Tag: murder

The Collective: Part 1

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

1.

Declaration of War

Her crème white skin gleamed in the dimmed light of overhead LEDs, tinted with a plethora of colors from the 3-D holo-vid in the room’s center. Her body mirrored that of the projected woman before her; legs and back straight, eyes forward, and arms at her sides. In her hands, two, razor sharp Katanas gleamed with hints of light and caricatured reflections. She began to move with the projection; her feet parted, braced her exposed torso as her arms drew the blades up to rest on her shoulders. The cold steel triggered waves that coursed through her body, tickled thin, light hairs along her arms and neck, and refined the shape of her nipples.

With a fluid motion, the blades lifted. A foot kept her balance in a pivot while the other leg swept sideways to come about. The blades’ hilts touched, began to whirl as one entity with graceful movements. She urged them apart and into a vertical tumble. Balanced extensions of arms and legs moved her lower, forward. The blades made long, controlled swipes as she pirouetted to bring their blunt edges in toward one another, form make-shift bars of death before her face. Her dark eyes closed in a meditative trance, and the movements flowed into one another again, faster this time.

The nudity wasn’t required for her practice, but she couldn’t escape the freedom it brought. To be one with the sword required she be willing to dance as naked as it was. The two were beautiful beasts, as graceful and ready to love, embrace passion as to murder, spill bloods.

The movements became faster with small leaps. The room’s layout was clear in her mind as her muscles worked. Despite the darkness, she saw the room with light– an unnecessary luxury given her routine. She was as much dead to the world now as anyone who might cross her blades would become. At that, it wouldn’t be long before the polished steel ran crimson.

They were already watching from the cameras embedded in the apartment. She knew who they were, had seen them before. In that odd way that memories sometimes manifest from the aether, they appeared in portents of violence. The visions were stills of things yet to happen, as though made of old, analog film left on the cutting room floor of time. For her part, she would see the film joined by blood.

Her style of practice was something of Tai-Chi mixed with Ballet, both forms of bodily training lost to the world in the rise of self-medicating technology. Before the Sleep, it had surrounded people, become so much a part of their lives most hadn’t noticed it any longer. Now, it was their lives; virtual worlds had become as real as the Earth itself– moreso even, given the untold possibilities V-R allowed for. Everyone was now a buff-stud or supermodel in a world of their choosing, lived out through the use of special chairs, visors, and neural adapters. Nowadays peoples’ avatars were more them than their chair-bound vessels ever could be.

The world had gorged itself on greed and gluttony when all but a few jobs became automated, relegated to synthetic workers, robots, or intelligent software. The World Economy had begun to collapse then. Ninety-eight percent of the world’s work force was laid off. Before it could decimate the planet entirely, steps were taken, precautions put in place. The populous was given living stipends, needs and luxuries made available at fractions of the cost to ensure complacency.

Most of the world saw the change as a positive, but not Lex. She saw if for what it was, and in some instances, what it would become. There were no more wars, sure, but there was also no more freedom, no property but what was allotted. There were no avenues to pursue hopes or dreams, and given time, there would be no hopes or dreams anyhow. The world’s peoples had become victims of their own hubris, compromised fertility for longer life, vitality for luxury, and mental health for quick fix pleasures that would only lead to stagnation. All the while the rich got richer off it, did whatever they wanted. The global population had compromised fertility for longer life, vitality for luxury, and mental well-being for the quick-fix of pleasures that would only lead to stagnation.

Lex knew that, and so eschewed all but the most necessary luxuries, stipends, or pacifying technology that would allow her to achieve her goals. Those things couldn’t stop her from pursuing the future she sought, nor eliminating anyone in her way of it. Her only dream or hope was to change things– by force or reason, whichever was fastest, easiest.

That was how they had found her; through a few, overlooked surveillance devices embedded in common goods. Then, once surveillance had begun, they’d come in when she’d been away and planted more equipment to build their case. All she’d needed was the sense to investigate at the scents of foreign sweat, leather. When she did, she realized her mistake. Regardless, it only served to hasten her plans.

The world was the oyster of a very select few whom had carved it out for themselves over the course of decades. They had private armies– whole governments even– on their side, had otherwise pacified any other resistance against them. They’d drugged, imprisoned, or neutralized anyone that might stand against them, refused to sleep. They would kill anyone, no matter their station, to ensure the status-quo.

And now they were here.

The door to her apartment burst open. A flash-bang went exploded. Lex remained poised, blades touching before her face. Her ears rang, but she felt the vibrations of a half dozen feet charge inside. It was one of the few squads of police left in Tokyo– the whole world at that. The bulk of their numbers had long been reduced to drone patrols with high-powered tazers or small chain-guns mounted to their bellies, but these were foot soldiers.

They filed in. The latest, high-tech battle-rifles in their hands rose on her. Shouts of Japanese and English commanded the American-born woman to drop her weapons. They flowed in, fanned out in a half-circle around her. The commands never ceased.

