Chapter Thirty One Marek

Marek is sitting alongside Alexis in the two cushy leather chairs in front of Sy’s desk, while they go over their ideas on how to Kill Cris and Gerald. Sy is kind of sitting on the front corner of the desk, dabbing his cigar into the ashtray, while Vaun pours the two of them another round of Bourbon from the decanter. He never really seems to stay in one place, and keeps moving about in the room.

He’s never really seen Vaun or Sy worked up like this. Sy has always acted so cool, and Vaun is the most fearless man he’s ever met. Yet, a couple of cops have them pacing. He knows first-hand the Cris and Gerald are more than capable of killers, but that’s nothing any of them haven’t seen before. Something else has the worried. Maybe it’s what they know about SSS, as if they have dirt on them or something. They’ve only been back on the force for a day, and they’re already abusing that power.

Most of the ideas that go around have to do with setting a trap of some kind, but it doesn’t seem very feasible, not out in the city where they can so easily be caught on camera. Thanks to his derelict friends, and the watchlist, they know exactly where the two are hold up though. It goes a long ways toward narrowing down their options, and not in a good way. Neither of them have ventured outside the two-minute lockdown vicinity of the precinct, and they’re not likely to.

It takes some convincing to get Sy to start considering making a move anywhere near the precinct. Instead of defaulting to saying no to everything, he swears he’ll take anything that’s a for-sure plan. Anyone knows a trap can be turned around on a person. They just need to keep their distances. Compared to even the likes of Sy or Vaun, he has a bit shiftier of a way of thinking, especially when it comes to dealing with the law. After all, he’s a born and raised gutter Rat. That’s why they want him and Alexis on the job.

He thinks back on the old days, when he used to stalk patrol robots. “You see, the law puts a lot of effort into making you think they’ve got all the bases covered, and that there’s really no escaping them. It’s a bunch of shit. The truth is, they’re spread a lot thinner than it looks. And that’s all it really is, is looks. That’s why they make their money on the easy stuff, like ticketing law abiding citizens for going five over, or bullshit like that. They don’t put up a fuss, and they pay their fines. Rat’s, like me, they hate us, like you would never understand.”

Sy sits on the front of his desk and swishes his glass towards Marek. “Yeah, everyone does. Cause you guys do nothing but drag the whole system down.”

Alexis looks a bit indignant, but she doesn’t say anything. He shrugs the comment off. He’s not a rat anymore, and no one would claim he still is ether. Both he and Alexis have earned their keep more-so than probably half the guards.

“I’m not arguing with you on that Sy. But I will say, they mostly hate us because they can’t fine us. It’s about the money, and we don’t have any. They definitely don’t want to arrest us, because we’re more than happy to get three meals a day in a climate controlled environment. Even prison is fairly easy for us. Derelicts have a code, inside and out. We never harm one another, and we always have each other’s backs in the pen.”

Vaun flicks the ash off his cigar and puffs his smoke towards the return vent. “Yeah, so what’s your point?”

“Well, for one, both Cris and Gerald have already been reprimanded for how they handle rats, like a lot of times. Honestly, all cops have, but with those two, it’s… extensive. They’ve put the political spotlight on the precinct a couple of times now. It didn’t matter that the two of them were justified in gunning down all those rioters that tried to kill us. It was simply a matter of the precinct trying to save face. All we need to do, is make them look dirty when we take them down. The city will bury what happened all on their own.”

Alexis waves Sy off, yet again, when he offers her a cigar. She waits a moment for the others to pause before offering her advice. “We need the get em stressed out, mad, or aggravated, you know. Like really wound up. Make them do something stupid, and make sure it’s seen.”

He’s a bit apprehensive about where she’s going with it. “Yeah, like an excessive force public scandal. Those always go over about as smoothly as a wiping your ass with a pinecone. Honestly, though, we are pro-law enforcement around here. I don’t like the idea of making the whole force looking bad over these two. Remember, we want to be on good terms with the precinct after this. Welan City would just be another shithole without them.”

She knows what Sy said is the truth. “Ok, but either way, we need to get them to slip up. Nothing obvious, like waving a red flag at them or anything, but you know, some very subtle bait, like someone getting fired from here. They might try and flip someone like that.”

What she says, makes tons of ideas pop up in head. “Oh, man, and yeah, they could arrest whoever it is, and then we poison them, like they do down south of the equator.” He raises his eyebrows. “They have this stuff that’s pretty much guaranteed to wreck their shit.”

Vaun covers his eyes with his hand. “Ok, wait, I hope you don’t mean that literally. Can we maybe start all over? I think we kind of got derailed at some point.”

