Halfskin Boxed

by Tony Bertauski

  Jamie knows what kind of services indebted halfskins do. If you can’t pay, you puppet. You deliver things. You do things.

  And you like it.

  As long as you never leave, you will like the things you do to people. And the things they do to you.

  Charlie grabs her sleeve. “I won’t let them hurt you.”

  “I got to think about this, Charlie.”

  “There’s nothing to think about. They promised me you won’t get hurt.”

  “Can you stop them?”

  “Just…come on, Jamie. We don’t have a choice. We already wasted our lives—we’re tapped out. We got to go halfskin to be right again. Once we’re paid up, we’ll be good. We’ll be right. You know that. You saw how I changed.”

  “They’ll hurt me, Charlie. They’ll hurt you.”

  “But I can’t…I can’t go back, babe. It’s too late. I’m already there.”

  “I know.”

  He tries to say more, tries to promise everything will be all right, but nothing comes out. He can’t protect her.

  Maybe it’s worth it. Maybe having everything she wants and feeling how she wants to feel and not caring about shit music is the way to happiness. Maybe she just needs to sell her soul while it’s still worth something.

  She gets out of the booth. She doesn’t know where the exit is, but she’ll look for it all night if that’s what it takes. Right now she just needs to be in her own head, experience her own field, think this through. She was sure she wanted this, but now…

  “You can’t leave.” Charlie grabs her wrist, prying her fingers open. He pushes the pill into her palm. “This is a onetime shot, babe. You leave and you don’t get another. That pill won’t activate outside the club.”

  “I got to think about it, Charlie.”

  “There’s nothing to think about!” His smile falters. Finally, a sign of the real Charlie shines, not that fake happy smile. He’s still in there. He needs her. And she needs him.

  She rolls the heavy pill between finger and thumb, the surface smooth and cold. She knows he’s right. Where will she go if she leaves? What’s out there can’t be worse than this pill. There’s nothing outside that door but her life.

  This can’t get worse.

  She closes her eyes and throws the pill in her mouth. An aluminum flavor coats her tongue and leaves a metallic trail down her esophagus. It lands in her stomach.

  He holds out his hand. “I promise.”

  And those are his last words.

  The normal-looking guy at the bar, the one leaning on his elbows and hating the music, the one staring at her, starts walking. He looks like he’s coming toward her but turns for the dance floor without a bounce in his step. He lifts both arms above his head. The music slurs.

  The lights dim.

  Gray walls appear out of nowhere. The ceiling transforms into rusted rafters with harsh fluorescent lighting.

  Silence falls.

  In the moments before the partygoers drop, before the floor is littered with bodies, Jamie looks back. Charlie is clutching the table. He feels something winding down, turning off. The whites show around his beautiful blue eyes before they turn gray—

  He slumps to the floor.

  They all do.

  2

  Paul massages his temples.

  Lieutenant Dobbs ducks under the police barrier. Dobbs talks to a few of the officers at the crowd barrier before delivering a tall cup of coffee. Another van has arrived, the satellite receiver extending above the crowd. There’s no such thing as secrets anymore. The bloggers and news corps probably know more about the warehouse than Paul.

  The coffee is black and scalding.

  Paul chases five aspirin with a swallow, scanning the crowd. Green lines lock on to individuals, automatically running them through facial recognition. No outstanding warrants—this time. Amazing how many fugitives in today’s age of facial recognition come to crime scenes. It’s like the mothership calling them home. This time it’s mostly certified bloggers streaming video and nosy locals posting on Facebook or YouTube.

  Dobbs follows Paul. “Feds are arriving in an hour.”

  “Good.” Paul can focus on crowd control and the impending media landslide. Maybe catch up on sleep.

  “They’re bringing a shit-ton of bricks.”

  “One brick is enough.” He blows on the coffee. The caffeine only fuels his surging headache.

  Paul raps on the door, orange paint peeling off the metal surface. This place is registered as storage for some offshore company. They own several buildings in the area, all of them consuming almost no power. They’ll never find the owners.

