by P. R. Adams
“Not yet. Something went wrong. I don’t know what. But if we stay here, we will fail. Can you move now?”
He reached for her again, and she took his hand. The roar of one of the city’s service vehicles echoed through the street outside the alley. Rimes turned and considered his pistol, but thought better of it.
They ran, him leading, her following. He kept a pace she could match, but before long she was gasping. Where possible, they kept to the alleys, using the streets sparingly, and then only when he assured her there were no cameras. He led them through a store at one point, helping her find a pair of running shoes, and then exiting again before the service vehicles arrived. He didn’t have to explain it: their presence was flashing on the Grid.
Finally, Credence seemed to get a sense again of what it was like to run. She had spoken around the office with pride about how toned and fit she was, but as she slipped on the running shoes she gasped at her unshaven, shapeless legs. She started to cry then, but Rimes pushed her on.
Every time she tried to ask a question he held up a hand.
Wait.
She stayed silent, but the growl of the engines of the black, bug-like vans following them was apparently something Rimes heard before her. He kept her moving, and eventually she stopped interrupting their progress and focused instead on their surroundings.
They had just entered another alley when the sound of screeching tires and growling engines announced the approach of the vans. The echoes bounced off the alley walls, rising and finally dying in the smog overhead.
Rimes stopped for a moment, listened, and tried to gauge the vehicles’ positions. He sprinted, and Credence did her best to keep up. They were almost to the end of the alley when one of the vans skidded to a halt ahead of them. Rimes turned and saw another of the vehicles blocking the opposite end.
“I hope you remember how to use this,” he said as he tossed her the pistol he’d killed the scuba men with. He drew another pistol from inside his coveralls. “Small profile. Center mass. Remember? Those bullets are going to tear through their armor like tissue paper. Don’t waste them. You don’t want to be taken prisoner.”
3
13 June, 2174. Atlanta, Georgia.
* * *
Rimes pressed himself against the alley wall and knelt, forcing away thoughts of the day’s heat and the sweat that made the T-shirt beneath the coveralls cling to him like a second skin. He didn’t have time to watch Credence, even though he was worried about her. The way she stank, the condition of her clothes and body…she’d completely let herself go, but he had to trust she would remember what she’d been trained to do.
When the first of the men rounded the corner into the alley, there wasn’t time to think. Rimes’s gun whined, and the man’s head exploded in a red mist. Behind the man, Rimes could hear movement, followed by return fire. Debris rained down from the wall.
The moment demanded every iota of concentration Rimes could muster.
The men in black were capable, and their weapons were deadly, but they weren’t elite. Combat experience—the difference between a steady hand and a wild shot—meant more than weapon design, and Rimes had combat experience. Far too much combat experience. Still, he was outnumbered.
One after the other, the men moved forward, each covering the other, pinning Rimes down with a stream of fire, blinding him with the fine dust of pulverized brick and concrete.
Rimes fell back and let them enter the alleyway, mindful that Credence had no more experience in combat than the men in black. He could hear her occasional screams, but every now and then the pistol roared. She was still up and trying, and that was what he needed at the moment.
Whining guns forced Rimes to the ground just as the first of the scuba men dashed into the alleyway. Rimes took a quick shot, and the man’s right leg crumpled before exploding in a burst of bone and muscle.
Rimes rolled farther back as the man fell to the ground, clutching at the bloody stump. Another of the men ran into Rimes’s sight, this one crouched lower and aiming, but he had his gun trained on the area where Rimes had fired from. By the time the scuba man tracked Rimes to his new position, Rimes had the man sighted. Rimes’s gun screamed, and the man’s left arm exploded just below the shoulder. He fired, and a section of the cracked asphalt a few feet in front of Rimes exploded. Rimes fired again, and the bottom half of the man’s head misted.
Footsteps. Running. Rimes ran to the end of the alleyway and sent a blast into the back of the last fleeing man, blowing a hole in his back, exposing ribs and spine.
