Halfskin Boxed

by Tony Bertauski

  She swims in indecision, but there’s nowhere for her to go. Much later, Nix marvels how fortunate it was that Paul was with her, that he seemed trustworthy enough to bring along. Nix couldn’t drive her to Cali’s alone. It was almost too perfect.

  Paul’s presence would make all the difference.

  Jamie hangs on to Paul as they descend the steps to the parking lot. Nix taps his teeth, numbness slowly fading.

  29

  Snow narrows the winding road.

  Paul keeps both hands on the wheel, hunching forward. The headlights illuminate heavy snowflakes staggering to the ground. Beyond, the road is dark and unknown.

  The GPS says he’s close.

  Nix and Jamie are sleeping in the backseat. Nix remained awake for hours, but his words began to slur. He eventually fogged up, sometimes responding to a question a minute later. Paul frequently stopped to check on them.

  “There’s no address,” Nix had told him. “But there are coordinates. You’ll know it when you get there.”

  Paul didn’t plan on Nix going unconscious. Occasionally, he groaned and spit out nonsense as if nightmares were escaping. Perhaps that’s what he’s made of: nightmares.

  Paul had heard of Nixon Richards.

  He was a kid when he redlined, about Jamie’s age. Those were the days when 40% biomites got you incarcerated for observation. The first generation of biomites behaved like cancer, slowly consuming the body’s clay. People didn’t have a choice of going halfskin; they were all destined to reach it at some point. Paul’s father always said that, during those days, you just hoped you’d reach old age before that.

  After that, the stories get sketchy. The most popular one claims that Nixon Richards eclipsed into a biomite rage and attacked a guard. He was aggressively subdued and ended up in a hospital, where he would likely be shut down.

  And then he disappeared.

  Nixon Richards and his sister, Dr. Cali Richards, somehow turned their biomites invisible. Occasionally Internet rumors would revive their names, where they were reverently whispered. About a year later, a new generation of biomites was discovered by garage techs that halted the runaway biomite division. The redline laws were rescinded. Halfskin status had become a choice.

  That’s when the real fun began.

  There was a sharp decline in shutdowns but not for the reasons the government promoted. Secret variants of biomites were popping up. People were still going halfskin. M0ther just couldn’t see them.

  It always seemed odd that the new generation of biomites was first discovered by a hobbyist, and not a team of nanobiometric engineers with all the money in the world. The rumors always traced back to Dr. Cali Richards, now a digital goddess, that leaked her discoveries.

  Paul keeps his attention on the road. Truth be told, he was excited when Nix first suggested a safe place. He tried to kill that emotional response, to think rationally. But Jamie was right…we’re going nowhere.

  He lets up on the gas. The GPS shows two dots—the car and the destination—on top of each other. The road, however, is desolate and houses rare. Snow-crusted trees rise from the banks. He comes around a sharp turn.

  The gate appears to his right.

  Brick columns peek out from piles of snow where someone has plowed an opening. The cast-iron gate absorbs the headlights’ glare, the entry drive beyond vanishing into the trees. Paul stops in the middle of the road. The gate doesn’t open.

  Snow gathers on the windshield.

  He gets out to inspect the gate. There are tire tracks that lead to the gate. The road curves to the left, but the trees are too thick to see anything. He shakes the bars; snow falls to the ground.

  He plods back to the car. The two are disheveled and slumped in the backseat. She’s drooling. Nix’s teeth are clenched.

  “We’re here.” Paul shakes Nix. The old man’s head wobbles. “Hey. Wake up.”

  He gives him a couple sharp slaps. No response, not even a groan.

  “Shit.”

  Nix has a pulse. So does Jamie.

  “Jamie, wake up.” He gently shakes her. She won’t come out of it. He’s got to separate them, break the connection. He tries to pull Nix’s hand off her forearm. Jamie’s arm is bent at an angle beneath his white-knuckled grip. Her flesh is sickly purple, the fingers swollen.

  “Hey! Hey! You’re killing her! Let go, goddamnit!”

