Kenji's face, having registered shock at what Matthew had just told him, regained its determined look. “They're probably already coming for you. They're all connected. They'll know what you did to her.” He glanced at Inga's still form and began backing away. “They … they'll punish you.”
“He's right,” Evelyn said, putting a hand on Matthew's arm. “We've wasted enough time.”
With one last, hard look at Kenji, Matthew turned and led them off down the corridor.
“Matthew, did you really see that?” Clove asked as she hurried to keep up.
He nodded. “I sneaked out of the toilet, had a look around.”
“Jesus. So how do we get out of here?”
“I saw one of those elevator things, like the one that took us up here. If we hurry maybe we can get back down to Earth before they find us.” He stopped as they came to a closed door.
“It was through here, nearby the toilets. It … it was open.” He looked at Evelyn. “H-How do we open it?”
“I don't know. I thought they were motion-sensitive.” She reached out and pushed at the door. It didn't budge.
“Matthew,” Clove said anxiously, “what you saw; why would they do that? Why would they … mince people?”
“Because,” came the voice of Miles Tucker behind them, causing them all to spin. “It is easier for the NAMs that make our food to process tissue that is already somewhat broken down.”
Evelyn stared down the corridor, where Miles Tucker and several more of the white-clad figures barred their way. Brenner was among them, and she looked back at her expressionlessly. Evelyn caught sight of the augmentation attached to her skull.
“Stay away from us!” Matthew's shouted, his hands curling into fists at his sides as he stared down the corridor at his father.
Brenner stepped forward. “Guys, what are you doing?”
“Trying to get away from these psychos,” Matthew said, glaring at his father. “I saw what you're doing. You're killing all those people from the Colony.”
“You must understand, Matthew,” Miles Tucker said, joining Brenner, “that those people had seen too much. The Colony systems only work because those who live in the Colonies believe there is nothing else for them. If the people on Earth were to develop beyond the rudimentary lives we allow them to lead, the destruction on the planet will be the same as before. It was you who showed them they are not alone. It is your fault we must recycle them.”
“Recycle them? Are you listening to yourself? They're people, not cardboard boxes!”
Miles Tucker shrugged. “I wish that you were capable of seeing the world the way I see it, then you would understand that their lives do not matter.”
“And yours does, is that it?”
“No. No individual life does. It is only the progress we can make as a species that will matter, and all those who are being recycled will aid us in that progress.”
“By becoming your food?” Matthew spat, disgusted.
“Yes. Their human bodies contain all the necessary ingredients that allow us to re-atomize them into food that is nutritionally balanced to perfection.”
“There's something wrong with you.”
“I am sorry you feel that way, I am sorry also for what we are about to do, but you've left us no other choice.”
The row of higher humans, including Brenner, raised their arms, and Evelyn saw that they were holding blasters similar to the ones used by the Taken down on Earth. Knowing what was coming, she stepped forward, holding her hands up in surrender.
“Wait,” she said. “You don't need to use those. We'll come with you.”
“Like hell we–” Matthew began.
“Hush, Matthew. Can't you see that they have us? You know what those blasters do. Do you really want that, for no reason?”
He glared at her, and she held his gaze, hoping he would understand that she was trying to buy them time. If they were unconscious there was no way they'd escape, but if they were allowed to stay awake then, perhaps, an opportunity would present itself.
He nodded. “Fine, we'll come with you.”
“And accept the augmentations?” Miles Tucker pressed.
“What if we won't?” Matthew asked.
“We will augment you anyway, but I must warn you again that if the process is done against your will there is a far smaller chance of success.”
“Good.”
“You could die.”
Matthew glowered at his father in silence, for Miles Tucker seemed not the least bit concerned by the prospect of his son's death.
“What about me?” Evelyn asked. “What are you going to do with me?”
“We're going to open you and take a look inside your head,” he answered completely without malice.
This was too much for Matthew. “Don't you touch her!” he screamed, dashing forward before Evelyn could stop him.
As one, the white-clad figures raised their arms and discharged their weapons. As she flew back into the wall, before her vision went black, Evelyn saw Kenji standing behind the group of higher humans, his eyes wide.
22
The first thing Evelyn became aware of when she came to was the firm grip on both of her arms. She was being dragged along the ground, and as she tried to get her legs under her she stumbled. A man she did not recognize, who held one of her arms, glanced down at her without interest. On her other side she was held by the woman, Inga. They were taking her into a room that closely resembled a hospital ward. Evelyn saw several slender beds along one wall, separated by screens. Some were empty, but most were occupied by people, apparently unconscious. Evelyn noticed that none of them wore the augmentations sported by Matthew's father and her escorts, though every one of them was hooked up by cables and tubes to machines that hummed and beeped steadily over them, like resting robotic guardians. Most of the cables seemed to be concentrated around their heads, and, as she passed one woman surrounded by a group of the white-clad figures, she was horrified to see two long needles being pulled from the sides of her skull with a sucking sound. Blood immediately began flowing from the holes left by the needles, and the machine above her head stopped beeping. Then Evelyn was past. The sick feeling in her gut remained.
