Defragmenting Daniel: The Complete Trilogy Box Set

by Jason Werbeloff

  “What’s his name?” asked Kage.

  “Who?”

  “The cat.”

  The boy paled again, as the Detective tickled the animal’s graying chin.

  “I really should get to sorting out my hand. Can we continue this routine chat tomorrow, please?” He stood.

  Kage remained sitting. Stroked the cat’s ears.

  “Where’d you get him?”

  The boy walked to the door. The taxi hovered just outside. “I’d prefer to talk tomorrow.”

  Kage stood.

  “Nice place you got here.”

  “Thanks,” said the boy, and gestured to the taxi.

  “I’m looking for an apartment myself. Rent’s outrageous these days.”

  The boy nodded. Stared at the floor.

  “One more question.”

  The boy sighed.

  “Where’d you get that food printer? Never seen one quite like it. New model?”

  “Not too sure.” said the boy. He placed a flat hand between the Detective’s shoulder blades. Guided him toward the door.

  “Good luck with that hand.” Kage winked as he stepped into the taxi. “I’ll see you soon.”

  Rolling in the Eddies of Lye

  Daniel almost collapsed as he shut the door on the Detective.

  Weird man. His angles were all wrong. With matchstick legs, and arms that thrashed around like concertinas as he spoke, Kage was like a flattened sausage. A slick, hairless sausage.

  Gods, Daniel’s hand hurt. Felt like every nerve he had ended in that hand. He examined the jacket of rosy flesh on his knuckles. The lye had eaten so deeply into his skin, he could make out the pale traces of bone beneath.

  Move Daniel.

  The Detective would return in the morning. Daniel was sure of that. He knew the look of a predator when he saw one. Lincoln Russell. The Beehive at Amputating Amy. There’d been plenty of predators back at the Organ Farm. Administration was full of them. Their quicksilver tongues flapped through grinning pearly teeth. Kage hadn’t stopped smiling from the moment he’d seen Daniel, his opalescent incisors striking against his ebony skin.

  A predator.

  Daniel had to move.

  He tapped his glasses. Was about to order a taxi, to who knew where, when he paused.

  Thomsin. His body was still in the shower. No self-respecting criminal on Law and Order ever left a body only half-dissolved.

  He was about to open the bathroom door, when he remembered the shirt he’d wrapped around his face for protection. He returned a moment later, the makeshift gas mask in place.

  The stench of lye in the bathroom had thoroughly overpowered the deodorant now. Daniel waded through soapy clouds of vanilla-tinged rot until he reached the shower cubicle. He examined the contents of the translucent forcefield that held the body suspended above the floor. The liquid had been colorless as Daniel had poured it over the boy, but now it bubbled gently, swirling with eddies of pink and brown.

  One of Thomsin’s arms lay against the side of the forcefield. Wisps of skin had torn away from the deeper tissues beneath, rising and dissolving as they left the body. In places, the bone of the arm shone through, a gleaming white beacon in the murk.

  Daniel watched the lye eat away at the flesh for a few more seconds, before he roused himself. He didn’t have time for this. He’d put the body into the forcefield – he checked the time on his overlay – about half an hour ago. Would the whole thing disintegrate in the next two and a half hours? That’s what the Wikipedia article had said. Three hours in total. But he wasn’t convinced.

  And would the Detective be back before then? He’d have to take the chance that he wouldn’t. Anyone with an inkling of distrust in the world would assume Daniel had killed Thomsin, even though he hadn’t. He hadn’t, he reminded himself. He hadn’t.

  Lincoln Russell had been different. A monster. What he’d been doing to that little girl in Amputating Amy … Lincoln deserved to die.

  No, he couldn’t have the world thinking he’d killed Thomsin. It was almost 1 a.m. The Detective wouldn’t be back until breakfast at the earliest, he guessed. It was a risky guess, but it was one he was willing to take. He had time. But first he needed some extra tools, and something to assuage the fire on his knuckles.

  “Taxi,” he whispered.

  *

  Something isn’t right, thought Kage. He leaned forward in the taxi’s Gutter leather seat. Rubbed his fingers together. They were tacky with Thomsin’s sweat. But something else too. Slippery. Soapy? He suppressed a cringe.

