e chat [muted, password enabled]

19 Aug 20xx

<AG> if anyone’s even still here, I have good news at last
<AG> found some unexpected support. There are some young people interested in the cause
<AG> theyre better than i thought. Anyone in mainline want to help?
<E> are you using what’s left?
<E> please dont. Can’t expose anyone else. Its not safe anymore. There are countermeasures
<E> please let the matter rest

20 August 20xx

<E> please can we talk
<E> please answer
<E> I’ll send someone
<E> this cant happen. say something please

–

Someone was ringing the doorbell and knocking rapidly, at the same time.

Shuddering awake from some unwelcome dream, Sao took a minute to orientate himself. He had been lying in a fetal position, curled tight as a vice. His shoulders felt like their bones had been folded in.

He straightened, gingerly, thrust a hand into his closet for a serviceable pair of pants, and bumbled his way to the front door. Daylight was blazing through his curtains, but he had no idea what time it was. While undoing the locks he spotted the leftovers of Saturday’s dinner - a rather disappointing vegetable soup - still on the stove. It was Sunday, then.

He wedged the door open, with the chain still in place. Just beyond the crack was Rai. He seemed electrified, red-rimmed eyes bulging like a frog’s. His gloveless hands flickered; in one nearly-white fist he gripped his phone. He deflated slightly when he saw Sao. “Oh, good.”

A strange greeting. Sao unchained the door for him. “Is everything alright, Rai?”

“The hell. I’ve been trying to call you all morning. I thought something happened.” Rai slouched in, and threw himself onto one of the dining chairs.

“Is there an emergency? I hadn’t-” He remembered the phone swap of Friday evening. “Ah - I didn’t tell you yet - I changed phones.”

“What, and numbers?”

“Yes. I sent my old phone for inspection, the Neocam cache, I think I said? It’ll likely be back before Monday. I have a replacement for now. Sorry I didn’t tell you.”

“You sent it – oh.” Rai raked his hands over his face, pulling sweat-soaked hair down over his eyes and nose. He looked like he’d emerged from a swamp. “But, right. I’m bugging you on your weekend.”

“I wasn’t doing much to begin with.” To show there were no hard feelings, Sao went to prepare some coffee for them both. “I only have instant coffee powder.”

Rai was on his feet again when Sao returned to the table. The gloves were back on, and ready to receive coffee. “Are you still feeling off?” Rai took a swig. “You don’t look so great.”

“I seldom do when I’ve just woken up.” Sao leaned against the nearby cabinet. The motion made him slightly dizzy, head swirling with remnants of his dream. The details were lost down that mental drain all dreams seem to flow toward and he hoped the queasy aftertaste would be next to go. “Did you just drop by for a wellness check?”

“Kinda glad I did.” Rai gave a mock salute with his mug.

“Cheers to good health, then,” Sao laughed.

For a ridiculous moment, Sao thought Rai might break into laughter too. There was something strangely pleasant about the whole scenario. Guests were a rarity. And Rai had already seen him with his scar-laden face uncovered - in less comfortable circumstances of the past, but this was the payoff - Sao didn’t feel the immediate need to scuttle to the bathroom for his pastes and powders.

Nothing to be afraid of. How nice it was to feel that way, especially around others.

There were times past where such a notion would be unconscionable. How things changed. For the better, he appended onto that thought.

But this was Rai. Pleasantries only lasted as long as his coffee. Lapping up the last drops, Rai exhaled sharply and leveled a classic glare Sao’s way. “Seriously, now: there was a report earlier today about another zombification. Kind of. I came because I thought you should know, but couldn’t reach you. Care to have a look?”

–

Sunday made good on the threat that was its name. It was a day for the sun, and absolutely nothing else if that unholy ball of fire had its way. The highway looked very dark under the white hot sky; white hot everything, earth burned to a crisp beneath. It wasn’t a long drive but Sao felt his newly-applied face disintegrating in the heat by the time the car stopped next to the nondescript apartment building. The street was hidden under an ominous shadow cast by the nearby bridge, the bridge he typically saw from a distance at Rai’s office. A handful of news reporters were taking refuge in the shade.

It was a walk-up, poorly ventilated. Sao and Rai were soaked by the time they reached the third floor. The stale, cramped yellow hall was being manned by police officers, setting up tape and ferrying items out. As they entered the apartment, a woman on a stretcher half covered in blanket was being moved toward the stairs. Rai asked the pathologist behind the stretcher if the victim had been identified.