Her arms lowered deliberately, swords in a downward-point toward the floor, her readied poise. The squad flinched. Shouts grew louder, repetitive. Rifle’s shook from adrenaline and fear. A few sparks of arousal in men and women left them half-dazed at Lex’s beauty and nudity.

In a blink, she leapt forward. A foot landed on the ball. Her hands flashed. The blades sliced up, in, down, flourished with a backward flip. Lex landed back in place as if she’d never moved at all. The only evidence was the slow river that flow form the blades’ tips, dripped crimson onto the metal floor. The squad blinked in disbelief as the lead man disassembled, arms severed from his torso and head from neck. His corpse fell to a heap.

Someone fidgeted, fingered a trigger. Lex leapt, spun. Blades sliced air, marred flesh, sundered bone and spinal nerves. Two of the left-most squad were decapitated in a flick of wrists. The others reacted, moved to take aim. Rifles were kicked from hands, bodies winded and propelled back with tremendous force. The dual blades mutilated wrists, incised throats. Screams turned to gurgles and bubbled whispers.

The room went silent again from the dead and wounded.

Two soldiers remained. One reached for her side arm, the other on her back on the floor, dazed. She gasped for air. Lex landed beside her, jabbed the left blade down into her chest, pierced her glossy body armor. The blade wrenched with cracking kevlar and bone. Blood spurted from an opened heart. Lex’s movement became a raised-leg spin that struck the side-arm. It flew across the room as the blades went for the woman’s throat, poised on either side to cut. She backed her up to the wall, forced her to her knees.

Lex stared down, blood spattered along her silken body, “You speak English.” The woman nodded. It wasn’t a question. “Tell your bosses I’m coming.” The woman nodded again. She raised her back up to her feet. “Tell them what you’ve seen here today, and that you know I could have done the same to you.”

“Wh-why?” The armored woman asked.

Lex chose her words carefully, “Mercy is a gift not often given. The world is about to change. You may choose to change with it, or die by my sword.” She locked eyes with the woman, “The choice is yours.” The woman sensed her conviction, swallowed hard. Lex sneered, “Leave. Do not return.”

The blades fell back to Lex’s sides in their readied poise. The woman bolted, stumbled over bodies for the door, fell through it only to scramble up and flee.

No matter what happened now, the Collective would know she was coming. They’d forced her hand, but she could use it, show them the stakes so they might watch, see the carnage about to befall them. Only then could they begin to feel fear– fear that would force them to make rash decisions, position their empire to be crumbled as they were taken out, one-by-one.

One way or another, an end would soon come.

Short Story: A Job to Do

~ S.M. Nolan ~ 1 Comment

Smoke curled and rolled beneath a low-hanging light, dissipated by the wave of a wrinkled hand. The man it was attached to hunched forward over the table beneath the light, in a booth seat of a dank bar most just called by its designation. Officially it was named The Oldhouse Tap. Unofficially, it ran by other names, most as unappealing as its never-swept, never-mopped tile floors. Even the walls had felt the rigors of age, their wall-paper stained and peeled like a cheap motel.

Another man sat before the smoking man, both with large mugs of beer that were more foam than brew. Such was the way the burnt-out bartender poured her patrons their poison. She cared about as much as they did. Most people in at this time of day were still on company time, the others hiding from their wives or families when they should have been at the unemployment office, or one of the half-dozen places through-out town with help-wanted signs in their front windows.

Instead, they were spread out around the bar, staring up at a television that never strayed from its Info-Corp news channel. Like them, the two men at the booth were mostly quiet, but when deigned to speak, did so in low, hushed tones. The second man hunched forward over the table, parted the smoke with his wrinkled, black, sunken eyes.

“I can have the money in a week, all I need’s more time.”

The smoking man took a drag from his cigarette with a few, resolute nods, “And you’re sure of that, yeah?”

The other man began to launch into a tall-tale. Of course, he started by explaining his position; like many others, he’d been laid off due to the shaky economy. No amount of groveling or employment seeking would help. All those help-wanted signs were for men and women twenty years younger. The shops in town didn’t care much for the older generation with their responsibilities, bills, and needs. They wanted expendable assets to leash one day, and kick-out when they were no longer cost-effective.

The other man went into detail on his experiences, “I was in with a shop down Main St, a coffee place– nothing in the front mind you, they don’t want the geezers working the front. They’ve got an image, you know.”
“Hmm,” the smoking man said with a long drag. He blew a long plume, “Got to have appeal with the kids.”

“Exactly.”

He went further in the same vein, but the smoking man was no longer listening. He’d heard all the tales a million times over. Everyone had their sob story, and everyone thought theirs was worse than everyone else’s. In truth, the smoking man knew they were all the same. It wasn’t his business to care, but he knew nonetheless. Each of the men and women he’d met were cut of a similar cloth; all older– his age really– out of work, and needing money. In a way, he sympathized; it could just as easily be him. Well, not him, but him in another life. He could have just as easily found himself in their shoes were circumstances even a little different.

