S Hunter - Longevity

Chris grabbed the armor and shifted over to the better cover near the center of the car. It was still awkward, staying behind the shield created by the car body while getting into the armor. He had barely finished when Livvy’s voice emerged from the back seat of the car, immediately behind him.

“Move out of the way. Please.”

He barely began shifting back towards the front of the car when the right rear door opened and Livvy, tunic and gloves already on and gripping a dart rifle, basically tumbled out of the car onto the road beside him.

The seventh shot hit the roof of the car and ricocheted off into the neighborhood just as Chris reached out, got a firm grip on her tunic, and pulled, successfully moving her back and drawing her up so that she was leaning against the car frame at his side, well within the cover offered by the car.

“Your arm?” Chris asked.

“It’s fine. A scratch. I’d clock you, you know, but I may need you to provide a diversion,” she said. “Just make sure the Chief knows I was prepared to huddle safely in the car, call for back-up, and scan for a sign of the shooter. Just like standard Enforcement procedures dictate. I’m going to get stomped on for this, aren’t I?”

“Not by me. But that was a good plan. I wish you had stuck with it.”

“But LLE handles this sort of thing differently, I suppose,” she added more calmly. “Proactively.”

“I want to try to flush him out before backup scares him away,” Chris said.

“So I figured,” she said.

“Whoever is shooting, he doesn’t seem to be very good at it. I’m worried about the innocent people beyond us. Now that we have the tunics, I think we should give him better targets and charge.”

“Where?” Livvy asked, closing her faceplate and turning around to look through the car window.

The eighth and ninth shots both pinged off the top of the car near her head.

“Persistent sort, isn’t he? Doesn’t he know these cars are projectile-proof?”

“I thought it might be a roof, but I think now it’s that oak over in the neighbor’s yard.”

Livvy nodded. “You’re probably right. Much better cover and more accessible than a roof, too. I can’t see him, though. Lovely cover.”

“On three then,” Chris said, moving from a seated to a crouched position. “One, two,…”

Louie chose that moment to poke his head out of the trunk. The ball was in his mouth and he somehow looked expectant, as though waiting for an invitation to play.

“Louie, down!” Chris yelled. “Three.”

He and Livvy leapt to their feet and raced straight for the huge oak, peppering the lower branches with darts as they ran. Chris stopped counting the shots that dug into the turf around them. They were shooting blindly into the lower branches, but if just one dart connected… Twenty meters out, and one of them got lucky. A very large vintage rifle fell out of the oak, followed a few seconds later by a limp body, which plunged to the ground and hit with a satisfying thump. It was bearded and dressed like a peasant farmer of the 16 thcentury.

The dart gave them at least 10 minutes even with a very large opponent, and of course the fall may have added considerably to that interval.

Both Chris and Livvy flattened themselves against the broad trunk of the tree and stood there, breathing rapidly and searching the branches above their heads.

“I think he was alone,” Chris said.

“I think you’re right.”

Neither of them moved.

“Still, if there is someone else, I want to know.”

“Ready?” Livvy said. “Go!”

They stepped out the shelter of the trunk and scanned the roofs of the neighboring houses. Nothing.

Waving her arms in the air, Livvy walked out from under the tree. “Yoohoo.” There was nothing, other than a barely-glimpsed figure moving away from the window in Isabella’s house. Chris lost interest before she did and almost immediately walked over to begin examining their prisoner. After another minute of scanning the roofs and the windows, Livvy joined him. He’d already cuffed the peasant and, one on either side, they crouched over the sleeping man, whose garb seemed almost natural as long as he was lying in the grass.

“I’ll bite,” Livvy said. “Is this outfit traditional for the fringe groups around here? ”

“No, but maybe he was making a statement,” Chris replied. “He may have even expected to get caught.”

“Undoubtedly. Even in San Francisco this get-up would attract attention,” Livvy said. “So. How did he get here?”

“It had to be before we did. We can look for a car but I’m betting he was dropped off, probably in the dark,” Chris said.

“And he didn’t shoot at us on the way in because…?” Livvy asked.

“Now that I can’t figure. You’d think he’d prefer to distract us before the interview.”

“Isabella…?”

Chris looked up at her. “Not involved with this, at least not directly. We’re practically in her flowerbeds, after all. No. Someone who knows about her knew we were going to show up here, but she didn’t arrange this.”

Chris got an inquiry on his aural and started relaying information and instructions to the approaching back-up over his collar comu.

The sound of several distant sirens changed direction and steadily gained volume. In the next few minutes three cars arrived in rapid succession in an impressive display of force, and uniforms climbed out of the cars and fanned out in several directions. Chris and Livvy scanned the roofs again but neither of them detected any movement other than more vague forms in the windows of the surrounding houses.

“What’s your guess?” Livvy asked when it was apparent they weren’t going to spot anyone else and they’d gone back to examining their unconscious prisoner. “Religious zealot or Naturals Only fanatic?”

“Dressed like this? No ID, no comu, no paper. He could be either, and there’s a lot of crossover. I don’t recognize him in particular, but I wouldn’t expect to. This is a little extreme for the Naturals Only locals. It’s possible that they’re escalating, or this one splintered from the group, or he’s a fraud. Or he’s only a tool. Or any combination of the above.”

The shooter was already blinking his eyes and trying to move with that purposeless shifting that preceded coherent thought. Chris thought he detected the moment, from a change in the man’s expression, when he really awakened and realized that something had gone terribly wrong with his plans, and that he was a prisoner. Chris stood up and looked across to Livvy, who was still looking down on the prisoner from the other side.

“At least we can be pretty sure,” Livvy said wryly, “that he’s not one of those rare pro-Longevity fanatics that want to kill us because they believe we are denying humanity the gift of immortality. He’d be better dressed.

“Also,” she continued, “if he’s a tool, it’s because someone preyed on his fanaticism. No one would throw money away on this level of marksmanship.”

“True. Unless they have a lot of money to throw around,” Chris said slowly. “Lets hope he wakes up in a mood to talk.”

The medics arrived with a stretcher and they moved out of the way.

“So you think we can be pretty sure there’s a connection to Josephson’s disappearance. Because he knew where to find us and got here first. Can we absolutely eliminate the possibility that he followed us here?” Livvy said as they walked back to the car.

“With Louie silently watching him climb the tree?” Chris asked.

Livvy glanced at the back seat, where Louie was again sitting docilely with his ball in his mouth.

“No, you’re right. Of course Louie would have warned us,” Livvy said, reaching in through the open door to scratch him behind the ears. “Incidentally, you don’t suppose he knows what a ‘distraction’ is, do you?”