by David Wong
They paused their conversation as a loud group of tourists passed.
Zoey said, “We just have to call the guy and have him extend it or whatever. I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”
Echo shook her head. “Nobody knows who Andre’s guy is. He gets mad when you ask.”
“Oh my god. Okay.” Zoey turned to Marti, his face completely hidden behind the rubber Bald Sasquatch mask. “So where are we going? Time is short, for a whole bunch of stupid reasons.”
“Across the street, three buildings down.”
Zoey counted the buildings and found one that had been built to look like a 1950s-era storefront business with a second floor that no doubt would, at least back then, have served as an apartment for the owner. Even the brick had been made to look like it’d been painted a dozen times over the decades, as various businesses came and went. A hand-painted shingle hung from a horizontal pole that said:
PENNYFEATHER AND SONS
FUNERAL SERVICES
… which left Zoey more confused than ever.
They shuffled in that direction, past pedestrians, no one paying them any particular attention. Zoey’s costume was a furry gray monkey wearing a pink bikini, her face completely covered by the mask of Bonnie the Bonobo. Wu’s ShitShark costume was designed so that the eye holes were in the mouth of the brown shark, and she wondered how well he’d be able to see in the event of a fight. A sophisticated enough system could surely make them in their costumes, there was probably software that could spot a person by the way their heels lifted off the pavement when they walked. But they just had to make it about a hundred feet down the sidewalk, through a dense crowd of drunken people with a million other things to look at. It wouldn’t even be a minute of walking. Surely they could make it that far without being spotted.
Surely.
As they walked, Echo pointed and said, “You know what’s three blocks in that direction? Fort Fortuna. Where…”
She trailed off, as there were bystanders who could maybe overhear their conversation. She didn’t need to finish—that was where Dexter Tilley’s body had been found. Zoey, however, had no clue what exactly it meant.
They arrived at the funeral home to find it wasn’t open. It was, of course, creeping up on midnight. There were lights on upstairs, though. Will knocked, then knocked again, forcefully. Nothing.
Will said to seemingly no one, “I know you’ve got a camera out here. I’m giving you one minute to get down here and open the door, or we’re blowing the lock.” He glanced back at the nearest group of drunk girls on the sidewalk and said, more quietly, “This is about Dexter Tilley.”
Seconds before the one-minute deadline expired, the door was opened by an old man with the kind of face that probably left him few career options outside the death industry.
The creepy man said, “You could have just told me it was you, rather than playing the barbarians at the gates. Come inside before you attract any more attention.”
Considering Will was in disguise, Zoey wasn’t sure who the “you” was that the funeral guy was saying he’d open the door for. Did he recognize Will behind Professor Cheeselog’s flashing glasses and beak? She half expected that once inside, he’d say, “My door is always open for Raja! Wait, where is he?”
Once inside, the man, who Zoey assumed was the Pennyfeather in Pennyfeather and Sons, said, “Now, how can I help you?”
“They’re here to ask about Dexter Tilley,” said Marti. “Same as he, uh, yelled at the door.”
“I of course cannot disclose any information about customers or potential customers—”
Will stopped him. “There isn’t time for that. This city is about to go to war over this.”
“A privacy guarantee that dissolves under duress is no guarantee at all.”
Marti pointed and said, “It’s over here.”
Without further explanation, he walked toward a wall display showing off various styles and finishes of caskets.
“There’s a hidden door. How do you open it?”
The creepy man made no move to help. Will just stared at him. After several seconds under his gaze, the man sighed and pressed his hand to a spot on the wall and the casket display slid open. Behind it was a steel door, with a separate security system.
Zoey sighed and said, “Okay, what is this place, really? Do I need to prepare myself for what I’m going to see behind the armored secret door?”
Marti said, “You’ll see.”
“Is it cannibalism? A cannibalism cult? Or are you doing mad scientist experiments on cadavers? Or on people who weren’t cadavers until you started doing experiments on them?”
