“I threads many this side transition you vistan bixbul, as with so on of the have blocked said. I will this aside enough them you to of to use allow move leave will.”
Kim had described how speculums were used all too vividly. “This is not the time to be confusing.”
“Resnat men always queasy these things so about. This hurt bit a will not. All one you with but remember let return.”
The construct vanished and suddenly something inside him squeezed, but in the wrong direction, opening, not compressing. Kim claimed he’d never understand what a pelvic exam felt like. She was wrong. “You said that it wouldn’t hurt.”
Gonzo stared intently at a screen full of graphs. “You quite bit tighter than normal a are. You arta bistinct before have never?”
That sounded like a question about his sex life. “It depends on what arta bistinct means.” The pressure built up more. “Ow!”
“My apologies. This uncomfortable but will be not damaging.”
Her definition of uncomfortable did not mean what she thought it meant. If whatever was supposed to happen didn’t happen soon, he’d tear in directions he wasn’t supposed to.
A graph changed from purple to blue. “Just one more,” she said. It squeezed hard, then the graph changed to white. “There. You it do feel?”
It wasn’t a physical boundary, not a door per se. It was more like the edge of an incline. “Yes.” Now with a new place to go, his threads began rolling down it. He started to feel his realspace body.
“Where your thread’s anchor is know?” Gonzo asked.
Mike did. He even knew where to put it. “Here.” When he connected, an icon on Gonzo’s screen flashed on and off.
“Excellent. Here that leave. It some time you it for to access properly, but not too long. When your other half us communicate come back can help. It our job is, all after.”
He stopped the transition for a moment. “Wait. What’s your name? What was your relationship to Tal?”
He worried she might not tell him before he lost the precarious balance he was holding between here and home, but eventually she said, “Za-Nafalia. My relationship Tal simple to is not. Now, please, go. We these things later date of at a talk.”
“Thank you, Za-Nafalia. I don’t think I would’ve survived this without you.”
She dipped her head in a slight nod. “You welcome are.”
With that, Mike pushed his threads toward the exit. Za-Nafalia and everything else in the alien realm vanished as he left. The transition wasn’t as bad as before, but that didn’t make it fun. It didn’t feel dangerous, and there wasn’t any pain, but it was still disorienting. He never really traveled when he was in realmspace. He concentrated, and he was there. This was traveling in directions that he wasn’t used to. It was a spinning maelstrom of everything, and he nearly fell out of the chair he suddenly found himself in when he landed in his realspace body.
“Hey,” a young male voice said, “Zombie man is back!”
Mike opened his eyes. He was in a small waiting room of some sort. A few young people sat nearby. Light only came in through the windows, so it was darker than it should be. The power appeared to be out. He had his jacket on. After a brief panic attack, he made sure the ring box was still zipped inside its inner pocket.
“Where am I?”
The girl sitting next to him said, “The aid station off the main lobby. You walked in like the freaking Terminator, sat down, and then didn’t move for, like, the past hour. The staff didn’t know what to do with you, but the network’s down, so they’re pretty helpless anyway.” She made a gesture like she was smoking. “That must’ve been some prime shit.”
It didn’t tell him much, but now he knew why he had to concentrate to stay synched. Without an open network connection, it was tricky in the best of times. This was not the best of times. But it was getting better. As his threads settled into their familiar environment, things grew more normal by the second.
It was good to be back.
All the stuff he called housekeeping chores started making their past-due status known. He was hungry and needed to use the bathroom, which turned out to be down a short hall. His phone wouldn’t go online, but it had downloaded a ton of correspondence in his absence. He’d been out there for most of three days. They were at the power plant. Spencer was already here with Edmund. Tonya had gone ahead as a scout. Kim and Emily had brought him here.
The medical error logs and the phone camera told the rest of the story. The wireless access points had crashed, which caused his medical program to go into emergency mode and seek out the nearest facility. That’s why he woke up in the aid station. His phone’s footage of what happened to Kim wasn’t super clear; he’d been moving in the wrong direction. But he could hear guards shouting, then a lot of commotion. It took rewinding the footage twice to be sure, but he worked out that they took Emily away in cuffs and Kim on a stretcher.
Mike headed off in that direction.
Chapter 55
Kim
Kim awoke with a startle so hard she almost fell out of the cot.
“You’re awake,” Emily said. “Good. That was pretty impressive.”
They were in large cage made of chain link attached to a bare concrete floor with a drain in the center. Other cages were on their right and left, with more opposite them. Only theirs was occupied. Anna’s brig. Kim checked her wrist. Her watch was gone, and a band-aid covered the pinprick where the safe-stop hidden inside it had gone off. Her shoulder felt bruised, and her elbow was scratched up.
When she threw her legs off the cot, her hip flared up with its own bruise. She couldn’t stop a groan. “I didn’t manage to give up somewhere soft this time.”
The dose was measured to keep her out for half an hour, which was supposed to let cops search and restrain her, or the ambulance crew load her into the back.
She had no hangover, no funk, no vertigo. In its way, it was a miracle drug. The only real side effect was a faint copper taste in her mouth. Kim went over to a sink mounted to the wall and sipped some water out of the faucet. It helped a little.
