The Bloodless Page 10

  “So, we finally meet,” a voice issued from a man who was apparently shrouded in darkness the whole time. Justice was too scared at that point to respond with anything coherent. The man chuckled and stepped out of the shadows. Justice didn’t know what he was expecting but it definitely wasn’t what he actually saw. This man looked quite normal. He was young, in fit condition, maybe a little more fit than average, dark black hair, and pale blue eyes that had that yellow glow around the irises. He smiled as he looked down on Justice, a sort of triumphant smile with just a smidgen of cruelty behind it.

  For a while he just stared at him, waiting, as if Justice was supposed to recognize him. After a few moments were passed in silence he turned and looked out the only window in the shack. “Of course you wouldn’t remember me,” The man said airily, “how could you?” Justice was absolutely confused. He felt like he should know him, there was something about him that was very familiar to him, but he had been having that feeling so often lately he didn’t pay attention to it anymore.

  “Let me introduce myself,” he said, turning back to look at Justice again. “I am Mendel and I’ve wanted to meet you for quite some time now, Mr. Justice. However, this isn’t the first time we’ve met, well, not like this anyway. Not with me like this, I mean to say. You were an employee of GoD Laboratories, were you not?” he asked as Justice continued to look confused. Justice slowly nodded his head. “Okay, well at least those halfwits were able to locate the right guy this time. Do you have any idea how many Justices there are around this area?” Justice shook his head. “Quite a few. Well, there are fewer now than there were, but it took us awhile to get the right one.” Mendel moved around the room so he was standing behind his captive. “You still don’t know who I am, do you?”

  Justice shook his head again.

  “Wow, we must’ve really done a good job then,” Mendel said putting a hand on Justice’s shoulder and squeezing. “Allow me to enlighten you. I am a bi-product of you and your colleagues’ nature raping experimentations. Not me as I am now, but my previous form. I was one of the first ‘people’ to undergo your reanimation process. Subject 05202100-103.”

  It wasn’t until that moment that Justice realized who this being in his presence was. All at once it came crashing in around him. The guy was right, he wasn’t recognizable in his current state but he remembered every subject and the number they assigned them. They assigned them all according to date, series and unit. He the first successful reanimation of their trials. Justice remembers him, however, as an elderly man who had died of natural causes. His body was frail and worn but there were no signs of disease or impending disease. He was a perfect candidate for the first series.

  During the first run of reanimations GoD scientists took people who died of old age, heart attacks, aneurisms, and anything similar that they deemed to be natural. Disease, accidents, murder, and similar “unnatural” factors were tested in a different series. 103’s body was donated by his family, a group that was really big into science. They didn’t know what the experiments were for exactly, as the scientists were as vague as possible when coercing the family to sign the release form.

  During the first series of reanimations, the families were notified only when the rejoining of the original soul was successful but that was very rare, which led to many families never learning the fate of their loved ones. The families that did see the return of their deceased were so overcome with emotion that they didn’t know how to react. Justice and his team would usually just do the surprise and take off afterwards, never communicating with the families again. They didn’t study the after effects of the process and that was the one major flaw in their experiments.

  Mendel must’ve seen the dawn of recognition in Justice’s eyes because he proceeded to say, “Ah, there it is. I figured that number would jog your memory, you science types are all the same. Or should I say, WE science types.” He did not elaborate, he just continued on, “You had a nasty habit of discarding failed experiments before you had a grasp on what was really going on. You understood the genetic and physiological aspect of what you were doing, but you didn’t care much for the psychology, did you?

  "Do you have any idea what it’s like being ripped from the afterlife and being thrown into a world of pain and agony? Going from blissful eternity to tormenting reality?” He snickered, “Of course, I don’t have to tell you all of this, do I? You know all too well for yourself,” he paused and contemplated for a moment, “or do you?” He waved a hand in the air, “Ah well, doesn’t really matter does it? Not now anyway.” He paused for a moment and walked back around to the window and looked out it again. It was almost as if he was waiting for something.

  “What do you want with me?” were the first words Justice was able to speak.

  “Oh my dear man, there is so much you do not yet know or understand,” Mendel responded, still gazing out of the window. “I want to bring you up to speed, but above all else,” he turned and looked at Justice, “I want you to pay. I want you to understand my agony and my torment.”

  “You’ve already killed my family you asshole,” he yelled at Mendel. He wasn’t sure where he was able to muster the anger from, perhaps it was the blasé attitude of a man he barely knew, or maybe Justice had had enough misery to last a lifetime. Whatever it was, it made him really angry, really quick.

  “And that’s just the beginning,” Mendel snapped back, anger flaring in his tone. “You know emotional pain, yes, but you have not yet experienced true physical pain. That’s where I come in.” He started pacing around the shack, “I am going to take you on a journey of pain you can’t even imagine. The excruciating torture you will suffer will make you bleed, it will make you cry, and it will make you wish you were dead, but you won’t be dead, you’ll be alive through it all. I’ll make sure of that.

