by Tony LaRocca
The huge, emaciated wasp that had its feelers in his skull resembled the mutants of the desert, except that it stood on its rear legs, its abdomen and stinger resting on the floor. Its transparent wings fluttered as it stirred his brain through tiny holes in his cranium. Its face was insectile, but at the same time, had the same structure and shape as its maker.
The image shook as Brandon’s chair gained speed. He heard his captor cry out in Russian as it rammed into the monstrosity, and knocked it to the floor. Its antennae ripped from his skull with a sucking noise. He bolted up, shouting in pain as all of his wandering mind returned to his body. He clutched the side rail of his bed as the lab spun around him.
Talya’s skin melted away, revealing the brilliant white star at her center. Her liquid flesh was the color of cream, streaked with oily fractals of red. It streamed across the room as if shot from a fire hose, and surged down his throat.
He gagged as his hands shot to his neck. It felt as if a nest of worms were squirming down his esophagus. He tried to prop himself up on his side, but lost his balance. He fell to the floor, smacking his face upon the tile.
He retched as his skin broke out in weeping sores. A stench that reminded him of burnt shrimp filled the air. He raised his feverish head, and saw that Brandon had wedged his chair on top of the insect. The hover–disk at its bottom was at full blast, burning the creature to cinders.
He could feel his lymph nodes pushing out from his neck, groin, and armpits. He brushed them with his fingertips, and winced. They had swelled into stones the size of eggs. His glowing muscles radiated heat, as if he were being baked. Brackish sweat flowed from his pores, covering his body in a glistening sheen. He forced himself onto his back, and looked up at the turret on the ceiling. He half–closed his eyes, focusing on the blinking light within its camera. If he had taken on his father’s abilities once, he could do so again.
Talya stepped over him, her body a blazing cyclone of fire. He glanced at his blistered hands, biting back a scream as his rotting flesh peeled from his fingers. It’s like the fog in the catacombs, he thought, but why didn’t it harm me the first —
“You tricked him,” she said. “Brandon says that you’re not Malachi, but I know better. Now he’ll have to be punished, because of you. Where is Jonathan? He should be here. What have you done to him?”
He choked back the acid that crept into his throat, and concentrated on the electronic eye above. “I keep telling you,” he said through clenched teeth, “I’m not General Jaeger. I’m Matthew. I’m his son. I’m sick of fighting your imagination, and what you insist is real. Let me go.”
“Liar! Jonathan, where are you?”
Do it, his inner voice commanded, and his point of focus flew from between his eyes, and into the security system.
He looked down at the scene below. He could see his body convulsing upon the floor, his diseased skin flaking from his bones. Was his zhivoi–paint plagued as well? He flowed his sense of self from the camera into its connected turret. Its cold, steel barrel felt as if it were an extension of his arm. He aimed at the swirling flames of Talya’s body, and fired.
A scarlet needle erupted from the turret’s muzzle. It sliced through the core of her white fire, splintering it into prismatic rays. She writhed, threw her luminescent head back, and screamed in silence. He watched as the liquid of her flesh streamed from his mouth, nose, and pores. Her epidermal slurry flew back through the air, and enveloped her incandescent form.
His consciousness snapped back into his body. The open sores that marred his skin began to heal as his muscles reknitted themselves around his fingers.
The laser turret stopped its assault the moment his mind left its circuits. Talya lay on the floor, her hands clutching her belly. How long did he have before she regained her strength? He grabbed the frame of the cot, and pulled himself to his feet. He lurched towards the door with staggering steps.
Something rammed into him from behind, knocking him back to the floor. He scurried into the corner as Brandon’s chair zoomed in from above. The fierce light from its anti–grav disk stung his eyes. He’s going to burn me, he thought. He’s going to blast me, just like I made him do to her bug.
He did not have the time or the strength to breach the machine’s workings again. He glanced at his withered hand. His nanomachines were hard at work reversing the effects of Talya’s pestilence, but it was still blistered and scarred. Would one more blister matter? He squirmed alongside the bottom of the chair, pulled back his fist, and punched.
