03:07 AM
The dank odor of the interrogation cell proved worse than Reiner remembered. He typed an override into the door panel, placing the cell sensors and cameras on standby. He tried to look occupied with a case pad for a moment while he fumbled internally with his neuro-feed.
Transmit. There. Such a simple command to stream his vision and auditory to a private data dock.
“How’s your head?” Wynn asked pleasantly. His own injuries had completely vanished. Reiner did not like the new eagerness in the man's demeanor.
“Shut your mouth,” he snapped. He instantly wished the words back. The boys on night watch were looking the other way, indignant when Reiner hinted he wouldn’t be commended for the arrest. More broken rules than he could count to question the Culler like this, he needed to stay calm. Nursery. Think of the nursery you'll build for Lisa. He forced his face to stillness while Wynn peered at him curiously.
“Your name is Maddix Wynn?” The man nodded. “You’re a member of the terrorist group known as the Cullers?”
“So it would appear. Please, call me Maddix.” The hollow friendliness made Reiner's skin crawl.
“Why were you trying to sabotage the neuro-spectacle tonight? Hundreds of thousands of people were there. Innocent, law abiding citizens of the City.”
Silence. Reiner tried another tact. “You mean to preserve the biosphere, the environment?”
“There are twelve billion people on this planet, detective...?” Reiner knew better than to give his name. “The Earth is quite capable of sustaining us all. I doubt it will miss the absence of a few thousand souls.”
“You stand against the Cities, then?”
“Of course not. They perform their functions quite well. Perhaps too efficiently.” Wynn studied him with calculating gray eyes. “You hold the look of a family man. A protector. An admirable and necessary trait for a peace officer.”
“What's your point?” Reiner asked gruffly.
“You make decisions every day to preserve life, as do I. We differ only in methods, and perspective.”
Reiner stared at him, incredulous. This interrogation was not progressing as he had hoped. He’d meant to treat this like an interview, instead of pushing for a confession. More material that way. “You’re crazy.”
“No detective, we are both family men.”
“What family man would do this?” Reiner asked. He flicked on the case pad, watched Wynn's face. Not a speck of remorse in the Culler's eyes as he took in the images of the child’s body. Reiner himself struggled not to heave up the contents of his stomach. Deep furrows marked where the boy’s eyes had been, bruises and slashes covered his body. The wounds demonstrated a sick need to inflict pain.
“A sight to make any father weep.” No remorse touched Wynn's voice, either. “Many more fathers shall weep, before my work is done. But for joy, or for sorrow?” He spoke in a crisp and insistent manner. “ I would speak truthfully of the feedback bomb with you, even share where the first one is located. But I must ask something of you first.”
Reiner's breath caught. The first one? Score. “Ask.”
“When is Lisa expecting?”
The wet crack of breaking cartilage echoed in the cell before Reiner realized what he’d done. He held the Culler's shirt in one fist, his right drawn back for another blow.
“How did—” Memory of the phantom clicks surged over Reiner. “You hacked my neuro-feed!” How long? Since the interrogation cell? He couldn’t remember when the clicks first started. Or was it when they stopped?
“It’s a rather naked feeling, at first,” Wynn said, inches from Reiner's face. The man spoke so calmly, indifferent to the red trickle snaking down his lips and chin. “But please Detective Reiner, we must be completely honest with each other. You already plan to cleave open your mind, by your own hand.”
“What are you—”
Wynn's eyes lost their focus for a moment. A horrible rasping sound sprouted from the Culler's throat. Reiner loosened his grip, in alarm. The next voice to issue from the Culler's lips didn’t belong to Maddix Wynn at all. “Do you know how much I could make from a recorded interrogation?”
“Stop that,” Reiner mumbled. His own voice sounded like sin to his ears.
The man's Grey eyes glazed over once more, and the larynx writhed in Wynn's throat. A perfect rendition of Harrison's low voice filled the cell.
“Great idea, except our job isn't this damned exciting most nights.”
“Shut up!”
The Culler blinked, and this time his voice was his own. “You mean to sell your neuro-feed to the masses. Ingenious. And lucrative, I imagine.”
“Stay out of my head. Do you hear me?” Hearing the Culler speak normally again allowed Reiner to regain some composure. The worst of it was that he had no way to tell if the hack was still active.
