Halfskin Boxed

by Tony Bertauski

  The following week, someone that his dad worked with came over to the house. Steven didn’t want to wait for it to heal. He didn’t want to rest, either. He was a three-sport athlete. He would go far.

  The man from his dad’s work boosted Steven’s biomites and his arm felt better the next day. He said the boost didn’t take him over 10%, but it didn’t make any sense. His mom said that would be useless.

  These biomites were special, Dad’s friend said. They would make sure his bones didn’t break anymore.

  “This is between us,” his dad said.

  18

  The chains lift a link at a time, leaving indelible impressions on Jamie’s psyche. Her body is filled with sand. Her teeth hum.

  Fabric scratches her face.

  Her eyelids crack open. Lines are scratched into the vinyl, her breath blowing back in her face. She stares at the felt ceiling of a car. The windows are dark. The air is ripe with body odor and the sharp tang of urine. It’s not until she pushes up that she notices the wet stain on her inner thighs. The seat squeaks as she sits up.

  Her head is heavy.

  A look of shock—usually that reserved for concussion victims—holds court until her name, her very own name, falls out of the sky. Jamie.

  My name is Jamie. I’m in the backseat of a car.

  A semi-truck flies past, jostling the car. Its headlights, for a moment, illuminate a man sitting in the grass. Darkness returns and the highway is lonely again.

  Recall, Jamie thinks.

  The thought command kicks in. Pressure builds between her ears like air inflating a dead tire. It’s followed by trickling sensations as brain biomites reboot neural connections, connecting memories buried in the subconscious, bringing them to light like defragging a computer.

  Charlie and the club.

  Fallen bodies.

  Police.

  And the old man. She remembers the old man named Marcus Anderson. His watery gray eyes and wispy hairs loose on an otherwise bald scalp. He’s the last thing she remembers, his face seething inches from hers.

  Three days ago.

  She remembers nothing after that. As if she’s been knocked out.

  The man remains still, as if the jagged edge of a distant mountain range is speaking to him. Her confusion is replaced with the instinct to move. She focuses on the back of his head and chats in his direction, a sort of welcoming gesture, a digital way of saying hello. And identify yourself.

  He’s closed down the lines of communication, no chatting or opportunity to know his name. Strangely, she can’t locate where she’s at. Her biomites are not locating GPS, just churning out a subtle clicking sound that’s searching for data. Jamie stays seated several minutes before slowly pulling on the door handle.

  Cold air rushes over her wet denim. The highway is dark, flat, and long. “Hey,” she says.

  He doesn’t move.

  Jamie grips the door, her fingers shaking. She could command biomite cells to give up energy to warm her core temperature, but she’s already depleted. Perhaps she hasn’t eaten in as many days as she’s forgotten.

  The stranger is wearing a T-shirt.

  “Hey!”

  She digs gravel from the frozen ground and heaves it in his direction.

  “Where the hell am I?” she screams.

  He turns his head slightly before rolling to his knees and standing. Green lines focus Jamie’s vision on the darkened face, but her facial recognition churns like the GPS. But she recognizes a memory. She saw him in the warehouse.

  He’s the one that helped.

  “Idaho,” he says.

  He stops several feet from the car, hands on hips. The lower half of his face is shaded with stubble. His hair is a mess. He wears the same shock that greeted Jamie in the backseat.

  “Who are you?” she asks.

  He looks down the road like the answer might pull up and honk. Stress can trigger a memory dump, especially in cops that witness fucked-up things. A biomite reset would temporarily wipe the slate and reintroduce memories a little at a time.

  Memory dumps don’t compel a man to kidnap.

  “We’re almost out of gas.” He points at the car.

  “Why am I with you?”

  He searches for another answer. He gestures to her trembling fingers. “We should find a place to sleep.”

  “Stay the fuck away from me.”

  Hands up, he begs innocence, stepping no closer. She wonders if she mistook his exhaustion for shock. Maybe he’s been driving as long as she’s been out.

