Ashes of the Fall

by Nicholas Erik

  I slide inside, blown backwards by the impact against a wall.

  The whole structure shakes, and I think that the skyscraper cutting into the top will collapse, bury me in here forever. But, after a minute, everything stops moving.

  Which is when a voice says, far away, down beneath the floor, “I’m glad you came.”

  My breath stops cold. It’s a voice I haven’t heard in fifteen years, and never expected to hear ever again.

  Because the voice belongs to Matthew Stokes.

  My knees shake as I climb down a long, shaky maintenance ladder in the almost pitch-darkness. Thin LED strip lights line the tunnel below, but they do little to help. One misstep and I’ll be plummeting to my death. After what seems like an hour, I finally hit the ground. I can’t tell how far beneath the earth I am, can only can assume that I’ve journeyed straight to its center.

  When I turn around from the ladder, there’s only one path: a narrow tunnel, a couple inches above head height. I duck instinctively as I walk inside, although my hair barely clears.

  The voice doesn’t say anything else, for the time being.

  Despite the close quarters, sound doesn’t carry. My footsteps are clipped, muted by some unknown material embedded deep within the walls. Whoever ran this facility didn’t want anyone on the surface hearing what was going on.

  After a long walk, the tunnel finally leads to a single door. Its hinges sag, ruined by either rust or sabotage. A biometric retinal scanner hangs on the wall, along with a HoloBand deep scanning station. There’s no need for either—the entrance is already ajar.

  I enter, expecting I don’t know what. But not what I find. My legs almost give out on me.

  “Matt.”

  It’s an almost exact replica of his room, down to the glowing tower computer, the two screens. The heavy keyboard that clicked and sang as he wrote. The posters on the wall. Nirvana, the Pixies, Sex Pistols. A black and white photo of someone flipping the bird, his face blurred out, the finger the only thing in focus. One twin bed with plain sheets, after he insisted our mother get a replacement for the ones with little ghosts on them.

  Everything’s the same as the day he left it back in Seattle. Like a time capsule to 2033. Even the creaky office chair, plucked from some unwanted trash pile somewhere, is identical.

  I stare at the walls and feel like I’m transported to something both familiar and entirely foreign.

  Who was Matthew Stokes?

  Just a boy, really, from what I can see. Confused as hell about his role in shaping the Circle, never getting over the trauma of being whisked away. Or maybe that’s just my interpretation of events. Archeologists never can know their subjects—in the end, it’s all just guesswork.

  But one thing’s different—the tower has a scan station attached to it. Those weren’t even around last time I saw Matt. He hadn’t invented the HoloBand yet. And there’s something else that doesn’t belong.

  His travel journal, the one Jana gave me and I never read.

  Which means that Kid, or Blackstone—they’ve already been down here. Did they find what they were searching for? Have I given it to them by coming? Then again, I’m here alone, and they can’t get in. The screen’s wreckage now blocks the only entrance.

  “Hello, Luke,” the voice says again. His, but now, closer and louder, I find it’s slightly more mechanical.

  “Hello?”

  “Read the journal and we’ll talk.”

  “No,” I say, “what is this place?”

  “My lab,” the voice says. “A safe spot, where I could work and plan without anyone bothering me.”

  “Why’d you kill yourself?”

  “Read the journal,” the voice says, with what I think is a hint of indignation and offense.

  I take a cautious step towards the desk and pick up the black leather book. I jump when I turn around clumsily and bang into the floor lamp sitting in the corner. It rattles off the wall. Then I sit down in the chair, wheels creaking as I do. The voice says nothing. I can’t tell if it’s a parlor trick, or if Matt’s creation watches.

  The journal is short, no longer than five minutes, but it has all the answers I’m looking for. It also confirms that Slick wasn’t bullshitting me. There’s a log of Matt’s movements up to a week before he died—first he talked with Marshwood, leaving behind a HIVE demo. Then he went to the Remnants, giving what he called the “first piece of the antidote” to Vlad Rose.

