Rachel Caine: Two Weeks' Notice

And he was her very own private security. She knew, in fact, that he was armed with at least one weapon, possibly two; he usually doubled up when they went out in public, mostly because she hadn’t been able to find a sidearm that was easily concealable under her tailored jackets. He’d made her drill on the procedures of what to do in the event that he ever had to go for those concealed weapons: one, get behind him; two, be ready when he pitched her the second gun; three, fall back to cover while he laid down fire.

Most funeral directors, Bryn thought, never needed to think about those kinds of contingency plans. Lucky them.

Her watch alarm went off with a tiny vibration, just at the time Joe checked his cell phone and said, “Time for meds, boss.”

“I know,” she said. It came out a little sharp, and she shot him an apologetic glance. “Sorry. I don’t think I’ll ever stop hating the needles.”

“More than the alternative?”

That didn’t deserve an answer. “I thought Manny was working on some kind of pill form.”

“You know Manny.” Joe shrugged.

“Well, not really. Do you?”

He snorted and let that one go, because the fact was, she had a point. None of them really knew her chemist, Manny Glickman, and since her life depended on the man to a great extent these days, that bothered Bryn more than she liked to admit.

“Anyway,” Joe said. “No arguments. Time for the booster.”

“I thought I was the boss.”

“You are,” he agreed. “You sign the checks and everything. Don’t mean that you can make me ignore the schedule, since that’s definitely part of what you pay me for, right?”

Right. It wasn’t that Bryn necessarily needed a reminder for this, but having one made her feel less…vulnerable. In oh so many ways. “Meds,” she agreed. “As soon as we get back to the office.”

For answer, he slid a syringe out of his coat pocket, held it up, and said, “No need to wait. We can take care of this in the car.”

Bryn glanced around. Nobody was watching them. “Easier out in the open,” she said, and unbuttoned and removed her suit jacket. Under it, she wore a light blue silk top, sleeveless…the better for shot access, unfortunately. She took a deep breath and presented her shoulder to him, and Joe uncapped the syringe, plunged it home with a quick flick of his hand, and pressed the plunger, fast.

The contents spread into her system in a slow, steady burn that traveled through muscle, entered her bloodstream, and suddenly bolted like fiery acid through her entire body. She was familiar with pain, intimately; fortunately, so was Joe, and he put a supporting hand under her elbow in case her knees gave way. They didn’t this time, but it was close. The fire began to cool, and she kept the scream locked down, pressed tight into a faint moan.

“So,” Joe said, in a neutral tone, “any better?”

She took a couple of deep breaths before even trying to answer. “If you mean ‘Does it still feel like I’m being flayed?’ the answer is yes,” she said, but by the time she finished saying it, the pain had rolled through her and vanished, except for a few last whispers haunting her joints. “Maybe a little less painful than last week’s formula, but this one has a worse aftertaste.” She wanted to scrub it off her tongue with a wire brush. Manny changed the formula about once a week, trying to fine-tune and improve it, but that didn’t mean it was a joy to experience. Especially when she had to endure it every day.

“Don’t suppose that aftertaste would be, say, chocolate.”

“More like bleach and sewage,” she said, and couldn’t help the gag reflex. He held on to her until this, too, passed, and silently handed over a tin of Altoids mints. She chewed two of them, and the relief of getting that awful taste out of her mouth was worth the intense peppermint burn. “Wow, that was not pretty.” She pulled her jacket on again as Joe stepped back, assessing her with a professional kind of analysis that made her feel less like a woman and more like a machine in need of maintenance. “I’m fine.”

“Okay,” he said. “Manny said to watch out for tremors and signs of decomp. He’s still working out the kinks on the combo formula. This one should suppress the Protocols better, but there may be some side effects. Could also burn off faster. Hard to know.”

Bryn had long ago accepted that her status in this world was going to be lab rat, but that didn’t make it any easier to take pronouncements like that. “So I should watch out for tremors first, or decomp?”

“Both,” Joe said. “But stay calm while you’re doing it.”

Yeah, that was her life. Keep calm, and watch for decomposition. She got a shot, every day; they were still trying out new formulas to counter different nasty things built into the nanites that rushed through her bloodstream, acting as her life-support system and keeping her…well, if not alive, then a very convincing copy. She never knew what the day’s shot would bring. Every day was a new surprise, and most of them were unpleasant.

Her cell buzzed for attention, and she checked the screen. “We should be getting back,” she said.

“Uh-huh. Trouble?” She sent Joe a long look, eyebrows raised. “Never mind. Stupid question.”

Joe took the driver position; she wasn’t allowed in the front, or to sit directly behind him. On his insistence, she always sat in the sweet spot where she would—theoretically—be the safest in the event of a gunfight. Bryn thought it was bullshit, because in the event of a gunfight, she could hold her own, and besides, she was relatively damage-resistant. Thanks to the nanites, the curse that kept on giving.

She’d never intended this to be her life. She’d just taken a job, a regular job as a funeral director, and discovered her boss was reviving the dead for profit in the basement. That had ended badly for her, with a plastic bag over her head, and a one-way retirement.

Except that Joe and his boss, Patrick McCallister, had brought her back to find out what had happened, and now she was stuck here, taking shots to stay on her eternal treadmill between life and death.

Because getting off that treadmill meant having to die all over again, and not nearly as neatly and quickly.

It meant rotting alive.

While Joe drove back to Davis Funeral Home—once Fairview Mortuary, but recently renamed since she’d taken it over—Bryn checked her e-mails.

“Crap.” She sighed. Joe sent her a look in the rearview mirror. “My mom’s e-mailing. She wants to know if I’ve heard anything from Annalie.” Her sister’s disappearance hadn’t caused too much of a stir yet.…Mom was accustomed to Annie taking off for weeks at a time, gadding about on sailboats or backpacking trips or affairs with boyfriends that never quite worked out. So she was just casually asking right now, with a tiny flavor of concern.

But that would change, soon, and the problem was that Bryn did know what had happened to Annie. She just couldn’t tell her family.

Joe nodded. “Does she still think Annie’s on vacation?”

“Yeah. But I can’t keep this up much longer. It’s been too long, and sending Mom the occasional text from Annie’s phone number isn’t cutting it anymore. She’s going to want to see her daughter. Soon.”

Not that Bryn could do anything about it. Annie was missing. Waiting for information was the worst part…and while she waited, there wasn’t anything else she could do except test out new shots, hope for some new intel, and hope for the best. Wait for the government, who now solely owned the raw formula of the drug Returné that Manny worked from, to decide what to do with her, and all the others addicted to this drug. She’d signed papers. Papers that meant, essentially, that she was trading cooperation with them—ill defined as that was—for continued life. Apparently, the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness wasn’t guaranteed after you’d actually died .