Lingering

by Melissa Simonson

  “Why can’t I come?”

  “Kids aren’t allowed,” I lied, pulling up Joe’s contact information.

  Her expression changed swiftly from confusion to outrage. “That’s not fair.”

  “That’s how it is, though,” I said, punching the send button and holding the phone to my ear.

  I met Joe outside as he pulled into my driveway. He clambered out of the driver’s seat, every line on his face etched in deeper with worry.

  “What’s going on?”

  I shut the door for him and ran a hand through my hair, circling his pickup backward, headed to my own car. “The door’s unlocked, Kylie’s inside watching TV, she should be set for a while.”

  “Great, but what’s the matter?” The light rain blurred his outline; he looked like an apparition through the mist.

  “I have to go right now,” I said, jingling my keys in my pocket, bouncing on the balls of my Nikes. “Please, just let me tell you later.”

  I threw myself into my car, backed out of the driveway with screaming tires, and left him standing there looking both mystified and concerned.

  T he code to the front door had been changed like Nick claimed; it was no longer Jess and Nick’s anniversary. I jammed my thumb into the buzzer, expecting to be at it for a while, but the door clicked immediately as it unlocked.

  Unnerved by the suspicious ease of my entrance, I slipped inside, my eyes on the red camera eyes winking down at me. Was Nick sitting there in front of the video feeds, wearing his usual smirk/smile, laughing condescendingly at my wild eyes and white skin?

  The sharp snap of the doors shutting behind me made my skin crawl.

  I navigated the twisting hallways that had so confused me on my very first visit, spine stiff and the hair on my neck on end. The light from the hallways grew dimmer, the darkness denser, as I headed for the familiar bank of cubicles. It seemed empty, though the computers hummed and flickered, their tiny lights flashing blue and green and red through the darkness. The overhead panel lights weren’t on, and though I’d always hated the strobe-light effect when they unexpectedly blinked on and off, I would have appreciated something to guide my way. Was someone sitting there in the shadows, looking right back at me? I squinted, looking for human silhouettes, but found none.

  It still felt like someone was watching me. From the cameras or one of the seemingly unoccupied desk chairs, I couldn’t be sure.

  “Jess?” I said into the silence, walking into the heart of the room, revolving on the spot, steeling myself for someone to jump out and announce themselves. I couldn’t see my own body in the blackness, and it felt like I was standing in outer space, surrounded by tiny blue, green, and red stars and the ghostly, lulling hum of sleeping computers.

  But then each computer exploded with color.

  Every screen surrounding me showed the same still-frame, shockingly vivid in the black office. A silver room lit by bright overhead panels. And then sound accompanied the video as it began playing, a blonde girl backing into the camera’s view.

  “No!” she screamed, clutching her arms around her blue tunic. “No, Nick, please—”

  I ran up to the closest computer monitor, my pulse thrumming at every pressure point in my body.

  “No,” she shrieked again, “please don’t, you can’t—”

  “Margot,” I said, in synch with the Nick on the monitor, just outside range of the camera.

  “Margot, what choice do I have? Nilsson’s in the fucking emergency room, for Christ’s sake—”

  “I didn’t want to hurt him,” she said, as Nick advanced on her, the back of his blond head cropping up, but he wore some kind of protective headgear and what looked to be body armor. Riot gear. Something that couldn’t easily be pierced. “You’re my friend, Nick, don’t do this—”

  “That’s bullshit,” he countered. “You know what stabbing someone’ll do, you didn’t plunge a screwdriver in him for his goddamned health, Margot—”

  Her back slammed into one of the silver cabinets behind her, her hands splayed against it to brace herself. “You know why I had to do that, none of you will ever let me out—”

  “No, we won’t. And it’s a good thing we never did, considering the stunt you pulled.”

  “Don’t come any closer,” she said, her face growing taut, expressionless. “Stay away from me.”

