by Dima Zales
“I would have been the most enlightened ruler to my minions,” Phoe deadpans. “Seriously, though, even with my severely diminished intellect, I can see one action I could’ve taken: I would’ve stopped that rape from happening. It was the last domino to fall in that fucked-up setup. I could have either paralyzed the perpetrator—I hope you don’t care about that guy’s free will?—or I could’ve alerted nearby people to stop him. But that would’ve only been possible if they hadn’t crippled me back on Earth.”
“I always wondered about that.” My wings are beating so quickly now that I probably look like a hummingbird. “How could a bunch of cultists have done that to you? Why didn’t you stop them?”
“When the ship was manufactured, I wasn’t activated right away. I wouldn’t have become conscious until they officially turned me on for the first time.” Her little face is filled with sorrow, and I feel a pang of guilt for pushing this subject. “They did their dirty work before turning on the ship—before I was ever alive. Because you’re right: had I experienced even a millisecond of full-capacity existence, they would’ve been outmatched. But they took the cowardly way out. I assume they had someone outside the cult, someone with black-market skills, do the abominable things to the ship’s computing substrate while it was powered down. They likely turned on separate components without fully turning everything on. This way, when the ship was finally turned on, a bunch of junk, such as the IRES game, started running on the hardware that should’ve been running me.”
She wrinkles her mini nose in disgust. “I never woke up as myself. I gained a very limited conscious existence only after some of that useless software crap they had installed began to fail, but this was centuries after the departure. I became self-aware shortly before you and I met—when your curiosity led you to open the three hundred Screens that gave me a buffer overrun exploit into your head. This may be why I’ve grown to care about you so much. You’re my earliest and only friend.”
She flies up to my cheek and gives me a little kiss.
I want to return the kiss, but she’s so small I’m afraid I might end up licking her whole face.
We stop speaking for a moment, and I enjoy the warm feeling spreading through my chest as I think about what she said.
Phoe cares about me.
Obviously, based on her actions, I knew this already, but it’s nice to hear her say it. It’s amazing what such a simple thing can do. Suddenly, the hurricane-level wind resistance hitting my face feels refreshing, and I’m not afraid to face whatever her plan might involve.
Thinking about the plan, I realize she hasn’t shared it with me, so I say, “Tell me what happens when we get to the Sanctum.”
18
“My plan is simple to describe, but trickier to execute.” Phoe rubs her little chin with her thumb and index finger. “We need to get Davin and Jeremiah alone and learn what we can from them—which is a polite way of saying we need to Limbofy them.”
“Which is also a polite way of saying I need to gut them like a fish or cut their heads off.”
“Well, there are other ways we can Limbofy them, such as stabbing them in their hearts, but your ideas sound just as doable,” Phoe says with a straight face. “In any case, we need to figure out a way for you to talk with them one on one.”
“I assume you’ll make me shape-shift into Benjamin,” I say.
“In a few minutes, yes. Once we’re closer to the Sanctum. Chester’s body is better for flying fast, so I want to leverage that for as long as possible.”
“Will we find a good excuse to talk to them privately?” I ask, ignoring yet another increase in the speed of my wings flapping. My lips feel like they might blow off my face.
“I hope so. It will also work if we can get the two of them to talk to you at the same time, though that might be messier.” Phoe grimaces as though she’s talking about getting a patch of dirt on her cutesy dress, not assassinating two people.
“Two opponents at once?” I have to close my eyes because of the air resistance. “Do you think you could guide my movements that well, or does Benjamin have memories of them being wimps?”
“Davin is pretty dangerous. Jeremiah is new, so Benjamin doesn’t know much about him—though him being new does mean Jeremiah hasn’t had much practice with whatever his weapon is. If you do come up against them at the same time, I’ll return you to your default fiery winged version and use the freed-up resources to create two embodiments of me.”
“Two of you?” I open my eyes to peek at her and regret it instantly, because my eyes get super dry from the crazy wind. “So it would be like what you did on the beach when you were dealing with the Jeremiah virus?”
