Ellen sighed. “The stuff he was giving me for free was cut with something. It gave it a yellowish tint. At the time I figured he was just trying to cut down on the loss of giving it away for free, but I found out only a couple years ago that the Shift gangs are very sophisticated in how they experiment on people.”
She shook her head, red locks bouncing across her forehead. “When I was in school, they told us about a version given to pregnant women that would actually build up as little corpuscles inside the fetus rather than going right to their developing brain. After about twelve years, they opened up and released the brain altering chemical. This would turn kids into an addict later on in life.” Ellen shook her head incredulously. “Such a rational, long term commitment to something so…evil.”
“I gave up the baby to the dealer never saw him again,” she said, “I have no idea what happened to…to my son. I begged to get on the team raiding that human trafficking house back in April under the slim hope that maybe he would be one of those kids. That I could see him. But…he wasn’t. That trafficking ring was run by different people, anyway.” She was quiet for a few paces before saying, “in the end, it’s probably better that he wasn’t one of those kids. At least this way I can keep lying to myself that he’s somewhere better. The reality is that he was probably experimented on until…” she sighed.
“I assume Darren knew all this,” I said.
“He did,” Ellen said, “in fact, it was one of the first things he knew about me. From our Shift addict support group. Darren found out his story wasn’t as unusual as he thought. Sharing mine got him to share his.” She looked over to me, “so what’s your story?”
I glanced to Álvarez, but he still didn’t give any indication of hearing our conversation.
“The walk to Grand Junction isn’t long enough for my story,” I said, “suffice to say that there are no group meetings for the things I’ve done.”
Ellen looked mildly annoyed by my response but was cut off from voicing this as Major Ellison called for her to come look at someone. She gave one last glance before trotting to catch up to them. I looked to Álvarez again, who was squinting curiously to where Major Ellison and Corporal Roman were knelt down. Agent Sullivan was somewhere up ahead.
As the two of us got closer, I could see what he was looking at. They had found a fat, middle aged man still alive, a tourniquet amateurishly wrapped around a mangled leg, a gash across his stomach stuffed with his gloves to stop the bleeding, hands blackened with frost bite. Ellen handed a canteen to Corporal Roman as she knelt down, swinging her bag around to get supplies out.
When I looked to Álvarez again, he was looking back at me. Even with his neutral demeanor, I could tell what he was thinking – that man can’t be saved. I gave him a slight nod and then turned and kept walking, passing by the LoC Security people.
“We need to get this man with the others,” Roman said, “to one of the doctors with us.”
I looked over my shoulder, seeing that Major Ellison knew the man was done for, but not wanting to admit it for fear of looking defeated.
“You’re better off killing him,” I said without breaking my gait, “that patch job on his stomach will come loose and bleed out as soon as you try moving him.”
“Malloy,” Ellison said.
“I’ll do what I can,” Ellen said.
I was about a hundred feet away when I realized that Álvarez was only a few steps behind me to the left. I didn’t bother looking, but I knew he wasn’t going to walk behind the LoC Security people anymore so we could find any survivors before they did.
And that’s probably exactly why they sent Sullivan ahead.
A hundred yards away agent Sullivan was bent over into the window of a car. I picked up the pace, moving toward him.
“You think he’s found another survivor?” I asked.
Álvarez said nothing for a few steps and then, “are you talking to me right now, or to yourself?”
“To you.”
“He has not,” Álvarez said, “he’s looking for something more self-serving.” He paused for a few steps and then said, “the demons haunt you.”
“The demons?”
“You are like Sachi,” he said.
I glanced over my shoulder at him, but said nothing.
“She tells only those in her trust,” Álvarez said, “but I know what she is.”
“What is she?” I asked, stopping and turning to him.
He stopped and looked me in the eye, “Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte.” And then he continued walking ahead of me.
Our Lady of the Holy Death.
I followed behind him as we approached agent Sullivan, who seemed surprised to see us, dropping something. The small sandwich bag fluttered to the ground, the inside gray with residue from Shift. I looked back up at Sullivan, a frightened look on his face. But the fear didn’t stop him from bending over and grasping desperately for the bag, wiping a finger on the inside of it and putting the residue stained finger in his mouth.
“How long have you been without it?” I asked.
“It was legal in the LoC,” he said defensively, as if he had expected accusations. His shoulders slumped and he said, “I only had a little left when we left Cortez. I finished it when I couldn’t find any more in Dolores.”
“Is that all you could find?” I pointed at the sandwich bag.
“Yes,” he said, looking over our shoulders at his comrades, still crouched down a little over a hundred yards away. “Please don’t tell them.”
“You’re going to go into withdrawals before we reach Grand Junction,” I said.
“I already am,” he said, “my head is pounding, I was up all night shitting diarrhea. Sometimes my thoughts get confused. Please, you gotta help me. You gotta help me find more. I need it.”
“You might prefer a quick death,” Álvarez said.
“No, no, no, please,” he said, “I’ll do anything. I’ll join the forty-eights. I’ll kill Major Ellison. I’ll-”
“Shut up,” I said, “nobody’s going to kill you. How long have you been using?”
“About a month,” he said.
