Chapter Text
Look alive, sunshine.
The isolated mass of land formerly known as the state of New York is firmly in the grasp of what was once the borough of Manhattan, which itself is under the thumb of the companies known as BL-IND and GeneCo. What you, reader, probably think of as New York, fell into an epidemic of organ failures many years ago. The state refused to cooperate with its neighbors who offered help. After years of social isolation, New York eventually became physically separated from the states surrounding it as well.
Enter, off two different planes coming from Europe and Asia respectively, the founders of GeneCo and BL-IND, Rotti Largo, and– fuck, I don’t know her name. No one does. Let’s call her The Director, that sounds ominous enough. She and Rotti Largo came down from the sky like a pair of dark angels to take advantage of the panic and vulnerability of the dying citizens of New York. Rotti Largo offered a solution to the physical problems, innovating a system of payment plans that allowed people to get transplants for their failing organs. For a while, people could cheat death. The Director claimed to fix the mental problems, censoring everything she deemed imperfect, especially emotions. They each set up shop in Manhattan, and while citizens predicted a rivalry, they each decided that they would profit more off of a collaboration.
And so they joined forces, setting a niche of surgeries as fashion statements and ensuring everyone was as happy as possible, at all times. For those who were late on their organ payments, or who strayed too close to rebellion, they sent out Repo Men, Exterminators, and Draculoids. When exchanges and repossessions grew hard to keep track of, they bought out a financing company that had already been running, Pierce & Pierce, and made them keep track of data on repossessions, profits, suspected rebels, and the likes. The island, which has since been fully taken over by Manhattan, is fully under the control of GeneCo and BL-IND. Everywhere you go, you hear those damned voices droning on from speakers and billboards.
“Ask a GENtern if Zydrate is right for you, and don’t forget to smile!”
Only those of us who are at the very bottom of this society–graverobbers, Killjoys, that sort of thing–can come anywhere close to being free, and even then, we’re barely close.
This is the state of the island of Manhattan in modern times, and only very recently did we escape the clutches of Rotti Largo and The Director. Here is how.
It all started with two girls. A friend of mine and I had taken one of these two girls under our wing. We didn’t know her name when we found her, so we just called her ‘The Girl’. It stuck. The Girl was around sixteen at the time, and I figured she had gotten old enough to learn the tricks of the Zydrate trade, so I had taken her out with me. We were in a graveyard sandwiched between two buildings, myself crouched over a corpse and The Girl watching intently as I extracted Zydrate from the corpse of a woman who had taken so much of it when she was alive that her skin was tinted a ghastly greyish-blue.
“You smack it,” I explained, demonstrating how to stick the needle in, “and then when it’s stuck as far in as it’ll go, you pull back on the plunger of the syringe.”
The Girl was being strangely quiet. I pulled back on the plunger of the syringe as I’d described, and watched as the barrel of the syringe filled with sixty millimetres of the thick blue liquid. The needle drew back out of the body with little resistance. I looked up to be absolutely certain that The Girl was paying attention, but she was nowhere to be seen. I frowned. Still holding the syringe, I stood up, looking around for her. She was speaking to another girl, around her age, pale, wearing an obvious wig and holding a jar with a glowing insect inside. This other girl had just come out of one of the two big buildings near the graveyard. I approached them, not enough for them to notice me yet, but enough for me to hear what they were saying.
“...Why haven’t I seen you around before?” The Girl was asking.
“I’m not supposed to go out,” replied the other.
“Not at all?”
“Never.”
“How do you live?”
By this point I was steadily nearing them. I suppose The Girl thought I hadn’t realised she had walked off, and the one she was talking to hadn’t seen me at all. As The Girl’s new acquaintance was opening her mouth to respond, she was interrupted by an intercom attached to a lightpost.
“Enjoy GeneCo’s day and nighttime formula of Zydrate,” said the cheery voice over the intercom. The message was repeated in Italian, then in Japanese. The Girl rolled her eyes.
“So, what’s your name?” she asked.
“Shilo.”
I was surprised they hadn’t yet noticed me. I was close enough now that I was casting a shadow on the grave they were talking in front of. Once again, the intercom interrupted.
“Have you smiled today?”
As the message repeated itself, I had drawn near enough for Shilo and The Girl to hear my footfalls. Shilo looked up at me and tensed. I looked from her to The Girl.
“Ask a GENtern if Zydrate is right for you,” said the voice over the PA.
At the same time, Shilo said, “Oh my God, you’re a graverobber.”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Buying Zydrate from an unlicensed source is illegal,” said the voice over the PA. As it repeated, Shilo’s eyes flicked from me to a sign stuck to a wall behind me. I didn’t have to look to know that it read, GRAVEROBBERS WILL BE EXECUTED ON SIGHT, with some legal information under it. That poster is plastered all over every graveyard in Manhattan.
Shilo took off. The Girl cursed, and then ran after her.
The voice over the PA said, “Don’t forget to smile!”
The Girl said, “No, wait, she’s cool!”
Shilo was already halfway across the graveyard. Clearly, she did not know to look out for the patrolmen on the lookout for the likes of myself. Three Pierce & Pierce employees, dressed to the nines despite it being the middle of the night, were surveilling the graveyard with flashlights. As Shilo was running from me, she was caught in the beam of one of these three employees. She froze like a deer in the headlights.
