by RJ Plant
*****
28 October 2042, Dublin, United Irish Republic
We walked from GDI to Kaitlyn’s building. Our building, I guess. I spent most of the trek concentrating on my legs, trying to look like I wasn’t trying to figure out how to walk again. It seemed more difficult than I remembered.
Of course, I’d been near to a decade out of practice.
The roller was parked outside. If we were going to get to the airstrip in under an hour, we’d need it. And it was feeling a bit pressed for time, I was.
I tried the roller’s doors, but they were all locked.
I looked over at Kaitlyn. I didn’t want to hurt her but frothing at the mouth as I buckled under a seizure wasn’t going to do anyone a bit of good.
“Wait here,” I said. “I’m going to get the keys.”
“Shouldn’t I get some clothes? How long are we going to be gone? Why are we going? You haven’t explained anything to me.”
I smiled at her. “Give me five minutes. Then come up.”
I hoped that was a smile.
I unlocked the building’s front door, then shut it behind me. Or slammed it, really. I flexed my arms, the muscles feeling dense and heavy. I shook my arms out, but the heaviness remained. As I walked up the stairs to the flat, I wondered if Shaina and Seth would notice the difference.
They were expecting company, of course, what with the whole building being monitored, thanks to Seth.
“Good day babysitting?” Seth asked from the couch, nose-deep in one of his surveillance tablets. Four other tablets were scattered on the couch and floor for easy viewing.
My heart beat a little faster seeing him there, relaxed, non-threatening. It wasn’t my usual welcome.
“It was different,” I said after a moment.
There were a lot of differences between Felix and myself, but the main one—aside from the different genome, apparently—was that I was always aware of everything that happened. If Felix knew or saw something, then I did too. Our cohabitation was one-sided like that—he was as blacked out right now as if he’d finished up a bender with Seth. I’d have felt a twinge of guilt if he wasn’t such a gobshite.
Shaina was in the kitchen. I leaned over the bar. “Seen the keys to the roller?”
“Yeah. Hang on just a second,” she said, holding up hands soaked in soapy water.
I plopped (read: fell) down beside Seth and picked up one of the tablets. It was showing a live feed from the street below. Kaitlyn at the roller, on her mobile. Almost as soon as she tucked it away, Shaina’s mobile rang. I could make out a few affirmative responses and was just starting to pick up actual words when the call ended.
“Conor,” Shaina said.
I stood and bowed. Seth stayed silent, unmoving, but watching intently.
“I take it that was Rian,” I said.
“How are you out?” Shaina asked.
“While I’d love to give you a smartass answer, I’m just as surprised as you, so. Maybe more. Probably more. In any case it’s not your problem, so if you’ll just hand over the keys, I’ll be off.”
“You seem a little different from the last time,” Seth said from the couch.
I closed in on him, faster than I meant to, and lifted him off the couch by the front of his shirt. A little more aggressively than I’d meant to, although I wasn’t sure if it was from anger or poor body management. The movement had been a mostly unconscious decision, the body’s attempt to properly respond to my feelings.
“How could you know?” I asked. I kept my voice low and calm as I held his face to mine. “You saw a glimpse of me, and while I was admittedly not on my best behavior, I think you can hardly blame me for fighting for my life.”
“Was more of a generalized observation than an in-depth analysis,” Seth said.
I tossed him back on the couch. Starting trouble here was just going to mean trouble down the road. I could play nice. I lifted my hands in supplication and faced Shaina.
“I’m on a bit of a time-sensitive job,” I said as I slowly walked forward. “Whatever questions you might want to ask, I probably don’t know the answers. Just give me the keys to the roller and I’ll be on my way.”
I was almost to the kitchen entrance when she tossed the keys to me and for one happy moment, I thought things were going to go smoothly.
Nope.
As I caught the keys, Shaina front kicked me hard in the stomach. I grabbed her ankle before she could snap her leg back and twisted. She turned with the movement, angling her body so that she’d fall well.
