Skullcrack City

by Jeremy Robert Johnson

  Wait, why ‘yub?’ Why wasn’t my mouth working properly?

  I wanted to reach up and touch my face, but found I couldn’t move my hands.

  Jesus. Was I restrained again? Was anyone checking to see if I’d broken the world record for waking up in restraints?

  Dara read my eyes. “You can’t move them yet? I’m sorry.” She put her hand on mine and I felt the sensation. She lifted my hand to her face and sighed. This was hard for her. She looked so worried. I tried to brush against her skin with the back of my finger. Nothing. “Dr. T. said there’s going to be a reintegration period, because of all the damage and the new input. He’s going to guide you through it, like he did with Buddy. Supposedly this kind of thing used to take years, like a toddler’s brain developing, but Dr. T. says he’s developed something that will give the connecting and healing processes a boost.”

  No. I couldn’t be the newest sacrificial lamb laid out for Dr. T.’s experimentation. I tried to voice my dissent.

  “Nuh. Da. Mebbe die.”/No. Dara. Let me die.

  “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  “Cah do dis.”/You can’t do this.

  Something started to beep behind me. I tried to roll from my side, to see what it was, but I couldn’t.

  Dara lifted her gun and pointed it at someone behind me. “Fix it, motherfucker.”

  “Relax, dear.” It was Dr. Tikoshi, his creepy non-accent slightly altered by broken-nose snuffle sounds. “Everyone needs to relax. Doyle’s dura mater is still very swollen. Any more pressure between the dura and the titanium plate and we’ll lose him. This is a delicate time. I’ll take care of it.”

  Dr. Tikoshi walked around the bed and brought up a syringe to my IV insertion point.

  What was he putting in me? What had he done?

  “As I said—you need to relax. This is a mixture to reduce swelling. A little mannitol, a little neurontin. A pinch of steroids. Something for the pain, of course. And the most subtle hint of perphenadol.”

  “Nuh. Nuh.”/No! No!

  “Have you heard the voices yet?”

  What voices?

  The beeping behind me subsided. Dara kept her gun on Dr. T., but her hands were shaking. My vision swirled.

  Dara looked at me. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t let you go.”

  “We have to move soon. Dr. T. says that Akatsuki is three states away, dealing with some issues with Delta MedWorks. Now, I don’t know what the hell that means. I guess I don’t even care, right now. But I don’t want to find out he’s lying and have one of those skullcrackers come in here and tear us apart. I don’t know if I even believe Dr. T. when he says he only made two of those goddamn things.”

  I focused on my mouth as much as I could, on shaping my lips and making the right sounds. “One he…called…No…zo…mi. Dead?”

  “Oh, you’re doing great. That’s so good.”

  “It’s…dead?”

  She hesitated, then said, “Yes. You put six rounds through him, and one lucky shot of mine hit him in the face right after he…”

  Dara was holding something back. She looked across my body, making eye contact with that bastard surgeon.

  “Dr. T. and I have talked about it. You’ve only got a couple of days until you should be able to get out of bed, and you don’t need any more stress than you’ve already got. High blood pressure could throw you into a coma, or worse. Just worry about healing, right now, okay?”

  “Dara?”

  She put her hand over her mouth to stifle a cry. “I can’t. I know this is my fault. All I can do is hope that you’ll forgive me.”

  She rose from her chair, and stepped out of my view. I tried to rotate again and there was a cold water shock and I could feel something pressing against the back of my head and after that I lay very, very still.

