DISCLAIMER: You know the drill. My characters. Their world. Yadi yadi yadda. =]
I've actually gotten a few emails asking for more Catherine stories since I posted the last one. This is extremely flattering for me, and I very much wish that I could write these things faster. The problem is, these stories are difficult for me to write. I'm good at Mage stories, because they're filled with magic and philosophy and larger-than-life characters and all sorts of things that I'm good at. Hunter stories have to be one part magic to nine parts everyday life – or they should be. My own Hunter stories contain a lot of magic and philosophy and larger-than-life characters, too, but here I'm making a serious effort to keep it down. That's what's so difficult for me. I can only ask that you be patient. I will keep writing these things, it'll just take a while between them.
A further disclaimer: I know absolutely nothing about scientifical procedures and medical research. Very probably everything I say about it here is wrong. But on the bright side, those things aren't really pivotal to the story, which is about… well, I'll let you find that out on your own… =]
***
The journal of Doctor Catherine Faller, entry # 15:
It's been a while since my last entry. This is not due to any lack of things to report. I would like to say that it's due to great and terrible adventures filled with earth-shattering discoveries, but who am I kidding – even if the world was ending around me, I'd still find the time to jot down a journal entry about it.
So I'm weird about these things. Sue me.
No, the actual reason is that I forgot where I put this notebook (under the couch in my living room, apparently – heaven only knows how it ended up there), and was therefore unable to make anything but some short notes on different paper, to support my memory. I suppose I could just have bought a new notebook. It's just that this one has been through me for fourteen entries now, during which time it's been shot at, scorched, drenched, mangled, torn and had ketchup spilled on it. You have to admire a notebook who can take all that and still stay in one piece. I can't help it feel I owe it the courtesy of keeping it until it runs out of pages.
So I'm weird about those things, too. Sue me again.
Anyway, the biggest news is that I'm no longer broke and unemployed. Ever since Aesop went temporarily out of business three weeks ago (in case the reason for this has slipped your memory, I refer you to entry four, which will reveal that the reason was largely me and my Hunter colleagues – aided by a very large bomb), I've been living on my meagre savings, which are insufficient for Hunting funds.
Maybe now I can finally afford a bullet-proof vest. I'd really rather not get shot again. I wonder where you buy one of those, anyway? They should be legal enough. It's not like you can cause anyone harm with them.
But I'm getting sidetracked. I was going to talk about my new job – and certain problems I encountered there…
***
Doctor Brystone was very tall, had a tiny little head, narrow, slumping shoulders and a big, round stomach. One got the general impression of a pear on two legs. Wearing a lab coat. Catherine had the feeling that her natural aversion to authority would be hard to suppress with him as her supervisor, but she would have to make an effort. She needed this job. If she went a few weeks more without drawing a pay check, she would be forced to move back in with her mother, whereupon she would go insane.
"Welcome to Van Dorn Pharmaceuticals, Doctor Faller," he said, shaking her hand. He had a creaky, droning voice. "I hope you'll enjoy your time here."
"I'm sure I will," Catherine said politely. She was tall, thin and had long, dark hair which regulations around here demanded that she keep in a bun. She was about thirty, pale from too much time spent reading indoors, and was pretty in a girl-next-door sort of way.
"I'll just show you around," Brystone said, "and then I'll let you get to work." He waved her along as he started walking down the white-painted corridor they were standing in, leading in from the main entrance to the building. "Mmm. There's three floors here. The ground floor is where you'll be working; that's where the laboratories are. The top floor is administration. You'll probably never have to go there, at least not with the, mmm, position you'll start with. The basement is storage, and there's a closed-off area for the more dangerous experiments, like, say, the ones involving lethal virus cultures."
"Oh. Those," Catherine said hollowly. She supposed it was better than her old job, all things considered. At Aesop, she had learned in the end, they kept monsters in the basement vaults.
"Everything down there is access only," Brystone went on. "At this level, you'll have access to only a few things, like open records. You've gotten a key card, mmm, haven't you?"
"Yes, Doctor," Catherine said.
"Good. Good." It took Brystone a moment to get back on track. "To your right here is Laboratory One." He pointed at a doorway. Next to it was a sign which proclaimed that he was perfectly right about that part.
Catherine glanced in through the door. Inside was a large hall, filled with row after row of long tables, on which various equipment was placed. Most of the walls were occupied by sturdy cabinets. Men and women in lab coats moved around the room, or worked in clusters. Catherine felt a pleased smile touch her lips. It would be good to work in a lab again. She had always enjoyed the feeling of expanding her knowledge through logical, scientific procedures. It made her feel that the world was working right.