Seth came up behind me about the time Shaina hit the floor. I drove my elbow back into the side of his head. The one hit was all it took. Blood flashed bright from the tiny cut my elbow had left. He was out, but Shaina was back up. I shot toward her. She lunged into my advance, planting a knee into my side as she passed.
She turned, stepped in to throw a cross. I swept her feet out from under her and this time she didn’t fall well. I grabbed her from behind and rolled us to the floor, an arm under her chin and my legs locked around her body.
“Now I know you’re going to be upset about this later, so just remember …” I said, my voice a bit strained as Shaina struggled to slide out of the choke, “you started it.”
I waited until her breathing steadied, then held on an extra ten seconds for good measure before pushing myself to my feet.
I grabbed the keys. Seth was coming to. I patted him on the head and ran out of the flat.
“Get in,” I shouted to Kaitlyn as I shoved open the building’s front door.
“What happened? Don’t I need clothes? A toothbrush?”
I slammed into the roller’s driver-side door, as effective a means of stopping as any, and unlocked it. I grabbed Kaitlyn’s arm with one hand, opened the roller door with the other, and threw her in. She banged her shin on the way up, the string of expletives bringing a smile to my face if only because she’d called Rian who then called Shaina, who then reacted like I punched her mother.
Which I had not done.
I got in the roller, shouldering Kaitlyn across the bench seat to the passenger side, and started it up.
“To be fair,” I said. “I did tell you to go get your shite after five minutes. It’s not my fault you spent your time tattling instead. How did you know, anyway?”
“Know what?” Kaitlyn said.
“Pretty Kaitlyn,” I said, turning in my seat to face her. “You’re not stupid. So be a good girl and when I ask you something, don’t play dumb and don’t play games. It’s always straightforward between you and me. Got it?”
“Could you at least not manhandle me?” Kaitlyn asked.
“Sorry,” I said. “Still trying to adjust to this—” I waved my hand at myself. “So now that I’ve answered your question, you answer mine.”
Kaitlyn said nothing for a long time.
“You haven’t actually answered my question, but like you said, I’m not stupid. Even if I hadn’t noticed the bit of vomit on your shirt and the newly acquired bandage when you got back to the lab, I certainly would have known something was off by the way you walked. What did Bernard do to you?”
“It’s funny you should ask me that,” I said, glancing briefly at my shirt. I didn’t see any vom … Oh, yeah. There it was. “He implanted a C-chip in my neck and then demonstrated what would happen if I didn’t kill you. Why I’m here is another question, since I never get to come out to play anymore.”
“Wait, you’ve been told to kill me?” she asked, shrinking against the window.
“Yes. I’ve got to get you to Stockholm first, take you to Esposito.” I spat his name like a curse.
“So, now I know the plan,” Kaitlyn said, her face a little paler even as her voice steadied.
“Good,” I said. “Get to work.”
“Excuse me?”
“If you can find a way to remove this chip, I won’t have to kill you. You can live; I can go on being me. It’s a win for both of us.”
&n
bsp; “I didn’t think there were any C-chips left,” she said. “I’d heard they were all destroyed after the War. Anyway, those chips have tamper deterrents. Namely, you tamper with it, you die.”
“Where does this information come from? Is it reliable?”
“From the manufacturer, so I would think so, yes.”
I narrowed my eyes at her, but she didn’t add anything, so I put the roller into gear and started driving.
I felt very bad for the clutch in this thing.
Kaitlyn was quiet all the way to the airstrip. I spent some time flexing different muscles. The last time I was in the driver’s seat—of my body, not the roller—was about seven years ago. Damn, was I already thirty-three?
I was a bit offended that time had gone on without me.
Seven years ago, Felix forgot to take his precious meds. People got hurt. Honestly, I would think they could have cut me some slack, considering they’d kept me caged in my own mind for eleven years prior. Not that I was bitter about it.
I stewed in reflective anger for the rest of the drive. It was somewhat cathartic.
