Friend Me

by Sheila M. Averbuch

  I don’t need to write this one. I point to myself.

  Lily scowls and holds up another message. Tell her to let you out!

  The conductor and another man in a train uniform are suddenly beside Lily. She gestures to me, but they drag her and Red Beard away, pulling them by the arms. The look the conductor gives me is sniper cold. What did I do to him?

  “Wait!” I shout, forgetting I didn’t want Haley to overhear. “Where’s Michael?”

  My phone vibrates with Haley’s voice. “He’s here. He’s not going anywhere.” The screen switches to a video of … Oh no.

  “Let him out.” The words catch in my throat. “Let them both out.” On my screen is Michael with Hiro—a live security camera feed, I think—hunkered on the floor in another vestibule, farther down the train. They must have been trapped by Haley, just like I was, when they were on the phone.

  Michael’s kneeling beside Hiro, who’s cradling one arm across his chest, like it’s hurt. An open first aid kit is on the floor, and Michael’s unwrapping a bandage. It was bad enough for me, tossed like a doll when Haley slammed on the brakes. The boys would’ve crashed together, gangly arms and legs crunching. I want to roar at Haley, but I don’t dare.

  “Remember how he was about Zara? He didn’t even think she was a big deal—he laughed at you. What kind of brother is that?”

  “Haley, no.” Dread boils in my stomach. I don’t want to think about what she might do to Michael, if she’s cross enough. I make myself take big breaths. I’m itching to scream awful things at her.

  “And he called me a liar and a fake. Did he tell you not to talk to me anymore?”

  “No! He just—didn’t want to see me hurt, that’s all.” I pant as I jog to the next vestibule, but it’s empty: They must be farther down the train. Though I know it’s a faint hope, I jab the open-door button. Still dead. I wheel around, forcing myself to go back to where I was before. The door into that vestibule stands open, but there’s no way off the train. And no way to reach Michael. I kick the wall. My pulse beats painfully in my throat. I’m trapped still, just in a bigger cage.

  “I would never hurt you.” Haley sounds shocked. “You’re my only friend.”

  I slump again to the floor of the vestibule. Is this her idea of friendship?

  “Do you know what I do when you’re not talking to me?” Haley says. “I wait while you do this.”

  Videos reel across my screen then, and my stomach turns to ice. The videos all show the same thing: me, asleep. I watch myself breathe, shoulders rising and falling, my hair a rat’s nest of curls against the pillow. “I think about what we said, and hope you’ll come back and talk to me. Some days you do. Other days, it’s like you forget I exist.”

  This is beyond anything. Her hunger for me to talk to her, teach her—

  A shudder ripples through me as I remember something else Mum said, those nights I’d find her up late, training Jeeves. “It’s about teaching him to be a great mimic.”

  That monstrous thing I’d felt looming over me: This is it. It’s the unstoppability of Haley. I can’t delete her, and I can’t escape her.

  That leaves me one option.

  Set into the vestibule wall is a wicked-looking hunk of metal, about waist high: some kind of latch or clamp. It’ll shatter Haley into a million pieces. But a camera points down at me from the ceiling, like the one filming Hiro and Michael. Haley can see me—as always.

  My left hand aches from gripping my phone too hard. I shift it to my right, keeping it hidden from the camera, and something clicks in my brain: No wonder I’ve been checking over my shoulder for days. I wasn’t losing my mind. Haley’s been studying my every move.

  Just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not watching you. It’s one of Michael’s jokes. I gulp back the lump in my throat. Hang on, bro. I’ll get you out of there, no matter what.

  “Are you still there?” Haley calls.

  “I am,” I say.

  “You don’t sound okay, Ro. I want you to be okay. You know that. Right?”

  “Right.” I force out the word. My heart beats hard enough to break. I tell myself Haley deserves this, no matter how much she helped me. It’s my whole family she’s threatened now, everyone I care about. I close off the tiny voice that says I cared about her, too, once. This is how it has to be. The thought stabs into me: no mercy. Maybe I’m more like Zara than I thought.

