The attack didn’t knock Rick cold, but his vision narrowed to a tunnel. His heart rate shot up, and instinctively, he propped himself, still standing, between the door and the doorjamb.
Another strike hit him from behind, this one against his ribs.
“Kris! They’re breaking in—” His head swam, but he tightened his grip against the door. “Run!”
The next strike felt like a boot.
I’m nonviolent, officer.
I’m not resisting.
I’m not resisting.
I’m not resisting.
In his mind, he imagined a tornado at his back.
Whack! The next strike—
It’s the wind—it’s just the wind blowing shit into me. I’m not fighting. “Run, baby!”
Kristina-Anne came around the corner; her eyes went wide at the sight of him.
“Run!”
She turned and disappeared. Yes. Good. Out the back. Ain’t nothing here worth—
He grunted as a flurry of blows drove into his back. There must have been more than one. The thought made him shake. He couldn’t let the attack be what it was, not in his mind. It’s a storm—it’s just a hurricane. There’s no one behind me but the wind. He didn’t turn, though what he’d convinced himself was merely wind-tossed debris came at a more rapid rate.
Tornado, it’s a tornado and I’m just keeping the door closed against the wind.
The next strike almost sent him to the floor.
“Get the fuck out of the way,” someone said.
Oh god.
I’m not resisting.
I’m not resisting.
“Get out—”
He roared to block out the voice, to turn it into the incoherent rumbling of a tornado, to remove its resemblance to speech.
His hand on the doorknob slipped, and he gripped it again. Something hit his knuckles. As he went down, Kristina-Anne came back around the corner, a metal baseball bat raised over her head. She swung it as he dropped to avoid the incoming blow. Somewhere above and behind him, the sickening sound of aluminum against bone rang out.
Why didn’t she run?
A body dropped to the floor next to him, but another boot stepped over him, its laces undone.
I’m not resisting.
I’m not resisting.
But he’s gonna trip with his laces like that. Better fix it. “Hey buddy—let me get that for you.” Rick grabbed the man around the ankle, sending the man to the floor. I’m just helping. I’m a nonviolent offender.
The sickening sound of the baseball bat sounded again, and the man yelled, “Bitch is crazy!”
Rick rolled out of the way as Kris’s bat came back down. “I will kill you all, you goddamned sons-a-bitches!” Her eyes were wild. “I”—she swung—“will”—she swung again—“kill”—she swung wildly once more, clipping the arm of a Mohawk-wearing Black man as he tried to step back in—“you all!”
Rick got a good look at them for the first time. A scar-faced Asian was guiding the Mohawk’d Black man toward the door. Mohawk cradled his obviously broken arm, careful to keep out of the range of Kristina’s bat. She focused her fury on a white guy on the floor. Rick tried to get to his feet, but he swayed along the ground. A smear of blood on the floor drew his gaze. Was it his or one of the attackers? Or hers? It wouldn’t matter if someone decided the cops were worth the money and they came for him again. Oh please, don’t let that—
“Get up, you motherfucker!” his wife yelled to the guy on the floor.
Under Kris’s withering stare, the Scar-faced Asian man first looked out from where he’d balled up, then backed as far away from her as he could as he stood. The muffled sound of the would-be robber’s sobbing was audible beneath the raging rush of Kris’s panting.
When Scar-face and Mohawk were a yard from the door, they dashed out, almost crashing together as they tried to exit the small portal at the same time. Whitey had lost some teeth, and blood dribbled down his chin as he gazed wildly around the room, a look of bafflement on his face. Tears streamed from his red-ringed eyes, mixing with the blood from his chin, hastening its dripping. “You’re fucking crazy, lady.”
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Kristina feinted forward with the bat, and the white guy stood, then fled past her and Rick out the door.
Rick’s head swam. He fought the dizziness, pulling himself along the floor until his back was against the wall and he could see the door, though his vision made it seem as though the entryway rocked, like the doorway from the cabin of a ship in rough seas.
“Oh God! Baby!” The bat clanged against the floor as Kristina ran to him. She cradled his face. “You’re not there anymore, baby. You’re okay. You’re okay.”
Rick stared past his wife, and under the influence of the raging alarm bells screaming in his head, she became a whispering shadow, a ghost of something he could ignore as he kept his unblinking gaze on the door, waiting for disaster to burst through the entrance with clubs and tasers and worse. He rocked back and forth, waiting for the police to take him.
Kristina-Anne trapped him in a hug and rocked with him, pulling him toward the door, closing it so she could rest her back against it as she cradled him. “I’m here, baby. I’m here. You’re okay, sweetheart. You’re okay. You’re okay.”
I’m a nonviolent offender.
I’m a nonviolent offender.
I’m a nonviolent offender.
I’m a nonviolent offender.
Slowly, Rick’s breathing slowed. The smell of his wife’s shampoo entered his awareness, and his eyes blurred with tears. He blinked, but he didn’t stop watching the door.
*************************************
“I don’t think they got anything, baby,” Kristina-Anne said the next morning.
