The Fall: Sanguine Series: Book One

by Chris Laughton

  This time there was no mistaking it: as the camera passed over the broken arm, there was the sharp crack that usually went along with a bone breaking, but in this case, you could watch the humerus snapping its pieces back into place. The corpse’s eyelids fluttered, and Paul realized that he himself hadn’t breathed in quite some time. The blogger had switched from “Oh God” to “Holy shit” now. He had noticed the eye movement as well and locked the camera on the dead man’s face. There was another crack and the skin on the back of the corpse’s skull moved unnaturally as one of what Paul could only assume were pieces of the man’s skull moved back into place. The eyelids fluttered again. It was definitely time to stop calling this a corpse. The eyes opened, but it took a moment for the no-longer-dead man to look like he realized where he was. As he struggled to get to his feet, Paul paused it, looked up at the scene and back down at the video.

  “Detective, did your men clean the scene?”

  The detective smiled, and Paul realized he’d stumbled on something the man had been waiting for him to notice. “You’re talking about the blood, aren’t you? Or rather, where the blood should be. Look behind you.”

  Paul turned, and sure enough, behind him, and thirty feet from anywhere it was splattered in the video, thirty feet from where it had any right to be, was a pool of blood. Paul looked back and forth for a moment between where the blood should have been and where it was. He noticed the pavement in between the two places appeared… cleaner. There was no other way to put it: the street and sidewalk between Points A and B looked like they’d been power-washed. He’d think it was someone trying to cover their tracks at a crime scene, except the blood was undisturbed. Trying to figure out how this blood had moved, however, was quite disturbing.

  His mind was screaming at him that this was a case he wanted no part of; that whatever this case would turn into was way above his pay grade. This could only mean attention put on him, and that would mean, at the very least, effort. At most, the right people (or wrong people as far as Paul was concerned) could start looking into his tenure as Medical Examiner, and questioning the work he’d been doing. Whatever this scene was, it was much bigger than some schmuck getting hit by a car, and the government’s and corporation’s interests were going to go way beyond property appropriation.

  The detective’s voice brought him back into the present. “Witnesses said that after the man left, the blood began slowly – I shit you not – their word not mine – ‘following’ him. The pavement was cleaner wherever it had been. And then it just stopped here. Ran out of gas apparently.” The detective chuckled to himself and returned his attention to the car and started saying something about the driver, but Paul was no longer listening. The important thing here was the blood. Whoever this man was, it didn’t matter that he’d been hit by a car. He could’ve been hit by a meteor for all anyone would care, because whoever he was, he had left more questions than answers.

  The detective was halfway back to the car now, but turned and realized Paul wasn’t following him. Paul set his case down and opened it, withdrawing what he’d need to take samples of this blood. He was no idiot; he would collect as much of it as he could, because he wasn’t sure how right now, but he knew this could make him a very rich man if he played his cards right.

  8

  Mason had felt his left leg shatter and the hip come out of the socket when the car struck him, and after that, time had slowed down. It was a familiar sensation for him now, but that wasn’t always the case.

  When he was still a child, an older boy had picked a fight with him. As soon as the bully had reared back to throw the first punch, Mason had his experienced the first instance of his perception of time slowing down. He hadn’t yet become what he was today, so he couldn’t move much faster than a regular person. But the way split-seconds expanded into minutes during an emergency had been there even that early. He’d been scared then, not understanding what was happening. Was something wrong with him? Did this happen to everyone and this was just the first time for him? It couldn’t be; the schoolyard fights he’d seen were rough and chaotic affairs. If everyone had this much time to plan their moves, they’d look like ballet. Mason had calmed down and worked through all these thoughts before the other boy’s fist was even halfway towards him. He had begun to move to the side to avoid the hit and it had been maddening how his body couldn’t move as fast as his mind. He had plenty of time to try to figure out if the punch was going to miss him or not. Most people would try to dodge backwards, but that was out of fear. With how slow the boy’s fist seemed to be moving, it was tough to picture it as any sort of threat.

  In the present day, with his much more advanced physical gifts, Mason couldn’t stop the momentum that was sending him towards the car’s windshield. He’d had plenty of time to recall that childhood fight, but his mind always worked faster than his body. Now there hadn’t been a punch to avoid, just a car windshield coming towards his face at what seemed like an excruciatingly slow speed. He’d run through all his options, and had moved his left hand to the windshield and was pushing against it as hard as he could, but that would offer him laughably little benefit. There was far too much inertia for him to offset with one arm in a tenth of a second. He glanced around at the bystanders and saw that everyone was still just flinching from the sound of the impact, with some not even registering it yet. Mason could do some rough math based off their reaction times and figured this car must have been moving very fast. Based on previous experience, he could heal from quite a bit, but this would be the first ‘fatal’ injury he’d ever sustained. He was running out of time before hitting the windshield, and could only hope he’d wake back up when it was all over. There had been nothing left to do but close his eyes and hope for the best.

