A tracker and the local police are both surprised to be working together to solve a crime. Who they are looking for is one thing, but what the person stole may surprise you…
To say that the golden age of trackers was over, would be to sell short the lack of demand the so-called ‘psychic bloodhounds’ faced. To say that I wished I’d been born with a more marketable talent, or a few generations earlier, would be to similarly understate the facts.
Innovative crime prevention tactics had made justice after-the-facters nearly obsolete. Most of my jobs concerned locating teenage runaways or adulterous spouses, and the pay almost exactly matched the excitement in its diminutiveness.
This made a high-profile case worth fighting for, and I tried to remind myself of this as I stared down the security officer blocking my path.
“Like I said,” I began, taking a deep breath, “I received a call this morning from the police, asking me to meet them at this museum.”
He crossed his arms, and his lips twitched upwards at the corners. “You expect me to believe that the police would contact a tracker?”
I crossed my arms, mimicking his stance. I’d run to the museum in the rain, not wanting to waste a single second. Unfortunately, this left me with soaking wet sneakers, and a smudge of mascara on my cheek.
“Yes,” I answered.
At this, he actually laughed. “That’s just not something you can throw around these days.”
“Look,” I said, dropping my hands to my sides in exasperation, “can’t you call someone? Is there a curator or head of security I can speak to?”
“Miss, no one gets in for free: not even unemployed trackers,” he said. “Buy a ticket, or get out.”
So, I relented and bought a ticket, if only to save myself further offence. I supposed I might be reimbursed those few dollars if I submitted proof of purchase; God knows the families of adulterers and runaways hadn’t exactly filled my bank account.
It was in the automotive hall that the lead detective finally found me. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he was confused by my apparent loitering amongst the early museum visitors. This was despite my attempts to explain my dismissal by the security officer in the lobby, and resultant lack of direction.
My waterlogged sneakers squeaked with every step as I followed the detective from one exhibit room to another. The sound resonated throughout the arched white marble hallways, and I cringed with every footfall.
“I can’t remember the last time I actually met a career tracker,” the man who had only barely introduced himself as Detective Nelson said. “I think I was still back in the academy.”
“You were solving crimes back in the academy?” I asked, summoning a polite level of interest.
“No, ma’am,” Detective Nelson laughed. “I think they were just giving us a history lesson.”
It took everything I had not to strangle the man, but I kept my hands by my sides. It seemed the universe had signed my ego up for a beating, and I just had to roll with the punches.
“Well, I’m glad we’re working together now,” I said flatly.
Detective Nelson ignored this. “You’re here because of a stolen display item and a missing docent,” he said.
We reached a cordoned off exhibit room, and Detective Nelson held the tape up as I stepped through. The room was filled with detectives and specialists with plastic identification cards hanging from their necks. Near the corner was a table with a series of monitors, their screens turned away from me.
Detective Nelson and I were the only two not wearing gloves.
“When did the crime occur?” I asked.
“This morning. Edward Brickley, the docent in question, was opening the museum when an intruder entered through the basement door. We still don’t know how this as yet unidentified individual initially breached the basement.”
I tried not to smile at the gap in Detective Nelson’s knowledge. Though, I had to admit, a blind spot for him was more or less a blind spot for me during these preliminary stages of the investigation.
“The intruder held a weapon, though it is hard to tell what kind of mechanism was housed in his wrist-mounted contraption.”
Detective Nelson walked to the monitor table and turned a small screen towards me, allowing me to review the security footage.
I could see a tall man; strong build; dark, medium length hair. It was impossible to tell whether the black cylinder on his wrist would fire a projectile or a beam, so I had to give Nelson that one. The thief walked a few steps behind the docent, Brickley, who held his hands up, as though reenacting an old Western film.
They walked to a display, the contents of which were not visible to the camera’s eye. The thief pulled a lead-weave satchel from his pocket, loading the unshown artifact into the bag, before following the still held-up docent back into the basement.
As they left the first floor, the dark-haired man looked over his shoulder, allowing the camera to briefly capture his face in full.
“Do you recognize him?” I asked.
“Nope,” Nelson responded.
But I did.
“Shouldn’t be too difficult to track,” I mused to myself.
I wasn’t exactly surprised that they had not identified the man in the footage. He looked a little different than he had a week earlier. Prosthetic devices shifted the boundaries of his eyes, mouth, and nose just enough to avoid recognition.