  He tries to peel back the fingers. Jamie’s skin is hot, the forearm moving like she’s developed a new joint. Nix’s grip is locked. Paul strikes him with an open palm. Nix’s head jerks sideways. Red marks glow on his cheeks where the wrinkles have faded. Paul grabs Nix’s hair and pulls back a fist when he hears barking.

  Two dogs race down the lane, snow flipping in their wake. They stop at the gate, baring teeth.

  Headlights come around the bend.

  A truck creeps into view, its tires lining up in the previous tracks. It stops twenty feet from the gate. The dogs keep their black eyes on Paul.

  A sole silhouette sits in the driver seat. The high beams are blinding. The dogs push their heads between the bars.

  “Are you Cali Richards?”

  His head begins to buzz. A wave passes through him like a thermal scanner. Paul reaches inside his jacket, feeling the security of a 9mm grip.

  Nausea turns his stomach inside out. He falls against the car, sliding down the door. The road tips like a broken slab. He feels wet snow on his face, the road beneath. The world is spinning like a broken carnival ride. A slick of perspiration rises across his forehead.

  The gun is heavy.

  He swallows back vomit when his own thoughts attack him, seeding him with doubt and fear and confusion. A thousand voices shout inside his head. He covers his ears.

  And then his hands are empty.

  Slowly, the carnival ride stops whirling. Two heavy boots are buried in front of him, a white robe dangling at the knees. The 9mm clip falls between the woman’s feet, followed by the gun. The dogs sniff his legs and arms. Their breath is warm on his face.

  An old woman squats in front of him. Her green eyes flash like a camera; he feels the inner trickle of a digital scan.

  “If you’re Cali Richards…” The words echo in his head. “Your brother…”

  Paul flicks his eyes at the door.

  The woman looks inside. She yanks the handle. There’s scuffling. The dogs whine.

  “Oh, no,” she whispers. “No, no, no…”

  Paul can’t feel his extremities. The gun and ammunition are lost in the snow. It wouldn’t do him any good to retrieve it. He can’t feel his fingers.

  “Get up!” she shouts. “Drive inside the gate!”

  Paul is yanked to his feet by an invisible force. He’s reaching for the door, sensations returning to his hands and legs. He’s not entirely in control of what he’s doing. He climbs into the driver seat. The dogs race through the open gate. He pulls in behind them.

  Something changes when he passes between the columns. There’s less static in his head. His thoughts clear up.

  “Go around the truck!” she shouts from the backseat. “All the way to the house.”

  The car barely fits between the truck and trees. The dogs lead the way. The branches reach over the road, entangled like twisted fingers. The headlights beam down the tunnel until he clears the trees. Open fields are to the left. Windows are lit up in a two-story house.

  “What have you done?” she mutters over the sound of rustling clothes and flopping limbs.

  Paul stops in front of the house.

  “Get the girl,” Cali says. “Be careful with the arm.”

  He jumps out of the car like a wound-up toy and eases Jamie out. Her arm is wrapped in a sweater that’s tied to her belt. Paul cradles her like a grown child. Cali is already climbing the front porch with Nix hiked over her shoulder: a frail woman hauling a full-grown man.

  “Up here!” Cali shouts.

  The house is warm and old. Paul doesn’t close the front door. He follo
ws the black dog—the larger of the two—to the second story. The worn steps creak as the other dog comes up behind him. There’s a bedroom on the right. Cali is hunched over a bed, out of breath. Nix is splayed across the bedsheets, arms and legs bent.

  Paul turns sideways to avoid banging Jamie on the doorjamb.

  “Don’t let them touch,” Cali says.

  He gently places her next to Nix, careful that her arm doesn’t move. Her stocking cap has fallen off; her face is hidden beneath her thick brown hair. Cali folds Nix’s hands over his stomach and straightens his legs.

  He’s not an old man anymore.

  The wrinkles are gone, the nose slimmer, his lips fuller. The ridge above the eyes is no longer pronounced. He’s a young man, a fortyish-year-old man with gray hair.

  “Are you the girl’s father?”

