by Shaun Barger
She settled into the couch beside Jem, folding her long legs beneath her. “I am deeply and truly sorry for putting you through that horrible day again. I hope you can forgive me, but I . . . I needed to be sure. Needed to test you, to see if you’d betray me in a pinch. To make sure that you’re still the same Jem I knew and loved. It’s been a long time. We’ve both been through a lot, and . . . people change.”
Jem scratched the spot behind her ear. Nervous.
“How did you do that?” Jem said. “Access my mods remotely. Make me forget that I was in full immersion. And what was that . . . machine?”
“My mother’s final invention,” Eva explained. “A dead alpha AI core, hollowed out so that you can plug into it with your mods to gain the cognitive capacity and processing power of an AI.” She took a deep breath. “She invented it to fix me. It took her years, but with this, she was able to rebuild my mind.”
She pointed at the brand on her forehead. The weeping eye within an inverted triangle. “I could’ve had this removed. Could’ve wiped it away, just like my mother wiped away my memories of what they did to me. But now I wear it as a symbol of pride. My red badge of courage as the lone survivor of Torment. First, but not the last.
“Anyway, she built the core to fix me, but I’ve since found other uses for it. When the Synth put someone into permanent full immersion—be it Paradise or Torment—they irreversibly erase the memories that would give away the immersion as false. With the core, I found a way to temporarily suppress these memories without destroying them. You had a headache, right? That was from the memory suppression. And as for how I remotely accessed your mods—the core can produce signals within its chamber so powerful that a direct link with your contact point isn’t necessary.”
“Is Blue here?” Jem asked, heart racing. “Did you test her too?”
“Blue is here, safe and sound. And no, I didn’t test her. The doctor, however, I did. Though nothing so traumatic as yours. The higher the rank, the tougher the test. And I want you by my side.”
Jem nodded, relieved. “Was that you, with me in the VR?”
Eva shook her head, her face twisting up a venomous anger that scared Jem.
“No,” Eva hissed. “I never use VR. I hate it. Hate what it did to me. Hate what it’s doing to the people up there. Making them forget. Making them just give up. Karl Marx thought that religion was the opiate of the masses, but he obviously never anticipated virtual orgies.”
She took a deep breath, calming herself. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember Torment. But the scars . . . run deep. So I don’t do VR. Can’t do VR. I controlled your experience from the outside, with the core. Accessed your memories to create the base for the simulation, and tweaked it.”
“What would have happened,” Jem said, carefully, “If I . . . failed your test?”
Eva took a sip from the bottle and looked at her thoughtfully. “You’re our most talented Runner. And a Runner you’d have remained. With no memory of me, or this place. And I . . . well . . . I’d have been a mess for the next few months. But I never doubted you. Not for a second. You are meant for great things, Jem.”
Eva took another swig. She grimaced and stretched out on the couch, laying her head on Jem’s lap. Looking up at her with adoring eyes.
“But enough business. Ezra told me about your little kiss. Like something out of a holo-drama. So romantic.” Eva sighed. “You’re all Blue can talk about, you know. How many Synth did you take out on your own? Ten? Twenty? Christ, Jem.” She whistled, impressed. “Doc says the girl already liked you before. But now it is so. On.”
Eva closed her eyes, visibly relaxing as Jem idly stroked her hair.
“I don’t know,” Jem said, embarrassed but pleased. “What about you? Did you ever rescue any of those pretty-boy musicians you always used to go on about? Have them brought down to the bunker to be your personal bards and paramours?”
Eva went quiet, and for a moment Jem thought she had fallen asleep.
“Sex,” Eva finally said, opening her eyes but averting her gaze. “Love. Physical intimacy. It isn’t in the cards for me. Not since . . . you know. And I don’t think it ever will be. I’m better than I used to be, but I really don’t like when people touch me.”
She looked up at Jem with a bittersweet smile. Took Jem’s free arm by the wrist and kissed the back of her hand. “But for some reason . . . this is okay. No panic attacks. No PTSD freak-outs. It’s a first. My mom couldn’t even hold me. But . . . I don’t know. Maybe it’s the whiskey. Or maybe it’s because you’re the only person who’s ever really made me feel safe. We’re the same age, but let’s be real. You were always the big sister. My Jem-iny Cricket.”
