Version 1.0 dtd 040700



I AM THE BURNING BUSH
By Gregg Keizer
I am the Dead Man.
I could feel the texture of the rope as it dug into the flesh around my neck. It was not the first time that I had died for lifers, but it was not the best time, either. It was to be a simple death, only a hanging. Nothing spectacular.
They think I do not feel the pain, but I do. The pain is always the same, like a white-hot needle through my lips. It was the same now, even though it had been over a year since I'd last died in front of them. For a year I had experienced the private deaths, dying only for myself, loathing the memories of their lifer touches. But something had driven me back to them again. I remembered now that it wasn't the pain. Perhaps it was the way their eyes went wide when I walked into a room. Or maybe it was only their money.
For a moment, as I saw my feet arc in the air, seemingly reaching for the knotted rope, I forgot that I would be alive again. I tried to scream but couldn't get anything
past the hemp that clamped my throat.
Thankfully, blissfully, I blacked out.
I opened my eyes, and everything was blurred, as if I were drunk on alcohol and reeling around the room. I realized that I still twirled on the end of the rope. It was only uncomfortable now. Someone handed me a knife; I reached up and cut myself down. I landed on the thick carpet that seemed to live under everything here.
The twisting colors, red to green to rusted scrap in a browning field, swept through me, and I knew now why I couldn't stop dying in front of them. I could feel. I could smell the sweat of my body. I touched my neck gently, slowly, marveling at the feeling as my fingertips brushed the skin. I was surprised I'd been able to stay away for a whole year and knew I'd never be able to again.
My mind seemed to freeze the scene around me in split second frames. I felt warm and relaxed, as if I'd just had an excellent brandy or had finished making love. Every particle of my body sparkled inside, knowing that it was alive, unmarked, and whole. The sensations I had felt during my private deaths paled in my memory.
I even felt a pinch of kindness toward the lifers around me, another symptom of resurrection. I stroked my wrist, my thigh, knowing, without looking, where they were. I could now hear the whispers of the lifers. Before I had had to read their lips. I was alive, sensitive again. Except for my eyes, the disease overpowers all my sensory organs when I am between deaths. Only death restores my senses to me. It even enhances them.
I knew the satiated feeling in my belly would soon be replaced by nausea. I would want to vomit, but I would only be able to spit into my hand and wipe my hand on my tunic. Then I would not even feel the spittle. I would slip into the deprivation I felt between deaths. But that time
was hours away, and I could feel again, more than I have ever felt when I've died alone, for myself. I inhaled deeply and looked up.
The lifers around me applauded softly as I took the rope from around my neck and threw it on the floor in front of me. The semicircle that pinned me in the corner was front-ranked with women, some of them daring to touch the edges of my clothing. One of them, sloppily made up and wearing clothes too cheap for this party, went so far as to, stroke the skin of my neck. Still feeling confused from the resurrection, I said nothing to her. I only wondered how she had managed to get in. Like the rest of the lifers around me, she had the shiny-eyed look of a finger toucher and whispered in that familiar hoarse croak that the drug creates. The hostess, her dress adorned with tiny jewels, pushed her way through the crowd and clutched my arm tightly.
"Wasn't that the best?" she yelled above her guests' voices. I looked at her, I felt her fingers knead my arm, and I almost pushed her away. But she had paid for it, all of it.
"I've heard of better deaths," said a man who'd made his way over to me. He had his arms crossed over his chest, and I could see his eyes glittering from fingertouch. The lifers had become silent, waiting for me to respond. I turned my back on him and faced the hostess again.
"You invite critics?" I asked her.
"I apologize for him," she said. "You can see he has pressed too much fingertouch." She looked at me. "He'll be asked to leave in a few minutes." I could hear some of the lifers mutter in agreement.
Silently the lifers came to me, one by one, and kissed the hand I held out to them. Their lips rasped against my knuckles, and one woman's tongue wetted a finger. Some
of them do that, hoping it will increase the chance of infection. They all looked at me expectantly, with that lifer expression of mingled excitement and awe. But I couldn't speak. I couldn't say it. The woman standing next to me squeezed my arm, but I kept silent. She finally tired of waiting.
"I have shown you," she said, using the words I should have used. "Follow me."
The lifers started whispering again, and the hostess relaxed, her hand curled loosely around my arm.
