Paroxysm (Book 2): Paroxysm Aftermath

by Ashleigh Reynolds

  PAROXYSM

  AFTERMATH

  ASHLEIGH REYNOLDS

  “The human spirit must prevail over technology.”

  - Albert Einstein

  PROLOGUE

  Four months. That’s how long it took for civilization to fall.

  It wasn’t like the last time she lived through it. Not the way Dagmar had concocted things. It didn’t happen suddenly or with the flip of a switch. It built and spread leaving destruction in its wake.

  The base was the last to fall despite their attempts to stop it.

  And then the mainframe was destroyed.

  Out of the hundreds of military staff only eighty-eight survived, forced into one of the secluded buildings off base. The rest was for them now.

  PART 1

  CHAPTER ONE

  Gemi sat in a chair on the roof letting the sunlight warm her face. With her eyes shut she could pretend it was just another beautiful summer day. As long as the wind didn’t blow and carry with it the faint caustic scent that still hung in the air despite the passing months. It was all that was needed to ruin the illusion, bringing reality crashing in.

  The abandoned town lay obliterated in the distance. It had been set on fire early during the initial attack. Building after building warped and fell, left to smolder until the entire town was nothing but a shell of its prior self. Even in its pre-attack state, it was a symbol of a former life. Now, it was just a mark of their defeat.

  The apartment building with tunnel access collapsed in on itself, leaving them with no way to get outside the compound. It was an unfortunate blow, but not devastating since the internal system—a crisscross of passages that spread all over allowing them to escape to various sections of the base—remained intact. But it wasn’t long until their enemies sniffed it out like vermin on the hunt for food. The attack happened in the dead of night. No one saw it coming. Their own tunnel system became their Trojan horse.

  Eighty-eight. That was all that survived. Trapped in a building that was crumbling at the seams and held together by a prayer.

  Gemi ran her hands through her hair and shifted her head on the back of the chair. She thought the violence would stop after the testing. That there would be an opportunity to set things right for those who were taken advantage of for so long. For her to be there to help the mass of people being unwittingly manipulated by a corrupt dictator.

  They had fought so hard to come back from everything just to fall once again, losing so much in the process. More than most could comprehend.

  Dagmar, the mastermind behind the chip tampering, and his lackey Jade, were brought down shortly after the data was leaked to the press, but it wasn’t without repercussions. During testimony Dagmar let it slip that Gemi was the one controlling the chips. And to a degree it was true. She was a pawn, something that should have been easily proven. But once word reached the anti-chippers and their supporters that she was placed at the head of the entire program things turned violent. There remained those who believed she played a larger role in everything. That she was the one setting up Dagmar. Even locked away, he had a way of controlling people. It surpassed manipulation, going to a whole new sociopath level.

  Jade was murdered outside of the courthouse. Another casualty of Dagmar’s sick game. There was no doubt she thought she was safe after following him so willingly. But, she was an easy target for rapidly growing rage and just the spark needed to get things rolling. It wasn’t even a week later that the violence became widespread, focused on more than just the Digital Behavioral Modification Assistance community, DBMA for short.

  The door squeaked open behind her. She needn’t look to know who it would be. He maintained constant tabs on her since everything went down. It seemed pointless to her, seeing as they had no way to leave and no way for anybody to get inside. But it made him feel better and who was she to take that away from him?

  Jaxton sat down in the chair facing her and leaned forward on his knees. “Sitting up here all day won’t resolve anything. You realize that right?”

  He looked worse for the wear. His calm facade was cracking at the seams.

  It took some getting used to. His hair had grown out, no longer sitting in just the right spot. He was also sporting thick scruff on his face. She thought it would hide his handsome features. Instead it did the exact opposite, highlighting the squareness of his jaw and sharp angle of his cheekbones. No amount of grime could mask how gorgeous he was. In another life she would have been putty in his hands.

  In the time since waking up he recovered little of his memories. He still had large gaps in time particularly from the period he arrived at base onward. And on occasion, growing in frequency as of late, woke up screaming as visions from their hundred lives trickled in. It was difficult watching everyone go through that, but especially him. He internalized so much of what happened, not just in the tests, but in the life he could remember with his family. Instead, he focused all his energy on her, which just made her shut down further.

  It was a draining combination from two strong-willed people.

  As if that wasn’t enough, there was the added stress of their relationship. Or what was left of it. He believed they were married. Mostly because of the proof obtained in their files, but he had yet to remember their life together. Adaline he remembered. Remembered the year they spent coming up with plans to run away together. The fact that he loved two women at the same time drove a wedge between them.

  What hit her the hardest was that the person sitting in front of him wasn’t one of those women. He loved the girl he met in the tests, the one that didn’t exist. Worse yet, he loved the girl that Dagmar had created. And that was something she hadn’t found the strength to let go.

  One day she hoped to find the courage to let her guard down and allow him to love her, the girl he married in some far-off life. But in their present state, it became less and less of a priority. Her only focus was on the lives of the military personnel, many of whom were still children.

