The Day Knox Died: Part 3
Exit Haven's Lapdog. Enter Adam Knox.
UPDATE: Thank you one and all for reading our Winter 2024 issue of 365 INFANTRY. Still ironing out kinks with the Quarterly, so I will be holding back our “Salute the Troops” credit post until they’re live. Similarly, the new ALAN FIREDALE will be released later today after finishing touches. Thanks again for your patience, and as always, please enjoy!
Silver. That blackest day drew into a week of dulled silver as Adam Knox, at last, returned from murk of what he thought to be death. Had his mind not registered all the salient sensations, he might as well have been in heaven, or hell, or reincarnated as some wayward soul.
Instead, he was still Adam Knox. Dark gray, 25 years of age, lying half-asleep in a hospital bed. Decorated to the nines for his “courageous acts of bravery in the face of enemies of the state,” so read the placard sat on the bedside nightstand. He was expecting to wake up to some terrible birthday party, a properly tacky celebration meant to bring joy back to a hound who damn near lost his life. It was an obscene image to have, but more had been done over less. That was the culture of Haven’s finest. That was the culture surrounding the blind rage he felt upon his partner’s death. The culture that rewarded his frenzied kill count that seemingly led to this entire mess. Through the grog and haze, Knox slowly came to, and slowly realized a most perplexing sensation; he could still feel his left arm.
He didn’t know which nightmare he woke up from, but when he felt for what was sure to be a nub of flesh and fur, he was met with steel. Ice-cold steel, appended to his shoulder socket, and running the length of his arm. He was still too weak to do anything. He couldn’t take joy in being alive, he couldn’t pity his now officially augmented form. He couldn’t even satisfy his anger for A.C.E.S., for the Artificially Controlled Eco-System had, for God only knows what reason, spared him.
He fell back into the void, pondering who was to blame for it all. Was it a terrorist who worked the back end of that protester’s mind, who dragged his arm before the wrought iron guillotine, desperate to make an example of a high-profile “pig?” Was it another 4D chess move by A.C.E.S. herself, unsatisfied with the mind games, now relying on the kind of torture only the Spanish Inquisition used to provide? For a moment, he actually savored that thought. That image of himself bound in black garments, tied to a slab in a dungeon, a curved blade swinging above him, sent to cleave the bastard’s body in half. But of all the courage within, the dark gray 20-something hadn’t the strength to wish for death. All he sought were answers.
He came out of his semi-comatose state the week after. Now fully conscious, he could get a hold of what this arm was. It was like having a tank barrel welded to his body. Bulky at first, he soon realized the sheer perfection of A.C.E.S. and her prosthetic program. He had full range of motion and articulation. His fingers curled and flexed, his elbow bent in perfectly wolven proportions. Most startlingly of all, his range of motion by way of the shoulder joint wasn’t a full 360-degrees. The prosthetic acknowledged the limitations of the limb it replaced, never allowing itself to contort into any unatural positions. She had thought of everything.
By God, she thought of everything.
To both his partial dismay and earnest gratitude, the recognition finally arrived on his second day back among the living. It wasn’t as juvenile as his delirious mind had worried. In fact, he was touched by their sensitivity about it all. Captain Fielding was there with a quiet “you really had us there, champ.” The nurses were quite flattering, to the point of borderline arousal. But the most sobering of all the visitors that day was none other than Henry Beltrami, current ninth chairman on the Haven Board. He was just as sharp as all those brilliant video messages showed him to be. Perfect white suit, perfect light gray fur, and the most honest hazel eyes he ever saw.
“I’m not supposed to be here,” the statesman began, “But I’m not about to let a good deed go unrewarded. All the placards and metals are compliments of the Haven Police Department, customary military honors for such a sacrifice in the line of duty. That said, I wish to invite you personally into conference with me, at my office in Empire. I have much to discuss with you.”
He made sure to take Knox’s organic hand into his, shaking it as though he were an old friend. There was no reason for the young officer to say no, and so he didn’t. He agreed to meet with the chairman upon his release. He wanted however many answers he could get, and holding court with man at the top of the city’s food chain was as good a chance to get them as any other. The best possible chance, in fact.