  That’s what he calls HIVE—the antidote. Presumably to the Circle’s malignant, misinformed vision of civilization. But it’s clear from the journal that HIVE wasn’t meant to be used. Instead, its threat was to balance the scales. Like giving everyone nukes.

  Not sure about that strategy, but then, the NAC might not offer a better one.

  Next was going to be a delivery to the leader of the Lionhearted—the part of the antidote which never reached its intended destination. Or it did, actually, just not in the way Matt intended.

  The third drive lives in here, in the computer. Apparently the Circle wasn’t going to get anything besides the HIVE beta for Tanner.

  If the three drives are installed in tandem on a computer with scanning capabilities, Matt’s HoloBand acts as the key—the assembler for the source. But only if the band is installed in either me or him.

  Which is why Blackstone and Kid were so damn intent on my help ever since I returned from the Lost Plains.

  I look up at the ceiling and say, “You want me to boot this thing up?”

  “Please,” the voice says. “It’s been awhile since I’ve seen your face.”

  I take the scanner, pressing it to the back of my neck. I feel a slight prick as a needle shoots in. If it’s testing for blood type, then I’m screwed. But the machine whirs on, chiming to confirm that it’s valid. The screen flashes, displaying a strand of DNA with three helixes. His signature.Matt must’ve set the machine up so that I could access it—help him with his project, if I had the key.

  It occurs to me, as the triple helix dissolves into a welcome message, that he’s been sitting on a lot of tech—the massively upgraded level 2 scans, HIVE—down here. He must’ve gotten sick of seeing his creations used to control the world. I don’t have much time to think about it, though, because when the computer finishes booting, I’m staring at something wholly familiar and completely foreign.

  A web cam on top of the monitor swivels and zooms in. The person on the other end of the feed squints, and the camera focuses. Matt brushes his blonde hair out of his eyes and smiles.

  “You got bigger, Luke.”

  I blink and say nothing, the only thought on my mind being just one.

  How is my brother alive?

  I don’t know what to do, so I say the first thing that comes to mind.

  “Hello.” It’s half a question, half an automatic utterance to fill the gaping void between what had been my reality and what my life has suddenly become. People don’t just come back from the dead.

  Even if they are computer programs.

  “You’re good looking.” The voice crackles over the speakers. It’s Matt’s—although a little deeper, more resonance, world-weary. “Girls must like you.”

  “Uh, thanks?”

  “Although you might need to improve your manner of speaking.”

  “I can speak just fine,” I say. The initial shock has worn off, replaced by a flood of questions, most of them angry. “You died.”

  “And you stole my identity.”

  “That’s not the point,” I say. I press my eye against the lens, so it’s all he—or it—can see. Then I back up slowly, giving him a bird that’s the best impression of the one on the wall I can muster. There’s a laugh that makes the speakers crackle and hiss.

  “You did all right for yourself. Managed your way out of that mess.”

  “Not that good,�
� I say. “Considering I’m in this dump.”

  “I’ll assume you’re talking about the Otherlands and not my room.”

  “If you have to ask—”

  “You’ll never know,” Matt says. “You like music, huh?”

  “A little. Not much of it around here.” I finally get the nerve to ask what I really wanna know. “Where are you? How the hell are you—”

  “Inside the machine,” Matt says. “Welcome to HIVE.” There’s a pause. “Or, at least, one small sliver of it.”

  “I don’t get it,” I say.

  “There’s nothing to get, little brother.”

  “It’s gotta be some trick.”

  “So is consciousness,” the voice says. “Here’s your proof.”

  Matt rises from his chair on the screen and then spins around, displaying his body with a smile as if to say see, I’m really human. Claps his hands. Sings. Everything a person would do.

  “That proves nothing.”

  “You remember when those Circle kids were making fun of you?” Matt says. The lens adjusts as his eyes focus on me. “You’ve still got the fastest tongue I know, judging by how you’re still alive.”