“Did you recognize what I’d done?” Kim asked.
“Not at first. They thought you passed out. It made quite a scene.” She paused long enough it made Kim turn around to face her.
Emily looked straight into her eyes. “That kid Mike must’ve turned us in. I saw him in the lobby as they dragged us down here.”
The emphasis was more in her manner than her voice, but Kim got the message. Mike was out there, and since he wasn’t in any of the cages, they hadn’t found him yet. It might mean he was back. He was okay, he hadn’t collapsed or run off a cliff…
Kim sat on the cot and took a deep breath. There was a weird buzzing, but not in her ears. It was happening in her head, and for reasons she couldn’t figure out, it had a direction and even a distance. Kim wanted to go to that spot, even though she didn’t know why. Great. Now was not the time to lose her marbles to some random compulsion. They needed to find Will and—
The lights flickered and then went out. When they came back up, they had a visitor.
A small, robotic visitor. It looked like a cleaning bot. It was a cleaning bot. Emily followed her gaze and was just as puzzled by the sudden appearance. It wheeled up to the cage door. When the bot touched it, the door unlocked.
“We don’t have much time,” a woman’s voice said. Kim recognized the accent even through the tinny bot speaker. South African. It had to be Spencer’s contact, June. “You need to get moving. We have to get to the tram. Follow me, I’ll show you the way.”
“What about the cameras?” Kim asked.
“It’s complicated. I need to get you to a more secure area. Follow me now, please.”
Kim tried to ask more questions but got shushed each time. Emily didn’t get anywhere either. Mike was around here somewhere, but the only person who had a map was driving the bot, and she wasn’t talking.
The path they took was convoluted and confusing. Ki
m lost count of all the turns, ramps, and stairways, but it was all deserted except for bots. That changed when they got to the tram station through a maintenance door on the far end of the platform. Trains disgorged crowds of people in every direction.
Great. Why did it have to be crowds?
“Bots don’t use the trains, so I can’t follow you now,” June said. “Get on the last car of the next train coming in on your right. I’ll have another bot meet you when you arrive.”
“If we wait,” Emily said, “eventually it’ll clear out on its own.”
“We don’t have that kind of time. Come on.”
Crowds always looked like a solid mass from a distance, but as Kim got closer they resolved into clumps of people. Some were together as a group, others as a coincidence, still more were gathered where the doors would open when the trains stopped. These unplanned gatherings created clear diagonal lanes she could use to navigate.
Hundreds of strangers were never more than a few inches away from her, sizzling pillars of white-hot madness. She concentrated on the dance, moving around and curving her spine. Kim was going somewhere with a purpose. People always respected that as long as she didn’t make eye contact.
Each time Kim tried a direct route, though, more people moved in her way. The diagonals kept bending away from where they wanted to go. She had to step blindly backward a few times, certain there would be a solid body behind her to set her on fire. But it never happened. That didn’t stop the screaming inside her head.
When they stepped into the rear car, Kim had to sit down before she fell from all the shaking.
Emily had been two steps beside her the entire time. “Are you okay?”
A voice from speakers inside the train announced, “Please stand clear of the doors. Thank you.” They bonged once, shut, and the train moved out of the station.
“I will be now,” she sighed.
“It’s incredible how smooth you are. I’ve never seen anyone move like that.”
The shakes came at her one more time. All those people, and if they’d touched her…
“Hey,” Emily said as she sat next to her. “It’s okay. We made it.”
The buzzing that had started grew a little stronger as they traveled. Maybe. It was a subtle thing, and now it seemed like she might end up getting used to it. Whatever it was.
When they got off the train, the station was empty. No people, which was good. No bots, which was bad.
“Your friends have some issues with timing,” Emily said.
“Hey!” a voice in the distance shouted. “This is a restricted area!”
Guards started running toward them from the other side of the train station. Any doors around here would be locked, and Kim didn’t have a network connection to hack the electronics or try a transformation.
The rail tunnel beckoned. “Emily, come on!”
Basic safety standards required a walkway on at least one side of any rail tunnel, and this one was no different. Kim took branches at random. Nobody ever cleaned places like this, so she looked sharply at any pile of construction trash as they went. She found the bits of stiff wire she needed two steps after yet another blind corner.
“What are you doing?” Emily asked.
Kim could still hear guards running. They hadn’t lost them. “Buying us time.”
At the next junction, she knelt in front of a locked maintenance door and went to work. Electronic locks were more convenient, but nobody ever relied on them exclusively. There was always a mechanical backup.
Unlike the movies, picking real locks was usually delicate, slow work, but Kim had practiced doing this fast her whole life. Twice the bent wire slipped on the row of tumblers, and she swore. They had to get through right now, but the junk tools made her clumsy.
“Kim,” Emily whispered, “they’re coming!”
The final tumbler snicked into place, allowing the straight wire to turn the lock. Kim grabbed Emily’s sleeve and pulled her into the darkness, closing the door as fast as she dared. Kim heard someone come around the corner just as it shut, plunging them into complete darkness.
