Afterlife

by Merrie Destefano

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, looking at me now, his eyes dark, unreadable.

  “I think I fell down in the City of the Dead. I must have cut my hand. I don’t know.”

  “You don’t remember?”

  I shook my head. It was an accident, it had to be, I didn’t mean to talk to that strange man in the bar, I didn’t mean to run away from Chaz in the cemetery, I didn’t mean to fall, I didn’t mean to hurt the dog—

  I flashed on a black dog, lying lifeless on the ground. Dead. Then it got back up again. Alive. A series of images looped through my head. Over and over. The dog was on its side, then it was on its back, then it was on its stomach. But it didn’t matter how many times we killed it, the dog wouldn’t stay dead.

  I tried to roll down the window, I wanted to escape, I wanted to run away from all of this—

  Just then Chaz tossed something in my lap. A plastic bag with a small metal-and-plastic chip inside. “Here,” he said. “This is yours.”

  I stared down at it, a numb feeling in my hands. “What is this?”

  “A government marker. It was in your hand.”

  Somehow I figured out how to make the window roll down, a button on the armrest, almost hidden in the dark. The glass slid down instantly and cool air rushed in. A row of brightly colored shotgun cottages flew past. In one fluid movement I grabbed the bag, smashed the contents against the door, then threw the bag out the window. Chaz didn’t have time to react, although I don’t know what he could have done anyway.

  He stared at me, a slight frown on his face. I had surprised him.

  “Why are they tracking you, Angelique?”

  I shrugged and looked away from him, ready to jump out if I had to. Somehow I had an entire escape route planned out in a millisecond, where I would go, how I would get there, what I would do when I got there. I could see a map of nearby city streets in my head, a vein of routes that would lead me to safety. A new strength flowed through my muscles, an ability to do whatever I needed to in order to survive. “I don’t know,” I answered as the car began to slow down. We must have been close to our destination, Russell’s house.

  I still didn’t know what was going on, or anything about my most recent life.

  But I had figured out how and when I got the marker. That man in the bar.

  He’d run his fingers down my arm.

  Then my hand stung.

  He’d put that marker in me. Whoever he was, he was looking for me.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Angelique:

  I’ve been here before. A whisper memory rushed over me, made me feel weak, helpless. I shivered as we drove through wrought-iron gates covered with wisteria and wild bergamot, past lonely columns set like sentinels along the winding carriage road. Abandoned slave quarters stood to the left, a fleur-de-lis carved in the sagging door. Many considered the stylized iris to symbolize either the Virgin Mary or the holy trinity. But it didn’t mean that here.

  There was little, if anything, holy here.

  Russell lived in one of those antebellum mansions built in the mid-1800s. Tucked away in a secret corner of the city, filled with all the magical beauty of the bayou. Here the Mississippi River branched into one of the countless slow-moving streams lined with crape myrtle and camellia, oleander and oak; Spanish moss dripped from the trees like syrup; yawning alligators slithered through the freshwater marshes. Legends say that the estate belonged to one of the first New Orleans’ voodoo queens, a woman with an exotic blend of Haitian, French and African slave blood; that her mother was one of the filles du roi, mail-order brides sent by King Louis XIV for his settlers. She left a touch of gris-gris throughout the property that couldn’t be erased. Carved in the trees were recipes for her renowned fetish bags—spells that would revive love, bring wealth, heal the sick.

  Perhaps she left a curse behind as well.

  My legs shook as Chaz led the way up wooden stairs. Plantation shutters stood open at the windows and incandescent light filtered through.

  I wasn’t going to survive the night. Something in me was going to die, some innocence, some part of me that I had been clinging to like a raft in a turbulent sea. It was going to wash away and drown, and at the same time something else would be born.

  Inside the house, children laughed and danced, and their sounds echoed through the centuries.

  I had a child once.

  Joshua.

  Chaz and I crossed the threshold and my past lives began to unwind, a spool of flesh-and-blood memories tangling around my feet and arms, a thread of images that turned serpentine, that coiled, ready to strike and bite. Each pierce of venomous fangs brought a visceral rush, an encyclopedic volume of smells and sounds.

  I found myself pinned to the wall from the weight of it, unable to move or speak. Trapped in my own delight and horror, I was unable to stop its progression.

  Around me, everyone began to dance to the slow-fast-slow rhythm of zydeco music.

  Inside me, another dance began. The dance of life and death.

  The dance of penance and pain.

  The dance of remembering.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Chaz:

  She stood in front of a full-length VR mirror, adjusted the projection as she tried on one outfit after another. A rapid procession of glittering, shimmering pink and white concoctions melted into one another as she pushed the remote control faster and faster. Her entire wardrobe zipped by in a blur of silk and satin and sequins. When it finally came to a halt, she was wearing a Mardi Gras hat with gold beads and lavender feathers, a black body stocking and a pink tutu.

  She stamped one foot, pouted, then said the line that every woman learns at birth.

  “I don’t have anything to wear.”

  My five-year-old, almost-six-year-old, niece glanced up at me.

  “What you have on is perfect,” I said, pretending to be serious.

