Lost Time: Part 1 [Second Skyn]

by Boyes, Damien

  StatUS-ID

  [fdaa:9afe:17e6:a2ef::Gage/-//GIBSON]

  SysDate

  [16:33:31. Thursday, January 16, 2059]

  Turns out, Saabir, the Advokat, wants to be found. He’s got an ad and everything.

  His name and occupation are enough for my IMP to retrieve a concise business profile. Zero customer reviews but a healthy rep, with specialities in Restoration, Estate and Criminal Law. There’s a contact StatUS-ID and an address that tracks to an office above a nearby rare book store.

  I’m there five minutes later.

  There’s no sign out front, nothing to show Saabir’s office is upstairs, but the front glass door is unlocked, which is invitation enough.

  A brass bell above the door chimes as I enter. The stairway is narrow but well-lit, orange carpet spread over creaky wood.

  Halfway up I’m met by three men on their way down. The first two are dressed identically—black suits with black shirts open at the collar. Even if they weren’t soaked in blood I’d know they were up to something.

  I suppress my instinct to get in their faces and turn sideways instead, press my back into the handrail and let them pass. One of them carries a chainsaw over his shoulder, the other a blowtorch. Heat bakes off it as they squeeze by. They keep their eyes straight ahead as their shoulders brush my nose.

  The third is wearing the same outfit as the first two, but pulled from the kid’s section. He winces at me from under a flop of hair and scowls past. All three of them have small oval cuffs pressed to the backs of their necks. The bell rings and a burst of winter air snatches up the stairwell after me.

  I should turn around and call 9-1-1, but I’m not interested in having another conversation with Special Agent Wiser.

  Four doors line the hallway at the top of the stairs. Three of them are closed and not labelled. Bloody footprints lead out of the fourth, the one closest to the stairs. Black letters on the door read:

  Saabir Arshad, Attorney at Law.

  I reach for my weapon and fumble at my hip for a half second before I remember I’m not that guy anymore. I don’t get to carry a gun. Instead I press flat against the wall and slide down the hallway toward the open door, listening.

  Nothing.

  With the amount of blood those guys had on them whoever’s inside has to be dead. Or wishes he was.

  I poke my head around the doorjamb to get a quick sense of what’s waiting but the lights are off. A streetlight slants through the blinds of the long, street-facing windows, casting stripes of black and scarlet. Smells like someone had a barbecue.

  I use my toe and nudge the door open onto a massacre.

  I step in, avoiding the blood as best I can, and brush the interior wall with the back of my hand, hit the light sensor when I find it.

  The office is small and washed in red.

  Windows on my left. A large potted plant, a wide bookshelf, and recessed door to the next room on my right.

  In the center of the room, an ornate wooden desk is positioned so it will be the first thing you see when entering. Blood is pooled in deep gouges on its surface and a torso with a head is propped against it, facing the door. His arms and legs have been severed. The remaining stumps blackened.

  Amazingly, his chest is still rising and falling.

  He’s alive, but won’t be for long.

  I try not to slip on the slick hardwood as I step over to him, tab already in my hand.

  His head wobbles as I reach his side, fights itself upright.

  “Welcome,” he says, his voice slight, his eyes sluggish. “Come in, come in. I apologize for my appearance. I’m afraid you’ve caught me at an inopportune moment.”

  “Just hang on, I’m calling an ambulance—”

  “Please,” he says, shaking away my concern. “I am far past medical attention.”

  “Don’t give up,” I say, tab in hand.

  “You misunderstand,” he says, coughs and continues. “I am in no danger of dying.” He smiles as though his arms and legs weren’t piled on the other side of the room. “Not today, at least.”

  He’s Reszo—should have seen that. No mortal could survive torture like this. His eyes flick to the tab, and I cut the connection, put it back in my jacket.

  “Thank you,” he says. “There is something you could do for me, if I could impose upon you.”

  “What do you need?”

