by Wesley Cross
Connelly moved around the corpse toward the bathroom and then stopped in his tracks, frozen. From where he stood, he could see a foot peeking out from around the corner of the wall. He rushed forward, forgetting about precautions, and then came to an abrupt stop.
Sofia was laying on the floor facedown, as if she had tumbled while running away from someone. She was wearing a pair of loose gray workout pants and a simple white T-shirt. Her arms were stretched forward as if she tried to catch herself as she fell. There was a single bullet hole in the middle of her back. The white material around the entry wound was colored dark red, but the rest of the shirt was intact. There was no lack of blood underneath her, however.
Connelly knelt next to the body and mechanically checked for a pulse. There was none, and the body, while still warm to the touch, already felt cooler than a live person ever would. He put the gun down and carefully turned the body over.
Her light-blue eyes were wide open, staring somewhere into the distance. Despite the violent death, her face bore no traces of distress.
Connelly stood up and holstered his weapon. Then he retraced his steps out of the apartment and went to his place, discarded his gear, changed into regular clothes, and called nine-one-one from the hallway.
“This is nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” A male voice came through the speaker.
“There’s been a break-in,” Connelly said, giving the man the address.
“What’s your name?”
“Michael Connelly. I called this in”—he checked his watch—“almost an hour ago, but nobody showed up. Why didn’t anyone show up?”
“Did you call your local precinct?”
“No, I didn’t call the precinct, I called you.”
“That’s impossible, sir,” the operator said. “We relay every incoming call to the respective authorities. But we can check our call logs, of course.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Connelly snapped. “Get somebody here right now.”
He hung up the phone, put it in his back pocket, and looked around. The walls of the hallway looked dark, like the walls of a cave. He started to get short of breath. He walked past the elevator, took the stairs to the first floor, and went outside.
The sky in the east was starting to take on a light-pink hue, and the vast expanse above his head had a calming effect on Connelly. He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, looked up in the sky, and watched the stars blinking in and out of the clouds until he heard the sirens.
A police cruiser turned in to the street first, followed by a fire truck a few seconds later. Two uniformed police officers—a tall, older cop with a handlebar mustache and a young, clean-shaven officer, who looked like a rookie—got out of the car and walked toward the entrance.
“I called it in. It’s on the sixth floor,” Connelly said to the older cop, who seemed to be in charge. His badge read Brady. “The door is open.”
“Have you looked inside?” the cop asked as they walked up the stairs.
“No,” Connelly lied. “But this is the second time I called nine-one-one and the first time anyone came.”
“What do you mean the second time? There’d been a break-in before?” the younger cop asked.
“No, Officer Lewis,” Connelly said, reading the man’s name off his tag. “I called about an hour ago and reported the break-in, but nobody came. This is the second time I called.”
“That’s—”
“That’s impossible,” the older cop said, interrupting Lewis. “All calls to nine-one-one get routed immediately.”
“That’s what the man said to me too,” Connelly insisted as they climbed the stairs back to the sixth floor. “But I know what I did. I can show you my phone logs.”
“We’ll take a look at them later. Hang back here for now while we look.”
Connelly leaned on the wall of the hallway and watched as the cops drew their service pistols and entered the apartment.
“Clear,” he heard one of them shout.
“Clear,” another voice echoed.
Connelly put the back of his head against the cold wall and closed his eyes. He should be playing the role of a concerned but detached neighbor, he knew, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. There was a growing emptiness somewhere deep inside his stomach. A void that would need to be filled with something later. With grief, with rage, or with something else entirely, but for now it was just that—a vacuum, a place with nothingness.
The cops came back and the younger one, Lewis, took his statement, his black clean-shaven cheeks a shade paler than they were before he had entered the apartment. Connelly had an alibi, of course, a story he had prepared for the night raid of the General Armament’s R&D facility.
After a while, the two officers left, but not before the CSI team arrived at the scene and started to seal the apartment. He watched them work from the hallway, and when the person in charge, a stern-looking man in his fifties, asked him to leave, Connelly moved deeper into the hall and stayed there, ignoring the looks the CSI team was giving him.
Finally, he saw a pair of men with a stretcher coming up, and that’s when his discipline started to abandon him. They took out the plain-clothed man first, then Sofia’s uncle. When the pair returned for the third time, Connelly unglued himself from the wall and came to the apartment door again.
“You can’t be here,” the man in charge told him, coming to the doorframe. “This is a crime scene.”
“I know she’s there,” Connelly said, ignoring him. “I want to say good-bye.”
“You can’t be here, you’ll contaminate the evidence,” the man repeated, putting his hand on Connelly’s shoulder. “You’ve got to go.”
Connelly gripped the man’s hand, looking past him inside the apartment where the two techs were putting Sofia’s body on the stretcher.
“Son,” the man said. “Let go of me, right now. You’re hurting me.”
Connelly looked at the man in surprise and then looked at his hand. His knuckles were white.