  I woke in a hotel room, alone. The drapes were pulled across the windows. There were bright white spots where mirrors and art had been pulled from the wall. My head throbbed all over, and a smaller spike of pain resonated near the base of my neck. Something cold and flat was pressing against my back. I managed to lift my left arm off of my body, but the weight of the hotel bed sheets pressed it back down.

  we could burn it watch the fire hungry What? they say I’m getting better but mom and dad they won’t look me in the eye this is how you get to the next level and join the council keep grinding bitches and Who’s in the room? money they gasp when the knife goes in that’s what makes it real fish fresh fish polish each weapon each night naked rotate oil I’m sleeping. I must be sleeping. This is the drugs talking. I wanted to believe in an afterlife better than this man this place is too small It’ll stop soon. this is what I get for helping my friends Jesus what is that thing what is that thing It’ll stop soon. we played him for sure yeah you want more Hex here you go Crooked D you fucking herb the medication burns I couldn’t control it Am I awake? once the flames started I peed all over myself and I smelled like smoke for days the man is sad again he’s always sad my world is too small Oh, shit. I’m in the hotel room. I’m awake. I wonder if all the Vakhtang have jaws like that this is my Right of Refusal and my girlfriend thinks it’s funny that I drew on this thing but you have to stand out am I right I can’t think straight. Are these my thoughts? primary target one S.P. Doyle thought to be in possession of both bank assets and sensitive information It’ll stop soon. my sister brought me flowers like that makes up for sleeping with my husband maybe I never would have started smoking if she never would have been It’ll stop soon. such a bitch but that’s life no hey now that’s death the hospital lights should turn back on any minute of Christ I’m scared I’m so alone I’m so alone It’ll stop soon. Please. oh my head I’d hoped Dara would fuck me after I made her that eye but you can never tell which way the wind blows oh great and now she’s going to bed with that sad skinny motherfucker oh hungry slide through space smells like smoke again Please. Stop.

  “Only one more move, I promise. I know this is hard on you. Dr. T. said your integration is showing real signs of progress. We had to leave for a minute to get more perphenadol from a friend of Huey’s, so I hope that’s helping. You were screaming when we got back.”

  “The voices. I couldn’t stop the voices.”

  “Are they there now?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  Dr. T. jumped in. “The perphenadol seems to be highly effective for suppression.”

  “Oh, doc, you have no idea,” said Dara. And she winked at me because she wanted us to share something, or she wanted me to remember the way we had been, and how she had saved me, but her face was still sad, and I was terrified that the voices would come back. She tried to distract me.

  “Once you’re up and around you can help me with this fucking guy. I’m barely sleeping, even when I’ve got him cuffed to that chair.”

  “I don’t care. Why am I hearing those voices?”

  Dr. T. said, “It’s part of the integration. Nozomi told me they were overwhelming at first, but the perphenadol seemed to help, and he was practicing meditation at night as a form of therapeutic absorption to block them out.” I tried to picture that massive beast sitting in lotus position, doing circular breathing with brains on its breath. “Akatsuki has been trying something else, creating memory hallways to identify and separate each of the voices.”

  “And that’s working for it?”

  “Not ‘it,’ him. He’s a male. And yes, I believe so. But Akatsuki is a later version of the…what’s the parlance they’re using in the media? Skullbuster?”

  “Skullcracker.”

  “Yes, skullcracker. Isn’t that delightful? I mean, it’s reductive, and there’s so much more to these beings, but it’s got a nice sound to it.”

  “It sounds like a fucking nightmare, doc. But you’re a crazy asshole, so you don’t get that.”

  “Temper temper. Watch your blood pressure.”

  He was right. I could feel my veins distending. The sense of compression at the back of my head was phe
nomenal. I had to focus on keeping things at low tide.

  “You said he compartmentalized each of the voices, but what I’m hearing is a mad rush. They’re thoughts that aren’t my own. They’re private kinds of things, but they’re in my voice, I think.”

  “The longer you hear them, the more distinct they should become. You don’t recognize any of them?”

  “That’s enough, doc. Doyle’s had a long day. Maybe it’s time he had a little bedtime cocktail.”

  Dara bent over and kissed my cheek and said, “Goodnight.” Then she grabbed a syringe from the hotel end table, stuck it into my I.V. tap, and pushed the plunger down.

  The new lab was much smaller than the one Dr. Tikoshi had kept hidden in the slums of 45th. This thing was closer to a dentist’s office. One surgical area, a few sterilizers and packed cabinets. The central light buzzed and crackled, and there were dead flies in the ballast cover. The view from the window showed me seagulls, industrial blight, and not much else. It was definitely a D-list, emergencies-only kind of set-up.

