No Dogs in Philly (13)

A Cyberpunk Horror Noir | Chapter 13: Freedom

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She was free!

Free to waltz out, to kick the guard in the shins and laugh, to click her heels and give little love smacks to every pig she met. Fear. And anger. But mostly fear in their faces as she skipped by, the lunatic that had smashed up half of Broad Street, untouchable, unstoppable. She had friends, the barefoot man in the suit who didn’t seem quite right, who told their bosses behind the big oak desks what was what, who went to jail, which bothers disappeared, and which lucky slobs could not be touched.

They handed her back her gun, loaded, right there in the station, and the prod, and the dart launcher, and the microgrenades, and her clothes, of course, that someone had even washed. She was pleased that half her tricks had remained a mystery, delighted they’d never found the hair-thin shiv lying just under the skin of her outer thigh. It was a challenge not to press her luck, not to hop into one of the squad cars in the parking lot and race off into the sunset.

Pick up the phone, Jojran!

Her implants were back online, brain awash in smut and news and wacky videos—it was a lonely cage without them. And even though she laughed into the cold night air, it was hard to forget why she’d been tossed in a cell. Her great pile of screwups that kept killing people she knew—and who would have thought that she actually cared? Terry was nothing but an annoyance, but for some reason she wouldn’t get out of Saru’s head, that image of her, that last glimpse, looking so scared, and McCully had seen it and gone back…

Pick up the phone!

She needed information, leads, targets. She needed to find the people hunting her and kill them before they killed her. It was clear the Gaespora were too afraid to do anything. They couldn’t help her. Couldn’t protect her. But they couldn’t stop her either.

Free. She truly was free, freer than any of them, free as a god. She could do whatever she wanted; all she had to do was survive. She would find these bastards and make them pay as soon as Jojran answered the goddamn phone. What was he playing at? He never ignored her calls. She’d have to go put a boot up his ass, but hell he’d probably enjoy that.

***

Security let her in without hesitation. It was the same men; she recognized the meathead that had hassled her before. He was polite now, “Ma’am,” and he smiled at her. It was a knowing smile, a smile that made her feel naked to the bone. She didn’t want to turn her back on him, and she watched him through her earlobe cam the whole way to the elevator; he smiled the whole time, watching her back. She jammed the button, fifty-seven, and then pressed it a few thousand more times, sensing suddenly the urgency. The music in the elevator was a sterile tune that hummed with menace. She wanted it to stop, searched for some way to end it, but it cackled on.

The doors slid open. The hallway was quiet, perfectly quiet. She walked to the door and rang the doorbell. Almost immediately the door swung open and Jojran stood there. He was dressed nicely, in clothes that fit for a change, and it made him look almost like a man. He seemed relaxed, truly at ease, not the nervous faux confidence, no twitching, no grinding his teeth, no unconscious vocalizations. He wore the same knowing smile as the guard.

“Saru,” he said. “What a pleasant surprise.”

“Shouldn’t be,” she said, pushing past him. Their skin touched as she went by and the area of contact exploded in a crawling sensation, like fleas swarming on her skin. She shivered. “I’ve been calling for hours.”

“Sorry,” he said. He closed the door behind him. Every motion was so smooth now. The apartment smelled funny, like sex, almost, and something else, something sweet like garbage. “I was occupied. I was trying to reach you too, where were you?”

“Got picked up,” she said. “Broke a few road rules, but they let me out for good behavior. Listen, I need you to find me a vulture, someone with good vibes. I need someone to analyze this.” She withdrew the vial of blood McCully had collected. “This came off one of our perps.” He didn’t need any more details.

Jojran took the vial and held it up to the light, swirling it. The blood rippled and ribbons of congealed black spread across the glass like veins. He smiled even more broadly. She noticed that his teeth were whiter, like he’d gone out and finally seen a dentist, fixed those odd yellow spots. His teeth were perfect now.

“I think I can help you with this,” he said. He winked. “I’ve been doing some research, you know, on our friends, the UausuaU.”

She shuddered. The name was nonsensical, some alien transliteration, something with no semantic power, just a sound. She’d stumbled through it, heard other people stumble through it, even ElilE and Friar with their good technical pronunciation—it didn’t sound like this. When Jojran said it it was perfect, a perfect, slithering recreation of the song, the hidden song she’d heard on the jukebox, in the elevator, in the hallucinations with Friar, the street player with his saxophone, and the screech of brakes as she’d slammed into that car and crawled over her crumpled hood.

