by Shaun Barger
“Explain?” Nik said, eyes uneasy as they remained focused on Jem. “What is there to explain?”
“Those people in my laboratory—they were all murderers, Nikolai. Rapists. Humans and half-magi who are all predators and trash. That alone wouldn’t be enough reason to subject them to the . . . unpleasantries required for my experiments. I’ve been searching for evidence of a human soul—an afterlife. That, or a way to give them souls like ours, with the ability to channel magic.”
Jem listened distantly, though her attention was mostly focused on pinpointing when this virtual delusion had truly begun.
Had the Synth really taken her alive during their battle at the cathedral? Had her failures and the heartbreak that followed been the illusory punishment of Torment? Or had everything with Eva, Blue, and Base Machado really occurred, and now she was being punished for those very failures?
Not for the first time, Jem wondered if maybe this wasn’t Torment at all. At least, not the virtual sort created by machines. Maybe everything that had happened after the cathedral had been real. And maybe, so was hell.
Jem couldn’t decide which was worse.
“I’ve dedicated my life to protecting humans from our kind,” the AI pretending to be a wizard named Jubal was ranting. “You don’t understand what magi were like before we cut them off from the human world again. Even the progressives saw humans as a lesser species, only a step above animals—just because their souls can’t be seen or documented like a mage’s.
“I found a signal. Everyone—humans, magi, even animals—have rigid, microscopic tubes in their brains that resonate with quantum frequencies. Nobody’s ever been able to make sense of it, but in my research, I discovered one specific frequency that was exactly the same in some humans, as well as some half-magi. The only frequency I’ve ever found shared by multiple test subjects. And each one of them was an evil motherfucker. Only the predators emit this signal, Nikola. The greedy, the cruel. The damned.”
Jubal’s last word jerked Jem back to attention, even though she knew she shouldn’t listen. Even though she knew the Synth were probably reading her thoughts, and were toying with Jem by echoing her contemplations of damnation.
“I fully intended to send Ms. Burton to Rojava,” he continued. “But her synthetic enhancements, Nikolai—I’ve never seen any so advanced! I had to scan them, but when I did, I couldn’t help but check for the signal, too. I can scan for it to weed out monsters, parading as people. And when I scanned your friend, well. Let’s just say that if there was such a thing as demons, they’d be drooling at her feet. Just waiting to lap up the blood she’ll spill.”
“You’re lying,” Nikolai said flatly, though Jem could barely hear him over the blood pounding in her ears. Don’t listen to him, she repeated in her head, like a mantra. Don’t listen to him, don’t listen to him, don’t—
Jubal exhaled with a hiss through his teeth, sounding as though he’d just taken a swig of hard liquor. Through the pounding in her ears, Jem could hear the ice in his drink clinking against the glass.
“It’s the truth, Nikolai,” Jubal said. “What do you even know about this human? She told me everything. Told me how she betrayed and brutalized her commander—a woman she claimed to have grown up with, and loved. She told me how she abandoned her lover and friends to die at the hands of the Synth over some petty argument. She even told me how she sold out her own kind, to escape with you—just so she could go to the stars.”
“The FUCK do you know?” Jem exploded, no longer able to restrain herself. Though when she began to form the words to call him a liar, she faltered. Because he wasn’t lying. Not about her crimes, at least.
“For the second time today, Captain, I’ll tell you what I know,” Nikolai said, reaching across the narrow aisle to give Jem’s hand a reassuring squeeze. “I know that you’re wrong about Jem. I know you’re a liar, and a murderer. And worse.”
Jem sat rigid, the venomous hatred and guilt that Jubal’s accusations had triggered diminishing ever so slightly as she stared down at Nikolai’s pale, soot-stained fingers gently curled around her own.
“How about this for truth,” the old man said, his slur deepening. “I’m not the captain anymore. Thane’s acting commander for now, but he’ll be captain soon enough. I’m through. Fucked, more accurately. The Moonwatch tracked the spell I used to escape. You destroyed my labs, but they’ll find enough in the wreckage to know what I’ve been up to. Already have me under lock and key while they investigate.”
