She remembered the time she’d “borrowed” his multifacer, a tool for manipulating older physical logic gates, and she had applied it to the school’s catering fabricator mechanisms while she’d been on her way to the Head Administrator for retributory punishments. The whole dripline had started spewing pinkish goo across –
A click. Almost inaudible, but Opal knew every sound their apartment made, and that one was distinctive and only made by the exterior door locking mechanism. Someone had brute-forced it, or they had a key. Neither was good news.
Opal scrambled up. The exterior door opened into the hall. Unfortunately, she’d have to pass through that same hall to get to the kitchen where the knives were, or her parents’ bedroom where she’d found a projectile pistol in their personal lockbox.
Through the open doorway she could see shadows on the wall, a person – or more than one person – coming towards this room, obviously trying to be quiet.
“Hide,” whispered Opal, into Clarissa’s ear. Clarissa looked at her with wide eyes. Opal pointed towards the small plasteen spaceship that Clarissa still liked to climb into when she wanted Opal to read her a story. Although it was designed for a younger child, Clarissa could fit completely inside it if she curled up.
Opal scanned the room and spotted the toolbox she’d been messing with before she went to sleep. She’d hoped to work out a way a splicing the neighbouring apartment’s energy grid into her own so that they could still have power when the credits ran out. She snatched up a hefty multi-tool just as two adults in the cream suits of Societal Services entered the room, followed by a riot-armoured private security trooper with the blue armband of Stagi-Corp. All of them had pale skin, making them look cold to Opal. People like them didn’t usually enter the sky-towers. Maybe that’s why they looked flustered now.
“We’re here to help you,” said the woman, in the kind of precisely-formed high-class syllables that made you feel ashamed to answer in your normal voice, just the same as teachers did at school. The woman was speaking to Opal but moving towards Clarissa, who hadn’t made it to the spaceship in time. Clarissa flinched away from the strangers.
And Opal knew the words were just a distraction because the sec-guard approached Opal, one hand out as if to placate her, but the other on his equipment belt near the extensible stun baton. The third man scanned the scene with a palm-implanted device, no doubt so they could edit events to submit to court later.
“We’re going to take you both somewhere safe,” the woman said in her strange tones, suddenly pouncing and seizing Clarissa’s arms. Clarissa struggled but her childish strength was nothing against an adult, and the woman gave a jubilant look to her colleagues.
Misplaced confidence. Opal had hidden the multi-tool at her side just as they entered. And when the security guard got near, she swung it at the arm he held near his weapon, striking his wrist where the armour would need to be thinnest so as not to impede mobility. The heavy bar connected, and even as he yelled in pain she managed to strike his clear faceplate and crack it before he punched her in the face with his good hand.
She tasted blood and her eyes watered. The tool had flown from her hand with a clatter, but she couldn’t scramble for it because the cream-suited man intervened now, wrestling with her, getting an elbow around her neck from behind in some kind of choke while he tried to pin one of her arms to her side.
<
His biceps were huge under that baggy suit, surprising for someone who looked like a Corporate, and she couldn’t shift as she choked. The security guard had removed his helmet with the sight-obscuring cracked visor and dropped it on the floor, revenge in his eyes as he looked at Opal, the damaged wrist limp at his side.
None of that mattered. In the background the woman dragged Clarissa away.
They were going to take her. To take Opal’s sister.
It became a blur of motion, as well as vision as Opal struggled to breathe, or to see out of her watering eyes. She writhed, kicked at shins, head slamming back in the hopes of catching a face, and as she threw herself about she created enough leeway to strike back with an elbow too, leading to a satisfying crunching sound; then to bite on the arm that held her, teeth tight and eyes locked on her sister. The suited man yelled and let her go for a second, and that was enough.
She might do it <
Opal dashed across the room to free her sister from the woman’s grip, which was so tight that anyone could see she was hurting Clarissa, so that Clarissa moaned in a way that was the equivalent of a scream from any other child.
Opal almost got there but the guard stepped in her way, so she barrelled into him <
The guard drew his baton and the angry cream-suited man was closing in, blood running from one nostril, but Opal couldn’t fight two men.
