Club Murmur
Reiko Yamada was an expert in her field, and with just one more successful job, she would join the ranks of the elite — the Bluebloods — among the thieves in Qebridge city. In her hand, she slowly twirled her invitation chit – a small iridescent piece of cobalt alloy the size of an average credit card lightly engraved with an outline of an aortic valve, the Bluebloods’ logo.
On most days, Reiko loved her job, but at 11:57 pm on November 5th, 2076, she felt that tonight wouldn’t be like most days. She was in a rush. Something about this latest job made her uneasy, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being followed. All she wanted to do was unload her cargo as soon as possible. Reiko pressed her hand against her chest. She took a deep breath and felt the rhythm of an unfamiliar heartbeat. Resting beneath her hand was not her heart; she had stolen it. Her latest victim was Mark Stevens, a twenty-two-year-old graduate student who had fallen in love with an ambitious artist – a woman who, by his account, didn’t even know he existed. Eventually, Mark’s feelings turned to unrequited love before ending in heartbreak. Reiko had estimated that Mark’s heart would fetch roughly forty thousand credits on the black market. It was a drop in the bucket toward paying back her outstanding debt. But, with this job done, Reiko could finally join the upper echelon of thieves. No more bottom-of-the-barrel heartbreak cases like Mark.
As she contemplated what the future might bring, Reiko’s excitement caused an influx of adrenaline to spill into her system. She felt her heart rate quickly rise – confirmed by the obnoxious beeping of her smartwatch. She winced as a wave of anguish overcame her, and she was flooded with feelings of love toward a woman she had never met. A woman who never loved her or Mark.
At 10:32 pm, on the fifth floor of the East District’s Avalon apartment complex, Reiko had just bypassed the smart lock securing Mark Steven’s front door. Despite the faint sounds of talking and music emanating through the door, she knew entering was safe. She had done her due diligence. Mark would be asleep by now. Falling into his new routine or watching a romantic drama and crying himself to sleep. Quietly opening the door, Reiko stood in the entryway to a large one-bedroom apartment. She sighed. It was a sad sight. Bathed only in the light from an abandoned holographic entertainment system was an unconscious Mark, snoring loudly, who lay slumped over a throne of cardboard sleeves from single-serving meals and beer bottles atop a grey couch. The whole sight was cliche. Sloppily dressed in grey sweatpants and an old t-shirt that read, “It’s not a bug. It’s a feature,” Mark held a half-empty bottle in his right hand. Careful not to wake him, Reiko gently grabbed the warm beer bottle from Mark’s hand and quietly set it on the coffee table near the couch. She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a small syringe filled with a glowing orange liquid before unceremoniously injecting it into Mark’s neck. With the sedative in his system, Reiko laid Mark face-up on the couch and began carefully swapping out his heart for the artificial one she had prepared for him earlier.
She slowly unzipped her jacket, laid it on the couch, pushed aside the trash, and removed her shirt. She took a deep breath as she folded back the bandage covering the fresh wound on her chest. She reached into her jacket and pulled out a black rod – a mix between a scalpel and a multitool. Careful to avoid the stains she only hoped were from food, Reiko rolled up Mark’s shirt and began slowly cutting into his chest. The whole setting was anything but sterile, but the chemicals she had injected into him earlier would safeguard against any possible infection and heal the wound within minutes. In fact, it wouldn’t even leave a scar. In seconds, all the arteries leading to Mark’s heart had been severed. Reiko was free to replace his heart. Gently, she set his heart down on her jacket and braced herself on the couch while using her free hand to reach into her chest. Closing her eyes, she reached into the cavity in her chest and felt around for the small caps securing the small artificial heart inside herself. After releasing each cap, Reiko was ready to remove her synthetic heart and did so easily. Still warm from carrying it inside herself, Reiko gently held the artificial heart and carefully lowered it into the open cavity in Mark’s body before slowly connecting all the major arteries to the temporary replacement. The synthetic heart would take care of the rest. All she had to do now was to close the wound and place Mark’s heart into her chest. A piece of cake, she thought.
