Machinations

by Hayley Stone

  “Then lie to me.”

  He laughs and gives me an affectionate look. “I can’t seem to do that either, as of late.”

  I want to kiss him again, but I know if I clutch him to me, even for one more heavenly second, it’ll make it impossible to let him go. I cross my arms, half-hugging myself and frowning. “Just come back, all right?”

  He looks at the floor. “If I come back…” he starts to say.

  “When,” I correct sharply.

  “When,” he agrees and his eyes spring back to me. Green and clear as a dream. “Things will be different.” Between us, his eyes add.

  I smile shyly. “Sounds good. I guess you better—” My voice breaks. The tears come. He steps toward me and wipes them from my cheek, holding my neck, peering down at me like the man I used to know. The man I’ve loved all this time. And for a moment, I’m afraid I won’t be able to do it. I won’t be able to let him go, will instead cling to him like a child. But the comm buzzes again, and reality sinks into me like nails, and I remember the world does not revolve around me and Camus. There are more important things.

  I can’t say anything more, however, so instead I give him a little shooing motion. Go on. Get.

  He doesn’t prolong our parting further, except with another brief kiss. And he doesn’t say goodbye, which is just as well. The permanency of goodbyes, especially now, frightens me.

  Chapter 20

  Churchill’s eleventh-hour crisis stretches first into twelve hours—the time it takes to assemble our teams, get them there, and begin evacuating—and then doubles to twenty-four hours after they’re besieged by an enemy force. Everything is slowed to an almost glacial pace, both there and in the war room where I and a handful of other council members watch and wait. Officially, we’re waiting for good news, but unofficially…

  For whatever reason, the machines seem content for the moment with harrying the evac teams on their way to and from the base, biding their time with the main assault. As of twenty-five suspenseful hours and counting, they’ve only managed to destroy a few of Churchill’s tactical vehicles on the ground, causing some casualties, but none of those McKinlians.

  Camus and his team stay out of the fighting as best they can, playing the role of smuggler as they focus on their primary mission of getting people out safely. Juneau is the nearest safe zone, but Alaska is unimaginably large, a beast of a state even when there were borders to cage her in, and even by air the trips are few and time-consuming.

  In all that time, I haven’t left the war room except to relieve myself. Samuel’s taken to bringing me snacks, and staying to make sure I eat some. I pick and nibble at the bread and crackers to appease him, when in truth I don’t find either very appetizing. My stomach’s full of hornets; my blood buzzing. It’s annoying because I do want to eat; I’m starved, but more than that, I know I should. Samuel raises the point that the brain can’t work without fuel, and I’m no good to anyone if I can’t think. So each time he shows up with something edible, I make the effort and pray I don’t throw up.

  Apart from Clarence, I’m the only one left of the original council keeping vigil. There are also a few technicians, but they’re only on watch for a few hours at a time, keeping conscious ones in circulation. Speaking of circulation, I think I’ve lost all feeling in my legs all the way up to my rear. I stand up, trying to get the blood flowing, and immediately feel the powerful effects of exhaustion. My vision becomes dark and fuzzy, like a decommissioned television channel.

  “Commander?” Clarence says, reappearing next to me once my sight returns. His hand is at my elbow. “Maybe you should sit back down…”

  I don’t argue.

  Sleep sneaks up on me, the traitor, knocking me out for a few minutes. I doze off and on until I’m jostled awake by someone bumping my chair.

  “Rhona?” Samuel’s voice: quiet, concerned.

  “Hey,” I mumble with a sleepy smile, reaching for my senses and finding them loose and slippery as falling sand. For a few blurry seconds, while I come out of the depths of slumber, I’m confused, having forgotten where I am and what’s going on.

  Then I remember. I sit up sharply. “What is it? Has something happened? Is it Camus’s team?”

  “No, everything’s fine,” he assures me. “But you need to get some sleep.”

  “What do you think I was just doing?”

  “You mean, besides drooling on the table?” I wipe the corner of my mouth and he smiles gently, making it impossible for me to be irritated with him. “Clarence called me. He said he was worried about you. I can see why.”

