Shyft

by Damien Boyes

  We don’t have time for this. Kade and her muscle might not actually be here, but I saw people arriving from the roof. They won’t be able to drop out of their bodies.

  The beaver stops halfway down the stairs, puts the stick on the step below her and rests her paws on top.

  “Detective Gage,” she calls out to me in a Cockney version of an Australian accent, its voice female, but deeper than I'd imagine coming from a beaver. She ignores Galvan entirely. “Welcome to my arKade. I am Ms. Kade, your host.” She throws the walking stick out to the side and performs a deep bow. “I must say, you have made quite the mess of my security team. Bit excessive though, innit? They wouldn’t have hurt you. Much.”

  “They were resisting,“ I say. “And you’re under arrest. But before I tell you ‘you have the right to counsel’ you’re going to take me to Xiao.”

  She gives me a saucy beaver look—tiny black eyes wide, round head tilted, non-existent hips flared—says, “I'm sure they'd be happy for a rematch,” ignoring my question. “My boys don't often get the chance to work those skyns against a real live opponent. Not many people think it wise to come into my house, uninvited—” As she finishes, she twists on her feet and her tail slaps against the steps behind her.

  Beaver’s mad. “Once word gets out about how easy it is, maybe some minds will change and your boys'll have more to do,” I say. “Now take me to Xiao.”

  She wiggles her nose. “May-be. But then again, there aren't many who can move like you did, deadshot two airborne targets. Especially targets so small. Not without assistance.”

  The beaver knows I'm Revved. But what’s she going to do about it, file a complaint with the Police Services Board? Galvan’s the one I need to worry about.

  “I've been hitting the range,” I say. “Now, last chance. Take me to Xiao.”

  “Last chance or what?” she asks, flicks her long eyelashes at me.

  “Or you’ll be the next one I deadshot.”

  She sighs, as though disappointed. “Xiao was never here. No more than I am.”

  “Then tell me who’s psyphoning your guests and emptying their bank accounts.”

  “I assure you I had nothing to do with that,” her lips peel back to show another five cm of teeth. “I’d be interested to know why didn't you didn’t simply ask for a moment of my time. We could have avoided all this unpleasantness.”

  “You’re going to need to come with us,” I reach for my binders and start toward her.

  The tank stiffens but she sighs, waves the tank back with paw. “I’m afraid that is impossible.”

  I raise my weapon and she gives a shrug that goes all the way to her tail. “Shoot me if you like, it won’t make any difference.”

  Galvan clears his throat and the noise startles me. I’d forgotten he was here. “When word gets out your guests aren’t safe, and your house isn’t secure, what do you think your reputation will be worth?”

  The beaver’s lower lip quivers and her deep brown eyes turn down. “Now here’s the clever one.” She pauses then shakes a stick at us. “I understand your tactical teams are already en-route. You have my leave to question anyone willing to talk to you—not that I could stop you—but you’d best move quickly. I'd say you have seven, eight minutes before guests start dropping. You’ll want to head up to the third floor, through the Menagerie Libre.”

  “What the hell’s that?” I ask.

  “Oh,” she replies, her muzzle drawn, her whiskers low. “You’ll see.” She takes a step back up the stairs, then turns, says, “You, my friends, are going to cost me a great deal tonight. I was partial to this skyn.” She raises her paw, wipes the thought away. “What's done is done, can't be helped. Part of the business.”

  I take a step toward her and she cocks her snout, angles a small brown eye in my direction. “Besides, Detective Gage, aren’t we all breaking laws here tonight?” She looks inward for a second then emerges to say, “Until next time,” and then her skyn collapses, lifeless, and tumbles down the stairs.

  The tank behind her drops like an unstable building and its massive body comes crashing down on top of her with a squelch. Blood spurts down the white steps.

  If we’re going to salvage anything out of this, we need to find some people who can’t cut their strings.

  “Come on,” I say, and nudge Galvan toward the stairs.

  “Did he say Menagerie Libre?” Galvan asks as he angles out and around the tank, giving it and the pooling blood as much room as possible.