  It’s something only Matt could possibly remember. My mouth drops, and I say, “But how? Why?”

  “A lot of questions,” Matt says with a kind smile, “but we don’t have a lot of time.” He rises from his chair, inside the machine, and pulls a book off the shelf. “I’ve been working on a revised plan, based on the new info I’ve received over the past months. You have to understand, since I’m only wired into the old internet, information travels slowly.”

  “Because your first plan worked out so well.”

  “Given the variables at the time, the analysis was—”

  “You sound like Olivia.”

  His features darken. “I am nothing like Olivia Redmond.”

  “If you wanted me to follow your trail, why’d you kill yourself and wipe your memories clean?” I hear the slight break in my voice, the why did you leave me behind again of a small child, looking up at someone he thinks is stronger. “Wouldn’t it have been easier to just tell me? Trust me?”

  Matt sets the hardcover book down on his desk, and then walks over to the shelf again. “This is the last memory that made it into my cloud storage before—well, before what happened.” With measured restraint, he slowly removes a tiny disk from the bottom. Then he walks over and pops it into the computer. “It took many months of scrubbing and reroutes for it to hit the old internet and for me to access it. I couldn’t send it to you, because I do not have access to HoloNet from here. But we can make a direct uplink here.”

  “Go on.”

  “What’s on it?”

  “The truth,” he says. “I assume you’ll have to see it, since people have been pulling you in every direction.”

  I feel the back of my neck buzz, indicating that something on the HoloBand has changed. Giving him a funny look, I boot up HoloNet, feel the rush of information, and navigate to his memories. Then it’s like I’m there, in his apartment again, Olivia Redmond and Matt Stokes arguing before me. I can smell the starch on his khaki pants, the nervous sweat running down his arms.

  “Look, Stokes,” Olivia is saying, gesticulating wildly, hair in front of her eyes. “Blackstone is the future. Tanner’s the past.”

  “I won’t give that bastard anything,” Matt says. I feel my own throat tighten at the words.

  “Always so damn idealistic.”

  “I’ve already given away part of the source code,” Matt says. “And I’ll continue splitting it up so that there’s no dictatorship. No Circle. People should be free from what happened to us.”

  “Blackstone saved my life,” Olivia says with a white-hot gaze, “why would I want that to change?”

  “I’m not giving you HIVE, Olivia,” Matt says. “Apart, it will unify the people, bring us democracy again. Together, it will destroy us.”

  “I figured as much, Stokes.” In the background the wall screen in his apartment turns on. They both look at it. There I am, at the front door, wondering what the hell is going on. “Who the hell is that? He looks like you.”

  “My brother,” Matt says. “He’s here to help me deliver the next drive.”

  Olivia quickly chews on her lip, and apparently runs an analysis. “Or he’s here to help me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I do.” She pulls a silver pistol out of her pants and closes the gap. “Sorry, Stokes. You were always one of the good ones.”

  “Olivia—” But a loud crack cuts him off, and the memory ends.

  For a minute, I sit there in stunned silence. Then I turn off the HoloNet and lean back in the chair. My brother didn’t commit suicide or send me on a wild goose chase to “prove my worth” as a hero. He had always believed in me, thought that we could work together in convincing the factions to lay down their differences.

  That was his vision—him the technical side, working on a program that would balance the power, give everyone a little piece of the action. Me the customer service side, selling a new world to a once bitten public.

  “She killed you,” I finally say in a whisper. “But the note.” I scrounge in my back pocket, pull it out. “It’s your handwriting. And—and you’re still alive.”

  “I had the foresight to back up my consciousness in case of a catastrophic system failure,” Matt says, referring to human frailty in computer terms. “As for the note, I only wrote you the letter that requested your assistance in a project—”

  “She wrote the note,” I hear a voice cut in. I jump, thinking I’m alone with Computer Matt. But who else do I see but Kid Vegas, head bleeding, a white gleaming smile on his face as he leans up against the door. “We were all brilliant. What’s forging a signature and a few bold words about great sacrifice and being a hero? Got your head twisted around so far that you didn’t know which way was up.”

