This is the vibe I have for the updated CORPS. Despite a little thematic overlap with Code:Black in the vignette, it is really just meant to convey a sense that everything is not as it seems and that ordinary people can be drawn into things far beyond their understanding. Comment on it if you want.
If Detroit was the one in the old movie Robocop, it might have been an improvement. But this was not the Detroit I knew. My partner and I were chasing the perp through Highland Park. Highland Park? People from the suburbs are afraid of Detroit. People from Detroit are afraid of Highland Park. This was a bad part of Highland Park.
The perp kicked down a door and ducked into an abandoned house. I was close behind and motioned Fritzie to head him off at the other side. There was a squatter in the house. I couldn’t see him, but I could smell him and hear him. A crash of wood and some new light filtering in told me where the perp had left the building. I stepped out into the evening twilight and stopped dead. The grass, what was left of it, was the color of ashes. The trees were black trunks without leaves or bark and the other boarded-up houses were mostly collapsed in on themselves. The air hurt my eyes and made my throat feel like I was gargling broken glass. This was not the Detroit I knew. And the perp, probably no more than eighteen, was halfway across the yard, a gun made of titanium-gray angles and blue diamonds aimed at my head. Before I could bring my Glock up, a silent lightning bolt snapped past my ear. A moment later, something glanced off my shoulder and landed in front of me, knocking me off balance and ruining whatever too-late shot I might have had.
Whatever it was, what was left of it might have been human. But that would have been a lot of fangs and two extra arms ago. The kid, the perp, had the gun pointed at me, sparks arcing between those blue diamonds, dripping off like drops of water and disappearing in little white vapor trails. In a thick accent he said, “Dis is not your place, police-man. Go back where you come from, while you still be scared nuff to do so.”
That’s not the way things worked, not the way you learn it at academy. A criminal is still a criminal, even if he just saved your life. Good conduct just gets you a better shake from the judge or the prosecutor when your lawyer goes for a plea bargain. But this was Detroit. I lowered the Glock from its half-ready position and gave the kid a nod.
“You strong, police-man. Strong nuff to follow me. But not strong nuff for dis place. Go back, lie, forget.” And then he lowered the gun, turned and ran into the twilight.
I went back. Came out the way I went in, ran around the house from the outside. My partner was there. The trees were scraggly, but alive. The grass, green. The other houses, merely decrepit. The door, open, not broken. “Did you see him?”, I panted. “He’s not in the house.”
“No, he must have gotten out before I got around back. He was a fast one.”
“Full of tricks, too.”, I offered. “Do we write it up, or write it off?”
“Write it up. Makes it look like we’re doing our jobs.” He laughed. I coughed, into my hand, trying to make it sound like a laugh. The cough was wet, and I didn’t need to look at my hand to know what color it was. There are some things you just never forget the feel of. I wiped the hand on my blues. Blood doesn’t show up very well on them.
We wrote it up. I lied.
But I didn’t forget. I went back the next morning. The house was empty. The place gave me the jeebs, but the other side was just the other side. No black trees, no ashen grass, no four-armed lightning scarred corpse. But the hand I coughed into ached, and there was half of a blood-red tracery on it. What it was, I had no idea, but I knew I had seen it before. Somewhere in town. And I was going to figure it out.
I was born here, lived my whole life here. But this was not the Detroit I knew. Not anymore.