  “Sounded like it to me,” I say.

  “What do you think that is?”

  “I have no idea,” I say as I move up the stairs to the next level of Hell. “But we're about to find out.”

  ***

  SysDate

  [02:06:18:29. Sunday, April 21, 2058]

  We reach the top of the staircase and pass through Kade’s glass booth to the second floor. To the Menagerie Libre.

  Even with the added benefit of the Revv, it takes a moment to process exactly what I'm seeing.

  The second floor is a wide open space from one side of the building to the other, save for the skyscraper’s support pillars, with the glassed-in atrium in the center. The exterior windows are blacked out with phovofilm but cones of light mark a path between the columns.

  Arranged throughout the floor are clear, well-lit boxes. Smaller versions of the one around the pyramid. A scene plays out in each box, a scene that slams a fist to the face of societal norms and puts the shattered results on display.

  Behind me, Galvan's homemade dinner hits the concrete, splashes my pant legs.

  In the box nearest to us, a naked man—a skyn, I can only hope—is spread-eagled, secured to the ceiling with chains hooked through his palms. His feet are staked to the floor. Deep cuts run from each shoulder, meet at the sternum and continue down to the pubic bone. His colourless skin has been pulled aside and secured with nylon clips. Entrails exposed, blood and intestines spilled onto the floor, his heart still manages a weak rhythm. His head lolls to the side, eyes rolled into his skull, but he's still conscious and shows no sign of pain. If anything, he looks blissed-out.

  Another man, facing the victim, transmitter plainly visible on his neck, is only wearing a shiny black apron, its white ties neatly bowed above his smooth, dimpled buttocks. He wields a long thin blade with the practised nonchalance of a butcher, examining the exposed innards of his victim with blood-slick hands, and every few seconds chooses a bit of viscera to neatly sever before popping it into his mouth. With every new slice the hanging man shudders contentedly.

  Finally, the butcher steps close, brings his scarlet-stained lips to his victim's ear and whispers, soothingly, all the while stroking the hanging man's flaccid penis, up and down, caressing it, until he flashes the blade down in a swift slice and turns to face the crowd, knife brandished in one fist, a shrivelled tube of rubbery flesh dangling from the other. He tosses the knife aside and, with a flourish, rips the member in half with his teeth, chews it down and swallows. Blood streaming down his chin.

  Behind him, his victim sobs in ecstasy, deep wracking cries like he's seen the face of God.

  A neat, hand-lettered sign on the glass cube reads The Sin of Flesh.

  Five observers standing closer to the glass clap appreciatively.

  It's then I notice the people watching, spin and sweep the room with my eyes. Everyone is skynned. There’s only two models, male and female: a reed-thin, bleach-blonde with a massive chest, waist too thin for organs, thighs that comprise a third of her overall height, and all barely covered by a one-piece bathing suit; and a sandy-haired hunk with department-store good-looks and musculature straight out of a comic book, wearing loose linen pants and no shirt. The female looks exactly like paler version the skyn we saw on DeBlanc’s couch.

  They’re strolling the Menagerie, walking in ones and twos, hands behind their backs or clutching the narrow stems of wineglasses, moving from scene to scene, casually observing acts of sexual violence a
nd indescribable cruelty. Ken and Barbie visit the Art Gallery. There's even mood music playing, a soothing ambient jazz of strings and synth.

  I taste bile but clamp down on it, fight through the nausea, make myself look around the room.

  There’s about a dozen different boxes, some more popular than others. They’re three skyns deep around the one containing the orgy. Further toward the back, a huge black bull is on its hind legs, violates an emaciated, shrieking polar bear from behind while cows watch silently from a row of stools.

  It’s the only one that hasn’t drawn a crowd.

  “What—what is this?” Galvan stammers. He's hunched over the soup of vomit, head down, hands covering his face.

  I don't know what to tell him. Part of me wants to pull my weapon and systematically put a bullet in the head of everyone here. To track down Kade’s twisted mind and wring her rodent neck for what she’s doing to the human race. Turning us into caricatures and demons. But what good would it do? Most of these people aren't even really here, their fingers on strings from anywhere in the world.

