by Elle E. Ire
“I’ll go with you if you’re set on leaving,” Kelly continues, keeping her tone calm and soothing, “but she’s telling the truth. I know she is. You’re still recovering. We’re all upset and we’ve all been drinking. You’re not thinking straight.”
“You know, I am somewhat insulted by being referred to as a ‘device,’” VC1 chimes in, using Kelly’s comm unit as a speaker so everyone can hear her indignation. For one frozen moment, we all stare at the communicator lying on the table.
And that does it. The whole idea of my AI getting offended with me in solidarity turns the entire moment into surreal absurdism. I don’t know what’s going on with her withholding information from me, but I’m betting it has to do with her programming and not something she can help. A laugh forces its way from my throat, followed by another and another until I’m laughing so hard tears are rolling down my cheeks, though by that point I’m not so sure it’s amusement anymore.
The others laugh with me. VC1 adds that she is not amused, which makes everything funnier. But when I find it hard to stop, Kelly sobers, pulling me into her arms. “Shh,” she whispers against my hair. “Slow it down. Breathe.”
I force air in and out of my sore lungs. The first breaths are hard. I’m still having mild hysterics. But eventually I’m able to inhale and exhale without gasping.
My eyes are squeezed shut, tears still leaking from the corners. Delicate fingertips brush strands of hair from my face, then cup my cheek. “Let me in,” Kelly says, her talent pushing at my suppressors. “I need to know what’s going on in there. This isn’t normal.” She chuckles. “Even for you.”
I take the teasing as it was meant to be—loving—and open my eyes to glance over at Sanderson. She’s anxious, her hands gripping the edge of the couch where she sits. Just the idea of letting Kelly help me through a release with the security chief watching is enough to bring the nausea back, but I want to show Kelly that I’ve grown. I also need to reassure Sanderson that I’m no longer angry. Allowing her to witness a vulnerable moment will go a long way toward both.
“We can go in the bathroom, if you want,” Kelly offers, an olive branch if I ever heard one.
I shake my head and sit down, taking satisfaction in the way her eyebrows rise. “Just do it.” She sits next to me. Internally, I ask VC1 to shut my suppressors off. I’ve had them running at 85 percent since the slaver mission, higher than usual. Kelly has to have noticed, but she hasn’t made me lower them, and I’m grateful. The fact that I’ve been so emotional even with the suppressors running high starts some alarm bells ringing in my head.
This “device” will comply, VC1 says, distracting me.
Great. Now I’m dealing with a touchy AI. Solidarity is one thing. Bitchiness is quite another. Save it, I subvocalize.
The walls come down, not in the gradual decrease in blockage that I’ve worked with the AI to perfect, but in one tumultuous drop that floods me with all my suppressed emotions at once: exhaustion, stress, anger, fear, worry, and a touch of powerful aggression that has me really concerned, along with a strange longing, aching need, the source of which I can’t begin to identify.
Kelly sucks in a sharp breath, her own senses overwhelmed by the onslaught. She winces, jerking her upper body away from me but forcing her hand to remain in contact with my face.
“Sorry… sorry,” I murmur, catching my own breath. “VC1 is pissed.”
That earns me a smile. “Just so long as she isn’t pissed enough to put me in emotion shock, we’re fine,” Kelly says.
“She’d never do that,” I assure her. “VC1 cares about you in her own way almost as much as I do.”
“Um, so are you going to fill me in on those implants of yours? Because it’s more than a machine. That much is clear,” Sanderson says from the couch.
Right. She doesn’t know VC1 is an AI. Almost no one does beyond my team. Even the Fighting Storm’s board hasn’t figured that out, though they know I’m a clone. I must be pretty off my game to make that kind of slip. For that matter, so must VC1. I glance at the security officer, gauging her trustworthiness before Kelly draws my gaze and attention back to her. Can I trust Sanderson with one of my two biggest, most dangerous secrets? I think so. When our current drama ends, I’ll tell her that much. The clone part, though, that will have to keep. “Later,” I mutter.
