by Emily Suvada
A simulation. A virtual reality.
A month ago I held a sparking electric cable in my hand and shoved it into the socket in the back of my neck. I was trying to stop Jun Bei from finishing the wipe, and I thought I was killing us both. I said good-bye to Cole, to my future, my life. But all I did was give Jun Bei control of my body, and I’ve been trapped inside her simulation of the Zarathustra lab ever since.
I push myself to my feet, swaying. I’m in the lab where I first found Jun Bei—the room with the floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the three-peaked mountains. The space is dim, lit only by the slanted morning light filtering down through the windows. The tiled floor is littered with scattered pieces of twisted metal and frayed wires—the broken pieces of a row of genkits that I’ve spent the last weeks disassembling. Outside, the mountains are dark and forested beneath a layer of thick white fog, and pigeons are circling in the distance, specks of black swooping through wispy clouds.
I pick my way across the room to the lab counter running the length of the wall, bracing my hands against it as the pain in my head settles into a dull ache. The counter’s surface is cool and smooth beneath my palms, but the sensations I’m feeling are just illusions—impulses sent into my brain from the implant in the base of my skull. Every VR simulation works roughly like that. Not all of them feel this real, but there’s nothing strange about pressing my palms to a virtual surface and feeling it press back. Every part of this lab seems genuine—every door, every tree and pebble has been perfectly coded to smell, taste, and feel realistic. It’s a flawless simulation, barely distinguishable from reality.
And there’s absolutely no way out.
“Keep it together,” I mutter as my chest tightens. I force my eyes shut, trying to ignore the fact that it’s not real air I’m breathing. If I let myself think about that, I’ll end up having another panic attack. I grope for a bottle on the counter, blindly twisting its cap off and gulping down a mouthful of icy water. The chill shoots into my chest as I drink, calming me.
This body might just be a virtual avatar approximating my own, but the simulation still tells me I’m hungry or thirsty, and still forces me to sleep when I’ve been awake too long. It hurts like hell if I stub my toe or cut myself on something sharp. Not all VR simulations come coded with sensations like hunger and pain, but Jun Bei obviously thought they were important.
I drain the bottle of water, tilting my head back to drag in a long, slow breath as footsteps echo in the hallway—bare feet slapping against tiles. Voices rise, high pitched and shrill. I tense, spinning around as the doors fly open and five small, shrieking children burst into the room.
Cole, Leoben, Anna, Ziana, and Jun Bei tumble through the doors. They’re five years old, their little bodies thin beneath gray Cartaxus-branded sweat suits. Bandages are wrapped around their chests, scars curling across their skin. I found them locked in the upstairs dormitory when I built up the courage to search the lab, and they’ve been following me ever since.
None of them are real—I know this. They’re just part of this twisted simulation. They’re walking lines of code powered by basic artificial intelligence. And right now, they’re running full speed into a room filled with shards of broken tech.
“Careful!” I shout, throwing my hands out to the whirlwind of small limbs and shaved heads. Anna stumbles over a pile of frayed wires and tilts forward wildly. I launch myself toward her, grabbing her by the waist and hauling her into my arms. She shrieks with delight, but the others scramble to a stop, their eyes widening as they scan the room. All I can see are their bare feet shifting between piles of broken glass and jagged metal. The children might just be part of this simulation, but they can still bleed.
“You can’t just run in here like this,” I say, stepping through the piles of junk to the other children. “I’ve told you before—it’s dangerous.”
Anna squirms as I put her down, twisting to wrap her arms around my waist. “We want to play.” She smiles up at me with ice-blue eyes that drive a wedge into my heart. I fight it back, forcing myself to be strong. I’m trying to keep my heart locked away, to forge a blade inside myself that I’m going to need when I get out of here.
And I am going to get out of here. I’m tired of being controlled. I’ve been manipulated and lied to by almost everyone I know. My entire existence was built on serving another person’s needs, but I’m not going to be pushed around anymore.
I want a life, I want to be free, and I’m willing to fight for it.