"That's Crandel, of the department stores," she whispered to me, pointing to a man walking toward us. "I was so lucky to get him to come tonight. Talk to him for me." Then she left me, her body moving fluidly around the room, touching everyone with a press of fingertouch, saying good-bye.
"I enjoyed it very much. I have wanted to meet you for some time," Crandel said, standing in front of me. I noticed that his blue eyes were not lit by fingertouch.
"Thank you," I said, delighting in the sound of his voice, yet wanting to be left alone with my reborn senses. I looked up, but the hostess was busy chatting on the opposite side of the room.
"I got my license only yesterday," he said. "I was lucky to get in tonight. What's it like anyway?"
I remembered the colors, the freeze-framing, the touch of a finger on skin, and the warmth. "It's like eating too many sweets." I always give frivolous answers, but they never notice.
"I've done everything else, I guess. They say it feels delicious. Better than fingertouch." He paused, his eyes looking at my hand. I knew he wanted to touch me again, but I could permit it only once. "You were captain on the ship," he said.
They all think I was the captain. "No. Weapons officer," I said, my words quick. He shrugged, as if it didn't matter.
"What are my chances of infection?" he asked, trying to disguise his feelings.
"Same as everyone else's," I said, looking for the hostess again.
"Is there no way to increase the chance?" he began. They all come to that question before long. He looked hungrily at my face.
"No," I said, my reborn senses allowing me to feel contempt. It tasted like tainted meat in my mouth.
I watched him press a pinch of fingertouch into the skin around his lips. His eyes-lifer eyes now-gleamed.
"Since the ice is broken, who wants to go first?" the hostess called from across the room, loudly enough so that even those in the back could hear.
"Excuse me," Crandel said softly, pulling away. I thought someone had called to him, but he walked to the window. Glancing back, he bowed slightly, then opened the window wide.
"I wish you a good death," he said. "Wish me the same." I could have mouthed the words I've heard so many lifers speak.
He climbed onto the sill, shoving the curtains aside with one hand and using the other to grip the frame. Then he stepped over the edge and was gone. I thought I could hear a scream as he fell to the ground fifty floors below, but I wasn't really sure.
I made my way to another corner, away from the lifers who were perfunctorily killing themselves. The hostess tried to touch me again, but I pulled away from her. I found a drink on a table and sipped its sourness while I watched them' commit suicide one by one. They weren't very creative; I've died so many times, in almost every
way. They were lifers, registered suicides, approved by the government. They knew what they were doing. They lusted for immortality through their death and hoped they would acquire the disease that raged within me and made me a DeadMan. They wanted to die and resurrect, to be like me.
Suddenly a woman was by my elbow. She held a thin knife in her hand and looked at it intently.
"Are you going to do it here?" I asked. She nodded, still looking at the knife. "Why do it by me?"
"Why not?" she replied.
"Why do it anyway?" I watched her and sipped my drink.
She smiled and opened her mouth as if to answer me. Instead, she brought the knife to her throat and slit it. The blood spattered my tunic, and she thumped to the floor.
I turned from her and concentrated on my body's putting itself together again. The scenes of violence in the room swept before me. I could still feel the sparkle of my resurrection, although not as strongly.
They call us deaders, DeadMan, undead, vampires, regenerative, regens, and other names I like even less. My body cannot die. It displays the symptoms, but its cells regenerate almost as quickly as they are destroyed. I am, in effect, immortal. I can die and resurrect within minutes. I have died three hundred seventy-three times for them, including the hanging tonight. I have died thousands of times more for myself, but I do not tally those deaths.
The parasitic disease that I and my five shipmates brought back from that hell world mutated somehow when we came home and made us DeadMan. The parasite keeps its host alive, not letting us truly die. Only when it is
` busy regenerating cells does it release its grip on our senses. We found that out on the return trip, the first time
one of us tried to kill himself. We can infect others, but only rarely and only immediately after death-our own temporary deaths and the lifers' usually permanent ones. The meds have no cure. Lifers swarm around us, touching us, hoping to catch the disease and live forever. They know little of what they desire. They do not realize what they must relinquish if they do succeed in catching the disease and becoming immortal. Their sensations will wither, as mine did. They are so eager to discard them in exchange for immortality. Perhaps that is why they are so distasteful to me.
Barely one out of a hundred becomes immortal. And the immortals we create cannot infect others. The infection mutates again in its second generation: Only the crew of the Acheron, the six DeadMan, can bestow immortality.
And only through death can we feel and taste and smell. And only in front of lifers can we feel more than a semblance of the sensations we once had.
