Halfskin Boxed

by Tony Bertauski

  Somewhere out there was a greater power. He could feel its presence like it was inside him. This greater power knew him intimately, he felt. It was everywhere, the air he breathed. This, he suspected, was the power that identified Margaret. But why give her up now?

  No one knew from where this information came or why. But Marcus’s life mission was to find this power. It gave him purpose.

  To find the powers-that-be.

  “Where can I access your network?” he asked.

  “Start with the Bank of America.”

  “Who do I ask for?”

  The regional director hesitated. Naturally, she resisted giving up classified information. He would have to push a little harder.

  “Careful, Marcus.” The old woman spoke over his shoulder. “You’re poking the hive.”

  There could be no trace of coercion. If Marcus was brought in for closer examination, his secrets would be exposed.

  “Mr. Connick,” the director said.

  “Thank you.”

  She returned to her post and began giving orders, oblivious to her cooperation. There would be no memory of speaking with Marcus Anderson, a name she would know. A name the whole world would recognize. A name that wasn’t supposed to exist.

  Twenty minutes later, the authorities escorted the barkeep and his wife out of the tavern and into the backseat of an SUV. The media recorded every second. The general public did the same.

  “You brick lover, Jimmy,” PN shouted. “I always knew you were a wrenchhead asshole.”

  “Marcus, look.” The old woman pointed.

  Across the street where police held the general public, a young woman had worked her way up to the barrier. She was in her late twenties, brunette hair cut short. The last time he’d seen her she was a teenager. He knew all about her, knew that she had lived on that North Carolina farm for years.

  Jamie.

  But he didn’t care about her anymore, didn’t care about her or Paul or Raine or anything from his past. Even if they were partly responsible for Marcus becoming a brick, he was looking forward now, pursuing greater truths instead of past regrets.

  “Why is she here?” Marcus asked.

  “One to lead, one to dream…” the old woman exclaimed, “one to bleed, the son to be.”

  Her expression was empty and distant, as it always was when she recited the phrase, as if something possessed her, a proclamation from another dimension. She said it at odd times, hinting for him to pay attention to a particular moment or event.

  “Is she one of them?” He refused to call her proselytizing a prophecy, but that was how it felt, a stanza that begged him to pay attention.

  The truth is the way.

  There would be one to lead, one to dream, one to bleed, and the son to be. Did that mean four people would lead me to the powers-that-be? Or did that include me? Do I lead? Or bleed? Or all of the above?

  The sense that his life was predetermined, that everything happened exactly as if God had planned it out, never ceased to raise the small hairs on his neck. He believed in free will, that there was no destiny. There was a purpose to life, but not one that controlled everything. Still, he couldn’t ignore the signs.

  Why did everything fit so perfectly?

  Jamie abruptly turned from the scene and blended with the crowd.

  Marcus let the old woman hold his hand as they departed. It gave her comfort, he knew this. Marcus might be the last undiscovered brick, a fact that would shock the world. The old woman, though, existed only in his mind. She saw the world through his eyes, heard through his ears. Through him, she lived.

  But she had never been human.

  Mother.

  Jamie

  Where am I?

  Jamie rose from a thin fog, the wispy kind that gathered around mountaintops in early morning, the kind that was peaceful. The kind that lulled you to sleep while obscuring sharp turns in the road.

  A high-pitched squeal was in her head, the kind of sound that followed a blunt object. But her skull didn’t hurt. She couldn’t feel anything.

  Her eyes were already open. Images formed out of the dark, a trick deftly executed by an invisible magician. Now there’s dark, now there’s light!

  Snick.

  Her eyelids dropped for a long moment, but not long enough to relieve the dry burn. She tried to blink, but her eyelids were locked open. Tears pooled on the lower lid, teetering on the lashes.

  She was staring straight ahead, a full-sized baby doll with glass eyes and broken eyelids. Only this wasn’t a dream, she was in her body—her dead-frozen body.

  Snick.

