Koko the Mighty

by Kieran Shea

  The man continues, “First off, I want you to know that you are safe. We regret having to use restraints, but I’m told you put up quite a fight earlier. Not exactly appreciative behavior to those who’ve saved you. Two of those you attacked have subdural hematomas and hairline skull fractures. Dr. Corella relayed your diagnostics and confirmed right cranial scarring area consistent with ocular implant technology. From this I must assume you are or were once a soldier.”

  Koko blinks once and says nothing.

  The man shakes the plastic container again. “Water?”

  Running her tongue over her chapped lips, Koko licks a niggling cold sore and thinks, When was the last time I had fresh water? Two days ago? Her circadian rhythms are all screwed up, it might be longer. Her mouth tastes like it’s been dabbed dry with sour cotton. She’s so thirsty. Reluctantly, she nods.

  The man treads forward slowly until he positions himself on her immediate right. With care, he lowers the straw to her lips and Koko draws hard. To say the liquid tastes better than kissing the astral plane would be an insult to the delusion of poets. Pure, distilled, and iodized perhaps, but then again—you never know about such things. The water could be contaminated. Koko’s bodily needs trample her suspicions like a rodeo clown. She sucks greedily until the container splutters hollow.

  So thirsty.

  The man steps back, pulls up a caster-based stool, and sits.

  “Call me old-fashioned, but I think it’s best to start with introductions. My name is Sébastien Maxx and here are the facts. Your submarine wrecked on a restricted coastal area. By restricted I mean this place is located along the northwestern portion of the North American prohibs, and there’s no good reason anyone on Earth should even be coming remotely close to these coordinates. If you cooperate, we’re in a position to assist you. We mean neither you nor your companion any harm. Now then, I’ll allow you a chance to speak. Can you tell me your name?”

  Koko rolls her eyes upward and remains silent.

  “All right, can you at least tell me where you’re from?”

  Koko licks her lips. “Well, hold on, let me think. Oh, yeah, now I remember. I’m from a little place called fuck off, ever hear of it?”

  The man calling himself Sébastien presents an unruffled, tolerant gaze.

  “Look, the storm you two just survived was gargantuan. We’ve been aware of this massive low-pressure system’s approach for days, and the fact that you came through it in one piece is nothing short of astounding. Even now the storm’s effects are producing a number of offshore waterspouts. You want to be glib? You want to be hostile? Fine, but make no mistake: you are both lucky to be alive.”

  “Is that so?”

  “It is. And the man with you, while he’s out of danger now, was very close to death.”

  Koko’s brow crinkles.

  Oh, hell—Flynn.

  “Where is he?” Koko asks.

  Sébastien shakes the empty water container. “Nearby. The wound in his leg has spread severe sepsis throughout his body and may have gone so far as to affect his cognitive functions, but is now being treated aggressively.”

  “Aggressively? Aggressively by who?”

  “Trust me, he’s in good hands.”

  “I don’t trust anyone. Doctors especially.”

  “A common sentiment.”

  “So where the hell are we?”

  “Our infirmary. This facility is part of the Commonage.”

  Koko blows out a breath and closes her eyes. “That means nothing to me.”

  “Nevertheless, it is where you happen to be.”

  Pulling together her best weapons-grade stare, Koko opens her eyes.

  “Listen, fuckstick—”

  “Sébastien.”

  “Listen, fuckstick. If you consider a beating heart essential, untie me and take me to see my friend now.”

  Sébastien tsks. “I promise, you’ll see him in time, but first things first, all right? I need specifics. Why have you come here? Are you from a corporate alliance? What are your objectives in the area?”

  The water has loosened Koko’s throat up, but her mouth is still gummy. She wants more water and could drink a couple of gallons without pause if she had the chance, but she resists asking for it.

  No.

  Stay strong.

  Whatever they gave you before, your fatigue and everything else, it’s affecting your judgment.

  Hang on, Flynn.

  Just hang on.

  “Our situation isn’t like that at all.”

  “Oh, really? Then what’s it like?”

  Koko sucks in a breath and holds it. “I want. To see. My friend. First.”

