Working Stiff

Chapter 3

There was no way to tell time in the sterile little room Bryn was trapped inside. She wasn’t restrained, at least; that was something. There was a small, bland little toilet area off the main room, and she visited it regularly. Being almost alive came with toilet duties, apparently. She kept wondering whether they’d lied to her, if maybe there was nothing at all wrong with her; she didn’t feel different. She felt fine.

She was alive; screw what McCallister had said. This was all bullshit, and they were just trying to scare her. She’d blacked out when Freddy had been suffocating her with the bag; that was all—someone had gotten it off of her in time, and she’d been unconscious for a while, but she was okay now. Nothing weird about any of it.

In fact, she was no longer sure she’d even seen what she thought she had. Mrs. Jones had probably just been a junkie, sick with need. And the body in the bag … No, that had just been a decomposing murder victim, nothing special about it. It hadn’t moved. It hadn‘t.

It couldn‘t.

Bryn flexed her hand, staring down at it. Same smooth skin. Same fingernails, topped with the same chipped pearl-pink polish. Same flexors and extensors and muscles and bones. Same scar, there on the wrist, where she’d caught a piece of flying shrapnel from an IED. The only scar she’d brought back from the war.

Not dead.

There was a camera in the corner of the room, and Bryn stood and faced it, head raised. She felt cold, but defiant. “McCallister,” she said. “I’m not dead. I’m not. So you can stop all this crap; I’m not buying it, all right? Just let me go. I’ll sign whatever forms you want. Nondisclosure. Whatever.”

No answer. And the camera never blinked.

She found plain but serviceable clothing in the cabinet, neatly folded—they’d included a shirt, pants, socks, even underwear in her sizes. Bryn took everything into the bathroom to change, and as soon as the stiff, new fabrics slid over her skin, she felt better. More in control, even though she knew that was an illusion.

The room was small, and it got smaller the more she paced, arms folded, stopping to glare at the camera. She didn’t speak again. There didn’t seem to be any point.

Twenty-four hours, he’d said. It was all nonsense, but still, she couldn’t help but wonder how much time had passed. Hours. Was he going to just keep her here the whole time, with not even the courtesy of a meal? Was this psychological warfare?

Well, she wasn’t worried. She could outlast some soft corporate drone, and if they wanted to do any serious psychological damage they should have left her naked, not given her perfectly fine new clothes and shoes. (The shoes were, she had to admit, actually nicer than what she’d been wearing with her suit. Although she missed the pink blouse.)

They’d taken her watch and, of course, her cell phone. Nothing to read, watch, fiddle with, or do. She methodically explored the cabinets and drawers, finding nothing that could help, and set the water dripping in a rhythm as close as she could get to one second per drop. She set the plastic cup under the tap and occupied herself marking off minutes, then five minutes, then ten, thirty, an hour.

Voilà. Instant water clock.

She was two hours into the exercise when she heard a harsh buzzing sound from the other room, and left the clock to see the door swinging inward. Rush him, some instinct said, so Bryn moved toward the exit, fast.

She skidded to a stop when Joe Fideli pointed a gun at her. He shrugged apologetically, but there was nothing but business in his blue eyes. “Sorry, Miss Davis,” he said.

“We’re back to Miss Davis, Joe?”

“Bryn. Sit down on the bed, please. No crazy stuff.”

She backed up and sat, well aware of the disadvantage at which he’d placed her. The hospital bed was high, and her feet dangled off the ground. No leverage for any sudden moves.

Bryn folded her hands and tried to seem as inoffensive as possible. He’d already mentioned how young she looked; that was an asset in a situation like this. One she hated to use, but still, she wasn’t exactly awash in options here.

Joe settled comfortably against the wall, still holding the gun steady on her. “Pat,” he said, “we’re good here.”

It bothered her how careful they were, because even then, Patrick McCallister surveyed the whole room before entering. Like Fideli, she was sure he’d had some kind of military-style training. Mercenary, if not traditional. He was way too good at checking corners.

He also secured the door, closing off her line of escape, before dragging over a chair and sitting down across from her. He did not, Bryn noted, block Fideli’s line of fire.

