Halfskin Boxed

by Tony Bertauski

  There was just a sense of danger.

  Someone was up to no good.

  And then a heavyset woman was there. She stepped out of the fog and raised her arm, extra skin swinging. “HE DID IT!” she screamed. “I SAW IT! THAT BASTARD ATTACKED THOSE POOR PEOPLE! I SAW IT!”

  Her arm swung to Jim’s left.

  There were people standing in front of a couch. A man and a woman and a young girl. They were nodding but not much else. Nodding and nodding. And then pointing where the heavyset woman had pointed. Right in front of him.

  Right in front of Jim—he palmed his face, all rubbery and fat and stuffy—was a smallish man holding himself up on crutches, his right leg in a brace. He turned to look at Jim, an expression of disbelief. That’s always how they looked, though. It was always It wasn’t me, I swear. No one ever did anything.

  But Jim knew, right from the start. He could feel guilt, see it on a face from a mile away. And this bastard was guilty. Gimpy or not, he’d done something and it would get sorted out.

  “What are you doing?” the bald man said. He shifted away from Jim’s clasping hand. “Officer, you’ve got it wrong. Think, son. Think how you feel right now. Someone has altered your perception through the biomites—”

  Jim twisted his wrist.

  “No! NO!” Baldy hopped on his good leg. Pain mixed with anger, slurring his words. “Wait! Don’t move, officer. Stay here, wait for the federal agents, they’ll be here in moments, they’ll tell you what’s happening—”

  Jim didn’t need to wait. He’d been a police officer for seven years. He knew how to keep Chicago safe. It started with getting self-righteous pricks off the street. These good people didn’t deserve this, that’s what he was thinking. And it sickened him to the point of rage when the heavyset woman told him what he’d done.

  The perp struggled at first, but even with two good legs he wasn’t a match for Jim. He could wrangle this guy with one hand, if needed. A little pressure on the wrist and the right twist and baldy spun right around, facing the door.

  “You won’t get far!” His face turned red. His scalp was inflamed. “I WILL NOT REST, YOU HEAR ME? I WILL FIND YOU! I WILL FIND YOU!”

  A little extra pressure and the man was on the move. Jim didn’t know who the hell he was talking to. He shouted at the corner of the lobby. It was empty over there. Clearly, he’d lost his mind, seeing things. Probably a biomite misfire. Jim had seen many of those over the last couple years; now it was biomite tweakers causing all the trouble. This guy didn’t look like the type, but nothing ever surprised him.

  Jim got him into the backseat of the squad car as a few more cars arrived. He wasn’t going to wait to explain. He had an impulsive feeling: he needed to get this guy as far away from the hotel as fast as possible. Call it a gut feeling.

  It wasn’t until he was a block away that the buzz faded.

  59

  “Keys.”

  Nix held out his hand, staring at the clerk. She was still in a muddled state, swimming in the frayed field of static that Nix was sending. He wasn’t sure he knew what he was doing, just commanding every biomite within his range to jitter like excited atoms, disturbing their frequency, throwing them into a state of confusion.

  Of static.

  Including his sister.

  Cali was slipping through her delusion. This day would come, Nix just always hoped they could ease into it. He expected to sit down with her and pull back the curtain a little at a time. It would be easier for her mind to accept it on its own time, but Marcus Anderson had burned the illusion to the ground, opening a trapdoor.

  Cali was falling.

  If he didn’t catch her, she might not come back.

  So now she was swimming in the same fog as everyone else. A field of nowhere.

  “Car keys. There’s a rental car waiting for us to pick up.”

  No use. He couldn’t risk selectively lifting her from the morass without clarity returning to the others. The police officer had accepted the implanted thoughts as his own. He was ready to march the enemy out of sight.

  Nix slid over the counter and looked around, pushing papers and folders. There, a key attached to a simple fob, by the computer. He snatched it up and grabbed Cali as she began sliding against the counter.

  “Come on, easy steps,” he whispered, guiding her toward the side exit that led to the parking garage. “Easy steps.”

  First, get her to the car. Get her out of here.

  But it needed to be quickly. Nix already felt icy weakness in his knees. His neck was stiffening under the strain of controlling all the biomites around him. The back of his eyes itched. With his arm around his sister, he ushered her as fast as he could, her feet tripping on the rug. They went past the people standing outside the breakfast room and into the hall.

  Marcus Anderson shouted his dire warning.

  Nix knew that they may never live in peace. But, then again, when had life ever been peaceful?

  60

  Cali and Thomas’s first date was at the State Fair.

  She answered the door and started laughing. They were wearing matching clothes. He wore a red shirt and white shorts. She wore the opposite. They looked in love.

  Total accident.

  They ended the night on the ride that spun around and pressed their bodies to the inside wall. Thomas held her hand. Cali screamed and laughed. And the world went round and round, round and round. The people on the opposite wall smudged into pastel streaks and water filled her eyes and her head went round and round.

  Round and round.

  And Cali went round.

  She was going round.

  The floor dropped out of the ride; people screamed. They were stuck to the sides. Not Cali.

  She was falling.

  Falling.

