Resurrection Man (Cyberpunk)

Resurrection Man is the sixteenth episode of Cyberpunk. The previous was Honor Among Thieves, and the next is Crisis Management.

Story
6 months earlier…

Wally heard the first rocket land a few blocks behind him. As he turned around to see what was going on, he was plastered with a mix of fish guts and rubble.

“What the hell?” gasped Wally.

Fifty, maybe sixty robots, all with the same FutureWorks sticker on their backside, approached the Upper Ring with rocket launchers aimed at designated mutants. The rockets flew at random intervals, sometimes hitting a mutant, sometimes hitting the house they were equipping with explosives, always ending in the same grisly death.

Wally watched in horror at first, but then he got a grip on himself and began to run. He ran as fast as legs could carry him, but then one of his legs got caught in a crack in the road. He used all four of his arms to pull at the leg, but it was useless. The more he tugged, the tighter it lodged into the crack. He heard a low buzzing, getting louder every second, and he turned around to see a rocket headed right for him.

Wally closed his eyes, bracing for the impact, when two strong hands curled around his stuck leg. He opened his eyes and looked around, and there was Sam, ripping his son’s leg out of the crack in the road and hurling Wally out of the rocket’s range.

Before Wally could say anything, a deafening explosion sent him back farther than Sam had thrown him. He plunged into a muddy terrain, and for the next few seconds he sat there, processing what had just happened.

“My d-d-dad… my d-d-dad...” Unable to say anything else, he broke into tears.

Hours had passed since the last robot left the scene. Mayor Milton, who had crawled away during Cyclops’ fight with SpongeBryan, Pat, and Ron, was now sifting through the rubble of the Upper Ring in search of an object. Milton had his shirt pulled up over his nose to cover up the stench of dead bodies everywhere, and part of the shirt was wrapped around his knee to stop some of the bleeding.

“Where is it?” Milton muttered. “It has to be in here somewhere.”

Suddenly, he noticed something shiny sticking out of the rubble just ahead of him.

“Yes!” he exclaimed.

Milton reached for the object and pulled it out. It was a long, thin piece of metal. Milton took another piece of metal out of one of his pockets and combined it with the piece he just found.

“Perfect,” he whispered.

Milton pulled the pieces apart again and put one piece in each pocket. He limped to his office to find Octhomas and many more Upper Ringers standing around it.

“There you are!” said Octhomas.

“May I…help you?” wondered Milton.

“Yeah, maybe you can tell us why you destroyed our damn houses!”

The Upper Ringers started shouting at the same time. Milton raised his hand to quiet them.

“I was doing you a favor. Those mutants were going to kill you., so I took some drastic measures,” said Milton.

“But destroying our neighborhood?” replied Octhomas. “Did it really have to be that drastic?”

“Property can be restored. Your lives, though, cannot,” said Milton, feeling the metal pieces in his pockets. “At least, not yet.”

“Where will we stay until our homes get rebuilt, though?” asked Octhomas.

“I’m sure I can arrange something with my friend Cecil Carpfish. Perhaps he can set you all up in a hotel.”

“A hotel?” cried a lady in the crowd. “How demeaning!”

“It’s the best I can do,” said the mayor.

“Meanwhile, you get to cozy it up in this office of yours,” said Octhomas.

Milton laughed. “Rest assured, I’ll be far from cozy. In case you haven’t noticed, I have a leg injury, and it’s an injury I really should be attending to.”

Everyone stared at Milton, so he continued talking.

“I’ll give Cecil a call, so none of you will have to worry about where you’ll be sleeping for much longer,” Milton said. “Right now, I must ask you all to leave, however”

The Upper Ringers left with suspicious looks on their faces, Milton looked through the doorway of his office, which was still charred from Cyclops’ attack. His knee was hurting more than ever. He saw shards of broken glass and his aide’s lifeless body on the floor, with a pool of blood around him. He figured he’d get a cleaning crew in the morning and a shovel so he could give his aide a proper burial. As he walked through the charred doorway, he thought about the damage done to his office, done to his life. It made him nauseous. He was still mayor, though, and he had work to do. He turned on his wristphone and dialed a number. A hologram of Cecil Carpfish appeared.

“Hello, Mr. Milton. Did our service meet your expectations?” asked Cecil.

“Yeah, it met them a little too well,” responded Milton. “Now my constituents are homeless because of your robots.”

“My apologies. I didn’t know how serious things were over there. I’ll send a couple of boats to take your friends to Carpfish Towers here in Pacific City, free of charge!”

“You’d really do that?”

“Yes, and I’ll even take care of reconstruction, though I’ll have to charge you for that.”

“Of course! Thank you, Cecil. You don’t know how much this means to me.”

“Think nothing of it. We’ll do anything to satisfy our customers. Is there anything else you need?”

“No, sir.”

“Please call again.”

Cecil disconnected. Milton took a deep breath, and then he dialed another number. This time, a hologram of a three-eyed frog appeared.

“James? What do you want?” asked the frog.

Milton took the pieces of metal out of his pocket.

“Recognize these?” asked Milton.

“I think so,” said the frog. “Wait a minute! That’s my spine! Why do you have it?”

“It was in a bit of an accident,” said Milton. “So was its host.”

“Are you saying Sam is…” the frog began, but was unable to finish.

“Yes, and I’m sad to say it’s my fault. But we can fix this.”

“Oh, no. That was just for wartime.”

“And we didn’t need it for wartime, thankfully.”

“You know how I feel about this, James.”

“I do know, Ed, but I also know Sam was just as much a friend of yours as he was mine.”

Ed was silent for a while.

“Okay,” he finally said, “Bring that crap over here and I’ll see what I can do.”

