I miss her.
When my system wakes up, I'm already staring daggers through the ceiling, and I hate it. The sun splays across the shitty, jagged couch I slept on, its gently dying light pouring across the folds of the XXXL Burst City band t-shirt I bought last night, pale golden beams highlighting the beer some prick spilled on me. I'm feeling kind of angry at nothing, and that's more than likely me hurting so badly that I need to put it into something else. My hand is snaking its way up my side, checking for any, uh, damage that I could have sustained last night, when I realize my abdomenal plate is open again - I'm jacked. I chuckle a little at having somehow pissed myself off enough to have not realized I'm high. I turn the big, chunky knob I picked for its tactility, the signal lightens, and my mesh connection lowers. I'm a little bit more here, even if I don't want to be.
Carrie's right, I gotta do some kinda grieving.
I roll off the couch, grab my pants (oh shit, bundle the gun up in them), trudge off to shower before Tara wakes up. By the time I've unplugged all the way, cleaned out my seams, and washed the random sticky liquids from the rubbery plastic of my joint covers, the sun is finally setting. I kiss Tara on the cheek on the way out, as I spot her on the couch, doing a reasonably sound impression of myself not all that long ago. I leave her my e-mail (spacemoth@robotgirl9mm.FC6.meshspace) and say my goodbyes, trying to match her recreation of me with a facade of happy normalcy.
The apartment building door slams hard as I leave, announcing my return to the world with a noise like garbage into a dumpster. I start walking, wherever the hell I'm going.
About half an hour later, I've found myself in one of the handful of subway stops they've got in this town. Cheap fluorescent lighting flickers overhead, the concrete walls of the underground occasionally splashed with leftover linoleum tiling like an unfinished bathroom. This place knows exactly what it feels like to be here right now. I jump the turnstile (they don't actually staff the guard posts in places like this) and wander over to the oversized map of the shrivelled subway system, hanging from the wall across from the platform. The color is a little faded, which makes me feel some kind of sad. The people here deserve better than this, especially for as long as it took for this map to flake and fade away. Then my mind comes back to Carrie.
I don't feel my hands as I trace a line east from here, along the yellow train line, following with my eyes as I go. Something like nausea bubbles in my circuits as my finger passes the laundromat down the street from the place I'm renting, then the bar I met Tara at last night, then to the downtown subway stop, then, seven blocks south of there...
i'm sittin around. the bar whose wall i'm restin against is real quiet, though its early in the night. it's not that bad, out here on this concrete planter, but i'm missing my handheld back home. probably better i keep my hands free, n that i don't lose too much of my attention on a fuckin shmup right now. the rain alone's already blowing out my audio, though I can still kinda pick up what they're saying in there - oh, fuck.
the cig falls outta my mouth right before the cherry hits my... lips. i pick up the butt, the filter half charred, and turn it over in my hands. it's something to do. these things keep lit on their own, so even without lungs, i can at least pretend like i've got the right to live. my eyes drift, n the seams in my fingers burn holes in my vision before i can slip em back into my hoodie's overlong sleeves. god, i hope i can work out a plugin soon, maybe that place up on third, i could use the fucking battery - shit, i'm not paying attention! i tune back into The Hideaway's wall like a dad who zoned out mid baseball game. i gotta get better at this.
"Christ, I cannot put up with this shit any longer. _________ [garbled] has the possibility of-"
"Heheh, shh, shh, sir, as I'm sure you're aware, ___________ [unclear]. After all, we wouldn't want _____________ [inaudible] to find our little hideaway in the middle of nowhere, now would we, Mr. Ford?"
[weird sound, maybe a spit take?] "You know damn well I'd never drink around any of those FC fucks. In the security office, we keep a long list of names. [loud, clanging table slamming] I'd know if any of those [hic] bastards were here! Anyhow... I'll be speaking to the Captain about getting you what you need. I'm sure pulling a handful of clankers off the street wouldn't be all that much of a damn problem, [hic] anyhow, it's not like anyone's going to care if a busted computer on the side of the road goes missing."
[an affect like a snake who's just been told you'll be climbing into its mouth] "Thank you very much, my good man. It's been an absolute joy working with you - [chair bumping noise, is someone standing?] oh! Are you sure __________ [unclear] to return to the base, lieutenant?"