Close up, without the adrenaline and fear to blur her focus, she was able to spot some interesting things about Mr. McCallister. First, the suit he was wearing wasn’t just any off-the-rack thing; it was tailored, and silk, and every bit as nice as what the late Mr. Lincoln Fairview had worn to work. McCallister looked tired, as if he’d missed a night’s sleep, but he was handsomer than she remembered. She’d missed how warm his dark eyes seemed, for one thing.

“Miss Davis,” he said. “How do you feel?”

“Not like I’m dead.”

“You think I’m lying to you.”

“Obviously. You have to be.”

He shook his head slowly, and leaned back in the hard-backed aluminum chair. “Joe,” he said, “show her the video.”

There was a flat-panel TV set flush into the wall, and well out of Bryn’s reach; Fideli pulled a remote control out of his pocket and punched some buttons. Cue music and intro titles, and a logo that resolved into the words Pharmadene Pharmaceuticals. It all looked very polished and corporate. High production values.

But what followed was cold and clinical. There was a corpse lying on a morgue table, clearly and obviously dead; the skin was chilly blue, and still smoking a little from being removed from the refrigerator. The eyes were closed. It was a man, nothing special about him except that he was dead, probably from the two black-edged bullet holes in his chest.

Enter a medical team, hooking him up to monitors that read exactly nothing. No heartbeat, no respiration, nothing.

And then the injection.

It took long minutes, but then Bryn saw a convulsive shudder rip through the body, saw the ice blue eyelids quiver, saw the mouth gape open, and heard …

Heard the scream.

She knew that scream. She’d felt it rip out of her own mouth, an uncontrollable torrent of sound and agony and horror and fear. It was the lost wail of a newborn, only in an adult’s voice.

The corpse’s filmed eyes opened, blinked, and the film began to slowly fade. The skin slowly shifted colors from that unmistakable ashy tone to something less … dead.

And the bullet holes began to knit closed—but not before bright red blood trickled out and began running down the heaving, breathing chest.

The monitors kick-started into beeps. Heart rate. Oxygen saturation. Blood pressure.

Life.

He stopped screaming and looked at the doctors. His voice, when it came, sounded hoarse and dry. “Did it work?”

Nobody answered him. They were all busily noting details, murmuring instructions, taking samples.

It was like the living man, where the corpse had been, didn’t exist at all except as a clinical miracle.

Bryn felt a horrible chill inside, but she put on a brave face. “Nice special effects. Really nice—”

She would have gone on, but another video started, brutally fast.

That was her. Ash gray, lying dead in a hospital bed. Her eyes were swollen and bloodshot and blank, pupils completely blown. She’d bitten her lip, and blood had dried on her face. Her head lolled limp on the pillow. They cut away her clothing, reducing her to just another shell, another dead thing, pitiful and cold and naked, and Bryn couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything, not even demand for them to stop the video.

Fideli wasn’t watching it. He and McCallister were watching her. She was peripherally aware of that, but she couldn’t tear her horrified gaze away.

“Right, give her the full dose,” said the crisp voice of a doctor in the video. “Start the clock … now.”

It took long, torturous minutes, and then … then … Bryn’s body stirred. Gasped. Spasmed.

But there was nothing else.

“Vital reactions,” the doctor said. “Note the time in the log, please.”

A nurse spread a sheet over her naked body. They seemed to be waiting for something, and Bryn realized that the video-Bryn hadn’t opened her eyes, or taken another breath after that first, convulsive one.

The doctor glanced up at a clock on the wall. “She’s not responding. I’m going to have to call it.”

“Wait.” In the video, Joe Fideli moved out of the shadows and put his hand on her face. “Come back,” he said. “C’mon, Bryn, don’t do this. Come on back. Come back.”

He slapped her, a stinging blow, and Bryn saw her blank eyes finally blink, slowly.

And then she screamed.

The same scream.

Fideli held her hand through the rest of it. Bryn didn’t listen, couldn’t over the rush of blood in her ears. She felt dizzy and sick and very, very strange.

She looked at Fideli, who shifted his gaze away. Then she moved her mute stare to McCallister, the cool corporate drone, who leaned forward and took her hand in his. Squeezed, silently, and waited until the video finally ended.

