The Phlebotomist

by Chris Panatier

  His face didn’t share her shock. “No,” he said, stepping over to the body and its spreading slick of hemorrhage. “She is what she is.”

  “She’s possessed, Claude! Did you see her? You saw her, right?” Willa wiped her face. “She was going to kill me!”

  “It looked that way,” he answered, letting the cooling element clank to the floor.

  “What is going on, Claude?” she snorted, jittery with endorphin aftershocks. Why did he seem so casual about her near murder?

  Claude knelt and glanced at the big clock. “I think you have an hour or two, maybe, before they miss her. Go get Isaiah and find somewhere to hide.”

  “Hide? What is happening?”

  “Just listen to me, you need to get Isaiah and run. Now.”

  “She… she tried to kill me, Claude, in case you didn’t see. We need to call security.”

  “She got permission to kill you, Willa,” he said, reaching for Scallien’s touchstone.

  Willa looked at the body sprawled on the floor. “What was that in her mouth?” she asked of herself.

  Claude rolled Scallien onto her back and held the touchstone in front of her face, at which point it unlocked. “Like I thought,” he said, holding it out for Willa, “look.”

  JESPER OLDEN : Update?

  SCYNTHIA SCALLIEN : She knows about the sugar. Pressing about fractionation now.

  JESPER OLDEN : That’s unfortunate.

  SCYNTHIA SCALLIEN : Blabbing about empty drones. So she did see.

  JESPER OLDEN : A shame. Proposed resolution?

  SCYNTHIA SCALLIEN : Liquidated damages.

  JESPER OLDEN : When?

  SCYNTHIA SCALLIEN : Now. The Old Way.

  JESPER OLDEN : You’ve gone gold then.

  SCYNTHIA SCALLIEN : Yes.

  JESPER OLDEN : A genuine vrae. Proud of you.

  SCYNTHIA SCALLIEN : Thank you Jesper.

  JESPER OLDEN : Well then. You have Claret approval. Make sure to follow remediation protocol.

  Willa read and re-read the exchange. “Liquidated damages?”

  Claude helped Willa to her feet. “You have to go now.”

  “Where?”

  He went over toward the hallway that led to the cooler and retrieved her touchstone. “Go outside, summon a teller drone, withdraw as much as it will let you. Then leave this here.” He handed it to her.

  “What?” she exclaimed. The prospect of going anywhere without her touchstone was almost as unsettling as her near-death experience. And in practical terms, it wasn’t very different. Without her touchstone she would effectively cease to exist. Patriot assigned one to every citizen. Gone were driver’s licenses, photo identification cards, or any other tangible way for one to verify who they were. Touchstones were the singular and all-encompassing source of personal identity. Instead of checking someone’s ID, people tapped touchstones. If the touchstone worked when you tapped it, then it was yours and it said who you were – a person’s face was irrelevant. Without one, you evaporated from society. Willa placed a hand over hers and swallowed hard at the idea of willfully abandoning it. “I… I don’t think I should…”

  “You aren’t getting me. You have to be offline,” he said, hefting Scallien by the armpits. “Are the locks on your apartment digital?”

  There were few segments of life left where conversion from manual to mechanical or analog to digital wasn’t entirely complete. Whereas touchstones had become essential in order to navigate daily life, digital door locks were still optional equipment, and it was there Willa had stood her ground against “progress.” If you could control your own locks remotely, then who else might be probing when you weren’t home? “No,” she answered, making a lock closing gesture with one hand.

  “Good. Go get Isaiah and then trash your place. Leave it unlocked. Throw off the scent.”

  “The scent for whom? What is happening, Claude?”

  “Patriot is going to come for you.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  He dropped Scallien unceremoniously, letting her head whack the tiles. “I need to grab some supplies and I’ll find you. I think I’m fired too.”

  “We’ll make for AB Plus.”

  “Go.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  4 MPH

  The speed at which blood circulates in an adult human body; equivalent to average walking speed.