Instead of answering, the creepy man opened the steel door with a voice command.
“Is it a torture chamber?” asked Zoey. “Ritualistic sacrifice? Corpse reanimation chamber?”
The door opened to reveal stairs. Wu went down first, as was his habit. Then everyone else shuffled past Zoey, as she stood aside and prompted them to pass. Echo was last to go down, but Zoey stopped her.
“Is the countdown still on?”
Echo showed Zoey her phone. A countdown was displayed, ten minutes left.
“This is The Blowback feed. Whether it’s real or just a bluff…” Echo shrugged.
“Okay.” Zoey breathed. “When they go live with this, it’s your job to stop me from watching it. I don’t want to see what they do to him, I’m not going to give them that. I need you to do that, okay? Because I’m going to try to watch it, I know I will, and you have to stop me.”
“Got it.”
Zoey followed everyone downstairs and found them standing in a spacious, comfy-looking lounge. There were expensive overstuffed leather sofas facing a few top-of-the-line recliners that were parked in the middle of the floor, huge monitors in every direction. A door was standing open on the opposite wall and through it was visible a bedroom that was probably fancier than any in Zoey’s own estate. There was a massive circular bed, chairs, and racks of … devices. A sex room.
“That’s the secret? The undertaker’s got himself a sweet bone chamber under his mortuary?”
Marti said, “Through there.”
He wasn’t heading for the sex room. It turned out there was another door, to their left. This one was locked and, once more, required the creepy man to access it.
The door clicked open, and when Zoey saw what was inside, she went cold.
33
The Suits were standing around a state-of-the-art surgery suite: a blindingly white, sterile room, a bundle of robotic arms poised over a table.
Zoey studied the equipment and said, “Uh … is the mortician here a serial killer? Did he lure Tilley down here and … do surgery on him?”
“Everything went bad at once,” said Marti, his voice trembling. “My mother died two years ago. Cancer. Just six months after the funeral, I got sick. Everything started to swell. I turned yellow.”
Echo, sounding like everything had finally fallen into place, said, “Bukhari syndrome?”
Marti nodded. “I’m supposed to stay in bed for two more weeks. I snuck out anyway. I didn’t even want the guards to come. I have a little pump thing in my stomach that’s dripping medicine. It still hurts though.”
“Is somebody going to tell me what’s going on?” asked Zoey.
“You’ve heard about rich people paying for gene modification, to make their kids more intelligent?” asked Echo. “Well, a lot of them developed liver failure in their teens. That’s Bukhari syndrome. Which meant Marti here needed—”
“A new liver,” finished Zoey. “Got it.”
Will nodded. “And you weren’t going to make it to the top of the donor list.”
“They told us that with car fatalities down so much, automated cars and all that, donor organs have dried up. They said there was less than a ten percent chance I’d survive the wait list. So, Dad went through a black market organ thing, but there were no livers. Lot of kids need them, for the same reason
I did. I go to Farnsworth Academy, in my class there are four of us who needed transplants. Time was running out. My body was filling with poison. I could feel it.”
Zoey picked up the story. “Sure. So your dad’s henchman, Dirk, found Dexter Tilley, who was a match I guess, and knew him because they all hang around with those jerks in the Hub. Your father had him killed, brought here, had his organs taken out.” Zoey studied the tangle of white robot squid arms hovering over the surgery table. “So this is an underground organ thieving place, right?” She turned to Will. “You know, the kind you assured me didn’t exist during the very first conversation we had about this case?”
Marti said, “Oh, no. No, Tilley wanted to die. He told everyone, in Hub chat. All his trouble with that girl, he just gave up on everything. DV told him about my situation, said he could save a life on the way out. We suggested a service. He used it.”
“So he came here willingly, and…” Zoey turned toward the creepy old guy. “What, you do an assisted suicide thing?”
The mortician looked annoyed at all of the implications that were being thrown around. He pursed his lips.
