Afterlife (18 page)

Russell:

The world faded and changed; all the color bled into one corner, all apricot sparkles. Sweet, like the orange huck-a-bucks that Isabelle ate in the summer. Frozen Kool-Aid in plastic cups. She gobbled them up until her mouth turned firework orange. Then she would stick out her tongue and we would both laugh.

But now words slammed through the orange fabric, silver and gray, words like bullets, sharp as knives, coarse razor-edged words that sliced through a velvet coral womb.

“Mr. Domingue! Can you hear us?”

When I first walked through the door, Marguerite was alive—she was laughing, joking with Pete. Then somebody messed with the dials in the universe, changed everything a sickening shade of mango orange. My wife sailed over the edge of the balcony and time stopped. Not long enough for me to say goodbye. Only long enough for me to wish that I could have saved her.

“What happened, Domingue?”

They flickered around me, all firefly light and electric cur
rent. Not real people. No one was real anymore. No one 'cept Isabelle.

“Isabelle?” My voice sounded like someone had stuffed cotton down my throat. I tried to lift my head, to see where she was. “Where y'at, baby girl?” My eyelids were stuck together, like somebody had poured glue over the lashes. I blinked.

“Where is your daughter, Domingue?”

My eyes met his, I saw a familiar glare. Even through the VR suit I knew who he was. Skellar. What was that monster doing here?

“Is anybody else alive in here?” he asked, looking back at one of his wavering shadow-bright detectives.

“We hasn't found nobody yet, Lieutenant.”

“What do you mean?” I blinked again. “Pete, tell 'em you're okay.” I couldn't hear Pete's answer, but I was too tired anyway. I took a long, deep breath, almost a sigh. My head sagged back and my eyes closed.

“Hey! He's goin' to sleep, somebody get that medic up here.”

“He gots a dart—”

“I know he has a dart, you moron, that's why he needs a medic! Anybody here know what the yellow feather means?”

I could have told them. The yellow feather turns everything orange, it slows the world down, it paints everything with a melancholy brilliance, and it takes your breath away—

At that point somebody untied me and I fell off the chair, my mouth open. I slammed shoulder first, facedown, gasped like a fish dangling on a hook. My legs shook and my arms trembled. If I could have screamed, I would have.

But by now, the cotton was all the way down inside my lungs.

Oxygen was a distant memory. And in its place, a black ocean rolled in.

Chaz:

I have to confess there are things about this world, this time period, that are wonderful. Things that I would never want to live without. Virtual reality is one of them. The ability to go almost anywhere in the world, anywhere that the current VR signal reaches, anyplace you have the physical coordinates for. I could be in Singapore one minute and Paris the next. All of it is in real time, of course. That detail usually confuses first timers. You can go to Australia, just don't expect it to be the same time as it was back in San Francisco.

But even VR travel has it drawbacks. Just like deep-sea diving.

The frequent, shifting patterns of light can sometimes cause travelers to have hallucinations. So, like any other good thing, there are warnings, age limits, contraindications regarding certain drugs.

I'm not sure how people lived before we had virtual reality or accelerated learning techniques or Verse implants.

Before resurrection.

What was it like when everyone lived with the fear of
death peering over their shoulder? How did they get the courage to cross the ocean in primitive boats, to burrow tunnels beneath the earth in search of precious metal?

Sometimes I wonder what it was like before families were ripped to shreds, when holidays were spent with cousins, aunts and uncles—before the creation of the
sous-terrain société
. We've filled our empty spaces with fool's gold, taken false solace in the tumbling jesters and the flying horses and the carnival that never stops.

Our world ended the day the Underground Circus came to town.

Sometimes I think we pulled a window shade down to cover our dark night, to keep our safe light inside. Let the vampires wander the streets and only invite them in when we need company, when we've grown tired of looking in the mirror and seeing no reflection.

I wish I could undo the black-market flesh trade, that I could burn the hands off every pretend mother and father willing to pay for a few hours of family-time-and-then-some.

The Circus had three levels of hell. As if one wasn't enough.

It all began with a cast of kidnapped children, displayed in the black-market video bars and ordered like after-dinner desserts. The first level was trained, like pets, to perform at secret events for the wealthy. Sometimes these youngsters pretended to be members of the family, in a mock-celebration or holiday, kindling long-forgotten memories of a life when families gathered together, when a house echoed with the voices of brothers and sisters and cousins.

The second level was taught to dance and sing, a tiny cabaret on a candy-colored stage. Like nimble acrobats, they leaped across floors covered in expensive Persian carpets, tumbled between priceless antiques. Swift and lithe, their
innocence erased with rouge and eyeliner, they acted out plays, entertained with rehearsed poetry.

