I sped along the back roads as fast as it and my loaner could handle. The loaner wouldn’t last much longer, and before I reached my destination, it would be time to change vehicles. Boredom would have set in before then.
I drove fast, which left little concentration for anything else. Bliss after the long hours I spent in the diner. When one had no concerns about death at high speeds one tended to speed often and with reckless abandon.
Far too soon I reached a point where the engine started protesting at my treatment, and the thrill had worn off. Luckily I was back in more familiar cityscapes and headed for the biggest parking garage I could see.
Pulling into a mall was always a safe bet for something reliable if not entertaining. My thoughts turned to how far I had come and how much farther my task was. I cleared all I wanted or would need from the car and left the keys in the ignition.
I didn’t bother with wiping prints. When the cops ran them, they would find nothing. It would lead them nowhere, and most police are too busy to take it further. And even if anyone did they wouldn’t find anything useful.
Strolling through the garage gave me time to consider what I would be doing that day. This task was personal. Only a few steps removed from being family, after all, If you squinted hard and looked at the situation sideways.
And after all, these years I have developed a massive squint. He was no actual blood relation to me, and I hated my ex-husband’s guts, but he was a grandson, one of three in fact. I kept tabs on them over the years; morbid curiosity kept winning.
They had no other children, my husband and his new wife, but, their son had produced four kids. Three boys and one girl, and I was on my way to see the youngest boy.
The wildest and most rebellious of the lot, never satisfied with just enough. He always strived for more and sometimes got it but more often than not found trouble.
And today that brought him to my attention, the worst possible trouble of them all. I was to have a talk with him and regardless of the answers the discussion would end him.
My suspicion was that there wouldn’t be any good answers today. Not for him and undoubtedly not for me, we would both be having a rough day. Of course, I could have refused but then the Man would know that I had balked at something after all.
And I wasn't ready for the risk of Dose Denial, something that terrified me. Far more than the concern of the afterlife, and whether or not I still had a soul.
There were facilities across the world that dealt with dose administration along with other necessities. The Dose Admins not only gave us our doses but also kept track of how well our chips functioned.
I made sure to stay on my dose admin’s good side. It didn’t pay to mess with the person who could ensure that you felt that last hour.
There was no need to wait the full 24 hours before administering a dose. Given in the first few minutes of the twenty-fourth hour or the last few. Depending on how your dose admin felt about you that day made all the difference.
In the beginning they made you feel most of that last hour as a lesson; never show up late. Make sure you were on time, or this would be the beginning of unimaginable pain followed by death.
Overkill and a whole hell of a lot dramatic, the first time I experienced the twenty-fourth hour I got the message. But I did cultivate a good relationship with my dose admin, a friendly mild-mannered man luckily.
Even during my sulk I never once directed my mood his way, which he appreciated by administering my dose early. And eventually, he trusted me enough that we spent time together, lots of time. I learned many interesting things during that time.
For one, the existence and location of his dose-skim. He let it slip; inebriation dismantled his caution. And his trust in me, the belief that because I had shared his bed with an abandon that I was like-minded.
Our time together ran its course, but a friendship remained in its wake. And I knew one of his prized secrets; he had built up a secret cache of Shi. Although I never could tell if he was aware of letting it slip. It was a crazy night, and at first, I thought it was part of some hallucination brought on by the drugs and booze.
Eventually, it bugged me so much that I went and checked it out. It turned out to be true; he had a storage location. I’m still not certain how he skimmed doses; perhaps the facility had breakage calculated in the dose numbers. Or maybe he was removing a tiny bit from each vial before injecting the remainder.
I could steal his stored dose for myself; it was entirely possible that he wouldn’t report the theft. To report it would mean he had to acknowledge that he was skimming in the first place. But it would be strange if I just disappeared, and maybe he only had two months worth saved up, or even less.
The obvious result would be that I would spend two months running and hiding. And I wouldn’t be any closer to finding the manufacturing facility. There was an outside chance that things could go my way, and I could slip out of the country; if I were lucky.
But luck had more than likely left the building, and I would instead deal with a shit storm. And make no mistake, a storm of epic proportions it would be.
The other problem was that I would effectively condemn him to death. It didn’t sit well that I would let someone I counted as a friend and a relatively decent human being die in that manner. It wasn’t a secret either that he and I had spent a fair amount of time together in the past.
I could of course outright kill him, but that felt wrong too. I would kill many and probably, at least, one more before the day was over, but it always seemed easier when it was a stranger. Facing someone you knew and had friendly banter stored up with was something else.
It was useless, and I already knew I wouldn't kill Ben. No matter how I tried to rationalise it. Today was probably the most horrible in a very long time. I left the mall parking lot with a dull but reliable car. No more stalling, I had to get to work.