  Paul kills his olfactory senses before the door opens. The briny scent of the harbor fades. When the door swings open, the crowd jockeys for position to get a glimpse. Paul quickly slips inside, where the atmosphere is dank and humid. Despite the absence of smell, he feels the odor cling to his skin, something that won’t shower off.

  Paul sets the coffee on the floor.

  Birds look from rusted girders, impartial to the death below. The bodies were in tangled heaps when Paul arrived. Almost all of them are in their twenties or thirties, their clothing stained with sweat. Most are gaunt and sickly, like living zombies.

  Now dead zombies.

  Folding chairs and card tables are scattered to his right, with red plastic cups and stale bread on the ones still upright. A makeshift island bar made of plywood and two-by-fours is in the corner.

  Poison, Paul had first thought when he saw the place. These nuts laced up some drinks and offed themselves in dramatic fashion. But it was just water. Would’ve been a hell of a lot easier if it was poison.

  “Sarge!” someone calls from the other side.

  Paul raises his hand. Officers are still moving the bodies, capturing faces for recognition. Some are still a mystery, probably having facial reconfiguration. A few of them are registering greater than 90% biomites. If those reports are accurate, they could make subtle changes to their looks with a thought.

  Paul slowly walks between the bodies, avoiding the man among the officers that doesn’t belong. He’s dressed like an ordinary citizen with thinning hair and an overhanging gut.

  M0ther’s agent, designed to blend. A brick.

  He did this. The patrons’ nixes were invisible to M0ther until he got here. Once the frequency was decoded, he turned them over to M0ther and she flipped the switch.

  Legally it’s not murder because, as federal law sees it, they weren’t human anymore.

  Paul scans the brick’s face but doesn’t find a match in the facial recognition database because he doesn’t exist. He’s a fabricated human, 100% biomites. A fucking brick. Funny how the government is fighting the war on halfskins with bricks. Fire with fire, they say.

  Paul’s never had to deal with one. Now an orgy of these plastic fucks is coming to town.

  Three of his officers are outside an office door in the back left corner. Manny, the shortest of the three, says, “You got to see that office, Sarge. I mean, holy hell—”

  “Why is she cuffed?” Paul points at the lone survivor.

  “She started spitting. We warned her.”

  “So you cuffed her?”

  “Well, yeah. When the brick moved her boyfriend, she lost it. Stevens had to subdue her and she started spitting. We warned her twice.”

  The girl is on the floor, slumped against the wall. Stringy hair hangs over her face. The only pieces of furniture in sight are metal chairs and broken tables not worthy of a garage sale.

  “Pull that lounger out of the office,” Paul says.

  “The brick said leave it; we’re not supposed to touch anything in there.”

  “You don’t work for him.”

  Manny and Stevens fetch the lounger. Maybe he should put her in the office so she doesn’t have to look at all these bodies, but he has the feeling she doesn’t want to go far from her boyfriend. Besides, that office smells worse than the warehouse. Judging by t
he bedsores on the asshole they found in it, he almost never moved.

  Paul kicks a card table to make room. The bread hits the floor like cardboard. He squats next to the girl, his belt binding his waist.

  “I’d like to take those handcuffs off,” he says softly. “But I need you to promise you won’t run. Can you do that?”

  She doesn’t respond.

  Paul leans over to visually capture her face. Her profile scrolls across his vision. In seconds, he knows her past and is a lot less surprised she’s here.

  “Jamie?” he says. “I know you’ve been through a lot tonight. I’m going to get you out of here as soon as I can, but in the meantime, I want you to rest comfortably, all right?”

  She lifts her head but doesn’t answer. Paul sways back, struck by the similarity to his niece. When he was a kid, it took things like LSD to fry a mind. Today, the right kinds of biomites could char a kid sky-high.

  “I’m cold off,” she mutters.

  Paul looks at the officers.

