Static Ruin

by Corey J. White

  “He?” Hurtt says with a wry smile.

  I can’t help smirking. Standing this close to him, one on one, I can feel the magnetic pull of Hurtt’s charisma. I’ve felt it from plenty of successful types—an enthusiasm for everything that sucks you in, makes you want to impress them. For the brief moments you’re caught in their spotlight you feel radiant, then that attention shifts, and you’re left alone in darkness. No wonder Mallory seems to hate me.

  Squid is the same, but their charisma is more subtle; a confidence they carry close to their chest. And thankfully Squid lacks the sociopathic bent of true tycoons—the feeling that every facet of your person is being judged, a credit value assigned to your very self.

  Yeah, I’ve dated mogul-aspirants in the past. Never again.

  “Waren’s untethered and he sounds male.” I shrug. “If he took offense he’d let me know; Waren’s not exactly shy.”

  “I had some researchers working on untethered AI once. The whole thing was a disaster; they’re too unpredictable.”

  “They’re people, Hurtt; of course they’re unpredictable.”

  He snorts sharply, but I don’t know if it’s amusement or realization.

  Before we can debate the personhood of untethered AI, the doors open on a high-ceilinged foyer. We exit the elevator, walking past expensive furnishings and gigantic pieces of corporate art—abstract paintings that resemble genitalia and reverse cosmic explosions.

  Outside, Mallory waits beneath a blooming jacaranda—a huge patch of green and purple in the canyon between the compound’s buildings, nature framed by polycrete and reflective glass.

  Hurtt strolls forward with his top-heavy gait, but I pause a moment.

  “How do you feel?” I ask Pale.

  He only shrugs, but from the way he hangs his head I can tell he’s scared.

  “I won’t let anything bad happen,” I say. “Come on.”

  We join Hurtt and Mallory outside, crushing jacaranda blossoms beneath our feet, releasing their honey-sweet scent into the air. The courtyard is crisscrossed with paths linking the buildings, each lined with glimmering white stones and creeping succulents. Birds twitter from the huge tree, and workers mill, gathering for their lunch break. A breeze pushes through the gap between buildings, loosing more blossoms to litter the paths. It’s peaceful here, almost beautiful.

  “Everything is ready,” Mallory announces as Pale and I approach. “Though Dr. Modern has lodged a number of complaints about our punctuality and lack thereof.”

  “Lucky he’s the best surgeon in imperial space, or I’d have fired him years ago,” Hurtt says. “Come along then.”

  He leads the way to Building Two. Inside, there’s no lavishly decorated foyer, just a security desk and a row of freight elevators. We ascend in silence, reflections dull in the burnished steel walls, pocked and marred from use. The doors clatter open, revealing a broad atrium filled with natural light, the sound of discharging lasrifles, and the thick smell of ozone.

  “How about that tour?” Hurtt asks.

  “Raf,” Mallory says, “Dr. Modern is—”

  “Extraordinarily well paid for his services. He can stand to wait another ten minutes.”

  Mallory nods with pursed lips.

  Hurtt takes a staircase leading farther up into the hive of activity. Lasrifles, wavers, and ballistic weapons are laid out on workbenches in various states of disassembly, overseen by workers clad in coveralls.

  A thick steel door with a scorched and blackened inset window seals off one corner of the space. The door is emblazoned with symbols warning of explosives being tested inside. There’s a muffled dhoom and the floor shakes subtly underfoot.

  Hurtt points to the bomb-proof cabin. “One of my teams started developing new explosive compositions without telling me. I found out when they blew out every window on this floor.” He laughs lightly, not slowing his pace.

  Pale stares at everything wide-eyed, impending surgery forgotten amidst all these violent toys. I squeeze his hand, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

  The stairs clang softly as we ascend to another floor. We pass through a set of doors, ignored by the medical staff that prowl the hallways at a clip.

  “This is the good stuff,” Hurtt says, holding an arm out to encompass the surrounding commotion. “We produce a wide range of augmentations, but there’s little innovation happening in that field. Every variant of limb and multi-limb has been iterated upon, every possible organ function boosted, tweaked, or entirely replaced. But in gene therapy? There are always new avenues of research.”

