by Eric Warren
“I made a deal…with Charlie. He would take you, and your father would find out. And he’d go after you, dying in the process of course. And then there would be no more threats. The Dante clan would be free to rule as we saw fit.” She smiled at Arista’s horrified face. “But of course, I didn’t tell you that. I brought you into my office—naïve as you were—telling you I had a very big job for you. We had received ‘secret intelligence’ exposing a weakness in Charlie. And you were going to be the one who exposed it, killing him.”
“There was no weakness,” Arista whispered.
“Obviously. Charlie was supposed to capture you for his projects. Use you however he wanted. My goal was getting David and any of the rest of your family out of the colony.” She shifted, pulling her blood-soaked hand away from her abdomen. “Damn.”
“But why? He couldn’t be a threat to you,” Arista said. She felt the growing pressure of Charlie repositioning the train, but Echo was dying and she needed this information. She needed to know what happened to her. “Talk fast.”
Echo scoffed, leading to another coughing fit. “In a hurry?” She smiled again. “Your family established the colony. They built the gates. But you were toxic for everyone. You didn’t know the first thing about defeating the machines. You didn’t know how to think like them. How to beat them. I do. And when your grandfather was finally disgraced it was me and my brother’s turn to take over. To send the colony in a new direction. And for the past twenty years things have been stable. But I knew the power of your family’s name. I knew people would forget your mistakes eventually, want you back. And that’s what was happening with this god-forsaken gate David built.”
Arista’s brow furrowed. “Then why not just kill David? Why all the complex plans?”
“Because it would have looked suspicious, you moron. But if his prized daughter was captured by the machines and he died trying to save her, he would be mourned as a hero, but no longer a threat.” She spat a glob of blood on the floor. “It was why when I found out you were alive I sent Sy to kill you.”
“Yeah?” Arista gripped the gun until her knuckles were white. “How’d that turn out for you? She’s dead.”
Echo winced. Either at the pain or the news Arista couldn’t tell. “You’re such a little weasel.” She took the deepest breath she could before continuing. The train had stopped again. “I couldn’t have you coming back and bolstering your family name even more. I also knew your implant contained a record of all your memories. If you accessed it, if you showed people…they would know I tried to frame him.”
“But not anymore,” Arista said. “Why tell me now?”
She tried to laugh but it seemed to cause her pain. “Because I’m dying and you’re the only one who can stop him.” She pulled the key from her pocket, holding it out to Arista.
What was this? After everything she’d done Echo couldn’t seriously be trusting her with Croden’s Key. And what did she mean to stop him? Wasn’t she in an alliance with Charlie?
The train lurched forward again. Arista scrambled back to the controls, searching for something that would stop it again. She’d wasted what little time she had! Had that been Echo’s true goal?
“Stop,” Echo said, weak. “Let him take you back. You have everything you need to stop him. Weapons, personnel, everything. Do the job I couldn’t do. Destroy that son of a bitch once and for all.”
Arista glanced at the key in Echo’s limp hand. Is that why she’d been so adamant about acquiring it? In order to stop Charlie, not help him?
“You are a traitor!” Charlie screamed. “I should have known better than to make a deal with a human!”
Echo only smiled. She tried to say something else, but nothing came out. She was right. The gate was open and the train would get them back home, eliminating any AI’s from this world. But what about Frees? And David and Blu? They didn’t belong here. The train was already picking up speed again. Did she have time to stop it again? The least she could do would be to save them.
Arista ran over and grabbed the key from Echo’s hand. Arista placed her palm on Echo’s shoulder briefly. “I’m sorry. And thank you.”
“Just…get it right,” Echo replied, closing her eyes. Arista jumped up, running past to the door that connected the car to the rest of the cars on the train. But it was still sealed. Without Frees she had no chance of opening it.
“It does not matter what she said,” Charlie yelled. “You will not stop me. The humans know of our alliance. They will hand you over to me. And as soon as we return I will have a body again!”
Arista gripped the handle with her machine hand, bending and warping it as best she could. But without Frees’ raw strength it was a losing battle.
Frees peered at her through the window. “Stand back!” he yelled.
She did as he said, shielding herself from the shattering of glass as his hand reached inside, grabbing the frame and ripping it from the housing. The door disappeared.
“What happened to you?” she yelled. The train had picked up considerable speed. They weren’t far now.
“Crawled under. I’m trying to find a way to stop this thing,” he replied.
“We have to get everyone off, before it goes through the gate. They don’t belong in that world!” She glanced over Frees’ shoulder at the people huddled in the cars beyond. They had lost all sense of their entitlement, sponsored and the wealthy were huddled together, no longer caring about their social status. They just wanted to live.
“I don’t think there’s time. I can’t find a way to slow it down.”
“Then we need to cut off the head. Or in this case, more appropriately, the tail.” Arista glanced down at the connections running between the two cars below them.
“No!” Charlie yelled, and the train picked up even more speed. Arista made the mistake of glancing up. The shimmering surface of the gate was directly in front of them. They would be through it in less than a minute.