It was painful going back, but nothing outstripped Knox’s desire to know. He wanted to know more. He needed to know more. There was no reason to suspect treachery or deceit, not after such a public display of brutality. In fact, without any endgame in sight, his own assassin quite possibly a figment of paranoid delusions, he had nothing left to lose.
Except maybe my clutching foot, he teased to himself, crossing the stainless steel threshold into Empire Square’s foyer, a glittering hall of polished glass.
“Here at the behest of Chairman Beltrami,” Knox bowed instinctively. After a quick call to the chairman’s officer, the secretary helped the young policeman to the elevator.
“Floor 54, at the end of the southern hall.” she bowed in kind. “And thank you so very much for your service.” Knox’s grin was sheepish, but she didn’t seem to mind. He was used to just about everything. Everything except being a national hero.
The elevator, a mirror-like chamber in its own right, whisked Adam Knox up to Floor 54. When he stepped out, dress boots clacking along the glimmering tiles, he hung a left, and made straight for the door with plaque named Beltrami.
“Officer Adam Knox, H.P.D. Division 222.”
The door opened immediately and chairman’s white-furred secretary hurried him into Beltrami’s office. There before the officer was the youthful statesman, still in his plantation best.
“Take a seat, Officer Knox,” he gestured, “Pleasure to see you upright again.”
With a deep breath and a hearty handshake, the dark gray officer took a seat before the politician.
“Let’s start with the usual congratulations.” Beltrami flicked a switch, and a liquor cabinet sprouted from the right-hand side of his desk. “Does your hovercar know the way home?”
“Yes sir.” Knox smiled.
“Excellent!” He was careful not to spill a drop on his pristine pearl suit as he poured out a scotch on the rocks. “Asked Captain Fielding about your choice beverage while you were still in recovery, I hope it’s to your liking.”
He passed the whiskey over, and Adam took a swig. It went down smooth for the dark gray officer, one he acknowledged with a belated raise of the glass. Beltrami met him with his own freshly-poured sherry. He was quite a character from where Knox sat. He was used to the whole clean-cut, gray-flannel business. Had seen plenty in the pencil-pushing wing of the precinct after all. Yet Beltrami held with him the aura all good statesmen, that of complete control. Control of himself and his affairs of state. Physically, he was a meek light gray, one you wouldn’t notice in everyday life. Yet in conduct, he oozed Old World nobility down to the letter. A hound of grace, charm, and pleasant company, with a mouth so clean you could eat off it.
“Firstly, I must thank you for your incredible efforts in the line of duty. We heard your address to the crowd on that day through the surveillance feed, an admirable work of deescalation. The bitter irony was that the topic under negotiation. We were discussing with A.C.E.S. and the White Coats about re-allocations back to infrastructure and resource management. A great deal of the grievances being brought outside were, in fact, being tended to.”
“Begging pardon,” Knox interjected. “And I understand if the next words are ‘doctor’s orders,’ but what precisely happened? After I was...indisposed.”
The hazel-eyed statesman gently shook his head. “Oh, of course not, you’ve every right my good man. It was 10:42 when your accident occurred. Afterwards, the crowds were dispersed with the necessary tools. Nothing more than smoke bombs, mercifully. The culprit on the street-side, the white-wolf, was a Frank Delby. He was downed by Officer Valarie Kellend.”
Knox’s mind flashed to the protesting wolf’s horrified face moments before that fateful shot.
“Autopsy revealed he suffered an augmentary seizure. The unfortunate tragedy of it all was the officer behind you, Mark Thompson from a few districts down. He suffered a similar seizure, one naturally fatal at that. He collapsed shortly after you did. The difference is that, while both wolves suffered an unfortunate moment of motor failure, the augs affected were quite different. Delby was a month overdue for a hand surgery, his current model having been susceptible to the vice-grip spasms you endured. Thompson’s main chip at the base of the neck simply short-circuited. We’ve observed that heightened levels of stress in jobs like law enforcement are more likely to induce such instances. Firmware updates had been administered to all departments, yet Thompson had never received his. In fact, you’re lucky you’re still with us Mr. Knox. Yours was never installed either, even after the drive was delivered via your apartment module.”
The dark gray wolf sipped his scotch a little more gingerly before replying. “Musta forgot. The weeks before this past one weren’t exactly happy ones. I wasn’t exactly thinking straight either.”
