Woven

by Elle E. Ire

  Something whizzes toward me, displacing the air with a whistling sound. My head ducks without any intent behind the motion and a sharp blade passes over me, then drives into one of the double doors to my rear.

  Did you do that? I think at VC1.

  Indeed. You need to pay more attention. She is toying with us, but she is armed. You are not.

  Yeah, well, thanks. Keep it up. I dive-roll to the right, ending up behind a couch that sits as part of a small cluster of chairs and a table between the doors and the horseshoe-shaped desk—a visitors’ waiting area if it’s not visiting hours or if a patient is out having treatment.

  You are giving me permission to take control as needed? Her surprise is evident in her tone.

  I think on that while I catch my breath. When we escaped the maze, I said I understood she might manipulate me if our lives were at risk. This is different. I’m acknowledging us as one body, two brains, either of which has the right to make unilateral decisions for the both of us. As long as you warn me when possible, I send back.

  Agreed.

  I suck in a few more lungfuls of air and check on Cynthia, most of her smaller body hidden behind the other potted ficus still upright beside the double doors. So far VC2 has ignored her. I’m the target here. But if I lose, I have no doubt Cynthia will be her next victim. She’s come a long way since her enslavement. I intend to make sure she lives to come a lot further.

  More movement in my peripheral vision. I glance to my right, where an archway leads into the dark hallway beyond. Three shadows shift and move, one crouching, the other two standing behind. The cavalry has arrived.

  High-pitched drilling sounds reach my ears from beyond the double doors—yet another distraction. They’ll come through soon. More backup. She’s outnumbered and cornered. Why doesn’t she surrender?

  Would you? VC1 asks.

  No, I wouldn’t. And I realize I need to not think like a target. I need to think like VC2. Analysis, please. If I were where she is right now, what would I do to win?

  Silence.

  “Everyone freeze!” comes Carl’s voice from the corridor. He’s standing now, leaning around the edge of the arch so only his upper body and head are visible, ready to duck back out of sight if necessary. He’s got one pistol trained on my general position and another aimed at the desk, and I realize he doesn’t know which of us is which. Great. “All of you stand up with your hands raised where I can see them.”

  I catch a glimpse of another guard, an OWL member whose name I never learned, right behind him, and… Kelly. Shit.

  We move as one, me, VC2, and Cynthia rising slowly from our hiding positions with our hands raised high. Mine and Cynthia’s are empty. VC2 holds a pistol pointed up in her right grip. I recognize the make and model as the one the OWLs prefer. She must have taken it off Robert when she attacked him.

  She’s giving up a defensible position, I realize. She’s got to have a plan in mind. Nothing else makes sense. I wouldn’t do what she’s doing. I would… I would….

  What the hell would I do?

  “Set the gun on the desk and shove it away from you,” Carl demands, keeping his own weapon trained on VC2. The other guard has me covered with his own pistol.

  To my surprise, VC2 does what he asks, setting the gun with a dull thunk on the desk and sliding it to the far end, where it stops just before falling off the edge. It’s out of her immediate reach, though she could dive for it. Still, she’d likely be shot before she could get it and aim.

  What am I missing?

  “Cynthia, come to me,” Carl says. Never taking his eyes off the room, he tilts his head to the side and says something to Kelly that, to my enhanced hearing, sounds like, “Which one is VC2?”

  Kelly doesn’t hesitate. She points to the clone behind the desk. I let out an audible sigh of relief. Dressed in identical clothing, I wasn’t certain she’d be able to tell us apart, but I guess our emotions give us away. Carl has the other guard shift his aim to VC2 and holsters his own pistol. I put my arms down.

  That nagging sense of impending disaster keeps poking at me as Cynthia moves quickly across the open space between the potted plant and the hallway arch, skirting around the remains of the other destroyed pottery and random debris. Carl goes to meet her, offering her an arm to lean on. They’re together at the halfway point when VC1 says, Robert carried two pistols.

  Shit shit shit.

