Halfskin

by Tony Bertauski

  But not Marcus Anderson.

  He was certain, now more than ever, that biomite technology would be the end of humanity. Where once he held onto the thread of hope—bare and frayed at the ends—that people would see the folly of their tireless attempts to create happiness with technology, it was now all but dissolved.

  They need me now more than ever.

  The public was unaware of Cali and Nix. Thank God, the media, either. So far, all they knew was that a mistake had been made. As far as authorities were aware, the brother and sister were wanted for questioning. But they hadn’t broken any laws. And, for the love of God, they certainly weren’t halfskins that M0ther couldn’t see.

  And that should be impossible.

  The only way to escape M0ther was to develop a new brand of biomites. Geniuses had yet to crack that case, but if Cali did… if, in fact, she developed something that knocked them off the grid and this wasn’t a fluke… well, then, Marcus was fucked.

  We all are.

  Everyone would figure out how to avert the all-watching eye of the government; they’d be out on their own, doing what they wanted, infecting humanity with a new brand of biomites that were, perhaps, stronger, faster and telepathic.

  Marcus was sure that he’d live long enough to see the ugly end. He’d see humanity consumed by microscopic machines. And he would sit back with the other purists in the world and laugh.

  Laugh as biomites ate them like flesh-eating bacteria.

  Laugh and say it, say it loud.

  I told you so.

  The door opened. A doctor entered and extended his hand. Asked Marcus how he was feeling.

  Marcus grunted. And tapped.

  The doctor dropped a folder on the counter and leafed through several documents. He pursed his lips and whistled. His lips wet. The sound happy and piercing.

  The doctor tapped the counter. It came to life like a computer tablet. Marcus removed his hand from the lighted surface. The doctor went back to whistling, moving objects around. He double-tapped a folder and the wall in front of Marcus transformed. The framed poster turned out to be a projection.

  Lights danced.

  An X-ray flipped into view.

  “That’s your knee.” The doctor used his fingertip to draw a red circle on the wall. “Your patella is shattered and you tore the patellar tendon.”

  Marcus didn’t need the X-ray and all the red arrows pointing to the black lines that spiderwebbed his kneecap. The knee was destroyed.

  “There’s a procedure that utilizes cadaver tissue to rebuild—”

  “No.” The thought of a dead man’s skin inside his body was revolting.

  “When the swelling is down, we’ll replace the entire knee.”

  The doctor explained, with more red lines, how they were going to enter Marcus’s knee, where they were making cuts, and what materials they would use to substitute for bone and ligament. He would have an artificial knee that worked almost as good as the one he was born with. He could expect trouble as he got older, but it beat the hell out of the alternative.

  “There is another option.” The doctor swiped the desktop. The red lines vanished.

  Marcus’s jaws flexed.

  “You’re an ideal candidate for biomite regeneration. There have been some recent advancements in biomite knee reconstruction. The seeding is relatively painless and the results are complete within a month. We could start today, don’t even have to wait for the swelling to go down.”

  Marcus took in a long breath. The doctor pretended to organize his folder.

  “No,” Marcus managed to say, and that was it.

  The doctor nodded. He turned the desktop off, pushed the folder to the side, and sat on a stool. Marcus let out a small sound when he unclipped the brace around his knee.

  The pain lanced the fog like a spotlight.

  50

  The room smelled like a stale armpit.

  A week of recovery, of sweating out waste, of dead skin peeling off them like burn victims, was about all Cali could take. It clung like cigarette smoke. She felt better stepping out of the shower and wrapping up in a robe. She leaned over the sink, piling a generous helping of toothpaste—compliments of Red Roof Inn—onto the bristles and scrubbed her whole mouth. The armpit was even on her tongue.

  Her spit was foamy red—blood and toothpaste.

  She pulled her lips back, spilling lines of blood over her teeth. Her finger squeaked over her gums, massaging the blood away. They had receded.

