Chapter 8

It had been a little more than three months since the Opera and Shilo was rebuilding her life. Well, she wasn't rebuilding anything; she couldn't, so she was building an entirely new life. As a grave-robber.

After three months, Shilo was still shoddy at harvesting Zydrate, but at least she didn't vomit at the smell anymore. But she couldn't keep her hands from trembling. Graverobber said that she had made a lot of progress. He had even let her start administering Zydrate to the addicts. As long as Amber Sweet wasn't lurking around. And even now that she, more or less, owned the world and could get all the official Zydrate she could ever want, apparently she would always prefer the illegal street Zydrate. But she wouldn't legalize it. This was Amber Sweet we're talking about, and that would make sense. And it would take half the fun out of it. Granted, legalizing street Zydrate would probably cause some sort of civil unrest, so, that was probably pretty smart on her behalf, though most people, at least in this town, already knew that Ms. Sweet was addicted to street Zydrate, and the knife that came with it.

Amber Sweet really didn't like Shilo. Shilo tried not to be offended, it wasn't like it Shilo liked her either, but it really wasn't Shilo's fault that Rotti had been willing to sign GeneCo over to her. And it wasn't like he really would have anyway, because Shilo would never have pulled the trigger on her own father. Not that Rotti hadn't done that for her in the end anyway, but, really, we were moving forward. But it still wasn't Shilo's fault.

Shilo didn't peddle Zydrate more than once or twice a week, and most of the trust her enough to allow her to shoot them up. So she wasn't all that practiced at that either. Some might say that she was better at harvesting than she was at peddling. Graverobber had let her keep the extractor from that first time and she wanders around with her Zydrate kit in her messenger bag slung over one shoulder and across her body. You never know when you'll come across a corpse. And she had once.

She had wandered into a boarded building to duck away from a trio of GeneCops and had found a body, fairly newly dead, that hadn't yet started to decompose, but the body was bloated and really kinda gross. Graverobber had told her never to waste an opportunity, and that was had been entirely too golden. So she had harvested it. The corpse was bloated and covered in a thick, clear, slimy… something. She had thrown up for at least five minutes before finishing the extraction. When Shilo managed to finish the extraction, she wanted nothing more than to get out of there. It made her careless and she ran out of the building without checking to see if the coast was clear. If those GeneCops had been lurking she would have been screwed. But, she got lucky, the street was deserted. Graverobber had congratulated her find, and Shilo had failed to mention her bout of carelessness.

And now Shilo was just getting back to the little cottage that she lived in with Graverobber. It was cleaner now, if only slightly, and it had taken three months to get it as clean as it was now. One of the first things that Shilo had demanded to clean was the couch and armchair. Oh, and her mattress. And they had done so, and now the furniture didn't leave a fine layer of dust on them. Shilo hadn't once seen a cockroach or rat, for which she was glad.

"Graverobber? Are you here?" she said as she wandered through the boarded door.

"Living room," she heard him respond and went to join him.

He was sitting on the couch eating a sandwich and looking the same as ever. Not that he should look any different after a mere three months. He grinned at her as she sat down on the other end of the couch and tucked her feet under herself.

"Anything interesting going on out there?" he asked.

Shilo shook her head and said, "Nothing worth mentioning. It's a quiet day, the addicts aren't even in the alley yet."

Graverobber nodded, "Sounds like we won't be peddling tonight."

Shilo relaxed back into the couch more comfortably, not peddling meant they would be doing more harvesting, and she could live with that. They just had to watch out for GeneCops, and she was getting pretty good at that. The sun was setting now, but it wouldn't be full dark for another hour, so she had time to kill. It was time for food. So she got up and went to the kitchen to make herself a sandwich. They ate a lot of sandwiches, they had pretty limited electricity and most of their cooking was done in the fireplace. She made herself a peanut butter and banana sandwich, Graverobber had brought the fruit back yesterday. She brought her sandwich and two bottles of water back to the living room, handing one of the bottles to Graverobber and perched herself into the couch to eat.

Shilo saw a vial of bright blue Zydrate hanging from Graverobber's belt. She was still fighting withdrawal from whatever her father's drug was; they had never figured out what that was, so she was having to battle her withdrawal and addiction without outside aid since they were afraid that giving her something else might have adverse reactions to her. There were times that she would stare at the Zydrate that either she would collect or she would see on Graverobber's person. She remembered the first time Graverobber caught her staring at the Zydrate in their little holsters.

"If you've never tried Zydrate, don't," he said, "It's common to get addicted to Z after your first hit. That's why it's free, because they're almost guaranteed to come back for more," he told her. Maybe that was part of the reason she didn't have her own Zydrate gun. Curiosity might just kill a young grave-robber. In the past three months, four of the addicts they regularly serviced had died, probably from an overdose.

"Shilo," Graverobber said, him using her real name always got her attention real quick, "You're doing it again."

She looked away quickly, staring into the fire that was burning merrily in the grate.

"Maybe I'm not cut out for this," she said.

