990

there is no person left in this body

The semi-recycled air sings of sorrow. It is visceral and difficult to explain to anyone who hasn't grown up in City 990. The singing originates from a choir, the members of which scatter themselves all around City 990.

Baritones: dropped voices better left unsaid in rotten rusted corners where the patrols never fins anyone but still somehow the dust never settles; illicit deals timed to the millisecond by masterminds who usually aren't entirely human by composition. The lights of the patrols sweep by, but even the ghosts are be gone by the time the light leaks into the alleys.

Tenors: 990 itself. Lowish humming of old maglevs and thirsty infrastructure that seems to drink in more energy than is put into it. This isn't entirely true--physics says no--but it isn't exactly untrue, either.

Altos: the breath of life, the human and semi-human and living things as they continue to exist.

Sopranos: glass breaking under the red light hour, the high remark of metal wire cutters against a metal latter as the--

--a solo gasp to add to the sopranos. Hiss of pain. This is not a place for hundred percenters. Sil's percentage was at around ninety-seven percent, but still. Close enough that his lungs very clearly make him aware that this was not a place for life; every breath feels redder than blood and screams in fire and knives.

Sil moves forward a step, and then another. and--

Chhhck. Exposed wire.

Sil pulls back his hand, lets out a whimper, tries not to reel too hard. hopes it mingles with the low hum of machinery that permeates the place like indigo smoke in a high-end voydhouse. Knows it doesn't; too high pitch, too pathetic, too human.

He's in a cramped room--nowhere to run. the exposed wire was good, in a way; it means he's on the right path, still on his way to electrical. that's the plan, but there can be no plan if he's caught before he can even find the main generator.

Darkness on one side, but Sil feels old rusted plumbing and a nest of tangled wires that grows as he creeps forward. So close, he thinks.

A gruff voice: "Did you hear that?"

But on the other side: light comes through a mesh grate that looks into the receiving area, the best-lit place in the building, though that didn't say much. There's a glass desk near the back, in front of which is an array of clear blocky chairs that's arranged in an attempt at a square. All glass, or glass-looking. The room's about wide enough for seven or eight people to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, but the all the glass and white walls--save the grating, though it's painted white on the side opposite Sil--made it seem more spacious. And the grating itself? Cost-cutting: most buildings in 990 were repurposed from something else, and Sil suspected that the real money had been spent on the resurrection and preservation chambers, as well as the walls that protected said chambers and the complex machinery they required. Extra electrical sticking into the receiving room? Just add mesh, paint it white. No need to waste the extra insulation.

The man behind the counter tilts his head and listens, before addressing the other person, whose back is mostly turned to sil so that all he sees is a tangled mass of brown hair sprayed across a drab striped shirt or dress or long garment that sil can't make sense of. The client in the striped shirt is holding something--someone--shaking the body periodically as she begs:

"Please. He was all I had. I can't go on. I can't. Give me the numbers for anyone. I will kill a child if it means getting my son back."

The man behind the counter leans forward, looking up at the distraught mother. "This...thing has begun to rot. Our limit is eight hours. That's the standard. I can't do anything after that. I'm sorry."

"No!" She shakes the body again. "It's been seven! I swear! the smell--it's just, we don't live in the nicest place, see, and--"

He cuts her off: "I have seen a lot of bodies in all states of decay. I'm sorry, but he's dead. Yes, we could make him walk and talk--"

"Then do it!"

"He'd be some sort of macabre puppet. Ma'am, there is no person left in this body. I can't do anything for you."

"But you can make him come back!"

He takes her hands, and slowly he moves her arms from under her dead son's back and knees so that the corpse drops to the cold gray floor with a quiet thud, his neck twisting further than it should so that Sil bears the brunt of his dark dead stare.

"There is no person left in this body," he says, gently this time. "We will take him, and we will cremate him, but we cannot bring him back. It's time to let go."

"I--I--can't--"

"You can. You will. Say, 'Goodbye.'"

She leans down, rights his head, closes his eyes, and says something that Sil can't hear. Then she straightens up.

"Go," the resurrectionist says.

Her tangled hair bobs up and down as she nods. She turns and Sil sees that her eyes are red and ripe for tears, but before any can fall, she slinks out of the room and back into the gut of 990.

The ressurrectionist looks over his shoulder. "Marcel," he calls. The door to the right of the desk opens.

"She gone?" a raspy voice asks.

"Yeah." He nods to the body. "Take this to the pits."

"Yessir. Is it...diseased?"

"The hell should I know?" His voice is no longer soft.

Marcel--door starts to close, but the ressurrectionist says, "Oh, and check electrical. I think we might have rats."

Marcel pauses. "That wouldn't be good."

"No, it wouldn't. Thanks, Marcel."

The door closes, but Sil could swear that the ressurrectionist's blue eyes linger on the grate.

"Who're you trying to bust out then? Or kill?" He's definitely looking at Sil now, who's frozen, the device in his hand pulling him down.

He steps back, touches the wire again, stifles the yelp this time, but it doesn't matter. It's too late.

But maybe he can finish this.

Sil shakes his head and lurches forward, not caring how much noise he's making. Praying that a stray pipe or wire doesn't cross his path, Sil runs into the dark, until the light that leaks from the recieving room is distant dream and the only glow comes from the electrical equiptment that surrounds him.

Blue light blue light blue light. Sil looks around, seeing red, green, yellow--

--blue.


There's a flash of light from a distant hall as a nearby door opens and closes. Sil freezes. A handheld light clicks on. The beam gets closer until--

Agin, he rushes forward. Sil hears a shout but all he sees is the blue light and the thick bundle of cables and the box of the generator and the small black rectangle that he dislodges from the main body, replacing it with the device in his hand, which melts itself to the generator and Marcel is still shouting and the running footsteps get louder.

And Sil takes the old device--a power input regulator--and throws it across the room, hearing it crack against the hard floor. He runs back toward the dark, toward the grate--

He feels an arm around his throat and knows it's too late.
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first in awhile. let me know what you think.