  Isabelle giggled then climbed up on her bed and started jumping like she was on a trampoline. “I know,” she said breathlessly between bounces. “It’s my favorite. I think I should wear this.”

  “I agree completely,” I answered. I had been sent upstairs by Isabelle’s parents, a delegate with the untoward duty of persuading Her Royal Highness into coming downstairs to her own party. I fell into that strange and temporary category of grown-up uncle/best-friend confidante. Isabelle wasn’t old enough to know that one day soon she would only share her secrets with other little girls, women in training who would walk hand in hand through the forests of adolescence together. Right now I was the one she told everything to.

  I wasn’t looking forward to the future.

  Angelique sat nervously in the corner, a silent observer. She hadn’t said much since we got back from Fresh Start. Her tests, the ones she took while I argued with Russ, hadn’t turned out very well. Just like I thought last night, there seemed to be something missing, like a connection between her lives wasn’t firing properly, some sort of brain synapses thing. I couldn’t quite figure it out. And I definitely didn’t want to think about it now. I needed to get Isabelle downstairs before VR Grandma and Holo Grandpa arrived.

  The house was already surrounded with a security team that rivaled the White House. All the children in Isabelle’s cell had been invited, as well as the children of every Fresh Start employee in the country. Apparently Russell had debated whether to make the invitation to all our employees worldwide, but decided it wasn’t right to put that kind of pressure on people who worked for him. They would have felt obligated to come, no matter the expense or danger involved in traveling with a child.

  Funny. I didn’t get my invitation until this morning. I had the feeling that the rest of the country had known about it for a month. Something was bothering Russ, something he obviously didn’t want to talk about.

  “Is it safe? Are you sure it’s safe?” Angelique asked quietly when my niece ran into the bathroom to comb her hair.

  “What?”

  “This party. All the c
hildren. I think I saw at least seventeen children downstairs.” She ran a finger along the hem of her skirt, her gaze lowered. “I honestly can’t remember the last time I was around that many kids all at once. I just—it doesn’t seem safe.”

  I had my doubts too. But this had been a family tradition for the past one hundred years. There was no way Russ would disappoint Mom, not now, not when she probably wouldn’t live to see Isabelle’s next birthday.

  My niece danced back into the room just then, her hat on backward, her hair in messy pigtails. She smelled like apple blossoms, and when she smiled, she revealed two rows of tiny perfect teeth. Her skin was a dusky cappuccino-colored Creole blend, like mine. In fact, she looked like she could have been my daughter. But of course that was impossible.

  Russ got Dad’s death certificate, not me. And when the time was right, he had a TRS, the federally approved operation that temporarily reverses sterilization. And then, about a year later, voilà. Isabelle Eloise St. Marie Domingue. The most beautiful baby in the world. Ever. The fact that there were only 65 babies born that year didn’t matter. Or the fact that 250 babies were born every minute back at the turn of the twenty-first century.

  To most people, Isabelle was exquisite.

  But to me, she was perfect.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Chaz:

  The spicy fragrance of crawfish gumbo and dirty rice steamed through the house. It was the sweet perfume of New Orleans, and jazz was its pulse. I paused at the foot of the stairs, not quite ready to join the party. People swirled past me, some familiar, some I’d never met. Everyone wore colorful costumes, gold masks, shiny beads and ostrich feathers: it was always Fat Tuesday here. If there was ever a city drunk with life, this was it.

  And I was tired of trying to find fault with it.

  Every corridor vibrated with the laughter and wild, untamed kinetic energy of children. Running. Jumping. Singing. A flash of light sizzled as Isabelle chased two of her friends through the living room, each child wearing a bright, slender BP collar. Beacon protectors were the latest child safeguard device, and Russ and I had fought hard to make them mandatory on children under the age of thirteen, just like seat belts and VR age controls were in the past. If a child’s heart rate increased drastically, like it would during an abduction, the device would automatically emit a blast of light outward in a complete circle, a blast that would temporarily blind anyone within twenty feet—with the exception of anyone wearing a BP—and thereby give the child an opportunity to escape.

  “They were a good idea,” a familiar voice said next to me.

  Cake. Definitely vanilla cake.

  I looked to my left and saw a woman who looked quite a bit like Mom. A slight haze blurred her facial features and she was outlined in pale yellow light. Is that what I look like? It felt strange to be on the other side of a VR suit.

  “The BPs,” she continued. “I saw the statistics last week. So far they have prevented six kidnappings and helped locate two missing children. Did you know that flash of light can be seen from our satellites?”

  I grinned. “No, I didn’t.” She meant the Fresh Start satellites, of course. The ones we use to track and transport dead bodies, the first stage in our regeneration process.

  “I think there might be something wrong with your Newbie, honey.”

  Mom never wasted time.

  “I talked to her for a few minutes when you were all singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Isabelle.” She paused and glanced over at the corner. She nodded and smiled at holo Dad right when he looked up at her. The two of them had this synchronicity that seemed to defy time and space and death. It really made it seem like that holo thing was alive. Sometimes I wonder what gave him the idea to have that blasted thing made just two weeks before he was killed.

