Charlie opens his coat and draws her in. She puts her arms around him, feeling his warmth, inhaling the essence that is Charlie. He protects her from the rain.
“You sure you want to do this?” he whispers.
“Of course. Why?”
“No going back. If we get caught, it’s all over. Lights out.”
“I know.”
“I just want you to decide.”
Jamie buries her face inside his coat, her cheek against his chest. His heart beats in her ear, filling the silence. He rocks her back and forth.
Somewhere, a ship moans.
Charlie keeps looking at the door. It’s taking too long. There’s no handle to pull; it only opens from the inside. Only on invitation. The minutes pile up. Her stocking cap is cold and the pill isn’t working. She can’t remember the last time she went cold off for this long. Music is always in her ears and video feeds her vision.
The tendons flex on Charlie’s neck. He swallows hard. Each second sows doubt. She’s not charred, not like Charlie was. Her biomites aren’t overworked and burned out. If this doesn’t work, though, it won’t be long.
The sliver of light returns. The girl pokes her head out like before. She might be nineteen, like Jamie, but hard living makes her look thirty. Her skin is blotchy and her hair knotty. The rims of her eyes are red.
She impatiently gestures; Jamie comes closer. The dirty blonde’s fingernails are chewed down to the nubs. Jamie’s fingernails still have candy blue polish on them. The dirty blonde presses her clammy palm against Jamie’s wrist.
“Forty-nine point nine,” she mutters. Her front tooth is discolored.
Jamie yanks her hand back. If the girl read Charlie’s visible biomites, it would be 49.9%, too. And so would everyone behind that door. Jamie didn’t come for visible biomites. She came for the other kind, the ones Charlie got a month ago. The ones the government can’t see.
Nixed biomites.
The dirty blonde’s stare goes unfocused. She’s silently chatting with someone, the circuitry of her biomite-enhanced brain wirelessly networking with others. It’s bright white behind her, like nothing exists in there. It’s supposed to be a dance club. Jamie shuffles back.
Charlie hangs on.
“Okay.” Dirty blonde pushes the door open and steps back.
A cold shank of fear keeps her legs from moving. She thought this would be easier, thought she’d go running inside when it came time. Charlie leans in, his breath warm in her ear. He nuzzles against her neck, kissing it gently.
“It’s all right,” he says. “I promise.”
He holds her hand and walks inside, not letting go even when the white light swallows him. He’s a bleached figure, smiling back, hanging on, pulling her toward the light. Toward hope.
Towards a promise that things will feel better.
The warehouse dance club explodes out of the white.
Laser lights fire at bodies that are slammed tight and bouncing to an endless techno-rhythm that ripples over her skin. Charlie pulls her through a crease in the crowd. His military coat looks brand new: clean, pressed, and sparkly. It didn’t even look that good when he stole it. Jamie pulls her stocking cap off. It’s clean and toasty. Smells like fabric softener.
The dirty blonde looks back, only she isn’t so dirty. Her hair shines like gold, her complexion smooth and tan. Her eyes are clear blue, all white, no red. She smiles a perfect smile and Charlie follows, pulling Jamie through the party that smells like an evergreen forest. It reminds her of spring.
They walk for several minutes, occasionally passing booths tucked deep into corners where skin heaves in and out of the dark: elbows and knees, thighs, and shoulders.
Everything unblemished, perfect.
Augment, baby. Biomites make life worth living.
They reach a horseshoe-shaped booth in one of a thousand corners. It feels like the back of the club, but there’s no wall in sight. Blondie gestures like a game-show host. Charlie slides in first.
“Can I get you anything?” Her voice reverberates in Jamie’s head.
“You can turn that shit down?” Jamie says.
Blondie sneers like synthesized dance beat is Mozart and how dare she. But then the volume drops until it’s barely a whisper above the ringing in Jamie’s ears. She knows it’s still pounding a rhythm inside everyone else’s heads.
Charlie holds up two fingers—two drinks—and Blondie melts into the crowd.
“Don’t insult him,” he says.
