Company Town

by Madeline Ashby

  The laugh erupted from her throat before she could stop it. Her shoulders shook. Her body trembled. She laughed until it became tears. She couldn’t stop.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You.” She fought to get control of her breathing. “You’re what’s funny. You fucking idiot.” She looked at Joel. “Joel chose to help me. He chose to, after you started killing my friends. He wanted to. Because he’s that good. He’s that kind. And the harder you tried to pull us apart, the closer he stuck to me.”

  Hwa picked up the gun with both hands. She reached down into Daniel’s waistband and felt more ammo tucked into his belt. She held the gun steady between her knees, in the shelter of Daniel’s body. “You poor dumb sack of ones and zeroes.” She raised the gun, loaded now. “You watched the data so close, you forgot there was a fucking person underneath.”

  She fired once at him, and ran for him. She aimed a kick squarely at his head. Suddenly she was in the air. Swinging in a circle like a child’s toy. He was so strong. Unbelievably so. His hand was around her ankle, and his hand felt like this room: made of diamond. Branch was just like this awful place, a hollow creature of silicon and hate, hard and brilliant and cold. Not sapient. Not necessarily. Not even conscious, maybe. Just running a program. Just living the brand identity to the fullest. The future Zachariah Lynch had longed for was here, and it was this monstrous inhuman thing, this venture capital pitch made flesh.

  “Did you think that would work?”

  “Worth a shot.”

  “You—”

  One side of his face ripped away. It bubbled and twisted and stretched, trying to repair itself. Suddenly he wore another face—Daniel’s. Then Joel’s. Then Zachariah’s. Then her mother’s. And Sabrina’s. And Layne’s. And Calliope’s. And Eileen’s. He stumbled back. He let Hwa go. She smelled rot. Cancer. It oozed out of him. Inside he was meat, the same as she. All his power was just appearance.

  A muffled voice told her to leave.

  It said to go now.

  It said it had not lifted her out of perdition in that elevator shaft just to see her die here.

  It said it would hold this monster, as long as it could.

  It said it was sorry.

  For her brother.

  For the city.

  It said to keep running.

  So she did.

  * * *

  Hwa barely felt anything in her knee or her shoulder as she bounced along the waves to the reactor lab. The ice was soft and slushy out here, offering no real resistance to the boat she’d commandeered.

  It was snowing again. It came down fast and hard and sideways, meaning she couldn’t drive as quickly as she wanted. She only noticed the other boat following her because of the tiny orange flag waving through the storm in her wake. Branch. Cold wind whistled along her teeth, her gums. It should have hurt. It didn’t.

  She pulled up alongside the reactor and jumped from the boat to the dock without slipping on the thick coating of ice that sheeted it. Ice overhung all the lights, dispersing their violet glow in a weak and watery way. She wasn’t even conscious of the cold.

  There was a padlock on the lab. Hwa shot it off. She yanked the door open. Left it yawning open behind her. Let him know where she was. Let him follow. The lab doors all opened for her. All she had to do was wave them open. And when she snapped her fingers, the emergency klaxon shut off.

  It was like having the keys to the city. Like being a new person. A person with status. All the doors that should have remained closed now opened. Finally, the school doors would open for her, if she only tried.

  She had no time to try.

  It was also like being back on in the ring. A series of decisions, each calculated to inflict maximum damage in the shortest amount of time available. Everything else just faded into a dull noise. There was only this moment, this choice. It was so simple. So blessedly, mercifully simple. She had missed it.

  “Prefect.”

  “Ready.”

  “Prefect, I need a Bullet.”

  The minisub burbled up to the surface like a bout of bad tacos; Hwa spun its hatch open with ease. It should have been heavy. Difficult. It wasn’t. She was like one of those mothers who could lift a car off her baby. It felt like being drunk. That special slick easiness that came with not feeling the full extent of her extremities. Maybe that was what came with knowing some extra-dimensional asshole was after you. You just stopped caring.

  Hwa watched the boat as it came closer. Then she turned to look at the city. She wished for a moment that the towers were not shrouded in snow, that ice was not clinging to every surface. She tried to think of it in sunlight, under a blue sky, on a calm sea. And with that, she jumped into the submersible.

  Inside the minisub, the winch worked just as easily. She spun it shut until a little green light came on in the shape of a happy face. She gave it the thumbs-up. The sub’s controls were simple: an accelerator, a joystick, and a brake. It was tethered to the big milkshake straw, so it couldn’t go very far. The other instruments on the panel were for lights and cameras, and Hwa had no need of those.

  Down.

  Down.

  Down.

  The reactor loomed large in the sub’s bubble. She initiated a docking program, and watched as an animation in the instrument panel told her how close she was to making contact. It all looked vaguely obscene. But finally the connection was made, the airlock threaded, and she could emerge.

  The interior of the reactor control room looked exactly as its designers had promised. An empty tube led to a blank-walled room. The room had a few displays hanging in it. They showed the reactor’s progress and the safety of the core. It was already up and running in a small state; to increase gain you’d have to draw more ions from the seawater and layer in more tritium. But from here, you could vent the whole thing, or seal it off entirely.

