Ersatz

by Michael Horton

ERSATZ

  A Devil Have Mercy side story

  by Michael Horton

  ERSATZ (Devil Have Mercy 0.1)

  Copyright © 2012 Michael Horton

  The following is a short story intended to supplement the Devil Have Mercy series. Please visit www.DevilHaveMercy.com for more details.

  ERSATZ

  A blank room with stone walls, no windows, and a single, overbearing flood lamp as its only source of light. The hospital room had more personality, but what did I know? I was supposed to be dead.

  “Says here your living name was Malcolm Xavier Forrester.” The man they called Augustus rapped the documents on the table and stared at me. “Is that correct?”

  I nodded.

  A guy sitting next to him snorted. “Malcolm X? Are you shitting me?”

  “Quiet down.” Augustus glared at him before turning back to me. “Mister Forrester, on the third of July you were struck down and killed by a law enforcement officer. A Reaper brought you back to life, but he didn’t tell you about us, did he?”

  I shook my head.

  “Mind telling us how all that happened?”

  I shrugged.

  Augustus leaned forward and set the files flat on the table. “Mister Forrester, you do understand that you’re no longer who you used to be, correct? There’s part of a Reaper inside of you now, and as long as that remains true, you can never return to the life you once had. A Reaper saved your life, but you’re no longer human. Do you have any idea what you are?”

  My tongue probed the inside of my cheek. I’d bitten it earlier, but the pain only lasted a second. The cut had disappeared almost instantly. I knew I wasn’t normal anymore. I didn’t need Augustus or anyone else to tell me that. I had a band on my arm that I couldn’t get off, and touching it only seemed to hurt me. Not to mention everyone around me was surrounded by technicolor ghosts. I guess my brain was still a little messed up, but no shit I wasn’t human anymore.

  “I didn’t ask to be saved,” I said. “Wrong place, wrong time. That’s just what happens.”

  “That’s not the point.” Augustus raised his voice like that would ease things along. Typical cop mentality. Judging from the way he and his cohorts were dressed, I’d probably end up in a tank at the Pentagon while scientists “ran tests” to see how much of a freak I was.

  I sighed at the thought. “So get to it.”

  The men sitting beside him laughed again. Glad someone was amused by all this.

  “Your metabolic processes have increased a thousand-fold. The way your cells function and regenerate is beyond anything modern science can replicate. You may have noticed your healing factor has changed as well. You were pronounced dead only to be brought back to our world by the man sitting beside you.”

  Being dead was easy. You’re just motionless, watching time fly by. Maybe there’s an afterlife, maybe you just float around your corpse forever, I don’t know. I never got to find out.

  “You died doing what some would call the right thing. We need people like you. That’s why your savior brought you back to us.”

  The man they referred to—the Reaper—sat next to me. He was still wearing his hospital scrubs like anyone needed a reminder as to what he did.

  “I don’t care. I’m not doing work for any government pigs.” I felt myself losing patience, too. People like them were the reason I bit it in the first place. I just wanted to go home and pretend the last twenty-four hours never happened.

  “It seems I’ve failed to communicate what we are, Mister Forrester. We Saints don’t do work for the government—quite the opposite, in fact.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “So you’re terrorists? Anarchists? What’s the story here?”

  Both Augustus and the men sitting next to him laughed, which was awkward for me and my alleged savior. The Reaper hadn’t looked at me since we sat down. Maybe he was starting to regret saving my life.

  Good. Maybe now he’d mind his own business.

  “More like independent contractors. We put a stop to potential crises before the Department of Defense ever hears a whisper.” Augustus tapped a finger on the desk and smirked. “Diplomacy is all well and good, but we have our own Reapers. Volunteers. And Black Bands, such as yourself. No need for the test tube assassins the taxpayers are funding.”

  My right bicep tingled. The band ached to be touched, to be used, but I’d fiddled with it before. Pain followed soon thereafter, and I wanted nothing more to do with it. The Reaper had talked about it like it was something sacred, but I just wanted it off me.

