The Faceless Girl: A Sci-Fi Noir Novel

Chapter 1

The 0300 tram hummed to a stop at the Main Borden Artery Station in Lower Spire. A thunk and the grinding doors told Private Investigator Trevor Price he had arrived at his final stop and jostled the beating drum in his temple. Heavy work boots pounded the diamond plated metal platform around him. He pulled the hand-formed brim of his dark red cap down and glided effortlessly through the crowd toward the artery’s south walkway and lit a cigarette, his left hand blocking the current of steam from a vent in the center of the street. Guarded by his false-leather glove and hat, his eyes scanned the opposite walkway for signs of recognition. Price was moderately confident no one was following, but he was damn sure someone was waiting for him. Nobody yet. A habitual glance at the dark, metal sky also revealed nothing, as always.

His hands fell in the pockets of his overcoat. He dropped the brass lighter to mix with his notebook and pen while his right hand passed through the false pocket to caress the wood-gripped wheel-gun on his belt holster. The .38 special served as a pacifier as much as self-defense lately.

The steps of his soft-rubber soles we drowned out by the din of foot traffic, steaming vehicles, and blaring adverts from the storefronts. Technicolor vomit from the screens and marquees helped him blend into the gray backdrop of stone and metal siding.

The ten-minute walk didn’t do much to relieve his nerves. The retail stores transformed into supply depots and coffee shops as he approached the manufacturing plants that made up a bulk of this sector. Occasionally the bitter scent of roasting beans or sweet baked goods would interrupt the nauseating tar odor leaking from the air-vents. He held up his portable to blend in better with the workers distracting themselves before their shift began. As he got closer to his target, Price would regularly peek ahead for familiar faces.

The investigator turned and crossed the street, spying the green neon sign of the clinic that served a majority of the factories nearby. Several trucks covered his flank as he watched for tells in the foot traffic. There. A large man in a bulky zippered coat with a portable to his ear, leaning against a wall of a small cafe, kept a refrigerator truck’s cab between him and the clinic. Scar tissue divided his stubble along the right jawline. Occasionally he grunted, “uh-huh, yeah.” Price guessed he was in his 50s from the lines on his face and thought he looked like one of those sports commentators there for his reputation and presence rather than any actual insight.

The PI put his back and a shoe to the wall as well, flicking away his dwindling cigarette butt. He grabbed for his lighter and a fresh pair of smokes.

“Wife’s talking your ear off, eh sergeant?” Price said with a new line of smoke rising from his lips. He offered the spare, and the man took it without breaking his gaze.

“It’s corporal, actually,” the man said, pocketing his phone without needing to hang up. His voice sounded like an old, gritty air filter.

Price shrugged. “You’ll make it. Maybe next week if this goes right.” He leaned over and lit the corporal’s cigarette for him, who returned the gesture with a nod. “Any idea how many triggers they have in there?”

“That’s your job, isn’t it? Aren’t you the Trevor Price who begged the Captain into letting you try to talk Malone down?”

“I wouldn’t say begged.”

They heard a ding as the door to the cafe opened for a pair of nurses holding coffees as they crossed the street to begin their shift. Price took a moment to appreciate the ugly efficiency around him. The rows of buildings were decorated with different fading shades of paint, rust-worn textured sidings, and varying lengths of extended store fronts. He knew the architectural-engineers designed these sectors originally as mining tunnels to be transitioned into refineries or factories, and eventually residences. By introducing a touch of variety, the pedestrians and patrons were able to go about their lives and forget that they lived deep beneath the Earth’s surface, that the vast majority of them would never see the sun. What people were now using as storage and retail used to be support columns. Metal slabs now hid tread worn cavern floors covered with countless kilometers sewage pipes, hydraulic pumps, and fiber optics. The ceiling, still hewn stone, was covered with a tangled web of ventilation, maintenance tunnels, and automated emergency fire systems. Strategically positioned blue lights regulated sleep patterns, and a steady stream of vitamin D supplements prevented the degenerative effects from lack of sunlight. Sure, everyone knew there was a whole other world above them, but safety and a steady supply of novelty kept them, well, Price knew there was a better word than happy. Sated?