She and Frees reached down together, ripping all the connections from the two cars. Frees punched the main connection block, shattering it, and the back train car began to pull away. But the others still remained in motion.
“Jump!” Arista yelled. As the words came out of her mouth she felt herself fly into the air to the ledge of the next car. As they landed she glanced behind them as the train car locked down on the maglev lines, just like it was supposed to when it lost control. “We have to cut all the cars from each other!” she said. The controls weren’t just in one car they were in all the cars. It was the connectivity of all of them that made it work. If they could sever all the connections, each piece would come to a dead stop on the tracks.
She and Frees bolted down the middle of the carriage, people cringing on either side of them. She looked up. Less than twenty seconds. And two connections to go. They wouldn’t make it. “You do this one, I’ll do the last one!” she yelled.
Frees nodded and bent as she took off for the last connection. She tried not to look at Blu and David’s confused faces as she ran past but she couldn’t help it. She was doing this for them. She couldn’t allow them to suffer in her world. They didn’t belong there any more than she belonged here.
She squinted against the bright glow of the gate ahead of them, punching the connection with her artificial hand as hard as she could, while Charlie screamed at her to stop. If only the first car got through that would be okay. At least Blu and David would be safe. And Frees could stay here with them. He could learn to blend in. It wasn’t ideal, but it was all she had.
A massive crash sounded behind her as the connection Frees had been working on broke and the second car snapped to the tracks, no doubt tossing people all over the place.
The gate was just ahead.
Only two more hits. Maybe three. “C’mon!” Arista screamed, hitting it with all she had.
Then he was there, beside her. And they hit it one last time. The train car separated just as the front of the first car began to pass through t
he gate. “Frees! We have to get to the other—”
She was cut off by a massive explosion which threw her into the air and she completely lost any sense of direction. Frees was no longer beside her. And the train she’d been standing on was gone. All she could feel was the air rushing underneath her as she flew backward. She couldn’t even see the gate anymore.
And before she knew it, the ground rushed up to meet her like a giant tidal wave.
Everything snapped to black.
THIRTY-SIX
CONSCIOUSNESS BLOOMED like a long-dormant flower. One second there had been nothing. The absence of thought, and the next moment she was staring at a grimy ceiling, a harsh light illuminating a dark space.
Arista turned her head to the side, taking it all in. She wanted to cry out, to yell for someone but she suspected she was all alone. Something terrible had happened. Right at the end, it had all gone to hell.
She tried moving her legs only to find a deep ache erupt inside her. Her entire body hurt, as if she’d been in stasis until that very moment and the act of moving one appendage had broken the spell. She grunted at the pain, squeezing her eyes tight in the hopes that this was all a dream and she wasn’t really where she thought she was.
The door to the small room flew open to reveal a towering figure, backlit by a bright light outside of the room. Arista shielded her eyes with her artificial arm, thankful it was still attached.
“Are you okay?” the familiar voice asked, entering the room. “I wasn’t sure you would wake up.”
“Are we…am I…?” she began.
“Back at David’s place,” Frees finished, sitting down on the edge of the bed. He looked terrible. Covered in dirt and soot, his right leg was still exposed. It no longer had any skin covering it at all. There was a hole in his upper right chest where Echo had shot him. And when she stared into his eyes, they were both orange.
“Didn’t want to try contacts?” she asked.
“Too much trouble.” He blinked.
“What happened?”
“My best guess is the gate closed prematurely,” he said. “Right in the middle of the first train car. One second it was there, and the next it wasn’t. The only problem was Echo said she’d stored all the ammunition up there. I have to assume the gate sliced right through it when it closed. The explosion destroyed the back end of the car and knocked us away from the gate. There was no way we could have gotten through. Not unless we were in the very front of the first car.”
It was gone. They’d failed. She’d never see the people she loved ever again. Her parents, Jill…Jessika. They were all over there and she was stuck over here. But at least she’d helped save people. She’d stopped the other passenger cars from going through.
“Blu?” she asked. “David?”
“David is in the hospital, recovering. Blu is there with him now. But we couldn’t risk bringing you there. Not until things calm down. I brought you back here using Jennings’ patrol cruiser. He’s working on exonerating us.” Frees stood and walked to the far end of the room, staring out one of the dirty windows. “They found Echo’s body. They think she’s the Echo from this world. The funny thing is, she left you an inheritance.”
“She did what?” Arista asked, sitting up and pushing her elbows out behind her. It hurt like hell but at the moment she didn’t care.
“Her companies are quietly searching for Arista Barnes,” he replied. “It looks like she wasn’t joking.”
Startled, Arista felt around her pocket for the key. Had it been destroyed in the explosion? Fallen out in the subway line somewhere? Not like she could use it here, but it felt…important to retrieve.
“Here,” Frees said, tossing a bundle of cloth to her. The key was wrapped inside. “I didn’t want it to get lost.”
“What a strange woman,” Arista said. “She told me I had to finish the job. Since she couldn’t.”
“I think she had a love/hate relationship with you,” Frees said. “I honestly do. From everything I heard you weren’t the one she had an issue with, it was your dad. She just happened to take everything out on you.”
