throat and let go of his wrist, turning away.

The sounds of the cyber-sword scraping on the concrete below accompanied Goro speaking. "We are not through, detective."

The lone star officers cocked their guns and started shouting orders to stand down. Dawson spun and gripped Goro by the throat, slamming him back into the Wanted Board with more force than before.

"You think your anger makes you powerful?" Dawson asked him. "Or is it those things attached to your shoulders that do it? Do you think they make you tough? Do you think they make you dangerous?"

She pulled the Accelerator out of its holster and held the barrel up to Goro's chin. He didn't so much as flinch.

"You don't know what danger is."

Dawson turned away again, holstering her gun. "Don't ever approach me again," she said.

As she was leaving the building through the main doors, she saw Sokoth standing on the third floor railing overlooking the lobby, watching her leave.

= = =

A Bloody Tusk loitering outside of a cafe was kind enough to lend Dawson his three-wheeler after she asked to see his registration and he pulled a machete on her. It carried her north out of Sunnyvale and towards Haight-Ashbury where someone who looked just like her was wearing her badge and hat, meeting with someone she considered a friend.

Three kilometers away from her destination she began to hear a voice. Something guttural, distant, booming and yet silent at the same time. To hear it was disorienting to her and she immediately pulled her commandeered vehicle to the side of the street when it started.

Something... something was calling, not to her specifically but calling in a tone, in a language that she could perceive... mostly. Finding the look-alike felt more important to her but there was something dire in the beckoning she was hearing. It was the scream of something impossibly furious by design and it promised an endless eternity of suffering if it was not heeded.

For several minutes she resisted, the call continuing ceaselessly until finally it was painful in the core of her to fight it. She started the three-wheeler back up and took a sharp turn off the street. Twenty-five seconds later the Firebird blazed by where she'd been stopped.

Following the call took her to a warehouse property in Portrero Hill. Surrounded by a chain-linked, barbed-wire topped fence, the sign beside the guard house identified it as ProteinBloc, in smaller words below it Regional Distribution Center. The noise that had drawn her here had gone silent but there were signs of activity in the facility. The opening and closing of bay doors, the rumbling of engines and the back-up warning beeps of forklifts.

Though there was no one visible at the guard house the sliding gate was equipped with an alarm horn, so Dawson elected to breach the perimeter near the northeast corner of the property by way of a hole in the fence she created with her teeth. Not since her youth in New York had she ever needed to enter a place without announcing herself; a gun and a badge opened a lot of doors. Her urge to hide and surveil the premises stemmed from the strange nature of the summons to this place. She would reconnoiter, determine if there was a crime and then if so expose it. Whatever else was going on, she was still an officer of the law.

This was the second time the scent saved it, or rather saved her as this was now how she thought of herself.

Once inside and close to the edge of the building's exterior wall, Dawson checked the Taurus Omni-6 she'd taken from Pickers. The revolver had two barrels, a larger one and a smaller one just beneath it. Both were fed by the same cylinder, which upon pushing out she could see had both an inner ring and an outer one that could rotate independently of each other and switched with a small knob on one side of the gun.

The smaller bore chambers were loaded with.32 caliber rounds, ideal for injuring targets with limb shots that wouldn't immediately be life-threatening. The outer ring however was loaded with.44 magnum cartridges, more likely to take a limb off entirely. They'd be of limited use to her.

Gun in hand, she furtively proceeded around the corner into the cargo yard of the warehouse and took cover behind the concrete barrier at the edge of a loading dock's decline ramp. Peeking over it she saw that there were almost a dozen box trucks pulled up to the open bay doors of ProteinBloc.

The first thing that struck her was the immense variance of the figures at work. Rather than being dressed in standardized corporate uniforms of some sort they were a wide and diverse mix of seemingly every type of person that could be found in a place like San Francisco. A man in overalls was carrying one end of a long plastic sack from inside the facility, aided by a woman in a business suit. Standing in the back of a truck was an ork in the outfit of the Bloody Tusks was carefully accepting small round cylinders of something crimson and viscous from a dwarf dressed in a turban and black robe.

Among them there was absolutely no disharmony, no slacking and no communication. It was as if everyone knew precisely what to do without needing to be told. They could hear something, something her ears weren't capable of perceiving but which something else in her could.

She watched as the work continued, and felt some sort of pull. The tasks to which they'd been set were of import, critical to the design. The meat, the materials... They were integral to the next steps. But steps to what?

Something in the hands of two workers gave way, an old shoe coming off in a tight grip and allowing the contents of a plastic sleeve to spill free. Amid a small stream of still-wet blood, a human leg spilled out to hang briefly in view.

Dawson was hovering on the edge of some intrinsic understanding, and right beside it was a sense of almost overwhelming revulsion. They were not at odds, but rather they were riding together in the same vehicle, suddenly moving much faster than could be considered wise. But which feeling had their hands on the wheel she was unable to determine. Perhaps it was one each.

The sound of a foot on the asphalt alerted her to the appearance of someone behind her. She spun, Taurus pointed forward at an immaculately dressed human man with slicked-back hair and a wide smile. Too wide, by far.

"Halt!" Her go-to word when pointing a weapon at someone. The man didn't move so she stood up and sidled away from the concrete barrier, putting the rest of the working figures in her field of vision.