Jordan Summers - [Dead World 01] (6 page)

"Is that the excuse you're using these
days?" he asked.

Red glared.

Bannon sobered. "You are not talking about minor
mutations. You're talking about genetically engineered monsters that no one
has ever seen." His expression turned to utter disbelief.
"I
don't
know why I bother."

"But—" Red said.

"Let me finish." He gave her a look that
brooked no argument. "We've identified no human DNA on site,
except for the
victim. The fluid scan gave us a positive hit on a Lisa Solomon." He
looked at the vidscreen,
then back at the body. "The image looks the
same,
give
or take a few missing pieces." Bannon smirked. "At least they left
the good parts," he said, glancing at the woman's exposed genitals.
"The findings
are
conclusive enough for me. As far as I'm concerned,
once cleanup
arrives, this case is closed."

"You can't do that."

He laughed. "Oh yes I can."

"I know these bites resemble an animal attack,
but the
bite depth seems off."

"Are you suddenly an expert on carnivorous mammals?"
Bannon asked.

"No, but I know enough to
know that there's some-thing
odd about this whole
scene." Red waved her arms around to encompass the area. "Look
around. There are no fur deposits or fecal spoors nearby. The animals
didn't
fly
here."

"You may have noticed there aren't any footprints
either. The ground is too hard to leave any behind." He stomped his booted
feet for emphasis. No dirt rose up from the cracked earth. "See what I
mean?" he asked.

"But she's been ripped apart, including her
clothes."

Bannon groaned in frustration. "That's what animal
packs do. They feed. Haven't you ever viewed the vid-footage?"

Red shook her head. "They don't eat
clothes."

"We've located her clothing. It wasn't eaten.
Well, at least not much. It had traces of canine saliva on it from multiple
donors. Solomon probably wandered too close to the woods. Many people like to
come to places like this and reminisce about the 'good old days.' God only
knows why," he scoffed, running a beefy hand over his buzz cut.

Red ignored his explanation. "Don't you think
there's something strange about this crime scene? I don't believe this woman
would come into the woods alone without at least carrying repel spray."

"Sorry, but being stupid isn't a crime,"
Bannon
said. "You may not like it, but
the evidence rules out
foul play having been committed here. You're the
only person who has a problem with this scenario. I suggest you let it go.
That's an order. You know, one of those things you refuse to follow."

Red's gaze narrowed. "I can't let it go."
She took a step forward and stared down at the remains of the woman. "She
deserves better than to be a feast for a moving
pack of
predators—not that I believe for a sec
ond
that's what happened here. Her family deserves the truth."

"You don't even know if she has a family. According
to the navcom—" He pressed another button. "— she's single."

Red's fists clenched again as she fought the urge to
bloody Bannon's nose. "That doesn't mean her parents aren't wondering
where she is."

"Parents? Hell, a labor farm could've created
her. Without the bar code, you can't tell the difference these days. I came
this close." he pinched his thumb and forefinger together for emphasis,
"to fucking one of those clones and didn't even know it." Bannon
shuddered in mock horror.

"She
has
family," Red whispered,
rubbing her hands along her arms and ignoring his asinine comment.

"We'll know soon. If we hadn't been able to identify
her by her registered DNA, we would've re
moved
her and tagged her as an unknown. More and
more are turning up these
days, the filthy little beggars. Worse than cockroaches if you ask me. That's
what they get for sneaking past the boundary and re-fusing
to register
with a republic. There's a reason
we have
rules for everything." Bannon turned and bellowed
an order to an underling to do a background check
on Lisa Solomon to see if she had any connection
to
the
unknowns.

"She's not affiliated with the unknowns,"
Red said.

"Funny, I never took you
for being an unknown sympathizer
."

"I'm not and you know it." She snarled.

'There's no room for crusaders on this team," he
said.

"You and I both know this
isn't right." Red crossed
her arms
over her chest. "You're burying this case so
that you don't have to do any real investigative work."

"There's nothing to investigate. The facts refute
your theory," he said, tapping orders
into his navcom.
"Give me one strand of evidence. Anything at all
to back your claim."

She remained silent.

"That's what I thought," he said.

Red reached out and grabbed his arm, stopping his
movement. His muscles flexed and heated beneath
her fingertips. "You're not being fair," she said softly.

He glanced down at her hand and
something flared momentarily in Bannon's pale blue eyes. Shocked by
what she’d seen, Red released him abruptly.

Bannon's expression cooled. "Life's not fair, but
what are you going to do? If you want to
stay, suit your
self. You'll have to
look into this on your own time. I'm
not
wasting the team on a wild animal chase."

chapter
four

Situated in what used to be grasslands
, the gold dome of the International Police Tactical
Team (IPTT) Headquarters rose like a 150-foot-tall leviathan out of the dead
prairie. Massive concrete dormitories, which housed a thousand people each.
jutted out like spokes on a bicycle wheel from a
cen
tral hub. Living quarters were broken down between officers,
trainees, and team members, with officers receiving a spacious twenty-by-twenty
private living area.

The dome protected the entire complex from the brunt
of the sun and
regulated the ambient temperature.
 
Carefully cultivated plants
dotted the landscape within the biosphere to give life inside the bubble a
semblance of normality.