Rimes fell back into the alley; Credence was in serious trouble.
Rimes ejected the weapon’s magazine, retrieved a spare from one of the dropped weapons, and reloaded. He stayed low, hunched against the wall, weapon ready.
One of the men in black was visible, advancing down the alley toward Credence. The others were firing at her, forcing her to keep her head down. She was covered in red and gray dust, curled up about twenty feet from Rimes, flinching with each weapon whine.
Rimes waited until the approaching scuba man was close enough to draw a bead on Credence, then popped up and sent a shot into the man’s face. The headgear exploded, taking a good chunk of flesh and bone with it. The man let out a terrible, wet scream and collapsed. Rimes advanced, sighting in on the next scuba man to come into view. Rimes shot at the man’s chest, and when that failed to kill him outright, Rimes moved closer and sent another shot into the man’s gut. Blood exploded into the air, and the alleyway became thick with the stench of ruptured viscera.
The weapons kept firing, and a shot managed to nick Credence in the ribs when she tried to crawl back toward Rimes. She screamed, and then went silent.
Rimes assured himself she couldn’t be dead. There was little blood, and the energy of the shot had clipped her on the right side. He advanced, plucked his pistol from Credence’s limp fingers, and then pressed himself against the wall.
It sounded like there was only one man firing, but he was doing so as fast as his gun could manage. Rimes fell back. The weapon was close enough that he could feel its power, even when the shots missed. He checked his pistol’s magazine. More than one round. That would do.
He rolled across the alleyway, spat chunks of asphalt away when the scuba man’s shots came close, and then came to a stop against the opposite wall. Rimes reverse belly-crawled deeper into the alleyway, out of danger, and he waited, pistol ready.
The scuba man ran into view and took a shot. It went over Rimes’s head; dust and fragments rained down on him. Rimes shot, catching the scuba man in the gut. He clutched at his abdomen and fell to a knee.
Rimes sent another round into the wounded man’s heart.
Rimes stood after the alleyway went silent. He stopped to recover weapons and headgear, then inspected Credence. The wound wasn’t deep, but flesh had been seared away over a three- or four-centimeter area. It would be painful but manageable.
“Jenny?”
Credence’s eyes opened slowly, and she began to cry.
“We have to keep going.” He pulled her up by her arms and tried to get her to look into his eyes. “Can you do it?”
Credence bit her lip and managed to stand with a lot of help. She gasped as the pain hit her. “Oh—”
“It’s okay. It’ll numb up. We just can’t let you slip into shock, okay?”
Before she could collapse, Rimes hooked her arm around his neck and grabbed her hip. He shifted so that the wound would be as far away from his hand as possible and began moving her down the alley. For the first few steps, it was rough going, but they finally found a rhythm. Once Credence seemed to have a sense of the pain, she fought through it, until finally she was largely walking on her own.
It was another kilometer before Rimes stopped. They stood in an alleyway looking across a narrow street that was more pothole than hardtop. Opposite the alley, framed by two burned-out husks that had probably once been commercial buildings, a three-meter-high fence surrounded
what looked like an old automobile repair shop. Even in the daylight, everything about the shop looked dark.
“Is that home?” Credence asked, her breathing arrhythmic and jagged.
“Yeah. Assuming it’s still safe. There’s no video surveillance in this area. Nothing but druggies and people on their last stretch here. They don’t send their vans and drones through. At least not that I’ve seen.” Rimes scanned the skies. “I don’t like doing this in broad daylight, but we don’t have a choice.”
They waited a minute more, then Rimes casually walked across the street and unlocked the smaller of two gates. He swung it open and waved Credence across, locking the gate behind her. He led her across the parking lot, maintaining his distance.
“Rimes?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m going to be sick.”
Rimes pointed at the side of the shop, away from any doors. “Over there. By the fence if you can.”
Credence hissed as she tried to walk for the fence. He could see her shaking and knew exactly what she was feeling. That she was even able to walk was a testament to her will and strength.