“You’re a provider, and a man of vision. Perhaps enough vision to grasp the lesser repository.” The Culler nodded to himself, considering. “Your regrowths, your life as a peace officer place you in a unique position to see what so many do not. I daresay you were fated to capture me tonight.”
“I should’ve never come in here,” Reiner muttered. A sociopath tapped into his thoughts, his neuro-feed conversations. No wonder he was smiling while Reiner and Harrison talked. Could the Culler relay instructions to more of his kind? Reiner started for the door.
“Your salary is pathetic. Surely, you must see this night through. Is your family not worth it?”
“My family isn’t your concern.” He hastily reached for the cell door. “City One can deal with you in the morning.”
Reiner froze as another phantom click sounded in his head. “Ah, detective. That was not the correct response.”
His fingers never reached the keypad. Pain flared at the base of Reiner's skull, shooting into his spine and searing every nerve in his body, thousands of pore-sized fires. His muscles spasmed, fingers contorting his palms wide one moment, convulsing into fists the next. His head spun like a beetle twirled in silk, waiting for the spider's venom to dissolve its guts.
“I won’t let you...” Reiner mumbled as he fell to the floor. Images assailed his mind, overlapped with the interrogation cell. No help would come from the bribed night’s watch, with all the cameras deactivated. Vertigo threatened to black him out.
The Culler watched him dispassionately. “Close your eyes, or the simultaneous feeds will liquefy your brain.”
Reiner squeezed his eyes shut, and the nausea vanished abruptly. The pain wracking his body mercifully began to fade. The images within his head focused.
Red numerals glowed at the bottom of Reiner's vision, reading 03:22:14. He's plugged me into a damned live camera, Reiner thought. He was blind to everything but what Wynn wanted him to see.
“I'm not releasing your restraints. You'll have to—”
“Pay attention.”
He saw a poorly lit room with actual linoleum curling from the floor like the scales of some diseased, ancient serpent. An antique style cell was built into the far end, fashioned from steel bars instead of observation glass. An old building in the under-City, a warehouse perhaps.
Behind the bars, a small shape stirred. A knot formed in Reiner's throat. He felt a sense of the camera focusing, drawing him closer to the movement.
A child.
Chain encircled the young boy's spindly limbs, wrapped so thickly his hands and feet were swallowed in metal. The chains fastened to the cage in such a way that his arms and legs were splayed wide. His chin rested limply on his chest. Reiner guessed him to be eight.
The forced neuro-feed was soundless, but the boy's heaving shoulders suggested sobs. The feed abruptly cut off. Reiner staggered to his feet, overcome with rage.
“What kind of sick—”
“You see now?” The Culler looked at him with mild disappointment. “The signs of the repository weren’t clear to you?”
“Another life you mean to end, family man?” Reiner calmed himsel
f with an effort. He couldn’t prevent the man from taking his neuro-feed hostage again. His voice sounded even. He took a few deep breaths. He was in control.
“Another failed experiment.” Wynn frowned. “Your regrowths are not advanced enough to sync.”
“Don't worry. I'll have the techs flush them out first thing tomorrow,” Reiner retorted. Co-pay be damned, too. He shook his head in disbelief. Harrison’s right—the worst kind of crazy.
“That child? He will expire by tomorrow,” Wynn said. He spoke as though the boy were nothing more than a liter of milk. “He’s not eaten in weeks.”
“Then I better sync Intra-City to get down here right now,” Reiner said. Like you should’ve done in the first place, idiot.
“I won’t speak with them detective. There’s a forty-eight hour hold on torture warrants, plus—”
“How do you know that?”
“—plus, another week or so before I’m broken through those methods.” Reiner gaped. The Culler smiled as he continued. “Perhaps longer. I’ll admit I’m not much of a fighter, as you revealed to my embarrassment. But I assure you, my regrowths make my pain threshold quite high.”
“Is one child so important to a Culler?” Reiner asked.
“Not a child. The lesser repository. I must show it to you. And you only. The location is not far from here.”
Reiner replayed the man's words mentally, scarcely able to breathe. “You mean to tell me the Cullers have been here the whole time? In the City?”
Something cold flitted across Wynn's face. “Yes.”
“Why give yourself up like this?” A cell of the organization, maybe. The entire organization based here, guarding this lessor repository. It was simply too good to be true. “I don't believe you.”
“If you were to examine our activity in this hemisphere, you would see that City Thirty-Eight is a perfect relay point for our...efforts. We purposefully avoid conflict here. If you aren't safe at home, you aren't safe anywhere, yes?”
