Halfskin Boxed

by Tony Bertauski

  Deeper, it went.

  Hotter, it became.

  Nix knew where the ride would lead if it did not stop. He knew it would take him to the center of existence, into the heart of the fire. To oblivion.

  If it did not stop. Did not stop.

  And the chug-chug rang like a gong.

  It hammered.

  It sang. It called. It created.

  And it burned.

  Nix felt the fabric of his life—his existence—was curling and graying like the edges of a parchment meeting the freshly struck tip of a match. He was thinning, fraying, and fading.

  He could take no more.

  If he went deeper.

  He would be no longer—

  But the ride began to slow—

  Slow—

  Stop.

  Near a furnace, a surface red hot, filling everything with light. It surged like a belly, like breath filled it, a heart beating inside.

  Beating to the chug-chug.

  Nix felt the elevator that held him so close to oblivion; it clung by a delicate thread that could be easily snipped by the edge of a butterfly wing. He waited, dangling precipitously close to touching the surface, a touch that would melt everything.

  He felt his skin peel.

  Bones char.

  He melted into a fleshy puddle of goo that would leak through the cracks of the elevator floor and drip on the furnace and sizzle and evaporate and become nothing, become nothing, become—

  And then it lifted.

  Ever so slowly, he pulled away, lifted up. Carefully. Lovingly.

  He inched away from death. Away from the furnace.

  No longer a puddle.

  And up he went where it was cooler. Where there were streaking colors and sounds again. He remembered things. Remembered who he was, entertained thoughts of what he looked like and where he’d been. He wished he could hide in the lagoon, like he could call it up and go there, soak in the ocean’s buoyant grip and lay his head back, bathe in the soft droplets floating from the waterfall.

  And upward he went—

  Through the thoughts, through the colors and smells and images until—

  Wake up, Nix.

  He felt a membrane wrap around him, sealing him inside. Defining him. It felt like plastic wrap.

  He recognized, finally, his body.

  He opened his eyes in a dark room.

  41

  A face looked back from the mirror. Sunken eyes, caved cheeks. A cold sore—red and angry—shined on her upper lip. She ran the tip of her tongue over it and felt the sting.

  Felt good.

  Cali’s hands quivered on her eyes, her nerves quaking with doubt.

  Biomites were artificial clones of biological cells. They required oxygen and nutrients. Food, something she hadn’t had in thirty-six hours. Or more. She had no appetite and figured she could go another thirty-six hours, if needed.

  She was still drinking water. Her urine had cleared and lost the biomite smell—something like putty. She suspected the majority of the old-generation biomites had been flushed out.

  The blinds were drawn. Darkness was outside. After midnight, somewhere in the range of 2:00 a.m.

  The hospital was quiet, except for the sounds of some of the suffering down the hall and the hushed tones of late-shift nurses. She programmed their computers to show their room was empty due to equipment failure. Nurses wouldn’t need to open the door until maintenance arrived in the morning.

  She listened to the radio and phone chatter, eavesdropping on conversations, but heard nothing except gossip and sorrow. No security guards reporting their positions.

  No Marcus Anderson.

  She dared not hope for the best. She wasn’t desperate enough to believe they’d gone to the streets of Chicago in search of them, leaving the doors wide open. Her head was stuffy, brain a bit sluggish as it readjusted to the flushing, but she wasn’t delusional.

  They were out there.

  I’m not delusional.

  Nix looked good, his vitals improved. She’d thought she lost him shortly before midnight. His pulse faded. There was nothing she could do but wait. And he came back from the edge. The new breeds wouldn’t let him die; they kept him alive. His forehead was hot to touch, but that was good. They were fighting.

  She wasn’t going to lose him.

  But she needed him moving normally. If they could leave the hospital at full strength, walk out like a healthy pair, she could handle interference much more effectively, alter what people were seeing and believing. They could do it when visiting hours had closed, when the day shift had gone home and surgeries were done and nurses were just trying to keep people asleep.

  They’d do it then.

  She sat down and rested her head, fully aware she might fall asleep. All was quiet and maybe she could get a few hours, setting an internal alarm to wake up. Her eyes were instantly weighted, like the thought gave her body permission to check out for a spell.

  If she’d had that thought seconds earlier, if she’d decided not to visit the restroom, the ending would’ve been different.

  Her eyelids were on their last drop, preparing to lock down, when a disturbance snapped them open. A nurse protested with hushed tones, but harshly enough to carry through all the doors along that wing. She was answered by a man with no ability to whisper.

  Cali jumped to her feet.

  She was at the door, eyes wide, mind scanning. There was nothing in the airwaves, but the nurse was obviously agitated. Cali felt her anger. It was late; there was no way the man was going to look in every room, not on her watch. If he had any questions, he could ask and she might be able to tell him, but there was no way he was going to—

  The man was done talking.

  The nurse was unable to stop him.

  Cali’s heart slammed her ribs. She touched the door, head against the cool surface, hoping to get an idea of where he was going. The nurse’s voice was trailing. She might be going off to search for help. Or she was following the man.