  “For you to kill me.” As he talks, his torso topples and I catch him by the shoulder and prop him back up. “I am trapped in this body, will be for the foreseeable future, I’m afraid. My previous guests saw to that. Days, I’d wager. There is a weapon in the bottom drawer of my desk. If you’d please retrieve it and use it to dispatch this body, I’d be in your debt.”

  “You want me to shoot you?”

  “In the heart, if you would. Seems a shame to waste a perfectly good Cortex.”

  I haven’t shot anyone since the war. I’ve pulled my weapon, sure, and I was prepared to use it every time it left my holster. But that was in the service of protecting people. I’m not sure I can look a stranger in the eyes and intentionally cause him pain, know I’m ending him.

  But he did ask.

  “You are the lawyer, Saabir?”

  “Where are my manners,” he says, bubbles of bloody spittle forming on his lips. “I am. Saabir Ashad, Attorney at Law, at your service. And you are—” I open my mouth to tell him but he cuts me off. “Wait—let me guess. You are Finsbury Deacon Gage, former Service Detective. Restored…yesterday if I’m not mistaken.”

  “I came to the right place.” I say, stand, flip a toppled leather chair upright and walk around the desk. The floor’s getting stickier as the blood dries.

  “I imagine you’re interested in who had you restored.” He says, and gurgles a laugh at my silence.

  “How’d—”

  “It is in my experience that anonymity leads to questions.”

  Now that I’ve found him, I can’t risk losing him. He’s my single connection to who brought me back. If I do free his rithm from his body, what’s to stop him from refusing to talk to me?

  I rest on my haunches beside the desk and slide the bottom drawer open. There’s a revolver lying on a stack of green folders. I grab it, stand back up.

  “Found it.”

  “Wonderful. If you could bring it around please.”

  “WWho did this?” I ask.

  “Mr. Allen et al.? He requested information regarding the whereabouts of my client, a former associate of his. Mr. Allen left unsatisfied.”

  “He did look pissed.”

  “I hold the attorney-client privilege to the highest standard.” If he can withstand this kind of torture without giving up his clients, how am I going to get anything out of him? He’s all I have.

  I pad around the desk but keep the gun down by my side, telegraphing my uncertainty.

  Saabir purses his lips and nods. “I understand your hesitance. You are of one of two minds: either you are thinking that by withholding the request to end my life I will have no choice but to answer anything you put to me, or you are a man of conscience and unsure about causing me harm. I counter with three considerations.

  “I’ve withstood enormous pain and didn’t betray my sworn duty. This is neither the first time I have been tested, nor the worst. You will not by force or coercion cause me to reveal information about my clients. That said, I know nothing about your case that I can’t tell you, and I promise I reveal all I know.

  “Secondly, while I will endure it if I must, my previous visitors ensured this skyn will continue to support my Cortex for days, and as you can imagine, I am in no slight amount of pain. You would be doing me a great service and your conscience would remain clean.

  “And for the third, as thanks for your assistance, I’d like to offer my services, pro bono of course, toward what I’d only assume is your desire to extricate yourself from your current legal difficulties. Are you not currently under investigation by both the Toronto Polic
e Service and the Ministry of Human Standards?”

  I suppose I do need a lawyer. And if he can play to a jury like he just talked me into shooting him, I couldn’t ask for a better one.

  “How long ‘till you’re back?”

  “Ten minutes,” he replies, relieved.

  I lower the gun and pull the trigger twice, put three holes just to the left of the breast pocket on his bloody vest.

  His pallid face splits into a grin. “If I can…beg your patience…for a few moments more…”

  His head slumps as his skyn stops breathing.

  A moment later, there’s a metallic thump and then a hiss in the next room. The door slides open and an industrial cleaning bot trundles in, scoops up the torso, moves around the room to collect the limbs and drives back through the door. It returns a few minutes later and begins the long work of sucking blood off the floor.

  Less than ten minutes after he left his last skyn, Saabir returns in another, identical to the first, except the new one has the arms and legs still attached.

  His steps are halting but he’s already dressed himself in an ebony thawb and scarlet vest. None of the buttons are done up, but considering I couldn’t walk for an hour after my restoration, he’s doing great.

