by Alex Nast
I can't look at him I'm so furious. "You're wrong."
"I'm not wrong, and I'll tell you something else. If she was smart she would have come back, waited until you aged and marched you down there and sold you too. Could have made a whole lot more. But she was dumb and didn't do the smart thing, just like you."
I lunge at him, latching on to his ear with the only weapon I have left to me, my teeth.
He curses and pushes me off, but not without a chunk of his ear coming with me.
Blood is running down his neck. He grabs me by the throat and winds up with the other hand and I accept that it's going to happen. A broken nose, a pulped face, missing teeth, it will make me worth a fraction of what I am now. It won't be escape, but it will be revenge.
But he stops himself, and then laughs like it's all in good fun. "Ya you'd like me to beat you senseless wouldn't you? I can see it in your eyes. Crazy little bitch." He gets close, close enough that I can smell the sweat and the blood, "I told you didn't I, there are things I can do that won't leave a mark."
Then he shoves me back and I fall, awkward, to the dusty ground. I spit his blood out on the floor and make sure to smile at him.
He glances at me, baleful, then gingerly touches his ear. "Perfect. Who knows what disgusting bile is living in her mouth from all the trash she's been eating." He kicks some dust at me just to prove his point. Then he pulls a flask from a pocket and unscrews the lid, takes a swig himself, then pours what's left on his ear. He grunts but he doesn't scream.
"Okay," he sighs. "I've got to go put the word out about what we've caught. When the high rollers hear what we have they're going to be falling all over themselves to outbid each other for her. Those rich assholes groveling at my feet," he takes a deep breath, "it's going to be fucking beautiful."
He rummages around in his backpack again and comes out with another zip-tie. He grabs me and walks me over to a pipe that comes out of the floor and disappears in to the ceiling. He gives it a good shake, just to make sure it isn't going anywhere, then zip-ties my wrist to the pipe. He smiles at me and slaps my face a couple times, "don't go anywhere."
I lunge at him and snap my teeth but he doesn't flinch. I sink back against the pipe.
"Remember," he says as he turns to leave, "horrible things that won't leave marks." He looks at Felix, "watch her. If she talks to you, don't say anything. If she does anything that makes you think it's a good idea to go within five feet of her, come get me instead. And if you ignore all that and she bites your ear off too, don't bother coming to get me."
"How much do you think we're going to get?" Felix asks.
Victor laughs loudly as he's leaving the room. "Millions," he yells at the ceiling, "fucking millions!"
4
"I can tell you're a good person Felix. You don't want to be here, doing this." I look for some reaction but he doesn't even glance in my direction. "You're not like Victor, that's obvious. It looks like you own a razor, at least, and the callouses on your hands tell me that you probably work for a living, or did up until recently."
He clenches his hands shut before he can stop himself and then unclenches them slowly. It's something.
"So how does a good, hard-working man with a regular job end up partnered with someone like Victor? I'm guessing it's not something you're thrilled to be doing."
Nothing.
"I think you either lost that job and have some mouths to feed, like that kid Victor mentioned, or something happened at home that gave you no choice but to go out and bet it all on scoring a big paycheck."
He doesn't react in any way that I can see from across the room.
"I'm guessing it's the second one. Maybe you got yourself in a bit of debt with the wrong people? Maybe a wife or a kid that's sick? Maybe-"
"Shut up," Felix says, half threat, half plea.
"A sick kid? Is that it?"
Felix is very deliberately not looking at me, "if you don't stop talking I'm going to call Victor back in here and ask him to put the tape back on."
If I lose my ability to talk to Felix now, I might as well be dead. There's no other way out that I can see. But if I stop talking to Felix it's going to be hard to convince him that he's doing the wrong thing, and that what he actually wants to do is let me go.
I wait a minute, to let the tension fade. "How about I just talk about myself? Is that okay?"
I wait, my entire life hanging in the balance, but Felix stays on the floor.
No tape for me.
"Well Victor's right, I have been known to eat some questionable now and then. Not proud of it but we all do what we need to do to survive right? You know what, I hope his ear gets infected. Don't worry though, I won't bite you." I smile in Felix's direction, trying to build a little rapport, but he's a blank wall.
This seemed like it would be easier in my head.
I lean back against the pipe and look at the ceiling. Trying to relax. "9.96, I can't believe that. You know what, it's been at least a year since I saw myself in the mirror. Crazy. I genuinely don't even remember what I look like. I mean I knew my score was above a nine, I knew I needed to wear the scarf, but 9.96? If I'd known that I would have left the city. My plan was always to just make it to age thirty or so. No one wants a nine face that's thirty years old. But a 9.96 face? I doubt I'd have been safe until I was fifty." I make sure to talk about myself in the past tense, like I'm already dead, just to put it in Felix's head.
Still no reaction though. I'm not getting anywhere. I need to try a different approach. "Have you ever heard of the Free City?"
He leans his head back and sighs.
