Jason P. Burnham

I’ll Follow You

By Jason P. Burnham

The empty containment unit had been viciously flayed open from the inside. Splayed like petals of a metallic flower, the unit was the lone human structure among the scattered rocky outcroppings that characterized Ravi’s patrol sector. Ravi was particularly displeased to have come across this guaranteed extension to his day, having nearly completed a double shift and already having difficulty keeping his eyes open. He hated his job every day, but this made today so much worse.

     He put his eye to the night vision scope on his pulse rifle, surveying for the escapee, but found nothing. That was one good thing about patrolling the deserted area nearest AbsolutPetrol Central. They didn’t want anyone to come knocking, so they surrounded themselves with desolation. It had the dual purpose of dissuading solicitors from knocking and dissuading containment unit escapees from surviving. Usually, that is — escapees could cause problems for Resource Engagement Officers like Ravi if they happened upon one another before the escapee died of thirst. Ravi’s suit protected him from dehydration and some level of pugilism, but perhaps not from whomever destroyed this container. The REO paid its officers in water and stims, and at this moment, Ravi was wishing he could have saved up some stims to deal with … this.

     Ravi was not high-ranking enough to have information about who was inside a unit in his sector — he was just a patrol officer. Most of the time they were unoccupied — citizens had learned better than to fight against the REO.

     Consulting his suit just in case he had an extra stim, Ravi wondered if there was any chance he could just ignore this, go home, and get some sleep with his dog, Sandi. What’s the worst that could happen? Central had already reduced their water disbursements to a level that guaranteed near-constant thirst. Ravi knew they wouldn’t pay him overtime for staying past his shift, but the threat of having less water for him and Sandi rooted him to his sector until he could resolve the situation.

He looked anxiously back at the unit. This sort of thing had happened before, though usually an alert would go out. Regardless, it was probably another subject rebounding from an overdose of Anti-Agg and emanating chaos. Anti-Agg could have paradoxical effects on subjects, and the risk was increased by high levels in the blood. It was a derivative of phencyclidine, or PCP, which had anesthetic and adrenergic properties. What that meant in overdose was someone high on adrenaline who can’t feel pain — the perfect storm for containment unit annihilation. Ravi was wishing more and more than he had just gone home instead of finishing his rounds.

     He studied the motion tracker on his wrist display. Damn.

     And he had to track the escapee at night. Not that Ravi was afraid of the dark. Okay, he was a little bit afraid of the dark, but who wasn’t?

     What’s there to be afraid of when you have infrared?

     The people who said that didn’t understand that not everything showed up on infrared, particularly persons knowing how to mask their heat signature. Ravi hoped this containment-breaking subject was too psyched out to recognize the need for infrared cloaking, but there was no guarantee. Maybe the person didn’t know the intricacies of REO equipment.

     Ravi sighed. But what are the chances of that? The REO was the second-most hated organization in the world. Stealing everyone’s water to “cleanse” it and taking a cut in the process doesn’t garner favor. The only conglomerate despised more was the parent company, AbsolutPetrol, that caused the catastrophic spill of a proprietary, “climate friendly,” crude-dredging chemical. Incidentally, only they had the technology to extract the toxin from contaminated water. Without AbsolutPetrol and its disaster, there would not have been an REO. To his dismay, Ravi would not have had a job without the REO — there was no other game in town.

     Ravi’s head jerked at blips from his motion tracker. Half a click away three (three?) signals appeared.

     No, no. Containment units are only big enough for a single prisoner … subject.

     His heart caught for a beat as he zoomed in on the movement.

     Dogs. The subject probably fled long ago. He exhaled deeply, the sigh reverberating in his air-recycling system. The dogs must have been resting when he checked before.

