The city was crawling with police and soldiers. After the second bomb went off, Ohtomo had begun deploying the revivor soldiers. They’d all be animate and on the ground by nightfall. Checkpoints were being set up at the bridges. Overhead, a military helicopter passed between two buildings as I turned, numb, onto Faye’s street.
At the end, where her apartment sat, trash bags and snow bordered the road. There was no place to pull over, so I nosed into the no-parking zone in front of her building and cut the engine. Sitting there, feeling the heat leech out of the cab, I tried to take some solace from the fact that the girl, Flax, would most likely be dead if I hadn’t been there, but it didn’t provide much.
She’s in trouble. She’s going to die.
Zoe’s warning had come too late. I called Faye immediately, but the call was cut off. Before I’d gotten to the main drag, I got word from the local police. I was too late. Noakes had ordered me back to the arena, where I dealt with the fallout for half the night. Part of me was glad.
Wind blew over the car as a jeep slowed down at the intersection ahead and the soldier riding shotgun peered in at me from behind his visor. I held up my badge and pressed it against the inside of the windshield. After a few seconds, the jeep continued on.
When I shouldered open the car door, it crunched into a bank of snow, and a blast of cold, damp air blew into the car. The sky was overcast, a sliver of gray trailing through the building tops. Even though it was barely afternoon, it looked almost dark. Somehow it seemed fitting.
I pulled myself out of the car and pushed the salt-covered door closed with my foot. Looking around, I saw dirty slush and snow that had refrozen so many times it formed a slick, gray-black trench that bordered the narrow street. Cars were jammed in tight, some covered up to their windshields. Garbage bags stood in piles, waiting to be picked up, stinking faintly even in the cold.
This was where she lived? Sometimes I forgot what a difference full citizenship could mean, even for a public servant. I remembered how tired she’d looked at the restaurant, and how the stress had worked its way into her eyes. She was jacked up on stims and strung out. I’d known something was wrong, but when she smiled I looked past it. When she smiled, it took me back those ten years to before we’d made our choices, back to when she looked happy, and when, if the right song came on, she would dance.
It’s here—
It wasn’t like I never expected to see her again. On some level, I think I hoped our paths might cross someday, but when I extended my tour, the months turned into years, and before I knew it a decade had passed. When I heard her voice out of the blue, I wasn’t sure how it made me feel. But when I saw her in the restaurant, I knew I’d made a mistake back then. Things should have been different.
How could you come back and not even call me?
I didn’t have a good answer for that. Something stopped me. It had been a mistake. Now, after all those years, we reconnected just long enough for me to listen to her last words over a cell phone, unable to lift a finger to help her.
The face of the apartment building looked old and weathered. The front doors were double locked with bulletproof glass. I held my badge up to the scanner, which made a ticking sound.
“Unauthorized for access,” a voice said. “If you are visiting a tenant, you may—”
“I’m a federal agent,” I said, still holding up the badge. The scanner ticked again, reading the badge number then running it.
“Go right in, Agent.”
The doors snapped and I pushed them open. A bank of mail slots were arranged on the wall to my right in ten-by-ten grids. Scanning them, I found hers was empty. At the end of the empty entryway was a single elevator door. I took it up to the ninth floor.
The hallway was quiet as I made my way down toward the yellow tape that had been crossed over the door at the far end. Most of the commotion seemed to be over.
“Hello?” I called. Someone stirred inside, and a moment later a man with graying hair approached the door. His eyes narrowed when he saw me.
“Who the hell are you?” he asked me from the other side of the tape.
I showed him my badge. “Sorry to barge in.”
His expression stayed fixed for a few more seconds; then he sighed and took a step back.
“Sorry,” he said. “We’ve had to chase camera eyes off all day. Name’s Bill Turner.”
“I understand. I’m Nico Wachalowski.”
I ducked under the tape and moved inside. It looked like everyone else had gone, leaving the place eerily quiet.
Her apartment was small but clean, and had a warm, cozy kind of look, in contrast to the exterior of the place. She had a decorator’s sense I didn’t have. The furniture looked secondhand but mostly real wood, and the prints hanging on the walls were picked carefully. It had warmth to it, a haven from the outside world.
“You were her partner?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “That was Doyle Shanks.”