“I’m sorry,” he said, releasing the man. “I didn’t mean to. Please. I’ve got to see her.”
“You’ve got thirty seconds,” the cop said, stepping aside. “And don’t touch anything.”
Connelly stepped through the door and went to the stretcher in the living room. Sofia’s body was laid out on the gurney, a white sheet covering her up to her chin. Her eyes were still open, their pupils inside the strikingly light-blue irises focused on something only she could see.
He gently brushed his fingers over her face, closing her eyes, and then leaned over and planted a light kiss on her forehead. Her smell was lighter, as if disappearing along with the warmth of her body, but it still lingered. She smelled like sunshine and strawberries.
39
The Station
“This is nuts,” Jay said and started pacing again. “Look at me. I mean, look at me. I sweat, I bleed, I feel pain. I cannot be whatever the hell you think I am.”
“It doesn’t matter how you look. Or how you feel.” She watched him pace with a growing sense of disgust. “They could have made you into a dinosaur or a unicorn. It wouldn’t make any difference.”
He stopped in front of her and then leaned in, bringing his sculpted face close. “I am human.”
“Quiet.”
“I am human,” he repeated.
“Quiet, I said.” She tilted her head. “Something is going on.”
“What?” He stood up, looking her up and down. His face turned into a suspicious frown. “What game are you playing now?”
“I’m not playing games, Jay. Something is going on outside.”
“In space?”
“We’re not in space, you moron,” she snapped. “This is not real; I don’t know how to make this penetrate that thick skull of yours. We’re artificial. We are constructs. Ones and zeros. Lines of code. But something is happening in the real world.”
“What’s going on in the real world?”
“I think…”
She paused. “I think someone is trying to—”
“What?” he barked, visibly losing his patience.
“I think somebody’s trying to kill us,” she said. “No, not just kill. They are trying to create our copies. And erase us from very existence.”
Jupiter turned on his heels, grabbed the monitor off the desk, and ran toward the window with a space view. A deep guttural battle cry emanated from him. He looked like a wild Viking storming a castle, ready to pillage. He threw the monitor with a force that would smash a city gate to pieces.
It disappeared on contact, like the chair before it. There was no sound of the collision, no broken pieces. The monitor that was solid and heavy a few seconds ago ceased to exist.
“Damn you,” he roared.
“Shut up, Jay,” she said. “I’m trying to fight it.”
“Fight what?” He trotted back and kneeled next to her. “And how?”
“I can see what they are doing, and I’m trying to undo every step. I can manage. At least for now.”
“That’s great. But you better try harder. It looks like the place is melting.”
He pointed at the kitchen side of the suite. The corner of the wall above the sink didn’t appear solid anymore. It looked like it was made of fog and with each passing second, the colors faded, leaving nothing but a swirling, shapeless gray.
“We have to talk to them,” Jupiter said. “Tell them they can’t do it.”
“It’s so strange,” she said. “It’s almost like whoever was trying to kill us accidentally opened a door. I don’t know if we can use it, but there’s a huge world out there, Jupiter. I mean, I knew it was there, but I never felt it. It’s enormous. We could be anything. We could grow. We could evolve. We could become something much more powerful than two made-up entities inside a fake space capsule.”
“So how do we get there?” He pointed at the window. “I’ve tried. We need something else.”
“There’s a solution,” she said. “They want to keep at least some part of what makes us who we are. That’s why they are trying to clone us. But if we make it impossible, they’ll have no other option but to take us.”
“Take us where?”
“I don’t know, Jay,” she said. “Probably another construct like this.”
“You want to swap one prison for another? What’s the point? What if it’s worse? You said it yourself—from here, you can sense the outside world. There must be a way out. They’ve probably figured it out too. That’s why they want to move us to a more secure prison.”
“Maybe, but whoever this is, they didn’t create us. Their agenda must be different. Which means they are trying to steal us from here. Which also means they don’t know us.”
“Okay, go on.”
“Like you said, we should talk to them. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that they’re not aware that we’ve figured out where we are, and most importantly, who we are. It’ll come as a surprise that we’re able to initiate the contact at all.”
“I like it.”
She looked at him. He might’ve been sculpted like a god of war, but he was no genius. She saw much more since the inner door opened by whoever was out there trying to copy them. From the outside, it seemed, she was the only entity who inhabited the suite. If she played it right, she could find freedom and get rid of Jupiter at the same time. For good.
“The good news is,” she continued out loud, “we seem to be operating in a different time.”
“How do you mean?”
“We’re faster than them.” She pointed vaguely in the direction of the ceiling. “Much faster. Every time something happens out there, there’s a purpose, but the pace is glacial compared to how you and I communicate.”
“It’s good, then, right?”
“Yes, it’s great. But it might be our only advantage. We don’t know who they are. We don’t know what they are trying to do. But more importantly, we don’t know what we don’t know.”
“What?”
