Resurrection

by Jeffrey Burger

  Glad to have the clinic to himself, the door to his small workshop - that doubled as his office, slid closed behind him and he punched the red button on the wall, locking it. Shrugging off the jumpsuit he’d been wearing all day, he draped it across the stool in front of his workbench and smoothed his clothes. From a drawer in the bench, he pulled a perfectly folded medical smock and shook it open, holding it out, taking a moment to appreciate its spotless appearance. Drawing it on over his street clothes, he looked much like any one of the doctors at the clinic. Moving to the back of the room and pulling on a tall three-door locker cabinet, the unit swung smoothly away from the wall in an ark - like a door, a neat, concrete passageway leading through the wall and down a long, dimly lit, flight of stairs. Pulling it closed behind him, he hurried down like he had a hundred times before, the familiar medicinal-chemical odor greeting him as he neared the bottom of the stairs, triggering a flashback to his youth. Back to a time when he was a courier for the cartel inhabiting the building, manufacturing the highly-addictive, blue-white powder, called Dust.

  He lucked out on that raid too, making it out of the escape tunnel at the back of the underground warehouse before the Pathfinders storming the front doors upstairs, made it to the lower level. There were casualties then too, a few Pathfinders, and at least half the workers in the building. It was brutal, gunfights spreading out onto the streets.

  The subterranean drug factory - turned warehouse, had all but been forgotten. And Rikit was the only one with the passcode… In fact, any of the people who might have still remembered its existence were dead, thanks to the clinic’s massacre. He wasn’t sure if that bothered or pleased him.

  The keypad chirped under his fingertips, the door sliding open, protesting with a metallic scrape. The small lab he had assembled out of the clinic’s retired equipment greeted him as he entered, the various computer screens glowing at him, the overhead lights flickering dimly to life. Much of the warehouse was empty, scattered bits of junk, clutter and defunct equipment, littering the darkness that stretched out beyond his cozy little realm.

  Rikit moved to the glass tank, gazing down at the naked figure floating in the amber transmission fluid, sleeping soundly, a breathing mask covering his entire face. The sonic scanner was quiet and still - he checked over his shoulder at the screen for the latest results produced two hours earlier. “You’re doing well…” He turned to it and scrolled the screen. studying through the days he was absent from the clinic, only understanding the bare essentials of what the scans revealed. “Excellent! No problems, looks like you slept the entire time - so proud of you.” He clapped his hands together like a child expecting a treat. “So, let’s get you up, shall we?”

  Once activated, the scanning arm folded out of the way and the amber transmission fluid pumped out of the glass tank into the reservoir. Once it dropped below the seam of the tank, Rikit released the catches, the top rising open with the aid of small hydraulic pistons. Reaching in as the remainder of the fluid drained away, Rikit used a hypodermic gun and injected the man in the arm with a stimulant. Breaking the edge of the rubber seal on the facemask, he lifted it off, moving the air tube out of the way, letting it hang out over the side of the tank. The man seemed to have aged and had grown some stubble since the last time Rikit had seen him. Perhaps it was the lighting in his makeshift lab.

  The man’s eyes flickered, rolled and finally opened, and Rikit leaned in grinning widely. In retrospect that may have been more creepy-leering than warmly inviting. Hands flew at him, splashing him with slimy medium, grabbing him roughly by the medical smock, threatening to drag him into the tube.

  “Who the hell are you? Where am I?” His voice was dry, gravelly, harsh.

  Rikit had braced himself against the side and top of the tube to avoid falling in, “Easy! Easy! You’re in the medical clinic!”

  “What medical clinic?”

  “Byas Kuyol…”

  “And who are you?”

  “I am a doctor, Rikit Lobat… don’t you remember anything?”

  The man blinked, his eyes searching, thinking, “No…” his grip eased.

  “Don’t worry, it will come to you, just relax. You’ve been out for several days…”

  “Why am I here?”

  “I don’t actually know…” replied Rikit straightening up as the man’s hands dropped free, releasing him.

