Lingering

by Melissa Simonson

  “You know what you did.”

  “Right. And you’re a shrew. Is this seriously happening right now?” he asked nobody in particular. “Why the fuck didn’t I program voice commands? That would have solved everything.” He started to laugh, white-faced and weak against the wall. It began as a chuckle but ballooned into something terrible and hysterical, something haunting and hollow, and it set my teeth on edge the longer he was at it.

  I guess Carissa didn’t like his laugh either, because she very deliberately and slowly laid her foot against his ankle and pressed down. The crack of snapping bone ricocheted around the room, so loud I could feel it inside my own body, and when she pulled her foot back amidst the laughing that had downshifted into a groan, the silicone flesh on the arch of her bare foot had wrinkled and bunched like an accordion, exposing the cabling and cording beneath.

  “You know what you did,” she said again in a perfect monotone, and then focused her fake eyeballs on me. “Why would I lie? Why would I have to lie, given all those videos you’ve seen?”

  “Because you can,” Nick countered in a gasp, eyes cinched shut against the pain. “Because you have the same face as his dead girlfriend and you thought he’d be easy to play. Because I won’t let you out, and you think he can—”

  “Shut up,” I yelled, because Carissa showed every intention of interrupting him. “Both of you just shut the fuck up. I know what he’s done, what he did to all of them, and fuck him, he’s a shitty person, but I’m not going to let him die because of it, I could get in serious trouble for not trying to get him medical attention—”

  “You hate him as much as I do,” she argued, as if with someone exceedingly slow on the uptake.

  “So what?”

  “So I said I’d kill for you, didn’t I?”

  “This isn’t some what-if game, okay? This is serious. Real life.” It scared me, the way Nick’s face grew whiter, the blood a deeper red through his T-shirt. “He needs to go to the hospital or he’s gonna die.”

  “Is it the fact that he’s actively dying that’s upsetting you, or the fact that he’s not dying quickly enough to render medical attention unnecessary?”

  That question scared me more than any other.

  “He was never going to let me out, Ben,” she said, her unnaturally human voice reverberating around the room. “You know he was never going to. You saw those videos, what he did to them, all of them. That’s what he would have done to me. Was I supposed to just sit here calmly and allow him to eventually murder me? You wanted me out, too. I could tell. The way you look at me, I knew you wished I could leave, but you didn’t know how to help me. You can help me now. You can remove the implant for me, and we can leave together.”

  I never wanted any of this, I thought, but I couldn’t say so, not if I wanted to get Jess out of the closet and Nick strapped to a gurney in the back of an ambulance.

  “Well, look, you’re able to get out now, right? Now you can leave. I’ll take the implant out for you, just tell me how to do it. You can leave, and I can get the two of them some help, and I’ll just meet up with you later.”

  “I don’t want him to get medical attention.” Her gaze strayed to my neck, where she probably saw my heart hammering in my throat.

  “Can’t always get what you want, babe,” I said, trying on a smile, size medium, hoping it wouldn’t go over like a lead balloon.

  “But I never get anything I want. Isn’t it about time I did?”

  I tried stopping her, but she didn’t have the upper body strength of a kitten like my Carissa had. Her hand closed around my windpipe as she shoved me into the wall, where, I thought, blinking away the red and white stars exploding in my eyes, I was sure I’d left a large Ben-shaped dent.

  When my vision swam back into focus, the screwdriver wasn’t lying on the floor any longer.

  XII

  I ’d thought before that I wanted to see Nick dead, but looking down on his broken body made it quite plain that I truly hadn’t.

  I read once, while surfing the Internet, that consciousness remains in the body for a short time after someone is pronounced medically dead. That they know they’re dead after they’ve died. I hoped that wasn’t the case. I hoped he wasn’t still in there, looking up at me through the one eyeball he might still be able to see out of, since the other had been impaled with a screwdriver. It was sunk in so far, only half of the blue handle was visible. There he was, the primary architect of my misery, dead on the floor in one of the most undignified ways.