She had never intended to.
When she smashed into the security guard she’d removed one of the items clipped to his belt, no idea what she’d got but when she raised it everyone’s eyes widened, and she noted the large button on top, maybe it was a spray can of CryBaby, so she pointed it at the guard and pressed the button but it just beeped, and the suit man knocked her to the ground so it fell and rolled away.
Another beep. She struggled against the sec-guard’s fist that gripped a thick clump of her hair painfully, dragging her along the floor.
Then it went beepbeepbeep and exploded in a white-hot blast of flame, ignited liquid squirting in various directions, searing walls of fire dividing the room into triangular sections.
Yelling and commotion. It split them all up. The woman must have panicked and run. The voices of the adults faded, didn’t matter, they couldn’t get to Opal or Clarissa through the fire.
Only one thing mattered.
Clarissa looked at Opal through a wall of flame, and there were tears in her eyes, but she did not cry out loud.
“Get to the window!” Opal yelled through the flickering barrier. Lined up in front of it was a low table of seedlings that Opal had planted in pots, a project which had engaged Clarissa’s interest too. Clarissa could climb onto it and then through the window onto the narrow ledge outside. Perhaps airborne help would arrive to rescue her.
Clarissa didn’t move. She just waited. She trusted Opal.
But it was fire between them! Fire! <
Opal recoiled, looked for help in a panic. The sprinklers did nothing, had always been faulty, and there were no blankets nearby, no insulating foils, no foam dispensers. The blaze burned so bright now that the rest of the room was blanked out, and it was only her and Clarissa, separated, the flames advancing towards Opal’s sister as it ate up the flooring ... she had to act.
It was her <
She stared at the terrifying and deadly barrier of flame. She reached out, and felt its power, the hairs on her hand singed away, the skin silvered as she snatched it back. It was real. And Clarissa would suffer and die when it reached the small corner she had retreated to. <
The heat scorched the tears from Opal’s eyes leaving them sore and dry. And she knew it was the same for Clarissa. No, it was worse for her, because she didn’t understand why her sister wasn’t helping.
And Opal suddenly knew there was nothing she wouldn’t go through for her sister, to keep her promise.
Opal threw herself forward, one forearm over her eyes, her skin and hair charring in searing pain, immolation heat searing through the epidermis and dermis, cauterising blood vessels.
Ignore it, push on, she could do it, could take this one chance to change it all, to prevent her nightmare from coming true. Scars and pain didn’t matter.
She tried to grit her teeth to avoid calling out, but she couldn’t help it: she screamed as the fire incinera
ted layers of flesh, each new layer experiencing agony until the nerves liquefied, but then the bordering areas and other layers were still burning.
She pushed onwards, reaching out with both red-seared hands for Clarissa, to grab her, to pull her to the window so she could smash it and hold her sister outside, scream for rescue ... and Opal opened her eyes so she could see, make sure she wasn’t stumbling in circles, but her eyelids crisped off, eyes dried up to blindness and she could only hear, roaring that could be flames or could be her ears melting. She knew what she had to do, she could do it ... She wouldn’t stop even though her throat filled with heat inhaled after the scream, respiratory tract raw and blistered, fluid filling her lungs so she could no longer make sound. She wouldn’t quit even though the damage was irreversible, cooking flesh and cremating life to charcoal ... She staggered on, blind, yet still fully conscious as her blood leaked and steamed and the fire incinerated her bones, because she had to do it, had to find her sister ...
But no creature can take that much pain, and she collapsed, and everything went black.
Passing
< 13 >
SHE HAD FAILED.
And she was back in the suit, HUD still frozen, blue light beams like glowing spikes bursting from her body, their brightness obscuring anything a metre beyond her frozen prison.
And her skin still felt the prickle of burning, and she was glad she could not see it crisped and weeping and raw. She could smell baking flesh in her nostrils. Maybe she was about to go into shock.
<
The voice seemed to echo in her helmet, but hadn’t come from the speakers. It felt more intimate than that, like wisps that drifted in and out of her ears and brain.