But it was the third level that ripped out my heart, one swift wolf bite of flesh and blood and muscle, one devouring hunger that both maimed and killed. In the third level, prepubescent children were dressed in harlequin diamonds of black and white; they rode a carousel of flying horses. Here, the performance was dark and unrehearsed, the children were required to play adult roles…

Here, in a wassail feast of licentiousness, we destroyed the holy innocence of those we should have died to protect.

 

In my mind I can see the black market like a midnight bazaar in Marrakesh. Dark streets lined with open stalls, moon hidden behind the clouds. The air fills with the chatter of trained monkeys and the fragrance of exotic spice. Snake charmers linger in the shadows while someone offers to paint your body with henna tattoos. Colored lanterns flash within the stalls that you pass, revealing secret merchandise behind the counter. Illegal drugs, forged death certificates, clone bodies made to order. Anything you want, here and now, while you wait.

For a pound of flesh, the Underground Circus will come to town.

The horrors of the world, shimmering in veiled incandescence.

For a price, it can all be yours.

Chaz:

I waited forever, waited for the elevator doors to open. Outside, the sirens reached a fire-bright crescendo, an explosion of noise and light that demanded attention. The lobby filled with a cheap hothouse collection of real/not-real mugs, some dressed in VR skinsuits, some wearing actual flesh and blood.

Despite all the frenetic activity that pulsed around me, I stayed focused on the light above the door, the light that told me where the elevator was.

Third floor and descending.

Muscles tensed in my chest and arms.

Second floor. A pause.

I glanced again at the stairwell. Sweat on my brow, my neck.

First floor. A ringing sound. Gears grinding to a halt.

I heard the swoosh of the doors before they actually opened, I leaned forward, ready to push the inhabitants aside, to punch the elevator button and shoot up to the—

The doors were open now. A body lay crumpled in the
corner. Long white-blonde hair, slender figure in a black dress and boots.

A dart in her leg, the feathered plume tagging her like a prize.

Angelique.

My heart thundered out the rest of the world, pushed aside the sirens and the cacophony of voices. I rushed to her side, gently took her wrist, caught my breath when I felt a pulse.

She blinked her eyes, wearily, glanced up at me. Tried to smile. Whispered my name. Sounded more beautiful than I wanted to admit.

She was in my arms then. I was carrying her into the lobby; a medic with a big red cross on his white coat was running toward me; her head was on my shoulder and she whispered my name again.

I placed her, ever so gently, on a stretcher, my lips brushing her cheek as I did.

A kiss, I think. Unintentional perhaps.

But then again, maybe not.

Rules are meant to be broken sometimes, I think, when life and death collide on the street corner, when everything we value gets mangled in the wreckage.

At that point I decided that all the Babysitter rules didn't matter anymore.

The medic nodded at me. Angelique was wearing an oxygen mask and had an IV running in her arm. “She's gonna be okay,” he said, “but I gotta get upstairs. Gutter punks shot darts up there too.”

“Upstairs?”

Already his team was charging across the lobby toward the open elevator. I grabbed a nearby mug, shoved him beside Angelique. “You watch over her,” I ordered, then showed him my tattoo. It was a command given by a superior. He nodded. “Make sure nobody touches her,” I said.

Then I caught up with the paramedics, slid in behind them just before the elevator door slammed shut.

 

The moment I stepped off the elevator I saw the door to my suite hanging open. VR mugs shimmered in the hallway, then abruptly zapped away as they were each replaced by their real live incarnations. A couple of bodies lay on the carpet, like bits of hurricane debris ignored because the storm still raged. Wind swirling, howling, beast-like and voracious.

I could feel a chill on my skin as I drew nearer, a low-pressure zone that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

I rounded the corner, saw an instant replay of the scene in Isabelle's bedroom. I wanted to shove my fist through the fabric of the universe.

“God, no—”

Somebody was coming after the Domingue clan with a fierce determination, and now a hurricane vortex threatened to suck me in. I fought against it. Felt my muscles lock, turn to steel.

Fresh Start guards that I had personally trained lay scattered across the floor, some breathing, some not, all tagged with a variety of darts. Like this had been an experiment. Let's check out that new batch of blowguns, any darts will do, they all take down a man in less than two seconds. No matter if they get back up again.

“Took you long enough to get up here.”

Skellar. The real thing this time, hands on his hips, he was surveying the room, stopped to focus on me.

A medic leaned over Pete, put an oxygen mask on his face. The guy gave a thumbs-up to someone across the room, then moved on to another prone body. Pete's eyes batted open, then closed again.

