The Unsung Frame Read online

  THE UNSUNG FRAME

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations,

  places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2017

  Thirsty Bird Productions

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in retrieval systems, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recorded or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

  For more books by the author

  GREGDRAGON.COM

  ‡Contents‡

  Chapter 1 – Tracing Jordan

  Chapter 2 – Sleepless in Synth City

  Chapter 3 – The A is for Fantasy

  Chapter 4 – Not Quite Agent Carter

  Chapter 5 – Sub City Ramen

  Chapter 6 – Grounding Drones

  Chapter 7 – A Night in Tunisia

  Chapter 8 – Sleuthing in The Swamp

  Chapter 9 – Ghosts in The Alley

  Chapter 10 – Coffee and Boredom

  Chapter 11 – My Partner’s Ex-Lover

  Chapter 12 – Running Marathons

  Chapter 13 – Hottest of the Hot

  Chapter 14 – Six-Figure Arms Dealer

  Chapter 15 – Watered Down Whiskey

  Chapter 16 – Wolf of Tarpon Springs

  Chapter 17 – Toast to The Good Guys

  Chapter 18 – A Kidnapping in Party City

  Chapter 19 – Deus Ex Machina

  Chapter 20 – The Maid in a Black Hat

  Chapter 21 – Muddy Interrogation

  Chapter 22 – Breaking and Entering

  Chapter 23 – Who’s Watching Whom?

  Chapter 24 – Have Gun, Will Travel

  Chapter 25 – One Shot, One Kill

  Chapter 26 – The Perfect Replacement

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  ‡Chapter 1‡

  Tracing Jordan

  Who could have imagined the amount of destruction that a loud minority could cause once empowered by their hate?

  All throughout the United States there was terror, much of it caused by humans that no longer wanted to live amongst a race of sentient machines. These machines … these synths, did not allow themselves to fall victim to the mob. They fought back, mostly taking defensive measures, striking back at those who terrorized them.

  The country looked to their leaders for a solution, but what they got was gasoline to douse the growing fire. At first, President Joseph Frank of the United States of America, did not address the violence. Then, in a series of messages to the press, he denounced the synths as criminals. In just a few words he managed to escalate the violence, and the country burned for it. 2132 was a terrible year for humanity, and a living hell for the synths.

  In the corner of a bar in downtown Tampa, a large man sat staring into an empty glass as if the secret of life would appear within its recesses. Dhata Mays looked up and watched as a tall, muscular man grabbed his coat to leave. The man had been drinking for over an hour, and Dhata assumed that he was waiting for someone who hadn’t bothered to show up. Girlfriend, perhaps? He didn’t know, but he could sense the man’s frustration; it was right there in the way he grabbed his coat.

  Dhata followed him out, got into his car, and then waited for him to drive off. He brought up a map on the Buick’s augmented dashboard, selected the man’s Ford and told CINI—the car’s computer—to follow it. Letting CINI handle the tail was far superior to doing it manually, since she would take alternate routes based on the estimated path.

  In his time as a detective, he’d always let CINI handle the tails, and this was the main reason why he’d never been caught. He grabbed his pistol—an energy tube—then cocked it back and primed it for maximum electricity. He touched the area near his ear which would power on his internal computer, then blinked rapidly to move the interface to his Implanted Contact Lens (ICL).

  The virtual desktop loaded and hovered in augmented reality. There was a message flashing and he saw that his partner, Lur Diaz, had sent him a message. It was an invitation for dinner to celebrate their one-year anniversary. He smiled. She’s so sentimental, he thought. We should make a day out of it; one dinner is nothing.

  A beeping sound snapped him back into focus, and CINI announced, “Destination reached.” They pulled up to Tampa’s International shuttle port and parked near the entrance. Dhata groaned. Of all the places to go this time of night, he thought.

  He would have to follow the man to wherever he was intending to go, and if it was overseas, then he would have to fly. A shuttle this late could mean that he would not be back in time to celebrate with Lur. It wasn’t that she wouldn’t understand, but he really wanted to be there.

  He had been tracking the man for several days to see if he was cheating on his spouse. But he was elusive, and his wife was growing impatient, so he had to see it through. Dhata shook his head with annoyance, looked around, and then thrust his hands into the pockets of his duster.

  He fell in with the crowd of shuttle port travelers as his ICL outlined the man in green so that Dhata could find him easily. He was moving fast, and Dhata wondered if he had been made; so fast, in fact, that he had to jog in order to keep up with him. He skillfully slid between people standing around, though he ran into a few who didn’t see him coming. As he ran near the landing zone, a loud rumbling occurred, and the glass windows shook as a shuttle flew in.

  Dhata glanced up at a monitor to see the details of the flight, and saw that it was the personal shuttle of a Japanese Zaibatsu. The man he was chasing stopped in his tracks, forcing Dhata to do the same. When he turned to face him, he threw open his coat—a move so instantaneous that the ex-detective reacted on instinct. He pulled his pistol to beat him on the draw, but hesitated on pulling the trigger when he saw that the man was rigged with explosives.

