Working Stiff

And the bullet holes began to knit closed—but not before bright red blood trickled out and began running down the heaving, breathing chest.



The monitors kick-started into beeps. Heart rate. Oxygen saturation. Blood pressure.



Life.



He stopped screaming and looked at the doctors. His voice, when it came, sounded hoarse and dry. “Did it work?”



Nobody answered him. They were all busily noting details, murmuring instructions, taking samples.



It was like the living man, where the corpse had been, didn’t exist at all except as a clinical miracle.



Bryn felt a horrible chill inside, but she put on a brave face. “Nice special effects. Really nice—”



She would have gone on, but another video started, brutally fast.



That was her. Ash gray, lying dead in a hospital bed. Her eyes were swollen and bloodshot and blank, pupils completely blown. She’d bitten her lip, and blood had dried on her face. Her head lolled limp on the pillow. They cut away her clothing, reducing her to just another shell, another dead thing, pitiful and cold and naked, and Bryn couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything, not even demand for them to stop the video.



Fideli wasn’t watching it. He and McCallister were watching her. She was peripherally aware of that, but she couldn’t tear her horrified gaze away.



“Right, give her the full dose,” said the crisp voice of a doctor in the video. “Start the clock … now.”



It took long, torturous minutes, and then … then … Bryn’s body stirred. Gasped. Spasmed.



But there was nothing else.



“Vital reactions,” the doctor said. “Note the time in the log, please.”



A nurse spread a sheet over her naked body. They seemed to be waiting for something, and Bryn realized that the video-Bryn hadn’t opened her eyes, or taken another breath after that first, convulsive one.



The doctor glanced up at a clock on the wall. “She’s not responding. I’m going to have to call it.”



“Wait.” In the video, Joe Fideli moved out of the shadows and put his hand on her face. “Come back,” he said. “C’mon, Bryn, don’t do this. Come on back. Come back.”



He slapped her, a stinging blow, and Bryn saw her blank eyes finally blink, slowly.



And then she screamed.



The same scream.



Fideli held her hand through the rest of it. Bryn didn’t listen, couldn’t over the rush of blood in her ears. She felt dizzy and sick and very, very strange.



She looked at Fideli, who shifted his gaze away. Then she moved her mute stare to McCallister, the cool corporate drone, who leaned forward and took her hand in his. Squeezed, silently, and waited until the video finally ended.



Fideli shut the TV off. In the silence, Bryn heard some rational voice in her head screaming, It’s fake; it’s all fake, special effects. This isn’t happening; this can’t be happening.



The only problem was that she knew it was happening. She’d seen, and she finally, horribly, believed.



She looked up at Patrick McCallister’s face and saw emotion there, quickly hidden. Pity, maybe.



He was still holding her hand. He’d been holding it through the whole ordeal, though she’d forgotten he was even there.



“Joe,” he said, “I don’t think we need the gun anymore.”



Fideli put it away without a word. Bryn realized that she really ought to say something, do something, but for the moment, all she could think of was to sit very still, holding to the warm anchor of another human being. She felt like all the world around her had turned into a black, sucking whirlpool, and she was afraid that if she let go, even for a second, she’d drown.



Go back to … that. That empty ashen thing on the hospital bed.



Oh, she believed, all right. And it terrified her.



“What did you do to me?” she whispered. She was staring right into McCallister’s eyes now, looking for that spark of connection again, but it wasn’t there. He’d shut down. Maybe he had to, to deal with the emotion pouring out of her just now. She’d never felt so scared, or so alone. So empty.



“There’s good news,” he said, in a soothing, quiet voice that unpleasantly reminded her of Lincoln Fairview, with his nice suit and cultured palate and nasty lies. “You need a daily shot, but apart from that one thing, you’re in the best shape you’ll ever be in. No sickness, no aging. You won’t change, because the nanites returned you to a template of what you were just at the cessation of life, and holds you there.”



“I’m dying. I’m dead.”



“You’re dying less than the rest of us,” he said. “You’re … on hold would be a good description. And there are positives, believe me.”



“Positives!” She couldn’t control the bitter, shaky laugh that burst out of her, and put her hand to her mouth to muffle it. “God.”



He didn’t tell her it was okay after that. He just let her sit and think for a while.



Finally, she wet her lips and said, “How in the hell does a company set out to create … this?”