Alas, no amount of empathy, sympathy, or cold beer would change what he knew now. He wasn’t like them. He was what they wanted to be; well-aged, still sane, and with immovable job-security. He even had spending money, something in direly short supply these days. Hell, he thought, probably not a one of the patrons in the bar today had that. They were all likely drinking on tabs that would follow them past their graves.

He listened to the sob-story a little longer, if only for courtesy’s sake. He already knew what would happen. It wouldn’t be another month before he was back in here to discuss the terms of the man’s repayment, only to be begged and pled with to hold off on collecting. Unfortunately, begging and pleading only went so far. Maybe the man hadn’t personally helped to tank the economy, but he had to deal with it the same as the rest. The problem was, dealing was all they ever tried to do. Not a one of them had learned to hold to their word.

He’d been in the banks’ employ long enough to know that the defaulters knew the stakes. Loans were an uncommon luxury even in the best of times. Now, they were downright impossible to come by. Even so, most of the people that had signed on the dotted lines had still refused to cop to the responsibility inherent in signing. Then, when the smoking man came to collect, they bargained and begged, and pled for more time.

His job wasn’t the most pleasant by any means. He could think of thirty or forty jobs off the top of his head that he’d rather have if only they were quite so secure in their need. That was the interesting thing though, as much as people wanted what he had, they never wanted to take the opportunity to get it. It left him as the sole member of an occupation where help-wanted truly meant it. But it wasn’t a fun job, most certainly unpleasant even with the best cases. Too many people defaulted nowadays, and by the first and fifteenth of every month he was expected to be in fifty places at once. Most places weren’t much different than this one.

Sure, a few of the people would repay the debt, or else shake his cynical core to feeling with their real misfortune. In those rare cases, he’d leave with a thankful politeness, possibly never to be seen again. Or else, he’d promise to return, understanding of their unfortunate circumstances. Whatever that latter groups circumstances were, he was certain he would never find any of them in a dank pit like the Oldhouse.

That was how the smoking man could tell the unfortunate from the dead-beats: when the unfortunate were down-trodden, lost for hope, they ran to their families to spend those possibly last moments with them. Conversely, the dead-beats were always in bars, restaurants, what-have-yous, running up tabs and knowing their last moments were upon them. It was an effective system, one that only a man working so deeply under the table for the banks could have established– or even distinguished.

He listened to the man tell his woes for another half-cigarette, then stopped him mid-sentence.

“I can’t help you,” he said as he rose from his seat.

He pulled his over coat open on the one side while the other man stammered and choked on his beer. A moment later a gun was out. A single, suppressed round ended the man’s life. He fell forward onto the table, blood leaking from a wound in his head. The rest of the bar had watched, each of them fearing they might be next. The smoking man replaced the gun into its shoulder-hoslter, then stepped over to the bar to drop a wad of cash on it.

“The bank will send someone by to collect the body,” the man said as he snuffed a butt in a tray on the counter. “You all have a good day. I’ll be seeing some of you next week.”

Most heads were hidden as he turned away. He had work to do. There was such little job security left in the world, and though it was messy, it was still a job that needed to be done. Even if there was no-one else willing to do it, few would do it as well as him.

Rehab: Part 8

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

11.

It was past noon when they made it to the office, the traffic heavy from the lunch-time rush. Even so, Chuck would be there until late into the afternoon as he laid out neat stacks of files for the coming week, combed the surfaces with white, latex gloves for any dust the cleaners had missed. It had been his Sunday routine longer than Carol had known him.

Suddenly, the thought now about what she may have to do bubbled within her. She’d never known Ed or Chuck to carry a weapon, but she’d also never known either of them to be amoral businessmen who stole lives and released monsters onto the streets. In fact, that was the polar opposite to what she knew them to be. Everything about this seemed out of character– an assertion she was forced to question as they made their way through the vacant lobby for the office.

Would Chuck be waiting for them? Had Babcock or Greene betrayed her? Could she trust, if things went South, that Sherry would be prepared for the worst?

They reached the office door, the firm’s name stenciled on its frosted glass. The radio inside was muffled behind it, near-silent given the thoughts that rampaged through their minds. They looked to one another, uneasy. Carol reached for the knob, hesitated, but Sherry nodded her onward. The door was thrown open wide, Carol’s pistol out in a flash. Chuck stumbled backward into his chair with a pant, surprised.

“Christ, Carrie you scared the hell outta–” He stopped short at the sight of the gun in her hand. “What’s this all about?”

“You tell me, Chuck,” she growled.

Her head was tilted down at an angle with a vicious, primal fury. It infected Chuck’s veins with ice. He shuddered, sighed. He knew it now– why she had come. With a speed she thought him incapable of, he reached beneath his desk. In a flash, metal gleamed, rose. Her gun echoed a single round that slammed his heart. The revolver flew sideways, hit the floor with a thud. Chuck slumped back, already dead.