“No, no, hear me out. I could, like, put DMSO on my clothes or something, but with scopolamine mixed in with it. That’d make it soak right in through their skin if they touch it. They wouldn’t even know until it was too late.”

Alexis is already shaking her head. “Nope. Nope. We’re not messing around with that shit… no way. And you’re definitely not putting it on yourself!”

Sy is rather intrigued, out of curiosity, not that he thinks it’s a good idea at all. “What the hell’s Scopolamine?”

“It’s this pathological hallucinogen that comes from the south. Basically a living nightmare with guaranteed complete amnesia. It’s definitely not common, but I have heard of it up here.”

Vaun looks more concerned than curious. “Great. What the hell’ve they been doing with it? Nothing good obviously.”

He thinks about it for a second. “I’m not really sure, honestly. I’ve heard it’ll turn a person into a puppet, where they’ll do whatever you tell em. It’s like they’re on autopilot and have no real conscious idea what they’re doing. I don’t really know all that much about it. We don’t do that kind of shit up here. That’s not the kind of folks we are. Not saying there aren’t any… lone actors, up here that don’t do bad shit. I’m no lily, but some of these guys you hear stories about, are, some bad dudes.”

Still skeptical, Vaun shoots the idea down. “These are hardened officers with years of experience. They’ll know when they’ve been drugged.”

Marek raises his eyebrows again, in challenge. “No, they won’t. This shit is no urban legend you guys. Even if this stuff were noticeable, by that time, it’s already too late. You won’t care. You’re already dead inside. It’d be as easy as stepping on an ant. If they won’t leave their safe zone, then we’ll have to go to them.”

Sy looks to Alexis, who somehow appears paler than she already normally is. She’s just about gone ashen now, and looks like she might’ve suddenly fallen ill. He peers down at her, concerned. “You alright girl? You’ve gone awful quiet.”

She swallows and tries to clear her voice, but it’s still a little unsteady. “It’s true.” She looks to the floor and keeps her eyes there. “Can we do something else? I don’t want to talk about drugs anymore.”

Marek leans over a little and tries to look at her. “Hey, it was just an idea. I was just sayin. I’d rather kick these guys down a few pegs before taking them on is all. If something goes wrong, we’ll walk away, simple as that. They won’t remember a thing right?”

“I know!” She kind of snaps at him, surprising all of them.

Even though she sits back up straight again, she’s remains a bit withdrawn. They can all see that her thoughts have wandered to a dark place. She looks awful and won’t make eye contact with any of them. It puts a dampener on the whole discussion, leading to a quick end to it. He paws at her to get her up out of the chair and holds onto her, concerned she might pass out or something.

“C’mon baby, let’s go lie down huh, you’re not lookin so good. You gonna be alright?”

He helps her saunter to the elevator and hits the button to go down. As the doors close, he peeks out to Sy and Vaun. “I’ll get back with you guys in a bit. I’m gonna get her settled down and make sure she’s ok.”

When Marek and Alexis are gone, Vaun stands at the decanter, twiddling with the top of it. He’s thinks to himself while he pours his bourbon over the shrunken ice ball in his glass. Without turning to Sy, he considers the merit to Marek’s idea.

“You know, maybe he’s right.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

“No…. no, not about that. About how we need to spring their own trap on them. It has to be them that screw up, not us. These guys already have a bad track record. It doesn’t have to be much of a stretch I don’t think. We won’t make a thing out of it. The precinct definitely won’t, and we’ll make sure the rats don’t either.”

Sy’s eyebrows are pinched tight while he stares at the burning end of his cigar, playing a few situations through his mind. “It’s gotta look like he’s going to punch a rat’s ticket and leave em in the ditch, bu yeah, someone still has to see it.”

Vaun shakes his head. “I hate this shit already. It’s dirty, and it’s not the way we do things.”

“Well, we’re expanding our skillset. That’s the only way I can frame it. I’m pretty sure we won’t be able to get them to agree to a cage fight.”

“Crap. That’s a pretty good idea though.”

Downstairs in Alexis’s apartment, Marek lays her down in her bed and bunches her covers up all around her. She’s looking a little better, but she’s still cool to the touch and seems exhausted. He doesn’t know what happened, but he assumes it must’ve been brought on by what they were talking about. He doesn’t want to press her, be he feels a little responsible for what happened.

“Hey, I don’t know what I was thinking, the whole drugs thing… it was just an idea. I’ve never done or been around anything like that, ok. I promise. I’d heard stories, but that’s all. I’m not the kind of person who could drug someone like that.”

