Snapshot

“Two options, I guess,” Davis said, holstering his gun. He took a deep breath. “We walk away, assume the IRL detectives are working on this, and pretend we didn’t see anything. We erase our phone tracks, claim we hung out in the diner a few hours longer, and forget this happened.”


“Okay, yeah,” Chaz said, nodding. “Yeah. No reason we have to be involved, right? And they obviously don’t want us knowing about this. So if we walk away, nobody is the wiser.” He looked down at the handgun he was holding. “What’s the other option?”

“Well, we’re stuck here until that domestic disturbance in the evening. We can poke around at these murders, maybe find out a thing or two that can help with the investigation. And if not . . . well, maybe we can figure out why the hell the precinct is hiding this from us. Those corpses look kind of fresh—not much bloating, not a lot of flesh sloughing off. Eight bodies found drowned in an old apartment building, and not a peep to the guys who could go back in time and find out who did it? Why the hell wouldn’t they involve us?”

“Yeah.” Chaz looked to him. “Yeah, damn. What’s going on?”

People became cops for a myriad of reasons. For some it was expected—it was a family thing, or just seen as good work for a blue-collar person. Others, they liked the power. Chaz was one of those.

But deep down, there was something in all of them. Something about wanting to fix the world. Whether you joined up because your family pushed you into it, or just because you got recruited at the right time, there was a story you told yourself. That you were doing something good, something right.

That story was hard to keep believing, some days. Other days it walked up, slapped you in the face, and said, “You going to do something about this or not?”

A good way to go out, Davis thought. Doing something that feels real again.

“You want to dig into this, don’t you?” Chaz asked.

“Yeah,” Davis said, standing. “You with me?”

“Sure. Why the hell not.” Chaz shivered, then finally put his gun away. “What do we do?”

“We wait,” Davis said, checking his phone.

A short time later, an autocab pulled up and a couple of people got out. White people, wearing business clothing. Real estate agents, Davis guessed. Or maybe people from a bank that owns this place. The woman dug in her purse for some keys while the man pointed at the broken windows, saying something Davis couldn’t hear.

They seemed concerned by the forced door. Hopefully that wouldn’t introduce too big a Deviation. They went inside, chatting.

They rushed back out a few minutes later, visibly agitated. The man sat down on the steps, hyperventilating, holding his face. He threw up a short time later. The woman screamed into her phone, hysterical.

It took about ten minutes for the squad cars to come. There were two, joined by a third later, which arrived about a minute earlier than Davis’s records said they would, without lights on. Davis didn’t recognize any of the cops, but since he’d been on Snapshot duty for years, that wasn’t odd. He knew people back at the precinct headquarters, but not a lot of the beat cops.

Several cops consoled the real estate agents, while the others secured the building. Why wasn’t there anything in the precinct records? A complete hush. According to the forums, the cars would be gone in under a half hour.

“This is so weird,” Chaz said. “What the hell is going on?”

“No idea,” Davis said softly. “But I think I know how we can find out.”

Chaz looked at him, then smiled. He seemed to be coming to grips with what they’d seen. “HQ?”

Davis nodded.

Not the real one, of course. The fake one, inside the Snapshot.

“Let’s go,” Chaz said, growing eager. “It’s been months since we had an excuse to do this.”





Four





Davis and Chaz burst in through the front of the 42nd Precinct headquarters, which housed Snapshot detail, among other special jurisdictions in the city. Davis tried to project confidence like Chaz did. But it was hard. In the real world when he visited this place, he felt small. Out of place. Maybe even scorned.

He paused inside the doors. The smell of coffee, the bustling of officers, everyone doing what they should—and everyone seeming to know Davis’s shame. That he’d failed them, and been banished as a consequence.

Fortunately, he had Chaz. “Insecurity” wasn’t really part of that man’s vocabulary. Chaz held his reality badge up high in the air and shouted, “Guess what, everyone. Y’all ain’t real!”

He sauntered forward, holding the badge and pointing it one way, then the other, grinning like he’d just won the lottery. Most people who saw it, they stopped and got that glassy look. Gina Gutierrez dropped her cup of coffee, which sent a spray into the air as it struck the floor. Marco’s jaw hung open, then he patted at his body as if trying to prove to himself that he was real.

Davis followed his partner, feeling an initial stab of pain for the officers who saw the badge. Then his empathy was consumed by memories of the last time he’d come into this room, in the real world. Gina had looked at him as if he were a rat slinking into the middle of a wedding feast. Marco had refused to speak to him.

People swarmed around tables, popping up from behind cubicles—each one wanting to see the badge for themselves. There was no reason for Chaz to display it as he did, held over his head for all to see. They could have been surgical, moved right to Maria’s cubicle, showed her the badge and gotten information without making a fuss. That was the sort of thing they were supposed to do. Fewer Deviations.

Davis didn’t chide his partner. Maybe those Deviations would stop Warsaw at 20:17 from happening, which was something a part of him really, really wanted.