“Her name’s Aquila G_____. She’s alive, if you were wondering, in a manner of speaking,” a pause, it seemed, as a precaution. “Thanks to the E34 in her.”

Sao cocked his head. “It’s common knowledge now,” Rai explained curtly. “We can talk to her later.”

“It may not be up to you,” warned the pathologist. “She hasn’t been responsive to any attempts to wake her.”

The unconscious woman looked to be in her fifties, muscular, with a thick neck and broad shoulders. She had dark brown hair (dyed; with white roots) and a hard, bruised face, thin from starvation but the bony cheek and jawline were bulging with blackened veins. She was breathing, roughly, inflating and deflating a familiar-looking black bulb protruding from a deep gash in her neck. A cut that would have killed her.

“From the state of the… remains, as well as the food found in her kitchen, she was attacked at least five days ago. Considering the injuries, she must have received the drug within minutes after the attack, or she wouldn’t have lived. And for the remaining days, she was left here… waiting.”

The sheet was tugged aside, revealing down to waist level. Sao winced. Her left arm was missing, from the elbow down. A fairly clean cut at the end was patched up with a congealed layer of E34 as they’d seen with Orchid’s neck wound. Her right arm, however, was intact or at least attached. The forearm as well as the outer shoulder was marked by a storm of slashes and deep stab wounds.

“Defensive wounds. There was a fight, and the attacker used a large, sharp implement. Unfortunately, we couldn’t locate the weapon,” the pathologist told them.

A nearby aide held up a large bag containing the detached left arm, the ‘remains’. The dead fingers were held up in a stiff imitation of a wave, the skin had turned a mottled purple on one side. “The neighbors called about the smell - it came from this.”

“The dismembered arm isn’t preserved,” Rai muttered. “No E34. Guess that’s the giveaway that she got the dose after the attack.”

Around the inner elbow of Aquila’s remaining arm, there was a wide, charcoal-black stain with darkened veins fanning out like a spider’s web. It pulsated with alchemic energy, but didn’t protrude as much as the growth on her neck.

“We found a 12-slot pill sheet containing a black powdered substance, but she was injected with a solution into the inside of the arm, where the black mark formed. The powder was dissolved over a makeshift cooker. It’s bagged on the floor over there.”

The apparatus was unnerving in its simplicity. There was only a syringe and a large metal spoon, crusted with a charred-looking residue.

Sao looked to Aquila, felt intrusive, and looked back to the syringe. Not much better. “She couldn’t have prepared it on her own. The mark being where it is, it would mean delivering an injection using an arm that had no hand. Someone else helped her.”

“The attacker changed their mind?” Rai frowned. “Does it look like anything was taken?”

The pathologist and aide pulled the blanket back up to Aquila’s neck, just over the black bulb. “Hard to tell, there are a lot of papers lying around, if someone was interested in those. Wallet had a chunk of cash and all the cards left in; it’s how we identified her. Her computer’s here, but it’s not exactly in working order...”

“No more pills were found?” Rai asked.

The answer was no.

The stretcher begin a long, precarious journey down the stairs. And to the hospital. She wasn’t dead - but the thought wasn’t as much of a relief as Sao wanted it to be. Ungrateful, he thought to himself. He stopped the pathologist duo again, just as they hit the first landing. “Do you think she’ll be alright?”

The pathologists blinked at each other, then at Aquila, who lay prone and unaware, but seemed to be frowning, as if she detested all of this. Detested him for keeping her waiting. Sao didn’t blame her. She’d been waiting five days already; in the stuffy summer heat, immobile and alone.

“We don’t know. But she should get to the hospital as soon as possible.”

Thanking them, Rai cast a final nervous glance at Aquila, and motioned Sao to enter the little apartment.

They surveyed what looked like a home office that had just been hit by a hurricane.

There were numerous filing cabinets and shelves, packed with faded folders and stapled stacks. Rather, the shelves had been packed with such things before being upturned, knocked around, stepped on, and so on. There was Aquila’s desk, a pricey piece with an adjustable-height base that had resisted any tipping, but its contents hadn’t been as secure. Around and under the desk lay a printer, computer tower and monitor, their wires ripped and casings smashed, tiny metal and plastic shards strewn like glitter. The screen had hit the reinforced table leg and folded in half.