Fideli shut the TV off. In the silence, Bryn heard some rational voice in her head screaming, It’s fake; it’s all fake, special effects. This isn’t happening; this can’t be happening.

The only problem was that she knew it was happening. She’d seen, and she finally, horribly, believed.

She looked up at Patrick McCallister’s face and saw emotion there, quickly hidden. Pity, maybe.

He was still holding her hand. He’d been holding it through the whole ordeal, though she’d forgotten he was even there.

“Joe,” he said, “I don’t think we need the gun anymore.”

Fideli put it away without a word. Bryn realized that she really ought to say something, do something, but for the moment, all she could think of was to sit very still, holding to the warm anchor of another human being. She felt like all the world around her had turned into a black, sucking whirlpool, and she was afraid that if she let go, even for a second, she’d drown.

Go back to … that. That empty ashen thing on the hospital bed.

Oh, she believed, all right. And it terrified her.

“What did you do to me?” she whispered. She was staring right into McCallister’s eyes now, looking for that spark of connection again, but it wasn’t there. He’d shut down. Maybe he had to, to deal with the emotion pouring out of her just now. She’d never felt so scared, or so alone. So empty.

“There’s good news,” he said, in a soothing, quiet voice that unpleasantly reminded her of Lincoln Fairview, with his nice suit and cultured palate and nasty lies. “You need a daily shot, but apart from that one thing, you’re in the best shape you’ll ever be in. No sickness, no aging. You won’t change, because the nanites returned you to a template of what you were just at the cessation of life, and holds you there.”

“I’m dying. I’m dead.”

“You’re dying less than the rest of us,” he said. “You’re … on hold would be a good description. And there are positives, believe me.”

“Positives!” She couldn’t control the bitter, shaky laugh that burst out of her, and put her hand to her mouth to muffle it. “God.”

He didn’t tell her it was okay after that. He just let her sit and think for a while.

Finally, she wet her lips and said, “How in the hell does a company set out to create … this?”

“They didn’t,” he said. “Returné was an accident, a side effect of an experimental drug for the treatment of cancer. It would have won Mercer and Sams the Nobel Prize, if it had worked the way they thought. Or if they could ever actually talk about it again, but of course now it’s highly classified.”

That made her laugh again, but it wasn’t a laugh she recognized. It sounded wild and ugly, and very not-Bryn. Of course, she wasn’t Bryn anymore, was she? The Bryn from yesterday, that girl had her whole life ahead of her. A career, love, a family—those were the things she’d wanted. And she was gone.

So who was this Bryn? No, not who. What was this Bryn?

She wasn’t a person anymore. She felt like one and she looked like one, but what he’d just shown her had stripped that away.

She was an animated, breathing mimicry of life.

“Bryn,” he said, and drew her attention again. She hadn’t even realized it had wandered. “Bryn, please listen to me. You’re in the danger zone right now. It’s not just that your body has to survive; you need to survive along with it. If you withdraw, if you go catatonic, I can’t help you. Stay with me.”

Bryn pulled in a deep breath. “Do I have a choice?”

“Always. But I’d rather you didn’t pick the other option,” McCallister said.

“Decomposing?”

He ignored that, didn’t blink, kept his focus straight on her. “I have a proposition for you.”

She laughed again. Still not a nice laugh. “They lock you up in this state for necrophilia.”

“Bryn. Listen to me, because what I have to say is vital to your continued existence. Pharmadene wanted answers out of you, and I wasn’t able to get them. But together, we can offer the company something else. Something better, possibly.”

She didn’t answer, because there didn’t seem to be much point. He was talking, but she didn’t understand what he was getting at. Not at all.

They were never going to let her out of this room. Her water clock was going to fill up and spill over and she was going to sit here and rot. Literally. She imagined that it was going to hurt.

“Bryn.”

“I’m listening,” she said. She didn’t want to, but she couldn’t seem to block out his voice. Her own sounded remote and odd, disconnected from the rest of her, but it seemed to reassure him.

“I’m going to put you back in Fairview Mortuary.”

