Who: Winnie, Connor Where: Dream land When: Recently What: Shared dream about a crime scene gone wrong Warnings: Gore, violence, sad times.
Walking down a tight, futuristic corridor, Winnie was dressed in her officer’s outfit if it had been styled a good sixty years in the future. The blue had silver trimming, her belt was fitted with a specialized gun and gadgets that she knew exactly how to use despite having no recollection of what they even were. Down the hallway was the office she shared with Joseph; a place that even here in the future they didn’t spend much time in. And even though everything was digital, they still managed to make a mess out of it.
“O’Hara.” The Commissioner popped up on a communication screen, wearing some kind of eye scanner on the side of his face that glowed in light shades of purple. “We need you to backup Agent Baird.”
“Baird?” Winnie put her arms behind her back, shoulders straightening in attention. “But, I’m just-”
“That’s an order, O’Hara.” Commissioner clearly didn’t have time for games and neither did O’Hara. If they were calling her in to back up Baird, that meant there might be some action. Quickly checking her belt to make sure she had everything she needed, Winnie grabbed an extra pack of ammunition out of her drawer and jogged down the hallway to Connor’s office. The station didn’t look anything like it did in Vegas. All of the desks were isolated in separate rooms that were so far apart and through so many security scans it felt like working at an airport. But, to Winnie, this was how it had always been. The year was 2030, after all.
This was all necessary in this futuristic reality, of course. Crime was spiraling out of control and the number of good cops left on the force was dwindling either through corruption or a bullet through the head. Winnie was one of the last few and was such a rookie they didn’t mind throwing her into the fray. Maybe she’d learn something.
Winnie swiped her card key along the side of Connor’s office door and stepped inside without asking. “Connor. I mean Agent Baird.” She corrected herself, shoulders straight again as Winnie offered a smile. “I’ve been assigned to give you assistance. What’s the situation?”
Connor was still getting adjusted to his office when Winnie arrived. Everything was strange, wrong, misplaced. He knew it was 2030, knew the unrecognizable objects on his desk were implements of police work, but had a difficult time placing what they were for.
Winnie, appearing at his door, sparked a more immediate memory. Though they had only spoken briefly before, her face resonated. Compared to the strange, difficult to grasp feeling of everything else around him, she held a stability, a comforting reality. "The situation?" Oh, yes, the situation. Someone had just told him. Why had he forgotten? "Homicide. A couple's been murdered in their apartment." He walked around the edge of the desk toward her, business-like as usual now that he'd remembered where they were going. "Ready to head out?"
“Ready.” Winnie was suddenly looking at a futuristic tablet in her hand, going over the case notes. Her mouth moved to the side of her face in thought, finding the information on the couple to be scarce as if they had just moved to the country. Obviously a murder alone wouldn’t be enough to bring Connor out on the field, so Winnie knew something was up. “I know I’m just a police officer, but you’re going to have to give me some details so I don’t go into a situation and act like an idiot.” She told him simply, without expression so the people at the end of the hallway couldn’t tell what they were talking about.
And, just like dreams do, suddenly they were in a futuristic flying car, headed towards the location. In real life that would have jarred her, but dreams had a way of transitioning simply and effortlessly like a train of thought. Hands on the wheel, though the car seemed to fly itself, she looked over at Connor in the passenger seat and then at the data pad mounted to the wheel. Soon, the files she couldn’t reach started to melt away, revealing a piece of the puzzle. “The witness protection agency.” She said softly, clicking off the data pad so she could pay attention to where they were going. “What were they hiding from?”
“The Family that employs him,” Connor said. The name of said family escaped him, his mind failing to provide a pseudonym, but the rest appeared easily on the screen. “They’re involved mostly in trafficking by air. Their cargo is primarily drugs and humans.” A small summary filled in the screen, outlining the ways in which the Family used the now thick and plentiful mode of air transportation to move drugs and terrified human beings in and out of the country. “Most of the trafficking is for the sex trade, but some of it is voluntary, getting people across the border who want to avoid immigration policies.” Ah yes, there had been that crackdown, vague in his mind, about ten years ago, making it harder than ever to get a visa.
“I hope you’re not squeamish,” he said, glancing out the window at the city as it went by. It was getting dark, and the sky behind the impossibly tall buildings was growing dim. In this dream, he seemed as disheveled as his cover in real life, the loose hoodie and five o'clock shadow he wore when meeting informants rather than the professional wear he made sure to present himself in at the office. It had a strange effect, softening his presence, but keying to something that was a little off about him, a little not right. His eyes, meeting hers, were black.
Winnie rubbed her hands on the steering wheel, twisting the leather between her palms in an attempt to control her energy levels. When it came to chasing down criminals, her adrenaline did her a lot of good. But, when walking around some messed up crime scene? It was just going to make her jittery. In the back of her head, there was a familiar feeling that reminded her of a lion. Calm, violent and powerful. It didn’t speak, but suddenly her hands stopped squeezing the life out of the wheel. She stared out the window at the strange, science fiction city. “I’ll be okay, Connor.” She said softer than she intended, but moved to keep her expression free from any doubts.