“Do you think she…” Sao himself wasn’t quite sure what he should hope for.

Rai picked up the slack for him. “Was one of the Neocam girls? I looked up Aquila G_____; she doesn’t have an account, or doesn’t use her real name on the site.” Rai picked up a few of the fallen files and flipped through them. “As for the other aspects of the pattern, I’m pretty confident in saying this wasn’t a suicide attempt.”

“A robbery, then?”

“A real violent robbery.” Rai continued to paw at the carpet of loose files. “Although, someone did save her with that rushed infusion. I assume that’s why they went with a jury-rigged injection setup. To get it all in quicker than pills were going to. I mean, she wouldn’t be able to swallow after what they did to her…”

“Why would the attacker cut her arm and throat, then save her? Perhaps someone different came along after the fact. The person or persons with the pills - the distributor.”

“Yeah, that makes more sense. But why would an attacker or a savior come here at all?” Rai paused at a patch of papers that were stained in blood, but snapped them up anyway.

A little further into the apartment, in front of the bathroom, some forensics officers were inventorying a large rifle and its multitude of accessories, as well as a boxy beige jacket.

“She had a gun. And that’s a uniform - she was military?” Sao asked quietly.

“Wait a minute. G_____, that’s a name I’ve seen… just a sec.” Rai slapped the papers down on the desk with a thunderous clap (as he was wont to do, even in an office that wasn’t his) yanked off one of his gloves with his teeth, and went to work on his phone. Sao continued his filing work for him, kneeling and collecting a stack of folders.

He saw a number of sheets with legal letterheads on them, and many addressed to the offices of the Central Courthouse.

“I knew it. Blase G_____, low-ranking soldier and E34 test subject, plaintiff in one of the early lawsuits we talked about,” Rai said. “The one that was based on a misunderstanding - it ended with him being taken for remedial care that he didn’t know he qualified for all along. His sister, referred to in the report as A.G., was a joint plaintiff. She claimed to have been a covert agent for the military.”

“A spy? How did this figure into the case?”

“It wasn’t exactly relevant. She only revealed herself and resigned from her post so she could support her brother. He came back from overseas with a busted leg and a damaged lung. It had been a dangerous campaign; weapons recall. Courts ruled his injuries unrelated to E34.” Rai lowered his phone. “When reading through the reports, I kinda thought it sounded like she outed herself specifically to get more eyes on the case.”

“So in a manner of speaking, she was a social influencer, like our modern set.” Sao set down the substantial pile of folders in his arms with a wheeze. “There are a lot of legal documents in this place.”

“About what? There really weren’t too many available to read on the original case.” Rai shuffled through the topmost folder, then the next. “Hang on - these are from the fall of that year - after the case was dismissed…”

“There are some here from December. The months are in the little tabs at the top of the folders.” Sao scooped up a dozen more. “She must have had a number of projects.”

Rai was flipping through the files like a machine as Sao handed them to him, and reading them about as fast. “All these are about her brother. And E34. She wasn’t too happy with the closing of the original case. Here: ‘I believe the Central Army is in fact not treating the subject for release and has detained him in an unspecified location against the will of his family.’ And, ‘no specifications of treatment have been shared with the families.’”

“I see. This convenient ‘remedial care’ was what absolved the military of any guilt in regards to the missteps of E34, but it wasn’t clear what exactly they were doing as treatment. I can see why she’d be upset.”

Rai closed the folder, a dark crease forming on his damp forehead. “I didn’t see any follow-up cases like this when I was searching the court records. Maybe these were just drafts. Or maybe these later cases never made it to the courts.”

“Could be that she gave up. Did her brother ever finish his treatment?”

Sao (and a few of the remaining forensic workers) swiveled in alarm as Rai dropped loudly to his knees. He pawed around the floor like a rabbit, scraping up folders without reading the contents, only checking their covers briefly before slapping them on the desk. There were a few folders on a shelf that hadn’t been overturned, and he scrabbled through those as well. Finally, he yanked out a folder from under the fallen computer. “Okay, now we’re talking. This is the most recent folder I’ve found so far.”

He stood back up and began devouring its contents. “It’s… practically all the same thing.”

Sao cocked his head to see the top of the folder. “The folder’s dated just earlier this year.”