  “You will, but only if you answer my questions.”

  “Man, you’re making a big mistake.”

  “Am I?”

  “Yeah. You’ve got us all wrong.”

  “But wrong how? Please, outside these walls there’s nothing of commercial value in this area, and believe me, I would know. My people told me your craft looked to be of significant worth, but was incapable of flight, so that rules out the lower orbits of the Second Free Zone. Fusion-powered, it can’t be yours personally.” Sébastien sighs. “If you can’t be forthcoming, you’re putting me in a difficult position. More important, you’re putting your friend in a difficult position. The safety of those within the Commonage is paramount to me. Outsiders are not something we readily accept. If you elect not to answer, I’ll have to desist in helping you.”

  “I thought you just said you don’t do anyone harm.”

  “Consider my position.”

  “So, what? You’re threatening me now?”

  “I’m being candid. Believe me, this was the last thing I expected to handle today.”

  “Maybe if I had some more water…”

  Sébastien pushes the stool back, sways to his feet, and crosses the room. At a sink, he opens a spigot and fills the empty container with a stream of fresh water. Then he walks back, holds the straw to Koko’s lips once more and she drinks.

  “Once more from the top,” Sébastien says.

  Draining the container, Koko tries to picture Flynn. She imagines a fussy gaggle of medical personnel fawning all over him, monitoring his delicate, tenuous grip on life. This Sébastien character mentioned a doctor just now, Corella was it? As much as Koko hates doctors, she hopes the doctor knows what they’re doing. She then hears a voice, echoing deep within her.

  In the end, be fearless in the face of your enemies.

  As a former corporate mercenary, Koko was trained by a long stream of hard-assed drill sergeants, constables, and sensei to withstand the rigors of restrained interrogation, to resist physical tortures she suspects would blow Sébastien’s mind. Good thing Koko suffered all that training, too, because on more than one occasion the harsh, disciplined instruction prepared her for the real deal.

  One time she and six other contract operatives were held for twenty-two days in a six-by-ten steel hutch deep within the subbasements of Manikin International’s global headquarters outside of Bogotá. Her team had been recruited to surgically liquidate a production development group before Manikin International completed beta testing some deep mantle mining innovation. Little food, sleep deprivation, and repeated beatings were the pussyfooted opening acts before her captors moved on to the main event. Each member of the team, male or female, was systematically gang-raped in front of the others. Despite the incessant savagery, no one caved. Koko, because she was the youngest at the time and the most attractive of the lot, had been deemed to go last as a coveted prize. Koko can still remember the stink of that hutch. The crushing heat, the taste of the small mice that they ate raw to survive. Sometimes she still has nightmares of the tuneless, jagged clang of the hutch’s padlocks being sprung. When the guards did finally come for her, she fought valiantly with diminished strength, but to her surprise the captors informed the team that they were free to go. Apparently Manikin International had entered into vertical integratio
n negotiations with their competitors, the same ones that had assembled the team to execute the liquidation, and arranged their release. Total dumb luck. This dork’s threats? Sébastien leaning on her was nothing.

  “We’re not from anywhere,” Koko says.

  “Everyone is from somewhere.”

  “We’re totally on our own.”

  “Ah, so you’re privateers then?”

  Koko refuses to look at Sébastien directly and reruns a second movie in her head: a long river of images of her and Flynn’s desperate flight from The Sixty. How they accessed the resort’s lower infrastructure, how she and Flynn stole the submarine. With painful detail she recalls exactly how Flynn’s screams of agony broke her heart. He begged her to turn back for his sake, but once at sea and at great speed, turning back wasn’t an option. The bug-out packs’ first-aid kits’ suture threading was too weak to adequately close Flynn’s wound so Koko stitched up his leg with stripped wire from a circuit panel. She was dismayed and distressed by how Flynn blamed her for everything. He wept and called her selfish, pernicious, and cruel. Of course soon after they passed the International Date Line, the floating underwater debris quadrant came next and that shitstorm of giant squid. While she freed the snagging cable, the starboard rudder never seemed to work right after, and Koko was forced to travel dangerously topside the rest of the way. Battling her own debilitating seasickness in the growing swells, Koko didn’t take long to grasp that they were drifting far south and way, way, way off their intended course. The massive storm was almost a ludicrous, cosmic insult. The whole escape, it was one long voyage into pelagic perdition, and when they finally reached the continental shelf, the next thing you know—the wreck.

