It’s not that simple. Is it?
Redirecting his focus, Felix hammered at his mind on the simple idea of Jordan coming back to life.
He’d put his mind and body back together to the point right before he died. If he could get him to breathe and get his heart beating, then he’d be alive, right?
That or we make a zombie.
Status Correction: Dead -> Living
Correct Status? (50,000 points)
Reaching up with one hand, Felix rubbed at the back of his neck.
Maybe I should ask someone to come stand with me… just in case.
Moving to the entry door, he popped it open.
Looking around, he found Lily working with some of her team. She’d accompanied him down here at his request, but had remained outside, also by his request.
“Lily, I need a hand.”
She nodded absently, still talking to one of her people. A full minute later and Lily was done, coming in to join him in the morgue.
“Okay. What’s with all the cloak-and-dagger mischief?” asked the woman as the door closed behind her.
“And why are you playing with corpses?”
Felix didn’t answer at first, moving over to stand next to Jordan. “Raising the dead.”
“I… see.”
Lily came over to stand next to him. “And what am I doing here?”
“Checking to see if he has a soul. Or blow him up if he becomes a zombie. Maybe both?”
Not giving her a chance to answer or argue, Felix spent the points.
Jordan Taylor, dead for a week, with a good part of his brain being blown out, took a deep, gasping breath. His eyes flew wide open and his body spasmed.
Coughing, the man’s hands shot up to his head, his eyes wide.
Looking around himself, Jordan continued to cough.
“Easy there, Jordan. Easy. You’re okay,” Felix said soothingly. Stealing a look to Lily, he asked under his breath, “He is okay, isn’t he?”
Lily was shocked, her eyes wide, skin pale, her mouth hanging open. After a second, she lifted a hand towards the man and then nodded her head.
“He’s… fine. His soul is his and it’s there,” Lily said in a whisper.
Jordan had sat up by this point, his hands covering his naked body as his head jerked back and forth between Lily and Felix.
“What… what happened? We were fighting in the lobby… the man in front of me had a shotgun,” Jordan said in a quivering voice.
“You died. That man shot you in the head with the shotgun.”
“I died?”
“Yeah. You died. You’ve been in the morgue for a while. About a week.”
Felix fell quiet. Jordan seemed to be taking it pretty well. No need to overburden the man if he didn’t have to.
“I don’t understand. I died, but I’m not dead?”
“Yeah, you’re not dead. I brought you back.”
“Back.”
“Yeah, from the dead.”
“Oh. I’m a zombie, then… or something?”
“No, not at all. Lily is here, and she already confirmed for me that you are exactly as you were before you died. It’s as if you never died at all.”
“But… why?” Jordan seemed calm still, so Felix saw no reason to end the experiment.
“Why bring you back? Why not? It said in your file you were agnostic, so there was no religious reason not to put your s—put yourself back together. No family, either.”
“Yeah… no. Neither. So… I just go back to work?”
“Take a few days off. We didn’t report your death, so no worries on that end. You can just… pick up where you left off.”
“Yeah. A few days off. Okay, I can… I can do that. Nothing’s different?”
“No, nothing’s different. You might have to get a new room assigned, and get some new clothes and things, but nothing HR can’t fix up, I’m sure.
“I’ll have an Other come in and get you squared away, alright?” Felix asked Jordan, patting him on the back.
“Yeah, okay. Did… did we win?”
“Decisively so. Look forward to seeing you around, Jordan.”
Felix turned on his heel and left the morgue, stopping only to give Andrea instructions.
“Felix, how many points did that cost?” Lily asked, her gait slowing down as she caught up with him.
Victoria and Andrea trailed behind.
“Fifty to bring him back to life. Thirty-five to get his body put back together.”
“You do know what this means, right?”
“That I should probably go buy the corpses of some of the strongest supers in the past and bring them back?” Felix responded, hitting the elevator button.
“Er. You could do that, yes. But I think first and foremost you should have HR get everyone to sign a ‘life after death’ policy. Not everyone may want to come back,” Lily said. She entered the elevator when the doors slid open. Andrea and Victoria entered as well, though they were still silent.
Maybe this was a bad idea.
“Yeah, I kinda figured. It’s why I picked Jordan. Agnostic, no family.” Felix hit the button for the floor to his office. “Next thing on the to-do list: buying the street.”
“Ah, we’ve had some success with that. It’ll take some time to buy everything, but considering our assets are still frozen, that’s fine.
“We need to meet with an inspector tomorrow to go over all the buildings and make sure they’re up to code for a purchase. I already sent you the invite, and you accepted, but I don’t think you actually read the invite.
“Not that we care about the inspection anyways, since we can just send in our teams and fix anything, but those are the regulations.” Lily leaned up against the back wall of the elevator as the doors slid shut.
“Great. Why is my entire life meetings? And meetings to prepare for meetings. Maybe this is why owners hire a CEO and then wander off.” Felix shook his head, his mouth twisting up in a grimace.
“No CEO would ever care as much as the owner does. That’s just the reality of the situation. You’re doing fine,” Lily said in response.
Felix huffed as the doors opened in front of him. Setting out for his office, he couldn’t find fault in her words. No one would care as much as he did.
“Yeah. I’ll get with Kit and have HR run up a new policy and get everyone to indicate their preference. I’ll also have them discuss the fact that Jordan is indeed alive, and no longer dead.
“I imagine I’ll get a number of people trying to get me to raise dead family members.”
Felix thought on that for a moment as he opened the door to his office.
“I suppose that’s doable… but we’d have to have them as a different contract. I don’t think a single year under the Indentured contract would cover the points.”
“Ah, good news, then. We’ve been experimenting with HR on the contracts. We can build a contract that lasts five years now. It took some doing with verbiage and how much magical power to put into the seal, but it works.
“Binding that contract with a return from the dead is more than enough oomph to seal the deal sufficiently.”
“Huh. So the nature of the deal helps enforce the contract?” Felix spun his chair around and sat down heavily in it, calling up his personal terminal.
Victoria took up her position at the door, and Andrea lay down on the couch. Neither spoke.
Their silence was becoming eerie. He imagined they’d have to consider the choice and its implications.
He was blessedly unable to resurrect himself, so his choice would never come.
“Magic can be finicky when it comes to people signing things with their souls. This would work.
“The hard part is getting a family member who owns the dead. I mean, who really owns a corpse? I imagine it might come down to if they left a will, and if they left an estate to someone. That’d probably qualify.”
Felix nodded his head, the conversation falling off as he started to get lost in the day-to-day minutiae of running a company.