by Sulivan, Tricia; Nevill, Adam; Tchaikovsky, Adrian; McDougall, Sophia; Tidhar, Lavie
“Done,” he said, all too quickly. “Okay?”.
Jess took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Okay,” she said.
The nurse nodded, went back to the console, flicked a switch, and everything went black.
She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. Her heart was pounding, trapped in her rib cage just as she was trapped in this… what? Where was she? What was happening? If only she could remember. But her memories were fading, drowned out by that one panoramic recollection she was forced to relive again and again.
“Help me.” Who said that? Did she say that? “Help me. Please. My name is Leena Jones. I was convicted in –”
She convulsed, a spasm that forced her body from the cot, high into the air, bursting her bonds, the darkness and her tired, frightened heart, sending her flying into …
… music. Oh boy, what music. She could feel the beat inside her, pulsing through her heart, hearting through her pulse… Jesus, she was drunk. Not too drunk to dance though. Not too drunk to have a good time. The floor was crowded, bodies bumping against each other, sometimes intentional, sometimes not, angles of flesh lit up then lost again as the strobe circled. It was like being in a kaleidoscope, patterns shifting and forming, colours changing from green to red to blue, coming together and falling apart, everything merging.
She stumbled, caught her balance and turned it into a move, spinning round, spreading out her arms, jerking her hips, forcing her mouth into the wide smile she was determined to wear. When she was steady again she turned to the guy she’d bumped into, hoping for a little flirt, a little of that good time she’d come out for – but as she moved the crowed shifted, clearing her view to the bar, and she saw Mick. Correction. She saw Mick and Kelly. Together. Kissing.
The pulse that surged through her blood had nothing to do with music. Fake good time forgotten, she elbowed her way to the bar.
“Cunt,” she said. The music was so loud it was unlikely Kelly heard her, but there were other ways to get her attention. Grabbing Kelly’s hair, Leena jerked her head back so that Kelly’s hands came up in defence, knocking over her cocktail.
Mick looked up.
“Leena?” he said, as though surprised. As though it hadn’t occurred to him that she’d be here.
“Remember me?” Leena spat, a gob of saliva landing on his cheek, then jerked Kelly’s hair again. Kelly started screeching, squeals of pain and fear cutting through the air as the music stopped.
“Shut up,” Leena snapped with another pull. Kelly screeched some more. “I said shut up, you fucking bitch.” This time she pulled so hard a tuft came out, globules of blood and skin sticking to the roots. Putting her hands to her scalp, Kelly whimpered, then slumped forward onto the bar.
In the resulting silence Leena heard a footstep behind her and glimpsed the bouncer from the corner of her eye. Darting forward, she dodged his arms and threw herself onto Mick, fingers aiming for his face while her knee sunk satisfyingly into his groin. He went white as he doubled up into her hands, making a little noise, half-sigh, half-groan.
“Bastard,” she hissed, digging her nails into his cheeks. “I should hack your willy off, you two-timing shit.”
Arms grabbed her wrists, pulled her fingers from his face, twisted one arm behind her back. Struggling, she kicked out, but the bouncer pulled her away.
“That’s enough now, miss,” he said.
“No it’s not.” She looked round the room. Everyone was staring at her. “He got me pregnant,” she told them. “He knocked me up then ditched me for that –”
“Come on now, miss.” The bouncer’s voice was calm, but his hold was firm. He started to walk her to the exit.
“I thought he loved me,” she told the room. But the room didn’t answer, just shifted, uneasy and silent. Well fuck them. Twisting her head, she looked back to where Mick was still curled around his balls. “I thought you loved me,” she told him, her voice breaking. “But all you wanted was a goodtime girl. Well, are you having a good time now? Are you?”
The bouncer jerked her towards the door, one arm circling tightly around her chest until she could hardly breathe, his right leg curling round hers to hold her against his body, his other hand pulling at her hair, little stabs of pain like electric shocks zapping through her skull. Then someone turned the lights out and she was suddenly scared.