  In hindsight, I’m grateful we were by the hydraulic noisescape of the ports, so far outside the city. Anywhere else, and people probably would have heard all the screaming.

  When I woke, Dara and Dr. T. had helped me to sit up for the first time in days. In a normal context I would have found the dizziness and head pain shockingly oppressive, but after enduring the high pressure terminal nothing vertigo of the realm and the actual sensation of something biting into the back of my head, this was kind of a walk in the park.

  “Can I see a mirror?”

  Dr. T. and Dara exchanged a look.

  Dr. T. said, “I would suggest that you first let me tend to your needs, and beyond that I believe a discussion of your new condition is in order before you.”

  “Fuck my needs. Fuck your discussions. Tell me what the hell…”

  Dr. T. pulled a syringe from his chest pocket and jammed it into my thigh.

  “Jesus.”

  “Remain calm. The promethazine will help you through this.”

  I did feel better. His injection washed through me and I almost fell back on the bed. I wondered why I didn’t feel air rushing across the open back of my hospital gown.

  “Steady. Please look at my light for a moment. Okay. Pupillary reflex is finally functional. That’s good.”

  “That’s how you figured us out, huh?”

  “What’s that?”

  “The night we met you. You did that little trick with your hand, and all of a sudden you’re pointing a gun at us.”

  “Oh, yes. I had my suspicions before then, but once she displayed monocular impairment and you didn’t, I knew that she was the one-eyed woman and you were Mr. Doyle.”

  “You know, doc, you’ve got a hell of a brain on you. Doesn’t mean you’re not a piece of shit. I definitely wouldn’t say that. I’d probably say you’re a speedy-handed, weird-voiced, waxy-skinned fuckwad witch doctor, for sure. But a smart one.”

  I liked promethazine. I was feeling good. Almost happy, despite it all.

  I stuck my hand in the air, thinking Dr. T. might want to give me a high five. He declined. But my arm felt just fine.

  “Wait, doc. How’d you know I was running around with this beautiful woman over here?”

  Dr. T. stared at me, frowning.

  “Did I hurt your feelings?”

  “No. There’s seepage.” He reached up and gently unwound a gray fabric turban which was wrapped around my head. He ran a square of gauze across my forehead and displayed it for Dara and me. Dark yellow and red mingled in the cloth. He held the back of his hand up near my forehead, then pulled it away. “We’re going to need a round of antibiotics to prevent the infection from encroaching on the plate border. If that crosses into your brain near the screw intrusion…”

  “Will something terrible happen, doc? Because my life’s pretty peachy right now.” And then I was laughing, and it felt good until I realized how restrained I felt as I inhaled. I put my hands up to my chest and shoulders and ran my fingers over crisscrossing straps, and when I looked down at them there was a tugging sensation against the back of my head and I remembered that I should be dead, but something far worse than a miracle had kept me here.

  I reached up to the base of my head.

  “Careful. You need to wash your hands, first. The entry point is still healing.”

  I didn’t care. I had to know what he’d done to me. My hands closed around a cold metallic length of cable, and I didn’t tug because I’d spent enough time with Buddy to know how this worked.

  “Is my brain behind me? Is that what these straps are holding onto?”

  “No. Much of your brain is still in your head. Nozomi only had time to swallow a few bites before your companion fired the finishing shot.”

  Dara had backed up against the wall, terrified that this moment had finally come. “That’s why we had to do what we did. Dr. T. said it could work, that we could connect both portions of your brain. That without it you’d either end up dead or in a coma.”

  “Dara, what am I connected to?”

  “It was the only choice. You saved me, back at Ms. A.’s. I couldn’t let you die. You…you’re all I have left.”

  My head was spinning. I pictured whatever gray matter remained in my head twirling around like a gyroscope, then pressing against my forehead, trying to escape what it had just realized.

  “Nozomi?”

  Dara nodded.

  “You hooked up my brain to a fucking monster?”

