Like a lot of things in The Dregs, it’s not a pretty sight. A block of concrete and neon, with one darkly tinted window on the right side of an unassuming door. A flashing green sign atop the building says The Dock. I stood outside the building for a long time until it occurred to me that the kind of courage I was going to need was on the other side of that door, so I walked in.
It was dark. It was always dark in here, and that might be a mercy considering the kinds of things that went on here. I recognized some other trackers near the back, I nodded in their direction and turned my attention to the bar. “You’re new,” I said to the bartender, “What do you recommend?”
“Leaving,” said a nasal, gravelly voice from behind me. “Kimbal, for someone who swore they were getting out of here, I hear you’re down here a lot.” Stepping out from behind the kitchen wall, a pale stick of a man stood before me, and he didn’t appear to be pleased. “Every time we see your face down here, somebody has to clean up your mess. What did you do to poor Stamp?”
“What did I do? What did—hang on Andrews, that bastard put me through a wall! I didn’t exactly get the deets before he tried to kill me, y’know.”
“Stamp wouldn’t have hurt a fly.” Andrews sat next to me at the bar. “Why he would have gone after you is a mystery.”
“Well, that’s why I’m here.” I looked at the bartender. “Just a pint of whatever the usual around here is.” He went off to draw a pint, and I turned back to Andrews. “Look, we were already into it when he started screaming that it wasn’t him. Then he shut down and…well, he rebooted. Then he pounced on me and was about to get nasty before he completely shut down.”
“Odd,” Andrews was running a finger around the rim of the glass he was nursing. “So something happened to him?”
“Aces. Here’s the headline. Something hijacked his MEMBRAIN implant and wiped him.” I want to show you something.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out a clear rectangle of plastic. Waving my hand over it, it connected to my own implant and showed the image I was thinking of on the face of the rectangle. The screen showed the image of the main board with the word TSUNAMI on it. “This is a scan Pointer made after Stamp shut down. What do you make of that?”
Andrews looked intently at the image on my screen, and I watched as a look of worry overtook him. “Damn,” he said. “I knew that shit was no good”
“You know what this is?”
“Unfortunately,” he replied. “TSUNAMI. It started appearing down here maybe two or three months ago. Didn’t think Stamp was the type.”
I looked up from my drink. “What, is this a drug?”
“Sure acts like one,” Andrews was looking straight ahead at the mirror behind the bar, then turned back to face me. “It jacks into the MEMBRAIN directly, and as near as I can figure it’s a hallucination. I don’t go near the stuff, and I don’t have an implant anyway.”
“You don’t have anything, right?” I looked him over. If he had any augments, nothing was obvious. “No, I always thought it was hideous. I consider it a diminishing of who I am, and who we are. I’d like to stay human. Fully human.” He took a sip of his drink. “Whatever it is, it’s killing people, that much is certain.”
I looked up from the bar and turned to face Andrews. “Ok, but how about this: If it’s a physical interface with the MEMBRAIN port, then why didn’t Stamp have…”
“Have what? Andrews raised an eyebrow.
“Can’t be sure until I get back to home base and do some research, but I don’t think Stamp had anything attached to him anywhere. Not sure I got a good enough look at him, though. I can get Pointer on that while I…ah…hmm.”
“Talk to the cops?”
“Well, maybe not the one I have in mind, but if this is some deadly kind of drug maybe they should know.” I got up from my stool to leave when Andrews put his hand on my shoulder.
“Folks topside aren’t gonna care about The Dregs, Kimbal.”
I reached up to take his hand and squeeze it gently. “I do. I’ll figure it out, or we might have dead augments above and below.” I turned to leave. “Andrews, tell Jack…something.”
“You’re gonna have to face that sometime.” Andrews sat back down and stared at his drink. “There’s less time than we all think.”
The door shut behind me and kicked up a cloud of dust.
——
Detective Peter Robinson can best be described as an anomaly, a thing that should not exist in this time and place. My job is to find things, and sometimes those things are throwbacks, and you’d think I’d have jumped for joy when I happened upon Peter. Technically, he happened upon me, and not particularly gently I might add. That’s a story for another time. We had forged what I think could be called a unique relationship; We annoyed each other considerably, but I could count on him, and he learned that I could be counted on. As I told him once, “I’m not a crook, I’m just a rogue.”