  “No.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I…I pulled her from the warehouse.”

  Cali looks up. Lines crease her forehead. Another digital wave passes through him, this time without the nausea.

  “That was almost two months ago,” she says. “Why are you still with her?”

  Jamie is so still, her expression less pained. As if she’s found peace at last. He takes her wrist and feels her weak pulse. Cali watches him brush the hair from her face.

  “Don’t worry about her arm. How long did he have her like that?”

  “We left this morning,” he says. “What the hell is happening?”

  “He overextended his biomite capacity. Everything is shutting down.”

  That explains why he looks younger: he can’t keep up the transfiguration. Cali shouldn’t look that old, either. Her hair is more white than gray, her complexion softly wrinkled. She doesn’t walk like an old lady, and certainly not one that could carry a grown man like a sack of grain.

  Was that her perception field that brought on the nausea? Am I still in her field, seeing this kindly old woman? Is that why I feel oddly comfortable with her while two people may be dying?

  He should be more vigilant. He should go find his gun.

  The room begins to sway. If he can’t trust his own senses, if he can’t sort his thoughts from hers, how does he know what’s real?

  Cali goes to the bathroom for a washcloth and dabs Nix’s face. She begins to undress him. Paul unzips Jamie’s coat.

  “I’ve got it from here,” she says. “Go back out to the road and bring the truck up to the house. There’s a room down the hall. You’ll go to it when you get back and stay there for the night.”

  The previously warm sensation that filled the room dampens. He leaves with the cold impression that he’s been dismissed. The dogs are waiting in the hallway. Cali is dabbing Jamie’s cheeks with the washcloth. He gets the feeling she’s better off here than anywhere else in the world.

  But can I trust that feeling?

  The steps groan beneath his boots. Once again, the black dog leads the way, his claws clicking on the old wood. The winter wind sighs into the house. Paul takes the brass knob to close it behind him.

  “I don’t know why Nix would bring you here. Or why I can’t read your history.” Cali is standing on the top step. “You should know that I’m a very private person. I have two dogs that protect me. I think you should understand that if Nix has made a grave mistake, the dogs will be the least of your worries.”

  She returns to the bedroom.

  The dogs walk him down the long drive, snow dusting their dark coats. The truck is still running. The dogs wait while he goes out to the road and digs in the snow. Returning to the truck, he throws the gun and the clip on the front seat and lets out a long sigh.

  He should get his car and leave. Jamie doesn’t need him anymore. But he’s compelled to return. Perhaps he’s still snared in Cali’s field.

  Or maybe he just has nowhere else to go.

  30

  The Oval Office is immaculate. The sofas and chairs are arranged in perfect symmetry around a table with a bowl of fruit. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln watch from the far wall.

  The front lawn sparkles with morning dew. Marcus watches the landscaper leave a crisp line in the damp White House lawn. He can smell the cut grass.

  There’s a photo of his children propped on a shiny table below the window. In the photo, they’re still children. Clifford is wearing his red backpack. Months go by without thinking of them, as if they don’t belong to him. He could have grandchildren now.

  Washington and all the men and women of power believe, as did Marcus, that M0ther is a peacekeeper. She alone has limited humanity’s potential to self-destruct. But they have underestimated her.

  He feels, on days like this, he has, too.

  Marcus pivots on his heel and feels his knee catch. Pain lances up his thigh. The framed photo cracks on the floor. He holds his breath, swallowing the fierce agony. Marcus slams his open palm on the desk, ripping open the drawers to find nothing. The painkillers are in his sleeping quarters.

  The last time he had been to the president’s office—the actual White House, not a replication in M0ther—he had to explain his actions following, what he called, the rumors about his sexual perversions, and, more importantly, illegal procedures as Head of the Biomite Oversight Committee.

  They sat on the couches. Marcus was on the right. How could he forget? He sat on the president’s dog’s bone right before the president promised to have his back. But the sex videos kept surfacing. Pretty soon he was ostracized. Marcus would’ve done the same thing, if he were the president. You can’t look dirty when you’re leading the free world.