As soon as he said it, the name began to eat at me. I knew that name.
“Was?”
“He got it too,” he said, pointing down at the floor in front of the sofa. The outline of a human body had been drawn there, arms and legs sprawled. A large bloodstain had formed there, trickling across the slightly uneven surface. Traced over the sofa around a swath of blood was a second outline: all that remained of Faye Dasalia.
“What did you say her partner’s name was?” I asked.
“Shanks,” he said. “Doyle Shanks.”
Doyle Shanks.
The dock revivor; it was carrying a partial list of names in its memory. I brought up the list.
5. Mae Zhu
6. Rebecca Valle
7. Harold Craig
8. Doyle Shanks
“Who was the last victim before him?” I asked.
“Guy named Harold Craig,” he said. “He was killed shortly after victim number six, Rebecca Valle. Before that was—”
“Mae Zhu.”
He looked at me, his eyes sharp.
“That’s right.”
My gut felt hollow. I never even asked her partner’s name. We were sitting face-to-face; all it would have taken was one question. All it would have taken was just one piece of small talk, as I struggled to think of what I was going to say to her next. I would have known her partner was a marked man, and the danger that put her in.
“I’d like a full list of the victims’ names.”
“You got it.”
“He was here, then?” I asked. “Her partner?”
“Probably dropping her off,” he said.
Zoe knew. She tried to warn me. She knew this was going to happen.
“What is your interest in this case?” Turner asked. “If you don’t mind my asking?”
“Detective Dasalia was a witness in an ongoing investigation,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you any more than that right now.”
Nothing appeared to have been disturbed. Her coat still hung on a coat rack near the wall, and a remote rested on the sofa next to the dark stain that had seeped into the cushion. The white outline in the shape of her body was seated upright. Based on the position, it looked like she had fallen there from a standing position. I’d seen tracings like that plenty of times before, but this one hit home. It was like she was suddenly erased from existence, leaving behind only an outline to indicate the space she had once occupied.
“Forensics been through already?”
“Yes.”
“So they’ve been taken to the morgue, then?”
“Shanks was.”
When I looked back at him, he was frowning.
“Heinlein’s got Dasalia. She signed up for it,” he said.
Right. “She signed up for it,” I said. I kept my voice stony.
“That all you’ve got to say?” he asked.
“I wish she hadn’t. I was told she was returning home from the last crime scene.”
“They dropped off a sample at the lab, then came back here. He must have already been inside.”
“Security pick anything up?”
“Nothing, but that’s this guy’s MO; he uses a baffle screen, stays off the cameras. Seems to trick the motion sensors, thermal sensors, even a heartbeat monitor, and just slips in and out. The cameras didn’t pick up anything. I’m not sure how he got in.”
“What kind of sample did she drop off?”
“Substance found at the crime scene,” he said. “She thought it was blood, but I called the lab and it came up false positive. Some kind of silicate.”
“Does that sound like the kind of mistake she’d be likely to make?”
“No.”
I wondered. I could think of a substance that resembled blood even at the molecular level but contained silicates. After reanimation, marrow stopped producing red blood cells, which had limited the life span of early revivors. They’d eventually switched to a synthetic.
Flipping through a series of filters, I brought up a custom set I’d created back during combat duty in order to zero in on revivor activity: their heart signatures, their unique heat signatures, and their blood. I hadn’t used it in years, but it still worked like a charm. Everything went flat, almost monochrome, and a series of dots stood out, bright white, each about two feet apart. They traveled from the front door to the center of the living area, where they stopped. It looked like that spot had been cleaned. No one would have picked it up unless they were looking for it. A revivor had been here. One that had been injured.
“What are you looking at?” Turner asked.
Based on the position of the body outlines and where the revivor must have stood, it was impossible that they wouldn’t have seen it. It was standing right there in the same room with them, not six feet away.
Except they don’t need to breathe, I thought. They don’t even have heartbeats, not in the traditional sense. When they need to, they can be very quiet and very still for long periods of time. They could fool thermal sensors and duck heartbeat monitors. I thought about the outline Faye said she saw, the one that had seemed to stand nearby in the parking lot where the prison truck burned. It wasn’t an illusion; someone was there, wearing a light-warping suit. The suspect in the garage too had worn one, and so had the shooter outside the FBI building. It was very unlikely that this was unrelated to the high-grade military contraband uncovered at Tai’s operation.
