Lifeless

by Adrianne Strickland

  I exhaled, and my fists relaxed. I voluntarily opened myself up to the Word of Death for about the first time, and it seeped into my thoughts like tendrils of black smoke.

  Asphyxiate, bleed, burn, crush …

  With equally black humor, I wondered if the Words were coming out in alphabetical order after being pent up for so long. I waited while the morbid parade went by in my mind, until I heard—or felt—the Word I wanted.

  I reached out and pet the cat, stroking its thin fur. I thought my hand might shake, but it was completely steady.

  “Stop,” I murmured.

  The cat stopped breathing.

  I raised my hand and let it fall to my side. I gave Drey a grim smile as I turned my back on the table. “I imagine I’ll be seeing more dying animals in the near future.”

  Drey was watching me, his eyes careful. “Yes. Until you get used to it.”

  “Your friendly neighborhood pet euthanizer,” I said with a low chuckle.

  His eyes grew more scrutinizing. “You seem to be taking this rather well.”

  He was right. I was completely calm. No crying or vomiting. Maybe when I wasn’t forced to use the Words or carried away by them, when I was in control … this gave me peace. Using the Word of Death was what I wanted, deep down.

  I shuddered, tucking my hand behind my back. “Are we done for the day, then?”

  “Yes. Tav, I—”

  “See you tomorrow.” I headed for the lab door, but then I remembered I couldn’t get out on my own.

  Luckily, Drey was right behind me, swiping his keycard for me. “I’ll get you one of these,” he said right before I bolted.

  I didn’t bother stopping by the mess hall, not even to order something to go, because my appetite had already vanished and I didn’t anticipate its return. I wanted to hold Pie. I wanted to read what Brehan had written on the scrap of toilet paper in my pocket.

  I needed to.

  ten

  On the tram back to my apartment, I kept my right hand behind my back, my left hand gripping it above the wrist, as if restraining it. I almost wanted to cut it off. It probably wasn’t fair of me to blame my hand for the darkness inside of me, even if it had been the deliverer. After all, the Words were in my head—or at least, that was where I heard them—but I didn’t want to cut my head off. At least, not yet.

  Gods, I hoped it wouldn’t come to that. I wondered, briefly, if I could use the Word of Death against myself. The Word of Time had killed himself, taking his Word with him, but Time hadn’t been the thing that killed him. I doubted my own Word would work on my body, since it seemed to exist inside of me happily enough without killing me. The possibility was something I was better off not considering, anyway.

  It wasn’t until I was back in the privacy of my bathroom that I dared to take Brehan’s note out of my pocket and open it. Written as it was on delicate toilet paper, it was battered but still readable:

  Tentative yes. He’s loyal to Carlin but not the rest. Why?

  As I flushed it, I couldn’t keep the hope from rising in my chest. Brehan’s endorsement was enough for me to trust Luft.

  Now I had a new mission, in addition to learning how to kill—or, rather, in addition to learning how to love killing:

  Reach Khaya.

  I vigorously scrubbed my hands in the bathroom sink. Pie had been too distracted by what must have been the smell of the cat on my hand to stay still enough to let me hold her. But at least she hadn’t shied away. In fact, she was scratching on the bathroom door, trying to get in.

  I opened the door to another puppy-sized assault on my shins. Crouching down in front of Pie, I let her sniff my hands. When she didn’t seem to find anything interesting and started chewing on them instead, I rubbed her down and play-fought on the floor with her until she eventually stopped attacking me and sprawled out, falling asleep in five seconds flat.

  Man, if only life were that easy for me. It could be, I supposed, if I let it. All I had to do was pretend this was a game, kill whomever I had to, like the good attack dog they wanted me to be, and then sleep soundly at night.

  Yeah, right.

