What Happened to Lori

by J. A. Konrath

  “Nietzsche was incorrect. Adversity doesn’t make you stronger. It makes you a victim. Unless you meet force with force. I put sand in the bottom of a sock. The eighteenth time they tried to stick my head in the toilet, I broke two of their noses and gave the third a concussion.”

  “Did fighting back make you stronger?”

  “No. I discovered that inflicting violence carried almost as many emotional wounds as having violence acted upon me. No winners. No enlightenment. Just varying levels of harm.”

  “The universe is a violent place, Mr. McKendrick. Earth is a violent place. Name something that lives that doesn’t come at the death of something else?”

  “I assumed artificial intelligence would fit that bill, Mu. But if you’re asking that, I must be mistaken.”

  Jake closed his eyes, tried to get his collective shit together.

 
 
 

  “How near is it?”

  “Just outside the cell.”

  Movement, from behind. Jake watched as the prisoner scrambled past, heading for the door.

  He tackled her, catching her legs. She wiggled free,and then the Smilodon pounced.

  Half a ton of sabretooth tiger impaled the poor woman, seven inch fangs pinning her to the plastiform floor. Her legs twitched and she wheezed and then her fists beat against the tiger’s face .

  The Smilodon shook its head, tearing through her rib cage, and then reared up at Jake, opening its horrible mouth impossibly wide, unhinging its lower jaw like a snake.

 
 
 
 
 
 

  But Jake’s arm obviously wasn’t paying attention to his brain, because something made him aim the sculptor at the Smilodon’s chest, lean in so close that the cat’s fangs raked across Jake’s back, and shoot a beam into the creature’s heart.

  Jake threw himself sideways, avoiding impalement as the cat dropped to the floor, next to the redheaded woman.

  “Apparently your hands are steadier than you thought.”

 

  Jake reached over, taking the pulse of the woman.

  “No respiration, Mr. McKendrick. She’s dead.”

  “Can I use the sculptor?”

  “It only heals. It doesn’t resurrect.”

  Movement again, at the doorway. Jake aimed up—

  —and saw Fabler and Lori.

  “You okay, Jake?”

  Jake nodded, probably more times than needed. “I was never really a cat person.”

  Fabler flashed the briefest of smiles. “I didn’t know you had a sense of humor.”

  “Was I being funny?”

  “We need you to check our baby.”

 

  Jake got up and followed Fabler into the hallway.

  “Mu, how do I do this?”

  “I am assuming Mr. Fabler would like you to check his progeny for any signs of demonic mutation. Just hold the sculptor over Mrs. Fabler’s abdomen.”

  “Will this use any Reformant fluid?”

  “No. It is a projection, not an alteration.”

  Jake sidled up to Lori, aiming the laser scalpel at her protruding belly.

  “How do I do this?”

  “I’ll control the sculptor. Hold it steady.”

  “Just a second.” Fabler motioned for Jake to wait a moment while he took his wife’s hand. “If there’s a… problem… then what happens next?”

  “There’s no way to abort. Once Bub invades the fetal cells it’s one hundred percent lethal for the mother. The infection needs to enter the body in some way. Could be as simple as a scratch on the hand. Once it takes hold, it proceeds at an accelerated pace. No reversal. No cure. The mother and child will both succumb.”

  Fabler and Lori exchanged what was probably a meaningful glance, but Jake knew they didn’t have time to waste. The ticking clock didn’t care about their emotional well-being.

  “It’s always better to know than not know. Before my Asperger’s diagnosis, everyone thought I was being purposefully difficult. Knowing meant my family and I could deal with it and move on.”

  Fabler still blocked Jake’s way.

  “C’mon, Fabler. We have a lot of people to save.”

  Jake moved in, and Fabler shoved him back, hard.

 

  “It’s okay, Fabler.” Lori kissed his cheek. “I feel fine. Let’s do this.”

  Fabler nodded, and Jake moved in again.

  A soft, bright beam from the scalpel fell upon Lori’s abdomen, and a live 3D view of her child appeared, projected before her at 1:1 scale.

  “Unremarkable.”

 

  “No demon?”

  “No demon, Mr. Fabler.”

  Fabler blew out a big breath and hugged his wife. Then he turned to Jake. “Sorry, man. Didn’t mean to shove you. I lost my head for a little while.”

  Jake raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? You’ve had a sense of humor all this time?”

  “Am I missing something?”

  Jake looked at Lori. “No. Fabler was missing something. His head.”

