Unnatural

by Anthony DiGiovanni

  * * * *

  “What in the name of all sanity were you thinking?”

  Uriah helped her to the sofa, guided by the feeble beam of only one of the handful of flashlights he would’ve had at his disposal with his backpack. “Just what else should I have done? You could’ve gotten crushed ribs from that thing if I’d waited.”

  “So much for ‘there’s no such thing as impenetrable walls,’” she muttered in a strained voice as she silently rejected his assistance. “You could’ve pushed me forward if it came to one or the other. Now we’re gonna starve!”

  “Don’t be so melodramatic. Suppose the nanobots can make an unbreakable veneer, God knows how. If I’d sent you out of the basement, you’d have food, sure, but you’d be completely trapped. At least down here we have a chance of breaking out through some sort of tunnel, and two heads are better than one. For all we know, the bots could have soundproofed the door.”

  “Not likely,” she said, clutching the damaged parts of her body. “I felt the door relax a little when you pulled me in, so if it wasn’t obvious already, whoever’s controlling those things wants us confined together. Which brings me back to my theory …”

  Uriah set the flashlight down so as to provide maximum illumination and stood a fair distance from her. The room’s most prominent features were a frayed couch and a bookshelf whose dust was probably sufficient to choke somebody if inhaled. “Don’t start. I dunno about you, Sabrina, but I intend to get out of this zoo, find the brain behind it, and destroy him, her, it, whatever – before I get destroyed. If you wanna do that, too, then we’ll need to trust each other. And the only way to get trust out of people is with the truth.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Blackmail.” He put one hand in his pocket, using the other to illustrate his speech as he paced the floor. “You know I probably caused the apocalypse, which you have a lot more reasons to reveal to those parasites at Luna than I do to violate you. Which is why I’d like to level the playing field here by reminding you that I have just as much evidence, if not more, that you bombed Strange.”

  Sabrina seemed to have gotten over most of her pain, saying in a relatively low voice, “That’s not trust. That’s fear.”

  “Normally I’d agree with ya. Results are always better when no one has to make threats to place power in other people’s hands for their own sake. But now we have no choice but to trust in fear.” There was an unusually substantial pause in which Uriah considered how he would articulate his thoughts on such a delicate matter. It helped him in this objective to see how long he could go staring at the light in the center of the room.

  At last he said slowly, “Suppose you didn’t have the power you do have over me, and that I lack the same amount of power. Besides what we know about each other’s pasts, my potency to screw you balances out your possession of the only Organic-threatening gun in this house.” His eyes flickered to the holster on Sabrina’s pants. “Take that stuff away, and what are we left with? Two people with enough mutual respect to put faith in each other’s good intentions.

  “Be honest. Did you see me as a decent person before ya knew there was at least a possibility that I wanted to, ahem, subvert your consent?”

  “As decent as a borderline antisocial guy who stabs robots with metal beams can be, yeah.”

  Still not budging, but he knew every ice queen had a melting point. “I can say the same for you, but ‘emotionally precarious’ instead of ‘antisocial.’ Beggars can’t be choosers in a world this short on people, though, so if the only things standing in the way of our working together are powers that cancel out, we have no excuse to play the suspicion game. That’s what the person who’s cornered us here wants us to do.”

  Sabrina’s facial features, put in sharp contrast by the light and darkness, loosened up very slightly as she looked down and said, “Okay, you win. I guess I was being … proud.”

  “And you don’t need to apologize for that. Pride is a virtue as long as ya earn it.”

  She smirked. “Who’s apologizing?”

  “That’s the spirit. Now let’s shut up and look for sweet spots in this bugger.”

  Thus began their hunt, after Sabrina offered Uriah her hand, which he gladly shook. He could’ve sworn he saw some redness on her face for a second, but he quickly returned to the task. They spent these next minutes in silence, with Uriah doing most of the physical searching in light of Sabrina’s partial incapacitation and sleep deprivation. She kept a meticulous log of signals her belt picked up, looking for patterns. Both of their duties were more difficult than they needed to be for lack of sufficient lighting, and they carried out such jobs in constant dread of further nanobot complications.

  “Anything I should know about?” asked Sabrina. He heard her stomach growling.

  “Nada, you?” Uriah crawled close to the walls with his head turned nose parallel to the floor. Dead bugs littered the junctures of wall and floor, and that was just what he could see.

  “Nothing, except …” She paused for no fewer than three seconds. “I’ve got a – wait …”

  Uriah sat up to face her. “Good news, bad news?” That was wishful thinking in the question itself.

  Another “patience” hand up. Her eyes were glued to the screen of her PDA. “I think something’s sending signals from here to … the moon.”