“Why was that?” Beltrami asked softly.
Knox paused mid-sip. This was it. This was it. The gray officer’s chance. He was holding court with one of the top dogs involved in the running of Haven itself. A hound who conversed with A.C.E.S. herself. Part of him froze with paranoia, the long nights locked in his own thoughts torturing him for daring entertain the idea. The other part, however, bore little more than cool, clean logic on his mind. He was a decorated veteran of the police force; a hound whose name was currently in every Comm/Ent. newsreel as a brave peacekeeper. His own execution, or so he presumed, had been stayed by all. The officer held some cachet now, and now was the time to use it. It would all come down to how he phrased the whole affair.
“My senior partner,” Knox began softly, stroking the scruff of his sharp chin. “Lamont Harris. He was killed in a hovercraft accident. Went to inspect beneath his craft, and his machine’s hover-engines discharged. Something about it didn’t sit right, but the official line was that it was just that, an accident. It wasn’t until I found files pointing to the accident’s potential arrangement on the grounds of some mild disagreements with regards to the way things have been going in the city. Some even similar to the issues currently protested. That sort of stuff shook me up. I thought I knew the guy, and it turns out he had a different way of looking at things. It upset me a great deal, and it also upset me that such disagreements were enough for him to be killed. I just don’t know who killed him. Between the grief, work, my mind never settling down, I just felt lost. I probably never even noticed the notification.”
Beltrami stood up and crossed the room. He gestured for Knox to rise from his chair and was met with something he never in a million years expected: a firm embrace from the statesman. It was almost cartoonish; the young officer’s ornate metal wrapped around the crisp white coat of one of his city’s leaders. And yet, here they were.
It didn’t feel forced or contrived, either; that was the puzzling part. In the instant he realized it was happening, Knox braced for a public-relations photo-op and all the chintziness therein, only for there to be no such ordeal. There came no camera flash, no gawking from passersby. The embrace was one of earnest empathy and consideration.
When he pulled back, Knox stood stunned while Beltrami was kind as ever. “I want to know everything you know, and I want to build a dossier on it here and now. We shan’t stand for such conspiracies this fine city of ours.”
The young darksome gray stood with slackened jaw and wide blue eyes. For a moment, the response didn’t even register. The thought of it all having been that easy was almost enough to send his mind into further spasmodic fits. With a snap of Beltrami’s pale digits, he came back to reality and nodded. Part of him hesitated with every word, admonishing him for such naivete, but the other half was in lock-step with Chairman Beltrami. The bespectacled light gray hand-typed every note and was personally handed the syphoned files by Knox when they returned to his apartment. Surveying the information, Beltrami was appalled.
“This simply will not do.” he resolved. “This is being brought right to the Board’s attention.”
“Do you suspect A.C.E.S. may be involved?” Knox asked innocently.
The fair-furred statesman looked him square in the eye and gave a succinct reply.
“Insomuch as bad actors are utilizing tools they ought not have access to. Such atrocities are not in the spirit of her conduct. She’s a mother, a friend, it’s impossible for her to stomach such loathsome exercises. She’s sitting directly in on the Board’s meetings via monitor, so you bet she’ll be involved in bringing these treacherous fools to justice.”
Whatever shadows of doubt lingered in Knox’s mind evaporated by the hand of Beltrami’s convictions. For all his gentleness and calm, he was forthright crusader, a hound of the people. In many ways, he seemed much like Lamont. The confidence and conviction sent Knox’s patriotic spirit rip-roaring back through his wounded soul. This was why he was allowed to live, it must have been. A.C.E.S. wouldn’t have held such an obscene grudge against him and him alone. All the strange omens, all those sleepless nights. Maybe she was trying to say something, trying to get him thinking along the right lines. There remained still a shriveled organ of doubt in Knox’s gut, but one he seemed hellbent on suppressing now. He couldn’t give up this chance to have it proven once and for all in front of the whole of Haven. He couldn’t.
First came the council meetings broadcast live across all of Comm/Ent., Knox’s testimonials booming across the city’s screens. Then came further investigations, razing each police department and individual intel agency, searching for corroboration and clues. Suddenly the breakout confession, Captain Fielding revealing the logs made of dissent in the police department. Their reason? By God, what a reason!