That called for another laugh, but she couldn’t dredge one up. “As a corpse in the prep room?”

“No,” he said. “As the new owner. Inheriting it from Mr. Fairview. You’re his niece.”

“I’m not.”

“You are now, on paper; he didn’t have any other living relatives. You’ll go back to work, oversee the necessary repairs, start up the business again. Make it known you’re carrying on your uncle’s work in every way.” McCallister glanced over at Fideli. “You’ll hire Joe as a funeral director. He’ll help you out if you have any trouble, and make sure you get your shots on time. Your job is to go through Fairview’s records, and try to make contact with Fairview’s underground supplier of Returné and bring him—or her—out into the open so we can shut down the leak who’s selling the drugs, quickly and quietly.”

“And then what?” Bryn asked him. “I go back to being dead?”

“Bryn—let’s just take this a step at a time, all right? I’m doing what I can for you. This gets you back into the world and gives you a kind of normal life. Do well on this, and I’ll fight to keep your drug regimen in place. Deal?”

She didn’t answer. She stared at him mutely, feeling as if parts of her were just … shutting down. Falling away. Important parts of her, already gone.

Hope, for one. A sense of who she was.

All gone now.

“All right,” she said softly. “Deal. On one condition.”

McCallister hesitated, frowning just a little. Maybe he felt the increase in her pulse through her fingers. “What condition?”

“I get to have the gun. Not Fideli.”

“Joe’s trained—”

“So am I,” she interrupted him. “Four years surviving in Baghdad. And I get the gun, McCallister. Or you can sit here and watch me rot.”

He pulled back, baffled, frowning in earnest now. “Why do you want it?”

Fideli answered for her, face gone still and hard. “Because she wants to be able to end it,” he said. “Put a bullet through her brain. Do damage the nanites can’t repair. Right, Bryn?”

She didn’t answer, but it sounded pretty good to her.

There was a moment of silence, and then McCallister sighed. “Not a bad plan, but it won’t work. The only things that will truly end you are fire, dissolution, or dismemberment, and I can’t see you sawing off your own head. You’re tough, but nobody’s that tough.” McCallister tried for a smile, and almost made it. “If you put a bullet through your head, you’ll just be wasting bullets and screaming a lot.”

She felt her teeth bare in something that didn’t feel like a smile. “How about if I use one on you? Would that work?”

“Are you asking if I’m like you? Revived?”

“Revived,” she echoed, testing it out. It sounded innocent, like she’d just had a long rest. “Yes. Are you revived?”

“No. I’ve never died.”

“Him?” She glanced at Joe Fideli.

“No. The drug’s still highly classified, and highly experimental, not to mention expensive. Finding a way to keep you stable and on the drug constitutes extraordinary measures.” His dark eyes locked on hers, demanding a straight answer. “If I give you a gun, are you going to hurt yourself? Or others?”

She imagined doing it. First holding the gun to her own head … but if what they were saying was true, it’d just be painfully inconvenient. And temporary. And messy.

So could she shoot Joe Fideli? He’d brought her back to this. He probably deserved it. Or McCallister. Shoot him right in the heart, if he even had one, which she doubted. She could imagine it, but it didn’t hold any emotional warmth for her.

She’d just be spreading around misery.

“No,” she said, and for the first time, her voice sounded like her own. “No, I wouldn’t do that. I just want to be able to protect myself. It’d make me feel … safer.”

“Gee, thanks,” Fideli said drily. “I’m all flattered and shit.”

“Joe,” McCallister said. Just that, and Fideli went back to being a statue. “All right, you get a gun. And you get paid, Bryn. You run Fairview, and you spread the word that you’re continuing all of your uncle’s business ventures, including the one running out of the basement. I’ll supply you with a stock of Returné, both for yourself and for whatever unfortunates still need the shots, but you have to find his supplier quickly. I can’t guarantee an unlimited supply.”

“I’ll need more,” Bryn said.

“More. More what?”

“Money. If I’m taking over Fairview, I need clothes. Better shoes. A real operational budget.”

“You’ve got it. We’ll be depositing money in an account in your name. Joe will bring you the details. It’ll come through a network of shell companies, out of an annuity. You were left the money from your great-aunt Tabitha.”

