Incarnate- Essence Page 11

  But are you really acting that different than you always have? Evita asked.

  That was true, but that was usually with people who didn’t know about my reincarnation. Or people who hadn’t helped me so much.

  You got Shirou killed for your own selfish reasons.

  Of course, that had been when I thought Akira was going to sell me out. That was self-preservation. Now it was just becoming petty. Now it was becoming just like Sachi, using people for her own gains.

  But isn’t she at least she’s trying to make the world a better place? You’re just being a preening little cunt…

  “His words…” I murmured, “no…my words. The words my right brain used to describe me.”

  I got up into the top bunk and buried my face in the pillow, trying not to think about it. The children occasionally spoke quietly amongst themselves, the TV always playing at a low volume. I tried to imagine the strangeness of this from their perspective. Many of them didn’t even know what was in store for them. And this was probably the best accommodations any of them had ever experienced. A strange juxtaposition.

  The thought of how young all of them were was almost alien to me. Not having tens of thousands of years of memories was a thought that boggled my mind.

  This is the only life they know. In a way, they’ve probably experienced a higher misery to life ratio than I had, yet-

  “Merry Christmas, you got pick of the litter,” a man’s voice was saying as the lock on the door clattered and opened.

  “I hope they’re better than the last ones,” another man’s voice said, this one higher pitched.

  “We got somes that might catch your fancy,” the first said.

  The children sat silent as both men came into the room. The one I recognized, the man who said it wasn’t just girls people wanted, reached over and shut the TV off. He shouted in Spanish for us all to line up and we obeyed, not wanting another beating or to see someone shot. Laura didn’t have to know Spanish to understand what was being demanded of us. The customer was a short, pudgy man, padding a handkerchief over his sweaty forehead. The tie around his neck was loosened, jacket taken off revealing sweat-soaked armpits on his pin-striped shirt.

  “Goddamn man,” the customer said, swiping the handkerchief over his sagging jowl, “these scurvy lookin’ fuckin’ rats is-”

  He cut off when his eyes landed on me, a grin spreading across his face. A shudder went up my spine. The thoughts my right brain had about getting corn holed and that he’d kill us – that I would kill me – before allowing that to happen. The customer walked closer, adrenaline pumping into my bloodstream, when he took a step past me to my right where Laura stood, invisible in my diminished peripheral vision.

  “It really is a Christmas miracle,” he said excitedly, a broad smile on his fat, toad-like lips, “You finally gotcha a white one! You speak English girl?”

  “She doesn’t seem to,” the other man said, “nor Spanish. But the black one can talk to her.”

  The customer looked at me and said, “What language she speak? Tell her she’s comin’ with me for a while.”

  “That one’s gonna cost extra,” the seller said, “As you can see, she’s in better shape than the rest of ‘em. And, like you said, she’s white.”

  “A’course you gonna try gougin’ me,” he said, “you still take that same cryptocurrency?”

  “Sure do,” the seller said, “process is still the same.”

  “Excellent,” the buyer said, his breaths quickening with anticipation as he turned his gaze back to Laura, reaching a hand out to caress her cheek, “what’s your name, girl?”

  She glanced to me, anger seething in her eyes.

  “He’s planning to buy you,” I told her.

  “What’d you just say to her?” the customer asked, looking at me.

  “I’d rather die again,” Laura said.

  “What’d she say?”

  “The door is still unlocked,” I said, “and this time I can get his pistol.”

  “Enough of the chatter,” the seller said, “just translate for ‘em.”

  The customer laughed and said, “It’s alright. I’d rather use body language anyway,” he pulled Laura close, spinning her around, pushing his large stomach into her back. Her surprise quickly morphed into rage.

  “What’d I tell you about samplin’ the wares,” the seller said, a mischievous grin on his face.

  “Only if you get to go right after me,” the fat man said, grabbing Laura’s right wrist and shoving her hand down the front of his pants. She struggled, but was too weak to resist.

