Racers of the Night: Science Fiction Stories by Brad R. Torgersen (26 page)

“Love me, Camarro Jones,” Jaguar said, reaching her free hand around Camarro’s back and pulling their bodies together, the gun still pointed at Camarro’s vitals. “Love me the way I know you can love me.”

Jaguar’s eyes half closed and her head moved forward, lips gently brushing Camarro’s while Camarro fought the urge to scream. The blockaded gateway to her pre-Awakening archive was being blown wide open. A torrent of suppressed memories was hitting her emotional-cognizant layer like hail in a tornado. Camarro began to quiver, her breath coming in gasps, which Jaguar took as a positive sign.

Their kiss grew more intimate.

Which was when Nate burst from the nearby wardrobe, wielding the wooden dowel that had held hangers full of costumes. His ankles were still joined, as were his wrists, and the ball gag looked grotesque in his mouth, but his eyes were aflame with purpose and he swung the dowel with all his Pacific strength, broadsiding Jaguar and sending her back across the room, the dowel shattering into splinters and the gun clattering across the floor.

“MMmmMMMPH!!” Nate said as he and Camarro exchanged the briefest of glances.

Then Nate was in slow motion, unable to match either Jaguar or Camarro with their simuman speed.

Jaguar was back up off the floor, a knife-edged hand intending to crush Nate’s rib cage. Camarro blocked it, locked Jaguar’s arm between both of her own, then spun wildly and let go. Jaguar pitched back against the dressing room door, the door’s wood cracking badly. Not waiting for Jaguar to formulate a counter-move, Camarro leapt and punched both fists into jaguar’s stomach, blasting them both through the ruined door and into the corridor beyond. Several women in stringy leather bondage wear, screamed and ran while Camarro and Jaguar struggled to their feet.

Hands like blades whipped and slashed.

Camarro blocked and parried, surprised at Jaguar’s skill.

Suddenly she saw Nate pick up the gun from the dressing room floor and aim it through the wrecked doorway.

Jaguar lashed with a leg, the gun spinning out of Nate’s hand. He screamed through the ball gag, his wrist pulped by the blow, and staggered back.

Camarro double-fisted again into Jaguar’s stomach, this time hurtling Jaguar down the corridor towards the stairs. Camarro dove to get her gun and re-emerged just in time to see Jaguar at the top of the stairs, glaring madly. Insanity among simumans was still a hotly contested subject in computer and psych departments around the world. The look in Jaguar’s eyes at that moment made Camarro believe that, yes, artificial as they might be, simumans could truly be insane.

Camarro leveled her weapon.

Jaguar jumped past the stairs, not bothering with the steps.

Camarro ran and followed, not wanting to lose sight of her perpetrator.

Patrons flew like rag dolls as Jaguar beat her way to the exit, Camarro hot in her wake. They both crashed out into the alleyway at the back of the Spiked Collar, the stench of human urine and rotten food and old booze heavy in the cold air as Jaguar began to run. Jaguar was fast, but the alley was very long. Per training, Camarro assumed a knee, balancing her weapon and sighting down the barrel with one eye closed.

The sidearm kicked once.

Jaguar staggered, streams of internal fluid spouting from the wound, then began to run again.

Camarro squeezed the trigger three more times, all center mass hits.

Jaguar veered from one side of the alley to the other, toppling trash cans and slamming face-first into a large dumpster.

Still naked, Camarro trotted down the alley with her gun at the low ready, until she stood over Jaguar as she lay on her back, smeared with her own liquid.

Her eyes looked up at Camarro in incomprehension.

“I loved you,” Jaguar said, her voice somewhat vocoded due to internal damage.

“You
thought
you loved me,” Camarro corrected her.

Red juices pumped liberally from the holes Camarro had made in Jaguar.

It would only be a few moments before the damage turned lethal. Camarro bent to try and repair what she could, but Jaguar shakily put out a hand and stopped her.