Since his departure from Upper Spire and the regulated police force years ago, Price had grown accustomed to a default attitude of gratification and simplicity amongst his new neighbors. He found their motives predictable. It was easy to strike up a conversation to discover their interests. Nothing really to hide besides minor vanities and petty grievances. It was typically when they deviated from this track that he was asked to intervene.

“Whatever. Doesn’t matter to me as long as I’m home early enough my wife will still fuck me.”

The corporal took a contemplative drag and smashed the cigarette under his shoe. “Malone operates out of the mortuary…”

“I know. I was the primary informant on the case file.”

The man ignored him. “... and usually has at least two assistants strapped with nines, knives at hand.”

“Sure, for autopsies.”

“... For autopsies. We’re hoping he’s got his accountant with him so we can bag his laundering method. It’s down those stairs across the street.” He pointed with his chin towards the basement access door visible through the truck cab’s windows, unassuming but open for business. “It should be across from cybernetics.”

“Usually is,” Price said, tapping his left cheekbone twice with a pair of hollow tinks. “Just give me 15 minutes.”

“That’s the idea, but come out right away if they’re not there. We’ll cover you on the way out.”

“You’ve got more than those two hotshots on the corner, right?”

“Don’t worry, gumshoe,” the corporal smiled. “We’ve got the waiting room in the clinic and an automatic in the window above my head, ready to blast anyone running out who isn’t an officer.”

“Or a PI, right?”

“Right.”

By habit, Price glanced at the metal sky vents, pipes, and service lights before beginning his job. Embers ate away the rest of his cigarette, and he bellowed smoke as he strode across the street when the traffic lulled. He stepped lightly down the stairs and grimaced when the last step made a slight clang that echoed down the dingy hallway ahead. Price walked heel-toe, quieter than the crackling fluorescent ceiling lights. A pair of doors flanked the hallway up ahead. He tucked and curved his cap around the bill and shoved it into his back pocket, then combed his thick black hair back with his fingers, letting it fall over the left side of his brow. His right hand reached inside his coat and flicked the safety off the 9mm in his left shoulder holster before cocking the 38 special on his right hip.

He glanced at the signs plated above the doors. The one on the right was labeled “Emergency Cybernetics” and the opposite read “Mortuary.” The seam on Price’s shoulder itched, a reminder of why the rooms are always in close proximity. He tested the left door handle. Locked. Key card access only.

“Fuck.” He pulled off his gloves, pocketed them, and revealed a small hex key set in his right hand. His fingernail pulled away the cover of a gearbox below his left wrist and used one of the keys to turn a calibration bolt. The joints in his fingers curved and stiffened, and he could feel the metallic ligaments tightening in his arm. Price replaced the keys but didn’t bother with the gloves; the artificial skin had worn away years ago, and his audience was already aware of the cybernetic arm, anyway.

He reached down and clumsily gripped the curved door handle. The fingers crushed indentations into the steel and twisted up. Price felt the interior deadlatch strain for a moment and a snap. Twisted bits of metal fell and clanged inside the door, and he pushed it open, thick creases left in the handle. Well, Price thought, that limits my play a bit.

This hallway of the sub-street-level facility was somehow even more dubious. Only every third light flickered, and a familiar pungent smell was growing. In some sectors, it was common for facilities out of public sight to operate in rundown conditions. Investigator Price was frequently hired independently to inspect places public auditors were nervous about going themselves. Most of the time it was solved with a few pictures, maybe a light scuffle, and the auditors would make adjustments in the operator’s payroll for the difference. Operators who also happened to be violent offenders? That was a different story.

