Page 51 of Because I Killed Him
While I review my class schedule, a Pinkie delivers my lunch. I eat the roasted duck and spiced cabbage with toxin-cutlery, a set of titanium utensils fitted with microsensors that analyze each bite. If the food is poisoned, I’ll get an alert on my Bond.
I finish everything on my plate, then crawl into bed. It’s only mid-afternoon, but I suddenly feel too low on juice to make it until evening. Tomorrow—my first day of classes—will set the tone for what’s to come. If I’m going to survive the two-week Bliss withdrawal, I’ll need all my wits to avoid whatever attack people like the Copper, who killed Jane, might be planning.
I stay in bed all day, drifting into a deep, dreamless sleep. When I wake up around 7 p.m., for the family meeting, I feel groggy, like I have a bad hangover.
On my Bond, I find a message with a video attachment from Dickie. I don’t know how he got my Bond number or why he can’t write in a simple, straightforward way like a normal person, but I understand what he means.
“Guess who just bagged the goose?”
The Pinkie is the ideal servant: tireless, unfeeling, and utterly self-sufficient. It requires no food, water, or rest. And, finest of all, the Pinkie requires no love.
—GOLNAZ RAHMANI, HUMANOID ARCHITECT
CHAPTER 10
Dawn light creeps across the sky, slow and shy, as if unsure whether it’s welcome. My Pinkies have emerged from their recharging pods and stand in a line at the foot of my bed, waiting to get me ready for the day. While the robots apply my makeup and comb setting lotion into my hair, I replay the video attached to Dickie’s text.
As I suspected, Dickie’s Pinkie chaperone managed to send a report to the Office of Student Affairs before the Copper destroyed its data storage chip.
Now, we have the smoking gun.
The footage opens with the Pinkie entering the green first-year carriage and scanning the rows for Jane Bradford. When the robot locates her, still shifting anxiously in her seat, lightning strikes the shield. The loud, sudden noise sends students into a panic, triggering a frantic scramble as bodies duck and roll for cover. Amid the chaos, the Copper unmuzzles the dogs. The beasts charge down the aisle with singular focus, muscles tensed, jaws snapping with wet fury. There’s no time for Jane to react. Before she can get up from her seat, the dogs’ teeth sink deep into her legs, ripping and shredding until her screams cause the other students to throw themselves against the exit doors in terror.
The Copper notices the Pinkie filming. With a panicked curse, he charges down the aisle and bodychecks the robot into the wall. Staticcrackles through the footage as he bashes his gun into its chest, again and again, until the screen finally cuts to black.
I turn away, nauseated by the sight of so much blood. When I met Jane on the courthouse steps a year ago, I never imagined I’d one day watch her die. Seeing her broken, lifeless face reminds me I can’t expect the rules I grew up with to apply here. This world is merciless, and so are the people in it.
Five minutes before 7:00 a.m., I step onto my terrace and brace myself for more blood. After Dickie handed the authorities the video evidence of Jane’s murder, the Copper was immediately arrested and sentenced to death. Dad says the courts are moving faster than usual because President Reeve wants to make an example of the agitators.
The cold front from yesterday’s storm has moved on, replaced by the mellow breeze of late summer. It’s the kind of day I’d spend at the river near my home. But instead of lounging on sun chairs with Vivian and Hillaire, our skin pink from the heat, with jazz from Big Band Beats playing softly in the background, I have to watch more people die.
Executions in the campus Guillotine Yard occur at 7:00 a.m. sharp, a grim opening act to each day. None are broadcast beyond the university walls. Low-citizen students shuffle cautiously onto their private terraces, stiff as the starch in their pressed suits and day dresses. Across the yard, the high-citizen students watch as well, but differently. Their regal, sun-tanned faces linger on the condemned between puffs of cigars and sips from porcelain cups. Reclining on their terrace chairs, the Blues exude the charged stillness of predators drawn by the sight and smell of blood.
Dad warned me that as a Public Person, I’d be surrounded by people who love death as much as I love life. At the time, I didn’t understand what he meant. The idea was too far removed from my world. But I understand it now.
The Copper who murdered Jane is led out first.
His mood is a stark contrast to the two students in line behind him. While they shuffle forward with blanched, tear-streaked faces, the Copper practically dances to the guillotine, a broad, unhinged grin stretched across his face. His wild, booming laughter echoes through the yard as the executioner forces him onto the bench and secures his neck in the yoke. Irecognize the erratic behavior. With nothing left to lose, the Copper must’ve taken Bliss after his arrest, making sure he dies happily.
According to Dickie, the Copper wasn’t working alone. During his interrogation, he sang like a canary, naming three other Coppers involved in the hit. They avoided the guillotine only because they didn’t deliver the killing blow. I’d still choose execution over the punishment they received: five years in Pearl Penitentiary, a prison disguised as a rehabilitation center where inmates endure grueling medical and psychological experiments.
I avoid looking at the guillotine and instead use the binocular feature on my Bond to zoom in on the Copper’s wedding ring. It’s gold, with a pair of emeralds inlaid on top… no different from Dad’s.
“Justice is rendered,” the executioner announces as he pulls the release lever. “May its echoes be heard.”
The guillotine is too far away for me to hear the blade drop. I only know the Copper is dead when green blood splashes across his hand, beading on the wedding ring. All I can think is how surprised I am by my lack of closure. At the very least, I thought I’d feel a sense of justice for Jane. But even though the Copper got what he deserved and his death serves as a warning to other Bliss users who might be tempted to target those connected to the ban, I feel no relief. Deep down, I know the Copper wasn’t a mastermind pulling strings in the shadows. He was just another vulnerable person struggling with addiction. And as I stare at the green blood, now completely covering his wedding ring, I wish the blood were blue.
Low-citizens didn’t create Bliss. We didn’t produce the drug, sell it, or benefit from its stranglehold on society. The high-citizens did all of that.
The irony is that most Blues don’t even use Bliss. They know better than to indulge in their own poison. They deal it, legalize it, and push it for money, power, and control. But they don’t need Bliss because they already have something better: freedom. And they’ve made damn sure the only time we’ll taste anything close to it is through a drug-induced haze.
When the executions end, I head to class, trailed by a cloud of ghosts: Jane Bradford, Charles Blackwell, the forty-nine Heretics, the Copper, and the two students beheaded after him. All of them cling to me like phantom limbs, weightless yet impossible to shake. Once you see the face of death, that’s it; it never leaves you.
Outside my suite, I take the elevator down to the Green Dormitory parking garage and climb into the flashy hovercar my parents gifted me for my eighteenth birthday. It arrived on a cargo train early this morning. It’s a hot new luxury sports model, and while I’d normally welcome the attention, right now being noticed is the last thing I want.
My Pinkie bodyguards squeeze into the back seat as I switch the hovercar to manual mode. Taking a deep breath, I push the throttle and lift out of the garage toward the Lecture Halls on the southwest side of campus.
When I reach the first-year Lecture Hall, the lobby is an overcrowded mass of blue, green, orange, and purple. I struggle to carve a path through. Students gather in circles or sit in low-slung chairs, their voices overlapping in bursts of laughter and nervous chatter.