  Menagerie Libre. I have to think back to high school Latin—a display of freedom, or something like that.

  Freedom from biology, from social constraint.

  From mortality.

  From morality.

  Standing here, amongst the inhuman depravity and cruelty and horror, I'm struck by a visceral realization. We've escaped the constant and oppressive fear of death. It’s true, we’re free.

  Only we’ve become vulnerable to something even more insidious: the reality of living forever.

  Even worse, the longer I watch, the more I’m…drawn to it. And the more I'm drawn to it the sicker I feel.

  I thought that having my personality loaded onto a computer would be the hardest part about life as a bit-head. I had no idea.

  There's a new world opening up before me, clawing for me, a world that’s tearing at the edges of everything I've ever believed to be true.

  What happens if I let myself fall in?

  What happens if I jump?

  Fucking Revv. I have to snap out of it. We’re going to end up with nothing.

  “We need to move,” I say.

  The staircase to the third floor lounge is on the opposite end of the room. We only have a few minutes until the TAC team gets here. Guests have started abandoning their temporary bodies. The people that came in person must have started fleeing back toward the roof when I got here. Kade was playing with me. Stalling while her guests escaped.

  I grab Galvan, haul him to his feet. The blood has drained from his face and his hands are shaking.

  “Why? Who…why would—?” I need to get him back to reality.

  I grit my teeth, slap him across the cheek. “They're just skyns. None of this is real.”

  He nods, quickly, repeatedly, as if trying to make himself believe it.

  “But I don’t— Who would want to—?”

  I grab him by the shoulders, seize him by the eyes. “People sick enough and rich enough to rent a murder performance box for the evening,” I tell him. Although, after this, the idea that a few rithm-altering shyfts could be in any way threatening is ridiculous. Talk about pissing in the ocean. “You have a job to do. Right now, our leads are fleeing via the roof. We need to find some people who can’t shed their bodies. Then you can spend the next month figuring out exactly what's going on here.”

  “I don't think I can—”

  “Galvan,” I say, staring through his spekz and into his unfocused eyes, “We’ve already lost Kade. If we don’t move, we’re not going to have anything to show Chaddah.”

  He blinks, shakes his head, takes a deep breath. “Okay, okay.”

  I hurry us past the rest of the murder boxes, and force myself not to stare as we go by.

  StatUS-ID

  [fdaa:9afe:17e6:a2ef::Gage/-//GIBSON]

  SysDate

  [01:27:37. Saturday, January 18, 2059]

  “We met once,” Petra says. Vaelyn skulked back from the bar and is nursing a drink across the table from me. Petra sits between us. The muscled duo watch sullenly from a distance. “It was Vae and I’s first meeting. And your last.”

  Yet another person who knows more about my life than I do. I wonder if there’s a word for that. Something German maybe.

  “What was I like?”

  She shrugs. “Quiet. Distracted. You left with Dora and two days later you were dead.”

  I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to hearing how I’ve been dead before. More than once.

  “And after that?” I ask.

  She looks at Vaelyn who answers why ask me, I don’t want to be having this conversation anyway with a roll of her eyes.

  “The group dissolved,” Petra says with a slight raise of her shoulder. “Lasted maybe a month afterwards. Doralai missed a few sessions and when she returned, she bobbled between haunted and paranoid. She stopped coming shortly after. She seemed to take your death really hard. Have you talked to her?”

  “I have,” I say and she doesn’t press me further. “What about Dub?”

  “He tried his best to keep the group together, him and Shelt, but there was only so much they could do. After that cop came asking around about you—”

  “Detective Wiser?”

  “Latin guy, mostly hardware?”

  I nod.

  “After that everything went to hell. Elder and Dora quit, and Tala and Miranda went crazy.”

  “Were they shyfting?”

  She looks again at Vaelyn who barely waggles her head. “Sure, I guess. We all were. We’d go out after the counselling and have a shyft and a drink, Elder leading the way. Vae was just starting to roll her own and she’d share them out—”

  “My shyfts had nothing to do with this,” Vaelyn snaps. “My shit is pure. You think Xiao would let me anywhere near this place if I was slinging tainted caps?”

