I woke with Masterson staring at me, smoking those goddamn MJ’s. What a shitty way to wake up. My mouth was dry. I sighed. “I was hoping that maybe you were a bad dream.”
He laughed irony not lost. “You wish. How do you feel?”
“Physically or emotionally? Physically I am thirsty. Emotionally I want some payback.”
Something in Masterson’s grin told me that I just sold my soul to the devil. I was unsure how to feel about that. I felt raw. It was inhuman. The enormity of what she did was nearly too much to comprehend. And what was I? At best a dead end. Would Masterson himself put me down when it was over? His large hands reminded me of DA’s. The time he choked me. My brain unable to cope hyper focused on the hands. I decided at that moment I hated them. Masterson picked up a plastic shopping bag and tossed it to me. “Get dressed.”
The t-shirt was huge and smelled musty. It hung off my skinny frame like a limp flag. The jeans were too long, I had to cuff them twice. In the bottom of the bag there was a pair of handcuffs. The fuck you style with a hinge in the middle. I knew the drill. Masterson led me through what appeared to be a lab portion of a large police station. We waded through the chaos of central booking finally took an elevator the parking garage. His vehicle was a typical cop beater car. It was unmarked but still obviously law enforcement. There was an impressive heap of files, paperwork, and trash in the passenger seat. Once inside the car he grabbed the cuffs and put his thumb on the sensor.
The cuffs beeped twice. “Voice print authorization?” I winced at the grating voice. It was possibly the worst synth voice I had ever heard. “Delta Four Mike.” I felt the cuffs slacken. I freed myself and suddenly Masterson leaned over really close. His breath smelled like coffee, bad cigarettes and shit. I found it impossible to stop looking at his fucking hands. I know he wanted eye contact and I wasn’t going to give it.
Suddenly he slapped me, so hard my neck hurt. “Look at me!” he growled menacingly; “If you run, I’ll kill you. If you fuck me I’ll fuck you back ten times harder. I won’t keep you in cuffs as long as we have this understanding.” A throbbing sting crept into my face. I looked him in the eye, and promised I wouldn’t do shit. As I did I palmed an ink pen from his passenger seat I spotted while looking at his hands. I took at very deliberate pause, a deep breath.
“What was that earlier about a security breach?”
He turned his attention to the car and regarded me out of the corner of his eye, “Don’t worry about that.”
“Well, it just seems to me that if there is someone else out there, working the same angle you are…”
“Yea? What do you think you know?” He snapped. “There are lots of people out there that would love to get a hold of you and your stash.”
“I don’t presume to know anything. My question is WHO would be motivated enough to do so? I mean that is fairly risky breaking into a police station. Who would have the capitol or at least the desperation to pull something like that off?”
He laughed a little at that, “You don’t think a few million dollars or so isn’t enough motivation?”
“Of course, you said everyone in my group is dead. Are you absolutely sure?”
“Yes I am sure. The Russian was taken out by a police sniper, we shot Bill down, your buddy D.A. killed Jodie himself and it took us a while but we finally got him.”
Something about that didn’t sound right. “So you saw her body..?”
“Your buddy D.A.—he was pretty enthusiastic with the implants, went off the deep end, refused to surrender. It took an anti tank rounds to put him down. The little clothing he was wearing was soaked in blood, mostly hers. There was hair and her tissue under his nails and in his teeth. He was so far gone at that point, psychotic. He had undergone extensive cybernetic augmentation. He took out 6 good cops before we started hitting him with 20mm depleted uranium rounds. We didn’t find much else of Jodie. We assumed he ate her. He was an animal.”
“He always was an animal. The cybernetics simply allowed him to quite pretending to be a human being. Ok then, what about the Yakuza?”
Masterson got real quiet. What the hell was that? Maybe he didn’t hear me. I repeated the question. “Yakuza?”
“I don’t suspect Yakuza involvement.”
Something nagged the back of my mind. I pushed a little more. “Even though that D.A. tried to double cross them and they hit us?”
“It’s not their MO.” He mumbled. “because it is hidden.”
“Where are we going anyway?”
Masterson gave me a big grin. “We are going to a clone bank.”
“What the fuck good is that going to do? I can’t access the account… You can get pissed all you want juice me or whatever the fuck you want to, but that doesn’t change that we need Jodie alive and a pure sample of my DNA.”
He shook his head, “Shut up and let me worry about that.”
Clone banks were (legit) facilities that could store DNA in a digital format, memories, and… money. DNA and memories were very much like currency in the fact that you could access them from just about anywhere. Most of them were networked and had fairly shitty security. Only the high dollar ones were physically isolated in places like old oil rigs to prevent people like me from taking what I wanted. (Not that the oil rig worked…) I had created my own custom setup that was well hidden and had a paper trail from here to the sun. I would take YEARS to unravel it on paper. The money was laundered and distributed, the genetic code and memory engrams were encrypted and only with the key, could you get the DNA, memories and money.
This was done to make it available even if my lab was compromised. Not that this mattered. The bitch was dead, and my DNA was crap. I didn’t feel much remorse anymore for having sex with her blank clone. Not after what she did to me. Well actually I did. The blank clone was better than Jodie because at least the blank was neutral. It had no capacity to love me or hate me. It was something akin to masturbating. It wasn’t like necrophilia because the clone was warm and breathing.
Holy shit! Sex with her blank clone…
“Hey Masterson…”
“I thought I told you to shut up.”
“I was sitting here thinking of how much I loathed Jodie, and I how I shouldn’t feel bad for getting my freak on with her blank clone…”
“Funny you should mention that. I almost forgot. Yea we know you raped her blank clone you sick fucker! That in and of itself is a second degree felony. We’re gonna add that to the list of charges after all this is over.”
“Sure whatever… listen to me. When did she die? From the time I had sex with her clone how long after did she die? This is the key!”
Masterson pulled into traffic. “I’ll have to check but I think about three months.”
“Oh. Then never mind… If she was pregnant it wouldn’t have mattered. She died before the baby would have been viable, and after 7 years the DNA may be there but the memories are gone.”
He looked at me incredulously, “Why the hell would I give a flying squirrel fuck if you have a little bastard running around? You ain’t right man… you ain’t right.”
We approached a large intersection.
“You WOULD give a fuck because the kid would be the genetic sum of his parents. In other words the key to the whole damn thing.”
We entered the intersection. Masterson cupped his hand to light another MJ. “Well you better figure something else out then.” He said.
Figure something out he said.
As he lit the MJ in his mouth, he leaned forward so that he could keep his hand on the wheel, bringing the cigarette to his hand instead of the other way around. That’s when I jammed the metal pen in his trachea as hard as I could. It wasn’t an expensive pen. It was one of the cheapie knockoffs of a space pen, but the barrel of it was metal and that happened to be stronger than the tissue in his throat. And that is what counted. It made a sickening pop sound like I was stabbed a piece of canvas. There was resistance on impact and it occurred to me if it had more of a point on it it would have gone in a lot easier. Blood sprayed out on the windshield, dash and myself.
Masterson tromped the accelerator as if he was going to outrun the cheap ass pen protruding from his neck. I grabbed the wheel and jerked it to the right as hard as I could. I was pushed into him by the centrifugal force. Masterson somehow pulled the pistol out of the shoulder holster and elbowed me in the face. My vision went white for a second and I immediately tasted warm copper down the back of my throat. The car slid sideways and went into oncoming traffic. I remember thinking thickly that this wasn’t going to end well. The engine roared and I never saw the end coming because my eyes were watering uncontrollably.