Running around the city trying to make accurate observations about supernatural beings, without being devoured by them first, was just not the same, somehow…
"Mmm. Most of the doors to your left are smaller labs," Brystone said as he walked on. "For more sensitive research, and for those experiments that has progressed far enough to need human test subjects. The project you've been assigned to isn't one of those, though, mmm. What did you say you've worked on so far?"
"Makeup, mostly." Catherine sighed. "Testing it for side effects. After that they got me started on a kind of diet pills. Aesop isn't really into serious medicine."
Actually, from what she could gather, the Aesop Research Company was into serious profit – aided by secret strike teams of mutated monstrosities that sabotaged all competitors. Realising just what kind of people she had been working for had been a bit of a shock, really. She had not exactly taken the job for humanitarian reasons, and many parts of it had nauseated her even before her Imbuing, but she still had nightmares of the things that she had seen in the Aesop building. Things that she, as far as she could tell, had probably helped create.
"Mmm," Brystone said. "Was that why you left? Because you wanted to do something that would benefit mankind and so on?"
Screw mankind. I just didn't want to work for bosses who were basically terrorists with supernatural powers. I do have some ethics, thank you very much.
"Something like that," she said. This was her first day; she had no intention of getting fired for being a frickin' lunatic who believed in demons.
"Well, over in this end is the lunch room," Brystone said, leading her into a large room with a lot of chairs and tables in it. "As a lab assistant, your lunch hour is from eleven to twelve, unless of course your supervisor says otherwise."
"Of course," Catherine agreed. That was a step up from Aesop, to be honest. You had a lunch hour there too, but you were informally expected to work over it every day. "What was the name of the scientist I'll be assisting, again?"
"Yeller," Brystone said. "David Yeller. Mmm. One of our best. Very, hmm, dedicated man. You'll be working with him on the cure for Länngren's Condition. He, mmm, claims to be near a solution." He smiled, or at least did his best. There was honest friendliness in his eyes, but his mouth had not been made for smiling. Catherine smiled back anyway. "You may come to, mmm, benefit mankind very soon."
Or at least the ten or so current cases in the world, Catherine thought. She had studied up a little. Länngren's Condition was a failure in the walls of the heart, weakening them over time until they eventually collapsed, at which time death was nearly instantaneous. It was nasty stuff, to be sure, but uncommon.
Still, helping to save the lives of ten people, as well as all future victims of the malady in question, was certainly worthwhile work.
"This project is a bit of a, mmm, anomaly for us," Brystone droned on. "Most of our research projects are subcontracts from larger firms. We do bits and pieces, mostly. This project is all our own, though. Doctor Yeller is quite enthusiastic about it."
Catherine noted the use of the word enthusiastic so soon after the use of the word dedicated. She was starting to get bad feelings. The last thing you wanted was an enthusiastic, dedicated boss. A boss like that was more inclined to make you work overtime. Not that Catherine was so very opposed to overtime – it paid well, if nothing else – but every moment spent on the job was a moment not spent on the Hunt.
And she had another kind of research to perform…
They had turned another corner, and now they were arriving at a new door. Brystone opened it and walked in. It was another large hall, furnished much like the laboratory on the other side of the building.
"This is Laboratory Two," Brystone said. "This is where you'll be working."
Catherine looked around. It seemed okay enough. None of the other lab-coated people in there had the haggard sold-my-soul-for-a-big-pay-check look most of the people at her last job had worn. Also, there weren't constant screams of pain from test animals. There were a few guinea-pigs – real and metaphorical – to be seen, and Catherine doubted that they were very fortunate guinea-pigs, but at least they were being experimented on in more ethical ways.
Brystone led her up to a workbench where two people were busying themselves with a complicated-looking device and a row of test-tubes. One of them looked up from the readings with a frown on his face.
"No, no, no!" he growled. He was a thin man, who would have been quite tall if he hadn't stood at a constant slouch. His hair was sparse and white, and his face was deeply lined. "It's still point thirty-four units away from the target!" He glared at his co-worker. "This can't be right! I checked my calculations very carefully! Doreen, so help me God, if you messed up the mixture…"
"I didn't, Doctor Yeller," Doreen said tiredly. She was younger than Catherine, and shorter, and cute in a dimpled, friendly sort of way. Her hair was short and somewhere between brown and blonde. "I was careful. Look, we haven't even gone through half the sequence yet…"
Brystone cleared his throat, making Doreen turn around. She smiled, wearily but genuinely.