  I remember Blackstone saying the line. My mouth turns. It was straight from him, pulling my puppet strings through his fingers. I remember what Olivia said about long cons, right after she shot me.

  I’ve been the mark this whole fucking time.

  Kid pats me on the back before looking at the screen. He takes a step back. “Whoa.” Kid walks over to sit on the bed. He doesn’t have a gun, or make any threat. There’s no need to, really. The predicament still stands—Carina and Evelyn are out there, somewhere, with a proverbial gun to their heads.

  Unless he’s lying about that, too. Which is more than possible.

  “So this is HIVE in action,” Kid says with a low whistle. “You actually managed to upload your consciousness, eh Matty?”

  “Don’t call me that,” Matt says.

  “What else can HIVE do?” Kid slowly takes out the two drives. “With the one in the computer, that makes three, doesn’t it Matty?”

  “Kid, don’t—”

  “I don’t think you’re in any position to make demands,” Kid says. “I got the drives. I got the girls. I’ve got control.”

  “I want proof of life,” I say, cutting into the fray. “Tell me they’re alive.”

  “Turn on your HoloBand,” Kid says. “Boot up HoloNet.”

  “Don’t do it, Luke,” Matt says.

  I do it. I feel a buzz at the back of my neck. Kid presses his own neck, and a memory shoots over to my bank after I accept the transfer.

  There’s a white-washed room, filled with pods. Hundreds of people, eyes closed, next to a massive server rack.

  “We found the server farm,” Kid says as the memory plays, this directed at Matt. “Old Tanner had the entire infrastructure raring to go. Too bad he never had the actual HIVE source. We just took him off line.” I see, in the memory, a Circle guard walk up to the far end of the room. Swipe a keycard to get into a glass windowed cube.


  Tanner sits in his own pod, eyes closed.

  The guard takes off his helmet—her, I realize, Olivia Redmond—and shakes out her hair. Then shoots Tanner right in the head. Kicks his body on to the floor, blood pooling on the white floor, and leaves.

  The memory ends just as Evelyn Vera and Carina Alonso are dragged into the massive white room with all the pods. Olivia passes them without a second glance.

  “You’re all bastards,” I say, once the memory ends and I shut everything down.

  “Matty here was really blue-balling the old man,” Kid says. “How’d you keep him from cracking the source on that HIVE beta?”

  “Closed system. The code was tweaked to only recognize his genetic signature. Most of the networking features were disabled, too,” Matt says, sitting glumly in his chair in his simulation. “It allowed his consciousness to survive, but the tech wasn’t compatible with anyone else’s HoloBand.”

  “But these,” Kid says with a glinting eye, pointing at the drives. “The code on these are compatible with everything.”

  “You’ll ruin the world,” Matt says.

  “It’s already ruined, Matty,” Kid replies. “And it has been for some time.”

  He whistles, and a team of guards surge into the room. I hadn’t even heard them come down, so focused was I on the memories, the revelation of being conned. Their hands tear at my shoulders, dragging me away.

  Kid yells after us, “Be careful with him. He needs to be alive. Forever.”

  And then I’m clipped to a rope and pulled out of a gaping hole in the narrow tunnel, up into the scorched plaza. It’s a ghost town. Bodies litter the streets. The only men I see are Blackstone’s.

  A sinking feeling weighs in my chest as I’m herded towards a helicopter.

  This is the way the world is going to be.

  Ruined.

  Blackstone’s guards usher me into the white-washed room of pods from the memory. I’m not cuffed, and I don’t resist. I’ve already been groomed, bathed and then examined by multiple doctors who judge me in perfect health. Gotta look good for my date with immortality.