Limbus, Inc., Book III Read online

  I reached the door without breaking anything, and fumbled with the deadbolt for a moment before it clicked loose and I was able to wrench the door open. The men standing on my porch looked at me dispassionately. I stared back, wild-eyed and disheveled.

  There were three of them, two in police blue, the third in a black suit. The policemen were strangers. The man in the suit…I narrowed my eyes.

  “I thought I told you not to come here anymore,” I said.

  “I never agreed to that,” he replied. There was a plain manila envelope in his hands. He held it out toward me. “You haven’t been picking up your mail.”

  “I’ve been ill.”

  “You haven’t been making your donations.”

  I wanted to rage at him about that. I wasn’t going to. Not with his two hired goons standing by—and there was no way they were here on official police business; money talks, no matter what your profession, and my father’s lawyers have always been good at knowing how loudly to speak to get what they wanted—and not with him glancing nervously at my gloved hands. Causing a scene would just reinforce whatever he’d told these men about me. I didn’t want that.

  My life would have been so much better if my father hadn’t raised me to be polite and perennially considerate. He cultured me like a flower, and when he got what he’d been trying for, he didn’t know what to do with me. Carefully, I reached out and took the envelope from the lawyer’s trembling hand.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “Your father’s conditions for your care were very specific,” he said. “You were either to continue your work with the company or you were to pay for the upkeep and maintenance on this property yourself. We’ve received no official visits this quarter. We’ve also received no payments.”

  “I’ve been unwell. I’m allowed to stay home when I’m unwell.”

  “You’re allowed to stay home when a company doctor certifies that you’re unwell. You haven’t been willing to see a company doctor.”

  “They all have the bedside manner of scientists.”

  “Be that as it may, we had a deal.” His eyes flicked to the envelope. “You have made no contribution to your keep this quarter. You are liable for the costs associated with this property during that time. Payment is expected in full by the end of the week. If it is not received, you’ll be asked to vacate.”

  I stared at him in wide-eyed horror. “And go where?” I demanded. “I have no money, no credit history, and with my condition—”

  “Should you not be able to make the payment and wish to maintain your current residence, we are willing to forgive your debt in exchange for tripling your visits over the next quarter.” His smile was thin and as venomous as a striking snake. “Interest, you understand.”

  I slammed the door in his face. Then I froze, paralyzed by fear, and waited for the hammering to resume. It didn’t. Instead, footsteps on the other side of the door told me that my unwanted guests were leaving, choosing discretion as the better part of valor. I started breathing again.

  Putting the envelope down on the shallow table where my father used to throw the mail, I pulled off my gloves. My hands were shaking so hard that it was difficult to get my fingers free, but the motion was familiar, and by the time I was done, I felt stable enough to open the envelope and remove its contents. A sheaf of legal paperwork, all of it leading up to the same inevitable conclusion: I needed to find the money by the end of the week, or I was going to be out on the street.

  The other option wasn’t something I could think about. Not here, not now, not with my skin still raw from the night before. I flipped to the last page to see how much it was they were asking for. Bitterness flooded my mouth.

  Sixty thousand dollars.

  They were asking for sixty thousand dollars to justify the fact that I’d spent three months in my own home, tending my gardens and watching too much television, instead of going to their labs and submitting to their designs for me. Sixty thousand dollars to live in the house where my mother died, where pink and yellow splotches grew on the walls, the floor, anything organic that happened to be within arm’s reach. When my father left me the house, he did it with so many strings attached that I’d felt like a fly being wrapped up by a spider, but I’d never dreamt that he would go this far.

  The tingling in my skin was becoming an itch, brutally deep and unrelenting. There was only one way to deal with it when it got that bad. I forced myself to put the papers down, pink stains already blossoming on their edges. If I held them much longer, they’d dissolve.

