The Infected 3: Cast Iron (30 page)

“Nope, it’s still Kevin. Well, it sounds insane, but I think I get the idea. We go in making accusations and casting enough blame that the police don’t dare take any action that won’t prove their innocence. Let’s get these police and Deb here in handcuffs then? After all, if it really is a terrorist attack using the police, she’s clearly in on it.” Marcia grinned not really intending to arrest the woman for anything or even actually restrain her, but was happy to see the look on her face, which was terrified. It should be. She’d annoyed a bunch of people with super-powers, which was never a smart move.

It was kind of perversely gratifying, until the woman tried to run away.

She actually just turned in place, teddy, garter belt and bare feet and tried to run her drugged behind away down the hall of a hotel. Because that would work. No one even bothered to chase her, because not thirty feet into her run, looking over her shoulder to see how close they were to her, Deb smacked into a wall. Pretty hard too. The move knocked her out totally.

Marcia winced, but noticed that the whole thing had gotten captured on camera. The big guy with the beard that normally did Mark’s show. She nodded to him.

“Got that?”

“Oh hell yeah. That’s going on the blooper reel for sure.” For some reason everyone laughed.

Except Charlot, who handed her a cell phone.

“It’s a Police Chief Lincoln for you Marcia?” Her tone was cool and crisp, but not overly worried for some reason. That was good; it would make the rest of her pitch easier.

It was her job, not Mike’s, since he didn’t have any authority in the situation at all. She took a deep breath and tried to sound stern.

“Chief Lincoln? Good. Six of your men just attacked a federal agent. Since you clearly know where and who we are, and they were acting on your orders, you’re under arrest for terrorism. You have two hours to turn yourself over to us for holding. Failure to comply means that we’ll have to come and get you. You do not want that. You don’t have even a tiny fraction of the manpower you’d need for that to help you at all.”

Then she went quiet, waiting for the storm to unfold.

8

It shocked the heck out of her, out of everyone, but the local chief actually showed up, without even bothering to bring a small army of police with him. The man was young for the job, a forty at most, but looked lean and sturdy, thin and clean shaved, with a mildly put upon expression on his face as he walked up. Alone and unarmed, but wearing his uniform. It was about the best case scenario then, instead f the worst, as far as Marcia could tell. She still had to resist the urge to hold her breath, waiting for the snipers to start shooting or whatever trick the man had arranged in the half hour it had taken for him to get there.

“Thanks for coming Chief Lincoln. I trust that this means you’re claiming you didn’t order the attack yourself?” She knew that, or at least suspected it was the case. Oh, everything in her mind screamed that he was guilty, but she’d been there. The officer that drew his weapon in the first place had just been responding to the scene. Scared people did stupid things. It wasn’t exactly hard to see how it had happened, was it?

That was why Proxy had taken them down after all. He was frightened. She couldn’t blame him for it either. Everything in the last six months of his life, even longer than that, had been about training him to respond instantly to threats that most people would never have to face. If she pulled a gun and started to point it at him Brian would hit her automatically, even though they were friends. If he didn’t have that training he probably wouldn’t be alive, regardless of his powers. Not given everything he’d been through.

Smiling, Marcia held out her right hand, which got the man to shake, then hesitate, waiting to be put in handcuffs. He wasn’t fighting at least. It really was a good sign. He searched the room for his men, who really were restrained already, though Karen was washing their faces gently with a damp cloth and making sure no one needed to go to the hospital. No one else that was. Three of them had already been shipped off in ambulances. The remainder were all bruised, possibly concussed and not very happy about it, but they shouldn’t die of their injuries. The Chief seemed to pick that part up immediately.

“So, I don’t suppose anyone will be willing to explain what happened here?” He sounded serious enough, but mildly amused for some reason. At least until Proxy ran through what happened from his perspective. It made the whole thing sound pretty serious.

“So, after I got a death warrant, one which the IPB put a hold on as a courtesy to you and your people, you sent these others en-mass to attack us. Illegally. Can you explain that in a way that doesn’t make you look even guiltier of using government resources for terrorism? I can’t see it myself.” He managed to sound almost pleased about the statement, instead of like he was about to kill someone.

That got the thin uniformed man to ruffle his short brown hair and hold his palms up toward the ceiling.

“I’m not really sure what was going on here at all, but I didn’t give any orders to attack you. We also don’t have a policy of discrimination against Infected people and certainly don’t go out of our way to harass government agencies. I can see how you might feel that way, but it was likely that these men just perceived a threat and responded. If a person pulled a gun on them, you wouldn’t expect them to just stand and talk, would you? As far as that goes half of the people here are standing around like virtual tanks ready to go, or rocket launchers. Some are like battle groups practically. What do you expect regular people to do in a situation like that?” He said it like it was a rehearsed phrase, something that he’d had to go over more than once before.

It wasn’t wrong either.

“That’s real enough Brian…” She started speaking but was cut off almost immediately.

“Is it? By that logic, I should be allowed to kill or hurt any officer immediately, because they all have guns and bad attitudes as well as low IQ’s. If the one idea works the other does too. Police officers kill more people each year than the other way around by a vast number. People have to be held responsible for their actions, and that needs to go double for those sworn to defend the law, not less so, which is the way it’s handled now. An average person should be given slack for asking questions and making mistakes, but these men are supposed to be the professionals. They know that it’s illegal to pull a weapon on people not presenting a threat. Which we weren’t. There can’t be allowance for mistakes or personal fear either. We can’t just let them go, since they’ll be protected behind “police procedure” which isn’t, I might point out, law. It’s what they use to get away without trial no matter what they do. These men need to be an example to all other law enforcement. You can’t just attack innocent people and get away with it. There’s no other way for this to work. The courts won’t handle this and the police cannot reasonably police themselves. We have to do it for them.” He spread his own hands, and sounded almost cheery about it.

