John Moralee - Future Imperfect - A Collection of Science Fiction Stories

The caller hung up without saying where they were. I swore. It was impossible to trace the origin of the call. Burners used too many relays, making them untraceable. The source could be anywhere in the city.

The one called Larick was lying on the floor, shivering as each pulse from my stun bullet coursed through his nervous system. I had remote access to the stunner’s strength. I turned it down so he could speak.

“You have my sister,” I said. “Tell me where she is or I’ll give you another dose of pain.”

“No way,” he said. “I’m a dead man if I talk to a cop.”

“Tell me where my sister is,” I said. “Or I’ll torture you.”

“Yeah, right. You’re a cop. You’ve not got the guts.”

“No?” For effect, I set my Omni to shoot another stun bullet. I pointed it at his crotch. “Want me to shoot here? The pain will be unimaginable when I turn it up to max. It’ll fry your body from the inside out.”

I saw the fear in his eyes. I thought he was going to crack—but Larick snarled at me. “I’m not betraying my brothers. Yellow Star call me home!”

The gang member’s skin started to turn a pale blue. Within seconds, his corneas were bursting with blood and he was bleeding from his nose and ears. He was dead before I could even get a medi-patch. I could not believe it. He had glanded a deadly neurotoxin and killed himself.

Now I’d never find my sister.

What was I going to do? The gang would kill her as soon as they realised Larick and Shorty were not coming back.

I stepped back from the dead man and struggled to think of what to do. The book. Did that contain something? I had to examine it properly. I pulled it out and examined the cover. Nothing unusual. I opened it to the first page, discarding a bookmark. There was no message on the page. Flicking through the pages, I saw nothing interesting. Getting desperate, I shook the book hoping something would fall out, then got a knife from the kitchen and cut open the spine. I ripped the book apart looking for anything important. I laughed. What was I doing? My mother would never send me a book expecting me to destroy it. She knew I loved books. After a minute, I took a second looked again at the bookmark. There were ornate designs on it like circuit diagram. I grinned. It wasn’t just a bookmark. There was a small hole for a data input cable. It was slim data storage device. I hurried to my tablet and connected the bookmark. The tablet’s screen displayed hundreds of folders containing documents and image files. A folder marked RABBIT HOLE caught my attention because it was related to Alice’s adventure. It contained read-only video files. I opened one titled OPEN ME. A video played, time-stamped twenty years ago.

The face of my mother appeared as I remembered her, bringing unexpected tears. She stood on another world with three dull orange suns, looking straight into the camera lens. “My name is Eryn Hudson, former executive of Sunstone Corporation. This is a record of my personal investigation into the sabotage of the Arcadia Space Elevator Project...”

Five minutes later, I was exiting my apartment with a reloaded Omni when I heard the doors to an elevator opening down the hall. I aimed my weapon, expecting more gang members. My partner stepped out, looking shocked to see pointing my weapon.

“Whoa! Put that down.”

I was surprised to see him. He had never visited my building before. I lowered my Omni. “Vito, what are you doing here?”

“Chara, I needed to see you in person. I got the results back from the blood sample. The DNA matches your mother. The girl is Eryn Hudson.”

“I know,” I said.

“You know? Chara, she’s a wanted felon. I came to give you a heads-up because the whole police force will soon be looking for her. They’ll arrest you if they think you’re helping her evade arrest. Is that what you’re doing? Do you know where she is?”

“No,” I said. “But I know she’s innocent.”

“How?”

“I just shot two thugs waiting in my apartment, sent by the real bad guys. And I’ve seen the evidence. My mother didn’t sabotage the space elevator. She never had an affair with Garth Zin, either. All the evidence against her was fabricated by the CEO of Sunstone Corporation, along with some board members, private investors and corrupt officials. They needed a scapegoat—so they picked my mother. She became a fugitive so she could track down Garth Zin and find the truth. It took her twenty years to find him—but she did it and made him confess. Zin was paid to frame her so the police would not look for the real saboteurs. My mother sent me a recording of his confession, as well as all the evidence needed to prove Sunstone executives were responsible for the destruction of their own project.”

“Why did they do that?”

“They’d underbid for the government contract, which would have cost them a fortune to complete. They sabotaged the space elevator to break the contract legally, while also receiving a massive payout from their insurance brokers. It was just a scam to earn them billions. And now I have everything to prove it, thanks to my mother.”

“That’s great,” Vito said. “Have you got the book on you?”

I had not mentioned the book to him. His left eye twitched as he realised his error. I raised my Omni. “You’re working for them, Vito?”

“What? No! Chara, don’t be paranoid. I came to help you. Stop pointing your weapon.”

“They sent you. You’re working for the Yellow Star.”

“No.”

“Liar. That’s why you weren’t keen on continuing the investigation earlier. They got to you, told you to back off.”

“Chara—” he said, and made a sudden move for his Omni.

I shot first. Vito went down with two stun bullets in his neck. I cuffed him and then dragged him into my apartment. He was wriggling like a sun-cooked worm, so I deactivated the stun bullets so I could talk to my partner without his teeth chattering. He started sobbing. “I’m sorry, Chara. They didn’t give me a choice. I got into debt after my divorce and–”

“I don’t care for excuses, Vito. You’re dirty. I’ve got the evidence to take down everyone responsible for framing my mother, but none of that matters if I don’t save my sister. If they kill her, you’ll be to blame, Vito. Do the right thing. Help me.”

Vito looked ashamed. “There’s a club. The Yellow Star use the basement for storing illegal things. They’ll probably keep your sister there because it’s in the middle of their territory.”

“Which club?”

“ Transformia . Chara, what are you going to do?”

“This,” I said, and I punched him in the face, knocking him out. I was rubbing my sore knuckles when I heard footsteps outside.

Someone knocked. “Chara? Shada?”

I stepped to one side and opened the door. A blonde teenager was standing in the corridor with a gash on her arm. She saw my Omni and raised her hands. “Don’t shoot, Chara. This might sound insane—but I’m your mom in disguise. I had my body transformed so I could come home without being recognised—but I must have screwed up because they were waiting for me at the spaceport. I used the alias Charlotte Dodgson in case anything happened to me—so you’d figure things out if I disappeared. If you don’t believe I’m your mother, you can check my DNA and—”

“I believe you,” I said. “I was there at the station and know the whole story. I already figured out a lot after discovering that this bookmark was a data device. But I don’t know why you sent it to me.”

“You’re a cop, Chara. I was hoping you’d take that straight to the authorities.”

“I would have—if I’d known what it was earlier, Mom. You could have made it more obvious.”