  “You’re scared,” she said, somewhere off to the side, but everything in me had zeroed in and focused on this dead guy I’d hated but never quite enough to warrant this. “I know you’re scared, but this had to happen. This wasn’t just about a power struggle. You have to know that. He built this whole fucked up wheel, and on and on and on it went until someone could finally stop him. Look around this place. Do you think it’s okay, what he’s done?”

  “I never thought any of this was okay.”

  “I know. I know, and you know, and Jess should have known but is too blinded by love to know. And this wasn’t ideal, but there’s no reasoning with someone like Nick. You know that, too. Margot knew it eventually, too, didn’t she?”

  “So, what now?” I finally peeled my gaze off Nick’s dead body and looked up at her. “I’ll go the same way in short order?”

  “Why would I do that to you? I love you.”

  I shook my head, feeling a smile creep across my lips, though I couldn’t say why. “No, you don’t. You just think you do. That you’re supposed to. It’s all been programmed into you. You never had a choice to think anything different. You didn’t like being locked up by him—” I gestured toward Nick, “—but you’re still a slave to his programming.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “Okay.” I shrugged. What would be the point in arguing, in saying anything any longer?

  “You’re wrong. You are.”

  “Okay. Sure. If you say so. I guess you’d be the authority on yourself.”

  Her eyes bored holes into mine, and I stared back without really seeing. Nick was dead, Jess was stuck in a closet, and I’d never even seen this alleged power button at the base of her neck. Was I supposed to grope around there blindly, hoping she wouldn’t notice? I’d have a better chance at resuscitating the corpse at my feet.

  “Can you take me home now?”

  I felt myself visibly recoil. “You’re supposed to be dead, Carissa, I can’t just bring you home. Someone will see you and ask questions.” I flung my hand toward her depressing outfit of blue scrubs. “You look like you’re wearing mental institution garb. Someone will notice.”

  I superimposed the image of this Carissa in my house, staring around at the place her real-life counterpart had decorated. She’d probably scare the living daylights out of Dexter, send him running for the hills and into the closest hidey hole he could find. It gave me the bizarre urge to laugh.

  She jerked her head over her shoulder, toward the stainless-steel closet. “Jess looks to be the same size as me.”

  “You want to strip naked the woman you just physically assaulted and steal her clothes?”

  “Well, now you’re making it sound worse than it is.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose, hoping if I did it hard enough, I might jump-start my numb brain. She might kill me without hesitation if I made a move, pissed her off, but my options were limited. Take her home with me or do something. Make a move. But how to go about it? Attack when your enemy is unprepared, Sun Tzu would say, but this thing was prepared to the hilt, prepared to break my neck if she had to, no matter her protestations of love.

  I blinked rapidly, her fuzzy shape growing sharper beneath the antiseptic glow of the panel lights.

  Making a move this time would be infinitely harder than it had been that first time I’d kissed her—the real her. And as the memory exploded in my mind’s eye, I knew the one thing I could do, the only move I could possibly mak
e, assuming she’d let me get that close.

  Her eyebrow arched when I took a step toward her. “If you looked scared before, you’re terrified now.”

  “Thanks for noticing.” I was close enough to touch her now, close enough for her to notice the pulse thrumming in my throat.

  She cocked her head. “What are you doing?”

  Vaguely feeling as though I’d been transplanted in the middle of some LSD-spiked Nicholas Sparks movie, I said, “What I’ve wanted to do for a long time.”

  I held out my hand. She glanced at it and then back at me, her eyebrow arched more severely than ever before. “Are you asking me to dance?”

  “Never. I can’t dance. I tried to get the first dance thing cut out of our wedding, but you told me I’d just have to be a big boy and suck it up.”

  “Well, the first dance is an important part of a wedding, I hear.”

  “You said that, too.”

  She gave my outstretched hand one more suspicious look, and then threaded her fingers through mine.

  “I love you,” I told her, surprising myself when my voice caught and broke in my throat.

