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  Emily continued softly, “I’ll tell you this. Being dead doesn’t rid you of your conscience. You will still feel good and bad about the things you do. A good person will always feel a little guilty when he feeds off an antemort. Pure and simple, we are parasites and there is no getting around it. You’ll discover the longer you’re dead the more you crave feeding, and you’ll hate yourself for the cravings.”

  “I’ll have to take your word on that for now,” Wes said. “I haven’t fed on anyone yet.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll teach you all about it. I’m going to be your trainer you know.”

  “You are? What does that mean?”

  “Well, we go out for some hands-on training. You’re going to be my brother. We’ll move into a small town somewhere, usually near a college where it’s easy to feed. Then after your training, you’ll be placed with a companion in a larger city and you’ll get to start making antemorts’ lives better. Do you think you can pull off being my brother?”

  “I guess, I think so.”

  Emily began to laugh. “I really love the training period. I love pretending to be someone else! I just love teaching new members! In the short time I’ve gotten to know you, Wes, I’m looking forward to training you.”

  “Whoa, a college town? I don’t have to go back to school, do I?”

  “No,” Emily said, laughing again. “At least not yet. You can decide that after you’ve been in the field for awhile. Many Mortuis decide they want to go back to learn new things so they can grow and improve. It’s that whole self-actualization thing. You’ll have plenty of time to learn or try anything you want.”

  “So, why do we have to live near a college?” Wes wondered why location was so important.

  “Well, to be completely honest, it’s for the food source. You always want to stay near areas where there are young antemorts in large numbers. You’ll find that you get more when you feed from a younger person. We don’t feed from babies or small children, though. A mind too young will sever very easily. Their souls haven’t had enough time to adjust to their bodies. Oh, and you can’t feed off animals. It would be so much easier if we could, but it just doesn’t work – the wrong kind of energy or something.”

  “I really do have a lot to learn,” Wes said, feeling slightly overwhelmed with all they’d talked about.

  “We can head back now, Wes. We’ve been soul-synced long enough. They should be done with your body.”

  “How do we go back?”

  “Well, I’ve synced with you so I’ll break our connection. When you break a sync, you just think of nothing. It’s hard to explain; as soon as you’ve done it once you’ll always be able to do it. Like your shooting stars. You’ll always be able to make those.”

  Emily smiled at Wes. The beach faded away as did Emily and the pier that stood in the distance behind her. There was more “nothingness” for an instant and then Wes opened his eyes. His vision was clear.

  Chapter 5

  Kim sat in her car looking out the windshield, but not seeing anything. Right before arriving home, the rain had increased from the light drizzle that had started that morning to a heavy downpour that now ran down the glass in front of her. The rapid rate and high velocity of the droplets were so extreme it was difficult to see the front door from where her car sat in the driveway. She watched and waited for her chance; the rain needed to lighten up long enough for her to get from the car and make the mad dash to the house. This was the most exciting thing that would happen to her all day.

  Pulling the key out of the ignition, Kim gathered her things and placed her hand on the door as she prepared to open it. The rain eased its pounding, and Kim took her chance. In one motion, she opened the door, leaped from her car, slammed the door behind her, and ran up the front walkway to the door.

  The house was empty. Mark, her husband, was still at work and their three children were all grown and gone. The youngest had moved out just six months earlier. Kim put her things down on the hallway table and caught a brief glimpse of her reflection in the mirror that hung above it. She paused, keeping her eyes on her things on the table before slowly lifting her head to look in the mirror. She knew she would see what she didn’t want to see: herself.

  Kim’s makeup had run as a result of her dash through the rain, and the tracks left by the water and the running mascara gave the illusion that she was even older than she actually was. So much for the claims that her new skin care line would erase years. She had just celebrated turning 50, but she was feeling much older. Kim ran her fingers under her eyes to smooth the makeup and skin. Where had all these wrinkles come from?

  The doorbell rang. Quickly smoothing out the rest of her makeup with her hands, Kim turned to answer the door. Always careful to check first, she could see a package delivery man when she looked out the window at the side of the door.

  “Hello,” Kim said, as she opened the door and looked through the space left by the still-attached chain.

  “Hi,” the delivery man said. “Are you Mrs. Powell?”

  “I am.” Kim looked down at the box that sat on a dolly next to the man. The box was of significant size and stood higher than the man’s waist. It didn’t have any markings on it to provide clues to its contents or origin. Her mind raced to remember if she’d ordered anything, but knew she would never have sent for anything that would come in a box that size. “Are you sure that box is for me?” Who would send her something that large?

  “Pretty sure,” the man said, handing her a clipboard with a delivery receipt on it through the space made by the open door. “Look it over and if it looks all right, just sign at the bottom. There’s a packing slip on the box if you need to send it back. I just deliver.”

  Kim unhooked the chain and opened the door. She looked over the sheet. The address on it was hers. The sheet, like the box, didn’t have any evidence of where the package was from or who had sent it. She would have to accept it and open the packing slip attached to the box after the man left. Kim signed the receipt and handed it back to the man.