"Your death was exquisite," a voice whispered beside me. "How do you do it?" I looked down. It was a girl, perhaps seventeen or so, with a bowl of fingertouch powder in her hands. Her eyes reflected every light in the room.
"How do you come to life again?" she asked, a bit more loudly now. "My name is Lynx. What is yours?"
"DeadMan," I answered,. smiling at her. I shook my head when she lifted the bowl a little. I stay away from fingertouch. It's a lifer drug. It's not for DeadMan.
"No, no, no, I mean your real name, the one that your friends call you, the one-"
"I don't give my name to lifers," I said.
"How do you do it?" she asked again.
"It just works," I said. I thought she would be satisfied
with that.
"You don't know how you -"
"You ask too many questions, lifer."
She seemed confused and weaved slowly in place. I
`~ thought she was going to fall, but she steadied herself by putting a hand on my arm. Carefully I lifted it off and let it drop to her side. She hadn't paid for me, and so I didn't have to let her touch me.
"Are you going to kill yourself, too?" I asked.
She giggled, looking up at me with reflecting eyes. "I don't think I can. I've got the papers and everything, but I don't know whether I can go through with it." She paused for a moment, dipped a finger into the powder, and pressed it against her forehead. I watched her rub the fingertouch deep into her pores. She reached out and stroked my arm and my wrist. I glanced at her hand, and she pulled it away. My skin was cold where she had touched it. "I mean, it's pretty permanent, isn't it?"
"For you it most probably is," I said.
I picked up another drink, stepping over the bodies that patterned the floor. There was only a handful of lifers still alive in the room, but most were trying to kill themselves. The more zoned ones were having trouble holding the knives and blasters or finding the windows. I leaned against a wall, wondering whether any here would become infected and live forever.
A man stumbled and fell on an upturned blade held by a corpse. I smiled at myself. Stupid, one-death-is-all you've-got lifers.
I was playing with my newest pinner in the game room when the call buzzed for me. I ignored it and finished the round before shutting off the machine. Its silvered surface darkened as the call buzzed again. Perhaps it was a client. I let it buzz anyway.
The pinner's power cord was badly frayed, but I pulled hard on it, jerking it out of the socket. I plugged another game into it, switched it on, and ran up a good score. The buzzing didn't stop.
I couldn't concentrate on the game. So I went to my window and looked out over the city. I'd broken the railing long ago and had never replaced it. I grasped the window frame. Crandel's eyes gleamed in my memory. I wanted to feel the dim sparkle of a private death, but I'd promised myself I'd have only one each day. The residue of the death I'd had two hours before lingered, but it was fading. I could hear, but I could not feel my fingers.
I must have been standing there for a long time before I heard the door open behind me. I had never had a lifer in my house before. I found out that they are not in the habit of knocking before entering.
"Bin?" she asked. It was the girl from the party-Lynx was her name.
I nodded, wondering who had told her my name. It couldn't have been the hostess from the night before. She had drowned herself in the bath.
"Can I come in?" The open door was already a bright square of light behind her.
I stepped back as she closed the door, wondering whether she would leap for me and try to clasp her body around mine in order to increase her chance of contamination. Twice lifers have tried that, but I sidestepped them both. Her eyes weren't shiny with fingertouch, yet I didn't think she was perfectly straight, either.
"I've got a license to kill myself," she declared, grinning.
"So?"
"I'd like you to help me. I can't do it myself." She touched the top button of her tunic, playing with it for a moment.
She stood still while I laughed. I turned my back on her and walked to the bar. I fixed a drink, not bothering to offer her one.
"Get out of here, lifer," I hissed. "You haven't got enough to pay me."
"Yes, I do; yes, I do. Here. See?" She held a fistful of crumpled bills toward me. They were all hundred-credit notes.
"Not enough, lifer. I kill only myself. Get one of your friends to do it for you." I began laughing at her again.
"Don't do that," she begged. I couldn't stop. "I said, don't do that," she repeated, pulling a needle gun out of another pocket.
I glanced at the gun. "What are you going to do? Kill me? Even the quickest poison won't work, lifer."
She let the gun drop to her side. The credit notes fluttered to the floor, but she made no move to pick them up.
"Please help me, Mr. Bin. You're the only one I know who can help me." She licked her lips, and I thought I saw a tear in the corner of one eye, but, then, it could've been the start of a fingertouch zone.