“Help me.” It came out a whisper. She wet her lips and tried again. “Help, please. Help me.” But the pressure got tighter and the darkness turned thick and black like the depths of a cave. “Hel-”
“Hello.” It was the nurse, his face hovering upside down over hers, his forehead creased with something like worry. “All done.”
“Ri-ight.” Jess’s voice was croaky, as if she’d been screaming. She swallowed, tried again. “Good.”
“Okay?” He turned as he spoke, busy at the console.
“No,” she said. “It was horrible.”
He frowned, though whether in annoyance or concern she couldn’t tell. On the monitor two sets of lines stabbed wildly. He turned a dial and one side settled down to a regular rhythm, while the other continued to jerk then, as he pressed another switch, faded to a steady horizontal line. He grunted, satisfied, then came over to remove the electrodes.
“A good reason for sticking to the 0.5s,” he suggested.
“I’ll say.” Jess sat up to undo her ankle straps, but stopped only halfway. She felt as if she’d been in the fight itself, not just its currents.
“Is this normal?” she asked.
“Huh?” The nurse was already sterilising the clips, preparing for the next client.
“To feel this shitty? I never felt like this after DCing a parking ticket.”
He looked over at her. “Probably just hypersensitivity,” he told her, coming back to free her ankles. “Your potassium and sodium levels were fine. Stay off the booze and if you still feel bad in a day or two, come in for a check up.”
“That famous DC Service,” Jess muttered, easing her legs onto the floor. “Never fix today what you can put off till tomorrow.”
“Pardon?”
“I said the tea and biscuits will sort me out.” Never piss off the man with the electrodes. Pulling her clothes straight, Jess headed for the door and freedom. Stay off the booze be damned – the way she felt right now, a few stiff drinks were exactly what she needed.
Carla was waiting at the pub, a half-empty wine glass showing she’d been there a while.
“Sorry.” Tom leant down to kiss her. “End of month rush at the clinic, you know how it is.”
Carla rolled her dark eyes.
“No I don’t,” she said. “I never leave it so late. I am organised.” Her glance slid from Tom to Jess, as though she knew precisely where the fault lay. “So,” she continued, “how did it go?”
“Quite an adventure actually.” Tom slid in beside her. “We had to push through a blockade of protesters.”
Jess opened her mouth, but Tom glared at her and she closed it again. She remembered the flyer in her jeans.
“Protestors?” Carla perked up, scenting a story. “Tell me more.”
“‘Freedom for Waiver Signers,’” Jess read, pulling out the paper. “‘Say no to the IIA.’” She frowned and threw it on the table. “Clear as mud. Who are the Waiver Signers anyway?”
She’d aimed the question at Tom, but Carla surprised her. “The waiver signers,” she said, “are the people who signed a DC waiver – mainly the originals.”
“Originals?”
“When DCs first started.” Carla sat forward, enjoying knowing more than Jess. “In those days the dummies were volunteers – mostly people who had no one to go back to – tramps, abused kids, druggies, ex-army, you know the type. They were given the option to sign a waiver – for as long as required, was the phrase used. I did an article on it when the Illegal Immigrant Act first came up. Either do your official time then be released to a responsible person for your probation, or stay
a dummy for as long as required, with financial compensation for every year over your official sentence. Of course, in those days no one knew how successful DC would turn out to be – that decreasing crime meant increasingly fewer dummies, so that ‘for as long as required’ would turn out to be much longer than anyone had ever intended.”
“You mean they’re still dummies? All these years on?”
Carla looked uncertain. Tom took over.
“Those who are still operational.” He made a face. “The problem from the government’s point of view is that they’re starting to burn out – you could see that in the guy handing out the flyers.”
“Jesus.” Jess shook her head. From anyone else she’d have dismissed this as exaggeration, but Tom was well placed to know.