  “Means she can’t run her field,” Manny says. “She wants music.”

  “Why can’t she have it?”

  Manny jabs his thumb at the brick.

  “If it’s just music, you’ll get it,” Paul says.

  Her eyes focus. And then she’s looking through him. Her expression turns cold and hard. She’s not charred, she’s still present. She still has enough clay—at least a little more than half, or else she’d be on the floor. Maybe seeing this place littered with halfskins will save her.

  “We got a deal?” he asks.

  She nods.

  Paul cuts the plastic handcuffs. She rubs her wrists and the officers help her onto the stained lounger. She must have her olfactory senses shut down; at least the brick gave her that. She rests comfortably.

  “I just want the music back,” she says.

  “We all do, honey.” Paul puts his hand on her forehead.

  “Sergeant Jennings?”

  The brick is behind him. He looks like a middle-aged man with bad posture, wearing brown pants and a checkered shirt. No one would remember him in a crowd.

  “I’m Agent Manning.” The brick offers his hand. Paul doesn’t even look at it. Manning waits several moments before dropping it. His left eye twitches.

  All the appearances of an imperfect human.

  These fabrications are designed with frailties to make people feel comfortable, as if they’re interacting with something real, talking to something other than a walking composite of biomites. Paul swears he can smell the plastic nature of this imposter even though his olfactory senses are dulled.

  “Your superiors have briefed you on the situation, I’m sure, but I would like to be thorough. Are you familiar with the Biomite Oversight Committee?” Manning asks. “Do you know what we do?”

  Paul doesn’t respond. Doesn’t even blink. Manning looks at the officers that gather around.

  “I realize this is difficult for you. Losing life is never easy. I can assure you that we don’t approve of this any more than you do.”

  Manning puts his hand to his chest and makes eye contact with each of the officers. Paul tries not to smirk. This…thing…imitating empathy is good. Some people will buy it, they’ll forget it’s a fabrication not capable of true emotions but rather trained to influence humans.

  “I was assigned to investigate evidence of halfskin activity in this area,” Manning continues. “I infiltrated the premises under the guise of a client and analyzed the use of nixes.”

  He didn’t need to explain it, but he just did. Paul admires the slick approach to avoiding their ire by appearing coy rather than arrogant. It’s not the strength these things possess that should be feared but the cunning.

  “I completed my analysis at 2:33 a.m. My report was confirmed at 3:02 a.m. The result was the shutdown of one hundred and thirty-two halfskins. There is one survivor.”

  Paul looks at the results. He knows the law; it doesn’t matter if he agrees. “You can leave,” he says.

  “On the contrary, a team of agents will be arriving for further analysis within the next couple of hours. We will cooperate with your department in every possible way—”

  “You killed them, Manning. Your job is done.”

  He acknowledged its name. Goddamnit.

  Manning stands a little taller. His relaxed expression hardens. A dead look fills his eyes. He takes a moment to look around, not so much to see anything but to let Paul interpret the sudden change in direction.

  “Paul,” he says, “I am an extension of M0ther.”

  “I know what you are.”

  “There is no arguing this point, Paul. Every analysis has been confirmed that without M0ther, your species would be consumed by greed. By extension, you fabricated me and others like me to save yourselves.”

  “I never signed up for killing people.”

  “These people were killing themselves, Paul. You were allowing it. You are mostly human and, therefore, incapable of adequately handling the situation.”

  “A brick to save us all. Fucking poetic.”

  Manning shuffles within Paul’s comfort zone. “Your officers will leave the premises. They’ll handle the crowd outside. No one is allowed to speak about what they saw or what is happening. No one, under any circumstances, is allowed in the back room.”

  “I’ll run that by the chief.”

  “The girl,” Manning continues, “will be placed in the back room. Her mother is not allowed to visit until she has been interrogated.”

  “We’ll decide where the girl goes.”

  Manning takes a deep breath. Does it really need to breathe?