“Why?”
His eyes widened in surprise, “I don’t know. One day I just started feeling strange. I went out and got wasted drunk. I’d only drank once in my entire life like six years ago and I hated it. While drunk I went back to the liquor store and bought Shift and got high.”
“Did you hook up with a girl that day?” Álvarez asked.
“I-I don’t know,” Sullivan said, “Maybe. The night before, I think. What does any of this matter?”
“She dosed you,” I said, “with something that made you want to use Shift.”
“Jesus Christ!” Sullivan said, “That’s a thing? That’s fucking mind control!”
“You’ve only been using for a month,” I said, “I think you’ll have an even more miserable walk than everyone else, but you’ll live. Count this as a blessing.”
“C’mon, man,” he said, “I feel like shit here.”
“So does that survivor back there,” I said, signaling to his comrades.
“Oh shit, they found someone?” Sullivan asked, “oh Jesus. They’re gonna wonder why I went right past them.”
At that Sullivan took off trotting and scrambling over obstacles to get back with his officers. Álvarez gave me a neutral look, but I almost sensed something like respect there. Without having to say anything, both of us started walking again.
“What makes you think Sachi is Santa Muerte?” I asked him.
“The first time I ran into her,” Álvarez said, “I was sent to assassinate her. When I looked into her eyes, I knew any death I delivered her would be nothing, so I lowered my weapons and removed my exoskeleton. She watched as I crawled in the dirt up to her feet and offered my knife,” he pulled out the Santa Muerte knife, “because I knew who she was. She blessed me by asking for my services.”
“And the others in your company…”
“They came when I called on them,” he said. “Here.”
“What?”
Álvarez held out his exo-clad hand. I brought mine up and he dropped something into it. A bloody piece of tech.
“RFID chip?” I asked.
“From a CSA officer,” he said, “Sachi wants all of us to have one.”
I nodded.
“You can store it in your rectum,” he said. “There are more survivors over there,” he pointed to a van flipped over off the road in the ditch.
With my bionic eye I could see he was right. I placed the RFID chip into the small storage compartment of my exo and then both of us turned toward the van. As we neared, I could see a father and his daughter inside. They appeared to be trapped, both pinned to the ground by the crumpled-up frame, stuck face up.
“Here!” the man said in a hoarse voice when he heard us coming, “please, help. We’re stuck. She needs water. We’ve been eating ice from the ditch for days.”
Neither of us said anything as we stopped over them. The man was impaled by a twisted shard of metal from the door, the blood dry and frozen around the wound. The girl, maybe fifteen, looked up at us with dull eyes, dry streams from tears going back toward her brown hair. She looked mostly uninjured aside from scrapes and bruises, her breaths shallow from the van’s frame pushing down on her stomach and preventing her from taking in full capacity.
“Please,” he rasped, “at least get her out.”
“Blessed death,” Álvarez said, kneeling down above the man. “You are the justice and the mercy.”
“What are you doing,” the man asked, wincing in pain as he tried to move, “use your exo suits to lift the car off us.”
“I ask you blessed death to walk with this man toward the hereafter.”
“No…you can’t,” the man said, realizing what was going on.
“Wash away his pain with the blood of Christ the conqueror,” Álvarez continued as the man now grasped weakly at the assassin’s knife, “and lift the shadow of his life’s burden.”
“Daddy?” the girl whispered.
“I am your humble messenger,” Álvarez said, lifting the knife above the man in both hands, “who has been given the gift of supplicating at your feet in the life before death. One day I shall walk by your side without pain or desire. Until that day, I will remain…your servant.”
Álvarez plunged the knife into the man’s chest, a fresh river of blood erupting around the blade. The girl let out a faint scream, cut short by a fit of coughing as her father’s eyes went wide. Álvarez twisted the blade and the man’s body went limp.
“Amen.”
Álvarez brought the knife to the man’s head, grabbing his ear and slicing the blade through it with ease. The motion was so fast it took the girl a couple seconds to realize what happened. She tried screaming again as Álvarez carefully placed the severed ear in a compartment on the waist of his exo suit, amongst other shriveled ears, and closed it.
I put the hand of my exo suit over the girl’s mouth and brought the other one to her throat. Álvarez watched me as I gripped down on her trachea, preventing her from taking in oxygen. She struggled feebly, eyes wide with panic, but quickly succumbed to asphyxiation. Fifteen seconds later my bionic eye told me that she no longer had a pulse. Álvarez wiped the blood from the blade of his knife on the man’s jacket and then held the handle out for me to use in taking a trophy.
“There’s no use starting to count now,” I said, standing back up and walking toward the road.
The LoC Security people rejoined us after their survivor died while they tried to move him. All of them were in a sullen mood. Ellen had bloodstains on her pants and jacket from trying to stop his bleeding. Álvarez and I stayed a ways ahead of them this time, but they didn’t seem to care.
The day wore on, growing colder once again as evening approached. Moving through the wreckage was slow work, but the number of destroyed vehicles gradually tapered off, making it easier. Only the corpses of those who had fled their vehicles peppered the road.