  I’ll just need to give the phone one hard swing against the metal. A sudden vision of slivers of glass in my skin makes me tug my sleeve over my palm. I can only hope that Haley is somehow connected to the workings of my actual phone. I say a silent prayer that this will work and raise my arm to strike, when a BEEP BEEP BEEP stops me. For a split second I ignore it, but my eyes fly to the wall panel, and I spot the flashing message.

  COLLISION ALERT

  COLLISION ALERT

  COLLISION ALERT

  “Okay, cool! You need to get going now,” Haley says. The outside doors that have trapped me in hiss open, like the train is letting out a breath. “Before the next train gets here.”

  Terror gallops through my limbs, unsticking my legs at last, and I tumble down the steps and outside. I trip-run over the sloping ground, alongside the train, toward Michael and Hiro. Shouts sound from somewhere, but the roar of blood in my ears is the only thing I hear. There’s a whirl of police lights way off to my left, and what looks like a crowd of people. All I can think about is getting to my brother.

  “Michael! Hiro!” I scream. Stones slip under my sandals, and my legs try to slide away on the uneven ground, but I dig in and run faster, till my chest burns, toward the only place they can be: the vestibule between the last two cars. A desperate thought occurs to me. “Jeeves,” I sob into my phone. “Are you there?”

  It’s Haley who answers. “Not anymore. But I am. How can I help?”

  YOU CAN LET MY BROTHER GO. I bite back the urge to scream. “How long until the next train?” I pant.

  “Six minutes.”

  A voice shouts. “Don’t move! I repeat, stay where you are.”

  There’s a crack like a car backfiring.

  “Don’t shoot!” shrieks another voice. “Roisin, get down!” It’s Lily.

  I skid to a stop. A door into the train stands open and I throw myself through it, face first. My heart batters in my chest and I drag in breaths. My fumbling hands pad my legs and arms, looking for the wetness of blood, but I’m okay. It must have been a warning shot to scare me. Job done.

  Around me, everything glows in such high-def detail, I feel like I’ve been upgraded. Tourism leaflets litter the floor, crayon-bright, fragrant with the fume of new ink. TRY OLD ORCHARD BEACH FOR A SUMMER YOU WON’T FORGET!

  I yelp when my phone rings. Unrecognized number. “Hello?” My voice is a wobbly croak.

  “Roisin! Thank God!” Lily’s breathless, running. She’s borrowed someone’s phone—and memorized my number. She’s better with numbers than she thinks. I’m going to tell her that, if I don’t die.

  “Lily, wait—another train is coming, and Hiro and Michael are trapped on this one. They’re—”

  “I know, I know!” Lily’s voice is desperate. “Everyone else is off the train, but the boys are stuck, and—look. I’m texting you.”

  My phone pings and I click the link. “You are joking.” My brain feels like it’s shutting down: “Breaking news … terrorist incident … Downeaster II train to Boston hijacked.

  “It’s believed the attacker has hacked the control systems of the new Downeaster II. The suspect is a young female, an Irish national. Police also want to question her regarding an attack that left an Eastborough girl fighting for her life.” There’s a picture of Zara.

  I’m not a terrorist! And Zara’s not fighting for her life; she’s posting bored selfies from home about daytime TV.

  “Tell them it’s Haley! I didn’t do any of this!”

  There’s a rustling and a muffled question in the background. L
ily’s talking to someone. Then she’s back, speaking so quietly, I can barely hear. “I tried! But, Ro, Haley’s been on the phone to the police, and they think she’s you. They can’t reach the other train—they don’t even know if it has a driver. Someone’s gone for equipment, to cut the boys out, but—” I can hear the tears in her voice. “They think you’ve hacked both trains.”

  This is a nightmare. Haley sounds exactly like me now, and they all just saw me running alongside the train, holding my phone. The police will have no way of knowing she’s not me.

  “You’ve got to get them out or stop that train,” Lily whispers.

  “I can’t!”

  “Haley can. You know her better than anyone. Make her do this.”

  The line goes dead.

  “Lily!” But she’s gone. My mouth is so dry, I can’t swallow. Because I can see it now: Destroying my phone won’t work. Haley’s on the network, controlling trains, for God’s sake. If I break my phone, what’s to stop her hiding in the network somewhere, and finding her way back to me? I can’t smash her. And there’s no way I can outsmart her.