“Wait until you see what he stole,” Nelson said.
The detective walked away from me, forcing me to jog a few steps to catch up. Why Nelson wouldn’t just tell me, I could not say. Perhaps he had a flair for the dramatic.
He stopped in front of a shattered pane of glass, stepping aside to allow me full view of the plaque.
“A CT?” I asked.
“That’s the one. It’s deactivated, a rudimentary design. It’s a real relic, but…”
“But someone could, theoretically, get it working again?” I asked.
Nelson shrugged. “That’s what our people are saying.”
Consciousness Transfers, or CTs, had been developed to shift the mind and soul of one person to another. Though perhaps altruistically designed, within a decade, they were utilized for egregious abuses of human rights. When a ban took effect, there was little dissent, and the devices all but disappeared.
I was surprised to find that an early model had been kept on display in the museum. Then again, I only rarely patronized this house of societal remnants.
“You’ve got what you need?” Nelson asked, apparently boring himself with the question. “Or do you need a glove he wore, so you can pick up the scent?”
I decided against telling Nelson that human scent was as good a tracking connection as any.
“Seeing the photo is enough,” I said. “I’ll get you that CT, and the fugitive besides.”
“You won’t be taking this on alone,” Nelson said through tight lips. “I’m sorry to say it, but I’ll be coming with you.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“It’s a police matter,” he said.
“And that makes you sorry,” I said.
“Babysitting a tracker does.”
I went to turn on my smoke, but Nelson practically slapped it from my hand. “It’s a museum.”
A technician picked up the smoke using forceps, placed it into an evidence bag, and handed it to me.
“Last thing, I’ll need the code to your journaling device,” Nelson said.
At this I paused. Journaling devices record stream of consciousness as approximate verbal values, mimicking a traditional narrative entry, following the day beat by beat. Though requesting such access was a common measure, I wasn’t exactly keen on Nelson retrieving the less charitable thoughts I’d processed during our meeting.
Then again, I doubted his readout was much kinder.
“Fine,” I said. I gave him the code. After all, securing a unique case like this was worth making an enemy or two.
I left the museum escorted by Detective Nelson. We passed the security guard, who merely smiled and shrugged. The rain may have been freezing, but my anger at this latest in the series of affronts kept me warm enough.
Ordinarily, I would have found myself hunting for signs, as humans left only a brief temporal mark. Yet, the path practically burned before me. I had only ever known this to happen when a mark’s every step was guided by unwavering purpose.
Our fugitive was desperate, and I knew why.
I climbed over the sidewalk railing, and dropped down onto one of the old roads, which rested about ten feet beneath the city’s foundation. Beneath the gleaming sidewalks and railways lay the bones of the old city, side streets, main streets, and intersections falling into darkness and disrepair beneath the circulatory system of our transplanted society.
Though the modern sidewalks and passageways reflected the sunlight and gleamed with a silvery-blue glamour, from beneath they were black as night, silhouettes against the clear blue sky. The old streets were cloaked in darkness, as the expansion of new passages grew to blot out the sun.
Detective Nelson dropped to the pavement behind me. I caught him rubbing his knee, before he straightened up.
“Where are we headed?” he asked gruffly, as though embarrassed by his awkward descent.
“Just follow me,” I said quietly. I allowed myself a small smirk the moment my face was turned away.
It was dark, but I had little need for light as I followed exactly in the footsteps of the fugitive. Tracking cast its own ephemeral illumination.
There was human life here, the underground collected the shunned and the discontent. These were the people who would forgo even sunlight to escape society’s clinging grasp. Nelson and I traversed miles of this gloom, passing vestiges of a lost world.
“You seem to know your way around here,” Nelson said. It was meant as an insult.
“I track mostly unfaithful spouses and runaways,” I said. “One set brings me to the gamut of hotels our city has to offer, while the other usually ends in the underground. In fact, I was here on a job only a week or two ago.”
Nelson nodded. “I guess the underground’s one of the few places a tracker’s still useful.”
I let it go. After all, he was more or less correct.
The smell of the underground was that of earth deprived of light. Every journey to this shadowed place held the strangeness of touching one’s own stilled heart. I found I actually missed it during those daylit hours.
In time, Nelson and I found ourselves outside a small house, surrounded by miles of deep, undisturbed darkness and decay. There were two doors at the front, the dusty glass of the first blinded by the splintering wood of the second.
