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Nexus

Chapter One: Back from the Abyss

Sergeant Ryan used his old ID card to swipe the lock on the door to the detectives’ bullpen. He was slightly surprised to see that it still worked. That was a good sign. He had been away for over three months and was sure that his access had been cancelled.

He was a large man, somewhere in his late forties, with thinning brown hair and grey eyes. His complexion was pale, like it usually was in early spring before the sun got strong enough to burn his thin Irish skin, but it was already mid-summer. His suit hung on him as if he had lost a lot of weight recently, but his frame was still solid.

A stunned silence fell on the bullpen when he stepped inside. Someone must have told the other detectives that he was due back that day, but they stopped what they were doing and stared none the less. Worse was the whispering that followed the few moments of silence. The other detectives, some of which had purported to be his friends, were all giving him a wide berth, as if he were diseased.

Perhaps I am, he thought.

At the far end of the bullpen the door to the Chief of Detectives office opened. Lawson, the Chief’s assistant, motioned for Ryan to come over.

“Tony.” Lawson said by way of greeting as he held the door for Ryan to enter.

“Lieutenant.” Ryan replied. He had never liked Lawson much, even when the younger man had been his trainee. The fellow did have a head for administration though, and Ryann felt that he had done the Detective Squard an invaluable service when he suggested that Lawson take the Lieutenant’s exam and switch career paths.

“Watch your lip in there.” Lawson whispered as he made way for the big red-headed detective. “The Mayor just finished chewing him a new asshole for letting you stay on the Squad.”

“Thanks.” Ryan mumbled. Maybe Lawson was not so bad after all.

Ryan closed the door behind him and stood silently while he waited for the Chief to address him. He could sense the tense atmosphere in the room even without Lawson’s warning.

After several moments of suspense Chief Fanning blew a lungful of air from between pursed lips and threw his hands in the air as he paced behind his desk.

“What am I supposed to do with you, Ryan?”

Several sarcastic replies leapt to mind, but Ryan wisely stayed silent.

The Chief was several years older than Ryan, and just as big, but with considerably more girth around the belly region; the fate of getting promoted to a desk job. Up until a little over three months ago Ryan had been working on developing a similar gut, but there was no trace of it now.

The chief continued, “First you go after a crony of the Mayor’s off the book, then you get shot by a thug that you can’t connect to the suspect, and then you hit the sauce so hard your liver appealed to the Police Association for relief.”

“My wife also left me somewhere along in there.” Ryan offered, perhaps as an excuse for the drinking bout that had recently landed him in rehab.

Fanning’s large fists crashed down on his desk, making several heads in the bullpen turn in their direction.

“Any one!” The Chief roared. “Any one of those things, including the separation, is grounds for temporary re-assignment. With all four you’re lucky to be still on the Force, let alone still in plain clothes. The Mayor wanted to see you back in uniform and on traffic duty in front of City Hall.”

Ryan’s head tilted to one side, a habit of his when he was curious or suspicious. “So, why aren’t I?”

“Because I’m understaffed and, unfortunately for me, you’re the best detective on the Force.” Fanning fumed. “But you can’t stay on Homicide.”

The Homicide Squad was the pinnacle of the Detective Bureau, and Ryan flinched when he heard that he was off it. He wondered how far he had fallen, but he was sure he was about to find out.

“Major Crimes?” Ryan ventured.

“No.”

“Robbery?”

“Nope.”

“Narcotics?”

“Nada.”

“Special Victims?”

“No way.”

“Christ Chief! What’s left? Wait … no … not … not Vice?”

“Yes, Vice.”

Ryan held his breath to quell his anger and thought about it. Vice included gambling, which was largely mob run. The man he had been after when he got shot, one of the Mayor’s major contributors, was rumoured to be involved in illegal gaming … amongst other things.

“Sure, Chief. I fucked up, big time. I guess I’ve got to earn my way back in.”

“You got that first part right, but you’re not in the clear yet. The only way I could keep you on the Detective Squad at all was on special assignment, part of a new initiative City Hall is starting.”

Ryan felt his balls trying to crawl back up into his pelvis. A ‘City Hall initiative’ could only mean that the Mayor had thought up a subtle but more painful way to punish him.

“What’s that, Chief?” Ryan asked carefully, holding his emotions in.

“Club and Cabaret verification.”

It was too much for the Irish-Italian cop to bear.

“Clubs and Cabarets?” He roared. “For Christ’s sake, Chief, that’s Bylaw’s job! Checking out licenses and seating capacities, counting bathroom stalls and seeing if the employees watch their hands!”

