Project Recollection

by A A Woods

  A rumbling crash vibrates in the distance, but you ignore it, skipping back from the man’s reach with a casual laugh.

  “How’s that door coming, Jonah?” you call.

  The rainbow-haired boy behind you throws a terrified look over one shoulder, his banded cable catching the light where it’s plugged into the wall. You almost miss his response as a shriek rises to your right. A Gamer—wild-haired, wide-eyed, and wielding a stolen stun-baton—goes down beneath the tackling heft of a guard.

  “Almost got it!”

  “Well hurry up and…”

  But your voice trails off as the lights flicker. The fluorescent bulbs fail, starved of their power, pulsing like a message you can’t read. But whatever it means, it’s enough to make every face turn up, every pair of eyebrows pull together. Twelve Gamers and the three ProRec guards still on their feet pause, holding their breaths as the shadows dance like malicious spirits.

  The wailing alarms go silent.

  A deep, cultured voice fills the hallway, making the hair on your arms stand tall.

  “Khalidah Abergel, report to the lower labs at once. Khalidah Abergel, report to the labs in sub-level two.”

  There’s a thump as someone uses the distraction to stun one of the guards. You don’t react. You only swallow, heart pounding, sweat beading beneath your loose hair. But the feeling coursing through you is more than just the fight, more than just the exertion of keeping ProRec guards at bay.

  “Tora.” Your voice is a whisper, a mutter so soft that no one else hears.

  “What was that?” asks a ferocious-looking Gamer with freckles.

  “I got it!” your friend shouts.

  There’s a ding and a shift of air behind you. You hear the shriek of wind through empty spaces, a lonely sound of abandonment.

  The Tunnels.

  Gamers burst into motion, disappearing into the darkness as if swallowed, carrying their unconscious fellows between them.

  But you don’t move.

  “Miss Abergel,” says the guard you were just pummeling, holding out his hands in supplication. “Please, if you would just—”

  You crunch a fist into his face and send him reeling into the wall.

  The last ProRec Guard is advancing. His helmet catches the flickering light. He’s huge and menacing and has his stun-gun trained right on your face. You bounce, jaw tight, breath coming out in a ripped, guttural snarl.

  “You’ve always been an uppity—”

  And then he goes down, crumpling like paper.

  The rainbow-haired boy stands there, wielding a crackling baton, supporting the dazed, wild-looking girl.

  “Khali?” he asks as the Gamers behind him vanish like skittering insects.

  You’re already moving away.

  “Go ahead,” you call without turning, fingers clenched tight. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  “Hey, wait!”

  You don’t look back as you stalk into the hallway, into the depths of the ProRec basement, heading toward something.

  Or someone.

  Tora

  Saturday, September 22nd, 2195

  10:36 P.M. EST

  I fall to my knees, Khali’s PAP tumbling from my numb fingers and swinging against my side.

  Zhu’s body hasn’t moved, but I can feel the difference without even looking. It’s in the air around him, in the sudden, hollow, horrible emptiness. My brother was a light, something that could draw moths and warm even the coldest corners of the world. But now, his body is frosty, his presence a spreading chill. The alarms have gone silent and the lack of noise only seems to emphasize what’s gone.

  “Undo it,” I rasp.

  “I’m afraid I can’t. There’s no program to retrieve a dissipated consciousness.”

  Her words are clinical and sterile, filling the space between us like the wings of a ghost.

  “Bitch,” I breathe, my head ringing, my PAP glaring uselessly at the floor.

  Yasmin takes a deep breath. “You don’t know the exquisite pain of motherhood, Mei. But I’d imagine Liling would understand. The love I have for my daughter has no limits, no laws, no restrictions. When I learned that Khalidah was going to die, I knew I would tear this whole city apart to save her. What do I care about the people out there? Memory addicts, Gamers. Even the investors upstairs don’t mean anything compared to my child.”