The dark-haired fugitive, I felt his presence as a heat in my bones. I had drawn closer than I should have allowed myself, I knew that now.
The front door was unlocked. The springs of the first door were strong, and pulled against my knuckles. The second door gave way easily, practically falling in its loose swing into the house’s dark interior.
I inched forward into the room and Nelson controlled the door’s closing, so that it was nearly silent. The dark-haired man’s nearness was now painful, and the image he presented in the security footage surged to the forefront of my mind, dominating my existent vision as I gazed into the blackened room.
I heard movement from deep within the belly of the home. I could feel something beneath the soles of my sneakers, so each step was tentative, my weight transferring with care, until I found myself against the far wall. I crept along, my fingers grasping their way, guiding me in a straight line. I reached a corner and sank to the ground, resting on my heels and facing the center of the room.
Nelson stayed standing, waiting by the entrance. Though I could not see him clearly, I could sense his fear. It permeated the room.
There was no light, apart from the omnipresent glow filtered by the web of passages above. Soon, these too would be replaced by the true darkness of evening. I closed my eyes, and focused only on the man’s presence.
He was near, within the house. His energy was restless, agitated. I could hear his heavy footfall from where I sat poised.
“Who’s there?”
It was him. The distant voice addressed only me: an uncanny stain bleeding across my psyche.
“I heard you come in,” he said.
Something snapped within me, and I could no longer feel his presence. The flame, the fire in my bones which had led me there, was doused. My blood ran ice cold.
Still, I remained motionless.
The oppression of the pitch black was lifted, as a faint glow reflected off the wall, only barely casting illumination. It grew nearer, and I could hear the footsteps become louder.
I grasped within my mind and body for a symptom of the dark-haired fugitive, but found my perception empty. I could no longer recall with any clarity his image, finding only a vague recollection, the kind one might possess having passed a stranger in the street.
Still, when I saw his face illuminated by the oil lamp as he walked in, the light in his right hand and a curved knife in his left, my remembrance flooded back.
He set the light down on what I could now see was the mantle of an empty fire place. And he looked around the room, before his eyes locked on mine. Surprise flashed across his face, but only briefly.
“It’s you,” he said.
His jet-black hair had been neatly brushed back that morning, but now it fell to disorder, appearing tousled and soaking wet on the right side. His face was still pleasant, but there was something pained in his expression.
He loomed over me, before bending down and wrapping his free hand around my upper arm, pulling me roughly to my feet.
He took the lamp from the mantle, gripping it in the same hand as the knife. He proceeded to drag me beyond the room and through a short hallway to a kitchen.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered. “Your policeman friend is following.”
“Where’s the docent?” I asked.
A movement came from under a sheet of canvas crumpled on the floor, in the corner of the room beside the sink. The sound of something knocking on the hollow floor was followed by silence.
The dark-haired man sat me down in a wooden chair, and leaned against the table, his shins touching my knees as he crossed his arms and stared down at me with amusement in his eyes.
“So, twice in one week. To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked.
“Bad luck.”
“It seems I’ve got some of the worst,” he responded.
I nodded. I could hear Detective Nelson move in the hallway just outside the door. I decided it was high time I laid my cards out on the table, whatever good it might do.
“So, let’s see if I’ve got this right. A man’s wife gets in touch with me about a week ago. Her husband gets bad news from his doctor, finds out he’s got just weeks left. Distraught by the nearness of his end, he disappears into the underground,” I said.
“That would have been good to know about a week ago,” the man smiled.
“I’m sure it would be. However, things being as they are, you two cross paths. He doesn’t look sick, not on the outside. In fact, he looks like the perfect specimen from a transfer of consciousness. It’s not until you’re in the body that you realize something’s wrong.”
The man nodded. “And not until you brought me to his wife that I understood my mistake. The pain is unbearable, and I keep fainting.” He touched his fingertips to the wetness in his hair, and they came away covered in blood. “The third time today, I grazed the corner of the sink.”
“Again, bad luck,” I said.
“The worst.”
“So, what now? You’ve got a kidnapped docent, an inoperable CT, and a body with an expiration date.”
“You’re only right on two counts,” he said. “My CT only needed a replacement part, which I now have. I should know, I built the damn thing.”
“The original?” I asked.