“I’m going to have a look around,” I told Turner. “Are you finished here?”
“For now,” he said. “It’s been a long day. I’ll leave you to it.”
He walked away, stopping when he reached the tape crossed over the door to ask, “Do you know why she died?”
“I don’t. I’m sorry,” I said.
He looked at me warily, then ducked under the tape and started down the hall. I watched him on the other side of the wall through the backscatter filter as he paused, looking back. He stood there for several seconds before turning and continuing on, out of sight.
I moved back to the sofa and stood in front of it, looking down at the outline of her body. Keeping it in view, I tapped into the police network and accessed the photographs taken by the Heinlein technicians, then relegated them to a window in the left side of my field of vision. Cycling through them, I compared each to the scene as it was now. Nothing had been moved.
Before transporting her, they photographed her body extensively. In the pictures, she sat there with her arms by her sides and her head tilted forward. Her eyes were open, staring down at the puncture wound in the middle of her chest.
I’d seen many bodies in my life, but I couldn’t look at that one. I closed the file, feeling dizzy and sick. I’d seen what I needed to see.
I knew that wound. More than a few soldiers got surprised in a foxhole or tunnel or at the edge of the bush and had taken a hit like that. They zeroed the blade in on the closest major organ, and sometimes that was a kidney or the liver, but the target of choice was the heart.
If there had been any doubt before, there wasn’t any longer; the police records indicated no murder weapon was ever found, and that wasn’t surprising. The wound was made by a revivor’s bayonet. These people were all killed by a revivor.
A call came in through the JZI. It was Sean.
Nico.
Yeah, Sean?
How are you holding up?
I’m holding up.
I’ve pulled the preliminary information from the data spike you recovered at the arena. You ready for the results?
What did you find?
Looks like the kid planted a virus right in the middle of the high-security systems of everyone’s favorite contractor.
Heinlein Industries.
Yes.
For what reason?
The virus was looking for something. It monitored the network and logged every transfer, every port that was opened or closed, everything that went on. It bounced between systems, gathering samples for months, then compiled them all together.
Did it find what it was looking for?
Yes. That information was pulled out and set aside from the background noise. It paints a clear picture; someone from the outside is using Heinlein’s systems.
What do you mean, using Heinlein’s systems?
Someone is using a back door that was set up from the inside to access all of their computer systems. Whoever it is has been making use of their data regularly, and also stealing CPU cycles from just about every available system.
Boil that down for me.
Someone on the outside is basically using Heinlein’s systems, not just for horsepower but also for their simulators and archives of data.
Why?
Whoever’s doing it is very interested in brain function specifically. The most commonly referenced information all involves the bridge between the revivor components and the brain, as well as higher brain functions including memory, with an emphasis on—
Zhang’s Syndrome.
You got it.
How could Heinlein not know this?
The back door was set up by someone inside, someone trusted. It allows access under the radar, and since the usage is taking place in nanoseconds across thousands of systems, you’d have to be looking to see it.
I thought about the message, the one Cross left for me, and then repeated as he died in the Federal Building lobby. Samuel never left.
Did you get the information on Samuel Fawkes? I asked.
Yes. He’s dead, just like they said.
How did he die?
Mugging gone bad. He was stabbed and died in the hospital.
Who killed him?
Some junkie. She died some years back.
Was he reanimated?
Yes, but according to the records, he’s not on active duty.
Where is he?
I wasn’t able to track him down, but he’s in cold storage somewhere.
That I didn’t like. Tracking down a single unit might be difficult even if it was where it was supposed to be. Until it could be traced, it left a lot of possibilities open. Cross had said twice that Samuel never left; was he even dead? Revivors didn’t get funeral services, and no one except the technicians at the Heinlein laboratories ever laid eyes on them again after pickup. Was all this just a way of disappearing that wouldn’t be questioned?
Do you have any idea what the intruders were using Heinlein’s systems for specifically?
You’ve got me there, but the amount of number crunching all those CPU slices add up to is enormous. They’re doing something specific; some long- term analysis and modeling, all to do with highly classified information that only Heinlein would have. Like I said, it’s something to do with human brain function. I’ll know more when I’ve had more time to look at it.
