by Shaun Barger
Someone was carrying the baton a little ways behind. Ahead, Machado had his blade. Nikolai held his tongue—they obviously weren’t in a listening mood. The zip ties were tight and painful, cutting off his circulation. They’d be easy to burn off, but he didn’t know how many humans were guarding him, or how well armed they were. Breaking free wouldn’t do him much good if they shot him in the face three seconds later. For now, Nikolai focused on tracking the distance between the turns.
They opened a door and dragged him through, flinging him onto a filthy wet floor. They pulled the bag off his head and Nikolai was blinded by a bright, naked bulb. Machado stood over him, wild eyed. Maalouf was beside him, obviously distressed. Two other soldiers he didn’t recognize stood on either side of the room, assault rifles aimed right at Nikolai. One of them had the baton Focal awkwardly tucked into his belt.
They were in a filthy cement room. Black pools stained the floor beneath him, filling Nikolai with a wave of nausea and terror.
“The Synth want him alive, but they didn’t specify in how many pieces,” Machado snarled.
Maalouf kneeled beside Nikolai, pulling a baggy with the truth scanning pads from a pocket with shaky hands. The colonel snapped a glance at him, furious. “The hell is the point, Chief? Obviously they don’t work!”
“Sir, let’s just see. Maybe . . .”
Maalouf eased Nikolai off the ground, helping him to his knees. Nik looked back and forth between them, wide-eyed with fear. Maalouf avoided meeting his gaze as he applied the pads to Nikolai’s temples.
“Wh-what’s happening? What did I do?”
“Time for the truth, boy!” Machado said. “The Synth just promised to wipe us out if we don’t turn you over. They’ve never threatened us like this before! Why do they want you so badly?”
“I—I don’t know! What are you talking about? Why would they—”
Red.
“Lying, sir.”
“I know he’s fucking lying! Are you even human? A real human, born from a human woman?”
“My mother’s name was Ashley Strauss!” Nik said through gritted teeth. “She gave birth to me at the ward three blocks from my house! She worked for the government, she—”
Despite the Green on Maalouf’s little screen, the colonel put a boot on Nikolai’s chest, shoving him back onto the floor. “Stop evading! Answer the god. Damn. QUESTION!”
Nikolai crumpled to the floor, whimpering. The room was spinning; he could feel the bile rising in his throat. Genetically he was human, right? There were slight differences, but he could breed with a human woman and she would have a human child. And if a human male bred with a sorceress, the child would be a mage. So in the scientific and philosophical sense, it could be argued . . .
“Yes!” Nikolai said weakly, anxiously watching Maalouf’s little screen.
RED.
Then Green.
Then finally Yellow, for uncertainty.
“Does it work or does it not work?” Machado demanded impatiently.
“Sir, it’s impossible to trick—”
“It’s obviously possible, Chief! Here’s your goddamn proof!”
Nikolai looked back and forth between them. Back and forth. Dizzier and dizzier . . .
Impatiently Maalouf pulled Nik back up, checking to make sure the pads were on correctly.
Nikolai puked across the front of his uniform.
Maalouf pulled away, horrified. “Aw, sick!”
Groaning, Nikolai saw that the two rifle-wielding soldiers were temporarily distracted—one staring at the vomit on Maalouf’s shirt with disgust, the other averting his gaze.
Nikolai wreathed his hands with flame and pulled his wrists and ankles apart with a splatter of molten plastic.
“Elefry!” he screamed as he lunged at Machado and threw a featherweight weave at him.
“What the fuck?” Machado screamed as Nikolai rammed into him, deftly snatching the blade Focal from his side as Machado literally went flying back against the door.
Nikolai spun, trying not to teeter over as he was struck with a powerful wave of dizziness, and aimed the blade at one of the soldiers. He shot off a splash of liquid akro to envelop the rifle, and the soldier staggered back, letting out a startled cry as the glassy material hardened up to his elbows.
