No Good Cops Left

Jonah221 played an audible choking noise through his respre-filter. The cigarette in his chromed left arm crumbled a bit and spit ash on his vinyl table, and part of him pictured his wife leaning over his shoulder in a floral print dress, promptly disposing of the butt with a teatowel before pecking his stubble. Drawing the fingers of his one natural arm across where the imagined kiss burned what had once been his face, 221 found nothing but numb, polished metal.

All that work for the force, worthless since the WireMob started their 'investments' into the pockets of the brass. Crooks loose. Men and 'chromies that had taken him years to put behind bars.

That Seether Macintosh in particular was a hackjob of a human being if he ever booked one- spinning opiates on the streets, taking advantage of Red War vets hooked on the tar. Former wiseguy, always blunt, always bloody. That was a six-year investigation to take Macintosh down, Jonah remembered, lamps glimmering klaxon red for a moment.

But Seether was someone of value, it seems, to the WireMob. Nobody told Jonah all charges had been buried, all cases put on ice. Nobody warned him and Margret to leave town. It was a nurse, when Jo awoke in Chicago Memorial Heavy Trauma wing 2, now chromejob #221, who inevitably broke him the news at his bedside. Twenty rounds of .45 electro-disruptor across his face, throat, ribs, and shoulder. Steely fingers crushed his detective badge in a vicelike grip. The flesh to metal procedure was not a pleasant experience, but it afforded Jonah life from the wreckage of his body. Margret had been less lucky. The few good cops left had been hit in a similar manner, shot, cut, burnt, and buried in their homes and with their families.

Jonah's smoke was burnt up. He tossed his budget dining room table across the apartment one handed with a digitized howl and scoured the place for his piece, unsure of what he wanted to do with it, but damn sure he wanted it. Apartment ravaged, ashtray full, the .50S7UG Browning Heavy Service Pistol revealed itself to him, and as he groped at it's nickel finish it whirred to life in his mismatched hands.  Things started to queue up in his head. Names who should be buried anonymously, en mass. The weapon designed to put baseball-sized craters in dissenting chromies felt light as he paced out to the apartment window and lit himself another smoke.

That night, the Wiremob hit him and every other good cop on the force. But, with Jonah221 still standing, glaring down on the streets of Chicago with a handcannon, a drag, and a circutboard full of hateful purpose, his computations deduced that no good cops were left.