“Tabitha? Seriously?”

“Tabitha Quick. She was a real person in Fairview’s family tree, just like you.” McCallister stood up, looked at her for a moment, then went to the door. It buzzed open for him, and he was outside for only a few seconds before coming back and shutting it again.

He had a small pneumatic injection gun in his hand, loaded with a clear vial of … something. “Your arm, please,” he said. When she angled her shoulder toward him, he cleared his throat. “Doesn’t work through cloth.”

Oh. In retrospect, dressing might not have been the best choice, because now it meant she had to slip off the button-up shirt; the sleeves were tight, and wouldn’t roll up that far. She unbuttoned it down the front and said, “I guess you’ve both already seen it anyway.”

Fideli promptly looked down at his feet. McCallister kept his gaze carefully on her face as she pulled the blouse aside and bared the flesh of her upper arm.

“What we saw was a body. It wasn’t you. You, of all people, should understand the difference,” McCallister said, very quietly, as he put the pneumatic gun to her arm. He pulled the trigger, and there was a star-sharp pain in her skin, then a heavy kind of warmth. “Done.”

She pulled her blouse back together, holding it in place until he’d turned away, then did up the buttons with fast, shaking fingers. “How many others have you done this to?” she asked. “Like that man in the video?”

“He was number four in the trials.”

“So four.”

“No,” McCallister said. “He was the first to make it. There have been six since then. Not including you, and whoever Fairview brought back. I told you, it’s top-secret and highly experimental.”

She met his eyes and said flatly, “Why me, then? Why did you bother?”

McCallister exchanged a look with Fideli, who shrugged guiltily. “I thought there was an outside chance—”

“You knew I didn’t know anything. You knew I’d just started.”

This was evidently news to McCallister, who straightened his already straight posture to give Fideli a long, measuring look. Fideli shrugged again. “No excuse, sir. She was a good kid, and I thought there was an outside chance she could be useful. My fault she ended up dead in the first place. I should have gotten there quicker.”

“We’re not in the business of cleaning up your conscience,” McCallister said, and then shook his head. “Done is done, but we’re having a conversation later.”

“Well, that’ll be fun.”

While he was distracted, Bryn slipped in the question she really wanted to ask. “So you wouldn’t have brought me back if I hadn’t been of some potential use to you? Even though you got me killed?”

For the first time, she got an unguarded reaction from Patrick McCallister. It was written all over his face, just for a second, and then the corporate drone was back, smooth and seamless. “Of course we would have tried,” he said.

Liar. But what was interesting to Bryn was that what she’d seen flash over his face hadn’t been the logical match to the lie—not impatience, or disgust, or superiority. What she’d seen had been pure, weary guilt.

Patrick McCallister, she thought, didn’t really like his job very much. Well, how many corporate drones actually did? Brilliant deduction, Bryn, she told herself. You could get federal funding for a research project on that.

Still, it made him just a touch more human to her.

“When can I get out of here?” she asked. She rubbed her arm where he’d given her the shot; it felt warm now, and a little tender.

“Soon,” he told her. He went back to the door and opened it again; this time he was gone longer, and Bryn took a deep, convulsive breath of fresh air that drifted in. Well, not fresh, but new. She felt stifled in here. What she could see of the hallway outside looked like more of the same, though—white tile, clean-room sterility. She couldn’t see any natural daylight, just fluorescents. It felt like they were underground, but they might just as easily have been fifty stories in the air, sealed off from the outside.

McCallister came back with something that looked like a tablet PC, something he made a few taps on and then handed to Joe Fideli, who examined it and nodded.

“What is that?” Bryn asked.

“A lot of things, including an audio/video recorder, infrared detector, secured Internet connection, and tracking device.”

“And it’s got blackjack on it,” Fideli said, straight-faced. He tapped the screen, then turned it around to show her a map, with a blinking light superimposed on it. “That’s you. I can track you anywhere with this. There’s an app for everything, apparently.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“The nanites in your bloodstream represent a significant financial investment,” McCallister said. “We’d prefer it if we knew where you were at all times. And, obviously, we need to be able to find you to get you the shot.”