  “Please excuse my appearance,” he says as he crosses the room, hand extended. “I assure you, I’m not usually this slovenly.”

  “You’re excused,” I say and shake his hand. “You’ve had a rough day.”

  He laughs and clasps my shoulder with his left hand. “Indeed. Now, I insist you join me for tea and I will tell you what you wish to know.”

  He leads me through the door into the adjoining room. Books are everywhere. On shelves and in piles to the ceiling. Only the small kitchen, the low circular table surrounded by pillows, and the doors leading to rooms on either side are clear. It smells like a paper morgue.

  I wrinkle my nose at the overwhelming odour of decaying paper and Saabir laughs.

  “Glorious, is it not? I can imagine no headier elixir than that of airborne knowledge. Now, if you would be so kind as to remove your shoes.” I yank my boots off and unzip my parka and he waves me over to the table. “Sit, please.”

  “You knew about my legal trouble?” I say as I arrange myself down onto the pillows. Saabir fills a copper kettle at the sink, places it on the flames of a gas burner.

  “I gave your situation a brief perusal when I was administering to your restoration.”

  “And you can help?”

  “I make no promises, but I assure you if there is a solution to be found, I will find it.”

  “What about my restoration?” I ask as he arranges floral patterned cups and saucers on a silver tray.

  “I hope I won’t disappoint you when I say I have very little in the way of information to share.”

  “Anything is better than where I am now.”

  He pulls the kettle off the burner before it whistles and pours steaming water into a teapot. A sweet floral scent erupts into the air, mingles with the aroma of dead books.

  He carries the tray over to the table, his steps already steady, places it in the middle, sets out a bowl of sugar, small pitcher of milk and a dish of fresh mint leaves, pours two cups of tea and sets one in front of me. The other he keeps for himself, adds sugar, mint, and milk and stirs it with a tiny metal spoon. He brings the cup to his nose, sniffs deeply then sips, replaces it on its saucer, closes his eyes, relaxes back into his cushion with a satisfied grin on his face and says, “There is nothing so satisfying as christening a new skyn with a sip of shai.”

  He takes a deep breath then opens his eyes and leans forward. “Whoever requested your restoration did so with complete anonymity. We never met in person. The substantial fee was paid for in cashcards, delivered by drone. Without the original Second Skyn information, the design of your skyn was based on the publicly accessible bio/kin of your original body, but with extensive physical enhancements requested by my client. The COPA challenge phrases and authorization information were all delivered via anonymized data stick. I accepted the contract, transferred the fee to the Fleshmiths and reported back only the restoration date to my client.”

  “You take a lot of anonymous clients?”

  He grins, takes another sip of tea. “Do the anonymous not deserve legal counsel?” he counters.

  His clients aren’t important now. Back to the point. “Why wasn’t I restored at Second Skyn?”

  He shrugs with his hands. “My instructions included a directive to keep the process as covert as possible, and certain physical requests for your skyn that are, shall we say, heavily encroaching on the limits of Human Standard. A private clinic instead of the highly visible Second Skyn met both.”

  I look down at my body. Concern rippling in my stomach.

  Saabir waves, as if trying to quell my anxiety. “You are perfectly within the bounds of Standards. Your body is capable of peak performance in multiple physiological criteria within half a percentage of maximum human potential.”

  I can’t believe it. Can’t even parse what it means. But I did nearly fly when I was running from the guy in the alley. I make a fist, flexing my considerable forearm. I do feel strong, come to think of it.

  “How much would a skyn like this cost?”

  “A considerable amount. More than three Service Detectives would earn in their entire careers.”

  Approaching eight figures. Who would have spent that kind of money on a body for me? And why? Now that I know more, this whole situation makes even less sense.

  “When did you get the restoration request?”

  “Perhaps two weeks after your hardlock.” He narrows his eyes and a smile spreads on his face. “But you knew this.”

  “Someone else brought me back.”

