by Hayley Stone
The reporter is the first one to spot something amiss, somewhere above her head. She squints, her face contorting into confusion, then fear, before she drops out of frame entirely, the cameraman panning to the crisp-blue sky. The view bobs up and down, begins to shake as the cameraman turns, starts to run, but not before capturing the perfect shot of a passenger plane diving into the capitol building.
At the time, I wasn’t giving the television my full attention. Camus was banging around the kitchen, failing to find replacement batteries for a flashlight. He was putting together our go bag, for when we inevitably had to leave. My mother had already made arrangements for us to travel north, to Seattle, courtesy of one of her favorite lobbyist’s private jets. Of course, this was before all commercial flights over the US were suspended.
So I wasn’t watching when my mother died, along with dozens of other well-meaning politicians, performing their civic duty in the face of extreme terror. She was snuffed out in the same instant I recommended Camus look in the drawer to the right of the fridge.
I clear my throat, finding it a little tight. “How did Ulrich and I know each other?” I ask Samuel. Talking is easier than thinking, easier than dwelling on the past. The more I remember, the more I’m beginning to wish I could forget.
“From what you told me, he was a friend of your father’s,” Samuel says. “They met in Germany when your father was stationed overseas in…Stuttgart, I think. This was a long time ago, though. Way before the Machinations began.”
The Machinations, I think, immediately recognizing it, like the feel of a splinter.
Machinations. A harsh, ugly word for a harsh, ugly time. The polite name for our current era, beginning when our technology turned on us, putting a quick end to the human wars, as they had been programmed to do. Problem was, they only accomplished this task by becoming an enemy humanity had to unite together to fight. Except we couldn’t beat them.
“Was Ulrich here as some German military attaché, then?” I ask.
“No. He’d been out of the army for a few years by the time things started happening with the machines. As I understand it, he came to the States on a green card, working as a German- speaking operations specialist for some investment firm.” It’s hard to imagine Ulrich as a banker—but up until a few hours ago, it would’ve been impossible imagining him dead, too. “Your mom actually helped him get the job; she agreed to be his sponsor, because of his friendship with your father. When the machines bombed DC and New York, he was in Florida on vacation.” At the mention of the Sunshine State, my mind summons images of sandy beaches, clear waters, and clear skies. I think Ulrich and I must have talked about his life before the war, at least once or twice.
“I don’t think he cared about the investment work at all,” Samuel says. “Between you and me, I think he was just here for Disney World.”
I laugh despite myself. “Poor guy comes for sand, surf, and Mickey Mouse ears, and ends up in the freezing cold. That’s some rotten luck.” Why do I remember these sorts of things? Trivial, unimportant things. “So, how did Ulrich manage to get from sunny Florida to the middle of Alaska?”
“Funny thing about fighting a war against machines,” Samuel answers. “After a certain point, nationality doesn’t seem to matter. The American military started accepting volunteers. As long as you could hold a gun and were human, you were welcome to join up. I don’t think I have to tell you, Ulrich knew exactly how to hold a gun.
“Anyway, as far as I understand it, when the military started to retreat, he came with them, and when the structure broke entirely, he along with a few others fell back to McKinley.”
“How did they know to go there?”
Samuel looks at me as if he’s forgotten who I am—or who I’m not. “We picked up their emergency signal, and you called him on a SAT phone. Gave him directions on how to get here. I don’t know any more than that; it’s all either of you ever told me.”
There’s so much more I want to ask him about, but something catches my eyes—movement where there shouldn’t be any.
“Don’t look now, but I think we have company,” I say in a barely audible whisper. Samuel tenses. “Run on the count of three.”
“Rhona—”
“Don’t argue! One, two…three!”
We take off in separate directions. Whether the thing is machine or flesh, it will now have to make the crucial decision of who to chase. If the machine is part of a lower echelon of AI, this sort of strategy may buy us valuable time to escape. Scouting drones aren’t usually programmed to think through complex situations. That isn’t to say they don’t get lucky from time to time, though.
