Chapter 1: The Reinvention of Man

In Blackness: The Reinvention of Man

This is the first chapter of The Reinvention of Man, the second book in the In Blackness trilogy. The three books together detail the quick rise of a near worldwide wide utopia and how it quickly ended in complete dystopia. This is an introduction to new creatures. Not vampire or zombie, and not quite complete alien. This is the beginning of something new, something more...human.



They have returned, and we’ve offered them…our flesh



Chapter One


Lenny sipped from a cup of coffee at his booth. The Best Little Road House, a diner in Salem, Oregon, was warm, dry and safe. Most of the tables were filled, with only a few waitresses helping serve everyone.

All these people eating and ordering food as if nothing was wrong. Like The Visit never happened. He couldn’t begin to forget, couldn’t shake the moment when dozens of people were beheaded and skinned right in front of him. Sometimes when he closed his eyes he’d helplessly replay the event in his head.

Because of the experience during the invasion four weeks ago, Lenny had been fueled by fear. The aliens that slaughtered so many had subsequently given him the mission of bringing people who had been given implants like him back to San Pedro.

His stomach muscles tightened. This happened for one specific reason—his implant affected him physically when another person with one was near. The other person didn’t necessarily know they had an implant. It took him his entire life to find out that he had one. He had followed the signal into the diner. Hopefully whomever he followed, they would become obvious.

At the beginning of his journey he wondered how long his trip to find subjects for the aliens would be. How far would he have to go? Realistically, his small amount of money would dictate the length of his travels. All of his savings from his pizza delivery job was spent on meals, motel rooms and gasoline.

A girl about eighteen, his age, exited the restroom. She had on hiking boots and an oversized backpack. Her partial dreadlocks fell over her shoulders. Heading his direction down the aisle, she stopped next to him and made eye contact before taking a seat at the booth next to his. Leaning forward, she wriggled her arms out of the backpack straps. The look she gave him made him self-conscious. Did he look as dirty as he felt? He didn’t normally grow a lot of facial hair but when he did let it grow, like he did now, it grew in patches of peach fuzz.

“Are you okay?” he said to her.

She showed him a weak smile. “Just need to sit. Looking for a ride.”

“To San Pedro?”

Her eyes lit up. “That’s a hell of a guess. How would you guess something like that?”

She was definitely the one. “Crazy you come sit right next to me. Go figure.”

“Yeah, go do that. You’re heading to San Pedro too?”

“About to split town.”

“Then I’m Celeste. I can get a lift, yeah? I travel light.”

“You just have that?” He nodded to her backpack.

She picked up the bag with one hand and then let it drop. "Jesus, a ride would be nice. Where are you from?"

“Washington, actually.”

“Where in Washington? I’m from there.” The pitch of her voice became high when she mentioned Washington. Her bad grooming led him to believe she had been traveling for a while.

Celeste moved across the aisle to his booth, leaving her backpack in the aisle. “You seem all right."

"I pass the murderer test?"

"I mean you seem all right." She leaned forward and whispered, “I haven’t eaten all day. Can I drink some of your water?”

“Have at it.”

She drank down half the glass. “So what part of Washington are you from?”

“Lowery, originally. Small little place, right…”

“I know Lowery. My dad was born there.”

“Lowery doesn’t have a hospital,” he said. “Nobody’s actually born there.”

“Delivered in the kitchen, I shit you not.” Although she seemed embarrassed by the fact, she chuckled.

“Well damn. I was there up until I was nine or something. Maybe ten.”

She finished off his glass of water. “I need to get there.”

“Need to? To San Pedro?”

“I guess need is a bit heavy but, yeah, whatever. I need to.”

“Did you hear what happened there during the invasion? You wouldn’t want to go there if you knew about it.”

“It didn’t only happen in San Pedro. Plenty of people suffered.”

“Did you lose anybody?” he said.

“Everybody.”

“A lot of people lost everybody.”