The other soldier opened fire, but Nikolai had already featherweighted himself and leaped up over the line of attack. He twisted in the air to cast down a tilted barrier, just barely shielding the first soldier from the bullets intended for Nik.
The wide-eyed soldier tried to follow Nikolai’s impossible leaping arc with his gun. Nikolai snapped out an akro tentacle, yanking the rifle from his hands and flinging it away from him.
Nikolai released the featherweight weaves on himself and slammed his akro-coated fist into the soldier’s sternum as he landed. The soldier crumpled to the ground, gasping. Nikolai reached for the soldier’s belt and reclaimed his baton, deftly pinning the man down with a few quick arches bolted into the floor.
The other soldier was running for him, despite his arms being immobilized by the hardened air.
“I don’t—want—to hurt you!” Nikolai growled as he bound the soldier’s legs with another burst of jellied air and sent him tumbling.
A bullet dinged off the cement next to Nikolai’s face and he brought the baton up in a sweep of rainbow-smearing light, shielding himself with a wall of akro. Machado stumbled back from the recoil of his gun, not yet adjusted to his massively reduced weight.
“Draw your fucking weapon, Chief!” he screamed at Maalouf, who’d been gaping, stunned in the corner, computer screen in hand. Nikolai sent a blazingly bright globe of illio at Machado’s face to blind him as he leveled to fire again, flinching as he shot wide, bullets ricocheting loudly off the walls of the little room.
Twisting, Nikolai turned off the globe of light and sent out a tentacle, wrapping it around Machado’s waist and yanking him closer. Machado unloaded the pistol right at him—the bullets bouncing off the shield of akro Nikolai had created between them.
Nikolai hissed a breath of annoyance. “Stop—shooting!” he said, pulling Machado flat against the shield as he warped it to fold around the colonel’s hands and in a loop around his legs. “I’m really trying not to hurt you guys.”
Machado howled and thrashed, suspended in the air.
Nikolai winced as an alarm began to wail. Red light flashed under the crack at the bottom of the door. He looked over to see that Maalouf was desperately typing on his little card computer.
Swearing, Nikolai blew it out of Maalouf’s hands with a burst of air, running to knock the human over before he could retrieve the device, which had landed down on the floor halfway between them.
Maalouf lunged for it, so Nikolai aimed his baton down at the screen, ready to blow it away once more. But the human’s lunge was a feint and there was a pistol in his hand, and before Nikolai could react Maalouf unloaded four rounds into his chest.
Nikolai fell back—gasping, curled up in a ball around where he’d been shot. The uniform had stopped the bullets and dampened their impact, but the wind had been knocked out of him. He lay there, helplessly wheezing for air.
“Drop the stick—knife—whatever the hell they are!” Maalouf screamed. “You twitch and I put a bullet in your head! You so much as blink and you’re dead!”
“Don’t—shoot!” Nikolai gasped, gently placing his Focals on the floor as he stared down the barrel of the gun. Shit. Shit!
“Release them! My men! The colonel! Now!”
“I’m not a Synth!” Nikolai pleaded. “You have to believe me! I’m not human, but I’m not a Synth, and I don’t work for them. I want to save you from them! I want to help all of you!”
The little screen flashed Green between them—the little pads still stuck to Nikolai’s temples transmitting that he was telling the truth. Confusion flashed across Maalouf’s face.
“Then what the hell are you? Some sort of—super soldier from t
he war front? Some colonist spy?”
“Who cares what he is!” Machado howled. “Shoot him!”
“Neither,” Nikolai said. “I’m something you never even knew existed. Something neither you nor the Synth know about. And there’s millions of us—millions just like me—with powers just like these. We can put a stop to this. We can fight the Synth in ways you never could.”
All Green. Maalouf was trembling, conflicted.
“But if the Synth get a hold of me . . . if I don’t get back to my kind . . . it’s over. It’ll all be over. You humans will die here. You’ll all die. It’s just a matter of time.”
“Don’t you fucking dare let him go, Chief! DON’T YOU DARE!”