“They didn’t,” he said. “Returné was an accident, a side effect of an experimental drug for the treatment of cancer. It would have won Mercer and Sams the Nobel Prize, if it had worked the way they thought. Or if they could ever actually talk about it again, but of course now it’s highly classified.”



That made her laugh again, but it wasn’t a laugh she recognized. It sounded wild and ugly, and very not-Bryn. Of course, she wasn’t Bryn anymore, was she? The Bryn from yesterday, that girl had her whole life ahead of her. A career, love, a family—those were the things she’d wanted. And she was gone.



So who was this Bryn? No, not who. What was this Bryn?



She wasn’t a person anymore. She felt like one and she looked like one, but what he’d just shown her had stripped that away.



She was an animated, breathing mimicry of life.



“Bryn,” he said, and drew her attention again. She hadn’t even realized it had wandered. “Bryn, please listen to me. You’re in the danger zone right now. It’s not just that your body has to survive; you need to survive along with it. If you withdraw, if you go catatonic, I can’t help you. Stay with me.”



Bryn pulled in a deep breath. “Do I have a choice?”



“Always. But I’d rather you didn’t pick the other option,” McCallister said.



“Decomposing?”



He ignored that, didn’t blink, kept his focus straight on her. “I have a proposition for you.”



She laughed again. Still not a nice laugh. “They lock you up in this state for necrophilia.”



“Bryn. Listen to me, because what I have to say is vital to your continued existence. Pharmadene wanted answers out of you, and I wasn’t able to get them. But together, we can offer the company something else. Something better, possibly.”



She didn’t answer, because there didn’t seem to be much point. He was talking, but she didn’t understand what he was getting at. Not at all.



They were never going to let her out of this room. Her water clock was going to fill up and spill over and she was going to sit here and rot. Literally. She imagined that it was going to hurt.



“Bryn.”



“I’m listening,” she said. She didn’t want to, but she couldn’t seem to block out his voice. Her own sounded remote and odd, disconnected from the rest of her, but it seemed to reassure him.



“I’m going to put you back in Fairview Mortuary.”



That called for another laugh, but she couldn’t dredge one up. “As a corpse in the prep room?”



“No,” he said. “As the new owner. Inheriting it from Mr. Fairview. You’re his niece.”



“I’m not.”



“You are now, on paper; he didn’t have any other living relatives. You’ll go back to work, oversee the necessary repairs, start up the business again. Make it known you’re carrying on your uncle’s work in every way.” McCallister glanced over at Fideli. “You’ll hire Joe as a funeral director. He’ll help you out if you have any trouble, and make sure you get your shots on time. Your job is to go through Fairview’s records, and try to make contact with Fairview’s underground supplier of Returné and bring him—or her—out into the open so we can shut down the leak who’s selling the drugs, quickly and quietly.”



“And then what?” Bryn asked him. “I go back to being dead?”



“Bryn—let’s just take this a step at a time, all right? I’m doing what I can for you. This gets you back into the world and gives you a kind of normal life. Do well on this, and I’ll fight to keep your drug regimen in place. Deal?”



She didn’t answer. She stared at him mutely, feeling as if parts of her were just … shutting down. Falling away. Important parts of her, already gone.



Hope, for one. A sense of who she was.



All gone now.



“All right,” she said softly. “Deal. On one condition.”



McCallister hesitated, frowning just a little. Maybe he felt the increase in her pulse through her fingers. “What condition?”



“I get to have the gun. Not Fideli.”



“Joe’s trained—”



“So am I,” she interrupted him. “Four years surviving in Baghdad. And I get the gun, McCallister. Or you can sit here and watch me rot.”



He pulled back, baffled, frowning in earnest now. “Why do you want it?”



Fideli answered for her, face gone still and hard. “Because she wants to be able to end it,” he said. “Put a bullet through her brain. Do damage the nanites can’t repair. Right, Bryn?”



She didn’t answer, but it sounded pretty good to her.



There was a moment of silence, and then McCallister sighed. “Not a bad plan, but it won’t work. The only things that will truly end you are fire, dissolution, or dismemberment, and I can’t see you sawing off your own head. You’re tough, but nobody’s that tough.” McCallister tried for a smile, and almost made it. “If you put a bullet through your head, you’ll just be wasting bullets and screaming a lot.”