  After Pie was completely out, I got up, stretched, and sat down in front of the wooden desk, so dark green it was almost black, and the sleek computer that sat on it. I tried to look like I did this every day, even though it was just about the first computer I’d voluntarily touched in my life. In the hospital, I’d practiced typing in conjunction with my reading and writing lessons, but like most of my activities, it hadn’t been optional. Typing was a milder form of torture, but it was still torture.

  My incentive now was that since this might have been Khaya’s computer, maybe I could somehow contact her from it. My personal surveillance team would of course be monitoring anything I did on it, let alone any voicemails I sent or emails if I could’ve even managed to write one. But maybe Khaya had sent a message here. Probably not to anyplace obvious like the email inbox, but maybe I could discover a less-obvious place.

  I still had the reading level of an eight-year-old, so after the screen blinked to life I was happy to discover that I could click most words for an audio prompt, just like I could on my old videophone back when I’d been totally wordless. I could also cue the computer with audio prompts, but I didn’t want to make my search so obvious as to announce it to the room.

  Instead, I browsed some random folders filled with articles I didn’t even bother attempting to read, but which looked like they had to do with biology. A good sign that this had indeed been Khaya’s computer. Then I launched a game of Solitaire and promptly closed it. I’d always found it too dull, but maybe Khaya had liked it. Finally I launched the web browser and idly clicked on a bunch of news articles that I once again didn’t read, until whoever was watching me had probably died of boredom. Or at least started watching something else. That was when I opened up the browser’s history.

  There was nothing from the past two months or so, but there were quite a few sites recorded before Khaya escaped. I read the titles as quickly as I could, which wasn’t as fast as I would’ve preferred, and made a mental note to try harder during my reading lessons.

  Oddly enough, there wasn’t much to do with anything other than birds: bird websites, bird articles, bird photos. The last thing listed was The Physical Characteristics of Blue Finches. “Physical characteristics” was a pain in my ass to puzzle out, and yet it told me nothing.

  I closed the web browser, my heavy disappointment sinking me into the chair. I could see that the history included no external messaging sites or forums. And I was pretty sure there was no hidden code within the bird sites, or at least not one that I’d be able to decipher.

  For some reason, the fact that Khaya liked birds was an extra weight on my mood. It made sense, caged as she’d been, but I hadn’t known she liked them. I didn’t know all sorts of things about her. I supposed these things would maybe come with time … if I ever saw her again.

  Would Khaya even want me rescued? What if she thought I belonged in here, locked up like a rabid animal? What if she’d already met someone else? We hadn’t known each other for that long. Since we’d met, we’d been apart longer than we’d been together, never mind all the years before we’d met. What if her liking me had just been a matter of happenstance, and I’d only been the first person she could get close to?

  But that didn’t say much for her powers of discernment or for her regard for me … or for people in general, if she’d just used the first person she came across. I regarded her more highly than that. Even from the depths of my doom and gloom, I couldn’t really go there. But there was still the problem: even if she’d loved me then, would she love me now?

  Probably only if I could keep it together and stay true to myself until I somehow managed to get out of here. And that involved focusing, not acting like a whiny baby.

  By now it was long
past dark, so I shut the computer down and went to bed, taking Pie with me. I didn’t care about letting her roll around in the silk sheets. If all of my stuff became coated with puppy fur, especially my all-black wardrobe, so much the better.

  The week wore on and Drey kept bringing sick animals to the lab for me to kill—mostly dogs and cats that were about to be put down anyway, collected from animal shelters throughout the city. At least, that was what Drey assured me. That wasn’t even the bad part, since, after the fourth animal, I wondered if I’d even care if they were terminally ill anymore. The Word of Death certainly didn’t, as I used it to stop their hearts.

  What was bad was when Agonya sauntered by my table one day during lunch in the mess hall, before my usual afternoon lab session with Drey, and said, “You know what they’re calling you around here? Merciful Death, Liberator of Aging Pets. Way to make a fool out of yourself—and the rest of us, at this rate. Can’t you just suck it up and do your job?”

  I mustered a grin. “But you yourself said I’m not one of you. And you’re right. I’d much rather be a fool than that.”

