by Xander Gray
I flashed forward ten years to the driveway of their small suburban home. Their Chevy truck had its hood popped and steam rising from its radiator. His mom lay cowering under the grill. Every time she cried, his dad kicked her.
Gar bolted down the steps and slammed his dad onto the hot motor. The truck rolled off its jacks with a bang. Don’t touch my mother! I’ll kill you! Gar threw his father to the ground and straddled his chest. Do you hear me? I will beat you until you stop moving! I will beat you until they bury you! His fists rained down on his dad’s face until finally the old man raised his hands to block the blows.
Another scene swam into view.
I saw him in an open-air hut with other soldiers, making promises to a group of bronze-skinned old men in robes. If you identify the enemy, we’ll bring jobs. We’ll pave roads. We can—
An explosion engulfed the hut next door. A wave of heat slammed into him. The other soldiers grabbed their rifles and dove to their stomachs; the old men covered their heads and shrank into the corner of the hut, their eyes searching the flames outside, calling to one another in their native tongue.
Gar ran down rickety stairs to a yard populated with goats.
A young woman stood in the yard, clutching the smoldering black thing that used to be her baby. She dropped to her knees, wailing, raising the baby above her head like an offering, but the only deity watching from the sky was an American helicopter.
I saw his darkest moment unfold in a cramped apartment in the war zone. He was getting ready to interrogate a family about the location of a terrorist. The wife and children were already prone on the living room rug. Gar ordered the father to join them.
The father resisted, backing toward the kitchen, unleashing a stream of insults in multiple languages. One of these impugned Gar’s mother. If it hadn’t been 112 degrees, or if the man had simply fallen silent, Gar might have controlled himself.
Instead, he pushed the father, and a single pop echoed in the cramped apartment. Gar looked at his rifle, dumbfounded.
The living room sat hot and still until the mother realized her girl had been shot. She fell to crying as the father dropped to his knees in the kitchen. He crawled across the floor to cradle his daughter in his arms, sobbing as a pool of blood spread over her green dress.
Gar stumbled. No, no, no. The girl needed her blanket. He ran into the alley where he had last seen her playing, looking for the telltale swath of orange and blue. But the alley was barren and deserted. There was nothing there. His eyes rolled back. He fainted.
I saw him back in the States, stepping into the dim light of his bedroom. Lamps on each side of the bed cast pools of light over the sheets. His wife sat up quickly on the mattress, pulling covers over her naked body. Another man lay with her.
Gar had expected this. He drew his handgun; the barrel spat fire.
The interloper flopped over the side of the bed. His wife screamed.
He could end her if he wanted. Instead, he tossed the gun at her feet and walked out of the house. He stared at the moon, breath condensing on the cool night air, knowing he had traded his freedom for retribution.
The scene changed.
He knelt on a staircase before tall stained-glass windows, his hands bathed in red light. He supplicated toward the cross not because he feared prison, but because he had allowed his father to mold him into an instrument of hate.
I disengaged from the scene until I could feel Gar’s mind pulsing through me, electric and elemental. Then I summoned two words—exit simulation.
A bright light opened above me. I rose toward it through purple clouds and swirling streaks of black. I anticipated crashing through the light and back into the real world, but before I could, something snapped me back.
Gar. He was an anchor. He could not accompany me. I understood then—he was trapped. I released him. The tapestry of his mind unraveled from mine, and I opened my eyes.
We were back in Medical. Gar knelt before me in the sand, sobbing uncontrollably. He leaned forward. His hands sank.
“I’m sorry, friend,” I said. “I’ll unplug the servers for you. I promise.” I picked up the torch, about to step back into the hallway, when something moved behind him.
One small, gray arm shot out of a dune, then another. A little girl’s head emerged. She dragged herself across the sand, trailing ichor and shreds of bloodsoaked dress, and then she wrapped her arms around Gar’s shoulders.