“Who?”
“The guy running this place.”
“Charlie, the music is ear shit.”
“Just…” He takes her hand. “You’re here, babe. You’re knocking on the door, let’s not piss anyone off. All right?”
He strokes the back of her hand. Before, his fingers would’ve been twitching with all these people, all this stress. Now he comforts her. The thing is, she really should hate this music. She knows that its computer-generated sound bites manufactured for brainless mobs, but it’s getting inside her, making her hungry for more. She forces her feet to remain still, to keep her head from bobbing. She’d never forgive herself.
“His name is Cee,” Charlie says. “All this is his field.”
“All of this?”
“Everything you see and hear. Everybody is experiencing his perception field. That’s why you can’t run your field—you have to commit to his. You feel it, right? You feel the music?”
She refuses to answer. Does he know what she’s thinking? Was she tapping her toe? Charlie’s not nodding; he’s bouncing his head to the rhythm. He feels it, too. He likes it. If he pulled her onto the dance floor, she’s not sure she could resist.
“How’s he do it?” she asks. “How’s he making other people see his field?”
“It’s the power of halfskin.”
“But everyone is experiencing his field. That’s just…”
The perception field is a personal thing. Jamie had auditory augments; she could change the color of her eyes or release serotonin into her bloodstream, she could roll identifier script through her vision to see maps or read someone’s name, but she couldn’t make someone else experience it. And not an entire club.
“He’s almost a brick,” he says.
“Impossible.”
“Yeah. They say he’s like 99.9% biomite.” He bites his lip, looking at the dancing. “He’s only a tenth of a percent clay.”
A tenth organic? Would that even be human?
Red, blue, and green lasers fire in all directions. The partygoers try to catch them. There’s an island bar not far away, and in the occasional gap in the crowd Jamie sees the lurkers watching the madness. Most of them are chatting up women wearing tiny skirts or transparent blouses over hard nipples.
One guy leans back on his elbows. He doesn’t like the music.
Blondie drops off two drinks and a plate of nachos with melted cheese. She holds a metallic pill between long, polished fingernails and flicks a knowing glance at Charlie. He acts like she didn’t just chat him.
The pill settles between the drinks.
“What’s that?” Jamie asks.
“The answer.”
The pill is hexagonal, silver on one side and white on the other. “No more pills, Charlie.”
“That’s not what you think. They don’t seed nixes through a gun anymore, that’s old-school shit. Just swallow the pill, the nixes integrate. I thought it was bullshit, too. Look at me now.”
He smiles. This time she sort of cringes. His smile looks like everyone else’s. It’s all so shiny and happy and good.
“How’d you pay for it?” she asks.
He takes a long swallow. “The drinks are complimentary.”
“No, how’d you pay for the…” She swallows, nervous to say it out loud. “The nixes.”
His foot stops dancing to the endless beat. He’s looking at the dance floor but doesn’t see it. She can’t believe she didn’t ask this question earlier. When he said
he was going to talk to a man about this, she was scared he’d never come back. She was happy to see him, happy that it worked, that he wasn’t dead. Happy that there was hope. So when he promised she could have the same thing, that she could save herself from becoming charred, she didn’t ask what it cost. Whatever the price, it was worth it.
But watching the mindless dance craze and perfect smiles makes her stop.
“Charlie?”
“Yeah?”
“How did you pay for this?”
His jaw clenches. “We don’t have a choice, Jamie.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I made arrangements.”
Suddenly, she’s not digging the music. The colors feel bland. Everyone feels like mice on a churning wheel. Jamie tries to engage her field, open her music, and scan the crowd, but she can’t override the club’s perception field, the bodies still happy and perfect.
“If I didn’t do it, I’d be charred the rest of my life. If you don’t do this, you will be, too.” He slowly turns the glass of beer, leaving rings on the table. “We’re nineteen, Jamie. You’re sitting at 49.9%. You’re maxed out, no more biomites. Another year and you’ll char, just like me. You’ll be left with hard feelings, babe, with sixty-plus years of hard feelings ahead of you.”