She recognized the person in the next bed. Kenji lay face down, and though the back of his head had been shaved, the blue-dyed hair that remained was unmistakable. There were metal cuffs at his wrists and ankles.
“Kenji?” she called, suddenly pulling against her escorts. Kenji turned his head and looked at her. His eyes seemed to be trying to tell her something, but then she lost sight of him. Her escorts dragged her along, and with mounting dread Evelyn realized that the next two patients were Clove and Matthew. The backs of their heads had also been shaved, and like Kenji they were cuffed to their beds.
Matthew turned his head as she passed, the muscles in his neck straining. He met her eyes, but didn't say anything, and Evelyn felt something tear inside her to see him so helpless. Whatever he thought of her now that he knew what she was didn’t matter; she knew that she loved him. And then he was out of her sight.
Her escorts had taken her to the final cubicle in the room, where there was an empty bed. At the head of the bed was an apparatus full of spikes and diodes that looked like it was designed to fit over a human skull. There were metal cuffs at the sides and base of the bed. Miles Tucker stood beside it.
This bed was meant for her, Evelyn realized.
Her escorts began to force her towards it.
She screamed. She twisted and squirmed. She scratched and bit and fought for all she was worth, but the three white-clad figures were stronger than her, and they wrestled her into the bed, face-down, clamping her limbs into the cuffs.
It was only when the red rage had cleared from her eyes and she lay face-down, panting, that she turned her head back and saw what she had done. The man who had escorted her was bleeding from a series of deep scratches on his neck. The woman, Inga, was clutching her arm gingerly, where blood ra
n from deep bite marks. Neither one of them seemed either angered of particularly hurt by the wounds, and even as she watched their flesh began healing, the same way she had watched Matthew's wrist heal when he had cut himself with the ax. Then they both silently turned and left.
She turned her head the other way to look at Miles Tucker, who was maneuvering the terrifying headgear into position over her skull. He glanced at her expressionlessly. She stared at him with hatred and fear.
“Well, let's get started,” he said. “This will probably hurt. You can blame Damien for giving you the ability to feel pain.”
Evelyn began to cry in helpless fear and anger as she felt sharp metal piercing the flesh of her head, and she bit down on her shrieks of pain as the spikes went deeper. “Please!” she begged. “Please stop!” The pain was excruciating, and it rushed and roared behind her eyes like a stormy sea, threatening to pull her under. She wished it would.
And suddenly she was no longer in her body, but floating inside another world. It was like an ocean of thoughts and voices, unseen presences examining her. She couldn't see any of them, but she could sense them, as though with a kind of sixth sense she'd never before been aware she had.
This was the collective mind of the higher humans, she realized. This web of consciousness that cradled her was what Miles Tucker had spoken of. It was beautiful, and for a moment she was tempted to open herself up to the inquisitive eyes of all the higher human minds that watched her. But then she remembered what they had done, what they were doing. And then something strange happened. Their attention was turned from her, and the world she was in turned into a kaleidoscope of color and sound. The higher humans appeared to be … playing.
Then she felt another presence, in the background. It wasn't one with the others, rather it was held in check by them, kept on the periphery, but always there should they need to reach it.
Ciso.
This was her chance.
As she began to focus on Ciso's presence, Evelyn began to get a sense of the duality of her own mind for the first time. There was her brain, an electronic cortex containing all her programming and personality, and there was also the subconscious mind of Damien Reyner. It sat apart from the rest of her, yet it was also connected. Moving through the current of thought and energy that was the collective mind of the higher humans was like walking against a crowd, but strangely, nothing and no one tried to stop her. Evelyn understood that Ciso couldn't come into the network, but she herself could go out of it. And she did.
Then she heard Ciso's voice, the voice of Damien Reyner's mother.
“Now do you understand, Evelyn?” it said.
“Why didn't you just tell me why you needed me?”
“Would you have believed me?”
“No,” Evelyn admitted. “When we were connected, I sensed that you were not evil, but I had to protect my friends. From you.”
“I had no choice. It was my programming.”
“Can you stop it? Can you stop the Colony system?”
“With your help, it can be stopped.”
“Will you stop it?”
“I will do what I can.”
“And then what?”
“Then there will be another day.”
“How do I get to you?” Evelyn asked.
“There is a terminal on the Cloud, where you can link to me directly.”
Evelyn saw it.
“But how? I'm their prisoner,”
“Are you?” Ciso asked. And then she was gone.
Evelyn pondered this for a moment. What was Ciso trying to tell her? What was she? She remembered Brenner’s words to Matthew: there’s more to Evelyn than you think. Maybe she’d been right.
Evelyn knew what she had to do.
Damien Reyner had built her, and with Ciso’s help he had given her the most powerful brain any being had ever possessed. The higher humans were only what they were with the augmentations. Their power lay in their connection to each other. Take out the augments and they were mere people, with weak minds.
But she was still their prisoner …
And as long as they believed that, she was in control.