I knelt in the sand and grabbed her arm. As soon as I touched her, I knew she wasn’t real. “She’s an illusion. Let her go.”
Gar kicked and screamed as she dragged him into the sand.
I put my hand on his face and looked into his frightened eyes. “You can’t keep living like this. The things that happened over there weren’t your fault.”
She fell on him.
I looked away. I had to. What a terrible thing to punish a man with his demons. I concentrated on the words exit simulation. A bright light opened above my head, a seething bubble of energy. I rose toward it, the dream place collapsing. When I collided with the light, my head hummed and every cell in my body vibrated. I passed into darkness.
Chapter
Thirty-two
I awoke back in the death row, a demon's computer lab. The monolith rose like a neon tombstone, bathing everything in slow pulsations of light. Navarez sat on a chair behind me, watching. Slaven stood near Crystal's bed, holding a breathing mask attached to a small orb, the cue-ball contraption he had attacked me with in the woods. Neither of them spoke.
Crystal was still unconscious. A Capgras stood on the side of her bed opposite Slaven, crawling with shadows from an overhead fan. Despite my familiarity—even intimacy—with the Capgras, seeing it there sent a shiver down my neck.
Slaven waved at me. “I trust you are satisfied with the state in which you find your physical body?”
I stood from the bed and walked toward the mirror. My reflection was my own. Someone had dressed me in street clothes. I lifted my shirt and saw the stitches beneath my ribs where Slaven had stabbed me. I touched the soft flesh of my belly—it was human. Organic. Relief surged through me.
I walked past the pulsing monolith to Crystal’s bedside and looked down at her sleeping face, thankful for the gentle rise and fall of her chest. “Now you’ll wake Crystal and let us leave.”
Without a word, Slaven placed the mask over Crystal’s face. Purple smoke surged through the clear cup, into Crystal’s nose and mouth. She thrashed and coughed before sitting up on the bed, eyes wide.
The purple smoke meant Slaven had converted my wife’s brain to nanites. “What have you done?”
“You mean this?” Slaven turned the cue ball in his hands, admiring it. “It’s not what you think. It contains a small army of nanobots whose entire purpose is shutting down and reviving the conscious brain.”
I had no idea what he meant.
“It’s a nanobot anesthetic,” Slaven said with disdain. “I didn’t transfer your wife’s brain.”
Relief surged through me. I didn’t want Crystal to experience existential angst whenever she contemplated her identity, nor did I relish lying awake wondering if the woman next to me was the same woman I had married.
Crystal blinked, rubbed her face, and glanced frantically around the room. “Joshua? Where are we?”
“I’ll explain later.” I touched her shoulder and felt her trembling.
She leaned over the safety rail, grabbing my shoulders. “I was attacked by something…”
I wondered what face Slaven had worn. “We’re going to leave here soon.”
“Soon?” Slaven folded his arms over his chest.
I looked him in the eye. “I need you to do something.”
Slaven arched one eyebrow.
“Shut these servers down.” I narrowed my eyes and clenched my fists. “People are suffering.”
“Not innocent people.” Slaven glanced over his shoulder, toward the monolith.
I stepped toward h
im. “Helena Isaacson never did anything wrong.”
He considered me carefully, perhaps assessing my volatility. “I can’t release Helena unless I release everyone. Unfortunately for you and Helena, I need the others to create the perfect environment for the Ouroboros. And you must admit, she gives the place a suitably macabre atmosphere.”
“Put these tortured minds to rest, Slaven. If you need some demented soul, take one of the lunatic child murderers in Ad Seg.”
“People without moral conscience won’t do—conscience creates the most powerful demons of all.” Slaven clenched his fists in anger. “And what makes you think you have any leverage? I could throw you in your cell.”
“No.” Navarez stood, a determined look on his face. “I’m the one who knows how to perfect the wireless tunneling. That means I have the leverage.”