“I’m one of them,” she said. “You lose everybody too or is this your idea of small talk?”

“I’m just saying why San Pedro? I didn’t mean to be insensitive. Still, San Pedro?” She didn’t know she was going there to have a meet and greet with the aliens and probably be killed. He’d help her get there, nonetheless. It didn’t feel right but he had to do it.

“Why are you going?” she said.

“Family.”

She gazed at the ceiling and then looked around, avoiding eye contact. “Just a feeling I have. I can picture myself there. You know?”

He leaned back in his seat. If she knew him better she’d know that guilt had taken him by surprise.

“Let’s get you something to eat,” he said. “A sandwich?”

“You’re offering?”

“Only this time.”

“Ham and turkey. I’m vegetarian but fuck that I’m hungry.”

“I’m Lenny. Good to meet you, Celeste.”

“Thank God I met you, Lenny. Thank goodness for rides. Lucky.”

“I wouldn’t use that word luck too loosely.”

She unzipped the big pocket on her backpack, looked inside it and then zipped it back. Then she unzipped a smaller pocket, looked inside and closed it, too.

He knocked twice on the wood table. “You have gas money?”

“I thought you were already going there.”

“It’s still gas, right?”

A waitress stopped at their table and asked to take their order.

Moments later a turkey and ham sandwich with mustard and mayonnaise oozing from the sides of it was set on the table.

With her mouth full of sandwich, Celeste looked like a rodent storing nuts in her cheeks.

She spoke a garbled, “Thank you. Starving.”

This might have been what it was like feeding the homeless on skid row.

Once she finished her sandwich they prepared to leave.

Outside, his four-door hatchback waited for them in the wet parking lot.

Celeste tossed her backpack in the back seat as he started the engine.

“Here we go,” he said.



***

He hid his dread of being inside the motel room from Celeste. For the time being, he had a hard time in the dark, in enclosed places. He couldn’t keep his hands from shaking, thinking of his experience during The Visit. If he could make it all the way back to San Pedro without sleeping he would. Since that wasn’t the case they had stopped for rest. No way would he let her drive his car. She seemed cool but why trust her?

She drifted to sleep, leaving him alone on the end of the bed to stare at silent news clips on television. One of the clips enticed him to turn up the volume. In the clip, the alien ship slowly fell through high puffy clouds and blocked out the sun. Daunting in scope, the ship had spanned from San Pedro to Washington. The sight of it would be talked about for generations and then some. His biggest fear was right there on the screen.

“Have you seen that before?”

He hadn’t realized she was awake. “Oh, no. Never seen that. Don’t know why. I guess in the few weeks since it happened I haven’t stopped to really… Wow.” The television showed another visual similar to the one he had looked at seconds ago. This time the amateur video caught news helicopters flying far underneath the ship, really nowhere close to it. During the time the footage was taken, he and Saline were in Lowery, Washington, being captured and shipped to San Pedro. On the news is what the general public had seen. What the living public didn’t see were the aliens. Basically everyone who had seen them had been murdered in the slaughters.

Looking at the screen she said, “Does this feel like the end of the world to you?”

“I think it’s the start of something.”

“So it’s the beginning, not the end?”

“My thought is that nothing can go back to how it was. Not completely. I don’t think so.” Then he lied down, accepting the consequences of closing his eyes.

"You don’t think the worst happened?”

“I saw people getting their heads chopped off. We were in a room with people getting skinned. Just… Crazy like you don’t want to know or see.” He shook his head. “I don’t want to picture it.”

“I’ve never heard… How’d you get out? You escaped?”

“Just thinking about it screws me up.” He held his right hand out for her to observe its shaking.

“I’m sorry.”

It was nice showing someone how much of a basket case he had become. It felt like confession. All this despite the fact that she’d be dead soon.

Someone knocked on the door.

He dragged his feet over to it and stuck his eye to the peephole. A woman in her early to mid-forties was smiling at him. She waved, and then knocked again, in her jeans and black hooded sweater.