His knuckles broke through the focusing lens of the hover–disk, sending a jolt of electricity through his arm. He rolled away as the chair careened into the wall, and crashed to the floor.
He examined his hand. His leathery flesh was blackened and charred. Shards of blue glass protruded from his bloody fingers. He reached up to the door’s handle, and pushed it open. He crawled into the hallway, and kicked it closed behind him. He stared at his left shoulder. Separate! his mind cried, but the joint remained whole. He was still General Jaeger.
He looked back at the door. Perhaps he could fuse its magnetic lock or man the security turret again, even though it was beyond his line of sight. He hung his head. Maybe his father could perform such feats as if they were second nature, but attempting them would cost him too much time.
He grit his teeth, and began to crawl.
Tish opened her eyes, but could not see.
At first she thought that she was underwater, but the frigid liquid that surrounded her felt thick, like oil. Something covered her mouth and nose. She took hold of it, and explored its contours with her fingers. It was a breathing mask.
Something that felt like a ribbed, metallic snake extracted itself from the base of her skull. She reached back into her thick, tight curls, and found a tiny mouth embedded in the top of her neck. It closed at her touch, leaving behind a puckered ring. Sparse currents of warmth began to flow through the icy liquid. A harsh blue–white lamp flickered on from above, piercing through the darkness.
She thrashed in the viscous soup, but her limbs felt like useless twigs. They were scrawny, and much longer than they should have been. She swam towards the light, but the hose attached to the mask held her back. She unclasped the strap from around her head, took a deep breath, and yanked it off. She kicked her legs, and propelled herself upward.
She broke the surface with a gasp. The vat that surrounded her was a little wider than the length of her arms, and just deeper than her height. Its top, crowned with a metal frame, stood a few feet above a polished floor. She pulled herself out, and flopped naked onto the tiles. A panel fixed to its glass wall glowed with the legend “Q39B–p28.”
Her eyes scanned the room as far as she could see. It was the size of an airplane hangar. Thousands of uniform tanks, neatly organized in rows, stretched into the darkness. She tried to peer within the one next to hers, but a cloud of bubbles amidst the frozen gel obscured its contents. She could just make out a human–shaped silhouette inside. Was it her mother, or maybe her father?
A whirring noise echoed from the shadows. She curled up behind the glass, covering her body with her arms.
Her jaw dropped as she realized that she had mature breasts.
A robot ventured into the light. It was barely three feet high. It had a single blinking eye at the end of a telescopic stalk. It rolled around the tiles on a trio of casters. It zipped up to her, and stared into her face with its swiveling lens.
“Wh–wh–wh…” She tried to speak, but her teeth were chattering too hard. She huddled her limbs closer to her body.
A panel in the side of the machine slid open. A claw whipped out, holding a tiny black egg with a nub protruding from its side. It was a wireless headset. A tinny voice chattered from its speaker, but she could not make out the words. She took the gift with trembling fingers, and pushed it into her ear.
“Are you there?” she heard someone ask. It was the voice of the tree, the one that sounded like a raspy w
oman. Either she was old, or she had been a pack–a–day smoker within the same league as her father. “Hello, are you okay?”
“I — I’m here,” said Tish, in a voice she did not recognize. For a start, it was much lower than it should have been. She forced her shivering jaw under control. “Can you hear me?”
“Oh thank God, I can hear you fine. You did it. You’re out.”
“Who… Who is this?”
“Never mind,” said the woman. “You have to come to me, right now. Can you walk?”
She pushed herself up on her scrawny arms. They shook beneath her weight. “No,” she said. She grabbed onto the wide metal frame at the top of her submerged tank, and pulled herself up. She managed to push her body into a sitting position.
“Tish?”
“Cool your ass, give me a minute.” She bit her bottom lip. It was one of her mother’s phrases, and she had just said it to an adult.