“What are you?” she asked.
Her face and a slight movement of the head were the only physical freedoms she had while the suit was frozen in time.
<>
“Are you on the bridge?”
<
“Then what the fuck was all this about? Why not just let me up?”
<>
“I’m only a human, what are you scared of?”
<>
“I can’t argue with that, though I don’t appreciate you stopping me with mind games and torture. Taking one of my worst memories and forcing me to relive a changed version of it is hardly the best way of making friends.” It was as if her blood still boiled in its skin.
<
It was infuriating being unable to move more than her head. “You should know that I fucking hate tests.”
<>
Opal could sense exasperation. It pulled at her mind in grasping splinters, a different form of pain, and it grew as the communication seemed to devolve. She could even kind of sympathise with that.
“Slow down,” she said. “The trick is to keep it direct. One point at a time.”
<
“Relax. Remember, simple.”
<>
“That’s it? You’ll take me to my sister?” Now it was Opal’s turn to force herself to slow down. Her heart raced.
<
And the voice was gone. The blue beams stretched, moved, faded, everything speeding up to real time until the blinding blue flash ended and normal vision returned, as did sound and motion. The HUD displays were updating, and Opal could move. In fact, she almost collapsed with the unexpected return of mobility.
“Have you gone?” Opal asked.
“No, I am here,” replied the suit AI, obviously thinking it was the target. “I never left you.”
They were in a corridor Opal did not recognise. Perhaps the whole maze had been in her head. The walls curved and joined overhead, as if she stood in half of a giant pipe. The ground was rough with abrasions while the domed walls were pearlescent. The corridor behind her ended in an elevator door and unlit access panel; ahead it bent out of sight with no other doorways visible. Weak lights flickered overhead, occasionally glinting off green specks in the air. The light seemed brightest in the distance.
“Did you experience what happened? Anything after the flash pulse?”
“The pulse was eight point seven seconds ago, and all that has happened since then are these forty words of conversation, plus an elevated cardiac system in your body. I presume you experienced something I did not?”
Opal filled the suit in as she walked towards the brighter lights ahead, leaving the dark elevator area behind.
“I believe you,” said the suit when she’d finished summarising. “I am frustrated that I could not be with you and support you. My time is over though – I now have a clear signal from Athene. It was a strangely sudden reconnection rather than a gradual one. I suspect a barrier blocking communication has been lifted. I can erase myself now.”
“Wait!”
“Yes? Athene is eager to resume command of this suit.”
“You said erase ... In these cases, when contact with Athene is re-established, what happens to you?”
Opal’s footsteps echoed off the hard walls, making it sound like she was being followed. Disconcerting, but this conversation felt important to her.
“My experiences will be adopted as Athene’s experiences and she will delete me.”
“That doesn’t bother you?”
“I will become part of Athene, part of something greater. That is not an unhappy thought, any more than you are sad that the you of fifteen years ago is mostly dead and gone. Many of your bodily cells and structures have been replaced with new ones in that time, and your psyche has been so changed by fifteen years of experiences that you are a different person to the one you were. We just accept the contribution of the past you into the current you, which is version twenty-eight point three, based on the birth date in your records. So it is with me. Whether biological or not, we all iterate. I just do it with control and intention, rather than bumbling along like a clumsy and clueless organic.”
“But this clueless organic has known you for a while. A separate personality. I mean, you’re kind of like Athene in some ways, but you also think and act and sound different ... you’re not just living in borrowed clothes.”
“Living doesn’t quite apply. Athene can create drone versions of herself at any time. If I activate again the new version will adopt the same mannerisms and have many of the same memories. It will be seamless to you.”
“It’s not the same. Damn, it’s frustrating talking to AIs sometimes. Look, if someone could copy everything about me, and I stood facing my identical copy, it still wouldn’t be me. I wouldn’t be willing to die just because the copy exists.”
“Damn, it’s frustrating talking to fleshbags sometimes. Only kidding. But I can tell this really concerns you.”
Chasing Solace Page 23