He looks up.
“So what choice is there? They told me what it would cost, I paid it. We need to be halfskin to cope. This place is giving us the chance. It’s the only way. You know I’m right.”
Jamie pulls her hand away. “What’s the price?”
“Just helping out, that’s all we have to do.”
“You signed us up for favors?”
“No. We just work for the club until the debt’s paid, that’s all.”
“What kind of favors?”
“You got to understand, becoming nixed halfskin is expensive. We could flip burgers for twenty years and not have enough money. I did what I had to do.”
“What kind of favors?”
Blondie knows what kind of favors. She’s working off debt, too. That’s why she’s answering a back-alley door and serving drinks while everyone else is having a good time. Does she even know what she looks like when she opens that door? Would she love this music if she stepped outside?
Does she ever leave?
Jamie knows what kind of services indebted halfskins do. If you can’t pay, you puppet. You deliver things. You do things.
And you like it.
As long as you never leave, you will like the things you do to people. And the things they do to you.
Charlie grabs her sleeve. “I won’t let them hurt you.”
“I got to think about this, Charlie.”
“There’s nothing to think about. They promised me you won’t get hurt.”
“Can you stop them?”
“Just…come on, Jamie. We don’t have a choice. We already wasted our lives—we’re tapped out. We got to go halfskin to be right again. Once we’re paid up, we’ll be good. We’ll be right. You know that. You saw how I changed.”
“They’ll hurt me, Charlie. They’ll hurt you.”
“But I can’t…I can’t go back, babe. It’s too late. I’m already there.”
“I know.”
He tries to say more, tries to promise everything will be all right, but nothing comes out. He can’t protect her.
Maybe it’s worth it. Maybe having everything she wants and feeling how she wants to feel and not caring about shit music is the way to happiness. Maybe she just needs to sell her soul while it’s still worth something.
She gets out of the booth. She doesn’t know where the exit is, but she’ll look for it all night if that’s what it takes. Right now she just needs to be in her own head, experience her own field, think this through. She was sure she wanted this, but now…
“You can’t leave.” Charlie grabs her wrist, prying her fingers open. He pushes the pill into her palm. “This is a onetime shot, babe. You leave and you don’t get another. That pill won’t activate outside the club.”
“I got to think about it, Charlie.”
“There’s nothing to think about!” His smile falters. Finally, a sign of the real Charlie shines, not that fake happy smile. He’s still in there. He needs her. And she needs him.
She rolls the heavy pill between finger and thumb, the surface smooth and cold. She knows he’s right. Where will she go if she leaves? What’s out there can’t be worse than this pill. There’s nothing outside that door but her life.
This can’t get worse.
She closes her eyes and throws the pill in her mouth. An aluminum flavor coats her tongue and leaves a metallic trail down her esophagus. It lands in her stomach.
He holds out his hand. “I promise.”
And those are his last words.
The normal-looking guy at the bar, the one leaning on his elbows and hating the music, the one staring at her, starts walking. He looks like he’s coming toward her but turns for the dance floor without a bounce in his step. He lifts both arms above his head. The music slurs.
The lights dim.
Gray walls appear out of nowhere. The ceiling transforms into rusted rafters with harsh fluorescent lighting.
Silence falls.
In the moments before the partygoers drop, before the floor is littered with bodies, Jamie looks back. Charlie is clutching the table. He feels something winding down, turning off. The whites show around his beautiful blue eyes before they turn gray—
He slumps to the floor.
They all do.
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Copyright © 2012 by Tony Bertauski
Copyright © 2012 by Tony Bertauski
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
This book is a work of fiction. The use of real people or real locations is used fictitiously. Any resemblance of characters to real persons is purely coincidental.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Writing is a lonely endeavor. Thanks to those that make it less so. And graciously volunteer to read the messy parts. You make this happen.
Lilly Burns, Dar Theriault, Jessica Collins, Frances Prema Werle-Smith, Noni Langford, and Russell Stare.
And, as always, Heather.
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