He unlatched the lock and cracked the door open.

The woman kicked the door into him, smashing him in the forehead so hard that he saw stars. He fell to the floor grabbing his face with both hands. The intruder slipped past him.

With his face to the dusty carpet he heard two gunshots and then the thud of what he thought was Celeste hitting the floor. He looked up at a handgun aimed at his skull. With the gun at his head, cowardice took over. “They made me do it.”

“Wha...” The woman gazed at him in disgust and slightly confused.

She still had the gun pointed at his head but he figured second thoughts about harming him had entered her mind.

He turned his head and got a glimpse of Celeste’s motionless ankles and legs. Breathing heavy, he turned his attention back to the gun aimed at him.

“Who made you do what?”

“The aliens. They made me get her.” He hoped on everything he loved that she respected the notion.

After some consideration the woman lifted her weapon and smacked him over the head with it. She hit him again with a fist to the cranium, and then kicked him in the stomach. Still catching his breath, he coughed as she ran out the door.

Curled in a ball and in tears he let the initial pain run its course. Attempting to push himself to his feet, he placed both hands on the floor, groaning.

The woman rushed back into the room. “We’re pulling that implant out of you.”

“Wait! Wait!”

She shut the door behind her. “Yell again and I kill you.”



*** In Blackness: The Reinvention of Man

The woman had a metal syringe in one hand and a gun in the other.

She dropped the gun and plunged the syringe into his shoulder. “Shut up or I’ll shoot you dead right here.”

The injection made Lenny’s arm feel like it would explode. Stars circled his peripheral and he became so uncontrollably limp that he couldn’t keep his eyes open. At first he purposely kept his eyes shut because it seemed to help prevent her from striking him and causing more harm. After a few minutes, he realized he couldn’t open them, couldn’t feel his body, couldn’t move his mouth. What was she doing to him?

“Don’t bother struggling,” she said. “Stop struggling damn it. Lay there. Flopping around and shit. Don’t even try to move.”

The volume of her voice gradually faded until he couldn’t hear her anymore. He laid there on an island in his head. Inanimate objects and green silhouettes of people, demons and aliens lunged for him. The visual didn’t mean anything, merely his mind staying busy. Proof of being alive. What if she kept him in this state?

After a lengthy amount of time he started feeling vibrations under his back. He wiggled his feet. The faint sounds of traffic. Whatever she shot him up with was wearing off. He still had his life in front of him, something Celeste didn’t have. Someone would find her dead in that motel room and not know what happened to her, why she got shot to death. When he got a chance, he’d go back and make sure the authorities knew she was a victim and nothing else.

Hands were gripping his wrists and ankles, carrying him, setting him down on a cold, solid surface.

In not too long he regained the ability to open his eyes. He found himself staring up at three, dim, buzzing lights hanging in a row from the ceiling. A basement. His first thought was that she had taken him to be slaughtered. He anxiously searched around for body parts, for blood, indications of his upcoming demise.

The woman stepped into view, looking down at him. “I’m Michaela.” She had tied her hair in a tight ponytail, still wearing the hooded sweater. “You’re scared, right? Make sure you hurry up and get over it.”

Not yet able to fully move, he began rolling back and forth like a fish too lazy to flop. She stirred away from him, giving him space.

After turning over on his belly, he started pushing his recovering body up off the floor. "Oh my God."

“I want you to take it easy. Nobody is going to hurt you. Would have already.” She squatted next to him. "I removed your implant,” she whispered.

He swallowed and flipped over on his back, so he was staring her in the eyes.

"From right here," she said, lifting his shirt.

Just to the right of his upper abdominal muscles was a not too deep cut. The blood made the shirt stick to him. He gently tapped the vulnerable and raw area. “It doesn’t hurt. There’s not a lot of blood.” She’d have to prove she removed his implant. It was too big a deal to take her word on it. “I have a cut and that’s all? Not a lot of blood.”

