Corner Pieces - Wylde/Crowe

[Telcontar]

The spinner climbed through sheets of rain, its turbines humming with mechanical indifference.

Crowe sat rigidly in the passenger seat.

Not because he was comfortable.

Because every alternative hurt.

The concussion still lingered behind his eyes, turning the city's lights into blurred halos that smeared across the canopy whenever he tried to focus. His ribs had been wrapped as tightly as the medics dared, but every breath reminded him of the explosion in the tunnel. Deep breaths were impossible. Shallow ones came with their own sharp reminders.

He had survived.

Some days survival felt less like a victory than an administrative oversight.

He shifted slightly.

A mistake.

Pain flared through his side, hot enough to steal the next breath before slowly fading back into the constant ache.

He settled again.

Didn't move.

Outside, Los Angeles drifted beneath them in fractured reflections of neon and rain.

Wylde flew with practiced confidence, saying little.

Crowe appreciated that.

Conversation required energy.

So did pretending everything was fine.

The silence stretched between them, comfortable enough that neither seemed compelled to break it.

Crowe watched the rain race across the canopy.

It occurred to him that this silence felt strangely familiar.

He'd shared hours like this with LE1.

Driving to scenes.

Waiting outside interviews.

Flying back from assignments that left more questions than answers.

They had spoken when the job demanded it.

Evidence.

Witnesses.

Procedure.

Sometimes bad coffee.

Almost nothing else.

At the time, he'd blamed the distance on what she was.

A replicant.

Professional caution had been an easy excuse. Easier than admitting conversation simply wasn't something that came naturally to him.

Now he sat beside Wylde.

A human partner.

And found himself with exactly the same problem.

There were things he could say.

He could thank Wylde for picking him up when driving his own spinner with cracked ribs bordered on stupidity.

He could explain why he had insisted on returning to work before the bruises had even begun to fade.

He could ask about Wylde's life beyond the badge.

None of the words ever reached his mouth.

Crowe frowned.

Perhaps he'd spent so long convincing himself that replicants were different that he'd overlooked the obvious truth.

Distance had never been about LE1.

Distance was simply how he lived.

The realization landed with more weight than he expected.

Outside, another burst of lightning illuminated the cockpit.

For an instant, Crowe caught his own reflection in the glass.

Bruised cheek.

Dark circles beneath tired eyes.

A man held together by bandages, painkillers, and habit.

The city blurred again as the concussion reminded him it wasn't quite finished yet.

Wylde glanced sideways.

"You look like hell."

Crowe managed the faintest hint of a smile.

"So I've been told."

Neither spoke again.

For once, Crowe didn't blame the silence on the person sitting beside him.

He finally understood it had been following him long before either partner ever had.

[tomcat]

The drive to GENETEK was interminable. The silence was heavy between the two men. Wylde didn't dislke Crowe - hell he didn't really know him - but there was little to talk about.

Wylde grunted his comment. Crowe answered. And then the silence continued.

His left hand hanging on the wheel, Rett's right hand fished into his pocket for his pack of cigarettes. He absent-mindedly shook a smoke from the pack to his mouth, and then he side-glanced at Crowe. The man was wheezing and breathing shallow. Wylde sighed and took the cigarette from his mouth and maneuvered it back in the pack.

It was strange. He missed working with reps. At least they had something to talk about.

[Eclecticon]

Beneath the two detectives Los Angeles rolls on, the megastructures of the central sectors giving way to smaller towers - kilostructures, Crowe finds himself thinking - and then a long and steady decline from the shining lights to the dark and endless wastelands of the kibble.  Here and there, a campfire flickers in the shelter of a ruined house or overpass.  Specials living any way they can in what some map somewhere still calls the San Fernando Valley. 

It's never comfortable flying this far out.  Not for any of the old-fashioned reasons.  Out here, a Blade Runner descends from the sky like a messenger of God, and jurisdiction and due process are whatever a cop on the scene says they are.  But come far enough out and you'll see the fly-struck bones of the world that used to be.

The GENTEK site stands out like luminescent fungus on an underground wall, light from unshuttered windows spilling out and pooling on the mud.  Even in the dark it's obviously a few years old and looks fairly permanent - steel-framed sheds rather than plastic huts surrounding a central building. Might once have been a ranch house, its lines low and sprawling. The effect's ruined by a pair of high-gain aerials poking up into the omnipresent fog like growths of some metallic fungus busily breaking down the whole site into its raw materials, red lights blinking a warning for anyone visiting from the air. Near one of the sheds, large, boxy things that may well be biowaste trucks. 

This far up and with the air filters whirring, there's no sign of the smell that's going to fill the world the moment you land and open the doors. 

[Telcontar]

He shifted in the passenger seat and immediately regretted it. The movement sent a sharp complaint through his broken ribs. Crowe waited for it to pass without letting anything show.

He had been out here before.

Not this exact stretch of wasteland, but close enough that the distinction felt academic.

Some years back, off the grid in the Kipple, where the LAPD radio became static and a badge carried only as much authority as the man holding it could enforce. He remembered masked faces. Long stretches of darkness. The particular kind of fear that came when you realized nobody in the city knew exactly where you were.

And EV-6.

Crowe had found EV-6 out there.

Of all the things the wasteland had taken from people, it had given him that.

Sometimes he still wasn't certain whether that counted as mercy.

His eyes settled on the GENTEK compound ahead. Clean electric light spilled across the mud in geometric patches. Antennas stabbed upward through the fog. Permanent construction. Waste trucks. Someone had spent real money building something in a place most people preferred to forget existed.

Crowe studied it for several seconds.

The silence between him and Wylde had lasted most of the flight. It had become almost comfortable.

Almost.

Crowe finally broke it.

"So."

His voice was dry.

"How difficult do you think this routine task is going to be?"

He kept his eyes on the compound.

"And which one of us is taking point?"

Crowe glanced toward Wylde.

"Because if we're taking bets, I'm putting money on 'routine' lasting until the doors open. One way or the other the folks out here don't get visitors and probably like it that way."

He looked back down at GENTEK as the spinner began its descent.

His hand moved unconsciously toward the blaster beneath his coat.