SILVER: Acheron (A River of Pain) (The SILVER Series) (23 page)

“Tell that to her, she’s been waiting for this for decades.”

Pinching the cigarette between his lips, he searches his pockets for something, finally pulling a tiny plastic bottle out of his jacket.

Inside it, one tiny, pink pill.

He sets it on the table in front of her. “A little courage?”

Enticed, her eyes dart from the pill, to Maydevine, and back again. “4-MTA?” she hopes.

She’s tired, and amphetamines would come in useful right about now, but Maydevine snorts at the absurd notion that he, the Chief of Police, would offer that up to her.

“It’s a beta blocker, but nice try.”

“What’s it gonna do?”

“Take away your anxiety.”

Silver picks it up, examining it closely. “Who knew there’d be a pill to make murder feel normal?”

“Justice
is
normal. Don’t make us go down in circles over this.”

Scrutinizing Maydevine through squinted eyes, Silver tries to fathom whether or not he actually believes in his own bullshit. Not that it matters.

She already knows what she’s going to do.

Justice Urged

Perched on the northernmost tip of the Fringe District, the enforcement bay is a cold, sterile, hateful place. Silver’s been here before, accompanying Maydevine on the few occasions he’s come to watch them carry out a sentence.

Enforcements are not public events, but Omega personnel often request attendance when the convict is known to them. Civilians aren’t generally permitted to attend, but Silver was just nine years old when she was brought here for the first time. As a Hunter Division Cadet, and the daughter of the Hunter General, she’d been granted special dispensation.

Maydevine called it extra-curricular learning, and she’d been instructed not to look away. She would see much worse violence in the field, he’d told her, and she ought not to be squeamish of it. One time, the Enforcer bottled it at the last second and shot himself in the head. He’d not done a good job of it, though. The bullet went in too shallow and ricocheted off his brain stem. It exited his cranium through his right ear, and sent a spatter of blood, bone and brains slopping all over the aghast onlookers—including twelve-year-old Silver.

She’d never forget the look of irritation on Maydevine’s face as he picked a chunk of blown-to-bits ear lobe off his pristine Hunter Division uniform, and retrieved the gun from the Enforcer’s bloody, dead hand.

She’d never forget that, or the calm precision with which Maydevine proceeded to shoot the now hysterical convict in the face, right in front of her.

Those were some harsh memories.

Stepping foot in the room for the first time in over a decade, the rotten place is exactly as she remembers it. This Old World brick building used to be a shipyard warehouse. Built almost directly onto the sea wall, it overlooks an old industrial haulage route stuck in beside moorage for the Old World Staten Island ferry service.

A giant pulley system would heave copper piping, steel rebar, and other building materials down from the warehouse into a boat waiting below, where it would be ferried to building sites all throughout Manhattan and New Jersey. This all happened from a loading bay on the top floor of the building, where the wall had been cut away to allow for the easy removal of materials.

Once blackened by the fumes of industry, the exterior wall of the building is now stained with human blood. After a convict is dispatched, the body is dropped off the edge and simply discarded into the lapping ocean below. Sometimes the corpse isn’t given enough of a shove, and it smacks against the side of the building, smearing its way down into the depths.

Afterward, a janitor cleans up the concrete floor of the enforcement bay with a bristle broom made from the pubic hair of Chimera. Each hair is stitched by hand into a leathery rat pelt, and the whole thing is fastened to a wooden handle with hemp twine. All the blood, and sometimes the guts and brains of the convicts, is swept out through the cut-away wall and left to dribble down the building’s face.

The floor is never properly washed, and much of it is now permanently stained. In the middle, at the point where convicts kneel, the layers of blood are so thick it looks almost black. Radiating out from there, the red pigment gradually fades away until the grey pallor of the concrete finally emerges from beneath it.

At some point, Maydevine asks if Silver would like to have use of an Omega issued weapon, or if she would prefer to use her own. Too dazed to answer, she barely notices as Maydevine tugs her HK USP out of its holster and checks the clip. Finding it satisfactory, he replaces the clip and pushes the weapon into her gun hand.

“You okay, kid?”

“I hate this place,” she murmurs, staring down at the stain.

She feels Maydevine’s heavy hand upon her shoulder, squeezing confidence into her. Were it not for the other eyes in the room, she’d rush into his arms.

The beta blocker doesn’t seem to be working.

The only door into the room is guarded by two Police Division Agents, heavily armed and standing rigid, like two great pillars of muscle.

