Plea Bargain

“BP 86/62 and rising, vital signs stabilizing.”

“Brain activity?”

“He’s coming to. Still phasing out of the last sentence.”

“Ahh. He wakes up slower each time. At this rate, we won’t get through 10 sentences before lunch…”

I awaken in a jolt, gagging on the tube forced down my esophagus. Tears stream down the sides of my face and pool in my ears, and my head pounds with the force of a lumberjack swinging a blunted axe from the inside.

“There he is. Welcome back, Williams. We need you to wake up a little quicker on these next ones, alright? Not all of us can be here all day.”

Blood and bile gurgle at the back of my throat, but the tubes pumping my stomach don’t allow for much of anything to come up. Straps pin my wrists to the metal operating table, which sends a perpetual chill throughout my body. The sterile light from above is blocked only by the silhouettes of the two women in lab coats.

I can’t speak. I can’t scream. I can’t move. I can only wait for what’s to come.

“That makes six sentences today so far, seventy-eight in total. Resetting the biophaser to the initial point of contact.”

My mind splinters as memories pour back in. Days, weeks, months—they've all blurred into something unrecognizable. I know it couldn't have been long in the outside world, yet decades have carved themselves into my psyche.

No. No, no…

“I don’t know how much longer I can keep at this job. They always look so broken when they come to.”

“Do you know what he did? Why he’s here? You wouldn’t be so quick to come to his defense if you did.”

“I don’t like to read their files. It gets heavy after a while.”

“Exactly. Fucking filth’s getting what he deserves.”

Footsteps echo across the room, and the overhead light shines directly into my eyes. “Injecting the ketamine-pentobarbital compound.” My heart races in time with the pounding in my skull; I thrash against the restraints, spending the last of my strength before the sedatives flood my veins. A sensation like television static begins filling every hollowed-out space inside me, buzzing beneath my skin until I can no longer tell where my body ends and the void begins.

The corners of my mouth twitch upward.

“Smiling. Heading back in, and he’s fucking smiling.”

“We don’t know what they see in there. All we have to do is make sure he gets put back in…”

I’m drifting before I can make out the rest.

#

“…again.”

“Huh? What?”

“I said you dropped your wallet again. Hell, Tae, where’s your mind at today?” You had placed your hand on my face and poked me in the side with a paper straw. “You’d lose all your shit if it weren’t for me.”

“Hm,” I chuckled, finally meeting your eyes. Rustic brown, rimmed with flecks of crimson whenever the light caught them just right. Looking into your eyes always cleared the fog in my head. My fingers absentmindedly rolled the turquoise beads resting against your hips.

“Stop playing. I did just fine on my own, b.”

I remember now.

It had been both of our days off; the first time they lined up like that in years. We decided to get out and walk around the city, and a little hole-in-the-wall café caught your eye off McDaniel Street. Faux ivy crawled over warm wooden paneling near the entrance, and a neon sign reading #Melvin'sATL bathed the espresso bar in amber light. “Red Leather” drifted from an old JBL speaker, wrapping the room in an era that belonged to our grandparents, while white sage smoldered on a copper plate by the register. Every wall was lined with books—memoirs, novels, poetry collections, history. We stayed for hours, wandering from shelf to shelf and debating passages from the likes of Assata Shakur and Huey Newton. “Minds of God coming made human,” as you called them.

Eventually, dusk found us. The cool of the shop gave way to humid evening air as we stepped back onto the sidewalk. Above us, metro lights twinkled like artificial stars. We wandered some more, weaving through crowds and dodging traffic, anything to make our day last a fraction longer.

That's when I noticed them. Three figures who’d followed us for the better part of eight blocks. You must have noticed them too, because your grip around my hand tightened.

“Tae.”

“I know.” I kept my eyes forward. “Don't turn around.”

“Atlantic Station isn't much farther. We can cut through there and catch a Waymo home.”

“I'll call one now.” I reached into my pocket for my phone. Behind us, their footsteps quickened.

“Hey!”

“Don’t turn around,” I repeated, and we sped up. My hands quivered around the device. The app was still downloading—sixteen percent, twenty-two percent, twenty-seven percent. I looked up and was met with nothing but alleyways. “Shit.”

