We live as long as we are remembered.

  ~ Russian proverb

  Sarah peeked around a corner. The hall ran clear and empty to a large room with an unmanned security desk. Behind the desk loomed the gigantic steel door of the closed vault, with its massive wheel that spun the many locking pins. “Come on. Coast is clear.”

  She pulled the gurney around the corner while Jill pushed from behind. Jill had dropped the huge umbrella as soon as the sprinklers stopped. It had kept her and the sleeping Marilyn mostly dry.

  Sarah hadn’t been so lucky. The umbrella was big, but not that big. Her soaked clothing clung to her figure, and her wet hair was plastered to her head. She probably looked like a drowned puppy. She wiped water out of her face and slowed as they approached the security desk.

  “Tomas.” she called softly.

  He popped up from behind the desk, and Sarah jumped with a cry of surprise. “Don’t do that!”

  “Sorry. Just finishing disabling the vault door alarm.” He paused, eyes drawn to her sodden, clinging clothing. He looked away quickly, and actually started to blush.

  That was sweet, and surprising. He saw mostly-naked bodies all the time. Although she wasn’t wearing her own body, Sarah didn’t like people ogling her, and she appreciated the fact that he didn’t keep staring. Most men would.

  Tomas instead typed a few keys on the keyboard hidden behind the desk. “We should be good to go.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Sarah said as she pulled at her shirt to loosen its clinging hold on her skin.

  “Trust me.” Tomas strode to the vault, spun the large wheel to release the locks, and hauled the massive door open. It swung easily on silent hinges, despite its enormous weight. He stepped through the eight foot wide door and flicked on an interior light.

  “I thought the power was out,” Sarah said as she followed.

  “The vault’s on an independent grid.”

  Tomas led the way inside. Despite her anxiety, Sarah couldn’t help but look around with wonder at the huge space. Racks of what looked like safety deposit boxes rose over fifteen feet into the air and stretched back into the darkness beyond the lights.

  Those weren’t safety deposit boxes. Sarah stared at the boxes in horror. Could there really be people in all of them, faces removed, locked away in those tiny coffins?

  Jill looked around and frowned. “I thought there were holding cells in here. What’s with the bank stacks?”

  “The holding cells are back there,” Tomas said, pointing to the left, toward an area concealed by deep shadows.

  “Creepy.”

  She had no idea. Sarah pulled the gurney farther into the room. “What do we do now?”

  Tomas ran to a single workstation and began to type quickly. After a moment he smiled and blew out a breath, looking relieved. “Got her.”

  “Her?”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  Without waiting for a reply, he dashed off into the darkness of the vault stacks. His voice called back to them. “There are three bodies in the closest transfer station. Wheel them in here. Then bring me one more empty gurney. Hurry.”

  # # #

  “There.” Dr. Maerwynn pointed toward one of the monitors.

  On the screen, Sarah and another white-coated person whose back was turned to the camera were pushing an empty gurney down a hall.

  “Where’s Marilyn?” Mr. Fleischer asked.

  “Follow them,” Dr. Maerwynn commanded.

  The staffer typed a command, and other monitors flashed to different views of the transfer lab. They watched the two women push the empty gurney down a couple of corridors. Then they rounded a corner and disappeared from view.

  “Where are they?” Mr. Fleischer demanded. The staffer frowned and pointed at the monitor right in front of him that showed the empty vault antechamber.

  “They should be right there, sir.”

  “They’ve tampered with the camera,” Dr. Maerwynn hissed. “They’re in the vault.”

  “What are they doing there?” Mr. Fleischer asked.

  Dr. Maerwynn suddenly gasped. “Come on! We have to get down there immediately.” Without waiting for a reply, she yanked out her phone and barked, “Call Mai Luan.”

  Even as the phone processed the voice command, she bolted from the room. Her voice carried to Mr. Fleischer as she rounded the corner into the hallway. “And I’m stuck in an F-ranked temporary suit. This is a disaster.”

  Mr. Fleischer pointed at three of the security staffers in the room. “You three. Come with me.”

  “But sir . . .” one of them protested.

  “Now, or you’re fired.”

  Together, they sprinted toward the vault.