Price heard of hustles like that of Gerald “Bright Eyes” Malone, but this one was cream of the crop. Making it as a surgeon double-licensed in autopsy and cybernetics is rare in Lower Spire, but not unheard of. After that hurdle is crossed, it’s a simple matter of short term blackmail on some of the less-connected factory workers. Losing a limb or an organ is not terribly uncommon, and Spire covers replacements necessary for labor, but quality varies. If the clinic determines that a replacement limb is essential for your survival, you’re sent to Emergency Cybernetics. Once there, the surgeon will try to upsell you, install a model that goes above and beyond the functions required to work. If you agree, it’s a simple matter of authorizing a generic paycard over to the surgeon’s assistant. If you refuse, well, there just isn’t anything in stock today, and your death is marked as perioperative.

Price found that where Malone’s ingenuity shone, however, was his ability to make connections with the union bosses in his service area. Through payouts to former patients and interviews with frightened new laborers, the private investigator learned a quid pro quo relationship had been established between nearly every worker’s organization in his part of the sector. Malone essentially became a union partner, taking a cut from dues as members enjoyed the benefit of not having their lives threatened, plus receiving a commission for every new member who joined out of fear that the last thing they would see would be Malone’s own pair of glistening artificial eyes.

Trevor Price made it to the double doors at the end of the hall. He crept low under the tall windows and against the wall to avoid being spotted too early. He listened through the door and heard four sets of calm voices, adult male, muffled. Slowly, he peeked through the gap. The lights were functioning but low. The men were sitting on stools around an autopsy table in the far corner of the room near the clinic access door. There were four tables sitting on large block pedestals spaced evenly in a square throughout the cramped room with a large grated drain in the center of the sloped floor. Four hooded lights hung from long, adjusted arms above each table. Price could see a sheet over the back table covered with wrappers and paper cups. The floors, stacked refrigerators, instruments, and autopsy tables were meticulously clean, and the walls even had a fresh coat of cream-colored paint. What couldn’t be covered up, though, was the smell. The sickly-sweet stench of autolysis could be chemically neutralized if it was properly contained. However, fear and anxiety have their own distinctive odors. Chemical signals of those suddenly aware of their own mortal danger stuck to the seams of this place. Price could feel his own perspiration and was repulsed by the stench. He wondered if the men could smell him, or if they were numb to all signs of suffering by now.

Price was taking too long. He sighed, put his back to the wall, and slowly stood up and knocked on the door as calmly as he could. The voices stopped and heads turned towards him as he pushed the door in with his hip, hands raised. All four men put down their lunch, and two of them stood and raised pistols to eye level. The investigator threw his hands even higher into the air.

“Hey hey hey hey, it’s only me!” Price stammered. “Just me, just checking in is all. Sorry to interrupt your meal.” His eyes took a quick account of the men. “Any leftovers?”

On the close side of the table was one of Malone’s bodyguards, gun pointed with a sloppy grip. His lab jacket and mouth were stained with mustard, and his eyes were wild, still reeling from the surprise visit. He stood a good head higher than anyone else in the room and was about twice as wide. Across the table, his counterpart, smaller and more focused, inched slowly along the far wall, instinctively setting up for crossfire.

Malone remained seated, hands calmly sitting in his lap. He was much shorter than his men, but Price knew from experience his precision and viciousness more than made up for his small frame. His reactions were as sharp as his chin and cheekbones, and his brows were blank over flat prosthetic eyes, making his intentions difficult to gauge. They looked like a pair of chrome washers with pin-sized holes, reflecting what little light the room offered. While his men jumped into action, Malone simply studied the situation.

The only one who looked more nervous than Trevor Price was the spindly older man, balding and goateed, unsubtly attempting to take cover behind the closest gunman.

Malone’s voice was slow, confident. “Guys, relaaax,” he said, though his men did not lower their weapons. “What can we do for you, Inspector Price?”