Maydevine nods to the one on the left. “Bring her in.”

Feeling the weight of the gun in her hand for the first time, Silver struggles to keep her breathing steady. The gun is real, this room is real, and in a few short minutes, the bloodshed will be real. In the corner of the room the janitor shuffles his feet on the floor, kicking away a wandering rat.

Silver’s stomach turns at the sound of the door opening and closing, and at the subsequent clanking of metal handcuffs and shackles. Reflexively, she closes her eyes as the woman is dragged to the centre of the room and forced to kneel. She doesn’t want to see. She doesn’t want to acknowledge what’s about to happen until it’s absolutely necessary.

The woman smells like piss and cigarettes, and grumbles as her weak knees crack down hard against the unforgiving concrete. Trying desperately to hide her nerves, Silver wipes her sweaty palm against her jeans. For the first time in her life, the gun feels unnatural in her hand.

Fighting that, and fighting the sudden call of her bladder, she opens her eyes and meets the elderly woman face-to-face … sort of.

A hemp bag pulled over her head, the old woman could be anybody. At first, Silver thinks that’s better. She never has to acknowledge her, or be acknowledged by her.

She raises her gun.

Then …

Nothing.

She thinks back to the puke who shot the last Enforcer in the back. Shooting someone in the face when they have a bag pulled over their head seems just as gutless.

Silver lowers her weapon, insisting that the Dodger be unmasked.

“I need her to see my face.”

The Agent on the right of the door acquiesces, and it feels like all the air’s been sucked out of the room when Silver casts her eyes upon the wretched woman.

Suddenly so unsure of herself, Silver shakes her head, her trigger finger hesitating for the first time ever in her life. The beta blocker is
definitely
not working. It’s supposed to disrupt your fight or flight response, yet, right now, Silver wants to run like hell.

“I can’t do this,” she whispers. Battling a tremor in her arm, she turns to face Maydevine. “I’m not doing this.”

He doesn’t seem fazed by her abrupt change of heart, and remains perfectly impassive.

“She’s been on the warrant list for three years. You’ll be doing her a good service.”

The woman, staring at Silver until now, finally pushes words out through her lips, making it look as if it takes every last bit of energy she has left inside of her. “After all these years … I suppose it had to be you.”

“Huh?”

“Do as your father says.”

“I can’t …”

“I won’t give him the satisfaction of begging for my life, so let’s just be done with this. Like he says, I’m more than ready.”

“Well, I’m not …”

Taking Silver by surprise, the old lady lunges forward and grabs the barrel of the gun. She presses it hard against her own forehead, trying to squeeze Silver’s finger against the trigger, but Silver resists.

In the struggle, the initials of Silver’s birth father, J.C., engraved upon on the side of the gun, catch the old woman’s attention.

“His own gun, too?” Her eyes whip over to Maydevine, the milky white one following in the path of the good one. “Your idea, of course?”

Maydevine refuses to acknowledge her, but Silver does.

“When did you know my biological father?”

If the old lady frowns, it’s lost in amongst the natural lines and wrinkles of her age-worn face. Once more, she looks over at Maydevine, but he won’t even turn his head in her direction.      

Letting out a wheezing, rasping sigh filled with crackles and lung juice, she slumps down and drops her head, something inside her suddenly giving up.

“Old bones, dear. Never mind it now.”

“I want to know how you knew him.”

“How is my son? Is he well?”

At the mention of the child, a significant portion of Silver’s anger returns. “Don’t deflect, and don’t pretend like you give a shit about your son.”

“I was promised he’d be okay.”

“Yeah? Well, I know what it’s like to grow up without a mother so, on behalf of all orphaned kids: fuck you.”

“Orphan?” the old woman suddenly reanimates. “You’re nothing but the misborn child of a—”

“I swear to god,” Maydevine cuts her off, “if you start slinging old dirt around I’ll pull the trigger on you myself.”

“Don’t you think that’s the way it
should
be, Gabriel?” she snaps back at him. “There’s something quite vulgar about getting the child to do it for you.”

Fine.

Still a sharp draw, even as he approaches sixty, Maydevine reaches for his holster and takes his gun in hand. A second later, the sound of a gunshot rings out the hollow room.

The old lady hits the floor, in a pool of her own blood.

Silver lowers her gun.  “Can we go now?”

Maydevine doesn’t even have his finger on the trigger. Frozen, in a halfway point between holster and target, he watches his daughter carefully for her reaction.