  She already had too much blood on her hands.

  “Sulking down there in the dark won’t solve anything either,” she replied.

  “This isn’t your fault.”

  “We’re running low on supplies. We’ll be out of food within the next three weeks,” she said changing the subject and ignoring the spark of irritation in his eyes.

  “What do you propose? The last time we sent out a group, before being ostracized here, only three came back. Even if we could get out it would just put the others in danger.”

  Gemi chewed on her lower lip. It was easy to be a leader when things ran smoothly. Now that everything went to hell, a large part of her yearned to walk away. If there had been a place to walk away to, she might have.

  “Did you know the DBMA program started in a small headquarters before it grew into this beast?” she asked.

  “Yeah?”

  “There might be an old mainframe that’s still functional.”

  “That won’t change what’s going on with the anti-chippers.”

  Gemi stood and wandered to the ledge. She leaned over, resting her chin in her palms and her elbows on the fractured stone. It was the issue from the start. Fixing the chips would be the easy part, but how did you control or calm down people free to feel how they wanted? There were even stories of pop-up shops to remove chips. Of course that was before the broadcast stations had been overrun. Before the president pulled out and left the military on their own. A small group attempting to fend off thousands in their city alone.

  “No one else is trying to come up with a plan,” she grumbled to the air in front of her.

  His arms wrapped around her midsection, drawing her
into him. It was a rare display of affection reserved for when she was in any sort of emotional distress. Or when he reached the point when he realized nothing he said would reach her. It should have comforted her, but it did the exact opposite.

  “How’s Allon?” she asked.

  “Deteriorating. The doctor got the seizures to stop for the most part, but he’s growing more and more agitated by the day. It’s hard to tell if he’s remembering his life or the test.”

  “I should go see him.” Gemi pulled away from him and started toward the door.

  Jaxton caught her hand and spun her around to face him. “You don’t have to do this all alone.”

  Gemi didn’t answer. She stared past him at the treetops. From their current position it was beautiful. As if the world below wasn’t burned and wrecked and run by a herd of lunatics hell-bent on leaving the planet unsalvageable.

  There had to be a way to fix everything before it reached that point.

  “I should go see him,” she repeated and slipped her hand out from his. She left him standing in the center of the rooftop with the same tense and exasperated expression he wore every time they spoke since they woke up.

  The interior was pitch-black. Gemi used her fingers on the wall as a guide while her eyes adjusted, following the path she learned to take. They lost power during the ambush. It left them with a small generator dedicated to the hospital wing, kitchenettes, and, more recently, the training room. And a limited amount of solar-powered flashlights and lanterns that were used sparingly throughout the compound. After a while the body adjusted to the constant darkness—learned to cope and use other senses. She couldn’t say as much for the human soul.

  Gemi found the doctor hovering over Allon. His body twitched and writhed, recovering from what she could only assume was his most recent episode. Despite its sterile condition, the air in the room hung heavy with the smell of decaying flesh. It was enough to make even the strongest stomach do summersaults.

  The past month brought with it the difficult decision to strap him to the bed for fear that he would hurt himself. Or others. Along with the seizures he had become malicious and violent when awake. Unfortunately, the ties left him incapable of moving and caused pressure sores to develop all over his back and legs. And with the dwindling medical supplies, it left them unable to do anything besides keep them as clean as they could, using water and recycled bandages.

  It was the same path that Callum had taken toward the end. Right before he chewed through his own wrists.

  “How is he?” she called upon closing the door behind her.

  “Not good. We’ve all but exhausted the remaining meds used to control his seizures. I’m not sure what will happen once it clears his system. Also…” the doctor trailed off and shook his head.

  “Also what?” she snapped, not trying to hold back her irritation to his evasiveness.

  “Well, he’s been saying some peculiar things.”

  “Okay, well, he’s probably just repeating things he recalls from before. Callum did at the end. As a matter of fact, he started to not even realize where he was. As if he was in some sort of persistent hallucinogenic state.”

  The doctor sat in the chair by the bed and regarded her. He was withholding something, something that concerned him enough to want to keep from her. It wasn’t a game she was interested in playing. The time for being coddled ended somewhere between her one hundred lives. She felt her blood pressure increasing as she stared him down, waiting for him to break.

  After what seemed like an eternity, he let out a puff of air and grabbed an item from the side table. “I recorded part of it. It’s better if you listen. Too hard to explain.” The doctor pushed the play button and set the recorder back on the table.

  “The blonde one. Get the blonde one. She is bad. Very, very bad. She did this, all of this. Kill. Kill her any chance you get.”

  The doctor stopped the audio and sagged against the chair. “It continues on like that for a while.”

  “So? It sounds like nonsense.”

  “The blonde one…” Allon moaned from the bed.

  The doctor was up and at his side in an instant. Gemi paced over to the bed and leaned over. He had grown so frail. Bones and veins stuck out in places that were normally covered in a layer of muscle. His face was sallow, sunken in and black under his red-rimmed eyes. He was a shell of the person he once was. The greatest contribution to his rapid decline was the fact that he stopped being able to eat five weeks prior, meaning his primary source of nutrition came from an IV hooked up to his wrist.