  Be fearless in the face of your enemies.

  “Very well,” Sébastien says. “I suppose we should consider you two outlaws, then.”

  Koko has to admit, she’s always liked the sound of that word, all rakish and beyond the straitlaced rules of law. Isn’t that how she’s always wanted to live her life anyway? An outlaw on her own terms? But then she pictures Flynn’s poor face once more, his beard slimed with foamy drool, and her heart locks up.

  Why not paint a thin truth?

  “Not outlaws,” she replies. “We’re survivors.”

  The door to the room unlocks and opens, and a medium-built man in clean green surgical scrubs enters. Topped with a towering Trotsky-like shrub of black hair, he sports a dark Balbo-styled beard on his chin, and holds a short diagnostic device in his hands.

  “Ah, Dr. Corella,” Sébastien says, turning. “Our guest is finally awake.”

  The doctor meticulously checks one of the projection screens, and when his face looms closer, Koko studies his startlingly porous, toffee-colored complexion.

  “So, how are we feeling, Miss… Miss…?”

  The doctor shoots Sébastien a tacit look, assuming he must have extracted the woman’s name by now. Sébastien holds his hands open at his sides. Simultaneously they turn and look down.

  “It would be easier if we could call you something,” the doctor says.

  Koko speaks through clamped teeth. “Koko.”

  Both men raise their eyebrows.

  “Why hello there, Koko. My name is Dr. Corella. Tell me, do you have an assigned surname from your Oceania breeding collective?”

  “My frickin’ Oceania what?”

  “Your cranial scarring indentations indicate you were at one time fitted for an ocular implant used by militarized interests. There was Oceania code alongside the indentations.”

  “That was a long, long time ago.”

  Dr. Corella nods. “All right. And your shipmate, the wounded man, I believe his name is Flynn? He’s from the Second Free Zone lower atmosphere orbits, yes?”

  Koko’s eyes widen. “Wait, how do you—”

  Without a shred of guile Dr. Corella clarifies, “While he didn’t have cranial scarring like you, there were SFZ collective trademarks embedded in his DNA. After your immediate rescue, our people said you were quite frantic and kept shouting at your friend to stay awake and called him Flynn. You should know this was the right thing to do, otherwise he might have slipped further into a coma and possibly expired before he reached us.”

  “So you’re the one fixing him up?”

  “I’m the sole physician here, that’s correct.”

  “And he’s doing okay?”

  “His status is no longer critical, I’ll say that. Would you care to see him?”

  If she could nod her head she would, but the restraints keep Koko’s head fixed.

  Her eyes shift to Sébastien, who looks concerned.

  “Doctor, I think I have to caution you…”

  “Oh, Sébastien, she’s fine. The tranquilizer in her system only allows her the most rudimentary muscle functions anyway, and inhibited as such she won’t be able to harm anyone. Not like her little scene earlier.”

  Sébastien takes Dr. Corella by his elbow and moves him across the room. The two of them whisper in conference for a moment, and then the doctor crosses to a cabinet and removes a sterile package containing a pressure syringe. After selecting a cartridge from the cabinet as well, the doctor loads it.

  “Well, we’ll err on the side of caution then.”

  Koko locks in on the syringe. “What the hell is that?”

  “This? An additional response limiter. Not to worry, it’s actually quite pleasant. You’ll still be able to walk, but you’ll experience your surroundings with a sluggish temporal shift. Have you ever had the sensation of déjà vu? It’s akin to that.”

  Sébastien engages the table’s controls again, and Koko motors up into a nearly vertical position. After lining up the injection on the tightened muscles of her neck, the doctor pulls back.

  “It’ll be easier if you relax,” the doctor advises.

  “That’s what all the boys say.”