  I was turning to head for the back door when I heard footsteps on the porch. I looked over my shoulder, hoping senselessly that it was the lawyer, back to tell me this had all been a misunderstanding: that I didn’t owe them sixty thousand dollars that I didn’t have, and didn’t need to make triple visits to the lab to make up for my shortfalls in the first quarter. There was no knock. Instead, a business card was shoved through the space between the door and floor, with enough force that it slid several feet before spinning to a stop. I leaned cautiously down, peering at the text.

  LIMBUS, Inc.

  Are you laid off, downsized, undersized?

  Call us. We employ. 1-800-555-0606

  How lucky do you feel?

  “What?” The word escaped without my thinking about it. I bent further, picking up the card and turning it over. There was writing on the back.

  I’m sorry. I couldn’t stop this. Call these people. They can help.

  The note wasn’t signed. I blinked back sudden, angry tears. Of course it wasn’t signed. There had always been people at my father’s company who felt bad about the way I was treated. Not bad enough to change anything, even if they could have, but bad enough to shoot me sympathetic looks in the halls, or to slip me extra juice when I was in recovery. Real princes among men, in other words.

  Call these people? They could help? They “employed”? “Yeah, right,” I muttered, dropping the card on top of the contract. People who “employed” were either scammers or pornographers, looking for cam girls who didn’t have any other options left. I didn’t look down on people who chose that life, but it wasn’t for me, and my skin was burning.

  Dropping my robe on the floor, I walked away from the contract and the card, heading for the soothing safety of my garden.

  *

  It took over an hour for the itching to stop. That was an improvement: after one of my “sessions” in the lab, it could take up to eight hours for my body to calm down and stop over-producing the chemicals they took from me—and that wasn’t just for one day. It took weeks before things began trending downward again. Which the people at the lab knew. They just didn’t care. My visits were only as infrequent as they were because I’d started pitching fits when I was thirteen, and in the end it had been easier to agree to my demands than it had been to calm me down. The triple visits they were angling for would take me a lot closer to their “ideal” harvest schedule.

  I would never stop itching again if I agreed to that.

  I climbed out of the planting bed, brushing vines away, and padded, naked and dripping potting soil, back into the house. The industrial Roomba that whirred constantly around the downstairs would deal with the mess. If it choked on the roots that inevitably wound up mixed with the dirt, I would take it apart, clean out its insides, and put it back together again. Robots are easier than people in that regard. When you kill them by mistake, you can make it right.

  The paperwork from my father’s lawyer had been fully consumed by pink and yellow streaks while I was resting. The pages curled up and inward like the petals of a flower, the business card I’d found on the floor cradled in the center. It was still pristinely white. I paused. There were no splotches on the paper, even though everything around it had twisted.

  I bent. I reached into the contract-flower, which crumbled at my touch, and withdrew the business card, turning it over in my hand. There were no traces of pink or yellow on the back, either.

&
nbsp; Carefully, still holding the card, I walked back up the stairs to my room. The bed was covered in canker-sores of pink and yellow; I must have sweated more in the night than I’d thought. I’d strip the sheets and mattress protector off later, throw them in the industrial washer and bleach them until they were white again. For the moment, however, I had other concerns.

  My desk chair was entirely synthetic, plastic cloth over plastic filling on a plastic frame. I sat, reaching for my laptop. Phones are hard for me; even the best case can’t keep a little sweat from getting into the machinery, and I tend to erode fine circuitry. Keyboards are easy to replace. So are optical mice. I opened Skype, checked the card, and carefully input the number on the front.

  Then, feeling foolish, I waited.

  The connection buzzed once, twice, three times, and I was about to go back down to my garden when there was a click and a pleasantly neutral female voice said, “Thank you for calling Limbus, Inc. We employ. How may I direct your call?”

  “Uh,” I said. I hadn’t really been expecting anyone to pick up: it all felt too unreal, like a prank on the verge of going a step too far. “This is Beatrice Walden? I received a business card recommending your services?”