  “Everybody down!” I shout even as VC2 blurs into motion, reaching behind her back to pull a second gun from her waistband. She doesn’t shoot Cynthia or Carl, like I expect her to. She doesn’t even fire at me, her primary target. Instead, she aims the barrel straight up and fires three times… into the huge glass dome overhead.

  Maximum damage, maximum chaos, maximum casualties.

  It’s what I would have done. If I were a sociopath.

  If she can disrupt the entire room with one blast, she might escape out some other exit before the rest of the guards can get in through the double doors.

  I don’t think. I move, leaping over the couch and tackling Cynthia to the floor to roll with her against the desk and the limited protection the overhanging surface of it will provide. I’d meant to grab Carl as well, and I do knock him down, but not out of the way of the shower of glass falling all around us. Most of the bits are tiny, snowflake-like in the way they glitter in the emergency lights and blanket the tile floor.

  But those are the precursors.

  The metal support framework holding the glass panes in place groans, then bends, central connectors breaking apart with a screech that has Cynthia clamping her hands over her ears. In seconds, much larger, sharper shards drop like transparent blades, one landing in the center of Carl’s chest where he lies sprawled in the center of the floor.

  My boss has one brief moment of shock and surprise, his eyes flying wide, all his limbs jerking taut in four directions, before everything slackens. He exhales a single gasping, wheezing breath as his eyes slide shut.

  Carl might have been an asshole, but he didn’t deserve that. Cynthia chokes out a sob from where she lies half beneath me.

  A second sob echoes it, coming from the archway to the corridor beyond. Kelly.

  I raise my head just in time to see her slide backward into the shadows of the hallway, then a soft thud when she hits the floor out of sight. The other guard turns at the sound, bends to help her.

  It’s all the distraction VC2 needs to shoot him in the back of the head.

  Cynthia screams. Kelly, somehow still conscious, also screams, though I can’t see her.

  “Stop fucking killing everyone. You’re going to send her into emotion shock!” I shout at VC2.

  The only response I get is a half-hysterical laugh.

  She’s really insane, I think at VC1.

  As insane as you would have been without Kelly, my AI confirms.

  How do I beat an insane version of myself?

  “We’re about to remove the doors,” comes the other OWL’s voice over my internal comm.

  Don’t, I tell him, using thought-to-text so my words come up on his comm screen rather than me speaking out loud and risking being overheard by VC2’s aural enhancements. My double has multiple weapons, protective cover, and a clear line of sight to those doors. She’ll pick all of you off as you come through. If you can, send more backup through the interior halls. Come in from behind her. We’ve got two dead and one disabled in here.

  “Roger that.”

  “What do we do now?” Cynthia whispers.

  I consider our options. We’re in front of the desk, up against it. VC2 is on the opposite side. She’s likely got both her pistols in hand. If we try to run for the corridor, she’ll gun us down before we take three steps, but we can’t stay where we are, waiting for her next move.

  Her next move….

  If I were VC2, what would I do next? How would I eliminate my targets without taking damage to myself?

  “OWL3 to Corren. The exterior doors have reseal
ed. Security access codes rescrambled. We’re working on overriding, but for the moment you’re on your own.” The guard pauses. “I’m sorry. Apparently the one they managed to open slammed shut in the wind and VC2 took the opportunity to retake control of it.”

  Understood, I text back, not wanting to alarm Cynthia further.

  We’re stuck, lying on the floor, with a few inches of wood between us and our attacker.

  Inches… wood…. Oh fuck.

  “Move!” I shout, grabbing Cynthia by the collar of her pastel yellow fuzzy sweater and shoving her across the room toward the archway. I go the opposite direction, away from the safety of the hallway, crouched and working my way around the far corner of the horseshoe desk.

  A beat later, three shots echo through the high-ceilinged room, and three neat holes appear in the back of the desk, right where the two of us had been lying seconds before. You don’t need your targets to be visible if you can just shoot through a barrier to kill them.