Thanks, Sean.
No problem. Where are you now?
Following a lead. Do they have any more information about the bombings?
Nothing to trace them to anyone. It’s a madhouse back here. The governor and Mayor Ohtomo are organizing a secondary deployment of troops and using revivor fodder for the meat of riot control.
That should go over well. I’ll talk to you later.
Later. I’m really sorry about what happened.
Me too.
Heinlein, Zhang …something happened over there. Something Cross became aware of and tried to bring to light. Faye had thought our cases were connected. Maybe she’d been right.
You were about to tell me something …something important.
Looking at the spot where Faye had sat, I remembered her face as she’d sat across the table from me. Revivors could kill; there was no question about that. In a lot of ways, it was their primary function. There had been a handful of times where I had to fight for my life, and at least half of them had involved some kind of revivor. They were different from people or even animals in that regard, because unlike people, they felt no anger, hatred, or fear, or so I’d always been told.
Revivors didn’t conjure up their own motivations.
Or they never used to. Times changed. I flipped open my cell and made a call to an old friend from back in the grind. We hadn’t spoken since then, but I’d kept tabs on him. He had an in at Heinlein. “Nicky,” he answered, like no time had passed. “What’s up?”
“I need a favor.”
It was a debt I’d never intended to collect, but he didn’t hesitate before he answered.
“What do you need?”
“A body.”
“Any body in particular?”
“Yes,” I said. “Once Heinlein does a collection, where does the body go from there?”
“After being refitted, they’re put into stasis for long-term storage,” he said. “They’re packaged and stored right there until a specific order is filled; then they’re shipped out.”
“They just made a collection. I need it back.”
“You need to talk to Heinlein about that. Maybe they’ll set up—”
“They won’t.”
“You’re a civilian now, Nico. They don’t ship revivors internally except to bases.”
“In my official capacity as an FBI agent investigating a possible domestic terrorism case,” I said, “I need to question that revivor. I’m asking you: with your help, can I push this through?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line.
“Send me the information,” he said.
I streamed over her name.
“I’ll call you back,” he said, and cut the line.
Walking through the apartment, I found her bedroom. I opened the closet and grabbed a pair of slacks and a shirt, then threw them onto the bed. I pulled open the dresser drawers one at a time; the top drawer contained stockings arranged on the left side, and underwear on the right. I grabbed one of each, a bra, and threw them down with the rest. I folded everything up and stacked them together, then stood in the dark and waited for the phone to ring.
Eventually it did. I picked up.
“I can make it happen,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me, because you never had this idea and I never helped you.”
“Got it.”
“You don’t know how you ended up with it, and you’re never going to.”
“I understand.”
“You won’t listen,” he said, “but I’ll say it: this isn’t a good idea.”
“She …” I began. I stopped, and started again. “It knows something.”
“Revivors aren’t people,” he said. “Remember that.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
He hung up. I grabbed the clothes off the bed and made one more phone call. There was another person I could think of who could help me with this who would also be off everyone’s radar. The phone rang several times before it bounced to voice mail.
“Zoe, this is Agent Wachalowski,” I said. “Call me when you get this; I need your help.”
An hour went by, and my ears still rang. My face still hurt, and the stub where my tooth broke off throbbed like hell. All the way back home on the bike, I had to breathe through my nose, and every block my nose got plugged with blood. My knuckles were raw, my fists felt like I’d been punching bricks, and they dicked me on the reward since Luis got killed. The docs made sure I was in one piece, then slapped a bandage on my face and gave me the boot. The cops never even said thanks, and the fed bolted right after he got that call he picked up in the garage.
So I got my face mashed up, got shot at, got dicked on the reward, and Luis bought it anyway. Eddie got booked for taking potshots at the psycho with a shotgun, then sent word from the tank that I was off roll for a month. Great fucking night.
I parked the bike and kicked the front door open. Someone bitched when I stomped up the stairs, but I didn’t care. I shoved the door open and whipped my helmet into the kitchen right through a stack of plates in the sink. Glass pinged off the wall as they smashed and slid in pieces onto the floor with a huge crash.
