The Sapphire Shadow

Chapter Fifteen: Poetic Injustice

Jackson just wanted to go home.

She wasn't even on duty. Her final shift started tomorrow, one more night of worried, fitful sleep as an employed woman. Cold rain ran down her face, soaking into her collar. People yelled and chanted all around her.

Shouldn't have even gone outside. But she would have been damned if she had ordered in and drank alone in her apartment. And she'd be double damned if she'd spring the few bucks to call a ride back home now. Not that any taxi would be willing to pick her up here. Everything for a few blocks around was zoned off. Quarantined. The maps said, "Traffic issues."

That was true, in a sense.

"Disperse immediately!" A voice on a loudspeaker, fighting to be heard over the crowd she was picking her way through. "Disperse or we will use force!"

They were already arresting people. A long line in cuffs, on their knees in front of an apartment building, heads bagged. Jackson only caught glimpses of them through the people around her, glimpses of the entrance blocked off by security cars and paddy wagons.

"That's my home!" a woman next to her screamed. "You're taking away my home!"

"Fuck the Domes!" a man roared. "Fuck 'em!"

A squad of APS officers streamed into the building, passing their faceless brethren coming out with more residents. Smoke poured from a window seven floors above, orange flames licking and fading as rain snuck through the broken glass. Other windows were spitting out bricks and bottles and who knew what else, all crashing down on the APS picket line.

Jackson ducked her head low under her hood, one hand wrapped tightly around the pistol in her pocket. She was in civilian clothes, off duty. Everything was fine. No one here knew she was a cop. No one here knew how many times it had recently been her stomping into apartments, kicking down doors and telling people they needed to vacate the premises.

All she had to do was keep walking, slide through this mess. Only a few more blocks to her apartment. A few short blocks. Close. Worryingly close. She looked up at the glass sides of towers all around her, ads replaced with customer-service announcements.

DUE TO REVISED FLOOD-RISK ASSESSMENTS, they read, LEASE RATES FOR TENANTS IN THIS AREA HAVE BEEN INCREASED. WE APOLOGIZE FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE.

She flinched at a loud crash near the apartment building. A recliner had been tossed down to the street, where it exploded into pieces.

PLEASE CONTACT AN AGF HUMAN RESOURCES AGENT FOR HOUSING OPTIONS TO FIT YOUR LIFESTYLE!

Cheers broke out at the exploding chair. People around her were hurling things now; the Domes were being attacked from two sides.

The glass flickered, all of it, Cheshire looming huge over the mob.

HR WILL ARREST YOU

FIRED? ——> EVICTED ——> DEPORTED

HOMELESS? ——> FIRED ——> DEPORTED

THE GAME IS RIGGED

Should never have left her apartment. As Jackson tried to cut across the crowd, she got caught in its current, pushed back, a herd moving as one. Away from the building being emptied out, away from her path home.

"Damn it, I'm not... Move it!" she yelled, shouldering her way against the tide. "Outta the way!"

"Disperse! Move back!"

In less than a breath, she was staring down Domes. Pushing against the crowd one moment, falling out of it the next.

"Hands! Show us your hands!" The APS picket line was surging out, forcing the crowd back. Most of them had riot shields up, but a few pointed sidearms at her.