“But he—he’s not lying, sir!”
“The hell he’s not!” the colonel said. “He’s already demonstrated that he can beat your precious scanner! He’s lying! It’s lying!”
“But what if he’s not?” Maalouf hissed. “Who are we kidding, sir? We’re all going to die. Our entire fucking species. But you saw what he can do! I’ve never seen any kind of tech that can do shit like that. Not even the Synth.” He shook his head. “He could have killed us. But he didn’t. God help me, he’s telling the truth.”
Slowly he lowered the gun. Machado went crazy, thrashing so hard against his bindings that Nikolai thought he might hurt himself. “Who cares if he’s telling the truth? If we don’t hand him over to the Synth, we are DEAD! Do you understand? Everything we’ve worked for. All the people who rely on us. Gone!”
“There’ll be others here in less than a minute,” Maalouf said coldly. He pulled out his keycard, tossed it onto the floor in front of Nikolai. “Go.”
“I’ll have you court-martialed! Executed! Drawn and fucking quartered! CHIEF!”
Nikolai grabbed his Focals and staggered out into the hall, the wailing alarms and flashing red lights washing over him. He clutched his bruised ribs and drew up a cloak of invisibility, blasting the lock and hinges of the door with white-hot flames to fuse it shut. Nikolai fell to his knees, retching at the effort. He wouldn’t be able to keep this up much longer.
His invisibility flickered and disappeared. It took an agonizing moment of effort to summon it a second time. Not now, come on, not fucking now . . .
A troop of heavily armed soldiers in full gear came sprinting down the hall. Nikolai dodged out of the way, moving away from them.
He felt sick, so sick.
It had to be the Synth plague, he realized with dizzying horror. The Rapture Bug. How else could he have fallen so ill so quickly?
Distantly, he wondered how severe the damage to his reproductive systems might be. He was only twenty, he’d never even thought about whether or not he might want to have kids someday. Had that door suddenly been closed to him?
Oh, fucking Disc. He needed to get back to Marblewood, needed to see a healer . . .
Stumbling through the labyrinthine halls, Nikolai traced his way to the entrance, grateful that he’d been so obsessive about memorizing the layout. Everything was on high alert, but he was able to sneak past the security checkpoints undetected. They must not have gotten the colonel out yet, though, because the facility wasn’t on full lockdown. Maalouf’s keycard allowed Nikolai into the upper level without a problem.
He turned, going toward the final security gate and the street beyond. From there, the outer perimeter wouldn’t be far. Then the forest. Then the lake. Then . . . home.
But as he come to the checkpoint, to the group of terrified soldiers, guns at the ready, looking for something, anything . . . Nikolai’s steps faltered. He could feel a gentle tug at his back. A pulling sensation.
Jem’s tracer.
A sign indicated the medical facilities in her direction. Above the sign, a clock. 4:00 a.m. Two hours till they de-modded her.
Nikolai shook his head, turning back to the exit. He had to get out of here. Had to get home. There was nothing he could do for the human girl. Nothing he could . . .
He stopped, sighing. Goddamnit. Nikolai turned toward the gentle but persistent tug of Jem’s tracer and began to run.
X.
THE SWAN AND THE SORCERER
Jem opened her eyes. Emerald light fled her vision like iridescent insects as she awoke from yet another memory.
She was on a bed in a hospital room. It was dark.
For a moment she didn’t know where she was. Or why she was wearing a helmet that covered most of her face.
It was signal blocker, she remembered. To prevent the Synth from remotely accessing her mods while she wasn’t in the shielded rooms below. Even though that was impossible. Still, her handlers wouldn’t leave her alone until she promised that under no circumstances would she take off the pointless helmet.
Jem took off the helmet.
She cast it aside, not caring as it bounced noisily across the tile.
Blinding light filled the darkness of the room as the door to the hall swung open, her guard peering in to investigate.
He was a heavyset, square-jawed man with a hand-rolled cigarette tucked behind his ear. The cigarette was visibly damp from sweat, which ran down his thinly-haired scalp in greasy rivulets.