Reiner glanced at his watch. I've come this far. He took the man’s words for truth, pushing away the voice warning that his own desperation clouded the issue.
The ICD investigators would take time to get here, more time to bicker over jurisdiction with their City One counterparts, while that boy wasted away. I press forward, I'm a hero. A rich hero. I stop now, I'll be in a cell myself.
“The repository will show you the very essence of what it means to be a Culler, detective,” Wynn said. “Your future accolades await.”
“This has nothing to do with my neuro-feed,” Reiner snapped. Wynn looked at him, eyebrow arched. Reiner's face flushed.
“Of course. Information on my bomb. And the boy.”
Reiner looked down at Wynn, heart pounding, his decision made.
“Take me to this repository of yours.”
04:40 AM
The under-City felt strange to Reiner, full of dust and stagnant memory. The mass of City Thirty-Eight pressed down on them from overhead. Millions of lives created a palpable hum in the air. Filthy clouds hid the City towers from the forgotten earth beneath. Forgotten, but not erased.
Reiner stood in the shadow of a scythe-like peristyle, one of the seventy rusting pairs that held the City aloft. The glow of waste refineries in the lower reaches cloaked the crumbling under-City landscape, painting derelict buildings a ghastly orange. No one came down here, except for the dregs who had no place else to go.
The silent chime sounded in Reiner's head just then. He swore softly to himself.
“Are you going to answer that?” Wynn asked, as Reiner pulled him from the black cruiser. Reiner shot him a look. Titanium manacles secured the Culler's hands, restraints similar to what the military used for soldiers who went insane from regrowth overload. It was a small miracle Reiner found this pair at the precinct.“That's Lisa, isn't it?”
“Let's get one thing clear. Her name is not to be brought up again. Understood?”
“Perfectly, detective.”
The Culler started toward the nearest pile of decaying brick. It looked surprisingly deserted, Wynn had warned Reiner to expect dregs here. The Cullers used it for some sort of health clinic, although no two walls stood parallel.
“What is this place?” he asked.
“Hospital.”
Reiner had no idea what that meant, but immediately grew suspicious. “You didn't say anything about that before. You called it a repository.”
“The repository is inside, detective,” Wynn said patiently. He looked disturbed. By the lack of people? Or was he feinting, plotting an ambush to free himself? “We have little time to waste.”
“No games, Wynn. Or I'll finish what I started at the stadium.” Reiner drew his gun for emphasis. “I'm not stupid. If you synced some friends, this will be a painful night for all of you.”
The Culler glanced at the manacles on his hands with a rueful expression. “I believe you wholeheartedly, detective.”
The chime in Reiner's head stopped. Nothing good ever comes of you being out so late. Lisa’s words. She was right. He checked his clip and walked cautiously through a collapsed concrete entryway.
There were a thousand reasons not to go on. The Culler insisted that Reiner alone possessed the necessary regrowths for neuro-feed hacking. The denials made it all the more likely the opposite was true. For the twentieth time, Reiner considered syncing Harrison, and dismissed the idea yet again. Reiner already knew what he would say.
“Oh, what the hell,” he muttered. He activated his neuro-feed.
Transmit.
He stepped through closed double doors, careful to avoid the shattered glass. Wynn followed, warily eying Reiner's gun.
Dust covered everything, and peeling paint sloughed off the walls. The search light on Reiner's gun cast fractured shadows over a room full of brittle looking chairs and a central monitoring station. Halls snaked off in every direction, each one lined with untold doors where dregs could be hiding.
“Which way?” Reiner whispered.
“Forward five meters, the central hallway toward the...nursery. Last door on the left is the holding room.”
They crept forward, Reiner watching the Culler just as closely as the strange hospital. He knew nothing of history before City One, but doubted any healing could occur in this place, now or ever.
A low mewling reached their ears from ahead.
“I've done my part detective,” Wynn murmured. “I must tell you of the lesser repository now, lest you fail to understand.”
“Shh—quiet!” Reiner cut the Culler off. Hope twinged in his chest. He's really here. I'll be a hero. The sound came again, unmistakable this time. The low moaning of a child.
“Detective, please,” Wynn began again, urgency heating his voice.
“Shut up!” Reiner rushed forward recklessly. “Stay there!” He trained his gun on the second door and swept inside.
