ABC - Penance

Alvarez Apartment, South Bank District

The Carrier dropped us at the front entrance to my apartment building then drove off, after Ghost and I agreed to meet up at Headquarters around noon tomorrow. With Minke in tow I keyed us into the darkened lobby, only two small recessed lights throwing down some illumination.

Close to the entrance was the doorway into Hell, also known as the door of Mrs Avonmore’s apartment. As building supervisor she got free rental but the downside was her living space was tinier than mine. Right now a strip of light was visible beneath her closed door, accompanied by the muffled sounds of late night television.

Minke and I crept stealthily to the elevator and I keyed it open. We hustled inside and I hit the button for the third floor as quickly as I could. The car door closed and we ascended, letting me breathe out in a long sigh of relief.

“Why is she so scary, Luisa?” Minke asked me as the elevator pinged to announce we had arrived.

“Dunno” I answered. “But one time we had a tenant in 2-B who had a psychotic breakdown. He had indulged in too much Chem and was trying to force open the door into his neighbour’s apartment. She was scared out of her wits and I heard the commotion from my floor. By the time I got down there, Mrs Avonmore had arrived and put the guy in a chokehold. He was built like a Jack from the Guard and had combat Enhancements too. I am not sure if I could have taken him down, not without shooting him”

“What happened to the guy?” Minke said, all wide eyed.

“She choked him out, then dragged him into his apartment” I replied. We had arrived at my door so I tagged it open with my Smart Key. I gestured for Minke to enter and I followed her, closing the door behind us.

“Nobody knows what she did in there to the poor sucker, but the following day he was all polite and apologised to the girl in 2-A” I continued, flicking on the living room lights. “He turned out to be a nice enough guy once he got off the Chem. They got married last year and moved in together”

“With Mrs Avonmore?” gasped Minke incredulously.

“What? No, 2-A and 2-B got married. They had the reception up on the roof. It was a great party and Mrs Avonmore gave a little speech at the end”

“Wow!” Minke replied and sat down on my couch. “What did she say?”

“Clean up the confetti, you bastards” I said straight-faced. Minke laughed and I did too. I didn’t want to spoil the moment by telling her those were really her words.

=====

In my tiny bathroom, I had changed out of my uniform and washed the parts of my anatomy that weren’t broken, bruised or bandaged. Parts of me fell into all three categories, so I took another blue pill from my dwindling supply and ventured into the living room.

Minke was sprawled asleep on the couch, so I grabbed Bingo’s sleeping bag and laid it over the exhausted girl. I sat on the coffee table facing towards her and killed the lights using the remote. The bedroom light was on, with the door ajar so I had enough illumination to see her narrow face as she slept.

She really was beautiful, the pain and terror of the past couple days barely showing in this wan light. Her scarred hands and face would have put so many people off, yet to me they showed her strength. For all the ass-kicking the world had given her, she clung to life with a ferocity I had to admire.

If my daughter had lived, I’d have wanted her to be like Minke.

I left her sleeping and went to my own bed. It did not take long and soon I was fast asleep too.

=====

A soft yellow glow woke me, the Will o’Wisp hovering over the bed. I had my back to the bedroom door so I couldn’t see the time, but my inner clock told me it was probably three AM or thereabouts.

The thin covers were drawn back and a slender, warm body slipped in beside me. Minke’s arm curled around my waist as she spooned against me, her breasts pressed against my back. I should have been aroused with such a pretty girl in my bed. Instead I just felt satisfied and patted her hand on my stomach with my own.

“Goodnight, Minke” I whispered.

“G’nite Mama” she said drowsily. Soon enough her breathing slowed and she snuffled against my back.

The yellow ball of light dimmed away to nothing and my eyes closed once more.

Best damned night’s sleep I have ever had.

=====

Central Police Auxiliary Headquarters, Spitfield City

January 15th V27 (2047AD)

The office for External Investigations was a two room affair on the eight floor, tucked away at the back of the monolithic building. With only two officers on the books so far, I used one room and Ghost used the other. There was a connecting door between them and whenever I was in the office I propped it open.

Whenever Ghost came in, he knocked the wedge loose with his boot and shut the connecting door. If there had been the option I reckon he would have locked it too. Today the door was closed so I duly pulled it open and slid the wedge into place.

“Morning, Detective Gaunt” I called out cheerily into his office. Ghost looked up at me from his desk, the datapad lit up with schematics of some building.

“It’s afternoon, Inspector Alvarez” he replied in his flat monotone. I guess he was pissed at me, since I was half an hour late. This was not my fault, as Minke and I had overslept after the long day we had endured.

“Only just” I assured him and walked over to his desk and sat my uniformed butt on the corner. I had not collected my good suit from Mrs Wei-Fang yet so my old blue uniform shirt and pants was the only choice. Not even I would waltz into the Headquarters wearing my jeans and a T-shirt.

Ghost was dressed in a well cut suit made from dark grey fabric, with a blue tie knotted around his broad neck. He had an eye-patch covering the right cybernetic one, made from a mesh weave that still let him see out but hid the gleaming artificial device from view.

“You know, Ghost, you look like a Pirate Accountant with that eye-patch on” I said with a smile.

“I arrrr” he replied and I fell off the desk laughing.

=====

Ghost’s moment of rare levity had passed so I crowded around his side of the desk and checked out what was on his datapad.