I shook my head slowly, waiting for the one question that lifers always ask. Perhaps she truly could not kill herself, but I doubted it. She was only more brazen in her desire to increase the possibility of contamination, believing that the touch of my hands as I killed her would give her a greater chance of immortality. Idly I wondered whether killing a lifer would increase the chance of the disease's leaping from me, but I let the thought fade. The image of putting my hands on lifer skin sickened me.
It has always amazed me how eager lifers are to die. "Get out, Lynx."
She turned and went to the door, her arms limp and her walk almost a shuffle. She had one hand on the door handle when she looked back at me.
"I have always admired you, DeadMan. Ever since I can remember, I've worshiped you. How you come back after each death. How you die with such grace, such calm."
"It won't work, lifer," I said. "You'll have to do it yourself. You can't pay me enough to make me help you die."
The door slammed as she left. I spent the next half-hour picking up the credit notes, counting and shuffling them into neat piles. In my opinion, whatever a man finds in his own house is his.
This party was even more opulent than the one the night before. It had to be, because it was Hansa's party.
I looked into her eyes as she held my hands in hers. She smiled slyly, gripping my fingers hard in greeting. I had had a private death before coming, and its sensations dully remained. I glanced away from her gaze and started counting eyes around the room. People always paid attention to what Hansa did, and there were almost as many looking at her as there were watching me. I shrugged to myself. Did it matter what a lifer thought of me? Hansa pointed out the city councilman and the area's fingertouch pusher, making sure I knew who they were. They were to have the best possible view when I died, she told me.
Fingertouch was drifting around the room, as if it were ash left on the ground after a fire. I actually saw one man, already zoned into oblivion, throw a small bowl of the stuff into the air and watch it float to the carpet. The press of people around Hansa and me was too thick to get through, and so I had to wait until a waiter went by with a tray of touch and a single glass on it. Hansa had remembered my eccentric taste for alcohol.
I could feel her thigh press against mine as she talked to
some of her guests. I let her do what she wanted. It was her party, and she had paid me enough to keep me quiet for the night. I looked at her again and noticed the scars around her neck where she had once tied a rope around it. That was the only time she had tried to kill herself, as far as I knew. Hansa threw parties for the lifers, but she didn't take the final step with them at night's end. Perhaps that was one of the reasons why I was glad whenever she hired me.
I turned to look at the crowd again and saw Lynx, that little bitch. She was on the other side of the room, and so I couldn't see whether her eyes were glossy or not., but I knew she had been watching me. I saw her turn her head quickly when I spotted her. I rubbed the palms of my hands down the sides of my pants. Somehow she made me nervous.
The fingertouch pusher stood in front of me, blocking my view of Lynx. "How can I be a DeadMan?" he asked. "I heard I can be one if I die right. I'll pay you whatever you want."
His forehead was gray for the overdose of fingertouch he had pressed into his skin. He wouldn't die tonight; he was too zoned to do anything lethal to himself.
"Leave me alone," I said.
"But Hansa said you'd talk to me."
"Hansa was wrong. No lifer can be a DeadMan." Suddenly I wished it were true. Hansa wasn't paying me enough for this.
After a half-hour of small talk with her guests, Hansa got them to clear a circle for me. The ones in front pressed a final bit of fingertouch into their skin. I smiled to them all, knowing that three quarters of them were having a hard time focusing on me. I had counted on that when I had planned my deaths for this party. I had an attention
getter to lead things off.
I sat in the cleared spot, the legs of the lifers encircling me. I pulled out a small glass bottle from my tunic pocket, took out the stopper, and poured the liquid over my head and shoulders. The fumes were overpowering and smelled somewhat sweet. I looked at the legs around me through a shimmering wave of fumes. Then I pulled out the match.
I always seem to hesitate before I go through with it, wondering why I cannot be satisfied with my private deaths. This time was not unlike any other. Perhaps it was in my mind, the certainty that I felt more, tasted more, when I died in front of them. We had spoken of it, Kiel, Sarreen, Fede, Langley, Tonner, and I, when we discovered the extent of the damage to our senses caused by the disease. They all felt more, too, in front of the lifers. The meds could not find a reason, but it was true. So we died for them in order to feel more and feel it longer.
I held the small piece of wood that I had found in an antiques store and studied it for several minutes, taking in the colors of the wood and the blue tip. Then the hesitation passed, and I could only hope that the thing would light when I struck it.