They were only footsteps behind us now. One of them grabbed my shoulder and spun me around hard, breaking our grip on each other. “Don’t you know how to listen when someone’s talking to you?”

Taking them in, I could see now that it was just a group of white boys; the one who spun me away from you must have been no older than seventeen.

“We don’t want any trouble, kid,” I said. I pulled out my wallet and offered it to him, hoping to settle this before it started. “Here, just take it.”

But he just laughed. “Calm down, unc. We don’t want your money. We just wanted to give your bitch a look.” His attention turned toward you, and he whistled. “How much to let us take her for a spin?”

“The fuck did you just say? Nah, you got the wrong one.”

“Come on, don’t be like that. We’ve just never been with a black girl before. Is it true y’all’s skin smells like chocolate?” He stepped closer and inhaled. “Ahh, I bet you do.”

I put my fist out and it landed square in his chest, stopping him from coming any further. “You ain’t doing shit—” Two of the boys lunged, pushing me down to the ground before the words could clear my mouth. One slammed his forearm against my throat while the other threw his entire weight onto my legs, both pinning me in place.

I struggled to catch my breath as your scream filled the alleyway. “Javon’Tae! Let go of him!”

The first boy stepped toward you, a grin spreading across his face. “Now... Let's see what we're working with.” He grabbed the collar of your shirt and tore it down, exposing your chest. His friends laughed as I fought to break free; I could only watch as he snapped the thread around your waist, sending the beads I’d caressed just hours earlier scattering across the dark asphalt.

“Get the fuck off her!” I bellowed. My right hand, pinned half under my hip, clawed at my waistband. My fingers found the grip and, with a heave, I wrenched my right arm free. I aimed the weapon and fired into the boy pinning my throat, and the weight on my upper body instantly vanished. I rolled hard to the left and fired again at the one holding my legs. The two collapsed sideways with a heavy, wet thud.

I scrambled to my feet, but your assaulter was faster. He drove his shoulder into my ribs and slammed me back against a wall; the gun went wild between us. We wrestled for it, but he was younger and more agile, and ripped the firearm from my sweat-slicked grasp.

“You killed them, you fucking killed them! You’ll die for this, you dumb apes!” He stepped back, aiming the barrel at my chest.

I closed my eyes and braced for impact. But the shot didn't hit me.

A sudden rush of warmth and the scent of white sage crossed the space between me and him.

“Tae!”

Pop!

The sound was deafening, but the silence that followed was worse. You gasped a fragile sound and collapsed backward into my arms.

“No, no, no, Nova…”

Another shot had gone off, and a white-hot spike tore into my abdomen.

“Ahhhh!” I yelled out in pain and rage I hadn’t yet come to know and ran for the boy. My hands locked around the gun, twisting his fingers until they popped. I yanked the weapon free, pressed the steel to his forehead, and pulled the trigger until the firing pin clicked on empty.

The alley fell dead quiet, save for the wet, shallow gasps escaping my own throat.

I fell to my knees as I was bleeding out, crawling the inches back to you. I pulled you into my lap and pressed my hand over the dark stain blooming on your shirt.

“Nova... Nova, look at me. Stay with me, b. Please.”

But your chest was still. The snapped turquoise beads lay silently scattered around us like emerald daffodils.

In the distance, the rising wail of sirens had begun to cut through the heavy humidity. Red and blue lights flickered, casting long, mocking shadows. I held you tighter, burying my face in your neck, wishing the concrete would open up and swallow us both.

“Nova!”

A sharp, agonizing jolt of electricity snapped through my spine.

“BP’s 83/70 and falling! We're losing him in the simulation!”

I gasped, my eyes flying open to the sterile, blinding light of the operating table. The alleyway and lab merged in my mind until I could no longer tell what was real and what wasn't. I tried to scream your name, but the tubes blocked out any sense of coherency.

“Jesus, he’s frying his brain. He can’t stay in that long.”

“I know. It’s strange, but it’s almost as if he… wants to…”

“Please,” I managed to choke out, the words tearing past the tube in a pathetic, gurgling plea. I looked to the women standing above me, my voice cracking with desperation. “Please... just put me back. Please put me back in. I need to see her. Just put me back...”

No AI was used in the drafting, writing, or creating of this story. This work is entirely human-written.