Hell's Maw. James Axler

Grant nodded. Then he lowered his left hand, moving it away from his body just slightly before dropping the razor disc. The disc struck the wooden floor with a hollow clang. “That ain’t mine,” Grant said, though he could hear how lame that must sound right now. As he dropped it, Grant studied the man whom he faced, eyeing his smart clothes and the weapon he held on him with professional surety. The man’s blaster was black with sleek lines, compact but of a large bore—probably a 9 mm, Grant guessed. It reminded him of his own weapon of choice—the Sin Eater, side arm of the Magistrate Division.

      Corcel ignored Grant’s comment. “Now,” he instructed, “hands up behind your head, you understand?”

      “Yeah, I understand,” Grant said, moving his hands as instructed until the fingers were laced together behind his head. He knew this move, had used it himself as a Magistrate and after that. It was the move of a professional, which meant his opponent had obviously had training in controlling people. “I think there’s probably some mistake—”

      “You keep quiet and you answer my questions only when asked,” the sharp-suited man told him.

      “Sure, you’ve got the gun,” Grant confirmed.

      Then Pretor Corcel gave instructions to the doctor to go find his partner and bring her here. He spoke in Spanish, though Grant’s Commtact automatically translated the exchange in real time. The discussion gave little away, but Grant tried to piece together what he could. The man in the suit was addressed as “Pretor” by the other man, Grant heard, or Praetor, another word for Judge or Magistrate.

      As the other man left the room, Grant addressed the figure in the dark suit. “You’re a Mag, right?” he asked. “A Magistrate?”

      Corcel studied him warily. “Yes—Pretor Corcel,” he said. “You speak Spanish, then?”

      “A little,” Grant lied. “Only a few words.”

      Corcel nodded sullenly, waiting before Grant with the blaster aimed at him. Grant stood like that for almost two minutes until Corcel’s partner came striding into the room in a suit similar to Corcel’s.

      “Pretor Cáscara,” she introduced herself immediately, flashing an ID badge in Grant’s direction, too fast to read.

      Corcel rapidly explained the situation to his partner in swiftly spoken Spanish, and Grant began to understand what had happened. It seemed that Corcel had had reports of black men with shaven heads who were involved in a spate of murders, and that Grant fit the description. Cáscara stepped over to the sharp-edged disc that Grant had dropped, kneeling to examine it where it lay as the two officers spoke. Corcel explained that the suspect had been carrying the weapon when he had returned to the crime scene.

      “Dumb mistake,” Cáscara lamented in Spanish.

      It would have been, Grant thought, except that I picked this up from the people who actually did do this. I think.

      “You,” Cáscara said to Grant in lightly accented English once she had been brought up to speed by her partner, “hands down, here, behind your back.” She showed him, crossing her wrists together at the small of her back. “I’m going to cuff you. You try anything and Pretor Corcel will shoot you, okay? He’s a good shot.”

      “Top of my graduating class,” Corcel added, his pistol never wavering.

      “Yeah, I get it,” Grant said, lowering his hands as instructed. “You’ve got the wrong guy, you realize?”

      “We’ll figure that out back at the Sector Hall,” Cáscara told him emotionlessly as she placed a pair of plastic handcuffs on Grant’s wrists. Then she stepped away and produced a pair of latex gloves from a pocket of her jacket, which she slipped over her hands. Along with the gloves, she produced an evidence bag, into which she placed the metallic projectile that Grant had narrowly avoided.

      “Had that thrown at me,” Grant explained. “There’s another one of those out there somewhere. Couldn’t see it, though.”

      The two Pretors did not respond to his comment.

      Once the first evidence pack was sealed, Cáscara returned to Grant, who remained standing close to the open ballroom doors. She reached for the bloodred feather that poked from one hip pocket of his jacket.

      “More of these out there, too?” Cáscara challenged him. It was hard to tell with her not being a native English speaker, but Grant thought that she was employing a sarcastic tone.

      “Look,” Grant said, “I had a partner here. A friend. We came here together—”

      “We’ll discuss that at the Sector Hall,” Corcel cut him off.

      “Sure, I just—” Grant began.

      “Quiet now,” Corcel said in a warning tone, gesturing vaguely with his blaster. “Don’t make me shoot you.”

      “Okay,” Grant said, “I just want to know what happened to her. If she’s okay. Her name’s Shizuka.”

      Pretor Cáscara looked up at that from where she had been labeling the evidence bags with a marker pen.

      “Shizuka…?” Grant repeated hopefully.

      Cáscara nodded firmly just the once. “She’s here. We’ll be bringing her in,” she confirmed. Then she moved closer to Corcel and whispered something to him in Spanish. It was too quiet for Grant to hear, but he guessed he might have inadvertently just turned Shizuka into a suspect. At least she was still alive.

      * * *

      GRANT WAS TAKEN via secure wag past the bullfighting ring to the local Sector Hall of Justice, a grand building in the center of Zaragoza that housed the authorities. The building was four stories high and stretched the length of a block, with tinted glass in the windows and a basement level housing the garage and firing range. The Pretors—the local equivalent of Magistrates—were based here, and they patrolled not only Zaragoza City but also the state beyond, covering an eighty-mile radius that took them well into the radiation-blighted lands to the south and east.

      Once inside, Grant was swiftly processed by a uniformed Pretor—his uniform consisting of flexible armor in black and red, the tailored jacket flaring at the bottom so that it created something approaching a skirt across the hips. The Pretor was armed with a boot knife and had a holster—currently empty—at his hip. Grant could see notches around the high neck of his uniform where a helmet would be secured while on patrol.

      After he had been processed—a simple procedure of taking holographs and prints—Grant was taken to a secure, white-walled interview room and left alone to wait. The room featured harsh lighting and contained a single table to which Grant’s right wrist was cuffed on a short chain, along with four chairs, two to either side of the table. Grant waited almost forty minutes until Corcel, the officer whom he had first met in the hotel ballroom, joined him. Corcel’s expression was unreadable as he greeted Grant, pulling a chair across to him before reversing it to sit on, his arms resting across its back.

      “Your name?” Corcel asked without preamble.

      “Grant.”

      “Grant…?”

      “Just Grant,” Grant confirmed. “Only name I ever needed.”

      “And you are an American, we have already established.”

      “That’s right.”

      “Whereabouts from?”

      “Originally Cobaltville. More recently, all over, but still in that territory.”

      “I see. And your purpose for being here, in Zaragoza?”

      “Vacation, with a friend.”

      Corcel checked something in the little A7 notebook he carried. “And that would be Shizuka, correct?”

      Grant nodded.

      “And what is your relationship to Shizuka?”