I know it’s the best tactic, but I still don’t like having to split up. I chance a glance back, and don’t see Samuel anymore. My heart thickens in my throat. But then my ears fill with that awful whirring sound, and I keep going. Maybe it’s all I know how to do: keep going.
The grumbling machinery grows louder, closer, and I’m running out of energy.
Several times I stumble, scraping my hands on rocks camouflaged by snow and ice. Each time, I get up. Bleeding, haggard with grief and fatigue, I get up, allowing frustration to fuel me. In my head, I try to hold a picture of Camus’s face from my dream.
I want so badly to see him again. More than anything.
Keep. Going.
But the machine is catching up, and it sounds like more are coming from the stretch of tundra to my right. Something is on the move out there, kicking up twin clouds of powder. My eyes begin to sting even more, not only from the dry, cold air, but also the white, fluorescent landscape. I’m forced to look away.
A sharp pop, like a cork released from a bottle. I barely have time to think What? before a hard pinch buckles my right leg. I go sprawling, my head smacking against compacted snow.
For a few seconds, I’m unable to think, let alone move. A small, pitiful noise climbs up from the back of my throat and snaps me out of it.
Can’t stay here. Gotta move. This thought is quickly followed by the despairing realization that I don’t have anywhere else to go.
Numbness creeps up my leg. Some kind of tranquilizer? It must be. I can’t recall the predator-class machines ever carrying tranquilizer darts before; sort of defeats their purpose. Maybe it’s some new kind of scout? No. That doesn’t make sense, either. Amidst the panic and fear, my brain can’t help but recycle this phrase. It doesn’t make sense. Why not just kill me?
“Worry ’bout it later,” I mumble to myself.
Hiding may not be glamorous, but if it keeps me alive, I’m willing to try it. With the strength of my arms alone, I pull myself toward a small opening in the shadow-drenched earth next to the trees—some kind of animal’s burrow?—dragging the dead weight of my leg behind me. Drops of blood dot the snow behind my struggling, wriggling body. My nose. My stupid nose. I’m Rudolph in that scene where his nose gives away his and his friends’ position to the Abominable Snowman of the North. Bumbles, I think that’s what they called him. It’s been a while since I’ve seen that movie…
I decide this is by far the stupidest train of thought I’ve had yet. I must be dying.
Again.
Through no small miracle, I get all the way inside the burrow—only to discover it’s not a burrow at all.
Instead, the ground turns to crackling tarp beneath my gloves. Overhead, the roof sags under the weight of snow, looking close to collapsing. The tent is so dark I no longer see my breath, white and frantic in the air. The only indication of color is a small wedge of fluorescent orange on the ground in front of me, interrupted by the black shape of my body. It’s a little like being swallowed by an orange—and a lot like crawling into a casket.
I clamber over some bumps in the middle of the tent, all the while straining to hear the sound of the machine. Where is it now? What is it doing?
Distracted, it takes me a moment to notice I’m crawling over the corpse of a young man. I inhale sharply, rolling off him, nearly chokin
g on my own spit. My eyes water from the cold and the fear.
Bodies. Three mummy bags of various colors, lightly dusted with frost. A family? Or simply strangers, gathered together in accordance with the age-old idiom, safety in numbers? No way to know now. I lift my gloves from the cold, slippery material of the bags, expecting blood—or some indication of how the machines murdered them—but there’s nothing. No savage marks in their sleeping bags, no holes ringed with black gunpowder. Just eyelashes lying sharp as icicles beneath the young man’s closed eyes.
The cold killed him, and the others. Cold or starvation or both. Suddenly, hiding no longer strikes me as such a great idea.
Outside, the wind hustles through the trees, and beneath the ambient noise, metal shrieks against metal. Every step documented by a crunch in the snowpack. Whir-whir-whir, is the noise the machine makes. Ee-eye-ee-eye-o.
