by Chris Hepler
It is not telepathy. There are no voices in my head. It is as if I can take her mind in my hand and feel it bound up in dark emotions. There is fear, of course, but buried deeper is a tight core of anger. It is hard not to compare her to Ena, who has fear and hostility to spare whenever she meets with a surprise. But Ena is wild, free with every emotion. Here, I know that Infinity holds her anger down with iron bars, using defense mechanisms that she has developed—
I stop. I am not going to do this.
"Have you got it?" Of course, she asks. She can feel there is no difference.
"I've changed my mind," I say. "The antivenin will be enough."
"Say that again?" She is incredulous enough that I realize my mistake. The anger will not dissipate if I let up. It will only boil over.
I explain the truth. "I made some calculations. You should be okay—"
"Are you going to make some more and find out I'm not?"
"The antivenin will be enough," I repeat. "Long-term damage will be avoided, and you're healing like a vipe."
"What's this really about?"
I hesitate. "My judgment is lousy, and I don't want to control you," I say. "You can live without me giving you any additional trauma."
Infinity stares at me.
"Fuck you."
"I'm sorry," I say automatically.
"You think 'cause I got abused, I can't make a mature decision myself?"
"Some people take it well. Others never recover. We're under the influence, and I don't want you to regret anything—"
"I eat regret for breakfast. And if I can ignore snakebite, three shots of Jameson's are not going to screw me up. Just don't act like you're noble for doing it."
I realize I am scowling. "It actually—" I catch myself. "Let us just say, I feel it's more polite to let you make up your own mind than to take it over and remove all doubt."
"Well, that's just great," she says. "I’m trying to say I trust you."
"I’m trying to be worthy of it."
For a moment, it seems as if she has no answer. "I want it," she says at last. I can tell that another refusal would be more insulting yet. So, I act.
I create energy inside her head, worming in just as surely as the venom in her veins. I feel my way to her brain's locus coeruleus, and once I have massaged it, she fairly hums and quivers, cortex washed in norepinephrine, ready for orders. The specifics, the science, comes to me more easily when intoxicated; it's cemented in how I think. I dial her heartbeat to a calmer level, play with her lungs for better oxygenation of the blood.
My mission is not to calm her but to rouse the parts falling into a dangerous sleep. When I finally awaken her core, I feel something primal: meridians open wide and burning like a star that vaporizes a comet on impact. Behind that is a black hole that can suck in even that star and crush it with no apparent bother.
It takes time. As soon as it is over, I release her.
"Whoa." Infinity leans onto the floor as soon as she can talk. Automatically, she self-consciously rolls down her shirt.
"How do you feel?" I ask.
"It was like… I don't know, dreaming or anesthesia or something," she says. "I was trying to move, but I knew I didn't really want to."
"You did want to," I say. "I stopped that."
"Man, if it were me," she says, "I would have fiddled around while I was in there and said, 'you're going to agree this was a dumb decision when you wake up."
"I'm on your side."
"No one ever is," Infinity tells me. "Not completely."
I have no answer for that. "Are you feeling any more symptoms?"
"No," she says, clearly surprising herself. "I can breathe. I can feel every part of me… the worst thing is this catheter."
I reach for a cotton swab. When I turn back, she has removed the needle already. She puts the back of her fist in her mouth, then takes the swab. "Didn't think you should touch it," she explains. "Blood and needle."
"You should be done," I say. "Antivenin, alcohol, too. You've been, well… purified."
She looks askance, probably at my choice of words. "I've got to leave, you know. I mean, you're one thing, but Kern and Breunig, they don't forgive and forget."
"I didn't know," I say dryly, "that you were given to understatement."
Infinity smiles and reaches out to gingerly hug me, careful not to push on any of the needles sticking out. Before I know how to respond, her lips touch my cheek, putting a warm kiss there and leaving just as quickly.
