Halfskin Boxed

by Tony Bertauski

  Marcus wasn’t there.

  The first and second floors were quiet and locked. On the third floor, one door was open. The old man stood near a window, peering at an angle so no one outside would notice him.

  “What the hell are you doing?” she said.

  Marcus didn’t respond. He craned his neck to watch the crowd gathered outside, sticking his arm out when she neared.

  “They know Paul’s in here,” she said.

  “They followed your tracks.”

  “Then they know you’re here, too.”

  “Mmm.”

  “We’re not getting out. The monitors will come for us; they’ll want to know why we’re in here.”

  Why weren’t the monitors already out there? A gathering of bricks always drew at least one of them.

  “Is this your plan?” she muttered.

  Marcus ignored her; instead, he watched the events with interest. Pete was emphatic, waving his arms and shouting. He was their leader, always emotional when he felt protective. His rare emotional outbursts were proof of his humanity.

  The others listened, occasionally looking at the building. A distant sound turned their heads. It was joined by more mechanical howling. Then a wolf pack of snowmobiles broke from the trees, the alpha male out front with a puffy green coat and a white cowboy hat.

  “Now what?” Raine said. “Paul’s still in the lab—”

  He raised his hand for quiet. As if to say watch.

  Bob threw his leg over his belted stallion and sank up to his knees in snow. The other monitors watched from their snowmobiles as he shoved his way through the snow, rubbing his blotchy face with exaggerated annoyance.

  He had better things to do than watch a herd of useless fucking bricks bitch about their research. They needed to shut the fuck up and be happy they were alive. Christ, there were people out in the world, goddamn honest-to-goodness real-life people that didn’t have homes or jobs or families and these artificial fabbers were stomping a hole in the snow, for what?

  Because they couldn’t get their free shit out of the building?

  Pete started out composed, but his fuse was short and bright. Emotions began to sparkle. His voice could be heard through the triple pane of glass three stories up. He was waving his arms and pointing and red in the face when Bob reached into his pocket.

  Pete fell like a bed sheet.

  His right knee splintered outward, arms flopping like stuffed rolls of linen. The bricks backed away, the example spilled in the snow.

  Bob went back to his snowmobile and squeezed the cowboy hat down before spinning off into the trees. He didn’t say a word, just dropped Pete like an old diseased horse.

  “I don’t believe it,” Raine said.

  The other monitors looked shocked, their hands frozen to the grips, eyes on the pile of Pete. There was no way that should have happened. Bob would need probable cause to swipe a brick, especially one leading the People’s research. The one solving their dream disease.

  “What the hell just happened?” Raine asked.

  “We just bought some time.”

  “We?” Raine grabbed the old man before he left. “Did you do that?”

  “We need a little extra time. Our friend out there gave it to us.”

  “But… but why?”

  Marcus stared through her, his unblinking eyes not hiding any secrets but sharing none.

  “They can shut us off,” she said. “The monitors don’t have to see us; they know we’re in here. They can swipe us from out there.”

  “They have no reason to.”

  “Bob didn’t, either! They know we’re in here; they’ll know we’re up to something.”

  “The monitors will exercise caution.”

  “But not the bricks! What if they find Dennis? They’ll know something’s wrong.”

  “We have all the time we need.”

  “Marcus, the bricks won’t be patient. Like Paul said, they have research in here. It’s all going to fail without power. Let’s not take a chance and redistribute to the rest of the building.”

  Pete was lying in a twisted pool—possibly dead. There would be no patience. Not anymore.

  “We’re almost ready,” he said.

  She shook him, feeling his soft flesh give under her fingers. He had soaked in one of those soul-sucking suits, too; his body squished like warm clay.

  “We’re almost ready? What are you planning?”

  “It’s better you don’t know.” He gently removed her hands. “For now.”

  “Trust, you said. How can I trust if you keep hiding?”

  “Faith, Raine. Let your faith guide you.”