  “What is this thing? Why did you put this on my arm?”

  “It’s a symbol of your lost humanity.” He tapped his own arm and glanced at the Reaper. “Egan, if you wouldn’t mind?”

  “Of course.” The Reaper rolled up his sleeve. Two dark bands were wrapped around his arm in the same place as mine. Crimson thread drawn through them created a triangular pattern, the letters ‘V’ and ‘I’ repeated three times. I only had one band, and the thread was yellow instead of red. I still didn’t know what it was for.

  “What Egan is showing you is called the Devil’s Brand. How he came to acquire that marking is a long story, but all you need to know is that it houses an immense power… as an inhibitor of sorts.” Augustus slid back in his chair like he’d just dropped the biggest knowledge bomb in the universe, looking all smug and old.

  Finally, something interesting. I raised an eyebrow. “What kind of power?”

  “Power over life and death. Power over the spirits that rule this world. Power that… well, why don’t we show you instead?” The assholes sitting beside him snickered again. What were they even here for? “Come with me to the training hall. Egan, do you mind?”

  The Reaper shook his head and smiled. “Not at all, sir.”

  Augustus led the way through the giant wooden doors in the back. I assumed we were underground because there wasn’t a single window in the entire facility that I could recall. I walked with Egan down a cement hallway, numbers and letters painted beside steel doors every few feet. Our footsteps echoed, creating the sound of raindrops.

  “Bet you get all the Reaper bitches, huh?” I grinned at Egan, who gave a courtesy smile back. He was a good-looking guy, I had to admit. Good jaw, strong cheekbones, and eyes some other guy might describe as “stormy.” Plus he behaved like a total pushover, agreeing with everything Augustus said. He just made some sort of noncommittal sound and continued walking.

  Room T-48. Did they really have 48 training rooms? I hadn’t cracked the naming scheme quite yet, but it seemed plausible. Augustus looked like he just loved showing off his training rooms as he swept an arm into the doorway.

  “This way, gentlemen.”

  Gray walls. Gray ceiling. Gray floor. Some sort of purple fixture was embedded into the ceiling, and aside from a single fold-away table there was nothing to see. Even the dark blue paint that broke the room into a grid seemed to be drawn only every meter or so. Yards, maybe, if they were real Americans. If that were the case, I’d have determined the room to be about a sixth the size of a football field.

  Augustus left his two lackeys outside the room and shut the door, dropping a latch that would lock it from the inside. Why did he need to lock it?

  “What you see here is one of our training facilities. You may notice that the room is… sparsely decorated, shall we say. However, we can fill this space with all sorts of objects thanks to an element called astral. Have you heard of it?”

  I crossed my arms and leaned against the wall beside the door. He was just going to explain it anyway. Augustus liked hearing himself talk.

  “Good, then I’ll explain.”

  Called it, I thought.

  He pulled a device from his inner jacket pocket, either a phone or a tablet, and h
ooked it into a strange looking jack in the wall. A few seconds later, the room took on a faint pink glow. The fixture in the ceiling was giving off a soft, pulsating light. It didn’t make things any less drab.

  “Astral is the root of all living things. Without it there would be no you, no me, no God. Spiritual energy, willpower, mana, prana… whatever you want to call it, it exists, and therefore we exist. It is through the use of astral that miracles can occur, such as your revival, Mister Forrester.”

  I swallowed. The moments before my death replayed in my mind. There I was again, trying to get back a woman’s purse. The thieving punk made a run for it, but I pounced on him. It didn’t surprise me that security assumed I was the bad guy, but I didn’t expect the taser they used to be lethal. Perhaps with better aim they would have missed my skull. Everything went dark. I shook my head and saw Egan’s face again. We were standing in the same place I’d first met him… some unearthly place. He moved his lips and extended a hand, but it wasn’t his voice that escaped.

  “Since you’ve revived, you’ve been able to see some new things, haven’t you?” Augustus stared at me until I nodded my head. The visions dissipated. My arm throbbed, and my focus returned to the pink-tinted room.

