Kirk told her everything.
They carted him off to local police station – a grubby, dilapidated bunker squatting several blocks away from the wreckage of the Russell home. The wall of cigarette smoke almost flattened him as they took him inside, but Delgado didn't seem to notice it. Maybe she was shielded by the even thicker smoke of her cigar.
The bullpen was chaos distilled, with harassed-looking officers racing back and forth, yelling orders to one and other, some wrestling criminals through the crush, others barking into their comm links and holo-screens. Stale coffee and greasy food mingled with the cigarettes to form a cocktail that made Kirk's head swim.
He squared his shoulders, swallowed down is nausea, and did his best to dodge the flailing bodies and fast-moving officers. Delgado wove through it all with the ease of an expert, so he stuck close, making himself as small as possible.
Not small enough to catch a shoulder from a hulking uniformed officer, but the big man didn't even notice him, bulldozing on through the crush.
Scrambling to keep his footing, Kirk followed her through the mayhem until they reached a pair of facing desks. Both were strewn with smouldering ash trays, empty coffee cups and food wrappers, and amidst the detritus each also sported an antique-looking solid state computer: a wafer thin monitor pinioned between spindly supports, with a touch-keypad built into the body of the desk itself.
"Take a seat," Delgado said, grabbing a wheeled chair from a vacant desk and shoving it into position.
Kirk sat. She dropped down at her desk.
"Bloody hell, Delgado," grunted the detective opposite her, not looking up from a data pad clutched in one hand. "What'd you drag off the streets this time?" His South Mercian accent was almost boneless, the words blending together into a lazy slur.
"He's a witness," she grunted, flapping a hand vaguely in the man's direction. "Kirk Balfour, this is my long-suffering partner, Detective Doser."
"And I love you too."
"Oh, shove it up your ass."
Kirk glanced around. Middle-aged and making no effort to halt it, Doser carried a beer gut with apparent pride. A short fuzz of flame red hair filmed his scalp, with a matching beard. Bloodshot eyes found Kirk, twinkling with amusement.
"Saw a wraith did you, mate?" Doser chuckled.
"Got a little closer than I would have liked," Kirk replied, turning back to Delgado.
"Lucky you've still got all your limbs attached."
"Aye, tell me about it."
"Shut up, Doser," Delgado cut in, speaking around the half-smoked cigar jutting from the corner of her mouth. She punched in commands to her computer, and the screen lit up. "Alright, Kirk," she said, "Let's have it. All of it."
Kirk didn't spare a detail as he walked Detective Delgado through the events of that night. Anything questionable that he and Piper might have done was all eclipsed by the wraith attack, and he'd had enough run ins with Hadrian's local cops to know they didn't really want to arrest anyone if they could get away with it.
When he told them about Barson, however, Delgado let out a moan.
"Barson Jennings?" she said.
"That's him."
"Fuck."
"That Cutter Jennings' kid?" Doser grunted.
"Yep."
His bulk rumbled unhappily. "That's just what we need – the pope of the docks sticking his knives into everything."
"I don't care about Barson," Kirk snarled. "Far as I'm concerned that prick got what was coming to him."
"Aye, maybe," Doser glared at him. "But you're not the one who'll have to sort the fall out."
"Trouble for another day, Doser," Delgado muttered. "Kirk, keep going. What happened next?"
So he told them – walked them through the mad chase; his close encounter with the wraith, how he'd trailed the death and destruction all the way from the docks to Piper's neighbourhood.
"I don't know why," he said. "But that thing was chasing her. Me, Barson – everybody else – I think they just got in the way."
"Why in the bloody hell would a codewraith be out to kill your lady friend?" Doser asked, apparently roused from his apathy to take interest. "Those tin-freaks don't think. They ain't exactly assassin material."
"I'm just telling you what happened. That thing looked right at Piper and chased her all the way home." Kirk threw his hands up helplessly. "Maybe it didn't kill her. Nobody seems to know where she is."
"There was no blood at the scene," Delgado pointed out. Doser gave a fatalistic grunt.
"So... so what do we do now?" Kirk asked.
"Kid, 'we' don't do anything. We've got your statement and we'll follow up on any leads we can."
"That's it?"
"That's it."
"But-,"
"Kirk, there's nothing else you can do right now," Delgado told him firmly, stubbing out her cigar to emphasise her point. "I'll be in touch if we need to speak to you again, but for now the best thing you can do is go home and get some sleep."
*
For two days, Kirk obeyed.
Then the next night he was walking, shoulders hunched, heading back to the crime scene like a moth to a flame. He didn't know what else to do. Two days with no word from Delgado, no sign of Piper and no trace of her family. He couldn't sit in his house for a second longer.
When he got there the incident had been airbrushed over: streets cleaned up, wreckage removed. There was still a massive hole in the side of Piper's house though, shielded by a temporary holo-display with bright text that read: CARTWRIGHT REPAIRWORKS – JOB ID 98654379.
Kirk suspected it would be quite some time before that job was fulfilled.
He edged his way around the perimeter, where the police cordon had been, looking for any clues, anything at all. He found the unmistakable divot marks where the wraith had arrived, but beyond that he couldn't see much. There was a weird kind of scorch mark in the street, not far from the hole in the wall, but he had no idea what might have caused it.
Frowning, and just hoping against hope he could stumble over some trace of Piper, he edged his way around the narrow streets and alleys immediately around the house. More codewraith footsteps, though these looked different – bigger and more numerous than the ones he'd followed from the docks. He hunkered down, cocking his head to one side as he examined one of them.
Then a hand grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him to his feet. Kirk let out a yelp of surprise as he found himself wrenched around and shoved against the building wall. An instant later the barrel of a gun was shoved into his face.