  She’d forgotten her rosary beads. Her prayers would not come to her tongue. She wanted to shake him, squeeze him until secrets oozed from his mouth.

  Something crashed downstairs.

  It was more than the dull thumping of empty fists—this was a sharp slap of metal on metal, one giving way to the other. Glass shattered on the next round. Raine took the stairwell three steps at a time, expecting to find the front door unhinged, the steel wedges scattered down the hall like clunky jacks and the monitors aiming their phones.

  Something shuffled through shards of glass.

  The yellow-handled sledgehammer—the one that was inside the dream lab—lay in a jigsaw display of glass outside the fabrication lab. Dark droplets speckled the floor.

  Paul stood at the computer.

  He had shed the skin suit, but dressed without showering. Smudged tracks of blood trailed his footsteps, bits of glass poking from the edges of his feet. Gel glistened on his bare arms and neck, his shirt clinging to his back. A putrid smell of tired skin hung around him, defeated only by the baked smell of cooking biomites.

  He wasn’t blinking.

  A milky sheen fogged his stare, the look of a concussion victim. Maybe he hadn’t completely awakened, or left something back in that murky sleep. Or the dream took something from him.

  “Paul.” She touched his arm, slime sliding beneath her fingertips. “Your feet.”

  Blood trickled from a gash, a rivulet spreading over the waxed floor.

  An image on the computer transfixed him like a shiny object swinging from a chain. A three-dimensional cube slowly rotated. What looked like body parts were crammed into it, sort of a box for spare arms, legs and shoulders. Then she realized the room was quiet. None of the equipment was running.

  Paul wasn’t staring at the computer.

  The fabrication chamber was transparent. The image on the computer was inside it, the flesh pressed against the glass walls in wet slices. The top of a smooth skull was wedged between two calves, the shoulder blades against the top of the chamber.

  The contorted body was folded.

  Paul drifted forward, his feet shuffling in slow, even steps. A shard of glass clicking from his foot, a smudgy trail left behind. His knees cracked on the floor, joints popped. He traced the edge of the chamber, fingers quivering, coaxing the butterfly from the chrysalis. Because the body inside the chamber wasn’t awake.

  His lips fluttered.

  The seams of the chamber suddenly broke. Paul fell back into Raine’s arms. A humid exhaust exhaled—warm and earthy, like pottery pulled from the kiln. The keyboard clicked behind them. Marcus had walked inside without a sound.

  The nude body expanded like compressed foam given room to breathe. Like a flower opening in sunlight. The chamber walls crept out, the seams widened. The left knee pushed the front panel; a dead arm rolled away from the thigh.

  Paul’s hand trembled. For the first time in years, she put her arms around him, comforting him like a sister.

  He couldn’t touch the body, not yet. There was no life, no identity. No spark. Sensory input had to be limited; overload could short the psychology matrix. Someone had to be awake for the body to respond. Until then, it was just a body.

  A body that looks like Jamie.

  It was a fabrication, a construction of biomites that looked like her—a
hairless Jamie with beads of moisture rolling down shiny skin.

  The head rose just enough to see her eyes, small pools of water in the cups of her collarbones. She had stopped expanding and now settled into the cramped chamber, fully inflated but still. Paul looked back, suddenly stabbed with fear. Marcus was still at the computer, but nothing was happening. Paul’s eyes pleaded with the old man. Please, don’t bring her this close and leave her.

  It occurred to Raine this might be it. Maybe the old man only wanted to bring back the body, to look through her eyes like a telescope to get the answers. Perhaps he had taken them to a cliff, their escape a swift shove because there was no leaving the building.

  Not now.

  And then the wet inhalation. It gurgled in Jamie’s throat, the chest inflating as if God’s lips blew one long breath inside her. The nostrils flared.

  Jamie’s eyelashes gathered in wet bunches. A single drop fell from one of them. The eyelids lifted in one slow, graceful slide. Sharp green eyes stared at freckled knees. The world was awakening through her blooming senses.