  Saliva settled around her tongue. The urge to swallow hung in the back of her throat.

  Where am I? Where am I, where am I?

  Her thoughts echoed in the vacuous space of her head, memories scattered in the mountain fog. Her chest was rising and falling in long even strokes even as panic surged, a swelling tide that demanded more air.

  Easy now. Slow down. Just be here, take in what you see.

  Snick.

  A large room, a glass wall. There were buildings, an urban landscape she didn’t recognize. The canopies of city trees were below her. Fifth floor, maybe?

  This isn’t Chicago. That was where I was last, right? Looking for… what was I looking for? A bank? A man?

  Bing.

  Elevator doors opened to her right. Shoes squeaked. Her eyes quivered in their locked-in state, forcing her to continue staring into a sunny afternoon. The footsteps were harried. A figure eased into her tunnel vision.

  It was a man. His skin was black, his scalp as smooth and shiny as the floor. He was dressed in baggy white clothes and long striped socks with dirt on the knees. It was a baseball uniform.

  Their eyes met when he was directly in front of her, his head slightly shaking back and forth, lips fluttering. “The fuck?”

  He picked up the pace, disappearing to her left. The footsteps squeaked another twenty paces. A doorknob rattled, followed by several dull thumps. He paced back and forth, muttering. The cuss words were loud and clear. After a second round of knocking, the door opened.

  A high-pitched tinnitus swallowed her head. Somewhere in the whine was the distant thudding of her heart.

  The shadows suddenly lengthened. A small chunk of time was clipped out, a film skipping forward.

  Her eyelids dropped twice—the intervals of time equal in length but too far apart to soothe the burn—when the door opened. The squeaky-soled footsteps were joined by a set of titanium-tipped hammers. The ballplayer was followed by a pale woman wearing a white lab coat over a black dress. Her black hair was pulled off her middle-aged face, exposing blue veins along her temple.

  “What’s she doing out here?” the man asked.

  “They were supposed to deliver her to the lab.”

  “Well, this ain’t the lab.”

  The woman flashed a penlight in each of Jamie’s eyes; ghostly blank spots slowly faded.

  “This couldn’t wait till tomorrow?” he asked.

  “Eric’s out of town.”

  “You call Smitty?”

  “Sick.”

  He looked off with a sigh. Peterson was printed on his back.

  “She seems functional.” The woman pocketed the penlight. “You got the pad?”

  He palmed a mini-tablet.

  “I’m going to find out why they left her out here,” she said. “Want to bring her in?”

  The woman’s shoes tapped away. Peterson’s head swayed back and forth, jaw cocked. He muttered cuss words around the name Patty. He probably did that a lot. When the distant door closed, he slid his finger across the tablet.

  Jamie instinctually reached for his thoughts, an inner movement of her mind, an attempt to sync with his biomites, a friendly gesture to connect their minds in a casual manner. Talking with thoughts and feelings, not words.

  Metal pans rang between her ears.

  Peterson looked up from the tablet. She couldn’t hear the words, but
read his lips. Don’t do that.

  He stared a moment longer. The ringing continued until she stopped reaching. Sensation poured into her thighs, wicked up through her stomach and filled her chest and arms. Aches and pains lit up like she’d been beaten with a bag of broken bottles.

  She wished for the numbness to return.

  “You hear me?” He looked down when she didn’t respond. “Nod.”

  Jamie felt her muscles contract. Her chin slowly dipped.

  “Follow me.”

  Jamie shot into a standing position, her arms locked at her sides. Her joints ached in throbbing waves. She could see past the trees and down to the street where children ran through geysers of water laid out in a five-ring pattern. The Olympic rings.

  Jamie turned with a quick military snap and faced a long, empty hallway. Peterson looked over his shoulder. Her footsteps fell with heavy cadence, the clamp of heel to toe reverberated through her calves. Her tongue stuck to her teeth as she swallowed a patch of cotton.