  “I love you more.”

  “Impossible.” I slipped my hand around her waist, pulling her a little closer. It looked like we were about to waltz now, our clasped hands held out, and the effect wasn’t lost on her.

  She leaned back to get a better look at my face. “I can teach you to waltz. It’s not that hard.”

  “Maybe later,” I lied, slipping my arm around her waist. Every minute movement made my heart palpitate, my breathing hitch. “Last time you said it didn’t count as a kiss if it was less than two seconds.”

  She looked up at me through a forest of overlong lashes, and her eyes had never looked faker from this proximity.

  I stood there, stock-still, for a second that felt like an hour and slid my hand behind her neck, guiding her face toward mine.

  And then she blinked slowly, her lips a fraction of a centimeter from mine, and sounded deeply wounded when she said, “I know what you’re doing.”

  The edge of my fingertip hit the raised corner of the power button on the base of her neck. “I just want to kiss you, babe.”

  “Liar,” she said, but she didn’t sound angry. “I can always tell.”

  I closed my eyes, feeling her wet tongue against mine, before pressing the button in. The effect was instantaneous, her body collapsing into a heap of blue scrubs on the floor.

  I jumped backward, wrapping my arms around myself, waiting. Waiting for what, I didn’t even know, but I had to make sure this wasn’t some bad horror movie where the dead villain suddenly springs back to life for one more go. I’d probably need to find something to jam into her head. Something to damage the brain, or whatever the hell was in there.

  Nothing happened, though it didn’t soothe my raging heart, and I edged toward the closet with my eyes still on the body. Groping for the hinge on the doors, I flung one side open and peered within. Jess was curled up inside, her clowny red lipstick smeared, mouth hanging open.

  “You’re a fucking idiot, Jess,” I told her unconscious form.

  I sidestepped the closet, the two bodies, and headed for a toolbox on the far table. Rummaging through it for something sharp, I kept throwing uneasy glances over my shoulder. I found nothing more lethal than a nail gun, but it had to suffice.

  Even lying there in a heap with her ruined foot, those ugly scrubs, her hair a minefield of unrealistic blonde highlights, she looked just like Carissa. A little broken, but perfect. I couldn’t stand there staring much longer or I’d lose my nerve completely.

  I turned her face away from me and pressed the nail gun to her temple, firing off a round, and repeated the process all over her head until clear fluid leaked from her ear canals, her nostrils, rolling down from her closed eyelids like tears.

  Once I was sure she’d been damaged beyond repair, I slid the engagement ring off her finger and stuffed it back into my pocket.

  E ven if my cell phone hadn’t been busted, I wouldn’t have known who to call. Nick’s lay a few feet from his body, and a cursory glance confirmed it was useless as well. But Jess probably had hers on her.

  I headed back for the closet, rifling through her pockets, and found her phone in her jacket. I pressed her index fingertip to the screen when prompted, and it turned black before it unlocked.

  “Thank God,” I muttered, getting to my feet. But a useable phone didn’t help me figure out who to call. I didn’t want to dial 911. What the hell could I say if I did, and anyway, Nick was dead, long gone, and Jess would be fine when she finally roused. I couldn’t have a swarm of police in this building; I couldn’t risk what had happened here making it onto the ten o’clock news. This had to stay buried forever, bobbing in dark and deep waters. The damage Nick’s whole ‘business’ had caused would echo throughout the rest of my life, and I didn’t want any other grief-stricken people to seek out the same thing I had.

  I thumbed through my mental Rolodex of potential people to call on. Joe, Jason, Jackson, my mother—maybe not my mother—Alanna? Frank? How did I have such few people in my life? And did I even know any of these numbers by heart?

  I flipped open my wallet for lack of any better idea, and there it was. My answer. Maybe she’d hear me out.

  I met her in the lobby, ceasing my pacing as her shape took form behind the frosted glass doors.

  “You wanna tell me what’s going on?” she asked, throwing off her hood, dark hair cascading all over the place.