Red entered the imposing military structure via a
twenty-person EDS shuttle, since her two-seater transport had been damaged in
the firelight. The electrodynamic technology had been developed in the
twentieth century for Maglev trains, which used high-temperature
superconductors in conjunction with magnets in order to run. The EDS technology
had been altered several times since then in order to eliminate the use of tracks
and increase speed. The added boost allowed the tactical team to get anywhere
on the North American continent within five hours or less. From the Republic of
Arizona it had taken three hours to reach IPTT, located in what used to be
northern Montana and Alberta, Canada.

Three very long hours with Bannon bitching in her
onboard headset the whole way. Red rolled her
neck,
trying to ease the tension knotting her shoulders as she strolled
out of the docking area toward the central hub. The man loved the sound of his
own voice.

Rows of stainless-steel beams, like silver incisors
clenching a kill, marked the entrance to headquarters. The thick sloping,
lead-flaked outer glass walls appeared vaguely pyramidal in origin, but the
reality was much more mundane. The glass filtered the sun's harsh rays while
the sloped walls helped dissipate blasts from hydrogen car bombs and other
projectiles.

Started in the year 2010 during
the last world war—
which
brought about the dissolution of countries and
the formation of self-governing republics—the IPTT
was in its 150th year of existence. The agency's
main
job was to curtail open aggression between the republics.

At one hundred thousand square miles each, the
republics took up 70 percent of the land mass in the world. The other 30
percent encompassed no-man's-land, a place of lawlessness and utter chaos.
These areas were so dangerous that boundary walls had been erected around them
to keep the peace.

Due to the constant threat of
upheaval each republic
created its own unique computer chip, which was used to
identify
its citizens. People could travel
freely from place
to place as long they were
registered with one of the
republics.
If too many registered individuals from one
republic crossed a border checkpoint into another, it
would be considered an act of aggression and IPTT
would step in, whether the republic
wanted its help or
not.

This didn't help its popularity around the world, but
since the
team had gathered 90 percent of the weapons
left over after
the war, no one said much in protest.

Along with peacekeeping duties, the tactical team was
also
responsible for boundary patrol and handled
most of the unusual criminal cases.

Murder, having been all but
eliminated, qualified as unusual. Killing unknown individuals fell into the acceptable
action category and wasn't considered murder due
to
the unknowns' lack of
registration with
a
republic.
 As far as the world was
concerned, unknowns did not
exist.

Red strode to the weapon detectors, noting the extra
guards posted nearby. It wasn't drill day, so what were
they doing here? She began to disarm, crinkling her
nose
at
the sharp mint odor the A.I. filtration sys-tem
pumped into the air to keep
everyone alert.

She laid her laser pistols down first onto the
conveyor
belt, followed by Rita, her malfunctioning navcom,
her pencil bombs, emergency oxygen inhaler, u
ltrasonic whistle, throwing knives, and rib splitter, then
stepped into the arched scanner.

A green beam shot down from
above, slowly traveling
the length of her body before
shutting off. A machine located on the other side of the scanner spat a
printout through a thin slot.

Red slipped Rita back on and
grabbed the synthetic paper before gathering her weaponry. She scanned the
document. Her vitals were on
target. The only marker
readings that
spiked were from her bloody combat
boots.
She paused to stare at the readouts that represented McCallan's and Lisa
Solomon's DNA. Neither
one had deserved to die.

She glanced down at the offending objects on her feet.
She'd have the boots incinerated immediately. Red didn't want to consider what
number this pair would make. Pretty soon the commander, grandfather or not,
would dock her pay.

A hatch to her right opened. Red removed her
boots and dropped them inside the container. The
unit closed with a slight hiss. A pair of sterile blue booties
sprung
out of a tube next to the incinerator. She
slipped
them on and continued inside, heading toward
her desk, trying hard to
ignore the snickers coming
from her fellow
team members who'd caught sight of
her feet.

"Gina, your feet are not properly
protected," Rita chastised.

"I know,
Mom."

"I am not your mother. It is biologically impossible
for me to have created you."

Red rolled her eyes. "I'm aware of that,"
she said, shaking her head and crumpling the readout in her fist. She dropped
the document in a recycle bin.

The console to her compunit sat
atop the flat three-
by-five metal table
that served as her desk and work space. A cursor blinked, reminding her that
the UID report waited for her to fill it out. Red sat down and tapped
a finger on the keys as she considered what to
write. Maybe some synth-chocolate would help her
think.

She opened the drawer, pushing aside her personal
items to see if she'd buried any chocolate near the bottom.

"Your body is giving off a cravings signal,"
Rita said.

"It's not a crime to need something sweet."

"If you’re
searching for the chocolate, you've already eaten
it. .. along with thirty-five other bars in the
past two weeks."

"Terrific." Nothing like a diet reminder to
kill a craving,
Red thought, taking one last look under her throwing
knives just to be sure.

Pushing the blades back into place, she spied her
comlink,
which allowed anyone in the building to contact
her directly
without having to route the call through the old phone systems. Red considered
ignoring
t
he device, but thought better of it. It
was
mandatory
after all, and
she did follow
some
orders. She slipped
the oval plug into her ear, then
removed the navcom
from her wrist.