Over the next few months, the artificial heart Reiko placed in Mark would physically and emotionally sustain him, slowly dissolving as it coerced his body into growing a new, organic heart in its place. Following organ theft, most people couldn’t tell the difference between their real emotions and the simulated ones pumped out by an imposter organ. The ones that noticed something was off were usually quick to dismiss it unbeknownst to them that their real organs were piping their feelings and memories into someone else.
Reiko had underestimated the intensity of Mark’s feelings. And she couldn’t get the thought of Mark’s love – the artist – out of her head. On her way to drop off the heart, she constantly checked her map as she found herself blindly chasing after a woman she had never met. When another wave of despair hit her, she thought about returning the damn thing, but when she looked up, she realized she was at her destination, Murmur.
As the most popular nightclub in the East District, the line to get into Murmur stretched around the block as the aspiring club patrons passed the time playing alternative reality games on their smartphones and glasses. Unphased by the line of drunk, high, or generally too distracted, Reiko made her way straight to the front entrance of the nightclub. She reached into her jacket pocket and flashed her invitation chit to the bouncer, who lifted the velvet rope laid out in front of the club’s entrance and ushered her inside.
Once inside, Reiko casually pulled the hood on her jacket over her head and glanced over her left shoulder. She felt again that she was being followed, but surely the bouncer would catch any potential tails. Typically charismatic, Reiko didn’t waste any time as she walked with purpose, squeezing her way through the dizzying sea of teenagers and handsy adults. At the far wall of the club, she pushed open the door labeled projection and proceeded to make her way down the dimly lit hallway. Reiko sighed in relief as the nightclub’s private room and its newest bouncer, David, finally appeared.
David was a tank. A former soldier, he maintained a weight of exactly two hundred twenty-five pounds and a body-fat percentage of nine percent and stood over six feet tall. Hired after a break-in three weeks prior, he had excelled at keeping the club’s more rowdy patrons in order. He was an effective deterrent for anyone thinking about venturing into the nightclub’s private areas uninvited. Tonight he was apparently on guard duty for projection. Reiko had always thought hiring someone with David’s background was akin to putting up a neon sign announcing to the world that the club was a front for illegal activity, but tonight she was happy to see him. And while he certainly wasn’t her favorite person, he had managed to be professional and respectful — a rarity — about the nearly endless details of her love life, which had become word of mouth amongst the club’s staff. Reiko pulled back her hood and walked towards the large steel door at the end of the hallway.
As she approached the door, David positioned himself between her and the entrance to the next and gently touched the small headset awkwardly hanging from his left ear, and gestured for her to stop. Reiko sighed. She knew the routine and impatiently tapped her foot as David relayed the latest embarrassing question from the holding room behind him.
“Who was the first to break your heart?” he asked.
“Do we really have to do this…?” she answered, holding back tears. Fucking stolen heart. She couldn’t remember the last time she cried, but now some stranger’s heart was on the verge of giving her an emotional breakdown. She was tough. She was going to be a Blueblood.
“Hey, I’m not the one asking.”, David replied.
“Can I borrow that?.”
“What?” he asked, puzzled.
Reiko pointed to her ear as a coy smile crept across her face. David nodded in recognition and reached to his ear to remove his earpiece. He held his earpiece out to Reiko as she leaned in, her lips nearly touching the device.
“Edward Hughes,” she yelled at the top of her lungs.
The audible cursing that could be heard relayed back from the earpiece told Reiko that she could at least get a little revenge for the security question she considered too personal.
“Sorry. Was I too loud? How’s it going back there, perverts?” she responded, still yelling. She quickly wiped the tears from her eyes and smirked at the sounds of cursing coming through David’s earpiece. Reiko shrugged, feeling somewhat guilty for dragging the innocent guard into her ongoing war with her coworkers in the holding area. The door made a loud clicking sound prompting David to step aside. Reiko opened the door and effortlessly walked into the large room on the other side. Throughout the room, countless rows of pedestals rose from the floor. On top of each pedestal was a glass bell jar where a disembodied human heart floated gently as if by magic. Attached to each heart was a dizzying array of tubes and cables that snaked their way down the pedestals and ran along the entire room’s floor. Spurred on by an array of machinery, each heart still beat. A thick black liquid slowly pumped through each tube, keeping the waiting hearts strong and ready for their new recipients.