“The gig’s up, Malone.” No, that sounded bad. “Captain Bar sent me to give you a chance to come quietly. With your skills, you can get a medic job in one of the penal mines, I bet.” Price, hands still raised, took a slow, long step towards the closest autopsy table.

The back thug said, “You can kiss my penal mine. He’s setting us up, doc.”

“Maybe,” Malone said, “but you should always consider every option. Each development is a symptom of a greater condition.”

Don’t roll your eyes, Price thought. Don’t roll your eyes.

“I’ve bought us some time with the cops. We just need to figure out the best way to get you out of here.”

Malone cocked his head. “I don’t remember doing you any favors, Price. What gives? What’s the angle?”

“Look, I just don’t want to see…” Distant yelling from the door behind the gang, a gunshot.

“No, nononono.”

The bald man stammered, “W-what was that?” Quick boots in the hall behind Price.

“I didn’t… this isn’t me!”

The wild-eyed assistant shouted, “It IS a set-up!” His 9mm flashed, the report ringing off the walls. The bald man yelled, covered his ears, curled up at the shooter’s feet next to the pedestal.

Trevor Price dove behind the closest table, drawing his own nine from the shoulder holster. He grasped the edge of the pedestal with his left hand and peaked head low around the side. The back door burst open as a hooded man kicked through, surprised at its give. Price watched Malone pull a short scattergun from under the lip of his table and turn in one smooth motion. A blast and the bottom half of the man’s face plastered the white wall in thick red streaks. A yellow indicator in Price’s left eye alerted him of movement just in his periphery. The doors to his flank flew open, and a barrel flashed, catching Malone in the shoulder and sending him to the floor. The bodyguards returned fire, and Price tried to turn and match a face to the grunt behind him, but his left hand was stuck on the table. He looked and saw his fingers crunched into the metal sheet.

“Fuck! I forgot to…” Price braced his feet against the base of the pedestal and yanked on his arm as bullets flew overhead.

A woman, weapon drawn, dove behind the adjacent table, yelling into the radio on her chest. Price gritted his teeth, closed his eyes, and pushed hard with his legs. A jagged section of crushed, thinned metal pulled away from the table in his stuck fist. He looked over his shoulder toward the officer being showered in sparks, then to the door, back to the officer. A bullet caught the light above her head, spraying glass across the floor.

“God DAMN it, what the hell is wrong with me?”

He led low around the backside of the table with his nine, spotted a massive leg, and put a bullet in its femur. The man fell to his knees, grabbing his thigh. Spotting her shot, the woman popped up to a crouch and squeezed off a few shots, two plunging into the man’s chest. She ducked, dodging a volley from the gunman with his arms braced across the far table.

From this angle, Price could see through the swinging door at the back of the room. Someone was dashing down the stairs at full speed.

“Stop! Wait!”

A face dropped in recognition and stopped suddenly, feet falling beneath him. He yelled as his back hit the steps. A spray blew a hole in the door chest height where the incomer would have been.

A pair of shots across the room, a pause, click. The woman was to her feet, barrel aligned with the top of the far table. Beady eyes rose next to a gun but quickly dropped with a red hole in the right cheek. A shotgun poked around the far table, sending the woman spinning with several pellets in her shoulder and chest. Price looked back around the table and saw the newcomer peek around the corner of the back door after the blast and quickly fired three times at the floor behind the table. He dashed forward, kicked, and Price heard the shotgun slide across the room. Besides the ringing in his ears, the only sounds now were groans and deep gasping breaths.

The woman’s arm was limp on the ground, and she was desperately trying to claw her jacket off. Price cautiously moved towards her. Passing the double doors he originally came through, he saw another officer staring at the ceiling laying in an expanding circle of blood, motionless.

“Poor bastard.”

Price knelt and pulled away the other officer’s hooded jacket after setting his pistol next to her leg. A few rips in her shirt oozed blood. He pulled her palm over a couple of holes in her chest.

“Put pressure here. You’ll be alright. It missed your lung,” he said and picked up her radio.