  “Thanks,” the man said, taking the clipboard back. He moved behind the box and pulled the dolly back, rolling its two wheels across the threshold. “Where do you want it?”

  “Bring it inside, if you don’t mind,” Kim said, opening the door as wide as it would go. “You can place it in here next to that small table.”

  The man rolled the box into her front foyer next to the small hallway table where she’d put her purse. Leaving the box on the dolly, he turned back toward the front door and closed it. Before she had a chance to process what was going on, he quickly grabbed her, pulled her toward him and then to the ground. Kim, now lying on the floor, struggled to pull herself away from him. The man forced Kim’s arms down to her sides and, straddling her, he kneeled on them. She screamed. With his hands now free, the man placed them on either side of Kim’s face and positioned his eyes over hers. Kim continued to struggle under the weight he was exerting on her. She tried to scream but the pressure of the man’s body on her chest prevented her from releasing more than a yelp.

  Kim squirmed under the man, trying to break her head free from his grip. He increased his pressure on either side of her face. Kim’s eyes linked with the man’s. She looked into them and lost consciousness.

  Kim felt herself slowly awakening. She was still in a state of sleep paralysis; her mind was awake but not her body. She attempted to move her hands or open her eyes but was unable to do so. Despite her inability to move, she could hear the voices of others in the room.

  “We’ll wait until she’s conscious and then we can proceed,” a man’s voice said.

  “I wanna try it,” another man said, “I’m beginning to think that it’s not the killing serum at all, but Rahul. Let me try and we can make sure.”

  “You’ll get yourself severed for talking like that.” The first man walked around the table where Kim could hear him working with some glass bottles. “Seth said Rahul was to be the first. We collected her be
cause she’s a closer match for him. If we want this to work, we have to make sure we’re syncing with the most compatible matches.”

  “Fine, I guess I’ll just hang around forever until the Body thinks I deserve to be rewarded.” A short-lived silence filled the room. “Wait a minute, I think she’s waking up.”

  Kim could feel her paralysis wearing off and she gasped for breath. As she opened her eyes she belatedly realized it may have been a better idea to pretend she was still asleep. She was lying on a metal table in a room similar to a hospital operating room. She could see an IV connected to her arm, and hoped the liquid in the bag was only saline.

  As she processed her surroundings, fear began to well up inside her. These men could have any number of uses for her, none of which boded well. They must be selling organs on the black market, she thought, and they were going to take what they needed from her.

  “Go get Rahul; I think she’s ready,” the first man said. “I really hope it works this time.”

  Kim strained to move but her body felt weak. Then she realized she wouldn’t have been able to move much even if she could. Her arms, legs, and head were tightly strapped to the table. She was going to die and she had no way of stopping it.

  A few minutes passed and the second man came back into the room with two others. “Are we ready,” the taller of the two new men asked the others as he approached Kim. He was a slender man of Indian descent.

  “She’s all yours, Rahul.” The man who had remained in the room pulled a small bottle from the table and inserted a syringe into it to extract some of its contents. His aged eyes watched as the liquid filled the small tube. He then put the contents of the syringe into the IV.

  Kim watched helplessly as the liquid slowly dripped into the fluid that ran from the hanging bag into her body. She felt her body growing heavier and heavier. So this was to be her end. It had come suddenly, without warning. When she woke up this morning, she’d never considered it might be her last. She felt her eyes shut slowly as the light from the room faded.

  “Okay Rahul, that’s your cue. Blake, hold her eyes open for Rahul.”

  Kim could see two men standing over her. The one called Blake was holding her eyes open. The other man, Rahul, leaned close to her and looked into her eyes. The light faded from her vision, taking the world with it.

  Chapter 6

  Wes opened his eyes and looked around the room. It was different from the one he was taken into prior to his soul-sync with Emily. Examination of his surroundings took only a few seconds. This room was small and square with solid concrete walls painted in a light shade of blue. On the walls were framed Escher prints. The other furnishings were simple. He was lying on a leather cot positioned in one corner of the room. At the foot of the bed were two bookshelves full of books and a small desk with a computer. On the opposite side of the room was a small closet containing a dresser.

  Pushing himself up into a sitting position, Wes noticed his hand was back. It looked great and he had complete control of it, as if it was never detached from his body. There were no mirrors in the room, but from what he could tell, his entire body looked much better than it had before his rebirth. If he didn’t know better, he would have believed he was alive again. Except that he still didn’t have his sense of touch.

  Wes got up and looked through the clothes in the closet. Most of the clothes in the wardrobe were his. In fact, almost everything in the room was his – from the books on the shelves to the computer. The only things that didn’t belong to him were the cot, desk, and dresser.

  The hallway outside the room was empty when Wes stepped out. It was long and narrow with numbered doors on either side. His room was 1124. Looking both ways, he noticed the hall to the right ended after only a few more doors, and he headed in the opposite direction. There had to be someone around who could tell him what was happening next.

  At the end of the hall, he entered a large room that looked like the lobby of a college dorm. Emily was sitting on a chair watching TV and crocheting. She looked up and saw him.

