Unfortunate Beginnings, Part 2

Three pops rang out as bright comets burst through the night; where they landed, her back erupted in flames.  Shen screamed, a terrible keening wail as her metal harness failed to stop the bullets and her jumpsuit caught fire.  “Fire, fire!  We’re under fire!” Peter screamed to the listening officers and heard others shouting the same thing.  He and the others dashed for the aero, using it for cover.  Shen was abandoned, forgotten; she was dead anyway.  Those ‘comets’ had been the tails of ‘leech-killers’; large incendiary rounds designed to melt through a vampire’s skin and set their bones on fire.  Shen would burn until she died. She was still screaming, thrashing on the ground but Peter could see her skin and bones were aflame.  

Peter cursed to himself as he heard the pilot of the support aero calling, “One on foot, heading clockwise.”  Had this happened in international waters, or in America, it would have been a victory for the good guys; time to grab a beer and share a toast.  Here in Gideon, it was ‘destruction of a sentient being’, which was murder. The term had been invented when it was pointed out that you couldn’t murder someone who was already dead.

Scowling, Peter jumped to the former prisoner transport.  “Go, go!” he shouted to the pilot.   Carson was the only other person to make it aboard before they started chasing after the support aero.  It was moving slowly, keeping the shooter in sight on the night cameras.  Their aero quickly gained; on the infrared camera, Peter tracked the runner.  “Cut him off,” Peter ordered, moving to the door.

Devon followed, clinging to the handle over the doorway. “Hell of a thing, huh?”  Peter looked at him.  “Five minutes ago, we were taking her to be killed.  Now we’re hunting down the guy that did shoot her.”

“That’s Gideon,” Peter said softly, making sure the safety was off the rifle.  He grabbed the handhold as the aero came around sharply; they could see the runner below.  The vehicle cut across his path and the runner recoiled, dodging left to dart between warehouses.  Peter cursed as the aero slid to a stop just over the ground, unable to follow.  Devon and Peter hopped out, their boots ringing on the pavement as they dashed up the alley between buildings.

They got to the end of the passage and stopped. Across the road was a building which forced the runner’s path to go left or right.  “Which way?” Devon asked.  Above them, the aero roared and whined, circling and looking.

“Go left,” Peter ordered.  He turned and went right as one of the aerocars turned to mirror his path above him.  Despite the hovering vehicle over him, Peter felt very alone.  That feeling worsened as he realized his path was taking him toward the open water.  Like many of Gideon’s residents, Peter tried not to think about living on a massive man-made island of concrete.  Seeing the open ocean was a stark reminder that Gideon sat in the middle of the Southern Atlantic, far from land.

“He’s on the end of the dock.”  The message from the pilot of the aero tightened Peter’s muscles.  There was no egress from that area; that meant that the shooter was trapped.  Vampires weren’t the only ones who were more dangerous when cornered.

“I’ve got him,” Peter said, as he stepped from between the rows of warehouses.  He could see the solitary form at the end of the docks, standing in the pool of radiance from the streetlight.  Peter stalked forward, his rifle at the ready.  The form at the end of the dock was turned away from him, but before he’d gotten to the halfway point, the form turned.  “Drop your weapon!” Peter cried.  Behind the shooter, the Atlantic raged, throwing up waves that dashed against the pier, creating an extra layer of mist that hung in the air.  The smell of salt was heavy, almost bitter. “Drop your weapon now!”

The rifle clattered to the concrete wharf.  “Lay down on the ground!” Peter ordered.  The man said something.  “Down on the ground!”

“Why are you defending that thing?” the shooter asked, pitching his voice to be heard over the wind and waves.

“We’re not having this debate.  You’re getting down, or I’m shooting you,” Peter snarled angrily.  He wasn’t really sure he could shoot an unarmed man who wasn’t threatening him.  He was sure he should.

“No, you’re not.  That thing is a predator, and the idiots who run this city think that if we feed them bagged blood we’ve leashed the beasts,” the shooter said.  Peter was finally close enough to see the man.  He was no one special; brown hair and dark eyes, with a medium build.  The features of his face were hidden behind a ski mask.  He was dressed in dark, non-descript clothing.  “All we’ve done is invite them to sit at the table with us.”

“That’s not for us to decide.  Last warning – get down or I’m putting you down,” Peter ordered.  He could feel the weight of the rifle, after holding it up for this long, pulling down on his arms.

“Do you truly think they’re going to be content to be in our shadows forever?”  The man was strangely calm.  Peter felt just as calm, even as he reached up and pulled the microphone plug from his helmet.

“No,” Peter heard himself say.  “I don’t.”

The shooter inhaled sharply.  “Then why are doing this?  Why are you protecting them?”

Peter thought of Bridgette and her secretive smile.  He remembered the look of barely restrained fury on her face when she first saw him.  “I protect humans, and I can’t do that if I’m not a cop,” Peter answered.  “My job means I do things I don’t like.  But when I put a vampire away, when I put them on a ship headed out of here knowing that they’re going to burn, I feel a little bit better.”

The man nodded.  “I can respect that.  What’d they do to you?”

Peter swallowed.  “She betrayed me.  I went against what I believed in to help her, and she screwed me over.  You?”

“They’re our predators,” the shooter said, his voice turning hard.  “I can’t understand why we wouldn’t see them as our enemy, why we don’t raise arms against them and wipe them off the face of the earth.”

“I don’t disagree with you,” Peter said, shifting his grip on the gun, “but I can’t go against the law.  Get down.  I won’t tell you again.” 

“Bendoit, I’m almost there!” Carson’s voice rang in his ears.

“And I won’t be subject to the injustice system of Gideon.”  The subject took a step back.  Peter heard himself shout a denial as the shooter tumbled off the end of the dock.  The cop dashed to the edge as the aero came around and dropped below the edge of dock, the spotlight panning over the water, trying to find him.

“You alright?” Carson asked as he stopped next to him.

“Yeah.”  Peter heard the rage in his own voice.  He was pissed at the turn of events.  Why had the man done this? What statement had he needed to make with shooting Shen?  She was dead anyway, once she reached America. The only thing the shooter had done was bring about his own arrest or death?

Peter gripped his gun tighter.  “I’m fine,” he said unnecessarily, though he wasn’t.  There were questions and he would find the answers.