  She quieted her racing mind, reaching out to sense biomite activity in relation to where she was. She picked up on the nurse’s. And the man’s.

  Cali hovered on the fringes of his biomites, careful not to influence them in any way, wary they may be expecting manipulation after they examined what she did to James. She simply watched what direction he was going.

  The C-wing.

  He would come this way, though. He’d stop in the room. Cali might be able to influence what he was seeing, but it was a risk. Any hint of manipulation could set off an alarm and bring a mob of gun-toting maniacs. And if this turned into a chase, Cali and Nix were not going to win. Not from the fifth floor.

  They had to leave. Now.

  “Wake up, Nix.” Cali bent over the bed, gently shaking his arm.

  Nothing, at first. She shook again and, this time, his eyes opened with effort. There was no focus, plenty of confusion. His breath was humid, rancid. Lips coated with gummy residue, skin flaking off his cheeks.

  Cali pulled back the sheets and looked away. She swallowed back the acrid bile that erupted past her tongue. He’d been eliminating urine where he lay. She could clean him up when they were ready. That wasn’t now.

  Nix was already falling back asleep. She sat him up, whispering what they were going to do. She couldn’t hear the nurse anymore. At the pace the man was going, he would reach the end of the wing in five minutes and come back in their direction.

  She got new pants on Nix. They were her pants, but he couldn’t go without clothes. Not naked.

  And not soiled.

  “One foot,” she whispered, leaning him forward. “Put your weight on it, then the other.”

  Nix followed her directions like a compliant zombie, lifting one foot then the other. He supported his weight, standing and swaying with her help. She led him to the wheelchair.

  That was good.

  He was moving, responsive.

  And not dead.

  Cali ran t
o the door and cracked it open. The hall was empty.

  A nurse would later report seeing a woman and a boy on the elevator around 2:00 a.m., just before the doors closed. She didn’t think much about it at the time. She couldn’t explain why.

  42

  Marcus unbuckled his watch and rubbed his wrist. He shut the laptop and made sure it was locked before getting up. Another stretch, this one for the lower back. The nurse paid him no attention. She was busy at her station, behind the counter.

  He dropped the laptop in a leather saddlebag and slung it over his shoulder. There were plenty of people coming through the nurses’ station, plenty that never looked at him. No one seemed that happy in the middle of the night on the biomite wing.

  The floor was quiet except for an occasional moan from the B wing, some old man that suffered burns over half his body when his tractor turned over. Biomites were rebuilding the skin and dulling the nervous system, but still he moaned. Marcus would gamble the old man moaned on a good day.

  He waited for the elevator, watching the lit arrow as if that would get the car there faster. He wondered if Cali and Nix used that elevator to leave the hospital. Wondered if they were still in the building. Wondered how the hell they even left the room. He hadn’t told the Secretary about the event. He glanced at his phone.

  Fourteen unanswered calls.

  Come daylight, he’d have to answer one. Just through the night, that’s all he wanted. The first twelve hours were the most important. He’d reluctantly released photos to the Chicago police without a full explanation. Names and faces, that’s all. People of federal interest. Their help would be much appreciated. There was a chance the two were on the streets, hiding in an alley or passed out in a car. If they tried to use a credit card or the phone, Marcus’s people would fall on them like vultures. Marcus needed to be patient. They couldn’t be far.

  Couldn’t be healthy.

  But how the hell did they disappear?

  That’s why he needed to find them more than anything. They fell off M0ther’s radar, somehow erased Nix’s test results, masked the security camera… this was the real problem. They had done the impossible and Marcus needed to find out how. It was no fluke. And if it had happened, if it spread to other people, to other biomites… this was something the doctor failed to understand. Of course, how do you make sense to a biomite sympathist like him?

  That’s why Marcus was working from the nurses’ station. He had commandeered the chief doctor’s desk. The man walked in and stood in front of his decadent fish tank.

  “Out.”

  Marcus didn’t look up from his work. “I’ll only need your space through the night, Doctor.”

  “Not in here, you won’t.”

  “I don’t think you understand.” Marcus punched a few keys. “Two halfskins escaped your floor. They have also escaped detection, something you haven’t been able to explain. Their capture is imperative.”

  “We don’t call them halfskins.”

  “They’re 50%. What else are they?”

  “They’re human, Mr. Anderson. Biomite-enhanced humans that, otherwise, wouldn’t be alive.”

  “Whether you call them halfskin or not does not change what they are. It does not change the fact that they are in violation of a federal law that no human being can be composed of more than 50% biomite replacement, Doctor. That is the law and I am enforcing it.”

  “Not from my office, you won’t.”

  Marcus finally looked up and sat back. They stared like gunfighters.

  “You think you’re saving them?” Marcus asked. “You’re only delaying their death.”

  “Medicine has been doing that for centuries.”

  “Medicine? Is that what you call this? You replace their bodies with microscopic machines, a little at a time, and you call that medicine?”

  “Modern-day medicine, Mr. Anderson.”

  “Medicine involves antibiotics and repairing the flesh, not replacing it. What you’re doing is killing the soul, selling pleasure for a price they can never pay.”