  She stormed off, predictably. But I didn’t feel as confident as my grin had made me look. I wasn’t even sure why I was in the mess hall. Brehan wasn’t even here, or Luft. Now that I knew I could trust Luft, I especially wanted to talk to him again and try to glean if he had any clues as to how I might contact Khaya. But he hadn’t made a second appearance in the mess hall all week.

  As I stood from my table, clearing my half-full plate even though everyone else left their plates for the bussers, I couldn’t help but feel like eyes were on me. More than usual, anyway. It was probably bad enough that given the dog hair on my clothes I wasn’t hiding the fact that I had a cuddly puppy, but now …

  Merciful Death? Gods. The City Council wasn’t going to let that image of me last for long.

  It was then I met a particular dark pair of eyes watching me from across the mess hall. I only caught a glimpse of her pale face and straight black hair before she turned away to talk to someone else, but it was enough for me to see she was smiling.

  It wasn’t a pleasant smile. Smiles never were, with Ryse. She might be suspended and banned from working with me, but she was still in the know. And if she was smiling, it meant things would be bad for me.

  Sure enough, when I showed up at the Death Factory that afternoon, Drey was standing on the other side of the steel table, a glass cage resting on the shiny surface between us. The guinea pig inside of the cage wasn’t sedated, and didn’t look anything close to sick and dying. It didn’t even look old.

  “I’m not sure—” I began, but Drey spoke before I could finish.

  “The City Council wants to see more progress with you, and I think you’re ready. You have to be ready, Tavin.”

  This sounded serious, and I looked at the guinea pig with mounting anxiety. Its twitching little nose reminded me of the bunny Ryse had made me kill. It was like she was insinuating herself in my life again, even from far away. “What do I have to do?”

  Drey put his hands on the edge of the table and stared at me levelly. “You have to kill it, Tavin, and not just by stopping its heart. Or else we’ll do this again and again until you kill it how they want you to.”

  So this was how it was going to be. My anxiety twisted into anger. “Do this? What, stand here?” I folded my arms. “Fine, I’ll stand here. We’ll see who gets tired first, old man.”

  Drey’s eyes dropped. “I told you that I was willing to do things for you I’d rather not do, as long as you were willing to do them for me in return. And I meant it.” He unfolded part of a white towel lying behind the cage. More steel, sharp steel, shined in the fluorescent lights. A scalpel rested on the towel. “You won’t do anything I don’t have to do myself. We’re in this together.”

  “Wait, what are you doing?” I demanded.

  That was all I had time to get out before Drey seized the guinea pig by the scruff of its neck in one hand, the scalpel in the other, and stabbed it in its fat little belly.

  The creature screeched. I just about screeched too, crying out and lunging for Drey. But he kept the table between us and held the bleeding, squealing guinea pig aloft, so I could see it but not reach it. Its tiny limbs flailed and spun in the air, scattering droplets of blood.

  “What are you doing? ” I shouted again. “Gods damn you!”

  “I won’t give it to you, Tavin, until you agree to make it bleed. You can kill it quickly, but nevertheless … ”

  I couldn’t stand the sight, but I couldn’t look away. The anger in my chest rose to my face in a burning wave and the word exploded out of my throat. “Fine!”

  Drey held the struggling creature out over the table and I snatched it from him, trying to ignore the feeling of the warm little body squirming in my grip. The squealing was scrambling my brain, and I used the first Word to come to me.

  “Open, open, open!” I shouted at it.

  At its veins, rather.

  Red spots appeared all over it, soaking its fur. A brief rainstorm of blood pattered onto the steel tabletop. I dropped the stained, twitching corpse back in its cage and held up my shaking hand, smeared with blood. It was just like it had been with Ryse. Except this time, I’d done it myself.

  The City Council wasn’t going to let me get away with clean hands anymore, literally or figuratively.