They sat there for a long while. Getting pleasantly buzzed on century-old whiskey and filling each other in on the intervening years.
Eva couldn’t stop grinning as she chattered away, discussing her time as the shadowy leader of the Resistance with the same lighthearted rambling she’d used to discuss school gossip when they were kids.
After Eva’s father died and the Resistance had quite literally gone underground, Eva’s mother continued to lead them, though she became paranoid. Secretive. She commanded the Resistance from the shadows, keeping her identity hidden despite pressure from her inner circle to come out and lead. Gradually she gave up many of her leadership responsibilities, passing them on to the inner circle so she could focus on Eva.
“I don’t remember much about that time,” Eva said. “Just pieces and flashes. But then, a couple years ago, it was like . . . waking up. Eight years of my life, just, poof! Gone. We continued treatment after, but the neural reprogramming was complete. And I was . . . myself, again.”
“Reprogramming?”
“Mom basically figured out how to program a human brain like you’d program a living AI. Which is no easy task, and impossible without alpha-level intelligence. But it wasn’t like she could ask one of the Overminds to help, so . . . she made the core. And here I am!”
Eva had wanted to take an active leadership role after that, but the Inner Circle was totally against it, not trusting that she was well enough for so much responsibility. Dr. Colladi agreed with them, but when she died, Eva insisted on taking her mother’s place as commander.
“And now,” Eva said, smug, “they’d die for me. Impale themselves on their own swords if I asked them to. Back to the natural order of things with a Colladi at the helm.”
“How did you change their minds?”
“It wasn’t easy,” Eva said, then shrugged. “It hasn’t quite hit me as reality that my mom’s gone. Poisoning herself in a lab accident, what a stupid way to die. After everything she went through to keep us alive. To fix me. I’ve been so busy running everything without her help for the past year, I haven’t had time to process—let alone grieve. But finding out that you were still alive?” She smiled, bittersweet. “It eased the sting. I can’t believe my mom was so wrapped up with me all these years that she didn’t realize—or didn’t care—that you were one of our Runners. It’s not like we have a database with pictures and profiles, so I guess it makes sense. But still. Having you here while I was . . . getting better. It would have helped.”
“The inner circle,” Jem asked, curious. “Where are they?”
“Other HQ,” Eva said. “We’ve got agents and Runners spread across the East Coast, but these days most Resistance activity takes place in the Tri-State area, under Armitage’s jurisdiction. Ruthless as Armitage can be, it has less surveillance and a looser security net than any of the other Overminds. Why do you think that is?”
Jem flinched at Armitage’s name, the Synth’s mocking, singsong voice echoing in her mind. A special room in Torment, saved just for you . . .
“No idea,” she said.
“Some of our people think it’s out of mercy. They see its gardens and think . . . there’s something good here. Some spark of humanity. Others think that it’s because this way, the Synth will know where the Resistance pri
marily cluster. And I haven’t totally dismissed that idea, but you know what I think?”
Jem shook her head. “What?”
“I think that if Armitage really wanted to crush the Resistance, it could have done so by now. It wouldn’t be easy, but we are just so hopelessly outclassed in terms of technology and resources that there really wouldn’t be anything we could do. But I don’t think it has anything to do with mercy.” Eva’s lip curled into a sneer. “I think Armitage is just bored.”
They were both drunk by the time Eva finally decided to give Jem the grand tour of the facility she liked to call Casa de Colladi, otherwise known as Deep Tactical HQ. Jem, still weak from her injuries, let Eva push her along in a wheelchair as they toured the immense bunker.
The HQ was a massive facility buried miles under Philadelphia. There had once been many such Deep Tactical HQs, built and stocked with enough food, weaponry, and supplies to last decades into what was expected to be a long and ugly war.
Only two remained. Eva’s, which was empty but for her and Ezra, and another even larger facility that had served as the primary base of operations for the remnants of Colladi Corp’s human resistance.
