Save Me

Shilo curled up in the corner of the crypt and hugged her bag to her chest. It had only been a week since the genetic opera, since the day everything she had ever had was so violently taken from her. During the time between then and now she hadn't once been back to the large empty house that had once been a home. She couldn't bring herself to walk its halls or seek out its rooms, to see the shadow of her father's memory in his favorite arm chair, to feel him by her bedside whispering to her in her sleep only to look and find the emptiness. No, she had gotten into the limo that night, after everything she'd loved had died away, and been brought back to that dark house. She stood outside for only a moment before the realization of her loneliness fully impacted her. She ran down the street, still covered in her father's blood, until she found herself lost in an alley. She'd collapsed underneath a rusty fire escape and cried as a fine rain began to fall and wash the blood from her skin. She cried herself to sleep that night in that alley with the rain falling down on her, trying to wash away the horrors that had played out in the opera house that night to no avail.

By some miracle no one had bothered her in the night and when she awoke she was drenched and cold, but otherwise unharmed. She had stumbled through the streets in a daze that next day. She was numb. She didn't eat, didn't bother to try to wash herself up or make herself presentable. She had just kept walking until she'd found herself in the only familiar place she'd known besides her father's house, the graveyard. She'd sequestered herself in her mother's tomb ever since, leaving only to steal a bite of food here or there when the hunger pains got too unbearable.

GeneCo hadn't failed immediately after Rotti died as everyone had thought it would, nor had the Largo's killed each other to claim the throne. Instead, Amber had installed herself as the head of the company and things were going on very much the same as they always had. Outside of her corner of the world people were still paying for genetic perfection and having their debts forcefully squared away, graverobber's were still to be executed on sight and buying Zydrate from unlicensed dealers was still illegal. To the whole of the world outside it was as if the genetic opera hadn't happened. It was as though hundreds of people hadn't watched Mag dig out her eyes and then be impaled on stage, as if Rotti hadn't killed Nathan and left Shilo an orphan. Beyond her mother's crypt, the world still turned and went about its business.

Shilo didn't even know what had happened to her father's body. She assumed that it had been thrown in one of the mass crypts among hundreds of other bodies to rot. Shilo didn't like to think about it. She certainly didn't like to think that perhaps the Graverobber had found him and restocked his zydrate supplies. She simply curled up in the corner of her mothers crypt hugging her bag to her chest and willed her thoughts to go away, to abandon her to the unquiet darkness of sleep. Slowly, she began to drift off into a fitful semiconscious state.

She was jarred out of her uneasy dreams by the sound of wood scraping on stone. She bolted upright and pushed herself farther into the corner. A tall figure quickly ducked inside of the crypt and slammed the door shut. He leaned with his back against the door and watched through the window as searchlights raked past. When the lights had passed he leaned his head back and sighed in relief. Long light brown hair fell past his shoulders streaked through with wild colors. Shilo started in recognition. At the same time the intruder noticed her pressed into the corner. "Kid? Is that you?" Shilo took a step forward out of the shadows.

"Yeah. What are you doing here?" It seemed strange to Shilo that the man she had only met one week ago for a single night seemed always to find himself with her. He raised an eyebrow at her and held up his empty Zydrate syringe. "Just stocking up on some supplies kid. What's your excuse. You pretty much dropped off the radar after the opera. Seems no one could find you to ask about your father."

Shilo took another step closer, "My father? What about my father?"

"Nevermind, it's too late now it doesn't matter."

Shilo closed the gap between them and grabbed Graverobber's coat. "Please, tell me, what about my father?"

"They needed to know what to do with the body, but it's too late now. He's one crypt over with all the others, part of the jackpot."

Shilo let go of him and backed away horrified. She shook her head. "NO! You didn't!..... You....."

"Relax kid, he didn't feel a thing." Shilo couldn't breathe. Her legs gave way beneath her and she sagged to the ground sobbing. Graverobber wasn't sure what he should do. Part of him wanted to just leave the girl to her own misery and part of him wanted to help her. It was a joke really. Who had he ever helped in his entire life? He destroyed lives, he didn't fix them. Still, he found himself kneeling beside her and putting an arm around her shoulders. She was so tiny, so fragile she felt as though she'd break if he so much as squeezed her. He leaned closer to her and could smell the odor of musty earth and death clinging to her skin. She'd obviously been spending too much time hiding in crypts, she was beginning to smell like the dead... like him. "If it wasn't me kid, it would have been someone else, or something. Nothing lasts in this world. You're just gonna have to learn to deal with that."

