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No rights infringement intended. M/F
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Our Bodies Fall
She hadn't been dead long.
A faint warmth still clung to the body when Partridge knelt beside the bed to check for a pulse. Somehow she had known they were coming, Partridge realized and he wondered just how many times the woman had injected Prozium into herself before her heart finally stopped.
Judging from the empty glass ampoules littered on the bedspread, it had been far too many. The woman had certainly ceased her dose at one point for her to have accumulated the number of ampoules she'd needed to kill herself.
Careful not to disturb the body before the Investigators finished photographing it, Partridge backed away from the bed and studied his surroundings. It was the standard-issue apartment of Level II citizens, with brightly lit and relentlessly white walls. The only signs of abnormality were an odor, sharp and ammoniac, beneath the distinct smell of disinfectant, and the broken telescreen in the parlor that he had noticed when Sweepers crashed open the front door. But overall the place was free of the usual clutter that was evidence of a sick and disordered mind.
From experience, Partridge knew that usually meant not all space on the floor plan was accounted for. He left the bedroom as he began to methodically measure off the walls of the apartment. A few meter down the hall he stopped and again considered the broken telescreen in front of him. Two Sweepers stood at attention behind him. "Move the screen," he told them.
Just as they pushed away the telescreen, something small streaked out behind it. Partridge swore in startlement, and lunged for it. "Hate!" he swore again as the thing he'd caught by the tail sank its teeth into his hand. It was, he realized, a large brown rat. He shook it hard to stun it before letting one of the Investigators bag it.
The hidden room was revealed to be barely the size of a large closet. The air inside was heavy, with the sharp, ammoniac odor of urine. A single lightbulb dangling from the ceiling cast wavering shadows over the walls and floor, all papered over with illegal pre-Reformation newspaper.
Partridge quickly took in this undeniable evidence of the dead woman's guilt, and then he stepped out of the room to let the Investigators do their job. He winced as he pulled off his left glove. The rat's teeth had sunk past the leather and into the flesh beneath.
"Sir?" A young Cleric in the initiate's grey uniform addressed him. "One of the Citizens who reported Irene Deckard for sense crime, is waiting just outside. He wants to know when the apartment is again habitable."
Partridge glimpsed a skinny man peering past the front door. "The landlord, is it? Transport him to an interrogation room." He flexed his left hand. "He'll need to answer some questions."
________________________________________
The landlord had proven ignorant. It seemed like a simple case of sense offense and suicide.
Partridge switched on his computer, called up the dead sense offender's profile, and scanned through the summary page: Irene Deckard, born Lee, parents Kyle and Heather - father deceased; one younger half-brother; SciTech Institute graduate; last profession as lab technician in the Ministry of Progress; last application for children denied seven years ago; legally separated from Pavel Deckard for two years.
He noted that Irene was forty-one, had a good but not brilliant academic record, solid work performance and no legal citation before the sense crime alarm.
He leaned back in his chair and tried to understand. There was something missing. He rubbed his bandaged left hand.
________________________________________
It was late by the time Partridge walked to the practice hall to keep his appointment with his partner. Fading afternoon light streamed in from a high window and reflected off the burnished walls of the practice hall. John was already in sparring clothes, barefoot and dressed in loose fitting pants and a wooden staff in his hands. The muscles of his back flowed with his movements as he slowly went through a practice routine.
For one long minute, Partridge observed him from the door. Then with quick, economical movements, he stripped out of his black Cleric uniform. He folded it and laid it neatly on the bench next to the door before pulling on the loose sparring pants and grabbing a wooden staff from the rack.
John hadn't paused in his motion. Partridge slipped into the routine behind him, breath falling in synchronization. One foot, then another slid forward on the practice mat. A shift of balance - a lift of the arms, elbows out, the staff snapping down, sharp stop, arms parallel to the floor. Reverse, slow step backward, diagonal strike, stabbing thrust, block, rotate, each motion precise, each perfectly controlled. They continued like that, the silence punctuated only occasionally by their hard exhaled breath and the soft thawp of staffs through the air.