  My head is swinging back and forth like a pendulum, like I can deny her words. Because she’s wrong. Parental love does have limits. I’ve lived it every day for the last six months. I’ve watched Mom refuse to claw her way out of addiction for me. Sink into the depression of a lost son and ignore the child who’s still there. I’ve seen my father turn away because of something I am, something I can’t help.

  But would I change things, if I could?

  Would I prefer this?

  I lift my head, clench my jaw.

  “You’re wrong,” I spit. “What you’re doing, it’s not love. It’s selfishness.”

  Yasmin sneers. “What’s the difference?”

  I tilt forward, as if I can force her to see reason, force my brother back into his body.

  But the sound of footsteps makes me freeze.

  Someone is barreling down the hallway, bare feet slapping the floor at a raw sprint.

  “About time,” Yasmin says, shifting with a rustle of silk.

  From the beveled corner of my PAP’s camera, I watch Khali skid into the room, cheeks flushed, hair disheveled, eyes electric. I’m too numb to react as she steps up next to me.

  “Welcome, daughter,” Yasmin says in that same dead voice.

  Khali’s footsteps stop.

  I grab the handheld in time to see her face drain of color.

  “What have you done?” she whispers.

  “What I must.” Yasmin paces until she’s above Zhu’s head, considering us like a doctor over her patient.

  Khali doesn’t move, watching the woman who created her like she would a dangerous animal.

  Yasmin continues, undeterred by the hate in Khali’s eyes. “I know you want nothing to do with me. You rejected the projects I started to save your life, ran away, severed ties. And perhaps I can respect that. But in the past few months, I have begun to wonder if you’d really turn down the chance to live if it was properly presented. If the choice was already made and you only had to accept.”

  Yasmin gestures to my brother’s body as if it’s a spread of delicacies. My fists clench painfully at my sides, fingers curling over the PAP, but Khali is moving. Stepping up to the table.

  The air turns icy in my lungs as she faces her mother, turning away from me.

  Yasmin continues.

  “I had intended to find you a more… suitable body. But I think this one is healthy enough for our purposes.”

  I can’t see Khali’s face and I want to scream, call her back. But I’m frozen, watching this exchange as if underwater. As if I’m on another planet.

  Khali’s fingers run along the table.

  “You killed him,” she whispers.

  “I cleared the body. His mind is now ready to accept its next inhabitant.”

  Khali tilts her head up and I catch the rim of her expression, lit by the septic glow of the fluorescent lights. Her rage and pain can barely conceal something more hideous than anything I’ve seen today.

  Temptation.

  She glances at me and I’m motionless, trying desperately to puzzle out the sadness in her eyes. I can’t speak, can’t unclog the block in my throat.

  She wouldn’t, couldn’t…

  A treacherous voice rises from the empty well of my courage.

  Couldn’t she?

  Her eyes are on my face. They shift to the PAP in my hands, to my weakness.

  I wonder if she’s thinking of her own.

  “I’m so sorry, Tora,” Khali says in a whisper before hauling back and slapping Yasmin across the face.

  Tora

  Saturday, September 22nd, 2195

  10:4
1 P.M. EST

  The strike resonates, filling the room, echoing in the stillness.

  “How dare you do this for my sake,” Khali says, stalking forward. Yasmin’s expression is stoic as her daughter advances. “How dare you ruin so much because of me.”

  “You don’t get to choose who loves you.”

  “But I do choose who I love in return.”

  Khali stands tall above me, protective, and I let myself unravel in her shadow. My breathing catches. I wrap my fingers around Zhu’s toes, press my forehead into the bone-white table, choking on my own breath. Official voices speak over the building’s intercom. The police, responding, no doubt, to the alarms and summons of the frantic patrons. They’ll make their way down here soon.

  A tiny, burning kernel of vindictive pleasure forms in the back of my mind.

  I’ll tell them everything. All of Nova will know what happened here. I’ll make damn sure of it.

  Through Khali’s PAP, I see Yasmin’s lips twitch. Her head cocks to one side and there’s a dark imprint left by Khali’s hand on her cheek.

