Vita Aeterna

by Jay Allan Storey

  Two more doors. I wasn’t sure if they’d be disabled with the alarm. The first one opened. I got to the second. I pressed the finger against the scanner but nothing happened.

  I willed myself to stop shaking, wiped it again on my gown, and tried again. It worked. The doors were still operational, but wouldn’t be for long. I flew down the final hallway to another door. Suddenly my HUD was working. I must have passed through whatever was screening it. Another alarm kicked in.

  I tried the finger on the final door. It didn’t work. I tried three times. The place was in lock down. I was screwed.

  I fought to stay calm. My restored HUD reminded me of the night I’d broken in to steal the trophy. I’d used the hack to fool the system into opening the door. My hand was shaking as I punched the controller buttons to set up the hack again. I prayed to God they hadn’t changed anything.

  Brickhead limped around the corner. He started firing as soon as he saw me. I screwed up one of the codes and had to enter it again. The bastard was only a hundred meters away. His shots were getting closer. Finally the HUD light went green. I held my controller wrist up to the panel. The lock clicked open.

  I smashed through the door into darkness. It slammed shut behind me. As my eyes adjusted I could see I was in a short hallway with a single door at the end. I pounded down it and glanced back just as three bullet holes punched through the door behind me. Pencil-thin beams of light from outside played on the floor. One last panel at the hallway door. Green! I pushed it open.

  I was outside.

  CHAPTER 11

  On the Run

  I flew around the nearest corner and down two or three alleys, hoping to lose Brickhead. It must have worked. I heard his lopsided footsteps thumping in the distance, but I never saw him again. I’m sure at least a few of the cameras recorded me running away, but once I calmed down, my Cam-surfing experience paid off like I never would have thought. It was night. I checked my HUD. Thank God it was working again. It was eight-thirty PM.

  I was still in the Corp Ring. There were cameras everywhere. I had to slink around walls and down alleys trying to stay out of their view. I was still wearing the hospital gown with my bare ass hanging out. I’d be screwed if anybody saw me. Luckily, there was hardly anybody on the street. I crossed back into Tintown and made for home. I couldn’t think of any place else to go. I wondered if Dad would even still be alive, without me there to help him.

  When I finally got to the apartment, Dad was watching the HoloTV, like always. He didn’t look up when I walked in.

  “Dad,” I called out to him.

  “Where’ve you been?” he said, without turning around.

  “I gotta talk to you,” I said louder, to drown out the audio.

  He finally turned and scowled at me. “I just want to see this.”

  “It’s important,” I shouted. I walked over and turned the TV off.

  He was pissed, but he didn’t get up.

  “I was watching that,” was all he said.

  “It’s about my Appraisal,” I said.

  He waved me off again and stared at the empty pedestal, like there was still a show on. I crouched down in front of him so he had to look at me. I hadn’t been that close to him face to face for a long time. His hands were wrinkled like old parchment and speckled with age-spots, his face was lined and mottled, snow-white wisps of hair ringed the blotchy pink dome of his head.

  He looked like he was about to nod off. I put my hands on his shoulders and shook him. His eyes opened. I looked into them and shuddered. There was a sadness I’d never noticed before, like staring down into a grave. For the first time in all the years we’d been together I felt like I understood what he’d been through.

  He finally noticed my gown. “Why are you dressed like that?”

  “Somebody’s after me,” I said. “They wouldn’t tell me my Appraisal. They took me to some special hospital but I ran away.”

  His eyes opened wider and he stared at me.

  He put a hand on each arm of his chair and pushed himself up to a standing position. I’d never seen him react so strongly. It was like he’d been asleep and had just woken up. I stood up, facing him. He staggered sideways and backed away from me.

  “What?” I said.

  “You,” he whispered. “It can’t be.”

  He was shaking, still backing away.

  “What the hell’s going on!” I yelled.

  “Vita Aeterna,” he whispered, his voice trembling with fear. “It’s impossible.”

  It occurred to me that the look he was giving me was the same one I saw on the doctor’s face after my Appraisal.

  “Run,” my dad finally said. He jerked his head toward the door, his eyes wide with terror. “Run and hide.”

  Sirens blared in the distance, getting closer.

  “Run!” he shouted at me.

  I jumped up and headed for the door.

  “Find your uncle Zack — Hurry!” he yelled.

  I backtracked to my room, grabbed my pack, and threw in some clothes — and everything I could find that seemed important.

  “Forget that!” my dad screamed. “Get out now!”

  I’d boarded to my Appraisal, so my regular board was gone, but I had an older, even more beaten up one in my room. It would have to do. I grabbed it, rushed to the front door, flung it open and flew out into the hallway.

  “Don’t come back,” my dad called after me.

  I ran outside and tore down the street in a panic. The sirens were right around the corner. It was too late to get away. I flattened myself against the wall inside an alcove. A SecureCorp van flew by me, siren wailing.

  I took a chance and peeked around the wall. The van stopped at my building. Soldiers pounded out of it, up the stairs, and through the entrance. I waited a few minutes. I had to know what they were going to do. It was a hot night and our window was open. Shadows flicked across the wall in the living room.

