Page 96 of The Fall

“You alright, there?” Greasegun’s voice snapped her out of her spiralling thoughts.

“Yeah.” Kerr shook her head, as if that would clear it. Her Opti flashed BAC warnings in case she couldn’t feel the alcohol in her system. “Are you s’posed to be drinking with your clients?” Kerr leaned heavily on the bar.

“Plauslible deniablility.” Greasegun refilled their glass, sloshing a bit too much on the bar top. “If you tell me an I’m drunk, no-one’s gonna b’live me.”

“K then. Model 2s a person. An she kissed Lusa. An I got jealous n’ ran.” Her forehead hurt concentrating. She wasn’t sure whether Greasegun was wobbling or her vision was. Probably both.

“You’re full of piss.” Greasegun passed Kerr the bottle.

“Yeah.” Kerr couldn’t think of anything else to add to that. It was true. She became aware of the bar filling up.

So did Greasegun. “C’mere to me.” They waved her over as if the bar wasn’t in the way. Kerr leaned forward. “You should go afer her. S’all gonna fall apart here soon anyway.” Greasegun placed a hand on her shoulder, though it felt like they were propping themselves up.

Kerr took the bottle of absinthe and slid off the stool. “Yeah. Thanks.”

Greasegun pulled a dehydrogenase RDC and stabbed themselves in the neck. “Back to work,” They said soberly. Customers lined up at the till. “Be there in a sec.”

They gazed vacantly into the distance, sending a message to who knows where before a large grin lit up their face. Kerr’s brain hadn’t cleared enough to realise that she was staring.

Greasegun turned to her. “Off you go, Seacake.”

“Yeah. See you ‘round.” Kerr stumbled toward the door, bumping into several people along the way.

Outside, the wind rattled the chain link. Kerr’s Thermabulle kicked in. “Kerr!” Someone was yelling her name.

She turned. “Alana?”

And then everything went dark.

Our Remedies Oft In Ourselves Do LIe

You’re a lot of fucking trouble.” Lusa sat, knees up against the wall of the stolen Styx van. The rear doors opened to a bare tundra, scrub brush swaying with the spring winds.

“Your sister caused all of this, not me.” Makenzie stretched and rolled her shoulders, taking stock of her surroundings before staring down at her clothes. “The latest fashion leaves a lot to be desired.” She picked at Lusa’s tank top hanging ridiculously off of her small frame.

Lusa ignored her and looked away. Makenzie sat next to her anyway. Lusa glowered. “Did consent not mean anything to you when you were alive?”

Makenzie shrugged. “We had something called Lesbian Sheep Syndrome. Consent gets sacrificed in the name of someone making the first move.”

Lusa curled her lip and turned away. “You can make the first move by asking. You’re a creep.”

“You’re all going to die, you know.” Makenzie swung her legs. “You’re not going to find any uninfected men.”

“I thought you couldn’t see what we were doing at the Lake.” Lusa picked at her fingernails, growing impatient with Makenzie’s games. “Do you actually know, or are you trying to fuck up my life again?”

“Your life is already fucked up.” Makenzie leaned in. “You don’t fit in at the Lake. You don’t fit in here. You’re an outcast with a violent streak.” She looked down at her swinging feet. “The virus is airborne and everywhere. Boys are infected the moment they take their first breath. Even if I made one right now, his poor little chromosome would be infected immediately.” She scanned the sky, as if she could see the retrovirus floating about in the stratosphere. “The balloons we launched stopped dispersing it, but it’s airborne now anyway. Remarkably stable, causes almost no symptoms. It’s very patient.”

Despite her disinterest in men and hostility toward the idea of children, she still hated that all of the effort her moms and the Adlets had put in to establish a last bastion of humanity would likely fail. But given what she’d seen of it so far? Maybe they all deserved it. “Can I ask you something?”

“Is this your version of making a move?” Mackenzie pursed her lips.

“Ew, no.” Lusa recoiled. Mackenzie didn’t look offended. “Why did you do it? Why make the virus?”

“Oh, that’s easy.” Mackenzie sat up straighter. “We could make prosthetics, like your sister’s arm, work with the body, but anything more advanced than that needed constant fluid interfacing. It needed to be part of you. And nanites couldn’t be injected because they would be attacked by your immune system. You needed to be born with them.”

“So, your solution was to infect literally everyone without their permission?”

Mackenzie stared blankly. “What?”