“These days it’s more like checking to see if the girls and boys they hire as ‘entertainment’ are all legal age and have current medical exams.”

Ryan’s anger deflated as quickly as it had spread. They called themselves ‘Clubs’, ‘Cabarets’ and ‘Gentleman’s Retreats’, but those were all just pseudonyms for the bordellos, whore houses and strip joints that used to operate illegally when Ryan first joined the force. The cops that had patrolled them since partial legalization were not even real detectives, just plainclothes cops that wanted to make detective or - a dark thought leapt into Ryan’s mind - former detectives who were too burnt out to put on the street anymore.

“Are you trying to tell me something, Chief?”

Fanning sat down and let out a sigh. “No Ryan, I’m not. You were a good detective before your … your issues … and you still have a lot of years left in you. If you keep your nose clean on this assignment, I can move you back into real detective work once the mayor forgets about you or retires or loses an election or something. It’s the best I can do. But the specific assignment has nothing to do with City hall’s initiative.”

The hair was standing up on the back of Ryan’s neck again.

“If it’s not the crappy assignment,” he said slowly and carefully, “then what is it?”

“You’re getting a new partner.”

Ryan breathed a sigh of relief. True, he preferred to work alone, but he had successful partnerships before. The force had been diversified since the reforms of the twenty-twenties and Ryan had been partners with women, gay men, visible minorities and people from oppressed religious groups over the years. Each one had been a dedicated and capable police officer and Ryan had not had any problems working with any of them. What was the worst that the Mayor could throw at him?

Ryan heard the door to the Chief’s office open behind him.

“Detective Sergeant Ryan, meet your new partner, Detective Flynn.”

Ryan turned, his hand coming up automatically to shake that of his new partner, but it froze below belt level.

Detective Flynn was somewhat shorter and slimmer than Ryan. Detective Flynn was dressed in a nice three-piece suit, polished oxford shoes and a tie. Detective Flynn had large brown eyes and a neutral expression.

Detective Flynn also had the head of a German Shepherd dog.

* * * * * * * *

Back before Ryan had been born there had been many great and sudden advancements in the science of genetics. Initially shocked by the possibilities, and goaded by religious groups fearing for the future of the human race, legislation was passed in most countries to restrict it’s use, but there are always ways around the law.

A childless couple whose genetic deficiencies had prompted them to become a leading geneticist and a gynecologist specialising in in-vitro fertilization were the first to move to move to a country that had no such laws so that they could design their own children as they pleased. As it was, they were both fans of a certain anime cat girl and thought that it would be nice if their daughter had cat ears and a tail to match their favourite character. The results were so pleasing to them that they immediately had several more, adding more feline features with each pregnancy.

They had become rich providing children to otherwise infertile celebrities, and their well-to-do friends soon learned of their unique offspring and demanded some of their own. It blossomed into a cottage industry of sorts, with the rich and famous from all over the world coming to their clinic for ‘fur’ babies, as they began to be referred to. The children grew up in various degrees of luxury, with all the advantages and downfalls that kind of lifestyle can bring.

The Doctors had designed their creations to be fertile but tried to make the genes governing the animalistic traits recessive so that their offspring would look like ordinary human children, unless they too paid to have their babies’ DNA altered. But, as with many emerging technologies, something went wrong. Altered adolescents that became pregnant gave birth to children with the same animal traits as their mother, and if the father was altered also then the child may have even more animal traits. After several generations it was not unusual to see descendants that were completely covered in fur with the heads and tails of animals, but otherwise human, walking around.

Anthropologists coined the term Homo Pellicius, meaning Furry man, to describe them. But most people just referred to them as Furries, after a cult that died out in the mid-twenty-first century.

To complicate issues, the technology that was used to shape the genes was not difficult to obtain, and once the technique was perfected it was copied by many, and at much more affordable rates. The number of furry children exploded around the globe, and people began to exploit them, breeding them as playthings for the rich and perverted. Eventually, the World Court ruled that anyone descended from identifiable humans was also human, no matter how much their genes had been altered, and entitled to all the same rights as any other human. Many countries were forced to change their laws to legitimise their existence.

But once the cat was out of the bag, so to speak, it could not be put back in. Traffickers that could no longer buy and sell furries realized that the technology could be used in reverse, to give animals human traits.