I picked up the body I had been extracting Zydrate from, and rammed its head into a weak spot of the brick building, the building that Shilo had not come out of. The businessmen heard the noise, but could not seem to tell from where it was coming. The beams from their flashlights frantically scrambled across graves and pavement. The fourth time I hit the wall with the cadaver, some of the bricks came crumbling down, making a hole big enough for me to fall through. Shilo stared, shocked, as I fell in.
“What are you doing?!” The Girl hissed. “Follow her!”
“You’re going to get us caught—!” exclaimed Shilo as The Girl grabbed her by the arm and dragged her after me.
I could hear the cries of “Graverobbers on site!” as the three of us fell through. The second I was in, I was hit with the stench of the dead. We were in some sort of a dumping ground for those who were neither rich nor lucky enough to secure a grave of their own. The ceiling of the building was worn and weathered, and beneath the thick stink of decay was the unmistakable electric smell of Zydrate.
I had hit the jackpot.
I continued my demonstration, now with an impromptu audience of two instead of one. This process was… not as quiet as it should have been. It was loud enough, in fact, to alert the three patrolling employees, who pulled Shilo and The Girl from where I had led them. The Girl thrashed and tried to escape the grasp of the man holding her, while Shilo cried out for the one that had caught her to let her go. I looked back, for just a second, to make sure The Girl was alright, and that was when the third businessman grabbed me. I tried as hard as I could to fight him, positive that if I was unable to, I would be executed right there in the graveyard. Maybe I would be thrown into that same building that I had just been yanked out of. I’d been in much closer calls before, though. I was near certain I’d be alright, or I’d at least live.
The three of us were thrown onto the ground, Shilo crying in a heap, and myself looking for the first opening to escape. Guns were pointed at our heads, and a voice coming from a band around Shilo’s wrist droned,
Blood pressure warning. Blood pressure warning. Medicate immediately. Medicate immediately.
I wondered if the kid was sick.
We then heard a voice from far off. “Let them go,” the voice shouted. I heard heavy footsteps coming our way, and looked up to see who was making them.
Holy shit.
Running in our direction, yelling for us to get off without punishment, was the Repo Man himself.
He knelt down in front of Shilo, and the second he did, the P-and-P men backed off. I grabbed The Girl’s arm and ran out of the graveyard. Either they didn’t notice I was gone, or they were too intimidated by the Repo Man to care.
Now, we get to a point in time that I was not there to see. I require your trust as a reader in me as a writer that I know these things.
Shilo awoke some hours later, disoriented and back in her bedroom. Her obvious wig was not on her head. Her father, Nathan, was in her room already when she woke up.
“That was a close one,” he said, “too close.”
“Dad?” Shilo asked. “What happened?”
“You’re going to be alright, that’s all that matters,” he reassured her as he put on a stethoscope and sat down on the edge of her bed.
“Was I outside?”
“No, Shi.”
“There were these bodies–”
“You missed your medicine and fell unconscious,” he explained gently as he listened to her heartbeat.
“They were all dead.”
“Nonsense,” said Nathan as he got up from where he sat and put the stethoscope away. “Please be more cautious, you could go into shock.”
“But it was real, Dad,” said Shilo desperately as Nathan grabbed Shilo’s wig from the mannequin head it was stored on and walked back over to her.
“I’m the doctor, and I’m your father,” said Nathan sternly.
“I didn’t imagine this,” she said, raising her voice so her tone matched his.
“Please, Shilo, drop it.”
“Couldn’t have fathomed this.”
“Please, Shilo, stop it!”
“Dad, I could smell the dead,” Shilo shouted. Her expression was serious, with a hint of fear in her eyes.
“You could have died,” Nathan started. He caught himself at the last second. Instead, he said, “You scared me to death!”
He set the wig down on Shilo’s bed and then withdrew. Shilo backed down after Nathan shouted at her.
“You’re all I have left of your mother,” Nathan told her. He avoided looking at Shilo, instead looking up at a framed holographic portrait of a woman that looked just like his daughter, only older. “You take after her so much. You look just like her, and you inherited her blood condition, too. I’d be lost if I were to lose you. I’ll stop at nothing to keep you safe,” he told Shilo as she put her wig on her head and adjusted it. Shilo walked up to Nathan, standing by his side.
“I’ll take my meds, Dad, don’t you worry.”
“Just until I find a cure,” Nathan reassured her. He kissed the top of her head and put an arm around her shoulders. “Your mother would be so proud of you,” he said. He walked over to the glass of water he’d brought in for her. Shilo was too busy listening to him as he spoke to notice anything strange about this movement. “And I’ll always be here for you if you need me.” Still, she noticed nothing.
“Shilo, you’re the world to me,” said Nathan as he brought the glass of water to Shilo. He kissed her on the forehead, and then began to retreat. Once he had left, he locked the door to Shilo’s bedroom from the outside. Shilo glared at the door when she heard it lock.
She was tired of this. Tired of the cyclical nature of her condition, tired of being locked all day in her room to go stir-crazy, and most of all, Shilo was tired of her fucking father.