  “Kill her!” he shrieked as his whole body shuddered. “Kill her!”

  “Help me hold him,” Dr. Askel shouted as he grabbed at a vial of liquid and inserted a syringe into it.

  Gemi bent over, the cold frame rubbing into the bony protrusions of her hips, and pressed her hands into Allon’s chest. She could feel every muscle trembling and twisting. The restraints holding his arms rattled against the metal as his spine arched off the bed and slammed back down repeatedly. His wide eyes stared unseeing at the ceiling and then jerked toward her.

  “You!” he screeched. “You demon. You must die. Die. Die! You’re the cause.”

  Dr. Askel jammed the needle into his IV and pressed on the plunger. Almost immediately his eyes rolled into his head and he stilled.

  Gemi pulled her shaky hands off of him and dropped them to her sides. “What the hell was that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he was remembering pieces where you went bad?”

  Gemi dug her nails into the flesh of her palms as a sick feeling flooded her gut. That was a possibility. But her mind flashed back to the night in the server room. Jaxton had accused Dagmar of putting thoughts in their heads to make them kill each other. Dagmar blew it off, but now, it appeared as if there may have been validity to it.

  “I have to go. Keep this between us,” Gemi called over her shoulder, not pausing for his reply as he slipped through the doorway and into the black corridor.

  A wave of dread rolled over her. They were already at odds with all the anti-chippers and the affected on the loose. Now, if her gut was correct, they may find themselves at odds with each other. Dagmar could have easily planted little seeds in their brains. Seeds that may grow until they attacked each other from within.

  If only she could remember everything. If only they all could remember.

  Gemi made her way to her bedroom, relying on the wall for support more than guidance. Was it a matter of time before they turned on each other? She shoved her door open and promptly felt the presence of someone.

  “Whoever it is, I’m not in the mood,” she called.

  “We need to talk,” Jaxton responded. His voice was unmistakable. Strong, earnest, and perpetually on edge.

  “Later.”

  “No, now.” He caressed her arm, guiding her to the bed. At least shrouded in darkness she didn’t have to avoid his eye contact or hide the fear and animosity that was growing.

  “I know you’re scared,” he said, his voice no more than a whisper as if he was trying to coax a wild animal to him.

  “You know nothing about how I feel.” Even without seeing him she could sense her comment hit home. “Look, I’m tired okay? I pulled the night watch and I just want to get a few hours of sleep.”

  “Are we ever going to talk about everything?”

  Gemi fell silent. Now wasn’t the time. There was no point in having a relationship when somewhere in the deep recesses of her brain there was evil begging to get out.

  What horrible things did he have tucked away in his head waiting to spring free? An image of her hacking into his long muscular neck sprang to mind and she flinched. Maybe it was best if she kept him shielded for as long as possible.

  Jaxton shifted his weight on the bed followed by a rough sound rumbling in his throat, signaling that she had been silent for too long. Had there been any light she was certain he would be wearing his familiar crease between his eyes.

  “O
ne day we will,” she replied.

  His hand seized hers and she had to fight the impulse to pull away.

  “I’m exhausted,” she reiterated.

  “Fine. Let’s nap together like old people.”

  “What did you say?” she snapped, ripping free from his grip, her mind racing with thoughts of that day in the van after the crash.

  “That we should nap?”

  “I think you should go.” Gemi moved from the bed and placed her pistol on the nightstand. She hadn’t felt comfortable walking around without it since the ambush.

  “I’m not sure what’s going on with you recently. But you understand I’m here for you, right? I meant it, you don’t have to deal with this alone.”

  She heard the door unlatch and, shortly after, close. Only then was she finally able to take a breath. It was too soon. Too many missing pieces to tell them and get them all worked up. However, hearing him say things verbatim from their other lives felt like a red flag. She couldn’t sit around and wait for change even if that meant working alone.

  Gemi flopped down on the bed and buried her face in her forearm. She made a list in her head.

  Step one: get to the old mainframe.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Gemi wandered down to the kitchenette. She had no idea how long she had been asleep, but the noisy halls indicated that it was near midafternoon. Whenever there was a lull in duties and classes, the place hummed like a beehive.

  The kitchen was the only other area they wasted electricity on in the beginning. Something needed to keep the food fresh—that was priority one. That’s what they told themselves anyways. As the months wore on and the supplies dwindled, they moved everything from the high-capacity kitchen to the smaller kitchenettes and later reduced to just two. At the pace they were consuming supplies, soon electricity would be the least of their concerns.

  She squinted as she stepped into the dim light. Even with a single row of ceiling lights running it was jarring compared to the complete darkness that encompassed the rest of the compound. She grabbed a frozen meal and tossed it into the microwave. As the food cooked she did a mental calculation. Not even three weeks’ worth of food. Even less for water. They would starve in their self-made tomb unless they did something. And soon.