Slaven looked Navarez up and down, like a butcher evaluating ribs. “What would you have me to do?”
Navarez kept his eyes on Slaven. “You’re going to do what Joshua wants. Then you’re going to send him on his way and never bother him again.”
Slaven stood silently, a stone sentry in a corrections uniform, his mouth a stiff line. In the pulsing light, he resembled an alabaster carving dressed to entertain funhouse patrons. He strode toward the computer monitor and slid the keyboard from its recess, sighed, and then tapped a key. A click resonated through the building. The monolith powered down with an audible clunk, plunging the room into darkness.
I couldn't see so much as the hands in front of my face, but I could hear the men breathing, somewhere in the dark. Slowly, I became aware of dim light on the left side of the room. There were windows along that wall, behind bookcases and cabinets, that had been papered to obscure vision from outside. Now, they were glowing a moonlight gray.
The floor creaked. “Joshua?” The voice belonged to Crystal.
“I’m here.” I felt along the bed rail until I found her hand.
I imagined Slaven stalking around the monolith, the Capgras trailing him. Any moment they would drag me to the floor.
The monolith lit up, illuminating the room. Slaven had not left the keyboard. The Capgras maintained its silent reverie near the pod.
“It’s done.” Slaven slid the keyboard back into its recess. “Now take your wife and get out.”
“Wait.” I looked at Navarez and pointed at my wife. “Scan her for me.”
Navarez retrieved the scanner from his shirt pocket and aimed it at Crystal. “She doesn’t emit a signal. She’s 100 percent organic human.”
Thank God. I helped her down from the bed and led her toward the door. She limped, clinging to me for balance. “This place is a head trip.”
I might have smiled under less dire circumstances. “You don’t know the half of it.”
Outside I looked up at the moon, a free man, and felt my entire body relax. We were alive and going home.
Slaven followed me to the doorway. “I’ll walk you up to the front in a minute.” Then he shut the door, leaving us outside.
Chapter Thirty-three
Crystal and I hugged on the rickety steps of the death row. Even after everything she had been though, her hair smelled flowery and clean. It reminded me of home—of flickering candles and pumpkin pie.
I did my best to explain what had happened. She never doubted me, not even when I told her how my consciousness had ridden the temporal track of my life. She gasped when I told her how I had ultimately been responsible for the shooting at Walt U, but if she passed any judgment, it was silent.
She had her own questions. She wanted to know whether the Ouroboros might successfully commandeer the bodies of six million people. Her eyes grew wild when she spoke of it. She felt certain we should not rest until we resolved it.
“I united Navarez and Slaven.” I looked out at the prison’s high perimeter walls, anxious to leave. “They seem perfectly capable of handling things from here.”
“Six million people.” She leaned toward me. “If you can help, you should.”
“I tried, Hon.”
“Try again. Don’t you think it’s worth it? Just to try?”
What I really wanted was to kiss my wife. “Whatever they’re working on involves engineering well beyond my expertise.”
“Yes, but you have abilities.” She picked at the weeds. “Six million people.”
“Would you give your life to save six million?”
“Yes.”
She always had been a good girl. Maybe that’s why I loved her.
I would go back inside and offer my services one last time. Even after all these years, I had never stopped wanting to impress my wife.
Chapter Thirty-four
I opened the door and stepped into the row’s oscillating shadows.
Slaven turned toward me. “One minute.”
“My wife can be persuasive. I know you guys probably don’t need my help, but she thinks—” The number 23 flashed in the upper-left corner of the computer monitor. Powering down the monolith had been a trick. Slaven had not purged. Gar and the others still suffered. “Are you kidding?”
“You can leave without incident,” Slaven said. “Simply turn around.”
I pointed at Navarez. “Did you know he tricked me?”
“What do you mean?”
“Come look. All 23 are still in the grid.”
Navarez squinted at the monitor. “Slaven?”