Carol was cold, empty. Her eyes were narrow beyond a barrel that still smoked before her. Sherry turned sideways, doubled over, and vomited into a trashcan. Carol ignored it, moved to Chuck’s body to rifle through his pockets for his house keys.

She turned for the door, “Come on, we need to finish this.”

Sherry dry-heaved, groped her way up the wall to her feet, “You…. you–”

She hesitated at the door without a look back, “I killed him. He’s dead and this building’s empty until tomorrow. We need to go, finish this before it gets worse.”

“Carrie, I-I.. don’t know if I can… do this anymore.”

Sherry’s eyes were tilted down, avoided Chuck’s body, his blood still wetting his button-up shirt. Carol looked at her, “Sheryl, you have to understand what’s at stake here. If he’d have killed me for knowing, he’d have killed you too. You saw what happened. It was self-defense, my right.”

A tear began to slide down Sherry’s face. Carol watched it, numb to its attempts at stinging her. In the beginning, she’d drawn strength from Sherry’s persistence and support. Now, Sherry was hollow, too terrified for anything more than the autonomous regulation of her body. Somehow, Carol was still strong, as though the strength had transferred from one to the other imperceptibly. Sherry was haggard, pale, as if too long without sleep.

“C’mon, we’ve gotta’ go.”

Sherry ambled mindlessly from the office, followed Carol back to the truck. When they arrived at Ed’s house, she handed over Chuck’s keys, “If I don’t make it, you have to finish this.”

Sherry nodded, incapable of making eye contact. Carol began the short trek from the street to the doorway, thirty-feet and a million miles to her racing mind.

Why do this? What was the purpose behind all of it? Was it really just money? And what did Greene mean about being an opportunist?

She wasn’t sure, but she knew the last of her answers lay behind the gold-trimmed, maroon door, of Ed’s red-brick house. Whether he gave them to her, or she pried them from his cold, dead hands, was up to him.

She stepped to the door, ready to kick it in, tried the knob first. It was unlocked. A strange sensation flooded her as she stepped inside, pistol at the ready. The faint aroma of whiskey clung to the air. She listened carefully, heard nothing. She stepped right, toward the dry bar and recreation room, her feet light on the hardwood floor.

“You don’ ‘ave to creep around in here, Carrie,” Ed slurred across the room.

He was drunk enough that his smell burned her nostrils even at the distance. She raised her pistol, watched him gulp from a half-empty bottle.

“’M unarmed Carrie. ‘Nless you… cosider thiss-sshit a weappn.” He raised the bottle, chugged. Carol was silent, her feet planted, legs braced, and the pistol high, steady. “Well? What the fuck’re ‘ya waitin’ for?” He bellowed, flung to and fro from the force of his words.

In all her years of dealing with Ed’s occasional drunkenness, she’d never seen him in such a state. It was obvious he knew her intent, knew she’d learned of the rehab program. That much would’ve was assured after they’d been followed between the rehab centers. She thought for a moment, her eyes on the drunken husk of a man.

She lowered her pistol, holstered it to step forward.

His drunken sway worsened, “What? Whadda’ya–”

She charged, slammed him backward. The bottle flew as he was knocked to the floor. His head hit the floor with a loud thud that morphed into a cry. She balled the hardest fist she could, straddled his chest. He struggled to breathe against her weight, drunk, confused.

She struck him– once more. Then three times. Four.

She lost count. Her fists pummeled his face. Ed was too dazed and drunk to struggle, barely able to breathe. She was far from killing him, but began to shout.

“You prick!” She screamed with a blow. “Bastard… Backstabbing… Son of a bitch…”

Tears streamed from her eyes. Her hands ached, bruised, bloodied from gashes on them and fresh wounds on Ed’s face. An unassailable sadness melded with her anger.

She struck harder, “I trusted you! You let him go! All these years! I-I trusted… you…”

Her anger exhausted with her strength. She fell to his side, wept into her hands. Ed had been a second father– albeit a distant one. Though she never voiced it, she trusted Ed to aid her in her crusade. Her entire life’s work and purpose had been to save women from men like Evans. Now her greatest ally, closest friend, was even worse than the people she’d tried to put away.

In one simultaneous instant, she questioned all her hopes and dreams, recalled her deepest regrets and failures. She welled with anger and joy, sorrow and happiness, at all that she had aspired and succumbed to. Her heart and mind overloaded with guilt and loathing, love and happiness.

She reacted without conscious thought, felt the gun lift from her holster. She knelt over Ed, his face bruised and bloody, but his wounds superficial. He might yet live, but he might also die. The dilemma only worsened as the pistol pressed his forehead. The duality of life climaxed in her mind; success and failure, love and pain, good and evil. Each side tugged at her, forced her thumb down on the gun’s hammer. Her mind fought her heart’s pain and anger with steel logic as it questioned which action led to what consequence.

She’d already killed Chuck, but that was self-defense. This was murder, plain and simple. Was she ready to take that chance– become the person she’d fought so long and hard against?

