by S. Harrison
That is the last thing I remember before waking up in Dr. Pierce’s lab. Honestly, it’s a miracle that I’m alive. If everyone hadn’t pulled me out of that rubble and dragged me underground, I surely would’ve died right here on this promenade. My classmates, Dr. Pierce, Percy, and the Professor . . . all of them saved my life.
“Noooo,” whispers a voice. “It was meeeee.”
It sounded like it came from right behind me. Startled, I skid to a stop and quickly look back over my shoulder. Who was that? Could someone actually still be alive among all this rubble?
“Hello?” I call out, and then I wait, listening intently.
There’s no answer.
The only sounds I hear are my own breathing, my heart beating, the breeze rustling the cherry trees on the other side of the promenade, and the footsteps of the others as they jog on ahead.
The voice was very quiet, but it sounded close. I scan around my immediate vicinity, and I don’t see any nooks or crannies in the surrounding debris that look big enough to trap a survivor inside. What I heard was probably just the wind. Or maybe the stress of the situation is messing with my imagination—yes, that has to be it—and to make things worse, it’s causing me to fall behind. I set off again, quickening my pace to catch up to Brody, but I only manage to run a few yards when it suddenly happens again.
“I saved yooou,” murmurs a ghostly voice.
I shudder with fright and halt in my tracks. I definitely heard it that time. I know I did. It was as clear as if someone were standing right beside me, and I’m not ashamed to admit that it’s seriously freaking me out.
“Who’s there?” I whisper anxiously. I look to the right. The promenade curves away in the other direction, but apart from sections of fallen track, it’s empty. There’s no one there.
“Yooou,” says the voice, and my heart starts drumming in my chest as I spin on my heels and stare back the way we came. It is a survivor!
“Hello?” I call out again. “I can hear you! Where are you?”
I look back and scan the top ridge of the fallen tracks we climbed over. There’s no one there. I look the other way along the promenade again. There’s no movement, just the same carnage of deactivated Drones and mutilated human remains wrapped in rags of tattered military uniforms. Nothing’s changed.
“Is anybody there?” I shout, just to make sure.
Silence.
Maybe I’m losing it? Sure, a damned monorail track fell on my head, but I didn’t think getting knocked unconscious could make someone go insane. Could it? Pull yourself together, Finn. You’re not crazy. It’s just your imagination. Concentrate on the mission. Everyone’s lives depend on it.
I take a deep, cleansing breath, and I’m about to carry on running when a churning nausea swells in my gut and pushes up into my throat. “Yooou,” whispers the voice. I slowly and cautiously turn 360 degrees, nervously searching my surroundings yet again. I know there’s nobody there; I can see that with my own eyes, but it still doesn’t stop me from letting out a quiet groan of distress.
The voice is not real. I didn’t really hear it. It’s all in my head.
Admitting that my mind might be unraveling doesn’t exactly instill me with confidence, and as I set off again to catch up with the others, I can’t help wondering whether Jonah had a point when he insisted that I stay in the lab. Up ahead, Brody is glancing back at me as he goes, no doubt wondering why I’m lagging so far behind. I run on, trying to bolster my resolve with a rapid chain of sharp, determined breaths, but I’ve only taken a few strides when something suddenly catches the corner of my eye.
It’s a human figure.
I skid to an abrupt stop and look in its direction, but as I focus properly on the figure, my whole body instantly goes numb, and my eyes widen with disbelief. I screw them shut, trying to erase the impossible, but when I open them again, she’s still there, about sixty yards away, standing on the promenade among that gruesome scatter of crushed and mutilated bodies.
A rising sense of dread begins bubbling up through a deep pool of confusion, and my heart begins pounding in my chest as she slowly raises her bowed head. Errant strands of hair trail across a face that’s smeared and dripping with blood from brow to chin. Her school uniform is ripped and tattered, her legs are striped with cuts and bleeding gashes, and one of her feet is twisted almost all the way backward at the ankle. Even in the dim light I can somehow see her eyes. They’re dark blue, but they almost seem black, and as she looks at me, it feels as if they’re burrowing into my soul. It’s true. I am losing my mind. This simply cannot be real, but at the same time I can’t deny what I’m seeing. That horribly brutalized and broken girl standing in the midst of all that death and destruction . . . is me.