  “What the hell do you mean you don’t know? You said you were a doctor…”

  “I am a doctor,” he lied, “but I am not your doctor.”

  “So, who is my doctor?”

  “I am afraid your doctor is dead… it’s a long story - one I can explain,” he waved, “but let’s get you out of there and get you cleaned up first.”

  ■ ■ ■

  The man stepped out of the contamination-wash shower, unabashedly accepting the towel handed to him, “That’s a good shower,” he smirked lopsidedly. His eyes shifted around at the darkness then back to the light of the little makeshift lab a few feet away. “What is this place exactly? It doesn’t look like any clinic I’ve ever seen…” He busied himself with toweling his body dry.

  “To be honest, we’re in the basement of the clinic. The clinic is above us.”

  The man paused giving him a steely look, “Yeah? Why is that?”

  Rikit motioned to a chair in the light, “Because it was the safest place I could think of to bring you at the time.”

  The man pursed his lips, “Go on.” Sweeping his fingers through his hair, the man sat down and accepted the clothes handed him, the towel laying across his lap.

  “The night you came in - and I don’t know from where, or for what, we were raided…”

  The man didn’t even look up, “By who?”

  “Not sure; pirates, raiders, drug runners… Though they did seem to be too well equipped for simple druggers.”

  The man nodded his understanding, “Go on.”

  “Well it got violent from the moment they crashed the front lobby. They killed everyone they came across. They seemed to take great pleasure in the killing…”

  Pulling a t-shirt over his head, the man paused, looking up, “Jesus…”

  “You were in a treatment room across the hall from my office - in a sonic scanning tank like that one,” he thumbed over his shoulder. “I pulled you out and bought you down here. I hooked up some of our old equipment and got you back in a tank.”

  “What was I being treated for?”

  Rikit shrugged, “I don’t know, I didn’t have time to check the system when I pulled you out. Your new scans all look normal as far as I can see. Although this older unit doesn’t tell us as much as the newer ones upstairs,” he lied. “Do you remember what you came in for?”

  “No.” He stood, pulling up his pants before sitting back down. “But thanks. I guess I’m pretty lucky I was just across the hall...”

  “Very. You and I were the only survivors.”

  The man stopped and looked at Rikit like he was trying to read him, trying to decide how to respond. He sighed heavily, “You lost friends then…”

  Rikit nodded, “Yeah. Quite a few.”

  “Ahhh, damn. I truly am sorry about that. And here I am, alive, a complete stranger.” He ran his fingers through his hair again, “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what you did. If you had left me, could you have saved any of your friends?”

  Rikit took a deep contemplative breath, “I honestly don’t think so. My office and your treatment room were at the back of the clinic. Had I gone toward the front of the clinic…”

  “Yeah, I get it.” He forced a smile, “Better two survivors than none. I owe you. My wife and family owe you…”

  “Hey, you remembered something!”

  The man’s face registered surprise, “Yeah! How about that - I have a wife and son!”

  Rikit watched him dress, he had a feeling this man was someone of importance. Could the raid have been about him? “I don’t even know your name…”

 
The man paused, looking him up and down, like an animal of prey considering his next meal. With a casual shrug he went back to lacing up the boots he’d been given. “Jaxon.”

  Rikit fiddled with a button on his medical smock, “Just, Jaxon?”

  “Just Jaxon…”

  ■ ■ ■

  Byas Kuyol’s night was warm and damp. Tropical. Strange noises, twitters, filtered by the leaves of the trees were punctuated by shadows that flittered through the night sky.

  Jaxon eyed his empty ring finger, rubbing it with his thumb while Rikit secured the clinic’s front entrance. The image in his mind of a ring, struck a familiar chord, but it wasn’t clearly defined in his mind yet, or what it’s significance might be. “So, you’re telling me you just left me here in that tube for a week? Alone?”

  “A little over a week actually.”

  “No wonder I’m hungry,” he grumped, looking back up when Rikit stepped away from the keypad on the wall.

