Chapter 54 – Payback
Tuesday Evening, July 28, 2308
Secretary Croswell, lounging on Stanwood’s couch, used his Micronix amplifier to handle the digital day-to-day requirements of his office. He was caught up before lunch and spent the afternoon getting a jump on the next day. His helmet sat on the coffee table.
The battle suit supplied all the nutrition he needed in the form of Dr. Fox’s Super Blue Healing Goo. Between panels, Croswell carried more than two gallons of the thick syrup. The noontime injections in each hip surprised him, but as the goo replaced the sensation of pain with one of pleasure, after a few moments, only the fading adrenalin dump caused by the initial surprise remained.
Croswell heard Stanwood begin to stir late in the afternoon. At six, another injection would be triggered, unless had settled this dispute and gotten out of the damn suit. Frustrated and angry; Croswell rose from the couch. He had long since turned off the phase shift camouflage. If Stanwood had awakened, he would have seen him, but that was the whole idea.
Croswell walked to the doorway between the elite-shelf living room and bedroom.
Stanwood was half awake and sat up, shocked to see Croswell standing there. “James?”
Without any warning, Croswell discovered he was furious. He’d known Joe Stanwood almost all his life. And Joe Stanwood had shot his friend, their friend, Andy Fox, who created the blue goo that had healed Wendell’s smashed knee.
Without any sort of pause, before Stanwood could speak, Croswell drew his weapon and fired. He didn’t just fire once, or twice. Croswell shot Stanwood at least a dozen times. Then he stepped onto the blood-splattered sheets and blankets and grabbed Stanwood by the neck.
The intelligence director coughed and choked, gasping for air through his ruined lungs and esophagus.
Secretary Croswell unsnapped one of the blue goo tubes from the reservoir on his back. He smiled and sprayed Stanwood with the blue goo.
“You didn’t have the balls to try this when we were kids, Joey. So, here you go.” Croswell could see the goo stitching Stanwood’s splattered organs and bone back together. He knew first hand how painful the process actually was.
Stanwood tried to scream, but couldn’t, as he could hardly breathe.
Croswell kept his old friend pinned with his left hand on Stanwood’s throat. After a few minutes, it was clear that Stanwood was breathing properly. “I missed your heart,” Croswell said. “I can do better than that.”
“Stanwood tried to raise his hands. “Jim, listen…”
“Listen to what? You fucking shot Andy, you asshole.”
Croswell held the barrel of his weapon on the soft spot beneath Stanwood’s ribcage and fired three more times.
Croswell’s face was in front to of Stanwood’s. “How do you like that, you son of a bitch?”
Stanwood began to gag and sputter. It was clear he was dying.
Croswell rose from the bed and doused Stanwood’s ruined midsection with another liberal helping of the healing blue syrup. The intelligence director would survive. He’d probably be in even better shape than before Croswell shot him.
Stanwood convulsed as the polysynthetic nano-stem cells did their work. He coughed up a considerable volume of blue-tinted blood and bullets.
“You’ve still got a pretty high concentration of syrup in you there, Joey. I think you can take a couple more. What do you think?”
“No! No, no more!” Stanwood pleaded.
“Yeah, well, fuck what you think, you dick.” Croswell aimed at Stanwood’s knee. “You pushed Wendell into the pool didn’t you?”
“No! I swear!”
“Bullshit.” Croswell put three rounds through Stanwood’s knee.
Stanwood screamed and cried, holding his knee and his ruptured guts.
Croswell stepped away from the bed and reattached the tube to his reservoir tank. “If I were you, I’d try and spit some of that syrup onto your knee, cause I’m not giving you any more. And I’d bet, you being the shit-bird you are, my money says you don’t have an emergency reserve pack stashed here somewhere.
“And don’t take the crap they give you at the emergency room. It’s watered down to nothing. Hell, you should call your little butt-buddy Cedric. He’s got his own version of the stuff. But be careful, I’ve heard his grape-mix doesn’t go well with Fox’s blue nectar. In fact, this stuff has a tendency to turn hostile against any sort of competitive nano-products.”
Croswell pulled out his phone. “Now shut up for a second, I need to make a call.”
Stanwood actually tried to silence his pain-filled whimpering but could only reduce the volume slightly.
“Kelly, hey it’s Jim. I’m over here at our friend Joe’s place, and we have reached an understanding.”
Croswell looked over at Stanwood. “He’s going to take a step back and drop this case. After all, he has plenty of real work that needs doing, don’t you?”
Stanwood nodded.
“So, you guys are okay, nothing to worry about anymore. Isn’t that right Director?”
Croswell held the phone out toward Stanwood, who whimpered and cried, “Yes, yes, yes.”
Croswell returned the phone to his ear and listened for a moment.
“Yes, of course.” He picked up his helmet and walked toward the front door. “I will get them and bring them directly to you, I swear. But don’t you think it would be better if we didn’t need to go that route.”
Croswell listened for a moment then said, “No. It’s just that coming back will be so much more difficult, you know that.”
Croswell approached the front door. “Okay. I’ll talk to you in a bit.” He disconnected the call and turned back to Stanwood.
Croswell gave the suffering director the finger and said, “Fuck off and die, Joey. Don’t even think about teaming up with Bergstrom. If you go anywhere near D-Thirteen again, President’s nephew or not, I will put a bullet in your head.”
Croswell walked toward Stanwood again, stopping at the end of the bed. “I want you to listen me very carefully, Joe. We’ve known each other a long time, and I have never bull-shitted you, or bull-shat you, whatever.
“My point is; it’s time for you to resign. If you don’t, President Conway is going have to hold his sister’s hand at your funeral. Are you hearing me, over all that whimpering you’re doing over there?”
Croswell drew his weapon and fired a single shot, destroying the Director’s personal phone. He then put a round through every terminal monitor in the condo. “Just in case I was less than clear: Get the hell out of Angel City, shitbag.”
Croswell exited through the front door, donned his helmet in the open courtyard and vanished into the darkening sky.