She hated the first part of that, but the second wasn’t unreasonable. “Where’s the tracking device?”

“Inside you,” Fideli said. “It’s a smart device; it went in with the nanites and is attaching to your bone right now. Won’t come off easily. Long battery life, too.”

“It’s not something we would use on a living person,” McCallister said. “The battery sheds toxins, and can lead to metabolic bone problems, but the nanites can easily deal with it.”

“You people are crazy!”

“We’re not you people,” McCallister said, and handed her a clipboard full of paperwork. “You’re one of us now. Officially.”

She looked at what he’d handed her. Employment forms, including—of all the crazy things—a full application and 1–9 form. He shrugged.

“I’ll need to see some ID, too. Welcome to the corporate world,” he said. “I never said it would make sense.”

Fideli drove her home about six hours later, in a big, black SUV with dark-tinted windows that just screamed covert operations to her. She felt a little queasy, and rolled down the window enough to get a cool breeze on her face. It was night again. She’d been dead most of one day, at least.

The first day of the rest of your so-called life. That almost made her smile. Almost.

“Hungry?” Fideli asked her. “ ’Cause I could murder a burger right about now.”

She wasn‘t, but she wasn’t sure whether that was biology or just depression. “Do I eat?”

“Sure. Same as you ever did.”

“Oh. Okay. Burger sounds fine. Whatever.” She closed her eyes and leaned her head back. The SUV smelled like leather and cologne. A guy car, definitely. As she shifted to make herself more comfortable, something dug painfully into her hip, and she reached behind her to find it.

She pulled out a brightly colored plastic toy gun. Day-Glo orange and yellow.

Fideli glanced over at it, rolled his eyes, and grabbed it away. He tossed it in the backseat.

“So … what is it, some kind of well-disguised stealth weapon, or—”

“My kids,” he said. “Can’t ever get them to clean up after themselves. Sorry about that.”

Kids. She looked around the SUV with fresh eyes, not assuming anything this time. It was clean, but there were definitely signs she’d missed the first time … the most obvious being the infant car seat strapped in behind her.

She couldn’t help it: she laughed, and kept laughing. It felt like a summer storm of pure, frantic mirth, and when it finally passed she felt relaxed and breathless. Fideli, making a right-hand turn into the parking lot of a burger joint, sent her an amused look. “What?” he asked. “It sounded good, whatever it was.”

“I had you pegged for some corporate James Bond,” she said, and shook her head. “Licensed to kill. Driving some kind of high-tech armored spy vehicle with rocket launchers. Jesus, you have a car seat.”

“Wouldn’t let my kid ride without it,” he said. “I’ve got three. Oldest is Jeff; he’s seven. Then Harry; she’s five. Juliet’s the baby.”

“I guess you’ve got a wife to go with that.”

“Kylie,” he said. “Best wife in the world. Best mom, too.” He sounded quietly proud. “Here. Pictures.” He opened the glove box, and there was an honest-to-God brag book in there, of charming kids and a pretty wife. Fideli looked like a different person in those pictures, relaxed and happy, a little goofy. It was … adorable.

And it reminded Bryn, with a cold shock, that her life was never going that way. Not now. She stared down at the picture of Juliet, a happy, giggling little baby in her mother’s arms, and her eyes filled with tears. “I can’t have kids now, can I?” she asked.

Fideli said nothing. When she looked over at him, his mouth was set in a pained, grim line, and his knuckles were tight where he gripped the steering wheel. She closed the picture album and put it in the glove compartment. The silence held until they were pulled up in front of the glowing marquee with all of the not-healthy choices.

“I’ll have a Monster Burger with fries and a Coke,” he said to the speaker, and then glanced at Bryn. “How about you?”

“Same thing,” she said, and tried for a smile as she wiped her eyes. “Guess cholesterol’s not an issue, right?”

“Bright side,” he agreed, and conveyed the order. “Might as well get extra cheese with that.”

The smell of the food filled the cab as they pulled away from the payment window, and Bryn realized that she was actually hungry. Funny, she hadn’t expected to feel that at all, for some reason. Sensation, yes, but needs? It just seemed strange.