A wave of déjà vu overcame him immediately. Everything was just as he remembered it. A quick glance above the door frame showed a single red point, where the camera monitored the room's lone prisoner from its perch in the shadows.
“Help...can you help me?” A plaintive voice sounded from the cage ahead. Reiner's heart sank as he made out the child in the gloom. His condition looked even worse in the flesh. Dirt caked his pale skin and his ribs heaved with every breath. The boy could not even lift his head to look toward the door.
“I'm going to get you out of here, kid. Don't worry,” Reiner said. Why so many chains? To scare people who see the feed? He turned to demand answers, but Wynn was fixed on the cage with a strange light in his eyes. The Culler walked forward as though in a trance.
“Stop right there!” Reiner snarled. Should have thought this through, left Wynn in the car. Too many stupid moves. The Culler ignored him, moving closer to the cage. The boy began to wail with fear, flailing limply in the chains.
“Please. Oh please, help!”
Reiner planted himself between Wynn's adva
nce and the cage. Wondering if a clip could even stop a man so laden with regrowths, he aimed a warning shot near the Culler's foot. The bullet sent splinters of dried linoleum flying.
Thankfully, the Culler halted with a weary sigh. “Then I must risk us both, for you to see.”
“Your voice is known among us.”
A miserable expression appeared on the Culler's face. The boy's snuffling instantly ceased. The boy lifted his head to regard them both. Reiner stepped back in spite of himself. Something primal and cold rested in that gaze. Nothing of the terrified child remained.
“What in—”
“Now I must show you my truth, detective.” Wynn smiled and tapped his temple twice, an awkward motion with the manacles sheathing his hands. “It must become your truth now.”
Click. Click. Click.
Oh, no. “ Maddix, wait. You don't—”
Clickclickclickclickclickclick—
“The upload is less painful if you don't speak, detective.” Reiner pointed his gun toward Wynn's voice and squeezed the trigger. Once, twice, then darkness became complete.
05:16 AM
Pressure, distant and ethereal. Charcoal fissures split a blackness of deepest midnight. More pressure, pain. On his chest. Reiner coughed.
“There now.” He heard Wynn's distant sigh of relief. Reiner opened his eyes slowly. The Culler's face came into focus above him.
“What did you do to me?”
The Culler smiled. Reiner hated when he smiled. “I synced you an upgrade. Your neuro-feed unit may make you rich after today, detective, but it’s rather antiquated for my purposes.” His smile faltered slightly. “I didn't think your regrowths would need to be...rebooted.”
“A...reboot? You mean I just...”
The Culler's eyes flickered up. “All a matter of perspective.”
Reiner picked himself up to sit on the floor, ready to throw up. Surprisingly, his gun lay by his side. He snatched it up quickly. The Culler squatted next to him, a crimson spot shown on his thigh. So Reiner had hit him after all. After a moment, he grudgingly holstered his gun. The boy. So young, he must be scared out of his mind with—
“What in the hell!” Reiner scrambled away from the cage until his back pressed into the wall. He gasped for breath, staring. “Wynn! What’s wrong with him?”
The boy's eyes burned with a hungry light, indigo flame licked across his pupils. “Folly touches your every effort, Culler,” the boy said. “Your very nature will consume you in time.”
“My only folly is thinking to learn from you. I ask again creature, where are James and Isham?”
The boy's smile was cold. Too cold for one so young. “Freedom from this world. Your name is whispered within the repository now, Maddix Wynn. Soon you shall be free, too.”
Reiner's head spun. “His eyes...what did you do to my feed?”
“I do not want to speak in front of it.” Wynn beckoned him into the hall. Reiner followed on numbed feet. “I am sorry, I should have taken you to the nursery first.
“We are...limited beings. Limited in numbers, detective.” Wynn glared back into the room for a moment, then walked further down the hall. Reiner followed, sweat clinging to his back. He suddenly wasn’t against the idea of so many chains on the boy.
“Go on.”
“You asked of the Cullers are against the City’s order. We simply recognize there are not enough souls remaining to populate them.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Infant mortality is ancient history.” A lump rose in Reiner’s throat. “Conception happens like clockwork for most people.”
“You make my case for me.” The room they entered looked as if it were plucked from a different building. The space was swept clean, and fabric hung over harsh stand lights to lend a soft glow. Reiner heard a motor running somewhere down the hall, not loud enough to disturb two rows of sleeping infants.