*****
28 October 2042, Dublin, United Irish Republic
The airstrip was a wide-open expanse of asphalt, much more than was needed now that planes had gone extinct. Air travel was all government regulated, inasmuch as any government could regulate anything anymore.
I parked the roller—almost certainly where I should not have—and escorted/dragged Kaitlyn along behind me. The gray mass of airships blocked out most of the sad gray sky, hiding the last off-colors as the sun sank into the horizon.
I stood there, letting the wind touch my face. It felt nice. I was always conscious, always aware, but I couldn’t feel anything. Which made the threat of pain an extremely effective motivator.
And made me all the more angry that the first thing I’d felt was Bernard’s sadistic power display.
We walked into the maze of display stands that announced the various destinations of each airship. It took a little over ten minutes to find the one destined for the Greater Scandinavian Territories. I watched as luggage was loaded onto a platform and lifted into the airship via an old-school pulley system. A ladder hung like a lolling tongue from the airship’s passenger boarding door. The airships didn’t land—maintenance and service were done while airborne—and they certainly weren’t handicap accessible.
I showed the boarding attendant the warrant card that Bernard had given me. Like the golden key of Kublai Kahn, the card opened doors, granted passage. I threw out the keys to the roller as we left it to its fate and boarded the airship.
10
28 October 2042, Dublin, United Irish Republic
The airship’s entrance, once you climbed all the way up the rubber-coated rope ladder, consisted of two staircases, one on the left and one on the right. On either side of the staircases were doors to the front and rear keel corridors, other decks, and crew areas. The staircases led up to the A Deck passenger area, with a promenade and dining room to the left, cabins straight ahead, and a secondary promenade and lounge to the right.
“Since we’re not at capacity, you can choose any unoccupied cabin,” a passing crewman said, spreading the news to the few other passengers aboard.
“Bathroom,” Kaitlyn said.
“After we get moving,” I said.
“Because I’m going to rappel down and run off in a roller I don’t have the keys to. You really are a bit of a dick.”
“You should think less about my assets and more about how to fix this implant situation. Any ideas?”
As I waited for an answer, I wandered over to the lounge area. It was empty for the moment, the other passengers presumably settling into their cabins. The promenade was about two feet lower than the lounge, the floor slanting down and leading to a long bench in front of the windows.
Most of the airships were old school, hydrogen filled, and for the same reason airships were hydrogen filled back in the early twentieth century: hydrogen was cheaper, more easily accessible.
“The chips just flood the brain with acetylcholine, so if I could find an anticholinergic, that might help,” Kaitlyn said, walking up beside me. “Or we could try cutting it out.”
I blinked slowly at her.
“Dinner will be served in two hours,” announced a disembodied voice over the PA system.
“Didn’t you say that would be fatal?” I said.
“I mean …” Kaitlyn shrugged. She walked over to the bench and sat, not quite leaning against the window. I sat across from her.
“Conor,” I said. Kaitlyn looked at me, a bit confused. “It’s my name. If you’re going to try to kill me, you should at least know that much.”
“I know your name. And I’m not trying to kill you. I’m trying to avoid you killing me.”
“Sure, sure.”
She looked at me, then out the window. She chewed on her thumbnail for something like half a minute before asking, “How do you feel?”
“Seems to be the question of the day, that. I feel fine.”
“Rian warned me to keep away from you when I called him. Said you were dangerous. You don’t seem much like the berserker he described.”
“Escorting you to your death isn’t enough?” I asked.
“Just thought maybe you’d leave a blood trail.”
“I’m under lock and key at the moment, so,” I said, pointing to my neck.
“Indeed. So why you and not Felix?”
“I don’t know. Maybe when Bernard put him under, Felix’s meds were flushed out or wore off.” But as I said it, that didn’t seem right. When we were kids, any time I was sedated, Felix was the one who came to.
“Bernard as much as said that he used you to gain access to Felix,” I said. “Or me, maybe.”
