The ride to the Morgue wasn’t eventful. This was the Underlevel of Silver City. People occasionally carried corpses when they were out doing groceries. Hauling their dead child, sibling, parent, whatever to turn into the Morgue while buying some meagre—but no doubt necessary—shopping on the trip back. Not an uncommon sight.
What was uncommon, however, was said corpse sporting three bullet wounds. Now that would attract the attention of the authorities in a manner most people would do anything to avoid.
Not even I wanted to deal with Enforcers if I could help it. They were a pain, but more in the bureaucratic sense than the actual “handling” sense.
To that end, I’d wrapped the loan shark’s body in corpse tape. In truth, it was a special kind of packaging tape used to wrap perishable goods, including foodstuff that could rot or get contaminated easily. They were excellent for covering up dead bodies too. So naturally, I used them as corpse tape.
Commissioner Gregor hadn’t gotten back to me after the update, so, as the Morgue appeared before me, I focused on ditching my target. The blocky building with the spires sticking out and the thick wires running out of it looked abandoned as ever. But I knew better.
I slowed my bike as I got closer, though. Usually, there was just the one car parked in the lot before it.
Now, there were two, one of which was unfamiliar.
I parked my bike at a more hidden location, making sure anybody coming out of the front entrance or looking out a window wasn’t going to see the wrapped corpse. Then I headed to the side entrance.
My line of work meant that I’d had to get pretty good at hacking into the Interface of others, so long as I could secure a connection.
Not just people, which was usually harder to accomplish, but for security systems too.
So it was that five small hexes opened up at the end of my right-hand fingers, revealing a bunch of toolheads I needed to open up the security panel beside the side entrance. A minute of tinkering later, I had access to the outlet I needed.
Another hex on the pointer of my left hand revealed the drive I needed to log into the Morgue’s security.
The Interface was similar to the one I possessed. That most people with Augments or even simpler implants got access to.
I stayed clear of the main security lanes and worked my way through the code to the snippet that handled the side entrances to the Morgue. All I had to do was insert a few lines to block the alert while I opened the door, and once I was inside the dim corridor, I reverted the security code to its original state by accessing another panel within. Simple enough.
But I couldn’t exit the Interface just yet. There were other security measures. Aliya wouldn’t appreciate me rifling through her Morgue’s security system, but the strange car had ignited a curiosity in me
And so had everything I’d heard from the loan shark.
Hounds after you already.
Could the car belong to these hounds? Unlikely. It was too clean, looked too official to associate with the shady criminals of Underlevel. But I couldn’t push away the nagging sensation that it was important, nevertheless.
I paused the various other security measures in the Morgue’s side-entrance corridor, all the way up to the antechamber. Then along the side hallways to Aliya’s office, and to the main disposal power hall too, just to be sure. I had spotted her car as well, so she had to be meeting them somewhere. Now I could sneak up to whichever room they were in.
It took a little bit to find the right place. Antechamber. My first guess was right all along.
I stayed hidden as I listened in.
“That was the last of them,” said a man walking in through the door that led to the main disposal hall. “You won’t be seeing us for another couple of months at least, Operator.”
“Maybe a whole quarter if we can help it,” said the other cobber.
I recognized their uniforms now. The white-and-orange suits had the logo of the Abel Tine Corp. Essentially, the power company that oversaw the operation of the Morgue and other facilities that burned bodies to generate power via Arclight mechanisms.
But these were mechanics. The Morgue had already had their bimonthly checkup just over a couple of weeks ago.
My question was vocalized by Aliya.
“That’s what the last guys said.” She was already standing in the antechamber, her hands buried in her lab coat pockets, her words muffled from behind her old-fashioned gas mask. “How do I know I’m not going to be seeing another bunch of you in a week?”
She looked tired. Her coat was ruffled, her dirty blonde hair mussed up. I was tempted to attribute that to the time of night, but then again, she always looked like that.
The men didn’t seem to be bothered by the fact that Aliya was bothered.
“You won’t be seeing us again for a while,” the cobber who had exited the disposal chamber said. “Trust us.”
Doffing their hats at Aliya, both men exited the Morgue. I waited for a while until I was sure their car had left the parking lot as well. Then I knocked on the door between my side-corridor and the antechamber.
Aliya was a little startled. She waved, and the door opened, admitting me in. “Don’t see you without a… delivery usually, Xylen.”
I smiled in greeting. “Oh, don’t worry. I got what you need. I was just waiting for your visitors to leave. Would have stayed away, but the time of day had me curious.”
Aliya frowned back to the main door. “I wasn’t expecting a call at this time either. The notice came in late. Less than two hours ago, in fact. Even more surprising, they mentioned there wasn’t anything wrong.”