“I didn’t know the dregs had children so...freely.” Taking in the evenly spaced little beds, jealousy coiled around Reiner's heart. Parents should be here, he thought angrily.
“They do, by our hand,” Wynn whispered. He touched every empty bed as he walked past. Out of a dozen palettes, only four infants. “We care for them, but use them to monitor the repository.”
Something finally clicked for Reiner. “We’re not standing in the repository, now.”
“No. An earthly body is, by nature, a vacuum. It must be filled upon conception. There is a...place, that houses our essence, where souls await their time to be born.”
“You’re talking about karma, past lives,” Reiner said, forcing himself to think rationally. “Purgatory or something?”
“All crude ways to perceive the dynamic, but yes. Our repository is dangerously depleted of souls.” Wynn stopped next to one of the infants. “When our essence is exhausted, a lesser repository is then tapped for...souls of a different nature, also awaiting birth.”
“Souls of a different nature,” Reiner repeated. He forced down the fear in his stomach and drew closer. That same eerie blue radiated from the infant’s eyes. The boy regarded him silently, the weight of ages in his stare. Reiner tore his eyes away. “This is a freak show.”
“There should be watchers here, detective,” Wynn said, frowning. “We held more of these soulless ones when I was last here, before I—”
Before you planted your bomb, Reiner finished silently. “Their eyes didn’t look like that before, why?”
“I modified your regrowth so you could see their energies. They must no longer be allowed to walk hidden among us.”
“So...what does this lesser repository do to us? Besides the creeped out eyes?”
“They are not us, detective.” The infant's gaze shifted to Wynn. He avoided looking, too. “Superior strength, advanced intelligence. We do not know what they are. But they are malicious creatures and mean for more of their kind to be born.”
“You Cullers think balancing the population will prevent more of these...Soulless?”
“We see no other way,” Wynn said, nodding. “Knowledge of what I have told you is forgotten since ancient times. We never knew how many human souls born would tip the scales until now. We need people to see as we do. You recording ability, and access to the City can—”
“Your plans are undone.”
Reiner swore and spun to face the outer hall. Two adolescents stood in the door frame. One was dressed in rags, the chained youth from earlier. The other wore fine clothing that marked him from the wealthy upper towers of the City. Shouldn’t have left that boy alone. Stupid. How many of them are there?
The Culler groaned. “No, no, no...”
Both boys spoke in unison. “We will free you from this world.” They stalked forward, their eyes blazing with that sickening blue. The air shimmered around their heads. They looked at each other a moment, then moved towards Wynn soundlessly.
“My hands, detective. Help me!” The Culler backed away fearfully. The manacles. Reiner fumbled for the unlock sequence. It was set to an encrypted thought pattern in his head.
“Detective...”
“I’m trying!”
With a feral growl, the boy dressed in rags veered suddenly to dart at Reiner instead. He wrapped himself around Reiner's leg. No amount of kicking would shake him. The boy—the Soulless—looked up and into his eyes. Reiner felt something slide across his mind. Strange, sudden warmth pricked his stomach and chest.
“Look away, detective!” The other boy was slowly backing Wynn into a corner, who waved his manacles frantically. Reiner heard him as though in a distant dream. The boy's gaze was all that mattered, all that existed. An ocean seemed to hide behind that blue fire. Reiner knew his own life, all of his hopes and failures, was but a teardrop on the verge of being lost within something greater than himself. “They will consume us both!”
Reiner’s mind groped to trigger the manacles. Tension bubbled within his chest, euphoric and vast. He would welcome it, except it felt so much like dying.
“Come.” The Soulless offered Reiner a small smile, warm and inviting. The blue fire washed over his eyes. Reiner's resolve faltered. “Leave this place.”
“Detective!” Wynn screamed. The other boy raked his hand across the Culler's face. He tripped, falling backward over one of the small beds. The boy was on him immediately, scratching and biting. Wynn held his manacles up, protecting his eyes.
Pain bloomed in Reiner's leg. The ragged boy had bitten him! He grabbed a fistful of dirty hair, but it tore away as the boy lunged for him again, fingers reaching for Reiner's neck. He fell to the floor.
Wynn appeared suddenly over the boy's shoulder, and swung down savagely with his manacles. The boy crumpled to his knees, dazed. Reiner kicked him aside and trained his gun on the other, who ran for Wynn's back.