"Ah, I'll be fine, Gebbel. You keep up the good work, I'll walk around a tad, keep the Captain from smelling the whisky on my breath, ha! I'll be seeing you around, Al."
holy shit, what're they up to? first Carrie, now they're pulling us off the street. peelin myself off the brick n gettin ready to move, i kill the cig i lit somewhere between "i'm the biggest bastard you ever heard" and "yeah man, you're so awesome." the door swings open, the cute little (real!) bell they hung from the door sounds, and that asshole sags his way through the doorframe. i watch as he... narrowly avoids fallin into the street, catches himself, burps, looks both ways, and turns in the direction of a convenience store down the road. i wait a few seconds, til he's made some distance, and pick up. it'll be a long night.
I'm almost there.
Once I stepped out of the subway stop, five blocks ago, I realized it had been raining since I left Tara's apartment. Now I'm only closer to the place, and I feel like I'm going to vomit up guts I don't have, my neuralnet reminding me that this pain is exactly why I'm a person. I don't entirely know where I'm going. I nearly trip as I cross the last street. Where am I right now? I've been barely paying attention all day, how the fuck am I supposed to go back to... work, after this?
The sun has set fully by the time I step into the security firm, its light spilling through the glass facade. I try to not seem too tired as I look around, despite being entirely alone.
The far and rightmost walls from the door are almost entirely populated with medium-sized, half-a-meter by half-a-meter deposit boxes, tight against eachother. On the left side of the far wall, and the right side of the rightmost wall, are small kiosk screens, glowing blue into the night. The leftmost wall has an electric bulletin board on the left, a television playing advertisements with a few (uncomfortable-looking) chairs below it on the right, and an unstaffed reception desk between them, set into the wall, with a large pane of clearly bulletproof, wired glass completely sealing it off from the waiting room. It feels like being on both sides of a padded cell.
I start shuffling forward, bent over and holding myself without meaning to. A generic, soft, feminine voice plays over a PA set into the roof, "Hello! If you require service, please press the button on the wall to your left, just next to the bulletin board." I walk over to the far wall's deposit box access screen, inputting Carrie's (fake, in both the personal and illegal ways) full name and access code as the voice overhead continues. Every button press is harder than the last. "If you would like to access one of our top-of-the-line, maximum care safe deposit boxes, please use one of our kiosks when you are ready." The screen displays a big, green, mocking ACCESS GRANTED.
One of the doors to my right makes an audible clank, its own little indicator lighting up. I grab hold of the overly large handle, gradually pulling myself into a world where Carrie is officially dead and I have to receive some of her final wishes. The voice overhead continues. "Do you have a loved one who has recently passed away," - the safe unlatches - "and are looking for a safe place to keep their remains?" The door swings, just slightly, and I stop it before the dark of the interior is lost wholesale. "We can meet all your post-life care needs! We have services for body and/or coffin storage, as well as long term cases and storage options for cremated remains!" Tears that aren't real feel as though they are spilling down my face. "We're here to take care of you." I swing the door open hard enough that it bounces loudly off the adjacent safe's face. A cardboard box covered in heart stickers of all sizes rests inside, half the volume of the safe itself - I grab it, hold it tight to my chest like I'll fucking die without it. I'm shaking when I turn on my heel, the safe's maw still wide.
"Have a great day."
I don't want to be here anymore. I don't want to be here anymore. I don't want to be here, anymore. This planet is dead to me and these streets are empty and there is no one here left to love. If that weren't true, would they not have built better ways to get across town to seek that love? Would they have not excised it from this godforsaken town like this? I'm stomping so hard down the concrete that I don't even notice that I'm at her building.
I'm staring, where her corpse should be. Carrie's face flashes through my mind as I stare up at the lone shattered window, all the way above me. Her building, shaped like a Y from overhead, seems to tilt in the wind, blowing through me like I'm not here. I'm holding the package hard against myself. I feel the edges of the cardboard almost fold in on itself and I gasp, scared to hurt it. I place it on the ground, and my hands begin to shake. I gingerly remove the pink washi, covered in hearts that almost glow in their red-to-purple horizontal gradient. The smell of what must be her home bursts from the eager mystery inside and it makes me cry again. You know what I mean.