He nodded. “I didn’t keep up with it following my supposed death, which makes the older models easier to work with. The one I’ve been carrying broke, and replacement parts are difficult to find, even underground.”
He motioned to the table, where the deconstructed museum piece sat beside another, complete CT.
“Does your kidnapped docent know he’s about to be transferred out?” I asked.
The kicking sound beneath the canvas began anew, and the dark-haired man looked in the direction of the sound, before forcing a faint laugh.
“It seems he didn’t.”
He paused, staring at me in a way I did not appreciate.
“Then again,” he began, “his face is on every screen up there, and I doubt I’ll pass their tests. I can bide my time in his body, underground, waiting for someone less noteworthy to come along, but I hadn’t thought an alternative would just show up.” He smiled. “I’ve never inhabited a female body before, let alone a tracker. I bet your abilities come with your flesh.”
I straightened up in my chair. “If you’re thinking of taking me, just know that my journal can be accessed later by a detective on the case. They’ll get you the second you show your face, just as easily as if you’d taken the docent.”
He pointed surreptitiously to where we both knew Detective Nelson had hidden himself. He smiled.
“I’m not worried about that,” he said. “They’ll get exactly what they want, and they’ll let it be.”
He stood up, and circled to the other side of the table. He looked over the disassembled museum piece, turning the parts over in his hands.
“Do you know what I called the first one of these I built? I called it the instrument of eternity. It is a pathway through faces and bodies: a pathway to endless life, endless visceral experience,” he said. “Someday, we might have a way to live on in metal bodies, even in jars. Yet, we will never again have the pure, raw experience of inhabiting animal flesh.”
“But you are alone,” I said.
At this he smiled. “I’m not alone. I have a wife.”
“Where is she?” I asked.
His smile faded. “I don’t know. We were meant to meet again when it was safe, but she missed the meeting. Still, I dream of her often. She always has that face, the one I first loved, but I never see it for more than a second.” He paused. “Sometimes, I think I have loved her too much.”
“I can help you find her,” I said.
“If we survive long enough to even begin the search,” he laughed. “And it seems this docent is useless to me now.”
He picked the knife up again. “It’ll be a mercy to end his worries.”
The man was crossing toward the shrouded and bound docent, when Detective Nelson sprang forward from the recesses of the hallway. His weapon was drawn and trained on the armed fugitive.
“Put the knife down,” he said, drawing himself into the room by degrees. He glanced over his shoulder at me. “I’m sorry to interrupt your little reunion. I guess your earlier meeting must have slipped your mind.”
I watched as Nelson advanced toward the fugitive, who still held the curved knife in his hands. I had only seconds to make a decision, before the decision would be made for me.
I stood up quietly and picked up my chair. The weight of the aged wooden frame suddenly seemed heavier than anything my arms had carried. The moment I had risen to my feet, the rest was beyond me to stop.
Nelson heard me and spun toward me, just as I brought the chair down on his head. I caught the expression of panic on his face, before everything of the man was obliterated by the sickening crack of wood against human skull.
It seemed I had even surprised the self-made immortal, because he set the knife down on the table and stepped back from the sprawled detective.
“If he’d lived to make a full report, I’d lose more than my freedom,” I said. “Besides, you need a body, and I’d rather it wasn’t mine.”
The man looked at the unconscious detective who lay prone beneath the fragmented chair.
“It seems I can’t quite find a body that isn’t in pain,” he said. “But this will do well enough.”
We both agreed that the docent, Brickley, knew too much, so the dark-haired man made quick work of him. I left the room for that part, but glad to know that there were still some things beyond me.
I returned in time to observe the CT in use. I thought it would have been a sterile, less invasive procedure. I must have been thinking of the later models.
This device required a subcutaneous, surgical attachment, and the only tool the man had was the large, curved knife.
By the time the procedure was complete, blood had run into every groove of the CT. Nelson was unconscious throughout, but the fugitive had to make every attachment, every incision into his own living flesh.
Nelson’s own mind was now in the dying body. I could see the steady rise and fall of the chest seconds after the transition was complete.
The detective’s body rose, clutching his head.
“Never painless,” the fugitive muttered through the detective’s lips.
The fugitive pulled his weapon, and dispatched the reviving Nelson with his own gun. He fired three times to hide traces of the operation in a mess of blood and bone fragments.
I turned away.