She flashed what looked like a wet mushroom in his face. How she held it, it might as well have been a magnificent diamond. "Guess what this is."

He focused on it, trying to ignore his blood drying on her hands.

She closed her palm, making the wet mushroom disappear in her fist. "It's your implant."

It didn't look as it should. He had pictured a transmitter of some sort, something obviously electronic, something smaller, not organic.

"Clearly not what you expected.” After dropping his implant on the ground, she stepped on it as if it was a lit cigarette butt. With a rag she wiped the blood off of her hands, like a mechanic might wipe grease from his fingers.

For her to think of removing his implant, she most likely, at some point, had one. "Who removed yours?" he asked.

"Nobody. I know they don’t give assignments. Tell me exactly everything that happened.”

The aliens obviously gave assignments, and to top it off, by her bringing him here and not killing him he knew that she already believed him, so what did she mean? “What do you want me to say?”

“You’re an idiot. Details. Is there something about you? I’m trying to piece this together.”

He could think of no reason why he and Saline were any different than anyone else in that slaughter room. “Outside of the implant I don’t even think I’m interesting.”

“There has to be something.”

“My parents are dead. Does that mean anything?”

“Doesn’t mean shit. What else?”

He shrugged.

“Give me some details, then. Exactly what it was like? What happened?”

He didn’t have a problem with the request. He got comfortable sitting there below her, not sure if standing at her eye level was a good idea yet. He told her about how they had been in the room in the newly built police station when the huge aliens came through large doors and started beheading people and skinning them and stacking them in piles. He told her about the guts on the walls, how they weren’t the first, and then he went into detail about how the killing stopped just in time for only his sister, Saline, and himself, to be escorted down to a basement where they were given orders from aliens over twice their size. Saline was charged with finding people who were religious and bringing them back to Pedro. He was supposed to find normal people like him with implants and bring them back. Someone else was told they would become a pet. Others were let go.

Michaela shook her head. “So they took you from the killings to another room. And they let others go. None of that sounds right.”

“I’m telling the truth.”

“No, I believe you,” she raised her hands as if to say hold on right there. “I’m just trying to picture what’s going on. If you’re not what’s different then the aliens are.”

“Different from when?” He braved a real question to his captor, almost ready to stand up.

She closed her eyes and craned her head back. “I’ve never tried to explain it to anybody.” She put both her palms to her forehead. “Good fuckin question.” When she brought her hands back down, her eyes were still closed. She opened them and said, “I’m an alien.”

He turned his head to the side. What did she mean?

“We all are,” she said, coolly. “There is no other way to put it. We’re fucking aliens.”

She said it so naturally and so simply, she must have been a slice of bread short of a sandwich. Everything started to fall into place. Bitch was nuts.

“Get rid of that stupid look on your face,” she said barely opening her mouth. “I’m not crazy. Listen here. That implant you had. It’s alien, right? Remember that big ass ship. Alien, right? You watched aliens hack people up right in front of you. Okay, then why am I crazy?” She waited a second for a response. “Now that that’s out the way, the implant you had, it’s more like a brain then anything.” He just stared at her, frowning. A part of him had started believing her and had fear to go with the knowledge.

She said, “Given enough time the will of the implant changes you. I am the implant inside of Michaela, not necessarily Michaela.” She paused. “Seeds from the ship are what’s implanted inside of you.” Another part of him believed her but still questioned her motives.

She wandered towards the stairwell. The yellowish lighting sucked any chance of positivity out of the room. Pipes ran along the ceiling above the light bulbs. The wood walls were attached to a concrete base. Several wood beams held up the ceiling.

“Why didn’t I turn into an alien?” he said.

“Yet. Each seed is different. Maybe it matters how you received it.”

He took a deep breath, recognizing that aliens weren’t going to kill him right now. Another deep breath as he set aside the initial shock of her being of alien nature.

“So I’m telling you,” she said, “I’m telling you… We don’t give assignments.”