He snorted. “Bad enough that your mother planned a coup right under my nose. Now, our three most promising battle magi have committed violent mutiny, led by her son.”
“If that’s true,” Nikolai said, pulling away from Jem so he could wave his hand with exasperation, “then why are you even talking to us?”
“Because I still give a damn! Still care what happens to you. Still care what you think! As absurd as that might sound, considering how . . . heated things became, earlier.”
Of all the things Jubal had said to them so far, this appeared to affect Nikolai most deeply.
“Just like you cared about my mom?” he spat.
Jubal hesitated, seeming to consider his reply.
“I didn’t kill Ashley, Nik. I would have died for that woman.”
Nikolai looked sharply at the communication crystal, eyes brimming with angry hurt.
“Then why the fuck are you still here,” he said, “and she isn’t?”
The old man didn’t reply, both he and Nikolai lapsing into a strained silence.
Considering that this was supposed to be a virtual world uniquely designed for the express purpose of punishing Jem, she found it strange that the two wizards would engage in such a tensely vulnerable conversation in her presence, even though she didn’t know enough about who or what they were discussing to follow. What purpose did such an exchange serve? Why did it seem like these men, in the heat of their argument, had forgotten that Jem was even there?
Maybe the AI tasked with torturing Jem considered itself an artist, like Armitage with its garden. Maybe it took pleasure in fully realizing the emotional depths of all the players in Jem’s damnation, going so far as to give them interpersonal relationship conflict beyond the scope of her personal narrative and viewpoint.
Maybe these were fellow prisoners, trapped in their own overlapping labyrinths of personalized suffering. Or maybe each was controlled by a specific AI—bored Overminds and Alphas, playing in their victims’ hells, like some sort of roleplaying game for demons.
There was something about all this that didn’t quite mesh with what Jem thought Torment would be like. Something was off, that she couldn’t quite place.
It was all just so . . . messy. And in Jem’s experience, the Synth were rarely messy.
She’d assumed that the wonders and wizardry of her virtual prison had been inspired by the sorcerer from Swan Lake, whose fearful silhouette had loomed with such intriguing menace in the dreams and nightmares of her early childhood. He’d been her boogeyman in tights, ever since she’d first gone to the ballet and watched, with horror, as he tormented Jem’s mother, the titular Swan.
But what if Jem was wrong? What if this was . . . real?
“There isn’t much time left,” Jubal said, with a sudden urgency. “I need you to listen. Marblewood’s City Hall has been completely sealed off and surrounded by the Watchmen. Thane’s following you with an entire squadron of Lancers—won’t be long till they get there after you arrive. He’ll kill you if you’re lucky. Capture you if you’re not. Just like the Lancers already waiting in Schwarzwald and Xanadu are going to capture or kill Albert and Ilyana the moment they arrive. The humans will dwindle to nothing, and everything you’ve done . . . everything your mother did . . . will have been for nothing.”
Across from Jem, Nikolai seemed to become smaller. “No! Captain, please—tell the king not to hurt them. Tell him that this is my fault! I made them help me. Lied to them. You know how I am
, I tricked them, it’s not their fault. Ilyana’s drugged, and Albert tried to stop us, but I wouldn’t listen. So please, don’t—”
“Out of my hands, m’boy. You—” He cut off midsentence, and when he began to speak again, it was just above a whisper. “You were right about king, Nikolai. He’s never going to help the humans. More afraid of there being another Vaillancourt than he’ll ever be of the Synth. All these years, I thought, maybe I can change his mind. Maybe I can . . .”
He cleared his throat.
“Doesn’t matter, now. I was wrong. But you little monsters! I know a way that you could force the magi into war with the Synth . . . and escape to live another day! Something that would stir up such a fuss, that even Ilyana and Albert might evade capture.”
Jubal’s words hit Jem with a jolt like icy water, snapping her to attention.
“How?” she demanded, making Nikolai flinch from the startling intensity of her outburst.
Whatever Jubal was going to propose, Jem knew that if there was even the tiniest sliver of a chance that she wasn’t actually in Torment—that, somehow, this was all real—if the old man’s plan was as feasible as he made it out to be, then no matter what it required of her, she’d see it through.
