Hollowgirl

by Sean Williams

  Only this wasn’t a week ago. It wasn’t even the real world. There was no way of knowing who in the Yard was actually on the end of a call to the PKs, be it people or dupes or more corrupt lawmakers. . . . She supposed they were about to find out.

  So much for running.

  “All right,” she said. “We stay, but the rest of you hide while I see who it is.”

  “I’m with you,” said Kari.

  “You’re both being paranoid,” said Clair One.

  “If what we’re telling you is true, we have good reason to be.” Clair forced herself to moderate her tone. “And if we’re wrong, I won’t argue anymore.”

  Clair One hesitated, then nodded.

  “Through here,” said Tash, tugging at the door leading to the next chamber, where Clair knew they would find the ladders up to the roof. “Quick, or they’ll see us.”

  Glad that at least one of her friends was picking up on her sense of urgency, Clair ushered the rest out of sight. When they were concealed, Clair turned back to the booth. Kari was circling it, tapping each door with the barrel of her gun.

  “Which one first?” Kari asked Q.

  “The one you will tap next. It will open in ten seconds. The remainder will open in the subsequent thirty seconds.”

  Half a minute, thought Clair, and if they come out with guns blazing it could be all over. Because Clair One tried to do the right thing . . .

  Kari slipped around the side of the booth, where she would be out of sight when the first person emerged. Clair stood front and center, waiting with her pistol behind her back.

  The ancient booth hissed. The door opened.

  Inside was a PK wearing a perfectly ordinary blue uniform. No armor. No camouflage. No weapons drawn.

  Clair might have relaxed had she not recognized him. Gripping the pistol even more tightly, she pointed it at his chest and crouched behind it like she would a shield.

  “Stop,” she told PK Drader, and her voice caught for an instant, “right there.”

  He raised his hands. PK Drader had an open face and a relaxed manner that had always grated on her. He seemed to be trying too hard. To cover up his lies, she had learned later.

  “You’re Clair?” he said in a friendly voice, as though they had never met. “I don’t think you called us here to shoot anyone. Tell me what’s going on.”

  “You betrayed us,” she said, not bothering to dissemble. He was a member of the conspiracy trying to take over the world. “You’re working for the lawmakers.”

  He grinned as though she’d said something stupid. “All peacekeepers work for the lawmakers.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “LM Kingdon? The seastead? The muster?”

  He tilted his head, a picture of innocence. “No idea what you’re talking about, Clair. I only know your name because of the call you just made. Why don’t you put down the gun and we’ll talk?”

  Clair bit her lip and thought fast. This could be an old copy of PK Drader, innocent of his crimes in the real world. But even if he honestly didn’t know what had happened before the blue dawn, that didn’t mean he was on her side. He could have been working for Kingdon all along. He could still be the enemy.

  Another door hissed open, the one on the far side of the booth. There was an oof of surprise, and Clair’s attention darted to where she had last seen Kari, but there was no one there now. When she looked back at Drader, he, too, was holding a pistol, aimed squarely at her midriff.

  “It’s over,” he said, all pretense gone. “You’re done. Come quietly and no one will get hurt.”

  Clair’s heart lurched midbeat, then steadied. “No,” she said. She wasn’t going to give in, not after everything she had been through. She wasn’t going to fall into Wallace’s or Kingdon’s hands so easily, even if she had to fight them every second she was inside the Yard. Wherever they were, whatever they were doing, she had to find them and stop them so she and her friends would be safe.

  To Clair’s left another door opened. She saw Kari grab the person who emerged from it—a wiry woman with close-cropped white hair, dressed in a tight black thermal camouflage suit. They scuffled, and this time it was PK Drader whose attention strayed.

  Clair jerked her pistol higher so it pointed at his face.

  “You’re the one who’s coming quietly,” she said. “You’re going to put your gun down, and then you’re going to tell me everything you know about the Yard and how to get out.”

  He didn’t flinch. His gaze remained coolly superior.

  “I’m not afraid of you, Clair. You won’t shoot.”