  Cali stepped back, looking at her reflection. She wasn’t pasty anymore. She opened the robe and exposed her body to the mirror, revealing saggy breasts that drooped over a series of speed bumps that were her ribs. Her pelvis jutted from her hips like brackets. No matter what she thought-commanded, the biomites weren’t putting weight back on her.

  She’d been eating, even though she wasn’t really hungry. She assumed it was just a caloric deficiency that was causing the gaunt affliction, but nothing had changed. Her distress haunted her, reminding her something was wrong each time she looked in the mirror.

  Another self-analysis, just to be sure.

  “All right, in you go.” Cali clapped her hands. “Into the shower, young lady.”

  Avery jumped on one bed; Nix lay on the other, hands folded over his stomach. “Momma,” she said, the impact of the jump bouncing in her voice, “we’re doing this game where I jump over to the other bed and… and…”

  She jumped a couple times and caught her breath.

  “And Uncle Nix tries to… to… grab my feet before I can get back and… and… we’re keeping score.”

  “What if you hit your head?”

  “No, no… he hasn’t caught me yet. I’m too fast, Momma.”

  “She’s too fast?” Cali looked at her brother, his eyes closed.

  “Too fast for me.”

  Avery squealed with delight, bouncing almost to the ceiling. Cali pulled the towel off her head and wrangled her daughter onto the floor, kicking and laughing. She smacked her bottom as the young lady padded into the bathroom. Cali turned on the shower for her.

  She dug through her bag, looking for the least gross thing to wear. Nothing had been washed in over a month. She hand-washed the T-shirts and underwear in the sink, but they still seemed rank.

  The armpit contaminated everything.

  She threw on a baggy sweatshirt and shorts, nixed the underwear. She closed the bathroom door and retrieved a black kit, sitting on the bed.

  “Let me have your hand.”

  “Do I have to?” Nix answered.

  “Come on.”

  “Use one of my toes. I can’t feel my fingertips.”

  “I’ve got a baseline with her fingers, now hand it over before I pull a sample off your lip.”

  He made half an effort. Cali grabbed his pinky and pressed it on a small box. A needle took a droplet. Nix pretended it hurt, sucking air through his teeth.

  “Baby,” she said.

  Cali set it down on the round table next to the window, the curtains drawn. All levels were exactly where she expected them to be. His nervous system was up to 60% function. Respiratory was 88%. Circulatory, 95%. Brain function was near 100%.

  Punching all cylinders.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  “How are you?”

  She waited for an answer.

  “Maybe you should put that thing on your finger,” he said.

  “I will. Don’t worry. You’re the only one who skirted death, so tell me how you’re feeling. Any unusual aches, pains, sensations? Anything abnormal?”

  It had been a week. His recovery was unbelievable, really. She’d just hoped he’d survive, that she could push him out of the hotel looking halfway normal.

  Still, it could all go wrong.

  “Well?”

  Nix shook his head. She stared, just in case he needed a little pressure to find the right answer. He folded his hands and closed his eyes. She pressed her finger on the black bo
x and watched the readout. Her levels were better than his, just something about the brain function was a little off. It was operating at full capacity; the only difference was the anomaly in the algorithm, something that was always there as long as she could remember. She could never figure out what was missing. It was similar to Nix’s readout when he was dreaming up the lagoon.

  Going there, as he put it.

  But she didn’t have a dreamland and that made her wonder if there was something the new breeds were doing that she wasn’t following. She would have preferred that they be better—stronger—but they couldn’t stay in the room any longer.

  They’d been out once. It was the second day after Nix woke up. She took him on an extended walk to the ice machine. They walked the entire floor and stopped at the end. She didn’t like being in the open for so long, but the exercise was refreshing. And the view of Chicago was different from that end of the hallway. They sat for an hour. No one bothered them.

  When they returned, maid service had been through. Thankfully, nothing was out of the ordinary, nothing that would raise an alarm. She thought about switching rooms, but that seemed too obvious.