  “You had nutrients in the transmission fluid - it’s absorbed through the skin. It also deals with bodily waste…”

  “Aw geeeez…” grimaced Jaxon, “I didn’t want to know that! That’s disgusting.”

  “What...? It’s thoroughly filtered…”

  “Oh, God, please stop talking...” He looked around the darkened parking lot, “Where’s your car?”

  “Car?”

  “Conveyance? Personal form of transportation?”

  Rikit, without his medical smock, dressed in street clothes and an unremarkable jacket, shrugged. “I walk.”

  Jaxon raised an eyebrow, his hands on his hips, “You’re not really a doctor, are you…” It was more a deduction than a question.

  “What? What makes you say that? Because I walk?”

  Jaxon waved toward him, taking him in from head to toe, “No offense, but your clothes… are, well…”

  “Plain?”

  Jaxon nodded, “Partly that. And I’ve never heard of a doctor without a Mercedes…” He watched Rikit’s face register silent confusion. “A luxury form of personal transportation,” he clarified. “So where do we eat - I’m starving.”

  Rikit pointed up the street, “That way.”

  Jaxon scanned the shadows as they walked, “Y’know, this doesn’t look like the best of neighborhoods.”

  “It’s not the neighborhood,” commented Rikit, “the whole city looks pretty much like this.”

  Jaxon’s eyes widened with surprise, “Really? Swell. What a dump,” he muttered. “No offense,” he apologized quickly, remembering this was the other man’s home.

  “No, it’s a dump, as you put it,” agreed Rikit. “That’s why I want to get out of here so bad.”

  “And what is it you do, then? You really didn’t say…”

  Rikit’s face tightened as he chewed on the inside of his cheek, diverting his eyes, “I’m the custodian at the clinic. I clean and maintain the clinic and its equipment. Sometimes I fix things.”

  “And sometimes you save people,” added Jaxon, with an appreciative smile. “Look, it’s honest work, nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “Thanks.”

  They walked for a couple blocks in silence, a few scattered lights from buildings casting odd, irregular shadows. No sidewalks and little illumination in the way of street lighting made for a precarious stroll. Blocks ahead, the lighting seemed more abundant. “How far is this place?”

  “Another few blocks.”

  Jaxon’s stomach grumbled, “Is the food any good?”

  “It’s alright I suppose. It won’t kill you, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “That’s not exactly the shining endorsement you might think it is,” remarked Jaxon, dryly. “By the way, I hope you’re buying - I seem to have misplaced my wallet. Must have left it in my other pants,” he joked sarcastically, adjusting the pants that were a bit too loose and not quite long enough.

  ■ ■ ■

  Poorly lit, musty, smelling of spilled alcohol, Flecca’s was a little dive bar-restaurant-local hangout, with live music and an eclectic mixed crowd - which looked to be every misfit in the city that didn’t belong anywhere else, thrown together like a junk salad.

  As crowded as it was, there weren’t too many tables to choose from and Jaxon was lucky enough to claim a small one against the wall, not far from the door. He sat with his shoulder against the wall, facing the door, eyeing the crowd. “Looks like a rough crowd.”

  “It can be,” admitted Rikit. “Try not to make eye contact and we should be fine.”

  Jaxon found himself staring down at the table, “That’s not going to be easy with the amount of people in here…” If he had to equate it to anything, he would compare it to a biker bar.

  “What’ll you two have?” asked the rough-looking woman who had appeared out of the crowd, an e-Pad in her hand. “Hurry up, I don’t have all night.”

  Jaxon deferred to Rikit, “You know what’s good here - order one for me too. As long as it’s meat, I feel like I need the protein.”

  “Well?” she snapped. “You girls decide yet?”

  Rikit ordered two steaks and two drinks - she turned away before he even finished talking.

  “How will that come?!” Jaxon shouted after her, wondering if he could get it cooked medium.

  “Dead and on a plate!” she shouted back, melting into the crowd.

  Jaxon ran his fingers through his hair, “Good to know,” he sighed.