CHAPTER EIGHT
My mind has finally fractured and spewed out a memory so vivid it’s become a full-blown hallucination, a horrific mirror image of myself, complete with torn flesh and red-splattered skin. If that’s even slightly close to the state I was in when they found me in the rubble, I can see why everyone was so surprised that I survived. The gruesome vision looks so real, as if the other me is actually standing on the promenade, but as I stare at my bloodied and broken image from the past, the already intensely bizarre mirage becomes even more disturbing when the space around her begins to ripple, like heat is rising from her body and distorting the air.
Something grips my insides, tightening my gut into a sickening bunch. That isn’t heat emanating from her; it’s hatred, anger, a seething rage unlike anything I’ve ever felt before, and at that very moment the realization stabs me like a blade between the ribs. This is personal. This is intentional. What I’m seeing is definitely a hallucination, but this is not a vision of a memory, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out exactly who that girl over there is.
Infinity glares right at me and raises her arm, and I recoil with revulsion as, instead of fingers, she points at me with a bloody stump at the end of her wrist. She looks like she’s sixty yards away, but when she speaks I can hear her voice so clearly the cool night breeze could easily be her breath against my face.
“You . . . are nothing . . . without me,” she rasps.
I can’t move. I can’t even blink. Somehow she’s invading my senses, and I feel powerless to escape the deluge of poisonous resentment that’s rushing out of her and flowing like a river into every corner of my being. Infinity. All of a sudden that name has a new and awful meaning as her anger seems to pour from a void of limitless darkness inside her, slithering and twisting across the distance between us and biting into my soul like a venomous snake.
Infinity’s face twists into a gruesome snarl, and I gasp out loud as, suddenly, the sixty yards separating us vanishes in the blink of an eye, and she’s standing right in front of me. Her arm whips through the air, and her palm slams into my throat as her fingers grasp tightly around my neck. Her grip is so strong I can’t breathe.
I grab her wrist and try to pry myself free, but her strength is inhuman, and she forces me to the ground, choking me with her right hand as she smears the fleshy severed stump of her left wrist against my cheek. I can feel the jagged end of bone pushing into my skin as blood drips from her face onto mine. Wild panic surges through me, and I struggle for breath as I clutch at her fingers, but she’s far too strong, and I can’t pry them loose.
This isn’t real. It’s all in my mind. This isn’t real. It’s all in my mind.
As I yell the words over and over in my head, Infinity glowers down at me, her mouth curls into a menacing sneer, and blood spits from her lips as she answers my thoughts as if she heard me thinking them. “I’m just as real as you are, Finn,” she hisses, and as I glare up into her hate-filled eyes, her fingers tighten even more around my throat. “The difference is, you’re weak . . . and I’m strong.”
“Stop. Please,” I gasp through clenched teeth.
“No. I’ll never stop,” she rasps, flecking blood into my eyes with every syllable. “This body is mi
ne. You don’t deserve it. I’ve seen your memories, Finn. While you whimpered and cried yourself to sleep all your life, I was the one who always stepped up. I was the one who accepted the truths that you were too afraid to face. I made the hard decisions. I’ve been the one who had to fight for both of us. Remember? Do you remember!?”
The waves of anger radiating all around Infinity suddenly intensify and surge forth from her body like a ferocious wind. I shut my eyes tightly as the rage flurries over me, rippling my clothes and skin and roaring in my ears. Then, as if a door has been slammed shut, everything goes instantly silent.