“Almost ten years of queries. She never gave up. I’m guessing her brother just never came back.” He slapped it shut and put it on top of the pile they’d amassed. “I’ll say it does look pretty bleak for Mr Blase. Maybe it was too late for him, he reacted badly to the treatment, or something. And nobody let her know what happened.”

“Coverup?”

“She definitely suspected something was being withheld. This attack could have been retaliation, if some army bigwigs thought she was involved in the pills resurfacing.” Rai glanced at the mean-looking rifle being moved out of the room. “Assuming she really was a trained agent, Aquila would have been decent in combat. She did put up a fight. It may have been a pro who took her out.”

“And…” Sao paused. “She could have had the skills to inject herself one-handed? Or, had an ally come to help?”

“We’re back to the pills, again. Where the hell are they coming from? Was she the distributor? Did she know one? And if remedial treatment exists, what can we do to get that for the people who have already taken them?”

“We need to know more about the experiment, in general. Perhaps we can find a test subject who completed treatment, or a doctor who worked on the project? We don’t need the stuff ourselves. If the supply is all used up, that’s good news - no more zombifications. We only need a little more insight as to how the existing victims could possibly recover.”

Rai scanned over the ransacked room again, looking drained. His eyebags were E34-shade of zombified dark, and seemed to have deepened. He made some vague gesture and turned to look out the window, at the sun, away from Sao and papers and chaotic remains of a devoted life. It occurred to Sao that he was resting, and he needed a break. Sao wondered if he’d worked all weekend. He really wasn’t sure what Rai did on his days off besides work. For recreation, he might run a movie on a second screen… while he spun away at his audits. He didn’t even sleep, no more than an hour a week, if Sao recalled. It was one of the few substantial ways he’d found to use his Life Fountain aura.

But even if he was capable of staying awake for protracted periods, it was unsettling he felt he needed to. Sao wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t as if Sao had any experience living as a Life Fountain. Perhaps it was his own laziness that had him recoiling, not an actual sense of sympathy. It wasn’t Sao’s business to be concerned with how Rai used his time.

Sao pretended to check his phone for a bit.

After a few minutes, Rai spoke. “If we’re going to connect with old survivors, having all Aquila’s files on hand could be an unexpected win. I’ll bet she got in touch with as many of the subjects’ families as possible on her mission.”

“Definitely a good place to start.” Sao took that as his cue to peruse the folders a bit more.

Wearily, Rai pulled out his gloves and began to pull them back over his hands.

Sao nearly jumped out of his skin when, once again, Rai slammed down to his knees. He thought Rai had collapsed. But that wasn’t even close to the case. Clawing about, Rai shoved aside the shattered computer monitor and its wires and gave the desk a hard push with his shoulder that moved it only slightly. That was enough.

He surfaced with a battered cell phone, the corner of its casing striped with blood. “Though I saw something shining under there.”

“Good eye,” Sao said. His words came out shaky.

Placing the phone on a pile of papers, Rai tapped the screen awake. They were faced with a fingerprint scan to unlock it.

With renewed vigor, Rai bolted for the stairs.

—

Having made it down the stairs just minutes earlier, Aquila was now the medical van, still grimacing in unnatural slumber. The aides strapped her down securely for the ride, but Rai was able to graze the phone with the index finger of her still-attached hand.

“Thank you,” he said breathlessly. Sao liked to think he’d meant it for Aquila’s ears too.

Under the glare of the sun, which was coming around the top of the bridge now, a relatively generic selection of icons slid into view.

“Look at that. She had Neocam after all,” Rai muttered. The app opened to reveal an empty account with a username composed of random letters and numbers. Huffing, he closed it.

Her call and message logs were entirely empty, excepting some solicitation for ‘free food’, ‘free trips’ and the most emphatically and emoticon-laden, ‘free money’. After giving the ads a thorough staredown, Rai closed out and went for an unfamiliar icon. What opened was a doppelgänger of the generic phone interface he’d just closed.

“It’s one of those encrypted chat applications,” Rai explained. “Not surprising that an ex-covert agent would opt for this instead of default phone calls, even for casual use.” He panned to a list of messages. “Aquila wasn’t too social. She was just part of one chat group.”

The enigmatically titled ‘e talk’ was password-protected. They could however see from the list preview that it had updated somewhat recently.

“So much for that. Well, aside from the group, she had one singular friend. No name, though.”