“We felt,” she testified. “It was in the public’s best interests we set an example. But we didn’t kill! We would occasionally hold council and converse about issues, but never would we kill!”
The search dragged on, the city-wide dragnet revealing the true culprit: disgruntled ex-cop Ira Lang. A short, tan-furred techie who quit District 687 over such heresy against his dear Ace. He was the one behind it all! From tampering with microchips through pocket EMPs to orchestrating such dastardly affairs as Harris’s scorching beneath his own hovercar. Crime after crime, reconstructed and relayed with remarkable detail, for all of Haven to see. The computer’s open rebuke of the squirming creep, and his just sentence of death was a momentous occasion. The whirlwind of honors bestowed and praise shone down up on the humble Officer Knox, potential victim turned shiner of light upon the rot of this miserable soul. Further vetting became part of police recruitment, the public rejoicing some manner of reform finally taking place. It all wove together flawlessly.
Perhaps, too flawless.
With each incredible advance in the story, each satiating revelation begetting more, that impoverished worm of doubt nestled deep the dark gray officer’s soul writhed and squirmed. It thrashed violently with each testimonial, talk-show interview, and especially upon that final day when Ira Lang drew his last breath.
Only that night, after a spirited dinner with his many colleagues, did it all come into view for young Adam Knox.
He sat down in his apartment, alone, the light cascading through the windows in small, slender bars. All throughout his newfound occupation of whistle-blower, he was still getting used to his arm. It gifted him with an increased sense of strength, and a host of technical wizardry to learn about. From a programmable intercom to body heat controls to a digital watch-face with all the functionality of a tablet. Gadgets and gizmos galore, all for the young wolf to explore.
It was during this night, midway through toying with the metal appendage, that a voice spoke. Not from the monitor of his module, nor the telescreen, nor his own arm: his head.
“Is it satisfactory?”
It was a gentle, feminine voice, without a hint of bit-crushed distortion. A pure, sonorous woman’s voice, flooding his mind. There was only one being in all of creation who could manage such psychic conversation with a VR headset.
“Best you could do on short notice, right?” Knox grinned. “Thanks for it. Thanks for not giving up on me.”
“My pleasure. But I also meant the trial, was it satisfactory?”
The chiseled dark gray cocked an eyebrow before answering. “Well we got ol’ Ira, didn’t we? I’m lucky I didn’t lose my arm to that crook.”
“But was it satisfactory? Were all your needs met?”
The writhing serpent of doubt ballooned upon this fourth question. He had to choose his words wisely, and his thoughts carefully.
“My needs were the least of my concerns,” he sighed. “What counts was the justice done. Was justice done?”
Silence hung in the room and across Knox’s mind, awaiting the response.
“Did I forget anything? I want you to be happy.”
“Why me though? What’s so special about me?”
“You’re extra-perceptive. That’s beautiful.”
Knox chuckled to himself. “Thanks for saying so. And no, you didn’t forget anything. You—” He stopped himself mid-sentence, the pangs and flashes of concern roaring up through him upon those very words “extra-perceptive.” He was, indeed, extra-perceptive. That’s what made him a crack flat-foot, and a good police officer, even for his age. And yet, in the “depth of his perceptiveness,” things left unnoticed in the moment began to rear their head.
There was something odd about Captain Fielding’s testimony. Not the change in tone, everyone had professional and private voices, but the mention of powwows discussing citywide issues in a forum—they never had. At least, not when Adam was around. Maybe they were leftover vestiges of a custom before his time, but the good gray lady mentioned one from just before their anti-riot detail at Empire Square.
Then there was Ira Lang, a scruffy Indian wolf with an incredibly rich history of crime, frustration, and resentment. He never knew many folks from 687, so it was plausible he was involved in police work. His spree had taken him across the entirety of the city, and yet he only fessed up to crimes concerning the 500s and 600s, and those relating to Knox, Officer Harris, and a few idle cop-killings in the 200s. And when detailing how Lang committed the others in the remaining districts, they didn’t seem too fussed by how he was able to be in District 607 one night and all the way over in 154 the next. There was plenty enough to convict him, a litany of crimes just waiting for prosecution, but they dumped what seemed to be a whole web of police killings on the one hound. No conspirators, no hidden network of agents. Just one tan hound with a helluva grudge.
