Free Out of the Black by Lee Doty

added up to three bodies were concealed in two cleaning supply cabinets, wrapped in multiple layers of thick industrial trash bags. Beneath the cabinet, lying where it had fallen in the rush to conceal the morning's violence, was half of a military auto-pistol. Half of the barrel, the front corner of the trigger guard, and the bottom of the grip and magazine had been removed by a single, clean slash. The edges of the slash were smooth, as if an industrial laser had cut the metal and ceramic of the gun.
    Before Ping's elevator had reached even the third floor, the man in the lobby pulled the phones from his ears and paused the movie he'd been watching. For a moment, his gaze led on the frozen image on the screen: Roy Batty, leader of the outlaw Replicants, stood in the pouring rain, a white bird folded in his hand. Blood colored his face, but a look of resigned sadness softened his eyes and an odd smile pulled at his lips.
    A similar mix of mirth and melancholy passed through the man's eyes as he closed and stowed his tablet. He stood and turned to look back toward the elevator bank, his face set with grim purpose.
    ***
    Jin swam like a fish through the crowded sea of humanity, lost in the lights and sound and the fury of her tainted blood. Around her, the dance floor's lights painted every surface with dazzling patterns. The music shifted and fluttered around her- everything designed to maximize her experience.
    The club was impressive, but the real show was the people; it was like having a family, she assumed. Everyone she saw, she understood. It was like she had somehow passed through them, coming away with some sense of their essence. This was magic, the magic of the twenty-first century, the magic of the mind. It was like Mr. Spock said once: "there is nothing real outside our perception of reality." Spock... deep.
    She slithered and danced among the other fish in the crackling electric sea, thinking happy thoughts, feeling faux compassion, simulated empathy- loving everyone she saw. The energy around her made her want to dance harder, faster. She was an expanding mushroom cloud of love, a fiery flower blooming bright, even as the outer petals fell away to ash.
    Then something changed, like the shiver of a predator slipping silently into the water- the school knew, even if the individual fish could see nothing. Around her, the crowd still smiled and danced, the music still thrummed, but some of the eyes that floated around her were set a little harder, some of the smiles seemed tighter, colder. Some of them felt it too: something hungry was in here with them.
    She was being watched- eyes from the darkness bored in, singling her out. The friendly, energetic music that still surrounded her seemed to acquire the character of a suspense video soundtrack. The broken, sinister tones were still hidden a few layers down, but emerging like a slowly drawn knife.
    Jin felt suddenly exposed, one side of an open doorway with light coming from behind her and an impenetrable darkness across the threshold. There was no way to close the door, no way to run back into the light. Around her, darkness and laughter. "Couldn't find any Beta." Mara's voice hissed out of Jin's memory.
    ***
    After a seemingly endless elevator ride spent under the severe oppression of a harpsichord and tambourine rendition of Jimmy Hendrix's Are You Experienced , the door opened into a dim hallway. Ping navigated the twisted and dividing hallways until he found 1413.
    He took a deep breath and knocked. Within seconds he heard a click as a hand was set on the knob from inside. Strange, he thought, at six on Sunday morning, he'd expected to drag Ahmed out of bed.
    He waited. Perhaps twenty seconds passed with no further action from inside. Behind the door, someone lurked, possibly with his hand still on the knob, probably staring at Ping through the peephole.
    Waiting and watched, head filled with a repeating loop of harpsichord Hendrix, Ping felt the hall lengthen