“The Synth can’t trace our tunnels,” Eva explained, “but they’re constantly sending diggers to look for us. Tracking, misleading, and intercepting them in tunneling patterns that won’t lead them back to us has been a logistical nightmare. We’ve only been able to keep this bunker and one other hidden. Only someone with mods as powerful as mine has the cognitive processing power for the intricate tactics and planning required to keep us safe. Mods like my mother had. Mods like yours. Do you see where I’m going with this?”
Eva pushed Jem down the seemingly endless halls at dangerous speeds, both of them hooting and cheering as she steered in drunken zigzags.
“And here’s the core lab once again,” she said, pressing her hand against the cool steel of the heavily armored door. “Not that I really need to keep it so securely locked up. Now that my mom’s gone, you and I are the only ones with mods compatible with the Alpha Core. You have to try it sometime, it’ll make your mod enhancements feel as slow and outdated as a twentieth-century graphing calculator. But you’ll have to wait. I’m working on something inside the core. Something incredible. I can’t even show you yet.” Eva’s eyes flashed with a strange intensity. “But it’s going to change everything.”
The core lab and Eva’s expansive quarters took up most of the eastern wing.
On the western wing were secondary living quarters and emergency barracks lined with hundreds of dusty bunks. There was a medical bay and a surgical ward. Multiple laboratories. Two extremely well-stocked armories with enough firepower to supply a small army. An immense underground vegetable garden. A warehouse full of rations, water, and supplies.
Finally, Eva brought Jem into the common area—a sprawling room that served as dining hall, library, and rec center. Waiting for them at a long table at the center of it all were Ezra, Dr. Blackwell, and Blue.
Blue’s eyes widened at Jem’s arrival and she moved to stand but stopped short, uncertain.
“H—hey,” Jem said, feeling shy.
“Hey,” Blue said. Also sheepish. Dr. Blackwell and Ezra exchanged glances, a subtle smile on the doctor’s lips.
“Ladies and gentleman,” Eva said, with only the faintest slur. “I present to you my newly appointed vice commander of Resistance operations, Jemma Burton!” She waited a beat for dramatic effect, then slapped a palm against her forehead, exasperated. “Oh. Jem, I didn’t even ask if you want the job. I—”
“Of course,” Jem said. She pushed herself up from the wheelchair to stand. The others hissed breaths of alarm, but Jem waved them off. She straightened her back, looked Eva dead in the eyes, and held out her hand. “To the bitter end. Commander.”
Eva clasped her hand. “To the bitter end.”
* * *
Jem and Blue had sex on virtual Venusian cloud tops—the gaseous sulfur dioxide dimly silver in the darkness. The cloud cities on the horizon sparkled with a million distant lights.
They came out of VR and did it all over again amid the tangled sheets of Jem’s bed. Afterward, they just lay there for a while, sweaty and staring up at fluorescent ceiling lights dimmed down to the faintest glow.
“Mmmm. I needed that.” Jem turned onto her side and nuzzled Blue’s neck. Sleepy and euphoric in a warm post-sex haze, she pulled the sheets over them and cuddled up as her heart slowed and the sweat began to cool upon her skin.
Jem had never been so happy. Not even before the war. Her days commanding Resistance operations were incredibly challenging and full of purpose. Her nights soft, spent with Blue and her friends.
Eva, Ezra, Dr. Blackwell, Blue, and Jem had become a strange little family in the month since their arrival. Ezra and the doctor did all the cooking, though most of it fell to Ezra—Eva’s stoic, charming aide-de-camp. When Ezra wasn’t running missions or assisting Jem with communications or strategic consultation, he spent his days tending to the garden, cleaning, and preparing simple but exquisite meals.
“Jesus, Ezra,” Blue would say through a mouthful. “Where the hell did you learn to cook?”
But he’d always just shrug, his expression unreadable, then change the subject.
Eva spent almost all of her time locked up in the Alpha Core lab, popping out to join them in the evenings for games, music, food, and the occasional holo-drama before inevitably excusing herself to continue work on her mysterious project.