“What about Charlie? Is he still trapped in the train cars?”
Frees paused a moment, then walked back over to her. “I couldn’t find any trace of him. He might have made it,” he said, somber.
“But you said the explosion—”
“The first half of the car passed through. If he’d transferred all of his consciousness to the front of the train he could have made it somehow. He knew what we were doing. And it wouldn’t have taken him long.”
She tried sitting up further. “I need to get back to the subway. We have to make sure. He could still be in those cars. And if he is…”
Frees put his hand on her shoulder, lowering her back down. “Trust me, I’ve checked. Everything has already been cleaned up. It’s been called a system malfunction; another reason not to trust automated systems.” Frees smirked. “Plus, that was three days ago.”
“Three days!” Arista yelled. She glanced down at herself. “I’m still in the same clothes! You couldn’t put me in something clean and warm?”
He stared at her incredulously. “That’s what you’re worried about? I’m pretty sure you didn’t want me undressing you.” He fumbled with his hands, not looking her in the eye. She’d never seen him embarrassed before.
“Well, I mean Blu or someone…” she trailed off.
“Honestly I wasn’t even sure you were going to wake up. You sustained a hard hit when you landed. I know because I landed right beside you. I saw it happen. And I thought for sure you were dead. But you still had a pulse. David said he didn’t expect you to regain consciousness for a week.”
“It’s funny,” Arista said. “I don’t remember any dreams. Just…blackness. There was nothing. I always dream but this time it was just…absence of anything.”
“I wonder if it has something to do with your implant,” Frees said.
Now that she realized it, she wasn’t receiving any stats from the implant. She wasn’t receiving any information whatsoever. “Frees, ask me a math question.”
“Uh…what is four-hundred-three divided by negative twelve.”
“I…don’t know,” she said, her eyes tearing up. “I think it…I think it’s broken. I’m not getting anything…”
“It’s okay,” Frees said, rushing to her. “You don’t need it anymore. It was more for your camouflage than anything else.”
“But it was part of me. It’s like…it’s like losing a limb,” she said quietly and she began to weep.
Before she could protest Frees had put his arm around her and brought her into a hug. He didn’t say anything, he only held her, as close to him as she thought he could. And for a few moments she allowed herself to cry, not just for the loss of her Device, but for the loss of everything. For the prospect of spending the rest of her life here, in this strange, uneven world. She wasn’t sure she could make it here. But at least she wasn’t alone.
She pulled Frees closer and wrapped her arms around him, shaking.
She wasn’t alone.
THIRTY-SEVEN
“YOU ARE WELCOME TO STAY as long…well, as long as you please,” David said, hobbling across the workshop. Blu had brought him home only a few hours before, but with all the drugs in his system from almost dying, he was moving slower than Frees was sure he liked.
It had been another two days since Arista had woken up, but she rarely left her room. She said it was because she had a headache but Frees knew it was because she just wasn’t ready to face anyone yet. She’d lost everything in one fell swoop. It would take her some time to recover.
“Do you think you guys will stay here?” Blu asked, tossing David’s hospital clothes into a small basket beside the door. “For good, I mean.”
“I don’t know,” Frees said. “We weren’t expecting to be here long.”
“Maybe your side will find a way to overpower them and open the gate again,” Blu said, hopef
ul.
“We don’t have a side. We’ve got two allies and two more people under glass who might be able to help us. And that’s it. And if Charlie made it across then he’s no doubt told them we’re dead. And even if they don’t believe him they don’t have a way to reopen the gate. Not if what Echo said was accurate. This had been a one-time deal. And that explosion more than likely destroyed the gate on the other side too.”
“Wow, you really know how to lighten the mood,” Blu said, brushing past him. “I was just trying to help.”
“I know, and I’m sorry. It’s just…I’m worried.” He stared at Arista’s door down the hall.
“I am too,” she replied. “But on the bright side I get to have a sister now. Never had one of those before. Which I guess that sort of makes you my unofficial brother-in-law.”
“What?” he said, jumping up. “We’re not…I mean, we’re not together.”
“Come on, Frees. I’m young but I’m not blind.” She laughed, pulling her silver hair back into a ponytail. “Plus, I think it’s sweet.”
“No that’s not—”
“Lie to yourself all you want,” she said with a flip of her hand, disappearing into the other room. Frees glanced over at David, who was smirking as he studied something on this workstation. Why did everyone think they were a couple? Other than the obvious fact he was a machine and she was a human, it wasn’t like they were intimate. They were just…good friends. It didn’t matter what anyone else said. He wasn’t about to let anyone else define their relationship for them.
“Frees,” David said. He glanced back up. “Arista told me you had schematics on the Quantum Gates?”
“I do, but they’re nothing like the one that brought us here. They are teleportation devices only. Site-to-site.”
“If you wouldn’t mind,” David said. “I’d like to take a look. “I’m not convinced we couldn’t give it a shot. And with Arista’s giant inheritance, we would have access to all the raw materials we would need.”