Hollowgirl

by Sean Williams

  There was someone standing in front of the building, an adult. As she twisted around, the better to see him, two more figures emerged from plate-glass doors, holding rifles.

  “Don’t make any sudden moves,” said Dylan Linwood in a hard voice she knew well, “or we’ll shoot.”

  [12]

  * * *

  “TAKE IT EASY, Dad,” said Jesse, tugging off his helmet.

  “I’ll do nothing of the sort.” Dylan’s expression was all brittle crags, like a cliff face on the verge of avalanche. “Get off the bikes at once, all of you.”

  Clair let go of Jesse and slid her left leg over the seat, dropping the small distance to the ground and putting her hands above her head. The tall, angular man next to Dylan was Ray: his left arm had been severed at the elbow in New York and was swaddled now with healing patches. To Dylan’s right was a woman with dreadlocks: Theo, Clair remembered, Cashile’s mother. Both, like Dylan, were members of WHOLE.

  Clair knew better than to doubt that his threat was sincere.

  “I told you what I was doing,” Jesse said, standing defiantly next to Clair. “You can’t pretend to be surprised.”

  “And I told you not to go. These are the consequences. Weapons on the ground, now.”

  There was movement to Clair’s left and right. More people were coming out of the trees, surrounding them.

  “Mr. Linwood,” said Kari, “my name is PK Sargent. I can vouch for Clair and the others.”

  “But who will vouch for you? Here, you could be anyone.”

  “Actually,” said Clair, “it doesn’t work that way.”

  “You I trust least of all.” Jesse’s father’s hostile stare danced between Clair and Clair One. “Weapons down. Last warning.”

  There was no point arguing with him, and no reason to either. They were on the same side, or at least had the same enemy.

  Clair carefully placed her pistol on the dirt in front of her and stepped away from it with both hands held up. Kari did the same, and so did Clair One, albeit with great reluctance. She, Clair reminded herself, would have no idea who Dylan Linwood was, or what Nobody had done in his body. To Clair One, Dylan Linwood was nothing but a threatening stranger.

  To Clair, though, he was a terrible reminder of everything that had happened on the seastead and before. His face was still bruised from the beating he had received at the hands of the people who had forcibly copied him, and his left eye was still red. But the injuries were healing, and his voice had its usual California drawl. Clair told herself to concentrate on that.

  “You know who I am,” she told him. “A week ago to me, but not so long for you, I came to your house and asked you about Improvement. Then you came to my school. You tried to convince everyone that we were in danger—Libby, me, all of us. No one believed you.”

  “Day in the life of,” he said. “What are you doing here now? Why has my son put us all at risk to bring you here?”

  “I’ll tell you, if you let me.” How much had Jesse explained to him already? How much did this Jesse know? “You were right and we were wrong. We were all very, very wrong—about Wallace, about d-mat, about everything. You need to know what has happened since you were duped.”

  “Why should I believe anything you tell me?”

  First he wanted her to explain, but then he said he wouldn’t believe her even if she tried. They could go around in circles like this all day.

  “Because I’m an Abstainer now, like you,” Clair said, making herself as tall as she could. She was short even next to Dylan Linwood. “I’m the girl who killed d-mat. With Turner Goldsmith I took on VIA, and with Agnessa Adaksin I took on the lawmakers who wanted to make slaves of all of us. I killed the woman who betrayed WHOLE, Gemma Mallapur, and I tried my best to kill Ant Wallace, too. It’s not my fault it didn’t stick. Ask Ray: he’ll remember some of this. And Jesse, too.” She hoped. “If you trust them, you can trust me. Just listen before you decide that I’ve got nothing to say. And when you believe me, let’s talk about fighting back.”

  She stopped, suddenly, uncomfortably aware of how hard everyone was staring at her. It occurred to her only then just how little her friends knew about her recent past. They knew something about Jesse and her, but the whole becoming-an-Abstainer part she had left out . . . and the way Jesse was looking at her made it clear that he hadn’t known either.