  # # #

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Tomas returned just as Sarah and Jill pushed the empty gurney into the vault beside the one that held the sleeping Marilyn. He placed one of the tiny face coffins on the floor next to the gurney.

  Sarah blew out a breath. “We had to check four transfer stations before we found this.”

  “Sorry. Should have warned you about that.” Tomas nodded toward the male bodies they’d wheeled in earlier. “Come on, help me push these over to the holding cells and remove the life support units.”

  “Why?”

  “Insurance.”

  They returned to the gurney with the sleeping Marilyn a few minutes later and Tomas told Jill to lie down.

  Jill obeyed but looked at the box questioningly. “What’s in there?”

  Tomas shared a look with Sarah. “Best you don’t know. I don’t think you’re ready for it.”

  “You told me about the real health risks, so why not this?”

  “You want to be able to sleep at night?”

  Jill shrugged. “Fine, be that way. Just make sure I get the bonus you promised.”

  Tomas pulled a syringe from his pocket and slipped the tip smoothly into Jill’s arm. “I promise.”

  As the fast-acting drug dragged Jill down to unconsciousness, Sarah felt a pang of guilt. “Will she really get a bonus?”

  “Hopefully. At the least she’ll keep her sanity.”

  Sarah stroked Jill’s sleeping cheek. “She’ll be fine. She’s the number one donor.”

  Tomas flipped open the lid of the little coffin and extracted a face. Unlike the one Sarah had seen earlier, this one was small, the size of a doll’s face. It was dark, with only a little gray mist floating beneath it.

  It looked dead.

  Sarah saw again in her mind the shimmering mask of the other extracted face, with its bright rainbow mist. What would cause such a difference?

  Tomas inspected the face carefully and whispered. “Eirene, can you hear me?”

  He placed the face next to his ear and waited. After a moment he grinned and blew out a relieved sigh. Sarah hadn’t heard anything.

  “You’ve been locked away a long time . . . No . . . Gregorios sent me.”

  Sarah watched the one-sided conversation with a frown until she noticed the face’s lips twitch a little. Maybe it was still alive after all.

  Reality had become too bizarre, but she forced herself not to question it. She’d witnessed the face transfers earlier, and there was no going back.

  Tomas spoke again. “We have a host for you. She’s unconscious and willing, but you’ll have to manage the full transfer. Can you do it?”

  This time Sarah heard the tiniest whisper.

  “Yes.”

  “There’s not much time.”

  Tomas positioned the face over Jill’s head and lowered it down until it almost touched. The thin, gray streamers floating beneath the face caressed Jill’s skin.

  Sarah caught her breath, biting her lip to avoid crying out for Tomas to stop. Why would he put the soul thing so close to Jill? Witnessing and experiencing a full soul transfer had left her feeling deeply shaken. She accepted the reality of facetakers, at least for now, but she didn’t want anything else to do with them.

  As Sarah watched with growing nervousness, the streamers under the facemask began to shift to light gray, and then to white. More streamers appeared, coiling down from under the face, and began rippling into different colors. The face itself began to slowly expand and brighten until it more closely resembled the shimmering mask Sarah had seen before.

  The motion of the rainbow streamers changed. They flowed over Jill’s face with purpose, no longer idly caressing, and concentrated around the boundary of her jaw. All at once, they tightened. The mask-like face began to glow with a bright purple light, and the muscles along Tomas’s arms and shoulders flexed as he leaned back, helping pull against Jill’s face.

  “Wait,” Sarah breathed, her mouth so dry she could barely get the words out.

  “This is necessary, Sarah. You knew it had to happen,” Tomas said, not looking over from his efforts to hold the parasitic face in place as it pulled against Jill’s sleeping form.

  “But . . .” Intellectually, she accepted that this was necessary, but still had to fight to remain still, a silent witness to the monstrous process. Part of her wanted to leap forward and slap the living relic away from her friend.

  She could not. It was her only hope for her own salvation. Her hands started to shake, and she gripped her hands into fists to quell the motion.

  Within seconds, Jill’s peacefully sleeping face began to lift from the skull with that disgusting, wet sucking sound. Sarah grimaced and covered her ears as skin slid away and Jill’s face came free with a loud pop. Tomas lifted it high, a shimmering mask with rainbow streamers floating beneath it.