She chewed her nail and thought. “Seems odd, doesn’t it?” she finally said. “Why not just kill me outright? Why do I have to see Dr. Esposito first? What does he need from me? What does Bernard need from you? What’s so important about you that some already willing agent couldn’t take me?”
“All good questions, but I’m afraid I can’t help you. Maybe he needs you to do something. Maybe he’s testing the effectiveness of the C-chip. All I have are maybes. Although … he did say there was a primary directive or something similar. Won’t know what it is until after I’ve taken care of you.”
“I hope you’re not the curious type, then,” Kaitlyn said.
I smiled. She shivered.
She pulled the Leif file with all of Kenna and Ylva’s notes from her bag. Ylva … Mýrún Ylva … I wanted to remember her, but she was like a dream that faded upon waking up. The more I tried, the more the almost-memory faded. Except for her face, which flashed behind my eyelids every time I blinked. A woman with plaited white hair, older, yet the skin around her face and neck didn’t completely lack the elasticity found in youth. She was smiling. She was saying something. Litla something, I thought.
“It’s hard to believe that Kenna and Ylva’s endgame was just to create … someone like you,” Kaitlyn said. “I mean it’s remarkable, decades ahead of their time, but … for what?”
I didn’t know, so I said as much. Kaitlyn pored over the file with increasing intensity, making notes and trying to re-create some of the redacted bits. I left her to it, opting to rest my eyes.
Barely a minute later, I felt hands at my neck, poking and squeezing the skin around the marks that had puckered above where the bandage had been.
“Why are you molesting me?” I said, eyes still closed.
“I’m not molesting you. I’m inspecting the puncture marks on your neck.”
“And what is your very reasonable excuse for that?”
Kaitlyn sighed and removed her hands. “Here, look at this,” she said, pointing out something in the file to me.
I stared at it, but after several words like live-attenuated and filovirus, I gave up.
“Can you explain this to me like I’m five?” I said.
She thought about it. “Potential biological weapon.”
“You’ve obviously met some very intense five-year-olds.”
“Some of these notes indicate that Kenna and Ylva were looking into manufacturing a virus. Something along the line of what Kazic mapped out, something personalized. But the why and what for, if they were ever mentioned at all, are missing.”
“And?”
“There’s no information about transmission, or potential transmission, but …”
“Come on, girl, spit it out,” I said.
Kaitlyn closed her eyes and let out a weary sigh. “Consider everything we know about Kazic and Leif. If you were a part of that final Leif trial—and it seems you were—then your chimerism isn’t just ‘oh, my liver has different DNA than my skin.’ You would have two. Completely. Separate. Genomes. Residing in a single host.”
“And brain damage, apparently,” I muttered.
She seemed to assume that I knew what she’d discussed with Felix. Did she know that I knew what Felix knew, or was she just not registering that Felix and I were actually different people?
“A DNA-specific—a personalized—vaccine could potentially have a better success rate than mass-produced vaccines, but it’s hardly practical. And most vaccines already yield impressive results. So why create a DNA-specific vaccine?”
“I’m on the edge of my seat here, Kait,” I said, willing to be her sounding board as she worked through the problem.
“To counter a DNA-specific virus. A virus for which you’d be the perfect distributor. Hypothetically, and specifically in a case like yours, they can introduce a virus to the host that only one genome will contract, while the second genome remains healthy if that second genome has had the vaccine.”
“And that makes me a good distributor, why?”
“Say you receive a vaccine for a virus, and then you get injected with the live virus, no attenuation, just a straight, full-on blood contact viral injection. Well, the vaccination gave you a chance to build antibodies for just this occasion, so you may only get mild symptoms or even no symptoms at all. The much larger non-attenuated injection—the actual virus—will take a little longer for your body to fight, whether you feel sick or not. So, since the virus is still active in your body, as soon as Felix, whose immune system has no way to fight the virus, comes into contact with the virus, he—”