  Anger welled up inside me, my vision narrowing. The itchiness in my right eye became distant, detached. Both men laughed as the fat man groped his free hand up Laura’s thighs toward her crotch, his greedy fingers pressing softly into her emaciated flesh.

  Yet the motion looks vaguely familiar to when my own hand was…

  When he got to her waist, he shoved his hand down her pants, pulling up to rub her vagina as the seller issued another barking laugh. Laura’s eyes grew wide as saucers as he continued to grind his fingers inside her.

  Unable to watch anymore, I ran and seized his arm, trying to pull him off. He laughed as the seller came to peel me away. When he grasped me, I reached over and snatched the pistol from his holster, this time removing it successfully.

  “Oh, shit!” the seller shouted as I pulled the trigger, the pistol pointing too low, his knee exploding in blood and bone fragments.

  “The fuck?” the fat customer said, loosening his grip as Laura clenched her hand around his scrotum.

  Children shouted. The customer shrieked. I pulled the trigger again, this time seeing the seller’s throat splatter against the TV. A rush of adrenaline pulsed through me, a high that might rival that of Shift.

  Does that feel good because he’s a monster, or because you are? Evita said in the back of my mind.

  The fat buyer had both hands on Laura’s arm, struggling to pull her hand out of his pants, but she kept a firm grip on him. Before I could raise the pistol to his head, he let out an even louder shriek as she jerked her hand up, the front of his pants darkening with blood. I pulled back the trigger, a geyser of flesh erupting from the side of his head.

  “Hurry,” I said, running to the stairs.

  Laura bent and wiped blood from her hand on the customer’s shirt before following after me, a vengeful smirk on her face.

  The door stood ajar ahead of me, but I could already hear voices on the other side. I nudged it open. There were at least three men, all yelling at each other in confusion.

  “Lock that fuckin’ door!” one said.

  A moment later someone came around the corner into the stairway, his eyes opening wide when he saw me. I squeezed the trigger, hitting him in the stomach. He keeled over with a pitiful moan, falling forward down the stairs. I stepped to the side when he tumbled to a stop near me.

  I bolted up the stairs without missing a beat. The other two men drew their pistols. I got off one shot, missing both, before they returned fire. I leapt down several stairs, landing on the body of the wounded man, hearing him howl in pain. Laura wrestled his pistol away, able to strip it from his grasp when I landed on his back.

  “C’mon, ya Godless fuckin’ mutants!” a trafficker shouted, “I’ll kill all’a you terrorist fucks!”

  I signaled to Laura. We both heaved the wounded man up, carrying him like we had with Masaru toward the top of the stairs, and threw him into the doorway. His body was met with a volley of bullets before his partners realized who they were shooting. In their hesitation, I peered around the corner and fired off three more shots, only managing to hit one trafficker in the upper thigh, sending him howling to the floor.

  “Y-you fuckin’ cocksucker,” the other growled, his footsteps backing away cautiously.

  “Kiddie fucker,” I said back, “you got no one now.”

  “Fuck you, you tranny mutant fuck!” he shouted, voice shrill with fear.
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br />   They’re not used to having people fight back.

  I knelt down and took the shoe off the dead body in the stairway and tossed it around the corner, hearing three more shots go off.

  He has to be about out now.

  I looked at Laura and nodded, signaling with my pistol out the door. She looked confused for a moment then nodded back. Both of us ran up over the corpse out into kitchen. Laura and I spread out. The remaining trafficker stood in the doorway to the living room, holding his pistol to the nurse woman’s head. It was the man who had come down that first night.

  “D-don’t take another s-step!” he shouted, arms trembling in uncontrollable panic.

  “It doesn’t have to be like this,” I said, trying to sound soothing, “you’re outnumbered and almost out of ammo. This doesn’t have to end with any more deaths. You can stop the killing now.”

  “Please…” the woman pleaded.

  “You-you mutants kill everyone,” he said, sounding like he might break down crying, “why would I believe you?”