  I make a dismissive sound. “I’m fine. Just a little tired is all. It’ll pass.”

  He slips into a chair next to mine. “You’ve been awake for over twenty-four hours. You’ve hardly eaten anything…You’re running on fumes, Rhon.” His fingers brush against my cheek as he moves one of my bangs from my face. I have to look at him then, as I’m guessing he wanted. Meeting his eyes, so earnest and imploring, is the final blow to my resistance. “Will you let me get you to a bed? Please?”

  I groan. “How much time do you spend practicing that face? All right. All right. I’ll go quietly. Happy?”

  He helps me up. Getting my legs beneath me is half the battle. The other half will be making it to my room. Lethargy drags at my limbs, making movement slow and awkward.

  “I’m just glad it worked,” Samuel says. “Plan B involved drugging you with a heavy sedative.”

  I think he’s joking, but I’m too tired to know for sure.

  Before I go, however, I extract a promise from Clarence I’ll be woken if anything happens. He gives me his word, on the condition that he won’t bother me unless it’s something significant. I can live with that. Once I’m asleep, I’m certainly not going to want to be roused over something as little as a nosebleed. “Just keep me apprised,” I clarify, nervous to be leaving my post. It’s not like my watching and listening was making any kind of a difference, but still.

  “We’ll hold down the fort, Commander,” Clarence tells me. “Get some rest.”

  Sleep deprivation is a funny thing. I find this out as we’re walking toward my room. As spent as I am, you’d think I’d be uninterested in my surroundings, but the opposite is true; I notice everything, fixating on details I’d overlooked a hundred times before. The concrete floor, for instance, which is worn darker in places by the soles of countless feet. It bears the history of our survival in one of the simplest ways, scuffed and dirty where we’ve treaded. And there are the walls, bare and bland until you look closer. My tired mind arranges the texture of the plaster into pictures, like a Rorschach inkblot test. I wonder what seeing frolicking deer and a frowning machine interface says about me.

  “Camus told me you tried to volunteer to head up the evacuation,” Samuel says as we amble along, him steady, and me with a drunk’s grace. He keeps an arm around me for support and I hug his side.

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “Can I ask why?”

  “You can ask.” I smile briefly. It falters. My face feels funny, almost numb. Honestly, I’m surprised my nose isn’t bleeding. Ever since the end of winter, my nosebleed trouble seems to have cleared up. Samuel thinks it’s my body finally adjusting, beginning to heal, but it could be a seasonal thing. Naturally, he wants to run more tests to be sure. “I don’t know what you want me to tell you, Samuel. You know me. I don’t always think. Sometimes I just act. Churchill was in trouble, and no one else was stepping up to the plate.”

  There’s open curiosity on his face, not judgment. “So you decided to play pinch hitter in the ninth?”

  “Sure,” I say. “I forgot you’re a baseball guy.”

  I expect him to lighten up, but he’s lost in thought.

  We reach my quarters. The sound of the door sliding on its track is a whispered lullaby as it opens and we pass the threshold. My bed is unmade from two nights ago, its coverlets open like waiting arms. Part of me wouldn’t mind a hot shower, but I’m pre
tty sure I’d drown in this state.

  Heedless of my sweat and clothes, I collapse onto the mattress. It comfortably supports my body, and I burrow into the pillows. Before I’ve turned back around, I feel the gentle weight of the sheets and comforter over my shoulders. Samuel.

  “What did I ever do to deserve you?” I ask sleepily, rolling over to look at him.

  He just smiles in that way of his—that way that makes the world a little more bright, like a candle lit in the darkness. “That’s funny,” he says. “I often wonder the same thing about you.”

  I close my eyes. “Come up with any good answers?”

  There’s a thoughtful pause. Then he whispers close to my ear, “Go to sleep, Rhona,” and his weight disappears from the bed.