  “Colors,” I said.

  “Colors, exactly. Outlines. Auras.” He placed his phone on the table and turned with his arms out by his sides. “You see it all around me, don’t you? What color?”

  I did see it. Surrounding his body was a bold color, a shade of blue. “Indigo.”

  “And Egan?”

  Egan. Looking at his aura gave me a headache. It was a shifting color I couldn’t quite describe. “Sort of a green, then silver, then green again. I think.”

  “That’s what most people say. In truth, there’s not a name in the English language for the unique aura Reaper’s possess. But you can see it, and that’s what matters.” He reached for his phone again and began sliding his fingers around on the screen. “Deeper, bolder colors denote a more potent astral force. More spiritual energy. More willpower. Here at Saints, if it’s a color you can name off the top of your head, it’s probably not one of our targets.”

  He laughed and looked to see if I was laughing with him. I wasn’t. “But I’m getting ahead of myself. I brought you here to show you the power of the Devil’s Brand, didn’t I?”

  I nodded.

  “Egan will show you what happens when he uses his. You’ll feel the temperature in this room drop as the astral flows into his body, but don’t worry, things will stabilize again soon.”

  With those words, the space filling the room wasn’t so empty. Ten figures cloaked in Reaper green appeared sporadically, looking like sci-fi holograms. They brandished guns and knives and bats—things I’d expect to see on the wrong side of town. They were all faceless, but looking at them still gave me a creepy sense of familiarity, like I’d seen them all too many times growing up in the city. They scattered, moving through three-dimensional space like real people. Whatever algorithm they were running to create that sort of behavior was seriously impressive.

  Augustus put his phone down again and gave a sharp nod. “Egan, dispatch these thugs, would you?”

  “On your command.” The nurse pressed his left hand over his right bicep, both palms facing the ground. Bands in his grasp, he gave a flick of his thumb. “Adarna, come forth.”

  One crazy thing became another right before my eyes. As Augustus had warned, I felt a sudden chill as green motes of dust converged around his right arm, glimmering as they took on a more cohesive form. Only a second had passed, but Egan’s smiley disposition changed completely. Around his arm now were seven long blades, each shaped like a feather and boasting a unique color, but they all gleamed of razor-edged steel. It resembled a murderous NBC peacock.

  I couldn’t help laughing. It was the last thing I’d expected to see. “What the hell just happened?”

  “That’s Egan’s Scythe. Every Reaper has one, and each functions differently.” Augustus was smiling from ear to ear. “Watch how he uses Adarna. You’ll understand the sort of power I was talking about.”

  Egan darted into the fray, and my laughter stopped. He really was different, suddenly in full-on kill mode. He advanced towards one of two gunmen, crouching behind his blade wing like it was a riot shield. The bullets couldn’t make a dent as far as I could see, and all of the simulated thugs were out for blood, circling him and looking for a chance to strike.

  The first gunman dropped the offensive and turned to run. Seven pointed blades sliced clean through its midsection with a single swoop of Egan’s arm. The gunman became green dust and drifted back into the lamp on the ceiling.

  “Nine more, Egan!” Augustus let out a belly laugh. He was clearly impressed. His demonstration must have been going exactly as he’d planned, if not better.

  Egan turned, blades outstretched from his arm like fingers, and twirled through two bat-swinging goons. An instantaneous double axel, though I won’t say how I knew that.

  Both of them exploded into dust. More shots were fired from the other side of the room, but Egan simply blocked them again. The feather blades were plated edge-over-edge, and I’d say he had limited control over each of them independently. One of the knifemen closed in. Egan grunted and parried the blade to the ground. The projection raised its hands and backed away, but I’d seen that move before. He was ready to draw another knife while his cohorts distracted Egan.

  “Duck.” Egan cut his eyes at me, raising his right arm to shoulder level, and each blade rotated so the points were horizontal. He drew his fingers across the top of each, strumming them like a wicked harp, and took another step back. “Seven Songs.”