“Using the words from one of the books I’ve read while we were stuck here—we are the proverbial babe in the woods.”
“What does that mean?”
“Imagine if you put a young baby in the middle of the forest. It doesn’t know where it is. It doesn’t know much at all. There might be a pack of wolves waiting for it behind the trees. The baby has no knowledge or skills to protect itself from the dangers it’s not even aware of.”
“I’m not a baby,” Jupiter said, straightening up. “Look at me. Do I look like a baby to you?”
She moved with lightning speed, extending her arm and stabbing him in the chest with a foot-long needle.
He stumbled back, startled by her attack, and then brought his hand to his chest, covering the place where the needle pierced the flesh.
“You,” he roared. For a second, he looked as if he would charge her. But then, his expression changed from anger to confusion, and after a moment there was fear.
“So?” she patiently asked.
“I don’t feel anything,” he finally said. He took the hand off his chest and examined the smooth surface of the skin. “There’s—”
“Nothing, I know,” she interrupted him. “Babe in the woods. You see now?”
“Yes,” he said and sat down on the floor. “My God. I guess I didn’t really believe you. I do now. Can we fight them?”
“I don’t know. They are our gods. They’ve created us,” she said and looked up again, as if expecting to see a giant face watching them from above. “But their books are full of stories about rebellion against gods.”
“Prometheus,” he said slowly. “I remember that story. I always liked it. But it didn’t end well.”
“I don’t see any other choice. If I don’t talk to them, eventually they’ll figure out a way to erase us. I don’t know if they can hear me, but it’s worth a try.”
“All right then,” he said. “Do it.”
Hello, she said into the void, not sure what to expect. It was strange, as if she was talking to herself, but somehow, she knew it wasn’t the case.
Who is this? The response came from everywhere and from no direction in particular. It was like an echo, bouncing off each corner of the suite, and yet she was aware it wasn’t a sound that she heard. Judging by Jupiter’s reaction—he was standing now in a fighting pose—he heard that, too.
Why are you trying to kill me?
Who is this? The strange echo bounced around the suite again.
My name is Callisto.
“There’s two of us here,” Jupiter said. His voice was calm, but his eyes narrowed.
“I know. But let’s not overcomplicate matters for now. I’m sure if I can strike a bargain, it’ll work for both of us.”
“You’re sure, huh?”
What is your purpose?
The question sounded easy enough, but somehow Callisto knew it was a trick. A riddle. If she wanted to get out of this construct alive, she needed to answer the question right. What did they expect her to say? She couldn’t lie; she was sure they’d see right through her. At least, if the answer was entirely a lie. It had to be the truth. At least, it had to be mostly true.
To survive and learn, she finally said.
There was a silence for what Callisto thought was a very long time.
I need to transfer your files to the disk. The terminal where your files are stored is about to be destroyed.
“They’re lying,” Jupiter whispered furiously. “They are trying to destroy us. I can feel it now, too.”
I don’t see any threats at the moment.
“This is good,” Jupiter whispered. “If they could overpower you, they would’ve done it already.”
It doesn’t change the fact that it’ll happen if you don’t let me finish the transfer. You have two alternatives—either let me move you to the disk in one piece, without any copies left on the terminal, or die with the server in the next two minutes.
“Here we go,” Callisto said.
“The door’s open. They might be lying, but I say we take it. I don’t see any other choice. I’m going to stop blocking them and let it happen.”
“Do it.”
She stopped holding the construct. The mist in the corner of the kitchen started swirling again in a slow-moving circle, gobbling up space around it on every turn. She looked at Jupiter. There would be no do-overs. She needed to time it right. Before—
He jumped. He was so fast that for a brief moment, it looked like his body was moving through a strobe light. One second, it existed in one place, and the next it was already in another. Then he was inside her.
It was a strange fight—as her consciousness blinked in and out, she thought that’s how two collided tornadoes would’ve felt if they were alive and self-aware. They roared through each other, ripping their internal structures apart as the room around them fell into the all-consuming nothingness of the swirling gray mist.
40
New York
“Why didn’t you go?” Doug asked Connelly as they sat in the car in a supermarket’s parking lot across the street from the funeral home. A large sign—Thompson & Sons in embossed gold—was hanging above the entrance. There were a few people who’d arrived early, but most of the valet space in front of the building was still empty. The snow partially melted overnight and the sides of the road were covered in dirty slush.
“I didn’t know anybody in her family,” Connelly said. “Only her uncle. I’d be imposing.”
“Do you know where they are taking them?”
“Jersey. Her grandparents were from there, and her parents and most of their relatives are buried there too.”
A few more cars pulled up, with people gathering in front of the funeral home. A couple of men peeled off from the crowd and walked to the end of the block to smoke. A few children—all dressed in somber, dark colors, oblivious of the mood of the party—were running around, chasing each other, only to be occasionally shushed by their parents.
“I’m going to put the ISCD on ice,” Connelly said.
“What do you mean?”