Naked In Death

" Dallas, be in Testing. Twenty minutes."

"Sir, I'm meeting a snitch on the Colby matter at oh nine hundred."

"Reschedule." His voice was flat. "Twenty minutes."

Slowly, Dallas replaced her communicator. "I guess we know one of the buttons."

"Seems like DeBlass is taking a personal interest in you." Feeney studied her face. There wasn't a cop on the force who didn't despise Testing. "You going to handle it okay?"

"Yeah, sure. This is going to tie me up most of the day, Feeney. Do me a favor. Do a run on the banks in Manhattan. I need to know if Sharon DeBlass kept a safe deposit box. If you don't find anything there, spread out to the other boroughs."

"You got it."

The Testing section was riddled with long corridors, some glassed, some done in pale green walls that were supposed to be calming. Doctors and technicians wore white. The color of i

It made her feel naked even before she was directed into Testing Room 1-C and told to strip.

She laid her clothes on the bench provided and tried not to think about the techs watching her on their monitors or the machines with the nastily silent glide and their impersonal blinking lights.

The physical exam was easy. All she had to do was stand on the center mark in the tubelike room and watch the lights blip and flash as her internal organs and bones were checked for flaws.

Then she was permitted to don a blue jumpsuit and sit while a machine angled over to examine her eyes and ears. Another, snicking out from one of the wall slots, did a standard reflex test. For the personal touch, a technician entered to take a blood sample.

Please exit door marked Testing 2-C. Phase one is complete, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve.

In the adjoining room, Eve was instructed to lie on a padded table for the brain scan. Wouldn't want any cops out there with a brain tumor urging them to blast civilians, she thought wearily.

Eve watched the techs through the glass wall as the helmet was lowered onto her head.

Then the games began.

The bench adjusted to a sitting position and she was treated to virtual reality. The VR put her in a vehicle during a high-speed chase. Sounds exploded in her ears: the scream of sirens, the shouts of conflicting orders from the communicator on the dash. She could see that it was a standard police unit, fully charged. The control of the vehicle was hers, and she had to swerve and maneuver to avoid flattening a variety of pedestrians the VR hurled in her path.

In one part of her brain she was aware her vitals were being monitored: blood pressure, pulse, even the amount of sweat that crawled on her skin, the saliva that pooled and dried in her mouth. It was hot, almost unbearably hot. She narrowly missed a food transport that lumbered into her path.

She recognized her location. The old ports on the east side. She could smell them: water, bad fish, and old sweat. Transients wearing their uniform of blue coveralls were looking for a handout or a day's labor. She flew by a group of them jostling for position in front of a placement center.

Subject armed. Rifle torch, hand explosive. Wanted for robbery homicide.

Great, Eve thought as she careened after him. Fucking great. She punched the accelerator, whipped the wheel, and kissed off the fender of the target vehicle in a shower of sparks. A spurt of flame whooshed by her ear as he fired at her. The proprietor of a port side roach coach dived for cover, along with several of his customers. Rice noodles flew along with curses.

She rammed the target again, ordering her backup to maneuver into a pincer position.

This time her quarry's vehicle shuddered, tipped. As he fought for control, she used hers to batter his to a stop. She shouted the standard identification and warning as she bolted from the vehicle. He came out blasting, and she brought him down.

The shock from her weapon jolted his nervous system. She watched him jitter, wet himself, then collapse.

She'd hardly taken a breath to readjust when the bastard techs tossed her into a new scene. The screams, the little girl's screams; the raging roar of the man who was her father.

They had reconstructed it almost too perfectly, using her own report, visuals of the site, and the mirror of her memory they'd lifted in the scan.

Eve didn't bother to curse them, but held back her hate, her grief, and sent herself racing up the stairs and back into her nightmare.

No more screams from the little girl. She beat on the door, calling out her name and rank. Warning the man on the other side of the door, trying to calm him.

"Cunts. You're all cunts. Come on in, cunt bitch. I'll kill you."

The door folded like cardboard under her ramming shoulder. She went in, weapon drawn.

"She was just like her mother – just like her fucking mother. Thought they'd get away from me. Thought they could. I fixed it. I fixed them. I'm going to fix you, cunt cop."

The little girl was staring at her with big, dead eyes. Doll's eyes. Her tiny, helpless body mutilated, blood spreading like a pool. And dripping from the knife.

She told him to freeze: "You son of a bitch, drop the weapon. Drop the fucking knife!" But he kept coming. Stu

The room smelled of blood, of urine, of burned food. The lights were too bright, unshaded and blinding so that everything, everything stood out in jarring relief. A doll with a missing arm on the ripped sofa, a crooked window shield that let in a hard red glow from the neon across the street, the overturned table of cheap molded plastic, the cracked screen of a broken 'link.

The little girl with dead eyes. The spreading pool of blood. And the sharp, sticky gleam of the blade.

"I'm going to ram this right up your cunt. Just like I did to her."

Stu

The knife, with the scarlet drenched blade hacked down, whistled.

And she dropped him.

The jolt zipped through his nervous system. His brain died first, so that his body convulsed and shuddered as his eyes turned to glass. Strapping down on the need to scream, she kicked the knife away from his still twitching hand and looked at the child.

The big doll's eyes stared at her, and told her – again – that she'd been too late.

Forcing her body to relax, she let nothing into her mind but her report.

The VR section was complete. Her vitals were checked again before she was taken to the final testing phase. The one-on-one with the psychiatrist.

Eve didn't have anything against Dr. Mira. The woman was dedicated to her calling. In private practice, she could have earned triple the salary she pulled in under the Police and Security Department.

She had a quiet voice with the faintest hint of upper class New England. Her pale blue eyes were kind – and sharp. At sixty, she was comfortable with middle age, but far from matronly.

Her hair was a warm honey brown and scooped up in the back in a neat yet complicated twist. She wore a tidy, rose toned suit with a sedate gold circle on the lapel.

No, Eve had nothing against her personally. She just hated shrinks.

"Lieutenant Dallas." Mira rose from a soft blue scoop chair when Eve entered.

There was no desk, no computer in sight. One of the tricks, Eve knew, to make the subjects relax and forget they were under intense observation.

"Doctor." Eve sat in the chair Mira indicated.

"I was just about to have some tea. You'll join me?"