  He slides the pressure syringe into her neck and after a warm bite a strange sensation seeps into Koko’s blood. Surprisingly, it feels kind of jazzy, all gluey and liquefied. Under better circumstances Koko might even enjoy the trippy, fugue-like buzz, but right now, being captive? No, she doesn’t like it at all.

  Sébastien moves toward the door. His lips open and close, but it’s as if Koko is watching a poorly lip-synced video, his voice registering in her ears three seconds after he speaks. Sébastien ushers in a male and a female assistant who are also dressed in green scrubs like Dr. Corella, and tells them to undo the table’s restraints.

  Once free, Koko melts to her knees, and the two assistants catch her. Their movements taffy outward and reset, and she’s guided forward in a controlled fall. Soon they’re in a windowless hallway so brightly lit it makes Koko see spots. Sébastien instructs the blue dog to stay, and several more men and women in green smocks secure self-adjusting hygienic masks to everyone in the group—the doctor, the assistants, Koko, and Sébastien. When the mask gets sealed to her face Koko gets her first glimpse of Flynn behind a set of curtains. He’s suspended and floating in a clear plastic tank. The surrounding ambiance is a reverent reduction and the two assistants move Koko closer to the tank. Dr. Corella steps forward and taps the translucent plastic.

  “He’s fit. Considering the spread of his infection, that’s good. As you can see, we’ve done some intensive grafting and reconstruction on his leg. Naturally there will be a scar, but he’s responding remarkably well given the circumstances.”

  Koko struggles to speak. “Can he… hear… me?”

  “No.”

  One step, then two on leaden feet, and Koko shuffles closer to the tank. The number of tubes and wires snaking into Flynn’s body are frightening, and a respiratory helmet covers the upper portion of his face. Koko then suddenly realizes they have shaved off Flynn’s beard.

  Oh, baby…

  Dread stretches through her. She tries not to imagine the ragged chasm Flynn’s death might slash inside her, and drugged as she is, she cautions herself not to let her affections show.
But the stinging in her eyes can’t be helped. Drifting on syrupy delay, Dr. Corella goes on.

  “A full amputation of his leg from the hip down was considered, but it now looks like that won’t be necessary. Being at sea is hardly an optimal treatment condition for amateur surgery. I imagine you did the best you could.”

  Koko turns around and looks at everyone. One of the medical assistants dabs her cheeks with a small towel and quietly suggests that it’s probably better that they leave and let those who know how to care for Flynn do what they do best. Turning her to face Sébastien, the assistants take her arms. When they move back into the bright-lit hallway again two identical men in red ponchos approach.

  “Eirik, Bonn, what is it?” Sébastien asks.

  “We’ve an update regarding the situation beyond the walls,” one of the men replies.

  Sébastien doesn’t disclose any alarm and bends forward as the other twin whispers something in his ear. Koko can’t hear what is said, and after a moment Sébastien addresses the two men curtly, indicating Koko.

  “Take Gammy and escort her to the open room on the third floor of Lodge Delta. Secure her there with Gammy until you receive further instructions from me.”

  Relieving the bookending medical assistants, the two identical men drag Koko away. The big blue dog follows.

  ALL HE DOES IS DREAM… DREAM, DREAM, DREAM

  Meanwhile, back in the warm, aquarium-like serenity of the IC tank, Flynn drops through a vivid, bottomless dream.

  A tunnel, a rabbit hole, a monster’s throat, he falls in an endless cavity of flight. Flynn thinks if he could just reach out and touch the walls that surround him he might be able to slow his descent and wake up, but he can’t.

  He falls.

  And falls…

  And falls…

  A phantasmagoric jump and all at once the tunnel disappears. Flynn finds himself standing alone in a vast, hard desert. Looking up, he searches for the tunnel he just passed from but all he sees is empty blue sky.

  With a flash of lightning a giant pyramid appears on the horizon, and Flynn is pulled magnetically toward its base. Up close, the structure is alarmingly huge and dark. Constructed of metal pipes, the pyramid hums like a massive, dense engine, and not knowing exactly why he’s doing it, Flynn locates an opening, enters and climbs upward.