  We follow Hurtt deeper into the antiseptic-smelling maze of corridors and reach a recovery room bathed in natural light.

  He leans close, whispers, “Have you ever seen anything like that?”

  I follow his gaze to a woman with arms genetically twisted into crustacean claws. It looks as though her radius and ulna bones have split apart, with her hands still present at the ends of the inner pincers. Glints of razor-sharp chitin line the claws, which clack sharply together as she tests her new appendages for the attending doctor.

  “That’s fucked up,” I say, too loudly. The woman and her doctor glance sourly at me.

  Hurtt chuckles. “You ever seen a person with a wolf’s snout, or poisoned barbs, or translucent skin?”

  “Sure,” I say. “All kinds of nonstandard bodies out on the ’Riph. Given anyone functional wings?”

  “Still no,” Hurtt says sadly.

  “What about a full-body chitinous exoskeleton?”

  “A small group of mercs operating out on the Mohsin Belt. Extremely uncomfortable apparently, but they’re practically unkillable.”

  I nod approvingly and Hurtt motions toward the door.

  “I suppose we’ve kept Modern waiting long enough.”

  * * *

  Dr. Modern stands in the gallery overlooking the surgical theatre. His steel appendages gleam in the bright light, lined with fine slits suggesting surgical implements hidden within. His legs split below the knee, each one a tripod ending in rubber hooves.

  The clawed woman downstairs seems quaint in comparison.

  Standing close, I see my slack jaw reflected in the silver orbs that sit deep-set beneath thick eyebrows; the same unsettling metal stare of Mookie’s Legionnaire eyes.

  “The surgery could take many hours,” Dr. Modern says, his voice a mangled amalgam of accents from disparate parts of the galaxy. “I will call you when it is finished.”

  I shake my head. “I’m staying to watch.”

  “Are you sure, Mars?” Hurtt asks.

  “You want me to trust you? This is the only way that happens.”

  Hurtt considers this with a slow nod. “Alright. Mallory, wait with Mars and keep me apprised?”

  “Of course,” she says dryly.

  Hurtt lingers and rests a hand on Modern’s shoulder, skin touching at the border between steel and flesh. “Whatever it takes to heal the boy.”

  “Please, Rafael. I look forward to a challenge worthy of my skill.”

  Hurtt crouches down in front of Pale. “See? You’re in good hands.” With that he turns and leaves, shoulders rolling inside his suit jacket with every step.

  “Come, boy,” Modern says. “Time to begin.”

  Pale looks to me and I nod. “I’ll be right here.”

  He lowers his head. It’s been a long time since I saw him so still, so scared.

  “If you hurt him,” I tell the doctor, “I will kill you.”

  Modern brushes my threat aside with a sweep of his polished steel arm, and guides the boy downstairs into the surgery.

  Pale lies down on the bed and the assisting nurse fixes a mask to his face. Within seconds his eyes droop closed and the nurse starts to shave his head by hand.

  “I can’t remember the last time Raf stayed in any one place for this long,” Mallory says as we stand watching through the glass, faintly reflected. “Do you know how many meetings he’s cancelled for you?”

 
; “You don’t trust Hurtt to make decisions about his own schedule?”

  “I don’t trust that you’re worth his time. The sooner you’re gone, the sooner we can get back to work.”

  “Sorry for the inconvenience,” I say blankly.

  The nurse removes the anesthetic mask and swabs Pale’s skull with antiseptic, staining his too-white skin green. My chest aches, but not with fear for Pale. Memories of Mookie’s surgery superimpose over the scene. Fine points of sweat bead on my forehead, dull squeal of teeth grinding.

  “Is it true? You killed Briggs?”

  I turn to face Mallory, but she stares through the window, refusing to look at me.

  “It’s true,” I say. “I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

  The side of Mallory’s mouth tugs down for a split second. “He was like a father.”

  “He was a monster.”

  “But he made us. What about Marius?”

  “He’s a monster too.”

