Chapter 8

“I’m sorry, I must have heard incorrectly. I thought you said that you left her a voice message?” Thorne was furious. “Are we inviting her to a sleepover, as well?”

Morehouse had failed again. His hands were clammy and the shakes were coming on. I need a drink. Thorne eyed his decanter, the liquid disappearing from the reservoir at an alarming rate. If ever there was a day to embrace the wagon, it would be today. He quietly poured the decanter into his decorative cup, a feeling of anticipation for the relief to come as the brown liquid slowly filled each commemorative character on his glass, the drink providing company with each thumbs up, each million-dollar smile; the oaken musk of the drink proof that he was in the company of greatness. Other winners, just like him.

“Yes sir.” Morehouse’s deep voice betrayed no sound of embarrassment at his failure. Thorne believed he would relieve Morehouse of his command when this was all over, there had been too much that had gone wrong that Morehouse should have foreseen. “One second, sir. Reports from apprehension team at her residence.”

The line clicked as Morehouse checked in with his own subordinates. What the fuck is going on here, Thorne raged to himself. This was supposed to be an easy operation. Kill the little bug that thought he could bring down the coalition, kill his sister because she couldn’t not be in on it, reveal the lone survivor as a saboteur, publicly execute them, and erase any chance of the truth about the old world ever threatening the power of the Coalition ever again. Somewhere along the way, someone’s incompetence had gotten in the way. Thorne knew for sure that it wasn’t his. Someone would be made to pay for the difficulty with which his first offering to the Coalition stalled and puttered before finally revving to life.

Morehouse clicked back into their voice chat. Now, his voice carried a concerning sobriety that Thorne was unfamiliar with from his commanding officer. “There’s been a complication, Mr. Thorne. Shots fired at the residence, one member of corporate security lost. Suspects, of which we now believe there are three, fled through the fire escape in an unmarked speed-transport.”

Thorne stood from his desk and glared at his terminal’s receiver, willing Morehouse to see the anger that now occupied his eyes. Rage cocooned him and his voice grew shrill. “That is not what I wanted to hear, officer. We are still tracking her terminal’s location, are we not?”

“She got smart to that and dismissed her corporate permissions for location detection. We’re working on a complaint with the local oversight jurisdiction and should be able to re-establish tracking permissions. Now she’s killed one of us, it’s going to become a city-issue.”

Thorne’s scream caught even himself off-guard. “NO! I - ” He breathed in deeply through his nose, basking briefly in the alcoholic fumes of his drink. “I mean: No officer, we need to keep this discreet. This will reflect very poorly on our company if we seem incapable of containing a minor security breach.”

“It might be too late for that, sir. I believe some of the other residents of the girl’s tower have already started contacting the oversight teams. Lots of nosy neighbors once the shooting and screaming stopped.”

Thorne calculated. Would have been nice to keep everything quiet, but this improved his position; with the girl causing harm to one of his people, she was now a willing and a competent co-conspirator in her brother’s activities. The developments in the girl’s violent resists at arrest justified his attempted apprehension and violent methods and explained away all of his failures. Yes, this was his play. Plus, his board would have a nice opportunity for a media boon when the pubs learned about a corporate officer being killed. When life gives you lemons, Zachary, you take another shot and you make fucking lemonade.

This prompted another judgment in Thorne’s mind: there would be a public showing of Morehouse’s dismissal. He would fly to Skyreach himself and gather the security team and deliver an inspiring speech about loyalty and willingness to be brave for one’s company. That was the bigger problem nowadays, anyway. No one really cared anymore, it was all just a job. He needed to visit the team himself to feel out who would place the company before their own interests. Middle Managers are a dime a dozen, replacing Morehouse wouldn’t be hard. Morehouse would also be Thorne’s explanation to the Coalition members if things continued to deteriorate.