“Without disclosing any specifics about any individual who may or may not have sought our assistance, I can say that we have a number of packages for those seeking end-of-life services. One can spend the night with a paid romantic partner of their choice, or enjoy a final meal, or enjoy a selection of … substances that have been carefully selected to not damage the organs or remain in the bloodstream. For gaming enthusiasts, we have a custom package that caters to their lifestyle.”
Marti said, “That was Tilley. He picked Crimson Day. The ‘Children of Ares’ scenario. It’s a level you can’t win. You’re fending off this big invasion of these huge monsters, buying time for refugees to be loaded onto a transport. After the last of the survivors are safe, you stay behind and take out as many invaders as you can before you’re finally overwhelmed. You detonate this bomb that takes out the last of the enemies, but sacrifices you in the process. Tilley wanted it so that when he died in the game, he would die in real life.”
The mortician said, “The solution that is released into the bloodstream first induces a sense of euphoria, then extreme relaxation, then a stopping of the heart. A gentle exit. All done in strict confidence, all overseen by a representative.”
Zoey said, “So people pay you to kill them.”
The mortician was taken aback. “Don’t be ridiculous. This is an organ harvesting enterprise; we pay above-market rates for organs one can live without, such as a single kidney. But for a package like our hypothetical customer’s, in which he’s offered end-of-life services with all viable organs being harvested, we pay a flat fee of two million dollars to whatever beneficiary the client chooses. The organs are then sold on the private market.”
Will said, “Then Tilley left his payment to Shae. So that’s where her windfall came from.”
“You can designate somebody to get an organ,” said Marti. “Tilley left the liver to me. That was the deal.”
“Hey, guys,” interrupted Echo, “the VOP have found the decoy helicopter.”
She showed them a feed on her phone, an aerial view of several vehicles surrounding the camo tarp covering the wire-frame shell they’d set down at the airfield.
Zoey said, “Can you, I don’t know, make it do something? To scare them away?”
“Hmm … hold on. Here, everybody be quiet.”
Echo punched a button and then spoke words that, in turn, echoed from a sound system on the decoy aircraft.
“ALL RIGHT, EVERYBODY! WE GOT YOUR BOY IN HERE! IF ANY OF YOU GET WITHIN A HUNDRED FEET OF THIS AIRCRAFT, WE’RE GONNA CUT OFF HIS DICK AND MAKE HIM EAT IT.”
She cut the connection and said, “We’ll see if that works.”
Zoey said, “Jesus. Okay, somebody tell me how Tilley’s body wound up in a box on my doorstep.”
Marti’s eyes went wide. “I don’t know. I swear. I didn’t have anything to do with that part. Really. I swear.”
Everyone turned to the mortician. It was clear he was dreading this part of the story.
He took in a deep breath, then said, “If, hypothetically, morning staff should find that a client’s corpse was missing, and if security footage should show that the corpse had, well, resurrected itself and walked out of the building under its own power, and if the existence of said corpse were to become public knowledge, it would actually be very unclear how to approach the issue without breaching the company’s strict confidentiality guidelines.”
Echo said, “Dirk Vikerness could have done it, if he had the right gear and copied the control codes directly off of Tilley’s implants in advance. Could have just remote-walked him to the casino, then anonymously tipped off The Blowback.”
“And nobody would notice an actual rotting corpse strutting down the sidewalk?” asked Zoey.
“They would, in any other city, at any other time of the year.”
Zoey turned to Marti. “Okay. I get that you needed a liver, that this was life and death for you. But why pin it on me? Is it really just because your father is a dick? And I apologize if you’re offended by me calling your father a dick, but please keep in mind that I’m only doing that because your father is a dick.”
“Dad’s been weird ever since Mom died. He’s scared all the time. He’s scared of the enhancements getting out, like Tilley had. He keeps saying that stuff would be the end of the world.”