  “But first, before any of that, I am going to fill you in on a few things. Did you ever wonder why you weren’t killed the first time you were captured? Didn’t it ever seem a bit curious that while everyone else was killed on sight, you were taken into custody?” Mendel asked as he came to a stop. Before Justice could respond, there was a dull explosion in the distance outside of the shack. Mendel didn’t react to it at all and it wasn’t clear whether he even heard it or not, but when there was a closer more audible explosion, there was no doubt he had to have heard it.

  A look of slight confusion appeared on Mendel’s face as a few more small and closer still explosions sounded off. The door to the shack was wrenched open and the thin man from the alley burst into the room. “Sir,” he said breathlessly, “we’re under attack.”

  Mendel looked at him impassively and responded, “Then do something about it Krieger.”

  “Well, sir, we think you’d better come have a look yourself. It’s pretty serious.”

  “God dammit,” and the first sign of frustration came out of Mendel. He swept passed Justice and walked out of the shack. The man named Krieger scowled after him and the two men exited the shack.

  Justice sat there for a moment fully expecting them to swiftly deal with the disturbance and be right back in the room. But when several minutes passed and more explosions were set off, he decided to stand up and try to have a look for himself. He walked over to the window to see if there was anything to be seen, but as soon as he got to it the door burst open. He broke out in a cold sweat because he just knew he was in for some serious backlash. However, when he spun around Justice saw a sight he had never expected to see in a million years. Crist stood in the doorway, a massive gun on her waist.

  “What the…”

  “You,” she exclaimed and rushed towards him and cut the ties that bound his hands. “You’re still alive, I can’t believe it.”

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” Justice asked savagely as he massaged his wrists that were surely close to falling off. He was understandably pissed considering Crist was the whole reason he was even in captivity.

  “What does it look like?” she respo
nded annoyed. “I’m getting you the fuck outta here.”

  “You expect me to trust you after what you did to me?”

  “You’re going to have to. We don’t have time for me to explain now, but I promise you when we get out of here I’ll tell you everything.” Justice hesitated as he was reluctant to go. “Now,” she yelled when he didn’t respond right away. He nodded slightly and followed her out of the shack.

  “What the…” Justice said for a second time. When they got outside the immediate vicinity was completely bereft of any bodies. No guards, no defense systems, nothing. It was very odd.

  “I set off a very large diversion,” Crist explained as she joined Justice outside. In lieu of asking a bunch of questions he would get answers to later, he decided to just follow Crist as she took off away from the shack. They ran at full speed for what seemed like at least a half hour and put a serious distance between them and Justice’s captors.

  They finally came to a stop, he couldn’t run any further, even if his life was on the line. He stopped and immediately retched and clutched his side that felt like it had torn vertically between his armpit and his hip. Justice tried to gather himself and when he looked up he saw a gun holstered on Crist’s hip. He lunged and pulled it out and quickly put it up against the back of her head. “Why was that so easy,” he gasped.

  “What are you talking about?” she said cautiously as she slowly raised her hands in the air.

  “Escaping,” he replied, “didn’t it seem like things went just a little too according to plan?”

  “Yes,” she said simply, “that’s how plans are supposed to be. My plans anyway,” she added.

  “What is this? Some kind of mind-fuck where you help me escape then beat my ass and capture me all over again?”

  “No.”

  “I want answers,” Justice yelled, frustration filled spit flying from his mouth. “What the fuck is going on?”

  “Put the gun down and I’ll tell you.”

  “Tell me and then I’ll put the gun down,” he responded. “If I like your answers, that is.”

  “I was under mind control,” Crist yelled, a hint of pleading in her voice.

  Justice lowered the gun because he wasn’t sure he heard what he thought he heard. Crist turned around to look at him, tear streaks down her face. “Mind control?” he said confused.

  “Yes,” she said, “do you remember the hip flask I was drinking out of?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It was a mind control concoction. They force fed me some after they captured me and gave me orders to find you and bring you in. They then put some in that flask and told me to keep drinking it every few minutes to keep the effects running,” Crist said, wiping fresh tears from her face.

  “And you did?” he asked without thinking.

  “That’s how mind control works,” she responded derisively. “The weird thing is though, I was lucid the whole time. I remember everything. I was myself but I was unable to disobey my orders.”

  “But why you?”

  “I don’t know! That’s what I kept asking myself the whole time. ‘Why me?’ It doesn’t make perfect sense, but the only think I can think of is that we’ve had contact in the past.”

  Justice pressed his hands over his eyes, the gun still gripped in his left, and sank to the ground. His body was fairly certain it no longer had legs, at least that’s the message it was screaming in his head. “I’ve had contact with lots of people in the past, why would they single you out?”

  “Like I said, it doesn’t make perfect sense, but, well, not to toot my own horn or anything but look at me. I think they made a pretty good decision.”

  “It did work out pretty well didn’t it?” he mumbled, more to himself than Crist. “Did they tell you anything else, like why they wanted to bring me in? Maybe you heard other things about what they’re doing?”