“Shut the hell up!” a voice yelled from under the floor, banging it with a fist.
“Fuck you!” I yelled back, stomping the floor with my boot.
I was so pissed, I was glad when I heard the door slam down the stairs. Heavy footsteps thumped down the hall, and the door down there crashed open.
“You got a problem?” I heard him yell.
Kicking my door back open, I hit the stairs before he got halfway up. He was some big, fat piece of shit with a sweat-stained shirt and tattoos on his shoulders. Beer foam or snot was stuck to his little bushy moustache. He had a wooden bat in one hand.
From the stairs up over him, I stomped my boot down on his chest and he went down like a big sack of garbage. A floorboard cracked when he hit the landing, face red and bloodshot eyes bugged out.
“Get up and get out,” I told him, “or I’ll jam that stick up your ass!”
“I’ll shoot you through the floor, you ugly bitch!” he spat, grunting as he rolled onto his hands and knees.
“You better not miss, asshole!”
I stormed back through the door and slammed it, so mad I was seeing red. I felt like I had to tear something apart or I’d lose my mind. People were banging and yelling on the walls and floors, and with each thump my blood got hotter and hotter. It would have felt so good to just trash the place, to break every last thing inside it to pieces. To take what I started with the dishes and not stop until it was all gone. To—
Over the racket, my cell went off and I flipped it open.
“What?” I snapped.
“Ms. Flax?” a voice asked. It was the G-man, Nico.
“It’s Cal. Not Calliope, not Ms. Flax, and not ma’am. Cal.”
“Cal,” he said. “I need some help.”
“Help? You guys screwed me—”
“I said you’d get paid for the tip on Valle,” he said.
“You will. I’ll take care of it. You help me out, and there’s a little more in it for you.”
My heart was still thumping, and I could still hear people yelling in the units around mine. I sucked air through my nose.
“Why me?” I asked.
“Because I don’t want anyone else involved.”
“You mean you don’t want to tell anyone.”
“Yes.”
His voice sounded rough. It was different from before.
“Illegal?”
“No. Just a favor.”
“Why should I?”
“Because I think you’re worth more than the cage at the arena,” he said, “and I think you do too. Besides, you could use a favor in return.”
There was something about the way he said it that made me think twice. Usually guys like him didn’t ask; they took. With the back of my hand, I rubbed my eyes and wiped the blood out from under my nose.
“I’m listening.”
“I need some things dropped off somewhere,” he said. “I won’t have time to get them myself.”
“That’s it? Drop some shit off?”
“Drop it off, wait, and then go back.”
“Why?”
“In case I don’t come out on my own.”
I thought about it a minute. He saved my life. I guessed I owed him something.
“What am I picking up and where am I taking it?”
He gave me the list. Loading up the bike was a trick, but it didn’t have to get far. I strapped on a pack, threw a bag over the gas tank, and stuffed the rest in my coat. He gave me the credit to get it all, and said I could keep what was left.
The drop point was some piece-of-shit storage hole that I didn’t like the looks of, and I’d seen some shit holes. It looked like no one had been there in years, like the people who kept their stuff there died and the guys that ran it skipped town. Who knew what was left down there, but I hoped not a bunch of junkies and hobos.
The lock was still there, so with any luck it was empty. He had given me the code to get in, and it worked, so I rolled the bike down to the freight elevator and rode it right in and cut the engine. With the tip of my boot, I kicked the button marked 8; bottom floor.
The underground part was as nasty as the part up top, and it looked like no one had been down there for years either, except for a set of wheel tracks that looked like they came from a hand truck, and some footprints following them. Another set followed them down and to the right.
Walking the bike, I followed the tracks, and sure enough, they went right where I was going: a green metal door marked C. The tracks went through the door, but when I pushed it, there was no give. I tried the handle and it was locked, so I banged on the door. No one answered. I was alone down there.
It didn’t matter. Wachalowski said just bring the stuff, leave it, and don’t ask questions. After I dropped it off, there was a bar nearby where I could knock back a few and watch some TV, then go back and check on him. I could do that.
I dropped the stuff next to the door in a pile, as he said: four gallons of water in two plastic containers, one bundle of plastic ties, a sharp knife, a first-aid kit, a battery-powered lamp, a length of chain, a padlock, and three clean towels. I wondered what it was for.