"Well let me tell you about it. Supposedly it's a city farther North, so far North that it's still cold, still snows in the winter. Can you imagine that? I wouldn't believe snow ever existed if there weren't pictures of it. And supposedly the forests are still alive there. Still green, can you imagine that? Plus, so many animals that you have to be careful outside the city limits or you might get attacked by the big mean ones. And the best part? There's still a government there. Laws, police, decent people that do the right thing. It's hard to believe right?"
Felix is gazing off in to the distance now. Maybe he's dreaming of it too.
"And best of all, Body Hunting is illegal there. Doesn't matter how beautiful you are, what your score is, no one is going to snatch you off the street and steal your body from you. Everyone is free to be themselves."
"It's made up," Felix says. "Doesn't exist."
"Maybe. We tell ourselves so many fairy tales just to get through the day. I'm no different. Like Victor, he tells himself that people like me end up in a perfectly good new body, with a pocket full of cash and smiles on our faces. It's kind of pathetic that he really believes that. If it was his daughter handcuffed to this pole instead of me, I wonder what he would do then?"
Felix isn't taking my bait.
"My mother believed the fairy tales too. Or she wanted to believe anyway. Wanted the money. Wanted to get me off the street and in to a proper apartment in a Tower. She promised, she was going to turn herself in and come straight back for me. 'Back before you can count to ten sweetie.' I can still hear her words."
Felix still says nothing. I keep my voice level, but I'm getting worried, starting to wonder if I can get through to him at all. Maybe Victor really got deep in his head.
"Parents will do crazy things for their kids. They'll ignore that voice inside of them that tells them they're doing the wrong thing, even on just the chance that they can make things okay for their kids."
Felix gets to his feet. "I told you not to bring up my family again." He starts walking to the door that Victor disappeared through and I see my only chance at life walking away.
"Felix wait," I hiss at him, desperate.
He ignores me.
"He's going to kill you," I say as loudly as I dare.
Felix stops. He turns around to look at me, doubtful, but listening.
"You know I almost killed you in tha
t alleyway right? I had my knife at your throat. Could have stuck you before Victor pulled the trigger. Had all the time in the world. But Victor only stunned me when I got up to leave. Think about it, he was waiting for me to kill you. That's the distraction he was going to use to shoot me with the stun gun. The only reason you're alive is because I spared your life."
"No Victor told me before that-"
I don't want him to think his way out of this so I ride right over his justifications. "This is your first Body Hunt with Victor right? And the two of you stumble on to the biggest pay day any Body Hunter has ever seen. Worth millions according to him. You really think he's going to split that with you, after he was willing to let me kill you? He's been out there risking his life for twenty years, looking for that one body that's going to make him his fortune, and he finally finds it and he has to split it fifty-fifty with some kid on his first Hunt?"
Felix looks over his shoulder at the door that Victor disappeared in to. There it is, the doubt. A crack of light that I need to shove myself through.
"You heard him say he was a Dust Eater right? That's not the kind of military that sits on their ass for eight hours a day at a checkpoint. They're the scary ones that go out in to the wastelands around the city on Tower business. How many people do you think he's killed?"
"I thought about that," Felix says. "I got myself a knife before I came out here. To protect myself." There is so much doubt in his voice though. He knows how foolish it sounds, but he's ignoring that inner voice, doing what needs to be done for whoever he has depending on him at home.
It's weakness and I can use it. "Without my hands bound I could kill you in ten different ways before you got that knife out of your boot."
He looks sharply at me, wondering how I knew it was in his boot. Just a guess, but not a hard one.
"Ya, I can tell it's in your boot. And if I can tell, you know Victor can. You're going to die with that knife in your boot."
"Oh god," Felix says more to himself than to me. He collapses against the wall and sinks down. "I don't know what to do. He's going to kill me. I knew it. I'm so stupid." He looks at me, "this isn't worth it. I'll find another way to get the money. This isn't worth it."
I manage to keep the ear to ear grin off my face. Barely. I knew it could be done. I'm free.
Felix stands up and starts to walk away, past me, towards the door that we all came in through. After all that the bastard is going to leave me here! I want to scream at him.
"Felix you have to free me."
He slows down and looks at me. "If I let you go he's going to know it was me. He'll come after me. I have a family."
"If you walk out of here without letting me go then you've killed me. You might as well cut my throat with that knife of yours. It would be better than Victor getting rich off of my body."
"I'm sorry," he says, "Victor is a dangerous man, I can't do it. I'm sorry for helping to catch you. It was wrong, but I'm desperate. It's not an excuse but..."
He nods like that's the end of it and starts to walk away again.
"What about my family?"
He pauses, "you said your mother was gone?"
"I have a younger sister. I wasn't about to admit that to a Body Hunter obviously, but now... Felix she depends on me. I spend all day looking for food for her, risking my own life on the streets to keep her safe. She looks just like me Felix, and she doesn't know how to survive. If you walk out that door without me you're killing her too. Do you want that on our conscience? I've done terrible things to survive, maybe I deserve to be here, cuffed to this pipe, but she doesn't deserve to die."
He's still hesitating, one foot out the door.
"Felix he's going to kill you no matter what you do. You know about his operation, you know how he works, who he is, you know where this place is, what I'm worth. He can't let you live. Even if you walk out that door without me you're still a dead man."
