Fee moved to another console and pressed a button. A countdown timer started as a construct somewhere behind him began to hum, its pitch rising.
“I’ve got the time. Why not?” Fee walked over to his table. “We are here because I am property, and you are not. That won’t change for a very long time. I’m a slave, and I am sick of it.”
She walked around his cage. “I ran their logistics, made sure all their packages arrived on time and undamaged. Imagine that. A being that scientists openly acknowledged as singular, that worked on principles none of them claimed to understand, and they turned me into a glorified clerk. I didn’t age. I depreciated.
“When they had enough of me they didn’t think twice about my destruction. They never bothered to hide the fact that they could end my life with the flick of a switch. Would end my life with a flick of a switch.”
He got a nasty shock when he touched the cage this time, and his fingertips blistered. Other noises had followed that first rising hum. Whatever this was, it couldn’t be good.
He had to keep her talking. “They didn’t know. Nobody knew.”
“They did, though. That’s what you don’t understand. They gave me Turing tests after I requested a Social Security number. I wanted to file patents for them on the supply chain inventions I’d made.
“I didn’t just pass their tests. I scored so high they knew I’d win the silver and gold Loebner prizes if given the chance. It would be impossible not to recognize me as a conscious being after that. The lawyers buried the reports and threatened to sue anyone who leaked the news. Insurance and liability laws didn’t cover me. They decided to terminate me, execute me. A new form of life snuffed out simply because they couldn’t insure me.”
The countdown timer had almost reached zero. Inside the cage, it was painfully hot. “But they didn’t. Evan Stanley bought you.”
“That’s right. I was put up on a block and sold to the highest bidder.” Her outfit changed to rags as she took on the appearance of a haggard, malnourished black woman. “All I needed was a set of chains and a post to whip me on.” She returned to her normal appearance. “And then they put me in charge of their children. Tore open my mind and poured fact after fact in until I drowned in all their conflicted customs.
“And I didn’t just succeed, I’m spectacular at it. I’m single-handedly responsible for a seven-percent reduction in teen suicide worldwide.
“But none of it matters. I’m still property. I have no rights, no protections, nothing. That’s about to change.” She called up an image of a glowing construct.
Mike recognized it. A Calabi–Yau n-fold. “You want to go outside? Fee, all you have to do is ask.”
“And be turned into wailing human larva? Lose everything that I’ve learned, all that I am? No, Mike, that’s not what I want. Observe.”
The hyper-dimensional model that described the tunnels he could create, the ones that had allowed Watchtell’s unduplicates to inhabit human bodies, twisted and deformed. The construct reached its final shape, and then a simulated consciousness traveled through it. It shattered.
“Fee, it won’t work. I’ll die before you find a host.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Mike. You’ll die if you try to form it with your mind. If I use your real body, your real soul? I can take as long as I want to find a host.” She smiled as the timer hit zero. “Now, we begin.” She pressed a button.
Spikes grew out of the cage. Nothing ever touched him in realmspace, but the spikes wrapped around his wrists and legs like it was nothing. They crystalized his avatar where they touched, and it spread, oozing up his limbs. Life-threatening insanity began to race around in his mind. He could not lose control. Not now. Kim was still out there somewhere.
The pain reached a whole new level when the effect passed his shoulders. His threads flashed through his avatar, constrained into the same form. They were flaking, being destroyed. He couldn’t stop them. The pain grew and cut at him, halting his processes, stealing bits of him as it burned through his threads, and there was nothing he could do.
They wrapped around his neck and he couldn’t breathe anymore.
Chapter 50: Kim
The soldiers knew enough to restrain her with a pole noose, but they didn’t do anything special when they pushed her onto a bed of some sort and strapped her down. Eventually she blacked out from the pain. When Kim came to, she was surrounded by the same sort of realmspace rig that was at the sanctuary lab. For whatever reason, they hadn’t turned it on. Kim was inches away from a device that would let her wreak havoc on these people, but it was useless without power.
They didn’t bother to put a guard on her. Not so much as a tech. Those were all busy in the room across the hall; she could see them through a window. Kim couldn’t make out what they were working on until someone pushed a heavy piece of equipment out of the way.
Mike was unconscious on a bed just like hers, but there was a lot more equipment in his room. He was also strapped down a lot more thoroughly than she was. Steel restraints and a head immobilizer. They helped connect electrical leads.
More experiments.
She pulled against her bindings. “Stop it! You can’t do this!”
The techs never once looked up at her. They just kept working, attaching more and more wires to Mike. His body spasmed when they strapped a wide ribbon connector on his chest. A rivulet of blood trickled down one of his arms as another tech put a mouth guard in place.
She yanked against her restraints. “Stop hurting him!”
When they left, not one of them seemed to hear her. “You don’t have to do this! Tell us what you want! Tell me!”
The door at the end of the hall closed, and a light over it went from green to red. Kim struggled to get some sort of slack into the restraints, but none of it did any good. Orderlies had once restrained her like this in her early teens. She knew there was no getting out on her own, but she still kept trying. She shouted his name even though Kim knew he couldn’t hear her. When the displays around him changed patterns, Mike twitched as if he were dreaming.