  An explosion occurred, lifting him off his feet, the force of the blast throwing him through the exterior glass wall. He cut open his arm and fell down a floor, where he found himself entwined with the brush. Dhata wondered how he’d lived, and counted his blessings, but then another blast shook the building and showered him with glass.

  Was it the man he had tailed that set off the explosion, or was he simply in the wrong place at the wrong time? He didn’t know what to think in his confusion as he lay there with sore arms and distorted vision. For what seemed like an hour he struggled to move, but he was being held down by the bushes. He eventually gave up and closed his eyes, trying to remember what had happened before the explosion.

  The man had run past the outgoing flight deck. That didn’t make sense if he intended to fly out. Then he remembered the incoming flight of that Japanese shuttle. Was it possible that he had stumbled upon a wicked plot of terrorism? The shuttle port at that time of night was always crowded … the perfect location for a devastating attack.

  The bomb would have killed and injured many, including the incoming Japanese. If Japan took the explosion to be an American attack, the synth and human infighting would be the least of their problems. Article 9 of the Japanese constitution forbade them from going to war, but that would not stop their cyphers from tearing apart the American grid.

  Suddenly, Dhata felt himself being lifted and he opened his eyes to see flashing lights everywhere. His ICLs were focused now, but his arms were strapped to his side. The medical staff was moving fast, and he was already bandaged by the time he was in the hover copter.

  I need to call Lur, she’ll be worried, he thought, and then his ICLs failed him again. “Hello,” he said. “Hey, hey, I can’t see.” Then his consciousness too was gone.

  When Dhata awoke, he was in his own bed with Lur seated next to him. Her hand was in his, with their fingers interlocked, and she was watching what appeared to be riots happening on television. He focused on this, and as his mind cleared, he saw that it was a news report showing scenes across the country.

  “Hey!” Lur said, when she saw he was awake. “How are you feeling, baby?”

  “Groggy, but, wait … how am I here?” Dhata said, noticing that his speech slurred when he spoke. “What about the explosion?”

  “He was a suicide bomber. Jordan Crane. The guy that you were following … I think that we were set up.”

  “Set up? No. That doesn’t make sense. If he wanted to get me, he could have blown up the bar. This seems bigger, wrong place, wrong time. I think he meant to blow up the shuttle port all along. That woman, Natalya, the so-called wife, I wonder if she has anything to say about this?”

  “I wouldn’t know. Nobody would. Nobody’s seen her in over a week.”

  “Over a week? Did they make an arrest? She’d be a prime suspect, since they’re married and all. No, you haven’t seen her because the feds picked her up. Guess we won’t be getting paid. What a goddamned waste of time.” He sighed. “You’re looking good, princesa,” he said with a smile.

  “He’s already flirting. Sheesh, business as usual, eh, skiptracer?” Lur said, laughing.

  “I have a beautiful woman holding my hand; what am I supposed to do?” he said. “A week though, baby? That’s a long time. You mean to tell me I was out for a week?”

  Lur nodded, and Dhata scanned the room. He wondered how long they’d kept him in the hospital. “What day is it, today?” he said.

  “It’s the 22nd, mi vida,” Lur said softly, as if her words would hurt him somehow.
br />   “I’ve been out for eight days?” he said, then pulled himself up. When the sheets fell away, he saw the bandages wrapped around his chest.

  Lur said, “You’ve been in and out, a lot, and then you don’t remember. I don’t even know if tomorrow you will remember any of this. The doctor said that you have to take it easy. Something about too many concussions in a short amount of time.”

  “Take it easy? That’s funny,” Dhata said. “How do you take it easy when the world’s gone to hell? I do feel better, though the side of my face is twitchy. But there’s no pain, and I can finally think clearly.”

  “Are you hungry?” she said, and he nodded slowly, but when she hopped off the bed, he quickly grabbed her hand.

  “I missed our anniversary,” he said, reading her big brown eyes, but Lur merely smiled and touched him gently on his cheek.

  “We spent it together. That is all that matters, even if you were asleep for most of it.” She winked. “Rest, Dhata, let me take care of you. The police are investigating the bombing, and the president called it an act of terrorism.”

  Dhata scoffed. “The president? Frank? What a joke. He’s probably glad for this jacked-up distraction to take our minds off the civil war happening in these streets.”

  “There’s something else,” she said, “I was waiting to tell you, but I know you, and now that you’re up, you will start working.”

  “What is it, Lurita? You can tell me. Whatever it is,” he said.

  “It’s the suicide bomber. Jordan Crane. They found out that he was a synth.”

  Dhata closed his eyes to hide his disappointment, and sat in silence thinking about what this meant. “That’s it, Lurita, it’s a wrap. A synth murderer is one thing, but a synth mass-murderer … the government will have to step in. The FBI’s investigation won’t be about the shuttle port. What they will be doing is looking into the synth community.”

  He stood up and his legs ached, and he almost collapsed. Lur rushed forward as if to catch him, but he held up a hand to stop her. When she complied, he took a step, then another, and another. Eventually he was next to her, and he placed a hand on the small of her back. She hugged him tight around his waist, and he wrapped his massive arms around her shoulders.

