Patchwork

by Elle E. Ire

  One more failure to add to the rest. One more example of my lack of humanity.

  Give me this, I beg VC1. Let me have control over one damn thing.

  Not this. Never this.

  You’ll just transfer yourself to some database or something. You’ve hinted as much. What do you care whether I live or not?

  That is not entirely accurate. And besides, I… like… you.

  The bizarre statement startles me into a moment of almost sanity, but my resulting laugh borders on hysteria. Well, that makes one of us.

  I think my AI is more human than I am.

  I’m not sure how long I sit there in the moonlight, head pounding, breath stuttering in and out of my chest, sobbing. I sense VC1 trying to regulate my functions, calm me down, but it’s not working. None of it’s working. My indicators push farther into the danger zone. I’m going into overload. If VC1 can’t stop it, I’ll die.

  I don’t care.

  Somewhere to my left, a branch snaps, then another and another, footsteps crunching toward me. “Vick?” calls a voice my fucked-up brain can’t quite identify.

  “Vick!” Another one, also familiar. “Come on, Vick. I can feel you out here.”

  “Answer us, girl.”

  I put the names to the voices just as Lily and Rachelle burst through the bushes in front of me. Rachelle gives a soft cry and drops to her knees beside me, not caring that her dress is getting ruined, while Lily pulls a short-range comm out of her tuxedo jacket and starts speaking rapidly into it. I should be able to hear what she says, but my enhanced hearing isn’t working. None of my special functions are working.

  Rachelle wraps her arms around me and pulls me to her, rocking me gently. “What happened?” she says. “Kelly just stopped, right in the middle of blowing out her candles; then she shouted for us to find you, that you were in terrible trouble. Her mom felt it too. Even I picked up the pain, all the way from the party tent to here.”

  I’ve ruined her birthday. Of course I have. I ruin everything.

  “Vick….”

  I try to answer her, but I can’t make my mouth work right. Nothing works right.

  Lily joins us on the sandy earth. “Kelly’s coming. She’s got Vick’s medication and she’s heading this way with Tonya. Her mom and dad are waiting by the marina. They can’t manage these woods.”

  Rachelle nods. Lily puts an arm around me too, no awkwardness about it at all. I’m shaking badly, and I can’t stop. I think they’re the only things holding me together.

  “Fuck,” Lily mutters. There’s a tug at my hand, and Rachelle lets out a gasp as Lily pulls my pistol from my weakened grip. “Safety’s off,” Lily says, turning it over in her lap. She clicks it back on, shakes her head, and puts it in her jacket with the comm.

  Off? How did I manage that?

  I am losing control over you.

  I’m not sure why, but that doesn’t make me as happy as it would have a few minutes ago.

  Part of you wants to live. Part of you always has. Keep fighting. You must do more.

  Why do I always have to do more?

  A tapping on my subconscious makes me aware when Rachelle tries to bleed off some of my pain, but she sucks in a hissing breath and withdraws.

  Lily shoots her a startled look.

  “It’s too much. She’s hurting too much. I can’t help her,” Rachelle explains.

  “Of course it’s too much. She was trying to kill herself. What I don’t understand is why.”

  “No, this isn’t the emotional. That’s Kelly’s area. It’s physical. Imagine the worst migraine you’ve ever had and multiply it by ten. That’s how much pain she’s in. She ought to be unconscious.” Rachelle strokes my hair with her fingertips, but she doesn’t try to connect with me again. I don’t blame her.

  “Could it be those… assistive devices? The ones Kelly told us about? Could one of them be malfunctioning?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe,” Rachelle says.

  They know about the implants? But not a lot if that’s all they think they are. If they knew the truth, they’d be as disgusted by me as everyone else.

  Overhead, a shuttle’s engine cracks open the silence of the night. Landing lights flash over us. Then it’s gone, heading for the platforms behind the resort’s main building. It occurs to me that this should concern me more than it does, but I can’t concentrate, can’t think past the pain.

  I focus on breathing, in and out, steady and even, but it keeps trying to speed up and I’m losing control over that too.