Thorne had been in his head for longer than he realized. The tenor of Morehouse’s voice buzzed his speaker. “Sir? Please advise, I repeat: oversight will arrive on scene imminently.”

“Give them her full description and a report on what happened. Tell them she was wanted for questioning for conspiracy of corporate espionage. Tell them she’s armed and dangerous. Petition their locators for permissions to her terminal. Call me when you know where she is.” Thorne ended the call and sat back down at his desk, impressed that the equipment survived his glare.

Adrian Morehouse replaced his hand terminal into his pocket and wiped the tears from his eyes before pulling the sweaty helmet from his head. Grabbing a rag from his vest pocket, he began to wipe Stringer’s blood from his neck and face. The black protective helmet was streaked with blood from the impact of his subordinate officer. The bolt from the girl’s pistol had gotten Stringer in the heart and he’d gone in ten minutes, coughing up a crimson mixture of blood and mucus as Morehouse watched him die. This wasn’t what he’d signed up for. Thorne was fucking crazy. I’m corporate security for an Energy firm, not some special operations commando for Skyreach Oversight. Arresting, questioning, occasionally rough-housing a reporter, you betcha’. Holding one of my longest serving subordinates in my arms as the life drains away… fuck. No.

Morehouse’s surviving team member, Allenson, sat across the hallway. Stringer’s limp corpse was cradled in his arms like an infact and a look of shock permanently fixed on his face, his mouth slowly opening and closing to saying something, but never releasing the words, like the wheels of a transport cart that keep spinning after it’s flipped over.

“Allensen. Hey, Allensen!” Morehouse snapped his fingers.

The shellshocked man looked up.

“Go home, buddy. Get cleaned up at the station and go home.” Morehouse helped Allensen to place Stringer gently onto the carpet and then hoisted the kid to his feet and looked him in the eye. “You did good today, kid. Shit went south, and we’re gonna’ ask ourselves for the rest of our lives if we could’ve done better today. But we did our best. Go home and let yourself off the hook.” Allensen attempted to protest, but his grief was too heavy to allow much of a discussion. This wasn’t war - they weren’t soldiers. Hell, they weren’t even cops. They were hall monitors. No company was worth this, and Allensen didn’t owe some greater loyalty to soldier on through his grief. As it stood from where he was looking at it, Morehouse was the one with debt for exposing his team to this madness.

As Allensen signed off on the brief report he was legally obligated to provide and shook Morehouse’s hand to walk away, the elevator dinged and a squadron of oversight officers flooded the hallway, cordoning off the immediate area of the scene from the elevator to the girl’s apartment and around the corner of the hallway where Stringer’s body now rested.

Greeting the lead detective, Gatska, his name, Morehouse told him everything as Thorne had instructed. Gatska had a discerning face and a confident demeanor that gave Morehouse some confidence in handing the case over. When the discussion progressed to the issue of location tracking, Morehouse made sure to ask the detective to petition their locators for new permissions to the girls phone. Gatska assured him that he petition was being submitted as they spoke and would be shared with Morehouse’s office and tagged corespondents within three hours time. That would have to work for Thorne. Even money couldn’t make the rusty cogs of city bureaucracy any faster.

After four interviews and three separate inspections of his full assay of equipment that each of his officers brought to the scene, Morehouse left contact information and was released from the scene. It had been one hundred and eighty seven minutes since he watched Stringer die. Tonight was the kind of night that a man defined himself by. What kind of man am I, Morehouse thought to himself. He wasn’t sure how to answer that question. Thorne had gotten him in over his head, but the girl had killed his kid. The girl was the reason that he was going to have to look Wanda Stringer in the eyes and tell her about her husband.

He traveled back to his security barracks and cleaned himself off. As he stepped from the shower, Morehouse knew what he had to do. First, though, he needed to contact the Oversight Jursdiction to confirm access to the girl’s tracking permissions and the launch of Facial Recognition on city surveillance. Then, he would call Thorne to bring him up to speed.