It did. I heard myself screaming as the gasoline caught and I burst into flame.
My God, I hadn't known it would be like this. Stop it, please, stop it. Not my eyes, no no, not my eyes. Oh, God damn it, it's gotten into my eyes.
But the sense of being alive in every cell, every particle, was the same as always when I awoke. I saw the brilliant colors with eyes that were untouched and watched the room flicker, frame by frozen frame. I was sure at that instant that the lifers expected something like this when they killed themselves. But most would never see and feel this. Most would never resurrect, as I did.
I died for them twice more that night, killing myself again before the nausea came. After each death, lifers kissed my hand, said their words, and then some killed themselves. Their numbers diminished, but it was a large party. Each time I awoke was better than the last. The rust in front of my eyes got more detailed after each death. The lifers became quieter each time I awoke from the dead. By the end of the third death, the ones still left stood four meters from me. They looked at me, of course. They never stop doing that. But they would not talk to me or touch the charred fragments of my clothing. They touched their faces with the gray dust from the bowls that still circulated around the room. Not even Hansa dared stand next to me after I died that third time.
"Good work, DeadMan," someone giggled from a corner. Everyone in the room turned to see who it was. Lynx stepped through the small assemblage and came toward me. She had a blaster in her hand, which she pointed at me. An uncontrollable chill swept up my back.
"Won't you talk to me?" she asked, moving the dark end of the blaster in a small circle, its circumference my skull. Hansa made a movement forward, and Lynx edged the blaster to let her know she could swing it fast enough. Hansa backed away.
I had been silent the whole time, watching Lynx and the weapon she held. If she pulled the trigger, it would be an inconvenience to me, nothing more. But she had no right to threaten me, much less kill me. Only a DeadMan may kill a DeadMan.
"Now we'll talk, DeadMan," she said quietly, her fingers tracing the curves of her breasts as she stared at me.
"No deals," I said.
"I haven't even asked you anything yet." She seemed to be pouting. The expression made her hideous. Her fingers
still played with the fabric of her blouse.
"You're going to ask me if I'll help you walk off the window ledge, or if I'll light the match for you. I told you before, no deals with lifers. I kill only myself."
"What have you got against me?" She let the mouth of the blaster droop, and I stepped forward. She flicked it back up and melted a hole in the floor a few centimeters from my feet. I stopped. Her voice was so casual that she might have been holding a drink in her hand. "I can't do it by myself. I need someone to guide me through. You've been there before; you can show me. I want to do it while I'm young. I don't want to live forever in an old body." She looked up expectantly. They all believe they will be the one to steal the disease and resurrect after their suicide. "Not one of us," she said, moving the blaster slightly to indicate the lifers in the room, "has been there before. They can't help me. You can."
I looked at her, letting rage build up.
"You have no right to touch me!" I bellowed the words, and the crowd backed away. Lynx stood her ground. She looked at me with surprise, as if she didn't know what she had done. "None of you can touch me. You want to die? Here, let me show you how to do it, lifer!"
I went right up to her, grabbing the end of the blaster, as if I were going to twist it toward her. I could hear the other lifers in the room screaming when I brought the mouth of the weapon to Lynx's face. I thought she'd let go then, thinking I meant to kill her. But she couldn't let go of her life-or else she knew I didn't mean to go through with it.
She was faster than I was. Why should I have learned to be clever in a struggle? She moved her wrist back, then twisted it around, using my movements to strengthen her own, and pointed the blaster at my belly. I still held on to
the weapon, but I couldn't help looking down at the point where the blaster's mouth disappeared into the flesh of my abdomen.
I felt no nervousness, no last hesitation in my mind, as I watched her finger tighten on the trigger. She was going to kill me.
There was no pain, perhaps because the blaster was so quick in its destruction. Neither was there the unique pleasure that I was used to experiencing when I resurrected. I saw no sweeping range of impossible colors, nor did I watch the room freeze itself into individual frames. I didn't even feel the warming in my belly. I had my senses still, but they were bland. Was this what the lifers hunted for?
Lynx was sitting on the floor in front of me, cradling the blaster in her hands, hugging it. She was crooning to herself in a voice too low for me to hear the words. The room was still full of Hansa's guests, but they were pressed back near the walls, as far away from Lynx as they could get.
The interruption had not quieted the hatred in me. I felt it in the slamming of my pulse in my throat. I walked to her and stood over her. She looked up, but her eyes were vacant. Had she had time to press herself with fingertouch? Had I been dead that long this time?