Finally, both men simultaneously straightened from the last stance. John lowered the practice staff and turned to Partridge. "You were late twenty minutes," he said. It was an accusation, a demand for an explanation of nonstandard behavior.
Partridge walked to the edge of the practice mat, rubbing a hand through his hair as he went. John kept pace with him. They stopped in front of the weaponry rack. "I was investigating the origin of a Sense offender's pet," Partridge answered. He held up his bandaged left hand. "Also, the line at Medical was long."
John studied him a little, and then nodded. They each grabbed a sword off the rack against the wall, and strode to the center of the practice mat. Partridge closed his hands around the sword hilt. They saluted each other. Partridge shifted his grip on his sword; the bandages on his hand distracted him a little.
And then John was on him, his blade slamming into his in a bone-jarring impact. Partridge shoved him off, slashing low. Steel clashed and scraped against steel in a flurry of blue sparks, disengaged. Partridge circled him warily now, looking closely for the holes in his defense.
John turned with him, keeping him face to face. "Your reflexes are off," he commented.
And Partridge barely jumped aside in time as John suddenly spun on his heels and unleashed a powerful downward blow; the upswing caught Partridge across the back and slammed him down on one knee. Winded, Partridge barely blocked in time as the length of John's sword slammed into his again, only this time he couldn't throw him off. His arms trembled visibly under the strain as he was slowly but surely forced across the mat. The wall of the practice hall was suddenly hard and cold against his back. Sweat blurred his vision, but John's narrow-eyed gaze remained suspended above their locked swords.
Slowly, the edge of Partridge's sword pressed into his own throat. The combined sound of both their breathing, heavy and uneven, thrummed in Partridge's head. He could see his own eyes reflected in the black of John's pupils, and the whites of his eyes seemed unholy lit. He felt John's breath hitch, could feel the echo of every shudder with John's chest pressed against his.
Then the alarm on both their wrists began chiming a single note.
The two men blinked at each other, a distance of meters suddenly between them. Partridge, lying there on the mat, felt as strange as John looked. "What -" he began to say.
But John's expression had already flattened. "Ah. Time for the afternoon dose." He offered his hand to Partridge to help him up and Partridge took it.
Partridge didn't know why - just for a moment - his hand trembled as he followed his partner off the practice mat.
________________________________________
"Please recount the incident that indicated to you that your dose is inadequate."
The doctor was a woman in her thirties. She watched him impassively, seated behind a large desk, with grey eyes that were larger and set closer together than normal. There were fine wrinkles in the corner of her eyes. Partridge told her, briefly, in concise words, what had occurred in the practice hall the day before. Her eyes never left him, except for one quick glance at the open file on her desk.
After he finished and had fallen silent, she looked pointedly at his bandaged hand. "Did you injure yourself then?"
Partridge tersely explained about the rat in the dead sense offender's apartment.
The woman's eyes flickered. "Who did you say the sense offender was?"
"Citizen Irene Deckard." Partridge paused, and looked at her carefully. "Did you know her?"
"Unfortunately. She was a patient." The woman sat back in her chair, and tapped her electronic stylus against the computer screen. "Your dose only needs a simple correction," she told him, looking at the screen. "Your most recent physical evaluation shows a point one percent gain in body mass; under what is necessary for a dose adjustment, but obviously this will not work for you. Some citizens build up resistance to Prozium over time. I will see that it is corrected."
She rose from behind her desk and walked around to open the drawer standing next him. Partridge's nose twitched as she brushed past him. She smelled...strange. Before he could fully process that thought, the woman stepped back behind her desk and placed a bottle before him. "Take these pills - two before you sleep - if another incident occurs before the Hall of Harmony gives you your adjusted dose."
Partridge nodded, took the bottle, and rose from the chair. As he turned to leave, her voice stopped him. "One more thing, Cleric," she said suddenly. Partridge turned back to look at her. The early morning light from the window behind her made a soft russet halo of the hair around her face. She extended a card to him. "Make sure to call me if you have any other complaints. To the glory of Libria," she added dutifully.