  “Or you instructed someone to do so after your death.”

  “I wouldn’t have instructed this,” I say, waving my hand down my chest. “That’s all you can tell me?”

  “I am afraid so. Why, may I ask, are you so concerned? Are you not glad to be alive?”

  Am I glad to be alive? Good question.

  “I haven’t decided,” I say, and take a sip of the tea. The heat and aroma pleasantly blooms in my sinuses. “But a man I’m told was my friend last time around attacked me thirty seconds after my restoration. Tried to jam a shyft in my head telling me it was for my own good. I don’t think my being back and Dub knowing the minute I arrived is a coincidence. You told someone. Either it was Dub himself or it was someone who told Dub where I’d be.”

  “If I may, Mr. Gage. The ‘who’ is not as important as the ‘why,’” Saabir says and takes another sip of his tea, breathing in through his nose as he does. “It is no trivial matter to compel a restoration. The detail and specificity of information required to instantiate the process indicates that either you or someone close to you were responsible. Are you sure you didn’t arrange for this during your last incarnation? It is the most obvious answer.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Could you have confided in anyone?”

  Doralai Wii? As far as I can tell, apart from Agent Wiser, she’s the only other person I interacted with at all.

  “There was someone I seemed to spend a lot of time with. But she’s dropped off the grid. I’ve no idea where she is or how to find her.”

  “Then, my friend, you are at a cross-roads. Do you learn to let go and begin anew, take the life presented to and make it your own? Or fight to reclaim who you were, for better or worse?” He leans back, teacup cradled in his palms, appraises me through hooded eyes. “So, Mr. Gage, who do you want to be?”

  Not much of a choice. Whether I try to forget and move on, or try to figure out what happened, either way my life is still shit. And I’ve always been stubborn.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever be comfortable with who I am,” I answer. “Until I find out who I was.”

  “So you have chosen your path,” he says, and sips again at his cup.

&nbs
p; It doesn’t feel like I’ve chosen anything. More like I’m following the steps someone else laid out for me.

  I wonder where the hell they'll lead.

  StatUS-ID

  [a646:d17e:8670:511f::Finsbury/D//GAGE]

  SysDate

  [17:51:41. Friday, April 12, 2058]

  “Fifty-two thousand thoughtmod caps weighing 5 grams each—two hundred and sixty kilograms—and you say the suspect was running with it?” the Inspector asks.

  She’s surveying the unpacked and itemized contents of the bag we retrieved from the Market. Five hundred and twenty individually-wrapped bricks of hundred-count shyfts, stacked in rows on a table in the station's small basement forensics lab.

  Chaddah’s standing at the head of the table, between Galvan and I on one side, and Daar and Brewer on the other. Anders, the on-duty forensics tech, runs each package through a sniffer, searching for prints or DNA or anything at all, but so far has come up empty.

  We relayed the events of the afternoon, described the cypher, how we discovered the shyfts. The Inspector’s held her questions until now.

  “Running. Jumping. Tight-roping along railings,” I answer. “Tossed it at me like it was full of cotton balls.”

  “What can you tell us about these shyfts?” the Inspector asks Galvan.

  “They’re Xiao’s. That’s his mark,” Galvan says and points to the rows of identical flickering hanzi adorning the caps on each shyft, one I don’t recognize: a complicated set of lines resembling two stick figures toasting one another under a boxy tree.

  Galvan takes a breath, hefts up a bundle of cylinders that look like they contain ghostly electrical storms in a pulsing dark blue mist.

  “These are Revv builds,” he says. “The display skin has changed a bit, but I’m almost positive.”

  “How about something we don’t already know, Wiser,” Brewer says in a hoarse growl. I open my mouth to snark back, but the Inspector quiets us both with a half twist of her head.

  “I—” Galvan’s trembling. The blue mist on the shyfts he’s holding roils in response. He puts the bundle down, takes a deep breath, pulls his spekz off and levels his naked gaze at Brewer. “I have a theory. Would you care to hear it or should I write it up in a report so you can ignore it?”