Artificial human gene banks had existed for the better part of a century to support gene therapy. Courts had ruled as far back as the twentieth century that genetic lines produced in a lab from multiple tissue samples had no legal status in and of themselves but were rather the intellectual property of the company that had produced them. The criminal gangs bought genetic stock from these companies and set up shop in countries where the laws were either very lax or they had control of the government. Then they hired or blackmailed geneticists to splice those genes into animal embryos, creating what they referred to as ‘upright animals’. The result was a line of anthropomorphic animals with legs and feet, heads, tails and pelts much like those of their animal ancestors, but that were intelligent and stood upright. The traffickers gave them human hands so that they could work, human brains and vocal cords so that they could communicate and human reproductive organs, because breeding them for the sex trade was the most profitable line of all. These anthropomorphic animals, and all their descendants, became known as Anthros.

Many people around the world objected to the trade in Anthros. Again, the World Court had to step in. They ruled that since the human DNA that was produced in labs could not be traced to one single donor the Anthros were without specific human ‘parentage’. Therefore, the resulting offspring were not human, and not entitled to rights other than that which local jurisdictions may grant them. They were, by definition, property; livestock to be treated as the owner saw fit within the framework of the relevant laws governing their treatment.

As the years passed and sympathy for the Anthros grew some countries granted them freedom from ownership, while not going quite as far as giving them human status. Some jurisdictions invoked old bestiality laws to curtail the sex trade with them, driving it underground, while others merely licensed it. In Ryan’s city, Anthros were nominally free, but did not have the same basic rights and freedoms as the humans, fur-less or furry. They could be employed in the sex trades, whereas, by a quirk of the law, humans could still not legally engage in prostitution.

This gave rise to the licenced clubs, cabarets and retreats that employed, and exploited, Anthros in the sex trades. Meanwhile, human sex workers still operated underground, suffering similar exploitation. Club and Cabaret Certification existed to keep those clubs featuring human dancers and stripers compliant with the prohibition on human sex work while ensuring that the Anthros in the legalized bordellos were well treated. As Ryan had surmised, until that day the function had been conducted mainly by civilian by-Law officers with only occasional supervision by the police.

* * * * * * * *

Stunned into silence, Rayn’s detective instincts took over and he studied the dog that was standing before him wearing a nice suit. The head resembled a German Shepherd, with the typical black and brown markings, a long snout, strong jaw and upright ears. Most of its body was hidden by the three-piece suit, which fit rather well, Ryan noted, considering it was being worn by a canine, but the legs sticking out of the trousers ended in two large furry paws with four digits and claws, just like a dog’s, with the lower leg angled backwards, also like a dog’s. The hands, however, resembled human hands, with four fingers and a thumb, but they were covered in brown fur and had large black leathery patches on the palms and inner side of the fingers. He could not see its tail, but he had seen enough of these on the streets to assume that it had one.

As his eyes came back up Ryan saw that there was a gold Detective’s badge clipped to the creature’s belt, and that shook him out of his stupor.

“Is this some kind of sick joke?” Ryan yelled as he spun back to face the Chief.

“No, Ryan. It is not.”

“But it’s a dog!”

“Flynn is a duly appointed police officer.”

“He’s a dog.”

“SHE was a certified K9 officer, and according to laws passed over a century ago to prevent criminals from interfering with a police animals, that makes HER a bono fide police officer in the eyes of the law.”

Ryan was familiar with the concept. Anyone striking a police dog or the horses once ridden by the mounted patrol was guilty of assaulting a police officer, and that brought severe penalties. Poisoning, shotting, stabbing or otherwise causing the death of a police animal was treated the same way as killing a real cop; people had been executed in some jurisdictions for it.

“Well forgive me Chief, but SHE is wearing a detective badge and the last I heard sniffing bad guys’ butts for contraband drugs was not considered detective work.”

Flynn’s head was moving back and forth between the two humans as they argued, like a dog following the ball in a tennis match. At this point though she decided to speak up.

“Perhaps you were unaware, Sergeant Ryan,” she said, “that after Anthros were granted their freedom all those employed by the police were enrolled as paid members of the Force. That required us to join the Police Association, just like our human counterparts. The Association, your union Sergeant Ryan, is there to ensure that ALL members are treated fairly and accordingly with the collective agreement. That agreements states, in part, that ANY officer may take the detectives’ examination and, if successful, have their names put on the waiting list for promotion.”

Ryan’s jaw hung open. “It talks!”

The Chief sighed again. “They all do, Ryan. The force has employed Anthros for tracking and riot control for some time now. As Flynn stated, the Police Association has represented them in several disputes with the Force regarding equal pay and opportunities. There are now two Canines and one Equine as acting sergeants on the Force, with at least two Anthro candidates on the lieutenant’s list.”

“That doesn’t mean that you actually have to promote them … does it?”

Flynn rolled her eyes. “I am standing right here, you know.”