  I lowered my pistol, holding it out to show I wasn’t going to shoot him. I couldn’t see what Laura was doing with my bad eye, but the trafficker gave us a rather astonished look. It took me a moment to realize it wasn’t us he was looking at. I turned around, seeing the trafficker I’d hit in the thigh hobble to his feet. He held one hand on the countertop and another pressing his pistol hand to the wound in his leg.

  A gunshot rang out. Blood soaked the side of his shirt as he cried out, falling back to the floor. Laura shot again, this time a spray of blood coming from the side of his neck.

  “You f-fucking monsters!” the other trafficker shouted, throwing the woman sprawling to the floor.

  He ran to the stairs going to the top floor. I shot once right in front of him, the wall splintering near his head, causing him to lose balance and fall forward on the stairs. Laura ran to him, jamming the barrel of her pistol into the back of his head.

  “Don’t you fucking dare,” she said.

  The sound of Yukiko crying came from the upstairs.

  “What-what are you gonna d-do to me?” the trafficker asked in a quaking voice.

  “You have tech in this house?” I asked.

  “Y-yeah.”

  “And the toddler?”

  “Sh-she’s upstairs.”

  “Give us your tech,” I said, “we’re taking her out of here.”

  Chapter 6

  “I swear, I never meant to hurt no one,” our hostage, named Darren, pleaded. He had an ugly face made even uglier by the grimace it was twisted into, his brow ridged, nose large, skin wrinkled beyond his years. Sweat drenched his clothes after we forced him to help us remove trafficker corpses from the basement.

  Laura had inspected Yukiko for injury. The child seemed somewhat comforted by Laura’s kneading fingers again, her inquisitive eyes looking up at Laura’s bony visage with clear recognition. Afterwards, Laura had given me a nod, lethargy entering back into her own face after the incident – and after finding that Yukiko was unharmed – indicating the child hadn’t been hurt. In fact, Yukiko looked almost healthy.

  The immigrant woman, named Liana, had been more than happy to help with freeing and seeing to the children.

  “This time I can learn their names,” she had said with a weak smile, walking freely into the basement.

  The children, thirty-one in all, were confused about what was going on. Liana had started cooing and whispering to them to try and comfort them, the proficiency and longing of a mother apparent in her demeanor.

  Darren sat in a chair in the kitchen, duct tape binding his arms and legs to a chair. Laura and I stood in front of him, Liana and a few of the children – including Yukiko – peering through the basement doorway watching.

  “What were you going to do to the baby?” I asked again, making sure Darren could see the pistol in my hand. A well-designed 3D printed model.

  Keeping themselves off the grid.

  “I weren’t in charge’a nunna this,” he said, blinking as a droplet of sweat fell into his eye, “I just got here a week ago. Was just followin’ orders.”

  “Take it from me, the following orders defense doesn’t work,” Laura said in German. She could understand him now with the tech we’d taken, but he had none and couldn’t understand her.

  What they had for tech was even more advanced than what I’d used in Mexico. The ARs, along with the two earpieces, were able to learn brain patterns and adapt to the user until they eventually no longer needed to use commands. The one in my right eye bothered me and I couldn’t see well through of it, but both contacts were required for this to work. The earpieces, while also translating foreign languages, were able to pick up on mouth movements, making the neckpiece obsolete.

  “Ya’ll are gonna bring ‘em here with that tech,” Darren said, “We weren’t spose’ta wear it while doin’ business.”

  “Bring who?” I asked.

  “The border guard. CSA. Mercs. I dunno,” he said, “but we were told not ta wear ‘em when doin’ this.”

  “When selling children into slavery,” I said.

  “Ya’ll dunno what it’s like round here,” he said, “this draught’s taken everything from me. I sold my land off to Benecorp and-”

  “Taken everything from you?” I asked, looking back at Liana with the few children who had come up to see what was going on, “you can stand in front of them and whine about everything that was taken from you?”

