Free On My Way to Paradise by David Farland

long time I checked the monitor: it remained
blank—no sign of brain activity at all, not even a dream of the
dead. So I turned off the slave and she stopped breathing
immediately. There was a chance she could live, a very slim chance,
if she were taken to the hospital. But I didn’t have the heart to
do it. The probability that she’d suffered major brain damage was
too high, and even though I could have generated new brain cells,
they wouldn’t carry her memories, her identity. She would have to
spend her life running from people she didn’t remember.
    I pulled her visor up to take a last look. Her eyes
were rolled back. Her face was very pale, perfectly still. One tear
had seeped from her left eye, slowly finding its way down her
cheek. I brushed it away, surprised to feel how high her fever had
become in the end. I closed her eyes and whispered the words the
refugiados spoke over their dead comrades, "Free at last."
    I couldn’t stand to see her sitting perfectly still,
so I switched the slave back on, just to hear her breathing. She
sounded alive, even if it was only an imitation of life.
    I began planning the things I needed to do as I
packed my clothes in a small bag. With three dead bodies behind me,
I was not about to risk the courts of Panamá. I knew I would have
to do something with Arish. I heard the sound of a rattle behind
me. I turned around—no one was there. I wandered to the kitchen and
got my medical bag, filled a specimen bottle with some clear
synthetic blood, and spilled most of the blood on the table because
my hands shook. I went downstairs to where Arish lay gasping on the
floor, removed the gas mask from his face, and then unwrapped a
scalpel and inserted the blade under his bottom right eyelid and
twisted till his eye popped free. I dropped the eye into the blood
and agitated the container a moment before putting it in my pocket.
I heard the rattling behind me again, and turned around—no one was
there. The rattling kept coming, and I realized my jaw was
quivering and my own teeth were rattling. I began breathing heavily
and my heart pounded.
    I took the scalpel and slit Arish’s throat from ear
to ear.
    "For Flaco, you murderous bastard," I told myself. I
watched the blood pump out of Arish’s throat, and as it ebbed away,
I could feel something inside me ebbing away. I believed God would
punish me. "Piss on him if he can’t take a joke!" I said. And I
laughed and cried at the same time.
     I searched Arish’s pockets and found his bank
card, a book called The Holy Teachings of Twill Baraburi, a couple
of knives, a screwdriver, and two "Conquistador cocktails"—
capsules filled with stimulants and endorphins, meant to be broken
between the teeth so the drug can soak through the skin
immediately. Soldiers sometimes take the cocktails in battle to
relieve tension and speed the reflexes, but several of the drugs in
them are addictive and must be taken in increasingly larger doses.
They were practically worthless, since I didn’t know the
prescription and therefore couldn’t resell them. But I am a
pharmacologist, and cannot lightly toss away any medications, so I
scooped them up and put them in my pocket along with Arish’s other
possessions. I packed my medical bag and folded the laser rifle and
shoved it in, then went back to the bedroom to get my bag of
coins.
    Tamara still lay on the bed, and her eyes had
reopened—a side effect of the slave plugged into her brain stem. As
I rummaged through the closet looking for the coins, I got a chill
up my spine. I felt as if Tamara was watching me, and my hands
began to shake.
    If I leave without her, I thought, I will never be
free of her ghost. I didn’t care if she was dead or not. I felt
compelled to drag her away. Had she not wanted to get away? I
decided to take her with me, even if she decomposed in my arms. And
when the decision was made I was filled with a manic joy. I felt I
had instinctively made the right decision.
    In the