“What were they here for? A routine check-up?”
“I’m not sure. Apparently, there’s some issue going around in all the Morgues, so they’ve been checking them up one by one.”
“Sounds like an emergency. Except…” It was my turn to frown a little. “They didn’t look like they were in a hurry.” I looked back at Aliya. “Or that tired. You’d think people dragged out at this time of night to go touring around Underlevel would look at least a little unkempt, but not those cobbers.”
Aliya snorted. “Go get your delivery, Xylen. They’re gone now, so who gives a shit. Maybe we’re lucky and they’re actually telling the truth, so we really won’t have to see any of them again.”
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I nodded. As I returned the way I’d entered, I heard her muttering.
“Though, these guys didn’t look anything like Shian and Jerus…”
Were those the names of the maintenance techies who normally came to this Morgue? I had no clue. This was Aliya’s business, not mine. All I had to do was deliver the bodies. That was a part of the Commissioner’s mission requirements.
“Mind bringing the package to the disposal chamber?” Aliya asked once I’d returned with the wrapped body.
She could have carried it there herself. But once we entered, she immediately busied herself with one of the other corpses. I had to take the loan shark’s body to the appropriate table on my own.
The Morgue’s disposal chamber was essentially an enormous oven. Each table with a body rested on notches so that when the Arclight mechanism was turned on, the tables would automatically move into the walls. It was the walls that held the main firing mechanism that utilized the remains of the corpses to drive the generators and create energy.
A layman’s explanation was that the bodies were simply burned up like fuel to power turbines to produce electricity. But that was ancient tech. It wasn’t accurate to today’s procedure.
The Morgue used specialized Arclight machinery to delve into every corpse brought in and compress them to such a degree that they started creating Arclight of their own. I wasn’t aware of the physics behind it. Arclight was just a strange substance. But the way it could self-propagate in the right conditions was something a lot of mechanisms took full advantage of.
I blocked off my nostrils with a little focus on my Interface. A lot of corpses were old inside the disposal chamber. While they kept the bodies flooded with preservatives to prevent decomposition, they couldn’t keep it at bay completely.
“Which one was this, Xylen?”
I looked back once I’d placed the corpse properly. The back of Aliya’s coat had split open, allowing her spiderlike mechanical limbs to curl around her and start operating on her subject corpse.
“Just a loan shark,” I said.
“You know I don’t care about that,” Aliya said sharply. “Name, profession, maybe family. That’s it. Something to keep a record. Everything else is incriminating.”
I nodded remorsefully. “Fair enough. I’ll send the details to your Interface.”
Aliya’s job was Aliya’s because she could remain unconcerned with anyone’s affiliation to anyone else. If a body was brought to the Morgue, it stayed in the Morgue. The Change-of-Heart Statute drawn up ages ago made sure bodies couldn’t be pulled out, even if there had been some sort of mistake.
There had been legal challenges to such an ironclad law. A ruling from one of the lawsuits required Operators like Aliya to practice plausible deniability. She just had to keep the basic record of who was brought in. Anything else was unnecessary.
I looked around, noticing some of the other bodies I’d brought in over the weeks and months were still here. The corrupt judge the loan shark had been talking about was lying halfway across the room. Aliya had plugged up the bullet holes with something. I wasn’t sure what, but the holes themselves were still unmistakeable.
Always a little funny seeing the state of the dead in comparison to what the body had been like when alive.
Like comparing a majestic tree to the firewood it became.
“How many bodies does the Morgue eat?” I asked. “Like, say, in half a year.”
She didn’t look back, still busy with her corpse. “Don’t you know that already? Or are you just trying to make small talk to keep yourself awake?”
“Aren’t you curious how the money plays out, Operator?”
Unlike most people, I didn’t get paid to bring the bodies into the Morgue. Not directly, at least. Instead, the money went to the account controlled by Commissioner Gregor. Can’t blame a guy for wanting to know what percentage of the cut he got for his work.
I’d never discussed this with the Commissioner himself. He gave me a set number of credits, regardless of what the job entailed. He’d probably give me the same amount even if the body of my target spontaneously combusted halfway to the Morgue. Commissioner Gregor was reliable that way.
But still. I was curious just how much of my payments were sourced from the returns that the Commissioner got from the Morgue.
“I’m not curious, no,” Aliya said. “I’m happy with what I get.”
“Happy?” My smile turned sardonic. “In Underlevel?”
She sighed. “If you’ve gotta be stuck someplace, best to try to be happy there, no?”
