Snapshot

Chaz shook his head, arms folded. In the mouth of the alleyway, the other kids were whispering, looking panicked by the narco’s actions.

“He’s young,” Horace whispered. “Maybe my age. Twenty-four, twenty-five. Asian. Quiet type. Creepy. We stay out of his business—figured he killed someone and wanted to hole up. But didn’t think . . . you know . . .” He shuddered. “He won’t come back. One of the kids spotted him running. Your people at his hidey-hole spooked him. He’s gone.”

“You have a name?” Davis asked. “Anything?”

“No name,” Horace said, then took a puff of the cigarette. “You got some paper I can write on?”

Davis fished in his pocket and came out with a small piece of paper. The gangster took a pen from his pocket and wrote on it. An address.

“He wanted two places,” he said softly. “With large tubs or pools in them he could fill. That’s the second. A school, once. If he’s smart, he’ll run and you’ll never see him. But people like him, they can be really smart in some ways but . . .”

“Really dumb in others,” Davis said with a nod. “Thanks.”

Horace shrugged, puffing on the cigarette. “You’re right. I knew something was wrong about him. Watch out for yourself, ese. He’s . . . well, I figured he was just crazy. But he knows.”

“Knows?” Davis said, glancing at Chaz.

“That it isn’t real,” Horace said. “He kept saying it. This is a Snapshot; we’re all part of a Snapshot. Got to get rid of the Deviations, he said. Warned me. Don’t be a Deviation. . . .”

Davis felt a chill.

“Anyway,” Horace said, “give me that cash.” He held out his phone.

“You said you didn’t want it.”

“I don’t.” He pointed down the alleyway. “Those boys though, they’re gonna get a bonus today. Spend a few hours in luxury. Don’t tell them, okay?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Davis said, tapping Horace’s phone with his, transferring enough to buy a nice car.

Horace stood and stamped out the cigarette, leaving a little twist of smoke on the ground at Davis’s feet as he walked down the alleyway. He adopted a stronger gait before he reached the kids. A practiced air of invincibility.

“Leave the guns!” Davis called to them, suddenly panicked by the thought of them running off with the weapons.

They dropped them in the mouth of the alleyway, then were gone.

“I can’t believe that worked,” Chaz said, arms folded. He looked at Davis. “How did you get him to talk like that?”

“He was scared,” Davis said, forcing himself to his feet. “Guess I played off that.”

“We never do stuff like this anymore,” Chaz said. “Interview suspects. We can get them to talk when they never would IRL. We’re really wasted in here, aren’t we?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Most of the testimony they could gather in here was inadmissible in court—if they found a witness, the IRL cops would have to get them to testify for real. And of course, a dupe’s words couldn’t be used against the real person in court.

It was all so sticky. Most cases involving Snapshots were arduous things, full of testimony on Deviations, possibilities, and technical arguments. The only thing that really held up was the testimony of the cops. They had to have good enough records to be viable witnesses, but also had to be officers the precinct wouldn’t care about wasting in work that nobody else wanted to do.

The two of them collected their guns. “I didn’t realize you’d started carrying,” Chaz noted to him. “Least not until I saw that gun earlier.”

“I’ve been doing it for a few months now,” Davis said. The truth, as he’d wanted to get back in the habit. Though this was a new gun, his first time carrying it into a Snapshot.

He looked after the gang members, but couldn’t spot them. They’d run off fast.

“Good thing this isn’t real,” Chaz said, shading his eyes from the late afternoon sun. “You’d be broke, friend. I had no idea you’d saved up such a nest egg. How’d you manage to do that?”

“Simple tastes,” Davis said. And plans to buy a house someday. Him, his son, his wife . . .

Well, that was one dream that could die. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s check this second place out, though I’m worried. We’ve been racking up quite the list of Deviations. Try not to step on any butterflies on the way.”

Chaz gave him a confused look, and Davis just shook his head, calling them another autocab.





Six





Davis and Chaz stopped on the cracked sidewalk in front of a boxy monster of a building. It loomed, hollow, with windows too small to be comfortable. Like a prison. Which was, as Davis considered it, a very accurate comparison.

“Southeast High School,” Chaz read from the sign—full of bullet holes—to their right.

“Closed two years ago,” Davis said, reading from his phone.

“They were using that box up until two years ago?” Chaz said. “Damn. No wonder kids out here turn to selling drugs.”

The school’s front doors were wrapped in chains to keep them closed. Davis took a deep breath, and glanced at Chaz. Both took out their sidearms.

You could get killed inside a Snapshot, though it didn’t happen as often as it did to cops IRL. You could anticipate your surroundings in the Snapshot, barring Deviations. You knew which thugs were likely to start shooting, and which situations were more dangerous.

Still, it happened. Most often it was something mundane. The woman Davis had replaced had died in a simple car accident. She’d insisted on driving a squad car instead of taking autocabs. She could just as easily have died on her way home from work, but she’d crashed here in the Snapshot.