  ■ ■ ■

  Jaxon could remember the physical act of eating, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember the flavors or the textures. It was odd, he remembered what he liked and flavors, but not why. He could remember how to eat - the utensils, but it felt awkward at first.

  Rikit watched his new friend eat, tentatively at first, sure that he’d probably eaten better food, and certainly in much better locales. “What do you think? Is it OK?”

  “Well I was going to say, it’s dead and I’m not - yet, but the truth is, it’s pretty darned good.” Jaxon chewed happily, getting a little more comfortable, taking a swallow off his drink to wash it down, ignoring the undulating movement of the crowd that ebbed and flowed around them.

  “Oh, good, I was a little concerned, it didn’t look like you liked it, at first.”

  Jaxon shook his head, “I don’t know, something going on with my memory, I feel like I’ve never eaten before, even though I know I have.”

  “A side effect of the transmission fluid in the scanner… and being in it for a while…”

  Jaxon motioned at him with his fork, “How do you know that? Being a custodian, I mean.”

  Rikit shrugged, his head ticking to one side, “Exposure to the doctors, nurses and equipment. I hear things, I pick things up. Learning by osmosis, I suppose.”

  “You been there long?”

  “About six years.”

  Jaxon raised an eyebrow, “Is that how you were able to set up an emergency lab in the basement?”

  “I was the one who disassembled and moved all that old equipment down there when the new stuff came in a few months back.,” nodded Rikit. “I just hooked it back up in reverse of the way I took it apart.”

  “Pretty good memory then…”

  “If I see it or do it with my hands, I always seem to remember. I do a lot of stuff that way.”

  “Lucky for me…” Someone moving past hip-checked the table and Jaxon’s arm shot out to guide them away while steadying the table with the other, to prevent their food and drinks from ending up on the floor, “Hey, take it easy,” he objected, not looking up. Rikit’s eyes registered fear the same time Jaxon felt a heavy hand on his shoulder, the fingers digging into the muscles below his right clavicle with enough crush to inflict significant discomfort.

  “I don’t think you were talking to me…” growled the voice behind his ear. “Because I don’t know you and I wasn’t talking to you…”

  Despite the electric shock of adrenalin, Jaxon fought to maintain calm and the perception of
painless, casual ease. “I apologize for disrupting you evening, good sir,” he said flatly, his voice a controlled monotone. The fingers crushed harder, threatening to break his collarbone. He grit his teeth, unable to mask the pain, “Please allow us to buy you a drink to…”

  The grip lessened as the form behind him reached forward with a free hand, an arm and hand like a small tree-trunk, grabbing a drink off the table, the glass disappearing behind him as the arm withdrew. Half-empty, the glass shattered against the wall next to the table, the liquid splashing and running down its surface, “What is that swill?” growled the voice, the crush returning to Jaxon’s shoulder.

  “Actually,” he hissed in pain, “we would have bought you something you would have preferred…” The steak knife in Jaxon’s left hand rotated around, the point of the blade pointing towards his elbow, the blade resting against his forearm, serrated edge out. The fork in his right hand moved likewise. Awkward, but necessary for stabbing behind him. Rikit’s eyes widened, with an almost imperceptible shake of his head, no. Jaxon took a deep breath, preparing himself…

  “Targus! TARGUS!” shouted the waitress, appearing like magic, slapping the man across the shoulder with her empty tray. “Let him go, Targus.”

  “But he…”

  “Let him go! NOW!” She pointed the round tray at him, “Or you’re banned for a month! You can go to your skank in the slums and get your liquor from her.”

  “Fine,” he snarled, giving Jaxon’s shoulder one last squeeze, hoping he would break something.

  Pushing him out of the way and toward the bar, the waitress sidled up to the table, “You two alright?”

  Rocking his shoulder, something clicked, and Jaxon took the opportunity to look back for the first time, at the mountain of a man moving through the throng of people toward the bar. “I’m alright, I guess. Thank…”

  “Good. Then finish up and get the hellion out. Your dinner is on me.”