  Don’t you leave me, too…

  But I’m asleep a few minutes later, slipping away from the world to my grayscale dreams. For a time, I float in a lake of black with no discernible up or down, only a constellation of stars around me. It’s relaxing until I try to move. The dark sticks to my skin like paste. Stardust collects on my arms and legs and face, clogging my throat when I try to speak out. I’m alone, glittering in isolation.

  Then I’m nowhere. Pale hills stretch on as far as the eye can see. At first I think they’re covered in snow. It’s only as I bend down and grab a handful that I discover it’s white-hot sand. It burns as it passes between my fingers. The sands of an hourglass. Time is running out.

  I wander for a long time, until I reach a city made of glass. It keeps changing, altering before my eyes like a desert mirage, never remaining the same for very long. It looks like my childhood home. It looks like a London university. It looks like Anchorage. A single touch and it shatters entirely. On my knees, I frantically try to put the pieces back together, cutting my hands on the sharper fragments. But I can’t. No matter how hard I try, no matter how much I bleed, I can’t re-create the places as they were. I’m stubborn, though, and persist. Rivulets of moisture, sweat or tears or maybe both, drop onto the earth with a hiss, baked almost instantly into steam.

  Someone eventually stops me, but I can’t make out their face against the outline of the sun.

  “It’s okay,” the shadow says. “Rhona. It’s enough. Look.”

  I look, and what I’ve made is something beautiful. It’s unorthodox and a little deformed, this abstract sculpture of mine, but it welcomes the light and transforms it into a kaleidoscope of wild colors, all dancing on the sand.

  I lay down beside the light display, entranced. The dunes no longer burn me, but instead feel warm and protective, the sand as soft as silk. I fall into a deeper, more impenetrable sleep—a wonderful void where I can finally, finally rest.

  —

  Not long after, I’m woken by a persistent buzzing sound.

  I mistake it for an alarm clock until I remember I don’t own one. And for good reason, I think, wanting to stuff my head beneath my pillows and ignore it. But then I realize it’s the communications console near the door and I’m up an instant later.

  I press all the wrong buttons before finding the right one. “Commander, you’re needed in the war room,” Clarence says with a face full of deadly calm.

  Samuel stirs on the sofa, having fallen asleep with his nose in an electronic reader.

  “What is it? What’s happened?”

  “We’ve lost contact with Churchill and all surrounding units.”

  “What?” I ask, fighting the very real urge to be sick. “How? When?”

  He shakes his head. “Five minutes ago. Please, Commander. We can have this conversation once you’re here.”

  —

  “It could be a communications glitch,” Samuel says, offering me hope as we rush down the corridors. “The upper atmosphere is notorious for interfering with transmissions. And this close to the pole? The solar wind could be modifying the electromagnetic waves, affecting any signals…” Somewhere deep down, intuition tells me none of those explanations are right. Still, I appreciate Samuel trying to lift my spirits.

  “Did you know I dream in black and white?” I say, interrupting him. We continue to keep up a brisk pace beside one another, but McKinley is large, command level a labyrinth of interconnecting corridors, and it’ll be a few more minutes before we reach the war room. I can’t stand the quiet or the endless supposition, so this conversation is the next best thing.

  “Really?” he says, scientific intrigue getting the best of him, as I expected.

  I nod. “But just now, last night, I dreamt color for the first time since dying.” I recall the full vibrancy of a dozen shades of red, brilliant blues, the miracle of green and gold.

  “What changed?” he asks me.

  “Someone else was there with me. They showed me how to see it.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

  “Huh,” he says, carefully mulling over the significance.

  We reach our destination before any awkward silences ensue, slipping out of that noose in time to hang ourselves by a different one. My throat feels tighter just entering the war room. I notice the wall displays first. They’re black and mute, when they shouldn’t be. Nothing speaks more volume than a deafening silence where there should be the noise of living.

  “Well?” I ask, a little more harshly than I intend. “Have we had any luck raising Camus on comms?”

  I don’t bother sitting down. I have too much nervous energy, replenished rather than exorcised by rest. While I pace in the small amount of space available, Samuel methodically reviews the evidence on the table—what looks like a bunch of technical mumbo jumbo to me.