When the sky began to grow dimmer, I put my helmet back on to keep the cold off and gain night vision. I tried once to contact Sachi, but we were still out of range. With the helmet on, I could hear the conversation the LoC Security people were murmuring to each other behind me.
“The fact is, none of this shit would’ve happened if it hadn’t been for that Japanese bitch,” Corporal Roman said, “all she’s done here is try to initiate force on everyone to get them to follow her orders.”
“It’s all of those forty-eights,” Major Ellison said, “I don’t trust these two with us, either. Why the fuck did they get sent along?”
“Eshe’s a good person,” Ellen said, “he was the only one of them that treated Darren well.”
“I don’t give a fuck if he’s a swell guy one-on-one,” Ellison said, “he’s working for that stupid cunt.”
“He hasn’t initiated force against anyone,” Roman said, “we don’t have a reason to do anything to him.”
“Are you kidding me?” Ellison asked, “You didn’t see what he did in Wichita? And he was there with ‘em back in Mexico. And Christ knows what he was up to back in Africa.”
“What are you going to do, anyway?” agent Sullivan asked, “are you going to kill them? They outnumber us in the group.”
“We need to get the Colonel to take control of things,” Roman said, “I think even the other gangs will take her side over the Jap.”
“Riviera’s a useless bitch,” Ellison said, “even if she wanted to take the lead, she’s too incompetent to do the job.”
“Hey, I like her,” Roman said.
“That’s cuz she’s an anarchy purist like you,” Ellison said, “but ideology does not a good leader make.” He sighed, “I can’t believe that bitch got promoted before me. Colonel Reynolds liked her for whatever reason, but she could never be half the colonel he was.” He paused a moment before saying, “it should’ve been me that got that promotion when he died. Died on Riviera’s watch, might I add.”
“You’re being kind of hard on her,” Ellen said, “she’s got a lot of shit to worry about right now.”
“Given the situation, I think she’s handling it well,” Roman said, “even Colonel Reynolds never had to deal with anything like this.”
“Christ, you’re a buncha fucking sycophants,” Ellison said, “she’s sold us down the river to those forty-eights. You’ll all find out before this shit’s over what kinda person Colonel Riviera is.”
“…you hear me?” a woman’s voice said.
I stopped walking and looked around.
“Evita?”
“No,” she said, the radio crackling, “it’s Sachi. Where are you? Do you still see cars?”
I released my breath, “yes. A few.”
“Okay,” Sachi said, “we stopped near the last car you can see off in the ditch. If you’re in radio range, you shouldn’t be far.”
It took about thirty minutes for us to find our way to where the group setup camp. By then it was dark out and many people had already gone to sleep. I found Emma sitting next to agent Brie whispering to each other, Aveena sitting next to them with something approaching a smile on her face for the first time since the attack. The three of them giggled as our search party approached.
“Any luck?” Rocky asked, standing up from where he was sitting with Manny, Pedro, and César. Benito and Olivia were off talking to each other.
“Depends what you mean by luck,” I said, seeing Álvarez glance at me as he walked past, sitting down next to a tree by himself. “Unlucky for the people on the road, but lucky for the people walking.”
Rocky raised an eyebrow at my dour analysis but then smirked and said, “I’m not having much luck either.” He signaled to where Emma, Aveena, and agent Brie were sitting, “She might not only win, but maybe get a threesome out of it. I’ll never hear the end of that.”
“Where’s Akira?” I asked, scanning around the camp and not se
eing her.
“Damn, you sure are in a bad mood lately,” Rocky said, “she went up the hill a ways again,” he signaled to his left.
I said nothing, walking by him in her direction. He shrugged, stepping away from me.
“Too much time with Álvarez,” he said as I passed him.
Álvarez looked up at me as I walked past, climbing the hill. I got about fifty feet up before I found her sitting, back up against a tree, looking blankly out over the woods below us. Yukiko lay in her lap sleeping, breathing shallowly.
I stopped in front of Akira, but she didn’t give any indication of noticing me.
“Akira,” I said. She slowly lifted her gaze to meet mine. “I think this brain implant is breaking down faster than you thought.”
She nodded, but her glazed over eyes didn’t show any sign of comprehension. She said nothing for a full minute before speaking slowly.
“I figured that might be the case,” she said, “our estimates didn’t take your split-brain situation into account, but the apparatus used for the bifurcation and reunification requires a substantial amount of energy, which might accelerate the rate of decay.”
“So, what you’re saying is, whenever I have a split-brain episode, it’s going to make a jump in the rate of decay,” I said.
Akira nodded, still speaking very slowly, “I’m afraid we’re in a similar situation, you and I.”
“Your brain implants…were they damaged?”
She took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly. “yes. They are…currently undergoing self repair.”
“Self-repair?”
“Part of…the upgrade,” she said, “but…it’s taking a lot of my…my attention,” she glanced down at her daughter, “that’s why I’m walking by myself.”
“Can’t you turn it off?”
She took another deep breath and exhaled, “if I turn it off, it could kill me.”
“They were turned off after Mexico…”
She said nothing for a few moments before slowly shaking her head, “I made further upgrades…using the same technology as the architecture in Laura and your brain.”
“So, its degrading just like mine?”
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