Lachlan and Jun Bei are still out there, working on code to alter people’s minds. They think they can make the world a better place by changing humanity against its will. I’ve stopped them twice before, and I’m ready to do it again—to fold my anger into a weapon.
I still have enough fight left in me to stop whatever they’re planning. But I need to get out of here first.
The lab’s genkits, its terminals, and every interface I’ve been able to find have been programmed to keep me out, but they’re just simulations—they’re made of code, and code can be hacked. I just need to find an entry point. There are four industrial-size genkits bolted to the wall in this lab, and I’ve been pulling them apart. I yanked out everything—the wiring, the nanosolution tanks—until only the jagged metal skeletons remained. Then I built them back up slowly, piece by piece, trying to figure out the simulation’s logic.
If I can’t find a way to get out of here, maybe I can build one.
“I’m working,” I say to the children. “I told you not to disturb me today.”
“Please?” Leoben asks, jumping up and down. His eyes are bright, his arms skinny, a line of stitches winding across his neck.
I rake my hand through my hair. Ziana is clinging to Anna’s side, looking down at the floor. Five-year-old Cole is jumping with Leoben now, making my heart lurch. I’m still not used to seeing him, and I’m not used to seeing Jun Bei, either. Their little faces hit me like a punch every time I see them. It’s not helping me achieve my goal of locking my heart away.
A tremor rumbles through the lab. Anna screeches, tightening her grip on my waist.
“It’s okay,” I say. “It’ll pass like the others. Just stay calm.”
The children huddle closer. These tremors have been shaking the lab for the last few weeks. I know Jun Bei is causing them, though I don’t think she realizes she’s doing it. Some of the time I’ll catch a flash of sound or a glimpse through her eyes. I’ve seen blood on her skin, and genkits humming in a room full of hackers with a mural of butterflies on the wall. She’s experimenting on herself, and I don’t know what she’s planning, but I know that every time either of us has been hurt, the lab starts shaking, and the implant in the base of our skull that’s holding us apart gets strained.
Eventually it’s going to be destroyed.
Another tremor shudders through the lab, and the room lurches. A vial rattles loose from one of the half-built genkits and shatters on the floor. I sway, catching my balance, and look around at the children. They don’t seem hurt, but they need to get out of here or they will be soon.
“Come on,” I say, pushing Anna toward the door. The room lurches again, and a crack races across the ceiling. Anna screams, huddling closer.
“Cattie,” Leoben says, grabbing at my shirt. “Cattie, the walls are breaking.”
Ziana starts to cry, reaching for my hand. The floor trembles again, and footsteps sound in the hallway. I freeze, my eyes cutting to the lab’s half-open door.
There’s only one other person in this lab. Another simulated avatar, like the five children. One that Jun Bei created. I’ve been avoiding him for the last few weeks, pretending he doesn’t exist, but he’s the only person who could be walking down the hallway right now. My blood runs cold.
Lachlan.
I swallow, fighting down a surge of fear. I trapped the avatar of Lachlan in his office weeks ago, but he must have gotten out. I push through the children, tiptoeing to the door, peering outsi
de. The hallway is empty, the triangular fluorescents flickering, but I catch a glimpse of someone heading up the stairs. It’s a man—tall, wearing a dark jacket. I only saw his arm, but it has to be Lachlan. The quake must have opened the door to his office and now he’s coming after us.
One of the children lets out a whimper, and I look down to see Leoben at my side. “He’s out,” he whispers.
I nod, my jaw tight. “Don’t worry. I won’t let him get you.”
The footsteps pause on the stairs, and another tremor rolls through the room. Lachlan must have heard us, and now he’s coming back. But the door to this lab doesn’t lock—I can’t keep him out of here if we stay. The children are frightened, starting to cry, and I’m not going to let him hurt them anymore.
I know they’re not real, but that doesn’t stop my heart from clenching at the fear in their eyes. They’re just avatars, but they still cry, and they still bleed.
Maybe Lachlan will bleed too.