  Maybe he knew somehow. Maybe he wanted to leave a part of himself behind. Like we send prayers forward into heaven, maybe he wanted to leave one behind.

  I felt a slight chill. Noticed that the front door was open. I could see out into the night, where a mass of faceless bodyguards hulked around the house perimeter. They were dark spots blotting out the light.

  “Have you started her tests?”

  I nodded, kept my attention focused outside. Did I see movement, somewhere between the black-on-black muscle men? The complexion of the party seemed to change. It was probably my imagination, but everyone suddenly looked a bit sinister. I never have liked Mardi Gras masks; tonight they went beyond irritating, all the way to ominous.

  “Well, you’ll probably attribute this to women’s intuition.” She glanced around the room, focused on Angelique, standing alone in between two groups of laughing people. “I have a feeling something went wrong during her jump. You need to make sure she pulls through okay.”

  “I always watch over my Newbies—”

  “No, trust me, this one is different.”

  I wondered if she knew more than she was willing to admit. Mom had an almost supernatural gift for reading between the lines, for knowing things that couldn’t be known. Like that time Dad lost his wedding ring down in the bayou and she knew exactly where it was.

  Mom laughed and then changed the subject. “Now where’s that crawfish gumbo? I heard that you can taste food in these VR suits, I want to give it a try—”

  Just then the front yard erupted in a chaos of shouting and all the perimeter lights flashed on. I instinctively shut my eyes just in time. Four children in the living room went into a panic and their BPs sent out a shock wave of light. Now people were shouting all around us.

  “I can’t see!”

  “What the hell happened? Jimmy, are you okay?”

  “Where is he? Where is my son? Is this a kidnapping?”

  “Somebody call the mugs—”

  “We don’t need the mugs,” I yelled back. “Kids, come to me. Right now.”

  A line of children began to form obediently in front of me. They had been trained how to respond in an emergency like this and I needed to take control immediately. Before another one shot off a blast of light.

  “Six, seven, eight—Isabelle, get over here—twelve, thirteen.” I lifted my head. “Where’s Deacon?”

  “Here,” a feeble voice answered as a little boy crawled out from beneath a nearby table.

  “Okay, I have eighteen. That’s right, isn’t it?” I shouted to Russ. He nodded, an expression like relief in his gaze. For a brief moment I realized how much he trusted me, something he’d mentioned once or twice but I always managed to ignore. “Okay, all the kids and all the guards, up to Isabelle’s room. Russ, you lead the way.” My niece’s bedroom was the most secure location in the building. “Russ, call me when you’re all inside.”

  I waited a minute. Then the Verse implant in my ear buzzed.

  “We’re locked in,” Russ said.

  “Just a second.” I saw Angelique, crouched on the floor. “Pete, take her upstairs with the kids. Two more coming up,” I told my brother.

  Then I grabbed a handful of liquid light from my pocket, enough to render an entire crowd helpless, if necessary.

  And I headed outside.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Chaz:

  I used to think I was special. Not walk-on-water special, but almost. Sometimes I relive my childhood in an instant, remember the way the entire universe seemed to revolve around me. Then I remember the moment that I realized I wasn’t a magnificent literati, that I didn’t actually encapsulate the sun, moon and stars. I learned that there were a thousand others like me scattered across the world, a thousand brighter than the sun and more precious than the moon.

  Other children.

  Not just the handful that I knew about in New Orleans. One thousand twenty-nine, to be exact, between the ages of one and twenty. Morbidly fascinated with this group of marauders, I learned everything I could about them, then put it all into organized categories. The government took all my statistics when I was done with my project—thank you very much for your hard work, young man�
��and to this day, that information is hidden away in a file somewhere.

  Eighty-two percent of the children belonged to families of One-Timers. One life, one child, one spin on the genetic roulette wheel. This group routinely passes their death certificates down to immediate family members.

  Eleven percent came from Stringers, those who were at the end of their line. Usually these were Eight-or Nine-Timers, but a Stringer occasionally quit jumping at life Three or Four. Again, these death certs almost always pass to a spouse or family member.

  Three percent were wards of the state. This was usually the result of a Stringer who left no will. In that case, death cert ownership was contested—maybe somebody in the dead Stringer’s sous-terrain société claimed they had an agreement, or maybe a distant relative suddenly crawled out from hiding behind the Right to Privacy Act. Whatever caused it, the death cert became property of the state until proven otherwise. These certificates often ended up getting tied up in decade-long court battles and, in the end, were almost always doled out to high-ranking government employees.

  That left four percent unaccounted for.

  At first I thought I had made a huge error, that my numbers were wrong and it caused me to check and recheck my calculations.

  Of course, I was only ten at the time, so I’d never heard of the Underground Circus.

  I didn’t know about the dark edges of society: how people longed for children but couldn’t have them, or that the Worldwide Population and Family Planning Law enforced sterilization whenever someone entered puberty. I would learn more about this later, when one of my close friends went missing right before her thirteenth birthday, and consequently, right before she would have been sterilized.