"KIRK?!"
A jolt of shock burst through him when he saw Arden Russell's bobbing pixie cut, and her stunned face staring back at him, those wide blue eyes just like Piper's. She wore a sleeveless hoodie, ripped jeans and battered old trainers, looking frantic, like a fox on the run. The pistol she had was a small calibre thing, snub barrelled and with a rotating drum magazine – old school and cheap, but still very lethal. The hand holding it trembled.
He waited for a second, heart pounding, but she didn't lower the weapon.
"Yeah, Arden, it's me," he gasped. He gave a tiny nod to the gun. "Can you...?"
"Oh, shit!" Arden released him, jerking back and stuffing the pistol into the back of her jeans. Pulling her hoodie down to cover it, she dragged one hand wearily down her face. "Sorry, I didn't realise it was you."
Kirk shook his head in disbelief. "Where the fuck did you even get that?!"
"The gun?"
"Yes, Arden, the gun!"
"I... it's a long story." She gave an awkward shrug. "Short version, one of the guys at Khesmer's range owed me a favour."
"Shit. Must've been some favour!" Feeling his heart rate edge back to normality, Kirk let out a sigh of relief. Arden let out a hysterical-sounding giggle and leapt forward to hug him. He returned the embrace, bubbling with questions but right now happy to just have some sign of life – some surviving connection to Piper.
They disentangled after a moment, and Arden sagged against the alley wall. She looked exhausted, eyes red-rimmed from lack of sleep.
"Are you alright?" he asked after a moment. "I've been with the cops half the day trying to figure out what happened to you all."
"I don't think the cops are going to be helping us with this one, Kirk," she said bitterly.
"What? Why? What happened? Where have you been?"
"After that... thing tore the house to pieces, we got dragged away and carted off to some 'safe house' by a bunch of corp thugs. Said it was for our own safety – as if any of them actually give a shit about people like us."
Kirk nodded. "So how did you...?"
"I never asked for a safe house," Arden growled. "Idiots tried to shut us up in some corp-piss motel and didn't secure the back window properly. So I busted the lock and took off."
"What about Piper? Is she there too?"
"No."
"Is she...?" He paused for a second, not sure he truly wanted to know the answer. "Is she okay?"
"Well, she's definitely alive, I know that much." Arden rubbed one temple, her jaw tight as she dredged up the memories. "Just before they stuck me into one of those cars, I saw her. There were two of those corporate spooks with her, talking about something. They didn't let her come with us."
Shit-upon-shit. Kirk rubbed his eyes with both hands. As if the codewraiths weren't bad enough, now the corps were all over this mess as well. He sucked a steadying breath in through clenched teeth and exhaled, long and slow.
"Do you know who they were?" he asked eventually.
"I..." Arden hesitated. Her eyes flashed to the left and right, checking the street again. Then she asked, "what do you know about AmpCore?"
He could hear the sharp edge of fear in her voice. Kirk shook his head. "Not much. Rumours mostly. Just another branch of corp spooks aren't they, digging into everybody's dirty secrets?"
"Well, that's what I thought." She bit her lip, her gaze drifting back to the street. "But, Kirk, I saw something, when those things attacked the house."
"Things? You mean there was more than one?"
"Two wraiths." She nodded. "Mum got us out when the first one came in, but it was after Piper." Arden gulped, trying to steady her shaking voice.
Kirk put a hand on her shoulder. "Easy, easy. Just talk to me, Arden."
"One of those spooks, just before I saw him with Piper, I saw what he did."
"Do what?"
"He killed that thing." Arden twisted away, looking into the street, up at her home. "He had some kind of metal rod – must've been some kind of fancy new corp weapon. When the second wraith went for him he just blasted it. I've never seen anything like it. It was like... like somebody set off a supernova in the middle of the street. Melted that thing into a slag heap."
Instantly Kirk's mind flashed to the scorch mark he'd found outside the house. It was certainly big enough for the wraith. He looked towards the house as well, eyes widening.
"I've heard stories about the freaks in AmpCore," Arden continued. "Corp experiments, messing with your genes, screwing up your body, making people into weapons."
"And you think that's who took Piper?"
"Unless you've got a better idea."
"No, no I don't." Kirk shook his head, running both hands through his hair, trying to wrap is brain around the almighty shitstorm that had engulfed them all.
"I'm not waiting around for some slimy bastard with a corporate badge to tell me Piper's dead in a ditch somewhere," Arden continued. "I'm going to find my sister. You want to help?"
"Of course it do." He took a gentle grip of her arm, turning her back to face him. "I'm here to help, alright? I want Piper back as much as you do."
"Thanks, Kirk."
"But what about your mum? She's still shut in that safe house isn't she?"
"Shit." Arden nodded. "Yeah. She... she told me not to go, but I couldn't just sit there."
"Will she be okay?"
"I don't know." He saw her shudder, and he remembered she was only seventeen.
Seventeen years old and already a fugitive from Hadrian's corporations. Still technically enrolled at the local academy for classes. In any sane world she would have been at school instead of risking her life like this.
"Okay, we need to think about how we're gonna do this," Kirk told her putting his hands on her shoulders. "You can crash at my place for tonight. My dad'll sort you out with a spare bed and we can come at this fresh. You need some sleep. We both do. Okay?"
Arden nodded, shoulders sagging with exhaustion. "Yeah, okay, lets-,"
She stopped like someone had hacked off the end of her sentence with an axe. Her eyes went wide, terror creeping across her face. He released his hold, a tide of confusion crashing through his mind as he saw her slowly reaching for the gun in her belt.
"Kirk," she whispered. "Behind you."
Then he heard the codescream.
||