  “Then you don’t know me.” She didn’t want to shoot anyone, but a progression of mental images undermined any reservations she had in his case: dupes dying in droves outside the muster, the failure of Devin and Trevin’s plan on the seastead, the endless threats issued from the mouth of a child whose mind was no longer his own . . . All that and more could be laid at Drader’s feet.

  The third door opened. PK Drader’s lips tightened. She could see him tensing, getting ready to move.

  “Don’t,” Clair said, taking a step forward, pointing the pistol as steadily as she could at the bridge of his nose. She had seen enough dramas to know how PKs spoke in such moments, and she did her best to keep her voice steady too. “Gun on the floor. Now.”

  Drader’s pistol dipped. To Clair’s right, Kari knocked his third accomplice down with one blow to the back of the neck. PK Drader turned, saw her, and straightened. It was clear he recognized her. For an instant, the two peacekeepers faced each other.

  “Traitor,” he said, snapping his gun back up and shooting Kari square in the chest.

  The big PK staggered and fell to the ground.

  “No!” Clair’s trigger finger tightened. Her pistol went off with a loud bang and kicked back in her hands. PK Drader dropped like a stone, his neck spraying blood in a crimson fan. Clair reeled, horrified by what he had done—and what she had done to him.

  “Oh my God.” Tash rushed past her, to Kari’s side. “He shot PK Sargent!”

  “And he’s dead now too.” Zep was staring at the blood, looking like he might be about to throw up. “Oh hell.”

  Clair didn’t want to look. She wanted Zep to be the strong one, to enfold her in his arms and allow her to close her eyes, just for a moment. But that was the past, before Jesse. This was the present and it was bloody and complicated. PK Drader had fired the first shot inside the Yard, and she had responded.

  “Watch out!” she said, blocking Clair One from coming any closer to PK Drader’s body. “They might still be dangerous.”

  “Seriously?”

  “You haven’t seen what they can do.”

  “And I don’t want to.” Her eyes shifted from the body to Clair’s face. Pinched and wary, her body language was conflicted. “But did you have to shoot him?”

  “He shot Kari.”

  “She attacked them first.”

  “Do they look like PKs to you?”

  Ronnie was checking PK Drader’s three fallen companions, loosening their tight black collars so they could breathe freely. Libby hovered at her shoulder, hands clasped tightly to her chest. They had no identifying marks or patches.

  “Whoever you spoke to couldn’t have been a PK,” Clair went on. “Not a good one, anyway. Wallace would only copy the PKs he can trust. We can’t afford to— Stop, don’t open their eyelids!” Clair added hastily as Ronnie went to check the pupils of the first PK Kari had dropped. “Don’t let whoever’s at the other end of their lenses get a look at you.”

  “Why does it matter if they see us?” asked Clair One.

  “They might not know there are two of me in here.”

  “So?”

  “See what they did when they found out there was one of me here? Imagine what they’d do if they knew there were two.”

  “Maybe we should plug their ears, then,” said Clair One, which was a good sugges
tion that Ronnie put into immediate effect, tearing strips off her party dress and wadding them into balls.

  “I have cut the power to the booths,” said Q.

  “Good thinking,” said Clair, even though that was bound to attract attention. “No one use the Air. It’s too dangerous.”

  “PK Sargent is alive,” said Tash, looking up. “Lucky she’s wearing armor.”

  Clair hurried to the fallen PK’s side. Kari’s eyes were closed. There was a round, silver indentation just below her heart, where the bullet had struck her. She was lucky also, Clair thought, that Drader hadn’t aimed for her head.

  “I am detecting activity in Mürren and Lauterbrunnen,” said Q. “Freshly fabbed drones are on their way.”

  “How long?” asked Clair. “Who sent them?”

  “They are under peacekeeper control. You can expect them in five minutes. Maybe longer: there’s a storm coming, so the winds are strong.”