  I heard them screaming at my dad, heard his voice mumbling back. A few minutes later the shadows converged at the living room window. There was a gunshot and a loud crash. I watched in horror as a body was jammed through the makeshift metal security bars and tossed five floors to the street below.

  It was my dad.

  ☼

  Richie’s apartment building looked at lot like mine, but the dark hid a lot of the dinginess and decay. I’d Cam-surfed there, after cowering in the shadows as the soldiers rushed out of our building and took off in the van, then changing into the clothes I’d brought. I had nowhere else to go.

  I made my way to an abandoned parkade nearby that the Lost Souls had used a few times before, one that we could access out of sight of any cameras. Using our code name for the place, ‘Dungeon’, in case SecureCorp were listening, I texted Richie to meet me.

  At first he didn’t believe it was me. He finally agreed to come, and showed up at the meeting place. Half the parking stalls were occupied by rusting skeletons of cars, most stripped down to almost nothing by years of scavenging.

  “You’re s…supposed to be dead…” Richie stopped short when he saw me. His face was pale, like he’d seen a ghost. We hid behind the hulking frame of what was once a delivery van. “They told us at co-op school,” he said. “They had an announcement about it. Some kind of scooter accident. We even had like — a special ceremony, you know?”

  “I’m not dead,” I said. The twinge that had been running up and down my spine for a while now tightened like an iron clamp.

  “I can see that,” Richie said. “What the hell’s goin’ on?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. How’d Cindy take it?”

  “She hasn’t been around either — for a while we thought maybe you two had run off or something. Then we heard…”

  “What? About me being dead?”

  “No, that was later. It was Cindy. We heard she negged out big time.”

  I stepped forward and grabbed him by the front of his shirt. “Fuck you.”

/>   “I’m telling you, she negged out,” Richie said.

  It was hard to breathe. It was like somebody had nailed me with a baseball bat. For a few seconds I couldn’t talk.

  “What was her score?” I finally said. My brain was paralyzed.

  “Bad. I think something like point five.”

  My gut twisted in knots. It wasn’t possible.

  “You better not be messin’ with me,” I said.

  “Talk to her,” he said. “Don’t just take my word for it.”

  “Have you talked to her?”

  “Nobody has. Like I said — nobody’s seen her for weeks.”

  “Then how do you know?”

  “It’s in the grapevine, you know — everybody’s talking about it.”

  “You’re so full of it. There’s no way she’s got an Appraisal that low. That would give her a life expectancy of less than forty.”

  “Hey, don’t take it out on me,” Richie said. “I’m just telling you what’s going around. It’s not my fault.”

  “Well you shouldn’t be repeating crap like that about Cindy,” I said, letting go of his collar. “She’s supposed to be your friend too.”

  “All I know is what I heard.”

  I told him about the kidnapping and escape.

  “Wow, that’s messed up,” he said. I’m not sure he really believed me.

  “Have you ever heard of anything like that happening?” I said.

  He shook his head. “Beats me. Maybe you’re super-negative or something.”

  “What?”

  “You know, like point two or something.”

  “If I was point two I’d already be dead of old age.”

  “Oh, yeah — well you know what I mean. After all, your mum and dad…” he looked at the floor.

  “By the way,” he said, looking up again. “I got a one point five. Not bad, eh?”

  “That’s great,” I said.

  He just stood there, like he was waiting for something. I think he was pissed because I wasn’t cheering about his news, but I had more important things to think about.

  “I need a place to hide,” I broke the silence.

  “What?”

  “I told you — they’re after me. After I escaped I went home. My dad told me to run away and find my Uncle Zack. They came to our apartment.” I found myself choking back tears. “They killed him.”

  Richie stood with his mouth open. “K…Killed him?” he finally said.

  “I need a place,” I said. “Just for a few days — till I figure out what’s going on.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Richie stepped back, his eyes bugging out of his head. I realized that in the space of one day I’d witnessed three people killed — one of them my own father. What was going on?

  “I wouldn’t ask,” I said, “but I’ve got no place else to go.”

  Richie stared at his feet. “Look, man, if it was a regular thing…”

  “Forget it,” I said. “I’ll find something.”

  I started to walk away.

  “Hey, what if they came after me or something?” Richie yelled after me.

  I waved him off without turning around.

  CHAPTER 12

  Cindy

  I headed for another hideout we’d come across cam-surfing, a tiny room in the basement of a building not far from the Dungeon. Its only window was broken, but it had bars so you couldn’t get through. There was a long section that was out of sight from the street. You could jam something against the inside of the latch-less door to keep people out. Nobody ever came around anyway.

  I sat on the floor and sifted through the trending news on my HUD. There was nothing about me (big surprise), and nothing about Chuck, or anything else that had happened, just the usual chatter about our freedom and everybody’s potential for success.

  I had to think. ‘Find your Uncle Zack’, my dad had said, which didn’t make any sense. Uncle Zack was supposed to be dead. I’d only heard about him a couple of times growing up. I always figured he was like some black sheep of the family that nobody wanted to talk about. From the little I heard there was some problem with his Appraisal. Us Barrets and the Appraisal — I swear we’re cursed. I never really paid much attention, but now that I thought about it things got kind of quiet whenever his name was mentioned.