Probably because he’d been doing something on the phone while they’d been waiting. Since most of his close friends were in the room with them, that probably wasn’t a good thing. Marcia guessed he’d called in, and gotten, death warrants for all involved. Why anyone at the Department of Justice would be so stupid, she didn’t know, but if it wasn’t a mistake then someone was giving Brian Yi cart blanche as far as that went. She really didn’t have an argument that would keep him from killing the men this time either.

She could see the rationale they were using for their actions, of course, she even agreed with it on paper, but that wouldn’t play with the kid in front of her. He’d been too hurt and harassed to believe any cops were actually good guys. He thought the system was broken and that they needed to all die to fix it. Worse, he honestly believed he wasn’t going to live much longer, so the cost of killing these men didn’t strike him as too high personally. He could take them out and weather the storm for a few more months, then leave it all behind. He’d told her as much, more than once. It wasn’t exactly sane maybe, but it was based in a cold and angry kind of logic. It just didn’t take everything into account.

Because not all of them really were evil.

It probably felt that way to Proxy, since he had no real reason to think anything else, having dealt with an actual group of terrorists that used their protected status as law enforcement to try and kill him. Twice. Before that a group of cops had kidnapped him and left him in a room to die with no food or water just because they were bigots that had a badge and the cover of the government. That had been bad enough that most people wouldn’t have made it at all and the police involved hadn’t gotten more than a slap on the wrist for it. This time it wasn’t like that though, and Marcia was really afraid that nothing she said could save the men in handcuffs.

Still, Brian hadn’t said he had a death warrant signed, so maybe it wasn’t that? Maybe he’d just called for a pizza, or got in touch with the press, to make a public spectacle of the men that had messed up? That would be over the top too, and come back to bite the IPB on the ass if they did it, but it wouldn’t be an abuse of power. Well… it would be, but not as bad of one. They’d still all be alive at least.

She didn’t know what to do at all. No one else seemed to be all that certain either, mainly standing, or milling a bit. Deb the slightly underdressed but good looking cooking show helper was alternating between crying softly and screaming about how they were going to kill her. They’d actually had to handcuff her and make her sit. She kept jumping up to try and run away, which meant that Kerry kept levitating her back into position every ten minutes or so. It would have been funny, if there was anything she could do about the situation at all. If it wasn’t such a huge disaster waiting to swallow them all whole at any second.

Taking a phone call Brian held up his right hand, smiling happily enough. It was genuine too, real joy, a thing that she’d only rarely seen on his face. He handed the phone over to her without saying who it was and winked at her.

Marcia grimaced and bit the bullet, speaking first.

“Um, hello?” Damn it, she sounded scared. That wasn’t good. People noticed things like that and thought it meant you were weak. It was hard enough being a woman in her line of work, without sounding like a freaking schoolgirl at a spelling bee.

“Turner? This is Moore. I… I don’t know the situation on the ground there, but we have seven signed death warrants and Brian doesn’t seem inclined to let the men go this time. Does the situation really need it? Is there nothing else that might work? We simply can’t go around killing the police, even if they really are guilty of actual crimes. I told him that, but he just laughed at me. I think there may be something wrong with the boys mind.” The old man on the other end of the phone sounded a bit bitter about the whole thing, but then he wasn’t used to people taking his orders as suggestions or simply disregarding them if they didn’t fit the plan of the moment. He expected to be listened to and obeyed. Brian treated him like an equal at best. It meant they didn’t mesh well as far as management styles went.

“You think? Maybe that happened when the police kept getting away with doing highly illegal things to him and you didn’t even try to take action to correct the situation? Not even covertly. I get that the press on this would be bad, and yes, in this situation I’m going to overrule the death warrant, using executive privilege, but this is your fault sir, for not doing something about those previous situations. I think we need to take down Shaw and his cronies. It should have been done immediately, but we were so afraid of what the press would do to us that we stopped Lancaster from acting on the spot. Now we have this mess on our hands.” It was her fault too, for not pressing things with the higher ups, but she’d actually voted for executing the cops that originally tried to kill Brian. That was legitimate and would have short circuited a lot of the stuff going on with Brian now.

After a while there came a sigh from the phone. It didn’t sound happy, but the man on the other end didn’t curse at her either, which she’d half expected.

“I know. It’s… The whole thing is unmanageable. If we kill any of them for wronging an Infected person, the backlash… But I get that we must take the lesser of evils in this case. It isn’t even evil, just justice. Fine. I’ll sign off on Officer Shaw and those that aided him, but you have to save the ones there. They need a training course, not death. We are, however, going to have to have a long talk about Proxy when you return to the base. This situation is getting too far out of control.” He sounded pissed still, but resigned.

Marcia wanted to shrug but didn’t bother. He was right on that score, this really was out of bounds. They couldn’t lock up Brian though, possibly in a literal sense. He’d gotten too good at escaping. If they tried to kill him, well, that would be enough to collapse the IPB immediately. Too many powerful operatives would fight to the death to stop that. Her included. If he just vanished the same thing would probably happen. At least if anyone suspected anything.

Maybe they could give him a stern talking too about procedure? It normally didn’t come up in his day to day life, but maybe it was time? Give him a verbal spanking and black mark on his record? It wasn’t much, but what could they do to the man? He really didn’t think he was going to live through the next day. It took most of the power anyone had over him away.