  “Don’t go puttin’ that shit on me,” Darren said, despondency turning to anger, “it was ya’ll forty-eights that put ‘em in that situation.”

  “Why did Benecorp buy your land?” I asked, changing subjects and once again making sure he saw the pistol in my hand.

  “Cuzza the draught everyone’s movin’ away,” he said, sounding nervous again, “Benecorp’s been buyin’ up land in the southwest for cheap as folks take off. Lotta folks had to take up jobs like this to pay off debts.”

  “And this is what you choose to do?” I asked, signaling to the couple of children still watching us, only comprehending our tone of voice.

  “Ya’ll gonna kill me or just scold me?” he asked, sounding both impatient and frightened.

  I looked back to Laura. She gave a shrug that seemed to indicate that she didn’t care either way. I turned back to Darren.

  “Do you know where they took our friends?” I asked, “The Japanese couple this child belongs to?” I signaled back to Yukiko.

  “I got no idea what they do down at the wall,” he said, sinking back into the chair again, anxious.

  “I’m not going to kill you,” I said, seeing his eyes light up momentarily, “not if you help us get them out.”

  The hopeful look in Darren’s eyes was quickly swept away, “that’d be suicide. Specially if ya’ll plan on usin’ that tech. They might already be onto ya.”

  “They remain unaware,” a strange voice said.

  I looked around, startled. Laura was, too.

  “Who said that?” I asked.

  “Who said what?” Darren asked, but his nervous expression told me he knew it was someone over the tech.

  “Who I am is inconsequential at this juncture,” the voice said, electronically deepened and scrambled, “however, the border sentry does not yet comprehend what has transpired at the trafficker’s unsavory domicile.”

  “And how do you know that?” I asked, seeing Darren sink down, knowing he wasn’t going to be a part of this conversation.

  “The current state of confusion will not persist indefinitely,” the voice continued, “they incarcerate your colleagues within the border embankment you traversed. If you desire to liberate them, I counsel alacrity.”

  “How the hell are we going to-”

  “That technology you are utilizing is capable of employing a zero-day exploit in the border sentinel’s network,” the voice said, “courtesy of administrative mismanagement and bureaucratic miscommunication.”

  “What ar
e you talking-”

  “Their unmanned aerial and ground vehicles can be commandeered remotely using this exploit,” the voice said, something like a glimmer of pride coming through the scrambling. “I will educate you on proper application of said exploit throughout while you undertake the necessary transit. But please, pardon my loquaciousness, I must steadfastly implore you to depart at once without further inquiry as to my motives so that your wayward friends may be emancipated from their regretfully lawful yet problematic internment.”

  I looked to Laura again and she gave another shrug. Yet there was a craving in her expression telling me that she wanted to do something.

  “You,” I said, signaling to Darren.

  He looked up at me, even more anxious than before, but said nothing.

  “We’re leaving now,” I said, “And you’re going to bring us to the wall.”

  “This is the command center they transported all of you through,” the voice said.

  The wall loomed in front of us, a hundred meters south of the dried riverbed that used to be the Rio Grande. It stood thirty feet tall, a large addition built onto the American side big enough to house the Langtry command center. Trucks and armored vehicles sat parked in paved areas between the wall and the dried riverbed, the infrastructure much more well-kept than on the Mexican side. I couldn’t make out any people from this distance, but I knew some had to be there.

  Darren drove on, still nervous, but I couldn’t see any indication that he had alerted the border guards of our approach.

  “I can see the drones with these,” Laura said, moving her head around to watch out the window as we advanced toward the wall, “and see information about them. Says they are Benecorp MV-U Hellraiser Drones. Fire forty-five kilogram LVT-Hellraiser missiles. Bunch of other stuff that I don’t know what it means.”

  “Indeed,” the voice said, “that is a permission granted you by the exploit. Advantageous, yet perilous. They will ascertain your presence as effortlessly as you do theirs. Uncertainty and disinclination are luxuries in which you are regrettably deficient.”