True Dead

I breathed clove-scented smoke through the numbers in the air. But the clock glowed on, undisturbed, projected from the cognitive link embedded in my temple.

The seven folded itself into an eight. Mocking me.

21:48.

“Your last junkie’s late,” came a voice behind me. “Always cut it this fine?”

“What have I said about the side-hustle, Selkov?” I asked without turning. “And don’t call them that. Happy is hard to come by these days, no shame in buying it.”

“My only job is to shut my mouth. Yes, Tolliver.” My new partner stepped into view and I eyeballed him, grinning round my cigarillo. He was built like the cab of a cargo mag-train. Moved like one too; a soundless, boulderish trundle. A long, slashing scar carved a path through his peppery hair, up from the forehead over the left eye. He wouldn’t talk about it, but I recognised a trophy of Charon City’s nightlife. A brawler. Not what I needed. Tough to retrain out of bad habits.

“I prefer, Boss,” I said, causing him to grumble like a dying grav-skim engine. Didn’t argue though. That’s right stay in your lane, Rookie. Every time, his type showed up thinking this job needed brawn. Ex bouncers, ex military. Ex everything. Washed-up musclemen. Bones to pick with the whole world.

“You know, you aren’t what I expected…” Selkov said.

Here we go.

“Yeah?” I asked, exhaling through the time again, as if to blow it backwards. 21:51. Where is he? If my customer didn’t show soon he’d end up a real pain in the motherboard come lockdown.

“I mean, I didn’t know they hired girls for this work.” Selkov adjusted the strap of his strike cannon. Thing was as wide as my thigh. Total waste of ions in my opinion. Typical. I sucked at my cigarillo, focussed on not letting my cog-link leak what I was thinking. There are subtler ways of telling idiots to take a running jump.

“Take a running jump, Selkov.”

“Yes, Tol— Boss. Sorry, Boss,” he said. I grinned again, smoke oozing between my teeth. See, Rookie, I’m terrifying and you know it.

“Hey!”

I turned, finding a skinny white kid in oversized trainers slapping his way between the headstones. He pulled up, puffing, and looked at Selkov.

“Girlfriend kept me, you know what them ladies be like.” He brushed imaginary dust off his shoulder, UV streaks in his hair picking up the green glow of my clock.

“How much for five warp and a twist of glitch?” He shoved a hand in his pocket. Trousers so yellow they made my eyes hurt even in the graveyard dark. Seriously? This hack-for-brains is the customer?

I cleared my throat but he kept looking at Selkov, damp eyes wide, waiting. Already on something, if the mismatched pupils were anything to go by. Hell. No. I stubbed my cigarillo on the sole of my boot.

“Come on,” I said, ignoring the shock that overhauled his face as I led him to Elouise Wilson’s grave. Poor Ellie. Beautiful old stick. Old age was a forgotten nightmare of the 21st century for most people, and Ellie was the last natural ager to come through in a long while. 89 years, by the dates on her headstone. And not a day of it smoothed out by chemical preservatives.

Sorry, Love.

I thrust my arm into the fresh topsoil.

“You know the drill, right?” I asked. “Side effects - rare but not unheard of - may include nausea, excessive thirst, increased libido—” he cut me off with a swooping whistle and I looked at him, letting it hang there until it curdled. The kid had sense enough to blush, I could see it in the glow of the time. 21:56. Cutting it fine indeed.

“Sudden death, and loss of bowel and bladder control.” He only stared. I sighed. “Of course, that’s nothing against the reason to take it… psychedelic visions, and euphoria.”

“Yes! How much?”

“Three hu—”

I screamed.

My free hand flailed, my body jerking, my other arm still lodged in the earth.

“Help me! Something’s got me! Please! No!”

My cog-link wiped the clock, the air around me coming alive with new projections. A rotten, grasping hand erupting from the grave. Broken, bloody fingernails and slipping dead skin in awesome, gory detail.

Artwork, if I said so myself.

Selkov was still bent double when the kid’s fleeing screams had faded.

“You… totally… had me,” he panted through his laughter. “I thought one of them was early.”

“I look dumb enough to keep my product with a Reboot?” I asked. My cog-link was back to watching the clock. 21:58. The kid had been fast, even in those shoes. I wondered if we’d find them later, flapped right off his feet.

“Do that often?” Selkov asked. “What happened to no shame in buying happiness?”

“That kid’s an overdose time bomb. I’m doing him a favour, postponing his date with Betty.” I tapped the blade of the shovel strapped to my back.