  The impact must have fractured his skull and caused some pretty massive head trauma, because it took him several moments to wake back up. When he finally came to, his hip had pulled itself back in, but his leg was still a wreck. He’d broken his left elbow, shoulder, a few ribs, and Lord only knew how much internal bleeding, but once his ability to heal had taken care of his head and allowed him to wake back up, he knew it was only a matter of time before all of that was fixed too. It was likely he’d had more injuries that had healed before he woke up. He’d heard the ambulance coming from a ways off, but knew to get the hell out of there. Even if he’d been an average citizen, the state of public medical care post-Fall was atrocious. His suit had been ruined, or he would’ve had to worry the paramedics would be more interested in saving it than him: they could sell it once he died. He couldn’t do anything about the massive amounts of his blood at the crash scene. It was freezing outside, so maybe that would slow it down, but if the cold couldn’t make the blood lethargic? He’d have to hope they were more interested in the driver than the victim.

  The corporations had rewritten the laws so that most crimes resulted in fines. If you couldn’t afford the pay the fine, they took your property instead. If you had no property to take, you wound up conscripted into labor camps or worse: one of their expeditions to try to pacify the lawless areas. Make it back from that, and they wiped your slate clean, but few did. Crime (and more accurately its attendant fines) was one of the government’s main source of revenue now, and the small portion that got redistributed to the general populace kept them happy with the system. It was a brutally ruthless, barbaric form of justice, but it was hard to argue with its efficiency. While things like inflation and unemployment had taken down other nations early on after The Fall, the lawless areas in the U.S. were just starting to become a problem decades later. It was amazing how long economic stability could be maintained as long as there was a subset of the population to cannibalize. The result was that it tended to be relatively safe during the day, but there was an unofficial curfew since everyone knew you were on your own at night.

  For now, he only hoped the authorities had enough incentive to look for the driver instead of him. On the other hand, fleeing the scene probably
made him a criminal as well, and they could come for his things too. Ironically, the severity of his injuries probably helped him: he doubted it would be easy for any of the witnesses to recognize him once he cleaned himself back up.

  He just had to hope the blood he left at the scene wouldn’t make it too obvious that he was no average citizen. Not like he’d had a choice. He couldn’t have stayed at the scene. That would’ve meant an ambulance ride, and it wouldn’t have taken long for the EMTs to spot his healing. He wasn’t sure what would have happened then, but he guessed he’d be brought in for government testing most likely. He’d be a guinea pig for the rest of his life, which would probably be quite long given that he hadn’t noticed any visible signs of aging in his reflection over the past ten years. But spending his days locked up in some lab as the goose that laid the golden answer to immortality? No thank you.

  At the crash, the thought had been all the motivation he’d needed. He’d managed to get himself upright, his left leg still singing with pain, and shuffled as fast as he could down the street towards his hotel. He chose a side entrance far from the hotel’s restaurant to minimize the chances of seeing a guard, and used the digital key stored on his phone to gain entrance. Sure enough, since it was daytime, there were fewer guards, and they were probably stationed solely at the restaurant. Now he finally had a moment to lean against the wall where he was fairly out of the way and try figure out what to do next.

  He was lucky he was staying at a hotel large enough to not have just sealed off their side entrances years ago. It was glamorous, the kind of massive, fifty-story state-of-the-art construction that had withstood the pre-Fall earthquake and needed relatively minor repairs compared to some other parts of the city. It was a testament to the minimalist style, so there were few architectural flourishes that could show much wear and tear, but if you could see past the slight degradation, the building served as a monument to the wonders humanity could build when it had still been at its peak.

  He took a moment to appreciate his luck that at least for the moment: it didn’t appear he’d been followed by any of the gawkers at the scene. When he’d come to, there was quite a crowd gathered around him, but it turned out that when someone was struck by a car doing highway speeds and then got up and hauled himself off, people tended to be too shocked to give chase.

  He kept circling back to what would happen if anyone paid attention to what his blood could do, but there was nothing he could do about that now. Besides, even if the police tried to track him down, they’d be looking for a gravely injured man, probably trying to leave town. The best thing he could do was heal and stay put. A man in perfect health with no interest in running would fly right under their radar. He’d been resting in the hotel’s side entrance for a couple minutes and could already feel his stomach rumbling. Thank God he’d eaten right before this, and a huge meal at that, or it could’ve been even worse. His shirt and pants already fit much looser as his body had begun chewing through its own soft tissue to find the energy to repair the most pressing injuries.

  He pushed himself off the wall and headed for the elevator. He pulled his phone out of his pocket. The screen was cracked, but it still worked. One more device removed from circulation. He ran it over the elevator’s lock and stepped inside, with his floor already selected when the elevator had identified its occupant. Luckily the elevator had a phone in it that he could use, because there was no way his personal one would get signal in here. Picking up the seemingly-ancient handset, he called the hotel’s front desk and asked for room service. Once he was transferred, he placed a large order for two porterhouse steaks with mashed potatoes, four large glasses of milk, and two ice cream sundaes with chocolate sauce. It took more than a little convincing for the kitchen staff to believe it was a legitimate call, given how much he was ordering, which was difficult to do when he couldn’t think of much besides the food. He’d actually eat them in reverse order. The sugar from the ice cream could fuel him in the short term, and the protein and carbs from the rest would let his body stabilize and rebuild the muscle mass he’d lost.

