State of Decay

“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.

His eyes didn’t close but they looked unfocused, staring into nothing. The pain was gone from his face.

I glanced over at Nico, who looked surprised. He handed me a paper towel.

“Is this for real?” he asked.

“Shh.”

I took the paper towel and wiped my face, then folded it in half, covering the smeared blood. I looked back to the man.

“Can you hear me?” I asked.

“Yes.”

Nico had pulled a pad of paper out of his jacket and was scribbling on it. He put it down on the table between us, facing me.

His name.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Alek Katebi.”

Nico pushed the pad toward me and tapped it with his pen.

Who is he working for?

“Who are you working for?” I asked.

“I don’t know who he is.”

“You don’t even know who you are working for?”

“That’s how it’s supposed to be.”

Nico turned the pad to me again.

What was the revivor for?

“What was the revivor for?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “All I did was pick them up when they came in, and drop them off. The buyer had a deal with some local trafficker to piggyback the units through his regular routes. I don’t know who the trafficker is. The trafficker doesn’t know who I am, or who I work for. I doubt he ever even saw the units himself.”

Where did you drop off the revivors?

“Where did you drop them off once you had them?” I asked. “The revivors, I mean.”

He paused, and the far-off look left his face. His sudden change worried me. Was he coming out of it? He turned and looked at Nico.

“He knows who you are,” he said.

Nico didn’t respond, and the man smiled, showing the gap in his teeth.

“He doesn’t care that you know. You can’t stop it now.”

“Can’t stop what?”

“Maybe before this is over,” the man said, “we’ll let them eat the rest of you.”

Another surge of emotion came from Nico, but he clamped down on it, leaning across the table to face the man.

“Were you there to pick up the revivor? Or were you there to destroy it?”

“If—” the man said, but that’s all that came out. He jerked in his wheelchair so violently that I jumped in surprise. His eyes bugged out, and I heard a muted popping sound as the mellow blue light around his head expanded into an orb and burst like a soap bubble. A spurt of blood shot out of one of his ears and spattered across the table, leaving red dots on Nico’s pad; then the man’s body went limp in the wheelchair.

“Shit!” I said.“Holy shit! What the hell was that?”

Nico didn’t answer; he was already up and checking the guy. He put his fingers to the man’s neck.

Shit. The light above him was gone. Blood was dripping steadily from his ear.

Nico took a step back; then, after a few seconds, he made a call on his cell phone.

“Get a medic up here,” he said. “Interrogation room 5-C. I’ve got a suspect down; he’s dead.”

“It …wasn’t my fault,” I said. Nico hung up his phone, still looking at the body.

“I didn’t do it,” I repeated, standing up. My legs buckled a bit, and I was having trouble catching my breath. Blood was spreading all down the guy’s neck, seeping into his shirt. Nico looked over at me.

“I need to get you out of here.”

“I didn’t do it,” I said.

“I know, but you’re not supposed to be in here.”

“But I—”

“Now.”

He turned me around gently and put his palm on my back, guiding me out of the room. I caught one last look at the body in the wheelchair as he closed the door behind us.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

He took me back to the conference room and handed my coat to me.

“Go back through the lobby,” he said. “You were never in that room, understand?”

“I blew it, didn’t I?” I asked.

“Just the opposite,” he said. “I’ll be contacting you again. Soon, I hope. For now, though, it will be better if no one here knows about your involvement, understand?”

I couldn’t believe it. I think maybe my mind was blown a little, and I couldn’t interpret it all. Was it me? Had I somehow killed that man?

“Understand?”

“Yes.”

He put his hand on my shoulder, and a shiver went up my spine.

“Go back out the way you came,” he said. “I’ll contact you again soon.”

Before I could say anything else, he left, heading back to the room with the dead man. I noticed there was some blood on my shirt, so I zipped up my parka to cover it up. As I headed back toward the elevators, I passed a group of people moving quickly in the other direction, but they didn’t pay me any attention. On the trip back down the elevator I kept waiting for an alarm to go off or something, but nothing happened.

I pushed open one of the front doors and went back out into the cold, leaving Nico and the dead man behind me.

Calliope Flax—Alto Do Mundo