by Alice Reeds
“Do you happen to know where Brandon is?” Leon. “I haven’t seen him all day.” I tried my best to sound casual, like this wasn’t something carrying far more meaning than Dawid would likely even understand.
“He isn’t currently at the Villa,” Dawid said with a light shrug.
“Oh?” I sat down on the armchair next to him just like last time. “Could you tell me anything more about that?”
“There isn’t really much more to it.”
“I see, but do you know when he’ll return?” Slowly I moved too close into desperate territory, giving Dawid a chance to catch on to my sudden prodding, especially since I hadn’t shown any interest in Leon until after I helped Dawid out. He looked at me for a moment, then sighed a little and leaned closer to me like he didn’t want anyone else to hear.
“I’m not sure when he’ll return,” he said, not quite the dark secret I anticipated he’d share. “But he surely won’t be long, a couple of days maybe. Some of us come only for our shifts, you know. No need to worry, Oscar.”
Dawid smiled reassuringly, leaned back in his armchair, and opened his book once more, an obvious sign for me that he said as much as he could, and the conversation was over. His words sounded similar to what my mother said, but the fact that he couldn’t tell me anything more specific just made me more suspicious instead of less. Of course, there was a chance that Dawid legitimately didn’t know because it wasn’t something he needed to know, but that didn’t change much. The fact was still the same—Leon was gone for unknown reasons.
…
Later that night, Fiona and I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling and giggling.
“This is so incredibly absurd,” I said.
“You have to live a little, Echo, allow your imagination to run free.”
“See, there’s a difference between doing that, and doing what we have to do. Imagining us breaking the simulation somehow, or something like Dear other Miles and Fiona, if you’d be so kind, could you try to break the simulation because we’re a bit in a pickle and hurry? That’d be mighty fine, but no pressure, it’s just our actual lives that are on the line here.”
Fiona laughed, her palms covering her mouth in an attempt to muffle the sound, which made her laugh only more. I adored the sound. “When you put it that way, it does sound ridiculous, yes. PS. You need to find something that will kill you in order to get this done. Don’t worry, you won’t actually die, at least in theory, no biggie.”
“If you’re really on a freighter, just jump overboard, if it’s high enough, it should do the trick,” I added, and while we both giggled, it turned a little hollower as it went on.
“What if we fail?” Fiona asked, giving in to the slowly brewing doubts I also felt.
“We won’t.” I tried to sound more confident than I felt.
“How do you know?”
“Because we can’t. There’s no other option for us to get out of this.”
“I never thought I would have to tell another version of myself, or my conscious or whatever the fuck this is, to die in order for me to live. Like what kind of paradoxical nonsense is this?”
“Does any of what Briola does make sense?”
She yawned. “True.”
That night I fell asleep repeatedly telling the other me everything he needed to know and needed to do. It was stupid, and I felt stupid doing it, but I wouldn’t let that stop me. It simply had to work out, and if it did, it would make feeling ridiculous for a few minutes more than worth it.
Find a way to die. Find a way to die. Find a way to die…
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Freighter
“Find a way to die,” Fiona said, the very same words the real me said a second prior in my mind, their meaning echoing and causing little ripples like a stone thrown into water. “What the fuck?”
“We need to break the simulation, escape it, I think,” I said and frowned. Before, the memories came with a feeling of stay alive, but now they’d changed, wished and longed for the opposite without the reasons why. Perhaps breaking it would put an end to the suffering and madness. If so, I was ready to try to follow my own request. “And I think I know how.”
“Mind sharing?”
Slowly we moved away from the railing, the water, and toward the building. “My theory is that something like a KO could break the simulation, and reaching that shouldn’t be so hard.”
“And how exactly would we get a KO?”
“How’d we break it on the island?”
“By taking out the implants?” She paused. “And facing the bear.”
I nodded. “Exactly, so if we do that again, we should get the same result.”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there are no bears on the freighter. Just those shadows and stuff, but how would we even trigger that? They might not show up again, and they never approached us properly.”
“But there is a tiger.” We’d watched the pirates bring it on board not too long after we’d awoken on the freighter, and though I didn’t know where exactly it was inside the superstructure, I remembered which door they’d taken. The more I thought about it, the more it felt like our only possibility.
Fiona grabbed my arm and stopped. I looked back at her, curious and confused.
“What if it’s a trap?” she asked, her tone serious. “What if this is exactly what they want, not you? Just a trick to actually kill us this time, everything until now designed to make us believe it isn’t real, but it actually is?”
“I think you might be overcomplicating this,” I said and smiled. “It’s also why I’m going to try it, not you. But I’m pretty sure nothing will happen, or if it does, it’ll be exactly what we want. You’ve seen the way they were trying to shoot us but left no traces whatsoever, and I got hurt only because real me is hurt as well. I don’t think we are literally able to die.”
“What if you’re wrong?”
“I might be.” I shrugged. “But we have to try.” I much preferred facing a tiger over jumping into the water and drowning, or dying from the impact.