  “How’s it look?” Nix asked.

  “What?”

  “Your analysis.”

  “It looks fine. Now, I don’t want you to push it. Tomorrow morning, we’ll be walking through the lobby to get to the parking garage. I’ll go first and find the car and have it ready. Avery will go with you. If you feel weak, you can lean on her. You need to conserve your energy. That means no extracurricular activity.”

  She snapped the black kit closed.

  “No dreamland.”

  Avery was still singing in the shower.

  Cali went to the mirror and brushed her hair. It was thinner than before. Nix lay motionless. She tried to ignore him but plopped her hand on Nix’s.

  “Look, I know you miss her. I know you miss… Raine.”

  The name came out sharp. She didn’t try to sugarcoat it.

  “But, I’m sorry, she’s in your mind, Nix. She’s something you constructed with thoughts, something you made up when you were little.”

  She squeezed his hand.

  “You’re saying she’s not real?”

  Cali shook her head.

  Nix nodded. He closed his eyes again. Then, a few moments later, he tapped his skull.

  “I think this is a new reality, sis. I’ve no more control of her than I have over my heart beating or hair growing. She’s a part of me that lives and breathes. I think the biomites give me access to the new world.”

  “Did you dream up that world?”

  “In the beginning, yeah. But now, it’s just more… real.”

  “But every detail you have created, right? You’ve pictured every color, every image since you were ten. You built that world with your mind.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “You told me it started in the doctor’s office with the poster and the waterfall, that you kept adding to it by visualizing something new. First, you made the ocean, then the forest and the fish… and then her.”

  Cali touched his forehead like she was checking a fever.

  “It’s all right, Nix. It’s just not real. You invented it. The only difference is that it’s inside your mind. Not out here, not in the flesh.”

  He stared at her, like he was really listening. Maybe this time he would understand. This time he would believe and stop wasting time in dreamland.

  “If I’m the only one that sees her,” he said, “does that mean she’s an illusion?”

  “Yes.” Cali nodded. “Sorry. Get some rest. We’ll go over things again in the morning. For tonight, get some real sleep. Promise?”

  He nodded, once.

  Cali opened the bathroom. The song jumped out, loud and clear.

  “Enough showering. No one else in the building will have hot water.”

  “Yes, Momma.”

  Cali turned the shower off and dropped on the bed while Avery dried off. She flipped on the television and scouted the news stations. Still no word on their escape. She had the queer sensation that something was missing.

  Couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

  Maybe if she’d noticed the missing wheelchair, things would’ve been different.

  51

  EVERY BUMP SENT SPIKES THROUGH Marcus’s knee. Even in the OxyContin-induced fog, he felt the pain.

  We don’t get many of these anymore, the nurse teased. I can’t remember the last time a doctor cut open a knee to operate, honestly.

  Honestly, he didn’t give a shit.

  He was supposed to stay another month to rehab. And while he was there, continue overseeing the case of the missing brother and sister.

  Plans changed.

  Just before surgery, his superiors informed him that Jack Parsons would be arriving to go over Marcus’s notes. Marcus could go home and recover peacefully. The day after surgery, lying in bed, mouth open, pain-sweat beading on his head like it was freshly waxed, he received the news that Internal Affairs wanted to talk to him.

  They scheduled a chat for when he returned to D.C.

  While he was stuck in Chicago, his office had likely been raided, his interns sequestered. His records scrubbed and combed through and picked apart. Dr. Erickson, chief of biomites, probably blew the whistle and reported their conversations. The bastard probably recorded them.

  Marcus knew what would come next; he’d been part and parcel of witch trials of this sort. They would paint him as a religious sycophant bent on destroying biomite technology, that he secretly manipulated the system and caused the premature death of hundreds.

  Eventually, they would say, thousands. Millions.

