S Hunter: Longevity

This is the man , Livvy thought. Has to be. Having been introduced to the rest of the D.C. LLE squad by the Chief, she’d been waiting nearly fifteen minutes when a tall, trim man with gray eyes, tousled brown hair, and the sculpted face of a 35-year-old walked in. Had to be Chris McGregor.

In San Francisco, where attractiveness-boosting enhancements were almost de rigueur for those who could afford them, he would be considered good-looking enough but relatively non-descript. The standards there were pretty high. What was interesting this morning was that his demeanor, which she would otherwise describe as flinty – although perhaps what Mike had told her was seriously coloring her first impression – was seriously mellowed by the fact that he entered the room with a dog placidly trotting at his heels.

Mike hadn’t told her about the dog. What he had told her was directly responsible for her ending up on this bench outside the Chief’s office.

“If you’re serious, really serious about transferring to LLE, you should go to D.C. and learn from one of the best. Although why you want to work in LLE I’ll never understand. Most of their work is just shutting down hotlabs and rescuing kidnapped practitioners. And it’s hardly a stepping-stone to anything better. Once someone goes into LLE, they’re untouchable. They’re never seen again in real police work. You’re in Homicide. You get to put monsters away,” Mike had said. “So why do you want to transfer?”

“It’s all good stuff, putting away monsters, I know,” she’d said. “But it’s not like I’m saving civilization.”

“Saving civilization, huh? You started out in Tactical so I suppose you never went out as a uniform on a clean-up crew after LLE did their own tactical work. It’s more like destroying civilization, if you ask me. That’s how I first met McGregor.”

“He’s one of the best you mentioned?”

“The best,” Mike had said, smiling wickedly. “A legend.”

She knew that smile. “Okay, so why do I feel like I’m being set up? A self-made legend, huh? Thanks for the tip.”

“Oh no. A legitimate legend.” He was still smiling. “He was married to Karen DeVoe, too.”

“That name sounds familiar.”

“If you want to work LLE, it should,” Mike said. “She was one of the key designers who worked on the Laws. A bioethicist. She died in an accident a few years later.”

“Sad. All right, what’s the catch? I’m still feeling the suspicion.”

Mike raised his eyebrows and managed to look hurt.

“I’m a detective. Sensitivity to being jerked around is essential to the work,” Livvy added.

“He doesn’t take partners anymore. Hasn’t for 30 years.”

“Why not? One of those long-lifers who’s gone asocial?”

“Not that I ever noticed. Pleasant enough when I was a uniform on clean-up crew and the few times I actually consulted with him on homicide cases after I made the grade. Always seemed like a nice guy. Dedicated. Driven, even, but you’d expect that, or he wouldn’t have stayed in LLE over 50 years,” Mike said. He was still enjoying the conversation way too much, which meant that she was definitely being played, but she hadn’t heard the hook yet.

“Michael, me darlin’, if you don’t tell me now why you want me to try to work with this man I’ll put your preserved head in my little rock garden as a planter.”

“The consensus was that he didn’t take partners anymore because they couldn’t keep up with him.”

So of course, here she was, sitting on a bench outside the Chief’s office, in a squad room that had gone preternaturally quiet and expectant, at 8:30 AM on a Monday morning. She’d used her family’s influence to get here, too, which she’d never done before and which she’d loathed somewhat more than she had undergoing her emergency appendectomy. But if she hadn’t tapped the family power pipeline, she wouldn’t have gotten close. Damn the man, she thought. Damn them both.

There was an unnatural silence in LLE when Chris arrived. That was never good. He looked first towards the Chief’s office and thought he found the source decorating the bench outside the door. She had to be one of the most stunningly beautiful women he’d ever seen, thanks to shoulder-length auburn hair and eyes of a startling blue-green in a face with the kind of flawless skin that would do for the embodiment of a Renaissance portrait. The effect was lovely and somewhat ethereal, a strange combination if she was a professional. At an absolute minimum, the eye color and the skin tones had to be enhancements. None of that was illegal, but given the effort and expense she’d put into the visual effect, Chris suspected she hadn’t been able to resist crossing the line on an enticing chem- or neuro-enhancement. Certainly she had generated some serious silence in the normally rowdy squad.

It wasn’t usual for people who had had black market work done to make deals with LLE by giving information on whoever had done the work for them, which was probably why she was here. High class, based on her looks and her relatively stylish but conservative clothing, but still a snitch and a pro. The visual work was very good, subtle. The illegal stuff probably was too. From across the room he couldn’t detect a perfume, but the range wouldn’t matter. Some of the new skin-level stimulants the illegal labs were putting out for high-class professional women were remarkably potent yet completely undetectable without chemsensors. As long as the developer didn’t call them a pheromone (this term alone was enough to put them in felony range), the penalties weren’t enough to discourage them for long. Chris looked around for a legal stick or for a clue as to who might have brought her in, but other than the expectant silence and some surreptitious looks from Williams and Agnew, whose desks were closest, no one was paying attention to her. Except, at the moment, Louie. Louie had made a beeline for the woman and was standing there wagging his tail as she stroked his ears. Either he was more susceptible, or he had detected something hinky. Or he was totally nondiscriminating.

“Hey, McGregor, excited about your new partner?” It was Williams. He jerked his head in the direction of Louie’s rump and grinned sardonically, sharing the joke with Agnew.

“His name is Louie. I take comfort from the fact that he’s probably a hell of a lot smarter than you two,” Chris said.

Both Williams and Agnew, the rookie, reacted to this with hilarity.

And that’s way more than that deserved , Chris thought as he continued on towards his desk. He was uncomfortably aware of a pair of unnatural turquoise eyes tracking him, and of Louie, still enjoying the ear rub. The Chief hailed him through the open door before he quite made it.

“McGregor, in here. Now. And bring the dog.”

“Louie,” Chris said as he crossed back in front of the woman. He snapped his fingers for emphasis and Louie fell into position at his left side.

“Close the door,” the Chief said. “Sit.”

He paused, considering Chris and Louie for a few seconds. The Chief was old school, meaning that although he went in for his regular resets, he believed that the appearance of age increased authority. He was several decades chrono younger than Chris, but looked a little older and even had some gray hair, which was almost unheard of among people plugged into Longevity. As far as Chris knew, it was genetic and premature, rather than an atypical enhancement.

“I got your report on Andrews this morning. This is the dog? Never mind, dumb question. Like you thought, our Forensics analysts figured out from the good doctor’s notes that he was working on research that might make Longevity more economical. His lawyer can use it to get him a better deal, but he’ll still have to face the minimum.”