If he was still alive when I came back, maybe I’d ask.
Getting the box turned out to be the easy part. I never found out how it was managed; I just told them where to send it. I picked an old unit in an underground storage facility that I’d rented back when I left the country. When I came back, I never reclaimed anything in it; in fact, I never set eyes on it again until that night. I hadn’t been down there in many years, and from the looks of it, neither had anyone else. When I arrived, a fresh set of dolly tracks stood out in the crud slicked over the metal floor, and there it was, left next to the rusted door to my locker.
Noakes pinged me over the JZI. Wachalowski, where are you?
Following a lead.
In Dandridge?
If you know where I am, then why do you ask?
You—
I cut the connection.
Getting the box was easy. Opening it was another thing altogether. On the floor of the mostly empty storage cell, under a ton of street and subway with the steel shutters pulled and only the light of a flashlight to see by, I sat and stared at that box for an hour.
Back in the grinder, when those things pulled me down into that tunnel, something happened to me. A piece of that memory never returned, and I was glad for that, but I remembered the pain and the horror as they began to tear me apart. When my last tour ended, they honored me, gave me a medal, and recommended I go home. Now, more than any other time since, I felt like I was being dragged down through that tunnel again.
Incoming message.
A drop of brown water dripped from above, and landed with a solid pat on the surface of the box. I should have faced Faye long ago. I’d owed it to her.
Now I had to face her as a revivor.
The words “incoming message” floated across my vision again.
I closed my eyes, shutting out the silver box.
This is Wachalowski.
Agent Wachalowski, this is Bob MacReady from Heinlein Industries.
If you’re contacting me like this, can I assume my request for a follow-up interview is being denied?
You can.
I’ll get a court order.
No, you won’t.
He was probably right about that. Heinlein had powerful allies in all kinds of high places, and they had decided to take the safe path. Getting a judge to issue a grant like that and having it stick would probably be beyond my means alone.
Do your superiors know you’re talking to me? I asked him.
Yes.
What is it that they want you to tell me?
That Heinlein is not behind this.
I never said I thought you were.
I’ve done some digging, Agent. Our name has come up in conjunction with your investigation too many times to be dismissed as coincidence. You must at least suspect it.
If he knew that, Heinlein had some pretty deep contacts. I opened my eyes and went back to staring at the box on the other side of the room.
Why are you telling me this?
Because despite how it may look, Heinlein is not involved. No one here knows why Cross was killed. Heinlein Industries, understandably, doesn’t want their shell peeled back too far, but Cross was a good man. He was respected here.
Sometimes circumstances make for hard choices.
Agreed, but that isn’t what happened here. I can’t make you believe that, but it’s true.
Cross stumbled on something; that I was sure of. That it was something sanctioned by Heinlein Industries and that they were behind his death I found unlikely, because I couldn’t make a huge entity like Heinlein and a relatively small-time criminal like Tai fit together. It was related to Heinlein, though. Whatever Cross had found, it got him killed, along with the others.
Another drop of water drummed onto the top of the box, then trickled down one side.
Just answer me one thing, I said.
If I can.
How much of a person really makes the transition, after reanimation?
I think there’s only one way to truly know, Agent.
I thought of the young girl’s body I found in that bathroom, back when the whole thing started. I didn’t get it then, but it was the first time I’d thought of a revivor as something human, and I wondered whether I was unraveling. Part of me only wanted to see the case through to the end no matter what the cost, but another part, a simpler, selfish part, had lost something and wanted it back. I wanted the lost years back. I wanted to forget what happened when those things pulled me underground.
I wanted Faye back.
But Faye was gone. I told myself that the thing in the box was not her. It was dangerous to believe otherwise.
Thanks, MacReady.
Thank you for listening, Agent.
Is there anything else?
Yes.
And that is?
Don’t open the box.
The connection terminated.
I stood up then and crossed the room. I lit the lamp and put it down in the middle of the floor as I went. The locker became illuminated in flickering light, causing roaches to scatter.
It’s now or never.