  Willa waited outside anxiously for a good two minutes before the banking drone landed, and then withdrew the daily maximum. Eight gold-colored triangular coins, each worth one hundred, dropped from the dispenser and the drone departed. She ran back into the station, hesitated for a regretful second, then hurled her touchstone over the stalls.

  She ripped the pink hair from her head, shoved it into her bag, donned her hood, and set off at the quickest clip she could maintain. As rain began, she blazed a new route across the corner of A Plus, through the grounds of an abandoned school and a warehouse park. She wondered how long it would be until they came for her. Maybe they were already on their way. She picked up her pace.

  At the door to her apartment and panting furiously, she fumbled with her keys – nobody had keys anymore – but her manual locks meant her entry wouldn’t be detected or recorded anywhere. She wondered how many more minutes she had to get packed and out of the building.

  “Isaiah?” she called. “Isaiah?”

  He wandered out from the bathroom, shirt off, his hair wet from experimental coiffing. “Grandma?”

  “Get your clothes on right now, baby.”

  “Where’s your hair, Grandma?”

  “I have it,” she said, trying to conceal her overwhelming panic. “Get dressed.”

  “Why?”

  “We have to leave. Please do as I say.”

  She ran to her corner of the room, threw open dresser drawers, and loaded a duffle with a mishmash of clothing. She took up an older, shoulder-length black wig, gave it a toss and pulled it on. At the table she grabbed her workbooks, a small box containing some old – now antique – lancets and vacutainers, syringes, tourniquets and intravenous lines. Soap. Dumped it all in. She did the same in Isaiah’s room as he looked on while fumbling with a shoe.

  Here they were, evacuating, just as she’d always feared. Though not for the reason she’d thought they would.

  “Where are we going, Grandma?” he asked as she cast about plucking socks and underpants from various piles, shoving them into his backpack.

  “A little trip across town, that’s all, baby. Few nights.”

  “But why?”

  “Get your zip-up,” she said, pointing it out. “We gotta get out of here while it’s still raining, alright?”

  “Why?” he said, knotting the other shoe.

  “My Lord, ’Saiah! Just grab your things, I’ll tell you on the way.”

  “But where–”

  “Later!” Willa snapped. “Get your stuff, now!”

  Isaiah complied, only now seeming to process the moment’s urgency, and selected some of his favorite shirts. Willa smashed an ancient lamp in the sink. She pinched the ten or so silver triangles from amongst the shards, yelping as one sank into the meat of her ring finger.

  “Grandma!”

  “I’m OK, baby, I’m fine,” she said. “Just a little poke.” She showed him the finger with a tiny sphere of red growing at its tip, then sucked it away. She dropped the coins into her bag with the others. All that she had.

  In the kitchen, she slid a stack of peppermint tea and some biscuits, as well as some remnant oat cubes, into the duffle, then went to flipping the rest of their lives out onto the floor, emptying drawers and scraping cubbies.

  “Toothbrush!” she hollered.

  “Got it,” said Isaiah, emerging from his room, backpack strapped on secure, jacket underneath. “Why are you making a mess?”

  “Make it harder for people to figure out where we might have gone. Throw them off the scent.”

  “Is someone looking for us?”

 
; “Yes, baby.”

  “Who?”

  “Some people your grandmother upset.”

  “What’d you do?” his voice was shock with a hint of wonder.

  Willa noticed his prized view-screen and headset pinned under his arm and knelt before him. “We have to leave this here, so no one can follow us on our trip. Trust me, please?” He released the screen and she placed it gently on the table. Finally, she threw on her coat, yanked on the aubergine boots, and said a quiet goodbye.

  Outside, Willa thanked God that the rain was still coming down and that the evening streets were busy. Nearby, a man flicked his touchstone and looked to the sky, no doubt summoning a brellabot. Isaiah in tow, Willa marched toward him just as the drone arrived. She could have brought down her own old-school umbrella to avoid having to rent one, but it was bright orange and pink and not designed for anonymity.