However terrible the price—Jem would pay. However brutal the violence, widespread the devastation, immense the suffering—Jem would not balk.
Not this time. Not like she had with Eva.
“When you arrive in Marblewood’s city hall,” Jubal explained, “go down into the basement, to the Disc. Nikolai, you’ll need to remove the bindings from the Disc so you can fully seal it with a bubble of Veil. Energy from the Disc can’t pass through Veil, so the flow of magic to the dome surrounding Marblewood will be cut off, and the Veil will fall—revealing the world beyond to the city, and the city to the world beyond.
“The Watchmen will scatter. Thane’s platoon of Lancers will be too busy fighting Synth and evacuating the civilians to give you much trouble. The Synth will attack. There will be losses. But then the machines will know of the magi, and it won’t be long before the magi find out what really happened in Marblewood. The king won’t have any choice but to enter the war after that.”
Nikolai stiffened. “No. No way. I’d never fucking do that.”
Jem clenched her fist tightly around the revolver’s pommel—whispers that had practically been inaudible before becoming ever so slightly less so.
“Why not?” she said to Nikolai. “You sacrificed an entire city of humans to save yourself. But you won’t sacrifice a city of—whatever the fuck you are—to save my entire species?”
He shrank away from Jem’s words, recoiling as if struck.
“You don’t understand,” Nikolai pleaded. “I grew up here. These are my friends. My family. They aren’t soldiers, they’re just civilians. They’ve never hurt anyone!”
“Ignorance isn’t innocence,” Jem snapped. “Your people abandoned us! Left us to die!”
“Jem, please, you don’t—”
“Ms. Burton has a point,” Jubal said with a drunken giggle. “You’re being very selfish right now, Nikolai. Not to mention shortsighted.”
“This gun,” Jem said to Jubal, wheels turning in her mind through a residual daze that she couldn’t yet shake. “The bullets passed right through the walls when I shot you. I saw the holes. Can see them now, in my recorded memories.”
Nikolai was staring at her, alarmed. “Jem . . .”
“What would happen,” she asked, “if I used it to shoot the Disc?”
Slowly Jubal began to chuckle. His chuckles grew to a drunken cackle, until finally, he dissolved into a fit of hacking wet coughs.
“Ms. Burton,” he said, once the fit had passed. “I really do wish we’d met under different circumstances. If you find your companion less than helpful in locating the Disc chamber, simply look for a white circle over the—”
Nikolai frantically launched from his seat and punched the gemstone communicator with crystal-coated knuckles. It shattered, going silent, leaving them in the dark but for the gentle glow of the revolver’s runes.
“You weren’t serious, right?” Nikolai asked, warily eyeing the gun held ready at Jem’s side.
“Of course not,” she said, echoing his broken oath with a bitterly mocking smile. “I promise.”
“Jem . . .”
“You’ve been there, right? Venus? Europa?”
“Jem, please, I—”
The mocking smile fled Jem’s lips, leaving only the bitterness, and hurt. “They’re even more beautiful than they were before the war.”
Serpent quick, Nikolai reached to draw his blade. But even if he hadn’t been so grievously wounded, he still wouldn’t have been any match for Jem’s mod-enhanced reflexes.
Their struggle was brief—Jem snatching away his blade before he could touch it as she struck him with a pair of quick jabs to his eyes and throat. As he crumpled onto the floor of the tiny compartment, gagging, she took his baton as well and moved back, leveling the gun at his prone body. “I won’t kill you, Nikolai. But I will hurt you. Lie on your stomach. Wrists crossed behind your head. “
“Please,” he whimpered, though he did as instructed. “I’m sorry I lied to you. Sorry I fucked things up so badly. But—”
“If this is really happening,” Jem said. “If this isn’t all just some artificial world tailored for my suffering, and there’s even the smallest chance that shooting your Disc might help my people, I have to do it. I’m sorry, Nik.”
Nikolai stared at her with the unsurprised heartbreak of a lonely child who’d just been let down by yet another adult.
It was almost enough to weaken Jem’s resolve. Almost enough to make her question whether there might be some other way.