  They would paint that picture, they would show it to him as a warning. Go down quietly, Marcus. If you don’t, this is what you’ll see.

  Perhaps he was wrong. Maybe this was all a misunderstanding. He was good at his job. If he wasn’t, he would’ve been replaced long ago. Maybe he was just too biased to be trusted. His hatred for biomites colored his perception, tainted his thinking and actions. Truth be told, he was perfect for the job and the Secretary all the way to the president knew it. If someone was planning on casting Marcus as the goat, they would make a mistake.

  He was a scrapper.

  They knew what he’d been doing. He managed his job with the tools they gave him. When he had to distort reality for the good of the country, he stepped up, did what needed doing.

  He shook his head.

  His thoughts were getting away. Even if he felt old and broken, he was the founder of the Halfskin Laws. If he fell, a lot would follow.

  He was rolled out of the hospital to wait for a car to pick him up and take him to the airport. Fly him home. His phone buzzed. He looked at the number, silencing it. His wife had nothing that he wanted to hear. He would be there by nightfall to hear it all in person. If there was one bright side to Chicago, it was the silence of his hotel room. There were no extra voices around unless he wanted them.

  Marcus watched for his driver in the downtown melee. No sign of the black Mercedes.

  But there was something interesting.

  Down the street, about a block away, was a man in hospital scrubs. An orderly was pushing an empty wheelchair. Marcus watched him instead of the traffic. The man bounced his head to the rhythm of buds buried deep in his ears. Normally, Marcus would’ve silently cursed about music in the workplace, even though the man was just pushing a wheelchair.

  He didn’t notice the car pull up to the roundabout. The driver had the door open and Marcus was pushed forward.

  “Hold on.” He put his hand up, eyes on the approaching orderly.

  “Hey. You.” Marcus snapped his fingers. When the orderly didn’t notice, he grabbed the nurse. “Get him.”

  The nurse, hesitating, reached out and gently touched the orderly, who pulled one of the cords from his ear.

  “Where’d you find that?” Marcus shouted over a passing truck.

>   “This?” The orderly pointed at the empty wheelchair. “Got reported found. I’m picking it up and bringing it back.”

  “Where?” He twisted in the wheelchair, sparks lighting up his knee. He grunted. “Where was it?”

  “Red Roof said they found it in a room.” He pointed at the back of the wheelchair, where it was written, Northwestern Memorial Hospital. “Happens all the time, man. You know how much these things worth?”

  The orderly waited for more questions. When there weren’t, he plugged his ear and continued on.

  A certain thrill rolled through Marcus’s insides. A delicious feeling, it was. Something he was all too familiar with. A feeling he got when he was right. Or when he found treasure.

  This was both.

  52

  The taste of coffee still lingered.

  Cali wished for a mint or something that would make her feel new and fresh. Something that would wash away this feeling of waste. She was certain it would be different when she escaped the room, the hotel. When they were out in the open and away from danger. That was when she would feel normal again.

  Fresh and new.

  The door clicked quietly behind her. She smoothed out the wrinkles in her shirt, with no lasting effect. Body odor clung to the fabric like a stain. The carpet felt spongy. She sensed the occupants of each room she passed. Most of them sleeping. A few reading USA Today. One couple was having sex.

  She smelled it.

  The lights buzzed in their sockets, throwing an iridescent glow down the hall. She passed the elevator alcove, pushed open the door to the stairs and descended, sure that someone had vomited somewhere in the long trail of treads within the last couple nights. Cali stopped at the bottom step and took a deep breath.

  Nix and Avery would stay up in the room for fifteen minutes, then come down and meet her in the parking garage. She’d have the door open, car running. She was sure he had the strength to walk normally through the lobby. She only wished she were there to help. Just in case.

  The door’s cushioned hinge resisted her initial shove. If she was superstitious, she might see that as a sign. Don’t go any further, stay in the room. But she’d been up there long enough. Cali leaned her shoulder into the red door and entered the main lobby.