She rolls over to face him, and takes one of his hands in hers underneath the covers. “It’s just that… it’s one of those things that shaped me, when I was young. I always thought I was tough inside, until then. I was so naive.”

He swallows hard, and starts to feel clammy. He’s not sure if he can handle it if something really bad happened to her. It almost makes him start to cry before she even continues.

“I was maybe seventeen when it happened.” She looks up at him, upset, but her spirit is steeled this time. “I remember Migo telling me, not a week earlier, to stay away from foreigners, especially if they spoke another language. He said that people from far-away places… hurt people, as they come and go.”

He puts his hand on the covers over her shoulder. “If you don’t want to, you don’t have to, k.” He’s mostly hoping she won’t tell him, but he knows she’s going to anyway.

“I remember seeing these guys, the kind he was talking about. There were four of them driving around in this shiny white car at night. I’d seen them doing it a couple nights. They never saw me, cause I always stay out of sight, but they saw this other girl. She was about the same age as me. They thought she was a hooker maybe, but I don’t think she was. They pulled their car up to her, out on the street, to get her to go with them. Their accents were so heavy, I can only assume that’s what they’d said to her.”

He’s relieved as hell that whatever happened, didn’t happen to her, but he knows it’s still going to be bad. His heartrate is really low, but thumping almost painfully hard. “They snatch her?”

“No, there were other people around too. She told them to fuck off, but that’s when they sprayed her in the face with something. I thought it was mace or something at first, but it wasn’t. She wiped her face with her hands and coughed a few times, but that’s it.”

He puts his elbow on his knee and run his hand in through his hair. He can’t make eye contact with her now, so he tries to look out the window to the catwalk. He’s ashamed to know. “Sounds like the stuff.”

“I stuck around for a little while, to make sure they didn’t take her, but they just drove off. They didn’t make a scene, yell at her or anything.” She shrugs her shoulders, but then immediately breaks into tears. “I though she… she was gonna be ok.”

It’s awful, and all he can do is pull her against himself and lay his cheek on her head. “I’m sorry babe. No one could’ve known.” He assumes she’ll say the girl’s body was found the next day.

As she wipes her eyes with the sheets, she continues. “I found her the next day curled up in the alley with her bloody hands covering her face. Except it wasn’t her hands that were hurt. Her whole face had been slashed up to nothing. When I tried to help her, to look at her face, she was clutching a memory stick in her fingers. I don’t think she even knew she had it. She didn’t know what happened. I put the thing in my camera, cause you know, I’ve always got my camera on me.”

He can’t even say anything, and knows it’s going to get even worse when she hides her face in the covers again. He puts both of his hands over her, while she shakes in sobs. He looks to the door again, not wanting to hear any more. There’s no way he’s going to let her out of his sight the rest of their lives.

“Those guys were the ones shooting the video. I could tell by their voices, it was them. They weren’t the ones who carved her up like that. They made her do it to herself. And it wasn’t the only drug they forced on her either. They told her such… sick things, and made her do things. I turned it off right away. The poor thing had no idea what had happened to her, but when she heard what was on that video…”

She shakes her head, as if trying to shake the memory of it right out of her head. “She jumped up and ran down the alley as fast as she could. I remember she stopped at the side walk, before I could catch her, looked left, and then leaped right out in front of a truck.”

“No babe! Oh no, I’m so sorry.” He lays his forehead down on her, whishing he could go back and stop what happened.

“Eventually, I watched that entire video of her debasing herself for those men, so I would never forget, so I could never forgive. That made me who I am. It made me hate men, heart and soul, my entire life. You don’t even know. All I could ever think about every day since, for so many years, was making people like that pay for what happened to that girl. I waited up every night, through every year, for those fuckers to someday come back, but they never did. I still can’t let it go.” When she brings herself to sit up again, her eyes are red, but dry.

He lets out a sob that’s half a chuckle. “You know… you were like this kind of scary myth on the streets. People would say that there was this phantom person who would come for you if you ever hurt a woman? They said no one knew who it was, cause no one ever lived to tell.”

“What? No.”

He chuckles again and wipes his eyes. “Yeah, I’d hear girls trying to scare away mean boys with their stories.”

“Nuh uh.” She’s almost smiling now.

“Yeah, I swear on it. It’s a real thing. They’d threaten to put guys on her ‘list’ if they broke their hearts. They said you’d always come for them. It was like there was no escape. They’d be dead for sure. It wasn’t just stories either though. I bet you saved so many girls.”

She wraps her arms around him, squeezes tight, and presses her face into his side. “You were my first Marek.”