“It’s done, Cam. Let me look at you when I go out. Let me remember you as the beautiful thing that you are. Beautiful … beautiful … beautiful … beaut—beau—be—beeeeeee—beeeeeeeZZZZZZZZnnnnnnnnnnn …”

Jaguar’s mouth remained frozen in the middle of forming the word when she died.

Camarro simply stood there and stared down at her twin, until the red-white-and-blue flashing of the patrol cars descended from above. If she cared about her nudity, she didn’t show it. Someone threw a raincoat over her and took her weapon while she was lead to the back of one of the cars. She thought she remembered Al Guadron’s face at one point, his eyes filled with concern and his mouth asking questions which Camarro didn’t really hear.

Only when she saw Nate’s face did she snap out of the trance, his puckered smile erasing the constantly replaying image of Jaguar’s dead image in her mind. She embraced him once, hugging so hard she feared she might crack his spine. He hugged her back, his hurt hand wrapped in a hasty bandage. They parted when Al came and placed her in cuffs, Nate demanding sternly that he be allowed to ride along with her back to the department for questioning.

Camarro closed her eyes in the back of the cruiser as it lifted and began banking across the city. Whatever else happened, Nate was alive, and now more than ever, he was the only thing in the universe that she cared about.

• • •

The fire crackled warmly in the beach cabin’s stone hearth. There was no safe house on Whidbey Island, but neither Camarro nor Nate figured they needed one. With the condo still being put back together by contractors, and Camarro on paid administrative leave until the investigation could be properly wrapped up, a vacation had sounded like just the thing.

Nate’s hand was still bandaged and immobile, so Camarro did most of his cutting for him; at dinner. He’d gratefully accepted her assistance, and now they sat on the cabin’s huge couch, looking out the bay window and watching the last of the sunlight leave the sky over the horizon of Admiralty Inlet. Nate was wearing his usual loose-fitting linen pajamas and Camarro had on a long, flowing silk robe with a Hawaiian floral pattern; a gift from Nate’s sister. Lana had sent it to Camarro on Nate and Camarro’s first anniversary. Camarro hadn’t worn it much since then, but tonight, she thought it was just the thing.

Nate and Camarro hadn’t talked much since leaving town. In the whirlwind since Jaguar’s death, they’d both been stuck at Metro, wagging their tongues out of their mouths answering question after question. Until they were positive that Camarro had been cleared of the murders.

As to whether or not she’d still have a job when they got back to EvSeaBelTac, she wasn’t exactly sure. She and Martinez would have to hammer that out, assuming he even wanted her back in his department when all was said and done.

So, Nate had wrapped up the last of his mid-term work for Professor Sanjalee, and the two of them had hopped a sky ferry to the old Ault Field complex that was part of historic Whidbey Naval Air Station. A ground cab had gotten them down the coast to the beaches west of Coupeville, and now they were resting and trying to put the events of the previous few days behind them.

“I think I feel sorry for her,” Nate said quietly, absently rubbing the bandage on his hurt hand with the palm of his good hand.

“Me too,” Camarro admitted. “When I fled the Scene I had no idea what kind of loose ends I’d be leaving behind. I certainly never guessed that anyone would actually miss me. Not the simumans anyway. Once I found you, I wanted to get as far away from the past as I possibly could. Start a new life. Get a new job.”

“Why did you choose to be a cop, anyway? You’ve never explained that to me.”

Camarro thought about it for a moment.

“Barney Miller,” she said.

“What?”

“At night, back when I was still staying in the U labs, when everyone had gone home, I’d watch television. Most of it was boring and I didn’t understand a lot of it. But I did like Barney Miller.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it.”

“That’s because you never watch the Wayback Network.”

“Is Barney Miller a cop show?”

“Yeah, but not the way you think. It was
funny.
The people were funny. I used to laugh myself into hysterics.”

Nate turned and smiled at her, the same smile she’d come to cherish every day.

“So, is being a cop anything like what you saw on TV?”

Camarro paused, then said, “No.”