But, then she looked over at him and saw his eyes turn to black marbles. Winnie held back a gasp, making a small noise through her lips that almost sounded like a squeak. It was terrifying, even if her lion knew those eyes. And, somehow, she did, too. She turned away from him, opening her mouth to speak, but they had already arrived at the crime scene. Ignoring what happened in the car, Winnie opened her door and slid out, taking a deep breath of air to get her head back in the game. Of course, the air was muggy and even a little bit stifling, but it was better than being in that car any longer. “I got this.” She whispered to the blue lion in her head, who thumped his tail impatiently. He was right. Screwing this up wasn’t just going to look bad on her record, but it would get the whole station talking that would rip away her chances of being a detective.
In a moment, they were outside the apartment room, yellow tape blocking off normal entry to citizens as forensics and other detectives seemed to mull about. Winnie ducked under the tape and then held it up for Connor, thumbs resting on her belt as she slowly walked into the bedroom where the couple had been murdered. But, the smell got to her first.
When she was a child, Winnie had gotten herself lost in an art museum. There was one exhibit her father told her not to go, something about the rings of Hell and other grown up stuff she wasn’t old enough for. So, when she wandered into the dark room filled with paintings that looked vaguely like abstract body parts and pools of blood, she stood in the middle of the gallery and screamed. Screamed until her dad saved her. The scene before her made her feel like she was five again. Lost in an art gallery covered in blood. It wasn’t just that the couple were murdered. Nothing was that simple with the mob. They were stripped down, tied up and cut down the middle like pigs. “They were making an example out of them.” Winnie said, biting down on her quivering lip.
By the time they reached the crime scene, Connor was utterly normal again. If anything, he seemed almost a little faded, all the more bland after, for that brief moment in the car, the veil had fallen away, and his silhouette had burned.
Here, standing before the bodies, he seemed like less than himself. Once that brief moment had passed, the normality that replaced it felt almost like a cardboard cutout, so obviously fake, so two-dimensional, that it made him seem as if he wasn't really standing there at all. "Of course they were," he said, quietly. He hadn't expected them to be cut up, but he accepted the mutilation to their bodies with the reality of the dream. They ought to look different, because this was not the efficient execution of his usual nightmares, but here they were, drained of their blood in a bedroom turned slaughterhouse. The room felt cold, distinctly. He could see his breath.
A hand was poking out from under the bed, and Connor's eyes fixed on it. He didn't say anything, though, just stared. It was a male hand, but not a broad one, the hand of a child, maybe an adolescent. "No one turns their back on the Family," Connor said. "No one. And that's why they all need to die, or go to prison." A flat statement, factual and nothing more. He seemed unmoved by the gore. It was familiar, that was all. The cuts weren't bullet holes, and the faces were just a little wrong, but he still knew this scene. He still knew what it really was. The obscene puddles of blood, and the glimpse of dark intestine peeking through the gash in the woman's stomach, they didn't even make him flinch. He walked closer, and knelt down in front of her. They'd left her dress on, thankfully, cut straight through it to get to her soft middle, but the man's shirt had been stripped from him and cast aside.
Winnie hung back, knowing that it wasn’t her place to look around the crime scene, but part of her felt like it wouldn’t hurt. This whole thing seemed pretty cut and dry, so why bring her along? Maybe it was a test to see what she could take. What she could see. “You realize that’s discrediting an entire department, right?” She narrowed her eyes at him, her mouth making a hmph shape without the sound actually coming out. “I’m sure the statistics show that this isn’t exactly a common occurrence.” Then, she heard a whimper somewhere and wondered if she was the one who made such a noise. It wasn’t Connor and it couldn’t be the lion. No, now she was hearing things.
The lady cop stepped closer to the bed, looking over the gasping, dead face of the husband. He looked like he died in pain, but not shock. Did the fear of the past catching up sit with them always? Her gaze drifted over to Connor who seemed almost robotic in his investigation of the woman’s body. Emotionless strength scared the O’Hara and she thought that it must have been exactly what her father didn’t like about him.
"It's common," Connor said, again refuting her words without a second thought to how his surety might sound. "It happens every night, almost." He came close to realizing he was standing inside a dream, then, and something strange happened to the room. The walls bent in closer, and the wallpaper changed. Bland paint shifted to a pale pink floral pattern on dark green, and outside it was the middle of the night. The only thing visible in the darkness was the rhythmic red-blue flash of the lights atop the cars outside. "If they knew how to do their jobs, these people would be alive," he said, bluntly.
He touched the puddle of blood with his fingers, lifted them, and the puddle reformed itself, totally untouched. The blood was still on his hand, though, and he turned it toward the light. It was the exact right shade, and the exact right consistency. "It's only been a few hours," he said. "This has barely dried." He looked over at her, and dropped his hand to his side. He suddenly felt strange, like he'd been caught at something. His outline had become distinct again as he'd been talking. He no longer looked like a drawing on a page, vivid again. "Do you care that they're dead?"
