King County Crowd Control Central Command [1], Seattle, Washington, 1:44 P.M.

Justice rode, a pale scooter…

“Hero on deck,” noted Officer Jose Braxton as she overrode the smart door at Officer Intake. “His visor is up—maybe jammed and the wrist phone is gone, in the explosion I guess—did you see the vid feed on that shitshow, Boss?!”

Liza from HR was face-up projecting on the intake desk, wanting a desk-view of the incoming subject rather than the overhead. Liza was so hot with her purple mohawk and pink neck phone choker. She was so hot that Jose often wished his parents would not have opted for the full neonatal circumcision. She often wondered what it would be like to have a penis. As much as she was jealous of Liza for having two dicks and two great tits, she also dreamed—and dreamed often with a longing ache in her heart—of being The Counselor-in-Chief’s lover.

Liza’s projection smiled wide-faced out from the desk at Carson, as he dismounted the white medical dispatch scooter and walked through the door, uniform singed and soaked in blood, his eyes uncharacteristically wide and calm, where they were usually narrow and intense. As an Intake Officer, she was the first line of defense against the scourge of police work, PTSD. It was key to her function to get to know the normalized expression of an officer to help evaluate trauma as soon as possible. Carson now had the eyes of an easy man, not the intensity of can-do enthusiasm he was known for.

A chill traveled down her spine.

“Are you seeing what I see, Chief Counselor?”

“Yes,” came the projection of Liza’s goddess face, “clearly shock. That’s fine, obviously. Get him to Decompression One—come with him; button up here until I can get relief intake. Accompany our recruitment poster person, ASAP, Officer.”

‘My is he in shock!’ thought Jose as Liza’s projection imploded and Jose smiled, “Great job, Carson.”

It always bothered her that it was her job to process fellow officers whose job she knew she could not do, so often treating those wrongly on the inside who had acted so rightly on the outside.

So did Jose’s heart ache for a deeper form of justice than she was apart of.

Carson stopped, doffed his helmet, racked it on the charger unit [the helmet apparently dead] as she expected of Carson, for he was always one to go by the book and not miss details. Carson clicked heels, turned about face and placed both hands behind his head and Jose apologized, “Sorry, Carson. You know the drill.”

She cuffed Carson in pink compliance cuffs, a must for any officer or other person without a secure phone [2], secured his side arm, patted him down and read him his rights, “Officer Carson, you have the right to remain silent until counsel is assigned. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law, via social mediation or medical treatment and forwarded to the insurance carrier.”

They turned together and Carson stopped and looked at the eye phones, com glasses and smart visors on the intake rack, as if inspecting a gallery of disembodied beings he had never seen before.

‘We have a deep trauma here,’ she empathized as she gave him time and space.

Understanding was part of her job, as was projection of understanding, so Jose comforted the shocked officer, “No need to refit here. Doctor Saud will fit you with a diagnostic halo for debriefing. Besides, we need to replace your wrist phone first. Then we’ll get you glassed good and proper, Officer. Let me tell you how proud I am to handle your intake—its an honor, Carson, really and truly.”

Carson spoke, only it did not sound much like pre-traumatic Carson, and it made her said, “Thank you, Jose.”

Touched that Carson even knew her name, as Braxton was how she was vest tagged and Carson was unplugged, she smiled and placed her hand tenderly on the middle of his back as she had been trained, without pushing at all, just serving the light touch as a compliance cue. And Carson moved on through Intake and they turned as one towards the escalator to Decompression.

‘It’s never been this easy on Officer Intake. It’s either psyche crew on deck, sedatives out the ass, melt down at the desk, and at best disorientation during The Walk In. Carson’s such a stud!’

…

Jose stood beside and behind Carson to the right, her right hand ready to deploy the compliance wand in case there was some expressive PTSD episode. She always hated that part of her job and thought that this process should be purely medical.

Behind the Debriefing Desk sat Chief Counselor and undeniable hottie Liza, and to either side, Doctor Saud, one ugly dude, Chief of Psyche Intake, and Doctor Tsung, a very pretty lady who possessed a social gravity that tended to bring the best out in her fellow medical professionals and also the officers on Intake, Adjustment and Rehabilitation. All three of these departments were ultimately under Tsung, who was head of Human Resources.

“Greetings, Officer Carson,” spoke Tsung. “Before we proceed with your spiritual well-being session, do you have any physical injuries? If so, this session will be suspended now, on your word, so that Trauma may do their job.”

“Uninjured,” answered Carson, like some super soldier out of a game stream, standing there with his hands cuffed behind his back.

‘Oh, no!’ she thought, as she noticed that the compliance cuffs seemed to have failed to engage. She had checked the circuit on each set, one having been charged and programmed for each officer on deployment at beginning of shift. And she had heard them engage when she applied them, though she was checking out Carson’s profile for stress and could not say for sure.

‘Carson is unsecured!’

‘If I say anything its my ass—I’ll be in Decom and Rehab, maybe Decog!’ [3]

‘He’s the good guy, the hero—doing better at protocols here then even Tsung, which is mind boggling. We’re usually Medsed Up by now.’

‘Don’t even look at the cuffs. Pretend you never noticed them...just in case.’

Tsung continued, “Chief Counselor Liza Kersey will represent your well being, with Doctor Saud evaluating, and myself conducting this debriefing. Is this understood, Officer Carson?”

“Understood,” spake Carson in a voice of near dreamlike calm, which seemed to bother all of them, as if he were so shocked that he would be beyond reach.

‘I just want to hug him and tell him how proud I am of him. But here I stand, ready to work this wicked wand. Life sucks.’

Then it started:

Tsung: “Officer Carson, do you care to explain your abandonment of your detail—the detail you in fact commanded, and might I add, with much professionalism. Why, Officer, did you leave the seen of the terror attack?”

Carson: silence

Tsung: “Officer?”

Carson: “Yes.”

Tsung: “Please answer the question.”

Carson: “No.”

Silence reigned as the three decompression panel members looked at one another for a long moment before Tsung continued: “Why, Officer Carson, do you refuse to account for your absence from the detail you commanded?”

Carson: “I serve a higher power, Brenda.”

Head of Human resources for King County Crowd Control, Doctor Brenda Mai Tsung suddenly contorted her pretty face in a whimpersome kind of rage and leaned forward as Saud rolled his eyes and reached with his right index finger in front of his blue shirt and pink tie to engage the extraction team with a touch on his wrist phone.

Liza had lost her composure and did not try and engage her throat phone, and Tsung, who it was assumed used a dental phone, seethed in frozen rage unable to act.

‘No way am I wanding Carson without an explicit order. Somebody might want to give the order, though—people?’

Justice, inhaled, deeply…

…

Notes

-1. Formerly The King County Jail

-2. Wrist phone, neck phone, eye phone, ear phone, dental phone or smart visor. The 2034 phone fraud scandal had made it clear that handheld units compromised public health, security and crowd control.

-3. Decompression [PTSD limiting debriefing], Rehabilitation [psychiatric therapy] and Decognition [memory and identity adjustment therapy] which is greatly feared by Tranz officers like Jose.