  The knot in her chest twisted a little tighter. His pattern, then, wasn’t from the last time he had used d-mat, when he and Trevin had accidentally triggered the blue dawn. The time before that had been after the battle on the seastead. She prayed it was then and no earlier.

  “You’re a Stainer?” Clair One said, looking like she’d gone mad. This was different from shooting someone who had threatened her. God help her if she admitted to killing herself. . . .

  “Let’s talk,” she said. “All of us, together. We need a plan, quickly, and we won’t get that unless we’re all on the same page.”

  Dylan’s gaze was appraising. He held her stare for a long time, then nodded. She had been tested and found worthy. For the moment.

  “All right,” he said. “But the weapons stay where they are. I won’t allow them in the caves. No exceptions.”

  “Caves?” said Clair.

  “The Mystery Caves of Minnesota,” said Ray, adding, “I came here once, as a kid.”

  Why that was significant Clair didn’t know.

  “This way,” Dylan said, gesturing at the entrance to the building. Clair did as she was told, and the rest had no choice but to follow her lead.

  [13]

  * * *

  CLAIR’S INFIELD WAS blank. The messages from Nobody had ceased upon her leaving Harmony. It surprised her, then, when a new bump suddenly appeared.

  It was from Q.

  She opened it as Dylan guided her through a set of glass doors and into an antechamber that might once have been a gathering point for tours heading underground, passing a line of smashed d-mat booths along the way.

  “Qualia has been broken,” Q said, “by which I mean both the notion and the entity. I am fixing the problem, fixing the glitches, fixing myself. Trying to.”

  That was all. As cryptic as only Q could be, but without her usual reassuring edge.

  “How, Q?” Clair bumped back. “Are you all right?”

  Q didn’t reply. Relief that she was alive was tempered by the puzzle she had left Clair. Qualia, Clair remembered, was the name given to the perceived realness of a thing. It was also the name given to one of the two AIs that had once overseen the safe operation of d-mat—the closest thing to parents Q had. It sounded as if Q was telling her that the AI Qualia had been involved somehow in the maintenance of the Yard, but wasn’t anymore. It had broken down, perhaps causing the glitches in the appearance of reality—or maybe the glitches had caused the breakdown instead. Glitches caused by the presence of two Clairs.

  The number of glitches appeared to have eased. Q had managed that much, at least.

  “Take a seat,” said Dylan.

  The antechamber contained scattered chairs and tables, plus a number of other people Clair recognized. They were all members of WHOLE duped during her cross-country dash to New York. Aunt Arabelle, in her wheelchair. Jamila, with her mismatched eyes. The guy with big ears who had been shot in Manteca. Most shocking was Cashile, the young boy whose face she had seen many times since, occupied by the minds of other people. He was sitting at a table, playing with an antique tablet. He looked up and waved on recognizing her.

  “Clair!” he said. “You made it.”

  Then he saw Clair One and, like everyone, frowned.

  “Hi, Cashile,” Clair said, forcing herself to forget about the many times he had been duped. He might be the only child left in the Yard now. “It’s good to see you again.”

  Cashile looked at his mom, who shrugged mutely. WHOLE hated d-mat and dupes of any kind. But they knew her. Some of them had even trusted her. Clair was grateful for the chance to explain. She
and her friends were safe now, but they couldn’t afford to sit around talking all day. They had to fight back before Wallace found them and wiped them out.

  “I said sit,” said Dylan, doing so himself. “Begin.”

  For the second time that day, Clair’s recent activities were under the magnifying glass, and this time there was no way she could leave anything out. She covered every event since Jesse’s father had been kidnapped, answering every question and seeking confirmation from Ray on the parts of it that he had experienced. At the capture of Turner Goldsmith, Ray’s memories ceased: that was when he had been duped. From there—the crash, Q, the muster, and so on—it was entirely up to Clair and Kari.

  Clair watched Jesse closely. He said nothing, and his expression was guarded. This was his father’s show: Dylan had made that very clear. Jesse wasn’t allowed to intrude.

