Eden & Echo - A Gritty Cyberpunk Noir Thriller

We sat in the white and gray break room, neither of us speaking. The cool blue LED lights gave it a sterile feeling, like we were in a hospital. I rubbed the toe of my boot against the textured cement floor, scraping off bits of rubber as I fidgeted. The cheap brown metal folding chair I sat in was about as comfortable as it looked and I could already feel my butt threatening to go numb.

Finally I couldn't take it anymore. "Is aunt GG a gangster?" I asked.

"What? No." Simon shook his head and furrowed his brow. "Why do you ask that?"

I chose my words carefully. I was seeing things in a new light and pieces were falling into place to form a picture I didn't like. "She didn't want me to become a cop, which would make sense if she was on the other side of the law. She has that helicopter and what she said to André shook him to his core. He was afraid of her, more afraid of her than he was of Gigot."

Simon considered this information before he spoke. "These are all facts, but no she isn't a gangster. GG didn't want you to become a cop because she was worried you might get hurt or attract attention from bad people."

"And the other stuff?"

"How much do you know about what happened to the Döbian high command after the war?" Simon asked.

"Not much." I admitted. "I know some of them were executed. But a lot of them got away."

"That's the long and the short of it. They robbed Döbi blind during the war and when it ended they bought new lives for themselves with their blood money." He said bitterly. We had never spoken about the war but I could feel a great bubble of resentment and anger welling up within Simon like a long forgotten cyst being ruptured.

"Döbian law was clear, if it couldn't be proved that they actively participated in the genocide or killed with their own hands they couldn't be convicted. It seemed like they would get away with it, but Gershwin got the last laugh."

My breath froze in my chest. "Gershwin?" I asked, my heart suddenly racing. "I thought he was executed! Don't tell me he escaped."

"Oh he was executed. But he left a ticking time bomb behind for the rest of his accomplices. You see, he was an incredibly gifted scientist. Maybe one of the best that ever lived. Gershwin was able to combine katzen biomod and stolen human nanotech to produce super soldiers."

"Warhunds." I said, thinking of my grandfather.

"Yes. A whole variety of them, all specialized to execute certain functions. Eventually the process became safe enough for Döbi to start enhancing their special forces. But in order to get to that point Gershwin needed test subjects, which he took from the concentration camps. The first batch of test subjects died horrible deaths. But as time went on and he refined his methods more and more survived."

"Some of them he brainwashed and kept for his personal guard, others he gave to the army as proof of his abilities. But the katzen he experimented on were being prepared for a different purpose." Simon said darkly.

"It might have seemed strange that he was augmenting so many katzen but nobody was willing to question his methods when the high command was so happy with his results. A few months before the war ended he opened the gates and set them all free. High command was angry but they had bigger problems than some escaped prisoners."

"So what happened?" I asked, wondering why I hadn't learned about that piece of information when I was doing my research. I had never heard about Gershwin freeing prisoners.

"For the first few years, nothing. Then one day, well…" Simon stopped. He looked over at me and sighed uneasily. "This part isn't my story to tell. If you want to know more you can ask GG. But some of the survivors decided to finally do something about the war criminals that escaped justice."

"They partnered up with other victims and began hunting down the people responsible. Some they killed, others they brought back to Espa for trial. As you know, Espa is dominantly a katzen territory so their courts were less lenient than those in Döbi."

"So she's a hero." I said, feeling conviction rising in my voice. "She made sure justice was served."

"That she did." Simon said, obviously relieved by my reaction. "After the work was done she settled down in Coven and started her shop. She has done a lot of good over the decades but I think she's still worried that one day her past will come back to haunt her. She's worried that the grandchild of someone she killed or maybe a bigot with an ax to grind will show up someday looking for revenge."

“Espa offered me citizenship in return for helping GG and her friends hunt down the Howlers. Though I would have done it for free. I was worried about retribution. But nothing ever came of it.”

“So you helped?” I had a hard time imagining Simon hurting anyone. “Why were you involved?”

“I'm a survivor too,” he said. For a brief moment Simon seemed like he wanted to elaborate, but he decided against it. “What else do you want to know?"

I tried to digest this new information. GG’s words about the camps echoed in my ears. I loved her like family but she could be a manipulative bitch. She was using the situation with André to force Simon’s hand. She wanted me to know about their history and didn't care about the fallout.

