by James Knapp
Over the racket, my cell went off and I flipped it open.
“What?” I snapped.
“Ms. Flax?” a voice asked. It was the G-man, Nico.
“It’s Cal. Not Calliope, not Ms. Flax, and not ma’am. Cal.”
“Cal,” he said. “I need some help.”
“Help? You guys screwed me—”
“I said you’d get paid for the tip on Valle,” he said.
“You will. I’ll take care of it. You help me out, and there’s a little more in it for you.”
My heart was still thumping, and I could still hear people yelling in the units around mine. I sucked air through my nose.
“Why me?” I asked.
“Because I don’t want anyone else involved.”
“You mean you don’t want to tell anyone.”
“Yes.”
His voice sounded rough. It was different from before.
“Illegal?”
“No. Just a favor.”
“Why should I?”
“Because I think you’re worth more than the cage at the arena,” he said, “and I think you do too. Besides, you could use a favor in return.”
There was something about the way he said it that made me think twice. Usually guys like him didn’t ask; they took. With the back of my hand, I rubbed my eyes and wiped the blood out from under my nose.
“I’m listening.”
“I need some things dropped off somewhere,” he said. “I won’t have time to get them myself.”
“That’s it? Drop some shit off?”
“Drop it off, wait, and then go back.”
“Why?”
“In case I don’t come out on my own.”
I thought about it a minute. He saved my life. I guessed I owed him something.
“What am I picking up and where am I taking it?”
He gave me the list. Loading up the bike was a trick, but it didn’t have to get far. I strapped on a pack, threw a bag over the gas tank, and stuffed the rest in my coat. He gave me the credit to get it all, and said I could keep what was left.
The drop point was some piece-of-shit storage hole that I didn’t like the looks of, and I’d seen some shit holes. It looked like no one had been there in years, like the people who kept their stuff there died and the guys that ran it skipped town. Who knew what was left down there, but I hoped not a bunch of junkies and hobos.
The lock was still there, so with any luck it was empty. He had given me the code to get in, and it worked, so I rolled the bike down to the freight elevator and rode it right in and cut the engine. With the tip of my boot, I kicked the button marked 8; bottom floor.
The underground part was as nasty as the part up top, and it looked like no one had been down there for years either, except for a set of wheel tracks that looked like they came from a hand truck, and some footprints following them. Another set followed them down and to the right.
Walking the bike, I followed the tracks, and sure enough, they went right where I was going: a green metal door marked C. The tracks went through the door, but when I pushed it, there was no give. I tried the handle and it was locked, so I banged on the door. No one answered. I was alone down there.
It didn’t matter. Wachalowski said just bring the stuff, leave it, and don’t ask questions. After I dropped it off, there was a bar nearby where I could knock back a few and watch some TV, then go back and check on him. I could do that.
I dropped the stuff next to the door in a pile, as he said: four gallons of water in two plastic containers, one bundle of plastic ties, a sharp knife, a first-aid kit, a battery-powered lamp, a length of chain, a padlock, and three clean towels. I wondered what it was for.
If he was still alive when I came back, maybe I’d ask.
Nico Wachalowski—Guardian Metro Storage Facility
Getting the box turned out to be the easy part. I never found out how it was managed; I just told them where to send it. I picked an old unit in an underground storage facility that I’d rented back when I left the country. When I came back, I never reclaimed anything in it; in fact, I never set eyes on it again until that night. I hadn’t been down there in many years, and from the looks of it, neither had anyone else. When I arrived, a fresh set of dolly tracks stood out in the crud slicked over the metal floor, and there it was, left next to the rusted door to my locker.
Noakes pinged me over the JZI. Wachalowski, where are you?
Following a lead.
In Dandridge?
If you know where I am, then why do you ask?
You—
I cut the connection.
Getting the box was easy. Opening it was another thing altogether. On the floor of the mostly empty storage cell, under a ton of street and subway with the steel shutters pulled and only the light of a flashlight to see by, I sat and stared at that box for an hour.
Back in the grinder, when those things pulled me down into that tunnel, something happened to me. A piece of that memory never returned, and I was glad for that, but I remembered the pain and the horror as they began to tear me apart. When my last tour ended, they honored me, gave me a medal, and recommended I go home. Now, more than any other time since, I felt like I was being dragged down through that tunnel again.
Incoming message.
A drop of brown water dripped from above, and landed with a solid pat on the surface of the box. I should have faced Faye long ago. I’d owed it to her.
Now I had to face her as a revivor.
The words “incoming message” floated across my vision again.
I closed my eyes, shutting out the silver box.
This is Wachalowski.
Agent Wachalowski, this is Bob MacReady from Heinlein Industries.
If you’re contacting me like this, can I assume my request for a follow-up interview is being denied?
You can.
I’ll get a court order.
No, you won’t.
He was probably right about that. Heinlein had powerful allies in all kinds of high places, and they had decided to take the safe path. Getting a judge to issue a grant like that and having it stick would probably be beyond my means alone.
