James Knapp - State of Decay

He slid the card across the table with the back facing up, and tapped the corner where I had scribbled some kind of little pattern.

“Do you know what that is?” he asked.

“A doodle?”

“Well, if it is, it’s a doodle of the waveform that’s generated when a revivor’s systems reanimate and come online. It’s called a revivor heart signature. Does that sound familiar?”

I shook my head.

“What’s really interesting,” he continued, “is that your doodle is even more than that. Every signature is unique, and your doodle matches, for all intents and purposes, the signature I pulled off a revivor found at the Palm Harbor docks yesterday.”

He was looking at me more intensely now, orange flickering in the pupils surrounded by that cold blue. The booze had finally started working its magic and was hitting me all at once, making it harder to concentrate. My anxiety was melting away, and I started to relax.

“Can you explain that?” he asked.

I couldn’t explain it, because I had no idea what he was talking about. He was kind of cute in person, I decided. He was nice, too. He didn’t treat me like a lot of the others.

His phone rang. He reached into his suit jacket and checked it, but didn’t answer. It looked like maybe he was reading a text. When he put the phone away, I could tell something was bothering him.

“Who was that?” I asked. He raised his eyebrows.

“An old friend. She wants to meet for lunch.”

“Are you going to?”

“Look, Ms. Ott—”

“I can help you,” I said.

“How?” he asked. His attitude was different, and I thought I was losing him. I remembered the resume I held in my lap. It shook a little as I put it on the table and slid it across to him, just like he had done with the card.

He took the paper and looked at it. He read it for a couple seconds; then his face started to change.

“I’m serious,” I told him.

“You know,” he said, folding the paper and putting it on the table in front of him, “I can see that you are.”

I had blown it. All at once, the anxiety was back and I sat up straight. Damn it, I knew the resume was a mistake; I shouldn’t have given it to him.

“Wait,” I said.

In a few seconds, he was going to send me home. I didn’t know what else to do.

The room got brighter as I stared at him, until it was so bright that the only colors I could see were the ones that hung above his head. They were complicated, but shifting toward red. I pushed them back, soothing them until I saw his face relax.

“You need to give me a chance,” I said. “If you could know one thing right now that you don’t, what would it be?”

He paused for a couple seconds, considering.

“Did she love me?” he asked.

“Something to do with your case,” I said.

“We have a suspect in custody. I need him to talk.”

“Good,” I said. That was perfect, actually. That was something I should be able to do. “I can make him do that. Don’t think about it. Just trust your instincts and take me to him. When we get there, do what I say and I’ll prove it to you. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

I let go of the patterns above him and let them resume their flow as the brightness subsided and they faded from view. The room returned to normal, leaving us sitting there facing each other. Agent Nico was looking at me now differently from before, but it was hard to say exactly what he was thinking. The seconds ticked by, but I didn’t want to jinx it by saying anything.

“Follow me,” he said finally.

“Really?”

“Really.”

It had worked. He stood up and waited for me to come around the table; then he walked down the hall and I followed him to a door with a little glass window that was blocked from the other side. He opened the door, and I could see there was a man inside.

“Is that him?” I asked, trying to get a peek through the doorway. Nico seemed to be deliberately standing in front of me, trying to block my view.

“Yes,” he said, “Ms. Ott—”

“I’m listening,” I said. I caught a look at the man through the doorway; he was big like Nico, and dressed in an orange prison uniform. He was sitting in a wheelchair, and from the look of him, he’d been in some kind of accident. He was staring at the floor, and all around his eyes his face was swollen and bruised black and blue. He had cuts on his cheeks and a square piece of gauze was tented over his nose with a strip of adhesive tape. His lips were split, with a couple of stitches in the top one.

“No, you’re not,” Nico said, and stopped talking. I looked up to see him looking down at me, waiting.

“Not what?”

“You’re not listening,” he said. “Pay attention.”

“Okay, okay.”

“Stay on the other side of the table from him,” he said. “He’s in bad shape and he’s restrained, but he’s had extensive body modification, so he’s tougher than he looks. He’s on painkillers that will keep him calm and also keep his motor skills fuzzy, but play it safe.”

“I will.”

“What are you going to do?” he asked. “Do you need anything?”

“Just let me talk,” I said, “and don’t say anything.”

He pushed the door open and went inside. He reached up over the door and did something, then motioned for me to follow. As we approached the guy in the wheelchair, he was looking at his leg. I couldn’t see it before behind the table, but one leg was held out straight in a metal brace. The pant leg was rolled up, and I could see two metal rings around his shin, one under the knee and one above the ankle. Metal pins were stuck into his skin and the whole middle portion was wrapped in gauze. His foot was swollen and black, the toes sticking out like fat little sausages.

I focused on him and saw a violet light prickling above his head, red spikes jumping out. Even with the painkillers, he was in pain, but he was also experiencing some turmoil. He didn’t know what to do.

“Hey,” Nico said to him. “You’ve got a visitor.”

The man looked over at me like he hadn’t noticed me before.

“No shit,” the man said. He was hoarse and his nose was plugged up. His front teeth were missing so his t’s came out like d’s.

“Answer her questions.”

Nico turned to me. I was on.

“Are you okay?” I asked. It was the first thing I could think to say, seeing him like that.

“I hope you’re not my conjugal visit.”

He smiled slightly and winced. His remaining teeth were bloody. I thought about the bandages on Nico’s knuckles. Had he done this? I wasn’t expecting the man to look like that. One part of me was saying that he must have done something to deserve what he got, but another part of me wasn’t so sure.

“I’m helping Agent Wachalowski,” I said weakly.

“You’re wasting your time.”

I was going to have to try it soon, before he got too riled up. I was hugely aware of Nico’s eyes on me.

“Relax,” I told him.

“Screw you, you ugly little bitch!” he yelled; then, before I could react, he leaned forward and spit at me. I saw a red glob shoot out of the gap in his front teeth and felt something wet land on my face, above my eye and down across the bridge of my nose to my cheek. I felt a big surge of anger from Nico, who stood up so fast he knocked his chair back. I held up one hand, easing him back.

“Calm down,” I said. “Both of you, calm down.”

The man in the wheelchair had been glaring at me with a kind of satisfaction, but now his face relaxed as I eased back the light around him, shifting the violets and reds to orange, then blue. Nico put his chair back and sat back down.

“Sleep,” I said. The man’s eyelids fluttered.