"See you around, stranger," she says and is gone from the room. I pull out the needles, debating running upstairs, insisting that somehow this could work out, but there are no more words. I put my shirt back on as I hear the door shut. She will be in her car, driving in the only possible direction: away.
I walk to the bathroom, where I remove the web and put the needles down on the cold, empty countertop. I wash my hands, an old habit to be performed after every surgery.
In the mirror, I notice a droplet of red on my cheek. Her wound, her mouth, her kiss. It lies on my unbroken skin. Safe, as far as such things could ever be. I know I should be repulsed but only let the water run, as if by standing still I could keep her here.
28 - INFINITY
September 7th
There isn't enough room in the car. I know this, but I don't have the time to acknowledge that uncomfortable truth when there are about fifty more gunning for me. There is no question I'm worse off now than I was a month ago. The game is up, the uncertainty gone, and assuming Roland is a good corporate narc, I'll have F-prots hunting me from two coasts instead of one. Where do I run to now—some storm cellar in Kansas?
I throw the last items on top of the stuffed back seat—clothes that didn't fit in the laundry bag. Said bag is full because the suitcases are packed with everything I brought from Cali, and this new bag includes pots, pans, and clothes I got once I realized I'd be here for the winter.
I slide into my seat and carefully buckle myself, leaving my jacket open and putting the arm belt behind my body. I want to be able to get at my shoulder holster quickly. Then, I make a last, instinctive check—yes, there are tissues on the passenger seat. Better to bring the whole box than waste it and have to buy a packet.
Hoping the little Atlantis doesn't violate motor vehicle laws, I pull away from the safehouse and into the on-again, off-again world of D.C. traffic. I hate it—the exit ramps sprout on either side of the road, instead of just on the right like a sensible city. I drive manually because that's what you do when you've disconnected your traceable GPS, and I careen across three lanes when necessary to make my turnoff. Forty minutes later, I'm where I need to be.
Morgan Lorenz called me this morning. I think it's legit. Cho knows the number of my new burner phone; Lorenz is still in contact with Cho. I tried, with my limited skills, to check the call out—it wouldn't surprise me to discover it was a ruse to flush me out of hiding. All I got was that the call was voice-over-Internet from a cybercafé. The voice sounded like him, and it came on a pre-dawn Sunday morning. Unless Roland scrambled the F-prots that very night, the boys in boots will be being briefed only now, not executing some plan with faked audio.
The talk itself was short. Georgetown. M Street. He would meet me.
I find parking about a block from the café. I do a casual walk around the area to play spot-the-cop, and no one seems vigilant enough to rate as a pro. There are couples walking with shopping bags, foursomes laughing at some triviality or other, a homeless man bundled up behind a cardboard sign and a woman trying to hail taxis that are always occupied.
I focus on the taxi-hailing woman the most, as she consistently looks around like a pro might, but by the time I make my second circuit, I see the woman finally get in a rideshare and zoom off into the distance.
Just then, my senses kick in. The sound of shoes on sidewalk. Someone is behind me.
I whirl, nearly on top of the homeless man, all sandy beard and body odor.
"Where's y
our car?" he asks.
I'm not stunned long. I cross my arms to put a hand on the Glock. "What's it to you?"
"Infinity?" he asks. I realize my mistake. It's Morgan. He's grown a ratty mop of a beard, he's in scum clothes, and he added a cardboard sign so he can disappear completely.
"Shit, sorry. It's nearby. You got everything?"
"I got nothing," he says. "Let's go."
We hurry to the car and get in, albeit with him picking up boxes and bags out of the shotgun seat. I notice his scowl as he stashes them on his lap but figure he doesn't have anything to smile about.
"Where are we going?" I ask.
"Someplace safe."
"Where's that?"
"I was hoping you knew."
I try thinking positive thoughts. When that fails, I start thinking of desperate ploys. "Last time I was in it this bad, I hit up a battered women's shelter. The cops won't expect you there."
"If you want me to dress in drag, I'm going to need better clothes."