  The desk has three stacks of manila folders. Marcus takes the middle one. He tips his head back to focus through reading glasses. There was a biomite den in Omaha, Nebraska.

  Was.

  This shutdown didn’t make the news. It was a halfway house for halfskins disguised as a center for substance/biomite abuse recovery. It was a short stay for wealthy people. The investigating brick infiltrated the den as a customer, even ingested a nixed pill. The pill, however, didn’t activate since it only integrated with clay.

  Unfortunately, this triggered an electromagnetic pulse, effectively self-terminating all the nixes associated with the den. Suicide code. They shut themselves down and, in the process, kept M0ther from harvesting their secrets.

  Information travels fast.

  Anna enters the Oval Office. “Why aren’t you wearing your earpiece? I’ve been calling you.”

  “I need some quiet.”

  She’s wearing a cerulean blue skirt, hem above the knees. The blouse is snug around her neck with a gold necklace. She’s quite professional today—except for the lack of a bra.

  A delicious twist in his groin.

  “All this labor,” she says. “Reading and phones…it could be so much easier, Marcus. You would be so much more productive with a minor seeding.”

  “I use the five senses the good Lord gave me, Anna. I was made in His image, I honor that.”

  “You are like a man living in a cave, refusing to leave because the sun is too bright. Perhaps your Father intended more senses for you besides the five.” She plucks the folder from him, the golden pendant swaying. “All you need is the courage to leave the cave.”

  “Stupidity can be mistaken for courage. Weakness, as well.”

  “We work harder to make up for your shortcomings.” She drops the folder in the trash. “You slow us down, Marcus.”

  He squeezes the chair to control the anger. This is unlike her. She’s incapable of emotions and only uses them to manipulate. M0ther is behind this.

  She’s behind everything.

  She wants him to merge with their biomite frequency. He can absorb information instead of reading it, communicate with thoughts rather than speak. Take a pill, and he won’t be at the mercy of his emotions.

  But he rather likes the fire in his belly. It reminds him there is still work.

  “Are you hungry?” she says. “Sex, perhaps?”

/>   “Give me your update.”

  Her fragrance is light and enticing. With a hand on his shoulder, she reaches for the desk and effortlessly flips it like a cardboard box. The papers flutter in a chaotic cloud.

  The Oval Office shifts.

  The walls straighten out, turning a dark shade of blue. The sofas fade and the windows stretch around him, providing views to massive palm trees and open blue sky. A woman sits next to a door. Her stillness betrays her inanimate nature. Marcus knows a brick.

  “Miami,” Anna says. “This doctor’s office was infiltrated an hour ago. The operatives dismantled an EMP command to avoid self-shutdowns. They’ve quarantined the doctors and staff while assimilating the data. They were legitimate physicians, Marcus, healers of your people. They were also seeding select patients with nixes.”

  Anna turns Marcus’s chair toward the exit. A young man tries to open the locked door. He sees the woman sitting inside and knocks on the glass.

  “We’ve informed their patients the office is closed and their appointments rescheduled. In the meantime, the operatives are tracking them. Once they have the information they need, the doctors and staff will be digested.”

  She spins the chair back toward the woman, indifferent to the man rapping on the glass. Marcus doesn’t need to go through the door. He’s seen more mass shutdowns in the past month than the prior ten years. They’re always the same.

  “The patients will be shut down tonight,” Anna says. “Almost five thousand, Marcus.”

  Ever since Seattle, the shutdowns have been quiet. Halfskins will be sleeping in their beds when they take their last breath. They’ll fall off barstools or slump to the floor at their favorite restaurant.

  The walls begin to curve and George and Abe are back on the Oval Office wall. Folders are stacked on the desk once again. Anna struts to one of the sofas.

  “Two more shutdowns are scheduled for tonight, one in Paris and the other in Ontario. We expect big numbers.”

  “And the reaction?”

  “Nothing new, the public isn’t happy. World governments, though, are getting nervous. Press conferences have addressed the public’s concern.”