  “This is sick,” I said, my voice shaking like my hand. I turned on Drey. “You’re sick.”

  But then I realized how pale Drey was. He looked about ready to throw up. He swallowed, tossed the scalpel down on the table, and wiped his own hands on the white towel. My shaking subsided as I watched him, a cold realization filling me like water in my lungs—like drowning and not being able to do anything about it.

  I couldn’t let him do this. But I didn’t want Ryse to step in either. Nor did I particularly want to die.

  So I had to do it on my own.

  “That was still a mercy killing,” I said, swallowing my own bile. “I was still putting it out of its misery because of what you did, and that’s not good enough for them. You don’t have to hurt them anymore. I’ll … I’ll do it without your help. That’s what they want, anyway.”

  Drey nodded, not looking at me. That was no doubt what he wanted too. Whether he’d known what my decision would be before this session in the lab—whether this had all been yet another manipulation—I preferred not to know.

  I didn’t want to have to hate him.

  eleven

  Even when I woke up the next morning in my green canopy bed, I wanted to look at my hands and make sure they no longer had blood on them. Never mind that I’d scrubbed them so hard the evening before—after already washing them at the lab—that they were nearly bleeding themselves.

  I didn’t want to get out of bed, but Pie had already peed on the floor. I supposed at some point I should probably start potty-training her instead of simply cleaning up her messes. I didn’t like the training aspect of it, but even human kids had to be potty-trained at some point. And picking up poop was probably something I could live without.

  I rolled out of bed, refusing to allow myself to check my hands again. I scooped up Pie, showed her the puddle with an obligatory “No,” and dodged said puddle as I left the bedroom. I deposited her outside on the balcony, where someone—Drey—had laid down some old paper, and hoped she would get the picture. She mostly just started shredding the paper, and also yelped in alarm when she nearly got her head stuck in the wrought-iron bars of the balcony railing. At least she couldn’t fit through.

  Poop aside, I didn’t know what I’d do without her.

  I still didn’t feel like facing the day. But before I could estimate how long it would take my various instructors to track me down if I didn’t show up to my lessons, there was a knock on the door.

  When I opened it, Drey stood there in the
green and gold hallway. He was half-turned away like he was deep in thought, but looked up immediately.

  “Put on one of your Necron suits. I know you hate them, but it was the only way I could get the City Council to agree.”

  I was still rubbing sleep from my eyes. “Agree to what?” Whatever it was, it couldn’t be all that good if it involved death-proof clothing.

  “To let me take you out into Eden City, for us to get some fresh air. Don’t bother with gloves.”

  Or, I was wrong. I blinked at him, stepping back in the doorway in surprise. Drey took it as an invitation to come inside.

  “And they agreed to this even with me wearing that stupid outfit?” I asked as he walked into the kitchen and started filling the pot of the coffeemaker from the tap.

  “Well, that plus four armed guards and an extra Godspeaker. Not Ryse, so don’t worry. We’ll have to take a van.”

  “But … why?” I sputtered, still standing in the entryway.

  “Like I said, I thought it would be good for you. For us, even. And the City Council decided to listen.” Maybe they liked the progress he was making with me, but I didn’t ask. He poured the water into the coffeemaker and turned it on. “I’ll make you some breakfast while you get ready. Eggs and bacon sound good?” He was already pulling the ingredients out of the fridge, which he must have stocked when he put down the paper for Pie.

  I hadn’t had someone take care of me like this for months. At least, not counting the hospital staff, who were paid to feed me bland food and change my bed sheets. It was almost like Drey and I were back at the old garage, complete with too-bitter coffee by the looks of the tar already hissing and dribbling out of the machine.

  Almost. But not quite. Nothing felt the same anymore. Or right. Not even this, which was shaping up to be the best morning I’d had since becoming the Word of Death—and the best chance I had to “bump into” Tu and Pavati and get rescued. Maybe Drey was in on it, and that was why this all felt like a ruse. It might be a ruse in our favor for once.