“What was that?” he demanded.
“Nothing.”
“I heard a noise.” He clucked his tongue, scanning the room. “Did you break something?”
Jem closed her eyes. “That’ll be all, Private. Dismissed.”
There was a long moment of silence. Then quiet footsteps moved away as the guard left the room. The door clicked shut behind him.
Jem exuded such a natural air of command that those used to taking orders usually did so when she put them on the spot. Especially low-ranking grunts like the guard, despite Jem’s complete lack of actual authority.
Once again the room was submerged in a darkness that was only broken by a pale beam of light cast down upon the floor at the foot her bed.
In a few hours, Jem was going to die. Anesthetized in the harsh light of the operating room. Skull sawed open to reveal the glistening pink maze of her wetware CPU—the intricate embedded coils of her cybernetic modifications creeping across bloody wrinkles like tendrils of ivy.
Even if Jem survived, all her stored memories—treasured or otherwise—would be gone. The data irretrievably locked in a bloody implant that had been torn from her skull.
Jem hadn’t fully understood the visceral horror of what she’d inflicted on Eva, but now, as her own neuroprosthectomy approached, she found herself crushed under the full weight of what she’d done.
Whether or not Jem deserved what was going to happen, she refused to spend her final hours staring into the darkness contemplating her guilt. Instead she would immerse herself in one final VR playlist of her happiest memories.
She imagined that it was what heaven would be like, if there was such a thing. All the best moments of a person’s life, playing out in an eternal, seamless loop—skipping over all the fear, monotony, and isolation that swelled to fill the distance between the rare points of light.
For the first time since Jem was a child, she allowed herself to fully immerse in her mod’s VR. It wouldn’t be long before they came for her—until then, why not push the limits of how deeply she might be able to lose herself?
Taking a deep breath, she unlocked the remaining VR safeguards—overruled every limit of what she might experience using the full power of her mods.
Now she’d be able to expand and dilute how she experienced the flow of time within her simulations, so long as she fully closed herself off from exterior sensory input. In the real-world hours that remained, she might virtually experience months.
She began to sift through her most cherished memories, carefully compiling them into a queue that would fill the virtual months till the operation.
If she set the VR to block access to memories as she experienced their virtual recreations, as well as all that had come after, she would probably forget that she was in VR at all. Normally, she found such a
loss of control terrifying—but right now, she craved it.
Jem finished the playlist and prepared to dive in. But then, just as she readied herself for one last virtual binge, she envisioned what it would be like to experience such bliss, only to awake and realize that it had all been a dream.
The concluding simulation on her list would be her final lovemaking session with Blue, unnaturally stretched out and looping to be experienced as days. But what then? Wake up from heaven, so all the horror and guilt could come back in a rush made even more hellish by the fact that, for a little while, she’d forgotten?
Unless . . .
Better not to wake at all. Better to just lock the door to dreamland behind her, and throw away the key. Then she could stay in the clouds with Blue, until the very last instant when they put her unresponsive body under anesthesia.
Why stop there? If she was going to die, why not rewrite history? Why not create the illusion of a happy ending?
Jem closed her eyes, replacing the hospital room with Eva’s laboratory.
In the memory simulation, Jem was sitting on the throne of Eva’s hollow AI core. Jem had just discovered Eva’s plans, and Eva had just finished explaining the nature of the Eva AI virus, weaponized from the copy of her mind made just after she’d been returned from Torment.
Jem froze the memory as Eva offered to help her down from the throne.
Here it was—the moment. The split in the time line.
Had Blue been right? Could Jem have talked Eva down had she not condemned the plan outright?
She let the memory resume.
“Eva,” Jem said, taking her hand. “It’s okay. I understand.”
The script divergence set the virtual Eva to automation.
“You . . . understand?”
Jem walked past the confused Eva to fetch the whiskey bottle she’d left sitting on the floor. The cork came out with a satisfying pop.