What she implied by saying “We” don’t give assignments made his heart sink. She had lumped herself up with the tall aliens that butchered people. This wasn’t a person who killed someone. This was an alien who killed people, who probably didn’t give a shit about human life.

“Will they kill you too?” he said.

“I think we’re recognized more as human than alien every day. If you’re food then we’re food too. It’s the same thing, and it’s fucked up. If they’re letting people go, for whatever reason, then we plain old need to find out those reasons. And here you are saying that they said to bring back people like you with implants. You mentioned religion. I’m half thinking to just bring myself back with you.”

“You’re not like I was,” he said. She was the seed added to a human. The aliens hadn’t given her a mission.

She casually strolled back over to him. “We’re not the same. I sure as shit know that.” She leaned over and firmly grabbed his wrists, pulling him to his feet. “Get up.”

He struggled to rise, first tripping on his own foot and then the complication of gaining balance.

“Get up,” she said, still pulling him up and forward.

Only a few feet in back of her were the stairs leading to an upper level. He didn’t have a plan but he couldn’t wait for her to find a reason to kill him. He might have been safe from tall aliens here, but from her he didn’t know for sure. Once she realized there was nothing special about him then she’d think of him as only a threat. He took a few quick steps in an attempt to get around her. Almost past her, she punched him in his healing wound. A piercing pain, like sewing needles had jabbed him from the inside, brought him to one knee.

“You have every right to be scared. I’m not going to pretend I didn’t kill that girl. We have reason to be scared too.”

“Celeste didn’t threaten you,” he said with a grimace.

“Her implant made her a threat.”

“Then mine would have made me a threat.”

“If I didn’t believe they gave you an assignment you’d be dead too.”

Behind Michaela a tall lanky guy with a scruffy, uneven beard leaned in from the steps. “Are we going up?”

“Yes, we’re coming. He’s fine, I’m sure.”

“That’s bullshit,” the lanky guy said. “You don’t know.”

“Yes, I do, actually.”

“We’ll find out won’t we.”

“I already did. He’s fine.”

“You’re reckless, Michaela.” The guy headed back up the stairs.

“That’s Soren,” she sighed. “He has every right to be an asshole about you. Like I was saying, your implants can make you dangerous.”

He rose to his feet. “You have to believe I wasn’t tracking you guys. Celeste either.”

“See, you don’t know shit. It could have been you. Not now because you don’t have an implant. It could have been Celeste. Not now though. She’s dead.”

They heard the basement door open. Footsteps of several individuals shuffled down the stairs. Soren led the group, followed by a woman a little shorter than him, and a burly stocky dude. A male with a pot belly holding a beer brought up the rear. They all fanned out into the basement area.

“This is him?” the woman said.

“This is Lenny,” Michaela answered. “Lenny, this is Lynn, you’ve met Soren, sort of. Cash and Mike.”

“He’s good?” Lynn said.

“His implant is out,” Michaela shrugged. “He’s good.”

Mike took a swig of his beer. “Where is it?”

Michaela pointed at the smashed implant on the floor. “Right there.”

Soren said, “So The Man has more of a chance of coming through us than him.”

“Yeah,” Michaela nodded. “So don’t talk shit.”

“Why are we meeting him?” Lynn said.

“Because he’s staying with us,” Michaela answered.

“I don’t see how that won’t complicate things,” Lynn added.

“I’m not staying with you guys,” Lenny said.

Mike had one hand on his pot belly and one hand holding a can of beer. “He’s just a kid. Explain to a brother why he’s not dead yet.”

“Something is different,” Michaela said. “He should be here, maybe until we figure out what.”

“You completely believe him?” Soren said.

“He’s alive, right?” Michaela glanced at Lenny as if to ask him if he was lying.

“Because I don’t believe your theory,” Soren said. “All I know for sure is that if The Man comes, it’ll be on us to protect him.” Soren looked Lenny up and down.

“The Man won’t give a shit about him because he doesn’t have an implant,” was Michaela’s response.

