Come Home
How long have I sat here? I’m not sure. Long enough for the dark to unfold into hesitant blue. The twisted limbs of the doppelgänger are almost pearly in the half-light. From this vantage point, it looks as small as a child. After hours of staring, I’ve yet to see its chest move.
One day, my Original body will lie like that. Someone will look into a similar face and find it vacant. I feel vacant enough to be dead already.
When I gave myself up to sitting here, I was sure I’d be discovered in minutes. Capture would almost be a relief. Because wouldn’t it be nice to rest, to be warm, to sink into oblivion. But if that’s how things are going to go, I wish oblivion would hurry up. My lower body has gone completely numb and though my shoulders shiver uncontrollably, even that exertion leaves me exhausted.
The building is so quiet, when I first hear the footsteps, I think I’m imagining them. Yet the noise keeps growing. panic stirs against my temple in moth wings.
My apathy of earlier disintegrates but, trying to stand, I find my legs leaden. Only a hand flung at the railing saves me from joining the Ressy. In the complete lack of feeling, I have to guide my steps by sight. My foot that collides with the step has the soft resistance of meat.
At the top of the flight the pain of returning sensation begins in shards. Running is impossible. I sink down and try to rub the feeling back.
Yet the footsteps below aren’t in any hurry, a thin whistle rises over them, almost bird-like.
Come on. Come on.
My toes are nearly wriggling. If whoever approaches is distracted by the Ressy it might give me time to run.
But as a stooped figure rounds the corner, a croak escapes me. Grandma Wolf.
It’s not dead. As my hands cup beneath its armpits, I could cry at the warmth and stickiness of life. Grandma Wolf grunts as she takes the feet and we make our way back up the stairs.
Its hands bash against the steps but it’s the least of the damage that it will take away from tonight. I’ll kill it if I try to take it any further, that much is clear. Even if it’s not bleeding internally, without BodySupport it wouldn’t make it as far as ICPO.
My arms are already screaming but Grandma Wolf’s expression shows only concentration. At the storage room we back in through the door and deposit the body on the empty pallet.
Plugged back into BodySupport, the Ressy breathes more easily. Still, the face is puffier than it should be, its right side puce and purple. Bio is bound to notice but the upside is it means that they’ll look for internal injuries. For, as much as my doppelgängers discomfort me, I don’t like the idea of one dying. And Mr Hughes won’t be able to puppet me for a while, at least, not until he ships another of my doppelgängers in.
Free of her load, Grandma Wolf has moved to the window. The sun has already breached the horizon. We’ll have to leave soon before the Centre starts to fill up. But then what? I haven’t just wasted a whole night but ruined my only plan. I sit heavily on the gurney.
A blackbird lifts its voice, a tremulous laugh at the sun’s return, so loud it could be inside the room. I look up, but of course it’s just Grandma Wolf, head tipped back, singing as if it were her mother tongue.
After a few rounds, the pace changes, its pitch changing to robin’s, excited by the promise of morning. the robin is followed by a creaking tweet of two intertwining notes, now lifting into the whoop of a swift, sliding across the heavens. Hunger and sex, warning and greeting, her song captures it all. When she finishes, the last mournful note peals outwards to unveil the crystal dimensions of air.
‘How do you do that?’ I whisper.
If she hears, she shows no sign of it. Under the waking light her stooped body has a terrible beauty. I could live a thousand lives and never belong like she does.
‘What do I do now?’ I say, ashamed of the whine in my voice. ‘The doppelgänger was my only plan. I know it was foolish, but what other evidence do I have?’
She turns and I flinch under the intensity of that gaze. My hands are suddenly clammy, her look enough to render me a foreigner to myself.
But her attention has already shifted to the doppelgänger, expression ineffable; and, as if aware of my sudden awkwardness, she takes hold of my hands. Her touch is warm, skin like vellum. She pats me and nods as if to herself, somehow human in an instant.
Only as she walks away do I register that she’s slipped something into my grasp: hard plastic – a card.
‘Hey,’ I call softly after her. But she’s already gone. I can hear the sound of traffic outside the window. I need to get out of here myself. But first I move closer to the light and hold up the card.
It’s the same design that’s issued to all ShenCorp personnel, though the layout is slightly different to any I’ve seen. That explains the mystery of how she keeps breaking inside the Centre at least.
The photo shows a suited Asian woman in her fifties or sixties, expression set with the haughty assurance of your typical human. So much so that it takes me by surprise to suddenly realise that I’m looking at a younger Grandma Wolf. The rumour that she was a lecturer here was always the most believable.
To the right, where there would usually be an employee number and expiry date, is left blank. The only other information on the card is a name – ‘Professor Miu Shen’.