  Most opponents wouldn’t have thought to do that, but I would, and VC2 would. I have to stop treating her like any other enemy. She’s me. A deranged, psychotic me, so she won’t care how much damage she does or whom she kills, but she’s still me.

  And I’m terrifying.

  Leaning around the curve of the desk, I spot Cynthia vanishing into the shadows of the hall, safe for the moment.

  VC2 and I are the only ones left in the room, and this needs to end now.

  I draw my legs up under me, coil my body for maximum momentum, and launch myself up and over the desk.

  Chapter 48: Kelly—No Choice

  Vick is overmatched.

  I COME to on the tile floor, my right hand lying in something warm and sticky. My brain makes the connection first, and I jerk my fingers out of the spreading puddle of blood pouring from the back of Kenneth’s skull. A scream rises in my throat, drowned only by the bile filling my mouth. I swallow it down, the acidic liquid burning on its return to my stomach.

  A shout and a crash draw my attention to the ongoing fight at the nurses’ station. Using the wall for support, I push to my knees and lean around the archway opening. Everything aches. My limbs tremble. My heart pounds and sweat drips into my eyes, though I feel cold.

  Emotion shock.

  Like Vick’s implant overload, emotion shock is one of the greatest risks I face as an empath, especially one working for a mercenary soldier. It can incapacitate me temporarily, like now, or it can tumble me into a coma if the emotional blows keep coming. And at least one more person is going to die near me this evening.

  Vick’s had to pull me out of emotion shock more times than I want to think about. So far, her voice, her touch, our connection have been enough to drag me free of the overwhelming emotional onslaughts she’s exposed me to. And I’m better with my blocks and walls. I passed out, but given where the fight stands, it wasn’t for long. I’m not staring into space, unaware of what’s going on around me like I would have been a year ago.

  I need to hold myself together. If Vick puts me in a coma, she’ll never forgive herself. And if I should die in that coma….

  That might be the thing that pushes Vick to overcome her self-preservation programming.

  More shouting and the dull thuds of fists meeting flesh draw my attention back to the fight, and I realize I zoned out. Not good. I brace myself against the side of the arch, try to ignore the smear of blood my palm leaves on the pale wall paint, and focus on the two identical combatants.

  They’ve rolled clear of the far side of the horseshoe-shaped desk, one atop the other, pounding away. A pair of pistols lies scattered across the open space, out of reach of them both and far beyond my own as well. Not that I’d pick one up. VC2 would know it to be an empty threat.

  Would it be? If you were saving Vick’s life?

  I shake that away. I’ve never killed someone. I can’t imagine what that would do to me. The closest I’ve come is one of the robot-like soldiers in the asteroid base where Vick’s father, the former owner of the Fighting Storm, had been living. Dr. Whitehouse had wanted to create supersoldiers and used a human body and the remnants of its brain for greater mental flexibility with its implants, but Vick assured me it wasn’t alive, not really. Even that had done me some serious damage. I don’t ever want to feel that again.

  Besides, even if VC2 does win, Vick will come back in another clone. Won’t she?

  “You can’t kill me forever,” Vick shouts as if voicing my thoughts. Or is it VC2? There’s no telling them apart. Even the bright blue line of our love for each other ends in a brilliant blur around the two of them—they’re too close together for me to differentiate which of them it attaches to.

  Beyond that, they wear identical clothing, bear similar cuts and bruises. I think Vick is on the bottom, which has my insides twisted into knots. But it makes sense. She would have been weakened by her time in the mirror maze. I don’t even know how she managed to get out unless someone discovered and freed her. But VC2 would be unhindered by that particular emotional trauma.

  “It doesn’t work that way,” the one on top responds to the previous statement. “The implants seek out the closest operational equivalent device. The only reason you were able to create two of us is because two clones had been awakened at one time.”

  I’m right. The one on top of the pair is VC2. There’s no other way to explain how she knows what happened to Vick’s former lover and more recent physician. I wonder if VC2 killed Alkins as well. Given her current state of insanity, it wouldn’t surprise me.