  “Pardon, sir? I lost my touchstone. Can I buy your brellabot?”

  The man’s eyes were cold – most peoples’ were – but they flowed down to Isaiah and softened slightly. “Sure,” he said, “but it’s double. Fifty.”

  “Good, because I don’t carry anything smaller,” Willa said coolly, dropping a silver triangle into his hand. She accepted the drone’s control beacon – a small black puck with a blinking yellow light – and clipped it to her lapel.

  Off they went under the cover of their drone, into the early evening sea of brellabots. Umbrella drones were a marvel of technology, each with a miniature array of ducted fans mounted above the traditional fabric canopy – the science fiction version of a child’s propeller beanie. They walked along as their brellabot slipped side to side and bopped up and down to avoid colliding with others as they passed. Despite having to move around so much, the dance between them was coordinated, orchestrated with seamless connectivity between each so as to keep their humans dry.

  “Grandma?” Isaiah asked as he shuffled along.

  “Yes, baby.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “We are going to stay with some friends.”

  “We have friends?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Why are we going to stay with them?”

  “We need to hide.”

  “Why?”

  “Because your grandmother discovered a secret that she’s not supposed to know.”

  “What’s the secret?”

  Willa looked down at him. “The kind of secret that gets you in big trouble if you know it,” she said, putting a finger across her lips.

  She walked with purpose, steering them in an endlessly twisting and random course, down thoroughfares and alleyways, into food stands and sundry shops. Eventually, their route took them deep into O Plus with its glass storefronts and sit-down restaurants. They even found the Pantry, and Willa bent to scan the menu, if nothing more than to see the entry for the sandwich she used to treat herself to back before everything happened. There were club sandwiches, French dips, Italian cold-cuts, but no croque madame. Well. Maybe they’d turned it into one of those off-menu specials. Willa looked at the people inside, Os most likely. They weren’t wealthy by any stretch – they would have been lower-middle class in the previous version of the country – but could afford the occasional night out.

  Isaiah, who had walked without complaint for miles, was flagging. What better place to lay low and recharge than a restaurant they couldn’t afford, somewhere would-be pursuers would never think to look. They needed to save their money, but they needed to stay alive more, and Willa wasn’t all too clear on who or how many might be after them. “What do you think, Isaiah?” she asked. “Want to eat here?”

  “Do you think they have hotdogs?”

  Willa unclipped the beacon from her lapel and held it to the umbrella’s underside where it stuck like a magnet, signaling the drone to take off in search of another customer. “Let’s find out.”

  They found a seat inside, a booth between two other booths, set on the opposite side of a short wall from the door. Willa slid all the way into her side of the table while Isaiah savored the experience, spreading out on the wide red seat. A young woman brought water, which Willa downed before she could even walk away. Isaiah looked on with new bewilderment at his grandmother’s behavior.

  The server reappeared. “Can I get you anything or do you need a minute?”

  “Noodles and franks, please,” said Isaiah with a huge smile.

  “Noodles and franks, got it,” said the server. “And for you, ma’am?”

  Willa wasn’t hungry. Her stomach was hollow, but she felt no desire to fill it. The idea of eating seemed so unimportant with everything that was happening. “Uh,” she said, “soup.”

  “Soup. Got it.” And the server was off.

  Their food came quickly, and Isaiah set into his noodles like a big cat with a fresh kill. Willa watched this, admiring not for the first time the ability of her grandson to adapt to sudden changes in his life. On the surface, at least, children so often went along with whatever was happening to them. Part of it, she knew, was that they didn’t fully comprehend every situation and so didn’t react as harshly as someone who did. In the short term it was helpful, especially when you had to move fast, but she worried on the long-term effects. At some point it all had to stop.

  Less than half an hour later, they exited. Willa had forced herself to drink down her soup, while Isaiah slurped up a bowl of ice cream. Standing under the restaurant’s awning, she scanned for anyone that might be coming in with another umbrella. A young couple, highbloods by their clean, styled hair, approached.