  “Are you going to kill him then?” She looks at me and I hold her gaze, then turn back to watch the procedure.

  If Teo understood why, I would kill him, no question. But in his current state? I don’t even know.

  Modern’s tripod legs whir as the hooves spread apart and he leans over Pale’s prone form, the legs supporting his weight. Both his arms break open, chrome implements unfurling, countless tools contained within those augmented limbs.

  His hands glide over Pale’s scalp, and the fine blades slice through skin effortlessly. Slight steel digits pull the skin aside revealing the white of his skull stained red. High-pitched whine as Modern’s vibrating saw spins, the sound turning my stomach when it touches bone, carving through the cranium.

  The top of Pale’s skull comes apart in segments, showing off his brain, remnants of wires still pressed against gray matter. His brain separates in slow motion, nanosurgery sliding augmentations through impossible gaps in the meat.

  Hours pass. Mallory leaves—I’m not sure when. I don’t hear her go, I don’t hear anything, I just watch. Time turns sluggish then reverses, until it’s Mookie’s brain on display. I’m forced to relive it all: Mookie surgically dismantled, put back together as part of the Legion, while all I could do was scream.

  My throat silently aches as those screams echo through my mind, until finally, it’s done.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I stay at Pale’s bedside all night. Ocho sleeps on the pillow beside his swollen, bandaged head, keeping an eye on him. A tiny part of me is jealous, but Pale has been in Ocho’s life ever since she was born, or hatched, or cloned, however you want to describe her process. She doesn’t know about all the other incarnations of her I’ve lived with. She doesn’t know she’s mine and mine alone.

  Dr. Modern checks on him hourly until dawn, when he announces that the operation was a complete success. Still I don’t leave Pale’s side. I prop myself up in a chair beside the window, looking up at the dull glow of stars, idly wondering how many of them are Guard vessels, waiting for me.

  I only know I slept because I’m started awake by Hurtt entering the room, my hand jolting out, ready to toss him into the wall. He looks at my outstretched arm, eyes wide as if he knows how close he came to injury.

  “Sorry,” I say. I let my hand drop back into my lap and he visibly relaxes. “Thank you, Hurtt. You made good on your promise.”

  “Please, call me Raf. Do you trust me now then?”

  “Let’s not go overboard,” I say with a smirk.

  He sits precariously on the bed and places a hand on Pale’s shin. The boy’s head is sealed in a rapid-healing skin, but it bulges unevenly, flesh swelling against the bandages.

  “Modern gave me a full report,” Hurtt says. “He called MEPHISTO’s procedure ‘inelegant,’ but he’s certain he reversed the damage.”

  The steady beeping of the electrocardiogram fills the silence while Raf and I watch Pale, asleep or sedated.

  I clear my throat. “I’ve had time to think. I want to take you up on your offer—I want the clone.”

  “Excellent. I promise we’ll never use your DNA for experiments on children or the unborn. I’ll do better than a promise—I’ll sign a contract.”

  “No,” I say, “I don’t want you to keep my DNA. I don’t want you experimenting with it, and I don’t want Mallory running some new voidwitch program. There are a thousand other ways to kill a person—the galaxy doesn’t need more of me.”

  Raf stands and paces the length of Pale’s room. “I understand your point of view, Mars, but clones aren’t cheap. What am I getting out of this deal?”

  “We’ll arrange for you to hand over the body and collect the imperial bounty. That should more than cover your costs.”

  Hurtt stops pacing and stands with his hands clasped behind his back. “I want to be able to call on you, in the future.”

  “Alright. One favor. But nothing so huge that they know I’m alive. Do we have a deal?”

  Hurtt stays silent for eight beeps before he finally speaks.

  “Mallory won’t be happy. But yes, that will work. You have to realize though, after we fake your death the Guard will have your DNA. There’s no way of knowing what they’ll do with it.”

  “Leave that to me,” I say. “I’ll make them too afraid to use the body for anything but a public display.”

  “What will you do once you’re free?” Hurtt asks.

  I shake my head. “Not even gonna think about it ’til it happens.”

  The door opens and Kerry pushes Teo into the room. “Marius wanted to see you.”