“And what am I supposed to do if you get hurt worse than you already are? While I have some knowledge of guns now, I still have zero medical knowledge, and I can’t fight a tiger, of all fucking things. It’s needlessly reckless.”
“If this really is just a simulation like I’m almost positive it is,” I began, trying my best to sound convincing and confident, “nothing bad will happen. We’ll simply get pulled out of this, and that’s exactly what we want.”
Still, she hesitated. “And you’re sure it’s the only way?”
No. “Yes.”
She pursed her lips.
“Would you rather we take a dive into the ocean?”
She shook her head. “Fine,” she said through a long breath. “But I won’t let you do it alone. Either we do it together, or not at all.”
“You faced the bear on your own on the island.”
“And that’s exactly why I won’t let you do this. Doing that sucked. It was one of the scariest moments of my life, and, fuck, you know how I despise admitting shit like that.”
The truth was, I was terrified. As much as I tried to force myself to think otherwise, my father’s words about my own stupidity and uselessness were like a bell ringing at the back of my mind as we spoke. But I couldn’t let him win, especially not when he wasn’t even physically here. He’d never know it…but I would.
Leaning my forehead against hers, I smiled and said, “Okay.”
“Kiss me?” she requested, those words spoken softly, quietly, barely there and gone a second later. I leaned in and our lips met, my eyes falling shut. The moment felt like some kind of goodbye, but also a strange kind of acceptance. Whatever happened, we’d face it together, the two of us stronger than on our own. It’d been that way on the island, and it was just the same
now.
…
Finding the tiger was a harder task than I’d anticipated. The hallways and rooms beyond the door the pirates had taken left countless possibilities of which the correct one might be. I couldn’t hear a thing besides the usual noises. The tiger was perfectly quiet, perhaps sleeping or sedated as it waited for the pirates to return, and the hammering was still missing. The fact that the tiger was here to begin with, such a beautiful animal trapped in too small a cage and far away from home, hurt my heart. This wasn’t the sort of life any animal deserved. Taking my cat, Felix, on a flight with me in his cage felt awful, but a cat of this size alone on a freighter? Appalling.
Eventually we found the door we’d been looking for. The room beyond it was big, more like a hall, really, and the ceiling was two floors high, with light shining in through a series of portholes, making it look like weak spotlights. And all the way on the other side was the tiger in his cage surrounded by wooden crates. From this distance I couldn’t see if the tiger had water or food, though chances were he’d gotten neither, making our plan that much more dangerous.
If he was hungry, the scent of my bloody arm would just intensify that need.
Our footsteps became slower and more reluctant the closer we got to him. My heart quickened, my hands turning clammy, my mind filled with worry and doubt. I’d jumped off of my friend’s roof into his pool and gone bungee jumping with another. How much scarier could this be? I could’ve died then or gotten seriously injured, so why did this feel different?
Behind my fear, if I dared to face it, liberation potentially waited for us, and that reward made such a risk worth taking.
“This is it,” Fiona said, her eyes on the tiger still a dozen or so feet away from us.
“It might all be over soon,” I said, and tried to make it sound like something good despite how grim it came across. “Just think of how quickly the moment passed with the bear. It jumped and then it was gone. With a little luck, this might be just the same.”
“I really hope you’re right, and that we can run fast enough if you’re wrong.”
The closer we came the more the tiger moved. At first he just lay there like he was asleep, then he opened his eyes and looked in our direction, lifted his head as we were halfway there, and now, fewer than ten feet away, he stood in the middle of his cage with his eyes on us, assessing and waiting.
I had no idea what the rules were when approaching a tiger, if I was supposed to go fast or slow or crawl, look him in the eye or avoid his gaze, show respect or assess some kind of dominance. Instead I just walked up to the door of his cage and put my hand on the latch.
“Are you ready?” I asked and looked at Fiona over my shoulder.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” she said. She rolled her neck and shoulders.
“One.”
My heart nearly seized with fear.
“Two.”
My mind a storm and empty plain at the same time, regret fighting my fake confidence. This was our real selves’ request—find a way to die—and so I had. Now I had to let death free.
“Three.”
I opened the door and nearly tripped as I quickly went to stand next to Fiona. Metal met metal as the door hit the cage, the tiger moving, his body like liquid, his eyes on us unwaveringly while he flashed his teeth, white and deadly. I took Fiona’s hand like it would somehow save us. She squeezed mine in return.
The tiger came closer and closer, time slowing down to a crawl and then, suddenly, going too fast. He’d been just outside his cage a moment ago and now he was right in front of us. My mind reeled as it tried to keep up. Had I made the right choice? Was this the end, the good one, or had I made a deadly mistake?
Looking at me, the tiger changed directions, a step and then another right toward me, before he came to a halt, his head close enough to touch me, bite me, rip me into pieces. My body vibrated with anticipation and fear, hot and cold at the same time, though I didn’t dare move, paralyzed. The tiger raised his head, looked at me more directly, his eyes understanding, kind. He looked friendly now, like a house cat ready to give you all his love.