  Clair One and the others didn’t talk much either. They didn’t need words to convey how betrayed they felt. Clair might once have felt the same. She had just revealed herself to be both more and less reliable than they had thought: famous in ways that Libby had never dreamed of, and at the same time a betrayer of the life they had known. She was telling them that everything they believed was wrong, and that she as much as Ant Wallace was responsible for the loss of their ordinary lives. If she could only show them, she thought, that she had had good reasons . . .

  Clair almost slapped herself. She had forgotten her lenses again.

  “These are the dupes outside the muster, trying to get Agnessa to turn me over,” she said, sending them the images. There were many more. They were horrible, but not as horrible as the thought of losing her friends’ trust forever. “This is the attack on the seastead. This is what the chain reaction looked like, at the end.”

  “‘Let them burn.’”

  Jesse’s voice brought her out of the slideshow. His father had said those very words in Manteca, when Jesse had tried to stop him from embarrassing Clair in front of the entire world.

  “‘Let them die if they want to.’” She finished the quote. “Well, it happened. How does it feel?” she asked Dylan.

  In his eyes she saw a hint of defensiveness. Yes, he had said those words, and they had come literally true. Horribly, tragically, and permanently, for so many innocent people. Unlike the Rapture, there was no happy ending for any of them.

  “Stop,” said Dylan. “I believe you. But that doesn’t mean I trust you. Just because you claim to be an Abstainer doesn’t mean we’re on the same side.”

  “The feeling is mutual,” she said. She had sworn never to use d-mat again because she had seen the horrors it could perform in the wrong hands, but that didn’t mean she was going to stop anyone else from using it. If everything went back to normal in that instant, she wouldn’t shun her friends just because they disagreed with her on that point—and she hoped they wouldn’t shun her, either.

  “I don’t even know what happened to you yet,” she said to shine the spotlight back on Dylan for a change.

  He nodded, and reciprocated in a brisk, efficient manner that left little room for questions. The members of WHOLE had woken up individually, wherever they had been duped: Dylan in Manteca, Ray in New York, Aunt Arabelle on the road, and so on. It had become rapidly clear what had happened. Nonusers of d-mat never expected to live after being turned into patterns, so their ongoing existence had to be an artifact of some kind. Given the world’s sudden emptiness, it wasn’t a huge leap from there to guessing that they were in a simulation populated only by people who had been copied, particularly when moving from one place to another on foot or by vehicle proved impossible.

  “It’s like a honeycomb,” said Arabelle. “You can’t cross the walls between cells—but if you learn to fly, like a bee, you can go anywhere you want.”

  “How did you learn?” Ronnie asked.

  “By accident,” said Ray, but he stopped when Dylan raised a hand. With Turner and Agnessa out of the picture, Dylan Linwood, the artist who had been denied the active role he always wanted, had become WHOLE’s alpha dog. And he was angry.

  “Ant Wallace thinks he’s won,” he said. “He thinks he’s going to live forever in his pathetic playground. We’re going to show him how wrong he is.”

  “That’s not all he wants,” said Kari. “Kingdon, at least, won’t be happy with staying in here. Like Tash says, information can be erased, and that makes everyone in here vulnerable.”

  “Matter can be erased too,” said Dylan. “You’ve seen that now.”

  “Regardless, she’s going to want to get outside and rebuild Earth the way she wants it to be: her cronies, her rules, her will be done.”

  Clair One looked over her shoulder suddenly, as though she had seen something.

  “The shadows are moving,” she said. Clair looked and saw dark shapes stirring in the corners, where the light was weakest. They didn’t look like anything specific, just wrong.

  “We should get underground,” said Arabelle.

  “Is it safe?” asked Tash.

  “What if the hollowmen find us again?” said Zep.