  “Have it your way then.” With a sudden, decisive movement, Yasmin plunges her own IRIS into Zhu’s port.

  “No!” I scream.

  There’s an explosion of white light. Khali stumbles backward, blinded, crashing into the far wall. Yasmin’s body becomes a taut wire, reverse-silhouetted by something around her, before her, inside her. I scramble along the table, toppling over in my haste to reach Yasmin’s IRIS. My fumbling, aching fingers find it, violently yank it out. But she’s already collapsing, her body as empty as a rag doll.

  The light fades.

  A shadow stretches over the tile beneath my knees and I tilt Khali’s PAP up, filled with terror.

  I see none of my brother in the man standing over me.

  Zhu’s body stretches as Yasmin tests out her new shape. She rolls his head, smiles with razor-blade cruelty that doesn’t belong on his face.

  “Marvelous,” she says through Zhu, his voice raspy from months of disuse. “Truly amazing.”

  I can’t take it anymore.

  Launching off my knees, I fall on her like a storm.

  “He was good!” I scream, pummeling her without knowing or caring where my fists land. “He was good and you stole him! Zhu was better than you’ll ever be, and I loved him and you—”

  With a snarl, Yasmin strikes back. She shoves me off her with surprising strength. My arms pinwheel. I land hard, my breath escaping. My IRIS yanks out of the PAP in my hand and I’m scrambling to plug it back in, but a bare foot collides with my stomach. The PAP skitters away. Another foot hits my chest and I wheeze.

  “Mom, stop!” Khali screams and there’s another body moving above me, but I can’t see. I struggle to breathe.

  “You’ve been a thorn in this company’s side long enough, Mei Sidana,” Yasmin growls, kicking me again.

  “Stop it!”

  There’s a shove, a crash, a clatter of tools. I hear the scrape of something metallic against the tile near my head. The scalpel being picked up? Fear flutters in my chest. I close my eyes, but the blackness doesn’t change. Doesn’t break. I’m trapped, helpless.

  But no, I’m not helpless.

  I’ve never been helpless.

  Khali taught me that.

  “Perhaps I should just force you, daughter mine,” Yasmin growls with Zhu’s voice. “I’m sure those other Gamers haven’t gone far.”

  “Never,” Khali spits.

  I’m on the floor, but my mind is in another place. Another darkness.

  You’re remarkable, Tora, and it’s not in spite of what ProRec took from you. It’s because of it.

  I grit my teeth and shove myself upright. Yasmin’s harsh laugh pinpoints her location. I focus on it, map the room in my head, try not to think about the weapon in her—his—hand.

  Something slides to my right.

  Bare foot on tile.

  I lunge, arms thrown wide.

  They wrap around twin columns—Zhu’s bony knees—and we go down together. Yasmin’s cry comes out as Zhu’s shout. A bright starburst of pain bursts on my shoulder as something sharp digs into bone. I scream. Claw free and roll away. My head is spinning, my heart pounding. Blood runs freely from an open gash on one scapula, drenching my tank top.

  I use my good arm to haul myself upright. My left hand hangs useless, pulsing with agony.

  “Tora!” Khali cries.

  Something moves, but it’s everywhere. The noise echoes in the tight room and I can’t think through the pain. I hear smacking feet, disappearing, even as Khali’s fingers wrap around my bicep. I snarl, stumbling upright. My arm is a single stinging line of pain.

  “You’re hurt!”

  I’m not listening. I’m shoving off the table, running after Yasmin, bouncing off the wall as I scramble into the darkness. I pause in the hallway and spin in a slow circle, frantically trying to hear Zhu’s footsteps.

  “No,” I chant, low and fierce and desperate. “No, no, no.”

  And then Khali’s there. “Come on!”

  She grabs my elbow and tugs me and we’re plunging forward, moving with catastrophic speed through the unknowable intestines of Project Recollection. But there are no footsteps. No sound to track. We reach a turn and Khali hesitates. Panic fills my skull as I think about Yasmin disappearing into the super-scraper the way she disappeared into my brother, escaping any consequence of what she did by wearing the face of someone else.