  “There’s a town up ahead, about ten miles or so,” he says. “We’ll get separate rooms.”

  “Why?”

  “We got to rest.”

  “No, why you doing this? Why am I in a car with you?”

  “I don’t know. I just…I need to get you far away from there.”

  He points in the other direction, as if Seattle is to his left. He probably has no clue what’s back there, but he’s right.

  It’s dangerous back there.

  “You got money?”

  He nods.

  “I need clothes,” she says.

  He moves around the front of the car. Jamie keeps one foot outside until the motor turns. Maybe if it wasn’t the middle of winter, if she hadn’t pissed herself, if she had a clue where she was…she would run for it.

  Instead, she climbs into the back and sits on a wet seat, watching the dashed lines race through the headlights.

  ______

  Jamie sits on the corner of the bed, twisting her fingers, staring at her reflection above the dresser. Her eyes are sunken, her cheeks ashen. Exhaustion gnaws at her, but sleep has been elusive.

  Synthesized dance beats haunt her. No matter how many guitars grind in her ears or how edgy the death metal rings in her head, the warehouse’s party mix lives on. She wants to scream, wants to cry, wants to smash the flat-screen TV. She can’t remember the last time she ate or had a period. She doesn’t get emotional, not like this.

  She killed those feelings a long time ago.

  This backwards-ass hotel has no Internet service and her personal account has been royally fucked by the old man and his bricks. Jamie has no connection to the outside world besides a TV.

  It’s not enough to distract her.

  A shadow passes the window. She eases one eye between the curtains. The parking lot is mostly empty, snow mounded around the perimeter. The car outside her room is empty, the back doors open.

  Paul comes into view with a sheet over his shoulder. Jamie turns the music down to a whisper and waits several seconds before peeking again. He’s tucking the sheet over the backseat to cover the piss stains. His hair is damp and combed. Even through the windshield, his color is better. More normal. And he’s not moving weird.

  He looks directly at her.

  Jamie jumps back. He felt her watching him, she’s sure of it. Are we synchronized?

  She had synchronized with Charlie, put their biomites on similar frequencies so they could share resources. They could access each other’s music, video streams and apps. Before that, they chatted like regular people, but after synchronizing she started receiving his thoughts, began to feel his emotions. Even when they were miles apart, she knew what he was feeling, even after he charred. That’s how she knew she didn’t want to char herself.

  It was a merged consciousness, the sort of thing that meant true love. Her pain was his; his affection was hers. There was no hiding once you synchronized. Two people living as one.

  But now there’s no one on the other end. And it’s cold inside.

  The knocking is sudden. She rubs her face, whispering, “Relax, Jamie.”

  She cracks the door. It’s the middle of January. Icy air blows under her collar.

  Paul stands back. His coat is new. “You sleep all right?”

  Jamie barely nods.

  “I’m going to check us out.”

  “Where we going?”

  “East, for a while.” He looks t
o his left. “Maybe turn south into Colorado.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Seattle’s the other way.”

  “No. Why are we still driving?”

  The unfocused haze returns. He throws his hands up when she starts closing the door. “Wait,” he says. “You don’t have to go with me.”

  The doorknob twists, the gold-plated surface strained beneath her knuckles. Right before he said it, she was thinking that she wouldn’t get in that car with him. She wasn’t going to go.

  The wind whistles through the pencil-thin opening.

  “I didn’t kidnap you, you’re not under arrest, and this is still a free country, so you’re free to go.” His padded gloves drop to his sides. “But where to, then, huh? Where will you go? Back to Seattle? There won’t be any halfskin dens up there for a while, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  He tips his head, looking around for thoughts.

  “Will you go back to your mother? Sleep on her couch while she numbs out on pills and booze, pays the bills with government cheese? How long will you last, Jamie? How long before the walls start shrinking and you get back to facing that ache you carried into the warehouse, the one Charlie promised would go away if you swallowed the pill? You can go back to your old life, climb back on that mouse wheel and start running, but it’ll take you to the same place: nowhere. I’m not going to stop you.”