  And there was no bottom to the ride. No end. Just a gut-dropping fall that lasted forever.

  Maybe she sensed Nix holding her, guiding her along the paisley-patterned carpet and narrow hallways, through a side exit into a gray parking garage. She heard the car honk when he repeatedly pushed the fob, but she didn’t recognize it as a horn or a car or anything.

  Didn’t feel the vinyl against her cheek.

  Didn’t know she curled against the backseat, fingers clawing, grasping. Trying to stop the fall, trying to cling to anything that would find solid ground.

  There was no sense of leaving the dank garage or the sunlight lighting half her face or the turns or the traffic. She sensed motion but not the car’s stop and go.

  Just falling.

  Falling.

  Until she hit something. Perhaps it was bottom. But she didn’t bounce. She went through it like a semisolid wall, one that lacked a real foundation, lacked studs, simply shattered on impact and allowed her through to the other side.

  Cali fell into the memories that she’d capped so long ago.

  ______

  Cali knew she wasn’t special.

  People suffered all over the world. They’d suffered tragedies far worse than hers. But none of that eased her pain. She’d lost all the things that mattered. If her brother did not need her, she had no reason to remain in this world. There would be a painless way to escape, somewhere in the bottom of a prescription.

  But Nix needed her.

  She needed to be there for him. At least until he was an adult. It wouldn’t be fair to take everything from him, too. He didn’t deserve that. He was so much younger than her, a surprise, her parents admitted. After Cali, they had no plans for another child. They were Catholic but didn’t want the big family. They didn’t do much about birth control, so fifteen years after Cali—whap—Nix was conceived.

  Surprise!

  Not that they regretted it. Her father always said it was like swimming in a cold pool: sometimes you just needed pushed in and the water would turn out just fine.

  They were better parents to Nix than they were to Cali. She wasn’t bitter, just noticed they were more patient, less angry. More loving. She was g
lad to see that because Nix, he was a good kid.

  God’s first jab took them away. Cali was old enough to handle that. She was a young adult. She’d found Thomas; she’d moved out and was ready to start her own family. She had a good job and a happy home. The news of their accident was a blow. And with no extended family, Nix was welcomed into their home.

  Thomas was a good substitute father. A good man. From day one, he was exactly what Nix needed. He was going to be a good father. So when Avery was born, she was perfect. And their family was perfect and all the scars were erased. They weathered the storm and were stronger. Closer. Cherished each other like no other family.

  No one deserved the second blow.

  Cali wouldn’t wish that on the devil.

  The call came, the news delivered. She drove to the hospital, numb. She drove without seeing and hearing.

  There was a funeral.

  There were guests and flowers and condolences and tears.

  And then there was silence. There was a gap inside her, a hole that could never be filled. A vacuum that swallowed her life. It hurt. It howled.

  It ate her.

  And Cali would not survive it. She could not live while dangling over a pit of fear, that any moment life could be raped and clawed from one’s clutches. That God could be so cruel. She couldn’t accept the smallness that her life had become.

  There were pills. There was booze. There were mood-altering biomites that suppressed thoughts and pain. But beneath it all was the realization that all was lost. There was nothing worth living for. If not for Nix…

  Cali knew about suppression therapy, that biomites could remove the memory of painful events. Research had proven that victims of tragedy resumed a normal life when trigger-memories were erased. As if they never happened. People, events, accidents… didn’t matter. It could all be gone.

  Just like that.

  But something was wrong with that. Cali couldn’t fathom erasing Avery from her life, as if she never existed. If she forgot about her daughter, if those precious moments were taken—her pink skin at birth, her first smile, first birthday—that would be like killing her all over again. And she couldn’t stand another loss.

  Not again.

  If she were not a biomite engineer, never would it have been possible. She carefully researched the idea and found no evidence of it ever being done. Perhaps it wasn’t possible. Cali wouldn’t accept that. She built a lab in the basement, using all the money left from her late parents and her dear late husband. She even took money from Nix’s trust fund—all of it—with the intention of paying him back. She just needed this first, and then everything would be all right.

  Everything would be all right. Just the way it was supposed to be. She deserved that. God couldn’t take whatever he wanted. She would be proof. The Richards family might not be impervious, they might not be strong…

  But they were smart.

  And Cali coded a strain of biomites with memories of her daughter. It wasn’t all that difficult, really. She simply planned to erase the memory of her daughter’s death and then ran the memory erasure in reverse for her revival. Avery would live just like Cali imagined she would. She would be a perfect little girl.

  Cali would see her. She would feel her.

  And she would have her daughter back.

  On the day she prepared to seed herself, she considered not telling Nix. She was afraid he would be a voice of reason, convince her it was a bad idea. Somewhere, she knew this. But she’d run out of options. Desperation is a convincing drink.

  Nix didn’t say anything. He listened and nodded.

  Perhaps he knew there was no use; she’d made up her mind. Perhaps, like an alcoholic’s spouse wife, he just wanted to see the pain go away. He’d seen her wither, listened to her weep. He watched his sister’s life shrivel to a dried husk.

  And he wanted her to live, too.