His words were cold but rang warm with truth. He wasn't the only graverobber. If it hadn't been him to do the deed, then almost surely someone else would have found the body and drained it of it's Zydrate. Still, Shilo was disgusted by what he'd just admitted. Anger welled up inside of her at what he'd done. "You bastard!" She shoved him away from her as hard as she could. He lost his balance and fell onto his back. The vials of Zydrate in his bag and on his hips rattled. One slipped free and rolled across the floor before bumping into Shilo. She looked at the glowing blue vial in front of her and reached out for it. With lightning fast reflexes Graverobber snatched the vial before she could pick it up. She looked up at him. He was back on his feet making his way to the door of the crypt. "Where are you going?" She shouted. A thought had just occurred to her. Perhaps she couldn't erase the memories of the past week, but maybe she could dull the ache.

"I'm going on my way. You'd obviously rather be left alone and I have work to do, people to see." He turned away from her once again and reached for the door.

"Wait!" He stopped dead in his tracks. He looked over his shoulder at her sitting on the floor. She looked pathetic sitting in the filth of the crypt tears staining her pale hollow cheeks. "I need it.... please," she whispered.

He turned to her and looked at the vial in his hand He held it up, "This?" She only nodded. Graverobber smiled that cocky crooked smile of his and chuckled. "I don't think so kid." He began to turn from her again.

"Please!" She demanded, "you owe me! After what you did you owe me!"

"Sorry kid, I don't owe you anything," he said without turning to face her.

"He was my father," she pleaded. "And you did it anyway. It's mine by right. I need it. First hits free, right?"

Graverobber clutched the vial in his gloved hand and inhaled deeply. "Sorry kid, not this time. Nothing is free." With that he left her alone in the dark dankness of the tomb. Shilo fell forward and pounded the hard stone floor in front of her with her fist. It wasn't fair. He couldn't just leave her. He should have given her the Zydrate. She deserved it, she needed it more than anyone. She needed to not feel. She slumped forward and buried her face in the crook of her arm and cried and cried.

*********

Graverobber had found himself back in the alleyway, reclining in the dumpster. His corner of the world as it were. The Zydrate whores had come and gone, filled his pockets with credits, given him a little carnal relief. Now he could relax. Just sit back and think. The kid had looked pathetic. She obviously hadn't had much to eat in the last week. She'd been covered in graveyard dirt and grime, hadn't seen a shower since the opera. Something about the sight of her that way bothered him. He wasn't sure why. He saw equally pathetic visages everyday. Girls that one could assume had once been vibrant with life, perhaps even pretty, reduced to shadows of themselves walking around in a daze without really feeling anything because of the drugs in their systems... the drugs that he sold them. Girls that wouldn't think twice about dropping to their knees in front of him in order to get that next hit when they didn't have the credits to pay. But had he ever really known them before they'd gotten that way? Graverobber struggled to remember. In the end all the faces looked the same, he laughed at the thought. All the faces looked the same because they were different, the faces, the bodies, ever changing. The only constant was that drug induced stupor that they seemed always to be in. The kid was different. When he first saw her she'd been... alive. There was no other word for it. She could feel. She'd been scared, and rebellious.... and innocent. Her innocence stood out in his mind. Some part of him, buried deep in his mind, liked that part of her most. He wouldn't admit it to himself, but her innocence reached out to him and he could not, would not help her corrupt it. There had been a time when he wouldn't have thought twice about it. He'd almost given her the Zydrate the last time they'd met. She'd wanted a cure and he'd just wanted to be cut down from his trap. He'd been out of Z then, but he'd given her the extracting needle. She'd almost done it too. He'd almost coaxed her to smack the needle in, until she'd realized that the corpse on the floor had been her mother. Now he was thankful that she'd run. He didn't want he to end up like the others. A part of him, a dark part, liked her. A customer stumbled over. "You're too late I'm all out," he said without bothering to look up. The customer stumbled away and he reached into a pocket and removed a small glowing vial. He looked at it and turned it this way and that. He knew he should just sell it. He wasn't entirely sure why he'd kept it for so long in the first place. It was they very vial Shilo had asked him for. The last part of her father that was left. He certainly wasn't going to give it to the girl, that was for sure, but he supposed that he had known the girl would be wanting it. He jumped out of the dumpster and sauntered out of the alley in the direction that his last customer had left. He loaded the vial into his Zydrate gun and laid a hand on the customer's shoulder. The boy turned around and, seeing the Zydrate gun, shoved a handful of credits into the Graverobbers open palm. He pressed the gun to the boy's neck and watched as the glowing blue Zydrate emptied into him. He shoved the empty gun back into his bag and stalked off down the street toward the cemetery.