Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Totalled ❯ Side Effects ( Chapter 5 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Chapter 5 Side Effects
 
I felt the back of my head hit the carpeted floor hard. I should have been dead. Siren crouched by my head. Dumbly I stared up at her, just now realizing that she had used an electrical inhibitor. "The Re-Eds said that your replacement lasted so long was that you didn't want to break out of it. What's it like, Stephen? What's it like hating yourself so much that you would rather live as a simulation somebody made up rather than as the human that you are?"
I just laid there feeling the pain of my fall. If I had wanted to say anything, it would have been a useless gesture. "The moral's code you've got allows you to enforce the laws not to safeguard them the way they need to be. All the original re-education officers are gone, so the Re-ed's are just going to repeat the process the best they can. It was too bad that Trooper Anderson blew up the High Commissioner*s mansion * the boys could have just picked up your disk and popped it back in. You could have been out in three days. I won*t lie to you Stephen. It will be painful...but then you want it to be that way don't you. Tell Harry, I look forward to getting to know him better after all this is over. As for the big why, Stephen....it's just because the Re-Ed wanted to see if it could be done."
She walked out of my line of vision. Red legs and surgical coats came in, hauling me onto a gurney and carting me out of the building. The trip was taken quickly and quietly. No one in suburbs would have known that this simple black van was the terror wagon - the eraser of dreams - the eater of souls. I wanted to cry. Tears were allowed but that was it. I watched locked in paralysed dread as my death squad wheeled me down into the lower levels. Red coats swarmed around me like little worker ants. They picked me up and carried me over to the cold Table. Icy metal bit into my wrists, ankles, upper thighs, chest and finally across my neck. A frosty woman stepped up, her white hair piled in mounds on her head, and pressed a deactivator to my forehead. The numbness and feebleness fell away as the Table hummed to life below me.
 

"What's the chart?"
"It's a Booster with a little twist.." The white woman mouthed back, flashing a small light in my eyes, checking for dilation. "Call up files - Milton, Harry. Access Siren*s specs. It's been a while since you had this shot, sweetheart. It's going to hurt you for a real long time." She looked down at me with the same regard as a high primate on a termite. "Any last words?"
"You can*t kill me...you need me. You want IA, I*ll fraggin show you how IA should be run. You*re nothing to me. Siren is nothing compared to terror I am. I*ll fragging light the world. You won*t kill me, cause you need someone like me. No, no, no... don*t do this... I want to stay here. Don*t DO THIS! Milton*s a fraggin pussy...no, no no....NO*
My arm flared with agony as the white haired woman stabbed me with a hypo. *I*ll burn you, bitch* Hot anger ripped through me. In my mind's eye I could see this entire complex alight with fire. The colours that would light the nights sky. I tensed and fought the bounds.
*You first sweety. Clear!" She stepped back just as I started screaming.
 
 
It was raining, as usual, in the inner city. I stared out at the remains of it's decay, as welts from acid residue burnt into the windscreen of my patrol car. The fragile looking girl, Eleanor Healchak, sat beside me looking out at the rain, seeing something other than the rocky slab we had come all the way out here to visit. She was tougher than she looked. A wisp of a girl with enough knowledge of human nature to make even me blush. Still, right now she looked like she wanted to be somewhere else than here.
"We can turn around if you want." I offered, reaching for a pack of smokesticks. The scratch of the match head on the box was like music to my ears. The brightness of the flame flare up and the dimming of the aftermath a peak and valley in less than a second. I touch the head to my stick and drew the smoke into my lungs. The newer smokesticks had the built in self lighters but I preferred this old century way. It was like music to my senses.
"It would be a waste of fuel." She snapped the door opened and climbed out into the stinging rain.
I paused for a moment then hoisted myself out of the car. I flipped the smoke away in the rain, pulled my regulation slicker tight and slapped my helmet on then followed her up to the cemetery. There, lazered into the plaque drilled into the faded white marble headstone, was the name Edward Healchak.
"Eddie wanted out so bad. He made it." She pulled out a ragged weed that she had picked from between the cracks of the pavement in the inner city. She laid it against the plaque as if it were a dozen orchids.
"How many credits per year to keep him here?"
"84. I'll get it somehow."
"You're not a partygirl anymore. Your foster parents might pay for it."
"Right." She hunched her thin shoulders against the drizzle, "None of the 'burbs will want anything to do with a dead inner city prostitute and male at that. If you think otherwise, T-man, you've been programmed." She traced the letters on the plaque then rose suddenly, "I'm ready to go. You got a visitor."
 

Propped against the transport was a brown haired woman. "Stay here." I headed back toward the car. Mist steam was rising up from the ground were the acid rain burnt against the asphalt. The woman at the car was tall and solidly built. The umbrella she held over her long brown tresses dripped steam at the edges. Cool blue eyes looked me over then a smile transformed her plain face into something beautiful.
"Can I assist you, Miss?"
Her smile froze, "Hal?"
"Do I know you?"Those eyes traced over my face then the shoulders dropped down into a sigh.
"No, sorry...I mistook you for someone I once knew."
"Do you need a ride somewhere, ma*am?"
"No, my vehicle's nearby. Thank you, Trooper." She turned and walked away, disappearing into the mist cover. Eleanor came up to the transport.
"Someone special?" One eyebrow was tilted up in a knowing manner.
I looked back into the mist where she had vanished, "I don't know. Get in, we've got to get you back to juvi before nightfall." And I had a fancy shmancy dinner to get dressed up for with Heather by 1800 hours. Didn*t like being late for a date with her * she had a thing about punctuality.
"Still don't know why you're doing this, T-man." She stared at me with those adult eyes. She was genuinely puzzled over my excessive friendship. I could tell her that it was guilt over that fact that her brother was here in this bone yard because I moved my surveillance too slowly. That somehow I lost a huge chunk of time after getting nailed with a lead pipe by the traitorous bitch who was supposed to have been my partner. Everybody on the Force says I*m lucky to be walking and talking after an attack like that, but then Eleanor was from the inner city, just like me - she knew the score. Something things happen and there is nothing you can do about it, but just lick your wounds and continue on.
I lit another smokestick as I keyed the ignition, "It's just the right thing to do."