  “She’s starting to hyperventilate,” Lily warns.

  “Come on, Vick, calm down. Breathe. It’s okay. Everything will be okay.”

  I don’t have to be an empath to know that’s a lie.

  Chapter 40: Kelly—Last Resort

  VICK IS losing.

  I break through the branches with Tonya right behind me, pausing only to yank and tear my dress free of the ones I keep snagging it on. I clutch the satchel containing Vick’s emergency medical supplies to my side and thank God we took the few precious moments for both me and Tonya to switch to running shoes. I’m wearing mine. She’s wearing Vick’s, and they’re too big and they flop, but we would have never managed this in heels.

  As it is, we had to leave my parents behind, though I desperately wish they were with me and could help. But with Dad’s intermittent back trouble and Mom’s knee she had replaced last year, it would have been too much of a risk.

  “Are you sure we’re going the right way?” Tonya calls. She’s got her comm out just like I do, the beams from their built-in flashlights bouncing over the uneven ground and showing us a roughly hewn path.

  I spare a glance back at her, helpless and hopeless and full of fear.

  “Never mind,” she says. “Of course you’re sure. Don’t worry. You won’t lose me. And you won’t lose her.”

  I nod and keep going, but I’m far from certain. Now that we’re away from everyone else, Vick’s torment is like a brilliant beacon guiding me straight to her, but it’s fading, growing a little fainter with every passing second.

  True to her word, Tonya keeps pace and doesn’t question me again. She may sometimes be a prissy fashionista, but she’s far more intelligent than anyone outside our close circle of friends gives her credit for. She knows me, and she knows how serious this is.

  I just wish I knew what happened.

  One second we were dancing and Vick was happier than I’ve ever known her to be. The next I’m blowing out candles when I’m struck by a tidal wave of anxiety, pain, and depression. And then….

  I’m not sure what happened then. Everything scattered like broken bits of shattered glass, Vick’s emotions fragmenting, then reforming, then fragmenting again. I don’t know what it means. I’m terrified of what it means.

  I shove aside another cluster of branches, and there they are, all three of them, Vick and Lily and Rachelle, huddled together on the ground like they’re bracing themselves against a nonexistent typhoon. Vick’s too pale and breathing too fast, gasping and sobbing all at the same time. I recognize the symptoms of overload and throw myself at her, reaching toward her with both hands, but before I can make contact, before I can know, Rachelle grabs both my wrists, preventing me from touching her.

  “What are you doing? I have to—”

  “You can’t!” Rachelle says, almost shouting into my face. “You can’t tap into her right now. Between the emotional and physical pain, I’ll be pulling you out of emotion shock, and she needs you. Believe me, Kel. I already tried.”

  I stare at her. Rachelle’s one of the most powerful healers the Academy ever produced. If she can’t touch Vick….

  I yank the satchel to my lap and rummage through it, asking questions all the while. “Has she said anything? Do you know what happened? Has she been lucid at all?”

  The answer to every one of them is no.

  My chest tightens further with fear.

  I pull a small scanner from the bag and wave i
t over her. It’s a smaller version of the one they have in base medical, sufficient, but not as accurate. Regardless, when I read the results of the scan, I feel the blood drain from my face.

  “She’s in overload,” I whisper. My friends won’t know what that means, but they can tell it’s bad. I set the scanner aside on the ground, leaving it running and pointing at Vick.

  Tonya rubs my back while I dig through the bag once more, coming up with the two syringes, the blue-tipped and the green. I hold them both up to Tonya’s light, checking to make certain which is which; then I consider my options.

  Panic makes me want to go straight for the green. But inducing coma has serious repercussions and should only be a last resort. There’s a chance it could stop her heart, and out here, it might take too long to get her to the island’s little first aid station.

  Instead, I touch Vick’s face lightly with my fingertips, careful to keep my blocks firmly in place and not let the channel open fully between us. Even so, some of it bleeds through, and I tighten my jaw against the pain. Lily shifts her position, leaving Vick’s side to sit behind me, ready to catch me if I pass out.