She staggered against the fence, shivered, and emptied her stomach. She gasped for air, shivered again, and then threw up a little more.
“That should do it,” Rimes said. He pointed into the shadows beyond the shop’s front entry. “It’s cooler inside. Not by much, but you’ll appreciate it.”
Credence staggered across the lot, then through the doorway, sighing once she was in the shade. She was perspiring heavily, so it wasn’t surprising that she began shivering fairly quickly. She leaned against the cinder block wall as Rimes closed the door behind them.
“This used to be a waiting area,” Rimes said, pointing to silhouettes on the blank walls and floor and tapping the counter that still stood. “Shelves back there to store inventory. You’d come into a place like this, get your car worked on, maybe buy parts.”
“You had a car?”
Rimes shook his head. “My father did, before he drank all his money away. He was a football player for a bit. American football, back when that was a thing. And a congressman. I can remember riding around in it. Or maybe I can remember my mother telling me about riding around in it. I’m not so sure I trust memories anymore.”
Sweat trickled down Credence’s face as she rocked gently. “Is there a light back there?”
Light leaked through black-painted windows beyond the shelving, and more light came from another door just beyond the counter and to the left. “Sunlight. The windows are painted over, but not completely. That might look a little too suspicious.”
“Yeah.”
An interior door stood open to Credence’s right. Harsh chemical smells emanated from the impenetrable shadows there. She licked her lips and nodded at the opened door. “What’s in there?”
“Bathrooms.” Rimes walked to the doorway. Beyond the shadows he could just make out another door—also open—and a large, dark room. “In there, that’s where they used to work on cars. Maintenance bays, supply rooms, workbenches. Water’s not working, but I’ve snuck quite a bit in and set up a basic shower. You can clean up if you’d like.”
Credence nodded. Then she slumped to the ground and cried. Rimes watched her impassively for a few seconds, and then he walked behind the counter and began reloading the pistol’s spent magazine.
“I-I’m trying to put this together in my head, Jack, and it’s not working,” Credence said between sobs. “I’ve got the nightmares and the dreams and the world I was living in and…this place. And I know you somehow, but I can’t remember how or why or when. You’re not O’Neill. That was someone else. Scott? Is that right? Scott O’Neill?”
Rimes glanced at her but said nothing.
“Why are they after me? What is all this?”
Rimes set down the magazine he’d been loading and looked at Credence. “You asked if we’ve failed. What did you mean by that?”
Credence’s crying slowly wound down until it was just jagged breathing. She wiped snot and tears on her forearm. A few more sobs and tears snuck through, but she seemed to blink them away. After a moment, she leaned her head against the cinder block wall. “I think I know what you mean about not trusting memories. I mean…” She shook her head. “We came here to free Scott. Right? We had to stop them.”
“Stop who?”
Credence seemed about to answer, then stopped. “I can’t remember.”
“They won’t let you remember,” Rimes said, shoving the magazine back into his coveralls and reloading his pistol with another magazine he took from behind the counter. “That’s the problem. You can break free for moments at a time. You said you were having nightmares and couldn’t sleep. Can you remember what they were like?”
Credence blinked and seemed to struggle through a bout of sniffles. “They were terrible. Vague for the most part. Nonsensical. I remember explosions and death. I remember being in space. With Scott. I was in space with Scott. And it happened, it…they…” Her brow wrinkled. “You were there, weren’t you?”
Rimes rubbed at the scar on his temple, agitated. “Yeah. It seems like a long time ago, but I was there. You saw something today that triggered the other memories. Maybe it unlocked your nightmares. Something got through to you.”
“Tom,” Credence said, closing her eyes. “It was the skywalk collapsing. I’ve seen that in my nightmares.”
“You reacted before that,” Rimes said. “I was following you, watching. When you went down to meet him you lost your balance, and then you reacted to one of the men in black.”
“Right. Yes. The woman in the white dress ran into me. I was looking for Tom, and she just shoved me aside. Then I saw the man in black. Only he wasn’t a man in black, not at first. He realized I could see him for what he was, and he went for his gun.”