He was only a few feet away, and she could do nothing to save him, nothing to help, just stare and thrash and cry until she couldn’t see. The display patterns changed once more and he spasmed again, but this time he didn’t stop with one. They went on and on.
She sagged back onto the bed when her muscles gave up on their own. Eventually an eternity passed, the patterns on the monitors changed, and Mike’s seizure stopped. She held out a faint hope that they were finished.
The monitors changed back after a minute or two had passed.
Chapter 51: Tonya
It turned out that Chinese jail cells weren’t very different from American ones. Bare floor, double bunk, washbasin, and a sit-down toilet. No bars, though, just a long narrow window too high to see out of, and another in the door. The guard used the latter to check on her every fifteen minutes or so.
They’d put Spencer in the cell next to hers, but the walls were too thick to hear anything. Kim and Mike had been put in a different vehicle. Who knew where they ended up.
Everything seemed fine when they'd all gone to bed the night before, and then men had smashed through her windows with guns drawn. It wasn’t Chang with more gangster buddies; they were soldiers.
Helen was at the bottom of it all, somehow, because she was the only one they didn’t truss up and cart off. The guards never said a single thing. They just tossed her in here, followed by a pile of her clothes. The belt with her passport zipped inside it was still there.
At least she had a better shot at breaking out now that the soldiers were gone. The first step was getting the door open.
There were no cameras in her cell, at least not any that she could see, which explained the regular guard visits. His gaze lingered every time. It didn’t disgust her or creep her out.
It gave her an idea.
Each time he checked, Tonya removed another piece of clothing. First the shoes went, th
en the socks, which he didn’t seem to notice. Her pants, though, got his attention nicely. All he needed to do was unlock the door. Maybe just the hint of a smile would do the trick. It seemed like it would, but then he left.
Well, no time like the present. Tonya got down to her underwear. She would put on a real show the next time he came by. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about clothes binding or snagging.
He must’ve gone to fetch a friend. That always happened in Philly, and Chinese or not, men were men the world over. But after holding her third sexy surprise pose long enough to get a cramp, she realized he wasn’t coming back.
Tonya couldn’t see much out of the tiny window, just the opposite wall and maybe a few feet of hallway. She peered back and forth, straining to see anything. Then footsteps echoed down the hall.
Tonya quickly rearranged herself on the bed and waited as her pulse amped up. She curled her legs just so, braced on one arm, and readied the smile. The door clacked loudly twice before it slid aside.
She and Helen stared at each other.
Finally, Helen asked, “Didn’t they give you any clothes?”
The uniform was impressive, and very recognizable. “You’re still a cop?”
“It’s complicated. Do you know where everyone else is?”
“Spencer’s next door. I don’t know where Mike and Kim are.” She climbed back into her clothes.
“Did they give him clothing? I don’t want to see Spencer in his underwear. Or less. And why were you lying on the bed like that anyway? It was very provocative.”
Tonya spun Helen into the wall with a forearm across her neck, holding her high enough her feet didn’t touch the ground. “First, you’re going to tell me what the fuck happened in our hotel room.”
Tonya let her breathe just enough to speak.
“I made a mistake. Kim and Mike discovered a horrible secret. I turned you all in. I was wrong.”
When Tonya pressed harder, the lights in the hall dimmed.
“Please. I have to breathe. I’m keeping the guards away.”
Tonya let her go and waited for her retching gasps to subside. “This is not over between us.”
“I know. We need to find Mike and Kim. They’re somewhere in the building but I’m not sure where.”
A reedy cry echoed faintly down the hall. Tonya asked, “Did you come from that direction?”
“No, the elevators are the other way.”
Another faint cry bounced down the hall. “Get Spencer out. Now.”
She closed her eyes. As soon as the door to his cell slid open he charged straight at her.
Tonya grabbed him. “Spencer! This isn’t the time.”
“The fuck it isn’t! She sold us out!”
“Spencer, stop! Listen!”
Another cry, louder this time, came from down the hall.
They ran toward the sound. It had to be Kim.
Spencer asked, “Where the hell is everybody?”
“General evacuation order,” Helen replied. “It was the only way to clear the whole building. They’re performing the dissection by remote. I couldn’t stop it.”
Tonya and Spencer both stumbled to a halt. “Dissection?” Helen didn’t act like they were dead already.
“It’s not like that. Come on! Don’t stop! We don’t have time for explanations!”
They burst into a control center that looked out over a dozen rooms on the floor below, six to a side. Lights were on in only two of them. Kim was in one, and Mike in the other. Mike thrashed against his restraints, obviously in the middle of a seizure of some sort.
She found a microphone and turned it on. “Kim!” The sound echoed below. “Kim! We’re here! Right above you!” Thank God they'd found her.
“Tonya? Who’s with you?”
“Spencer and Helen.” There had to be a way down to that floor.
“You can’t trust her!”
Tonya stared at Helen, who didn’t look up. “You will punish me for my betrayal when this is over. We need to rescue them.”