"You're doing fine Kid, everyone goes through urges, everyone wants to know what it is that makes this stuff so irresistible, "Graverobber told her, "You're a tough kid, you're dealing with one addiction already and you don't think Zydrate will help you, so you're fighting that too."

He stood up then and beckoned to her. It was time to leave for the graveyard shift. Shilo slipped her messenger bag over her head and followed Graverobber out the door. It was still early, but already the sky was a deep inky blue-black. It was about the time when the GeneCops would be switching shifts, meaning security was pretty lax. So they snuck into the cemetery and found a new grave and dug it up. They found three bodies piled in the loose dirt, not even a coffin for these three, who might have been family or complete strangers. They were the new dead, stiff with rigor. Graverobber took one, calm and seeming almost to enjoy himself. Shilo took another, her hands still trembling as she stuck the tube into the corpse's nasal cavity and into its brain and pulled the plunger; there was no doing this quickly, the Zydrate was pretty thick and didn't always want to come through the tube into the vial. Graverobber was watching her as she removed the vial from the extractor, and she looked back; the third body was still sitting there, waiting to be harvested. That could only mean that he wanted her to do that one as well. She swallowed convulsively as she inserted the extractor tube into the last corpse. She had learned quickly to think of it as nothing but a corpse, a body… when you started thinking of them as people you started thinking of them as what they might have been in life, and you were far more likely to get sick when they became people.

Once all three of the bodies had been harvested they made their way slowly to another grave that looked as if it had been untouched. They found another two graves and five bodies to harvest before leaving the graveyard and heading back to the cottage. Graverobber had Shilo extract five out of the eight bodies they ended up harvesting. There were too many GeneCops wandering around for them to keep harvesting after that, so they went back to the cottage to relax more; it was about midnight when they got back. Shilo plopped down onto her mattress and organized the vials she had while Graverobber did the same on the couch, only, he lounged. Then again, Graverobber never sat; he lounged, so that wasn't unusual in the least.

"I still don't think it's right that I have a mattress and you have the couch," Shilo said without looking up from her kit. Graverobber grinned, this wasn't the first time she had brought it up, and he had yet to make a sexual comment about it, surprisingly enough. Sometimes it was hard not to. She mentioned again that the mattress was big enough for both of them and that she didn't mind sharing; he had spent the last three months biting his tongue when she started in on this argument. But, after three months, it gets tiring. Not to mention, Graverobber wasn't well-known for his patience, though he could be surprisingly patient when he needed to be, considering the kinds of people he dealt with on a daily basis. But…

Graverobber stood up and sprawled on the mattress around Shilo, that devious grin on his face as he trailed his fingers lightly down her arm. "Y'know Kid, if you really want me in your bed that badly, you should just say so," he said in a husky voice.

"N-n-no," she stammered, her face a very deep red, "That's not wh-what I meant at a-all."

He wrapped his fingers under her chin, "Look at me, Shilo," he said, and she did, her name getting her to look against her will almost. She just couldn't help it. She stared at him, her face still red, but her eyes didn't waver from his. His face was serious now, he grin wiped clean away. And it was close, quite close, "Is that so?"

Before Shilo could even squeak out a response, the distance was gone, not just smaller, but completely gone. It took her a second to realize he was kissing her, and then another second for the shock to set in. But she didn't pull away; she might not have had the chance to, because the kiss ended quickly, chaste as he pulled away. Shilo stared at him through wide eyes. Graverobber's grin was back.

"Wh-what?" she stammered, completely confused about what had just happened.

Graverobber was still grinning at her, seeming amused yet somehow serious about what was going on, "Confused Kid?"

"Yes," she said, "what about Amber Sweet?"

Graverobber made a face, almost disgusted, "What about her?"

"Don't you love her? I mean… You treat her like a goddess… that look… like total devotion…"

"It's what she wants, you always give the customer what they want," he told her with as much of a shrug as he could give holding himself up on one arm the way he was.

Shilo fell back onto the mattress staring at the ceiling, "I don't get you, Graverobber," she told the ceiling.

Graverobber's face, grin and all, appeared above her, "No one does," he said before lowering himself in a push up to kiss her again. "That offer still open?" he asked, suddenly no longer above her, and reappeared next to her, laying on his side his grin somewhat more serious than it had been.

"I don't get it, I don't get it," she chanted to herself for about a minute before she nodded and told him that the offer was still open and rolling onto her side, not facing him. She heard what sounded like a half suppressed chuckle from behind her. She was surprised he bothered to even try to hide it.

Amber Sweet was sitting at her desk staring at a transparent piece of paper printed with information. Someone had defaulted on their payments and it was time to get that pair of ear canals returned to GeneCo. She called in a Repoman and relayed all of the necessary information, which meant that she handed him the sheet of paper and waved him away with the usual order of getting back GeneCo's property. With the Repoman gone, Amber was left to dwell on the thoughts that they always seemed to return to. Shilo Wallace.

She turned in her chair to face the two waiting Henchwomen standing silent and immobile as statues behind her. "I want Shilo Wallace dead," she told them. And without a movement to show that they understood, both walked out of the office.