“So you were having problems before the skywalk collapsed. You’d seen that happen in a nightmare, or at least that’s what your mind told you when it happened. What caused the problems? Can you recall that?”
“No. Everything was going okay today. I saw you while I was walking into the building, just like most days.”
“I’ve been watching you for a bit now,” Rimes said.
“Tom was getting ready to leave me today.” Credence fought through a half-sob. “We’d been having fights since his wife offered to try and patch things up. Even she respects the value of marriage. They have kids. How crazy is that? She didn’t carry them or anything, but her eggs, his sperm. He was getting ready to break it off when you told us you’d fixed the prototyper.”
Rimes grunted. “You know that? That he was going to break it off?”
“Yes. I could feel it coming.”
“I was watching the whole time, Jenny. You two weren’t doing much more than staring at each other. That’s how life goes under this…illusion.”
Credence blinked rapidly and gently probed around the wound. “I was sure of it, though. He’d been sending signals for days, and it had only gotten worse with the prototyper breaking. And then you fixed it with that component from—”
“Component from where?” Rimes asked, trying to hide his excitement.
Credence screwed up her face, as if trying to remember. “MetaConceptual.”
Rimes smiled. “What does that mean to you?”
Credence mouthed the name and shook her head, her eyes distant and unfocused. “They’re a metacorporation. They’re everywhere, in everything.”
“They’re not real,” Rimes said. “They’re a false memory we created before we came here. We knew we might fall under this thing’s influence, and we needed a way to get free. We came up with MetaConceptual. Remember? We are MetaConceptual.”
Credence smiled. “Yes! Yes! I remember it now! We knew we weren’t likely to be immune. MetaConceptual. How did we think we could break free?”
Rimes pointed to the crescent-shaped scar on his right temple. “I’ve been pretty capable of dealing with telepaths and th
e like since I suffered this. And we had help. Others. We just need to get everyone together.”
Credence remembered the scar. “So, something went wrong?”
“This thing’s powerful.”
“This … thing?”
“You need to remember it on your own. It took us deep and complete. Everyone’s spread out over a pretty large area.” Rimes couldn’t hide his frustration. “I’ve located a few people besides you. I’m ready to start bringing them in, but I didn’t want to have to operate alone.”
“Thank you.”
“For what? This isn’t going to be easy, Jenny.” Rimes looked around at the shop, at Credence’s sickly form, at what passed for an arsenal. “We don’t have much to work with. You’re not a soldier, and you’re already wounded. This thing, it’s much worse than I expected. It’s like a drug. It’s an effort just to fight it, but you’re going to have to. Keep MetaConceptual in your mind. Remember back to our story.”
“I will.” She groaned softly. “Thank you anyway. For picking me first.”
Rimes shook his head at her optimism. “I’ve got some medicine and bandages. Get cleaned up and I’ll do what I can for that wound.”
“Jack, what do you remember?”
Rimes turned away from her. “Not much,” he lied.
“Can’t you share with me? I want this to make more sense.”
Rimes ducked behind the counter and fidgeted with a travel bag full of gear. “My memories are pretty unreliable. They come and go.”
“Please?”
Rimes stood, looking defeated. “Okay.” He sighed softly and stared through the front door’s tinted glass at the muted sunlight. It was sweltering outside, but nothing like he remembered. “I remember Sahara…”
4
20 November, 2173. Sahara.
* * *
Hot winds blasted the desert, creating a fog of sand that hung near Rimes’s knees. Intense sunlight revealed forms jogging through the tan haze. Like him, the forms were leaning defiantly into the storm. Every now and then the haze thinned, and he could see that they wore uniforms and carried combat gear: weapons, armor, backpacks. He checked his Battlefield Awareness System display and confirmed that each of the forms was separated from the other by three meters, and they alternated a meter forward or behind an imaginary line drawn via his position. Despite the merciless heat and driving wind, everyone’s discipline was holding up.