“My ass is just fine, kid, but yours is going to be fried if any of the automated nurses catch you. This maintenance robot is my little cutie. The others are much bigger, and will probably put you back in.”
“Sorry,” she said, panting. “My legs don’t want to work.”
“You’ve been frozen for twenty–five years,” the voice said, “it’s going to take a few minutes. But they should have done some shocks and maintenance to keep muscle apathy from getting too bad. You were in iatric fluid, after all.”
“Ia–what?”
“Never mind. But as soon as you can stand, you have to get moving.”
Tish looked down at her tall, dark, slender body, at breasts that had to belong to a grown woman, and at the patch of hair between legs that were way too long. “I think they woke the wrong girl,” she said. “I’m not me.”
“Sure you are, you’re just older than you’ve been led to believe. You’re chronologically in your thirties, but the cryogenic system slows down the aging process. So let’s split the difference, and say that your body is more or less that of a twenty–year–old.”
Tish shuddered, and stared at her lanky arms. “Please,” she said, “I don’t understand. Who are you? Where am I? Why am I a skinny grown–up?”
“You are Tish, that will never change. You are in the Cathedral of San Domenico, which was once a military intelligence bunker of WesMec that they converted into cryogenic storage. You are older than you remember because you and millions of other survivors were frozen, and WesMec Gov. plugged your sluggish brains into a virtual reality called a Sage. The whys are going to take a long time to explain, and will have to wait. As for me, my name is Marianne, and I am the friend telling you that unless you want to go back into that nightmare, you’d better move your butt.”
“Marianne.”
“Yes. Come on, Tish, move it.”
She bit the inside of her cheek, and put her hands on her knees. She rolled onto the balls of her bare feet, and forced herself to stand. She pinwheeled her arms out, sure that she was going to lose her balance, and scuttled a few feet to the side. A nearby trio of pipes arched from the darkness of the ceiling to the floor, and she clutched onto them for support. After she caught her breath, she took a few, staggering steps.
“Better?”
Tish nodded, though she knew that her new friend could not see. “Better.”
“Okay. Now, see that little robot? It’s a maintenance drone. I call it Charlie.”
Tish waved at it. “Hi, Charlie.”
“Yeah, cute. Charlie is going to lead you back to me. The admin override kept security from noticing that you’re out of your tank, but I’m pretty sure that perk won’t last forever. So please, get your ass moving.”
Charlie rolled up to her, looked her up and down, and then moved a few feet away. Tish forced her shaking legs to follow, one step at a time. “I’m coming,” she said.
They left the circle of light that illuminated her tank, and a dim lamp atop the squat robot’s head clicked on. It rolled ahead of her, stopping every ten feet to let her catch up. After a few minutes, they reached a sliding door. She touched its handle, and her companion emitted a sharp whistle.
“Hold up,” said Marianne. “The system will register an open door as a security breach, unless Charlie can override it. People aren’t supposed to be moving around down here. Yours are the first feet to walk on this floor in decades.”
“Great,” said Tish. She stood back, and let the drone go to work. Its arm extended from its side, wielding a multi–headed tool in its claw. It unscrewed the panel around the lock. She caught it as it fell, and placed it on the floor. Charlie dipped its eyestalk in a gesture of thanks, and went back to its task. After a few seconds, with a spark and a pop, the door slid open.
“Warning,” called a toneless voice from a speaker above, “latch detection failure. Calling maintenance.”
Charlie let out a stream of bleeps and ticks. “Is it letting them know that it’s on the job?” Tish asked.
“You catch on fast. Is it done yet?”
“Almost.” She picked up the latch panel, and slid it back into place. Charlie brandished the multi–tool, and proceeded to screw it back on. “Done.”
“Okay, now repeat after me. ‘Romeo, Nine, Kilo, Seven, Whiskey.’”