“I don’t understand the neuroscience,” he continued, “but at the hospital we call it loose connections. Their scenarios start to leak into the system – along with some of their cognitive functions. Overuse, I suppose, like with the old standard EST packages. They end up the equivalent of those movie videos that went all crackly over time.” He took a sip of his beer. “In a small controlled environment like ours, there’s no real danger. Any hint of electrical contamination and we do a mild wipe – hell – I’ve had two myself this year – but imagine if that started happening in the general population?”
“Hence the rush to get through the new Illegal Immigrant Act?”
Tom nodded. “They’re phasing the dummies out as they corrupt, but if the government released them all now they’d owe them a fortune in compensation. Far better, from their perspective, to let them quietly fade away until they’re too brain damaged to cause any trouble. Especially if they can start using foreign criminals to replace the originals.”
“But that – that’s…” For once Jess was lost for words. “How can they get away with it?”
“No one cares,” Carla said simply. “Why would they? I mean, these people were friendless even before they became criminals. Who’d give a toss about them now?”
Jess thought about it. “So they’re fucked,” she said.
Carla frowned; she didn’t like bad language. She turned to Tom. “And that’s your protest? A few burnt-out anti-waver signers?” She sighed. “I suppose it might make page eight.”
Jess felt a wave of distaste rise in her throat, an urge to shake Carla’s complacency out of her. She should try being a clinic dummy, see what it felt like to be zapped and zapped then left to rot… The thought surprised her – she wasn’t normally vengeful – and lifting her glass to break the mood, she discovered it was empty. She waved it in front of the others.
“My round. Same again?”
Tom shook his head and lifted a nearly full pint. “I’m driving.”
“Please.” Carla smiled perfunctorily and turned to Tom. “Now, wait until you hear my news. A maisonette’s just come up on the market…”
Jess escaped. If Carla was in her ‘let’s move in together’ mood, the conversation would go downhill from here on in. She knew what Tom saw in her of course – the woman was stunning. And she guessed he liked her controlling manner and the clear, precise structure she gave him after a chaotic day at the madhouse – but personally it got right up her nose.
“I’ve bumped into some old mates,” she invented when she brought Carla’s wine over. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just go and sit outside with them for a bit.”
“No problem,” Carla said.
“Do they want to join us?” Tom asked at the same time. The couple looked at each other. Tom smiled and shrugged.
“See you later then,” he said. “Have fun.”
Jess took her bottle of Leffe out to the beer garden and sat next to the stream that separated it from the rest of the village. Taking a long swig of beer she felt herself relax for the first time that day. This was more like it. She gazed at the stream unseeing, absorbing its gentle gurgling, and told herself that after this drink she would go back inside, be sociable. She didn’t feel like it though. She felt wiped out, physically exhausted, as though she’d literally been dancing and fighting the night away. What she actually wanted to do, she decided, draining half her bottle, was stay out here in the evening calm and get pissed out of her mind.
When the cold drove her in an hour later her head was thick with the combination of alcohol and residual DCs, the floor unsteady beneath her feet. She stopped at the entrance to the public bar, holding tight to the door frame in case it tried to move away from her, and looked around. The place was packed now, a popular country pub on a balmy Friday night, the area around the bar heaving with people, colourful and vibrant in their spring clothes. It was like being in a kaleidoscope, Jess thought, patterns shifting and forming, colours changing from green to red to blue, coming together and falling apart, everything merging…
“Have they gone?”
“Huh?” She looked around. Tom was squeezing through the crowd to her side.
“Your friends. I don’t want to spoil your fun, but I’m on early shift tomorrow. Five am start.”
“Sure. Right.” She stood a little straighter and let go of the door jamb. The world lurched. Tom grabbed her.
“You’re drunk,” he said. “Jesus, Jess, you know you shouldn’t drink after clinic. You’re such an idiot.” He said it kindly though and took her arm. “Come on, let’s get you to the car.”
They were in the car park when it happened, Jess sandwiched between Carla and Tom at the far end as a car turned on its headlights. The beam shone into Jess’s face, dazzling her like the glinting of a strobe, and for a second everything went dark except for the jagged light in her eyes. A pulse started beating in her ears, rage coursing through her body, and when Carla stumbled in her high heels, knocking against Jess, Jess pushed back as hard as she could.