  She looked at Paul with the eyes of a newborn—completely new. Behind them, a beginner’s mind. She was open and fresh, untainted by thoughts and emotional baggage. A clean canvas for God to paint. She would remember this moment, remember a father watching her enter the world, remember Paul trembling.

  Her first sight.

  And then she arrived. Marcus activated her past. Raine saw it fill her eyes—the recognition of the man kneeling in front of her, the body that was hers, the identity known as Jamie with its history of pain and sorrow and joys and discoveries.

  Jamie smiled.

  A puff of laughter quivered out of Paul on a long stale breath. He snatched a sheet nearby and wrapped her naked body, then hugged her. Raine wrapped her arms around both of them and felt his body shake beneath her. For a moment, she had forgotten about dreamland. All the joy in the world filled the room.

  She just wanted to be with it.

  “Come, come.” Marcus touched their shoulders. “There will be time later. Come along.”

  Raine peeled away, wiping tears.

  Paul wouldn’t let go, fulfilling a promise that if Jamie ever came back, he wouldn’t let go. He was a bundle of wet, sticky joy quaking on the floor. Jamie’s scalp was shiny new on his shoulder. Marcus was patient and let Paul weep.

  Raine continued sopping tears with her sleeve. The faucet was still open, thoughts of Nix and Joshua crawling from one of those chambers. She didn’t have to go to dreamland to be with them. She could bring them here, couldn’t she?

  The moment was shattered by a dull thump on the front door.

  “Come now.” Marcus was more insistent. “We have to go.”

  Paul helped Jamie stand, the white sheet clinging to her. He pulled it over her shoulders and wrapped it around her twice. Jamie smiled and nodded, but not at Paul.

  She nodded to Marcus.

  Their eyes locked. It was different than the loving, open gaze she held with Paul. This was tighter and focused. Knowing. They couldn’t be chatting already, she had just come out of the box. She was a fawn learning to walk. But perhaps they didn’t need to.

  She was with him in Chicago for a reason, and she remembered why. Or he planted a memory.

  No, that wasn’t it. Jamie connected with something deep and meaningful, something she believed in. Did she know he would fabricate her? Did she know Paul would be waiting?

  Another whump came from down the hall, this time with a shattering effect. Glass spidered on a window. The bricks had abandoned the front door.

  Paul had his arm around Jamie. The old man guided them to the door. “Could you bring the hammer?” he called back.

  Raine paused. The yellow-handled sledge had been pushed aside. She lifted it to her shoulder, the fiberglass handle slick with gel. Another glassy whump echoed from across the hall, this time tiny specks tinkled from one of the offices.

  “Come, Raine!” Marcus called from around the corner.

  She took three steps in the opposite direction and peered into the office. The window was narrow and high, jagged lines streaking from three circular scars of impact. The end of a thick branch slammed near the center, leaving a fourth one. She jumped back. This time the window slumped inward.

  A face appeared at the corner.

  Someone shouted. It was distant and muffled through the cracked security glass, but she recognized her name.

  She didn’t remember going blank.

  It was like a section of life had been snipped from her consciousness. One second she was looking at the face and hearing her name, the next she was on the floor looking into Marcus’s eyes. He lifted her with one arm, the hammer in the other hand.

  The building had filled with pressure.

  The old man rushed her around the corner. It wasn’t until he closed them inside the dream lab and began jamming the rest of the wedges around the door that she realized the pressure wasn’t in the building.

  It was inside her head.

  Marcus

  Marcus tapped a steel wedge near the bottom of the heavy door, sweat dripping from his nose. He blinked the shiny object into focus then drove it home with one swing. The door made a popping sound, the tension sealing the dream disease lab shut.

  “What are you doing?” Paul grabbed his shoulder. “There’s no way—”

  Marcus spun on him. Paul tensed and put him at arm’s length.

