Latency

  Latency

  Hunter Bureau #2

  Blaze Ward

  Knotted Road Press

  Contents

  1. Bang

  2. Detective/Captain

  3. Coffee With a Side of Conspiracy

  4. Deals

  5. Knock Knock

  6. Morning

  7. Fashion

  8. Chiptech

  9. Hunter

  10. Records

  11. Access

  12. Jansen

  13. Runner

  14. Hospital

  15. Breaking and Entering

  16. Downtown

  17. Latency

  18. Bullet

  19. Southbound

  20. Dreamer

  21. Stalking the Elusive Prey

  22. Jacksonville

  23. Bolthole

  24. Secrets

  25. Chain of Evidence

  26. Timebomb

  27. Rest Stop

  28. Boston

  29. The Dance

  30. Edgar

  31. Olek

  32. Quinton

  33. Denise

  About the Author

  Also by Blaze Ward

  About Knotted Road Press

  1

  Bang

  Lunch time. Nice day downtown not too far from Boston Common. Sidewalk café on the ground floor of one of those towers that had gone up after the aliens arrived and changed everything.

  Just sitting and shooting the breeze with Rachel Asher.

  Greyson was still getting used to having a partner again. He’d been retired for over a year, and had mostly worked solo before that.

  Being a Detective/Hunter for the Earth Police Special Missions Hunter Bureau wasn’t like a normal cop job. He wasn’t out solving crimes most of the time, running down leads and stuff like that.

  Sure, he did it. Maintained a quiet network of informants and criminal friends he could lean on in a pinch, but most of what the Hunters did involved death. Other departments, other agencies, would do all the legwork, but when things got ugly or tight then folks like Greyson got called into the picture.

  You could teach someone how to be a cop. How to be a detective. Forensics and all the technical stuff.

  You couldn’t teach Killer. Folks were either born with it or they weren’t. Trying to make someone a killer when they didn’t have it in them ended up just breaking them after a while.

  It had taken years for the brass to grasp that, but they’d finally given up on the psychological manipulation crap in training and started looking for people willing and able to put a beam weapon to an intelligent person’s head—or more specifically an alien’s—and pull the trigger.

  Those people were mercifully few, but that was what the Hunters did. Most of the time, the beam was even on a heavy stun setting, so the Hunter could take that rogue alien in and question them. Palmstunners and the like. Safe enough to use, even in crowd situations, since you could sort everyone out and apologize later as necessary.

  Every cop on the street was issued a palmstunner. Even Greyson had one, tucked under his belt on the right side, under the light jacket he wore when working. The kind of jacket that went with comfortable slacks and a nice-enough shirt. Greyson had ceremonially burned all his ties when he’d been fired the first time and he really didn’t care enough to replace them. The brass got him like this and liked it, or they could go piss up a rope and he’d go back to his various pensions. His synth whiskey and his classical music. Noodles at the place down around the corner because the owner kept prices cheap and Greyson could live small.

  He didn’t need to be a cop.

  They’d needed him to come back into the fold, not the other way around.

  Greyson looked across the lunch table at his partner. Rachel Asher. Kid young enough to be one of his, if he’d had any he knew about. Another killer. Patrolman/Hunter on her way to making Detective and then Brass one of these days, except that she wasn’t staying in Boston to do it.

  Eventually, Scotland Yard would open a slot for her to take a lateral and she’d become a Bobby. Or something. Probably three days after she completed that law degree she was constantly studying towards.

  Like now. Head down with a cup of coffee in her off hand. Nose in a tablet reading homework. That book reader was even more reliable than her shoes.

  Rachel had stopped wearing a tie after she got paired with him. Greyson figured he was a bad influence on the kid, but he didn’t care. She was a good cop. Would be better than him once she learned a few more things, and then she’d move into one of those corner offices with a view of a river somewhere.

  If he wasn’t already pushing fifty, he’d maybe consider transferring to London when she did, just so he could have her as a boss. Greyson Leigh hadn’t learned anything about Rachel to convince him that would be a bad turnabout.

  Her eyes came up just enough to confirm that he was staring at her.

  Cop sense.

  She had it.

  Rachel started to say something and a sound interrupted. Short. Loud. Sharp. Over.

  Three bangs.

  “What the hell?” she asked, but Greyson was already on his feet and moving. He paused just long enough to drop enough cash to cover lunch on the table and he was sprinting away.

  Firefighters run to the sound of trouble.

  Cops run towards gunfire.

  Chemically-propelled slugthrowers, using gunpowder, were illegal anywhere except a dedicated facility, after a long process before you could get all the necessary permits. It was an expensive hobby Greyson had never felt the need to indulge in, unlike some other cops who yearned for a forgotten silver age of cowboys and indians.

  And a few hard-case criminals who liked things that went bang.

  He considered drawing his palmstunner, but decided that whoever it was shooting things was already trouble with Poor Impulse Control tattooed across his forehead. And they were still firing, so people were at risk.