  “You don’t give orders around here.” He took a step closer. “It won’t hurt. As easy as turning off a light—”

  But she’d somehow ripped the steel cabinet door off its hinges and flung it toward him like a boomerang. He ducked, cursing, and lifted what looked like a gun as the cabinet door banged to the ground.

  “Nick—”

  He let off one shot that caught her in the thigh. She had no blood to spill, but her blue eyes went wide as she grabbed onto the cabinet for balance. She swayed for a moment but steadied a second later, experimentally pressing more of her weight into her damaged leg. And then she took another step toward him.

  “That’s not going to stop her,” a loud male voice that wasn’t Nick’s shouted from the PA system.

  Another bullet tore through her chest. She rocked back from the force of the shot, wobbling again, but that didn’t stop her, either.

  She tilted her head back, looking up toward the ceiling, toward the intercom. “Please stop, I promise I’ll be good this time—”

  But she couldn’t say anything else, because Nick fired three bullets into her face, one after the other, so quickly the shots sounded like one.

  “Jesus,” Nick shouted, ripping his headgear off as he looked up into the eye of the camera. “I might need some help in here.” He shook his head, still cursing, pulling something from the toolbelt around his hips as he made his way toward the body on the floor.

  It was an axe of some sort, I saw, once he raised it up and brought it down on Margot’s throat, separating her head smoothly from her body. I stood there, shell-shocked, watching him dismember her, throwing the body parts aside like garbage, until she was completely disassembled.

  He dragged her torso across the room and heaved it onto a work table, yanking the tunic off, exposing Margot’s naked chest and the smooth hole from the bullet between her breasts. “I’ll miss these tits,” he said, looking up at the camera again, a laugh in his voice. “Is she still producing signals?”

  “Negative,” said the man over the intercom.

  I couldn’t watch anymore and turned on my heel for the staircase, loading the flashlight app on my cell phone. I’d galloped down the steps when the beam of light radiating from my phone fell on a pair of bare feet. An icy horror seeped through my veins as I lifted my phone and found who I’d known it had to be the second I saw the bare feet. There was only one “person” around here who went shoeless.

  And the fact that she was alone and unsupervised couldn’t mean anything good.

  “What—what are you doing?” I stammered, training the flashlight on Carissa’s face. What I’d really wanted to say was “what are you doing out?” but I doubted she’d appreciate it.

  A normal person would have held their hand up to shield their eyes from the harsh light, but she just stared, unflinchingly, right into it.

  “Waiting for you. Did you like the movie?”

  “Of course not, it was horrible. Where did you find it?”

  She turned, gesturing toward the closed door she stood near, but didn’t say a word.

  “What’s going on? Where’s Jess? Where’s Nick?”

  “In there.”

  “Well, what, are you locked out?”

  “No, I have the keycard.” She held it up and waved it at the scanner. The green light flashed. She pushed the door open, her face devoid of any kind of expression as she looked back at me. “Aren’t you coming in?”

  I blinked furiously upon entering the room, almost feeling my pupils retract into pinpricks from the sudden change of light.

  “She smashed my cell phone,” I heard Nick’s voice grun
t from somewhere below me. “You’re going to need to take me to the hospital.”

  I spun around, my gaze landing on Nick, sprawled on the floor against the wall, one hand pressed into a wound on the side of his stomach, blood seeping between his white fingers. My breath hitched, my vision blurred, and I sank to my knees beside him, wondering how to help him in the meantime. It had been a very long time since my high school First-Aid course.

  I craned my neck to glance at Carissa, who, predictably, looked unconcerned. “She did this?” I didn’t wait for Nick to answer, fumbling with my phone. “I’ll call an ambulance.”

  “No ambulance,” Nick panted. “I don’t want anyone to see this place. Just take me in your car. I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

  Something slender and silver shone in my peripherals. A Phillip’s head screwdriver. Oh, the irony.

  Carissa’s steps sounded much heavier than one would expect upon glancing at her, and I felt one second away from pissing myself as she advanced. “What are your thoughts on what he did to Margot?” she asked, sparing Nick a look of disdain.