The question echoed in her mind while her senses screamed at her, body ached from the convergence of dreams to nightmares. The couplet of bullet-trains collided at Mach speeds to explode, fog her vision as her finger slid over the trigger.

Her arms were locked, her body poised. The moment had come. It was up to Ed now.

Her body trembled, her voice shook, “Why?”

The word echoed through her into a deafening silence that rang with the war-drum charge of her heart. Ed’s left eye was swollen shut from the beating, but his right focused on her beyond the barrel.

“No one… was ever supposed to know,” he replied quietly, sobered by the beating. He exhaled slow, his breathes labored from her weight. “Chuck and I felt the recession… started doing patent work on the side. One of the inventions that came in… was a machine, intended for memory loss. The client died before the patent was finalized. We took some capital, built it… We only had the best of intentions.”

Carol’s lip twitched. He’d chosen. She rose from his chest, the gun still poised on him. His breath returned. He pushed himself into a sit. She allowed it.

“It’s bad now, Carrie. I-I know that. But it… it wasn’t always this way,” he assured her. “When we first created the program, the state didn’t want to have anything to do with it. But they let us try it. All of the cons we experimented on… they were lifers looking for reduced sentences, parole.” He shook his head in disgrace, “The device failed so many times, left dozens brain-dead. Chuck and I pushed to keep trying. It was impossible not too. All we needed was to discern the specific regions of the brain that caused the behaviors. That was it.”

He hung his head, quiet for a moment. When he looked up again, there could be no doubt of his sincerity. Even so, it made Carol’s stomach churn, her skin crawl.

“It got out of hand. But one day… one day, something happened. It permanently erased the person’s mind, but kept them alive. They were child-like, docile– but alive!”

Carol watched him with a knife in her chest. She wasn’t of anything more than its incise and his words.

“Babcock could tell you more about it, he was the… tech, guy. He learned how the machine had done it, manipulated the process. He learned how to read what chemical imprints meant which types of memories. It became mathematical, a formula we had to get right. We found something… something that differed between the genius and the layman. It was a certain set of chemical and genetic markers– the reason we’d failed so many times was its absence in those patients.” He swallowed hard, “It wasn’t long before Babcock was manipulating specific memories, wiping others to clean slates, creating new ones. I-I’d tell you how, but it’s too technical for me.”

She believed him; Ed could barely work his smart-phone most days.

A corner of her mouth twitched with spite, “How could you do it, Ed? How could you let Evans go?”

“I’ve had to let dozens of guys like Evans…go,” he admitted without remorse.

“How could you do it to me!” She spit, wounded.

“I didn’t do it to you, I did it to him— to all of them… for you.”

Vertigo overcame her. The room began to spin. His next words were muffled by a confounding guilt. Everything that had happened to Evans– all of the people whose lives had been taken from them– were taken because of her.

She hastened to a realization as the final pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Everything Ed had done for her, the reason he’d hired her, was a result of his own mental illness– the meticulous workings and rationalizations of a mind obsessed with his own crusade. He’d spent so many years repressing guilt for stealing lives, letting murderers, rapists, and pedophiles be reformed, that he used her past trauma as the reason and rationale for all of his victims. In due time, his “success” was endorsed by the state, country even.

Finally the fractal-like image was revealed in all of its complex and deluded splendor. The rehabilitation program, instituted by Ed and Chuck, had been a vision of grandeur and hope– stolen from someone much brighter and tainted by their lack of morality. They’d failed at making the machine work for its original intent, re-purposed it, and removed all claim to its moral responsibility in the process. After years of growing guilt, nightmares, and remorse, Ed found a victim he might redeem himself through.

But it all fell apart that day Ed met Greene in the restaurant just before Evans’ sentencing. He’d come in his usual disguise, but as a courier to inform Ed of Evans’ chemical markers. Ed’s redemption was impossible then, but he still needed to rationalize, keep his conscience clean. It suddenly became Carol’s repayment, and when Evans was reformed, his drunken binges began. Either consciously or not, he’d been drinking, waiting for either it to kill him or Carol to suss out the truth and finish him herself.

The spinning stopped. She pushed through her haze, tried to discern her next course of action, but couldn’t. Ed’s words continued on, incessant ramblings of rationalizations and justifications for the atrocities he’d committed– all in her name, to honor her. It made her sick.

With what little strength remained, she pushed herself up, stood over him. There was only one logical resolution; Ed was a criminal, mentally sick and amoral, but no less human. She wasn’t a murderer, but she wouldn’t allow herself to be a victim to anyone anymore, much less the scapegoat for a lunatic.

“Get up,” she ordered. He didn’t respond. She kicked his foot, holstered the pistol, “Get up god damn it!”

She drug him to his feet, got behind him to steer him, stumbling, out the door and to the truck. She threw open the doors as Buddy growled at his stench. She silenced him with a word, threw Ed into the backseat. He toppled in, once more adrift in a sea of drunken confusion. Sherry looked across the truck with a question on her lips, her face once more colored, but still oily, sweat-covered.

