His Hideous Heart

by Dahlia Adler

  There comes a scrape, a sliding noise … and then something jabs at my leg, my stomach. A broom handle? Softly, the Judge speaks. “Laura?” Hearing him say my name for the first time is a shock, but I force myself to stay inert. Eight counts in, exhale. “Laura?”

  He prods me several more times, and then the object withdraws, and I hear him shuffling away across the floor. I stop counting breaths and quietly gulp down air, my head spinning from lack of oxygen. Eyes shut tight, I can hear the Judge at the table—arranging his tools, metal clinking portentously—and fight the urge to vomit again.

  What have I done? What am I doing?

  An eternity passes, two, and then his steps approach again; his key scrapes the lock and the cage door squeaks open. I remain on the ground, limp, my back throbbing and my shoulder numb where my weight rests on it. Eight counts in, exhale. He enters the cage, his breath loud, the air disturbed by his body heat. His hands close on me, tugging, rolling me onto my back. And that’s when I finally act.

  Grabbing the first handfuls of flesh I find, I howl like a banshee and drag him to the floor as hard as I can. He slams down and I roll on top of him, wrapping my hands around his throat, squeezing. It’s kill or be killed, and my vision tunnels, my feral brain taking over once more. He writhes and struggles—and then stars explode behind my eyes as a bony fist collides with my jaw.

  Tumbling back, I collapse to the floor, the cage spinning. My hand strikes metal, liquid sloshing and giving up the bitter scent of stomach acid as the bedpan capsizes. Beside me, the Judge is already righting himself—but I’m between him and the door now, and I see my chance opening before me.

  We both move at once, our bodies coming together, and I feel the prick of a needle a moment before I crack the heavy bedpan across his skull. He rolls away, crumpling with a pitiful groan, vomit and urine soiling his robe; and I jerk backward, kicking my leg out in terror to dislodge the syringe from my calf.

  My foot comes down on it as I scramble upright, the casing smashed to fragments in an instant, the liquid inside it pooling with the water soaking the floor. I gasp, horrified. Did he push the plunger before I hit him? How much is in me?

  The cage hangs open, and I scramble out at a frantic crawl, heaving the door shut again with a crash. The key isn’t in the lock, and I realize with dismay that the Judge—locked in, moving slowly, gripping the crown of his head—still has it. He won’t be contained long. The room swirls and I stumble, lurching backward as fresh panic licks its way up my throat. However much of the drug is in my system, I have to get out before it overtakes me, or I’ll be dead.

  Staggering into a run, I make a crooked dash past the surgical table, pawing feverishly at the curtains until I plunge through the slit and fall against an ascending flight of wooden steps. There’s a door at the top, dark wood, blurring in and out of focus as the drug smothers my brain cells one at a time. Five straight days of bread and water, sedatives, and shock therapy have drained my strength, and the climb leaves me winded and shaky, my heart chugging.

  The door opens onto a dark hallway, which opens onto a shabby living room with floral-print furniture and yellowing wallpaper, a thick, beige carpet underfoot. The air smells like a combination of flea powder and onions that makes my stomach clench, and darkness edges in from the corners of my eyes. Everything seems to roll back and forth, and it requires all my concentration to keep the furniture in one place.

  The front door taunts me from the far side of the room, the tawny shag like thirty miles of desert between me and freedom. I make it four crooked steps before my legs buckle and I fall. A sob racks my chest as I realize I’ll never make it. The distance forward is a light-year … but nearby, to my left, a chintz curtain hangs across a picture window.

  Levering myself to my feet again, I start for it in desperation, falling again before I quite make it all the way. Breathing heavily, forcing my lungs to take more air than they want, I drag myself all the way to the window with the last vestiges of my strength.

  Outside, dusk is falling—the appointed hour. Under a lavender sky sit the houses, hedges, and orderly yards of an incongruously normal neighborhood. Windows glow as evening settles in, the lights a queasy smear. Across the street, I see a woman—or maybe two women, or maybe the same woman twice; or maybe it’s a mailbox, and my muddled brain convinces the bright colors to become the human I need.