Winnie felt a chill at her back and though she had seen dead bodies before and had promised herself that she was always brave enough for the worst, she wanted to run. The smell of the bodies lifted up and made her dizzy as the walls inched closer and angled in like a wet cardboard box melting overhead. She took a step back, nearly knocking over a lamp as she pressed her back against an inky feeling wallpaper. Her dad was right. She should have stayed away from that wing of the museum. She shouldn’t have left a slice of cake on his desk.
“Of course I care.” She spat at him, anger boiling as the wall turned to velvet curtains in her hands. Winnie felt herself fall in a mess of fabric, so she steadied herself like someone with their back turned to a cliff. Her hand was on the edge of her gun, mind past suspicion and onto full on fight or flee instincts. The lion roared a warning to her, but she couldn’t hear it. She couldn’t keep her eyes off the way his hand turned a thick copper red with blood. “What did you do?” Winnie’s voice was just a whisper, but it had the force of an opened window in the middle of a storm.
Connor looked at her with interest. She seemed afraid of him, which was a surprise. Most people weren't smart enough to be afraid of him. Most people didn't see past polite smiles and practiced interactions to realize something knocked hollow underneath, like a secret compartment. She saw, though, like her father had seen, and expressed mostly through hostile glares. She had already put it together.
He regarded her with something a little like sadness. He didn't seem such a terror, then. Something was definitely wrong, but maybe more in the way a doll was wrong when it was missing an eye and a leg, never sewn on. "Nothing," he said, and closed his hand. When it opened it again, the blood had turned into petals of red construction paper, and the fluttered from his palm. "Nothing."
Winnie stood there in silence, her hand slowly moving away from her gun and she walked around the bed cautiously towards him. The room felt darker than before and the stench of the bodies were replaced by the musky scent of dying roses. She wasn’t the type of woman who spent time in a perfume or a flower shop, but even a lady cop wasn’t above stopping by a nice vase of flowers and taking a whiff before going back to being a total badass. Even if she didn’t feel that way now. Connor had something dark about him, something she knew was always there, and whether or not it was dangerous still remained to be seen.
But, she knew that look on his face. It was like the boy who kept trying to deal weed behind his favorite quickie mart or the a girl who couldn’t give up hooking because the money was good and she had an addiction to feed. Those were her people, her beat. And, even if she represented the law, it didn’t have to equate cruelty, too. “But, you carry wrong around with you.” She said finally, fingers reaching out to snatch one of the pieces of paper like she intended to hold onto it for him.
She turned the paper over simply, finding it blank and placed it in her back pocket. “You don’t have to lug all that around on your own.” Winnie was still frightened, trembling even, but courage didn’t mean a damn thing without a little fear. She managed a shaky smile that barely turned the corner of her lips when she saw a little shadow crawl past them into the next room. With just a glance back at him like I’ve got this, Winnie sprinted out the room after it.
Connor watched her come closer to him, and was unsure what to make of her. She should know better than to be near. When he was younger, he had thought what was wrong with him, what made him different from other people, might somehow be contagious. He knew better now, but the thought had stuck, that he was better off leaving normal people to go about their lives, rather than pollute them somehow with his presence.
"I have for a long time," he said. That wrong was as deeply embedded as anything else. It wasn't meant to be shared. When she tucked that petal of paper into her pocket, with that tiny smile, his expression opened to naked surprise. What did she think she was doing? Why was she doing it?
Then she was running, and Connor was running too. He'd seen the shadow, and if she was going to face it, he wasn't going to let her do it on her own. "Don't touch it," he warned. He didn't know what it was, but he knew that touching it couldn't be good.
Winnie stood in the living room which was crumbling and tilted with wide, open wounds that bled the twinkling city lights below. She caught her breath, hands on her thighs like she had just ran a couple miles between rooms. In the middle, with all the furniture, papers and police caution tape thrown about like someone shook a dollhouse, the little boy’s shadow sat. There was no boy to speak of anymore and the longer Winnie thought about it, the less likely it seemed there was ever an actual human child at all. The other police officers would have found it, wouldn’t they?
“Okay. Okay.” Winnie said to it and then looked behind at Connor who had followed her into the room. He had told her not to touch it, but the little shadow seemed to be calling to her. Asking for help even though it wasn’t anything but a ghost or maybe a reflection of a boy caught in this mess. She took a step closer, feeling her weight tilt the floor. The boy turned to look at her, his eyes bright flashlights through the darkness as he started to boil and morph towards the ceiling.
In a second, Winnie recognized it. “A beacon?” And, it was. A metal needle pointed towards the now exposed, black sky with green, glowing circuits up the sides of it. She knew the damn thing anywhere. In moments, the beacon started to glow and call her towards it with a sound of metal hitting static. Winnie did her best to try and resist, but her feet slid towards it as the room started to collapse. “Connor!” She called, slipping as the entire living room slanted downwards and sent her falling down the side along with beacon. Winnie reached for him, but the beacon sent out an energy blast that shot her off the side of the floor and into the darkness below.