The Killing Jar

by RS McCoy

  Mable collapsed. Her head was consumed with pain that spread like fire. She was only vaguely aware she’d knocked over the jar and spilled the pungent fluid across the tile. She kicked out her legs uselessly and kept her hands pinned to her ears. Blood ran between her fingers.

  Then only the blackness.

  THEO

  NINTH STREET DINER, TORONTO, NORTH AMERICA

  AUGUST 22, 2232

  The second time Theo killed someone was undoubtedly worse than the first.

  The first time had been an accident. No matter what anyone else thought or said to him for the rest of his life, he knew that other forces had been at work that day. There was nothing he could do to save the boy, nothing he could do to prevent that death.

  But the second time was entirely his fault. He left Mable alone on a job, intending to let her fail spectacularly. He never imagined it would put her life at risk, but he should have. He knew what bugs were capable of. He’d seen the files.

  An hour after they’d split in front of the café, Theo turned his comms back on. He planned to claim some sort of technical failure if it came down to it, but otherwise, he would let Mable take the fall. She wanted to be on her own anyway.

  Instead, he got no answer.

  The cam continued to live stream but all he saw were the same white walls of every Scholar facility. Could she really still be in there? Why hadn’t she extracted it yet? Why hadn’t she come back yet?

  Theo knew then that something had gone terribly wrong. A knot formed in his gut.

  He knew she had her tablet. He could track her position. It took a few minutes to navigate on his wristlet but he got it done. Theo punched the coordinates into his virtual map and was shocked to see Mable was nowhere near the pharma complex. She was two miles away at the Toronto Regional Hospital.

  Hospital?

  Theo figured that was a good sign, sort of. Dead people didn’t usually go to a hospital. But Scholars almost never went. There wasn’t a need. If a Scholar suffered an affliction worse than a minor injury, it indicated a fault in their genetic makeup. They were outcast to live as Untouchables, unable to contaminate the superior genes of the class.

  He had never been in a hospital.

  Theo knew there was no chance Mable had made it from the pharma complex to the hospital without being asked for ID. Would they find her alias or her real identity? Did they think she was Camille or did they know she was Mable?

  This was far beyond Theo’s capabilities to do damage control.

  There was just one person to comm.

  And Theo really didn’t want to comm him. Not under these circumstances.

  The longer Mable was in the hospital, the more likely they’d find out who she was, if they hadn’t already. So Theo connected the comm.

  Nick’s face hovered in the space above the café table, projected from his wristlet.

  “What the hell happened?” It was accusation. Nick must have known something was wrong even before Theo commed.

  “I, I’m not sure. I lost comms—”

  “Arrenstein is on his way. Keep your cover. Stay in the area. You can connect with Arrenstein and get a new transport badge to return to CPI.”

  Theo hung his head. “Is she—”

  “We don’t know how bad it is yet. You can get more information with Arrenstein. He should be there within the hour.”

  Then Nick was gone.

  Alone in a strange café in a strange city, Theo was left to wallow in the sting of guilt. To swim in the waves of it. He clasped his hands together, fidgeting his fingers and tapping his thumbs, but nothing could change the facts.

  Theo was a terrible person who did terrible things.

  He had wanted Mable to mess up, to get caught being cocky and difficult, but not like this. He didn’t want her to be hurt.

  When he could suffer alone no more, Theo commed the only person who would understand.

  Jane’s dark bangs and high cheekbones appeared above the table. “Hey, how’d it go?” Her smile faded when she saw his expression.

  Theo only shook his head.

  “You didn’t do it?” she asked.

  “No, I did.”

  “Then what’s wrong?”

  “I think she’s hurt really bad.”

  Jane erupted into a wide smile. “Then there’s no way they keep you with her. They’ll have to switch up the teams!”

  Theo shook his head again. “I didn’t mean for her to get hurt. What if—” He couldn’t get the words out.

  “I know it’s not what we planned, but at least it gets us together. That’s worth it, don’t you think?” Jane batted her lashes.

  The answer was a complete, resounding no. Killing someone would never be worth it. Putting someone in danger would never be worth it.

  What was he thinking?

  “No, it’s not. I made a mistake.”

  Her lip took on a considerable pout. “Theo? What are you saying?”

  “I don’t want to be on your team. I don’t want to be with you. I don’t love you. You’re a bitch.” Theo thought Mable would be particularly proud of that last line, assuming she lived long enough to forgive him and let him tell the story.

  Jane didn’t appear fazed in the slightest. In fact, she seemed more amused than anything. “Love? Really? I thought you were smarter than that. There’s no such thing. It’s proven and documented scientifically. Genetic history is the only real measure of compatibility.”

  That was it. The snapping branch. The moment it all clicked.

  He wasn’t about to explain it to Jane. She would never understand. She thought love was a mere superstition suffered by lower class people. A religion to blind them to the truth of their meaningless lives.

  Theo knew, deep down in the core of his being, that love existed. Maybe not the perfect, genetically viable partnership Scholars envisioned, but it was real. He had seen it firsthand.

  Nate loved Casey, wholly, completely, and without care of the consequences.