  “It will be okay, Lurita,” he said, her curly hair tickling his nostrils. “I have to make sense of this, somehow. I have to find out if this is something major, or just a case of one synth with some sort of anti-human grudge. You say that Natalya hasn’t been seen?”

  Lur nodded, and they started walking towards the kitchen area of the house. “They took her away, and she isn’t answering phone calls. I was hoping that when you were feeling better, you could call in a favor or something.”

  “Every honest John I know is either dead or retired,” Dhata said. “The police department is not the same as it was when Jason was alive. Now they’re controlled by anyone with money, and if a crime boss was behind the shuttle port bombing, you better believe that she’s already dead.”

  He sat at the small table inside of the kitchen, and Lur went inside the cupboard and grabbed a can of corned beef. He watched her cut up some onions and season the meat, then power on the heat beneath the skillet. It was in this moment that he realized that he loved her. It was instant, just like that: he went from admiring her to needing her.

  It frightened him when he thought about the dangerous situations they had been in, and the numerous times in the past that he could have lost her. Lur Diaz, daughter of a Cuban crime boss, and now his partner in every way.

  She placed a steaming bowl of corned beef and rice in front of him and another in the place that she set for herself. “Thank you,” he said, and she blew him a kiss. They ate in silence for the next ten minutes. Dhata didn’t know just how hungry he was until he had finished his third helping. “Is CINI still parked out there?” he said, but she merely looked up at him, as if she expected the question.

  “They tried to tow her, but we weren’t having any of that,” she said. “Can you imagine my surprise when that stuck up bitch responded to my commands?”

  Dhata smiled at the way she cursed; her accent took the edge off of it somehow. “About a month ago, I added you as her co-owner. It was back when you were having me drive you to West Tampa like every day. I thought that it would make more sense for you to drive yourself. Plus, you live here now, and you need to have a way to get around. How did she treat you?”

  “I think she is jealous of me,” Lur said. “I can hear the bitterness in her voice.”

  They looked at one another and began to laugh, and for those few moments, Dhata Mays was happy. It was a tiny island in his sea of hurt that had come from the suicide bombing. Tampa Bay was a warzone, and it would only get worse, but now, in this moment, he was happy.

  ‡Chapter 2‡

  Sleepless in Synth City

  At 2:15 a.m., a day after Dhata Mays regained consciousness, an explosion occurred on the tenth floor of the Akiyama Koch Robotics building in downtown Atlanta. The destruction was substantial, but only ten percent of the synths being developed were damaged in the blast. Media sources were quick to say that it was a chemical reaction gone wrong, but Dhata Mays knew better. The civil war was at a fever pitch.

  He was parked outside of the police station wondering what he was going to say. Information on the explosion was police business, and though he felt in his heart that they needed his help, he knew that the feeling wasn’t mutual. So many questions, but who to ask? There weren’t many Johns who owed him a favor. It hurt to move, and for a few moments he wondered if he should have taken Lur’s advice and rested for a few more days.

  “Screw it,” he grunted, and opened the door, biting down against the pain in his legs. He saw a number of police officers, but none he recognized, so he kept his head low and walked inside.

  “Big man,” someone said off to his side and he turned to see Jackson Cole. He was a detective now, which took Dhata by surprise since he was one of the most corrupt officers that he’d known. Soliciting prostitutes, stealing money, Jackson had done it all.

  “What’s up, Jackson?” he said. “Detective now? Congratulations on the bump.”

  The tall, blonde, stim-junkie grinned through his neatly trimmed beard, though his eyes were blue pieces of sharpened ice. “It’s been a year, but thanks,” he said. “Who you here to see?”

  “No one in particular, but maybe you can help me out,” Dhata said.

  “Sure, what you need?” he said, walking up to Dhata. He was a foot taller than the skiptracer and liked to remind him whenever he could.

  “Natalya Crane, the wife to the guy who blew up the shuttle port—”

  “That synth-loving trap? She ain’t here, big man. What you want to talk to her for?”

  Dhata thought about his answer. Should I lie? Is Jackson feeling me out for a reason? “She hired me to look into the guy before he blew the place up. I just want to know if she set me up, or if she’s really innocent,” he said.

  “Oh,” Jackson said, seeming concerned. “I forgot that you was tracing for civs now. How’s that going?”

  Jackass. “Cool, actually. It pays the bills. Well, it did, until I went into that shuttle port,” Dhata said.

  Jackson chuckled. “I see you limping, but you came out of it alright though. I bet you miss working here after that went down. Look, just between me and you, all joking aside, I think that it was real shitty how they cancelled your license.”

  “I appreciate you saying that,” Dhata said. He was already bored with talking to him. “So, is she here? Natalya, the wife.”

  “No, the boys uptown have her in custody. They won’t even let me get a crack at her—know what I mean? So you can forget them talking to a private investigator.”

  “Skiptracer,” Dhata said, annoyed with his games. Jackson knew what he was, yet chose to insult him.

  “Skiptracer, my bad. Though I don’t see much difference now. Skips work for Johns, and you … you ain’t got no license, my friend. May as well forget her, plus, by the time they’re done, she’ll be on a one-way train to a maximum-security birdcage. You catch my drift?”