  Kage had recorded the brief interview with the boy. He tapped his glasses now, and called up the video. It may have been brief, but it was telling.

  Thomsin was an asshole, like any other Central Bubbler teen. That wasn’t unusual. What was unusual was his face. It could have been the light, but Kage thought the boy looked paler than almost any Bubbler teenager he’d seen. With the magnifying effect of the dome, Bubblers tended to brown quickly. Thomsin’s cheeks had been speckled pale and red, like a Russian doll’s.

  But there was something else. He scrolled back through the video.

  The cat.

  Curious. The feline wasn’t purebred. Mottled pelt. Just about every cat in the Bubble was purebred.

  “The creak of soft leather against your elbows. Musk on your collar. If leather’s your thing, we’ve got it. Jackets, shoes, accessories, pants. Looking for Gutter leather, bovine, buckskin, fish, or snake? Something more exotic? We have it all, at Gutter prices. Full-grain, top-grain, or corrected grain – quality for your budget. Now selling in retailers throughout the B–”

  Kage tapped the arm of his glasses. Saved the contact details for later.

  The video of his interview with Thomsin returned to his overlay.

  Yes. As he played through it a second time, he was sure. The beads of sweat on the boy’s brow. Lips so tightly pinched together, they’d all but disappeared. Clenched forehead. Jaw muscles bulged.

  Kage had put it down to nervousness at the time. But it wasn’t fear or anxiety. It was pain. Thomsin was in agony.

  It was an easy expression to misidentify. Bubblers, especially the elite class, like Thomsin Sparling, were issued standard analgesic implants at birth. To be in that sort of pain, he’d need to have an arm lopped off. Or undergo surgery without an anesthetic.

  The boy had said he’d burned his hand. But a localized burn wouldn’t produce that sort of pain response in a Bubbler. Not a chance.

  Kage rubbed his fingers again. The soapiness was still there from when he’d shaken the boy’s hand. The boy’s injured hand. From a burn?

  He smelt the residue. Bleach. Soap. Not the sort of things one would put on a burn.

  Yup. Something isn’t right, thought Kage, as he stepped out of the taxi, and up the stairs to Bubble PD.

  “Anything back from forensics on that blood sample I asked for?”

  “Ask them yourself,” said Shoulders.

  Kage ignored the Detective’s curled nose. His snarl. He pressed the elevator button. Tapped it again. This must have been the last remaining building in the city with a cable-operated elevator. It had been built long before grav-based replacements. Every time he stepped into this death-trap he was certain the cable would snap.

  But it didn’t. The doors opened, and he was in the morgue. The cool, chemical air settled around Kage’s throat.

  “Good to see you again, Kage,” said Dr. Hoevert without glancing up. “I’ll be … right … with you,” he said, straining to crack open a chest. It was Lincoln Russell’s.

  The doctor wiped his hand across his apron. Pulled off his glove, and presented his liver-spotted hand to Kage.

  Kage paused. Shook.

  “He was fit, mind you,” said Dr. Hoevert, returning his attention to the body. The Coroner’s gray hair was striking under the high-temperature LEDs. Almost nobody let their hair gray anymore, what with Gutter blood transfusions readily available. “Or as fit as a man in his nineties c
an be.”

  “Ninety?” asked Kage, staring at the body’s muscled abdomen.

  “Believe it,” said Dr. Hoevert. “This man has more implants than Cher. Did you attend her concert last month? Everything. From his skin to his joints. All his major organs. And much besides.”

  Dr. Hoevert reached into the chest. Tugged on the heart. “See the size of that thing? Fit as an ox. I don’t like this way of doing things much myself. Aging gracefully is my preferred exit.” The Doctor tossed back a wisp of gray hair from his eye.

  “How’d he die?”

  “Tough to say until I’ve completed the autopsy. Either the head wound, or exsanguination from his severed femoral artery. Take your pick.”

  “You got the results on that blood spatter I asked for?”

  “Jaclyn, have you run that DNA profile yet?”

  A girl in a pink tank-top ambled into the room, chewing gum at a hundred decibels. “Uh, yeah, doc. Got ‘em right here.”

  Kage took the file from her. Avoided staring at her boob tube.

