Working Stiff

She pulled up short after a few steps, because someone was standing in the light of a street lamp twenty feet away, watching her.

Patrick McCallister.

The damp had matted his hair down in a sleek cap around his head, but she’d know him anywhere; if nothing else, nobody she’d ever met had that quality of coiled stillness to their posture. He was wearing dark clothes and a loose Windbreaker that wouldn’t have looked odd if it came with big reflective governmental-agency letters on it, but this one was unmarked.

“How’d you know?” she asked him, not coming closer. He shrugged and put his hands into the pockets of his dark jeans.

“Where you’d park? It was tactically the smartest choice,” he said. “So I thought you’d find it.”

That spoke volumes about what he thought of her … and made her ask, “So where did you park?”

“Someplace not as tactically sound, but unexpected,” he said. He pushed away from the streetlight and walked toward her, taking his time. “You look good.”

“You should have seen me a few hours ago,” she said. Without conscious decision, she was also walking toward him. I should have my gun out, she thought. I really don’t know what he’s going to do. Maybe he’d knock her out and put her back in the van and go do the meeting himself. That would be typical McCallister.

“How bad was it?”

“Ever seen Night of the Living Dead? Like that,” she said. “Only you’re right. I wasn’t craving brains.”

“At least that’s a bright side.”

And then he was right there, a foot away, in her space, with only the gently drifting mist between them. His eyes were wide and dark, and she thought, He’s going to do it now; he’ll strike, and she was ready for that, ready to block a punch….

... But not, as it turned out, a hug.

She stiffened for a second, then relaxed into the embrace. “I’m sorry,” he said. “By the time I found out they’d taken you, they already had you inside Pharmadene. I didn’t have a chance to intercept. When you didn’t come out, I knew they were going to let you …”

“Decay,” she said, very quietly. “I have to face it. I’m dead. I’ll always be dead. This, all this feeling and looking alive, it’s just … just cosmetics.” She pulled back and stared at him. “You can’t really feel anything for me, can you? Because I’m not really here. Underneath, I’m … that.”

“Underneath, we’re all that,” McCallister said. “Everybody’s dying, Bryn. You’re just maintaining it better than most people—that’s all.”

“You can’t actually believe that.”

“I do,” he said. “I believed it from the moment I saw you wake up. I knew you were a fighter. I knew you’d break my heart.”

He stepped forward, put his hands on either side of her head, and kissed her. His lips were cool, damp, sweet, and urgent on hers, and suddenly Bryn felt wildly out of control, but safe. Safe. It felt like such an amazing relief.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and pulled her into his arms. “I said I’d never let that happen to you, and I couldn’t … I’m sorry.”

“You sent Joe.”

“I should have gone myself.”

“He did fine. I’m out. I’m … as good as new.” She felt a flashback to that awful place, the white room, the sound of primal screams, her own silent, implacable dissolution caught in the staring eye of a camera. “I’m fine.”

He knew she was lying; she could tell from the way his fingers traced damp lines on her cheek, and the gentle way his lips brushed hers. “I know how you are,” he said. “It’s in your eyes. They’re darker now.”

He didn’t mean in color; she knew that. Her eyes were haunted. She’d seen that herself, in the scratched mirror of the safe house as she’d showered off the remembered stink of her own death, again and again. It was hard to feel clean now. Hard not to remember how little separated her from dissolution.

“I can’t think about this right now,” she said. “I’m sorry; I just can‘t. I have to think about Annie. I have to make sure she’s safe.”

He hesitated for a moment, looking into her face, and then nodded and stepped back. “Let’s do it. But, Bryn, let me do the talking, all right?”

She didn’t agree or disagree, just walked with him into the darkness.

* * *

The house was halfway up the block, dark just like all the neighbors. There was a play set in the backyard visible through the chain link, and a doghouse, but no dog came out to bark at their approach.

The whole neighborhood seemed eerily silent. Bryn would have expected to see at least one light on, even as early as it was…. Early risers existed everywhere, didn’t they?

This felt almost like a movie set—dressed, but vacant of human habitation.

McCallister mounted the porch steps and held out a hand to keep her on the sidewalk. The front door was open; she could see the black gap from where she stood. She hadn’t seen him draw, but McCallister’s gun was at his side, primed and ready to fire.

She drew hers as he eased the door open and stepped inside.

Bryn followed him. She wasn’t staying on the damn sidewalk, and he must have known that because he didn’t bother to try to tell her again.

“Shut the door behind you,” said a man’s voice from the darkness, and a light flared on, splashing over pale blue, worn carpet, toys spread in a corner in primary-color confusion, newspapers piled on a chair, a faded floral sofa….

On which sat a man with a round, unremarkable face, short graying hair, and cold, ice blue eyes.

“Mr. Mercer,” McCallister said. Bryn shut the door and locked it behind her to ensure nobody would be coming up behind them. Mercer didn’t have a gun visible, and they had two; she wasn’t letting anyone in to start to even the odds.

“Mr. McCallister,” Mercer said, with perfect composure. “I would have expected you to be down at the headquarters getting your shot by now. Surely Irene’s chewing nails over your absence. You know how she is about full buy-in from her team.”

“You should have been the first one she went for,” McCallister said. “If I’d been making up the charts, you would have been at the top of the list.”

“I’m glad you weren’t, then. I had just enough time to get my things together and file for my vacation before Harte thought to order my lockdown. That’s something my good little corporate-citizen act bought me, at least— vacation time. That and free Krispy Kreme doughnuts once a week at the team meetings. But in fact, Harte was too afraid to order me put into the program at first; she knew I could engineer a vaccine to counteract the revival process and make myself useless to her. Effectively, she would be rolling the dice on whether or not I’d wake up, and she couldn’t afford that risk until she was sure she wasn’t dependent on me.”

Mercer transferred that cool stare to Bryn. “You made it out. I heard they were bringing you in for … What do they call it? Observation. Irene likes to have a record of the process on file, to prove that the experimental failures have been cleaned up properly. I’m not really sure she doesn’t keep copies. You know, for fun.”

“You really are crazy,” McCallister said, almost admiringly. “I’d heard rumors.”

“Oh, I’m not crazy. Crazy is sticking a gun in your mouth and blowing a hole in your cerebellum, like my old lab partner. I simply chose to stop counting the cost of what we did, other than in terms of what it could buy me. That’s eminently sane. Thanks for your two hundred thousand dollars, by the way. I’m very grateful. It’s helped me get my new assembly process tooled up in a secured facility. I’m turning out the drug in enough quantities to guarantee steady employment, and that’s all I really want.” He smiled. “Well, that and destroying the company, and particularly Irene Harte. But that’s what I want from you, McCallister. In return, I will guarantee your friend Ms. Davis here a lifetime supply of Returné, as long as she makes her wealthy funeral