“What are you looking at?” The Afflicted stands above me.
I’ve been staring stupidly at this little crab as it shimmies this way and that to its crab family, I can only assume. I don’t look up at the guy, just keep focusing on that little crab.
“Hey!” He prods my shoulder with his spiked hand.
Still looking at the crab, I say, “I didn’t know you were here.”
“What?” He asks.
The hermit has nestled into a bag of chips that hadn’t made it into a trashcan.
I repeat, “I didn’t know you were here.” I wish I could cut my leg off, it throbs and burns terribly.
The mutant squats in front of me and obstructs my field of view. His hands are hands again, except they still have a splintery wooden texture to them. He’s scowling at me.
“What do you mean you didn’t know I was here?” He asks. His breath is oddly minty. Bad guys usually have bad breath, but not this guy. “You’re an enforcer, why else would you come in here?”
Sweat trickles down my face, I’m doing my best not to pass out from the pain. My left hand is pinned underneath my body. “My boyfriend works here… hey, babe.” I try my best to look past the guy who’s way too close.
He twists around, his fingers fuse together. I reach out for them and squeeze tightly. His pinky and ring finger snap like a twig as they fail to form together with his other fingers. He yelps and hobbles back, but I have what’s left of his hand and tug him to the ground. He raises his other arm in a spiked fist, but I raise my other arm too, and mine has a gun in it. Yep, I found my freaking pistol.
He stops mid punch, his spike a breath’s length away from my temple, and my gun directly against his.
I clear my throat. “I’m sorry,” I say.
I pull the trigger.
[[ERROR… ERROR… Data incomplete… Anomaly detected… Fabrication detected… Report: Memory has been tampered with. Data reconstruction started.]]
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I clear my throat. “Call it a draw?”
There’s fear and disgust in his eyes. “You’ll just kill me anyway.”
I sigh. I want to tell him I wouldn’t, and I know I wouldn’t, but there are many other people in this line of work who would have already pulled the trigger if given the chance.
“I don’t get paid enough for that kind of paperwork,” I say.
His spiked fist is still dangerously close to my skull, but I’m afraid if I try to shift away from it that he’ll stab me in panic.
He cries. “They’ll arrest my wife and daughter.”
I don’t blink when I ask, “are they also Afflicted?”
He nods.
I shouldn’t have asked that question. I did not want to know this. I’ve just made my job one-hundred times more difficult. Of all the multiple-choice answers rolling through my brain, I have no idea what’s the right answer to this question, “Should you shoot the Afflicted man you’ve just sympathized with, or let him go?”
- Heck no I don’t let him go, he might kill someone else.
- Am I crazy? I’ll be court marshalled and thrown into prison if I let him go.
- Shoot him? He’s got a freaking family, is he really a bad guy?
- I’m not a bloody cold-hearted killer. I can’t shoot him.
- Keep up my streak of doing dumb things and getting dumb results.
I guess “E,” one-out-of-five chance I guessed right.
“Hey, man,” I wheeze.
He’s sweating. His wide eyes tell me he’s trying to solve a very similar question as me. “What?” He asks.
“How old?”
“What?”
“You’re kid?”
He doesn’t say, he just looks at me, like he’s trying to work out the trick I’m trying to pull – which is none, but I don’t blame him.
“Look, buddy. I have a son of my own. Conner. Eight-years old, super sweet. He’s waiting for me to come home in an hour and wake him up while he’s in bed and tell him I love him. Kiss his cheek and ask him how his day was at school. He’ll squirm over to me as I sit on the edge of his bed, and he’ll nuzzle me like a caterpillar, and mumble something sweet, like, ‘I had a cupcake.’ And I’ll smile and run my hand through his hair, and say goodnight, and tuck him back in as I make my way out of the bedroom door, and watch him as I close it slowly, just to take in the precious few minutes I get to be in his presence after a long and hard day of work. I just want to get back to that. That’s all I need to do, is get back to my kid, and let him know that mommy loves him.”
A tear has made it into his eye. The cybernetic one whirling coldly. Everything starts to blur, and I know I’m drifting away from all the pain and blood loss. But I’m consciousness enough to see as his spike turns back into a normal hand. I lower my gun. He picks up my helmet and lays it in my hand.
“Thank you,” I mutter. But’s he’s gone already. In fact, I’m not laying on the ground of the aquarium anymore. I’m lying in a bed, strapped up to monitors, and wrapped in bandages. There’s a man sitting there. Someone I love dearly.
He looks over to me. “Mom?”
“Hi sweetie…”
Maybe I left the teen out of eighteen. He was an eight-year-old at one point, and I have a hard time forgetting how little he used to be. Besides, what’s a little lie to get out of dying?
[[End Memory Sequence]]