  “Easy, Marcus,” Mother said. “Take a breath. Don’t show anger. Trust is delicate. He doesn’t know how close they are to death.”

  He didn’t feel Paul behind him. That wasn’t something he was accustomed to, someone sneaking up on him. Not that Paul was sneaking; Paul just wanted to know why they were being locked inside the lab. There was no way out.

  Not that he could see.

  Marcus took a slow, cleansing breath. The air was thick with sweat and fear and putrid piles of shed skin suits. Of course Paul didn’t know how close death had come. When Raine peeked into the office, the monitors swiped them.

  If not for the old man, they’d be dead.

  He cast his mind around them like a Faraday cage, a mindfog that shredded the monitors’ communications, their commands to self-terminate obliterated. It was how the old man stayed free all those years, how he controlled his environment. But protecting his own mind was easy. Four minds was consuming him. As long as he kept focus, the monitors couldn’t swipe them. This came at a price. Marcus could hardly concentrate.

  And right now, he needed to focus.

  “They’re coming through a window,” he said gently. “They’ll be inside the building soon. We need just a little more time.”

  “There’s nowhere to go,” Paul answered. “Not in here.”

  Marcus heard this through a thick veil, his senses clouded. He stared at Jamie, his ticket to the powers-that-be. The one to lead?

  Paul grimaced, a man trapped by desperation.

  “Don’t look at her.” Mother walked behind Jamie, finger to her lips. “Paul needs to believe she’s not a puppet.”

  She was right, Marcus couldn’t give the impression he was controlling her. Jamie’s limited memories were stored in the biomite DNA, essential ones that unfolded at the time of the spark. She remembered her identity, remembered the old man in Chicago.

  And the memories of her end.

  She’d peered into death, followed the yellow brick road to the end of the rainbow. He hadn’t planned it that way, but her death would serve him well. He hoped she would lead him to the powers-that-be.

  “Do you feel that?” Marcus looked around the room as if fairies were whispering. “They’re swiping us, Paul. They’re trying to turn us off.”

  “No, they’re not. We’d be dead.”

  “I’m stopping them.”

  Raine’s eyes were still wide with shock, slightly foggy. Recalling that brief encounter with nothingness, she still felt the long cold night swallowed her.

  “He�
�s right,” she said. “They saw me, Paul. And I felt it. Marcus stopped them.”

  An unblinking standoff was chewing up valuable time. Paul was still soaked in gel, patches of skin softened into sickly gray-pink dough. The sensations had to be agonizing, but he didn’t show it.

  Someone shouted inside the building.

  “What’s stopping them from turning off all the power?” Paul asked.

  “They won’t harm their dream disease lab,” Marcus answered. “I took precautions should they try.”

  “If you betray us,” Paul said, “I will hunt you down.”

  “Get back in the suits,” Marcus said. “A fresh layer of gel for you.”

  Four new suits were draped over the beds. Marcus drove three more wedges in place. Each swing rang down the corridor like an alarm. It made no difference, the bricks and monitors already knew where they were. The power distribution pointed right at them.

  Within the mind static, the old man could hear their thoughts. They had found Dennis. Once they followed the tracks, the pieces quickly fell into place. The monitors overturned Bob’s orders (what few he gave before riding off). They didn’t know what Marcus was doing, but one brick was dead.

  The banging started again, this time a dull fist on the lab door.

  They were inside.

  “Paul?” someone shouted. “What are you doing? Please, you’re compromising everything!”

  They were already suited up, hoods pulled over the crowns of their scalps. Jamie stood behind Paul, her freshly fabricated face glowing like a newborn. Her eyes still innocent, imploring. She didn’t remember Paul, had no memories of the farm or him adopting her. She only felt that he was important to her, the paternal love guiding her to stand in the protection of his shadow.

  “Take your beds,” Marcus said.

  The insistent fleshy thudding outside the door pushed them along. Paul waited until Jamie was comfortable, whispering words of comfort. He did the same with Raine, squeezing her hand.