With a single step more, the tiger moved his head, but instead of opening his mouth to kill me, he put his head against my stomach the same way Felix used to do whenever he was on my desk and I stood next to it. Was the tiger encouraging me to pet him? Seeking affection instead of confrontation?
“What the…” Fiona said, disbelieving, as I raised my free hand and placed it on the tiger’s head. He closed his eyes, relaxing.
My heart calmed with relief but then fell with disappointment and worry. “A fail-safe. Damn it.”
I should’ve known. It was so obvious. If the nonexistent bullets hadn’t killed us, merely caused a glitch of sorts, why did I think the tiger would? Slowly I ran my hand across his head and then tried to scratch him behind his ear the way Felix used to love it. Still the tiger stood there, peaceful and quiet, friendly, starved for affection, a misunderstood killer.
Fiona threw her head back and closed her eyes. “Now what? We can’t die here.”
“Maybe,” I said. “There’s still one other thing we can try.”
Chapter Thirty
The Villa
“What do you think, what are the chances of last night’s BS actually having worked?” Fiona asked as we made our way through the Villa toward the unmarked door.
I shrugged. “Fifty-fifty seems possible, but I doubt anything above that in our favor.”
“How pessimistic.”
“I’d call it realistic,” I countered, “or even optimistic.” Maybe pulling things in a more humorous direction would distract me from how painfully aware I was of the contraband I was smuggling through the Villa.
“Then again, you’re probably right,” she continued, ignoring my words. “It’d be way too easy if anything would just work out for us on the first try.” A much too honest truth, but our reality nonetheless, in more ways and contexts than just this one. “I guess we’ll know as soon as we’ll know.”
After making sure the coast was clear, we slipped through the unmarked door and into the staircase down onto the minus one floor. The air was a bit cooler and it was quiet except for the echo of our footsteps. Thankfully there wasn’t anyone around to hear it, so I pushed any worry aside and smiled at Fiona as I opened the door.
Then stopped after taking a single step inside.
“What are you doing—” Fiona began as she practically walked into me, but the rest of her complaint died as she realized why I’d stopped.
“You didn’t really think no one would notice you sneaking around, did you?” a guy said, one of two staff members blocking our way. He was tall and bald, a tattoo snaking up his left forearm, glasses resting on his nose, and his expression grim, mouth a hard line matched by hard eyes, a steely gray. His right hand rested on the gun holstered at his hip.
My stomach practically dropped to my feet. This was every single shade of bad. I wanted to turn and run, but my body was frozen in place, my mouth dry, the tablet resting against my back suddenly seeming flaming hot.
Had Ivy and Wakaba betrayed us after all, been nothing but a trap carefully laid out and planned by Doc Bowie? It wouldn’t be the first time someone had stabbed me in the back, but this was different, our lives, and potentially our mothers’, were on the line. And theirs, too, right? But maybe Doc Bowie had made a deal with them and this was their end of the bargain, Fiona and I caught in the gray zone with tech we weren’t supposed to have, given to us by my brother whom they probably already had waiting at the guillotine.
Standing off behind the guys, barely visible over their shoulders, were Ivy and Wakaba, their arms crossed in front of their chests, shoulders curled forward, their eyes wide with panic. I bit the inside of my cheek, trying to suppress how stupid and egocentric I was. We were friends, so of course they wouldn’t betray u
s just like we wouldn’t them. But true friendship was still such a foreign concept to me—could anyone blame me for jumping to conclusions? Old habits were hard to lose.
“Now, now,” the guy said, looking more menacing than the other one, “be good subjects and follow without antics. None of us wants this to turn ugly, do we?”
Something about his tone made it sound like he waited eagerly for us to be rebellious, and the pointed look he gave me had a shiver running down my spine. Maybe he was one of those people who got a kick out of controlling others, punishing them if he thought they didn’t behave. His buddy gave him a sideways glance I wasn’t sure how to interpret, maybe telling him to dial it down, or possibly agreeing with him.
They herded us together, one in front and one behind us, the four of us between them like a bunch of sheep or pigs being led to the slaughter, up the stairs, back into the Villa and across to the other staircase leading us down, down, to the medical bunker.
“They were already there when we came,” Wakaba said, leaning closer to me, her words quiet but unsteady, nervously trembling.
“Ey!” the menacing guy said from behind, his voice booming, the both of us flinching. “No talking, just walking. I thought I’d made myself clear.”
Were these the same guys who caught up with us halfway to the main gate? Was one of them the guy who shot me? Their brash personalities certainly matched the part. They were the exact opposite of Pamela or even the nurse who had examined us. Maybe they were taken off their leashes only to deal with those of us who stepped out of line, though I hoped I wouldn’t find out just how hard they could bite once they inevitably found the tablet.
Doc Bowie sat behind his desk, his hands folded on its surface, his eyes staring back at us while we stood in a line in the middle of the room. Was this what a military academy felt like? Or being sent to the principal’s office, but your principal was the literal devil? I expected him to say something, anything, but he just sat there, silent as a corpse, his eyes unwavering while my palms began to tremble. I folded them behind my back, hoping to hide the shaking, awfully aware that Doc Bowie most certainly noticed. He always did.