  She wants to close the door, slam it shut so his words won’t come true, but that last half inch just won’t close. His words are cruel. But they’re true.

  He pulls on a stocking cap.

  Jamie pushes the hotel door closed, the bolt snicking into place. She shivers with her hand on the knob, the wind gusting against the window. She feels it howl inside her.

  In just a few minutes, he had scooped all the bullshit out of her, left her hollowed out, staring into an emotional hole. The one Charlie promised would go away.

  ______

  A little bell rings above the door.

  “I’ll be right with you, hon.” A waitress snaps a ticket to the short-order carousel. Tuna melt sandwiches prod Jamie’s salivary glands.

  Several old-timers hunch over cups of coffee on padded stools. A row of red leather booths line the plate-glass windows with men reading newspapers with prescription glasses. Paul is in the back corner, a television anchored above his head. At thirty-some years old, he could be the youngest one in the diner. Certainly the most handsome.

  The diner’s music clashes with her audio. She silences the heavy metal crashing in her head. Paul has a newspaper folded in one hand, arm stretched across the seat.

  She wanders over. “How’d you know all that?”

  “Good morning.”

  “How’d you know?”

  “Know what?”

  “Everything you said back at the hotel, it was true. How’d you know?”

  “It’s obvious.”

  “No, it isn’t. Last night you looked like an empty puppet, now you’re reading my mind.”

  Paul drops the paper next to a plate of bacon and half-eaten eggs. He looks out the window. Dirty frost is crusting the corners. “I know you,” he finally says. “I can’t explain it.”

  “Try or I’m not getting in the car.”

  He raps the table, shaking his head. A secretive smirk comes and goes as the waitress tops off his coffee and pours a cup for Jamie without asking.

  “Something changed,” he says. “When the bricks arrived at the warehouse, something changed. I’m having a hard time sorting it out. They did something to all of us.” He taps the table again, hanging his head. “It was like…thoughts and…and emotions…they were like information floating freely. I was feeling things and hearing thoughts I knew weren’t mine. I couldn’t tell if I was scared or you were scared or someone else. There were just no barriers.”

  “You’re saying you can read my mind?”

  “That’s not it. I just…had a sense. Really, Jamie, you’re not hard to read. The waitress knew you wanted coffee before you did.”

  Jamie’s hands quiver. She shakes three packets of sugar and stirs them into the cup. “So you just decided to kidnap me?”

  “I didn’t kidnap you, Jamie. They were going to take you. I’ve heard the rumors of what they do to confiscated halfskins, you probably have too. Call it twelve years of law enforcement instinct that made me do it.”

  “They can track us, you know.”

  “Probably. But I have plenty of cash and it’s been a couple days. Nothing so far.”

  “It’s been that long?”

  “As far as I can tell.” He seems a bit disturbed by this.

  “So now what?”

  “We keep moving, find a safe zone.”

  “There’s no such thing. M0ther sees all.”

  He shrugs. “Maybe.”

  She clutches her coat sleeves, tapping her foot. Her eyes flick to his plate. Paul waves at the front desk and holds up two fingers. He shoves his plate aside and points at the cracked leather bench opposite him. Jamie swallows in protest, refusing to budge. He’s got all the answers, saying everything she wants to hear. She’s got no reason to leave, but she can’t sit down, can’t take his invitation.

  Until the food arrives.

  Jamie finds herself reaching for the spoon, sliding across the stiff seat and shoveling food into her wet mouth. She doesn’t look up until she’s finished. Within minutes, her stomach goes from shriveled to bursting. She pushes the plate away.

  Paul goes back to reading the newspaper. His eyes are bright and alert. Jamie sips her coffee and tries to run him through facial recognition, but there’s no free service in this dirt-hill town.

  “Why can’t I identify you?” she asks.

  “You don’t have the authority.”

  “You’re a cop, not the president.”

  He shrugs, turning the newspaper over. “Maybe you’re broken.”