“You have no idea how important this is!” Slaven snapped. “The Ouroboros never wanted to know the details of what I do, and neither do you. You want a clean conscience. But you’ve looked behind the curtain and you can’t have it both ways!”
He was a monster. I shoved him aside and slid the keyboard from its recess.
He slammed his arms down into my shoulders, driving me to my knees—pain detonated along my spine—and then he pushed me flat on my back and pressed his hands over my nose and mouth. I couldn’t breathe. I struggled against his immovable arms, watching the rafters fade, fade. Then a miracle: my wife threw herself into him, knocking him aside.
He was up in a flash, looming over her. The flesh of his face buzzed; his facial features temporarily vanished into an ocean of chaos. “You never learn.”
Terrified, she scrambled backward until she thumped into the wall. Slaven leapt after her, jerked her to her feet, and spun her around.
I sucked in a huge breath, fighting to haul myself upright on the edge of the podium.
Slaven locked an arm around her throat. He could snap her neck with one move.
I put a hand over the keyboard. “Let her go.”
He squeezed Crystal’s neck. She stopped squirming.
“The deal stands.” His tongue flickered behind a swamp of rippling flesh. “Step away from the computer and I’ll walk you out.”
I didn’t trust him, and Crystal would want me to fight. I positioned my finger over the return key.
“Damn you.” Slaven hurled my wife across the room. She slammed into the wall with a crunch and thudded to the floor. Her head lay at an unnatural angle, oozing blood.
I ran toward her.
Slaven grabbed me from behind. “You’re flesh and blood now. There are a hundred ways I could kill you—twist your head, smash your sternum.”
His arms were like vises around my chest. I twisted in his grip, but he was too strong.
“But I have a better idea.” He slammed me into an empty bed. “I’m going to punish you. You need a lesson.”
I swung at him. He caught my fist with one hand and pulled two zip ties from his belt with the other. He zip-tied my wrist to the bed rail. “I built the grid to teach people like you a lesson, but I can’t use it on you, can I? You’re too special. I’m sick of hearing how special. For thirty years I’ve wanted to gut you like a fish, but Attis wouldn’t let me.”
I swung my free hand. He caught and bound it to the other rail. “There’s no one here to stop me this time.”
“Slaven!” Navarez knelt beside Crysta
l, two fingers against her jugular. “If you hurt Joshua, I won’t help.”
Slaven rolled his eyes. “If I took your threats seriously, I would have pressed purge.”
“You’ve really hurt her.” Navarez stiffened with rage. “You don’t think I’ll walk away?”
Slaven retrieved the white orb from a medical cart. “I do not believe you’d let six million people die because I treated two poorly.”
“There has to be a better way.”
Slaven scoffed. He turned to me—his face a trembling hive—and jammed the anesthesia orb over my face.
Chapter Thirty-five
I opened my eyes.
I was strapped to the bed, but it had been hoisted into a vertical position. Straps bound my chest to the mattress, my arms to the rails, my ankles to each other. I struggled, but they didn't budge—they were too tight, and I was too human.
Navarez had been mounted in an identical position on the far side of the monolith. He stared until I glanced at him, and then gestured across the room with his chin.
My breath caught.
My wife lay in the egg-shaped pod, its circular arm silent above her head. Her face was scraped and pale. Blood caked her temple. Her hair bloomed across the platform like a frozen waterfall.
I concentrated on her abdomen until I saw the gentle swell of her breathing. Thank God. “Slaven. Please.”
Slaven rolled up the sleeves of his uniform, looking down on my wife as though she were a lab animal prepped for dissection.
“Don’t hurt her.”
He pressed a button on the pod. Blue lights blazed along the circular arm. It began to rotate, a slow grind building to a high-pitched whine, as it threw arcs of blue-white light on the floor. The same light bathed my wife’s face in an underwater shroud. “She took quite a blow to the head. If I don’t transfer her, she may die.”
“Let me take her to the hospital.”