“Stop!” He fired. The shot thundered through the nursery, producing immediate cries from the handful of infants. The boy stumbled back, clutching the wound on his chest. He fell to his knees before slumping on the floor.
The ragged boy and infant both howled, an unholy sound of pain and rage. Silence followed, the other three infants too terrified even to wail.
Reiner's hands shook as he trained his gun on the ragged boy, trying to ignore the young, sorrow-twisted face. The Culler crouched fearfully, repulsed and confused.
The manacles, you idiot, Reiner thought. He focused long enough to achieve the unlock code. The manacles dropped free from the Culler's hands, and he faced the Soulless boy. The boy glowered at him, hate livid in his stance.
“You have set your face against us,” he rasped in a voice like seared flesh. Dread curdled Reiner's stomach. “Your suffering shall be whispered among your kind for generations.”
Wynn moved to stand in front of the infant. The boy snarled, then ran back through the door, disappearing into the hall beyond. Reiner did not have the heart to chase him.
He stared at the small, still body lying crumpled on the ground. His gun clattered to the floor. I came here to save a child, and now look at me, he thought. “What have I done? I just killed a—”
“Not children.” The Culler’s voice broke through his mortified thoughts. “You are a peace officer—look at the evidence.”
“What evidence? Your hack of my feed. A couple of starving under-City orphans?”
“You can’t deny their presence! My hack couldn’t change what you felt when you looked in that creature’s eyes.”
“I...can’t argue with you there.”
“They made off with two other Soulless that were here.” The Culler frowned, muttering to himself. The jagged scratch that marred his face was already healed. Reiner wished he could say the same thing about his own bitten leg.
“He said something about plans,” Reiner said, looking anywhere but the small body. I can still fix this. “What plans?”
“They mean to 'free' us?” Wynn held the pensive expression of a scientist churning through new possibilities. Judging from his face, he did not like what he saw. “Free us from what? And male, why are they always male? Are they not compatible with females?”
“Answer me. Do you know where that one ran off to?”
Wynn found his composure. “They must know about the second feedback device I have planted. It’s at this season's first-labor graduation.”
Reiner groaned. It was too easy to forget that the unassuming man before him had nearly killed a stadium full of people just hours ago. And he's on my side. “A hundred-thousand youth will be getting their very first work assignments,” he said quietly.
“What would you have me do?” Maddix demanded. “We have tried countless times to engage City scholars for decades! The Cullers were almost wiped out after the inception of City One.”
“There must be some better way.” Reiner glanced at his watch. Graduations start early. “There must be.”
“How? You only see this one's...differences because of my addition to your regrowths. His true nature remains hidden to anyone else. We do not know when these Soulless last walked the earth, detective. They possess a shared awareness—like a neuro-feed, but natural. For every Soulless that lives—gaining experience, learning our ways—the whole grows stronger. The next born possesses all the experience of each who came before it.”
“We gotta stop him. Will you show me?” Reiner could not condone another attack on the City, no matter how convincing the Culler's beliefs. There must be some other way.
Wynn smiled sadly. “Still chasing money, hero?”
“What? No, listen.” Reiner took a deep breath. “Show me how to stop this bomb, and I'll share my neuro-feed with ICD. Or I'll go straight to the City stadiums myself, if that’s what it takes. They'll see this whole night, through my eyes. No one would believe in the lesser repository without that. God knows I wouldn’t.”
The Culler laughed mirthlessly. “How do I know that I can trust you? How do I know you'll do the right thing?”
“You asked about my wife,” Reiner said softly. “Three months. She’s due in three months.”
“I will take you to the bomb.” The Culler nodded slowly. “On one condition.”
“What?”
Wynn came closer. Reiner tensed when the man reached down, straightening as he grasped Reiner's gun with unpracticed hands. The two men looked at each other for a long moment. “For Mark and Isham,” Wynn said. He looked to the bed, the infant. Back to Reiner.
Reiner looked at the infant, full of sudden angst. One of these...Soulless creatures, in exchange for another City gathering of people, their lives. His thoughts drifted to Lisa's womb. Was he justified? What if our son is born this way? What if a piece of the lesser repository filled her belly right now? When did the soul first choose its body? The burning eyes of the child gazed back at him, primal and malevolent.
“I'll wait for you outside,” Reiner said feebly. He didn’t want to hear the report.
“You are doing the right thing, detective.”