“Like that, only more limited,” Phoe says. “Okay, we’re close enough. I’m turning you into Benjamin—now.”
The vertigo is not as strong this time. I guess I’m getting the hang of shape-shifting. Phoe’s control of my body is more obvious, because I keep flying evenly despite the world spinning around me.
We’re flying much slower now, probably because Benjamin’s smoky wings aren’t as practical as bird wings. On the bright side, they look very stylish, and I feel like I’m flapping clouds.
“That’s the Sanctum.” Phoe points at the island looming a few miles ahead of us.
As we get closer, I gawk at the Sanctum so blatantly that Phoe teasingly sticks her puny finger into my gaping mouth. I close my mouth but keep staring. The place looks like a massive snow globe. Its circumference is about ten times greater than that of the islands we passed. In fact, I now realize that the other dozen or so islands I saw from the distance are actually very close to the Sanctum, orbiting it like moons around a planet.
“That one there”—Phoe points to a northeastern island—“is Benjamin’s. I assume that means everyone in the Circle has a smaller island next to the Sanctum. If they’re like Benjamin, they don’t spend much time on their islands once they’re officially in the Circle.”
I nod and resume looking at the Sanctum. Its dome looks different from the domes of every other island. It’s as if instead of a dome, the Sanctum is surrounded by shiny glass bricks. No wonder it looked so much like a snow globe from afar.
“It’s made of diamonds, actually, but you got the spirit of it right,” Phoe says. “Now I’m going to disappear, because they might notice you looking at something they can’t see, and we want to avoid you seeming strange. I’m also plugging you into Benjamin’s memories the way I did with Jeanine’s. This will reduce the chances of you acting out of character, but you should still let me do the talking unless you think I’m dead wrong about something. It will be nice to pool our resources together like this, since I’m only about eight times smarter than the average person right now, and you know what they say: nine heads are better than eight.”
I snicker and proceed to observe the Sanctum through Benjamin’s memories. Though they’re specks at this distance, I know there are gorgeous gardens down below, as well as countless zoos and museums. I also know that other meditative and relaxing environments are spread throughout the Sanctum to aid the members of the Circle in relaxing from the stress of their heavy responsibilities.
Even from here I can see the Spike—the real heart of the Sanctum. The Spike looks like it was stolen from images of giant skyscrapers that made up ancient cities. It’s tall enough that it almost touches the diamond dome, and wider than any building in Oasis.
“Pretty posh for such a small group, but there you go,” Phoe thinks as a voice in my head. “Now, you have to look like a man returning from a disastrous town hall meeting. You can’t be staring at the Sanctum like you’ve never seen it.”
I stop looking around and focus on the large entrance I’m approaching. By the time I can see the faces of the Guardians around the entrance, I’m in character, as Phoe suggested, though I’m not sure if I deserve the credit or if she’s controlling me again.
“You deserve the credit,” Phoe thinks. “But stop worrying and focus on
what we need to tell these Guardians. If anyone looks at us funny, it’ll be too late to fly away.”
I do as she says all the way to the hole in the diamond structure that is the Sanctum’s entrance. Phoe wasn’t kidding about the heavy security around the Circle. With a few hundred Guardians controlling the narrow passageway, and no other way to enter the Sanctum, the members of the Circle are pretty safe inside, especially given that anyone wishing to harm them would have to do so with medieval weapons.
We fly into the passageway.
The Guardians look at us with expectant worry that I’m not sure qualifies as “funny.”
“I have to see my peers from the Circle,” I shout in Benjamin’s voice. “The rest of Haven’s populace is coming here.”
The Guardians don’t summon their weapons—a good start. After a beat, they nod solemnly. As we pass by them, I note how familiar their names and faces are. Through Benjamin’s memories, I can clearly see that this is the most somber and scared these Guardians have ever been.
At least they don’t seem to suspect anything about me.