  That was the life Theo wanted. And it was a life he would never have with Jane. It was a life he might never have at all, but it was worth giving up an empty life with anyone else just to have the chance.

  “Goodbye, Jane.” Theo clicked off the comm without waiting for her response. Why hadn’t he seen it earlier? Jane was beautiful and intelligent and came from a prestigious family, but those things didn’t matter. He’d clung to his Scholar ideals, refused to let them die.

  But only weeks ago, he’d run from them.

  Theo wasn’t a Scholar. He wasn’t an Artisan or a Craftsman or anything else. Theo was merely himself, a recon handler with CPI. And he had just made a grave mistake. He could only hope this time, he could fix it.

  MABLE

  TORONTO REGIONAL HOSPITAL, TORONTO, NORTH AMERICA

  AUGUST 22, 2232

  Mable woke in a bright room she’d never seen before. Her head hurt like she’d been kicked in the face, or run over, or both, so painful she didn’t dare move to investigate her injuries. She could only lay curled on the strange bed and wince. She didn’t dare cry. The pain would have been too much. She could only look around the empty, windowless room in short bursts before slamming her eyes shut once more.

  She remembered a shuttle. Theo sitting beside her. She remembered Japan and cherry blossoms. Nothing made sense.

  Mable wanted to get up, to get out, to find out what happened and where she was. But she was trapped by the pain in her head.

  Once again, she was caught. Only this time she didn’t know where she was. Only this time no one would come to save her.

  SILAS

  CPI-AO-301, NEW YORK

  AUGUST 22, 2232

  Silas shifted in his shuttle seat for the thousandth time, unable to quiet the racing of his pulse. He couldn’t help but replay the ecomm that arrived.

  AGENT COMPROMISE. RECON4-MW.

  The first part was the same, the message that was always sent when an unknown person attempted to access the tabl
et of one of the agents. This time, a Dr. Divya Prataban unknowingly tripped the tablet security. Whilst she found Maggie’s false identity, Silas was alerted.

  Recon4-MW. Mable Wilkinson. Maggie.

  He should have known it was coming. Maggie’s comms hadn’t come through for the last twenty minutes. Something was wrong.

  So Silas waited, twenty long minutes, until the emergency ecomm came through. With the security triggered, he was sent her global coordinates in real time. Her tablet stayed at the pharmaceutical complex for two minutes before moving to the hospital six minutes away.

  Eight minutes of agony.

  No sooner had she arrived at the hospital than Silas grabbed his coat on the way out the door. He managed to quiet the shaking in his hands long enough to send Nick the info from the pod.

  The shuttle was the usual affair, distracted passengers and abrupt Craftsmen serving drinks. Only Silas was different. Only Silas could hear his heartbeat hammer in his ears. His stomach lurched to think of what her condition might be.

  On his tablet, he watched the cam feed. It was live, but as still as stone. Maggie was in a dim room with a tile floor and white walls. It wasn’t the furnishings that concerned him. He knew she was in the hospital.

  It was the fact that she never moved. Not even a little.

  Silas refused the brandy coded into his travel badge and resigned himself to prayer. Two decades into his career, Silas had learned to keep his relationship with God to himself. It wasn’t all that hard. They weren’t all that close. But given the circumstances, Silas held tight to his faith. He could only hope it would be enough.

  How could this have happened?

  Silas had worked long and hard to keep this very event from fruition, and here it was. A second Wilkinson taken down on his watch. He refused to think of the possibility of her death.

  Nick had a pod waiting at ground transport when he arrived. The coordinates already received, the pod sped off toward the hospital as soon as he was seated inside.

  His hands twitched. He was desperate to know, to see how bad it was for himself.

  The pod let him out at the curb in front of the hospital. Silas dashed inside and found the Craftsman woman at the information desk.

  “I’m here to see Mag—my niece Camille. Camille Cristophsen.”

  The woman didn’t so much as look up from her tablet. “Please scan your hand below.” He got the impression she’d repeated that statement a few thousand times already today.

  Silas found the scanner and pressed his palm to the digital panel. He’d already coded his palm print to allow him access. With clearance such as his, Silas could be anyone at any time.

  When he pulled his hand away, the panel flashed OB9-532. Observation. Ninth floor.

  Silas headed for the elevator.

  The few minutes it took him to navigate the hospital felt like ages, like the Earth had suffered an ice age or two in the same time. He cursed every wrong turn and pushed more than one slow walker out of his way. At last, at long last, he found 532. But he didn’t go in right away.

  He need a moment to prepare himself for what he might see. What kind of condition she might be in. He needed a moment to catch his breath and get his mind in the game. It wasn’t the first time this scene had played out. It was just the first time it nearly killed him.

  Then Silas opened the door and saw his worst nightmare realized.

  There she was, nothing more than a slip of a girl, curled into an impossibly small space on the bed. Her body was rigid, tense as only a person in pain could be. Her eyes were squeezed shut and she made not a single motion to indicate she knew he was there.

  Silas felt the air lock in his chest. Tears sprang to his eyes to see her that way. Fragile and frail, no prickly exterior or callous insults, Maggie was the hurt girl he’d always known her to be.

