Witness Sample

FROM PSYCOP BRIEFS: VOL 1

Have you read PsyCop Briefs, Volume 1? The novel-length collection contains 20 PsyCop shorts—most rare or exclusive, and four brand new. Here’s a sample from the novelette Witness, which takes place between PsyCop 9 and 10.

I

I’ll say one thing for the Fifth Precinct: at least I knew where everything was in relationship to everything else. No matter how many times I tried to get the lay of the land at my new job, I always managed to take an unscheduled detour and show up five minutes late. Laura Kim looked up from her desk and greeted me with, “Oh good, you’re here.” She’d ensconced herself in an office as far away from the FPMP’s resident repeaters as she could possibly get, and I wondered if she’d also had some kind of aversion whammy placed on the door. Because I always found myself checking out the records room or the cafeteria in response to one of her summonings.

Apparently that Friday afternoon I wasn’t the only one at the Federal Psychic Monitoring Program who’d been summoned. Super-buff empath agent Jack Bly stood at the window, hands in pockets, daylight gleaming over his severe buzz cut as he gazed out over the railyard. And the Super Stiff who’d shamelessly bribed me into eating quinoa for dinner last night by shoving his hand down my pants? He was ever so casually checking out Laura’s bookshelf, doing his best not to look smug, and failing miserably.

Laura stood, planted her hands on her desk, and said, “Since Agent Bly has wrapped up his current investigation and Agent Marks has completed his verbal de-escalation course, you’re all available to take part in a technical workshop this weekend.”

What? Now that I’d graduated from the Chicago PD I was supposed to have weekends off. I’d been building up my Netflix queue all week, and a new pizza place down the block just slipped a drool-worthy menu through our mail slot. I was about to say thanks, but no thanks when a quick look from Jacob informed me that Laura wasn’t asking me to give up my weekend, she was telling me. And any protest on my part would just make me look like the dumb FPMP rookie I was.

Fine. I didn’t complain. But I might have sighed. Quietly. To myself.

Laura fanned three sheets of paper across the desk and said, “Due to the particular nature of this training, we’ll require a signature on this waiver form.” Each of us picked up a form and read. Or at least tried to, in my case. The legalese was so thick, they’d lost me after Waiver Release and Assumption of Risk. My eyes defocused as I thought about the Carnivore Special. Ground beef, Italian sausage, Buffalo chicken…was that it?

“Question about item four,” Bly said. “Is it absolutely necessary?”

Four, that’s right. Four toppings. And what was that fourth topping?

Laura said, “Think about it. You’ll get more out of the training.”

Bacon. Yes. I might as well run the pizza through a blender and inject it directly into my arteries—and I could barely wait. Between the quinoa and the working weekend, Jacob totally owed me whatever indulgence I could possibly dream up. Sunday night would be greasy food, TV, sweatpants, and—

“Drugs?” Jacob said. “It’s a lot to ask.”

Wait, when did we start talking drugs? Because scoring random pills from the friend of a friend in a shadowy gin mill was one thing. Having a governmental agency medicate me? That was a flat-out no.

I scanned the consent form in a panic. Four, four…where the hell was four? Bad enough I couldn’t find section four, I started doubting I even remembered what the number itself looked like. I was too busy imagining a bunch of musclebound apes strapping me down to a gurney while someone shoved an IV into my arm….

“There.” Bly reached across and pointed out a paragraph. The paper was trembling. I took a deep breath and somehow managed to quell the impending freakout. Barely. I found number four on my consent form and read it more closely. I understand there are general risks with any medication, including: sedation, dizziness, nausea, vomiting…fucking hell, was it too late to go crawling back to Sergeant Warwick with my tail between my legs? Cold hands and feet, suicidal thoughts and behavior, memory loss and death.

I’d never had any illusions my stint as a federal agent would be a walk in the park. But death? I preferred the threat of dying to come from the barrel of a gun or a few decades of questionable diet, not some dangerous and untested drug that had no business coursing through my system. I was just about to slap my consent form down and make a big stink when I saw a word I knew all too well: Auracel. One tab, twice daily.

Well, fuck. I could do that standing on my head. In fact, when I went grocery shopping, I’d take that dose anyway to spare myself the sight of the intersection repeaters.

Bly penned his signature. Jacob was watching me. I gave in with a shrug, and the two of us signed away our weekend. Laura co-signed the forms, tucked them away in a locked drawer, then pulled out bottled waters and dosage cups, each cup containing a single pill. As I scowled down at the Auracel, I realized I wasn’t the only one who’d hesitated. The other two official psychs were eyeballing their pills with dread. 

“Wait a minute,” I said to Jacob. “You’ll be sick as a dog if you swallow that.”

“It’s Neurozamine,” Laura said calmly. Neurozamine was Auracel’s wimpy cousin—and it didn’t do squat for me. “You’re the only one cleared for Auracel.”

Jacob said, “If one psych is forced to take a stronger medication, it invalidates the entire experiment.”

Laura assured us, “That might be a consideration, if this were an experiment. However, it is not.”

“But you are sending us off with our talents compromised,” Jacob insisted.

“It’s a training exercise in witness interview techniques.”

A single Auracel—essentially, no big deal. It might be strong enough to knock most psychs on their ass, but I’d built up so much resistance I could stomach three or four. A normal dose wouldn’t even leave me with its signature behind-the-eyeball headache hangover. Did I trust Laura Kim? As much as I trusted anyone, I supposed. And in law enforcement, training was as ubiquitous as paperwork. 

I did my very best to staunch the Camp Hell panic as I tipped back the pill—what if it only looked like Auracel, but was something worse, a new psyactive, maybe. Or a tracking chip disguised to look like a pill. But my tongue recognized its old frienemy immediately, the shape of it, the smooth coating—and as I paused just a moment too long before I swallowed, the pervasive, eye watering bitterness.

I swallowed. And if Bly felt me panicking, he wouldn’t get to revel in that sensation much longer. He and Jacob both downed their pills too.

“Agent Powell will see you to your transport,” Laura pressed a button on her phone and a forgettable Caucasian guy in a black suit opened the door, then stood beside it, hands folded, waiting blandly. But as I turned to follow Jacob and Bly, she added, “Agent Bayne, a quick word?”

Now what?

Once we were alone, she said, “Obviously I’m not sending you into a haunted training facility.”

“Okay.”

“But it would look bad if I made an exception for you. Understand?”

“Sure.”

“Even though there wouldn’t be any natural reason to compete among you—I mean, your talents are so completely different that they complement each other—I think that an ability as strong as yours is bound to spur some rivalry. And what I want you to focus on here is gleaning as much as you can from the workshop. So, the Auracel.”

“Right. Got it.”

“Good.”

As I rejoined Jacob and Bly, I puzzled over the fact that Laura was attempting to mitigate jealousy. Over my mediumship. Laura Kim might be one of the smartest people I’d ever met, and I had no problem taking an Auracel for the sake of humoring her. But this idea that anyone found me threatening was patently lame. After the horrific exorcism the three of us had done together—formaldehyde, plastic sheeting and a thrashing corpse—I’d bet money that neither of my colleagues envied my abilities. Plus, it didn’t sound like we’d be training our psychic abilities this weekend, only our mundane skills. And no fellow officer has ever found me threatening.

Creepy? Sure. But never a threat.

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