“Actually, Ed, can you pick me up? I have a bum knee. Long story.”

“Long story. I’m sure it is.”

Ed disconnected. A few minutes later, he flew through the doorway of the office wearing rocket boots.

“Hop on,” he said,

Milton jumped onto Ed’s back and held onto his rubbery skin as they headed towards the laboratory. Once they reached their destination, Milton let go of Ed as he powered off his rocket boots.

“Do you have them?” asked Ed.

Milton took the metal pieces of his pockets and gave them to Ed. Ed opened the doors to his laboratory, and the light coming from the inside was so overwhelming, Milton had to cover his eyes.

“Lovely place you’ve got there,” said Milton.

‘Thank you,” said Ed.

Ed and Milton walked into the laboratory, and Ed grabbed a lab coat from a hanger on the wall.

“Make yourself comfortable, James. We’ll probably be here for a while,” he said.

Milton watched as Ed put the metal fragments on a table and started working on them with tools. He looked at his wristphone. Half past midnight. He slumped down to the ground and started drifting off to sleep. Suddenly, he was back in the wreckage of the Upper Ring, dead bodies and debris everywhere.

”It was you,” said a familiar voice behind him.

Milton turned around and saw the pale, ghoulish face of Sam looking right at him.

“It was you!” echoed Sam.

“What are you talking about?” asked Milton.

“It was you who killed me.”

Milton didn’t know how to reply. He backed away, hearing bones crunch beneath him as he stepped on rotting carcasses.

“It was you who killed me!” Sam held out his palm. “And it is you who will die.”

Sam shot a burst of electricity at Milton, and Milton closed his eyes, anticipating the grisly death that was coming to him. When he opened his eyes, however, he was back in the lab. He looked at his wristphone again. A quarter to three.

“Okay, done,” mumbled Ed. “Now to get this to the machine.”

Ed took the repaired metal spine to what appeared to be an MRI scanner. He saw a spine-shaped depression in the bed of the scanner and fitted the spine into it. He then pressed a button next to the bed, and it rolled into the scanner’s tube, which immediately closed itself once the bed was inside.

“Is that…” began Milton.

“Yes,” affirmed Ed, looking at the scanner’s progress using a tablet.

After what felt like a decade to Milton, the tube opened up, and the bed slid out of it, this time with Sam, whose eyes were closed and whose fingers were shooting off small sparks of electricity, lying where the spine used to be.

“He did it,” whispered Milton. “That son of a bitch did it!”

Milton ran over to the bed.

“Be careful,” whispered Ed. “He could wake up at any moment and we don’t want to scare him.”

Sam opened his eyes and yawned, stretching his entire body.

“What are you guys doing here?” he asked, looking around. “Where am I?”

“You’re in my laboratory,” Ed replied. “I’m Ed Wart, in case you don’t remember me.”

“Don’t remember you? How could I forget?” Sam chuckled.

“I’m glad you’re doing all right,” said Milton.

“James? I haven’t seen you in forever! Why aren’t you in Alveus? Wait…Alveus…I was just in Alveus,” muttered Sam.

“Don’t strain yourself too hard,” warned Ed. “You’re still recovering.”

“I was killed! A rocket hit me! How am I alive?” asked Sam.

“I’m afraid I wasn’t completely honest with you when I told you what that spine was capable of,” Ed told him. “In addition to amazing electrical powers, it gives you the ability to come back.”

“Come back from what?” Sam’s hands began to shake.

“Come back from the dead,” said Ed.

Sam sat up, trying to register what he just heard. Back from the dead. He remembered a moment from his childhood, a moment he hadn’t thought about in a long time. He was eight years old. He was staying up late against his mother’s orders, waiting for his dad to come home from his job, which was a mystery to young Sam because his father was very secretive, sometimes even hostile, whenever young Sam brought it up.

Young Sam hid behind a couch, which was very old, very shabby, with springs sticking out of it. The end of one of the springs nearly poked his eye out, but it was worth it if it meant even catching a glimpse of his dad’s elusive job. He heard the doorknob turn, and he giggled with excitement. He saw two muddy boots walk in, and a shovel fell to the floor, startling him so much that he jumped.

“Sam,” a deep voice said. “I know you’re under there.”

Disappointed that he’d been found out, young Sam came out from under the couch with his head down.

“Why aren’t you in bed?” his father asked him.

“I wanted to see what you did for a living,” squeaked young Sam.

The father laughed.

“Well, I guess there’s no point keeping it from you any longer. I’m a resurrection man!” said his father.

“A resurrection man?” repeated young Sam. “What’s that?”

“I bring back the dead,” whispered his father.

“Really?” asked a suspicious young Sam.

“Yeah. I dig them up their bodies so I can give them new lives.”

“Wow.”

Young Sam was very impressed by his father’s “resurrection man” activities, but the police weren’t when they caught him in the act a year later. It turned out that he robbed graves and sold the bodies to sharks and other predators for hefty sums. While it made Sam’s father enough to support his family, it was also very illegal, and he was locked up for a very long time to be made an example of.

Sam’s mother got a job after her husband was arrested, but she didn’t make nearly as much as he did. She and Sam were forced to move out of their apartment and into an even worse one, and Sam decided to enlist in the army at the earliest possible age after not seeing his father for six years. Sam vowed to be a better father for his son, but Sam, lying in the bed in Ed’s laboratory, knew all to well how that didn’t work out.

“Should we leave?” asked Milton.

“It was you,” said Sam.

“What do you mean by that?” Milton sweated.

“You saved me. After I died. You saved my life. Thank you.”

Milton stopped sweating.

“Anything for a friend,” he said.