  “You’re up,” she said, putting down her crochet and standing. “It’s so good to see you in person. Here, come sit with me.” Wes walked over to the couch and Emily gave him a hug and another smile.

  “What is this place?”

  “This? Oh, these are the dorms. You have your own room now.” Emily sat down and started crocheting again. Wes sat next to her. “Was it okay, the room? Meri and Jordan did the decorating before they headed back to Chicago.”

  “Yeah, it was great. I was wondering who had done that.”

  “Hopefully it will help ease your transition. It’s always nice to have some familiar stuff around. You don’t want too much, though. At some point you have to give up the past and move on with your life.

  “A woman was abducted two days ago,” Emily continued, motioning to the TV. “We’re almost certain it was done by the Atumra, or Truly Dead, as I call them. Her husband reported her missing yesterday morning when she didn’t come home. He thought it was strange that she’d left the house without taking her car or her purse. This morning they found her body lying on a bench in Lincoln Park.”

  “That’s horrible, but how do you know it was the Atumra? After all, it was Chicago.”

  Emily’s focus was on the TV, but she continued working her crochet needle. A small chain bracelet with the same medallion Wes had seen on Meri and Jordan slid around on her wrist as she worked. Wes concluded the emblem stood for AfterLife.

  “No,” Emily answered. “The whole situation definitely has Atumra’s signature all over it. She had markings on her body as if she’d been attacked, but there was no definite sign of death. There were IV marks on her arms and an unidentifiable compound was found in her blood. This is the second body the police have found in this condition in a week, and we have reason to believe there have been more.”

  “How many more?” Wes stared at the TV, which was now playing a commercial.

  “We’ve uncovered dozens of similar deaths over the past few months. The antemorts we know of that are found in this condition are coming from St. Louis, Indianapolis, and as far up as Minneapolis. I hope, for our sake, they aren’t close.”

  “Close to what?”

  Emily ignored Wes’s question. She finished the row she was working on and placed her crochet in a fabric bag she picked up from the table next to the couch. “I think it’s time to give you the grand tour.” Emily stood up. She looked gorgeous (where had that thought come from?), and was dressed as if to go out for an evening of dancing. Her red hair was combed into large curls that fell across her shoulders and down her back. Her bangs swooped across her forehead. Leaving the fabric bag on the table, she moved out of the sitting area toward a set of double doors. Wes followed. Before they passed through the doors, Emily turned around. “Like I said, these are the dorms. This is the main foyer, or Den, and in addition to the rooms on this floor there are rooms on the three levels below and above this as well. You can get to them by using that stairwell.” She pointed to an opening between two of the hallways that branched off the foyer opposite the main Den entrance. She then turned and continued through the doors.

  “We call this AfterLife complex the Hub. It’s a fairly central location within North America. It’s our headquarters really, and we bring new members here for the rebirth process. There are other AfterLife complexes in other major cities and Hubs in other countries but they all operate in the same basic way.”

  Passing through the double doors, Wes noticed the hallway supported the same concrete ceiling he’d seen while being transported in on the stretcher for his rebirth. The hallway felt very institutional with its white walls and tiled floors, and wasn’t as cozy as the Den was.

  “Most of the complex is subterranean, which is where we are now. It’s easier to hide and we don’t have to worry about anyone coming to snoop around to see what we’re doing here.” Emily led Wes to an intersecting hallway and stopped. “Down that way,” she said, p
ointing left down one of the branching corridors, “is where we conduct the rebirth process on new members, and down the other way,” she pointed in the opposite direction, “are our training rooms and Operations Central. That’s where Oscar, our ops guy, works. In the training rooms we hold sessions that focus on survival as a Mortui and how to live more symbiotically with antemorts. For example, there are training programs that teach members fighting, self-defense, and self-preservation skills that may be useful against other Mortuis. Training in the Hub focuses on skills that help us as Mortuis. Continued education occurs in the real world.”

  “Fighting?” Wes wondered who he would ever need to fight now that he was dead, and if it would even be a fair fight. He couldn’t feel pain so if he ever got into a physical battle with an antemort, he could keep going till the antemort was tired and then get away if he needed to.

  “Yes, fighting,” Emily said. “It’s more for self-defense purposes if you ever find yourself alone with a Truly Dead. They can be vicious and you don’t want to be caught by them. They’ll kill you.”

  Wes laughed. Surely Emily was joking, but Emily didn’t laugh.

  “You can be killed Wes, even though you’re already dead. Your body will break and it can be damaged. It takes quite a bit to heal a damaged body. It might even take the equivalent of the lives of three or four antemorts to fix some of the more extreme damages. Take care of your body.” Emily grabbed Wes’s chin and looked him in the eyes to emphasize her words. “Do you understand me?”

  “Yes.” He nodded.

  “Good.” Emily’s voice was strong and commanding and Wes was startled by her sternness. She certainly didn’t look like the kind, almost vulnerable person he’d talked to on the beach. “Until you’re fully trained, the only thing you really need to remember is to protect your eyes. If you don’t have them you can’t feed, and if you can’t feed your body will rot and decay.”