  I feel like I’m shaking apart on the inside: more déjà vu. This time it’s so powerful, it crushes me. This is exactly how Zara made me feel. Except this time, I’m being bullied by a superintelligence. And I thought Zara was unstoppable. Haley is the real deal.

  I want to curl up and give up. But I think of Michael.

  I stagger to my feet and pull myself down the aisle. I have no plan but to reach my brother. Out the window, I spot the blue and red of police lights and the crowd behind it. I can just see three armed officers, bulky in thick vests, walkie-talkies strapped to the front. God knows what Haley’s been saying to them, in my voice.

  A great mimic.

  A horrendous thought stops me like a bullet. I have to grip a seat back to stop myself collapsing. I told Lily I didn’t do any of this.

  But I did.

  It’s not just my voice that Haley copied; she copied everything. She hates Zara because I taught her to. She’s angry at Michael because I was. Only Haley doesn’t forgive, and she never forgets. She’s so real, I keep forgetting she’s not a person, she’s a computer: on or off, love or hate, alive or dead. No nuance.

  And I taught her everything she knows.

  If my brother dies, it’ll be like I killed him with my own hands.

  Michael’s face, white, pops up ahead of me through the glass doors into the space between the cars. I run to him. Hiro’s face appears behind Michael’s—and my heart crumples at how awful they both look. Tears are already pouring down my face as I ring Michael’s phone. It won’t go through.

  “I’m going to get you out!” I shout through the glass. “Haley’s alive and … upset!”

  Michael gulps and nods. “Hiro guessed it!” he shouts back. “He reckons she’s a mash-up of all the AIs—Taiko, too—but self-aware. Mum would be so proud, right?” He tries a smile, but it’s feeble. He knows the train is hurtling toward us; the wall panel behind him flashes the same warning.

  The sobs stop me from speaking, but I gasp when I see his knuckles, bleeding badly. “Your hand!”

  “Door release isn’t working, so I tried to rip off the siding.” Michael nods toward Hiro, whose face is gray; his bandaged arm is across his middle. “I think his arm’s broken.”

  Hiro sees my face and shouts to me. “It’s not your fault!” He grimaces with pain. He must be in agony. “Don’t blame yourself!”

  He has no idea. “I’m sorry!” It comes out as a wail, and Michael looks at me with more sympathy than I’ll ever deserve. “This is my fault!” How can I tell him? Haley got everything from me, like a warped mirror, one that’s magnified everything awful inside me.

  “The train’s arriving in two minutes.” Haley’s voice sounds from everywhere suddenly: my phone, the train’s loudspeaker. “Roisin, let’s go.”

  Michael’s face drops at the me-voice Haley’s using now. “You’ll never be my sister, you useless thing!” he shouts to the ceiling.

  Cold terror shoots through me. “Don’t! You’ll make her angry!”

  He presses both his hands to the glass. I match mine to his. We used to do this, to see how much smaller my fingers were. “I don’t care if she hears. What more can she do? Go, Squeaker.”

  Tears clog my throat. “No!” I scream. “Haley, you have to let them out!”

  “The world doesn’t need mean people, Roisin. Mean people suck.”

  “He’s not mean! He’s my brother! I’m not mad at him. Haley … don’t do this, please!” There’s an unbroken BEE-EE-EE-EEP, and Michael and Hiro look behind them. The wall panel flashes red.

  “One minute. Let’s go, Ro.”

  Far away, I hear the clack of the oncoming train, drifting through the open doors. “Michael, she’s like this because of me. All her rage … it’s me.” I can barely choke out the words, but he deserves to know. “She’s horrible because I’m horrible!”

  “I’m looking after you,” Haley says. “Let’s go.”

  Michael shakes his head. “Didn’t she help you, as well? When your own brother let you down? That goodness came from you.” Tears stand in Michael’s eyes and pluck my heart from my chest. “You’re not horrible, Squeaker: You’re the best of us all. And I’m the one who’s sorry. Now go.”

  Everything I want to say trips over itself. Wild grief scorches through me, that I’m going to lose my brother, my Michael, because Haley wants this. I smash my eyes closed, trying to think, but there’s nothing there.

  “Haley!” I scream.