Dogs, Ravi thought with a heavy heart. A flashback hit him — listless puppies, blending into the sand, shallowly respiring. He had been on a so-called “Waterlarcene Raid,” and the lethargic canines had lined the alley to the waterlarcene’s door. The woman had been accused of sequestering water illegally — REO didn’t allow any water distribution that didn’t go through them; they said it was for “quality assurance.” When they broke into the house, the woman inside turned out to not be hoarding water; the REO had received a bad tip. That didn’t stop Ravi’s fellow REOs from beating the woman and taking her for booking, purposely spilling the meager water rations she had for herself. Ravi had to go back the next week to finish up some paperwork for Central, only to find all the puppies gone. He asked a kid on the street what had happened, and the child said that after the REO took the woman in, the dogs couldn’t share her water anymore and they had all died. Except, as it turned out, the mother of the litter, who tried to bite through Ravi’s suit as he was leaving. She knew. To add insult to injury, whomever gave the false tip probably got a week’s water ration for their lie. People would sell you out for watered-down sweat.

     He shuddered, partially at the memory, partially from exhaustion and the continued necessity of finding the escaped subject. On the upside, confronting the hulking rage of whoever broke out of this container would assuredly be emotionally easier than sentencing a litter of puppies to death.

The noise of his air handlers gave him a boost of confidence. The higher oxygen concentration in the filtered air of his suit would give him an advantage over the escapee in this toxic atmosphere, but he wasn’t certain how much. After all, the person had really destroyed that container. He looked at the shredded metal again. I’m too tired for this, he thought, sleep’s fingers clawing at his eyelids, the weight of the lost litter draining him. I just want to get home and collapse with Sandi under the blankets. Ravi’s dog was tan too.

     In the shadows, under a rocky outcropping, Ravi stumbled first, then gave in to exhaustion and sat. He would never be allowed to go home until he faced whomever was out there. Theoretically, the escapee could make it to Central, though without a suit like his, the possibility was vanishingly small. But he couldn’t confront the escapee without getting some sleep. He debated whether the miniscule noises of air processing from his suit would be enough to attract attention. But if he turned it off, he would have to breathe the polluted air, clogging up his lungs and putting him on a level playing field with the runaway. Before he could decide, he had passed out. He dreamed of puppies.

###

     Crrrack.

     Ravi screamed. He had broken bones before, but never his femur.

     “They say the body is 60% water. How pulpy do you think I have to make you to be able to drink that 60%?” asked the figure holding Ravi upside down.

     In the dissociative pain of his broken limb, Ravi suddenly recalled that one of the withdrawal effects of Anti-Aggression serum is an extreme hypersensitivity to noise. In his pain fugue, Ravi thought, I wish I had turned off my air handlers. Then, I sure wish Central would quit authorizing overdoses of Anti-Agg.

     “No response? Guess I’ll just have to keep smashing.” The figure raised Ravi up and moved toward a nearby rock outcropping.

      Ravi tried to speak, but teeth and blood bubbled out instead.

     “I wish the fluids would come out of you in a more pleasant tone. You sound like swamp gas, and I do so prefer babbling brooks. Or that’s what my mother told me the sounds she played for us were. I’ve never heard the real thing.”

     For a flash, the lancinating pain from the rebounder’s grip abated, and Ravi was falling. The agony jumped from femur to lower back, and then both his legs went numb.

     REO won’t pay to fix that, he thought distantly.

     Paralyzed from the waist down, vision failing from blood loss, he tried to focus on the human standing over him, shoulders heaving. She was about his size, skin a few shades darker brown than his own, and long, frizzled hair, half of it matted to her neck with sweat.

     She’s crying, he thought as sympathetic, hot tears carved valleys in the coagulating blood on his face — he could see his death playing out in slow motion.

     The rebounder looked at him.

     Oh shit, it’s her. It was the woman whose puppies had all died when they took her in. Ravi was surprised to see her because he didn’t do the post-arrest processing and had no idea what happened to most of the people he brought in. Her residence was a few clicks away, at the edge of his patrol sector, so this was probably the nearest containment unit. You would have to give me Anti-Agg too if you killed my dogs.

     Standing over him, she vacillated between murderous and melancholy, raising her foot to crush his windpipe, then turning suddenly away to sob.