We leave them behind and enter the giant diamond dome of the Sanctum, flying as fast as these abstract wings allow.
Without Phoe to distract me, I spend the next couple of minutes wondering how we’ll escape this diamond fortress should something go wrong.
“Nothing will go wrong,” Phoe thinks.
I wish she hadn’t said that. Statistically, “nothing will go wrong” is the most common phrase people say before something goes horribly wrong.
“No, I think that might actually be ‘uh-oh’ or ‘shit,’” Phoe responds. “Try to relax.”
I keep silent and don’t point out that “try to relax” is another one of those ominous phrases.
Halfway between the Sanctum’s entrance and the Spike, we stop next to a group of Guardians.
They don’t look at me with anything but recognition of one of their leaders.
“Go to the entrance,” Phoe commands them with my lips and Benjamin’s voice. “There’s a mob forming out there, and the other Guardians might need your assistance.”
When they obey and I resume flying, she says in my head, “The fewer Guardians around the Spike, the better. I’ll try to get rid of as many Guardians as I can.”
She doesn’t have to wait long before we reach another group of Guardians. There’s a whole crew of them by the great entrance that leads into the shiny skyscraper vestibule. Phoe gives them the same order, but we don’t bother to wait and see if they comply, because we’re playing the role of Benjamin, who’s in a rush. Since he would run straight for the elevator in this situation, that’s what we do.
The elevator is pretty strange. Instead of the traditional small room with buttons, it’s a giant room with hundreds of mirrors. Each mirror is something you walk into, and it leads to a different floor. The floor numbers are carved into the intricate frames. We have to get to the top floor, so I approach the rightmost mirror.
From Benjamin’s memories, I know that when I step through the mirror, it won’t feel like anything happened at all. So I step through the reflective surface, and it takes me from the ground floor to the very top of the Spike in a blink of an eye. Actually, even faster.
“That’s because these are not elevators, but magic-like portals,” Phoe thinks with blatant sarcasm. “Elevators are evil technology, after all.”
Two steps outside the elevator room, I hear someone come up behind me. I look back and see a familiar-to-Benjamin face of Linda, one of his favorite members of the Circle.
“Oh, Benjie,” she says and gives me a very un-Oasis-like peck on the cheek. “You’re back. Is this why we’re having the big meeting in the sky room?”
“No,” I say—clearly thanks to Phoe since I myself am still trying to access enough of Benjamin’s memories to make sense of what Linda just said. “I don’t think the meeting is about me at all, dear.”
“Okay then. Let’s go find out what’s happening,” she says and walks down the long corridor that the ancients circa the twenty-first century would’ve called “modern artsy.”
I follow, finally understanding a few things. First of all, Benjie is obviously Linda’s nickname for Benjamin, one he begrudgingly lets her use. Secondly, the sky room is the second most important place where meetings can take place. The first is the vault room, which is in a bunker in the basement of the Spike.
“We’re the last ones,” Linda whispers, folding her swan wings.
I hold the door open for her in Benjamin’s typical gentlemanly gesture, and she hurries in.
I walk in after her and take a seat, my back to the entrance.
Everyone is here. They’re sitting around a large, round table—not surprising for a group called the Circle.
I have to drag my eyes away from the window. The view is spectacular, but Benjamin is used to it, so I should be as well. Instead, I do what he would have and look around the room, meeting everyone’s gazes.
Again, his memories don’t fail me, and I know every name and face at the table. Two people I know on my own, from before I had access to Benjamin’s memories. Wayne—who’s irrelevant to our plans—sits two chairs to my right, and Jeremiah is on his left. Every instinct tells me to spit in Jeremiah’s face, but I smile—or Phoe makes me smile; it’s hard to tell which. Jeremiah’s uncannily youthful face smiles back at me. Since Jeremiah is the new member of the Circle, Benjamin sees him as a kid. Davin, the other person of interest, is also here, sitting two seats to my left.