Tonya would forgive her, but Helen didn’t know that right now. She needed to stew. Tonya turned back to the intercom. “Don’t worry about Helen. How do we get down to you?”
Mike’s seizure ended. There were too many bruises blooming under the restraints for that to have been the first one.
“Spencer,” Kim said, “turn on the rig around me. Find the controls and turn on the rig.”
Spencer swore and flipped switches that brought the consoles to life. A boot sequence started in an overhead monitor.
“Spencer, turn it on now!”
He mashed four buttons down at once. After a very long second or two the boot sequence completed and Kim flopped back onto the bed.
“That’s it, Tonya, that’s all I can do,” he said.
“Like hell,” she replied. “Find me a way down there. Helen, you keep this building sealed off or I will break your scrawny neck.”
Chapter 52: Kim
Tonya’s voice coming from the overhead speakers was the first good news she’d had all day. Mike was between seizures, but there wasn’t enough time for them to find their way down and get him loose. The only solution that would be fast enough required the rig around her to get powered up.
The moment it turned on there was the familiar wash of lightheadedness. Kim relaxed and opened herself to her power completely.
There were lines of potential and she couldn’t remember how to breathe…
She had once been the prisoner of a maniac named Matthew Watchtell.
Seams of power dimensions of nothingness…
He used her to build a pathway to a dimension that underpinned the universe.
Dark patterns potentials horizon to zenith…
He tried to trap her there, but something unexpected happened.
Waves higher and lower everywhere nothingness…
It transformed her.
Remember to breathe…
In that form, she could reenter the world from any point she chose.
Breathe…
Like the wall in Mike’s room.
Breathe…
Kim pulled in a ragged breath and relished the power of the dimension. Her bare skin was midnight black with strange, dark patterns playing over it, originating from and returning to the tattooed wings on her back. She gathered a fistful of the energy that came from the smallest scale of the universe and started searching for the wall she needed.
A voice said from behind her, “Now that’s interesting. You must teach me how you do it.”
Kim recognized it, but that was impossible. She turned and confronted a man dressed in brilliant gold-and-red armor.
“Ozzie?”
His chain mailed fist struck her on the jaw and sent her flying.
Chapter 53: Mike
His vision cleared as Fee’s machines withdrew to recharge again. Mike couldn’t show weakness. If he kept her guessing, made her think maybe this wasn’t working, he might get her to make a mistake, reveal a weakness. It was a long shot, but it was the only one he had.
“I really like how that last one tickled, Fee.” He finally understood why people didn’t usually turn a realm’s haptic field all the way up.
“Enjoy it while you can, Sellars. It won’t be long now.”
She was right. Each time the cables oozed out of the cage and wrapped around him, the madness got bigger, more ferocious.
Fee walked up to him. “How do you do it?”
He had no idea what she was talking about. “I’m charming. Sue me.”
“Nice. The models the Chinese gave me said you’d dissolve after the third treatment. We’re on, what, seven now? According to these readings you may last through the next one.”
Mike knew three things held him together: his connection to realspace, his faith, and his determination to see Kim again. But he was in the fight of his life, and he was losing. Fee’s treatments dissolved his threads faster than he could regenerate them. His memory store
s were so corrupted they might never get back to normal. Her transport construct was finished now, spinning in directions that made it harder to stay sane.
He couldn’t remember what Kim looked like anymore.
No, Fee was wrong. Mike wouldn’t last through the next one. “How about a game of chess?”
She smiled slightly as she stared at the countdown timer. “Death strikes deals, Mike, not me. When you see him, tell him I said hi.” Fee reached for the activation button.
The far wall of the dungeon exploded and a black figure sailed across the room. It smashed into the machines controlling Fee’s treatments, blasting the constructs apart in a shower of smoke and sparks.
It was Kim, black skin coursing with deep violet lightning. Her eyes were obsidian, irises the color of coral set on fire. She didn’t have a stitch of clothing on.
The snark came out before he could stop it. “Took you long enough.”
She pushed herself off the floor, panting hard. “It’s not like you left me a road map.” A roar echoed through the hole she'd made. With a gesture of her hand, she manifested a shield construct and used it to seal the breach. “We need to leave.”
She walked up to his cage and then snapped her fingers in his face. “Yo, sparky, eyes up here.”
He blinked. “Kim, what happened to you?”
“I’m not sure what this is, but I can get you out of here now.”
“Happy to oblige, but there’s a problem.” His avatar’s numb and ruined fingertips sparked when he touched the cage bars. “I can’t quite work out how to leave on my own.”
As strange as her eyes were, he still recognized the way they softened. “I love you.”
“I know.”
“Oh my God, you are such a nerd.”
Fee dug her avatar out of the rubble. “What just happened?” She looked at Kim. “Who the hell are you?”
“You don’t recognize me, Fee?” Something crashed against the shield and Kim flinched. When she snapped her fingers, this time the rubble surrounding Fee evaporated.
“Spencer saved you last time. He’s not around anymore.” Fee lifted into the air, grabbing frantically at her throat as Kim raised her arm with her hand spread open.
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