Echo said, “We have five minutes until the Midnight Feast. Marti, go on camera. You tell them it wasn’t murder. It was suicide. If Zoey’s cat isn’t—if they’re keeping him alive for the show then there’s still time.”
“Uh, no, that’s where you’re wrong,” said Zoey. “It was murder.”
She turned to stare down the mortician.
“If the trolls in the Hub had known, they’d have come after Marti and they’d have come after you, and they’d have been right. Tilley didn’t kill himself. You killed him. You pushed a button and poison flowed into his veins. You paid him two million dollars for his organs, great, that’s nice, but how much were livers going for on the black market, Marti?”
“Uh … a lot. One point five million, I think.”
“Yeah, so, add in the lungs and heart and eyeballs and you’ve made millions in profit off this. Millions. By killing a man. Because instead of getting him help for his depression, you invited him to your kill suite so you could cash in on his guts.”
She turned and glared at Marti.
“So your dick father was right to try to put the blame on me, to try to deflect. If they knew the truth, they’d have said the same thing I’m saying now, which is that about ninety-five percent of people who try suicide and fail, never try it again. The mood passes. It would have passed for Tilley, too, I bet. But we’ll never know, because instead of helping him, you pushed him off the ledge because you needed parts.”
Marti, choking up, said, “He saved my life.”
“You could say the same if you’d stabbed a homeless guy in an alley and taken his liver. If you got him drunk first and tricked him into consenting to the act, would that suddenly make it okay? In Tilley’s state of mind, it was the same thing. I want you to get on camera and confess. Confess to Tilley’s murder, right now.”
“I will. She, uh, took my phone, if she gives it back I’ll—”
Will cut him off. “Zoey, can I have a word…”
“No, you can’t. There’s no time. Echo, give Marti his phone back. Or give him yours, whatever.”
Zoey turned to the mortician again.
“What’s your name? Are you Pennyfeather? Or one of the sons?”
“There is no Pennyfeather. That is just a name that was generated for the business, customers prefer their funeral parlors to sound family-owned.”
“Whatever. What you’re doing here? It’s done. On top of the fact that you’re running a murder factory that chews up the vulnerable, you knew damned well what was going on with all th
is, you could have defused this conflict at any time just by going public. You were happy to sit back and let that all fall on my doorstep. We’re burning this operation to the ground.”
The creepy man looked back and forth from Zoey to Will.
“Well … that is your right.”
“It’s my right in the sense that I can put my hands on an exotic weapon that will literally turn this into a crater, yes.”
Will said, “Zoey, he means it’s your right because you own this business.”
34
“What? What do you…”
“Marti, no,” said Will, “put the phone down. Zoey, this place is owned by a company called Legacy Services, which owns a chain of two dozen funeral homes, which is in turn owned by a holding company called Bold Frontier. Of which Arthur was the sole investor. And now you are.”
The creepy man was now wearing a smug expression that made him look like he could be one of Satan’s lieutenants. For the third time in two days, Zoey found herself unable to stand. She shakily reached back for something to hold herself up, then sat/fell hard onto the tile floor of the surgical suite. It smelled of disinfectant.
Will said, “Zoey … even if you’d given the order to immediately divest yourself from any businesses you find morally questionable, I don’t even think this would qualif—”
“You knew. You knew this whole time.”
“I didn’t realize you owned it until I looked it up on the way here. It’s all managed by someone else, by design. Arthur built firewalls between himself and the businesses he ran and selling organs is still very much illegal under federal law. And, while I appreciate that you take a different side in the whole assisted suicide debate, I think we can at least—”
“Shut up. You don’t even get it, do you? They were right. The Blowback. This whole time. They were right about everything but the eating and the orgy. But I absolutely had Tilley killed, I absolutely took his guts, I absolutely allowed his hollowed-out body to be kicked around by strangers like a beer bottle on a sidewalk.”
Marti said, “And if you hadn’t, I’d be dead by spring. Plus who knows how many other people, from the other organs—”