  She hardly resembled the bright seven year old he’d known in Atlanta so many years ago. Then, she’d had blonde hair, spun into an intricate braid and pinned up at the back of her head. Her ice-blue eyes were eager to learn more about him, to figure out why he took such keen interest in her brother, though she made a good effort to stay out of the way, at her parents’ insistence of course.

  Back then, she wanted to learn more about the program, the prestigious assignment her brother would receive if he passed the tests. She’d even asked to be given the tests herself, though she was eight years too early in her classes. Silas had done his best, indulged her questions, given her a test so she’d feel included. She’d done pretty well, considering.

  Now, there was so little left of that happy child. Silas knew he had a part to play in that.

  “Maggie?” He walked to her bedside and, at the sight of her, slammed a hand over his mouth. It ripped his guts out.

  From close up, Silas saw the wide gash across the side of her head, at least five inches long and already stitched up. It was a horrific wound, fresh and angry. He wondered what kind of lasting effect such an injury would have on her, what kind of brain trauma she had suffered.

  Maggie’s eyes flashed open and stared for a brief moment, settling on his face, locking gaze with his, before they slammed shut again.

  It was enough. Silas breathed out his relief. “I’m here to take you back. As soon as you feel ready, we can get out of here.”

  She didn’t move, but he knew she understood.

  Silas sat in the only chair and tried to get control of himself. She was alive. She was safe. She would recover. No matter how long it took, Silas would make sure she had everything she needed.

  “You’re the uncle?”

  Silas looked up and saw a woman in a doctor’s coat, the same outfit they’d been wearing for centuries. She had a pinched face and bright red hair that fell in corkscrews around her face.

  He nodded and stood, eager to hear the prognosis.

  “I’m Dr. Madison Trevalli. Your niece had quite the fall. She was found in a pharmaceutical facility.” Her eyes stayed on the tablet as she read facts from Maggie’s admission. “If they’d waited much longer to get her here, she might have been too far gone. We’ve given her some mild pain killers and some Timperol to limit the swelling of the brain.”

  Silas knew doctors were the most misunderstood section of society. They had the knowledge and background of Scholars with none of the prestige or pay. They did it because they wanted to help people.

  But in that moment, Silas felt none of that. This doctor rattled off facts about Maggie as if she were nothing but a frog for dissection. It made his blood boil.

  “When can I take her home?” He put his hands on his hips and glared.

  “I’d say by tomorrow morning. The swelling should be down by then. She’ll need plenty of rest for a few weeks, but she can rest at home. I’ll put her discharge instructions in the system. Let me know if you need anything.” Hospital protocols be damned, he would take Maggie to CPI where she could be properly cared for.

  The red-head doctor hadn’t been gone for more than a few minutes when the door opened again. This time, it was Theo that entered. He looked at Silas a moment before his eyes locked on Maggie curled in bed.

  Before Theo could say a word, Silas reached out and grabbed a handful of his shirt, forcing the teenager out into the hall. Then Silas slammed him hard against the wall and pinned him there.

  “What the hell happened? You better have a damn good excuse.” Silas knew it was wrong to blame Theo, but he’d done nothing to help the situation. He hadn’t even gone to the pharmaceutical complex when he realized she was injured. He didn’t do anything.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. The comms—” Theo’s eyes were wide with fear but Silas didn’t care.

  “You expect me to believe that? She has a gash in her head so wide you could put your hand through it. Why? You fucking tell me why!” Silas was close to Theo’s face, screaming his frustrations and fears all at once.

  “It was my fault. I let her go in alone.” Those words disarmed him completely.
He hadn’t expected anything so rational and selfless. Silas dropped him.

  “I turned off the comms,” Theo explained.

  His hands became fists as he fought back his anger. He wanted to hear it from the source. “Why?”

  “I didn’t want her as my partner. I wanted someone else. I thought if she messed up—”

  Silas let out an angry scream as he slammed his palm against the wall. He paced the width of the hallway several times before turning back to Theo. “What if she’s infected, Kaufman? Did you think about that? What if she’s got a bug in her brain?”

  Theo looked like a kid who’d just watched his dog get run over. His shoulders slumped and his features fell in an instant. “Get the hell out of here. Don’t come back.”

  Silas never wanted to see him again.

  “But, I—”

  “I said get out.”

  Theo’s jaw tightened as he turned and walked back down the hallway.

  Silas returned to Maggie’s room and sank into the chair. He would never fail her again.

  ABRAHAM

  LUNA COLONY

  AUGUST 23, 2232

  Abraham rubbed his hands together. He couldn’t remember ever being so nervous. Then again, there was so much he couldn’t remember.

  Was he a nervous type? Or generally calm? He didn’t know. He only knew Charlene made his heart race.

  Even more so with his plans for the evening. Abraham couldn’t begin to guess at what her reaction might be.

  He swallowed his nerves and said, “I only made enough for the kids tonight. Would you mind eating later?”

  “Seriously?” she complained as she helped the kids wash their hands for dinner. He had no doubt caring for them day in and day out would work up an appetite, but if she could hold out for another hour—

  “I’m sorry. I can put something together if—” His stomach sank. So much for that plan.