  I pound against the glass, leaving filthy streaks, and try to scream for help; but no sound comes out. Slowing by the second, my heart throbs in my chest, my lungs heavy. A numbing haze laps over me like a gentle surf, shadows swallowing up the sky, the lighted windows, and the object across the street that I’ve been hoping will save my life.

  The curtain flutters as I slide to the floor, and darkness grabs hold of me before my head hits the carpet.

  * * *

  I wake again with a jerk, a fierce white light glaring into my face. Sounds are sharp, slicing through the groggy veil of the drug as I come out of its hold, metal clanking and a voice snarling. Something pulls at my ankles, and I squirm, opening my eyes.

  My pulse goes haywire, fear napalming my nerves, when I realize I’m back in the basement—lying atop the surgical table, the Judge tightening a heavy-duty strap across my legs. I scream, flailing clumsily, trying to right myself, and my hand collides with something to my right. A metal shelf bearing scalpels and scissors and other deadly tools upends, crashing to the floor, the instruments scattering.

  Whirling, his eyes huge and furious through the holes in his hood, the Judge roars, “Bitch! Satan’s whore! She ruins everything! Already the ritual is delayed, and hell hungers for her filthy soul, but still she fights against justice!”

  “Help!” I scream louder, shoving myself up. His hand cracks across my cheek, knocking me back, heat and pain blossoming across the left side of my face. Forcing me against the table, he loops a second strap around my waist, pinning my arms while I’m still too dazed to fight back.

  Up above, from somewhere past the thick curtains around us, past the door at the top of the stairs, past even the lonely wasteland of the living room, there comes a heavy thump. The Judge hears it, too, spinning toward the slit in the curtain, his gloved hands working in agitated fists. “No. No, no! The ritual cannot be interrupted!”

  Diving to the floor, he scrambles to retrieve his tools, and I scream until my chest aches. There are two more thuds and a splintering crash; and the Judge abandons his scattered knives with a squeal of panic. Footsteps shake the rafters above us, and I scream louder, wishing it could shake the room apart.

  “Hell will have its payment!” the Judge gasps urgently, hoisting something up from the floor. “The accused will not escape divine retribution! She will be sent to the bosom of the eternal!”

  He raises aloft a circular saw, its sharp teeth bright against the light, and as it spins to life, it emits a piercing shriek that drowns out even my own cries. The blade sparkles as he brings it down, a glittering death that plunges for my exposed breastbone, and I clench my eyes shut with one last scream—waiting for the unendurable to begin.

  An explosion sounds, so loud it cuts through the twin wails of my voice and the shrill, mechanical saw—and then the noise of the blade spins sharply away. There comes a crash, the screech of metal teeth eating the concrete floor, and when a hand closes on my shoulder I scream again in senseless dread.

  “It’s okay, you’re safe now,” a voice says, firm and reassuring. “I’ve got you now, Laura.”

  My eyes open, my chest hitching as I gulp in shallow, terrified breaths, lights pulsing everywhere with the beat of my heart. The face peering down at me is familiar and impossible, and the name rattles out of me like a loose screw. “Agent Fields?”

  “It’s over,” the woman says. Her hand is warm and real, her grip tight. I smell gunpowder in the air, hear the saw shrieking furiously against the floor.

  “Where is—where is he?” I whimper.

  “He’s gone,” Agent Fields states
. “You’re safe. You’re going to be okay.”

  I don’t believe her. I won’t believe her until after she’s unstrapped me from the table, helped me up the stairs, and walked me out to the front yard—where an ambulance, police cars, and a crowd of neighbors are already waiting for me to appear.

  * * *

  One week later, when I’m home from the hospital, Agent Fields and Agent Prescott pay me a visit. I sit between my parents on the couch, each of them gripping one of my hands as though I might be in danger of floating away. They’re more nervous than me, I know; the doctor who examined me in the emergency room gave me something to help me sleep, and when I woke up the following morning, my ordeal in the Judge’s basement had begun to collapse into a fuzzy blur. Just like that, a hole opened in my memory, gulping down events I’m pretty sure I never want to relive anyway. It’s strange, though, like searching for a tooth that’s inexplicably no longer there.

