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I HAD BEEN A BUSY BEE. Besides being in Mad Heights, there was one other place I had been that they didn't know about. Before I went to the Soldier of Fortune Meet-Up meeting, I had made one other stop—back to the Free City apartment of Mrs. Easy Chair Charlie.
My day may have ended with gangster punks (Mad Heights), but it began with them, too. I strolled into Free City, and I knew the Free City gangs would try to jack me up again and no business card would stop them this time. As I approached the tower of Easy Chair's widow, they appeared. It was the same kids; one after another they walked to me.
"It's the detective again," one said.
"I didn't think he was dumb enough to come back a second time," said another.
I was in no mood.
"Get away from me," I said.
"That's it, Mr. Detective? You got no more fake business cards to show us?"
I really was in no mood for this.
"Guess where I'm going after this?" I asked.
"Why?" one of the punks responded.
"Mad Heights."
They all laughed. "You're not going to no Mad City, you square."
"When you go to a place like that, you have to be prepared to do what needs to be done. I should practice."
Instantly, the expressions changed on their faces. They knew where I was going.
The first mistake was drawing their weapons on me. The second mistake they made was not firing at me immediately. I pulled my omega-gun the same time they did, but I didn't hesitate. My mind was set to shoot them, not kill them—they were still young enough that they had a chance to get on the right path in life; however, I would torture them, viciously. Medium-yield plasma discharge rounds. I needed something to practice on to see their effectiveness. The mayhem commenced. Lucky for them, it was not set to kill; unlucky for them, they would be showered with burning, excruciating painful rounds. The punks were all reduced to whimpering wrecks, bundles on the ground. They cried and begged for me to stop.
"She hired us!"
"Who?"
"She told us to stop you from coming up to her place, no matter what!" one of the punks yelled at me.
"Who?!"
As I approached Easy Chair's place, people were watching me from the windows. I couldn't tell if they approved or not of what I did to their resident juvenile delinquents.
Then I saw them. Two high-tech robo-dogs optically targeted me, their metal teeth extended out, and they raced at me. You never wanted to be attacked by a robo-dog, and these were pit-bull models, which were among the most lethal (along with Doberman and German Shepherd models).
Every city, even super-cities like Metropolis, were inseparable from their automation and machines—never use the word "robot" around my fiancée, Dot. Machines and technology were built to last, and last a long time, and that's exactly what they did. Even the technology infrastructure of the nouveau-rich Peacock Hills had existed for centuries. Everything only looked new, including the robots you saw. But these robot dogs were straight-out-of-the-box new. They were genuinely something to behold. The flawless, shiny-silver metal parts, the supple plastic connector pieces, the blue-metal, razor teeth and retractable front-paw claws. You wouldn't find such beautiful mechanical specimens in any tower mansion in uber-rich Silicon Dunes, but the two killer machines were coming at me in low-life, no-money, Free City.
The robot pit bulls were fast! I was faster. The beauty of my gun was that I could switch its setting with a flick of a thumb. I shot them, and the robots wobbled around and then blew up. I shielded myself from the debris with my coat and angrily kicked the door, but it was already bolted back. There I stood, locked out. I sat on the ground next to the apartment door as I took out my mobile.
The video-phone answered, and Mrs. Easy Chair Charlie was glaring at me. "How did you get my number?"
"Open the door!"
"No!"
"Where did you get the money to buy expensive security robot dogs, pit-bull models, like that?"
"My life insurance! I told you that before."
"Oh, so we're sticking with that story?"
"It's not a story. It's the truth."
"What was Easy going to acquire that was going give him such a payday that he was going to get you and him Up-Top?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"People who can afford those kind of robots shouldn't be in Free City. I'm going to report you to the government. Free City is for people without legacies and no money. You have enough money to buy not one, but two, fancy security robot dogs you would find in Silicon Dunes." I stood up from the ground.
"No, don't do that."
"Don't do what? Stand up from the ground or report you to city services?"
"Why don't you go away? Leave me alone."
"Seems like I care more about your husband than you do!"
"That is not true!"
"Jumping in with his murderers."
"That's not true!" She suddenly broke down and sobbed. "Will you please go away and leave me alone?"
"When you tell me what Easy was into that got him killed that night, I will."
"He wasn't killed. He was shot by the police righteously."
"I don't how it was done yet, but he was murdered. I don't know if they shot up the police and then threw him out there, or what, but I'll find out how. And when I do, I'll say you were in on it."
"That's not true! I had nothing to do with it!"
"You're spending your dead husband's life insurance, even though to this day, you never even filed the claim. Where's the money coming from?!"
She erupted into a bawling mess.
"I'm not leaving here, until you let me in and tell me what Easy was into. I got past your Free City gang punks you hired to keep me out, and I got past your robot dogs. You think hiding in there crying is going to stop me?"
She disappeared from the video screen on my mobile. In a minute or two, I heard the locks unlocking, and the door was opening.
That's where I went before Mad Heights. And I went to an even more dangerous place when I ran out of Police One, instead of the men's room. I wasn't eager to do so, and I surely wasn't brave. It was my OCD-self, locking on one singular purpose, and pushing every other thought and fear out of my mind—I would rescue that girl, and no deranged punk in a rabbit mask would stop me.