  Just as he’d thought. Industrial-strength Rejek in the blood sample. You’d only find that in Gutter donors. Just as he’d thought. Male donor. Oh, this was interesting. Age estimated at between sixteen and twenty years old. If he remembered correctly, the Gutter kids used in the gore bars were younger than that. Prepubescent.

  “Funny thing.” The girl masticated louder than a tap dancer. “Couldn’t find a match for the DNA anywhere in the database.”

  You won’t find a match if he’s a Gutter, thought Kage.

  “Why you smiling?” asked Dr. Hoevert. He dropped one of the lungs onto a scale. Blood spattered on Kage’s already blood-caked moccasins. He didn’t flinch. Not flinching seemed the masculine thing to do.

  “You ever seen anything but the standard food printer, in a kitchen anywhere in the Bubble, Dr. Hoevert?”

  “Uh, no son. They standardized them almost a decade ago. Only one type around these days. Stops people from …” He yanked on the other lung. “… from abusing municipal ink.” He looked up at Kage. “What’s your point?”

  “Could you take a DNA sample from the skin on my hand? From my palm.”

  Jaclyn’s head tilted a full sixty degrees. “Like right now?”

  “Right now.”

  She shrugged. Swallowed her gum. “Guess so. Hang on a sec.” The girl scurried to the next room.

  “Don’t mind her,” whispered the Coroner. “They send a new one down monthly. She won’t last another week … You feeling alright, Kage? Looks like you’ve got something on your mind.”

  Kage paced. “He didn’t know about the printers. That they’re standard,” he said.

  “Strange,” said the girl, returning with a swab. “Everyone knows that the printers are standard.”

  “Can you compare that with the DNA sample?”

  The girl popped another stick of gum in her mouth. “Uh, which one?”

  Kage almost slapped her with the file in his hand.

  “Oh, yeah. Sure can.” She dropped the swab in a vial, and tossed it into a pile.

  “Do it now,” said Kage.

  The girl looked to Dr. Hoevert, who nodded.

  “Alright, alright. You two are worse than my dad. I’ll be done in fifteen minutes.”

  “Call me,” said Kage, loping toward the elevator. “I’ll be upstairs. In the Cave.”

  *

  Riding a wave of anesthetic bliss, Daniel meandered into the apartment an hour later, laden with more shopping bags.

  He stroked the bandage wrapped around his right hand. Marveled at the ointment he’d bought at Phil’s Pharma. Gods, the times he could’ve used that cream while he was working at the Organ Farm. Rejek was caustic, and over years of handling the emerald liquid, his hands had calloused, then scaled. Sometimes the scales cracked, and when Rejek encountered open skin – well, it wasn’t pleasant.

  Daniel unloaded the largest bag. Extracted the spade, and expanded the handle to its full length. The reinforced polycarbonate grip was cold in his hands. He examined the ceramic tip of the spade. “Cuts through rock,” the assistant had said at the utility store. “Nano-enhanced edge.” Daniel wasn’t too sure what that meant, but it sounded promising.

  He pulled on elbow-length gloves from another packet. Struggled to stretch the rubber over his bandage, but the gloves fitted snugly by the time he was done.

  The spade pendulumed back and forth as he walked to the bathroom. He whistled to the rhythm of his footsteps on the tiles.

  We had you cleaned

  We had you eat

  This time, Daniel had a real gas mask over his face when he opened the bathroom door. Mottled gray, “because safety can be stylish too,” the packaging had said. The rush of his breath in his ears punctuated the tune.

  We love your toes

  We love your meat

  There wasn’t much left of Thomsin Sparling inside the translucent forcefield. The arm that had previously been wedged against the side of the container, had separated at the elbow. It floated on the surface now, drifting around the enclosure, muscle fibers trailing in its wake. An eyeball sailed the gentle waves of decay beside the forearm, rolling in the eddies of lye.

  Daniel leaned over the top of the container, its invisible edge gnawing at his ribcage as he lowered the spade into the blend. He stirred. Plunged. Chopped. And in what seemed like no time at all, big pieces of Thomsin became small. Then smaller still. The caustic mixture did its work. Hair proved difficult at times, catching on the polycarbonate pole. But Daniel rubbed the hair between the fingers of his gloves, and the lye dissolved the strands easily enough.