Tish repeated the words. The arm retreated back into its side panel. Something rattled from inside of the robot’s shell. Then the claw returned, holding what looked like a paintbrush. She took it, and held it up to Charlie’s headlamp. Its fine bristles were gossamer strands of glistening fiber optics. A long wire ran from its base, ending in a square plug.
“This is extremely important, Tish. You have to tie that around your elbow. Don’t tie it to your wrist, because you might bang it against a wall. Make sure that you tie it tight, because if you lose it, we’re all screwed.”
She pinned the brush against her ribs, and double–knotted the wire with one hand. “It’s on tight,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
She rolled her eyes, and tugged on the plug. “Yes.”
“Good. Now, after you go inside, our friend won’t be able to follow. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.”
Tish slipped through the doorway. Charlie craned its stalk around the frame to peer at her. “Bye,” she said. The robot tapped the panel in response, and the door slid closed. Once again, she stood in darkness.
“Now,” said Marianne, “whatever you do, do not move. Got it?”
“Why not?”
“Because there’s an open shaft below you, about six feet away.”
Tish pressed her body against the cold steel of the door. “Holy cow,” she said. “What if I had walked too far?”
“Relax, there’s a safety gate. Besides, the elevator isn’t even in service anymore. Anything not absolutely necessary was shut down ages ago. Which brings us to your next problem.”
“What problem?”
“Shh,” said Marianne. “Do you hear that?”
She did her best to listen, but the shaft was enveloped in silence. “I don’t hear anything.”
“Exactly, because they shut the circulation off down here about a decade back. Everything’s maintained by automation now. Your mask supplied you with a nitro–oxygen mix. Out here, I’m guessing you have four, maybe five days of good air, tops.”
“And then what?”
“You might have to go back in your tank, eventually. It might be the only way to keep you alive until the end.”
Tish swallowed. Her mouth felt like sandpaper. “The end of what?”
“Look, let’s just focus, okay? One thing at a time.”
The girl who was no longer a girl could feel her heart pounding against her ribs. She ran her fingers through her thick hair. She grabbed a handful, and pulled. “I can’t take much more of this,” she said. “It’s just one thing after another after another. I’m scared.”
“I don’t blame you, sweetie. I wish there were some other way. The only thing you can do now is go forward. But I’ve watched you, Tish.
I saw everything you did in there. You’re brave. When I accidentally turned you into a plant, you stayed brave. When I took Matthew away, and left you down in the tunnels, all by yourself in the darkness, you stayed brave. Taking the crown, getting out of the tank, making it this far, all of it was very brave. Now, I need you to be brave just a little longer. Can you do that?”
“Wait, wait, wait,” said Tish. Her throat felt tight, as if something were pressing against her windpipe. “You’re the one who did all that to me?”
The woman sighed. “It was an accident,” she said, “I promise. Asher did things to me that mutilated my avatar within the Sage. He trapped me inside of a loop within its vegetation libraries, and garbled all of my senses. It was like seeing the world through magnifying glasses, and hearing every whisper through blaring, distorted speakers. Everything was blurry and upside–down until it was up close. It took me a long time to work through the confusion. I was just trying to communicate, but I wound up passing my condition on to you instead. My bad. Tell you what, you can give me a good punch when you see me.”
Tish opened and closed her mouth. She tried to fight back her tears, but it was impossible. “I want my mom and dad,” she said. “Why didn’t they come for me?”
“Both of them fought very hard trying to get to you,” said Marianne. “If not for them, you would have been trapped down there forever.”
Tears streamed down her cheeks. “Then why didn’t I see them?”
A few seconds passed in silence. “Because they died, sweetie. The Magistrate got your mom, and your dad died making sure you could escape. They did it to save you.”
Tish let out a long, high wail that echoed off the walls of the shaft, and sunk to the floor, her head in her arms.
“I am sorry, hon, I really am. If I could have saved them I would have, but the only one I could save was you. A lot of other people are going to die, and I don’t just mean in San Domenico, I mean out there. We have to help them. Please, Tish, I need you.”