“Are those the plans for Spitfield Automated Network and Distribution?” I asked. Ghost affirmed they were and we looked them over together. It was a big facility located in the Wash, a place I had driven and walked past a number of times but never entered. They ran tight security as I recalled so we never got called out to any incidents on their turf, which I mentioned to my partner.

“I ran a check through the records” Ghost said. “No call outs for any reason to the premises in the past two years”

“That is unusual for the Wash. Even the best guarded facilities have an attempted burglary a couple of times a year. Maybe they don’t report them?”

“Maybe they clean up any mess themselves to avoid people like us snooping around” Ghost responded.

“That is a very paranoid way of looking at things, Detective Gaunt” I smirked at him. “I like it”

Ghost appreciated my comment it seemed, as he gave the tiniest of smiles when he thought I couldn’t see his face. The big guy was positively warming up to me at last!

“When do we go and interview that security guard, Zeus Tubbs?” he asked me. I had contacted their head office on my way in this morning, so at least I could say I had been working before noon.

“He’s working the night shift today, from ten PM until dawn. They have scheduled a meeting for us at eleven tonight”

“Another late night for us then” Ghost responded. “Are you staying here until then?”

“Hell no. I am going to update the case files for Victor Kamarov then head home again. What about you?”

“I have some things to check out, so I can meet you at the warehouse around ten-thirty” he said.

Ghost went to close his datapad and I laid one hand over his much bigger one. He lifted his face to mine enquiringly.

“Was there something else, Alvarez?”

I hated to break the good mood that had been growing between us but I couldn’t let this go.

“Ghost, where did you disappear to last night at the camp?”

His expression turned cold and flat, all the warmth of the past half hour gone in an instant.

“What do you mean? I was scouting ahead of the team just like I was ordered to”

“Yeah, you were” I agreed. “I could not see you most of the time, but your transponder showed me where you were. Right up until you shocked that guy in the alleyway, then you vanished. I didn’t notice at the time because of all the other shit going on, but I have been reviewing the mission logs down in the Technical division”

“The transponders recorded our locations for all three teams, up until the EMP burst took out the Sentinels and the drone” I continued. “Except yours was offline before that time. It only became active again when you were in the service tunnel, coming to rescue me. It got snuffed out when the pulse took it down again”

“Must have been a faulty transponder” Ghost suggested evenly. “You should get it tested to see why it was only working intermittently”

“I can’t. I already asked the technicians about it. The burst cooked your transponder for good, so there is no way to test it now”

“I would never do anything to betray you, Alvarez” he stated in his flat tone.

“Thanks for reassuring me, but it wasn’t what I asked you” I retorted in the same flat manner. “I am guessing you saw something or someone that you wanted to investigate. Something you didn’t want me to know about”

Ghost dragged his hand away from underneath mine and stood up, forcing me to step back. He towered over me and I could feel that synthetic eye boring into me from behind the patch.

“I thought I saw someone. They were in a vantage point that overlooks the camp that I have used before. I decided to check it out in case they were a threat to the mission or to you Alvarez”

“I see” I replied, refusing to back away from his imposing presence. “Was there someone watching us?”

“It was nobody of consequence” he answered.

I really wanted to ask him some more about this, however I could tell from his last sentence he considered the matter closed. Pushing him further would undo any trust we had established between us and I dearly wanted to trust my partner.

“Okay, I can accept that for now. But at some point in the future we are coming back to this topic. Do you copy me, Detective Gaunt?”

“Copy that, Alvarez” he agreed.

=====

Alone in my office, I pulled up the files we already had for our Jacker. A data trawl by the Technical division had not found much even with his name and image.

Victor Kamarov had arrived in the Zone eight years ago, sponsored by Yuri Karachov, a local businessman who was also the Pakhan (Boss) of the Bratva. Kamarov was listed as a Security Consultant and was twenty five years old when he arrived, making him thirty three now.

There were significant gaps in his Ident records, which meant a very skilled Net Diver had deleted all the good stuff. Based on the limited data that remained, Victor would fly under the Police Auxiliary radar as someone of no real importance. Nobody of consequence I thought to myself, mimicking the words Ghost had used earlier.

I pushed that aside for now and concentrated on Victor. The technical officer who had accompanied the raid was still trawling the datapad we had secured. In the meantime the Forensics team were sifting the gear we had collected from his room, trying to trace the source of the weapons and ammunition.

With a curse of frustration I closed my datapad. I had to wait for more information and that was hard for an impatient bitch like me. What I needed was to distract myself so I checked the time. It was barely mid-afternoon and I had hours until I was scheduled to meet Ghost.

My phone was in my hands in a flash. First I dialled Jan to check she was home and ready for visitors. She gleefully agreed so next I called Minke.

“Hey Minke, it’s me” I said in a rush when she answered. “Are you still at the apartment? Yes? Great, I’m stopping by to change and pick you up. I want to introduce you to someone very special in my life”

“Um, Okay, Luisa” she agreed. “I’ll get dressed then”

“Are you still in your pajamas?” I demanded over the phone. “It’s the middle of the afternoon!”

“Yeah, well I’m more of a night person” she replied, sounding like the teenager she was for once. “I’ll see you when you get here”.

Then she hung up the phone and I stared at it for a whole minute until I finally got my butt into gear and headed to the basement parking lot.