  Really real, Clair reminded herself. If the simulation could make people move and bullets fly, why not wind and rain too? And drones, and evil peacekeepers, and worse. All the Yard had to do was wind them up and let them go, like clockwork dolls on a tabletop. How was she going to fight them all?

  Save your friends first, she told herself, then the world.

  “We need to get out of here before they see us and take us in.”

  “The elevator connects to an underground train line,” said Ronnie. “We could get out that way.”

  “And after that?” asked Clair One. “What then?”

  “We’ll work that out on the way.”

  “On the way where?”

  “I don’t know, all right?” Clair rounded on her, out of patience. “Stay here if you want. I’m not going to kidnap you or threaten you or anything like that. But I’m not giving myself up and I’m not leaving the others behind. If we stay here much longer, we’ll all die.”

  “Are you going to shoot me, too, if I get in your way?” asked Clair One.

  Zep, Ronnie, and Tash were staring at them as though they were a glowing red timer counting down to zero.

  “This party sucks,” said Libby with bright decisiveness. “Let’s blow this joint. Argue later. That’s my suggestion. Okay, ladies?”

  [6]

  * * *

  CLAIR ONE GLARED at Clair for one long second, then at Libby. Finally, she nodded.

  “Okay, but I’m not happy about it.”

  “Take a number. I was expecting a new face and a crashlander ball, not this funky little shindig. Ronnie, which way is the elevator?”

  Before Ronnie could answer, Kari woke with a groan.

  “Son. Of. A. Bitch. . . . He shot me!”

  Clair took one elbow, Ronnie the other. Together they levered the heavy peacekeeper to her feet.

  On seeing the blood and PK Drader’s body, she asked Clair, “Was that you?”

  Clair nodded, her face turning warm.

  Kari gripped her shoulder. “Had it coming to him. How long until he comes back?”

  “I don’t know if he will,” said Clair, remembering what Q had said. She didn’t even want to think about the possibility that Q might have been wrong. “We need to get moving.”

  “This way,” said Ronnie, guiding them through the observatory.

  Clair didn’t remember seeing the actual elevator the other time she had been here, just its existence on a floor plan. That was because it was concealed behind a loose plywood panel, unused for years but apparently still working.

  Zep pulled the panel off, exposing two sliding doors that Q had opened in readiness. The space within resembled a large d-mat booth with ample room for all of them. The walls were bare metal, broken only by a simple push-button control panel, UP or DOWN. When they were all inside, Tash pushed DOWN. The doors closed. Clair’s stomach seemed to rise into her throat. She could smell Zep’s cologne mixed in with her friends’ perfumes and the dust, sweat, and grime that she and Kari had brought with them from the outside.

  “This is messed up,” said Zep as the carriage descended. “We’re all thinking that, right? Clair just killed someone.”

  “Clair Two did,” said Clair One.

  “Am I the only one freaking out?” he asked Clair. “Why aren’t you freaking out? Have you done this before?”

  Clair stared up at him, not knowing the honest answer to that question. She had shot more dupes than she cared to think about, but if Q was right and there were no dupes in the Yard, then that meant that Drader had been himself. A traitor who would have killed her given a chance, but a person nonetheless.

  “No, I haven’t done this before,” she said. She had just crossed a line. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  Her hands started shaking uncontrollably. The gun fell to the elevator floor. Kari picked it up and folded Clair to her chest. The silver bullet hole was right at Clair’s eye level. She stared at it as she held Kari in return, finding justification there but no comfort as the elevator descended.

  “Nice one, Zep,” said Libby, slapping him on the chest. “You’ve broken her.”

  “I didn’t mean to. It’s just . . . you know.”

  “You’re freaking out, yes. Find a way to do it quietly.”

  “Zep’s right,” said Tash. “This can’t be happening.”

  “It’s okay,” said Kari, her voice a muffled boom in Clair’s ears. “We’re not hurt. I can’t promise that everything is going to be all right, but I can promise to do everything in my power to keep you safe. That’s my job.”

  “You told me that in New York,” said Clair.

  “Hmmm. And look what happened.”