"Doctor Catherine Faller," Brystone said formally. "This is Doctor David Yeller, the head of this, mmm, project, and his other assistant, Doctor Doreen Highland."
"Nice to meet you," Doreen said cheerfully and held out her hand.
"Hi," Catherine said, somewhat less cheerfully, and shook it.
David mumbled something unintelligible and exchanged the test tube in the machine for another one.
"I'll, mmm, let you get to it, then," Brystone said and left.
"No! Damn! Damn! Damn!" David slammed his fist into the bench, making both Catherine and Doreen jump. "Thirty-eight units from target! Thirty-eight!"
Doreen gave Catherine a weak, apologetic smile.
"I guess I should just start filling you in on what we're doing right away, huh?"
"Please do," Catherine said.
As Doreen began to explain the part of the research they were occupied with at present, Catherine made her big mistake. She realised that while she had looked around for visible signs that Van Dorn Pharmaceuticals was not like the Aesop Research Company, there had been an element of that place that she hadn't even been aware of until shortly before she had left. It had been filled with invisible, malevolent creatures, one of which – she had reason to believe – had at one point tried to infest her. And once she had thought of that, the only way she could think of to make her skin stop crawling was to check.
So she squeezed her eyes shut for a brief moment – no more than an extended blink – and then, when she opened them again, opened the other pair of eyelids too, drawing away the veil that normally separated her vision from the world as it really was. She swept her gaze quickly over the laboratory, and had a shock.
The room was okay. Doreen and all the other workers looked perfectly normal. Except for David.
David had very clearly been dead for a long time.
***
The rest of the day was… stressful.
Catherine's first instinct upon seeing a rotting carcass stand in the space previously occupied by David was to run. Scary thing, too close! Catherine observed scary things from a distance. That was what she did. Standing around and giving them every opportunity to tear her entrails out was very much not what she did.
But if she ran away, it would look bad. And your first day at work was not the time to look bad. It was much too easy for your employers to replace you then, since they hadn't really invested anything in you yet. So, as she needed this job pretty badly, she forced herself to remain still and keep calm.
Once she had managed to do that, reason prevailed. There were lots of people here. David hadn't torn out any of their entrails. Presumably, Catherine was reasonably safe. The deduction comforted her, but only a little. Anomalies didn't always act in a rationally predictable manner.
"Doctor Faller?" Doreen said. "Are you still with me?"
"What?" Catherine blinked. "Oh. Yes. Sorry. Drifted off a second there."
That made David pay attention to her for the first time. The corpse turned around and glared at her. It still resembled David, faintly… or perhaps it would be better to say that it resembled David as he would look a few months after his death. There was the same thin built, the same stooped-shouldered poise, and even the same clothes; seeing a dead and decaying man walking around was traumatising enough, but seeing a dead and decaying man walking around in a perfectly clean and presentable lab-coat made it worse, somehow.
"You may be labouring under a misapprehension here, young lady," David-corpse snarled. Catherine though she could smell rotting meat on his breath, and only managed not to shy back by applying the full strength of her will. "You are not, in fact, paid to drift off. You are paid to work. Is that clear?"
Catherine scowled. She didn't like phrases like 'young lady'. The fact that this one was uttered by an Anomaly just made her resent it even more. Where did this rotting mess get off to, calling her 'young lady'?
Unfortunately, he was a horrible nightmare beast who could tear her head off without straining a muscle. Even worse, he could get her fired. Catherine bit back a snappy retort and just said:
"Yes, sir."
"Right, then." David turned to Doreen. "Well? Explain to her again, from the top! Can't you think for yourself?"
Catherine got the explanation the second time around, mostly by making a point out of not looking at her dead-but-still-kicking superior. The work they wanted her to do was not especially challenging; Doctor Yeller handled most of the difficult stuff himself, leaving his assistants with what amounted to boring grunt-work. Catherine didn't mind. She wouldn't have been able to concentrate on anything very advanced right now, anyway.
She had guessed within five seconds after coming into hearing range that David would be a trial to work for, and she was not mistaken. He constantly snapped at her and Doreen, accused them of everything short of muddling his work on purpose and swore curses and damnation over the entire state of the universe. After a few hours of being ordered around, Catherine started to wonder if maybe being a starving, homeless person was quite as bad as it was reputed to be. Regardless, it was starting to look mightily appealing in comparison.
When David grudgingly dismissed his assistants to lunch, both of them gratefully fled the scene. David himself stayed behind in the lab to keep working. Catherine supposed that he didn't really eat anymore, but she wondered if he had bothered to go to lunch even if he had. If she had ever met a man capable of surviving on a diet of air and pure contrariness, this was it.