“What kind of research have you been doing?” she asked, taking a step backwards, nonchalant. He noticed of course, and his smile grew, even broader now, straining at the edges of his mouth.

“Wonderful research,” he said. “In fact, I’ve found a lead. Fanny Duvak. Do you know who she is?”

Saru sensed they were moving in tandem, that he acted only in response to her but so quickly it was like they were mirroring each other. Her Betty jolted to her hand and she fired three rubbers into his chest. He brought up his arm and flicked his wrist, casually, like he was trying to dry his hands. A pain like a knife cut across her chest. She looked down and saw indeed she had been cut, a straight red line from her right hip up through her left breast to her left shoulder. The cut had gone right through her steel-armor shirt. For a second the pain was too much, overloading her senses, and then her combat implants kicked in and shot her full of painkillers and adrenaline. She dove behind the kitchen counter and then peeked over the top.

Jojran stood there, exactly where he’d been, not moved an inch by three rubber bullets from two feet away. They had put holes in his shirt, holes in his skin; she could see blood trickling out. His head swiveled a hundred degrees to look at her, swiveled without the rest of the body moving an inch, bones cricking at the motion.

“Why, Saru?” he said, sounding hurt. “Why would you do that to me?”

She stood and leveled the gun at him. Her scans swept up and down telling her over and over again that this was Jojran, their somatic profiles matched—slower heartbeat, slower blinks, regularly timed, like with ElilE, a stopwatch arrangement to every breath and motion, like a machine pretending to be a man.

“What have you done with Jojran?” she asked.

“But I am Jojran,” he said. “You know that.”

“You’re good, but I’ve seen doppelganger clones before. You aren’t fooling anyone so cut the crap. Where’s the real Jojran, and I swear to god if you’ve hurt him I will show you pain.”

He laughed, neck springing back into forward position, and then he leaned-sat on the back of the sofa causing the nose of her gun to twitch down and stay level with his heart. She didn’t know if a regular bullet would slow him down but the anti-armor shell in the barrel could shred a tank; it would turn a person—even a drugged-up, body-modded psychopath—into goulash.

“You think I’m a clone? No, sorry. I’m the real deal.” He held up a hand and she saw his fingers were wet with her blood. His bare fingernails had gone right through her. Her whole chest felt tight as her platelet injectors flooded the area and accelerated the scarring process. He wagged his forearm so the skin jiggled and then he grabbed a pinch and ripped it out, holding it up and shaking it.

“Yep, still Jojran. But my name is Brian. You never asked. You never cared. I used to have quite the crush on you. Now I just pity you.”

“You’re sick.”

“No. Quite the opposite. I was sad and afraid and alone and my life was pain. Now I know peace. The only one hurting me is you, Saru.” He pointed to the weeping bullet holes in his chest and clucked his tongue.

“You’re an imposter. You murdered Jojran like you murdered those women and McCully.”

Jojran laughed, a genuine mirth that felt like powdered glass running through her ear canal.

“Death is a meaningless concept. An individual can be just as easily unkilled as killed. We’re not that complicated, Saru. We’re so simple we don’t even register as life to true organisms. I certainly wasn’t alive until I joined the UausuaU.”

She resisted the urge to just shoot him. In his mad rambling he might let something slip, a clue about his hideout or his methods. The danger was if he started making sense, started getting inside her head.

He held out a hand. “Why don’t you join too? I know what you want. You spend your days seething from old wounds, chasing fixes and thrills. I have the greatest fix you can imagine in the palm of my hands.”

“No thanks. I just want to know where Jojran is.”

“You aren’t listening. I’m right here. Trying to help you. Genuine help. But maybe I’m not the one you need to talk to right now. What about your friend McCully?” And as he spoke his voice changed, becoming McCully’s. “Or the woman, Terry?” Her voice. “Do you wish to see them again?” Jojran again. “They’ll come if you want. It’s a cruel thing to ask, to bring them back to the pain of this world. But they’ll come for you. They’ll come to share their joy with you.”

Was he taunting her? The scans showed nothing, no body sign of lies or deception, no blush or elevated heart rate, no blink or the conspicuous absence of a reaction that tagged along with intent to deceive. There were no implants in him—none, not even the one’s Jojran had had before to access the Net. There was nothing that could imitate voices like that.