“Look Ryan.” the Chef said, rather forcefully. “This is the initiative that the Mayor is pushing; the promotion of Furry and Anthro officers in all city services to show that the city values their service and sees them as full citizens.”

Ryan glanced sideways at Flynn, then spoke in a low voice to the Chief, “They can’t vote, can they?”

“Furries can, since they are considered human, they have always had that right. Anthros, like Detective Flynn here, cannot … not yet, but the day is coming when they will be able to vote.”

“But they’re not human!”

“Neither were women, legally speaking, at one time.” Flynn injected. “The World Court decision left it up to the nations, states and municipalities to decide on what rights to bestow … or deny. There is, however, some debate as to whether voting is a right, a privilege or a duty. It is especially vague when it comes to municipal politics, where many jurisdictions have the power to decide who can or cannot vote, regardless of their status as human or as citizens.”

“So, you’re a lawyer now too.”

“Not yet. I’m only in my second year of Law School with the online university program.”

Ryan turned back to plead with the Chief. “Common Chief, do I really deserve this? I’m going to be a laughingstock as it is with the club detail.”

“Many of your colleagues work with officers like Flynn every day on the tactical and drug squads without any issues.” The Chief reminded him. “Besides, the clubs that have prostitution licences are all staffed with Anthros, and Flynn knows the territory. Since you are not part of the general detective pool, I’ve even given you two your own office, on the third floor, so you won’t have to put up with these bozos teasing you.”

Chief Fanning put a meaty hand between Ryan’s shoulder blades and steered him toward the door.

“I’ve had all the club files moved there from City Hall. You two can take a few days to straighten them out and get to know each other before you start making the circuit.”

Fanning pushed Ryann out of his office. Flynn was already outside waiting and Ryan heard the door click shut decisively behind him.

The detective bullpen was silent again. Everyone was staring at them. Ryan swallowed and headed for the door.

Before he got halfway Detective Brown, a large black man half Ryan’s age stepped into his path. He was holding a small box in his hands.

“Ryan, before you go, you’ll need this.”

Ryan assumed that it was his gun and badge inside the box. He had to turn them in when he went into rehab in case things went bad; the Force didn’t want him offing himself with a police-issued weapon. He accepted the box and opened the lid. Reaching in he pulled out a red nylon leash and a leather dog collar. The tag on it read “Flynn.”

Ryan hastily pushed the leash and collar back into the box, but it was too late. The rest of the detectives, including Flynn, had already seen them. With few exceptions the room erupted in laughter. Flynn’s muzzle wrinkled and her lip curled, exposing sharp teeth on one side. Brown took a step back and his hand dropped to his waist, where his service revolver was clipped to his belt.

“Don’t project your fetishes on me.” Ryan said as he pushed the box into Brown’s chest, forcing the younger detective to take it back. “Come on, Flynn. We got work to do.”

The laughter subsided somewhat as Ryan strode out of the bullpen without looking to see if Flynn was following or not. It was cut off completely when the solid door closed behind him.

Flynn moved up beside Ryan as the senior detective continued towards the stairs.

“Sorry about that, Sergeant.”

“It’s not your doing, Flynn.”

“Still, I knew that I’d get ribbed by the Squad, especially as the first Anthro Detective on the Force, but when I made Detective, I assumed that they would put me in the general pool. I didn’t think that I would be assigned as anyone’s partner, not right off. I should have warned you.”

Yes, you should have, Ryan thought, but he said, “I can take care of myself.”

Flynn gave him a sideways glance, but her expression was still neutral. Ryan assumed that she knew about his recent problems and bristled at the thought that she might be judging him; not because of what she was, but because she was so junior, a brand-new detective.

He took the stairs to avoid any awkward questions from anyone he might know on the elevator. The Detective division was on the second floor, so they just had to climb up one flight, but doing so reminded Ryan that he had been effectively banished, exiled and cut off from the rest of the Squad. He wondered if they would even have access to the separate server the Detectives’ kept all their data on.

The “office” Fanning had assigned them too had obviously been a storage room up until recently. Most of the space was taken up by two old desks, a dozen filing boxes and two old metal filing cabinets. There were no windows and no false ceiling to conceal the ductwork and various pipes that ran through the walls. There were no environmental controls either, and Ryan could image them cooking in there come August then freezing in January.

“We’ll have to requisition a fan and a space heater.” Flynn said, obviously thinking on the same lines as Ryan.

“That is the building’s main HVAC line.” He told her, pointing to a rectangular metal duct that ran uninterrupted from wall to wall. “I’ll bring in a drill and a hack saw and mount a grill with an adjustable aperture onto it. It will be quicker than waiting for the paperwork to filter down to City Services.”