Do your superiors know you’re talking to me? I asked him.
Yes.
What is it that they want you to tell me?
That Heinlein is not behind this.
I never said I thought you were.
I’ve done some digging, Agent. Our name has come up in conjunction with your investigation too many times to be dismissed as coincidence. You must at least suspect it.
If he knew that, Heinlein had some pretty deep contacts. I opened my eyes and went back to staring at the box on the other side of the room.
Why are you telling me this?
Because despite how it may look, Heinlein is not involved. No one here knows why Cross was killed. Heinlein Industries, understandably, doesn’t want their shell peeled back too far, but Cross was a good man. He was respected here.
Sometimes circumstances make for hard choices.
Agreed, but that isn’t what happened here. I can’t make you believe that, but it’s true.
Cross stumbled on something; that I was sure of. That it was something sanctioned by Heinlein Industries and that they were behind his death I found unlikely, because I couldn’t make a huge entity like Heinlein and a relatively small-time criminal like Tai fit together. It was related to Heinlein, though. Whatever Cross had found, it got him killed, along with the others.
Another drop of water drummed onto the top of the box, then trickled down one side.
Just answer me one thing, I said.
If I can.
How much of a person really makes the transition, after reanimation?
I think there’s only one way to truly know, Agent.
I thought of the young girl’s body I found in that bathroom, back when the whole thing started. I didn’t get it then, but it was the first time I’d thought of a revivor as something human, and I
wondered whether I was unraveling. Part of me only wanted to see the case through to the end no matter what the cost, but another part, a simpler, selfish part, had lost something and wanted it back. I wanted the lost years back. I wanted to forget what happened when those things pulled me underground.
I wanted Faye back.
But Faye was gone. I told myself that the thing in the box was not her. It was dangerous to believe otherwise.
Thanks, MacReady.
Thank you for listening, Agent.
Is there anything else?
Yes.
And that is?
Don’t open the box.
The connection terminated.
I stood up then and crossed the room. I lit the lamp and put it down in the middle of the floor as I went. The locker became illuminated in flickering light, causing roaches to scatter.
It’s now or never.
I pulled the box open. There was a high-pitched hiss as the cover came free, and a cold white mist puffed out through the seam. I lifted the top away and put it on the floor. A thin sheet of black plastic was stretched across the inside, and sitting on that was a small index card. I picked it up and flipped it over to find a handwritten note.
Deanimation in twenty-four hours. Leichenesser will take care of the rest. Get what you need before then. Good luck.
Twenty-four hours. I hadn’t even thought about what would happen after the fact.
There was nothing I could do about it now. Maybe it was better that way. She hadn’t wanted this; I knew that.
I took a deep breath and pulled the black plastic apart to reveal what lay underneath. The inside of the locker was filled with a transparent rubber blister, filled with clear fluid so that its skin was taut. Through the plastic I could see the shape of a bare human figure cocooned inside. It was her.
Her eyes were closed and her hair had been completely removed, but the face was hers. A thick tube extended down her throat, her lips forming a seal around it. Dozens of small electrodes covered her body, trailing threads that hung suspended in the liquid surrounding her. Her skin was ashen, and the veins underneath had turned black from the synthetic blood they contained.
There was a drain fixed to the middle of the storage-unit floor where I could send the stasis fluid. Gritting my teeth, I nestled my hand between the skin of the blister and the inside of the storage container. I felt beneath it; it didn’t seem to be attached anywhere, so I lifted the sac and it came free with a sticky peeling sound.
The whole thing was hard to get a grip on, and it was heavy. I managed to pull it up over the edge of the container, when the whole thing oozed over the side of the crate before I could stop it. The rubber skin got snagged on one of the latches as it went, tearing it open top to bottom and spilling its contents out onto the floor.
I swore as cold liquid poured over my lap and gushed down into my shoes. I stumbled back and fell as her body slipped out and slid across the floor, bumping to a stop against me.
I pulled myself up, trailing strings of sticky fluid as I scrambled back. Her body lay on its back on the wet floor. As I watched, her nipples hardened in the cold, pointing straight up at the ceiling from either side of a wrinkled, oval skin graft.
Faye is dead. This thing is not her. Wake it up and do what you need to do.
I grabbed her wrists and dragged her off the plastic. The electrode filaments stretched and snapped as I pulled her over to the drain and let the fluid ooze through the grate. I grabbed the plastic tube that snaked down her throat and dragged it up out of her stomach until the end popped out of her mouth.
I grabbed one of the plastic water jugs and peeled the top off, then dumped it over her body. Once the stasis fluid was rinsed away, an internal electric jolt would trigger reanimation.
I looked down at the body. The vitals monitor was still showing a flatline. I knelt down next to her and peeled one of the electrodes free from her shoulder. Her face was slack and lifeless. My throat began to burn.
“I’m sorry, Faye.”
I heard a dull thud from inside her chest, and her whole body went rigid. Her eyes snapped wide open and she convulsed, leaning forward. The cords in her neck stood out and her face contorted; then her head fell back onto the concrete as she pulled in a long breath.