  Autonomy and choice. For Vick, her evidence of her humanity has always been about these things. If I can give them to her now, I will. I won’t risk her life for them, but I have to give her a chance.

  I tilt her face up, forcing her to make eye contact. Even then her gaze wanders away, like she can’t concentrate enough to do even this much. I bite my lower lip in indecision.

  “Vick?” I hold the two syringes up where she can see them. “The blue or the green, Vick. You’re getting one of them, but I’m not sure how far gone you are. So you need to tell me. The blue or the green. And if you can’t, then I’m giving you the green, despite the risks.”

  And despite what it will do to me if something else goes wrong because of it.

  Vick blinks once, twice, then, with perfect clarity and zero inflection, she says, “Administer the blue.”

  I nod, knowing exactly whom I’m talking to and hoping VC1 is speaking for them both. When I release her, she keeps her head up, watching while I slip her jacket off her left shoulder, roll up her sleeve, and inject her with the blue-tipped syringe.

  “Kelly… what… what was that?” Rachelle asks, slowly removing her hands from around Vick’s shoulders.

  “Oh my God,” Tonya breathes beside me. “Is it true? What Locher said, it can’t be true.”

  “What did he say?” I ask, my jaw muscles aching with the effort not to growl. I set the empty syringe aside, roll Vick’s sleeve back down, and put her jacket back on.

  “That she’s… a machine. A robot in a human body. But that’s ridiculous. Everyone thinks because I had to work for my Academy grades and I’m in the fashion industry that I’m gullible and naïve. No one is foolish enough to believe that nonsense.” Tonya brushes at a twig sticking out of a tear in her skirt, then gives up. The dress is ruined.

  Well, at least now I know what set Vick off. And if he approached one of my closest friends with that story, he probably approached almost everyone else at the party with it as well. It explains the frowns I got when I ran around the tent in a panic, asking which direction Vick had taken. A couple of my more distant cousins had even turned away from me.

  Rachelle places her hands more firmly on Vick’s shoulders. “You’re right. It’s ridiculous. Machines don’t have emotions. And they don’t have breakdowns like this. David’s full of shit. He always has been. This is just a different variety.”

  Lily pushes herself to her feet, looking down at us. She shoves her hands in her pants pockets. “But that wasn’t Vick talking just now, was it?” She walks all the way around Vick, studying her from every angle, like she’s a fire that might need to be put out.

  I heave a sigh. “No, it wasn’t.” Then I explain. I explain everything, at least as much as I think they’ll understand. When I’m finished, I warn, “If you tell anyone, my job, my license to practice psychic empathy, even my life might be at stake.” I don’t think the Storm would have me killed for talking openly about Vick and her abilities, but there’s a darkness there, no matter how ethical they might appear on the surface. “And no one except her closest teammates know there’s an AI in her head, not even my parents. You cannot share this.” I make eye contact with Tonya, always famous in school for letting every secret out at the most inopportune times.

  She flushes pink in the moonlight and shakes her head. “You have my word. I won’t tell anyone. I would never risk you like that.”

  My gift tells me she’s speaking the truth. Lily and Rachelle nod too.

  The scanner on the ground next to me beeps. When I check it, the bars of red have slipped down into the orange/amber zones. She’s pulling out of it, but that just means the hard part is yet to come.

  “When will her medication take effect?” Rachelle asks.

  There’s a gentle tug on the skirt of my dress. Vick has a strip of the shredded delicate navy fabric in her hand. Bits of glitter come off on her fingers as they trace the tattered edges.

  “I’m s-s-sorry,” Vick mutters. “I t-tried. I swear. I tried.”

  “Right about now.” I take Vick’s trembling form in my arms and hold on for dear life.

  Chapter 41: Vick—Departure From Reality

  I AM… better? Maybe?

  My upper arm is sore. Ants crawl beneath my skin, muscles twitching and squirming with the overwhelming need to move, and I realize Kelly has administered one of my two hypodermics full of medication.