French fries still tasted as salty-delicious as ever. She munched on them as Fideli drove the last two miles to her apartment. It wasn’t much, a lower-middle-class kind of neighborhood with hardworking people. The apartments were generic and cheaply made, but affordable. Fideli didn’t ask what building she lived in, which indicated a little more knowledge about her than she felt strictly comfortable with; he parked the big SUV and said, “You mind if I take off? I like to eat with the family when I can.”

“Sure,” she said. She felt strange, suddenly, as if she were looking at a building she didn’t know, facing an evening with a total stranger: herself. She took her Coke and bagged food, but made no move to get out of the truck. It idled gently, waiting. Fideli watched her in silence.

“Hey,” he finally said. “Better idea. How about you come with me?”

She jerked a little in surprise, because she really hadn’t expected that. She’d been waiting for him to impatiently order her out. “What?”

“Home,” he said. “You look like you don’t need to sit alone and watch your burger get cold, Bryn. It’s been a pretty full couple of days for you, I’d say.” What he wasn’t saying was that he saw the fear in her. Fear of facing life alone, the way she was now. Whatever she was.

“Joe …” She didn’t mean to use his first name; it was just instinct. She bit her lip. “Mr. Fideli … there’s no chance I could be … contagious, is there? I mean, I don’t want to put your family in any danger.”

He shook his head. “Can’t share the nanites, even through an open wound. They’re keyed to your DNA, cease to function outside your body. I wouldn’t let you around the kids if there were any risk, believe me.”

“And you’re sure that I’m not going to get a craving for brains or anything.”

He laughed this time. “You let me know if that happens. But no. It ain’t your zombie apocalypse scenario, not this time. You’re just … you. On permanent, portable life support.” That was a sobering thought, and even he stopped laughing. He put the truck in reverse. “No arguments—you’re eating with us. We’ve got a guest room, too. Kylie’s got some stuff that’ll fit you.”

Bryn wasn’t really in the mood to stand her ground, not tonight. She was, deep inside, sobbingly grateful to him for the kindness. If she’d faced those blank, generic walls of her apartment alone …

She wasn’t sure what she would have done.

“Hey,” she said. “Can I bring my dog?”

Fideli raised his eyebrows. “Sure.”

The messes inside the house really weren’t something Bryn wanted to face, but she forced herself to clean up the worst of it. It wasn’t the dog’s fault, after all; she’d been busy getting herself killed and revived for almost a full day. In fact, Mr. French, her bulldog, was well behaved even in Fideli’s wildly interesting SUV; he contented himself with sniffing the interior door and then poking his head out of Bryn’s passenger window, tongue out and ears flapping all the way.

Fideli’s house was a rambling ranch style in a typical suburban neighborhood, nothing really special about it except the old-growth trees that made it seem hidden and protected. There were more signs it was a house with kids that she spotted as soon as she drove up—the mommy van in the driveway, a boy’s bike lying on its side in the grass, a brightly colored Big Wheel nearby. A candy-colored plastic playhouse made for a little girl.

The windows of the house glowed with warmth.

Bryn put Mr. French on his leash and carried her own food as she followed Fideli up the walk to the side door—the kitchen door, as it turned out, and the kitchen was busy. Bryn had to immediately back up against the wall to avoid a pair of running children, a boy and a girl, who whizzed by. The girl stopped to awkwardly pat Mr. French on the head, then dashed off.

Mr. French woofed and sneezed, then sat down with his head cocked, assessing his new situation.

“Jeff, Harry, I’m warning you, one more time….” The woman from Fideli’s picture book rounded the corner carrying a stack of dirty dishes and stopped, glancing from Joe to Bryn and back again. The hesitation lasted for only a second, and then she came up with a bright, nearly genuine smile. “Hey, honey. Who’s this?”

Joe took the dirty dishes from her and put them down in the sink, then kissed her. It was a warm, comfortable kind of kiss, not self-conscious at all, and then the kids came racing back around yelling and flung themselves on his legs, and he hugged them.