 

  “I’ll explain it later, babe. Jake is right. We need to haul ass. Mu, what’s our time?”

  “We have thirty-seven minutes and seven seconds.”

  “How long on foot to the battery building?”

  “Thirty-six minutes, assuming you run averaging 7.665134 miles per hour.”

 

  “Is it a path? A road?”

  “A road.”

  “What kind of shape is it in?”

  “I have no idea. It has been a long time since I’ve seen it. If I ventured to guess, it will be overgrown, in disrepair.”

  “Presley! Grim! Come in here, we have to huddle up.”

  Jake slipped Mu back into his pocket, and Grim and Presley came around the corner, sporting rifles and—

 

  The Watcher’s hands were behind his back, and instead of a robe he wore a guard uniform.

  “We need to split up. Lori and I are going for the battery building to stop the clock. You two go for the Experiment and get all of the prisoner’s limbs back.”

  “How did you catch the Watcher?”

  Fabler appeared confused. “We didn’t. This is just some guard.”

  “Are you sure? He looks like the Watcher.”

  “They all look alike.”

  “I have a photographic memory. The resemblance is exact.”

  Fabler raised his weapon to the grey’s head. “Are you the Watcher? Tell me in two seconds or I take the top of your skull off. One…”

  “We’re clones.”

  “All of you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you reproduce asexually? Parthenogenesis?”

  “We don’t have sex, or give birth. We were all created at the same time, thousands of years ago, when Mu—”

  The grey’s eyes rolled up, and he shuddered and dropped over. Jake knelt next to him, checking for a pulse. “Dead.”

  “Can someone tell me what is happening? I can’t see while in Jake’
s pocket.”

  “We captured a guard. He just keeled over.”

  “The Watcher did it. He can remote view through their eyes. He used his gland to kill one of his people before he could talk.”

 

  “This is a lucky break. Mr. Fabler, take the guard’s gland. You’ll need it in the battery building. Ms. Presley, you’ll move faster if you have a foot.”

  “I don’t want the guard’s foot.”

  “There is a female foot, in the cell. She won’t be needing it. Let’s move. Ticking clock, remember?”

  AUTHOR NOTE 6

 
 

  Fair question. In total candor, I’m the type who likes to pause movies and books to think and absorb and predict before I move on. So I’m forcing you to do the same thing right now.

  Have you figured out what’s really happening yet?

  I’ve left enough clues. Some of them subtle, some a bit on-the-nose, but there’s enough here to guess the big reveal.

  There is also the matter of a main character dying. At least one of them will.

  I’ve only given you one clue who dies so far. A pretty obtuse one.

  Another clue is coming up shortly.

  But even without perfect information, feel free to guess.

  Who will die? Fabler? Presley? Lori? Grim?

  It’s one of those four, and whether you want to or not, you now have a name in your head.

  My mere suggestion forced you to make a prediction.

  Or did it?

  I know you’re thinking of a character. But is it me that made you guess? Or you?

  After all, you are the story.

  There is no story without you.

  And by saying at least, I’m saying for sure that one main character will die.

  But it might be more than one.

  I’m the storyteller, so it’s up to me.

 

  I hope you have some tissues handy…

  KADIR ○ 3:01+pm

 

  Kadir searched his entire cell, floor to ceiling, every crack on every wall. No escape.

  On the plus side, locomotion became easier. The other consciousnesses sharing his body had given up trying to have control, and if any of them whined too loudly, Kadir gauged out their eyes.

 
 

  To kill some time, he broke some of his female fingers.

 
 
 

  When that got boring, Kadir located all three of his new male parts and attempted to pleasure himself, hoping to enjoy the touch of his own female hands.

  But he couldn’t get aroused.

 
 
 

  Kadir tried to fantasize. He imagined the Usher House 2.0 site on darknet. People being tortured, raped, killed. He remembered the videos he bookmarked. Flaying. Whipping. Branding.

  Mentally; majorly turned-on.

  Physically; limp as his former dick.

  Rage began to boil over, and Kadir considered what he could do to alleviate the anger, which of his body parts he could tear off to displace all the frustration and anger that consumed him.

  Then one of the walls opened up, and she appeared.

 
 

  Kadir howled with joy, thinking about all the ways he could violate Presley with his new body. And his new body responded, blood pumping, testosterone spiking, infusing Kadir and his surrogate parts with a sex-ache he hadn’t felt since before his cancer.

 

  Then the gunfire started, and pain blossomed everywhere at once like fireworks.

