S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) by Saul Tanpepper Page A

with the other Operator to check for damage and to see if the outflow filters caught anything, scraps of uniform, implant pieces. He hasn’t reported back yet.”
    Harrick stared at the screen for a moment before shaking her head. “How long?”
    â€œOnce they drop the search and recovery unit into the tanks, they estimate two hours to run a complete system sweep. My hope is we’ll get confirmation much sooner than that. Like you, I’m eager to close the book on this one.”
    â€œAnd the vic?”
    â€œI’ll take him over to Post-Mortem for cleaning and processing on my way back into town. They’ll swab the bite for DNA and make a positive ID of the biter. Arc can have him after that.”
    â€œI’ll send over a bus.”
    â€œNo need. He’s contained. We got this.”
    The small man standing at Eric’s elbow shifted uncomfortably. He’d been up since nine o’clock the previous evening and had been running on adrenaline all day. But now the excitement was giving way to fatigue and worry.
    â€œI was hoping I could go home,” he began. “My wife—”
    But Eric cut him off. He wasn’t interested in hearing the man’s excuses, and the fact that he actually thought he’d be going home after what had happened here only irritated him all the more. He and the other guy, the one checking the filters with Vanne, were both going to spend at least one night in a jail cell while the investigation continued. And depending on what the interviews yielded, maybe quite a few more nights. They should’ve reported the system glitch immediately.
    Eric rubbed a hand on his cheek. He was also tired and eager to get home. He needed to check on Jessie, make sure she was doing all right. It was killing him to watch her drift away the way she was, from her friends. From Kelly. She was in so much pain, and it was clearly eating her up inside.
    He realized Harrick was speaking:
    â€œâ€” an isolated glitch. We’ve finally received official confirmation of system failures in at least two other cities over the past twenty-four hours.”
    â€œPublic works?” Eric asked, the uneasy feeling in his stomach quickly expanding like a bad gas bubble. “Or military?”
    â€œSo far it’s just civilian facilities. Mostly isolated to remote sites with older stream hardware. Arc is activating more units to get everything updated within the next two weeks.”
    â€œThat makes a ton of sense,” Eric said, frowning. “Like throwing gasoline on a fire to douse it.”
    Captain Harrick winced. Eric knew that she would’ve put him on notice in the past for speaking out against Arc, but the rules seemed to have changed in the past few weeks. No longer did Arc exert the same power over the citizenry anymore. Or the government. In a surprising turn of events two weeks before, a senator from Idaho called for a congressional investigation into mismanagement and abuses of privilege by high-ranking executives in the company. He accused Arc of diverting profits meant for upgrading their systems so they could pay outrageous salaries and bonuses. The allegations themselves weren’t terribly surprising, just the audacity of the senator in making them so publicly.
    In an apparent retaliatory move by Arc, the senator was accused of accepting payoffs from foreign companies and spying for the Southern States Coalition. This was typical tit-for-tat, except this time Arc’s claims seemed to have little bite.
    Eric had learned that police forces in other cities had stopped interfering with open protests against Arc and their stream technologies. People were boycotting the new federal inoculation initiative, which mandated total implant compliance by month’s end.
    â€œNo military issues have been reported to the civilian agencies,” the captain emphasized.
    â€œArc would probably try and suppress knowledge of it if there