“Come on,” I hiss, swinging open the door, gesturing for the children to follow me. I duck into the hallway, running for a tiny storeroom a few doors away. It’s cramped and dark, lined with shelves of lab equipment. The children scramble inside after me, wide-eyed and trembling, and I pull the door shut behind us as the footsteps turn back into the hallway. A tremor sends a beaker on a shelf beside me falling to the floor. It smashes on the tiles, but none of the children move. They’re more frightened of the man in the hallway than broken glass on the floor, and I don’t blame them.
The footsteps grow louder. I stand with my back against the door, my heart pounding, and one of the children lets out a sob. I scan the shelves for a knife, a scalpel, anything, but all I can see are the glittering shards of glass on the tiles. I drop to my knees and clutch one in my fist. The edges bite into my skin, a trickle of blood weaving over my knuckles, but the injury isn’t real—this isn’t my pain, or my body.
I’m something deeper now. Something made of will and urgency, alive in a way that I still don’t understand. All I know is that I’m not going to let Lachlan Agatta hurt us anymore.
The footsteps draw closer, and the door handle clicks. I can hear him breathing, sense his presence through the door. I turn, grabbing the handle, and yank it open. I lift the shard of glass in a smooth motion, then drive it deep into his side.
The glass cuts into my hand as it slides into him. He stumbles back, clutching his side, his eyes wide with shock. Blood is seeping through his shirt, flooding down from the wound.
But it isn’t Lachlan.
Leoben stumbles back, slumping against the wall. Not the little boy behind me—the man I know from the real world. Tall, broad-shouldered, with tattooed skin and a shock of white-blond hair.
He stares at me, horrified. “What the hell did you do that for, squid?”
CHAPTER 3 JUN BEI
THE FLASH BUTTONS DETONATE IN a thunderclap that sends me flying. I land hard on the cave’s rocky floor, scrambling back as the ceiling gives way. My ears hiss with static, my audio filters saturating as rubble hurtles down, a cloud of choking gray dust plunging the cavern into darkness. I curl into a ball, shaking as rocks slam into my back. Some bounce off harmlessly, but others hit my ribs, knocking the breath from me. Small, sharp chips of rock spray my neck and shoulders, slicing lines of fire across my skin.
And then suddenly it’s over.
“Jun Bei? Are you okay?”
The hissing in my ears fades, replaced with muffled, panicked voices. Rhine is calling for me from the other side of the cave-in. I cough, my ribs aching, my eyes scrunched shut. “I—I’m okay.” I lift my head, gasping from the pain that radiates along my spine at the movement, and try to look around.
The cave is dark, the air too clouded with dust for my tech to scrape more than a few points of light from the tunnel we ran here from. I can’t tell if the explosion worked—if the tunnel to the bunker is closed off safely. The dust is coating my mouth and lungs, scratching like sandpaper. I blink, shaking a cloud of grit and pebbles from my hair, and force myself to sit up. Spots of heat flare across my back and legs, but there are no emergency alerts in my vision. Nothing broken, no heavy bleeding. Just a few dozen grazes and gashes, and bruises that’ll leave me aching for days.
“Wh-what happened on your side?” I call out to Rhine, coughing.
“We’re fine,” she shouts back. “We’re going to take the wounded to the atrium. Stay there—I’ll send a team to get you.”
I lean over and spit out a mouthful of chalky dust. The cloud is clearing slowly, revealing a pile of boulders and rubble filling the tunnel’s fork. Rhine and most of the others must be on the far side, closer to the bunker. It looks like the cave-in closed the entrance like we’d hoped. Some of the Lurkers are racing away from the explosion, but a few are buried under the rocks.
I hope at least one of them survived. I could use them as subjects for testing the Panacea.
Voices echo from beyond the cave-in—Rhine and the others are shouting instructions to one another, trying to move the wounded. I push myself to my knees, swaying, a trickle of heat spilling down my face. It tastes like copper when it reaches my lips. There’s a bump on my forehead, and my thoughts are foggy as I stand. “Who else is on this side?” I call out. “Ruse?”