Heck, the whole undeath thing was the least of it, with this guy…
"So what do you think so far?" Doreen said as they sat at a table in the lunch room. It was empty, safe for the two of them; David had kept them working over the regular lunch hour.
"About the place?" Catherine impaled a few pieces of the cheese salad she had brought with her on her fork and studied them while she thought. "It seems nice enough. About the management?" She shrugged and at the pieces. "It's no worse than at my last job," she said honestly.
Doreen laughed sympathetically.
"Oh, God. That bad, huh?"
"Yep." Catherine grimaced. "You know, rumour has it that some bosses are not, in fact, out to kill their employees. One day, I hope to find out if that's true."
"Well, Doctor Yeller isn't that bad," Doreen said. "Really, he's not. It's just a bad day for him. We had high hopes for the last batch, but none of it is pure enough."
"Yeah, I noticed from all the swearing." She wrinkled her brow as she watched Doreen start on her second turkey sandwich. "What's his problem, anyway? Has he staked his entire career on being able to finish this project in time?"
What she really wanted to know was why a Corpse was involved in medical research. While human intangibles – ghosts, if you wanted to be superstitionist about it – were common enough, not all too many of them had the sheer bloodymindedness it took to climb into a dead body and get it started again. Those that did had some major motivation.
As far as Catherine understood, that usually translated into vengeance for some past wrong. And depending on the circumstances, that might mean that she would have to get involved, much as she hated the thought of jeopardising her new job for the sake of some stranger who had pissed David – or someone else; the thing in David's body did not necessarily have to be David – off at some point. Of course, if the guy on the receiving end of the vengeance thing was an asshole who deserved what was coming, she could just stand aside and let David do his thing… but she needed to figure out which way it was first.
Pumping Doreen for information was the first step.
Doreen, however, hesitated.
"I… don't think I should tell you," she said. "I'm not even supposed to know myself."
Catherine scowled. In her opinion, there was nothing that people should not tell her. She was supposed to know everything. This was the order of the Universe According To Catherine.
"But I'm going to be working for him," she said. "Shouldn't I know things that might affect my job here?"
"I don't know…" Doreen said uncomfortably. "It won't really affect you. Just do what he says, and you'll be fine."
Catherine sighed. She wasn't getting anywhere here, it seemed. She could nag, but Doreen had a look of unhappy stubbornness on her face, like she was going to stick to her viewpoint for as long as it took, even though she didn't like it.
"Fine," she grumbled. "I'll just have to find out some other way."
"Oh, come on," Doreen said. "It's not really that important, is it?"
Catherine gave her a flat look.
"You're saying I should let something remain unknown?" she said. "What sort of scientist are you supposed to be?"
"Well, there is such a thing as privacy," Doreen said, looking somewhat taken aback by the acid in Catherine's tone.
Catherine gave her a look of complete lack of comprehension.
"You know?" Doreen tried. "Like, uhm, someone's love life, or…"
"Haven't had one for going on four months," Catherine said flatly. "Would have told you otherwise. Your point being?"
"You're actually saying that everything should be made public?" Doreen said.
"Yes, I damn well am." Catherine thought about the Anomalies, hiding behind human masks and letting the great work of Science turn into a bad joke by concealing vital laws of nature from the scientific community. The thought alone made her want to scream in rage. "How is anyone supposed to make valid choices when people withhold data? That's effing criminal, that's what it is."
"So in other words," Doreen said, disbelieving, "you think I'm a criminal for not telling you something you want to know?"
"That's what I think. Yes." Catherine gave her a cold look.
"Oh." Doreen struggled for words. "I'll… I think I'll go sit somewhere else. Uhm. Nice talking to you."
She made her escape to another table with all the speed her dignity admitted. Catherine was left alone, fuming silently and feeling bad without knowing quite why.
***
The journal of Doctor Catherine Faller, entry # 15 (continued):
Dead men rule the world.
Not as scary a thought as it first seems, really. Dead men are still men. Or at least (if my current theory is correct) they're the _copies_ of men. Why shouldn't the dead be allowed to run the world? They're just like us, so what's the difference?
Well, there's a little bit of difference, actually; some intangibles seem to have grown demented by the translation from physical original to energy-based copy, and others seem to have retained their wits but lost their conscience in the bargain. Still, how many live politicians listen to their consciences on a regular basis?
Dead men rule the world. That's just something you have to accept and adapt to.