  Sweat stinging his eye, Daniel surveyed the vat. As Wikipedia had promised, Thomsin had been reduced to a sludge barely thicker than manila-colored coffee. There was something awesome, something breathtaking, in the thought of a body in that form.

  Liquid. Free.

  Daniel withdrew his gloved hands from the shower enclosure. Walked over to the basin, and thrust the gloves into the basin’s forcefield.

  Pristine.

  He removed them, careful not to dislodge his bandage, and tapped his glasses. “Empty shower,” he said. A minute later, and Thomsin had drained away entirely.

  Daniel threw off the gas mask. Let out every molecule of air in his lungs. Crumpled in a heap of relief on the bathroom floor. He felt as though he’d been covered in ribbons of anxiety this past day. They’d snagged on people, on objects, as he’d found his way through the Bubble. Thomsin, the recesses of his mind had whispered. Thomsin, Thomsin, Thomsin.

  Now Thomsin was gone.

  When Daniel stood, he was lighter. His thoughts clarified. Crystalized into a plan. He checked the time. 5:40 a.m. Half an hour until sunrise. Daniel listed mentally what he had to do next.

  Get rid of any trace evidence that Thomsin had died here. The spade. The gloves. The throw that had covered the body. The blood on the floor. The droplets of sludge on the shower base.

  He’d need something in which to carry his tools. A duffel bag maybe. And then he’d need somewhere to stay. It was no longer safe here, not with that Detective sniffing around.

  He rummaged through the top of Thomsin’s closet. Found a medium-sized satchel. That would do fine.

  He fetched the bleach from the shopping bags, got down on his knees, and scrubbed.

  *

  “That’s weird.”

  Una leaned closer to the hoverscreen. “That video you sent. No facial recog match. He’s not in any databases. I searched crimes, birth records, and organ recipients. None of them. Thomsin Sparling’s face should be in dozens of databases.”

  “It’s not weird at all,” said Kage.

  Una raised an eyebrow.

  “He’s a Gutter. Most of them aren’t in any databases,” said Kage.

  “But I thought you said the killer was Thomsin Sparling? He’s not a Gutter.” Una brought up Thomsin’s image from his identity card.

  Kage shunted through a scr
eengrab from the video taken at the apartment earlier that night. The two images stood side by side now. Thomsin and his imposter. “This isn’t Thomsin Sparling.”

  “Huh. Computer agrees. Only a 23% match probability now that we have high-res images of both of them for comparison.”

  “They look similar from a distance. But look closely. Bone structure. Distance between the eyes. They’re not the same person.”

  The whites of Una’s eyes grew. “So then, who is he? And what’s he doing with Thomsin Sparling’s credit card?”

  “On top of that, he’s living in Thomsin’s apartment,” said Kage.

  Una fished a cigarette from behind a hovering screen. “This doesn’t bode well for the future of Thomsin Sparling.”

  Kage remembered how the killer had smashed in Lincoln Russell’s skull. Hacked off his leg. His fingers.

  Kage turned. Was halfway out the door, on his way to round up a posse of patrolmen to pay another visit to Thomsin’s apartment, when his glasses rang.

  “Soapy strings,” said Jaclyn.

  Kage heard her chewing on the other end of the line. Which was impressive, given the noise-cancelling software in his glasses.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The DNA strings,” explained the girl, “they’re degraded. Some sort of soapy substance. It’s messing with the coding procedure.”

  “But is it him?”

  “Is it who?”

  Kage inhaled deeply. Resisted the urge to punch one of the hoverscreens. “Is the DNA sample taken from my palm the same person whose DNA was on the victim – Lincoln Russell’s – forearm?”

  “Oh … ummm. It could be.”

  Kage glanced at Una. Calmed his heart. Bit down on his lower lip so hard, it bled. “Can you say more?”

  “Well, you know, we do Short Tandem Matching here in the lab. To get a match, we need to analyze multiple STR loci, and see whether there–”

  “A little less detail than that. Tell me. Is it a match?”

  “Because the sample from your hand was badly degraded, I couldn’t analyze enough STR regions to get a definitive answer. But the regions I was able to analyze, matched.”

  “Is it him?”

  “Probably.”