I’m grateful the others have their faces turned away from me. I pretend they’re equipment instead of people as I begin shoving-slash-rolling them toward the entrance of their half-buried tent. “Sorry,” I say to the young man and his dead buddies. Not even out loud, really. The word passes soundlessly through my chapped and chattering lips.
A few obstacles near the entrance won’t stop the machine from finding me, but maybe it will slow it down. Buy me time. To do what? asks the tiny, frightened voice in my head.
Something.
Anything.
But even as I slide the last corpse into place, my arms turn rubbery as a chew toy. They tingle almost pleasantly, as if shot with that anesthetic the dentist gives you before drilling cavities. Always hated the dentist.
I clutch the EMP-G to my chest and flex my hand. My fingers don’t feel like fingers anymore—not mine, anyway. The tips are dead when I press them to my cheek, trying to revive some sensation in the nerves. Nothing. Still, I can make them work enough to pull the trigger. That’s what’s important. “Won’t take me without a fight,” I murmur through a half-paralyzed face.
Whir-whir-whir.
Crunch.
Crunch.
Crunch.
Closer now. I almost laugh from the tension.
I don’t even see it. The machine tosses the mummy bags aside like doll packaging and reaches in, yanks me out into the crisp sunlight. All the while, I’m firing like a madwoman. The machine releases me suddenly, and if I could run, if I could make my stupid legs work, I would.
But I can’t.
Instead, I stare, wide-eyed and dry-mouthed, as light and shadow fall over the machine’s still, metal face. It’s even more disturbing up close for its carnivorous look. A cool, raptor glare, designed to inspire fear, with optics red as the eyes of a monster. They are frozen in their last adjustment, half-extended toward me like a camera’s zoom lens. Everything being recorded, analyzed, and sent back to the higher echelon—the intelligence that rules the machines.
The optics click, and I feel the movement like a foot in the gut. Back online.
I fire again, and continue firing every time the thing reboots itself, praying the charge lasts. The cold has taken its toll on the weapon, however, so it seems unlikely I’ll be able to get more than ten bursts out of the thing. Ten times the ten seconds it takes for it to reboot means I have roughly a minute and forty seconds left to live.
A minute and thirty-nine now.
I try to get my limbs to work, but they just won’t. The best I can do is flail around in the snow, gaining an inch of distance away from the machine at a time. It’ll never be enough for an escape.
A minute and ten seconds.
Just as the machine starts back up, and I fire one of my last rounds, an axe slices through its middle, causing sparks to fly. The machine doubles over on itself, its core processor exposed from the attack. The axe comes down several more times to make sure the machine is rendered completely inoperable.
The world sways as I struggle to stay up on my elbows, my vision becoming elastic as a fun-house mirror. I try to concentrate on the stranger clothed head-to-foot in extreme-weather apparel, face hidden behind a white balaclava.
Samuel? I think, but then I remember Samuel never wore a balaclava. Or carried an axe.
Somewhere in the distance, I still hear the sputtering roar of machinery, only now I dimly recognize the sound as belonging to a snowmobile.
What I don’t hear anymore is the whirring, and it’s such a relief the tension drains from my body. In the absence of adrenaline, I pass out.
Chapter 5
By the time I wake, my surroundings have changed entirely, replaced by white floors and white walls.
Again.
At least I’m not naked this time. Although I do notice I’m wearing a change of clothes. The outfit is comprised of a snug, rusted-orange blouse and tan khakis just loose enough to be comfortable. In fact, both the shirt and the pants fit entirely too well, as if tailor-made for me. I put the two together. This was part of my wardrobe, back at McKinley. Is that where I am? It seems too much to hope for.
I waste no time getting up and investigating. The room I’m in looks more like a holding cell than a bedroom: small, with very little in the way of furniture or decoration. There’s only one door, no handle. Beside it, however, is what looks like some kind of intercom.