  “Miss Walden, hello.” The woman’s voice turned suddenly, unnervingly warm. “I was told to expect your call. If you can hold for a moment, I’ll connect you.”

  “Wait!” I said, without thinking. She went politely silent. I swallowed hard before asking meekly, “Connect me to who?”

  “To your recruiter, of course. She’ll be able to explain everything about this wonderful opportunity—and may I say, Miss Walden, I am absolutely delighted that you’ve chosen to call us. I think you’ll benefit greatly from becoming a member of the Limbus family.”

  Her voice cut off before I could ask any more questions, replaced by pleasant, twinkly hold music. I stared at my screen. I considered disconnecting the call. I looked at the business card on my desk—still white, still clean, still devoid of pink and yellow stains—and stayed exactly where I was.

  The music stopped. Another voice, also female, came on the line. This woman lacked the receptionist’s warmth and sweet demeanor: she went straight for the conversation’s throat. “Walden,” she said. “So good of you to call. I have to say, I expected you to dial a little faster. Should we have waited until you were actually drowning, not merely underwater, before we made our offer?”

  “I don’t even know what your offer is,” I said, bristling instantly. I dug my nails into my palms, feeling the skin begin to burn. “If this is some sort of sick prank—”

  “I assure you, it’s not. I know of your existence because one of our freelancers used to work for your father. He told me all about you, and I knew from the moment I heard about your special skills that we would have some very exciting employment opportunities for you.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Naturally, we’d compensate you fairly. There’s no direct market comparison, given the uniqueness of your position, but we’d be able to start you at a hundred and fifty base rate, just as your retainer, with an additional seventy-five thousand to be paid following each successful…outing. Even with the estimated tax rate on this income, you would only need to take three assignments per year to pay off the onerous rates your father’s company is attempting to charge for your housing. Take a few additional assignments, and you could even begin fixing that tawdry old place up. Get some curtains, replace some floors, all those silly little things. We have a branch that handles crime scene cleanup, hazardous material removal, and construction. Once you’re an employee, we can refer you.”

  “I never said—”

  “We’ll email you the address for my office. Please be here tomorrow at eleven to discuss your future with the company. Wear something nice. I won’t insist on business casual yet, given your circumstances, but you will be expected to make an effort.”

  “But—”

  There was a click as she hung up on me. I stopped, mouth slightly open, feeling like I’d just been hit by an unusually professional freight train.

  “What the fuck just happened?” I asked.

  Only silence answered.

  *

  All the fashion blogs—yes, I’m addicted; who wouldn’t be, when those people look so happy, so effortless and normal and draped in sheer chiffons—said that natural fibers were in this season. Again. They’d been announcing how “in” natural fibers were for the past five seasons, and those of us who couldn’t afford them, or couldn’t wear them for other reasons, well, we were just fucked. They also said that the colors of the season were peach and charcoal. That was slightly more manageable. I had a rayon turtleneck in peach, with long sleeves and a hem that fell to mid-hip, covering an acceptable percentage of my skin. I paired it with black yoga pants, “environmentally conscious” because they’d been made from recycled plastic, about as natural as Twinkies.

  Surgical gloves are never going to be the hot fashion item of the season, but when it comes to putting a barrier between skin and the world, there’s not much that works better. I stuffed a box into my purse, just in case, and turned to look at myself in the mirror, trying to pretend that this wasn’t a terrible idea. I looked…not bad, exactly, but years out of style and scruffy, in that “I have dressed myself from the back of the closet” way. My hair hadn’t been cut with anything more professional than sewing scissors in the bathroom since my mother died. Sheepdogs have been known to look better groomed.

  “This is a terrible idea,” I informed my reflection, which didn’t disagree.

  But downstairs, a pile of dissolving pink and yellow paper chips that had been a contract still said that I owed sixty thousand dollars if I didn’t want to be either a lab animal or homeless—and if I became homeless, I’d wind up in a cage at my father’s company before the year was up, when someone inevitably died and the authorities realized I couldn’t be stopped through any other means. My freedom was riding on this day. Plastic pants and all.