  “Pleasure?” The doctor slid his hands into the front pockets of the lab coat. “Walk this floor, Mr. Anderson, and listen. Do you hear pleasure? There’s a boy that needs a new heart valve, a woman that needs a kidney, and a man with a brain tumor. They’ll all survive because of biomites. It’s what we do in a hospital, we heal them. Biomites have made that possible like never before.”

  The doctor pulled the door open.

  “Now, I’ll ask you to leave once more. Don’t make me call security.”

  Marcus considered the demand. Certainly he could force the doctor to reconsider. This wing benefitted substantially from federal funding. But he couldn’t play that card, not yet. He needed to operate quietly. For now.

  He snapped the laptop closed and pushed away from the desk. He stopped on his way out. “You know where they are, don’t you.”

  The doctor shook his head.

  “When this is over, if I find out you helped them escape, your career will be over.”

  The doctor was unperturbed.

  The elevator arrived.

  Marcus stepped into an empty car and went down to the cafeteria for some coffee. He’d sit there and monitor his agents from a booth. He checked his phone again. There was about three hours of daylight left to do it.

  43

  Their reflection in the elevator door was distorted. Still, that couldn’t hide the vacancy in her eyes, the dark pockets they stared out from. Nix looked like an invalid, head cocked to the side, mouth open. His cheeks were pale and shiny, like a frost victim. She leaned over, inspecting the tiny cracks along his cheeks. The skin was flaking off, like a snake shedding skin. She rubbed her own cheeks. Skin fluttered like dandruff. She peeled a sheet from her arm.

  They passed the third floor. She felt five people as they went by. They were blips on her radar, their biomites signaling like stagnant ships on a sea of ether.

  Second floor, three more. Two nurses, one orderly.

  The world was unfolding around her like another dimension, her body interconnecting with everything with an electronic pulse. The language was unspoken, belted out in waves and particles, falling on her like photons on a light-sensitive plate, patterns that were immediately translated.

  Connecting. I’m no longer separate from the world.

  The elevator slowed. Stopped.

  Cali held the button down on the panel, keeping the doors closed. She reached out with her mind. There was no one within range. She didn’t expect anyone to be in this part of the hospital where janitorial and maintenance clocked in and out. Not this time of night. There was an exit to her right, down the hall and through the loading dock. Her finger slipped off the button.

  The doors opened. She looked in both directions.

  Nix’s head bobbled as the wheels bounced out of the elevator. Cali pushed at a half-trot. She kept her mind open, her feet moving. The loading dock was at the end, to the left. There was a doorway that led through a locker room that—

  SOMEONE.

  The wheels squeaked. Cali’s feet tripped up; she almost let go. She stopped in the middle of the hall, fingers trembling. Someone was up ahead. Someone at the loading dock. She stayed there, in the hall, afraid to move.

  But she had to move.

  She had to keep going.

  They were out in the open. Hiding wasn’t an option, not anymore.

  The chair eased forward, the rubber wheels silent again. Cali was on her toes, breath bouncing in her throat. She closed her eyes, reaching out to feel the body that was between them and the exit. She read the person’s biomites like seeing words through a telescope. She knew who he was before peeking around the corner, seeing the man with short hair standing in a doorway, holding the door open to blow smoke.

  Federal security.

  They had the exit covered.

  Had them all covered.

  She leaned against the wall, head bouncing lightly. Her brother, still silent in the
chair. She needed to think, just for a minute. They couldn’t outrun him. The second they were recognized, they would be caught. They needed a head start. A big one. If she tried to blind him like James… no, they’d be ready for that. She assumed they’d know what she did to get out of the hospital room. They’d know when their biomites were being manipulated.

  She took a minute.

  She thought. They’d be expecting her.

  And then closed her eyes. There was no other choice.

  44

  Sam Craven was still considered a rookie.

  He’d been working for the feds two and a half years, but they still called him rookie. He’d been on numerous assignments and saw nothing but boredom. He’d fired his gun plenty of times at the range and bagged deer during the season, but when on duty, nothing ever happened.

  And he didn’t expect anything to happen this time.

  The suspects were harmless, although that could be deceiving. A couple of halfskins on the run. How that happened, they weren’t told. Just a brother and sister due to be shut down and somehow fell off the grid. Intelligence suggested they were on their way out of town, but there was no evidence they ever left the hospital, so Sam was holding down one of the exits.

  Hours went by and he stayed at attention. But the room was stuffy and he was jonesing for a smoke. He leaned the door open and fired up a Winston, pulling the first drag deep. The smoke hit the nighttime air, thick and white. The paper crackled with satisfaction.

  He wasn’t distracted. He had an eye on the outside and inside. No one would get within twenty feet without being seen. And if he saw them, his biomites would automatically trigger a facial recognition alarm and the rest of the team would converge. Lights out, halfskins.

  But they weren’t here, not in the building. No way.

  If those two could brain-scramble James, if they could loop that camera, then they wouldn’t stick around the hospital, now would they? Holding down the loading dock was a waste of time, really. They should be on the street, interviewing people, analyzing biomite activity… all the shit he’d been trained to do. Not acting like a doorstop.