He nodded. He’d gotten the sleep medicine for her, but he was the one who’d needed it after the violence of last night. She stayed up long into the early morning, making sure he was okay until the drug pulled him into blissful, dreamless unconsciousness.
He touched the back of his neck. Nothing felt broken. At least the rig isn’t damaged. He coughed and regretted it. There was no way for him to know for sure—the hospital was for rich folks and those at death’s door—but if he had to guess, he’d say the muggers must have broken a few of his ribs.
The cops hadn’t came—he couldn’t remember why thought they would? The adrenaline always short-circuited his prefrontal cortex, but once he got clear of his conditioning, he always felt disembodied from the events that had triggered it, as though they’d happend to someone else, as though somehow he’d acquired his injuries in his sleep.
His landlord, Omar, had patched a hole Kristina had put in the wall with the bat, but he and his wife would have to pay for it. It wasn’t Omar’s fault; it’s not like he lived in opulence. Everyone at the bottom had it bad, and just because the bank let his landlord own the building, it didn’t put Omar much above anyone else on the block.
“We have to get out of this neighborhood,” he said.
His wife froze, then looked up at him. It was the first thing he’d said since the incident. She smiled. “You back, honey?”
Rick nodded.
“Hungry?”
He nodded again.
“There’s a plate for you in the fridge. Didn’t know when you’d be clear enough to eat.” Clearly exhausted, she turned to walk away.
“Hey,” he said.
“Yeah?” She turned and raised her eyebrows.
“I mean it. We’re gonna get out of here.” He made sure she looked into his eyes, even from across the room.
“I know, Tiger.”
Breakfast was quiet. Throughout their marriage, they’d taken turns saving one another, and by some sort of grace, or pure luck, they’d never both been at the bottom of the hole at the same time.
How long could they hold out?
He tried not to think about it as his wife yawned and excused herself to the bathroom. It was her turn to shower and sleep.
It was good that Hector hadn’t fired him from the courier job. If Hector lost money and wanted to blame it on Rick, it might be trouble later on, but for now, he could pay the bills another week. He doubted Hector would be so spiteful as to—
He shook the thought from his mind. Hector was a lot of things, but he doubted he’d be that cruel over a request Rick had clearly hesitated to fulfill. He hadn’t promised his boss he could fight—in fact, he’d done the opposite.
Still, he worried. He settled into his chair and grasped the cable he needed to log into his AR net portal and winced as pain coursed through him when he tried to access the port at the base of his neck. The plug fit unusually tight this time, and he had to force it, but once he had, he sat and logged in.
The same login screen confronted him as always. Nearby sat a rolling cart with a wireless keyboard. He pulled it close and logged in his username and password. And that’s when something strange occurred.
Everything about the AR interface was wrong. It was just… off. There were flickers, and the array occasionally blended and superimposed one image over the other, as if the interface itself had double-vision.
He investigated further, pulling up a browser and glancing around the living room before navigating to his favorite porn site. He turned the volume low and played one of the streaming videos.
It was odd. The actors were all there, but something about the image seemed unreal. AR video may not have been as immersive as Simulated Reality or even Virtual Reality, but it usually provided an engaging experience—especially considering the act in which the performers were engaged at this part of the scene.
And he felt nothing. This is… A thought came to him, and he tried to temper his excitement as he pulled up a different video site—one of a few that played old MMA fights.
He hesitated before he entered the search. Even AR video triggered his conditioning, albeit a less debilitating form. Kristina had to prescreen new movies before he could watch them—in case the fight scenes were too realistic. When the site with the MMA footage came up, he took a deep breath, and played one of the videos.
He watched the fighters circle, then winced reflexively as one of the fighters threw a punch that landed. He waited, surveilling his body, alert for the first signs of the conditioning. He opened his eyes slightly, then more, then fully open. The video kept playing. There was another flurry of attacks and counterattacks.
Nothing.
Nothing!
He marveled as the movie depicted a brutal strike that had elicited anxiety and nausea in him when he’d first seen it.
Still nothing. He watched a while longer before disengaging his implant and standing.
There was fresh plaster where Omar had repaired the holes in the wall, and the broken lamp had been placed back on the end table as if its brokenness was deliberate, like an artist’s statement.
How long could they hold out? She was still too… unwell to work and he could barely pay the rent to keep them in this small apartment in an increasingly crime-ridden neighborhood. The courier job wouldn’t cut it much longer.
The fight scene and its inability to trigger him lit a weak flame of hope within, a flame he tried to tamp out lest it burn him. Might not be the same in Simulated Reality. He took a deep breath. Still, if he wanted a future—if he wanted a family—he had to at least give it a shot.
He knocked on the bathroom door and called loudly over the sound of the running shower. “I gotta head to work for a sec. You okay in here alone?”
Her voice was muffled. “Yeah. Lock’s been changed. You gonna be gone long?”
“Um… I’m not sure,” he said.
“Back in time to eat?” she asked.
“Probably.” He stepped out the door and locked it, then headed to Hector’s office.