“Don’t worry about me,” Lenny said. “I’m not going to stay.”

They ignored him.

“If The Man comes, he kills everyone, don’t you think?” Lynn said. “He’s not going to be like, well, let me make sure not to hurt the kid.”

Mike sipped on his can. “There’s the chance we’re overreacting. Personally I’ve always thought The Man wanted something specific.”

“You’ve said that before,” Lynn said. “Unless you can tell us what…”

“When I was with the other group I remember it saying--”

“You keep telling us this,” Soren said. “It said it was none of you. Guess what though. Aren’t you with us because they’re all dead? So I wouldn’t worry about what it wants, unless we have what it wants, and don’t know what that is so...”

“Why involve him,” Cash said. “Seriously, if he doesn’t want to be here let’s not hold him hostage.”

“They want him to come back and report to them,” Michaela said. “You don’t think that means something.”

Mike said, “I’m just worried that we’re going to start removing everyone’s implant. We don’t have the resources. No offense, Lenny.”

“You guys are a bigger risk than I am,” Lenny started. “Didn’t someone say that?”

Lynn took off her glasses and straightened herself. “For your information Mr. Lenny, if what happened to you is true then we don’t know what they did to you. You could have two or three implants for all we know. It’s you we have to worry about.”

Then it crossed his mind that maybe the aliens meant for him to bring back the likes of those like Michaela and Lynn and Cash and Soren. But he didn’t need to do so, because he no longer had an implant.

“You know he doesn’t have two or three seeds in him,” Michaela said.

By how they spoke about The Man, Lenny gathered The Man was tracking them, but he couldn’t put together how it would get to them through Celeste or even himself, even if he had an implant still. But at least he had them thinking. They were all murderers when they needed to be. When he got his chance he’d escape.

Soren coughed and then dry-heaved into his hands, cupping his vomit as it dripped from his bottom lip. “Let’s talk about what it means…to be…human,” Soren said, shuffling backward towards the stairs. “How is being human…good enough?” Soren stared down everyone in the room. “It is none of you. Then let’s make sure it stays none of you.”

As Lenny took notice in the sudden difference in Soren’s cadence, the others backed up to the outer edges of the basement, away from him.

Again Soren vomited into his hands, violently lurching forward and hunching over.

Lenny was closest to Soren. Mike was on the other side of Soren with a clear path to the steps. Mike glanced at the staircase.

“What’s going on?” Lenny said.

Mike dashed for the stairs. Soren flung yellow and chunky vomit at Mike, hitting him in the face. Mike yelled out, grabbing at his own face in pain. Soren grabbed Mike by the shoulder, spun him his direction and then expelled a stream of vomit onto Mike’s face. Mike screamed as if his insides were being torn from him. Soren threw Mike to the floor. Lenny backed up against the wall, watching Mike tightly holding his face and writhing on the floor. Soren began stomping Mike in the throat and chest and the back side of his head.

Soren turned to the rest of the room. “One at a time,” he said, not bothering to wipe the dripping yellowish spittle from his lips. “Everyone in here dies.” The vomit was eating away at Soren’s own mouth and hands. His mouth rapidly deteriorated, causing his bottom teeth and gums to show. While his tongue jutted in and out like a snake’s, Soren started saying something unintelligible.

Cash ran for the stairs, and successfully made it out.

Soren didn’t even look over at Lenny. Soren again cupped his hands, gathering drooled puke. He then flung it at them. It missed Michaela altogether but it got Lynn on her upper torso and face. She swiped at her face and started taking off her clothes.

Soren cupped more of his vomit in his disintegrating palms. As he threw up, Michaela made for the staircase. Lynn started behind her but by that time vomit was being slung at her. She backed against the wall, screaming for someone to help her, all the while Soren repeatedly splashed her with puke that Lenny thought he heard sizzling.

Not able to watch this happen, Lenny took a few powerful steps and jump-kicked Soren in the back, making him stumble forward. Lynn ran over to the far wall, as Soren focused on Lenny. “One at a time.”