  He got to his room and used his phone to let himself in. Luxurious by pre-Fall standards, now it qualified as downright opulent, with its vaulted ceilings and more square footage than some apartments. He limped through the entry hallway into the bedroom. He collapsed onto the California King-size bed that was the focal point of the room, exhausted from hauling his battered body all the way from the scene of the crash. He thought about turning on the television on the opposite wall, but decided he didn’t have the time before the room service arrived. He actually hadn’t used the television that much. It was the one thing that looked a bit out of place, no doubt smaller and less fancy than the one originally set up in the room; a replacement for a failed unit.

  Instead, he stood and spent a moment looking out of the sliding glass door that led onto his balcony. The view was breathtaking out onto the water: one of the few types of spectacular views that still held its majesty post-Fall. He’d stayed in places with views of mountains or cityscapes, but it was difficult not to notice the symptoms of a dying world in the dead trees or urban decay. Once you got far enough out of the cities, it was still possible to see that nature could come back from this, but nowhere with a hotel had views of that. Elliott Bay was always beautiful though, a side effect of the opaqueness of water hiding the damage underneath. He’d spent several nights on his balcony, just letting the repetitive nature of the water’s movement put him into a kind of meditation.

  Travelling to a city without knowing someone there who you could stay with post-Fall was such a rarity that it had been unlikely he’d run into anybody in the afternoon at a business-focused hotel such as this one, but he still breathed a sigh of relief. He’d been incredibly lucky and now that there was light at the end of the tunnel he realized how careless he’d been. Rebekah was certainly special, but he still needed to look out for himself first. One slip up could be the end for him, and he didn’t want to think about what it would mean for the world if he were discovered. Earth was already suffering from the number of humans it had. At the peak of their population, they had caused enough damage to push the world into a death spiral, and now, even as the population constantly decreased, they refused to take their foot off the world’s throat, still harvesting resources and pushing it closer to unrecoverable. What if they could harvest the secret to immortality from his blood? Keeping more humans alive would ironically probably doom them to extinction. No, whatever he was needed to stay hidden while humanity died around him. The species either needed to learn to live responsibly or be written off once and for all.

  This was hardly the time for existential philosophy, however. Being a business hotel, there was no in-room kitchen, but almost no other expense had been spared in its construction. The bathroom had a massive tub, and separate stalls for the shower and toilet. Another television was set behind the mirror, though the signal wasn’t fantastic. Mason had drug himself back into the bathroom partially to survey the damage the car crash had done, and partially to hide from the hotel staff when they brought his room service up. He leaned over the marble surrounding the tub and turned the handles to draw a hot bath. Not the most masculine thing, but the heat and the water would help him finish healing. His shoulder and arm were already much better, but even though he was massively favoring his broken leg, he needed to get off his feet for it to really heal. After he very gingerly undressed, he took the laundry bag from the closet in the hall and stuffed all the clothes he’d been wearing into it. That had been one of his favorite suits, and as ridiculous as it was considering he’d been clinically dead for a few minutes, the suit was what he mourned the most. He dropped the bag back in the closet, and slid the door shut so the hotel staff wouldn’t see it. He’d throw it all out later and travel a ways to do it; there was no way to be too cautious about avoiding being identified.

  He went back into the bathroom and closed the door, finally letting himself look in the mirror. Most
of the blood that had been running down his face when he awoke had been reabsorbed through his skin, so the scene wasn’t too grisly, but the man that stared back at him was still unrecognizable. He weighed easily thirty pounds less than normal, and was hideously gaunt. Normally, he didn’t look a day over twenty-three even though he was a decade past it; his body seemed to just stop getting older at that age. Now there were bags under his eyes and crow’s feet beside them and his skin had lost some of its elasticity. He had a five o’clock shadow, but instead of giving him a ruggedly handsome look, the flecks of grey it had now just combined with the other changes to make him look sickly. His entire body was covered in what was pretty much one large bruise. Just as it would get to the edge of one injury and start to be more flesh-colored, it would run into his next shattered bone and fade right back into purple and green. His bruises would be the last thing to heal, so he tried to tell himself that by this point, he looked worse than he was. What concerned him more was his drastically altered appearance. It would be hard to avoid detection looking visibly years older than the day before.

  He needed to focus on the issues he could control. He checked his teeth in the mirror and cursed under his breath when he saw that one of his canines and two of his incisors were cracked. For some reason, his teeth didn’t heal on their own. They needed to be pulled out before his body would realize he needed new ones. He had brought his multitool with him on this trip, and since he couldn’t think of anything better to use than its pliers, they would have to do. Even though pain took on a different meaning when injuries were never lasting, Mason still wasn’t a fan of it. He wasn’t even the toughest guy he knew, so he wasn’t looking forward to how this was going to feel.