  He reached under his left arm and pulled out the Nerve Scrambler.

  Only Hunters were issued these weapons. They could take down anybody at short range, up to and including a Phrenic, those brutally-efficient shapeshifters that had to wear a suppressor device if they didn’t want to be arrested on sight.

  Or killed.

  More gunfire. Three slower shots. Greyson was back in the army again. Back in the early Twenty-first Century. Before the aliens came and made the world over. Back when violence was used to solve problems.

  Boston was a hard town, but it had adapted well to peaceful times. The sidewalk was a little crowded with people frantically running for cover in buildings or behind anything heavy enough to stop a bullet.

  Midday. Spring wasn’t that far off, so he’d settled for just the jacket and not anything heavier. Most of his work was indoors or riding in a car, but a sidewalk café had been a good idea. Out in the sun and nice breeze, after a winter cooped up.

  It still snowed in the winter in Boston many years. Not as bad as when he’d been a kid, to say nothing of his grandparents, who had stories of blizzards so bad the city came to a halt for a week.

  Nice enough day, but for some punk with an illegal gun taking pot shots at the world.

  There.

  Greyson found the center of the maelstrom as people were all headed outward from a single point. Of course, this moron had walked into a small park today and decided to open fire.

  At least the shooter was outside, where someone like Greyson Leigh might hear him, rather than confined in a building, where he could barricade himself in and nobody would know until a victim managed to trigger a panic button.

  Male. Ragged but middle-class, with a slight paunch and clothes that he hadn’t gotten second hand. Several days stubble on the side of the chin
Greyson could see from here. Almost looked like an accountant who had suffered a psychotic break.

  He was reloading. Damn, was that a flipping revolver? Where the hell had he stolen a relic like that?

  Greyson’s grandfather had had something like that, demilled when the aliens decided to make humans safer. It couldn’t fire. The one over there did.

  Greyson counted three bodies down and ignored the wild screaming sounds from the other survivors, all fleeing for their lives, so that he wasn’t distracted.

  He knew the range of the nerve scrambler. That hand cannon had a longer reach, but Greyson was quiet. He slowed and realized that Rachel had been silently pacing him, even with her stubbier legs and heavy boots.

  She had her nerve scrambler out, too. Probably had no idea what Greyson was up to and just being careful and paranoid.

  “Police, drop the weapon!” Greyson yelled as he came down to a jog at the edge of deadly range.

  Never stop moving with a shooter, so you can dodge suddenly, but take the time to be careful.

  And not everyone knows what a Hunter is, so the sound of his voice would likely just draw fire. It was possible though, that identifying himself as a simple cop would break through to the man. Or draw fire this way.

  Nobody wore the sorts of Kevlar vests Greyson had lived in as a soldier, so he was just as at risk as everyone else in view.

  The bastard with the illegal hand cannon merely snapped the cylinder shut and turned his way, raising it.

  In all the movies, the cops always managed to avoid being shot at fifteen meters by a maniac with a gun like that. They had to take that moment to let the audience know that they were the good guys and had no choice but to take the bad guy down, but only after lives were at risk.

  Greyson shot the fucker dead center and drove hard to his right with a planted foot, just to get away from that questing barrel.

  Nerve scrambler was one hell of a rude weapon. Against humans, generally terminal, unless someone just got brushed by the edge of the field or was out at the edge of effective range.

  There was a hospital close enough to treat someone who’d been hammered. Save his life, maybe, in some sort of medical miracle.

  Greyson shot him again as the first bolt drove the man to his knees.

  Rachel followed with a shot of her own, but Greyson had already seen the light go out in the man’s eyes.

  Dead.

  No longer a threat to Hunters or innocent civilians just running errands on their lunch hour.

  He was still jogging, so he circled farther right and closed with the man.

  “Call for backup and medical emergencies,” Greyson turned to Rachel with a hard face.

  She was a little green around the gills, but nodded and pulled out her Communicator. She stopped moving before she stepped in a blood puddle.

  Greyson always owned pants that blood would wash out of.

  Potential victims were still running, so Greyson had the entire space to himself right now. Just him, Rachel, the dead guy, and a handful of victims.

  He approached with the nerve scrambler all set for a fourth bolt if the corpse sat up right now.

  Greyson still had weird nightmares that he didn’t dare talk about with the Bureau shrinks, lest they start asking harder questions and maybe take him in for a battery of tests that might get him killed.

  Like how he had survived being shot with a similar weapon while hunting a Phrenic through the catacombs under Boston last fall. Or the fact that he was a Phrenic himself, a frightened being buried so deeply into the personality of Greyson Leigh that neither of them understood where one ended and the other started.

  Except that Greyson was in command of their body. Ethen had retreated to a little box in a closet, up on the shelf in back, where Greyson’s mind could protect him from the universe.

  Rachel suspected the truth, but had never said anything to anyone, or they would have shot him on sight.