The one-to-one dialogue with said friend was not locked. A drop of sweat hit the screen. Rai wiped it, leaving a grimy trail over the sparse clump of messages from one ‘deactivated user’. All sent exactly a week ago.

Thank you very much for your help and sorry for troubling you.

See for your reference:

What followed the apologetic brief was a list of names and details.

Jasmine M___, and Hazel V______, with phone numbers only.

Orchid J____, phone and address.

And Maya L____, phone and address.

The next message, orchid for tuesday eve. Further arrangement to be confirmed

The final message was, I think you will like them.

“Maya,” Sao breathed. “This was what we needed when we were looking for her.”

“We didn’t stop looking.” Rai dropped his hands and narrowed his eyes, facing skyward. Challenging the sun. “Seems like Ms Aquila was doing more than just obsessing over her brother’s case.”

“Seeing as her brother and the women on the list are connected by E34, it could have been related.”

“Tuesday eve is exactly when Orchid made her attempt. Looking at the order of the list, Maya could be next - for the pills, to take her own life, neither outcome looks too hot. Maybe there was more in that secret chat group. Ugh. I wish we could just talk to this lady. It kills me that I gotta turn this phone in with the other evidence. If a coverup is going on… we’ll, let’s get a snapshot before it conveniently vanishes too.” Rai took out his own phone, took a picture. “I’ll send this to you. But…” Rai gave an exaggerated huff. “You haven’t told me your new number.”

“Oh. Just a minute.” Sao pulled out his new burner phone. Although he’d been told it was his to keep, he handled it carefully; he couldn’t help but think of Hro when he looked at it. With Hro you tread delicately, or risk getting bitten.

“Yeah, yeah, you show your new toy off.”

“I’m worried about leaving sweaty fingerprints.”

“As I said…”

Sao smiled. He read the number off.

Rai read it back to confirm.

By the time they hopped back into Rai’s car, the ambulance had long gone, as had the reporters Sao spotted when they came in.

High above, the traffic on the bridge howled, as if in pain from the sun’s spearing rays. But the shady streets around them were unusually quiet. When they had left, it dawned on Sao how eager he’d been to leave.

—

The bubble of enthusiasm didn’t quite burst but instead slowly deflated as reality made itself known. They had Maya’s full name, her phone number, and her home address - but they hadn’t found her.

The first indicator of failure was that calls to her number were not picking up.

When Rai rammed his finger at the doorbell to her terraced unit for the fiftieth time, hope had dissipated, any droplets evaporated by the ferocious heat.

Rai pressed his face to the door as if trying to sneak through the sealing. “Well, I don’t hear anyone. Or smell anything.”

Thinking of Aquila’s decomposing arm, Sao’s gag reflex tightened. “Might she just be out for the moment?”

The old couple who lived in the neighboring unit supplied something of an answer. “She’s a conscientious girl, she wouldn’t be back without telling us,” said the wizened man. “We’re watching her pet fish. She moved the tank over before she left. Said she’d be away a while, family matters to attend to. She’s been gone almost a week now.”

Sao didn’t like the sound of ‘gone.’

“Would you have her phone number?” Rai asked.

They did, but it matched the disconnected line pulled from Aquila’s messages. The couple were apologetic.

The old woman seemed to be shriveling in the heat. Sao was eager to let her shut the door, but she clung to the frame even as her husband withdrew. “You don’t mean to say Maya’s in any trouble?”

“We’re just looking to interview her at the moment,” Rai said. “We think she might have seen something relating to another case. Let us know if she comes back.”

Sao was down the steps and trying to fit himself into the small patch of shade afforded by a lamppost. But Rai lingered at the door, staring down the old woman.

“Has her girlfriend come by anytime recently?” Rai asked suddenly.

The old woman pressed herself to the doorframe, looked the street up and down, then stuck her considerable neck out to whisper directly to Rai’s face. The voice that came, however, was anything but subdued. “Not since the fight. There was an enormous, blowout fight, dishes thrown and one of her fishes was even killed! Thrown into the street in retaliation. Sobbing for days coming from the house afterward… I never saw the other girl again after she stormed out that final night. I expect they broke up.”

“Huh. So this was recent?”

Rai’s ambivalence was a letdown for the old woman. “Oh, no. It happened last year. Near the holidays. The dead fish became frozen to the ground, it was horrible... I suppose the truth, then, is there were no recent visits as Miss Maya doesn’t have a girlfriend. Not anymore.”