“This is Inspector Trevor Price at First Borden Clinic...uh, Mortuary. Three officers down. Multiple perps down. Send EMS immediately.”

Price picked up his weapon and walked over towards the wheezing sound in the center of the room. The first assistant’s chest foamed pink. He coughed, and flecks of blood sprayed across his face. A moment later and he was still, save a few twitches. Along the far wall, the second assistant lay dead, blood trickling out of his face. To his right, he saw the fourth officer on the scene listening to a headset tucked under his stocking cap, standing over the convulsing Malone. The doctor was on his back, bleeding profusely from two shots to the groin and one in the gut. His legs convulsed, and his jaw spasmed like a gulping fish as he bled out. Price looked up at the officer clearly intent on watching this man’s final moments.

“Nice backup.”

“What did you say?” the cop said with a snarl.

“I said you and your whole dickslap outfit can get. Fucked.”

“Hey, Price, I don’t know if you saw, but we saved your ass a second ago.”

Price scoffed. “You can stop with the theatrics. I’m already spent. Your little hit squad used me to get the drop, and you couldn’t even do that right.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about, dick. You don’t know what was going on upstairs.”

“Whatever you say, triggerman.” Price turned back to the door and pointed behind the nearest table at the stupefied man curled up in a pool of mixing filth and blood. “By the way, you missed this guy. Have fun cleaning him up.”

“You’re right about one thing, Price,” the officer called out down the hall. “You are a tool.”

Moments later, Price passed a pair of EMTs as he was walking up the stairs to the street. He spotted Captain Bar in full uniform in the middle of a shouting match with a woman in scrubs. Price didn’t bother eavesdropping. He sat on the curb nearby and tried grabbing for a cigarette but couldn’t take his left hand out of a fist and went for his hex keys instead. A minute later he closed the gearbox and studied the shallow gashes in his fingers and palm as emergency crews and vehicles raced around him. The arm hadn’t been passable for a real limb in a long time, but the wear was really starting to show now.

“‘Bout time for some repairs, huh Price?” Field boots stood in front of him. He looked up at Captain Bar’s double chin. Not a pleasant angle, so he stood. The Captain of the Borden Police station was sturdy, muscular, but well-insulated. His head was buzzed, but there were several gaps in the follicles, chemical burns from a past life. Except for the worn soles on his boots, Bar’s uniform was pristine, but the sooty smell was proof he was a lead from behind sort of Captain. Price didn’t know his full backstory except that he was highly connected in union politics and probably still is.

“The cost to fix it would be more than the arm, at this point.”

“How about that eye of yours?”

“About as useful as the other one.”

“Well, we’ll have the rest of your fee to you by the end of the week. At least you tried, son.”

“End of the week, huh? Need enough time to shuffle the budget around? I suppose you didn’t think I’d make it out.”

“Price…”

“Too close to home? No, you’re right. It’s my fault for expecting better.”

“Son, you better realize something. You’re working outside of the system, and we’re your primary contract. If you don’t watch that mouth of yours, you’ll have to find a real job.” He paused and smiled. “Or you could always crawl back upstairs to mommy and daddy. We can’t all say that, can we?”

Price felt his cheek twitch. “... End of the week. I look forward to it. Now if you don’t mind.”

He stepped back and started his way towards the tram station.

“Good call, son. We’ll be in touch.”

His portable buzzed, and he brought it to his ear.

“Hey, Horvat.”

“How’d the job go, partner?” Price could hear children yelling for attention in the background.

“Getting paid.”

“That bad, huh?” A baby shrieked.

“Yeah, I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.”

“Speaking of which, I’m supposed to tell you I can’t come in tomorrow, but I need you to call and say you can’t do without me halfway through the morning.”

“I don’t want Angela chewing me out, Charlie.”

“Just have Marcy do it. Besides, you’re going to need me. Picked up some chatter that should have your ears burning.”

“What kind of chatter?”

“Dunno. Could be big.”