Carol shut the door, climbed in beside her, “Call Mike. We need to get him there before he comes out of it.”

They pulled away from the house, the front door still wide open. Sherry made her way through afternoon traffic to the police station at twice the posted limit. They fought to carry Ed up the steps, for him into an interrogation room and wait for him to sober up.

Mike met with the two women in the observation room beyond the interrogation room’s two-way mirror, “What the hell happened?”

For the first time since the day had begun, they looked at themselves. Sherry was unscathed, save for her exhaustion, but Carol’s clothing was disheveled, her hands and knees bloody, bruised. She looked frightening, as though she’d been at war for the last two days, had fought her way through the trenches to uncover the truth. In the small amount of time she’d been afforded rest, she’d chose instead to drink herself into a stupor. She wasn’t sure whether to be proud or sick with herself.

She decided she didn’t care, launched into retelling the events while Sherry corroborated. She’d be damned if she was going to let Ed skew the truth any further than he already had, made up her mind to come clean about everything, perfectly at ease with whatever consequences she might be due.

EPILOGUE

When attorneys Carolyn Switzer and Sheryl Hunter relayed their story to Detective Mike Boone, Carol took the blame for the death of Charles Henderson. Simultaneously, aspects of their story, corroborated by various parties (including Dr. Henry Babcock and Edward Mordin.) placed them at no fault in the use of The Ohio State Investigative Act. Edward later went on official record during the trial of State of Ohio V. Switzer and Hunter, testifying that he knew Henderson had stashed a loaded thirty-eight revolver beneath his desk. According to his testimony, it had been there since Zachary Evans had been sentenced to rehabilitation, placed in fear of retribution in the event that Carolyn ever discovered his secrets. Mordin also assured the court that Henderson kept the weapon loaded with the safety off.

To the surprise of everyone involved, Edward produced security tapes from hidden cameras secretly installed in the office, and went on record to say, he too, believed retribution might some day come, but suspected Henderson would make the first move. A series of cameras were placed at angles which gave full, 360 degree views of Henderson’s desk. When the tape was reviewed during the trial, it was immediately determined that although Switzer drew first, Henderson’s prior actions and his reaction therein, negated any charge of murder.

The case was dismissed following an innocent verdict on the charges of first and second-degree murder.

A subsequent trial, State of Ohio V. Edward Mordin revealed that the defendant had been guilty on fifty-four counts of first degree murder, and seventy-one counts of felony criminal battery against State Penitentiary inmates. On the advice of a separate, expert witness and testimony by one Carolyn Switzer, it was recommended that Edward Mordin be sent to an upstate, mental health facility for rehabilitative therapy and life imprisonment without chance of parole.

When the evidence of Ed’s actions came to light in open court, both Leon Greene and Doctor Henry Babcock were arrested and tried by attorneys appointed by the state’s deferment laws. The attorneys, on expert advice of witnesses Carolyn Swizter and Sheryl Hunter, sought the maximum sentence of criminal neglect and felony assault. Henry Babcock’s sentence was reduced on appeal however, when he gave up several, senior members of his medical staff to authorities. Each was subsequently tried and found guilty for criminal neglect and malpractice against some two hundred and thirty seven former rehab-patients.

The media’s field day summarily exposed the state’s rehabilitation program, shedding light onto a dark corner of the criminal justice system. The resulting public back-lash forced the specific form of therapy, known as Cognitive Reassignment Rehabilitation Therapy, to be suspended indefinitely despite its success. The US Supreme court later found CRRT to be unethical, instituting a nation-wide ban on its use. However, various rumored reports have relayed that its use has continued in secret both in and out of the United States.

As for the two women, having garnered fame and public praise from their revelation, they became sought out as high-profile attorneys. Their careers took off, allowing them to open their own practice, Hunter and Switzer Law. In addition, Detective Micheal Boone was awarded a Public Safety Officer Medal of Valor for his service and willingness to risk his reputation to fight injustice.

Shortly after the media-circus subsided, Anthony DePaul received the following letter from an anonymous source:

Anthony DePaul,

I send you this letter in the hopes that I may assuage my own guilt for actions against you; though they were never of my own accord, nor by my own hand.

It’s no doubt you’ve heard of the incident regarding Edward Mordin and Charles Henderson that resulted in the losses of memory in two hundred and thirty-seven criminals sentenced to CRRT by the state. All of the files have been released to the local police departments and FBI to be done with as they see fit, save an unknown two hundred and thirty-eighth victim.

This man, intentionally obscured by my hand, is Zachary Evans. His crimes were unspeakable in nature, copious, and cold. Mr. DePaul, I’m sorry to inform you that you were once this man. However, he died when you were born. Your memories are be fabrications, your personality manufactured, but they were done so to bring out the best aspects of your character, keep buried the worst. I tell you this because of an event that took place roughly two weeks before this all began; a woman bumped into you on the street, dropped her things and stammered like a fool. You were kind to her then, sincere and apologetic.

