Soul Patrol: Badge of the Forgotten

Ten Days

 

Vega's office had a door, and she shut it behind them with a click that sounded like a gun being cocked.

Elias stood in front of her desk. Boone leaned against the filing cabinet. Through the glass wall, the whole precinct was watching them and whispering, and none of it reached the room.

Vega didn't sit. She pulled the folded page out of her jacket, smoothed it flat on the desk, and stared at the pencil scrawl.

SHE KNOWS.

"Well?" said Elias. "Do you?"

"Do I what?"

"Know."

"Know what, Thorne? That's the fucking question." She stabbed a finger at the paper. "I've been called 'she' by a lot of people in a lot of decades. Could be me. Could be some other bitch on this list. Could be a joke."

"It's a pretty shitty joke."

"Most of them are." She exhaled smoke that hung in the air like a question. "Here's what I know. Somebody in the Bureau wants every cop in Halfway erased. Somebody in the Patrol wrote a note in the margin. I don't know who either of them is, and until I do, this precinct is locked down. Nobody in. Nobody out. Nobody talks to another precinct."

"You're not going to warn them? There are a hundred and forty cops on that list."

"And one of them might be the leak." Her voice went flat. "You want to send a warning to the wrong desk and watch this whole thing speed up? I've been doing this since 1974, kid. I'm not paranoid. I'm alive."

"Technically neither of us is," said Boone.

"Shut up, Cyrus."

"Yes, ma'am."

Elias kept his eyes on her. "You didn't answer me. Do you know what she knows?"

Vega looked at him for a long moment. Something moved behind her face, and then closed like a door.

"If I knew who was erasing my people," she said, "I'd have shot the son of a bitch already. Ask me again when you've been dead fifty years."

It wasn't an answer. They both knew it. He let it go, for now, and filed it beside the half second when Pell's smile had frozen.

"Give me that." She pointed at the gray envelope in his fist. He handed it over, and she read the notice with a grimace. "Tribunal. Ten days. Three judges, one from the Bureau, one from the Patrol, and one neutral, who's always the biggest prick of the three."

"What happens if I lose?"

"They declare you a discrepancy. Under Bureau law, that means you were never supposed to exist, and the law is allowed to fix it." She made a stamping motion in the air. "Legally. With paperwork. And nobody in Halfway can lift a finger to stop it."

"So I've got ten days to..."

"To become a person the law can't ignore." She slid the notice across the desk. "Figure out how."

Ten days, Elias thought. Ten fucking days to become somebody the law couldn't ignore.

"Right now, go sit down before you fall on your ass. And Thorne?"

"Yeah?"

"You did good out there. Don't let it go to your head, you cocky little shit."

Boone snorted. "She just said you did good. Frame it."

"Fuck off, Cyrus."

The break room was a converted ticket booth with a kettle that whistled like it had something to say, a mismatched sofa, and a fridge covered in notes that said things like WHO STOLE MY YOGURT and I WILL FIND YOU.

Dolores sat in the middle of the sofa with a chipped mug in both hands, looking perfectly at home. Next to her sat the Viking, hunched over his crossword like a mountain over a molehill.

"Five letters," the Viking rumbled. "A wanderer. Starts with N."

"Nomad, dear," said Dolores.

The Viking scribbled it down. "Seven letters. To steal."

"Purloin."

The Viking tested the word like a sword. Then he looked at her with something close to reverence. "Bjorn," he said, and stuck out a hand the size of a shovel.

"Dolores. Pleased to meet you, Bjorn. Is that a real axe?"

"Yes."

"How nice. I was told this was a lovely afterlife, though I confess I expected fewer axes."

A head poked in through the doorway. It was Dale, mullet drooping. "Cap says lockdown. Also there's leftover Chinese in my desk, if anyone's hungry."

"How old?" said Boone.

"Nineteen eighty-seven."

"Pass."

Dale shrugged and disappeared.

Elias stopped in the doorway. He'd been running on adrenaline for a whole night, and now it drained out of him all at once. He didn't know whether to laugh or sit down on the floor.

"Elias." Boone appeared at his elbow, holding a sandwich the size of a fist and whistling. "You want half? It's ham. Or something like ham."

"You're whistling."

"So?"

"You never whistle."

"Sure I do." Boone paused. "Huh. Do I?"

Behind him, a heavy voice said, "No, you don't. You hate it." Hattie Marsh was leaning in the doorway with her arms crossed, smelling faintly of smoke and hot iron. She hadn't been there a moment ago. "Cyrus. Come here."

"Aw, Hattie, I'm eating."

"Come. Here."

Boone rolled his eyes and followed. Elias watched from the doorway. Hattie took the old cowboy's face in both hands, turned it toward the light, and stared into his eyes like she was reading fine print.

"How do you feel?" she said.

"Fantastic, honestly. Slept like a baby. Haven't had a nightmare since..." He stopped. "Well. Actually, I don't remember why I used to have them."

"That's the fucking problem, Cyrus."

"What is?"

"Lending a memory is supposed to ache." She let him go. Her big voice dropped low. "It's supposed to feel like a tooth pulled. Like a room in your house is gone. It shouldn't feel like nothing. It shouldn't feel like a goddamn holiday."

Boone frowned. "So what does that mean?"

"I don't know." Hattie looked over his shoulder at Elias, and the look she gave him wasn't the bawdy, warm one he knew. It was the look of somebody who knew a lot more than she was saying. "Yet."

She left without another word.

"She's in a mood," said Boone, cheerfully, and went back to his sandwich.

Elias took a breath. Dolores looked like somebody's mother, sitting there with her tea. Maybe that was why it hurt so much. Then he did the hardest thing he'd done all night. He crossed the room, sat down on the sofa next to Dolores, and made himself smile.

"Hi," he said. "I'm Elias. We met earlier."

Dolores studied him over the rim of her mug. Politely. Kindly. The way you'd study a child at a bus stop.

"Did we, dear? I'm afraid I've had rather a strange day. I keep meeting people and forgetting them. It's quite embarrassing."

"It's not your fault."

"Well, I do like your coat." She tilted her head, and something flickered across her face. "Wait. The coat. The lab coat."

Elias's heart jumped. "What about it?"

"You're the young man in the lab coat!" She set down her mug in her lap, delighted. "Oh, you're the one he told me about! I've been waiting all day!"

"Who told you?"

"The man with the badge. He gave me that funny little marble, and he said, 'A young man in a lab coat will come looking for you. Give it to him.' And I did. Didn't I? I suppose I must have."

She had forgotten every second of the alley. She'd forgotten the stamp, the chains, the scream. But she remembered waiting for him.

Elias couldn't speak. His eyes stung, and he looked at the floor until they stopped.

"Dolores," he said finally. "What did he look like? The man?"

"Oh, I couldn't tell you, dear. He kept his collar up and his hat down. Terribly nervous. His hands shook something awful." She frowned, working at it. "But he said one other thing. It slipped my mind, and now it's coming back. He said to tell you..."

The whole room went quiet. Bjorn lowered the crossword. Boone stopped chewing.

"He said, 'Tell the boy to ask the gray one in the bottle who he used to be.'"

Nobody breathed.

At Boone's belt, in the corked glass vial he'd carried since the morgue, the tiny gray smear of a Forgotten soul began to glow.

Boone looked down. "Well, fuck me sideways," he whispered.

It pressed itself against the glass. Slowly, patiently, like it had been waiting for someone to ask.