reeze!" One of the officers hissed at me.
  Damn it, I thought. This was sure to blow whatever night I was about to have with Myra.
  I turned back to look at her, to hopefully get some kind of indication she knew this wasn't my fault, but she was gone. I looked around quickly, but there was no sign of her.
  She had just evaporated into the night.
  The cops must have thought I was looking for an escape route.
  "I said, freeze!" the officer shouted at me in an angry tone. At the same time I could make out several more assault rifles coming up as a few more took note of me.
  I stopped moving, half raising my hands to show I had nothing in them.
  "Kneel onto the ground and submit to mandatory inspection," he barked.
  I slowly try to fall to the ground without crashing my knees to the pavement, while still keeping my hands up. It never works and I thudded to the hard ground, a flash of pain racing through my knee caps.
  "Hands on your head," he barked again and I complied.
  Now two of the others came up to me and started patting me down. I noticed one of the narcs was taking an interest in what was going on. He was dressed in night gear, all black with a nylon hood stretched over his head. He had what I think were night vision gear pushed to the top of his head. I had heard they were using some of the military grade stuff.
  Actually, that was stupid, I thought. They were the military. The Department of Domestic Protection had absorbed the state Guard and Reserves as well as most of the domestic police force in one felled swoop a couple of years ago.
  One of the agents stepped up to me as the cop frisking me came up with nothing.
  "Papers," he said calmly, but with a tone that clearly not a question.
  "My back pocket," I said, my hands still on my head.
  He nodded at me and I slowly brought a hand down to my pocket and slid out the small, red bi-fold and handed to him. It was about the size of a passbook. Red plastic-leather, with a silver seal of the United States imprinted on both sides. Inside was my full identification. Photo, full name, address, Social Security number. As well as a short hand version of my work and medical history, the places I've visited outside my home region and a bunch of other stuff that's all written in machine code on the last four pages. They have some kind of special reader to decode that and I have never really been able to find someone who knew, definitively what it was.
  There are rumors that it's a bio-tracking chip. That satellites can pin-point where you are at any time. Or that they have subliminal messages that can be passed through it at any time. There's no shortage about what those last four pages are really.
  The narc flipped open the bi-fold and made the standard holding-out-the-id-at-length-while looking back and forth at the pictures maneuver.
  "Full name," he said and I answered.
  "Address," he said and I answered and he continued down the list. I always thought this was the stupidest part of the whole inspection routine. If I wanted to evade, I would have memorized the freaking ID, wouldn't I?
  After that, he flipped through some of the other pages, pausing here and there to really inspect the information.
  "Are you alone?" He asked without looking at me.
  I thought about this for a second.
  Was Myra a poli-narc? If she was then this was a set up and if I answered wrong, I would wind up in the tank again. Or worse. But why set me up? Me? I'm nobody. My gut reaction was, no, she wasn't with them and I decided that my second was up and I better say something now or they wouldn't believe anything I said.
  "Yeah," I said. "I was heading home."
  He nodded slowly, "And where was home again?"
  Inside, I sighed. "Eight Holyoke." Just like it says in my book.
  He smirked. That kind of smirk that says I have all the power and I'm about to exorcise it so lets see some graciousness. "Okay, stand up."
  I brought my arms down and put my hands on the pavement and lifted myself up. My knees felt achy. I brushed some dirt and pebbles from my pants and then from my hands.
  "Alright, Jack," he said my name like it was a thing. "As you can no doubt guess, we're about to hit this rave for illicit drug trafficking."
  I restrained myself from sighing again.
  Political/Narcotics officers were constantly "raiding" places for drug trafficking or political insubordination. The latter being something of a wide net offense, some of which can make you disappear.
  At least isn't that bad.
  "I can see you've had a few drinks, but you're pretty coherent. You seem like an upstanding citizen," he smirked again. Why do they talk like that?
  "So, Jack," again, my name sounded like something dismissive. "How many people upstairs?"
  "Oh," I said before I could stop myself. There really is no sense lying, he was either going to haul me in for public intoxication or drug use. If I lie it would get bumped up to impeding an investigation or interference with law enforcement, another generic violation.
  "Probably about a hundred, maybe one-fifty," I said. "I'm not a hundred percent sure, it's dark."
  He nodded, "Of course, of course. Just a ballpark figure."
  The narc looked over at the other one. The second one was sitting inside the police cruiser at the computer. He looked up and nodded to the narc whose been questioning me.
  "Good," the narc said. "Now, I'm going to do you a favor, Jack."
  I looked up at him. I really wish he would stop using my name, but I tried to keep the contempt out of my face. I could only hope that I was succeeding.
  "Because you haven't told me one lie, I'm going to let you go home."
  "Really?" Again, I couldn't help it. I've never heard of a poli-narc letting anyone go home. But then, I've never run into a staging area before a big take down, either.
  He smirked again, wider this time. "Yup, I sure am. Provided you don't drive home."
  "Yes, I mean, no. I was going to take the bus," and I gestured down the street leading to Central Square.
  "Good, good. Now I'm just going to make a note of how helpful and cooperative you've been," he said and pulled up a small box he had on a chain at his side. He took it and keyed something in and slid it over the back of the red passbook. I assumed he had just encoded those pages with information that I'm snitch or something. Maybe it's not such a bad idea that only they can read it.
  It beeped softly as he drew it over the bottom of the passbook.
  He smirked and handed it back to me, like he was passing me a pack of smokes. "Here ya go, Jack."
  I took it and slid it into my back pocket.
  "You're free to go, now leave and don't come back here," he said that with a less friendly tone.
  "Yes," I said and slowly walked past him and threaded my way through the cruisers to the other side of the street. I looked back to see them putting on their riot gear and forming up at the doors, right out of sight.
  As I turned the corner, I could hear them rushing into the building. I wondered where Andrea had gotten to and if she would be calling me tomorrow for bail.
  And what the hell happened to Myra?
  Just my luck, meet a hot girl and she vanishes.