James Knapp - State of Decay

“It mixed me up,” I said.

“Hmm?”

“The pleasure model they set up,” I said. “I was just talking to myself, talking out loud. It looked like a snuff job to me. I said someone was probably still looking for her. You know, the girl.”

“I get it.”

“It said, ‘He is.’ It said, ‘He’ll never stop looking.’ ”

“I see.”

I shook my head, remembering that wax doll’s face looking up at me.

“It’s crazy,” I said, “but I was sure it meant her father.”

Sean pressed his lips together.

“It got to you?”

“No. It wasn’t that. It was the way it said it. It was like something else was in there looking out…. It was like it paged through the memories there, and dredged up a piece of information it didn’t even understand.”

Sean didn’t say anything, and after a while, I thought maybe I should stop talking.

“I meant to do it,” I said. “I’d have been doing it a favor.”

He smiled a little, and clapped me on the shoulder.

“Nico, I won’t bar you from the case, but as a friend, my recommendation to you is to walk away from this one. It took you a long time to—”

“I know.”

“You have never been quite the same.”

“I know.”

“When they ask me, and they will, all I have to tell them is your body is chemically stressed, and I recommend a short time to readjust. No one would blink at that. This case will move on, and the next one will move in.”

My first reaction was to say no, but it didn’t come out of my mouth. Instead I shook my head. I grabbed my coat and shrugged it on.

“Revivors are not human beings,” he said.

People said that all the time. I’d said it too, early on. Revivors weren’t living, but they weren’t dead either. Their knowledge, their compulsions, were human. That I knew. I thought of the girl, her pale face and her dark hair. Her soft voice. She was not like the revivors in that hellhole, the revivors I had known. She was not like them, and she was like them.

I learned more about revivors than I’d ever wanted to when they dragged me into that hole. It made no difference what you were in life; strip away the brain chemistry, and you had a revivor. They were what lurked under the surface of all of us, even me.

“I don’t know what they are,” I said to Sean.

Sean watched from across the room, but he didn’t say anything more as I left the lab and closed the door behind me.

The sun came up shortly after we emerged from the tunnel. The lights from the previous night had flickered out, and the streets and sidewalks were thick with early-morning commuters. When the train joined the main railway, the concrete building facades flashed by, and in the distance, past the field of monorail tracks, the city sprawled for as far as the eye could see. Skyscrapers formed a mass of geometric shapes, dwindling to the horizon until they were lost in the haze of morning snow. Beyond that, the city proper’s skyline rose like a huge monolith above the rest. I watched it for a while with a sleepy stare as droplets streaked across the window.

The car was clean but showing its age, with worn trim and fading LCDs that scrolled schedule information, advertisements, and public-service warnings. It was packed full but quiet, as passengers stared at their computer screens, keypads, and styluses, whispering just over the hum of the track. They had the heat on a little too high, and the air smelled like coffee and cologne. Despite the attacks and the general unrest on the streets these days, it was almost peaceful.

I had managed to pinpoint the security camera closest to the corner where the murder took place, and had them send me the contents of its recording buffer for the hours corresponding to the time of death. I watched it on my computer tablet as another train whipped by the window, heading in the opposite direction. I could make out the vehicle in the lower left-hand corner of the frame and was able to pick out the license plate number. The sidewalks were crowded with people on either side of the street, heading back and forth and ducking in and out of shops. Everyone was bundled up against the cold, making it hard to pick out facial details. After an hour or so it had begun to snow, further obscuring the image.

A message came in, flagged urgent. Someone was on the line, waiting. Moving the footage off to one side, I brought up the image a second before I decided I should screen it. In a window I could see Serena’s face, lips pressed together as she waited. A receipt had already been sent, so it was too late to try to duck her. The expression on her face said I’d already been doing that too long.

I opened the connection and typed.

Hello, Dr. Pyznar. I’m on the train. Nonverbal only, please.

She looked at me from the screen and frowned, but not in an angry way.

These psych exams are mandatory, Faye. For everyone in the department.

I know.

The results of your blood chemistry have come back.

And?

The bottom line is, it’s obvious to anyone who looks that you take too many stims and too many tranquilizers. Knocking yourself out and then shocking yourself awake isn’t the same as sleeping.

She didn’t have to tell me that, but unfortunately, at the moment it was all I had. I was a second-tier citizen. I never served in the military, but I was wired for Posthumous Service. Making detective was the first step toward at least a first-tier retirement. My caseload would dictate the rest.

Are the levels within tolerance?

You mean, are they within the department’s acceptable range? Yes, but—

So I’m okay?

She pursed her thin lips, fixing me with a frustrated look. My recommendations hold some weight.

My eyes drifted to the window containing the security footage. Scanning through, I watched the snow pile up in fast motion until it covered the windshield of the car. People continued to cross in front of it until a small figure broke off and approached the driver’s-side door and got in. I stopped the image, backed it up, and let it play.

The figure was female: the victim. She approached the car, unlocked it using the remote, then opened the door. She didn’t seem as though she heard or saw anything strange. She got in and shut the door behind her.

This shouldn’t even count as the evaluation. Doing something else at the same time isn’t helping.

Doctor, I’m in the middle of a murder investigation.

She sighed.

I know. Tell me, at least: Are you still having the dreams?

Yes. I had one last night.

How are they affecting you these days? How do they make you feel?

Sore.

If you’re tense enough in sleep to wake up with muscle aches, that’s not good.

Tell me about it.

What about the voice?

It’s not a voice, it’s my voice…. Talking to myself helps me think. That doesn’t make me crazy, does it?

Not yet.

Can we call this done?

On the screen she frowned again, but again, not in an angry way. She wasn’t mad; she was concerned, and I knew that, but there was just too much going on.

The next exam is in three months. You have to come in for that one. Physically come in.

I will. Thank you, Doctor.

There’s no point in making first tier if you work yourself into an early grave. Slow down.

I will. Thank you.

Closing the window, I smiled, thinking that it had gone better than I expected. She was going to give me a pass for now; one more thing off the list. I turned my attention fully back to the security footage.