The Crystal Muse

Chapter 1

On the surface, it looked like the standard-issue police operation from any given action movie. It was the middle of the night, police cruisers surrounding the building, the walls absorbing the unrelenting white glare of spotlights and the rhythmic blue pulse of strobing police takedown lights, with officers standing behind cruisers leveling automatic weapons at the windows and doors while a body-armored special unit prepared to enter the building.

For Danvers Police Chief Frank Schaeffer, that was where the similarities to Hollywood fantasy ended. His jurisdiction was classified as a city, but that was more likely due to breaking the plane on acreage or an arbitrary population number instead of building size or population density. The building in question was a wing of Danvers High School, bringing back too many bad memories of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold from his days as a patrol officer back in the 1990s--at least this was going on in the middle of the night rather than a school day when students could be at risk. The special unit prepping to go inside also wasn't Danvers PD. Rather, those officers were Massachusetts State Police, and not even the Special Tactics & Operations Team. The Staties' presence alone was bad enough for a local-level cop's ego, but their presence in particular simply reinforced the rift.

He walked over to one of their units, one of the sharky-looking Assault Runner interceptors that had been the backbone of the MSP's and Boston PD's ground operations during the Boston Riot of 2017, keeping one eye on the High School the whole time. Emblazoned on the front doors where the Massachusetts state seal logo all MSP cruisers wore was a stylized patch reading Massachusetts State Police Bravo 7 Special Operations & Investigations Unit. Not only did they have better gear than Danvers PD, they certainly had to have an attitude to go with it.

Two of them stood at the Assault Runner's rear, scrutinizing the screen of a laptop computer sitting on what should have been the trunk of a regular sedan, judging by how it obscured a label that read Warning: Drag Scoop Opens Outward. They certainly looked the part in their midnight blue battle dress uniforms and heavy black flak jackets with STATE POLICE sewn raid-style on the backs, gray-on-black low-visibility Bravo 7 and American flag patches on their BDU shirts' shoulders. One of them, a huge linebacker-looking guy with black low-vis sergeant's pins on his flak jacket's epaulets and HOGAN on the back below the collar, gestured at the screen with a huge bullet. "This corridor's gonna be the worst of it. I'll lay forty bucks they'll have something waiting for you there, so watch yourself."

The other one, who wore a midnight blue baseball cap with the Bravo 7 patch sewn on the front and gray scrambled eggs on the visor, whose own flak jacket had lieutenant's bars on the epaulets and DILLARD below the collar, cracked a sarcastic half-smile. He was just as tall as the sergeant, but not as broad across the shoulders and chest. "Thought you were bucking for a promotion, Shredder."

"It'd mean more responsibilities, Boss, and I don't want that just yet." The comment elicited soft chuckling from both of them.

Schaeffer cleared his throat, attracting the Staties' attention. "You guys absolutely sure my people can't handle this?"

The lieutenant's gaze was flat, almost dead as he pulled on a pair of rubber-palmed fingerless tactical shooter's gloves. "No offense, Chief, but there have been local-level police departments in the past that bought themselves a whole mess of SWAT gear and never learned how to use any of it. It tends to result in a lot of heroes being generated," he explained as he took off the baseball cap and tossed it onto the car. He clipped his radio earpiece to his right earlobe, making sure the boom mike was right at mouth level, and then reached for the black Kevlar helmet sitting next to the laptop. "I don't work with heroes, because they only come about when mistakes are made, usually fatal ones. Better to let the trained pros handle it."