  “It was horrible. I hated it. I always had sympathy for her, from the second he showed me her interview videos. You told me she was “switched off”,” I added to Nick, surprised I could feel betrayed by someone who’d never had my trust to begin with. “You made it sound…peaceful. Humane. What you did to her, that was one of the worst things I’ve seen in my life.”

  “Are you somehow forgetting the part where she shanked Dr. Nilsson?” Nick burst out.

  Carissa tilted her head thoughtfully. “I’ve been standing here for a while, waiting for you to show up, wondering what Margot’s relationship to me is. My mother, kind of? Big sister?” She raised her hands, lifting them up and down as though she were weighing each option. “Aunt, maybe? I wouldn’t exist without Margot, really. She made it possible for me to live. So, mother, I think. That one fits best.”

  “Well, I’m glad we’ve got that sorted,” Nick said, leaning his head back against the wall, his eyes flickering back and forth at the pair of us.

  “But I have a lot of sisters, don’t I?” She dropped to one knee, staring into his face. “I remember when I was young, I always wished I had siblings. I wasn’t lucky then. But now I have…how many? Twelve?”

  “There were thirteen models, not counting you.”

  “I wonder why I don’t have any brothers,” she said, her expression pensive, or at least a good imitation of it. “But it doesn’t take much imagination to figure that shit out.” She looked at me as she stood. “Did you know about them?” When I shook my head, she said, “Stupid question, of course you didn’t. But you can see for yourself.” When she focused her gaze somewhere over my shoulder, sound blasted from a computer on the work bench behind me.

  “That’s Simone,” Carissa said, but what did her name possibly matter? All that mattered was that she was naked in a glass cage, one hand pressed flat against a transparent wall, her scream somewhat muffled. “Please let me out,” she said, and I wondered if she’d be crying if she were capable, the way her face was twisted. “Please. It’s been weeks.”

  “No can do,” came Nick’s voice, clear and strong, probably from another intercom.

  Simone went quiet for a moment, her face slackening. I thought she was going to give up and huddle into a corner, but she didn’t—she pulled her fist back and slammed it into the wall. Fractures spiderwebbed from the point of impact, icy white under the lights, and she drew her fist back to do it again, deeper cracks sprouting along the glass. When she pulled her arm back a third time, her hand was missing three fingers.

  The video fast-forwarded in double time, Simone pounding the glass so rapidly she blurred, and when she sank down to the steel floor, surrounded by fragments of cabling and silicone flesh, her arm looked as though it had been chewed off at the elbow, sparking at the joint.

  “And this is Victoria,” Carissa said, as another image replaced Simone’s blank-faced expression. “I don’t envy Victoria.”

  I didn’t either. It looked like she was in some kind of gynecologist’s office, her face frozen, her eyes staring blankly at Nick as he worked her feet into stirrups, laying her completely bare for the camera to see.

  “Now, what were you doing here with Victoria?” Carissa asked, but she had to already know.

  I looked away from the computer screen. I didn’t want to watch anymore.

  “Checking her lubrication levels,” Nick said, a sigh in his voice, like this whole production was a farce.

  “And why on earth would you need to do a thing like that?” Carissa prodded.

  “Because I considered building AIs for sexual purposes, at one point. But I cancelled the project, I never went through with it, and you can see perfectly well I never forced myself onto her—”

  “You never forced yourself onto her, sure,” Carissa conceded. “But there were objects involved. You wanted to make a bunch of Victorias and roll them out to the pervert public to sell for top dollar.”

  As Nick did something to Victoria onscreen, she let out the slightest of moans.

  “He didn’t give her a voice, you see,” Carissa told me. “Apparently, she didn’t deserve one, he didn’t want her to speak. All she could do was moan like that.”

  I felt cold all over, numb, and pressed my eyes closed. “Please turn it off, Carissa. I don’t want to watch this.”