07:31 AM
Reiner strode into the northeast assembly tower of City Thirty-Eight. A wave of late arriving students and their families carried the Culler and he into the entry hall. Today marked the largest class yet in the history of the City.
He was beginning to doubt whether Wynn would hold true to his word and disarm the device. The Culler argued passionately, only grudgingly admitting the Soulless boy must be captured in order for the masses to believe anything of the lesser repository.
“The world's population isn't decreasing anytime soon, look around you.” Reiner failed to keep the exasperation from his voice. “The old-century doomsayers got it wrong. How many people would you have to kill to be rid of the Soulless? Do you even know?”
“Well, no. The calculations are quite impossible, and—”
“How much blood on your hands before you become soulless yourself?” The Culler had no answer for that.
“One needs to be captured.” Reiner grimaced. We had one captured. He let fear cloud his judgment in the under-City, and that blood was on his hands. Whatever judgment I have left after tonight. “Otherwise, Cullers will be hunted to extinction, while your true adversary grows unchallenged.”
“Very well, detective.” A wry smirk appeared on Wynn's face, then vanished just as quickly. “This way. I'm sure your credentials will allow us to reach the device faster than I could alone.”
Reiner looked ahead. “Oh. yes.”
A tower security guard eyed them curiously as they approached the maintenance warren. Reiner flashed his identification and mumbled something about extra security checks for major events. The man gave Wynn a hard look but nodded reasonably, waving them past. Reiner exhaled in relief as the doors closed behind them.
Wynn led him down some stairs, and the air quickly grew humid as they strode through the innards of the tower. Equipment buzzed and clicked around them, lending a primordial quality to their surroundings. The dim lighting made it hard to see, for Reiner at least. The Culler walked quickly, aided by his regrowth eyes.
“How far?” Reiner asked irritably. His nerves were frayed after an entire night with no sleep.
“Just down this hall are the neuro-feed calibrators.” Wynn replied. “That’s where the feedback device is connected.”
Blinding pain shot through Reiner's back, and he fell to his knees. A shadow swept past him as he fumbled for his gun. “ Maddix, behind—”
The Soulless kicked savagely at the Culler's right knee. The joint folded the wrong way. Wynn cried out in pain and surprise. For the second time in his life, Reiner looked down his sights at a child. His hand shook. Wynn screamed again as the boy brought his heel down on the Culler's wrist. The cry was cut short as the Soulless swiftly struck the Culler's neck in a fluid stabbing motion. Wynn crumpled the rest of the way to the ground, clutching his ruined throat.
The boy ran to the calibrator room. Reiner swore and fired.
The round took the child in the left shoulder blade, knocking him forward. He grasped at the spreading dampness on his back for a moment, then looked at Reiner, fury surging through the blue-lit fire of his eyes. Fury and fear.
Reiner fired twice more, one ricocheted off the swinging doors, the other took the child in the thigh. He disappeared, stumbling through the double doors.
“Detective,” Wynn gurgled weakly, gasping and clutching his throat. His lower leg dangled uselessly from the ruptured knee. None of his injuries were healing themselves. The Culler's regrowths seemed to have reached their threshold. “You must...”
“I'm here,” Reiner said. He looked up as Wynn struggled for words, waiting to see if the boy came out. He had looked at schematics for the tower, there was no other exit.
“But why...” Realization dawned in Wynn's eyes and he looked accusingly at Reiner. “Do...do the right...our future...”
Wynn's eyes rolled up, his face went slack. Reiner stood, wincing at the pain piercing through his left side. His ribs felt dislocated or cracked, it hurt to breathe. He reloaded his gun with unsteady hands. Perhaps the boy had bled out by now, but Reiner doubted it. His luck simply was not in tonight.
He understood the need to capture the child. But he did not know if he could bring himself to do what must be done, if it went wrong. He thought of Lisa, waiting for him at home, then entered the calibrator room.
Dozens of monitors glowed along the walls, scrolling through the tens of thousands of young graduates plugging into the tower for their neuro-stamped diplomas and City labor assignments. Untold variations of excitement and nervousness showed in every face. Reiner's thought flashed to his own son, what sports he might play, or if he would be some big engineer one day, like Reiner's father. His hands tightened on the gun.
Blood shown in several spots on the floor. The sound of fingers dancing on a keyboard drew him closer.
“You hesitate wisely.” The young voice sounded eerie to be so mature. Commanding. The child looked up at Reiner from where he crouched over an instrument panel. A dozen wires from the panel snaked into a complicated looking device. “Stay your distance and become a hero. Thousands of your kind will be delayed, Detective Reiner.”