  Was that her soul? Sarah wanted to look away, but couldn’t. Instead, she stared in sick fascination at the shimmering facemask. If she ignored the fact that it might just be Jill’s soul, forcibly ripped from her body by some arcane magic, it was beautiful.

  Tomas placed the other face over the blank skull and it sank into place, with flesh flowing up and over it to bind it to the body. The face shook like Jell-O in the hands of a running child as it united with the body. He let go and, as the shaking settled over the next couple of seconds, he carefully deposited Jill’s face into the tiny coffin.

  “Don’t you dare close her in,” Sarah snapped. The thought of her friend being locked away filled her with a sharper horror. No way she’d accept that.

  “I won’t. Now get over here quick and take her legs.”

  Sarah moved to obey while Tomas leaned his weight over the body’s upper torso, pinning the arms down against the gurney.

  “What’s going on?” Sarah asked.

  The body convulsed hard, every limb whipping up into the air like it had been hit with a massive electric shock. Sarah hadn’t been holding tight enough, and she was knocked back several steps.

  “Help me,” Tomas called as he fought to restrain the wildly thrashing body.

  Sarah rushed back toward the gurney, only to get kicked in the chest by one flailing leg and dumped back onto the floor.

  “Hurry,” Tomas called.

  Sarah gave him a dirty look, but threw herself back to her feet and tackled the lower half of the convulsing woman. As she held on with all her strength, she shouted, “Why is she doing this?”

  “She’s been unincorporated a long time. It’s a shock uniting with a new system after so long.”

  Sarah recalled the rush of sensation when she’d been transferred from the doll. She’d lost her sense of touch and smell only for seconds, and the experience had almost overwhelmed her when it all came roaring back. How would it have felt if she’d been bereft of those senses for . . . how long?

  The two of them fought to hold the body down for half a minute before the convulsing slowed. Tomas straightened, wiped sweat from his face, and gingerly fingered a bruise already darkening under one eye where the thrashing head had connected.

  The woman lay quiet, breathing hard, staring unblinking toward the ceiling. Her face looked mature, strong, and very striking. It fit Christine’s body well.

  “Who is she?” Sarah asked in a whisper.

  The woman sat up smoothly. She smiled and extended one hand in a jerky motion. “I am Eirene. Pleasure to meet you.” She spoke with an archaic British accent.

  Sarah took the proffered hand. “I’m Sarah.”

  “That body looks good on you.”

  “Thanks.” How could the woman know? Eirene turned to Tomas. “Interesting choice of suit. Glad you’re here. What’s the situation?”

  Tomas gestured at the vault around them. “We’re in enemy territory. We need to move fast.”

  Eirene swung her legs off the gurney. “Very well. Lead the way.”

  Sarah held up a hand. “Hold on a minute. That body’s a loaner. Besides, what about me and Jill?”

  Tomas explained to Eirene. “I promised you’d return her to her own body after we freed you.” He nodded toward the sleeping Marilyn.

  Eirene rose to her feet and surveyed her new body for a moment, and then took a tentative step. “Very well.”

  Tomas’s phone beeped three times loudly. He glanced at the partially-open vault door. “We’ve got company.”

  He ran to the vault door and peeked through, and then retreated rapidly to them. “There’s a crowd out there, including Mr. Fleischer and Dr. Maerwynn.”

  Eirene hissed like an angry cat, “Maer. She’ll regret interfering with me today.”

  Purple fire ignited in her eyes and cascaded down her body. It didn’t seem to burn her skin or clothes, but rimmed her entire form in sinister purple flames. “There’s only so far I can boost this form, but it’ll have to be enough.”

  “Maerwynn is the primary threat,” Tomas said. “I found a couple occans on guard duty and disabled them. Everyone else should be F-ranked.”

  “What do we do?” Sarah asked, choosing to ignore the cryptic conversation and the living purple inferno who wore Christine’s body. In a word, Eirene was terrifying, but if she hurt Christine’s body, she’d pay.

  “They haven’t seen any of us yet.” Tomas pulled a long knife from one deep pocket and handed it to Sarah. “You need to hold them off for a few minutes.”

  Sarah looked at the knife fearfully. “I can’t fight them.”

  Tomas smiled. “You won’t have to.”