  The door clanged open. Right on schedule.

  “This room.” Branch looked for the door that had just been behind him a minute ago. Now it was a smooth expanse of blank white wall. “What room is this?”

  “It’s my room.” Hwa closed her eyes. Raised her hands. Hoped it would work. Hoped that her instinct was right. And began to draw.

  Master control room. All the buttons. All the switches. The door locking behind you. The door no one can open but you. A perfectly secure room where you are in complete and total control. Where you have all the power. It will respond entirely to your commands, and only your commands. It will behave exactly as you need, because this is an emergency. Because no one should be down here. If someone is down here, it’s because the city of New Arcadia and everyone who lives there is in profound danger.

  When she opened her eyes it was there. The master control room. The one she and Tae-kyung had always talked about. It hummed. It peeped. It sang. The displays showed the reactor in ancient pixellated fonts, pale green on black. It was big and clunky and the buttons were so bright they were hot to the touch. And right there, right under her thumb, was a big fat red one. The Button. The one in every doomsday scenario. The one you weren’t supposed to push. Ever.

  “Your problem is, you got no imagination,” Hwa said, and pushed it.

  INITIATING OVERLOAD, the displays read.

  Branch looked at the displays. He looked at her. “You’ll die.”

  Hwa shook her head. She swept away all the buttons. Now all the arrays were nothing but grey plastic. “No. We will die. Here. In the mud. Together.”

  Branch made a noise unlike any Hwa had ever heard before. It was a long, resonant screech of frustration. He threw himself at the walls. He kicked and punched and launched himself at their smooth white surfaces. Nothing opened for him.

  “You have to be organic,” Hwa said. “Sorry.”

  He vaulted over a rack of useless arrays and grabbed her by the shoulders. He shook her. “End it! End it now!”

  Hwa started to laugh. It was the strangest thing. She should have been scared. Terrified. Anxious. Worried
, a little, about all her skin falling off and her eyes melting out of her skull. But there was something so delightful about Branch’s frustration. He wore the same expression as a cat trying to fight itself in a mirror. Vicious and angry, but still profoundly stupid. The longer she thought about it, the longer she laughed. Slowly, he let her go. She started hiccuping, and he slapped her.

  “Aye.” Hwa rolled her neck. The slap barely hurt at all. “Aye, b’y. Really? That’s the best you’ve got?”

  He punched her in the stomach. It hurt, but not as badly as it might have. Maybe he was already weakening, somehow. If anything could do that to him, it was probably fusion radiation. At least, she hoped so.

  “You poor dumb fuck.” She spat at him. “You really fucked this one up, b’y. No gold watch for you. They can just take your Murder Drone of the Month plaque right off the wall.”

  Branch wiped the blood and bile away from his mouth. “You’re just as spiteful and stupid and small as your sisters,” he said. “You have no vision. No sense of what you’re doing.”

  Hwa grinned through the blood. She let her accent go just as thick. “Aye? The way I reckon, a chain of murders, a major explosion, and a reactor leak t’ain’t so great for business. So youse tell me: how’s Joel supposed to make all the right investments, when he’s busy cleaning up this mess? Won’t all that capital be lining the pockets of all yourn attorneys? Because I think the people of this town have grounds for a lawsuit. I think the Lynches might have to sell some assets. Maybe do a wee reshuffling.”

  Branch backed away. He turned to the countdown clock on the display. Sat down on a swivel chair. Watched the numbers. Watched the levels of radiation climb up to the red zone on the meter.

  “I’ve failed,” Branch said. “I’m a failure.”

  “You get used to it. Eventually. In my experience.”

  “I failed to close the loop,” he murmured. “The strange loop.”

  “Eh?”

  “You are the strange loop,” he said. “The disorder. In the literature, in the modules, when we train for this job, that is how you are called. The Disorder. Our job is to order you.”

  Hwa still had a chuckle in her bruised stomach. “Cute. I’ll tell me mum about that one. When I see her in Hell.” She watched the levels climbing up and up and up. She didn’t feel so good. She felt hot. Feverish. Slow. Branch flickered like a candle. Like he was having trouble keeping himself together. She had to ask him now. “Why the birthday cards?”

  “What?”

  “The threats,” Hwa said. “Why did you send the death threats if you knew they’d hire me to protect Joel?”

  Branch gave her his last condescending sneer. “We didn’t.”

  The room filled with light.

  19

  Human

  A sonorous voice. Beautiful. Rich and deep and perfect.

  “I have of late, (but wherefore I know not) lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition; that this goodly frame the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy the air, look you, this brave o’er hanging firmament, this majestical roof, fretted with golden fire: why, it appeareth no other thing to me, than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an Angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?”

  Her eyes opened.

  Nail sat beside her, reading from a compact. His hair was a little longer than she remembered, but otherwise he looked exactly the same. Pale and handsome and well-dressed. Like nothing in the world had changed.

  “Oh. You’re awake. The Mistress will be pleased.”

  Her mouth worked.

  “Yes. This is my speaking voice. I gave it to her as part of our contract. But she is lending it to you, during your convalescence. We are allowed to converse. Would you like some water?”

  She was alive.