  “His name was Jason Thomas Hurley,” Fields begins. “Does that mean anything to you?” I shake my head blankly, and Prescott silently produces a photograph from a folder under her arm. A cold chill sweeps through me as I take in a face—pale skin, dishwater hair, beady eyes, the eyes—and Fields jumps on my reaction. “You recognize him?”

  “No—I mean, yes,” I stammer weakly, my mind spinning. “He’s a customer. At the café. Sort of a regular.” His features are nondescript, and yet they jump out at me. I can see that same face on the other side of the register, those eyes trying to meet mine as he pays for his drink, saying, You should smile more. Every time he came in, You should smile more. I shudder. “Smile Guy. He’s the Judge?”

  “He was,” Prescott answers briskly, tucking the photo away.

  I nod vaguely. It’s gone from my memory, but my parents have assured me multiple times that the Judge is dead; that he was shot by the FBI just before he could kill me. Twice in the past seven days I’ve woken up screaming, haunted by a mechanical whine and the glittering rotation of metal fangs. “You saved my life.”

  “You saved your own life.” Agent Fields folds her hands together between her knees. “We’re still not entirely sure how, but you escaped the cage in Hurley’s basement and made it to the first floor. A neighbor saw you beating on the window and called the police. She knew Hurley lived alone, and your disappearance was all over the news.” With a friendly smile, she adds, “If you hadn’t managed that, we’d never have known where to look for you. I wish you could remember what happened, because I bet it’s a hell of a story.”

  “I’m glad I can’t,” I answer truthfully. Brandy, Mark, and Shauna have been by every day since I came home, trying to help me recover my lost time, but I’ve resisted their encouragement. Other pictures have been shown to me—the cage, the basement, the table—and I quail at the thought that they have anything to do with me. The truth is, I don’t think I really want to know what happened to me. Ever.

  “Perhaps that’s for the best.” Agent Fields proceeds to fill in some more details, describing items they’ve found in Hurley’s home, corroborating evidence of his crimes. I tune all of it out. At last, she gets to her feet and reaches for my hand. “Congratulations, Laura. You’re a fighter and a survivor, and you’ve still got the rest of your life to live. What do you think you’re going to do?”

  “I’m going to quit my fucking job,” I answer immediately, and am rewarded with a throaty laugh.

  The two women say their goodbyes and we see them to the door; and for a long time after they leave, I watch out the window as my boring neighborhood—houses and hedges, mailboxes and tidy yards—falls under the sway of dusk, windows lighting up one by one. Hundreds of lives left to live.

  A Drop of Stolen Ink

  Emily Lloyd-Jones

  inspired by “The Purloined Letter”

  My first words were always a lie.

  “Hi, I’m Augusta Pine.” I extended my hand so a security guard could scan my tattoo. He held my wrist as red light drifted over the back of my hand, illuminating whorls of ink. My ID tattoo was a silvery web of squares and threads that ran from knuckles to wrist. It was the basic design: government-issued electron-ink, with a mod along my thumb so that I could check my vitals.

  My new boss polished his vintage glasses. I knew his type. Mr. Duvall dressed in antique clothing, but not for its style or its value. He wore it to prove he’d outlived its previous owner.

  His phone beeped, and he glanced down at it. It would be a biography of stats: my age, my education, even my social security number would be uploading to accounts payable.

  Sweat trickled down my neck, dampening my silken shirt. I shifted, hoping that my restlessness would be mistaken for nerves. Mr. Duvall’s eyes passed over me. I knew what I looked like: a rangy feral cat that someone had tried to tame. Sharp cheekbones, thin mouth, and sharp eyes. I’d softened my appearance with a blouse and nails painted periwinkle blue.

  “Welcome to Atreus Partnership,” Mr. Duvall said. “I am sure you will fit right in.”

  I should. I’d been designed to.

  * * *

  There are three things you need to know about identity theft.