I pulled the box open. There was a high-pitched hiss as the cover came free, and a cold white mist puffed out through the seam. I lifted the top away and put it on the floor. A thin sheet of black plastic was stretched across the inside, and sitting on that was a small index card. I picked it up and flipped it over to find a handwritten note.
Deanimation in twenty-four hours. Leichenesser will take care of the rest. Get what you need before then. Good luck.
Twenty-four hours. I hadn’t even thought about what would happen after the fact.
There was nothing I could do about it now. Maybe it was better that way. She hadn’t wanted this; I knew that.
I took a deep breath and pulled the black plastic apart to reveal what lay underneath. The inside of the locker was filled with a transparent rubber blister, filled with clear fluid so that its skin was taut. Through the plastic I could see the shape of a bare human figure cocooned inside. It was her.
Her eyes were closed and her hair had been completely removed, but the face was hers. A thick tube extended down her throat, her lips forming a seal around it. Dozens of small electrodes covered her body, trailing threads that hung suspended in the liquid surrounding her. Her skin was ashen, and the veins underneath had turned black from the synthetic blood they contained.
There was a drain fixed to the middle of the storage-unit floor where I could send the stasis fluid. Gritting my teeth, I nestled my hand between the skin of the blister and the inside of the storage container. I felt beneath it; it didn’t seem to be attached anywhere, so I lifted the sac and it came free with a sticky peeling sound.
The whole thing was hard to get a grip on, and it was heavy. I managed to pull it up over the edge of the container, when the whole thing oozed over the side of the crate before I could stop it. The rubber skin got snagged on one of the latches as it went, tearing it open top to bottom and spilling its contents out onto the floor.
I swore as cold liquid poured over my lap and gushed down into my shoes. I stumbled back and fell as her body slipped out and slid across the floor, bumping to a stop against me.
I pulled myself up, trailing strings of sticky fluid as I scrambled back. Her body lay on its back on the wet floor. As I watched, her nipples hardened in the cold, pointing straight up at the ceiling from either side of a wrinkled, oval skin graft.
Faye is dead. This thing is not her. Wake it up and do what you need to do.
I grabbed her wrists and dragged her off the plastic. The electrode filaments stretched and snapped as I pulled her over to the drain and let the fluid ooze through the grate. I grabbed the plastic tube that snaked down her throat and dragged it up out of her stomach until the end popped out of her mouth.
I grabbed one of the plastic water jugs and peeled the top off, then dumped it over her body. Once the stasis fluid was rinsed away, an internal electric jolt would trigger reanimation.
I looked down at the body. The vitals monitor was still showing a flatline. I knelt down next to her and peeled one of the electrodes free from her shoulder. Her face was slack and lifeless. My throat began to burn.
“I’m sorry, Faye.”
I heard a dull thud from inside her chest, and her whole body went rigid. Her eyes snapped wide open and she convulsed, leaning forward. The cords in her neck stood out and her face contorted; then her head fell back onto the concrete as she pulled in a long breath.
I stared as the monitor picked up signs of life; to all appearances, she seemed alive. Her eyes turned to me, bugging out of her head and reflecting the light from the lamp. She began hitching in breaths, forcing out words one at a time as ropes of fluid sprayed from her blue-black lips.
“What …happened …?”
Faye was staring up at me. For just that second, I swore I saw recognition.
“What …happened …to …me?”
I saw it at the last minute. I was looking right in her eyes, and I saw fear. Her stare looked through me into something else, something I couldn’t see. She saw something that terrified her.
“Don’t …” she whispered.
The muscles in her face relaxed. The terror went out of her, and a soft glow flickered on behind her eyes. The monitor wavered, then snapped into the waveform of the revivor heart signature.
I had no conscious memory of moving, but suddenly I was kneeling over her in the muck, one hand held out in front of me and the other raised near my head. An old dresser had crashed over, and a can rolled across the concrete and rattled to a stop among pieces of broken glass. Blood trickled out of a cut on my forearm.
I realized I was holding a pair of rusted scissors in my hand, grabbed from the dresser. The tips were pointed down at that oval-shaped scar.
Glass crunched under my heel as I started to stand and half fell, half sat on the wet floor. I threw the scissors away and heard them clatter across the concrete. After the initial jolt, a revivor might not move for as long as an hour.
Before I could change my mind, I gathered the chain and the lock.