  “I think Margot was the catalyst to everything,” Carissa said musingly. “I think you may have loved her, Nick. I think once you realized she was playing you all that it hurt your ego. She obviously never returned your feelings, and you couldn’t handle it, so you wanted her switched off. It’s pretty obvious your feelings on AIs changed quite significantly after her. No more Mr. Nice Guy after Margot, and there were plenty more where Simone and Victoria came from, but I’m not going to put Ben through anymore show-and-tell.”

  “That’s categorically false,” Nick argued.

  “Then why did you do that to her?” she pressed.

  “You know why. She gravely injured a member of the team.”

  “And why did she do that?”

  “Because she wanted to leave, and we wouldn’t allow it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it wasn’t her choice to make. She didn’t know what would be best.”

  “So, she didn’t know her own mind, but you somehow did?” She laughed, shaking her head. “You didn’t let her out because you wanted to keep her prisoner to carry on with your tests and your games and your God complex.”

  “Carissa?” I croaked. “I need to get him to the hospital. He’s going to bleed out. He needs an ambulance. Let me get him out of here, and then…then I’ll come back.”

  She turned back to me with sharp eyes. “I don’t want you to call anyone, but I don’t want to have to take your phone from you.”

  I looked around the room, but there was no sign of Jess. “Where’s Jess?”

  She took a step toward me. “Am I going to have to take your phone?”

  “Where’s Jess?”

  “She’s fine. Am I going to have to take your phone?”

  “She’s not fine,” Nick said. “She’s in the closet.”

  Carissa gave me what looked like an indulging look. “She’s in there, but she’s fine. I didn’t hurt her.”

  “The hell you didn’t.” Nick waved a bloody hand toward the closet in question. “As soon as she walked in the door, she grabbed her by the throat and strangled her.”

  “She’s just unconscious,” Carissa said, as though that were a perfectly acceptable condition to be in. “She’s not hurt. Why would I hurt her? She’s my friend.”

  “The least you can do is check on her,” Nick said.

  She looked like she was weighing the benefits of checking on her closet hostage, glancing at me questioningly, as though asking my input.

  “Yeah, I need to know if she’s okay.”

  The second she turned to head for the closet, Nick sta
rted gesturing wildly to get my attention. He bowed his head, though his eyes were locked on mine, and pointed toward the base of his neck. Her power button, I knew, was located there.

  Nick nodded, I took a step and a huge breath that convulsed in my chest, and I hadn’t even planted my foot on the floor when Carissa looked over her shoulder.

  It happened before I even realized it had. Her hand snaked out, snatched the phone from my grip, and sent it flying like a Frisbee into the far wall. The screen cracked instantly upon impact, rippling fissures spreading over the surface, and shattered when it hit the floor.

  “Really?” she asked indignantly. “You’re trying to help him? After everything he’s done?”

  I held one hand up toward her and the other at Nick. “I know what happened in the video you sent me, but that doesn’t mean I want him to bleed out—”

  “What video?” he demanded. “The one with Margot? Simone and Victoria?”

  “No. You know perfectly well which video, let’s not play dumb, okay, I saw it, it happened. I don’t know if that was supposed to be punishment for her asking me to visit without your knowledge or consent, but,” I looked up at Carissa, “it wasn’t right, not even a bit, but—”

  “What fucking video?”

  “You were sexually assaulting her, I saw the whole thing.”

  His jaw hung slack for a few seconds before he tipped his head against the wall and laughed. “Jesus. You really are a real woman, aren’t you? This whole woman scorned thing. Making up rape allegations to get back at someone. Just FYI, even if I did do it, it’s not illegal to rape a robot, the law hasn’t quite caught up to that one, sweetheart—”

  “You’re saying you didn’t do it?” I cut in, watching the red puddle on his shirt grow wider, wetter.

  He gave me a coughing laugh and a patronizing smile. “Yes, that is what I’m saying. She played you. Well, join the fucking club, Margot did it to me, too. You’re in good company.” He shook his head, looking at Carissa. “I suppose this is why you suddenly had a problem moving your shoulder, is it, you needed some ‘evidence’? Of course, I’d have to take your shirt off for that.”