The sea of cables, tubes, and wires parted at the center of the room, leaving an opening only big enough for a small operating room chair and a few medical carts. Reiko removed her jacket, laid back in the chair, and waited. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the door on the far side of the room open to reveal two men clad in full surgical attire. Tom Cahill and Chris Daly had worked at projection at Murmur as surgeons longer than anyone else. They had seen heart thieves like Reiko come and go; most thieves couldn’t handle the stress associated with experiencing another person’s emotions. A work hazard associated with having to transport another person’s heart inside their body. But Reiko persisted. As the duo came closer, Reiko saw that one of them was carrying another heart in a jar — this one real — labeled Yamada.
“Oh, fuck you. We were just having a little bit of fun. You know, my ears are still ringing,” Chris exclaimed.
“You’re lucky we didn’t ask about college. What was that one girl’s name again? Rebecca? There were some very vivid memories of her.” Tom quipped.
“Can we just get this over with already?” she said, not rising to the challenge.
For the next hour, Reiko did her best to avoid looking down at her chest as the two surgeons worked to remove the foreign heart and return her heart to its rightful place. She could’ve performed the operation in an emergency herself, but it wouldn’t have been easy. With the technology and techniques at her disposal, she didn’t fear infection or organ transplant rejection. Quite the opposite. The moment Reiko placed a stolen heart in her chest, it began to form new connections and take root in her body. And in a matter of minutes, the new host’s heart began to flood her with the emotions of its prior owner.
Dazed, Reiko looked around the room. Normally, she had fought against the sedatives and stayed awake for most of the surgeries, but this time she had fallen asleep. Twenty-three minutes had passed. Reiko pulled her shirt down over her chest and looked around the room as the sedatives started to wear off.
The surgeons had left, and she was alone in the room except for the sound of the orphaned hearts beating almost in unison. She saw a small receipt for the most recent delivery at the corner of the operation table to her right. 31,562. Different organs held different memories and emotions, but heartbreak often found in hearts like Mark’s was often the most in-demand and thus fetched some of the highest prices. Mark’s heart had earned her less than she expected, but once she was accepted as a Blueblood, the most lucrative jobs would be hers. On the black market, a heart like Mark’s was typically sold to any artist or musician desperate and unscrupulous enough to need raw emotional inspiration. The rich and famous paid the most, demanding intense and deep emotional experiences. It was ironic that Mark had fallen for an artist, and Reiko knew the same person that broke Mark’s heart might eventually use it to create their next work of art. While artists represented the most prominent clientele, hearts were also stolen by anyone willing to pay enough to learn about a person’s deepest feelings. It was a great time to be a stalker. Without the host’s brain to regulate it, an orphaned heart would spill its secrets to anyone willing to listen.
Fortunately, Reiko’s work was done, and with her heart safely back inside her body, she only felt the slightest tinge of guilt about her work – nothing that some of the club’s copious drinks couldn’t fix.
She slid her legs over the side of the chair and gently stood up before reaching back to the chair to steady herself. She was still a little unbalanced. Reiko jumped when she heard the sound of one of the glass jars shattering on the floor. Everything around her was intact, but she knew that she had heard. Something definitely broke, but none of the Murmur staff would be that clumsy. She wondered if it was another break-in, a rival group of thieves possibly trying to even the odds. Stealing from other thieves was easy when they had already done all the hard work of procuring the hearts. Reiko casually pulled on her jacket and covertly felt around her pocket for her scalpel. Just as she felt the cold metal of the scalpel on her fingertips, she saw a shadowy figure approach her. As he walked into the light surrounding the operating area, she recognized the figure as Connor Wright, a nineteen-year-old whose heart she had stolen two weeks earlier. Connor looked around the room, focusing on the labels adorning each bell jar before meeting Reiko’s gaze.
“Didn’t think I’d make it this far. Security’s good. But they all end up here, huh? It would have been a little too good to be true to be mine.” Connor said, casually tossing a still-beating heart at Reiko’s feet.
Reiko looked down at the heart, a puddle of black liquid forming beneath it, and she tightened her grip on the scalpel – still cloaked inside her jacket pocket. With her heart back in its rightful place, Reiko knew she didn’t have to worry about feeling guilty about what would happen next.