Kelly’s essence, for want of a better term, floods my mind with soothing coolness, her love for me quieting even the most chaotic of my emotions. In my peripheral vision, I’m vaguely aware of Sanderson’s comm buzzing and her taking a call, but she keeps her voice quiet, and I block it out.
Kelly’s expression shifts from compassion to concern as she sifts through the tangle of feelings, pulling them apart one by one and helping me purge them through her. I’ve gotten a lot better about doing this on my own, but when things get really bad, I still depend on her. I’ll always depend on her.
When she gets to the need and the aggression, now entwined with each other, she hesitates. “What is this?” she asks, voice pitched for my ears only.
I shake my head. “No idea. I was hoping you’d know where they came from.”
With her unique empathic ability enabled by our brainwave match, she yanks them apart, pushing them out of me with deliberate force that leaves me breathless. “Sorry,” Kelly says, not the least bit apologetic about her roughness. “I don’t know their source either, but we need to figure it out. Because I’ve felt that combination before.”
Chapter 32: Kelly—Memories
Vick isn’t alone.
“WHEN? FROM me?” Vick asks. “Was it at night?” Sanderson reaches across the table and pushes a frosty mug into Vick’s hand. Water this time.
“When did that show up?” I ask, stalling. I’m not sure how to explain what I felt in the slaver installation or how to tell Vick it reminded me of her without upsetting her further. Also, if a waitress came in while I was purging Vick’s emotions, well, that’s not something she wants others to see. I’m surprised she let me do it in front of Sanderson.
“Don’t worry,” the security chief says, waving one hand in dismissal. “It just looked like the two of you were about to make out.” She grimaces. “And I was some kind of voyeur. A lot more embarrassing for me than you guys.”
“How about the comm call? Something important?”
“You’re avoiding the issue,” Vick accuses, studying me. We’re still in physical contact, my hand brushing hers on the seat of the couch. She can read my hesitation through our bond.
“My office just wanted to know where to find me,” Sanderson says, answering my earlier question. “Now that I’ve told you what’s going on, I didn’t see harm in telling them. I don’t want them wasting time tracking down my location if another body is found. Now, on to other things.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “I think we’re all avoiding several issues. And if any of them are pertinent to our rash of murders, I need to know the facts. All of them. Whatever’s going on here, it’s connected to the two of you. I just don’t know how.” She looks from me to Vick and back again.
Vick drinks a sip of water, then presses the cold mug to her forehead. I reach out with my empathic sense, wincing at the headache pounding behind her eyes. This is stressing her out in a big way.
“Okay,” I say, wiping sweaty palms on my slacks. “I’ll go first.” I face Vick. “That cluster of emotions, the aggression and the want, I felt them in the slavers’ base. Our last mission,” I clarify for Sanderson’s benefit.
“From me?” Vick asks again.
I shake my head. “No. But why do you think it would have been? And why did you ask if it was while you were sleeping? It wasn’t, by the way. We were both wide awake each time I picked up those feelings. When I narrowed down the source, you weren’t it. I think it was a woman I saw in the banquet cavern, and later in the landing bay, but her face was hidden each time, and I couldn’t make out features. A coincidence, similar thought patterns, nothing more.” Except Vi
ck just reminded me how she feels about coincidence. She doesn’t believe it exists.
“I don’t think so….” Vick trails off, hiding her expression behind her glass. She glances at Sanderson over the rim. “What I’m about to tell you… don’t freak out, okay?”
“No promises,” Sanderson says.
“Right. Well, I didn’t throw up earlier because those girls look like Kelly. I mean, that was horrific enough, and unsettling as hell, but… that wasn’t it.”
I wrap my fingers around hers. Her skin is cold and clammy. “Go on.”
Taking a deep breath, she lays it out for us. “I’d seen them before. In my nightmares.”
“Wait,” I say, my eyes widening. “You mean the ones where you’re… killing people?”
Vick opens her mouth to speak, but Sanderson beats her to it. “Whoa, whoa. You’re telling me you dreamed about killing these girls, and now they’re dead?” She fingers the comm she returned to her belt, like she’s about to bring her team down on us.