I open my eyes, and I’m a little girl again, standing at the door of the red drawing room in the east wing of Blackstone Manor. With one patent-leather shoe buckled on my foot and my torn dress hanging loosely by my side, I raise Jonah’s gun and open fire. A vase shatters into pebbles of crystal shrapnel. I pull the trigger again, and a tumbler of brown liquor bursts in a cloud of twinkling glass. There’s a tangled blur of dodging and ducking men grabbing at one another, throwing themselves behind sofas and armchairs and sprawling across food-laden tables. Grown men are screaming and running and cowering and hiding while I gleefully stand in the doorway, basking in the warm glow of the manic pandemonium. I let loose three shots over their heads, just for the fun of it. Then I close my eyes, throw my head back, and laugh out loud in absolute childish joy.
My happy chuckling becomes coughing, then the coughing becomes gagging, and when I open my eyes again, the choking sounds are coming from my own mouth as Infinity’s gruesome, bloodstained face bears down on me.
“I pulled that trigger. Not you. Every risk you ever took, every time you thought you were being brave . . . it wasn’t you, Finn. It was me. You’re nothing but a parasite, clinging to the inside of my skull like a tumor, infecting me with your useless emotions. If it wasn’t for me, you’d already be dead. You’re alive because I kept us alive, you spoiled little bitch, and soon I’m gonna rip you out of my head and erase your whole pathetic existence!”
I summon all the strength I have as I grasp Infinity’s wrist with both hands, glare up into her eyes, and hiss through my teeth, “Get . . . the . . . hell . . . off me!”
I rip her clawing fingers away from my neck and gasp a huge breath as Brody yells from up ahead, “Finn! What are you doing? Let’s go!”
With my heart drumming in my chest, I look toward him, then bewilderedly from side to side. I’m not pinned to the ground; I’m standing upright. Infinity’s hand is not inches from my throat. In fact she’s nowhere to be seen. I touch my face and look down at my fingers. There are no drips of blood, my neck feels completely fine, and I suddenly realize that I’ve run clear across the promenade, all the way to the line of cherry-blossom trees on the other side. I look back over my shoulder, and there’s another pile of rubble a few feet behind me that I must have climbed over, but for the life of me, I don’t remember doing it at all.
“What are you doing?” shouts Brody. “C’mon!”
My hands tremble as I attempt to gather my brutally frazzled nerves and wrap my head around the fact that what I just experienced really was only in my mind. As vivid and wholly disturbing as it was, it was only a hallucination. But oh my god . . . it felt like Infinity was actually here.
I may be messed up, but at least I know now that I’m not going crazy. Infinity is trying to escape from a dark corner of our brain, and she’s making a hell of a mess up there in the process, but she was right about one thing; she is strong. I felt it. She’s burning with hatred and frightening determination.
I honestly have no idea how I’m keeping her from fully emerging, and it may only be a matter of time before she finds a way to regain control of my body, but if that’s the way she wants to play it, then I’m gonna do my damnedest to fight her tooth and nail all the way. She wants to get rid of me; she made that very clear, and it sounded like she knows how to do it.
But I’m not as weak as you think I am, Infinity. You don’t scare me. And if I have to shoot myself in the head to stop you from winning, then that’s exactly what I’m prepared to do. I’ll take us both down, you psycho bitch.
“Hurry up!” shouts Brody. He’s standing on a narrow white path about fifty yards ahead, waiting for me to catch up, and in the distance I can see Bit and Dr. Pierce are even farther along, nearing the foot of the hill that leads up to the dome. “Bit said the R.A.M. has passed the second marker. I told her and Dr. Pierce to keep going!”
“OK, I’m coming!” I yell back. I’m still more than a little shaken up, but Infinity clawing her way through my head or not, we need to complete this mission. I set off running again, heading between two cherry trees and across a short stretch of sand along the border of the promenade to the white concrete path. It snakes uphill into the distance through wide swaths of manicured grass and landscaped patches of shrubs and flowers. I quicken my pace along the path, taking in lungfuls of crisp night air to clear my head and push the thought of Infinity as far down inside me as I can. Right now I’m in control, not her. And while I command this body, I’m gonna carry on.
The narrow pavement that I’m running on is lined on either side with low-set lamps that cast alternating strips of light and dark across the path. Up ahead, Brody is standing right beside a lamp, and I can clearly see that he’s anxious and eager to leave as he glares toward the far end of the promenade, scanning the gaps between the ravaged buildings for any sign of the mechanoid.