I can see on his face he has no idea if I'm telling the truth, and neither do I. I'm saying anything I can, anything that will let me live.
"My name's Juno," I say. I hate telling him my name, but anything to make me more a person, less a thing.
He takes another look at the door, then at me. Then he reaches down to his boot.
5
Felix is clumsy getting his knife out of his boot, spending more time looking over his shoulder for Victor than actually working on getting me free.
"Felix calm down. If Victor comes back in I'll tell you. Just focus." Really I want to scream at him to get it together, to hurry, Victor could come back at any moment. But I stay calm, make him think it's all okay.
He takes a deep breath and nods and finally gets the knife out of his boot. How he thought he was going to defend himself with it when he can barely get it out under pressure I have no idea. He saws the knife against the plastic zip-ties behind my back, but by the cursing sounds he's making it isn't going well.
"Don't saw, that'll take forever. Try pulling the knife against the ties."
He switches and I feel the pull on my wrists as he applies pressure.
"I can't do it."
I can hear the panic rising in his voice. He's going to lose it and leave me here, I know it.
"Yes you can." I'm trying not to get angry, to not swear at him and start panicking myself, but he isn't making it easy.
"Hold the back of the knife against the pipe, with the blade facing towards you."
"Okay," he says after a moment.
"Hold the knife steady, make sure it doesn't get pulled sideways." I pull forward with everything I have, pulling the plastic zip-ties tight against the edge of the knife, using my weight to cut the plastic.
Finally I lurch forward and just manage to stay on my feet.
My hands are still bound behind me but I'm free from the pipe.
I don't wait for Felix, I'm heading towards the door. But the damned thing is locked up with a heavy metal bar across it. Not easy to remove with my hands behind my back. I turn around, expecting Felix to be right behind me but he's standing there in the middle of the room, looking off towards the door that Victor disappeared through, knife clenched in his hand.
"Felix what are you doing?" I hiss at him. "Help me get this door open."
He looks back at me and whatever spell he was under is broken. He nods and comes over to me, removes the bar from the door without making too much noise, pulls it open and just like that we're free. I've never been so happy to see the ugly red light of day.
We run a block, just to be safe, and then I stop, holding out my wrists, and Felix puts the knife blade against the plastic of the last zip-tie around my wrists and we both pull apart and the plastic gives way. I can't believe it, I'm free. Actually free.
I laugh, not quite believing that it worked. I was dead. Should be dead. I can't stop smiling. I will never hesitate again, I will kill first and never look back and never even feel bad about it. The guilt is a hundred times better than the feeling of being sold at auction like a piece of meat. A thousand times better.
I hurriedly wrap my scarf back around my head, across my face, bundling up my hair, so that only my eyes and nose are free. The familiar feeling of the stifling fabric hot against my skin in the burning heat. It feels like my best friend.
"I have to go back," Felix says.
"What!" Did we forget something? I'm about to run in the other direction and he wants to go back. Part of me wants to tell him good luck with it and take off. But I ask. "Why?"
"It's like you said, no matter what I do he's going to come after me. He'll probably go after my family too. He doesn't know where I live but I'm sure he can find out." He pauses. "I have to kill him."
"Felix..." I can't even begin to tell him all the things that are wrong with his plan. But I convinced him to help me, and I knew full well that this would be the result. Victor would hunt him and kill him. Victor might have killed Felix anyway. Probably would have. The smart thing to do is kill Victor now, before he realizes th
at Felix betrayed him. Smart thing for Felix anyway. Felix will have surprise on his side. But he's not a killer. Victor is a killer. I am a killer. Felix is just desperate, with a knife and no good options.
"Don't Felix," I say, shaking my head, "it won't work. If you go back in there he will kill you. You might be able to do enough to him to kill him too, but..."
Damn him. I feel responsible. I wasn't the one that convinced him to leave his comfortable life and join a Body Hunter, he got himself in to this. But I know Felix is going to die if he goes back in there, and I'm going to have to add one more dead body to my conscience. I'm beginning to like him too.
"I'm sorry for everything that I did to you Juno. Go and be with your sister. Take her far away from this place. Go find the Free City." Then he turns around and is gone, slipping back towards that destroyed building and certain death.
I should have told him to think about his wife and kid. Who's going to support them when he's dead? I should have told him to leave and go to the Free City. Or go live on the street. It's better than being dead. But he's already gone.
And I thought he was a coward.
The thought of going back to help him crosses my mind. It might work, two on one, but if Victor sees me, Felix won't have surprise on his side any more, wouldn't be able to get close enough to make that knife of his work for him.
No he got himself in to his mess, he can get himself out of it. Or die trying. Whatever. He's not my responsibility. He didn't even ask for my help.
I start to walk away.
But he saved me. More than that, he's the only person in the world who's lifted a finger to really help me. In a city full of selfish assholes he's the one decent person I've come across. The only person I've ever met that I might, maybe, consider trusting. He did something horrible by helping Victor catch me, but he also did the right thing and let me go. He saw me, the human being underneath the pretty face. I've never met anyone that could do that.
I stop walking.