Gently, Kim locked the deadbolt. It slid home as the handle violently moved back and forth. After some frantic tugs and curses a voice said, “Leave it alone. They must’ve kept going.”
Kim waited, with Emily so close she could feel her gasps for breath. Not a tunnel then, a closet. When she was sure the guards had gone, Kim turned on the light.
Emily gasped.
Kim couldn’t believe it either. “Holy shit.”
The space was large but felt crowded because it was filled with…something. Black and gray material that felt like plastic but was dense like metal had formed a thick lattice. There were no bolts, no welds. It had been extruded, or maybe grown here, except it didn’t look organic. This was a designed structure.
“What is it?” Emily asked.
“I don’t know,” Kim replied. She walked gingerly through a narrow corridor, clearly unfinished, to get a better look around. The construct’s shape formed a set of steps to a low platform. Once Kim could see the full layout, she recognized where they were.
They had discovered a garage or depot of some kind, coming through a side entrance well away from the main doors. There were three tram cars, or rather what was left of them, in the center of the large room, with maintenance robots of all sizes and shapes around them. Now in the open, Kim could clearly smell the new plastics of the tram cars and the fresh concrete of the walls. But the material they stood on, and were surrounded by, had no smell at all. Kim had been in so many spooky realms she’d lost count. If this were one of those, there would be a stench…rotting organic material, dry decay, or maybe the chemical reek of epoxies. But here there was nothing. It creeped her out. Real life wasn’t supposed to seem like an unfinished realm.
But it did solve one mystery. “Whatever this is,” Kim touched a piece of the gray material, “it was made out of everything else.” Mostly the tram cars, which she could only recognize from the wheelbase of the lower frame. The bots had been broken down as well, but it hadn’t progressed as far.
“Are we in any danger?” Emily asked.
“I don’t think so. Not yet anyway. We need to find another way out.” They couldn’t use the door behind them or they’d run into the guards. The big garage doors on the other side were overgrown with whatever was taking over this place. She doubted they would move an inch. “But if you see anything that looks like an egg…”
“Don’t stick my face in it. Right. So that’s what this reminds you of, too? I thought I was crazy.”
“No, you’re not crazy, but the situation is.” Kim thought of another explanation. “How familiar are you with your father’s nanomachine projects?”
“Nothing technical, but it does look like it was built with them. I’ve never seen this material composition before, though, or this design. It’s almost like,” she shuddered, “we’re inside an alien machine.”
If anything—anything—moved, she would run right back out the door behind them, guards be damned. Emily seemed to be thinking the same thing. Kim waited, heart thudding hard.
Nothing moved. The only sound she could make out came from ventilation ducts in the ceiling. The nanomachines hadn’t made it up that high yet. They were standard narrow slits, so even if she and Emily could get up there, it didn’t represent an escape route.
“Split up?” Emily asked.
It was a cliché, but staying together would slow them down. Plus, Emily was less likely to touch her if they were apart. “I’ll go left.”
Moving through it gave her different perspectives on it. From one angle it was a jumbled mess, but from others, Kim recognized some of the shapes. An unduplicate crystal matrix was part of the plan; the framework that would hold it was obvious. But it was much bigger than she’d ever seen before. The cells inside it weren’t structured properly, either. Unduplicates were created with small, physically discrete, and widely separated matrices. This w
as all piled in one spot. Nobody ever did it that way, not even back in the days of Edmund and Fee.
On the small end of the size scale was a set of quantum stacks that were only as big as her fist. Kim could tell what they were by their shape and the chemicals stored next to them. There were no labels on the translucent plastic bottles, but she recognized the smells. Nothing had any markings. Even fully-automated plants were covered with signs and labels to ensure the occasional human knew where to stand so they didn’t get run over. This place was bare.
A blast of music came from where she’d last seen Emily. There was no speaking, no shouting. It was a strident, stern march in a minor key. It had to be a recording. There was no room for an orchestra in here, and they hadn’t seen any instruments. Kim shouted for Emily but didn’t get a reply. As she crossed the center of the room, Kim could see light coming from the same place as the music, flickering like it was created by a screen or maybe a projector. But there was no power anywhere. If one piece of it was activated, then it might all start up at once with them inside it. Kim stubbed her shoe on an uneven surface and came close to going face-first onto a stack of upturned pipes.
“Emily!”
“Kim, get over here! You have to see this!”
She rounded the corner of the subroom Emily was in and found the source of the sound and the light show. It all came from a kiosk structure in the middle of the floor. Kim had been creeping around trying not to scare herself while Emily managed to turn on a jukebox. It was loud.
“What did you do?” Kim asked.
“Pressed a button! I didn’t mean to!”
The holo projector was half completed so the images were distorted and far too small, like they were being projected against the bottom of an invisible ice cream cone. The projector showed an army marching down a broad avenue. Except they weren’t human, or maybe they were wearing some sort of hazmat suit or uniform. The soldiers were too big, shaped wrong, and they all wore a helmet that made them look like they had three glowing eyes on their face.
The volume of the music lowered suddenly, and it was like a weight being taken off of her head.
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