  I needed more promethazine. I needed Ms. A.’s shotgun back in my mouth.

  “It’s a little more elegant and complicated than that.” Dr. Tikoshi’s bedside manner didn’t really exist.

  “Oh, I’m sure it is, you condescending prick. You fucking violated me. You should have let me die.”

  “I would have. Please understand, I performed your surgery with a gun pointed at my head.” But I could see it in his eyes—he was fascinated. The experiment was everything to him. He didn’t see me. He saw raw materials, a fertile field for his fucked up ideas, and he was getting off on the results. He continued. “Most of Nozomi is back in the laboratory on 45th street, feeding the rats and roaches along with Boudreaux and Buddy. What you have on your back is only the distillation of Nozomi’s true capability, a unique organ which sat just above his stomach.”

  I remembered Nozomi drooling over me. There’s room now.

  “So I’ve got some mutant gut bag strapped to my back.”

  “I named it the animus ciborium. The whole of it, and its contents, are in that pack, including an organic neural circuit which connects to the external cord to allow integration with the remainder of the brain in your skull.”

  I reached up to the top of my head. The first thing which struck me was pain from the infection. The second thing was the cold metal austerity of the back of my head.

  “Three titanium plates are in place. Nozomi damaged a good portion of your parietal area. The cavity in your skull was filled with cerebrospinal fluid, which should work fine, as it did for Buddy. The brain has unfathomable redundancies…”

  “Buddy? This is his cord.” I reached up and grabbed the fiber-optic line connecting me to the pack, and wondered how fast I’d die if I yanked the thing from my skull. “Buddy was fucking insane. Nothing you did for him was ‘working fine.’ He was broken. But at least his brain was his own.”

  “You have your entire brain, although my research indicates you needn’t worry about possessing the whole of it. Aside from that, can you not see the potential of what’s on your back? If you learned to tap into your connection, you would have the collective intelligence…”

  “I don’t want them in my mind.”

  “But imagine all the wisdom you could possess. All of those memories and experiences available to you. Can’t you see the strength in that? And the viral casings in the animus ciborium are built for compression. You could have so much more. There’s a cap on top of the pack,
and beneath that, a chamber lock for further data input.”

  “Data input? You sick fuck. Do you have any idea…”

  “Your blood pressure.” The monitor alarm was sounding. Dara was trying to protect me, again. What had she done? I detached my I.V. line, then pulled the pressure cuff from my arm and threw it to the ground.

  “Oh, I better watch my BP, Dara. Maybe I should cut back on salt. Or maybe I’m stressed out because I’ve got a backpack full of other people’s brains connected to my goddamned skull, and every once in a while they all forget they’re fucking dead and start yelling inside my head.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “You keep saying that.”

  “I don’t…Please, I need you here. I love you.”

  She said it, but I didn’t even feel it, not the way I would have wanted to in any other world, any other time. The promethazine had worn off completely. “You don’t fucking love me. You’re just afraid to be alone.”

  “That’s true—I don’t want to be alone. But I do love you, for whatever that’s worth. And I wanted you to have a chance, some chance, to save your mom.”

  Mom. What would she think if she saw me now?

  An echo: Dr. T. laughing at me through bloody teeth.

  But mom didn’t pick up, did she?

  He knew something. He’d known I was travelling with Dara. He’d found me through gridtracking access he shouldn’t have. He had far more information than he was letting on.

  I turned away from Dara and pushed my body up and away from the operating table. My knees almost gave, but I noticed Dr. T. was already backing away.

  Dara said, “You need to sit back down.”

  “No—this motherfucker knows where she is.”

  “That may be. But you can’t beat it out of him. We need his hands. I’m no doctor. I have no idea how to maintain your set-up.”

  “What do you think, Dr. T.? Is she right? Or is it just that she wasn’t paying attention a moment ago when you told me about data input.”

  “No. She’s right. You’re assuming information and memory are the same thing as fine motor skill. But a surgeon’s hands are decades in the making. I have a long history with the human body. I know the precise level of pressure at which skin yields to scalpel. You’ll die in a week without me.”