  “They won’t,” said Dylan. “Not underground. We leave a trail of glitches whenever we rip somewhere. That’s one of the ways they track us. But the caves are less connected to the rest of the Yard than anywhere else. The stone is almost as effective as Faraday shielding. It may not be comfortable down there, but if we’re careful it’ll keep us safe. Meanwhile, we’re working on another solution. Don’t screw up and you could be part of it.”

  That was gruff but promising. Clair agreed, although her every instinct cried out to keep running. As he led them out of the building and along path that led through the woods, by bridge across a stream, and so to the entrance of the caves, it was clear that her friends weren’t reassured either. Working with WHOLE meant working with terrorists.

  Give them time, Clair told herself, and they’ll come around.

  Did she really want that, though? She wasn’t sure. Already they had seen and been shocked by images of themselves duped and killed outside the muster. How much more would it take to harden them to such realities? If they had to fight the hollowmen to get at the exit, if some of them died before Wallace and Kingdon were overthrown, would that be enough to make them damaged just like her?

  [14]

  * * *

  BEHIND A HEAVY metal door with an exceedingly complicated lock, the caves were cold and damp and smelled of something sharp that might have been bats. Fortunately, there were blankets and heaters running off power beamed down from above, and a walkway anchored high above water below. If there were bats, they were hibernating. Strings of lights illuminated graceful rock formations and crystal clear pools. Everywhere Clair looked she saw layers of limestone stacked like giant pancakes, held up in places by frameworks of rusting metal.

  With the door shut behind them, they were cut off from the Air, and Clair felt a sense of isolation drop over her. It wasn’t entirely a good feeling. She was safe from Ant Wallace for the moment, but she was cut off from Q, too. If Q ever returned.

  “Rest,” said Dylan. “We’ll talk again in three hours.”

  “And what are you going to do until then?” Clair One asked.

  “Work on that solution I mentioned. I can’t do that and babysit at the same time.”

  With that he was gone, leaving Clair One looking betrayed and patronized. Clair felt for her, but there was nothing anyone could do about hurt feelings for now. WHOLE had its own agenda, which obviously didn’t yet mesh with theirs. Luckily Kari was already helping them settle in, reassuring them in a patient, grown-up fashion that they weren’t in any immediate danger now.

  Clair One wasn’t buying it: Clair could see her other self’s eyes tracking her as she moved through the caves. There was going to be a reckoning between the two of them. Clair knew that. But it would have to wait, as would Wallace and Kingdon and everyone else in the Yard.

  She had something more important to deal with.

  Jess
e was coming back from a deeper part of the cave with blankets. When he had handed them over, she grabbed his arm and tugged him into a niche near a conical, gray stalagmite where they could be relatively alone.

  “I need to talk to you,” she said.

  “Yeah.” He folded down next to her. There was barely enough space for both of them, forcing their knees to touch. His long hair hung down in a veil between them. “I figured.”

  Clair resisted the urge to lean into him, as she used to. Instead she forced herself to ask the question that mattered most at that moment: “What’s the last thing you remember before the Yard?”

  “New York,” he said.

  Her gut clenched. Not the seastead, then.

  “Which time in New York? When we went there from the flood in Crystal City? Or after the crash?”

  He shook his head, confused. “When Ant Wallace took us prisoner. Before Turner came and the big booth activated. The office.”

  “Where Ray lost his arm?”

  He nodded. “He’s not happy about that, as you can imagine.”

  Clair could imagine it all too well. She felt as though someone had reached into her chest and ripped out her heart.

  That time in New York—the first time he had ever used d-mat—was the worst possible answer. So much had happened since then. Hunting dupes together in Crystal City. The forest at the South Pole. Their cabin in the seastead. The muster, where they had argued and then made up. Their plan . . .

  “Hollowmen,” not “hollow men.”

  He wasn’t the same Jesse she knew.

  She leaned forward and cupped her face in her hands, covering her eyes. Her elbows dug hard into her knees, giving her something else to think about apart from the pain of simply being.

  “Are you all right?” he said. Tentatively, softly, he touched her back and ran his hand down her spine. “Did I say something wrong?”