We had a good laugh about that one just before he threw me in the slammer for possession of a combustible engine car. My client wanted it for a private collection, and while I didn’t see the appeal at first, it was a beautiful thing to behold. A light blue 1955 Thunderbird, it was called. Impossibly old, well-kept, and a goddamn homing beacon for the police the second I turned the key. It ended well enough, the client got the car, I got a slap on the wrist, a proper chewing out by Mike, and a relationship with a cop I’m not romantically involved with.
“Heyah, Kimbal,” Robinson was staring at me. I had gotten so lost in thought I broke the sacred rule of visiting Peter at work. I looked down and found my feet on the wrong side of the painted line on the carpet. I looked up to find Peter still staring, but a bit more indignant than a moment ago. “C’mon, man,” he said.
“I was distracted, Peter. I’m sorry.” I backed up to the other side of the line and raised my fist as if I were about to knock on an invisible door. “Knock knock, “ I said as cheerfully as I could. “It’s Kimbal. May I have a word with you?”
Robinson lived for these little moments, I’d bet. He scooted his chair back, stood up, and straightened his shirt and tie. He looked up to make eye contact with me and then turned around to the hutch behind his desk and poured himself a cup of coffee. He took one obnoxiously loud sip of it, lifted his head up as if to savor the moment, took a deep breath, and then turned around to meet my gaze again.
“Hi,” I waved and put on the silliest grin I could muster.
He regarded me for a moment before looking down at his desk. He started picking up files and papers from his desk and turned around to put them in the filing cabinet behind him. I had always suspected most of those papers were for show; he had the only metal filing cabinet I’d ever seen. I asked him once if he knew what kind of price he could get for that antique. “Nowhere near the satisfaction I get out of it.” He replied, almost amused that I didn’t understand why he loved it. Standing here waiting for him, I believe I had a firm understanding.
“Peter, I know we love playing this game more than we say we do, but I think we really might have a problem and I need to talk to you about it.”
Peter locked his file cabinet and looked back at me. “Please,” I said about as humbly as I could. He raised an eyebrow at me as if hearing the word ‘please’ intrigued him. “Kimbal, come in and sit down.” I did as he asked. “Thanks for seeing me,” I figured getting to the point quickly would be in both our interests. “I think there’s a new drug of some kind that’s making its way around The Dregs, and it’s killing augments.”
Peter’s face went from one of vague listening to…well, it got very red. I’d pissed him off somehow. He picked up his earpiece and hit a button on his desk console. “Get up here. Now”. He put his earpiece back on the desk and stared at me. “I’m trying very hard to kill you right now. It would actually be less stress on my heart to strangle you right here than to do what I’m about to do.”
“I don’t understand, Peter. Usually, I know why you’re mad at me.”
Myke suddenly appeared out of the elevator in the hallway. She saw me, and completely deflated. Stopping outside the painted line on the floor, she looked at Peter. “I assume I can just come into your idiotic invisible office?”
“Now is not the time to test me, Hollings.” Myke also got very red-faced and looked up at me. ‘What did you do?”
I took a deep breath. “I did some digging around in The Dregs and I got some information about what happened to Stamp. It’s a wider problem than I thought. I came to see Peter about it. This is the thing?”
She snapped at me. “The THING you’re not supposed to know about, Kimbal!”
“That’s it, I don’t know. Peter, I swear. I mentioned that I got the crap kicked out of me by an augment named Stamp that apparently had this in his system. She gave me no specifics other than to say there’s an open investigation about something related to what happened to me. I know nothing”.
Peter was still silent and very red in the face. I loosened my collar to expose my neck. “I mean, if it’ll help?”
He seemed to calm down a little at that point. “Look, I’m really not here to mess with your day. I had no idea. Let’s have a seat, I’ll tell you what I know.”
“It’s not his day you need to be worried about, Kimbal,” Myke said as she stared a hole through me.
“Getting that message, ma’am,” I replied. “Dig in. Here’s what I know.”