I think the shelters might accept a man, but they'd ask questions, which could trip us up. What would our story be? Two domestic abuse victims coincidentally fleeing… what? A bisexual polygamous husband?
"Option two," I say, "we rob a bank."
"No," Lorenz says. He doesn't even look at me.
"I wasn't serious."
"I am," he growls. "I may have to assault people, I may have to infect them, but I sure as hell don't have to rob them."
It seems crazy to me—he's either naïve or somehow hasn't figured out that his accounts would be frozen. "You want to just live on blood?" I ask.
"Want, no. Can, yes."
"And for income—"
He waves the sign at me. HOMELESS, HUNGRY, HONORABLE.
"You've got to be kidding," I say. But there's another part of me that twitches in shame. I remember emptying that trucker's wallet before trash-canning it in Arkansas, and here he is, lasting a week without stealing. This is the Lorenz I watched on video. The crusader I'll never be.
"Are you going through with the trial?" I ask.
"I don't have a choice. And you? You in this for love or money?"
"It's the right thing to do," I say. "And the money's not that good. I've made a pad, but it won't last long. Credit cards create trails. Hey, car?" The dashboard lights up in response to my summons. "Where's the low-rent section of town here?"
"Wait," Morgan says. "That command uses GPS. They could be—"
"—looking for the car to link to the grid, yeah."
"Aren't you going to hit cancel?"
"It'll spin its wheels. I already disconnected it. I have a spare chip in the glove box."
Lorenz opens it up and moves stuff aside. "Where?"
"Possibly the trunk," I think out loud. "Under the luggage."
"Are we at least charged up?" he tries.
"I was going to do that after I met you." At his disbelieving look, I smile. I got him. "You're funny when you're desperate. Check it out—full tank."
Lorenz gives me a dark look. The message gets through. If I'm not reliable enough for this, he'll be gone in a second. "I saved up a little money. Made it all cash." He nods.
"How long have you survived?" he asks.
"The truth? Just a month."
"Oh, boy."
"We're going to need to practice working together," I say. "It's going to be you and me against the world."
Lorenz holds up a forefinger. "Actually, you're wrong there."
29 - RANATH
September 7th
I sit in Kern's office, listening and brooding. I am unused to entering the room with a sense of shame or confusion, and as a result, I remain quiet. I do little to prompt conversation. Kern is, as I suspected, busy.
"I'm saying I have a stack of the things on my desk right now," Kern says loudly into the speaker phone. "I've never heard of the manufacturer. I've never seen the product before. Someone cashed in right quick."
I turn over one of the dark blue boxes heaped on the desk. Red lettering spells out that the Virally Activated Medical Prognosis home test kit is 99.5% accurate and is the same test being used in hospitals. It gives no details of how those numbers were attained or the names of the hospitals privy to this testing. The curvature that turns the "M" into little stylized fangs suggests its target demographic is more concerned with mind-numbing fear than well-cited sources.
"Yeah," says the speaker-phone voice. "There's four or five reliable companies in this field so far. Not selling junk like the old days. Used to be you couldn't spit without hitting someone claiming to have discovered some qi phenomenon or other—"
"I was there," Kern says, tired.
"Okay, so we ran them by our guys. Most of them, they're little needle-stick things with—hold on, let me get this right—hema... hemagglutination assays?"
"Yeah."
"The team said they're nothing surprising. Barring human error, they work. We had some tissue samples on ice. They tested right. Of course, the crew is more worried that they'll produce false positives—"
"Well, the main question I want you to ask over there," Kern interrupts, "is, 'are any of our people in these companies, and are they profiting?' If someone gets it into their heads that we not only released the bug, we're selling ancillary products of any kind—I don't even want to think how bad that looks."
I take Kern's tablet off the desk, type, and slide it over to him: WHO IS THIS?
Kern taps a response: LEGAL.
"Now, I believe you had something to say to Dr. Cawdor. He's here."