  “We’re still alive, aren’t we?”

  There was silence in the elevator, apart from the whining of the mechanism responsible for their rapid descent. Kari rested her chin on the top of Clair’s head. That small intimacy made Clair feel slightly better. She just needed a quiet moment in which to catch herself while her entire life fell out from under her. . . .

  “Sorry,” said Zep.

  “Don’t apologize,” said Clair, releasing Kari from her death grip. “You were right. I think I was overdue for a breakdown.”

  “Several, by the sound of it.” He grinned at her and her heart lightened a little more.

  “So at the bottom of this thing we’re going take the train,” said Clair One, her voice harsh. “How do we know they won’t be waiting for us there?”

  “There’s no booth until the other end of the line,” said Ronnie.

  “And we have to go that way, right?”

  Clair felt weary. Clair One just would not let it go. Clair supposed she wouldn’t either, in her shoes.

  “There are observation stations at various points along the tunnel,” said Q. “I will arrange transport to meet you at one of those.”

  “And then? We can’t get out of the Yard. We have no idea where Wallace is. We haven’t even started talking about what we’ll do if we find him.”

  Before Clair could say anything, a chat request appeared in her infield, the first she’d received since arriving in the Yard.

  It was from Ant Wallace.

  Clair stared at it for a second, chilled to the core. They hadn’t spoken since she had blown up his space station, killing earlier versions of both of them. It was like hearing the voice of a ghost that had been haunting her from the shadows, never showing its face.

  “I just received a chat request from Wallace,” said Clair One.

  “So did I,” said Ronnie.

  “And me,” said Zep.

  “Don’t answer it!” Clair said, trying to keep the panic from her voice. “Don’t do anything. Let me think.”

  PK Drader had seen her, and Wallace would have been watching through Drader’s lenses. Q had masked her on the way to the observatory, so anyone tracing her would see a different name, but Wallace would be aware of that trick now. He was obviously bumping everyone nearby to see if she took the bait.

  “Change our masks, Q,” she said. “Mix us up
so there’s no chance he can tell who’s who. There’s no point hiding you now.”

  “Yes, Clair. It is done.”

  Sharing her infield with the others, Clair accepted the chat request. Audio only.

  “Clair Hill, I presume,” said Ant Wallace. His image appeared in a window that tightly framed his features, revealing nothing of his surroundings. His face was as charming and warm as ever. Clair knew better than to trust him any more than she had trusted Drader. “The naive girl blessed with powerful friends. Or is that actually a curse? Time will tell.”

  “What do you want?” She did her best to keep her voice level, but she could hear a slight hitch in it. Seeing him brought back too many memories, none of them good.

  “‘Want’? How could you imagine I want for anything in here?” He smiled. There was no humor in his eyes. “This is my world. Your interference cannot be tolerated.”

  “I just want to go home,” she said. “That’s all.”

  His eyebrows went up.

  “If you could do that, I wouldn’t be here myself. I thought you knew about that.”

  He was talking about the outside, Clair assumed. Ant Wallace was all but confirming that there was nowhere for her to exist but the Yard. She refused to accept that this would never change. She would make it change, somehow.

  “Meet with me,” he said. “We have much to discuss. Maybe if we work together we can both get what we want.”

  Again, that shark smile, but with a hint of uncertainty this time.

  Clair realized that he was fishing. He didn’t know which Clair she was. It was better for everyone, she decided, if he remained unsure.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Clair, swallowing her desire to scream at him for tricking her into killing so many people. She wasn’t going anywhere near him until she was ready. “All I’m doing is trying to get back where I belong.”

  He laughed. “All right, play it that way. But you’ll find it very hard to go anywhere in here. That I promise you.”

  The chat ended abruptly, and at the same moment the elevator began to slow its descent. Wary despite Ronnie’s assurances of what might be waiting for them and with Wallace’s vague threat still ringing in her ears, Clair took the gun back and positioned herself next to Kari at the front. She felt Clair One and the others pressing close behind her. No one said anything.