I reach in, keeping the secret alive just a little longer. A hard, plastic rectangle, and then a fabric I know so well that it almost redoubles my tears. In a brief flourish, I produce a set of nanocamo fatigues in my size from the box, letting them hang out in front of me just like the reflection they embody. I remember the feeling of the buzzcut, the seabreeze against my face. I don't know if I could do it all again. In front of me, in my hands, draped down to the asphalt, Carrie was asking me to be that me once more, and I think she knew that. I am crying so hard, at the strength that she saw in me, which I do not see in myself, right now. Between my right thumb and the fatigues, meeting my eyes, is a keycard with GEBBEL PHARMACEUTICAL SOLUTIONS across the length of its face, a clear magnetic strip just beneath. Is that who killed you, honey?
In the alley, the familiar light scratchiness of the fatigues welcomes me back into this kind of night. I synchronize its fabric to my subsystems and command its fibers to match the greys and browns of the concrete and brickwork surrounding me. I am home, should I choose to stay here. But there, at the end of the alley, behind her building, is a strange little portable, cameras sitting atop its odd corners. A challenge to welcome me back; a question mark to append to the end of her death sentence.
I slip, furtively at first, and then with great warmth, past the view of the cameras, and against the door of the portable. I missed this much more than I remembered, doing what someone does not want me to, finding the answers. The lock rakes open with just as much ease as I remember, the knob sliding slowly, my grip pulling the door first close against the jamb, then quickly away from me, banging against the wall on the other end of the hinge's arc. My pistol is held tight in my grip and I almost lose myself in the wrote practice of the moment, my will briefly once more made strong. Thank you, so much, Carrie, for giving this to me, if only for as long as it takes me to process the other side of the room.
To my right, stands a server tower, small, yet clearly buzzing with activity. Its wires feed into the wall of televisions on the other end of the room, a mixture of CRTs and LCDs making up the building's haphazard security network. There, in the middle, though, is a paused feed. I am watching a frozen version of Carrie, missing her lower left leg, holding herself up against the door to the roof of her building. Across from her, roughly six meters away, is a man, dressed in a set of nanocamo not unlike mine. His hands are empty, a heavily modded rifle slung along the left side of his body. I cannot make out his face. I cannot remove myself from this intrigue, and step forward.
Carrie asks the man, "Why would you do this for them?" He does not reply. Liquids pour from her leg freely. She seems to fall forward; he closes the distance. He pulls his left arm under her right armpit, but with the same hand, she punches him directly in the gut. He stumbles... and knocks her leg from under her. His left hand locks around her right wrist, his right around the same arm's elbow, and stomps on her throat as she lands on her right shin. With a twist, the arm, from the elbow down, is torn from its socket and goes flying out of view, seemingly off the building. Carrie screams in pain, and with her remaining arm, grabs ahold of the man's right leg. With the last of her strength, she pulls hard, slamming him onto the ground. He makes a deep, guttural sound, before kicking her hard in the chest, her body going flying. There is a sound like tarp in the wind. Carrie is gone. The clip ends, and that's the most closure I get.
I stare into the nothing where her body used to be. She must have fallen. Where are you, Carrie?
I turn. The black rectangle of the outside world sucks in my vision, and I freeze. The beauty of my return to form is forgotten, and I realize, that same man stalks the night, more than likely for me. The night ahead of me sucks me into its anxiousness. And then I remember the stomach punch she gave him, her body leaking life all the while, struggling to the end.
I will not let this fucking prick get away with this.
I burst into the cold air, pistol in hand. I march myself around the side of the building, fighting the fear for anything that will find me somewhere closer to Carrie's killer. The ground is perfectly clean around all sides of the building. There is no apartment building kept this clean. There are no fragments, or lost parts, or signs of life, but there are no beer bottles, cigarette butts, or needles, either. As I make my third sweep, I remember her arm. I pass one of the handful of dumpsters along the side of the building, and I notice the distinct space between it and the wall. I reach in, sure of the sisyphean nature of my task.
A glint in the dark. I produce, horrifyingly, her hand. One last tear, tonight. And then, I see, balled in her fist, something plastic. I wrench it from her still-tight fingers and find my prey. Another keycard, this time set with a photo - the GPS logo next to a haggard man, white, bald, and bearded, below which read JOSEPH SEARS.
In my frenzied, furious, scared mind, I let myself have this. That's right, asshole, in the end, she fucking got you.
I clutch her arm in both of mine, and I don't stop running.
shadows cast in unseen halls, strange forms on darken'd walls