"Dr. Cawdor, I'm Eloise Campion. I’m on the response team for Morgan Lorenz’s allegations. Dr. Kern says a member of your team may be less than loyal. Is that accurate?"
I point at the phone. "What have you told her?"
“Just damage assessment,” says Kern. "She knows Infinity got into the lab. What we need now is for you to recall any situations where you told her anything confidential."
"Why would she need to know that? We're assuming Infinity's with Lorenz now?"
Kern has on that face he makes when delivering terrible news. "It's safest if we assume, yes. Eloise, hope you don't mind if we go dark here for a second. We need to organize ducks."
"Make your row," says the lawyer, and Kern kills the volume. He seems like he is trying to be the adult in the room.
"Let's get one thing clear," Kern says. "I assume from the emergency code in your text she still knows everything from the last three years. You did not put the memory cramp on her?"
I don't want to hear any of this. It comes out in my voice. "I did not."
"Should I ask why?"
"Because she wasn't a target at the time."
"Okay, but there was a point where you realized she was a vipe, and then presumably after that point, she departed, and she was still a vipe as she did so, right?"
I drum my fingers. This is not going to go well.
"What are you thinking?"
Lies are for targets. That rule didn't work with Infinity. I opened up, and now a dozen specters of what could go wrong dance in front of me. I could be subpoenaed. My identity change could unravel. The families of the vipes could descend on me in a mob. D.C. does not have the death penalty, but Virginia does. Still, I cling to the mantra. "I'm thinking I fucked us royally, but that is no new revelation."
"Stop right there. You did not fuck us. She did. You get her as soon as possible, and we can close up the can before the worms get out." Kern must have read my face because he adds, "Alive, dead, however you want to do it."
"That's not the wisest course of action—"
"Forget wise. Wise is gone. I want real. We can plan for anything. Just tell me what she's going to do. You know her best."
Focusing on the problem helps calm me, which is no doubt why Kern wants it. I see a few scenarios: Infinity can lie low, she can join Lorenz's case, or she can go to the press.
What comes out of my mouth is, "No."
"I'm sorry. I d
on't see how that's productive," says Kern.
"You want me to be real," I say. "The reality is, either I shoot her in the head, or I somehow tie her up in some unbreakable Spider-Man restraints, bring her to the drop-off point, and then… what?"
"Roland, I don't actually know the full extent—"
"Yes, you do," I insist. "You're going to argue in court that she's not even human. What do you think's going to happen to her if you succeed? Never mind that bit about all men being equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights. I don't know how you get around that one."
"We've got a case that lays out several precedents," Kern says. He looks natural saying it, as though there is no trouble at all. "I mean, if you want to see a crisis, look at the other side. They're meeting with the Nonhuman Personhood Project—"
"So, it follows that she's a gorilla? Or does she just need to be put down like one?"
"Well, after we registered the DNA with the International Commission of Zoological Nomenclature, it follows that they're not Homo sapiens. They're Cruor—"
"That's a rubber-stamp process, and you know it—"
"Ranath, for someone who designed our protocols, you are being nutbar-level recalcitrant. What did she do to you? Did you fuck her or something?"
"We just talked."
Kern holds his fingers to the bridge of his nose. "That's worse."
"Look, I am on board with the idea of damage control, but protocol says we bring her in, and then what? She was one of us right up until we found out. She didn't change. We're the ones making this a death sentence. You and me. No one else."
"That is not accurate. I recognize emotions are high, so I am not being unreasonable. You can wipe her mind from here to eternity. Problem solved."
I hesitate.
"What?" says Kern. "I know you can do it. She'll probably agree it's the best option, for God's sake." I say nothing. "Look, if you need time, I'm sorry, we don't have any. I'm giving you a nonviolent solution. Either take it, or explain what the fuck your problem is."
He does not know. And I will not tell him. "I change identities a lot in this business," I say. "But there are people I refuse to be."
