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The same scream.
Fideli held her hand through the rest of it. Bryn didn’t listen, couldn’t over the rush of blood in her ears. She felt dizzy and sick and very, very strange.
She looked at Fideli, who shifted his gaze away. Then she moved her mute stare to McCallister, the cool corporate drone, who leaned forward and took her hand in his. Squeezed, silently, and waited until the video finally ended.
Fideli shut the TV off. In the silence, Bryn heard some rational voice in her head screaming, It’s fake; it’s all fake, special effects. This isn’t happening; this can’t be happening.
The only problem was that she knew it was happening. She’d seen, and she finally, horribly, believed.
She looked up at Patrick McCallister’s face and saw emotion there, quickly hidden. Pity, maybe.
He was still holding her hand. He’d been holding it through the whole ordeal, though she’d forgotten he was even there.
“Joe,” he said, “I don’t think we need the gun anymore. ”
Fideli put it away without a word. Bryn realized that she really ought to say something, do something, but for the moment, all she could think of was to sit very still, holding to the warm anchor of another human being. She felt like all the world around her had turned into a black, sucking whirlpool, and she was afraid that if she let go, even for a second, she’d drown.
Go back to … that. That empty ashen thing on the hospital bed.
Oh, she believed, all right. And it terrified her.
“What did you do to me?” she whispered. She was staring right into McCallister’s eyes now, looking for that spark of connection again, but it wasn’t there. He’d shut down. Maybe he had to, to deal with the emotion pouring out of her just now. She’d never felt so scared, or so alone. So empty.
“There’s good news,” he said, in a soothing, quiet voice that unpleasantly reminded her of Lincoln Fairview, with his nice suit and cultured palate and nasty lies. “You need a daily shot, but apart from that one thing, you’re in the best shape you’ll ever be in. No sickness, no aging. You won’t change, because the nanites returned you to a template of what you were just at the cessation of life, and holds you there. ”
“I’m dying. I’m dead. ”
“You’re dying less than the rest of us,” he said. “You’re … on hold would be a good description. And there are positives, believe me. ”
“Positives!” She couldn’t control the bitter, shaky laugh that burst out of her, and put her hand to her mouth to muffle it. “God. ”
He didn’t tell her it was okay after that. He just let her sit and think for a while.
Finally, she wet her lips and said, “How in the hell does a company set out to create … this?”
“They didn’t,” he said. “Returné was an accident, a side effect of an experimental drug for the treatment of cancer. It would have won Mercer and Sams the Nobel Prize, if it had worked the way they thought. Or if they could ever actually talk about it again, but of course now it’s highly classified. ”
That made her laugh again, but it wasn’t a laugh she recognized. It sounded wild and ugly, and very not-Bryn. Of course, she wasn’t Bryn anymore, was she? The Bryn from yesterday, that girl had her whole life ahead of her. A career, love, a family—those were the things she’d wanted. And she was gone.
So who was this Bryn? No, not who. What was this Bryn?
She wasn’t a person anymore. She felt like one and she looked like one, but what he’d just shown her had stripped that away.
She was an animated, breathing mimicry of life.
“Bryn,” he said, and drew her attention again. She hadn’t even realized it had wandered. “Bryn, please listen to me. You’re in the danger zone right now. It’s not just that your body has to survive; you need to survive along with it. If you withdraw, if you go catatonic, I can’t help you. Stay with me. ”
Bryn pulled in a deep breath. “Do I have a choice?”
“Always. But I’d rather you didn’t pick the other option,” McCallister said.
“Decomposing?”
He ignored that, didn’t blink, kept his focus straight on her. “I have a proposition for you. ”
She laughed again. Still not a nice laugh. “They lock you up in this state for necrophilia. ”
“Bryn. Listen to me, because what I have to say is vital to your continued existence. Pharmadene wanted answers out of you, and I wasn’t able to get them. But together, we can offer the company something else. Something better, possibly. ”