Though why it was so important to her was a mystery. I didn't want to go digging into Simon's past anymore than I wanted people looking into mine. People killed demi-humans on sight. I understood the need to keep secrets. Secrets kept people safe.

There was something else that had been eating away at me as I sat in my uncomfortable metal chair. "How did you not know what André was up to?" I asked. "He was your personal bodyguard. You should have known."

"Ah…" Simon grimaced. "Yes, that will haunt me for a long time. His background check when we hired him a year ago came back clean and his military records were clean too. Either he managed to keep what he was doing hidden all this time or he only started recently. My suspicion, based on how quickly the police in Coven caught onto him, is that this behavior was something new. What they would call an escalation."

I didn't want to say it but I couldn't help myself. "How could you not know? You spend more time with him than anyone else. There had to be some sign of what he was up to."

Simon shook his head. "André and I didn't really talk about anything besides work. He was good at his job and that was that. Some people like to get close with their security detail, I prefer to keep things professional. It's easier that way if one of them has to take a bullet for you."

I winced. The rawness of what he had just said was making my guts churn. "What else do you know about what happened? Do you know why he did it?"

"Security raided his apartment and found some hund supremacist literature, blood of the wolf and all that. So maybe he was radicalized and fell in with a bad crowd. Or maybe he got turned down by someone and that set him off. Even if he confesses we won't know the real reason why he did it because even he probably doesn't know. I'm sure he has excuses. But we will never know the real reason, not really."

I sat in that particular dark pool for a moment, considered it, tried to understand it. "So why didn't you just have the police handle it?"

"This way is better because I could keep my name out of things and police departments leak like a sieve. The secrecy of the bone yard is considered a matter of national security. Since he was apprehended down here I've asked my government contacts to keep his arrest hush hush and seal the file. That should keep my name out of the news. He was my bodyguard, after all."

Something he said stuck out to me as odd. "You've already talked to them? When did you do that?" André had just been captured only a few minutes earlier.

"This morning after GG told me about André I made a few calls and asked them to confirm what she told me. One of them suggested using the boneyard." He shrugged. "We will have to see how that plays out. If André was part of some supremacist group I would rather keep his arrest quiet and avoid painting a target on our backs. But like I said, we will have to see how that plays out." He took a sip from his bottle of water.

I was happy that Simon took the time to sit down with me and explain things. I knew what he said was probably the truth. But of course there would be some things he had held back and this wasn't the whole story. But on the balance it would be true. He wouldn't hide things from me unless he had a good reason. Of course, sometimes the reason was that it was none of my business.

Simon believed that what he called compassionate honesty was a cornerstone of good parenting. Not brutal honesty, that was just beating someone over the head with the truth as you saw it. But compassionate honesty, truth tempered by knowledge of the effect it would have. He said it was the difference between telling someone you hoped they had a nice day and pointing out that their shoes were ugly.

There was a polite knock at the door. "Come in." Simon called out.

Mr. Knight the armorer opened the door and peeked his head inside, his pink fur making him look like a scarily realistic hand puppet. "Simon, can I clean up out here or do you still need the range?" He asked in the same dialect of Döbian that Simon and I spoke at home. I hadn't realized it until now but the two of them looked incredibly similar if you ignored the color of their fur.

Simon shrugged and looked over to me. "What do you think, Hase? We're here already. Do you want to get in some trigger time, just us two?"

"I'd like that." I replied, standing up and pushing my chair in. "It would be nice to blow off some steam."

"Very well." Mr. Knight said as he opened the door the rest of the way for us. "I'll send some target drones down for you to practice on." Then he stopped and looked at me. "You did good today, Eden. You kept your cool and didn't make a bad situation worse by trying to insert yourself into it. Well done."

"I didn't do anything." I replied, feeling self conscious. "Gigot did all the work."

Mr. Knight nodded in agreement. "Yes. And you let him do it uninterrupted. You would be amazed how many people can't just let other people do their jobs. The right move was to do nothing. Perhaps you should meditate on that."

Simon smiled warmly. "Are you thinking about taking on another student, my dear Mr. Knight?"

"Perhaps." The pink hund admitted. "I love weapons but you can only do the inventory so many times a day before your brain threatens to melt out of your ears."

"But not today." Simon said. "Today is our day.

Isn't that right, Hase?

"Yep." I said happily, feeling more centered now that the stress of what I had seen was dissipating. "Today it's just a girl and her father spending some quality time together."

"With machine guns." Simon added, a mischievous grin on his face.

"With machine guns." I grinned back.