“Cunt,” she hissed. “Fucking bitch.”
For an instant Carla’s face was caught in the headlight, her mouth a wide O of surprise, then darkness flowed in as Tom got between them.
“Hey, cool it. It was an accident, Jess.”
“An accident,” Jess spat. “An accident.” She pushed Tom in the chest, making him stagger backwards. “You two-timing shit. I’m pregnant with your baby, and you call it a fucking accident. Well, I’ll show you an accident.”
Turning back to Carla, she pushed her into the wall, wrapped her fingers in Carla’s long black hair, and smashed her head against the bricks. Carla gave a little grunt, sagging as her legs gave under her, and Jess tensed to do it again – then stopped, her hands rising into the air, her body jerking uncontrollably before she fell unconscious to the ground.
Everything was dark and still and hard. She hurt, but when she tried to see what was wrong, she couldn’t move. Then she heard a faint sizzling noise, a hissing with louder crackles accompanied by a blue-white light, far away, but closing quickly, spreading out like a wave hurtling towards her. She tensed for the hit, felt energy surge through her, light yet powerful, then relaxed. Bright colours flashed behind her eyes and in the distance she heard voices.
“…calling the police.”
“No. She was drunk as a skunk. Disinhibited after a level two. You know what that can do.”
“That was her choice –”
“Jess,” a new voice said. Jess started: it was so close as to be almost in her ear. She tried to open her eyes, but couldn’t see beyond the whirling colours.
“Jess,” the voice said again. “Listen. We don’t have much time.”
Jess frowned in concentration, her head bleary with drink and pain. The voice was familiar.
“Jess. Concentrate, will you.”
“OK,” she said, though she wasn’t sure her lips moved. “Who…?”
“It’s Leena. Listen, you have to help us.”
“Leena? But…” She was confused. That made no sense. “Where are you?”
“Inside you,” Leena said. “I left some of my currents in your body. Only –”
“You what?”
&
nbsp; “It’s amazing.” Leena’s voice was rich with joy. “I couldn’t get a lot through – just a quick leak into the wires during the outage – but then you got this surge of electricity, knocking out your system and magnifying mine so that…”
Jess stopped listening, trying to remember what had happened. She had a sense of rage coursing through her, of Carla cowering, of intense pain then – nothing…
“Tom must have used his Taser,” she said.
“Well that’s worth knowing.” And Jess could feel Leena take the knowledge and flow it through her system, the electricity sparking and jumping. “Now, what you must do is –”
There was a flash behind her eyes, a sizzling sound and a smell of burning.
“Shit.” Leena’s voice turned faint and crackly, like a badly tuned radio. “No,” she said.
Jess felt sick. She spasmed, limbs tensing against rough tarmac, and fought to breathe.
“Help me,” Leena said. “Please. You have to DC a higher level. Get up to Danny Monroe. DC Danny Monroe. He’ll tell you what to do next.”
The static was worse now, almost drowning her out, and when Leena’s voice came again it was small and desperate.
“Help us,” she said. “Please. Help us with Danny Monroe.” Then there was another spark, like the zap of an insect killer, and everything went dark. Slowly other voices, normal, distant and angry, phased in.
“She committed a crime,” Carla said. “A full-on level two assault. And I’m the victim. So why the hell shouldn’t I report her?”
“She wasn’t herself,” Tom replied. “Jess hasn’t got a violent bone in her body. I don’t know what’s going on, but –”
“Well I do,” Carla cut in. “I know exactly what’s going on.” She paused and when she spoke again her voice shook. “You prefer her to me, that’s what’s going on. You’d rather see her get away with a crime than see justice for your girlfriend.”
“Carla –”
“I’ve always suspected it,” she continued. “All those reasons why you couldn’t come out at night, tired after a hard day’s work –”