  A memory rose from the endless mist. Nothing personal, no hint of who she was or where she’d been or why she was walking into a brightly lit lab. She remembered the geysers in the Olympic ring pattern.

  Centennial Park. Her pulse picked up. Georgia. I’m in fucking Georgia!

  She stuttered half a step inside the doorway. Fear hardened her thighs, locked her knees. That was the first time she’d willed her body to do something.

  It would also be the last.

  “There it is.” Peterson walked past her. “She just realized where she is.”

  “Sit her down,” Patty said. “I’m not ready.”

  A sharp current seized the back of her neck. Stiffly, she moved toward a chair and fell on it. Peterson sat at a computer.

  Flip.

  Another page turned and clipped a small slice of time from Jamie’s awareness, like flicking a light switch up and down.

  Her eyelids continued their timed release, her tongue occasionally moving. The tears fell off her lower eyelashes, tracking like raindrops on a gray window. There was a fish tank behind Peterson, a goldfish lingering near the top.

  Georgia. There was no explanation for how she ended up this deep into a clay state, no memories she could trace. She had been in Chicago, she was sure of it. But now she knew why she couldn’t sync thoughts with Peterson when she’d reached for him.

  There are no biomites in Georgia.

  “All right. All right.” Patty was ending a phone call.

  “Who’s our witness?” Peterson asked.

  “They’re sending someone.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know, someone new. Special assignment for the girl’s unique circumstances.”

  “Unique? What’s that mean?”

  “I don’t like it, either. This got dropped in my lap this morning. Let’s just get it done while there’s still some weekend left.”

  “This couldn’t wait until Monday.” He turned toward Jamie like she was an object, not a person. A this, not a she.

  “They sent her from Athens. They’re up to their eyes with halfskins, got thirty of them waiting to process, ten past their limit. This one has been in stasis for a week.”

  “So now they’re just passing their work onto us?”

  “That’s how it works.”

  “No, how it’s supposed to work is they build another facility, not bury us.”

  The goldfish swam against the glass, eyeballing Jamie for food. The fifty-gallon world was so much larger than hers. Jamie was here for processing. That realization continued to grow in her but like thorny weeds.

  Peterson worked steadily at the computer, continuously shaking his head like a Parkinson’s patient. That disease was gone from the rest of the world, where biomites repaired the sudden death of dopaminergic neurons that generated dopamine. But in the great clay state of Georgia where biomites had been outlawed, the pure clay residents—100% organic humans—were subject to the whims of genetic abnormalities and disease.

  “When’s the witness getting here?” Peterson called.

  “Twenty minutes.”

  Peterson looked through the desk drawers and went to a tall set of shelves. Jamie watched him in her periphery, her eyes jittering against the internal grip. The fingers on her right hand twitched. She could feel her denim thigh on her fingertips, the sweat on her palm.

  Peterson returned with a black bag slung over his shoulder. He tapped at the computer screen then walked over to Jamie.

  “Hello?” His face was several inches from hers. “Know why you’re here?”

  He pulled the tablet from his pocket and swiped with four fingers. Sensations vibrated in her bones.

  “Don’t release her yet,” Patty said. “I need some help.”

  His hand froze above the tablet. He appeared to be in suspended animation; then his head slowly began shaking, jaws flexing. Peterson dropped the bag and left Jamie to stare at the hungry goldfish. Her lungs slowly expanded, long deep draughts of air mechanically drawn and expelled, not enough to rid the itching critters of panic crawling beneath her skin.

  She craved a deeper breath.

  Metal rods snapped into place. Boxes were unflapped, a keyboard tapped. Something crinkled hard and loud, stiff plastic or vinyl. A zipper raced to a long end.

  “Any more after her?” Peterson asked.

  “That’s it.”

  “We just waiting on the witness, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “You could’ve called Lindsey, you know. She’s got clearance.”

  Long pause. “You didn’t hear?”

  “Hear what?”

  “She got diagnosed.”

