Shadow Walker

Jail

The administration officer sat behind her glass security booth, tapping the data log touch screen with such intensity, it was a wonder it didn't crack. She spoke to him without looking up.

"State your name." Her voice was as monotone as the sound of her iron fingers smacking the screen.

"Declan Hancock."

"Age."

"Twenty"

"Occupation."

Dec shrugged. He didn't know what to call his shitty job. Floor worker, stock person, idiot who boxes up produce to be shipped offshore to the Northern Isles. He settled with, "Produce packer."

"Company."

"Overland Trading Co."

"Residential address."

Dec leaned forward in an attempt to look at the screen. "You already have my address."

This made the woman look up. Her face was as white and pinched as his own. "Can you confirm that your current residential address is the ground floor of fourteen Carrington Street?"

"Yes."

Iron fingers went back to typing. "Okay. Look at the camera. No teeth."

Dec glared at the tiny dot of an ID photo camera hanging from the glass protection booth and waited.

Click.

The flash left white imprints in his eyes.

"Empty your pockets and remove your palm pod." Iron fingers shoved a tray containing a large zip lock bag under the grill of the glass booth. Dec, only then remembering the woollen gloves and face stocking in his back pocket, hesitated.

Iron fingers pushed the tray further towards him. "Empty your pockets and remove your palm pod," she repeated dully.

Dec hid his shaking hands beneath the counter and removed his palm pod first, as slow as he dared, to buy time to devise a plausible explanation for the gloves and stocking. Could the gloves have been borrowed? Perhaps he was returning them to a friend. Could the stocking have been a rag he used to clean his bike? He dropped the bag with the palm pod, gloves and stocking into the tray and slid it back under the glass grill, stomach sinking. He was so screwed.

Iron fingers barely glanced at the tray before she waved him through. "Body scan, then first room on the right."

He bit back a sigh. He was safe for now. Dec removed his shoes and stepped inside the giant egg of a machine in the corridor. The 'virtual butt probe' as Tommy called it, was a human scanner that used a non invasive form of MRI technology to check for foreign objects stashed inside the body.

All clear. The machine flashed green and he was ejected from the other side by a rush of air. His socks made gentle padding noises as he made his way down the narrow corridor and into the interview room.

Officer Montague or 'The Crabman' as Dec had come to refer to him, leant over the lonely island of a table at the centre of the room, proffering an engorged right arm. The first time Montague had interviewed him, Dec had thought his arm was a natural deformity next to his other normal, almost underdeveloped arm, until Montague made a point of telling Dec how he built himself up that way so he could be best shot in the force. "One for strength, the other for dexterity," he'd said. "Light on the trigger, steady on the hold."

Dec winced as Montague took his hand now. His grip was just as it had been the first time—like getting your hand caught in a clamp.

"Declan Hancock. Didn't expect you to be back so soon." Montague's voice was all sand and shell grit. "I see our recommendation to keep out of trouble didn't quite sink in." He motioned for Dec to sit.