  “What was wrong with you last night? Why the zombie act?”

  “Like I said, the bricks did something to us. Probably the same reason you slept for days.”

  “So you just left? Just clocked out, threw me in the car and no one noticed?”

  The newspaper lowers. “Exactly. Listen, you don’t have a clue what M0ther can do.”

  “Oh, I think I do. I’m a fucking authority on what she can do.”

  The woman in the adjacent booth looks at her. Jamie stares back until she turns around.

  “All I’m saying is, I’m trying to wrap my mind around what happened in the warehouse. Those bricks were inside our heads, Jamie. They were making my officers and me walk and talk like toy soldiers. And even after all of that, I’ve still got a feeling we ain’t seen nothing. I always thought I knew what she could do, but I got a taste of it, and I’ll be honest, I got scared.”

  “So you took me with you?”

  “You needed rescuing.”

  “How do you know one of those bricks didn’t give you those thoughts and make you want to leave?”

  “No.” He drains the last bit of his coffee. “What I did made sense.”

  The waitress arrives for another refill. He doesn’t stop her. There’s no ring on his finger, not even the hint that a ring was ever there. Maybe he’s just as simple as he looks, just a bachelor living to serve. He’s not that much older than her—ten or fifteen years, maybe. Despite the reasonable age gap, he feels like a father, not a cradle-robbing psychopath. Maybe it’s because he reads the paper and carries a phone. Or maybe because he just doesn’t look at her that way.

  But there’s a dead pill inside her, and it contains vital information that Marcus Anderson wants.

  Maybe she just got lucky Paul was there.

  Jamie warms her hands around the mug, staring into the black coffee. The caffeine hums in her head. Then she realizes something. I’m cold off.

  Her perception field is down. No music, no visual augments. Even her taste buds are unaltered, the food bland and the coffee bitter. And when’s the last
time that happened?

  “So we just drive?” she asks.

  “We just drive.”

  Paul finishes reading.

  Jamie rests her head against the glass. It’s some time later when he wakes her up, still in the booth.

  19

  Nix drops into the booth. He used to groan just to sound old. Now it comes naturally.

  “Want a menu?” a waiter asks.

  “Water’s fine.”

  “You waiting on a room? Could be an hour.”

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  The waiter pulls the plastic menu off the table and returns with a glass of water. Nix’s reflection looks back from the window in “Portland’s #1 Dream Café.”

  Dream Long. Dream Safe.

  According to experts, no one can achieve Dreamland without accelerated assistance. To do so would be the fastest route to charring the brain. Biomites cannot support the lucid experience without irreversible damage.

  There are always claims that someone had done so, that somebody can visit an alternate reality by closing their eyes. They were ridiculed or proven false with brain scans and biomite feedback reports. Meanwhile, dream cafés are projected to be the highest grossing industry in the world.

  But I can’t be the only one.

  Televisions hang behind the bar, spouting news from Seattle. Scenes of an empty warehouse pan across the screens. The bodies had been claimed, examined and buried. “They were almost bricks,” an anonymous source claims. “Every one of them damn near 99% biomite.”

  Experts doubted the findings. They should doubt everything Marcus Anderson and his bricks touch. It’s just more lies, reality manipulated for some greater cause.

  He chats through Portland’s #1 Dream Café Internet, where he can hide his identity. It’s the best way to scan cyberspace for rumors of nixes and black market fabricators. Searches like that will prick the NSA’s ears as quickly as googling “how to bomb an airplane.” But tangle the search in the digital crumbs of the backroom dream junkies and no one knows exactly who was searching. Besides, dream cafés were clogged with wannabe halfskins searching for black markets.

  He downloads the most recent hits into his brain biomite storage for later sifting. Damn near all of it will be false leads, thanks to Seattle. Anyone with a fabricator would be quiet after the warehouse—some might even shut their doors. They knew this day would come, like a smoker knows cancer is in the future. No one cares until spots show up on an X-ray.