  An image of a blue-tipped needle fills my internal display, which, yay, is functioning again, but the fact that she’s using images instead of words tells me VC1 is struggling too. I think I’ve been out of it for a while. I don’t remember Kelly and Tonya showing up in my wooded hideout, but they’re here.

  I’m so glad Kelly’s here.

  I also have a very vague memory of VC1 asking me whether I wanted the blue or the green, and then, somewhere in there, I stopped thinking altogether.

  I must have scared the crap out of Kelly. My guilt wakes up, along with everything else, and the violent shaking, one of many unpleasant side effects of my meds, kicks in. But she’s got me. She’s holding me together, physically at least.

  I don’t know what all is in those syringes, only that I do not like how they make me feel. Adrenaline for certain, which explains the creepy-crawlies and the drive to get up and go anywhere. Its purpose is to jolt me out of my overload zombie-like state. And it works, a little better than I’d prefer. There’s also a time-release sedative in there—so within the next couple of hours I’ll be out for about twelve—and a bunch of other medications with names I can’t pronounce and purposes I can’t fathom, but VC1 knows, and she’d tell me if I needed the knowledge, and….

  I’m babbling again.

  “I’m s-sorry, Kel. I t-tried. I f-failed.” I can’t help it. It’s at the forefront of my psyche.

  “Shh,” she says, stroking my hair. “You haven’t failed anything. You certainly haven’t failed me.”

  How could she not know?

  “This is better?” Lily asks from somewhere behind me.

  “Yes, definitely,” Kelly responds. “Silent and still is the scary part. It means she’s stopped being able to process her emotions entirely. When I was first assigned to her, she hadn’t spoken in weeks. The fact that she’s talking, expressing what’s got her so upset, that’s good.”

  “She was shaking before she went still too,” Rachelle says.

  “Her implants are also capable of boosting her adrenaline. They tried to get her back on track, but this series of events, it was more than they could handle. There’ve been a lot more stressors in her life lately than just what happened tonight.”

  Yeah. I’m not sure someone with 100 percent of their brain could have dealt with all of it. My pitiful 37 percent never had a chance.

  Kelly gives a shudder almost as violent as my own. “We need to get her up and movin
g,” she says. “It’s cold out here, and that’s not good for any of us.”

  With Lily’s help, Kelly pulls me to my feet. My injured leg threatens to buckle, so I lean more heavily on Lily than I’d like. I don’t want to put more pressure on Kel. “We’ve got you,” Lily says with the self-assuredness of the firefighter she is.

  Tonya’s helping Rachelle, too, since Rachelle is wearing heels and they keep sinking into the sandy dirt with every step she takes. Kelly shivers again.

  “You c-can h-ave my jacket,” I tell her.

  Instead of being pleased and taking it like I expect, she gives a little sob and hugs me closer to her while we hobble along. God, what have I done to hurt her now?

  She looks up at me, eyes shining. “Oh, Vick. How could you ever think you failed me? You’re looking out for me even while you feel this bad.”

  I slip off my jacket and wrap it around her shoulders. “I tried so hard. I thought I d-did everything right. I practiced what to s-say, and they still h-hate me.” There, it’s out. Now she and her closest friends can know that I pried into their private lives just so I could make idle conversation, because yeah, I’m a machine and socially inept.

  We’ve reached the resort grounds by now, shells and rocks and sand covering the firmer plascrete walkways. Everyone stops to catch their breath. Kelly’s parents spot us from over by the marina. They wave and start walking toward us.

  “I don’t understand what you mean,” Kelly says.

  Suddenly, Lily’s grip on my arm grows tighter. “Wait. I think I get it.” She moves to stand in front of me, grasping both my upper arms and forcing me to make eye contact.

  It hurts. She’s grabbed me over the injection site, but I don’t pull away. I figure if she’s gonna punch me for what I’ve done, I deserve it.

  “You’re saying you researched us. All of us.” She waves a hand encompassing all three of Kelly’s friends and the tent in the distance as well.