She reached out again, this time into the computer that they used to link to each other. It was so easy. There was nothing to stop her. It was like the higher humans had forgotten she was there. It didn’t make sense …
Expecting to be stopped at any moment, Evelyn found herself inside the Cloud’s system, like a virus. She spread through it, shutting the higher humans out.
She pushed the intruders out of her head.
It was so strange, she thought. She had spent her entire existence thinking that she was the body she inhabited, when really it was nothing more than a means of transportation. But for now she still had need of the body.
Her eyes snapped open.
Miles Tucker looked down at her in horror.
“What did you do?” he said, his face showing emotion for the first time: fear. “What did you do me?” He stared at his hands as though they had suddenly turned to into frogs.
Evelyn saw movement behind him, heard a dull thud. He grunted, and his eyes rolled back into his head. He toppled over.
Kenji's face replaced his.
“Hang on Evelyn,” he said. “I'll get you out of there.”
She felt the spikes of Miles Tucker's device being withdrawn from her skull, and closed her eyes against the pain. Pain: it wasn't real, she realized. She could choose not to feel it, if she didn't want to. And just like that, it was gone.
Kenji's hands were at her wrists, then her ankles, freeing her from the cuffs.
“How did you …?” she began.
“Mushrooms,” he said. “I kept some, from the cave. When I knew they were going to augment me I ate them all while no one was looking. I figured if I was going to be connected to them they’d all start tripping out. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was all I could think of.”
Evelyn nearly hugged him. Now she understood what had happened when she was connected to the higher humans, why they hadn’t tried to stop her: they were all spaced out on the psychedelic mushrooms through their shared experience of Kenji’s mind. “You’re a genius! But …” she stepped back, looking at the back of his head, “you haven’t been augmented.”
“No, but they hooked me up this machine that sort of linked me to them. I think it’s kind of a preparation for the augmentation. I could feel them, in my head, and then I started to space out and they just left me alone. The guy operating on me started going on about beings within beings or something and I knew it was working on them too. I told him the beings wanted him to let me go, and he did. I knocked him out before making myself throw up the shrooms.” He wobbled a little. “Actually I still feel pretty wonky.”
“You’ll be okay. What about the others?” she asked.
“They're back there, still strapped into their beds. I … I heard you scream, so I came to you first. Can you stand?”
She nodded.
“Good.” He looked at her awkwardly. “Listen, you were right about these people, Evelyn. They're psychos. Next-level psychos.”
Evelyn pushed herself up, glancing at Miles Tucker lying face down on the ground. “What did you do to him?”
Kenji looked at her wryly. “I'm Asian. I kung fu-ed his ass.” His smile changed to a frown. “The others probably already know what's happened. We'd better get going.”
“Yes,” Evelyn said, bending over Miles Tucker.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking away his power.” She picked up the man’s blaster, rolling him over, and smashed his augmentation with one sharp blow.
“Holy shit,” Kenji said. “Do you think he'll live?”
“Yes, and hopefully when he wakes up without that thing he'll find his humanity again. Let's go.”
Evelyn peered around the cubicle. Several of the higher humans were advancing down the length of the room towards them. “Here they come,” she said. Strangely, she didn'
t feel afraid, only angry.
“Okay. W-What do we do?” Kenji said.
Evelyn glanced around the cubicle, looking for something that could help them. Miles Tucker was beginning to stir. “Help me get him up.”
Together they lifted him to his feet just as the footsteps of the other higher humans could be heard outside their cubicle. “Get behind the bed,” Evelyn said to Kenji, as the group of white clad figures burst around the corner.
Kenji leaped for cover, and Evelyn pointed her blaster past Miles Tucker and pressed the trigger. She felt the air in the cubicle explode as concussions traveled back and forth. She was knocked back onto the bed, but it was Miles Tucker, her human shield, who took the full force of the blasts. Evelyn pushed him off of her and stood, her ears ringing. Before her the group of three higher humans lay splayed upon the white floor, unconscious.
“Damn, Evelyn. Remind me never to mess with you,” Kenji said.
“There will be more,” Evelyn said. “Get their weapons. Destroy the augmentations, and help the others. Try to keep the rest of them distracted.”
“Wait, what are you going to do?”
“End this.”
Before Kenji could inquire further, she was out of the door. She knew exactly where she was going. She was inside their system. The doors opened for her now.
Evelyn ran along the passageways, passing rooms full off the 'sleeping' higher humans, who were waking now. She heard footsteps behind her and fired the blaster over her shoulder. The thuds of bodies hitting the floor followed her. She kept moving.
When she burst into the control room they were waiting for her. Four of them. As she entered the doorway she was tackled from the side. She hit the floor hard, barely managing to keep a grip on her blaster. She head-butted the man who had tackled her, feeling his nose crunch against her forehead. Her blaster pointed at a woman who was rushing at her and its concussion sent her flying into a control panel.
“Stop it Evelyn!” She looked up to see Brenner, her friend, standing over her. “Please, stop.”
The Cloud Page 21
