TDH

TDH
By Scott Wilson
Word Count: 704

“Is that the last of them?” Dimitri asked his partner, Jess.

“Don’t count on it,” she replied, placing a heavy silver frame in the back of the police cruiser.

“You know how many serial killers there are in this city. No matter how many we catch, there will always be more to replace them.”

Thudding rocked the frame, almost knocking it from the secure track it rested in.

“Feisty little bastard, isn’t she?” Jess said.

Dimitri looked at the distorted and twisted face of the female they imprisoned in the time-dimensional holding cell, or TDH as commonly called. The scowl on the woman’s face made her look more beast than human, and she fought that way when they cornered her earlier.

“Has anyone every escaped from a TDH before?” Dimitri said.

“In the ten years I have been on the force, I’ve only ever hear of one escape. And that was when the frame was hanging on the gallery wall back at the prison and the damned thing malfunctioned. The bastard smashed a dozen frames, killing the prisoners and let a couple other maniacs out before being subdued.”

“I heard some of the politician’s were trying to pass a law so the victims or victim’s relatives could keep the THD for murderers.” Dimitri said.

“Why would anyone want to hang a living picture of a criminal on their own wall is beyond me,” said Jess.

“The temptation to incinerate them would be too much for them. Can’t see the legislation being passed.”

Jess and Dimitri secured the rear doors of the car and began their routine patrol again. Two hours into their shift and they had apprehended six wanted criminals already. There was room for another four TDH’s before they would need to head back to head quarters to retrieve fresh ones; much more efficient than the old days with one prisoner per paddy-wagon.

Jess drove the vehicle, keeping strictly to the designated route for the twelve hour shift. While she could leave the onboard computer to navigate the preprogrammed path, Jess always enjoyed manually controlling the vehicle.

“Why do you always drive, Jess?”

“I’m just old school, Dimi,” she replied. “Never got used to the idea of a microchip in control of my life.”

“Yea...” cried Dmitri as a crash rang out from the back of the vehicle.

The street lights shone bright, then exploded. The control panel on the vehicle went black and the car slowed to a halt, veering into the window of a bakery before stopping completely.

“Get your blaster ready!” Jess shouted, wiping blood from her brow.

Dmitri unbuckled his seatbelt, then pulled his standard issue blaster from his belt holster. He did not see the razor sharp edge of a broken frame come down quickly, severing the hand holding his blaster.

“Aaargh!” he screamed as blood spurted freely across the front windscreen of the squad car.

Jess pressed the internal blast shield button, but the loss of power rendered it useless. Quickly, she pulled her blaster out and sprayed wildly into the back of the vehicle. Flashes of the pulsing laser gave the two officers brief glimpses of the crazed criminal holding some kind of electrical disruptor device in her teeth.

“You bitch!” Jess cried, firing another three blasts into what remained of the back of the vehicle.
She felt the cold, sharp chill of metal enter her back, and explode through her chest. She dropped the blaster and gasped for air as the frame twisted inside her, piercing her lungs and severing her spinal cord.

Dmitri grabbed his partner’s blaster with his remaining hand and fired a barrage of shots behind Jess’s chair. In the flashes of light, he saw that all frames were smashed to pieces, giving this psycho a huge supply of swords to attack with. In the light of the last blast, he saw that the criminal was no longer in the vehicle.

The last thing Dmitri heard was the slicing of his skull and the severing of his brain as a long blade burst through the roof and into his skull.