  I fished through my pack. I’d tried to grab everything that was important, but I’d only had a few seconds. I exhaled as my fingers touched the pouch where I kept my personal stuff. I couldn’t remember whether I’d grabbed it or not. It took a few minutes to find what I was looking for. Our family info card was an old, cheap one, and didn’t have any broadcast ability. I was grateful for that. I scanned it with my controller and the results materialized in my HUD.

  There was hardly anything about Uncle Zack on the card — his birth record, a couple of old pictures of him, my dad, and my grandparents, some notes from the co-op school. But at one point all mention of him stopped, like he’d disappeared. I worked out how old he would have been at that point — sixteen — the same age I was supposed to have ‘died’.

  There was no mention of this Vita Aeterna, whatever that was. I was dying to look it up, but whoever I was up against must have boatloads of money. You can bet they’d be on the lookout for anybody using that search term. I didn’t even dare look up anything about my uncle, for the same reason. I rifled through the other stuff in the pouch. The card I’d stolen from SecureCorp was there. A lot of good that was going to do me. I almost tossed it, but then changed my mind.

  I had no idea what was happening to me, and where I’d end up tomorrow, but there was one place I had to go, no matter how much of a risk I’d be taking.

  ☼

  Cindy’s house was deep inside the Corp Ring, which was far more dangerous for me than Tintown, where nobody really gave a shit what you were doing. Maybe I was just paranoid, but it seemed like there were a lot more SecureCorp guys than usual everywhere I went. There were more cameras in the Corp Ring, and a lot fewer places to hide. Normally I would have been gawking at the gleaming sky-scrapers and mansions I was passing as I Cam-surfed through the streets, but now I had more important things to worry about.

  I was careful, and made it to Cindy’s without being seen. I’d been there a few times before, but I still pulled in a breath at the sight of it. It was like a palace, three stories high with vaulting roofs like a mountain range.

  I hid between a couple of bushes and cased the place. There were a few lights on in the lower level, but I couldn’t see anybody inside. The light in Cindy’s room upstairs was off.

  I clenched my fists thinking about what Richie had said. I still didn’t believe it. I had to see her and hear it from her in person. Her dad hated me, so I knew he wouldn’t lift a finger, but I hoped maybe Cindy might find a way to help me.

  I checked the grounds, and up and down the street. There was no sign of any SecureCorp, or anybody else for that matter. After about twenty minutes I worked up the guts to go and knock. Normally I would have thrown a pebble at her window or something, but I couldn’t afford to stand out in the open for too long. Anyway, from what I’d heard she might not even be there.

  Cindy’s dad opened the door. His overflowing bulk filled the whole frame. When he saw who it was, for a second the contempt on his bloated face was the same as always. Then his jowls smoothed out as his lips tightened into a smile so broad it looked like it was hurting him.

  “I want to talk to Cindy,” I said. I tensed and stepped back, expecting him to grab me and rat me out to the authorities.

  “Why don’t you come in,” he said instead, still smiling.

  I was so stunned I just stood there like a moron. He’d never invited me into his house before. Usually if he even caught me on the grounds he’d threaten to call SecureCorp.

  He stood aside and held the door open. I walked through it; I had to talk to Cindy. I craned my neck and scanned around the massive foyer, bigger than our whole apartme
nt. Ahead of me, a curving marble staircase swept up to the next floor. A thousand points of light wheeled across the tiles beneath our feet. I tilted back my head and saw a gigantic crystal chandelier hanging ten meters above me. For a few seconds, I almost forgot where I was and who was standing in front of me.

  I finally shut my gaping mouth and came back to reality.

  “Mr. Edwards,” I said.

  “Call me Tom,” he said.

  Somehow his being nice to me creeped me out even more than when he hated my guts. I leaned my board against the wall. He sneered at it for a second, like it was going to contaminate the place, then, like he’d remembered something, smiled again.

  I followed him to another huge room off the foyer. The curved platform of a three-meter-wide HoloTV pedestal stood against one wall. An oriental carpet the size of a city block covered the floor. Expensive looking antiques balanced on ornate wooden tables, and potted plants taller than me stood beside the wine-coloured plush leather furniture.

  “Have a seat,” he said, sweeping his arm toward one of the couches. “I’ll get you a drink of water.”

  “I’m not thirsty,” I said.

  “Don’t be silly,” he said. “I insist.”

  He waddled off through a door to the kitchen. I sat down on the couch. I heard him turn on the tap and the water seemed to run for ages. I was about to get up and check on what he was doing in there when he stuck his fat face around the door frame.

  “Be right with you,” he smiled.

  Something was wrong.

  I heard a faint beep from his HUD controller. That’s when I knew.

  I got up and started for the door.

  He was coming out of the kitchen. To my surprise he was actually carrying a glass of water. He dropped it when he saw me trying to run. I couldn’t believe a guy with that much bulk could move so fast.

  I got to the door first, but realized he’d locked it when I first came in. I started to twist the deadbolt knob. His massive ham-like fist reached out, grabbed my wrist and tore my hand away.