My brother lay on the floor a few feet away, a team of three white-coats surrounding him, all working furiously. It didn't look good.

“That was your sister-in-law on the ground outside,” Skellar said.

“What the hell happened?” I looked at him like he was guilty. He shot the same look back at me. “Where's my niece?” I demanded.

He shook his head. “We haven't found her yet.”

The dark cloud lowered, pressed heavy, squeezed all the oxygen from the room.

Without realizing it I grabbed something and threw it across the room. It broke with a loud crash. Startled heads looked up, then went back to work. This was not my reality, I was not going to accept this.

“Isabelle!” I called as I jogged toward my bedroom. “You can come out now. It's Uncle Chaz.” I searched through the closet, looked under the bed, remembered games she used to play: hide-and-seek, tag. Little girls like to hide, please let her be hiding somewhere, let her be safe.

Let her be here
.

I paused in the doorway, scanned the living room full of people, some working, some dying. None of them mattered. None of them had the answer I wanted. I kept seeing Isabelle's face as I sprinted to the VR room, then the bathroom, then Angelique's bedroom. I stopped again in the kitchen, glanced over the counter toward the living room, back where I had started.

Skellar was watching me. I could feel it, vicious heat on my skin. He moved closer, inside my danger zone.

“She ain't here, Domingue. I'm sorry,” he said, something like pity in his eyes. The last expression I wanted to see on his face. “We're gonna have to work together from here on out.”

I didn't want to listen to him, I'd rather he be my sacri
ficial lamb, I'd rather toss him over the balcony like somebody had just done to Marguerite.

“This here's the work of gutter punks, nobody else in New Orleans uses darts,” he continued, as if he didn't notice that I was about to explode. “But it doesn't make sense. Gutter punks deal in illegal drugs and they use darts in gang wars, not in a 'sitter's hotel suite. And I can't remember the last time they kidnapped a little girl. Doesn't fit their code.” He paused. Maybe trying to see if I was paying attention, if he was getting through. “Somebody led them to your doorstep. Question is why.”

I could smell it then, for the first time I recognized something that I should have noticed the moment I walked through the door. The sugary-sweet odor of flesh hovering on the brink of decay. One of the medics had ripped Russ's shirt open and an automated external defibrillator was slamming two hundred joules into his heart, trying to shock him back to the land of the living. I could even see the bands of muscle across his chest, rippling, expanding. I don't know how he had hidden it from me or how I had been so blind.

My brother was a spike addict.

For an instant I was fifteen again, helpless in the dark night, surrounded by a chanting mob, rocks flying.

My father dead on the ground.

And somebody had been standing just inches away, high on spikes. I never saw him, but I knew he was there. Heard his laugh, echoing hollow and cold.

The nightmare that wouldn't go away was alive and well. Somebody was playing games with my family, knew all of our weak spots. Even mine.

“Domingue, hey,” Skellar called from the other side of the room. “Take a look. They was watchin' this.”

I snapped back to attention. He turned on a VR news video of a dog. I watched a news clip, saw a black German shep
herd rise from the dead, then somehow resurrect a second wild dog, a silver wolf hybrid. I watched the video, but in my mind I heard echoes of a previous conversation. Last night, that Newbie in Russ's front yard. “Where's the dog?” she asked, but I had been clueless. Never heard of a dog. Never heard about any of this, whatever it was.

“That must be the dog they're looking for,” I murmured.

“Who's lookin' for it?”

I stared at him, didn't realize that I had spoken out loud. “The Newbie that self-destructed over at Russ's,” I said. “She was asking about a dog. Right before she zapped herself to another clone.”

He scratched the stubble on his chin, glanced around to see if anybody nearby was listening. They weren't. “Same thing happened down at the station last night,” he said. Like he stood in a midnight confessional. “Somebody downloaded, usin' a handheld gizmo. He got in to see your brother, right before he was released. We found the body in the interrogation room, but all the video had been wiped clean.”

“Somebody on your team is playin' both sides.”

“It wouldn't be the first time.” Skellar lifted his gaze toward the balcony, where several of his men were sampling for DNA residue, then he glanced back at me. “Look, whoever took your niece is gonna try to contact you. Or your brother, if he pulls through—”

The medics took the defibrillator pads off Russ, slipped an IV in his arm and strapped an oxygen mask over his face. He was breathing. He was alive. For now anyway.

“—and you're gonna let me know when they do. Got it?”

I nodded, wondering if I was willing to partner up with him. Didn't seem to matter what I wanted. All of a sudden, my options got pretty limited.