James Knapp - State of Decay

If he was still alive when I came back, maybe I’d ask.

Getting the box turned out to be the easy part. I never found out how it was managed; I just told them where to send it. I picked an old unit in an underground storage facility that I’d rented back when I left the country. When I came back, I never reclaimed anything in it; in fact, I never set eyes on it again until that night. I hadn’t been down there in many years, and from the looks of it, neither had anyone else. When I arrived, a fresh set of dolly tracks stood out in the crud slicked over the metal floor, and there it was, left next to the rusted door to my locker.

Noakes pinged me over the JZI. Wachalowski, where are you?

Following a lead.

In Dandridge?

If you know where I am, then why do you ask?

You—

I cut the connection.

Getting the box was easy. Opening it was another thing altogether. On the floor of the mostly empty storage cell, under a ton of street and subway with the steel shutters pulled and only the light of a flashlight to see by, I sat and stared at that box for an hour.

Back in the grinder, when those things pulled me down into that tunnel, something happened to me. A piece of that memory never returned, and I was glad for that, but I remembered the pain and the horror as they began to tear me apart. When my last tour ended, they honored me, gave me a medal, and recommended I go home. Now, more than any other time since, I felt like I was being dragged down through that tunnel again.

Incoming message.

A drop of brown water dripped from above, and landed with a solid pat on the surface of the box. I should have faced Faye long ago. I’d owed it to her.

Now I had to face her as a revivor.

The words “incoming message” floated across my vision again.

I closed my eyes, shutting out the silver box.

This is Wachalowski.

Agent Wachalowski, this is Bob MacReady from Heinlein Industries.

If you’re contacting me like this, can I assume my request for a follow-up interview is being denied?

You can.

I’ll get a court order.

No, you won’t.

He was probably right about that. Heinlein had powerful allies in all kinds of high places, and they had decided to take the safe path. Getting a judge to issue a grant like that and having it stick would probably be beyond my means alone.

Do your superiors know you’re talking to me? I asked him.

Yes.

What is it that they want you to tell me?

That Heinlein is not behind this.

I never said I thought you were.

I’ve done some digging, Agent. Our name has come up in conjunction with your investigation too many times to be dismissed as coincidence. You must at least suspect it.

If he knew that, Heinlein had some pretty deep contacts. I opened my eyes and went back to staring at the box on the other side of the room.

Why are you telling me this?

Because despite how it may look, Heinlein is not involved. No one here knows why Cross was killed. Heinlein Industries, understandably, doesn’t want their shell peeled back too far, but Cross was a good man. He was respected here.

Sometimes circumstances make for hard choices.

Agreed, but that isn’t what happened here. I can’t make you believe that, but it’s true.

Cross stumbled on something; that I was sure of. That it was something sanctioned by Heinlein Industries and that they were behind his death I found unlikely, because I couldn’t make a huge entity like Heinlein and a relatively small-time criminal like Tai fit together. It was related to Heinlein, though. Whatever Cross had found, it got him killed, along with the others.

Another drop of water drummed onto the top of the box, then trickled down one side.

Just answer me one thing , I said.

If I can.

How much of a person really makes the transition, after reanimation?

I think there’s only one way to truly know, Agent.

I thought of the young girl’s body I found in that bathroom, back when the whole thing started. I didn’t get it then, but it was the first time I’d thought of a revivor as something human, and I wondered whether I was unraveling. Part of me only wanted to see the case through to the end no matter what the cost, but another part, a simpler, selfish part, had lost something and wanted it back. I wanted the lost years back. I wanted to forget what happened when those things pulled me underground.

I wanted Faye back.

But Faye was gone. I told myself that the thing in the box was not her. It was dangerous to believe otherwise.

Thanks, MacReady.

Thank you for listening, Agent.

Is there anything else?

Yes.

And that is?

Don’t open the box.

The connection terminated.

I stood up then and crossed the room. I lit the lamp and put it down in the middle of the floor as I went. The locker became illuminated in flickering light, causing roaches to scatter.

It’s now or never.

I pulled the box open. There was a high-pitched hiss as the cover came free, and a cold white mist puffed out through the seam. I lifted the top away and put it on the floor. A thin sheet of black plastic was stretched across the inside, and sitting on that was a small index card. I picked it up and flipped it over to find a handwritten note.

Deanimation in twenty-four hours. Leichenesser will take care of the rest. Get what you need before then. Good luck.

Twenty-four hours. I hadn’t even thought about what would happen after the fact.

There was nothing I could do about it now. Maybe it was better that way. She hadn’t wanted this; I knew that.

I took a deep breath and pulled the black plastic apart to reveal what lay underneath. The inside of the locker was filled with a transparent rubber blister, filled with clear fluid so that its skin was taut. Through the plastic I could see the shape of a bare human figure cocooned inside. It was her.

Her eyes were closed and her hair had been completely removed, but the face was hers. A thick tube extended down her throat, her lips forming a seal around it. Dozens of small electrodes covered her body, trailing threads that hung suspended in the liquid surrounding her. Her skin was ashen, and the veins underneath had turned black from the synthetic blood they contained.

There was a drain fixed to the middle of the storage-unit floor where I could send the stasis fluid. Gritting my teeth, I nestled my hand between the skin of the blister and the inside of the storage container. I felt beneath it; it didn’t seem to be attached anywhere, so I lifted the sac and it came free with a sticky peeling sound.

The whole thing was hard to get a grip on, and it was heavy. I managed to pull it up over the edge of the container, when the whole thing oozed over the side of the crate before I could stop it. The rubber skin got snagged on one of the latches as it went, tearing it open top to bottom and spilling its contents out onto the floor.

I swore as cold liquid poured over my lap and gushed down into my shoes. I stumbled back and fell as her body slipped out and slid across the floor, bumping to a stop against me.

I pulled myself up, trailing strings of sticky fluid as I scrambled back. Her body lay on its back on the wet floor. As I watched, her nipples hardened in the cold, pointing straight up at the ceiling from either side of a wrinkled, oval skin graft.