  “Sorry to interrupt you on your night out,” said Willa, doing her best not to sound anxious. “This is my grandson and we–”

  “Take it,” said the man, handing over the beacon without so much as a nod or eye contact.

  Isaiah gave a shrug. “Free drone!”

  “Yes, what luck.”

  Willa glanced around for anything suspicious, but not knowing what that might actually look like, pressed on. Their route remained circuitous though she knew the end point. At almost ten o’clock, they crossed the boundary into AB Plus. Elsewhere, cameras would have been a concern, but Willa recalled with no small amount of pride that the lowbloods could be relied upon to keep theirs in a constant state of vandalized. Willa unclipped the beacon and offered it back to the drone.

  Watching it fly away, Isaiah asked, “Where are we, Grandma?”

  “My old neighborhood,” she answered.

  “Oh,” he said, taking it in with the new perspective. “Why?”

  “To find someone who can help us, I hope.”

  She hustled them across wet asphalt and swampy grass until they were a stone’s throw from the home of Everard Alison. He stepped casually onto the front patio as if drawn out by a premonition of their approach and lit a cigarette. He jutted out his chin and smirked. The gesture said I saw you coming, I’ll always see you coming. Willa led Isaiah off the curb and across the way.

  “Taking me up on my offer, then, Ms Willa?” he called as they splashed up the walk.

  “Nope.”

  His face darkened, the smirk erased. “Then best git on,” he grumbled.

  “We need shelter for tonight, that’s all.”

  “I ain’t got food for two more mouths, Ms Wallace,” he said.

  Willa stepped into his personal space, lowered her voice and whispered, “I haven’t asked you for food, have I?”

  “Matter of time,” he answered with a shrug.

  “I fed you,” Willa said. “Twice. Some people would do well to remember the kindness of others.”

  “Ain’t about kindness. It’s ’bout I ain’t got food for two more mouths.”

  “We brought our own,” she said, adding, “And if you can’t afford food, you can’t afford these.” She flicked the smoking butt straight from his lips.

  “Hey!”

  “It’s late. You want to stay out in the open or are you going to let me and my grandson inside?”

&
nbsp; Everard sighed. “Were you followed?”

  “You said I was smart, remember?” she said.

  He raised his eyebrows and held his arm to the side in resigned welcome. “The Locksmith’ll want to talk to you anyhow.”

  “Good. I want to talk to him.”

  The air inside was warm but stagnant. Children huddled together throughout, little teams in their designated areas, each with a pile of blankets and a few toys, some tattered books.

  “Where are their parents?”

  Everard turned, gave her a look, and she had her answer.

  They came into a tiny kitchen with a small table and four chairs. Willa pulled Isaiah close.

  “Empty veins,” Everard said to no one in particular.

  “Is the Locksmith here?”

  A muted chortle came from his throat.

  “OK,” Willa said, “where is he?”

  “Calm down,” Everard said, filling two cups from the tap. “Sit for a spell.” He gave his beard an easy scratch.

  Isaiah poked her sleeve and gestured to a nearby group of kids. “Go ahead,” she said, giving his cheek a stroke. “Stay where I can see you.”

  “That’s good advice. With so few parents around watching, kids get misplaced.”

  Willa turned back to him. “Why would you say such a thing?”

  “Because it’s true. More missing kids outta AB Plus than anywhere.”

  “What?” Willa said.

  He nodded somberly. “A handful go absent every month.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “And why would you?” he sneered. “Like I said, you ain’t in it.”

  “Who’s taking them? Where are they going?”

  “Somewhere else, I guess,” he said, sticking another cigarette to his lips but leaving it cold. “Why these few here ain’t really ’llowed out of doors.”

  A tall man ducked into the small kitchen through a back door making Willa flinch. Everard made a gesture that let her know the man was expected, a friend. He was tall, dressed in a fitted, but years-worn, gray denim suit. The collar of his shirt seemed whiter than it was against his dark neck. “Ms Wallace?”