Soul Patrol: Badge of the Forgotten

The Fake

 

"Five hours," Vega said, slapping a wall clock that ran backward. "Five fucking hours till dawn. Somebody give me a plan, and it had better not be stupid."

Vega's office was crowded. Elias sat in the middle, still holding the marble. Boone leaned against the wall with a bandage on his shoulder. Beside him stood the mullet guy from the hall, who had finally introduced himself as Dale Kowalski, died 1987, cause of death: a bad burrito at a Sizzler.

"Simple," Dale said, spinning a chair around and straddling it backward. "We walk in the front door of the Bureau, hand Pell the marble, and he gives us the old lady. Everybody goes home."

"Dale," said Boone. "That is the dumbest goddamn thing I've heard all week."

"It's a classic!"

"It's a fucking hostage exchange with the people who kidnapped her, you asswipe. The second he's got the marble, he stamps all four of us and files us under Never Existed."

"Okay, so we don't give him the real marble."

Everyone looked at him.

"What?" Dale shrugged. "I watched a lot of TV. There's always a fake."

"That's the first useful thing you've said since 1987, Dale," said Vega.

"Thank you, Cap. I've been saving it."

Vega chewed the end of her cigarette. "The Bureau scans anything you hand them. Pell would smell a fake from three blocks away."

"Then we make one he can't smell," said Elias.

They all turned.

He held up the marble. "Hattie forged my badge out of my memories. Can she copy this?"

Twenty minutes later, they were back in the Forge, and Hattie Marsh was staring at the marble like it owed her money.

"Fucking hell, hold still, you slippery little shit," she muttered to the marble. Then, to Elias: "Copying the shell's easy, love." She turned it in a pair of tongs. "Glass and light. Any apprentice could do that. The trouble's the heart. Bureau scanners read the inside first. If there's no real memory in it, it lights up like a Christmas tree and Pell shits his pants laughing."

"So we need a real memory," Elias said. "Mine?"

"Not yours. If it's yours, they'll spot it's a copy the second they compare it to the original." Hattie gave him a look. "Somebody else's. Somebody who'll lend it."

"Lend it?"

"Patrol officers can lend memories to each other, kid," said Vega. "It's the one perk of this fucking job."

"I'll do it," Boone said.

Elias's stomach turned over. "No. Absolutely not. You already lost your middle name, you stubborn son of a bitch. I'm not letting you..."

"I ain't asking, partner." Boone pushed off the wall and walked to the anvil. "I need a memory that's big enough to pass a scan. Old enough to look real. And I want it gone." He tipped his hat back. "So I'll give you the card game."

Nobody said a word.

"The night I died," said Boone. "Sixty-one dollars and a pair of aces. I've been dreaming it for a hundred and thirty-nine years, and I'm fucking sick of it."

"Boone..."

"Kid." He set his hand on the anvil. "It's a nightmare. Let it do some good."

Hattie hesitated. Then she nodded, and touched the tongs to his palm.

Light streamed out of him like smoke, silver and slow, and Elias saw it in the air: a smoky saloon, a table with five men, a hand of cards spread in the lamplight. Two black aces. Two black eights. A man across the table with a knife under his sleeve, and a smile Boone would never see again. Elias watched the light drain out of him and felt like he was attending a stranger's funeral.

Then it poured into the marble, and the glass filled with something dusty and golden. Hattie hammered the shell closed, and the rain-streaked windshield formed on its surface, perfect.

She held it out.

"That's a bastard of a good copy," said Dale, impressed.

Boone swayed. He blinked, rubbing his forehead, like a man waking from a nap. "Huh. Why am I holding my hat?"

"You lent a memory," said Vega quietly.

"I did? Which one?"

Elias couldn't answer. His throat had closed.

"Don't look at me like that, kid," Boone said, and grinned, though it looked strange on him now. Lighter. Like a man who'd set down something heavy without noticing. "I feel great. What are we doing?"

"Robbing the Bureau," said Dale.

"Fuck yeah. Let's go."

"Cap," Dale whispered, "should I be worried he's this happy?"

"Yes," said Vega. "Very."

The Bureau of Final Records was the tallest building Elias had ever seen.

It stood at the center of Halfway like a white tooth, so high the gold sky seemed to pool around its top. Windows in perfect rows. Not a single crack in the marble. Two hundred steps led up to a set of bronze doors, and above them, carved in stone, were four words.

EVERYONE IS ACCOUNTED FOR.

"Cheerful," Elias muttered.

"Give it time," said Boone.

"I feel like I'm walking into the world's biggest DMV," Elias added.

"Worse," said Boone. "At least the DMV has windows that open."

They climbed. Every step made a small, clean click. At the top, the doors opened by themselves, and a wave of cold, perfectly filtered air rolled out.

Inside was a lobby the size of a cathedral. Endless filing cabinets stretched into the distance, floor to ceiling, in pale wood drawers, each with a tiny brass label. Clerks glided between them without a sound. Not one of them looked up.

"Dale," Vega had said before they left, "you stay on the records floor. Find out where they keep the erasure logs. Anything with a signature."

"Got it, Cap. Fuck the paperwork."

"Not literally, Dale."

Dale had already peeled off toward a corridor of drawers, whistling. Vega stood at the lobby's edge with her badge glowing, ready to make noise if things went sideways. "And you two," she'd growled. "If either of you fucks this up, I will personally haunt your asses for eternity."

Elias and Boone walked to the reception desk alone.

The desk was white marble. Behind it sat a single clerk with a smudged face, typing on a keyboard made of stamps.

"We're here for a Ms. Weaver," said Elias. "By dawn. He'll know."

The clerk did not look up. He pressed a single key, and somewhere far off, a bell chimed.

"Please wait," he said, in no voice at all.

"If that bastard smiles at me," Boone muttered, "I'm shooting him in the teeth."

"You shoot light."

"Then I'll shoot it real fucking hard."

They waited. Elias's hand was sweating around the fake marble. He kept expecting it to light up, kept expecting the whole floor to start screaming.

It was a cathedral built to worship paperwork, Elias thought, and every drawer in it held somebody's entire life.

Then footsteps echoed across the marble.

Pell came down the central staircase with his hands behind his back and his smile fixed in place. He was wearing a fresh suit, crisp as a new banknote. Behind him, a pair of clerks walked in perfect step, and between them...

Elias stopped breathing.

Dolores Weaver walked between them in her lilac cardigan, handbag over her arm, pearl earrings gleaming.

She was alive. She was fine. Her name shone clean on her forehead.

"Dolores!" Elias started forward.

"Mr. Thorne," said Pell, warmly. "You brought the marble. How delightful."

"Where's the trade? Give her to me."

"Of course. Of course." Pell nodded to the clerks, who stepped aside. "Ms. Weaver, you're free to go, dear. Your friend is here."

Dolores looked at Elias.

She smiled. It was a polite, puzzled, kindly smile, the smile of an old woman who has been approached by a stranger at a bus stop.

"I'm so sorry," she said. "Have we met?"

"Motherfucker," Boone breathed, and his hand went to his gun.

Elias felt the floor tilt beneath his shoes. Fuck, fuck, fuck, he thought. Not her. Not her too.

"Dolores. It's me. The alley. The stamp. You, you gave me the..."

"Oh, dear. I don't think so." She patted her hair, frowning. "I'd remember someone so nice."

"What did you do to her?" Elias's voice came out ragged. "You son of a bitch. What did you fucking do?"

Pell spread his gloved hands, and his smile widened by exactly one more inch.

"Precisely what I promised, Mr. Thorne. She kept her name." He tilted his head. "I simply never said she'd keep you."