We loaded pieces of the disassembled CT into the lead-weave bag. This, we would bring to the police station. The second CT, he bundled into old newspapers he must have found somewhere in this house. Physical newspapers were only ever found in the underground.
“Can you really help me find my wife?” he asked.
I wrote my office address down on a piece of the newspaper wrapped around the CT. I exhaled. “Wait at least a few days before showing up.”
The police recovered the two bodies from the underground, and sent me on my way, a handsome paycheck in hand. Of course, Detective Nelson showed no interest in examining my journal.
Now, all I had to do was wait for the body thief to show up on my doorstep.
#
Two days later was too soon, but the detective’s familiar face was on my security monitor, the movement of my street so familiar in the background.
After returning to the office at the conclusion of the case, I had done a little research into the inventor of the CT. His name was Constantine, and he did have a wife. At the time of their marriage, she had been named Pamela. She was a beautiful woman, with dark skin and long hair she kept in braids. There was a quickness to her eyes, a vitality that made me half-believe in her survival.
I let Constantine in. He sat down, while I took a seat on the opposite side of the desk. I had plenty of experience dealing with untrustworthy people, but there was a tension here I just couldn’t dispel.
Constantine looked around, and made a low whistle. “It’s surprising to find a tracker who can afford a real office like this,” he said.
I ignored the insult. “Tell me a little about your wife.”
“Pamela. Like I said, we split up a while back, promising to meet again when the time was right, when there weren’t so many people on the lookout. We check in every ten years, but twenty-five have gone by since I last saw her.”
I sighed. “Do you have a picture?”
He shook his head. “Do you have something to drink? Coffee maybe? This body, it’s missing something I just can’t place.”
I brought two coffee cups to the machine, which instantly filled. I set them down on the table, eager to roll up my sleeves.
I cleared my throat. “I’m having trouble believing that you’d risk your life and freedom just to be reunited every few years.”
“Ours was the kind of love you never find again. It was this all-consuming adoration. I know she wouldn’t miss our meeting if she had a choice.”
He gave his coffee a stir. “Do you have any sugar?” he asked. “Maybe that’s it.”
I doubted it. Nelson didn’t seem the type to better anything with sweetness, even coffee, but I brought him the bowl from the windowsill.
“So, how does this tracking thing work?” he asked, clearing his throat and running his thumb beneath his right eye. “How do you latch onto someone? It’s important, because she’ll be in a new body with a new face. I can’t even be sure of her age or gender.”
I shrugged. “There just has to be something familiar about the person. It could be their face, their scent, their personality. In your case, I was able to attach to your physical body.”
We sipped coffee and continued to discuss his wife. He seemed unable to summon anything useful. He had nothing of hers, and he couldn’t exactly convey the essence of her humanity to a stranger. I had to admit, it would be an incredibly difficult case for any tracker.
Suddenly, night seemed to come too soon, tiredness swamping my vision. As he watched, I slumped in my chair, the effort to stay seated far too great. My vison blurred around the shimmering, shifting well of light.
“It’s easier this way,” I heard him say gently. “Besides, I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be a tracker.”
#
It took time for my consciousness to restore. With half-numbed fingers, I gingerly pulled the metallic arm from its subcutaneous attachment at my right temple. Recovery was an easy process by this point, but those first sensations required adjustment.
The last one, the detective, had been in immediate, convulsive pain from the chair shattered across his skull. I had gasped and choked as my consciousness grew. I’d clenched my jaw so hard that I cracked a tooth. Even thinking on it now caused a swell of self-protective revulsion.
The tracker’s body was different: this one was hungry and tired beyond food or sleep. It was the trace of a hopelessness I’d never felt before, an insidious weakness steeped into her bones. The cosmic impotence of her birthright existed on a cellular level, but so did her ability to track.
That was all I’d needed from her.
I stood up from the chair and nearly collapsed to the ground, still under the influence of the sedatives mixed into her coffee. The dose had been too great for her size and it undermined every motion, but I forced myself to stand again.
I didn’t have much time. The detective’s body on the floor was beginning to move, sober and strong. With that body, she might stop me.
Still, I would give her a chance. Disappearing a detective brought unique challenges, and she might enjoy the power and recognition that came with the title. Her first waking moments in the new body could be the start of a lasting partnership.
I reached down to my wrist and unlocked the journaling device.
By the time anyone finds it, it will be far too late.
END