I stared as the monitor picked up signs of life; to all appearances, she seemed alive. Her eyes turned to me, bugging out of her head and reflecting the light from the lamp. She began hitching in breaths, forcing out words one at a time as ropes of fluid sprayed from her blue-black lips.
“What . . . happened . . . ?”
Faye was staring up at me. For just that second, I swore I saw recognition.
“What . . . happened . . . to . . . me?”
I saw it at the last minute. I was looking right in her eyes, and I saw fear. Her stare looked through me into something else, something I couldn’t see. She saw something that terrified her.
“Don’t . . .” she whispered.
The muscles in her face relaxed. The terror went out of her, and a soft glow flickered on behind her eyes. The monitor wavered, then snapped into the waveform of the revivor heart signature.
I had no conscious memory of moving, but suddenly I was kneeling over her in the muck, one hand held out in front of me and the other raised near my head. An old dresser had crashed over, and a can rolled across the concrete and rattled to a stop among pieces of broken glass. Blood trickled out of a cut on my forearm.
I realized I was holding a pair of rusted scissors in my hand, grabbed from the dresser. The tips were pointed down at that oval-shaped scar.
Glass crunched under my heel as I started to stand and half fell, half sat on the wet floor. I threw the scissors away and heard them clatter across the concrete. After the initial jolt, a revivor might not move for as long as an hour.
Before I could change my mind, I gathered the chain and the lock.
9
Wake
Faye Dasalia—Guardian Metro Storage Facility
There was no sound, no sensation, and no light. I did not know what I was or where I was, only that I existed. Enough of me survived to at least know that.
When the darkness came, it had been absolute. There were no dreams, and I sensed no passing time; only a black, empty void. There was nothing and no one, not even me. I was lost in darkness until the warmth came.
Primary systems initializing.
The words hung there in the dark and then faded. Warmth gathered in my chest, then bled down my spine and trickled through my body. It wormed through each limb to find fingers and toes. It found the nape of my neck and gathered there.
Secondary systems initializing.
Cold pinprick light flickered to become a strobe. A connection inside my head seemed to spark and sent a pulse through my brain. I began to sense different parts of myself, like lights turned on through rooms of an empty home. My mind willed it, and my fingers and toes flexed.
I opened my eyes, and light poured through each lens. Images began to form.
I was lying on my back, staring upward. Above me were pipes and water-stained concrete, lit by flat electric light. I did not recognize the things around me.
I breathed in and sensed particles in the air. They were smells: decay and mildew. Beneath them were sweat and men’s deodorant. The smells opened up pathways inside my mind. Connections opened to dark and disused cells. My memories began to reawaken. I sensed them, endless points of light in a void. The sum of them, taken as a whole, was me.
Tertiary systems initializing.
A drop of liquid splashed in a shallow pool. The air was cold, and goose bumps rose on my skin. Somehow, somewhere, I was alive.
I sat up, naked in the cold, damp shadows. I sat on a bedroll on a concrete floor, surrounded by old boxes. I saw furniture, some covered and some not.
“Hello?” I called out, but no one answered me. I stretched, and tiny jolts twitched through my muscles. Vibrations hummed inside my chest. Energy flowed thr
ough me and urged me to move. Behind me, a drip of water splashed again.
I stood up and wobbled there in the dim light. Tiny jolts sparked through the muscles of my legs, making minute corrections.
Calibrating . . .
I noticed the heavy chain for the first time. It was wrapped tightly around my left ankle and fastened with a padlock. It snaked across the concrete six feet or so, where the other end was locked to a floor drain.
“Hello?”
The room was dimly lit, but I could still see. I saw boxes and furniture and old crates. These things triggered memories. From that sea of tiny lights within the void, certain points rose to the surface and I saw that the things around me were things I once knew.
Past a stack of crates, I saw electric light. I stepped toward it, dragging the chain behind me. It was a lamp on a box. It sat next to an old water-stained sofa. Lying on top of the sofa was a man.
A memory, brighter than the rest, swam up. I knew that man, and when I saw him, I froze. When I saw him, it hit me.
I am Faye Dasalia.
That was my name; I was Faye Dasalia. The vibrations in my chest seemed to grow. Who was this man, and why was he here with me?
His face was handsome, but it had been beaten. His Roman nose had been broken at least once, and his face was freshly bruised. He wore slacks and a sleeveless white undershirt. A scar stood out on the left side of his neck. I followed it to the meat of his shoulder, which was pocked with thick white scars.
I stepped closer, and glass crunched under my foot. A jar had broken, littering the concrete. I saw coins and a toothbrush. Off to one side was a pair of sharp scissors. I skirted the glass and took another step. The chain pulled taut as I knelt down beside him.
Who are you?
As his chest rose and fell, I felt warmth from him. As I watched, hot orange light pulsed at his neck, a thick branch on either side. I could see them, coursing there under his skin. They came from his chest, where a fiery coal pulsed.