  Maybe, deep down, he knew this was a bad idea. But he was drinking from the same well, tainted with desperation.

  He would support her delusion.

  He watched her descend into the basement and close the door behind her. He waited for her upstairs while Cali, cheeks wet, pressed the cold tip of the seeder against the base of her skull while she thumbed through photos of her daughter.

  Touched the trigger.

  And darkness was no more.

  61

  Nix had no idea what the car looked like or where it was. Luck, for once, was on his side. The taillights lit up ten stalls away: a white Ford Focus. He wasn’t sure he could reach it if it were any farther.

  He couldn’t focus on Cali anymore, couldn’t keep her biomites in whiteout, not without completely exhausting himself. Rubber scuffed over the concrete; Cali’s shoes pointed behind her.

  Nix stumbled into the back door. He rested a moment, out of sight from passing cars. He checked her breathing. It was shallow and slow. Completely unconscious.

  Good.

  Maybe her new breeds put her to sleep.

  A horn echoed in the enclosure, shocking him back into action. He opened the door and pushed her into the back. No one would see her. She could sleep.

  She could forget.

  Nix sat in the driver’s seat for a minute. Back in the lobby, everyone would return to normal. Confusion would reign, memories obscured and illogical. Eventually, someone would show up and figure out what happened. Someone would come looking for them.

  Marcus Anderson would.

  Nix started the car. He could barely feel the pedals.

  He drove carefully out of the parking garage, took a right at the exit and waited for the GPS to show him the nearest interstate. A police car flew past. His knuckles turned white, palms slick on the wheel. He snuck a peek in the rearview, watched the cruiser’s taillights ignite and felt a cold twist in his belly before it turned the corner.

  The GPS’s voice was female. At the next stoplight, she said, turn right.

  ______

  Somewhere on I-64 South, Nix pulled into a rest stop and parked far from the other cars.

  He was starving.

  And tired. The adrenaline had worn off. He had to pinch his legs to stay awake at the wheel. He needed coffee but had no money. The car had half a tank of gas and it would get them through Indiana, but after that…

  He got out and stretched his legs. Cali hadn’t moved much. Occasionally, her nails would scratch against the seat like she was trying to claw her way into the trunk. That much told him she was alive. He wanted to open the door, listen to her breathe, feel her pulse. It would look like he was hauling a dead body.

  The driver’s seat was still warm. He reached over the seat and pushed two fingers against her neck. Still warm. Still beating.

  Still alive.

  He got back on the interstate. They had another three or four hours’ worth of gas.

  ______

  Lexington, Tennessee.

  Cali sat up.

  Nix’s eyes flicked from the road to the mirror, waiting. And waiting. Her face, still haunted by weight loss. Cali’s expression was foggy, at best. She didn’t seem to look at anything in particular. Just sat there. Nix just drove.

  “We’re going to need gas,” he said.

  He didn’t know what else to say. That was the most important thing on the list at the moment. Stranded on the side of the road was a losing strategy. But Cali didn’t respond. Her expression didn’t change. She stared into space. Maybe she didn’t hear him. Nix drove another couple miles.

  “We need food,” she said.

  Nix didn’t rush his response, sensing she was processing things slowly. “We need money,” he finally said.

  Her head turned side to side, as if listening. “Next exit,” she said.

  He thought about asking what next, how they were going to pay for anything. They couldn’t use a credit card. Nix, for one, didn’t even have a wallet. He wasn’t sure if Cali had anything in her bag. Camping in a farmer’s field and eating corn wasn’t going to last long.
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  The next exit was ten miles. There was no conversation. Cali looked no less foggy. Nix was dizzy from looking from the road to the mirror. The car rolled into a Sunoco with a Subway and stopped at one of the tanks. He threw it in park.

  Cali’s hand rested on the door handle. “I’ll be right back.”

  Nix watched her methodically walk inside, like a sedated mental patient. He kept track of her through the glass wall as she walked down the aisles. He lost her somewhere on the other side. Minutes went by. He thumbed the steering wheel, debating going in.

  He took a deep breath, envisioning her lying on the floor and the clerk calling 911 and the police arriving—

  Never should’ve let her go in alone.

  He grabbed the door handle. The parking lot smelled like sour beer. One foot on the pavement—

  Cali pushed the door open.

  It wasn’t a straight line she walked, but she made it to the car. She tossed a plastic bag of food inside the car and fell in the backseat. Her head tilted back, eyes falling shut. “Fill it up.”

  “With gas?”

  “There’s thirty dollars on the pump.”

  He didn’t bother asking how or where the food came from. No one was coming out shouting about a robbery. Nix just filled the tank. When he turned around, Cali was asleep. There was an apple in her hand, a single bite notched out of it. Nix checked her breathing, just to be sure. Then he drove off, shoving candy bars and bananas in his mouth, washing it down with water.

  Cali slept until they reached the mountains.

  62

  Marcus was one of the first to board.

  The airline assistant wheeled him down the gateway to the plane. The stewardess smiled and tried to help. He just wanted her to get the hell out of the way. He managed to find his first-class seat, sweating through the pain, without bending his leg. There was just enough leg room to lay it out straight.