  “Well, it seems to me that they want you dead, but as far as other activities, no,” Crist said taking a seat next to him. “It all happened pretty quickly. They got me out of my home and then next thing I know they were sending me to get you. There wasn’t much in between.”

  “How did you find me? I mean, after they caught me,” Justice said lowering his hands to the ground.

  “After that Tyler guy knocked me out I woke up and I was all by myself, it’s as if they just left me, like I could be discarded. I guess they never expected someone like me to make a big daring rescue like that.”

  “Wait,” he said and his head perked up, “didn’t they?”

  “What?”

  “Think about it,” Justice said and he got on his knees, “these don’t seem like people who just leave loose ends strewn about their plans…” he trailed off and didn’t continue. He became lost in thought, thinking about things, impossible things, but some things that had occurred to him throughout the whole ordeal and the aftermath.

  Everything seemed to work out like the plot of a movie, as though the past twelve hours were scripted. But if that were true, what was the end game? What were these “people” planning and what was his role in it, if anything? Was he just a pawn? Even if any of that were true, he decided to just push it all to the back of his mind because there wasn’t anything he could do about it at that time anyway.

  “Hey!”

  “Hm?”

  “Are you okay?” Crist asked.

  “Yeah, just thinking.”

  “What about?”

  “Nothing,” Justice said and when he tried to stand up he found that his legs had regained their strength rather quickly. “Fuck,” he said surprised. “We need to get out of here. We have to keep moving. Do you have anywhere we can go?”

  “Yeah,” Crist said getting to her feet. She brushed the dirt off her pants and looked into the distance, “it’s not much but it’s somewhere safe.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Burning Effigy

  The day was early and Justice found himself wide awake standing outside the front door of Crist’s safe house. It had been several months since she rescued him from Mendel. The shack wasn’t much of a house, but more of a shanty. It wasn’t in the best condition as Crist had to build it herself. Justice made a note to get some help to do a little refurbishing of the shack. He figured he might as well ask Fox, the man who saved his life in the home in Wellingtown, when they met up later that day.

  Crist’s shack was located in Burbage which, like Wellingtown, was a suburb of Albuquerque that was over one-hundred kilometers from Abiyah. Alexander Jefferson decided on New Mexico as the best destination for the large compound he desired for his company as New Mexico was widely regarded to be the best location for experimental laboratories. The isolation allowed for built in privacy features and the distance between neighbors was usually pretty great. Plus the topography of the state created natural fortresses. Of course, nature wasn’t good enough for Jefferson and he had walls built on top of the jagged outcroppings of rock that surrounded the land purchased for his laboratories.

  Jefferson’s crowning achievement with the design of the compound was the decision to construct a dedicated power plant fifteen kilometers from the compound. It was completely autonomous and not a single organic being was employed at the plant which was meant a lighter payroll, something Jefferson always preferred. It was a solar power plant of course since those were the only power plants authorized for construction at the time but in the US Southwest that was the preferred type anyway because of all the sun the area received each year. However, after one too many malfunctions with the automation in the plant, Jefferson sold it to an energy company who employed real life people to run it.

  A chain reaction was set off after the sale of the power plant that saw a population boom around the GoD complex and the power plant. Jobs were being created and people like living close to work and where people settle so do other commercial entities. Soon the whole northwest corner of New Mexico saw settlements spring up that finally filled a void left by the Native Americans. It was a tight-
knit large area community. Many of the services needed for societal living were traded between the neighborhoods and before The Incident, the entire region was on a solid track to becoming self-sufficient.

  The sky above Justice was dark, but it was always dark in those days. He took a deep breath of the putrid air before slipping a mask over his nose and mouth that filtered out the contaminants in the air that had been killing people so efficiently ever since The Cloud erupted. The presence of The Cloud cast an unnatural haze over the lands limiting visibility dramatically. He checked his watch and saw that eight in the morning was approaching quickly. He would have to set out soon if he wanted to be on time meeting Fox.

  “You’re coming back aren’t you?” a soft, unusually vulnerable voice wafted to Justice’s ears. Crist had opened the door and she stood there in just a t-shirt, her purple and pink hair rolled up in a messy bun, a mask on her face as well. Her hard, heterochromatic gaze had always remained the same, it was one of the main things that drew Justice to her.

  “Only if you want me to,” he responded.

  “Don’t do that,” she said slightly exasperated, “you know I hate it when you talk like that.”

  Justice smiled and gently placed his hand on the side of her face, “Sorry, this is still really new for me.”

  “It’s new for me too,” Crist said, “but I guess three months is still a short time.”

  “Yeah but you’ve always been more sure of what you want.”

  “So you don’t know if I’m what you want?”

  “Did I say that,” Justice responded and he removed his hand from her face. “Of course you’re what I want. I’ve always wanted you,” and a sharp pang for his family reverberated through his body. He had to be honest with himself though. There’s no question that he loved his family with every ounce of his heart, but he had loved Crist since the day he first saw her in his laboratory. They developed a deep emotional connection in the days that followed their reunion. That was something he never had with his wife but it was something he had longed for his entire life.