Free Vigilantes by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

work while in college, and she had received good recommendations from those employers.
    Plus, the public defender’s office at the Impossibles had given her a recommendation that she saw as both excellent and as a slap in the face: it had said that she was as good at organizing her cases as she was at defending them.
    Since no one from the PD’s office won cases at the Impossibles, that was the best recommendation she could get. Except for the organization slap.
    That part disturbed her more than she wanted to admit.
    Still, a job was a job, and she now had a good one with S 3 .
    Which made that whisper through her links so very odd. Why would someone tell her about S 3 ’s conflict of interest? She traced the link, and saw that it had come from Zhu himself. So she tried to contact him directly.
    She got nothing. Not even a hint that she had the right link.
    She tried again, and this time she got an official discouragement:
    You have not been cleared to use this private connection .
    So, she tried to reach him on the S 3 link. She was told to wait.
    She’d never received that message on a link before.
    She thought of contacting the other attorneys, but they were as new as she was. Besides, she’d had weird bosses before. One of the reasons Zhu had put her in charge was that she was organized and knew how to get things done.
    She pinged the network and asked if Zhu’s location was considered public or private.
    For S 3 , the network responded, Torkild Zhu’s location is available.
    She wanted to impatiently snap, So where is he? But she didn’t. Instead she searched his location, and was stunned to discover he was near the front of the building.
    How long has he been there? She sent, thinking she could just wait until he arrived on their floor.
    Ten minutes .
    That seemed odd. And it included the moment when she had gotten the weird message. So she pinged him again, and got nothing.
    Then she realized she could turn on the building’s security system. She asked to see the front sidewalk.
    The security feed showed her an empty sidewalk, except for something near the door—which she couldn’t really see.
    Zoom in , she instructed it.
    That something was a pair of shoes, attached to two legs bent at strange angles. Then she realized that liquid was running down the sidewalk toward the next building.
    She felt a surge of panic.
    The liquid was dark, and there was a toppled cup near the bottom of her screen. Coffee. She had to hope she was looking at coffee.
    Zoom in closer to the door , she instructed the feed.
    It did. She saw a man sprawled, face down, body twisted and bent in a way that no person’s body should be twisted.
    Her breath caught.
    Are emergency services on the way? She asked the security feed. After all, it should have sent for help if someone had a medical emergency outside the main door.
    Emergency services have come and gone , the security feed responded.
    She didn’t understand that. And she had learned through hard experience that she shouldn’t argue with an automated system.
    Instead, she sent, Show me .
    It did. Police officers, faces averted from any security feed, grabbed Zhu, threw him to the ground, and then beat him.
    She stopped the feed. It made her hurt in empathy, and terrified her at the same time.
    Send for medical personnel , she sent the security feed. And then, in case it had been tampered with, she sent for an ambulance herself.
    But she knew better than to sit up here and wait. She sent a message to the other new hires:
    Anyone got medical training?
    Two people responded, saying that they knew basic health stuff.
    Meet me at the front sidewalk, she sent. Right now .
    Then, without waiting for a response, she got up from her desk and ran to the stairs. She wasn’t going to take the elevator, not when she had no idea what was happening.
    She thumped down the stairs, her heart pounding, her breath coming in big gasps, regretting the heels she had so proudly put on that