  Clarence shakes his head, and for the first time ever I see his composure break and frustration pour through the cracks. “Our technicians keep trying to establish contact, but there’s just nothing. It’s like we’re shouting into a vacuum. Either they can’t hear us, or…” He takes a breath. “Or no one’s left to respond.”

  “Cheery thought,” I mutter, then stop myself. No. No way. I’m not going there; I can’t afford to indulge that particular what-if, not if I want to stay calm. Or calm-ish. “What was the last transmission received?”

  “Churchill reported having some difficulty with the machines a few miles out from the base, but there was no other indication anything was amiss.”

  I brace myself against the table, looking at the holographic display. Amidst the geographical landmarks such as mountains and lakes, and the occasional abandoned settlement or city, there are white and red blips to mark our forces and those belonging to the machines. Crimson dominates the landscape between Churchill and Copper Center, overwhelming our pale pixels ten to one, making me think of blood spilled on snow. “Is this map up-to-date?”

  “As of last transmission, yes.”

  With a wave of my hand, I soar hundreds of miles to the south. The red blips decrease in number until only white ones are left to navigate the ice-blue geography. Our evacuation teams are en route to Juneau. I tap on a few of the blips, which brings up information on them. Team name, vehicle make and model, and occupancy. Good, I think, until I scan through them and find that none register a Commander Forsyth aboard.

  “Clarence,” I say slowly, afraid of the answer. “Where’s Camus?”

  He fiddles with the display, bringing up Churchill base. “His team is still onsite, or was as of ten minutes ago.”

  I close my eyes, fighting the urge to curse like a sailor.

  “I think I know what the problem is,” Samuel says, hijacking one of the wall screens. “I’m no expert, but according to the diagnostic report, the issue doesn’t have anything to do with a glitch or the weather. Taking that into account, the most likely scenario is that the machines are running some sort of jamming device to disrupt our signals and confuse communication. Typical of their programming. But…”

  He switches the pictures on the screen to a computer-generated view of Earth from space.

  “There’s an alternative possibility. Th
is is the area of low Earth orbit, where most of the remaining—functional—satellites are, including our own. What if the machines have somehow managed to, I don’t know, bring the one we’ve stationed over Alaska down? Or gained control of it, at least?”

  “It’d account for the communications failure,” Clarence agrees mildly. “But it’s still a leap.”

  “Not to mention it means we can’t do anything about it,” I point out.

  “I didn’t say it was a best-case scenario,” says Samuel.

  “What do you want to do, Commander?” Clarence asks.

  As the mantle of responsibility crashes down onto my shoulders, I’m once again reminded of how heavy a weight it is. No wonder it drove Camus into the ground.

  I pick at my nails for a moment, torn between wanting to send in the cavalry and knowing it’s the wrong play. My heart screams for action, but my head asks, what would Camus do in my position? It doesn’t matter. Camus isn’t here. And Clarence and Samuel are expecting an answer from me.

  “We wait,” I tell them. It’s not an easy decision, but I hope it’s the right one. “At least for a day, two at the most. Send word to the council. Let them know what’s going on. We can’t rush in blind. We have to give them a chance to contact us first.”

  “And if they don’t?” Clarence inquires.

  My smile is grim, my mind set. “Then I’m strapping on a pair of snow boots and going after them myself. No arguments.” It’s the best solution, situated between my head and my heart. No one ever said middle ground had to be safer ground. “I can’t hide in a tower forever,” I add. “I won’t. Not when the people in danger are the ones I sent out to fight the dragon for me.”

  “I believe you,” says McKinley’s head engineer. I think I spy a mixture of sadness and pride on his face. “But let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  Chapter 21

  “I’m going with you.”

  I look up from my laces—an intricate mess of loops and snaps that weave back and forth up the neck of my boot, cinching it tighter and tighter. There’s enough that can go majorly wrong out there; the last thing I want to be worrying about in the field is one of my laces coming untied. If it means taking a little extra time to triple lace my snow boots, so be it. It gives my hands something to do, anyway, apart from fidgeting restlessly with the rest of my combat attire.