  Xiao. His name keeps coming up.

  “Did you know him then?” I ask. “Xiao?”

  Vaelyn squints her eyes at me. “I’m not talking about him. He’s got nothing to do with this.”

  “We met him later,” Petra says.

  “So there’s no way, with all the stuff that happened, all this out-of-character behaviour, you don’t think someone was lacing shyfts with bad code?”

  “Anything’s possible,” Petra says flatly. “But I know we had nothing to do with it.”

  “But you’re working for Xiao now?” I ask. Whether I was working with him or about to arrest him, Xiao has to be involved with this somehow.

  No, not me, Finsbury. Finsbury was tangled up with Xiao. Then Finsbury ended up dead and the world went to shit and I got dragged into his mess.

  What if Shelt’s right, and Xiao is behind all of this? I need to find him and ask.

  Vaelyn straightens in her seat. “I work with him.” She angles her head at me, “Why do you want to know about Xiao anyway?”

  “I was investigating him. Shelt thinks I may have started all this. That I got too close and all the shit that happened since is Xiao’s retaliation.”

  “I don’t know what Shelt’s been telling you,” Vaelyn says, leans her broad shoulders over the table and levels a thick finger at my chest, “but Xiao isn’t the kind of man who would fuck over innocent people’s lives.”

  “He’s a criminal,” I say.

  She screws up her face like I’ve just insulted her mother and half-rises. Petra puts a gentle hand on her shoulder and guides her back down.

  “He may ‘break the law’” Vaelyn says finger-quoting the air. “But he’s no criminal. Think what you want about me, but Xiao, he’s a gentleman. He looks out for his people, protects his partners. He’s fucking generous man, and he doesn’t have to be. He could take twice as big a cut as he does. He doesn’t hurt people if he doesn’t have to.”

  Bullshit. Boss of the year or not, he’s a criminal. He’s involved and I want to know how. “Well then if he’s such a humanitarian, if he had nothing to do with
Dub’s death. Or Tala’s. Or Miranda’s. Or mine. I don’t imagine he’ll mind chatting with me and we can clear this all up.”

  “I can ask him,” she says, either missing or ignoring the sarcasm, “but he doesn’t meet with people he doesn’t know.”

  “You can vouch for me,” I say.

  “The hell I will,” Vaelyn says, sits back and crosses her arms. “I don’t know who the fuck you are. I one time sat in a room across from the guy you say you used to be. I’m not risking my career on a stranger.”

  Petra looks at Vaelyn, considers it for a moment. “We’ll make some inquiries,” she says. And then adds, “No promises,” when Vaelyn glares at her.

  “Good enough,” I say. It’ll have to do. I’ve got nothing better to go on.

  Vaelyn clearly wants to get back to business, and waves her goons over. They cross the room and stand beside the table, waiting for me to leave.

  “That’s my cue,” I say and slide out of the booth.

  “Don’t hurry back,” Vaelyn says. She’s smirking, like she knows something I don’t. Petra sighs and looks away, her eyes downcast.

  Thankfully, my head’s almost back to normal, the residual effects of the alcohol sim faded. I cross the room toward the exit, and as I’m passing the bouncer, about to descend the stairs, I catch a glimpse of someone moving through the crowd from the back of the club, headed toward me. Medium tall, slight, hood over angular features and a tangle of dark brown hair. He’s familiar, but different.

  It takes me a second, but…it’s Elder.

  What the hell is he doing here?

  We lock eyes as he approaches, he smiles like he’s been waiting. Like he’s relieved to see me.

  I move to intercept him, but before I can one of Petra’s bodyguards imposes himself between us. He doesn’t seem to notice Elder.

  “Come with us, sir,” he says.

  “Wait, I—” There’s a green flash from behind me and I raise my arm to shove past him but can’t, can’t move at all. Then the room is pitching upward, and I crash into the bodyguard’s waiting arms. I can’t feel my body. Neuralised from the neck down.