  The old man doesn’t even notice me, but his eyes light up when they fall on Pale, lying still in bed.

  “You mean he wanted to see Pale,” I say, words hard-edged and flat.

  “Sorry,” Kerry says, frowning in sympathy.

  I shake my head. “No, it’s fine.”

  Kerry wheels Teo to the top of the bed, and Marius reaches out and holds Pale’s hand.

  “I’m going to go, Mars,” Raf says. “I’ll make preparations for your procedure. Tomorrow?”

  “Sounds good.”

  Hurtt lingers in the door, and Kerry steps back from Teo’s chair. “I might get something to eat. Leave you and Marius to talk.”

  “Thanks, Kerry.”

  “Of course.”

  He and Hurtt leave, closing the door silently behind them. Teo pushes himself up from his seat and walks to a shard at the end of the bed, glowing bright with medical data. He reads over it, face blank. I can’t tell if he understands any of it, if he’s lucid in this moment.

  He sits back in his chair to watch over the boy.

  “Marius,” I say loudly. His eyes only leave Pale for a moment. I repeat his name again, louder, and wait for Teo to stop staring at Pale and focus on me.

  “I have spent so much energy on hating you. I see now you were never worth it.”

  “I loved you.”

  “You loved Cilla, you broken—” I bite off the words and try to calm myself. “You don’t know me; you don’t even know my name. How did Cilla die?”

  He turns back to Pale and the skin around his mouth twitches with words unspoken.

  “Marius,” I say, too loud for him to ignore. “How did she die?”

  He clears his throat and sits straight up in his chair. He looks down at me—literally and figuratively—his cracked lips curling into a frown, nothing in his eyes but disdain.

  “It was a difficult labor,” he says. He’s transformed, his voice and posture those of a medical professional, but not a caring one—one of those bastard doctors who view people as animals. For the first time I see the man as he was, the man he must have been to perform those experiments. “She experienced a postpartum hemorrhage and died soon after giving birth. She was sedated; there was no pain.”

  “You were there?”

  “I assisted in the delivery.”

  I shoot out of my seat and round the bed to loom over him. “You’re a fucking doctor,” I say,
words like venom on my tongue. “No one should die in labor with a doctor nearby. You fucking let her die. You killed her.”

  “She didn’t love me.” The words come out clipped, controlled.

  I slap him hard across the face, the sound echoing in the small room.

  “Of course she didn’t love you,” I say quiet, slow; “you are evil.”

  “I made a statue of her. Wrote every line of genetic code by hand. I loved her.”

  “Loved her enough to let her die.”

  That strength of presence leaves his eyes and he squints. “I want to go back to the apartment.”

  I can picture it: him standing by Cilla’s bed, holding me—naked, covered in womb gore and draped in a birth caul—while he watches her die.

  All because she didn’t love him.

  He watched her die, and then he gave me a variation of his name. Destined me to be a monster, if you believe in destiny.

  “Get out, get out, get out!” As I scream Teo cowers in his chair. He grips the handrim, backs away from the bed, and wheels himself fitfully to the door.

  I open it and he pauses to look at Pale over his shoulder, then he pushes out into the corridor. I try to slam the door behind him, but it catches on the hydraulic arm and closes gently.

  I snatch Ocho from Pale’s pillow and hold her to my chest, like maybe her purring could slow my heart, thundering like a war drum. I should get to the Rua, I should go up into orbit and turn every one of those Guard ships into scrap. I should kill and crush and scream before this anger tears me apart.

  But I won’t. I can’t. Not until the clone is ready.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Pale is awake but groggy when I leave his room and go upstairs to meet Raf. I stifle a yawn, eyes half-lidded with missed sleep, and my lower back twinges with each step, muscles cramped from dozing in the chair beside Pale’s bed. Ocho trots along beside me, paws slinking silent over the polished floors.

  I find the surgery and pause outside the doorway, antiseptic smell thick in my nose, holding me back.

  “Is this a good idea, jerkbutt?” I ask Ocho.

  She maows and rubs against my leg.

  “I’ll hold you to that.”