“H-help,” a woman’s voice croaks from behind me.
I spin around, scanning the cavern through the haze of dust. Ruse is sitting up a few feet away, coughing, with three bodies sprawled behind him. Two look like Lurkers, but the third is clearly a genehacker, with slender, twisting horns jutting from their temples. Their throat is cut, their body slack. I search for the source of the voice, finally spotting two dust-coated figures huddled against the wall. One is kneeling, holding the other’s head in her lap. It’s Matrix and her wife—the woman the Lurkers were tearing open with their hands. Her abdomen is gaping, her skin stained black with blood and dust, but the blood rolling down her side is still flowing. It looks like she’s alive.
“Holy shit,” I breathe, racing across the cavern, falling to my knees beside her. Ruse scrambles up behind me, wheezing. The woman’s body is covered with gashes from the cave-in, and her stomach is cut open diagonally from the Lurker attack. The wound is huge, a pile of her intestines spilling out across her abdomen, gleaming beneath a layer of dust, but there’s not as much blood as I’d expect. Her tech must be coded to minimize bleeding. There’s a chance her hemoglobin is hacked too. With the right defensive code, even an injury as extensive as this doesn’t have to be a death sentence. She won’t last much longer, though.
My breath stills. She’s the perfect experimental subject to help me finish the Panacea.
I drag up my cuff’s interface, sending a pulse through the cavern. The Panacea should be able to bring people back from death—that’s the reason Lachlan worked so hard to send it out. It can block or invoke any instinct, including rage, fear, and even the instinct that underpins death. The Panacea can offer us a new world. It can give us immortality. But it’s not working yet.
The Panacea’s code has been glitching since Lachlan sent it out with the vaccine, but I can’t remember writing it, so I haven’t been able to fix it. All I know is that it’s missing something—a tiny piece in a puzzle of over nine million lines of code.
Finding that missing piece could take weeks of research, but there’s a chance I can do it instantly with the right test subject. If I push the Panacea to its limits and watch what happens when it breaks, the answer might be obvious. But doing that isn’t easy. I need to see how the code behaves in someone when they die.
I lock onto the wounded woman’s panel. It’s firewalled. I look up at Matrix. She’s kneeling above her wife, tears streaking through the gray dust caked on her skin. “Give me access to her tech,” I say. “I’m going to try to save her.”
Matrix’s eyes cut to me, suddenly bright with hope. She blinks, and a credentials file pops into my vision. I log in to the woman’s panel and dive into her tech.
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br /> Her name is Clara. She’s one of the farmers who live on the mountain’s slopes. She’s twenty, and her body is packed with clever, thoughtful code. She’s smart, she’s young, and she doesn’t deserve to die like this. Hopefully, she won’t have to.
It’s easy to see how most apps run in people’s bodies, but monitoring something as complex as the Panacea requires a full genetic scan. Gentech code acts differently on everyone thanks to their unique DNA, so to see how the Panacea glitches inside Clara, I need to know how it’s running first. That means scanning every cell, every gene and mutation along with every other app she’s using. The scan will let me see how the Panacea fails when she flatlines, and it’ll also let me update the code instantly. There’s a chance I’ll be able to fix the error in the Panacea in time to save her.
Her heart might stop beating, but she’ll come back to life, safe and whole. I just have to keep her alive long enough for the scan to run.
“We should get out of here,” Ruse says, coughing. “There could be more of them coming.”
“I need a minute,” I say, starting the scan. I scroll through a readout of Clara’s injuries. It’s a miracle she’s still alive. If she dies before the scan finishes, any results I get from her will be useless. I need to work fast and stabilize her now.
A few commands from my cuff kick off a customized healing module in her panel. I rip open the pack strapped to my thigh and slide out a roll of tape. Clara moans faintly, twitching as the new code floods her body. “I need to close this wound,” I say to Matrix, tearing off a strip of tape with my teeth. “This is going to hurt. I need you to hold her down.”