He took the card. Inscribed across it was the home and office telephone number and address of one 'Mary O'Brien, M.D.'
"To the glory of Libria," he agreed.
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The pills didn't work. The increased dosage didn't work.
For days, he walked through the Halls of Justice in a daze. The daze protected him, held him in a passable semblance of the drugged stupor of his colleagues - as he slowly realized what his traitorous body was doing, what this meant for him, for his future. A future in flames.
And fear - that strange, incomprehensible word - was suddenly very much comprehensible.
One night, he woke, drenched in sweat and a sour taste in his mouth. The harsh pounding of his own heart throbbed in his ears, rendered him alert and tense in the middle of the night while only a hands-breadth away the fully covered body of his wife laid motionless between the sheets. With an abrupt grimace, Partridge pushed aside the covers and got out of bed, not pausing when his wife stirred in faint protest.
He didn't turn on the lights, finding the door of the shower stall by touch. He leaned against the cool spigot as the too-hot water pounded down his back, leaving a streak of angry red skin behind. His heart was still pounding, the spasmodic ache in his chest making him flex his injured hand against the cool porcelain tiles as he struggled hard to think through this madness that had taken over his nights.
In the silence, someone was whispering.
Errol, Errol, Errol, Errol...
And the heat of knowledge, of shame, crawled beneath his skin until his entire body burned as though the fires of an antiquated hell had been lit beneath him, around him, inside him.
Heretic. Imposter.
Sense offender.
He shuddered. Slid downward until his wet face pressed into his knees. The bathroom's wet tiles were cold against his clammy skin. The now cold water ran in rivulets down his hair. Water pounded down on his back. And all the while, he sat there in the corner of the shower stall, his body time and again racked by spasms of guilt and despair, and a gnawing sense fear. If only he could wash away this terrible awareness. If only he could quench this terrible inferno.
Footsteps hesitating just outside the door. "Husband?" came an uneasy voice. "Husband - what are you doing?"
A Cleric, feeling, grown resistant to Prozium.
They would burn him, then incinerate his ashes, to prevent the taint of him from ever spilling upon the earth.
Numerous footsteps outside the door. "This is Medical! Open the door, Cleric!"
The door splintered. The shower curtain was flung aside in a rattle of metal rings. Belatedly, he jerked back into the corner. He couldn't control the shuddering of his body. A flush of shame, hotter than he had thought possible, blazed through him at anyone finding him like this. "Don't touch me!" he cried.
Or, rather, he tried to. Only an unintelligible moan came out.
"Cleric Partridge!"
Someone's cool hands across his brow. A woman's eyes wide and startled. Her mouth forming words that fell into silence as the darkness descended fully and Partridge knew no more.
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He woke in a strange place. It appeared to be an underground bunker. A man sat in the chair next to the bed, and he stood when he saw that Partridge was awake. "You were out for two days," the man said. "We were worried that the medication had failed."
"Who -"
"You can call me Jurgen." He walked across the strange room to the door. "It was Irene Deckard's research that brought you to us. We all hope her sacrifice was not in vain." Jurgen looked at him solemnly. "But before we talk about that, there's someone I'd like you to meet," he said and opened the door behind him.
A woman stepped over the threshold.
She wore the obscene costume of the Pre-Liberation era: a flimsy, loose fitting red dress whose thin folds faded to transparency between her thighs when she walked before the gas lamp.
He stared at her. Couldn't stop the sudden tightening of his stomach muscles, the sudden thump of blood in his throat. Her body disturbed him. She felt more naked to him in that dress than she would have if she'd stepped entirely out of it.
And she - Damn her - she knew it.
Her pale eyes glinted at him. "Cleric Errol Partridge," she murmured, "welcome to the Revolution."
"This is Mary," Jurgen spoke from beside her. Partridge noticed how lightly Jurgen's hand settled on her lower back. "She will explain some things."
Mary smiled.
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Finis