  The crinkling plastic stopped. “Dream disease?”

  “They caught it early, but it’s still touch and go. They have her at Atlanta Medical.”

  “Damn.” Peterson drew out the word. Jamie sensed he was shaking his head.

  By the sound of it, Lindsey was clay, she didn’t have biomites. Clays weren’t supposed to get dream disease. Only halfskins that created dreamlands randomly succumbed to dream disease, falling asleep and never waking. That was the reason Georgia defected in the first place.

  Dream disease was God’s retribution for messing with Nature, the antidote to humans playing god, the plague that would rinse the human race of biomites, the clay states said. It was why people flocked to the clay states, to purge their bodies of biomites, to bring back their clay and be safe from dream disease.

  But not anymore.

  So now what?

  An angry flame flickered, too weak and outnumbered by the forces of fear to make a lasting impression. Jamie swam in the dank confines of her frozen skin.

  A phone rang. Patty’s conversation lasted three words. Then she said, “He’s coming up.”

  The unfolding plastic continued.

  Peterson suddenly appeared in front of her. One second there was a goldfish, the next he was snapping his fingers in her face. His lips were moving, but the sounds were swallowed by the return of a high-pitched ring.

  “She keeps winking out.” His voice was distant. “They spin her brain?”

  “They had a hard time finding her next of kin. Couldn’t process her until they did.”

  “I’m guessing they found them.”

  “They did.”

  Peterson started digging into the black bag he’d dropped earlier, pulling out long tubes and small flexible screens. He attached a cuff around her arm. He dabbed plastic discs with clear gel and pushed them onto her temples. She imagined they felt cold and gooey.

  “You about ready?” he asked.

  “Just about.”

  He prepped another disc, swirled the clear gelatin with the tip of his finger and stuck it over her carotid. Jamie formed a strangled word, heaving it through the stovepipe in her neck. A dying animal gasped its last breath through her lips. Peterson looked up, cocked his head, gears grinding behind his impatient eyes before pulling out the tablet. A few strokes and her h
ead squealed up another octave.

  Stop. That was what she was trying to say. Please stop.

  “What took so long to find her family?” Peterson asked.

  “What?”

  He repeated the question.

  “She’s adopted.”

  “So?”

  Pause. “By a brick.”

  Peterson’s hand stopped somewhere near the left side of her neck, a greased cup between finger and thumb. “You fucking with me?”

  “No.”

  “That ain’t legal.”

  “In this case it is.”

  Bricks. The word coalesced from memory vapor, a scene emerging from the fog: rolling hills and horses, old barns and broken swing sets. A warm sense of home bloomed deep inside, spreading into her chest. There were faces out there, people that loved her—

  Snick.

  “Son of a bitch.” Peterson was suddenly behind the desk, a skip through space. He’d dropped the disc and was pulling a pair of latex gloves over his bare hands. The fingertips snapped like rubber bands. “You could’ve told me sooner.”

  “You can’t get dream disease touching her.”

  “The hell you say!”

  A string of profanity followed. He rattled his head back and forth as if shaking the words out of his throat. His baseball shoes were cleated to the floor, fingers twitching at his sides.

  “How the hell does a brick adopt anything?” he asked.

  “Something to do with special circumstances.” Patty grunted with something heavy. “She lived on the Settlement with them for a while.”

  Peterson shuffled back a step. “She lived with the bricks.”

  “Yes. That’s what took so long, something to do with the rescript and fence. She got released three months ago and they wouldn’t let her back in. It was a whole thing.”

  Peterson stopped shaking his head. Now he was nodding, he was remembering, he’d heard the story about her, about the special circumstances in which a brick was allowed to adopt her.

  Paul!

  The name appeared, the letters blazing in bright neon. Paul had become her legal guardian on the farm before the Settlement—the rights of all bricks had been stripped away with a single stroke of a legal pen, carting them into isolation because people were dying of dream disease and the bricks were the ones they blamed—