One day I hope that I will find it in me to do exactly that. Until that day comes, I guess I'll just have to try to keep my compulsive meddling from making me join them…
***
What could a dead man want? Catherine spent the evening trying to think of an answer, and browsed through hunter-net archives to see if there were any clues there. She even posted a message asking for her fellow Hunters' opinions, and that was a rarity for her. She had made a few posts when she first subscribed to the mailing list, explaining to the rest of the online community what was wrong with their approach. That had landed her in the middle of a violent flame war, since for some reason other Hunters didn't want to know what was wrong with their approach. After that she had stayed silent most of the time, with only an occasional post when someone else posted something unacceptably stupid.
The harvest of answers were sort of useless, though. The trigger-happier of the Hunters advised her to take David down as quick as possible, since he was bound to be up to something devious. All monsters were up to something devious, weren't they? Catherine rolled her eyes at those messages. In her experience, Anomalies were exactly like humans, in that they were stupid, irrational and generally useless. If she were to kill everything that fitted that description, she would have a whole lot of killing to look forward to.
She did make note of a few of the techniques they advised, though. If she found out that David was up to something he shouldn't be, she might need them. And while she didn't relish the thought of covering the corpse in gasoline and then lighting it, the fact that that would work was still a useful piece of information.
The other kind of Hunters, the touchy-feely crowd, weren't much better. They told her that she had to talk to David and try to convince him to return to the grave peacefully. By all means, that had sort of been how Catherine had gotten rid of the only other Corpse she had ever come face to face with, but she wasn't exactly keen on repeating it. She had every nearly died that time, several times over, and she couldn't afford to die right now. She had way too much work to do. She was not going to let David know that she knew what he was. He was bound to be very passionate about protecting his secret, and Catherine did not think she had what it took to survive a serious attempt on her life by a corpse. Corpses were bloody powerful.
Just when she had almost given up hope of finding anything of worse in this pile of garbage that fools considered to be reasonable suggestions, she struck… well, not gold, exactly. Cupper, maybe. Something that was just useful enough to be worth her while.
Catherine, sitting behind the computer, smiled to herself. You took what you could get in this harsh world, didn't you?
***
When arriving to work the next day, Catherine found David already brooding over his calculations. That disturbed her plan, but just a little. What really bothered her was the fact that it was very probable that David had never gone home last night. He had stayed here and worked all through the night.
Why on earth would a corpse be so interested in finding the cure from some obscure heart condition? He was already dead, for crying out loud – he didn't need his heart anymore. For that matter, the cure would be found, sooner or later, even without him pestering Catherine and Doreen to work harder at it. Most of the pieces of the puzzle was already in place, as far as Catherine could see. It was just a matter of making the last fine adjustments that would make the treatment efficient.
Then she reversed her thought, and considered something disturbing. What if someone David had really, really hated in life was dying in Länngren's Condition? Then he would die if the development of the cure hit just a few snags, if there were just a few last-minute delays. David was in charge of the project; how difficult would it be for him to make it look like the last few problems weren't solved yet, even though they were? In fact, if this theory was correct, David probably wasn't David anymore. He had died, and some vengeful intangible had crawled into his body to seize the opportunity.
Now there was an upsetting hypothesis in more ways than one…
Doreen walked in a few minutes after Catherine, giving her nervous looks as she set about her first assignments. Catherine felt uncomfortable, being looked at like that. Not that people didn't usually give her funny looks, or even frightened looks – she wasn't a big woman, but she was loud and she wasn't afraid of ruffling feathers, and that was enough to intimidate some people – but Doreen made her feel like half a monster. She hadn't been that rude to the girl. Or she didn't think she had, anyway.
It just took Catherine half an hour to slip the envelope out of her pocket and drop it to the floor unseen. After that, it was just a matter of waiting. Actually, it was a matter of waiting for an infuriatingly long time, though she supposed that technically speaking, it was just about twenty more minutes. Then a passing lab assistant noticed the envelope and picked it up. Catherine had carefully written 'David Yeller' on it in big, rough capital letters.
"Uhm, Doctor Yeller?" the lab assistant said. He seemed uncomfortable addressing David. Catherine didn't blame him; even now, with the Second Sight switched safely off, there was something fanatic and furious about the good doctor that was disturbing. "Is this yours?"
David turned around from the work bench and glared at the young man speaking to him, which made him flinch. Then David snatched the envelope out of his hand.
"What's this?" he snapped. He read the name on the side. "What the hell?"
He ripped it open with a quick, rough movement and pulled out the letter inside. Catherine, who was watching silently along with Doreen and doing her best to look blank, knew exactly what it looked like. She had spent most of last night labouring with it. It was three lines written in glued-on letters she had cut out of a magazine.