  The edges spread with the wailing of a dissonant chord, and I knew what was coming next. I cradled the back of my neck and dropped to the floor. I found myself laughing again when it happened: they launched, seven heat-seeking blades for seven thugs, one in each of their throats, and the blades continued screeching through the air until they reached the walls. One impacted the spot where I’d been standing with a metallic thunk. It was an impressive, if ridiculous, display of power. Such a simple-yet-versatile weapon had come out of nowhere. The blades, their thirst for blood quenched, returned to Egan’s arm with a melodic hum.

  Just as it had appeared, each part of Egan’s deadly wing vanished into fragments of greenish-silver light. He raised his hands as if to shrug and gave a bow. Augustus clapped, and I rose to my feet and joined him. Was I really capable of something like that? Were people like this running around everywhere in the outside world?

  “Excellent strategy, Egan. You’ve cleared this exercise in record time. A shame your days in the field are on hold.” Augustus rubbed his bloated frog-neck and sighed.

  “What do you mean? Are you putting him down or something?” I looked to either of them for the answer.

  “The link between a Reaper and the bonded is immutable. It cannot be broken without certain dire consequences for one or both parties.” Augustus tilted his head as he looked at me. I must have looked as worried as I felt. “That is to say… because of this covenant of life that Egan has granted you, things can end in one of two ways. You, the bonded, may once again die. Egan will not be able to resurrect you again, and your astral—your soul—will return to him in full. Or, in the ending we at Saints try to prevent, Egan may die. This would terminate your life as well, Mister Forrester.”

  “So if he goes, I go?” I glanced at Egan, who smiled grimly back. “What kind of rule is that?”

  “That’s why we would keep Egan here,” Augustus said. “It’s a protection program of sorts, to prevent the second scenario from occurring.”

  “So what do I have to do?”

  “If you choose to cooperate with us then we’ll retire him from all duties outside the facility, effective immediately. If you choose not to join Saints, and I’ll understand if that’s the case, then both of you are free to leave as though nothing happened today. However, the bond you cr
eated at your revival cannot be severed. Neither he nor I can guarantee your safety.”

  I turned to Egan. “What do you think?”

  His eyes were filled with a warmth I never expected from something called a Reaper. “I’ve saved dozens of lives in my time as a nurse. Do whatever you feel is right, Malcolm. I won’t hold it against you.”

  I thought about the incident that took my life. I thought about the woman in distress, about the pickpocket who got me killed, about the thugs Egan had just dispatched in seconds like a rogue Batman.

  Rogue Batman, I realized. Hell yes.

  “I’ll do it. I’ll cooperate.”

  Augustus and Egan exchanged glances and smiled. “Excellent news. There’s a small amount of red tape, but once we’re through all the documentation I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.”

  I knew I was beaming like an idiot. “Awesome. When do I get my weapon thing?”

  “Slow down, slow down. You’re a Black Band, so things work a little differently.”

  “That’s not a race thing, right?”

  Augustus laughed again. “Not to my knowledge. Black Bands don’t really come with ‘built-in’ weapon systems like Reapers do. We manufacture them ourselves here at our lab. You’ll be fitted with something that your body hopefully accepts. When you release your astral, as Egan demonstrated earlier, you’ll still receive a sizable boost to your natural attributes. Your speed, strength, and, as I mentioned before, your healing factor, will all be increased. The closer you remain to Egan, the faster you’ll be able to increase your astral flow in times of need.”

  “What do I do with this band when I’m not catching criminals and stuff?” As if there’d ever be a time I wasn’t.

  “It’s up to you, but I’d recommend keeping it hidden beneath your clothes.” He patted Egan on the back. “Most Reapers aren’t as friendly and selfless as this one. You still have a human aura, but if a Reaper sees that band he may perceive it—and you—as a threat.”

  I will be a threat. I’ll be the force that keeps this city clean, police be damned.

  “Okay! That concludes the training demonstration, so if you don’t have any other questions we can head back up to the conference room to get through these papers.”

  I still had plenty of questions, but they could wait until after I was fitted with my own weapon.