All of these discrepancies and logical leaps kept roaring through his mind while A.C.E.S. quietly asked in the background “Was it satisfactory? Was it satisfactory?”
He looked down to his metal arm and balled his fist. He didn’t know whether to be insulted or flattered that an entire show trial had been orchestrated just to appease him. For all he knew, Ira was the bastard who iced the black-furred Lamont, but the uncertainty cast by the entire affair sent the young wolf’s blood racing and head spinning. He took the badge from his uniform, the pentagonal sheet of metal resting in his lone organic hand. He glowered at it from behind silvery glow of his appendage, every repetition of the question souring his view on everything. A.C.E.S., his colleagues, the Board, Beltrami. Every last goddamned one of them, partner to or conspirator in an obscene work of bread-and-circus. One he was partner to.
The illusion of change and progress had brought the tensions down. There were fewer protests than before, crime seemed to have withered away for a spell, and the mere appearance of the system being able to pull itself apart to address its own rot satiated many. It even satiated himself.
It all had been satisfactory. Until now. When she asked that horrible question for the umpteenth time, Knox screamed at the top of his lungs “NO IT’S NOT! IT’S FUCKING NOT!” He clamped his hand tight around the badge, tears welling his eyes, and he squeezed the sheet of metal until his palm and pads bled. He squeezed it until he felt the metal crack from the force of his hand, shards leaping out in all directions. The badge had been crushed by his hand. His real hand. The hand of flesh, fur, and blood, one of which had been robbed in a ruse so elaborate he doubted he’d ever be sane again. A streak of sanguine relief coursed from his palm, dying the length of his arm as he grabbed crumpled icon and slammed it furious against his neck. Over and over he dug in, palms bleeding profusely as he dug for that goddamned microchip.
He felt his metal arm leap up to grasp his bloody wrist, wrestling the makeshift shiv from his hand.
“You are not well” rang in his mind. He felt A.C.E.S. push his arm away, desperate to stop him. And yet, Knox didn’t budge. He slammed all the maintenance releases on his shoulder socket, the prosthetic dropping onto the bed. He was free to keep chiseling away at his own flesh, desperate to reach the chip at his neck’s base. It was a suicide mission, but by God, was it the only way to go. Not out of a window, nor by a bullet, but knowing this perverted freak who ran the entire damn city would no longer hold dominion over him, his body, his soul. Over and over, he dug deeper and deeper into his neck, finally reaching the miniature green tile. He gave one final stab...and the voice stopped.
He didn’t descend into the dark abyss, as he had with the severing of his arm. In fact, the limb he ejected never powered down. Its power source was self-contained. For now, as he shoved the joint back into his socket, he still had two arms. And with those two arms, he furiously sought out gauze in his apartment. He bandaged his hand and neck as best he could, threw on a shirt, and leapt for the apartment’s front door. Though it came crashing down to stop him, Knox met it with an adrenaline-fueled might, his cybernetic prosthetic shoving up into its slot.
The gray wolf bolted down the hall, eyes still wet with his frenzied tears, manically racing down the dozen-odd flights and towards the parking garage. There sat, pristine as ever, his brilliant green Hemi Cuda. The Old World beast waited for her master to climb behind the wheel, hit the gas, and tear out into the night. That he did, twisting the key, ripping her into gear, and burying the throttle beneath his jackboot.
The rest of the night was a blur, from the crash through the parking lot gate, the cadre of autocops careening after him, to that final beautiful sight of the chain-link border racing towards him. He rammed the Cuda into the titanium fence, only for it to rip in half as he braked hard to stop from falling down the canyon beyond. Like a victory lap, the Cuda roared past the intact fence. She roared along, free in the desert, while the autocops powerless to stop him, trapped by their programming. The muscle car hurried down a treacherous path, across the dusty grave where desert-dwellers once lived, and up the other side into the unknown.
He only looked away from the horizon once, down at the watch-face on his silver arm, its metal hand clung tight to the wheel.
It bore but one message: “I’m sorry.”
Me too. Me too.