“You won’t get in trouble for that?”

“Not if they don’t find out about it.”

Flynn plucked at her suit jacket. “I don’t mind the cold so much, but it does get kinds hot in this old building in the summer.”

She began to move behind one of the two desks but stopped and looked to Ryan for approval. Both desks were the same, mid-century models probably recovered from surplus, with worn out swivel chairs and older model workstations.

“Take whichever you like.” Ryan told her.

Flynn stood behind the desk and removed her jacket. She draped it over the back of the chair before undoing her tie and loosening the top buttons on her dress shirt. It was only with the jacket off and her cleavage exposed that Ryan realized that what he had taken for a typical deep German Shepherd chest was in fact two large furry breasts. It brought home to him how little he knew about Anthros.

“Damn it.” Flynn swore, adding a few more colourful words as she sat down.

“Well, at least you swear like a real cop.” Ryan noted as he moved to the other desk. “What’s wrong with your chair?”

“It’s not the one I ordered. I need one with a tail hole and extra lumbar support.” She said as she tucked her thick tail beside her and tried to find a comfortable seating position. “Although we Anthros are basically humanoid from knee to neck the geneticists that designed us overlooked a few things, like hips that can take the added stress of walking upright. After an hour or two standing up the pain becomes unbearable. Sitting in a chair designed for the human spine afterward just makes it worse. I’d be better off squatting on a box.”

Ryan grunted. You learn something new every day, he mused. Her willingness to discuss what he considered a medical condition so openly prompted him to ask about something else that was on his mind.

“Why the suit?”

Flynn looked up from logging onto the workstation. “Huh?”

“Why are you wearing a suit?”

“I was told to wear business attire if I wanted to make a good impression on my first day. My Sergeant on the Tactical Squad said that suits were standard for detectives until they made one of the special task forces, like Intelligence or Narcotics.” Her nose tilted as she looked him up and down. “You’re wearing a suit.” She noted.

“I always wear … I always wore a suit on homicide. But why not a dress, or a pantsuit. You are female, right? A three-piece is a little masculine, even for a … a …”

“Anthro.”

“Right, Anthro.”

“Regular women’s clothing doesn’t hang so well on us. It’s those canine hips I mentioned earlier. Same for women’s undergarments; they don’t account for the fur. Men’s suits have slimmer hips and more room in the crotch for air circulation. Also, bra straps tend to get caught in the long hair of breeds like mine. The vest of the three-piece suit serves the same purpose while looking more professional.”

Ryan was regretting that he asked. He changed the subject.

“What’s your first name, Detective Flynn? I’ll need it to open a personnel file on you as your supervisor.”

“It’s just Flynn. Most Anthros have just one name. I was born before the emancipation, and the Breeder that owned us named the offspring of his breeding pairs alphabetically. I was the sixth puppy born to my mother, Molly, and the Breeder liked the name Flynn. It’s not so bad … I have a sister named Buddy, but mine’s more neutral. After the emancipation we had the choice of taking the Breeder’s last name but my Mother refused. She raised us with just our given names.”

“The Personnel department didn’t mind?”

“They put ‘Canine’ in that space, but legally I’m just Flynn.”

“Humph. Kind of like Cher.”

“Who is Cher? Another Anthro?”

“No, a human singer that lived to be a hundred and thirty-seven due to plastic surgery and hormone replacement therapy. So, I guess I’ll just call you Flynn.”

“And I should call you …?”

“Sergeant.”

“Right.” She looked around at the file boxes and the empty cabinets. “So … Sergeant … it looks like By-Law never bothered to digitalize their records, so how do you want to arrange the files? Alphabetically or by case number?”

“Alphabetically. I never refer to cases by the number records assigns them. What do we have?”

Flynn opened the nearest box and rummaged through it. “Files on the individual clubs, records of visits and violations. Files on the owners and principal officers. There’s an index of those here.”

“Let me see it.”

Flynn passed a thin file over to Ryan. He opened it and slid a finger down the list. A lot of the names were familiar to him from working Organized Crime and later Homicide; the two covered a lot of the same territory, when you thought about it. Most of the people named as officers of the corporations that owned the clubs had been implicated in, but never convicted of, crimes like illicit gambling, drug trafficking, and the occasional mob hit.

And if these goons are on the list … he thought with rising excitement as he turned the page to where the names that started with the letter ‘G’ were …

His finger stopped on the name of the Chief Executive of the Kit-Kat Klub, one Noah Gunderson.

“Well, well, well.” He mumbled under his breath. “This assignment just got a lot more interesting.”