Dr. Blackwell spent her days preparing fertility plague cure kits, each with a set of ready-to-inject doses synthesized from a sample of Blue’s amniotic fluid, and instructions for replication. One of Jem’s top strategic priorities was delivering cure kits to Runners at the fringes of Philadelphia, who would then transport them across the wilderness to the Resistance agents and allies of neighboring cities and beyond.
Jem’s responsibilities were difficult—impossible sometimes—but she’d never felt so alive. Command suited her, and the soldiers, Runners, and Couriers under her command were more than happy to take orders from the legendary Jemma Burton. The story of her battle at the cathedral to protect Blue and the doctor who was delivering the cure for the Rapture Bug had already made its rounds, becoming more and more exaggerated every time it came back to her. She’d killed ten tactical PK droids. No, twenty droids. And a Synth trooper. No, an entire platoon of Synth troopers. Followed by a dramatic, death-defying escape as Armitage’s shape-shifting Husk chased after her with long, mercurial claws.
Tempted as Jem was to set the record straight, she held her tongue and let rumors fly. It was good for morale.
Blue was Jem’s one great worry. Unlike the others, Blue had no responsibilities. None but the inevitable burden of childbirth and motherhood. Until then, it was all relaxation. Eating right. Exercising. Tending to the underground garden. Practicing guitar and studying archived copies of old parenting guides that nobody had needed for more than a decade.
She was always ravenous for Jem when she returned, even if they’d only been apart for a day. But Jem knew that wasn’t just infatuation or lust. She worried that it was as much out of boredom and loneliness.
Jem’s operations sometimes took her away from the home base for days at a time. When she wasn’t coordinating troops within tunnels to intercept the constant flow of Synth diggers, approving and supervising never-ending webs of clandestine operations, or coordinating with wilderness Runners for cure delivery and refugee escort, she’d been smuggling large quantities of weaponry and supplies to secret mouse hole caches all across the city. Orders from Eva, with instruction but no explanation. Preparing for . . . something.
Eva still wouldn’t tell Jem what she was working on in the Alpha Core lab. What she was always working on, day and night. But Jem could tell that it was big, and that it was nearing completion.
The inner circle—a diverse group of former military strategists and old Colladi Corp security—wer
e strangely accepting of Eva’s refusal to explain herself. Even the most difficult and consistently combative members of the group never spoke so much as a single critical word of their reclusive leader.
And whenever they did speak of her, they’d do so with strange expressions that Jem couldn’t read. Not quite fear. Not quite reverence or admiration. So what was it that inspired such blind loyalty?
This time Jem had been gone for an entire week. And though Blue had been as ecstatic as always to see her, Jem detected a jittery agitation underneath it all.
Jem stroked the soft fuzz of the short, shaved hair on the side of Blue’s head. Rested and eager for another round, she kissed her again, hands wandering. But Blue had grown stiff. Unresponsive.
Jem rolled onto her side, head propped up on her hand. “Hey. What’s wrong?”
Blue didn’t reply at first. She looked at Jem, then averted her gaze, staring back up at the ceiling.
“Jem,” she finally said. “Have you ever been to Base Machado?”
“Sure,” Jem said. “I’ve made a couple runs bringing people to live there. Never gone inside, though. No mods allowed.”
Base Machado. An air force base turned city, and the last place in the Americas where humans lived under human rule. A stone’s throw from Armitage’s fortress city and base of operations, where the AI core that contained its mind was buried at the center of it all.
The base had maintained an uneasy truce with the Synth. They had what was left of the American nuclear arsenal, and threatened to blow themselves up should the Synth ever invade. The Synth, for all their cruelty, had never resorted to using nukes. Whatever their plans were for the world after humanity’s demise, they wanted it intact. So, for now, they tolerated the little city’s existence.
Many a Runner and Resistance soldier had retired to Base Machado. Jem had considered it herself, but they had a strict ban on mods for fear of Synth hacking or control. If you wanted to live on the base, you had to have your mods removed. Zero exceptions. Not a big deal for most people, who simply lost the ability to connect to immersive VR. But for Jem, it might well be tantamount to a lobotomy. She just didn’t know.