I know what you are. What are you doing?
If you put a note behind the third plant in the window to the right of the front door, I will find it.
It was a fairly good plan, Catherine felt. As long as she was stealthy when she checked, he would have no way of knowing who came and picked up his answer, and she had even worn gloves when handling the letter and the envelope. There should be no tracing it back to her; anyone of several dozen scientists walking by could have dropped the envelope where that guy had found it. She was learning.
She studied David's face carefully as he read the note, looking for fear, or surprise, or murderous fury. What she found was an annoyed lack of comprehension.
After a moment, he growled, squeezed the note into a ball and threw it at a trashcan with a surprisingly good aim.
"Some halfwit's idea of a joke," he said. As far as Catherine could tell, he dismissed it completely from his mind with those words. "Why are you two idiots standing there staring? We've got work to do!"
As a scientist, Catherine knew fully well that the most informative experiment was one that revealed to you just how little you knew. That, however, made it no less infuriating.
***
Catherine actually did sneak a peek behind the third plant in the window to the right of the front door before going home that night, but there was nothing there. She hadn't really expected there to be, to be honest, but hope sprang eternal. Or so they said.
What the hell was going on, she asked herself as she walked out into the chilly evening air. This wasn't how it was supposed to work. She had heard about Anomalies who got frightened off by the mere knowledge that someone knew what they were. She had heard of Anomalies who ruthlessly tracked down and killed the people who knew what they were. She had never, ever, in all her browsing through hunter-net and all her contacts with Hunters in real life, heard of an Anomaly who didn't care if people knew what he was.
There was a reason why the corpses were sitting so hard on the media, after all. They were stronger than any human being could possibly be, they could shrug off bullets and some of them had even more and even freakier abilities than that, but they were limited. Even a hypnotising corpse could only control so many people. If humanity at large realised that their world was under the control of their supposedly diseased ancestors, they would get nasty. A corpse might stand a bullet or two, but a flamethrower was something else – and despite what one might expect, there seemed to be more of the living than of the dead, at least of the restless dead. The corpses needed their secrecy. While they could keep their existence secret, they were the kings of the world. The moment they failed to do so, they were ashes in the wind.
So why would one of them just disregard a potentionally dangerous security breach? Why wasn't he up in arms against it? Catherine had no answer for that.
"What's with the scowl?" Doreen came walking down the corridor, smiling somewhat shakily. "Having a bad day?"
"Most days I do," Catherine said darkly. "Today just happens to be bad and confusing."
"Oh, we'll figure it out," Doreen said lightly. "Our theories are sound up to a certain point, and there's only so much space left for things to go wrong in. It'll take a few more weeks, a month tops."
"Hmm? Oh." It took Catherine a few moments to realise that Doreen was talking about their project. Despite her promise to herself that she would devote herself to her work, Catherine found it frighteningly easy to start regarding her paid job as an unwelcome distraction to her true calling. "Yes, yes, of course we will."
"Are you heading for the bus stop?" Doreen said.
"I walk," Catherine said. "Saves me money and keeps the figure in check."
"Yes, I imagine all that salad goes straight to your tights," Doreen said innocently.
"Heh." Catherine smiled wryly. "I don't like the idea of any creature having died so I could get lunch, but I have no scruples whatsoever when it comes to pastries. You should see me with a box of jelly donuts. It's quite a show, or so I've been informed."
Doreen giggled.
Catherine opened the door, stepped through it and held it up for the other woman.
"Bus stop's on my way home," she said with a shrug.
They started walking across the parking lot.
"Aren't you scared to walk home alone in the dark, though?" Doreen said. "I'd be terrified, let me tell you. I'd see muggers and rapists in every corner."
"I've gotten mugged," Catherine admitted. "Don't know how much good it did him, though, seeing as I was a student at the time. I think I had all of three dollars in my wallet."
"Yeah, but still." Doreen glanced at her. "Someone actually threatened to kill you if you didn't give him your money, and still you're not scared of dark streets?"
"It's not that I'm not scared," Catherine said. "It's more like…" She hesitated, not sure how to put it herself. "The whole world is a pile of trash," she finally said. "People are stupid, ignorant, most of the time wilfully ignorant, short-sighted, narrow-minded and generally not using the brains they were born with. There's no way I can ever escape that, and there's no way I can ever keep the lumbering mass of stupidity from harming me whenever it wants to. Strolling down dark streets won't do any difference, because wherever there are human beings, there's danger. So yeah, I'm scared. But I'm not scared of anything in particular. The state of the world frightens me so much that there's no room left for anything else."