  No one spoke until Uriah returned to his prior task. “Okay, then, that makes things simpler.”

  “Sure, but not easier. Who do you wanna bet can be crueler: that city on the moon, or the nanos?”

  “Maybe they’re the same thing, if Zolnerowich is behind this.”

  She scoffed shortly, but seemed to give it up. “So what’ll we do? Neither of us is making any progress.”

  “We’ll do what we’ve been doing,” he said as if this were obvious.

  “Dennis, face it. The puppeteer in this whole game is playing to win.” She walked over to him and sat on the floor. “We’re stuck until Zolnerowich takes us to the gallows, so we might as well focus on finding some food and water, let alone figuring out how to extend the supply for days, at least.”

  “I’m not one to give up without a fight, Sabrina,” said Uriah, who turned to face her with a less than calm expression.

  “Neither am I, but I know when to regroup, and I’m surprised you don’t.”

  He shook his head and went back to his search, which lasted all of five seconds before he stopped and got up.

  “Given up?” She was at least trying to contain the “I told you so.”

  “Guess again, O you of little faith.” Uriah returned, at the opposite end of the room, to his sleuthing position. “I have a hunch.”

  “You never have hunches.” Which he agreed with, but there was a first time for everything.

  “Just watch,” he said with a punch through what turned out to be flimsy drywall. There was as much wariness as pleasant surprise in Sabrina’s face when he turned around.

  “How did you know –?”

  “Like I said, I didn’t. I just saw something about this wall and, well, I was right.”

  Sabrina joined him by the hole, peering inside to find a small room dug out of that space. “Is that food?”

  It was. Enough rations to feed your average family for a week, just sitting in a pile on a relatively clean floor. None of it appeared spoiled, and even the surrounding paraphernalia retained not the slightest trace of gunk, mold, or insects.

  “I don’t buy it,” said Sabrina, backing out. “This can’t be anything but the trapper’s doing.”

  Uriah laughed. So suspicious. “Sure it is, but it’s food. I’d rather die of poison than slow starvation.” I don’t wanna scream along with Andy.

  She gave him a what-has-gotten-into-you stare as he unwrapped a pastry. “That’s what the Zookeeper wants us to think. Don’t you see, Dennis? He’s creating the cancer and expecting us to be thankful for the chemo.”

/>   “I get it, Sabrina, I really do.” As he talked, he was checking just how large the supply of water was. There was none, only a few bottles of hard liquor. “Case in point, the little sneak’s trying to get at least one of us drunk. I wouldn’t put it past him to put some sort of edible narcotics in the food.”

  Self-conscious, he stopped himself from biting into his breakfast immediately. It occurred to him that they would have no toilets with which to dispose of the remainder of such food anyway. “But should we find no way outta this place, I’m not saying we should ignore the food altogether, either. We’re not selling our souls to the devil here. We’re taking some risks.”

  “Okay, then, say one cup of that alcohol does inebriate me – very likely with my body. Then I would be selling my soul, figuratively. I might shoot you, or worse. In fact, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say our captor’s already messed with your head.”

  Uriah replaced the food into its package, creasing his brow. “Care to explain that?”

  “You just all of a sudden had this intuition to break that wall.” Sabrina snatched the pastry from his hand and stuffed it into her pocket. “Sometimes it’s a good idea to follow your gut, but you’re not the type who does that often.”

  “So? I can change.”

  “You’re a human. Humans don’t change without strong reasons, and I think your reason is that nanobots have been messing with your brain, directly or with a mind-mod device.” She pointed to her belt. “This thing confirms my theory.”

  “You’re delusional.”

  “Do the names Dunning and Kruger mean anything to you?”

  Uriah suddenly took her hand, saying, “Sabrina, I think you need some rest. It’s been a long morning, and the caffeine’s probably hurting you more than it helps.”

  She was reluctant, but she soon sighed in resignation. “Maybe you’re right. But I’ll sleep in there.” She nodded at the food storage room. “I still think you’re too unstable to be anywhere near drugged food or booze. If you try to take it, I’ll know.”

  “Oh, okay, sounds fair,” he said in a disappointed voice. When God closes a door of paranoia, he opens a window.

  “It’s nothing personal, really. I just want to protect both of us. You can try to get us out of here in the meantime.”

  “Sure.”

  Sabrina climbed into the annex, notably without leaving her gun behind, and Uriah tossed her a floral quilt that had adorned the sofa. “There’s no pillow, sorry. Rest easy.”

  Uriah surveyed the silent area, realizing the depth of his newfound loathing of Sabrina Lockhart.