     She can’t see my face, he thought. If she could and recognized him through his battered countenance, he would have already been dead. Her vengeance would be justified.

     Her heaves turned to shudders, and Ravi glimpsed her face — she was laughing. Inexplicably, he laughed too, delirious at his impending demise, at the ridiculousness of where he found himself. An unwilling pawn watching the inexorable approach of the queen.

Her laughter caught in her throat at the sound of his ragged guffaws. But when she recognized it as genuine, she cackled, and the two of them giggled uncontrollably until their faces and chests hurt, Ravi’s having the added pain of lungs pooling with blood. It was the most he had laughed on the job since begrudgingly joining the REO all those years ago.

     “Hey, hey, come here,” Ravi gurgled, motioning to her.

     The figure ambled closer. Her rebound was coming to an end.

      Ravi knew the exsanguination, particularly the pulmonary hemorrhaging, wasn’t survivable, even with his suit actively suturing arteries and administering blood products. His lungs would be too full of blood to exchange oxygen by the time he got to a medical unit.

      “Here,” he pressed his commandlink into her palm. “Take this and wear my suit.” He looked down at where she had crushed his femur. “Don’t bother cleaning it. It will repair itself when you put it on.” He coughed, blood spattered his chest plate. “It’ll fit — you’re about my size. Go right to Central and obliterate them.”

     She stared at him, and he couldn’t tell if her look was distrust, fear, or uncertainty. No, it’s understanding.

     “Yes, it’s a suicide mission, but your degree of Anti-Aggression rebound is uniformly fatal. It’s only a matter of time, but you can destroy a lot with this suit if you hurry. Once you pass security with my suit and access codes, you’ll find the entire executive suite at Central, all virtually defenseless.” He gurgle-laughed. “They’re so arrogant, they think nobody will touch them there.”

     She gulped.

     “You can do some serious damage to AbsolutPetrol, and thereby the REO. Maybe even enough for others to join the fight.” He had a sudden revelation. “Bring your dog to help you.” He coughed again.

     Growling at the word ‘dog,’ she ripped off his helmet. Connections snapped like thunder, and air handlers cycled into overdrive in the open circuit. She retched at the sight of him.

     She knows. He hadn’t been wearing his helmet when they took her in.

     “I … I’m sorry,” he said.

If Ravi hadn’t been looking at her, he never would have believed the noise that he heard had been human. She sounded like a wounded bear, defending her cub with her dying breaths.

He didn’t want to break her fury vigil, but he knew he had to speak before his time ran out.

“I’m sorry,” he found himself saying again. “But if you want revenge on more than just me, you need to go now.”

     She looked at him grimly. “Why?”

     It could have been one of a thousand questions. Why do people die from the rebound? Why did you take our water? Why did you hurt my family? Why did you join the REO? Why did they put me in that containment unit? But there was only one answer to her question.

     “Because I hate them as much as you do,” he said, words he knew to be true, but had never been able to say. “Every REO is bad, including me. Only now can I admit it. Death illuminates the darkness of living.”

     Her lips quivered and twisted into a snarl. Ravi knew most of it was for the REO, but as its face here and now, some of it was for him, and he accepted that. She said nothing further and he could feel life draining away, but not fast enough for her to get to AbsolutPetrol Central.

     “You … you’re going to have to kill me quickly if you want to make it. Don’t forget to take my retinas with you, or the suit won’t work and you won’t be able to get into Central.”

     He sputtered and coughed again, but there wasn’t anything left to say.

     She stood over him, motionless except for the wind blowing through her sweat- and blood-stained hair. A sliver of the moon appeared from behind a cloud.

     “Thank you,” she said, tears on the brims of her lower eyelids reflecting the boulder she had picked up to smash his head in. “Time to die.”

     He smiled. For the first time that he could remember, Ravi was not afraid to go into the dark. Especially now that he knew the leaders at Central would be headed there shortly as well. He had a few bones to pick with them.

THE END

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