Soren paused, his body trembling. For a second he closed his eyes, and then he opened them and started after Lenny.

Three gunshots, each letting off violent explosions, pierced Soren twice in the chest. His head jerked back from another shot. He stumbled once and then hit the floor. Michaela had reentered the room, wielding a handgun.

“Get to the damned bathtub!” she shouted to Lynn.

Lynn started moving and then couldn’t continue. Michaela tossed the gun and then jogged over to Lynn. “Help me get her to the bathtub upstairs. Come on, let’s go!”

Lenny hurried to them. He grabbed Lynn from under her arm pits. Michaela had her by the ankles. They desperately carried her dead weight up the stairs, through an incredibly clean kitchen, and then down a hallway to a small bathroom. They managed to get Lynn halfway in the tub before pushing her all the way in.

Michaela twisted on the water. “Get her clothes off.”

First he took off Lynn’s shoes, and then he undid her belt to take off her corduroy pants.

Michaela worked on her upper half, removing her sweater and then her blouse. “She’s going to be okay.”

No way would she be okay. The spots where the vomit connected with her were terrible. Her chest was littered with widening wounds. There was exposed muscle on her face. Spots on her legs, he could see down to her bone.

“We got this,” Michaela said, before rushing out of the bathroom. She came back moments later with an 8 x 11 sized black box. She dumped the silvery liquid content of the box into the tub with Lynn and the hot water. “Don’t even think twice about it. We got this.” She adjusted the cold water, evening out the temperature of the bath. In her other hand she had a syringe.

“What is that stuff?”

Staring at the tub Michaela said, “It’s what I shot you up with when I removed your implant. It healed you too. Almost the rest of what we have though, so...” Michaela injected Lynn into her shoulder, and then set it in the box. She then tossed the box out of the bathroom and into the hallway. She took the wash rag that hung on the faucet and dipped it in the water then used it to dab the open sores on Michaela’s face.

“Everybody’s okay?” Cash was standing in the doorway.

“Oh yeah, fuck you very much, motherfucker,” Michaela said, rising to her feet, a beast awakening. “If I had my gun on me I’d shoot you right here.”

“What, was I supposed to die down there?”

“You were supposed to come back, you piece of shit.”

“You know damned well that’s not what you would have done.”

“Motherfucker that’s exactly what I did. That’s exactly what I did.”

“It’s your fault anyway.”

Michaela knelt and put her ear to Lynn’s face. “You’re lucky she’s breathing.”

“It’s still your fault,” he said from the doorway.

She stood again. “What are you talking about?”

“You brought him. If he’s with you I’m not.”

“Clearly you don’t have my back.”

“I have to have my own back first.”

“Get this. If you have your own back then nobody has yours. What do you think about that?”

“This is too fucked,” Cash said.

“And.”

“So what’s your plan?

A pause.

“You don’t have one,” he said, “and we’re dying because of this stupid risk you’re taking. We can’t say it enough. You’re too reckless.”

“The Man wanted nothing to do with him. Not down there he didn’t.”

“Soren was The Man?” Lenny said, dumbfounded.

“The Man is a thing, a thing,” she said, and then inhaled deeply. She focused again on Cash. “It got to Soren and made an effort for us. It wanted nothing to do with Lenny. Basically nothing. So it can’t be because of him.”

Cash stomped away muttering to himself.

She dropped to her knees, turned off the running faucet and cried into Lynn’s bath water. The few wrinkles in Michaela’s cheeks were more prevalent with tears streaming down her face. Strands of her hair were stuck to her cheeks and were pushed into the neck of her sweater.

“Can what happened with Soren happen to you?”

“Don’t worry about that. It wants nothing to do with you.”

“But it would if I still had an implant?”

“Don’t ask questions you know the answer to.” She had her eyes closed, breathing deliberately. “I just don’t see another way,” she blurted. “You’re coming with us to San Pedro.”