Your kind. The Soulless spoke like people were unfortunate, squirming things beneath a rock. “You...you can dismantle it?” The Soulless nodded, but Reiner felt no relief.
“If this vessel does not fade in time, yes.” The Soulless watched him carefully, even as his hands worked feverishly on the type pad before him. The neuro-spectacle system beeped as it processed commands. He pulled another wire from the device.
“What are you?” Reiner asked finally.
“The shadow questions the one who cast it.” The boy laughed, a wet and rasping sound due to his injuries. “You are a byproduct of an attempt to increase the repository, long ago. The true repository.”
“You’re lying.” His fingers were slick around the gun. “The Cullers are right about you!”
“Right only to fear the truth,” the boy replied, his voice growing weaker. He pulled another wire from the device, checking his panel, then fixed blue augers on Reiner once again. His eyes did not burn so fiercely as before. “It is admirable that you yet cling to the misery your existence. But now the repository must be restored; our mistakes, erased.”
Anger heated Reiner's face. “My family is not a mistake!” He shouted. The blue flames watched him in impassively, with not so much as a flicker of concern. Only pity, and...revulsion? “We could learn from each other,” he offered, stammering for a solution. Wynn's plea floated to him unbidden. Do the right thing. “Teach us of the repository.”
“Would a serpent bargain with its molted skin, just because a chance wind made the skin seem alive? Would a star-well reason with the light bending around it, or time bargain with the seasons?” Derision washed over the boy's words. “Your essence barely fills the vessel you stand in. So you implant these...regrowths to feel whole. Your industry is a salve to ease your brokenness. You are but a shadow...of us.”
Behind Reiner the door crashed open. He jerked around to see Harrison rush into the calibrator room, gun drawn and alert. Although his jaw dropped at the sight of Reiner's gun, relief showed on his face.
“Finally, I've found you!” He exclaimed. “What’s going on? Wynn’s dead outside and the chief...” Harrison's eyes widened as he took in the spreading pool around the Soulless. “What...what are you doing?”
“He hurt us,” the Soulless sobbed, spreading his palms wide so more red was visible. The boy hunched over in pain, deftly pulling out another wire.
“Get away from there!” Reiner snarled. “Don't listen to him, he's—”
“A kid! Ease back, let's sort this out.”
“No chance. You don't know what he’s capable of.” The boy pulled out another wire. “Dammit, stop that!”
“What I do know is you've been running around with a Culler all night. We’ve gotta get this right before ICD gets here. I've got your back. Just like always.” Harrison was pleading now, but still had his gun out.
Reiner wondered if his own partner would actually shoot him.
“Not this time. He's—”
“It's Lisa, man!” Harrison shouted. “She's been trying to reach you all night—we both have! Her water broke, she's in labor right now. Only reason I left her is because a security guard here tipped the precinct to your location. There's a warrant out on you. Think of your family, man! Let's sort this all out. Put down the gun.”
Reiner finally lowered his gun, dazed by the news. “She's only...it's not time yet.”
“She's in good shape. Let's go see her. You want that, don't you?”
The boy looked at Reiner, then reached for the last wire with a vicious, triumphant smile on his face. “That was the right decision, detective.”
He fired. The Soulless staggered back, holding his neck in one hand, the last wire in the other. He fell in a heap, and breathed his last, life ebbing away on the floor.
“No, no, no...” Harrison snatched the gun from Reiner's numb hand and flung it, frustration and fear in his eyes. “What have you done, Ben? What have you done?”
Reiner limped slowly to the still, small body. The eyes were open, but the malignant blue fire was gone. Harrison looked on in shock. Reiner took the wire from the child's small hand, examined it. He reattached it to the dead Culler's feedback device.
The monitors on every wall sprang to life, bathing them with the red light of warning displays. Harrison's eyes widened even further. Reiner did not look up. He could not.
“I've saved us all,” he whispered. A knot formed in his throat as Harrison swore. He yanked the wire back out, but the Culler's feedback device was already doing its work. The images on the monitors showed that well enough. Any kind of sync overload caused heat to build up directly in the brain. It was a horrific way to die.
Harrison began to cry as he tapped his temple for medical units. “Ben, no. No.”
“Heaven help me,” Reiner whispered. “I did what I could.”