[Original Novel] Pressure 3: Beautiful Corpse, Part 16
Previous parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15
He rubbed the back of her neck for a minute or so. Olivia felt something change, and experimentally tried to speak. “....Vivian?” The man smirked. “We still bitches, Liv. No way I’d let ‘em keep you. I’m so sorry we couldn’t get to you sooner, it’s a real war zone out there.”
It was a man’s voice. And face, and body. But nonetheless, Vivian was speaking to her with it. “Oh! You’re gonna love this. They figured out we show up ambient temp on thermal gogs. And that IR gogs disrupt the haze somewhat. So I got creative. Reattached the umbilical to the brain, added a set of eight improvised legs for getting about, and presto. Very vulnerable state, don’t get me wrong! But it’s worth the gamble. If you can get one of ‘em alone and burrow into the head, you’ve got yourself a disguise that shows up human on both thermal and IR. Because the body’s still alive! Do you see what I’ve done? Don’t gush too much. Now, the key is to dig in through the roof of the mouth. That way there’s no outwardly visible damage. The top of the skull also works but then you’ve got to wear a hat. And of course find someplace to dispose of the displaced grey matter, eyes and whatnot. You really want at least one uninterrupted hour with them, it’s gotta be someplace secluded. This is important! Leave the brainstem in there to control autonomic functions, or you’ll have to pick a new one and start fresh.”
Gushing wasn’t Olivia’s first inclination. Although, there was a certain sick brilliance to it. Like the evolutionary arms race between increasingly venomous snakes, and increasingly venom tolerant predators who eat them. Vivian had really found her calling.
“No time to fix you up. I’ll just disembody you. Brought everything I need in a cooler.” Olivia tried to argue but Vivian was having none of it. Being cautiously lifted out of her own open skull was, surprisingly, not the strangest thing she’d seen recently. A feeling of intense fatigue came over her when the umbilical was cut. Only seconds to live, under any other circumstances. Vivan deftly mended the umbilical end to the base of Olivia’s brain, and within seconds she felt restored.
The addition of slim, rickety insect-like legs Vivian explained were repurposed from fingers allowed her to crawl about with sustained effort. “The eyes were a special job. Night vision, thermal, full spectrum. To level the playing field. Although really, if they engage us in the dark we’ve already won.”
With some straining, Olivia found she could shift her vision into parts of the light spectrum normally reserved for a handful of exotic animals. Likewise if she focused on distant shadowed parts of the room, details began to emerge. Similar to how her eyes used to adapt to the dark, but an order of magnitude faster.
“Already prepared a doppleganger. Don’t remember her name. Hair, nose, cheekbones...all things considered, not bad given the limited pool of candidates.” There was nothing to say. Vivian just rambled on matter of factly about the most depraved things. But if ever there were a gift horse whose mouth should go unexamined, it was Vivian. Olivia shuddered to think what she’d be enduring now if not for her.
Vivian wheeled in a pretty young girl on a gurney, connected to life support. The top of her head lay beside her. Olivia could see into her open brain cavity, everything having already been scooped out and disposed of. There were pangs of guilt. Who had she been before? Did she die frightened? Olivia thought of Violet. It proved effective at justifying damn near anything.
Olivia crawled into the open braincase, the umbilical trailing out a notch cut for the purpose, hidden beneath long, flowing hair. Her eyes settled into the open sockets, Vivian did some unseen mending, and all at once Olivia found herself in control of the new body. “Not so fast, still gotta close you up Liv.”
It was a trip to stand up and walk around in a body not her own. Looking in a mirror was stranger still. “I’d still like you to fix up my old body. Call it vanity if you like but after this is all over I want it back”. Vivian smiled. “I understand. Mine’s in a fridge on level 20. But there’s a lot of work to do before we can go back to how things were.” Olivia nodded solemnly, and left Vivian to her work.
There were faint bloodstains on the floor of the corridor she remembered being wheeled down. Vivian had the good sense to stash the bodies someplace. To evade detection. Possibly also for parts. “One more thing!” Vivian called after her. “The body you’re in now can die. If you’re shot in the heart, or lungs, or whatever, you’ll have to ditch it. Not in plain sight. Wait till the coast is clear to climb out. You’re very fragile in that form. I left a scalpel and sidearm I took from one of the guards by the entrance, I suggest you take both with you in case you need ‘em.” She stood and thought for a moment. “Alright. But please, put on a different body by the next time I see you. I don’t ever want to see that face again.”
It was a strange feeling, to contemplate truly killing someone. Dr. Bizen didn’t count. He was still alive in a manner of speaking, and likely happier than he’d ever been. If anything, she’d done him a favor. Any other fabricant might’ve simply stripped him down for parts. But with a loaded pistol in her pocket, the reality that she might have to end a life hung heavily in her chest. The feeling was alleviated somewhat by the realization that if it troubled her at all, she was not so far gone as she’d believed.
She wondered in passing if that wasn’t something she told herself for the purpose of self-absolution. And really, hadn’t the wretched crew of the Belusarius given her ample reasons to kill them? Memories of the surgeon’s decidedly non-medical trespass surged to the forefront of her brain, this time refusing her efforts to suppress them.
What about Dietrich? He too was responsible. The occasional echoes of gunfire from elsewhere in Belusarius were his doing, as was her capture. Then, to top it all off, there was Doctor Bizen. The sample size was small, but if you bite into three apples and they’re all rotten, what else is there to do but toss the whole barrel?
It was an exhilarating direction to go in as the more she thought about her life from this perspective, the more sense it made. Like how the discovery of evolution at once made sense of the fossil layers, or how the understanding that the entirety of the universe is expanding made sense of the appearance that all other galaxies are receding from this one.
People are fundamentally cruel, sadistic monsters only barely persuaded to behave otherwise by civilization. Even then, not consistently as thousands of jam packed jails attest to. Fair weather philanthropists who revert to brutal, bloodthirsty ogres when frightened. The notion that all people are basically good being the naive refrain of the sheltered first world neophyte.
It certainly meshed seamlessly with her experiences in school. If any memories held the power to displace the surgeon and the operating bed, it was the old, familiar demons. Recollections of her eager, good natured bids for friendship and belonging, met every time with laughter, beatings, even the denial that these had taken place and the insistence that she’d thrown herself down the stairs, locked herself in her locker or given herself a black eye for attention.
It had pre-empted any sort of prejudice which might’ve otherwise developed in her. Whenever she met someone obsessed with what they felt were the uniquely terrible qualities of another race, she recognized at once that in fact he was describing the worst aspects of human nature. His only mistake was turning a blind eye to those same qualities in his own race.
Gender too. She’d long understood men and women misbehave in almost identical ways but that different terms existed for when a man does it versus when it’s a woman. No small number of each side believes that only the other behaves in those ways. Usually because they’ve never dated a same sex partner and so don’t have the firsthand experience that it really is all humans who are like that.
But she now found herself in an unprecedented position. She was part of something meaningfully distinct from humanity. No longer was her contempt softened by the reminder that she too was human, for now she wasn’t. And even understanding the true nature of what even now consumed the Belusarius and its crew, it was at least a kind of family. One which knew no internal strife, only cooperation towards a shared goal.
Stepping out into the deliberately cranked up lights was startling. But she did not feel weakened. The living body she’d assumed lacked that particular shortcoming. A voice called out from the far side of the atrium. “Find cover!” It was a soldier. Or as close as it came down here. One of several men clustered behind an upturned table, all wearing what looked like riot gear gestured for her to join them. Too delicious.
Stay Tuned for Part 17!