Story code: ST-001922
Part 4: The Quota
Arthur’s chest hit the edge of the aluminum table, knocking the breath from his lungs as he vaulted forward. He ignored Ms. Sterling’s sharp shriek, his hand closing tight around the smooth glass of her smartphone. His thumb swiped wildly across the screen, pulling up the emergency dial pad. He rapidly punched in the ten-digit IP gateway to his apartment’s server, desperately typing the alphanumeric abort sequence to seal the incubators before the patrol officers turned the doorknob.
He managed to strike the green send icon just as Detective Corliss hit him.
The detective’s heavy shoulder slammed into Arthur’s ribs with the force of a freight train, driving him completely off the table. The world tilted violently. Arthur crashed onto the hard linoleum floor, the back of his skull bouncing against the tile. The phone slipped from his sweaty grip, skittering across the room and coming to rest face-up near the steel legs of Sterling’s chair.
Officer Miller dropped his full body weight onto Arthur’s legs, pinning him to the floor. Corliss drove a heavy knee directly into the center of Arthur’s spine, wrenching his right arm back with enough force to strain the rotator cuff. Cold steel handcuffs ratcheted down around Arthur’s wrists, biting viciously into the bone.
“Assaulting a civilian inside a county law enforcement facility,” Corliss snarled, hauling Arthur up to his knees by the chain of the cuffs. “You just crossed the line from a civil hold to a violent felony, Vance. I’m tagging you as a flight risk and an immediate danger to the public. You’re catching a no-bail hold. You aren’t seeing the outside of a cell until a judge says so.”
Arthur barely registered the throbbing pain in his shoulder or the taste of copper flooding his mouth. His eyes were fixed on the floor, locked on the glowing screen of the dropped phone.
Elena Sterling stood pressed against the far wall of the interrogation room, her chest heaving as she adjusted her wire-rimmed glasses. She took a shuddering breath, her hands shaking slightly as she smoothed the lapels of her charcoal blazer. She stepped forward, deliberately avoiding Arthur’s gaze, and gathered her scattered Vanguard Healthcare paperwork.
“Are you injured, Ms. Sterling?” Corliss asked, keeping his knee planted in Arthur’s back.
“No,” Sterling said. Her voice wavered for a fraction of a second before she forced it back into its rigid, corporate cadence. She clicked her heavy silver pen. “His physical aggression and refusal to cooperate constitute a hostile default under the civil code. I am finalizing the judgment without his signature.”
She slashed a heavy checkmark onto the bottom of the form, pressing hard enough to indent the stack of paper beneath it.
“The wage garnishment will be executed at the maximum penalty rate,” she stated, sliding the paperwork into her leather briefcase. “My collections quota for the quarter is officially secure. Vanguard is satisfied. He is entirely yours, Detective.”
She bent down and retrieved her smartphone from the linoleum. The screen was still illuminated.
Arthur sagged against Corliss’s grip. A soft, automated chime echoed in the dead air of the small room. A new message notification dropped down from the top of her screen. Arthur knew exactly what it was. The query he had fired off right before the tackle had gone through, and his apartment’s server was returning the status report to her device.
“Read it,” Arthur breathed, blood bubbling at the corner of his split lip.
Sterling frowned, looking down at the glass in her hand. She tapped the notification.
Arthur watched her eyes track left to right. He watched the self-assured, bureaucratic armor completely shatter in real-time. The color drained from her cheeks, leaving her skin a sickening, ashen gray. Her mouth fell open.
Arthur didn’t need to see the screen. He had built the environmental system. He knew the exact automated death knell it had just delivered: *CRITICAL ERROR. EXTERNAL DOOR BREACHED BY LAW ENFORCEMENT. CONTAINMENT FAILED. INCUBATORS EXPOSED TO ATMOSPHERE. TRANSGENIC CULTURES: TERMINATED. SARAH VANCE SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: ZERO.*
“You wanted your four hundred thousand dollars,” Arthur whispered, his voice a hollow, defeated rasp. “You planned this arrest to get your signature. You made me miss the six o’clock failsafe.”
Sterling stared at the screen, her hand trembling violently. She looked up at Arthur, raw horror pooling in her eyes.
“Vanguard cut off Sarah’s leukemia treatments,” Arthur said, letting his legs give out entirely, forcing Corliss to hold his dead weight. “So I grew my own. And you just sent the police in to destroy it.”
“I didn’t…” Sterling whispered. She took a stumbling step backward, the phone shaking in her grip. “I was just clearing the ledger.”
“Enough,” Corliss snapped, yanking Arthur upward by the cuffs. “We’re done here. I’ve got patrol officers waiting for my green light to tear that apartment down to the floorboards.”
Corliss dragged Arthur backward toward the doorway. Arthur offered no resistance. The frantic adrenaline was permanently gone, replaced by a freezing, suffocating void.
Before the heavy steel door swung shut on its hydraulic hinges, Arthur looked back into the room one last time. Elena Sterling stood perfectly still in the center of the interrogation room, her prized default judgment paperwork forgotten in her briefcase. She was left clutching the phone to her chest, breathing in shallow, jagged gasps, utterly paralyzed by the unread medical crisis she had just engineered for a bonus.
The deadbolt clacked loudly, sealing Arthur into the sterile hallway, bound for a lightless cell while his sister’s borrowed time evaporated into the open air across town.