  He was still Greyson Leigh, regardless of the body he wore. Cop. Hunter.

  Killer.

  The shooter was dead.

  Nerve scrambler three times dead.

  Not-fucking-around dead.

  Greyson scanned the space for any other shooters. Seeing none, he holstered his nerve scrambler and gingerly picked up the revolver by the end of the barrel. Then dropped it because he’d forgotten how hot those damned things got.

  After putting gloves on, he tried a second time, muttering curses at himself.

  Wow. Museum piece Ruger. 1970s model, give or take. Back when that one actor had made them the gun every fool had to have for protection. Including Greyson’s grandfather.

  Blue steel .44 Magnum. In those days, it really had been the most powerful handgun on Earth and take your head clean off.

  Those days were past. And guns like this were illegal as anything outside of a licensed gun range with really high annual dues and a crap-ton of paperwork on file.

  Who the hell was this man, that he’d even had access to something like that? And what would cause a middle-aged accountant, maybe ten years older than Greyson from the thinning hair turning white and the lines around the eyes and mouth, to just walk into a park and start shooting people?

  Clothes screamed middle-class office drone. Accountant or actuary. Something bland and forgettable. Maybe off-the-rack wool in charcoal tailored by an expert, rather than bespoke.

  “Company inbound,” Rachel said as she stepped close. “I let them know we were here and things were calm, so they didn’t arrive shooting. Unlike someone I know.”

  He glanced over but she was grinning. That was good. Anything else and she’d have gotten the sharp side of his tongue.

  He wasn’t a cop, but Hunters were still the people who ran towards gunfire.

  “Hey, what’s that?” she asked suddenly, kneeling next to the dead guy.

  Unlike him, she already had her gloves on, but she was still closer to police academy.

  He’d been a professional assassin for the US Army at her age. Cop only happened later.

  Greyson stepped around so he didn’t shade her from the bright sun that had suddenly come out from behind the clouds.

  Rachel reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a knife. Long and straight like a stiletto. Useful tool.

  She prodded at something on the side of the guy’s head, right behind his left ear.

  Greyson had never gone in for one of those data-jacks that had become all the rage after the aliens first arrived on Earth sixteen years ago. Sure, you could plug your brain straight into a global communications network and have access to a galactic encyclopedia of information, sports, and entertainment.

  But Rachel wasn’t old enough to know what a modal popup window was. Or why it might never go away if the programmer behind it was enough of an asshole. Especially the ones who played a stupid pop song from the 1980s.

  Yeah, I’m going to give you up, fucker.

  “What have you got?” he asked anyway, in case it hadn’t been what it seemed.

  “Synth Chip,” Rachel replied, leaving it in place, plugged into the guy’s skull like a dongle in a USB port. Another reference she might be too young to get. “The name on it is Killer.”

  She turned a confused look up at him.

  “I thought that Synth Chips were supposed to override everything, so you sat quietly in a chair and lived whatever experience was programmed into them?” she asked/said.

  Like him, she wasn’t jacked. If you wanted that level of immersion, there were places you could go where they would suit you up and put a helmet on you, invoking it all through a SQUID. A Superconducting QUantum Interface Device.

  Beam crap straight into your brain, but do it through your skull.

  For a lot of people, it was just way easier to get a data-jack and plug things right into your mind.

  Greyson had never wanted one. Greyson in Ethen’s mesomorphed body couldn’t have one, because neither of them was sure what a medical scanner would show.
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br />   “That’s the theory,” Greyson said. “Something obviously went wrong with this one. Whatever homicide detective gets the case will have fun sorting it out.”

  “They won’t assign us?” she asked. “We were here.”

  “We’re Hunters, Rachel,” Greyson said as cops in Skycruisers started dropping out of the sky with lights flashing and sirens wailing.

  He had the revolver by the barrel still, but held it at arm’s length, just so no punk with a twitchy finger stunned him right now.

  In about thirty seconds, none of this would be his problem anyway.

  2

  Detective/Captain

  The shooting had been all over the news Rachel had been watching for two days now, but like Leigh had said, it had been handed off to some homicide detective as fast as one could arrive and be briefed. They’d gone back to the restaurant, had dessert, and disappeared. Thinking that they were done.

  Apparently, she’d been wrong.

  Rachel looked up from her homework now as the door opened and Captain Parsons looked out at her and Greyson in the two seats, like truant school kids sent to sit outside the principal’s office. Parsons was an English word that always conjured up images of a lean, fussy, Anglican priest on a rolling, green wilderness, playing religious music on an old-fashioned organ.

  This woman had none of that going.

  Parsons was maybe five eight in bare feet, plus five inches of heels going today. Bottle blond who took the time to touch up her roots but not her brunette eyebrows. Blue eyes in that Slavic way from so many who had come over to North America over the last three generations. Cheek bones a girl could shave her legs with in a pinch.