She remembered Eva staring up at her from the floor after Jem had subdued her, like Nik was now. Begging Jem to stop. Begging her not to . . .
No.
Jem summoned the memories of Machado’s fall, forcing herself to endure the deafening cacophony of ten thousand people weeping and screaming at the exact same time. A visceral reminder of all that was at stake—of all the people whose lives she’d ruined.
In her mind, Synth forces closed in methodically around the desperate civilian mobs that surged across the base’s open expanse like packs of clumsy gazelle. Synth wranglers picked away at the mobs, until each human had been flung into mobile containment units with the casual indifference of a harvester gathering fruit.
She’d called them cowards for how they treated her. But Jem had been the real coward. Jem had been one who’d sold them out for a ticket to the stars.
A ticket that had been a lie in the end.
The chamber was rocked by a gentle tug as it came to a stop, and the curved door panel hissed away, opening to what appeared to be some kind of cleaning supply storage closet.
“Up,” she commanded, beckoning for him to lead the way. When Nikolai refused, she repeated the order and kicked at the stump of his hand, hating herself as he let out a mewling cry of pain.
Nikolai’s dagger and baton clutched awkwardly with one hand, revolver in her other, Jem held the whimpering boy at gunpoint as he led the way out into the ornate tiled lobby of his city hall.
A statue of a man and a woman in gold and silver featured prominently at the center, the ceiling lit with a hologram of cloud-patched sky framed by stained glass windows that shone like electric jewels.
The lobby was empty, the great black doors across the way closed shut. But outside, she could hear the nervous chattering of a crowd.
“NIKOLAI STRAUSS!” boomed a voice from beyond the door. “WE’VE BEEN AUTHORIZED TO USE DEADLY FORCE IN YOUR DETAINMENT! PLEASE LAY DOWN YOUR FOCALS AND ILLEGAL FIREARM AND COME PEACEFULLY!”
“You know us, lad!” another shouted. “We don’t want to hurt you! So please—don’t fight!”
Searching for the symbol Jubal had mentioned before Nik could cut him off, Jem quickly found a wide stairwell, leading down—
marked with a pale, glowing dot.
“There,” she said, directing him to lead the way.
A heavy knocking came from the door, and both Jem and Nikolai spun to face it, startled.
“Nikolai!” came the rumbling baritone of a large man’s voice. “It’s me, Joseph. I’m coming inside—alone. I just want to talk.”
The door began to creep open, a pair of big hands reaching in, palms out to show that they were empty. A young, statuesque white man cautiously sidled in through the gap in the partially open door, slowly closing it behind him with a shove from his winged golden boot. On his back, he wore an eagle-topped scepter of brass, matching the buttons on the bright white coat he wore over a navy three-piece.
He looked like a cop.
“Joseph!” Nikolai called—seeming somehow both relieved and annoyed.
“One more step and I’ll shoot him in the head,” Jem said to the newcomer, words booming with menace as they echoed across the tile. “Another step after that and I’ll kill you too.”
Joseph gave Nikolai a look, tensing, but the boy responded with a subtle shake of his head.
“You’re the boss,” Joseph said, with a gentle affability Jem knew many would find disarming. “I’m just here to talk. I mean you no harm.”
“Get over here,” she commanded. “Stand next to Nikolai. Now!”
“Like I said, you’re the boss.”
Jem felt numb as she followed them from a safe distance down a long flight of stairs to a hall hung with curtains of red and gold—sharply cutting off the cop’s attempts at negotiation.
“Jem, wait!” Nikolai said, turning to face her as Joseph shoved open the polished black doors behind him to reveal a cavernous, domed room of slick white marble.
The Disc chamber.
Nikolai moved to stand between her and the Disc, frantically holding out his arm as if to impede her view. “Don’t shoot it! I’ll seal it in Veil, like Jubal said. If you shoot the Disc, you might kill it, and everyone here will die. The Lancers won’t be able to evacuate the civilians, or fight off the Synth. The Synth’ll take us all prisoner. And if they find a way to take our magic, and use it for themselves—there’ll be no stopping them.”