I’ve covered half the distance to Brody when I notice something move in the shadows on the pavement behind him. A dark shape has appeared from behind a shrub near the edge of the path. I’m too far away to tell exactly what it is, but I’m suddenly hit with a massive surge of dread. There’s only one thing that it could possibly be.
My eyes fixate on the shape, and my dread becomes panic. I knew they were out there somewhere, but Blackstone Technologies covers a large area, and I was hoping like hell that we could make it to the dome without having to face one of those things. All I can think of is Gazelle, her mind taken from her, forced against her good nature to kill poor, innocent Jenny. And now one of those goddamn brain spiders is curled up on the path behind Brody, preparing to do exactly the same thing to him.
He has his back to it.
That’s why he doesn’t see it.
Any thoughts of my encounter with Infinity are immediately shunted into the back of my mind as I break from a run into a frenzied sprint, and I yell at the top of my lungs, “Brody! Behind you!”
He looks in my direction, momentarily confused, then, heeding my frantic warning, he looks over his shoulder. Brody turns back to me with a frown while I blade my arms through the air, straying from the winding path as I cut the corners and dash across the grass toward him. Why isn’t he running? Did he not see it? Dr. Pierce said they seek out movement, but does he actually think it will leave him alone if he stands perfectly still? It can still see your body heat, you idiot! Run dammit! Now is not the time to prove how brave you are!
The moment those last words enter my mind, pockets of memories begin flooding back to me in rapid succession, flicking through my head in time with my frantic footsteps.
I remember struggling for breath as a silver Blackstone Drone marched toward me, its arm outstretched, reaching down to grab me. Its fingers were inches from my throat when suddenly there was a glossy white flash and a loud cracking sound, and there stood Brody, slamming what was left of a broken chair into the Drone’s back.
More images pulse forth from the haze, and this time I’m surrounded by even more Drones, but these ones are huge, with massive, broad shoulders and V-shaped torsos. Blood is in my eyes, half blinding me. The Drones almost have me, and there’s absolutely nothing I can do, when suddenly someone grabs the collar of my shirt and drags me into an air duct, saving my life.
It was Brody.
Another memory flashes, and I see him again, red faced and breathing hard, struggling but never giving up as he piggybacked Dea
n away from danger without being asked. It was also Brody who, barely half an hour ago, was standing proudly at Bit’s side, declaring he’d protect her with his life. And he meant it.
Only yesterday I saw him as a bully, Brent’s lead-footed sidekick and dim-witted lackey. But now, it’s clear that any brief moment away from Brent’s ego and influence lets Brody’s true nature shine from behind the mask he’s pressured to wear. He really is one of the good guys, and I’m not gonna let a robotic abomination latch on to his skull and take away another hero.
I remember when we were trapped in the clean room all those hours ago while Nanny Theresa’s mind hacked into that Drone Template. Its black plastic mask morphed into a perfect likeness of her wrinkled, leathery face, and she took control of its robotic body to hold me down, break my fingers, and strangle the breath from me. I surely would’ve died if it weren’t for Brody leaping through the air without hesitation, shoulder barging the possessed android to the ground. And now, if he isn’t gonna move, that’s exactly what I’m gonna do to him before that Lobot has a chance to pounce on his shoulders and turn him against us.
I’m focusing directly on Brody’s face as I barrel toward him at top speed. Suddenly his eyes go wide, and he holds his hands up in front of him as the realization dawns that I’m not gonna stop. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the dark thing shuffle forward to attack as I dive through the air and thump into Brody, knocking the wind out of him as I sweep him completely off his feet and tackle him onto the grass. Both of us roll over and over. As we come to a stop, Brody glares up at me bewilderedly.
“What did you do that for?” he groans through his teeth as he clutches at his side. There’s no time to answer as I quickly jump up and thrust my hand into my satchel. My fingers scramble to find the handle of the flashlight. It’s the closest thing I have to a weapon, so I whip it from the bag and stare back toward the path, panting for breath as I hold it high over my head like a club.