Outrun Stories #56
Pale Blood — Part 7 of 10
- Video available here: https://youtu.be/tq_AHXTF-0w
He’s on the edge of his seat now, fat, balding and sweaty old Chapman. This case might make his fucking career, give him that pension he’s always dreamed of, well, I’m not going to disappoint, am I?
“You took the needle, Cutty? What happened? You get the power?” He asks.
“Chapman, I could read your mind without having any sort of power, you’re thinking of donuts and your pension right now,” I laugh.
“Easy, Cutty.”
“Look, nothing happened. I took the needle, shit, like I said, most just die straight away, some squeeze through and just get a set of bad mutations, some, one in a hundred, one in a thousand, get the power, a taste of it. All I’ve got now is half the time left I would have had originally in this shithole of a world. Fuck it, I didn’t care, I needed to get to Carla. Cutty’s last wild ride, right?”
“That death-wish of yours, sure.” Chapman shifts is gut and stretches. “Cutty, we can offer you a way out, a little peace for what you’ve done, you just need to tell us the whole thing.”
“You fuckers still don’t get it do you? I don’t care about what happens to me, I only cared about trying to do something for her.” I shake my head. “Look, this power of theirs you’ve been trying to go after, trying to get hold of, trying to weaponise. It’s some sort of telepathy, don’t ask me the details, I don’t know shit about it and it’s not exactly like they’ve got a team of scientists working for them. It’s all voodoo, hocus-pocus shit. Real dark, real fucking scary. So, you’re one of these mutants, you can look into the mind of one person, and suck out a memory. They put it inside another person, and it’s as real as any memory you’ve ever had, just like you’ve been there, done it, fresh too, like the day it happened.
“So, they figure out a way to take memories from people, and put them into other people, but what’s really going to make them a dollar is putting these memories into human’s, and how do they do that without leaving the confines of their underground? They need these vessels, and low and fucking behold, what works best for them? Teenage girls, and a big job had come up, one worth hundreds of millions. Take the memory out of one human, put it in a vessel, make sure the vessel gets to the buyer, and the vessel drops the memory in them. The catch? Not only does the vessel have to live the memory, but once it’s taken back out of them, they’re dead. They needed a special sort of girl for this one big job, someone that had already taken her knocks and was tough enough to take the memory. So, they were keeping a close eye on the system for new blood, and when Carla came along, they got their meal ticket.”
“You accidentally gave them what they needed?” Chapman sighs.
“Yeah, I fucking did, I signed her death warrant, alright? So, I cash in everything I have, not that I had much in the first place, my dad left me this old ’67 Camaro I was able to get a few bucks for on the black market. Enough to buy my way in, enough to buy a memory transfer. Enough to meet one of them, one with the power.”
“How far did you get?” he asks.
“All the fucking way, Chapman. All the fucking way.”
About the Creator
Outrun Stories
Short sci-fi stories in 500 words or less deriving from the Outrun, tech-noir and NewWave aesthetic.
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