I walk over and push the black button, speaking into it. “Hello? Is anyone listening? I’m awake now, just so you know…”
No answer. Not even the faintest scratch of static. I’m not even sure it’s still functional. Not a good sign, but I push the intercom button several more times anyway, to be sure. Or else to annoy whoever’s ignoring me on the other end.
Once I’ve worn out that diversion, I look around to see what I’ve been left with to entertain myself.
Just as the answer seems like it will be big, fat diddly-squat, I come across a mirror. Thin as a sheet of paper and reflecting the opposite wall, it camouflages itself well. I don’t even notice it until I pass by and catch a flash of red. My hair sticks out like a sore thumb against the room’s bland color scheme.
I step back slowly, like it’s some big reveal.
It is the first opportunity I’ve had to get a good look at my new, cloned self. For all I know, I appear deranged, hideous, inhuman. I could be a monster.
I take stock of my features like I’m reading off a quality-control checklist for a Rhona Long doll. Everything seems to be there—two eyes (green), average nose and mouth, round face. Perfect teeth, too (all without the agony of having braces well into high school). But my freckles are different; they’re darker, splotchy, and only cover one side of my face, like a Dalmatian’s spots. I’m not sure whether to feel curious or repulsed. It’s an interesting look. Certainly…new?
“Could be worse,” I say aloud to my reflection. “We could have ended up a cyclops or something.” Samuel had said cloning wasn’t textbook science.
I decide the freckles aren’t so bad.
I’m still analyzing them when the door slides open with a hiss of depressurizing air. A woman enters. I recognize her, but have to search for a name. She’s wearing her platinum hair in a simple braid that trails down her back, and has her hands clasped in front of her like she’s holding something important close to her chest.
The door shuts behind her almost immediately, sealing us in together.
She doesn’t speak, but instead begins signing with her hands. The first time she does it, I’m afraid this is going to be one long, awkward conversation. But she makes the same gestures again, more slowly, and understanding starts to come back to me. By the third effort, I know exactly what she’s saying.
You look just like her.
“I’ve been getting that a lot lately,” I reply with my usual cheek, and she smiles, so either she’s only mute, or she’s deaf and reading my lips. My gut tells me the latter.
Do you remember me?
That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? I’m grateful that this time I can actually find a name to put to the face without having to
ask or be told. “Hanna?” I say, only a little uncertainly.
Her eyes, a rich, hazel color, fill with glossy tears. Tall and long limbed, she crosses the room in two strides and embraces me like a long-lost sister.
It’s as if someone has unlocked a vault in my mind, and I withdraw a few memories from the last five years, since I’ve known Hanna. We met after the end of the world, but our friendship wasn’t defined by it. I remember good times, like meeting in the cafeteria during dinner and how she would do the most hilarious impressions of past celebrities, fictional characters, and even our colleagues. She did a particularly excellent imitation of Camus, accent and all, which he always responded to with a stiff smile.
But I also remember the hard times. When Hanna lost her hearing during an attack, and how we learned sign language together. I hadn’t wanted her to feel alone. Now she’s here, returning the favor.
I squeeze her a little tighter.
Samuel said your memory was—she pauses to think, then makes the sign for broken—I was worried.
“Samuel,” I say, recalling the forest and the machines. I’m almost afraid to ask about him. “He’s safe, then? I mean, it sounds like you’ve talked to him. Is he all right?”
Hanna smiles patiently and verbally says, “Slow down.” I realize my lips are moving too fast for her to read—nothing more than a slur of concerned syllables. He’s fine, she adds with her hands, showing her preference for signing. I remember the first few months after the incident and how she hated being unable to speak properly, always too loud or too quiet. So much of what had made her her was the character of her voice. Yet somehow she managed to redefine herself. I wonder if I can do that, too.
“Can I see him?” I ask her.
The smile disappears from her eyes and she shakes her head.
“Why not? You said he was fine…”
Yes, she assures me, although I think she’s leaving out some key details. More or less.
“More or less? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He’s being debriefed by the council.” She says this aloud, maybe because she doesn’t think I’ll understand the obscure signage for it.