I grunted. She was right in a sense. Once you were in Underlevel, you don’t really get to get out. It marked you. Stained you. Not just with the despair branded into that little flesh-and-blood nook of your brain that wasn’t overrun with nanobots and cybernetics.
It marked your life. The people who could sniff out the Underlevel from your records would make sure it was known to everybody. They’d judge you, mark you in turn. Shun you for it.
They’d make sure everyone else did too.
“So,” I said. “About the—”
I was cut short when I received a sudden alert. An alarm back home had just gone off.
“I have to go.” I hurried away. “I’ll see you around, Operator.”
“Everything alright?”
Another alarm sounded through my Interface. They had breached the interior of the apartment. In basically no time too. Cold prickles popped up along my spine. Hounds after you already.
I shot Aliya a departing smile. “Everything’s just fine. Just something urgent has come up.”
As I turned around, I caught the look in her eyes. She clearly suspected something. But we didn’t have time to address any of that. I didn’t have time.
If they’d done anything to Mutton…
I sent another message off to the Commissioner as I got on my bike and rushed homewards.
X-18: Hounds came after me. Heard anything, Commissioner?
Still no reply to my original update. Gregor would get back to me anywhere between minutes to several hours after an update. He never left a message un-replied for over twelve hours, so this wasn’t unusual. But for once, I wished he’d hurry up and get back to me.
I’d never received a level 2 alert like that. Wherever I established my home base, I’d take the time to set up a security system around my place. Barebones, portable, but still pretty effective.
This security was in layers. Or, as I liked to call them in mockery of Silver City’s structure, levels. Level 1 was the outside perimeter. Just outside my front door, the back door, and the windows. Level 2 was just inside those. The main indicator that someone besides was inside my home.
Level 3 was on Mutton himself. No alerts for that yet. It only activated if he was actually injured or otherwise severely distressed.
The wind was cold but relieving on my face as I accelerated my bike.
It took me a whole twenty minutes to get close to my own apartment. Each minute had gripped my heart like the tines of a rusty fork scratching on a blackboard. Pictures of Mutton kept replaying in my head. Dumb dog eating the treats, sniffing what he shouldn’t.
I parked my bike well away from my apartment once I was close enough and took a back alley towards my home.
The hounds hadn’t arrived by car, clearly. Or they had parked someplace else and had jogged to my apartment. The window on the east side was open. It was close to the fire escape, so I vaulted up, going fast but trying not to make too much noise.
Quiet. It was all too quiet. I knew what I’d be doing if I was the aggressor here and my main target was missing.
Wait quietly to spring a trap.
Instead of heading to the back door that led to the fire escape, I leaned forward and jumped to the open window. My hands caught the windowsill and managed to hang on. A three-storey fall now would have been real bad.
I dragged myself up and into the dark interior of my apartment. The window was along my bathroom, and the bathroom door was ajar, opening into darkness. My motions had caused some scuffing noise here and there. Unavoidable. But hard to tell if the so-called hounds had heard me yet or not.
Keeping my body low but tense, I inched forward. The smell of death made me unconsciously send my Arclight drive into overdrive. But then, I got close enough to see the heat signatures in the dark. Two unmoving, a smaller one going from one prone figure to the other.
I froze, then sighed in relief. A quick step into my dining room revealed that Mutton was perfectly fine. Pretty sure the blood coating his paws wasn’t even his.
As for the so-called hounds, they were both lying on the floor in growing pools of dark red, their throats torn open.
I looked around. “You made a mess of the apartment, huh boy?”
Mutton woofed in greeting, lolling out a blood-soaked tongue when he saw me.
I righted an upended chair, then took a seat on it. “Don’t worry boy, I’ll clean up the mess. But don’t eat any more of them. Killers give your diarrhoea, remember?”
Leaning back, I took a moment to settle down. Mutton was fine. First priority taken care of. But that didn’t mean everything was okay. I now had people who knew where I lived. People who were hunting me.
Another alert beeped off on my Interface, but this one had a note of familiarity.
“Got a job for you, X-18.”
A briefing from the Commissioner. What fantastic timing.
I ignored the briefing for now, then went straight to the comm line. If he was around to send me a briefing, he’d no doubt be around to pick up a call.
Sure enough, it only took two rings before the Commissioner answered.
“X-18,” Commissioner Gregor said. There was the tiniest note of relief in his voice. “I’m glad you’re safe.”
“…you knew about it, then, Commissioner?”
“You’ve survived this long because you’re careful, X-18. Extremely so. If it were up to you and you alone, no one would ever find you.”
I was silent for a moment. A whole year of working together, and it had all led to this. “Mind telling me, then, why you leaked my location to these hounds?”