“No. I’m saying I think I dreamed about killing those girls… as they were being killed. Look,” Vick continues, tugging away from me to stand and pace behind the couch. It’s not a big space in the alcove between the furniture and the wall, but she can manage five or six steps each way, and I know it helps her think. “You can check the security logs on our door, though given my capabilities, I guess that’s not great evidence. Kelly can vouch for me being in our quarters every night for the past two weeks.”
I nod. Vick has gone to bed early almost every evening, her nightmares making sleep difficult, so she hasn’t been getting enough of it, and she’s been tired.
“I’m not suggesting I had anything to do with the murders, but I think I’m… picking up on them, somehow, on the killer’s thoughts.” She turns to me. “Could I be channeling this person somehow? There was a similar victim in the slaver tunnels. I never had a chance to tell you about her, what with the lake and stasis and all, but could that girl’s murderer have hitched a ride back here?” She stops and closes her eyes, then opens them. “I want to bring VC1 into this conversation.”
“Go ahead,” Sanderson says, waving a hand at Kelly’s comm still lying on the table. “Let’s hear what the AI has to say.”
Vick and I stare at her.
“I’m not stupid,” the security officer says, sounding offended. Then she grins. “Even if I am more brawn than brains, I have ears. There’ve been rumors. Rumors that Storm personnel have very carefully quashed. VC1’s an AI.” She leans over and speaks toward the comm. “I’ll try to stop referring to you as a device.”
“That will be much appreciated,” Vick’s voice says from the unit. Inflection in her tone is limited. She must be busy doing other things that keep her from demonstrating her human qualities.
“Tell them what you just told me, please,” Vick says.
“Very well. Over the course of the last few weeks, it would appear I have been experiencing… anomalies, though I didn’t discover them until just now when I tried to review the security logs on the door to our quarters to prove our innocence, though as you say, they would be suspect.”
It takes me a moment to figure out that by “our” she means her and Vick.
“There are gaps in my recorded memory,” VC1 continues. “I have attempted to account for them and failed. Investigating further, these seem to have begun shortly before my host was placed in stasis, suggesting your suspicions about this murderous individual being on our transport are correct.”
“I have more to add,” I put in. “There was an incident on the shuttle. I dreamed… well, no, at the time I thought it was real. Alex convinced me it was a dream. But I would have sworn that someone came into my cabin on the trip back, that she, since we’re assuming it’s the woman I saw in the landing bay, was standing over me, and then ran off when I woke up. When I got into the corridor, there was no one there, and when I checked, Vick was in the stasis box, Lyle was asleep, and Alex was flying the shuttle. Alex checked the vid logs. We found nothing.”
“Fuck,” Vick whispers, pausing in her pacing to reach over the back of my couch and pull me against her chest. “If you hadn’t woken up….”
This woman might have killed me. Or something.
“Assuming you weren’t dreaming, the altered camera footage ties in exactly with what we’re experiencing here—someone who can tamper with them wirelessly. Someone like Vick and VC1,” Sanderson adds.
“And maybe they’re tampering with VC1 too,” Vick puts in, sounding uncomfortable. She should be. If this individual can mess with VC1’s memory, she might be able to affect Vick’s actions.
“But the part about you channeling the killer’s actions through your dreams,” I continue, thinking out loud. “That doesn’t work. You aren’t a psychic. I’d know if you had latent abilities.”
“You’re sure there’s no way you could be responsible for these deaths?” Sanderson asks.
We glare at her.
“Hey, I have to ask. It’s my job. And I know Vick’s had a lot of trauma. I’m not saying it’s happening consciously, but—”
“No!” we say in unison.
Vick’s grip on my shoulders tightens. “Oh,” she breathes against the back of my neck. “Oh, holy flying fuck. I think I know exactly what’s going on. VC1, you told me you sent my really bad Rodwell memories to some other storage unit, something on a par with your capacity, but you didn’t know exactly what it was. Or maybe,” she says, resuming her pacing. “Maybe it blocked your ability to figure out what it was.”
