Just two hours before, Lieutenant Michael Caldwell sat behind auto controls of his police hover craft contemplating retirement and finishing his lunchtime supplements.
“You know,” he said to his stouter and happier partner Corporal Jack Faring, “I make it to 5 p.m. today and I’m retired.”
“That today?” Jack asked, munching on a Dunkin Donuts classic Butternut donut. Jack never had the brightest bulb, Michael thought, but he was braver than most and knew his way around the Metroplex better than any partner he’d had before.
Michael grimaced. “You were my partner for, what, 11 years, and you JUST remembered that?”
Jack’s faced turned red and he grinned. “Well, he said. “Not really. But see I’m not supposed to tell you about the surprise thing back at the station house when we’re done. So, they asked me to play dumb.”
“You’re not a very good actor,” Jack said, eyebrows raised. Just then, the radio squawked.
“Echo two one seven, this is echo base. Please respond to a domestic disturbance. Your area, just outside Supernatural zone sixteen.”
“No way,” Michael said aloud, his finger on the radio’s ‘mute’ button. “My last day. No chance I’m responding to a supernatural call today. Just ain’t happening.”
None of the beat cops liked responding to supernatural calls. Neither did Michael. On any other day, he would be filing some meaningless paperwork through the police network, mentoring other beat cops or just doing something in the Metroplex police headquarters. However, on his last day, Michael took another officer’s shift as an expression of the leadership’s support and to better remember his final day on the force. He and jack had done a good job fending off the worst calls and passing them to younger officers. And the call center certainly screened incoming calls to their cruiser. So this was a fluke, right?
“Echo Base, this is two one seven. You sure you got the right car? Just verifying the location and status,” Michael responded.
“Two one seven, all you. Disturbance is in just off the one-one-three-eight block of,” and the artificial intelligence read the street back to him. Then it chirped. “Updated. We have two causalities and the suspect is now considered armed and dangerous. You’ll be the first responder. TechSWAT is behind you.”
Michael groaned. “Confirmed,” he said, mashing the “charge” buttons on two plasma rifles housed in the hover craft’s fuselage. “Two one seven is rolling.”
Michael looked over at Jack, finished the last of his Butternut donut. “This somebody harebrained idea of a surprise, too?”
Jack shook his head. He didn’t look happy.
The early afternoon had given way to dark gray clouds on an abnormally orange horizon. Arriving at the location, Michael watched as tendrils of black smoke rose from the roof of an older concrete-and glass styled town house. The building sweated something iridescent. Blacks of charred stone were strewn about the lawn, sidewalk and streets. All of the automatic lighting had shattered. Michael assessed that something had exploded and the shockwave had permeated almost everything within about a block.
“There’s no way in hell I’m going in there,” Michael said as the hover craft door swung open. “I’m waiting for …”
The radio came to life again. “Two one seven, TechSWAT’s main and alternate carriers are down. You’re on your own for about another 20 minutes.”
Jack plopped out, popped the security hatched and retrieved the plasma rifles. “Wow. You’re having some luck today, Mike.”
Michael laughed, looking skyward. “You couldn’t have waited three more hours?”
“Just think of the pension,” Jack said, handing Michael the rifle.
Michael eyed the charging meter and sighed. “Full and blue. You full and blue?”
Jack nodded.
“Okay, let’s go meet the supernatural wife beaters,” Michael said.
As they walked toward the building, Jack pulled something that looked like a remote control off his belt and pointed it at the building. Michael watched him gather readings off the house; however, his partner didn’t have to say anything about the outcome.
“Not the usual, is it,” Michael asked.
Jack shook his head. “Nothing’s coming up. Lots of off the scale stuff. I just had this thing recalibrated and cinched up tight. So, it’s good.”
Michael’s skin bristled as they got closer to the town house. The front door used to be one of the more secure electric sliding security doors with high levels encryption and 3-inch thick titanium plating. When Michael stepped over it to reach the smoking hole that was now the town home’s entrance way, his stomach tensed a bit.
“Really, Jack,” Michael said. “We should wait.”
“Well, we’re here now. And you’re in charge. So, you’re call,” Jack said. Michael knew his partner’s expression all too well. Quit being a chicken shit, grow a pair and let’s go. He’d only seen it one other time, after being reassigned from RICO to interstellar drug traffic and enforcement. Michael only needed the one look to remind him why he joined the police force and why he liked Jack so much as a partner. His retirement wasn’t going anywhere.
Michael nodded. “Let’s armor up before we go in. Locators on, too,” he said. Each of them clicked a few buttons. Jack led the way.
Swelling with a glowing burgundy fog, the first room washed Michael with something that made goose bumps rise; something closer to spending a morning sledding down hills in his native Wisconsin neighborhood, soaking his clothes and later his bones; something that took the better part of an hour to warm up from afterward.
“You cold?” Michael asked Jack.
“No,” Jack said, surprisingly. “Burning hot.”
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