“I cannot believe you use that,” Selkov said. “So retro.”

“Classics are reliable,” I said. “Tech can let you down right when you need it.”

“You think he’s one?” Selkov asked.

“You don’t? No kid like that wants to get old and die natural. He clearly has money, and isn’t afraid of a little Chemistry. There’s liv-Long in those veins for sure.”

“Damn,” Selkov said, adding a sad whistle. “Asclepia lures them in young now.”

“That’s what happens when a company keeps the side effects deadly secret,” I said.

“That supposed to be a joke?” Selkov asked. I snorted, but was kept from answering by the clock. Turning red.

22:00.

I blinked it off.

“Lockdown,” Selkov said. We heard the distant grumble of the gate gears, then the echoing thud of the locks slamming home.

“You good, Selkov?” I asked.

“Starry-eyed,” he said, but I noticed he laid a protective hand on his cannon as he moved to leave.

“Where are you going?”

“Patrol,” he said, tilting it at the end like a question.

“Hell no! We had a multi-vehicle pile-up today. There’ll be twenty Reboots at least. You think I’m digging up that many people you’re higher than that kid. Tonight, they come to us.”

“Serious?” Selkov asked. “Is that allowed?”

I tugged a black box the shape of a hockey puck off my belt.

“Pull up a hammock,” I said, throwing it into the grass. I tossed myself into the air above it with practiced ease, letting the invisible force of the tech catch me.

“I’m going to walk the line a bit,” he said, raising an eyebrow at me.

“Suit yourself.”

He rolled away between the gravestones, head on a swivel. I set my cog-link to monitor nearby ground-level movement, and settled back to doze.

“Boss! We got action! Sector three… I could use a hand here.” Selkov’s voice was unsteady, and not from a bad cog-link. I leapt off the hammock, syncing my cognitive’s visuals to his. But he was running and the projection feed was bouncing.

Then the blue flash of his damn cannon.

Blinking off the afterglow, I ran.

Selkov was drowning in a tide of the undead. His gun blazed and a woman in a floral dress fell back, one arm blown into chunks.

“Aim for the head!” I caught the woman in the back of the skull with the forward edge of Betty, and she hit the ground. For good this time.

But a sound reached me that froze my heart as still as any Reboot’s: Selkov’s gun sputtering and winding down, core-drained. Focus, Toll. I cursed under my breath and swung for the cervical spine of a nearby gentleman, taking his head off as neat as you like. It flew away behind a crying stone angel.

“Selkov, Run! I’ve got this.”

“Boss?”

“You’re no good to me deader than these things!” I twirled Betty and punched her forward like a lance, gouging a v-shaped hole in the forehead of a screeching woman in a glorious trouser suit.

Selkov ran.

An hour later, gritty with grave dirt and wiping embalming fluid off my hands, I found Selkov losing his dinner in the decorative bushes lining the edge of sector two.

“Still starry-eyed?” I asked, but gently. He straightened, wiping his mouth.

“It’s the smell,” he said, sheepish.

“I know,” I said.

“They don’t smell… I mean, they still smell alive.”

“I know.”

“How do you…?”

“Kill them? They’re already gone. Only they get no peace with that drug in them, popping their bodies back to life without their minds to run the show. Trick is to focus on their fatal injuries.”

Selkov looked doubtful.

“Come,” I said, and took him back to where I’d laid out the bodies. True dead now. He watched as I pulled my medallion from my vest and held it to my lips, whispering my prayer over each victim. I’d never let a rookie see me do it. They never understood. But Selkov didn’t ask his questions now. He only watched, cloaked in silence.

“It’s not their fault Asclepia lies to everyone,” I said.

“Someone should tell the truth,” Selkov said.

“Stop right there. You handed that freedom to Asclepia, same as me. The NDA we signed is bomb-proof,” I said. “Don’t go testing it.”

“That was before I knew…” He sounded defensive.

“It doesn’t matter. A tiny thing like the truth? Versus lasting beauty and near immortality? One hit of liv-Long and old age is something they heard about in history class one time. Consequences are for other people.”

He stared at the bodies.

“What’s your point?” he asked.

“Do you honestly think they’d care? Even if they knew?” I asked in return. “Or do you think we’d just end up with better overtime and a more transparent job title?”

He didn’t answer. Didn’t need to.

“This is the world we were given,” I said, gentle again this time. “And all we can do for them now,” I handed him a spare shovel, “is give them back.”

“By hand?” he asked, staring at the shovel.

“By hand,” I said.