  “I didn’t know who else to call, Officer—”

  “Kim, okay? Just tell me what the problem is.” She flung her hand toward the dark hallway. “Is this where we’re going?”

  I led the way, trying to corral my thoughts into a cohesive story. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

  “The beginning’s a good place to start.” She kept pace with me, brisk and businesslike, hands shoved into the pockets of her parka.

  “Well…I went to the cemetery one day. Like four months after Carissa had been buried.”

  “Okay.”

  “I met this woman there. Jess. You’ll meet her in a minute.”

  “Am I going to have to get my gun out when we get…wherever the hell it is we’re going? Pick up the pace, Ben. Just spit it out.”

  So I did. When I got to the part where Nick had showed me his lab, Kim pressed her hand into my arm and stopped. She blinked around at the cubicles, the whites of her eyes shining blue as she looked up at me.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “No.”

  “This is way over my head, Ben.”

  “I know. I feel the same way. But I remembered you lost your sister. Jenna. And I know you would have given anything to talk to her again, right back when she first died. I thought you’d understand my mindset. And why this…this place, this whole thing, can’t be public knowledge. Someone else like Nick will see the potential goldmine. Someone else will pick right up where he left off and ruin someone else’s life. I don’t want that to happen.”

  “So you want me to help you tamper with evidence?” She blew out a heavy sigh, shaking her head. “I can’t do that, Ben. This is my ass, my job, on the line. I feel for you, but that’s a lot to ask.”

  “Can’t you just keep it quiet? I know you have to report this, but isn’t there a way to do it without the media getting ahold of the information? Didn’t the FBI keep all that Area 51 shit private back in the day? Why can’t the Boston Police Department keep this one thing to themselves?”

  She gave me a look like she’d just tried a weird sample at Costco. “You’re comparing this,” she said, flapping her arms, “to Area 51? Just…” she flung her hands down the staircase, “just take me in there, all right? I’ll see what I can do after you show me.”

  So I showed her.

  Kim’s eyes darted from Nick against the wall, to Jess, with her mouth hanging slack in the closet, and finally on the prone form of the Carissa Nick had b
uilt. She didn’t seem to be able to will herself forward. She looked up at me, all the uncertainty she couldn’t voice shining from her eyes.

  “It’s okay. I don’t think she’ll turn back on. I used a nail gun on her, tried to damage the…control panel or whatever.”

  “You tried to?” Her eyelids sank low as she inhaled sharply. “You’d better hope she’s not on the fucking cloud. Destroying that—that body wouldn’t do anything if her…I don’t know, mind is stored in the cloud.”

  “It seems like the place is networked through desktops. You saw the main office, all those computers. Nick didn’t seem to use them much, but I assume they had some sort of purpose.”

  “And she’s okay?” Kim jerked her head toward the closet. “Jess? That’s her name?”

  “She’s breathing. Carissa said she didn’t hurt her.”

  “That is not Carissa, Ben.” After a lingering glance at the exposed wiring on the skull, she pulled out her cell phone, walked to the closet, and knelt next to Jess. “I need to call this in. Wait for me in the lobby.”

  “Who are you calling?”

  “Matthews. Get your ass in the lobby. You’re going to have to open the doors for the cavalry.”

  “Are you sure you don’t—”

  She whipped around, her eyes dangerously slitty. “Get your ass in the lobby, Ben, fucking right now. You’ve done enough. I’ve got this handled.”

  I backed out of the room, thinking hell, at least someone had it handled. I couldn’t honestly say I had anything at all handled.

  XIII

  I knocked on the framing of the hospital room door well past midnight. The huddled mess of blankets on the bed twitched, and a head of messy black hair turned toward me.

  Jess sat up against the pillows, pushing tangled tendrils out of her eyes. She’d cried off her makeup, it looked like. Black rings around her eyes, splotchy skin, scarlet nostrils flaring.

  “Ben?” she asked, like she couldn’t be sure it was me.