"Well, I wouldn't say all people are stupid," Doreen said with a nervous chuckle.
"No," Catherine said matter-of-factly. "I imagine you wouldn't."
Doreen stopped in her tracks, making Catherine stop too and turn around to face her.
"Why are you always like this?" Doreen said. "I'm trying to be friendly…"
"Always like what?" Catherine said. "Honest?"
"Mean," Doreen said quietly.
That took Catherine aback somewhat. People had accused her for a number of things, but they usually did so angrily, which made it easy to shout back at them. Doreen just got hurt. Shouting at her would be like kicking a puppy, and while Catherine was a cat person, that was a bit beneath even her.
"I don't try to be mean," she said uncertainly. "I just speak my mind."
"Yeah, but…" Doreen broke off, and smiled bleakly. "I guess it doesn't do any difference that people don't usually want to hear everything that's on your mind?"
"None whatsoever," Catherine said firmly.
"Well…" Doreen wrinkled her brow. "Then how about… I keep in mind at all times that you think I'm dumb, and you stop telling me I'm dumb all the time?"
"Why are you trying so hard, anyway?" Catherine said. "If it's just because we work together, I wouldn't bother if I were you. You said it yourself, a month more tops and we'll be reassigned. Why are you so eager to get along with you?"
Doreen blinked.
"Because I like you," she said simply.
Catherine opened her mouth. And then closed it again. And opened it again. And fumbled for words.
"You do?" she finally said, which, as sentences went, really wasn't worth all the effort that had gone into it.
"Well, yeah," Doreen said, shrugging. "I mean, not when you're calling me stupid, I don't. But the rest of the time. You're tough, and you're smart, and you're even kind of funny, in your way." She laughed at Catherine's expression. "What, no one has ever had anything nice to say about you?"
"People have," Catherine said slowly. "But not on what you might call a regular basis."
"I speak my mind, too," Doreen said.
There was a pause.
"I kind of like you, too," Catherine finally admitted. "I mean, except for the whole 'inferior intellect' thing, obviously."
"Obviously," Doreen said dryly. "But I guess you're kind of used to having us inferior intellects around you, right?"
"Oooooh, yes." Catherine sighed.
"Then I guess I can live with it if you can." She smiled and held out her hand. "Friends?"
Catherine took it.
"Friends."
And she had thought the day had been confusing as it was…
They started walking again.
"Tell you what," Doreen said. "If you promise to keep it a secret, I'll tell you what the deal with Doctor Yeller is." She grinned teasingly. "Just so you know that I'm not a data-withholding criminal."
Catherine actually had the decency to look somewhat sheepish.
"Would you?" she said humbly. "It's been bugging me something fierce."
"Well, thing is…" Doreen made a little grimace. "He's got it."
"It?"
"Länngren's Condition," Doreen said. "He was diagnosed with it almost a year ago. I think he pulled some strings to get this assignment, because he didn't trust anyone else to do it properly." She looked more serious than Catherine had ever seen her so far. "That's why I don't mind when he shouts at me and pushes me around and stuff. I know why he does it. If he can find the cure in time, he can save himself. If he can't…" She shrugged.
"I see," Catherine said. And she did. She actually did.
***
"Doctor Yeller?" Catherine said. "May I talk to you for a moment?"
She had followed Doreen to the bus stop, chatting about nothing much all the while. She hadn't let any sign of her stunning revelation show on her face – at least she hoped she hadn't. She had waited along with Doreen until the bus showed up, taken her farewells, and started walking along her path home. And then, as soon as the bus was out of sight, she had run like a maniac back to the building. Her key card had let her in.
Laboratory Two was empty, except for David, who was brooding over his notes. As Catherine had known, he was burning not only the midnight oil, but the wee hour oil and the early morning oil, too. And why not? He didn't have much time, after all.
Only, in one sense he had all the time in the world, and in another he was all out of it. And that contradiction was a bitter irony if there had ever been one.
"You again?" David snapped, not turning around. "This had better be something concerning work, young lady. I think I've found the place in our calculations where we've gone wrong, and I am not in a mood to be disturbed."
Catherine squeezed her eyes shut for a second and then opened both her pairs of eyelids. David was a corpse again, his hair rotting away and his skin covered with mould.
"It sort of is," Catherine said and stepped through the door, slowly walking towards him. "You may want to sit down, though. It may be a bit upsetting."
"Nonsense," David said, annoyed. "Spit it out, girl."
