Red lights blinked and the fire alarm blared throughout the room. The door slammed shut behind Jin Chu. He jerked around in shock.
As soon as I hit the ground, I bounded into the air shelter and slammed the door behind me. Lefty was hot on my heels, but he didn’t catch up in time. I spun the crank to seal myself in. Then I jammed the pipe into the crank spokes and held on to the other end.
Lefty tried to turn the crank from the other side, but he couldn’t overcome my leverage advantage.
He glared at me through the air shelter’s small round window. I flipped him off.
I could see Jin Chu clawing at the door, trying to get out. Of course it was no use. It was a fireproof room’s door—solid metal and clamped shut with a mechanical interlock that could only be opened from the outside.
The foggy airflow from the broken valve slowed and petered out. Dad’s wall valves connected to gas cylinders that he refilled every month.
Lefty stormed to the workbench and grabbed a long, steel rod. He came back to my shelter, breathing heavily. I got ready for a life-or-death game of circular tug-o-war.
He panted and wheezed as he stuck the rod into the handle. He pushed hard, but I was able to hold firm. By all rights, he should have won—he was bigger, stronger, and had better leverage. But I had one thing he didn’t: oxygen.
The gas that had just filled the room? Neon. Dad had wall-mounted neon valves because he used it so much when welding aluminum.
The fire system had sealed the air vents, so the workshop was full of inert gas. You don’t notice neon when you breathe it. It just feels like normal air. And the human body has no way to detect a lack of oxygen. You just plug along until you pass out.
Lefty fell to his hands and knees. He shook a bit, then collapsed to the floor.
Jin Chu lasted a little longer. He hadn’t exerted himself as much. But he succumbed a few seconds later.
Let’s meet so I can protect you. Did he really think I’d fall for that?
I pulled out Harpreet’s Gizmo and dialed Rudy’s number. I didn’t want to, but I had no choice. Either I could call him or the fire brigade volunteers would when they arrived. May as well get a jump on it.
—
Artemis didn’t have a police station. Just Rudy’s office in Armstrong Bubble. Its holding cell was nothing more than a repurposed air shelter. In fact, it was Dad who’d installed it. Air shelters don’t have locks, of course. That would massively defeat the purpose. So Rudy’s “cell” had a metal chain with a padlock around the crank. Crude, but effective.
The usual occupants of the cell were drunks or people who needed to cool off after a fistfight. But today it held Lefty.
The rest of the room wasn’t much larger than the apartment I’d grown up in. If Rudy had been born a few thousand years earlier, he would have made a good Spartan.
Jin Chu and I sat handcuffed to metal chairs.
“This is some bullshit,” I said.
“You poor, innocent thing,” said Rudy without looking up from his computer.
Jin rattled his handcuffs. “Hey, I actually am innocent! I shouldn’t be here.”
“Are you fucking kidding?!” I said. “You tried to kill me!”
“That’s not true!” Jin pointed to Lefty’s cell. “He tried to kill you. I just set up the meet. If I hadn’t he would have killed me on the spot!”
“Chickenshit!”
“I value my life more than yours. Sue me. We wouldn’t be in this mess if you hadn’t been so blatantly obvious with your sabotage!”
“Fuck you!”
Rudy pulled a squirt bottle from his desk and sprayed us both. “Hush,” he said.
Jin winced “Now, that’s just unprofessional!”
“Quit bitching,” I said, shaking the water off my face.
“You may be used to taking shots in the face, but I’m not,” he said.
Okay, that was a good one. “Go fuck yourself,” I said.
The door opened and Administrator Ngugi stepped in. Because why the hell not?
Rudy glanced over. “Hmm. You.”
“Constable,” Ngugi said. She looked over to me. “Jasmine. How are you, dear?”
I showed her my handcuffs.
“Is that necessary, Constable?”
“Is it necessary for you to be here?” Rudy asked.
I could have sworn the temperature dropped ten degrees.
“You’ll have to excuse the constable,” Ngugi said to me. “We don’t see eye-to-eye on everything.”
“If you’d stop coddling criminals like Jazz, we’d get along better.”
She waved her hand as if shooing a bug. “Every city needs an underbelly. It’s best to let the petty criminals do their thing and focus on bigger issues.”
I grinned. “You heard the lady. And I’m the pettiest of them all. So lemme go.”
Rudy shook his head. “The administrator’s authority over me is questionable at best. I work directly for KSC. And you’re going nowhere.”
Ngugi walked over to the air shelter and peeked through the window. “So this is our murderer?”
“Yes,” said Rudy. “And if you hadn’t spent the last decade hampering my attempts to drive out organized crime, those murders wouldn’t have happened.”
“We’ve been through this, Constable. Artemis wouldn’t exist without syndicate money. Idealism doesn’t put Gunk on people’s plates.” She turned to face Rudy. “Did the suspect have anything to say?”
“He refuses to answer questions. He wouldn’t even tell me his name—but according to his Gizmo, his name is Marcelo Alvarez and he’s a ‘freelance accounting consultant.’?”
“I see. How sure are you that this is the man?”
Rudy turned his computer to face Ngugi. The screen showed medical lab results. “Doc Roussel dropped by earlier and got a blood sample from him. She says it matches the blood found at the crime scene. Also, the wound on his arm is consistent with the knife Irina Vetrov had in her hand.”
“The blood DNA matched?” Ngugi said.
“Roussel doesn’t have a crime lab. She compared blood type and enzyme concentrations—they matched. If we want a DNA comparison we’ll have to send samples to Earth. It’ll take at least two weeks.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Ngugi said. “We only need enough evidence to warrant a trial, not to convict him.”
“Hey!” Jin Chu interjected. “Excuse me! I demand to be released!”
Rudy squirted him with the bottle.
“Who is this man?” Ngugi asked.
“Jin Chu from Hong Kong,” Rudy said. “Couldn’t find any record of where he works and he isn’t forthcoming about it. He set a trap so Alvarez could kill Bashara, but claims he did it under duress. Alvarez was going to kill him if he didn’t.”
“We can hardly blame him for that,” she said.
“Finally! Someone with common sense!” Jin said.
“Deport him to China,” said Ngugi.
“Wait, what?” Jin said. “You can’t do that!”
“Of course I can,” she said. “You were complicit in a plot to murder someone. Coerced or not, you’re not welcome here.”
He opened his mouth to protest again and Rudy pointed the squirt bottle at him. He thought better of it.
Ngugi sighed and shook her head. “This is troubling. Very troubling. You and I…we’re not friends. But neither of us wants murder in our city.”
“On that, at least, we agree.”
“And this is new.” She clasped her hands behind her back. “We’ve had murders before, but it’s always been a jealous lover, an angry spouse, or a drunken brawl. This was professional. I don’t like it.”
“Was your gentle hand with petty crime worth it?” Rudy asked.
“That’s not fair.” She shook off the gloom. “One thing at a time. There’s a meatship launching today for the Gordon cycler. I want Mr. Jin on it. Deport to Hong Kong with no legal complaints. Hang on to Mr. Alvarez for now. We need to collate the evidence for the courts in…where’s he going?”
“Landvik was Norwegian and Vetrov was Russian.”
“I see,” said Ngugi.
If you commit a serious crime, Artemis deports you to the victim’s country. Let their nation exact revenge on you for it. It’s only fair. But Lefty—I guess I should call him Alvarez—had killed people from two different countries. Now what?
“I’d like you to let me pick this one,” Rudy said.