In that moment, I met you, Mr. DePaul. But in that moment, I also felt the specter of a man I loathed. The quest to understand led me to lay to rest a great injustice. It is for this reason, and this reason alone that I have kept your former self from the press. You have been given a second chance. One, I feel, you deserve because of the injustice done to you. You are Zachary Evans, but you are also Anthony DePaul. As the latter, you may live your life in blissful ignorance, or pursue what you will to know more of your former self. In either case, you will atone for the crimes of a past life, because it is ingrained within you to do so.

Enclosed is a flash-drive for you to keep or destroy. It contains all of the information on who you were. What you do from here on out is your choice, but believe me when I say, that to follow Evans’ path is to erase the soul you’ve been given.

I gained much more from our encounter on the street than a mere letter could tell. Now perhaps, you may gain as much in knowing that you were given a second chance, and have been living it to the fullest. I hope you continue to do so.

The files you hold are the only copies. No one can speak of Zachary Evans and link him to you. Please, for your own sake, destroy the file. I can not bring myself to do it and it is not my right to do so. I unintentionally wronged Evans, and in turn, you. Though his crimes were unspeakable, so too is the breadth of your chance to make up for them. I hope this atones for my part.

Anonymous.

Upon finishing the letter, DePaul removed the small drive. He stuffed the letter into the inside pocket of his jacket. In one, simple motion, he dropped the drive to the floor and smashed it with a booted heel. He keeps the letter on him to this day, intent on using every chance he has to atone for a past he cares not to remember.

Short Story: The Murder of an Angel

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

I found her wandering the Ginsu Corporate Japanese garden. I’d been called to the scene to address a public nuisance. Such is the way of our culture now that even this woman, goddess though she was, could not escape our surveillance drones nor there automatic report. Though she was non-violent, I knew from the report I received en-route, that I’d have to take her in. What I found when I arrived though…

The Ginsu Corp’s Japanese garden is an enormous courtyard in the center of a sky-scraper made of all modern, sleek angles, stainless steel trim, and large, open windows. That last bit seems the most important for what I found, but it was hardly on my mind when I entered from the lobby-side. The door there was designed to open and close like a sliding door, but was hidden in the windows to appear as one. Something about architects and their styles– or some such nonsense– made it necessary to hide the door.

There was a persistent, purposeful gurgle of water in the garden. A make-shift river was cut through its center with clever, hidden plumbing and a slow-trickling waterfall to the left side. The water would slip down those rocks endlessly, follow the twists and turns of its man-made banks, flow beneath a foot bridge in the middle, then exit somewhere far to the right to start the process again.

The few, Japanese Maples Ginsu had imported were delicately placed around the garden’s stone pathways and small clearings so as not to overshadow the countless foreign hedges, flowers, and ancient, potted bonsai-plants. Over the sky-scraper and through the foliage, the sun’s rays cut streaks through a mist that persisted over the area. It gave the garden an almost ethereal look.

It was surreal. There I stood in heavy, corp-sec armor with an LR-30 five-five-six in my hands, in a veritable garden of Eden. It was even more surreal when I made my silent progress to the footbridge, then clomped over it in my weighted gait into the Garden’s heart. Somewhere behind me a Koi jumped at one of the various water-dwelling insects. It landed with a splash that I missed but caught the ripples of. Even at the distance I could see the Koi in the river; they were massive, all manner of mixtures of orange, black, white. Some were wholly patterned, the rest mostly solid colors with speckles of others splattered across them. There must have been a few hundred that swirled through the water, added life to the already-teeming garden.

I found her a few paces from a split in the hedges. To say I was breath-taken would be an understatement. She sat in the dewy grass in one of those shining sun-rays that gleamed down from the heavens. The metaphor was all the more apt then. Her knees were drawn up, legs curled beneath her while she leaned on an arm. She glowed with an aura of the sunlight– or maybe it was her angelic features– while a hand pensively hung at the back of her neck. She stared upward in trance, as oblivious to me as I was of what was to come.

I don’t know how long I stood there, but it was enough to eventually rouse her curiosity. I should have said something, anything, but I knew I couldn’t. To add anything to the sounds of that low gurgle, distant, quiet birds, and the faint scent of fresh mist would have been blasphemous. Instead, I watched her. As if of her own volition and nothing else, she rose from the ground and angled toward me.

She was clad in little more than a transparent dress. It wasn’t a thing from any of the corp-owned stores in town. They’d have never allowed it. Even so, she wore it like a goddess, could have fit in with any of the old myths about ancient women whose beauty brought men and women their knees.

She tilted her platinum blonde head– which curiously seemed natural despite its impossibility– and drew a slow hand upward. My eyes caught the motion to see her pale skin beneath the dress, her body bared for the world, for me. The glow behind her gave an outline of something voluptuous to her already-transcendent beauty. It was difficult not to stare. Even so, something in the way her hand curled beneath the hard angles of her jaw made it seem as though she wished me to, took pleasure in it.

