Detectives Karen Lovelace and Jason Nelson (Just Another Day)

NOTE: Detectives Lovelace and Nelson come from the story Just Another Day.

"Hold her down!" Came Lovelace's grim order.

Nelson was quick, fast and young. Heeding his older partner's command, he grabbed the struggling suspect, putting his dense weight atop her.

"This'll all be over soon." Lovelace said, her voice steady, trained. She brought up the needle of Ukrainian smack, ejecting a little and the air.

"Немає! Немає! Геть!" the poor woman exclaimed, wrestling against the leather-jacketed detective above her.

"Sshh." Lovelace cooed. She brought the smack to Sofia's vein, and went ham on the plunger.

Sofia fought it just like her people fought against invasion. She rallied at first, but there was no more denying a heroin overdose than there was a column of T-90M Proryvs. She faded fast, and Lovelace and Nelson left her on her back.

"Karen, she's gone." Nelson said, he sounded wrecked, paler than ever.

"Don't throw up." Lovelace warned him. They couldn't exactly be leaving DNA evidence at the scene of... this.

"That's all you've got to say? We a war refugee and that's all you have to say?" Nelson said, exasperation rising.

"Easy Babyface, you forgetting who the bitch is here?" Lovelace asked, a bitter smile, as she set down and wiped off the needle, dressed the body and the scene.

"How can you be so fuckin' glib? Do you even care?" Nelson asked.

"I care." the blonde detective responded. "Care about never seeing the inside of a cell in Pelican Bay."

"And that's all?" Nelson asked, brushing back his black hair.

"Look, kid, not now. We've gotta move fast, and smart, we can drink ourselves to sleep later." the veteran dirty cop responded. "C'mon."

She tossed him a rag, and he did what he could to erase any sign of his passing. The coroner would look into this suicide as a suspicious , and they may even find Lovelace and Nelson's prints across her shitty excuse for an apartment. But that wouldn't be a dealbreaker. The pair had been investigating Sofia, and the she supplied, for a while before it had escalated to this.

Their work done, Nelson and Lovelace made for the door, their heads low, their movements quick.

Before exiting into the night, Lovelace took one last look back at the carnage, the carnage she had caused.

"Oh damnit, what a waste..." she muttered, before heading for the car.

-

"Karen, we've got a problem!" Nelson's face as he came back from the car looked like he had shit a brick.

He raised his free hand, showing the red parcel.

"What is that, some kind of gift for Verrucci?" Lovelace quizzically asked, hand on her piece on her hip.

"I've never seen it before. It was on the dash." Nelson said. "Karen, someone's watching us."

"Easy, Babyface." Lovelace said, raising a hand "There has to be a more rational explanation."

She took the parcel, and began to unwrap it.

"Lovelace, don't!" Nelson said, but it was too late. There was a flash of light, and the two crooked cops found themselves hurtling through light, through realities.

And into the mulitverse!

-

Lovelace came to first, she rose unsteadily to her feet. Looking around, everything was different. A minute ago, it had been night, in the City of Angels.

"It's daytime? What the hell...?" Lovelace mouthed, taking a look around. And the buildings, they were different, there was so much light and neon, and people. Thousands of them, a veritable throng.

"Karen, Karen am I fucking disassociating now?" Nelson gasped, looking up.

The Times Square Mega Screen, once a familiar sight to the native New Yorker, loomed overhead.