"Have it your way." Catherine shrugged. "Doctor David Yeller, you're dead."
David stiffened, and then turned, squinting at her with maggot-infested eyes.
"It was you who wrote that ridiculous letter," he said. "What is this? Some practical joke? I do not have a sense of humour, and I am very busy."
"No joke." Catherine shook her head. "The wall of your heart collapsed. I am fairly sure that death was instantaneous and painless. Probably happened in your sleep. Actually, it was a bit too painless, because you didn't even notice, did you?"
"What are you talking about?" David snapped. "You're either a maniac or a young woman with a very poor sense of propriety, and I will tell Doctor Brystone as much at first opportunity."
"You just got up the next morning and went to work," Catherine went on as if she hadn't heard him. "You put your heart and soul into finding a cure. You put everything that didn't have to do with that aside, forgot about it. And then you put death aside as well." She laughed hoarsely. "I can relate. I tend to focus too much on one single thing, too."
"Be quiet." David shook his head violently and turned around, staring down at his notes. "I have work to do. I don't have time for this."
"You have to know it," Catherine said. "Somewhere. You may have been too busy to notice your own death, but being dead isn't like having a cold. It gets worse, doesn't it? Gets harder to move. Gets harder to think. You can deny it all you want, and the whole up-and-walking-around thing is definitely handy when it comes to proving to yourself that you're alive, but the truth is that you're dead and you know it."
"No. No!" David clenched his fists, trembling. "I have work to do. I have work. Stop disturbing me."
"Doctor Yeller…" Catherine was right behind him now. She put her hand on his decaying shoulder. This was risky, she knew, because he was probably strong enough to break her neck without even trying. But she couldn't see that she could do anything differently. In a life of eternal confusion, this was a rare moment of absolute clarity. "I'll do your work. I'll find the cure. It's too late for you, but I can help the others. It's time you got some rest."
David slowly turned his head around and looked at her.
"You'll… do… my work…?" he said, as if trying out a new concept.
"I promise," Catherine said.
There was no fireworks, no heavenly light, no infernal flames. There was no screaming, no thunderclaps, no trombones. All that happened was that David slowly toppled over, falling off his chair and to the floor. Catherine took a quick step back to avoid touching him; in a way, an animated corpse was less disturbing to be in contact with than an actual, normal dead body.
She considered wiping off the fingerprints she must have left on his shoulder, but a moment later she realised that no one would care overmuch about prints from a woman who had spent all day with him in a fully legitimate way. There would probably be some form of record of her using her key card to get into the building, but she would just have to deal with that when she got there. It probably wouldn't be too troublesome – it wasn't like she had a motive to kill David.
Or the means to kill him in a way that made it look like he had died from his heart condition several months ago. She wasn't sure what the coroners would make of that. Probably the same thing as coroners usually made of things like that; don't ask, and the other corpses won't kill you. Would that help her get clear or give her unwanted attention from other walking dead? Too early to tell.
She turned around to go, but stopped in the door and looked back.
"I promise," she said again.
And left.
***
The journal of Doctor Catherine Faller, entry # 15 (continued):
I was actually questioned by the police, but it seemed more like a routine thing than anything else. I said that on my way home, I had suddenly thought of another angle to approach the problem in, and I had to rush back to tell Doctor Yeller that. He had listened, told me why my angle wouldn't work, and sent me away again. And that was that.
The official version is that he died of Länngren's Condition. The corpses are guarding their secrecy. One day, when I have proof, I'll shout their secrets from the rooftops. For now, I'll just be grateful that they protect me by protecting themselves.
I haven't noticed any special attention from them. Maybe they believed my story, too. David wasn't a very good corpse, after all; his powers were all instinctively used, and might have backfired at any time. And he was never affiliated with any of them. Perhaps they don't care that much.
Doreen is in charge of the project now, and I'm assisting. Losing David put us back a few weeks, but we'll find the cure soon enough. We actually work quite well together. She's a clever person, as people go. Still unacceptably stupid by an objective scale, of course… but, like with Kevin, it doesn't bother me as much with her.
Even so, my mind keeps drifting from my work. There's Anomalies out there, corpses and shapeshifters and puppeteers, all of them hiding from the rightful view of Science. There are laws of nature that we can't even conceive of, and they are being kept hidden from us. What's the cure for a minor disease, even one I promised to find, compared to the Hunt? I try to tell myself that I need balance in my life, that other things are also important, but I have never been good at keeping things in perspective.
If I died in my sleep tonight, how long would my dead body walk around fighting my battles before it realised it was dead?