  “A port,” I gasp. “I need a port.”

  Khali yanks me to the side, presses my hand to the wall. There. Three chrome ports embedded in a maintenance hatch. I slam my IRIS tip into one, tumble into their mainframe. In my haste, I feel their security measures ripping through me like barbed wire, but I ignore them. There’s no time to be careful. With frantic mental claws I rake through the super-scraper’s system, hunting for my brother’s fleeing body.

  In a devastated lobby strewn with broken glass, the city police have crashed like a wave over the violent intruders, sending Kitzima, the Vixens, and the Purists into a sprinting retreat.

  In the ballroom, harried civilians in elegant gowns are fighting to be first in the elevator, shouting over the wait staff.

  In the upper offices, night-shift employees type frantically on data pads and I can feel the distant burn of their virus as it sweeps through the mainframe, blazing along lines of dangerous information like disease along a neuron.

  Destroying evidence.

  Doesn’t matter.

  Come on, come on.

  Desperation is an acrid taste in my mouth. With every second, Yasmin gets further away. I can’t let that happen, can’t let her escape.

  My attention catches on movement in a vast, still chamber. It’s a production warehouse, attached to the sub-levels by a clear glass breezeway.

  One white-clad figure is sprinting through the machinery.

  I slip into the factory like a ghost, feel the creak of mechanical arms coming to life. I stretch hundreds of fingers, a surgeon slipping on my gloves.

  Yasmin stumbles to a halt.

  I’m ready to kill and she knows it. A red rage washes over me, overwhelming my senses, thrilling at the idea of smearing my brother’s stolen body all over the concrete floor…

  Zhu’s head tilts up and she looks at me through those beautiful blue eyes. Piercing. Knowing.

  Wrong.

  “Peaches.”

  I gasp.

  The word pierces the bubble of my rage. Every bit of machinery in the warehouse is humming, waiting for an order I can’t give.

  Peaches.

  It’s his code-word, coming to me through the grip of Yasmin’s mind.

  What if he’s still in there?

  What if he’s not gone?

  I rock back on my heels, watching the scene as if through someone else’s memory as Yasmin ducks her head, darts between my stretching mechanical fingers, and vanishes into the sprawling, gaping, endless shadows beneath the city
of Nova.

  I begin to shake as I unplug myself from the wall.

  “Tora?”

  When I open my mouth to answer, only bile comes up.

  I heave until I’m empty, until I am nothing but air. Kind, tentative fingers run along the ridges of my spine. Khali’s voice is hollow and haunted, but it still wraps me like a blanket, smooths my jagged edges.

  “I’m sorry, Tora,” Khali rasps. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  Her forehead comes to rest against my neck, clammy with sweat. Her arms bracket mine as I lean against the wall. And I don’t need to see, don’t even want to, because I can’t think outside of this space, this merciful pocket of warmth. I can’t think at all, because if I do, I’ll break apart and float away and disappear. Tears flood my useless eyes but there’s a tiny, almost invisible glimmer in the crushing hopelessness because she’s there, curled around me, and we fit together like two mismatched pieces in the puzzle of the world.

  Tora

  Saturday, September 22nd, 2195

  10:50 P.M. EST

  Even though I can’t see the body, I feel the emptiness. There’s a vacant space where something should be, a silence where there should be noise. Across the lab table, I hear Khali breathing. Khali moving. All the infinitesimal, microscopic things that make a person alive, there in one, absent in the other.

  I’ve never witnessed death before, and to smell it now, on the body of an enemy…

  I don’t know what to feel.

  “She’s still warm.”

  Khali’s voice is as numb as I feel, her feet almost silent as she steps around Yasmin’s body. Nausea rolls through me as I imagine Khali touching her mother, feeling the residual warmth on dark skin. I clutch my aching arm to my chest and focus on the gash in my shoulder to distract myself from the crushing failure.

  “I wish I could have stopped her, Tora… Mei. I wish I’d known.”