Imagine me, all corp-sec clad and rifle-toting ready to rain hell-fire on rebels and revolutionaries, being met with a match so fully inverse of myself– in appearance or otherwise. Surreal didn’t quite cut it anymore, if only because of the ethereal, extra-worldly magnificence before me. I was the beast in the metaphor, a perfectly sculpted image of terror, torture, and pain, and somehow I’d found beauty that brought me to my knees. Literally.

My rifle dropped from my hands first, the safety thankfully on. She was within arm’s reach, could see all the subtle curves of her supple breasts, perfectly-rounded hips, and the glistening green of her eyes. The left side of her head was shaved. The rest short but with bangs that angled around her forehead. The seemed to weight it into a tilt to one side, then drifted in the light breeze that made it over the gargantuan walls of the around us.

I met her eyes with a breathless, parted mouth. I was only vaguely aware of the people gathered around the garden and surveillance cameras. Most would be watching out of curiosity, others out of arousal. So repressed has our society become that this woman was committing a crime simply by existing. By then, I had forgotten my job there. She could have murdered me, if it meant only a touch from her unearthly wonder.

Our eyes were still locked when I fell to my knees. Her mouth formed a sadness then that still stabs my heart when I remember it. With a pair of nimble, silken fingers, she lifted me upward by the broad-underside of my chin. Her touch sent a shiver through my spine. I was ready to faint, so powerful was she.

Why what came next happened, I don’t know. Maybe she knew what was to come from it. Maybe, like I with her, she’d been captivated by something in me that I didn’t know existed. Or maybe she was as enthralled as I by the unseen, primal forces of lust and love that have allowed our species to propagate. Whatever it was, she gave a small shake of her head as I rose to full-height from the light pressure beneath my chin. Then, slowly, both of her soft hands rose to either side of my face. She pulled me into a long, deep kiss that nearly made me buckle again.

Her breath was hot, inviting, her tongue soft and trained like a dancer. Between us a slow, almost mournful ballet began. I’m not sure how long it lasted, but I never wanted it to end. My hands were warmed through my gloves at her hips while the breeze tousled the creased, see-through dress around them as its anchors.

I know she sensed what was to come. I felt it in a burst of passion that surged between us. If I had known though, I might have done something more. But all I knew was her; a glowing, pulsing beacon of beauty, love, and good in a world literally gone to hell. Outside that garden, there were a dozen different corps all vying to carve out the largest part of the world they could. Anyone that got in their way was labeled a traitor, dissenter, terrorist.

My job was to rid the world of those people, the undesirables. All I ever did was drive wedges between people and their families, murder the righteous, and taunt the rest into choosing sides in a war for the most basic of freedoms. I will never know her name, but I’m sure that she was all of those things and somehow… I couldn’t have done more than I did in that moment.

There was a sound like a someone shouting in the distance, but I didn’t hear it. Then a hiccup in the low gurgle. I was a million miles away, riding a beam of sunlight with a queen of stars. Her passion never faltered; not from the moment our lips met. It merely stopped as she slipped down my body, clutching at my armor. I was hit by reality like a freight-train ramming an unseen motorist off the tracks. Another apt metaphor that was just as bloody as my armor as she slipped away from me.

Before I knew it, she and I were surrounded by one of the Corp’s Emergency Response Squads. The ERS are guys sent in to “contain,” a “situation.” In other words, I didn’t do the job fast enough or well enough, and some assholes kicked down the door. They murdered an angel. I know no-one believes in that stuff anymore. Neither do I, really, but then again I never believed in love, or love at first sight either. I do believe in those last two now.

She bled to death in my arms. Her glowing gown was stained red from the exit wound in her chest. I was safe from my armor and its built-in kinetic compensators. I wish I hadn’t been. I’d have rather died there with her.

I held her, breathless tears welling in my bestial eyes. She never stopped smiling. Not even after the life left her eyes and her last breath eased from her chest and tore out my heart. I was arrested for indecent public conduct and displaying affection while on-duty. The latter was a reprimand, the former a felony.

I took my forty licks– corporate lashings that we all agreed to allow when we signed on with corp-sec. Why wouldn’t I? I was cold, numb, without feeling. I had become the very thing the corps always wanted out of us. It wasn’t until I realized that that I finally understood why she’d smiled even with a bullet through her heart and her life fading: she’d made a statement with her life, her death, and the moments leading to it. I was the punch-line to a joke about trying to remove the humanity from a human.

Even now I don’t mind. Every day I wake up in my dingy hovel, help more people to escape the prison-compounds the Corps have turned most cities into. I use my power, my authority, despite my Spartan living and appearance, to do the one thing I know she would approve of. I help people find feeling again, just as she did for me. Even if she didn’t love me, I loved her, and I’ll go to my grave doing everything to honor that. It took the murder of an angel to awaken me, but I’ll be damned if it was in vain.