  I took a deep breath, trying to shove my doubts aside, picked up my purse, and went down the stairs. The front door seemed to loom in front of me like the passageway to some dark, terrible realm filled with horrors. I forced myself to keep walking. I had my keys. I had my transit card. I had done this before. Not in months, true, but still, the world couldn’t have changed that much while I stayed home with my garden. It just couldn’t.

  I opened the door. Sunlight flooded into the hall, making the exposed skin of my face and scalp tingle. I stepped outside. Locking the door behind me felt like passing the point of no return, and maybe I was; maybe this had been my last chance to back down. I was really going to do this. I was going to risk everything, and do it.

  Then again, it wasn’t like everything was all that much, at least for me. I walked down the sidewalk to the bus stop, drinking in the landscaped yards around me with my eyes, greedy for every detail. The house on the corner had hydrangeas. Crabgrass had almost reclaimed the lawn of that one house that never seemed to keep a tenant. I couldn’t have identified any of my closest neighbors by their faces, but oh, how I knew them by their lawns.

  The bus pulled up to the stop as I arrived, like a sign that I was doing the right thing after all. The gloves made my fingers feel slow and clumsy. I wasn’t used to wearing them anymore. The man behind the wheel watched with thinly veiled contempt as I fumbled through my purse and produced my card, holding it up to the reader, which beeped to show that I had paid my fare. I offered him a wan, apologetic smile and scurried to the back of the bus, compacting myself as tightly as I could into one of the empty seats.

  Riding the bus is a special sort of hell. People aren’t respectful of one another’s space, sometimes because there’s no way to be—I won’t take a bus during rush hour, I just won’t—and sometimes because they just don’t care. I’ve had men sit down next to me and spread their legs so wide that there’s no way to escape, only for them to glare and sneer when I asked them to stop touching me
. I’ve had people fall into my lap. And always, always there is the distant fear that something will slip, that someone will put a hand down my blouse or one of my gloves will tear, and I’ll touch somebody. Even if they were the ones who forced the contact, what happened next would still be my fault.

  It was always my fault. But I couldn’t afford a taxi, not unless this Limbus place actually decided to hire me, and so I gritted my teeth and held on, praying no one was going to die.

  The address my recruiter had provided for the Limbus, Inc. offices was downtown, coincidentally right on the bus route that ran past my house. It was more than forty minutes from home; even if I managed to survive the trip there, I was going to have to make the same journey in reverse. The thought made me bite my lip and hunch in my seat, feeling my skin tingle and burn beneath my clothes. Some people worry about sweating too much. I worry about…well. Something else.

  The ride went smoothly, maybe because I was worried enough to look sick and no one, no matter how pushy, wants to sit next to the sick girl. I staggered off the bus when we reached my stop, pausing twice to check the address. Assuming it was correct, I was supposed to be going into one of these tall, almost featureless glass skyscrapers. All of them twinkled in the light, reassuringly sterile. Nothing could grow here. Where nothing grows, there’s nothing that can die. There was nothing here for me to hurt.

  This was it: this was the point of no return. Either I turned and walked away now, and resigned myself to a quarter spent almost entirely in labs run by men who view me as a treasure trove instead of a person, or I kept going forward and took my chances on the future. I closed my eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath. The face of my father flashed, unbidden, through the darkness behind my eyelids. He was looking at me with the mix of pity and irritation that he always seemed to reserve for the rare moments when we were alone.

  I opened my eyes. I kept walking.

  Screw you, Dad.

  *

  The lobby of Limbus, Inc. was enormous, all glass and chrome and polished steel. I felt grubby and out of place as I walked across the shining marble floor to the desk where a bored security guard furtively read a magazine while trying to look like he was paying attention to everything around him. I stopped and waited to be called. He kept reading his magazine. I cleared my throat.