“I’m sorry for that.”

“Me too.”

“You don’t have to keep being a cop if you don’t want to. There are other things to do. People change jobs all the time.”

“I’ll have to think about that. This thing with Jaguar … it really made me look at myself. What had been happening to me since I left the Scene.”

“It’s a shame nobody ever picked up on how crazy she got. Until it was too late.”

“Yes. Yes it is.”

“Did I tell you that Jeff Maddox tried to wire us some money before we left?”

“No shit. You didn’t take it, did you?”

“Of course I took it. The damage to the condo isn’t going to be fixed for free.”

“I thought that was coming out of the insurance!”

“Yah, and drive the premium into orbit. Look, he was very nice about it. Called me on the phone and everything. Told me I was a damned lucky guy and that he wanted me to keep making you happy, because he thought you deserved it.”

“I find it hard to believe that those words came out of that man’s mouth.”

“Me too. But then, I suspect we’re not the only ones who have had our reality turned upset down by this whole thing. Anyway, he said the money was strings-free. Even signed a release to that effect. Said it was the least he could do, and hung up.”

“I’ll be damned …”

“Yeah, something, eh?”

Camarro thought long and hard about what Nate had just told her. Was it really possible for humans to change? Even the ones who seemed beyond changing?

The fire had died to a flicker, and orange light cast broad shadows across the cabin. Camarro stared into the hot coals for many minutes, then closed her eyes and prepared. She’d been thinking about this ever since she’d seen Nate alive and well at the Spiked Collar, and she’d not been sure how to approach it, other than to wait for the right opportunity to present itself.

Deftly, she got her knees under her and flipped a leg across Nate’s thighs, then sat down straddling his waist.

“Whoa,” Nate said in surprise, partially sitting up.

She pressed her hands into his beefy chest and pushed him back onto the couch, running her fingers across his prominent pectoral muscles—not as solid nor durable as simuman, but for her, it was more than enough.

Camarro felt the dam between the past and the present begin to tremble, and she mentally shouted down the demons that had begun to rise.

Go away! This is mine! Not yours! I claim this!

Gently, she reached down and pulled the sash to her robe open, the vee at her neck parting until her significant cleavage gleamed in the dying firelight.

“Cam, I … I mean, are you sure? What about—”

She silenced him with a finger on his lips.

She guided his good hand up to her chest, encouraging his warm palm across her bare, simuman flesh. The robe began to slip off her shoulders. Then it fell away entirely.

Nate’s hand no longer needed encouraging. Nor did much else that belonged to him.

Mine!
Camarro shouted mentally again, as Nate’s mouth rose to meet hers. He was gentle, yet urgent. She welcomed his passion. It helped her stay focused on the task at hand. She
had
to overcome the old memories. She would be their prisoner no longer. She was a free agent, with the will to choose. Her past would not own her.

“I love you … I love you …” Nate breathed repetitively into her ear, his good hand caressing her back.

“I love you too,” Camarro sighed, holding his body to hers.

As if on command, she felt brand new cyber-neural pathways forming—like rays of sunlight, breaking through the clouds in the wake of a prolonged thunderstorm.

Now, in Nate’s muscular arms, nothing seemed impossible.

Not anymore.

And as the night progressed, Camarro’s demons eventually grew weary, then few, then silent.

“Blood and Mirrors” is what happens when my imagination blends the movie
Blade Runner
with the television shows
The Wire
and
CSI
. It’s also about as risqué in theme and content as I dare get. But when a story plot seizes my attention and won’t go away, I tend to follow it to its conclusion. Even if the pathway takes me into territory I am not terrifically comfortable with. “Blood and Mirrors” is sexy, as well as sexual. But I hope it’s clear by the end that Camarro’s life on the Scene was a life of slavery. Far from glorifying that life, I wanted this story to be much more than just a steamy murder mystery—I wanted it to be about a woman overcoming her horrible, artificial past, for the sake of a loving, entirely human future.