FICTION: Cyborg Sleeps: Part 11

Sorry for the delay in updating on this story, I have had another story idea distract me, been busy on holiday and all sorts of stuff.

In this part, the police get involved. I don't yet know how much more we're going to see of the police officers, but I've given them names just in case I want them to come back later. I kind of have a plan for PC O'Hara, but we'll see how that pans out later.

Part 11

At 2:14am the call came to the emergency services line.

Operator: "Hello, Police, fire, ambulance; which service do you require?"
Caller: "[panting] I dunno, oh God, it was horrible…"
Operator: "What was, is it an accident or a crime?"
Caller: "She just fucking killed them, I mean, I think they're dead… Oh God [sobbing]"
Operator: "Where did this happen? I'll send police and ambulance right away."
Caller: "[deep breaths] The end of George Street, Sandworth – at the Syborn Way end, oh God, my mates, she just killed them… I ran, they're dead, help me… [hyperventilating]"
Operator: "I'm dispatching police and ambulance now. Can I take your name, they'll want to ask you some questions, and then they'll catch the killer."
Caller: "No, no name, just don't let her get me!"
Operator: "Who is she? Do you have a name, a description, I can give the police?"
Caller: "The fucking robot-woman, man! The robot-woman! You've got to believe me, I saw it with my own eyes!"

The operator ends the call, flags it as a hoax or lunatic making a crank call. The dispatch alert already sent by computer to the police and ambulance is followed by a crank caller alert, and the number from which the call was made is recorded to be checked in case a prosecution can be made.

At the same time, Asira is touching her lighter to the kit bag and flammable supplies, and leaving the junction of Syborn Way and George Street.

At 2:19am, a police car arrives at the scene. They were close by anyway when the call came in, and decided to check it out anyway, even after the cancel alert came in. It is instantly clear that something has happened. As Sergeant Nicholls radios the information back to HQ, his partner, Constable O'Hara, sees one of the two bodies move in the headlights. She exits the vehicle, and traces a wide arc around the crime scene, to avoid disturbing evidence. She makes a direct line then towards the prone figures.

In her torchlight, she can see there is no hope for the first man: he has already bled to death from the gaping stab wound in his gut. The other body emits a groan, and she turns her attention to him. He is lying in he front, a pool of vomit near his lips, and an obviously broken nose. He appears to be just coming around from unconsciousness.

O'Hara calls to Nicholls, "We need an ambulance here, there's a survivor!" She kneels beside the victim.

"Can you hear me? I'm a police officer. My name is O'Hara, what's yours?"

The response is indistinct, and may or may not have been an attempt at an answer. As they wait for the ambulance, O'Hara moves the victim into the recovery position, and continues to speak reassuringly to him. From time to time she checks on the progress of the concussed individual. Nicholls cordons off the scene and waits for the scene of crime officer to arrive for investigation to begin properly.

The ambulance arrives first, 2:27am, and O'Hara carefully guides the paramedics so that they will disturb the evidence as little as possible. The victim has recovered some consciousness, although he is still unable to focus his eyes, and his speech is slurred. O'Hara has reassured him that he is safe and not going to be attacked again.

At 2:41am the crime scene investigation has begun. Detective Andrews recognises the face of the dead man, "We've had him in on suspicion of arson against Pakistani businesses down East," he says, "But his gang always gave plenty of alibis, of course, so we could never charge him. But if he's here, I'll bet his two cronies were here, too – might have seen who did it. Might have done it themselves, if they had a disagreement over something."

Nicholls told him about the second man, who has by now been taken to the hospital for treatment.

"Sergeant, do you think that the phone call we got originally might have been from the third member of that little troop? I think we should track him down sooner rather than later, don't you?"

"Sounds smart. I'll get HQ to send a squad car round and bring him in."

"First, get on to the call centre and check the records, if we're lucky he might have called from home, and we'll know it was him and where to find him."

As it happened, he had.

***

At 3:01am, Asira collapsed at the door of the safe house and the agents on duty there began treating her. Simultaneously, Detective Andrews was back at the police station interrogating Grant, the unharmed member of the trio who had assaulted her. It was not going well for Andrews.

Grant stuck to the craziest story Andrews had ever heard, about a robot woman who looked human, and who had attacked him and his mates out of nowhere. They'd defended themselves with whatever they could find, and only Grant had escaped. Andrews initially assumed that Grant and Craig, the concussed individual, had turned on their leader – who had knocked Craig unconscious, but then been stabbed by Grant. This theory was quickly quashed by the evidence at the scene of the crime. Two knives ad been recovered. One was clearly the dead man's, and heavily stained with blood that was at least partly someone else's. The second had fingerprints that on preliminary examination seemed to match Grant's. It had no blood on it at all, but a notch in the blade and a strange residue smeared on it.

To make things worse, the case had already gained notoriety in the station, everybody referring to it as the "robot-woman" case.

O'Hara was at the hospital, and took a statement from Craig.

"Me and my mates were just coming back from a night out, when we saw this Paki chick, right? We just started a bit of friendly banter, like, when she suddenly came at me with a fucking knife! Well, I managed to dodge it, but she must have hit me with a club or something with her other hand, cos I was out like a light. The next thing I remember was lying in my own puke with a broken nose and you asking me who I was. That's all I know, I swear!"

O'Hara believed him that it was all he knew about the actual fight. She did not believe him that it was "friendly banter". She knew the sort of gang this man belonged to probably did not do anything "friendly" to Asian women. But questioning him about it would not help matters. Secretly, she felt some sympathy for the woman who had dared to fight back, and hoped she was okay. Knowing that there was blood from an unidentified subject on the knife the dead man had dropped, it did not take O'Hara much imagination to figure out whose blood it was.

The blood spatter analysis at the scene of crime confirmed O'Hara's intuition that two people had been hurt, and that one of them must be the missing assailant. The detective called O'Hara and told her they reckoned that their unsub (and now chief suspect) had probably been cut along her side, and that it was probably quite a serious wound. O'Hara asked at the hospital whether any such injuries had been taken in that night, and quickly discovered that nobody with those injuries had received medical treatment in the time scale. Either she had treated herself somehow, or she was lying dead or dying somewhere else. O'Hara radioed this information back to the detective, who felt his headache grow even worse. For fuck's sake, he swore to himself, at this rate I'm going to start believing it was a robot, or else a cyborg of some kind!

Somewhere across the city, an agent was finally putting a call through to Director Gattell.