  First, anyone can be a victim.

  A few decades ago, there were toddlers with mortgage debt. Elderly grandmothers with drained bank accounts. Even the recently deceased were resurrected for their social security numbers. In the age of the internet, we uploaded our identities and hoped corporate firewalls would protect us. Spoiler alert: they didn’t. All of our information was ripe for the taking.

  After several years of rampant identity crime, a solution was finally devised.

  The only way to protect personal information was to put it somewhere safer: beneath our very skin. Written in government-issued electron-ink, tucked underneath layers of epidermis and powered by the body’s tiny electrical impulses.

  It was a simple, elegant solution. The identity tattoos could not be duplicated and they could not be stolen—at least, not without removing a limb. And without the warmth and breath of a life, an applied tattoo went dark, and all of its information vanished.

  But here’s the second thing you need to know: criminals are smart. Human ingenuity knows few boundaries. There are still ways to steal one’s identity.

  But before you despair, here’s the third thing.

  Criminals may be smart.

  But I’m smarter.

  * * *

  A guard picked up a small patch of black filament with tweezers and gently laid it at the base of my hand. The nanotech burrowed beneath my skin, and in a few moments, a small barcode appeared. “It will let you in and out of the building,” the woman said. “Atreus Partnership is on the seventeenth floor, and this will let you into those offices as well, but no others.” I nodded. The tattoo wasn’t electron-ink, which meant it could be deactivated once I left the company.

  I found myself in a glass elevator with two rail-thin young men. They talked in sharp bursts of technical jargon and didn’t look at me once.

  I stepped into the hallway, found another set of glass doors—no handle, of course. Just a sensor. I held up my wrist.

  Nothing happened.

  I peered through the glass doors. The office was empty, save for two desks. It was a wonder of metal and glass, everything transparent and utterly sterile. My breath fogged the glass.

  “You have to twist it.”

  I looked up. A young woman stood a few feet away. She looked nearly as transparent as our surroundings—white-blond hair and pale skin. Only her mouth had any color; her lipstick was the red-orange of a sunset. “Your wrist,” she said. Her voice had the lilt of an accent—London, I guessed. “The sensor’s a bit wonky. You need to angle your hand down.”

  I did as she said.

  The door slid open.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  She nodded. “New intern?”

  “Is it that obvious?” I smiled. “I’m Augusta.”

  “Well, I hope you last longer than your predecessor.”
She turned to the desk on the right, settling into her chair with a practiced ease. “He hit Reply All on a sensitive email thread.”

  I fought back a grin. “I’ll do my best.”

  “Good.” She flicked me a cool glance. “I’m Adriana—a senior intern, so you’ll be answering to me.” Her introduction finished, she began rummaging about in her desk.

  I found myself studying her the way I’d watched Duvall, the jargony employees, and even the security guards.

  My handler liked sending me into these situations without briefing me first, because it made me second-guess every interaction.

  I didn’t know whom to suspect, so I suspected everyone.

  * * *

  I jogged every evening. Gravel crunched beneath my feet, and I could hear the lapping of the reservoir lake a few steps away. It was a quiet sort of place, the trees blunting the sounds of the city.

  A second figure slipped from the shadows, and before I could blink, a man was running alongside me. He was thin, with a blade of a nose and a mop of brown hair. He caught up easily, his strides eating up the distance between us.

  “Prefect,” I said, sounding only a little winded. “You’re late.”

  “Well,” he replied, with a glance down at his forearm. His tattoo was elaborate—global clocks ran across his forearm in a small grid. He was a man who lived in many times at once. He checked a clock, then tapped his wrist. “It’s a Tuesday. I had to meet with three other assets.”

  “Poor you,” I said. “Stuck telling people what to do all day.”

  For all that I gave him a hard time, Prefect wasn’t a bad handler; he’d kept things professional, if a bit aloof. And I’d heard rumors of other prefects—ones who weren’t afraid to misuse their wraiths. A person with utter control over another … well. Let’s just say humanity’s track record wasn’t great in that regard.