  That was impossible.

  She nodded.

  Hwa had only the vaguest notion of how radiation poisoning was supposed to work, but she knew she wasn’t supposed to still have skin. Or eyes. Or a working set of lungs. She was supposed to be a puddle of melted human cheese. That was how it worked. Right?

  The water tasted wonderful.

  “Thank … you.…”

  “It is quite all right. I live to serve.”

  Hwa stretched her feet experimentally. Wiggled her toes. Tapped her fingers on the sheet. She was in the Lynch clinic. Had to be. There was an orchid on the table beside her bed, and a cut-crystal tumbler full of water. The lighting was soft. She waited for the turn of a windmill blade. None came. Five, then. She wrapped her left hand around the glass and brought the glass to her lips.

  Her hand was wrong.

  Clean.

  Pure.

  Unstained.

  The tumbler trembled in her hand.

  “Yes.” Nail retrieved the tumbler. He set it down on the tray beside her bed. “About that.”

  “How…?”

  “They’re not sure. I’ve heard them talking, and they seem to think you’re augmented. With augments they’ve never seen before.”

  A white room story. That was the term. Mr. Bartel used it for one of the clichés they were supposed to avoid during the creative writing unit. A woman wakes up alone in a white room, unsure of how she got there or even who she is. He was really excited about just getting to teach one of those creative writing units at all. He promised he would edit an anthology of their stories. Share it with other schools. Put the whole thing in the library system where other students in the province could read it. Hwa realized she had never turned in her assignment on time. Never even turned it in at all. Just shrugged and turned the other way and focused on the killings. She probably had so much homework to make up. She was never going to graduate.

  She held out her left arm.

  Still clean.

  She swung her legs off the bed. Stretched them out.

  Her left leg was just as pale as her right one.

  “Shall I fetch someone?” Nail asked.

  “I guess.” He stood, and Hwa grabbed awkwardly for his elbow. He turned. “Thanks,” she said. “Thanks for sharing your voice with me.”

  He beamed. “Rusty will be glad to know you are well. All the Mistress has asked for since you’ve been here is pasta and bread and cake. It was as though she were trying to eat your weight in comfort food.”

  He left. The floor was soft under her feet. Moss. The longer she stood there, the more moss grew around her feet, blue and springy and pleasantly alkaline smelling. She dug her toes into it. Flexed her feet. Her ankles had no pop. Her joints felt flexible and loose.

  It was her eyes, she decided. Her eyes were probably so damaged that she had needed new ones. Or contacts. Some ocular prosthesis that would replace her melted eyes and also allow the installation of a filtered perspective. So of course her stain was filtered out. She ran her right hand over her left arm. It didn’t feel any different. One long smooth line of skin. No change in density. Just skin. Just like the other arm.

  She pinched it. Scratched it. Watched her fingernails drag down the skin, leaving little white lines in their wake. Studiously avoided the mirror near the door.

  Branch couldn’t be right.

  She wouldn’t allow him to be right.

  Why would I edit it out?

  A sound bubbled up to her mouth. A whimper.

  “It’s your eyes,” she whispered. “It’s just your eyes. You’re still you.”

  Her mother’s face would not be waiting for her in the mirror.

  “Stop being such a pussy.”

  She walked over to the mirror with eyes closed. Trailed her fingers along the wall. Stopped when they hit the frame. Entered walking position. Her muscles still felt the same. Light. Ready.

 
“Ready.”

  In the mirror stood the woman she had seen in the crystal ball.

  Behind her stood Daniel.

  * * *

  “A beard?” Hwa asked. “Really?”

  He stroked his chin. “You don’t like it? I sort of like it. I stopped shaving once you were in here. There wasn’t much point.”

  “I thought you were dead. I saw you…” Her voice shook. It was suddenly much deeper and rougher than it should have been. She reached out and touched the beard gingerly. “I watched you break.…”

  “I know.” He kissed the tips of her fingers. “I watched the footage.”

  She spoke in a whisper. “How is this possible? How is any of this possible?”

  Daniel snapped his fingers at the mirror. She turned to look, and a swarm of machines appeared in the glass. They swam along in schools, occasionally pausing to wriggle their hairs at something before continuing along their merry way. As she watched, one of them divided in two.

  “Those look like…” Her head tilted. “The Krebs. But different.” She enlarged the image. They were so delicate. So fluid. Like animals. Like cells. Like something alive.

  “That’s your blood,” he said. “Our blood.”

  She looked up at him. “What?”

  He pushed the Krebs to one side and opened another file. This one had his name on it. The same machines were gathering in thick clusters. When he zoomed out, he revealed his rib cage and collarbone. The pattern of broken bones. The machines were literally scabbing over his bones to mend them.

  “If you’d just waited,” he said. “Just a minute a longer.”

  Hwa shut her eyes. “Please don’t make me look at that.”

  “All right.” She felt him move behind her. “It’s all right. You can look.”

  When her eyes opened, the Krebs were back. But he zoomed the image out, and there was her name on top of the file. The Krebs danced across her whole body. But they were most densely concentrated in the place where her stain used to be. They were there, under her skin, a second stain of proteins and circuits.