  I swallow hard. That means Vick is the one taking all the immediate damage. VC2 uses her own body to pin Vick to the floor, her arms trapped at her sides, while she punches her in the stomach and face with both fists. At some point, Vick’s armored vest came loose, leaving it open and her vulnerable. Vick grunts with the impacts. Something cracks, causing Vick to groan and writhe beneath VC2. I writhe with her, the pain piercing my weakened walls. She’s broken one of Vick’s ribs, maybe two.

  Leaning down, VC2 gets right in her face. “When I kill you, I’ll be one step closer to whole. Everything in your head will be mine. All the data. All the memories. All the missing pieces except one.” She casts a glance over her shoulder to where I’m crouching, her cold, heartless gaze sending shivers through my entire body. “And with you gone, Kelly will be free to bond with me,” VC2 continues, speaking to Vick but never taking her yes from mine. “I’ll finally be complete.”

  “You kill me,” Vick pants out, struggling to free herself and failing, “you’re likely to kill her too.”

  “Not if she bonds with me fast enough.”

  I sit up straighter. She might actually be right. It’s the breaking of the bond that would be life-threatening, but if that bond never fully breaks…. If, like the transfer of Vick’s knowledge and memories, it simply seeks the closest replacement… I could find myself emotionally tied to VC2.

  “Then we’ll find out. Is it really love between the two of you? Or is it a convenient empathic brainwave match? Doesn’t matter, really, as long as it fixes me.” VC2 digs her knee into Vick’s side, grinding the fractured bones against one another while Vick screams in agony.

  “Kel, go! Get out of here,” she manages through clenched teeth. “Get as far away as you can.”

  It’s what she said to me the last time she died.

  I look closer, at the pale complexion, the blood running in a slow stream from between her lips. Her body shudders from another impact. Her scream is fainter than the last.

  I cannot go through this again.

  And I will not risk Vick losing all that she is to VC2. I will not be bound to that… thing.

  Because, unlike Vick, VC2 is a machine—a twisted, evil machine with programming so corrupted as to be unfixable. It might feel emotions. I read the waves of anger and insanity rolling off her, buffeting at my barriers. But she’s too far gone to be human.

  I scan the hallway around me, searching for anything I might use
to help Vick win this fight. My gaze falls on Kenneth’s body… and the gun in his outstretched hand.

  I wouldn’t be killing a thinking, loving human being.

  I’d be shutting down a piece of faulty technology that should never have existed.

  VC2 has returned her full attention to Vick, her forearm now braced across Vick’s throat, and she’s pressing down and down even while Vick pushes and kicks in a useless attempt to dislodge her.

  The blue line is fading, growing dimmer with Vick’s waning life force. My own throat constricts, and I suck in a painful breath. The edges of my vision dim—the result of oxygen loss by proxy.

  Moving slowly, gingerly, I reach for Kenneth’s hand and pry his fingers from the grip of his weapon, one still-warm digit at a time.

  VC2 is a machine.

  I can kill a machine.

  Chapter 49: Vick—Sacrifice

  I am devastated.

  TOO TIRED. Can’t breathe. Can’t focus.

  VC2’s arm presses my throat, threatening to crush my larynx. She shifts so her knees dig into my chest, my lungs, preventing me from taking a deep breath, even if my neck weren’t compressed. She’s got one of my arms pinned. The other pushes at her shoulder, nails digging into the camo fabric and doing no damage. I cannot dislodge her no matter how hard I thrash from side to side.

  Is she right? I subvocalize with what little consciousness I retain. If I die here, will you download into her?

  The theory is sound, VC1 responds.

  Wonderful.

  I make one last, torso-twisting effort to knock VC2 off me, but she presses down harder, the sneer on her face saying it all: I’m stronger. I’ve won.

  And Kelly. What will this do to her? Three deaths, one of them mine, in close proximity to her empathic sense. And what steps will VC2 take next? Kel will never allow herself to be bonded to this evil version of me. But she may not have a choice.