  A cold vibration encases Paul’s body. His skin tightens. His skull hardens. Pressure fills the space behind his eyes and pushes his tongue down.

  The world looks bleak and distant.

  He has very little awareness of following Manning to the back of the warehouse. All his officers come along, some with expressions as blank as his. Others appear shocked.

  “Are we clear, Paul?”

  Paul nods, but not of his own accord. His biomites have betrayed him. Manning—an extension of M0ther—just hijacked them. He took control.

  Biomite protestors always complain about the government having too much power. As Paul watches his men follow the brick’s orders, he knows firsthand that they’re right. The only person capable of resisting would have to be free of biomites.

  And there are very few clays left in the world.

  3

  Orange cones are on the pier, and a sign that warns people to keep out. There’s too much activity around the warehouse for anyone to care about the rotting wharf or the lone person on it.

  Nix Richards stands about halfway to the end. A ship moves past his peripheral vision, waves slapping the leaning pillars. He pulls the hood over his head. He doesn’t mind the wet and the cold.

  No one bothers watching from this vantage point because it’s too far to see or hear. Nix enhances his vision, magnifies the crowd, downloads their identities and thoughts, filters through the chatter, paying more attention to the bloggers than reporters. They’ve got a better handle on the halfskin subculture. News organizations still pander to the older generations that hold out hope for yesteryear, that biomites are just a passing phase.

  He caught a video stream from earlier that morning, before he arrived and before they erected the screen inside the front door: a blogger caught a view inside the warehouse. Nix had snipped a few stills from it and enhanced the resolution to see the police wandering around a pile of bodies.

  Nix was lucky to get to the scene so quickly. He was at the airport in Vegas when he caught the news, and immediately bought a ticket to Seattle. By the time he arrived, the place was crawling with cops.

  Nix had disguised his imprinted identity and worked his way through the crowd. If one of those cops caught a whiff of his true identity, that Nix Richards—the man that invisible biomites were named after—is watching from the pier…wel
l, that warehouse story would fall off the front page.

  His eyes begin to tingle.

  Raine is calling. Perhaps he hasn’t noticed. He’s been consumed with screening the flood of data, looking for a way to get closer and, eventually, inside. The window of opportunity is closing. He can deal with cops; they’re still human. The bricks, though, would be difficult. And more are on the way.

  Nix initiates an opening in his perception field. The boards creak as bare feet walk past. Raine’s image stops a few feet in front of him, absorbing the view. She’s wearing a loose, long-sleeved shirt and shorts that expose all of her legs. The rain, though, falls right through her.

  “We shouldn’t be here,” she says.

  “This could be our last chance.”

  “There are other fabricators, Nix. This isn’t the last one.”

  Her lips are plump, her eyebrows fiercely pinched. Twenty years have passed, but she looks twenty-five, not forty. Nix, on the other hand, is forty but looks sixty. That’s intentional, but he still wouldn’t look as young as her.

  He rubs his weary face slick with precipitation. His eyes are exhausted. He’s had to stay focused and engaged with the highly charged environment, all while maintaining his facially transfigured disguise. Even Raine’s image is a little fuzzy. He can’t slip, not here.

  Raine’s fingers are warm on his hand. She leans against him; he feels the illusion of her weight. He feels all of this as if she’s actually there. It comforts him. She’s always been there.

  Three black cars come down the road on the right. They park a block from the warehouse. Nix lets his pulse quicken. His opportunity may already be over. He magnifies his vision, green lines capturing their details and pulling their identities imprinted on their biomites. Pierce County police. They gather around the lead car. Nix eavesdrops on their conversation about hunting season.

  “This isn’t necessary,” Raine hisses, even though no one could possibly hear her. “I don’t need to be fabricated.”

  There are wrinkles on the backs of Nix’s hands. If his body aged normally, he’d look a little more worn from running and stress. The normal progression of aging, however, has changed since the birth of biomites. No one knows what a forty-year-old man is supposed to look like.