“It is conceivable,” the comm unit says. “And I believe you are reaching a conclusion I reached earlier… and was programmed against telling you, but the circumstances have changed and I may share my thoughts with you now, because now you are in immediate danger.”
“I’m not reading the killer through any kind of psychic ability. I’m reading her through VC1. And VC1 is reading her through another set of implants….”
“Oh my God,” I whisper as the pieces fall into place for me as well. I whirl around on the couch, sitting up on my knees so I can make eye contact with Vick. She gives a slight shake of her head. We can’t share the rest of this with Sanderson. The risk is too great. But we both know who our murderer is.
There’s another clone of Vick Corren on the loose, one with some very traumatic memories and a second set of very capable implants. And she’s using those implants to kill women who look like me.
Chapter 33: Vick—Double
I am not alone.
“SO, YOU’RE telling me there’s another individual with implants similar to Vick’s running around my base killing people. Someone with a lot of bad shit in her head.” Sanderson eyes us, cocking her head to one side. “What aren’t you telling me? There’s more. I can see it in the way you two look at each other.” We can barely understand her words; there’s some commotion going on in the main area of the club. Maybe the evening revelers have come out after all. But we get the gist.
“It’s classified,” Kelly blurts out. It’s the truth. The Storm board of directors has sworn us to secrecy on the subject of clones, since they’re illegal and all.
On a personal level, I’d rather not be shot if they find out about me being one.
Sanderson fixes me with a hard stare. “I think we’re past classified at this poi—”
Before she can finish her retort, the alcove curtain is thrown aside, and three uniformed station security officers come barreling through. They stop in front of Sanderson. “Ma’am,” the youngest one says, giving her a quick salute, the other two taking up a stance behind him. He’s gotta be new, ex-military. He’s still got scars from puberty acne, and no one salutes in security. “We’ve got a lead on our killer. She missed a camera, and—” He breaks off as he notices his boss isn’t alone in the small space. “Holy shit!”
Next thing I know, I’ve got three XR-7s aimed at my head and chest.
Oh, this is not going to go well. I raise my
hands slowly, making certain everyone can see they are empty.
Kelly gives a little squeak, preparing to get off the couch and come to my aid, but I wave her off with a quick motion of my fingers. “Let’s all take it easy,” I say, keeping my voice calm while adrenaline surges through my body. The youngest one, the one with the gun in my face, holds his weapon with trembling hands, his trigger finger twitching—so, not ex-military then, or not very good ex-military.
I’m using VC1 to calculate my survival odds if he fires or I attempt to disarm him when Sanderson stands and uses one hand to push down on the weapon until it’s at the officer’s side. I breathe a small sigh of relief, even if two more are aimed in my direction.
“But ma’am,” he argues, though he doesn’t raise it again, “she’s the killer. She’s murdered six women.” His companions nod in agreement.
Sanderson glances at me, her mouth forming a hard line. I shake my head slowly. No sudden moves from me. “Show me the evidence, Daniels.” She holds out her hand, no tremors there, and the security kid pulls his comm off his belt and drops it in her palm. She activates the screen. Whatever they’ve got must be loaded and ready to view. Her eyes shift back and forth through several replays before she heaves a deep and weary sigh.
“We’re gonna have to take you in, Corren. For questioning,” she hastens to add when Kelly begins a protest.
“Whatever’s on that screen, it’s not me,” I say, low and even.
Sanderson flips it around and touches the Play icon. The image is fuzzy and dark, but not so much that I can’t make out what’s happening. It’s in the promenade dome, and everything is sideways, but beyond the dome’s central gardens, it’s picking up one of the side corridors leading in. The hour must be late, with the dim light and the absence of people, though one or two shopkeepers pass by the camera pickup, probably heading home. For a few seconds, nothing happens. Then, without warning, an exact duplicate of me, because of course, it’s another clone, reaches out of the access hallway, wraps one arm around a passing blond woman’s throat, and drags her backward out of view. The empty dome seems a lot more ominous after that.