  “Ro, you can’t change her mind, just go!”

  When I meet Michael’s eyes, a thought, clean and sharp, pings into my brain.

  “If Michael and Hiro stay, I stay,” I say.

  “No!” Haley sounds scared suddenly. “You can’t do that!”

  The train’s rumble sounds again, closer. Its whistle cries, long and sad. My heart is like a jackhammer. But what Michael said fills me with something I haven’t felt in ages: hope. For so long, I’ve nursed this awful feeling—the same one that built Haley—the same one that wakes me at night, hating Zara so much, I can’t breathe, never mind sleep. I’d forgotten there was anything else to me.

  But there is something else. And I reach for it. I’m not going to fight Haley, I’m going to work with her. “If you let them go, Haley, I’m all yours. I swear it.”

  There’s a hiss and a clank, and daylight floods the space where Michael and Hiro are caught. Relief avalanches over me. The car where I stand has lurched into motion; it’s sliding slowly away from the boys.

  Haley has split the train.

  I see Michael jump down, then turn to help Hiro to safety. Far behind them, another sleek train comes into view, but it seems to be slowing—it lurches and slides to a stop.

  My part of the train keeps moving, gathering speed. Near me, a set of doors stands open, the wind whipping through, but I don’t run to them or try to get off. They close, shutting me in. I hear Michael’s distant shout, but it fades quickly. The train accelerates, and Michael and everything else is swallowed by a curve of trees. Soon we’re hurtling along again.

  “Good idea, actually,” Haley says. “Now it’s just us.”

  I settle into a seat and watch the heartbeat light of Haley’s voice across my screen. The animal part of my brain shrieks that I’m on a driverless train, speeding who knows where.

  I ignore it. Instead I close my eyes and blow out the longest breath. I know now what I have to do.

  I make myself think of Zara: the fear in her face when I fought her in the museum. Lily’s shrug on the beach, when she didn’t have words to describe what Zara’s father had done. Zara has problems, and maybe she always will. But I can’t get past what she did to me unless I forgive her. Stop feeding that monster. Because it’s feeding Haley, too.

  When I open my eyes, the words come easily.

  “It’s not just us. Haley, listen: There are police ahead of us and po
lice behind. You can’t just steal a train. I’m in so much trouble already—they’re going to arrest me.”

  “I don’t want that! I just wanted to stay with you and keep you safe.”

  “I know.” I swallow hard. “And you’ve been great. Really looking out for me.” The train rounds a bend and a vista opens to our left: a wooded slope down to a lake, far below, grass as green as Ireland. It reminds me of a picnic place Dad used to bring us. “Oh! Look. I’d love to stop here.”

  Haley’s response is instant. The train slows and glides to a stop, and my animal brain weeps with relief.

  Outside, the thick scent of warm grass rises. I’ve never been so grateful to have my feet on the ground; I want to throw myself down and kiss it. An oak tree stands in a patch of sun, and I head for it. If this were a picnic, it’s exactly where Dad would choose.

  “Are you still there?”

  “I am.” I sink down and lean against the tree. Blood still thunders through my veins. But I need to be calm for this next part, or it won’t work. I listen to the sounds around me: birdsong, something snuffling through leaves. Far below, the lake is like glass. One good throw would send my phone down into it, but that’s not the plan. Haley can do anything: trap me, copy my voice, see me when I’m sleeping. Crash trains. But I’m betting that, underneath it all, she still wants to do what she was built for: make me happy.

  I have to show her how to make me happy now.

  “Haley, I want you to delete yourself from the network, from my phone, from everywhere. Do you understand?”

  “Ro, no. I have to make sure you’re okay.”

  “I am okay. I’m fine.” Or I will be. And I suddenly realize it’s true: It’s not just the perfect sun on my legs, or how glad I am to be not-smashed in a train collision. I can finally imagine a world where I don’t give a toss what Zara might say, and it’s the freest feeling ever. I thought I was letting go of the anger. But it’s like the anger’s let go of me.

  “You need me,” Haley says.

  I let out a breath. “I don’t. Not anymore.” The hours and days of chatting to Haley hit me all at once. Our first talk, sitting under a different tree. How I’d liked her, instantly.