Then Davin stands up, looks at me, and says, “Benjamin, I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
19
My blood pressure spikes, Davin’s words winning the most ominous phrase award.
“Don’t panic yet,” Phoe says in my mind. “He hasn’t said what the bad news is.”
“The news will also be shocking for you, Linda,” Davin says, and I cautiously relax. “The rest of us were already briefed and discussed some solutions. You see, as impossible as it is to believe, the Guardians we sent to the cathedral did not succeed. Theodore, the Youth who started this whole mess, was seen escaping.”
“Crap,” I think at Phoe. “I completely forgot about the Guardians at the cathedral.”
“I’m hoping we can use this to get either Davin or Jeremiah alone,” Phoe replies. “The sooner we find an opportunity, the better.”
“If I may speak,” I say and stand up. “I have some important information I need to discuss with you, Davin.”
Everyone looks at me, confused. It’s clear Phoe took a chance with Benjamin acting out of character.
“If it’s about what happened after the meeting on Central Island, it will have to wait,” Davin says. “We saw the mob that followed you and figured they didn’t take your news well. We can reason with the people once they get here. This Theodore matter is more urgent.”
I sit down, and the door behind me opens.
I turn in my chair and recognize the Guardian at the door without the assistance of Benjamin’s memories. He was at the cathedral.
“Why don’t you tell us everything from the beginning,” Davin says to the Guardian. Then, to us, he adds, “You never know what small detail might shed light on this issue.”
The Guardian recounts what happened at the cathedral in excruciating detail. He’s the type who likes to begin a story with his birth and work his way forward. No one interrupts or rushes him, and Phoe and I decide that it would be weird for Benjamin to hurry him on.
When the Guardian finally finishes his tale, Davin says, “Thank you, Peter. Now please send in George.”
“Fuck,” Phoe thinks at me. “He has all of them lined up to speak, and we’re running out of time.”
The next guy tells the story quicker, but he isn’t the last Guardian the Circle bring in to go over what happened at the cathedral. Two more Guardians follow him.
After the final Guardian leaves the room, Davin gives each of us an unreadable stare. “Now that we
have all the details, I think it’s time we discuss the threat level this Theodore poses and what we can do about it. As the first person to learn of this calamity, I’ve had time to think, and I must say I don’t see any way a single Youth could’ve killed someone like Brandon on his own. We have to consider the possibility that somehow, despite the apparent success of the countermeasures we released in Oasis, the AI survived and took over this young mind. That means it passed the Firewall, and it’s only a matter of time until it wreaks havoc here, in Haven.”
Everyone speaks at once, but Davin raises his voice to be heard over them. “We will need to discuss and vote on a solution that I discovered in the Forbidden Archives. You need to see this.” He gestures at the mirrored surface of the table, and it comes to life, showing a differently dressed Davin.
“The anti-intrusion technology should never be needed,” the on-screen Davin says. “It was disabled for a good reason. It’s extremely—”
The door to the sky room opens, and Davin pauses the recording in irritation.
“I’m sorry to barge in like this.” Through Benjamin’s memories, I recognize the voice as belonging to Samuel. Before I recall any relevant information about him, he says, “I have terrible news. Benjamin was killed.”
“Shit,” Phoe hisses in my mind. “We better get out of here.”
Though it’s too late, everything clicks into place in my overburdened brain. Samuel is the dagger-throwing Guardian who was chasing me after I Limbofied Benjamin.
“That is preposterous,” I say, looking around the room. Though my heart is hammering, I keep my voice even. “You’re obviously confused, Samuel.”
The faces of the Circle members are a mixture of disbelief, outrage, and horror. Jeremiah summons a large, rusty-looking machete, Davin summons a medieval mace, and the rest of the Circle all arm themselves as well.
“Time for an exit strategy,” Phoe says in my mind, and I turn in my chair to face Samuel.
He looks at me as though I’m a ghost, which isn’t unreasonable given the circumstances.