Bryn stood there clutching the leash, her Coke, and her bagged food, feeling like this had been a massive mistake, feeling more isolated than ever … until Kylie came forward, wiping her hands on a towel, and took the Coke and bag from her to put them on the counter. “My husband doesn’t know how to introduce people,” she said, “so I’ll just jump in. Kylie, and that’s Jeff and Harry. Harriet, but we all call her Harry.” The two kids, one blond, one dark, waved. “The baby’s still in her chair in the dining room—honey, check her, would you?”

“Yep,” Joe said, and walked out of the kitchen trailing children.

The noise level dropped to almost nothing, and Bryn felt awkward again. “Hi,” she said, and held out her hand. “I’m Bryn. Bryn Davis. I, ah …” How was she supposed to explain any of this? How top-secret was it, anyway? “I work with Joe. Oh, and this is Mr. French. I promise he’s housebroken.”

Kylie smiled at the dog, then shook hands. She had fine blue eyes, and Bryn sensed a sharp, lively intelligence behind them. “I never heard him mention you before.”

Joe appeared in the doorway again with a baby on his hip, comfortably braced in his big arm. “She’s new,” he said. “Honey, take her a minute; I have to lock up the boom sticks.”

“Jesus, Joe, you’re walking around with her and your guns?” Kylie rolled her eyes and took the little girl, who cooed and nestled against her with more trust than Bryn thought she’d ever had shown to her in her entire life. “Go. Shoo. Get less dangerous.”

“Impossible,” Joe said. “I’m a lethal weapon, baby.”

“Shut up.”

He blew her a kiss and disappeared again. Kylie jiggled the baby—Juliet—on her hip and exchanged another smile with Bryn. “So,” she said, “he talked you into the heart-attack special, right? I hardly ever let him eat that stuff, which is probably why he’s running late. Here, let me get you a plate; go on into the dining room.” She raised her voice to a yell. “Jeff, come in here and rinse the dishes!”

“Mooooooom, the show’s starting!”

“It’s recorded, honey; put it on pause and just do what I tell you.” Kylie handed Bryn a plate, picked up the food and drink, and followed her into the dining room. It was a warm kind of room, all earth tones and wood, with family photos on the walls. Bryn felt a little odd eating fast food there, until Joe Fideli came back, plunked his own down on the table, and began digging in. Kylie settled in across from him.

Bryn found out quickly that she wasn’t just hungry; she was ravenous. The burger disappeared, and so did the fries. The fizzy sweetness of the Coke tasted so good it almost made her weep.

She didn’t feel quite as dead anymore. Especially when Mr. French stretched himself out in a warm blanket across her feet.

Kylie and Joe chatted about family stuff, occasionally asking her a question or two; it was all unforced and comfortable, and Joe finally got around to telling his wife that he’d invited Bryn to use the guest room. That got another second of hesitation, as if she were trying to figure out his motivations, and then a quick agreement. Kylie got up to fix the room while Joe slurped the last of his drink.

“Do they know?” Bryn asked softly. “I mean, about what you do.” Whatever that was.

“They know I’m in corporate security,” Joe said. “And that my work is top-secret. So she won’t ask you any questions. She’s just going to assume you’re someone I’m protecting. Which is true.”

“Do you usually bring people you’re protecting home to meet your family?”

“Not ever,” he said. “Hope you feel special about it.”

He started to get up from the table. Bryn put a hand on his arm, holding him in place. “Joe.” She got his full, alert attention. “Thanks. You’re sure I’m not putting anybody in danger by being here?”

He smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “You really think I’d bring you within a mile of my kids if I thought there was any chance at all of that? Bryn, you’re a nice girl, and I admit, I got you brought back mostly because I felt I’d let you down. But you ever pose any danger to my family and I’ll make you permanently dead, and I won’t hesitate for a second.”

She believed him. She let go, and Joe picked up her empties and cleaned up the table, just like a normal guy.

“If I ever did pose a danger to them, I’d want you to do it,” she said. “You’ve got a lovely family.”

“You say that now; wait until you spend a couple of hours with the little terrors,” he said. “Come on. I owe Jeff a video game or two.”

Normal life.

Bryn wondered if she would ever have this again, this taste of a future, of life, of family.

Well, she thought, if this is all I get, I might as well enjoy it.