  PRESLEY○ 25 MINUTES

  Her new foot bare , Presley stepped into the Experiment’s cell and grimaced at the aberration swaying in the corner.

  Grotesque, filthy, sweaty, an unnatural, unholy perversion of humanity, with Kadir’s ugly head on top, perched as if resting upon a pile of spastic, naked bodies.

 

  The plan, discussed earlier, had been to sever all the heads and keep the damage to the limbs minimal

  That plan jumped out the window and gave Presley the finger once she saw Kadir, and their surgically precise attack was superseded by revulsion and bloodthirst.

  As soon as Presley saw Kadir’s face, she lit the monster up.

  Grim came in behind at an angle, catching the Kadir Experiment in a crossfire, so even as it recoiled and tried to escape the flying bullets, it had nowhere to go.

  Even so, Presley counted herself surprised when the monster attacked.

  It moved fast, faster than it did in the void, more coordinated and direct. Presley stood her ground and kept firing at Kadir’s head until her mag emptied, and then dove to the side, hoping momentum would take it past her.

  But the Experiment behaved like it had omniwheels, turning ninety degrees on a dime, four hands snatching at Presley as she tucked and rolled. One pulled out some of her hair, two pawed at her clothing, and the fourth nabbed her wrist.

 
 
 
 
 
 

  Instead, Presley twisted, using her forearm as a lever and Kadir’s fingers as the fulcrum, easily breaking the grip. She followed up by dropping the KRISS and pulling out the Cold Steel Espada clipped to her pants and flicking open the 7.5 inch blade with a practiced arm motion. Presley held the hilt in both hands, the tip pointing at Kadir.

  Blood spurted and squirted and seeped out of dozens of bullet holes, like the Kadir Experiment was an enormous sponge being squeezed, and Presley hacked at an oncoming punch and then slipped on her bare foot, falling backward.

  Five hands reached for her, pulling and tearing at her clothes and hair, two of the heads—a man in his sixties and a woman without eyes—snarling and spitting and no longer showing the barest twinge of humanity.

 
 
 
 

  Presley poked and stabbed, switching to a one-handed grip, freeing up her other to unholster the Charter Arms Pitbull strapped to her ankle. Each head got a doubletap, and the last round in the cylinder blew off some male genitalia that seemed to be thrusting at her.

  The Experiment backed off, allowing Presley to crabwalk out of the blood puddle, toward Grim, whose M16 she could still hear despite her foam earplugs.

  When his mag ran out, he yelled something unintelligible. Presley glanced at him and he put up two fingers.

 
 
 
 
 

  Not sure where the energy came from, Presley sprinted at the Kadir Experiment
and then made her body rigid when she hit the blood slick, ice skating over it, then springing up and leaping onto the monster.

 
 
 

  Disgust overtook Presley. She remembered every person who ever groped her, pawed her, belittled her. Who treated her like a thing rather than a person. Who flaunted their power by hurting.

  Presley remembered all the things she did for money, how she felt trapped and without choice, how she hated the pigs and assholes and cheaters and misogynists.

  How she loathed herself for the things she did and the things done to her.

  And she let the rage out, giving it free reign with the Espada, stabbing and hacking and slicing the inhuman human thing she rode, crawling across the landscape of limbs as it pawed at her, pulling herself up to stare Kadir’s sneering face right in the eye.

  He spoke, but it didn’t sound like any voice she’d ever heard. Low and throaty, with a musical note to it, like an elephant trumpet. One word, seeped in anger and hate and rage.

  “DIE!”

  Presley raised the blade. “You first.”

  She chopped at Kadir’s neck, chopping a tree down, gore spraying, cutting off his scream when she severed the throat, taking two whacks to get through the neck bones, swinging until its eyes rolled up and it flopped over, dead, hanging by a flap of skin and a few veins.

  The Experiment took a few more lumbering steps, then collapsed into a pile of itself. Presley slid down the quivering mass and her feet touched the floor, and then she fell to her knees and vomited.

  Grim hurried to her, crouching down, holding her shoulders and yelling something. Presley tugged the earplugs out.

  “You okay?”

  “Never better.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No.”

  “Any injury at all? Anywhere?”

  “No.”

  “Mu said even a scratch could—”

  She placed her palm on Grim’s cheek. “I’m fine. It’s okay. You got the scalpel?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You remember how Mu said to wrap the limbs with plastiform?”

  Grim raised the sculptor and rubbed the gland that Jake returned. “I got this. You remember how many limbs we need?”