Her gut told her he was telling the truth. Or what he thought was the truth. He really believed he was Jojran. He thought he was helping people by murdering them. He believed he could bring people back from the dead.

And she was starting to believe it too.

“Come,” Jojran cooed. “Come join your friends.” He took a step forward, holding out his hand. Her finger twitched over the trigger of her Betty. “Come, we’re all here, Saru,” it was McCully’s voice again. “It’s so nice here. You can have whatever you want.” And then Terry, in her three-packs-a-day croak: “It’s wonderful here. I’ve never been so happy.”

And other voices, voices from her past, barely remembered—Johnny Creek, the first boy she’d kissed, in the Morning House after they’d stolen the janitor’s flask of whiskey, trying not to grimace as they slurped it in the cleaning closet, pretending it wasn’t their first time, and then the passion of the transgression bringing their mouths together. “Come, Saru,” he said, but was he dead? Or was it a trick of her mind? Emily Rothstein, the girl that had tattled on her for sneaking a boy—not Johnny—into the girl’s dorm. Saru had cornered her on the playground, the fenced-in asphalt on the building roof, and slammed her head into the ground, pinned her and pummeled her until both her eyes were swollen shut. Saru hadn’t meant to hurt her, not that much, at least, but she’d needed stitches and she wasn’t as pretty after that. She too sang along: “It’s not your fault, Saru, it was my fault. I’m sorry. Come, come with us, it’s alright.”

Another step, the hand outstretched was less than a foot from the gun barrel now. She saw her hands were shaking and the Betty wasn’t as firm as it had been. “It’s okay, Saru, you did your best. I’m better now.” Colton Mathews, one of her first cases, a kidnapping fiasco. He had almost the same name as Colton L. Mathews, of the Rittenhouse Mathews, but his parents were the Richmond Mathews, living in assistance housing, paycheck to paycheck off the mother’s truck-driving salary. The kidnappers had learned their error, but they’d poked the kid full of holes and left him behind a dumpster anyway. She’d never caught them, hadn’t gotten close, hadn’t even taken the time to bring back the kid’s body. She’d taken the family’s $2,000 and hit the bar. “It’s okay,” Colton said. “I’m better now. I’m safe, I’m happy.”

She dropped the gun, let it snuggle back into its holster. Her hand stayed where it was, just a few inches from Jojran’s. “It’s okay,” Jojran said. “It’s all okay. We’re happy. We’re safe. We’re complete.” It was true; they were happy, she could see that. All these mistakes were just the symptoms of her humanity, inevitable. And beyond that waited a better form of life, a form that was perfect, that could not err, and she could be part of it. There it was, the certainty, the absolute, a diamond, irrefutable Truth. She had not erred. The very world she lived in was an error, a false step on the path to existence, an abortion, a failed world. Of course she caused pain and hurt others. It was life, the life that she was part of and she could no more control her nature than the maggots that wriggled in the meat of the dead.

She saw that she was immaterial, that her actions were meaningless, but she could join in something greater, something real, a purpose, to bring joy to the joyless, to liberate the other horrid, mistaken abominations of this tiny planet. All the men and women mindlessly killing and screwing and scrabbling together piles of junk—for what? Pointless action. Carnal routine. The urge to eat and murder propelling a horde of hairless monkeys further and further into a hell of their own creation. She was dead, they were all dead, even though they may move and copy they were just machines, air-powered bags of gas and blood. Life! She wanted life! Truth! Purpose! Certainty. Here, here was reality, and everything she had known was nothing more than the lizard-brain impulse, amebic stimulus-response.

Oh god, she wanted it!

She reached and their fingers touched. His warmth flowed into her, a trickle, a river, an ocean of souls, caressing her, running through their hands and over her skin, welcoming her to reality. She was home. She was whole. Somewhere, a distant part of her put its hands on her hips and clucked. Saru, you moron, you fell for it, you swallowed his Kool-Aid. Oh well, it was too late now. She luxuriated in the warmth, the joy, the physical ecstasy of every atom in her body climaxing at once. Yes, this was better, oh how much better it was. It was hard to tell amidst the torrent of souls, but somewhere in the process—amidst the satisfaction of her own gullible stupidity and the ecstasy of an alien touch—she realized that she was dead, or her body was, at least, and she was finally free.