"You killed me, lifer," I whispered so that only she could hear me. She didn't look up. I grabbed her by the throat and pulled her to her feet. My fingers were creating white patterns in her skin.
"Look at me." I paused. "How will you pay me? You owe me for one death." I tightened my grip, then loosened it so that she could answer. "How will you pay me? I don't die cheaply, lifer."
"Kill me," she spat, "and we're even."
"No deal. I want my fee. I want money for my death."
"I don't have any. You can check with the banks. Ask Hansa. She knows. Ask her. Go ahead. I'm tapped, not a credit."
"You worthless little bitch!" I shouted. The lifers moved even closer to the walls. "You killed me and you can't pay?" I strengthened my grip on her neck, watching her mouth flutter as she tried to draw air into her lungs. "You won't pay? You want to die? Feel it then, lifer, feel it." My voice was out of control now, loud enough to frighten even Hansa. I saw her from the corner of my eye, and she was white-faced. No one was pressing fingertouch anymore. No one had to. I was giving them a zone they hadn't experienced before.
I pressed both hands around Lynx's neck and squeezed until her tongue began to inch out of her mouth. Her face was turning colors. First red, then rust, then an indigo that reminded me of ink. I shook her the way a dog shakes a piece of meat.
"How does it feel, lifer? Good? Let me know when you see the pretty colors, lifer."
Then I saw her smile. Through the grotesqueness of her mottled skin, even through her thrusting tongue, I could see her smile. She was getting what she wanted. I was giving it to her. She wanted to die, and I was doing all the work.
I let my hands fall from her neck, dropping her to the carpet. I could hear her body hit the floor and her gasping breath as if from a long distance. I stood still and stared at her for a long time. Then I looked at the lifers in the room and at Hansa. Some were dipping into the gray bowls and pressing fingertouch into their cheeks and foreheads. Hansa's face had resumed its normal color. She wasn't even looking at me. She was talking to three of her guests,.
gesturing widely as she made her point or finished her witticism.
Lynx was crumpled on the carpet, her face pale but her breathing almost normal. She had torn her high-necked blouse away from her throat, and it hung around her waist. She was sobbing.
"Almost, lifer," I whispered. "You almost made me do it.
She looked up at me. "Why did you stop? You goddamned DeadMan, why did you stop when it was so close?"
I wanted to ask her whether she had seen the merest of shifting colors, the briefest freeze-framing of the room. But I couldn't overcome my disgust.
"Because I hate you, lifer. I hate you." I knew it was true as I said it. I knew that I depended on them for the feel of skin on skin, the taste of sweetmeats, the sound of the wind through my clothes.
But I felt contaminated, soiled by the girl's obscene use of me. Perhaps I had always known that the lifers consumed me, as they consumed their gray drug, but I had refused to acknowledge it. Lynx's use of my death, once so exquisite, had made me see the lifers for what they were.
They used me as I used them. But I could still feel without them, while they could not live forever without the DeadMan and his disease. I was more necessary.
"I hate you all," I said. I wanted to shout it, but my control had returned and a DeadMan doesn't shout to lifers. He talks. They listen. I turned and strode out of the room. I didn't even stop to collect my fee from Hansa. She would send it to me.
The night air was clean and smelled of a storm coming
over the mountains. I pulled a silvered flask from my tunic pocket and drank deeply of the burning liquor. I heard a scream in the distance. It seemed to be coming from the other side of the towering building, where Hansa's apartment was. Perhaps they were already throwing themselves from her windows.
When the scream ended, I knew how to get back at them. The silence told me how.
The lifers wanted to die I would make them live, as I lived. Maybe I could nail every window shut. Maybe I could dull every knife in the city. Maybe I could buy all the rope and matches in all the shops.
I've died nearly four hundred times for them. I will save four hundred of them to get even. Or maybe save one, four hundred times. I could follow Lynx, protect her from herself. Every time she'd try to plunge a blade into herself or fuse her body with a blaster, I would be there. I would stop her.
I will miss the shifting colors and the feeling of warmth in my belly I get from dying in front of them. I will not quit dying; I don't think I could do that. But I will stop dying for them. I know I can do it this time. I have the image of Lynx's smile to keep me away from that kind of death forever.
I drank the last drop from the flask and put it back in my pocket. I thought I heard another scream from around the corner of the building. I hurried back inside and began to take the stairs two at a time.