Hollowgirl

by Sean Williams

“Har har,” said Ronnie.

  Clair didn’t join in. They should be looking for weak spots in the prison. Fooling around was just making it take longer. She was itching to get back to the top and take concrete steps toward escaping the Yard. If there were survivors on the outside, she bet they weren’t cracking jokes.

  She took a final tour through level Z while the others cycled through to the next level down. The other five corridors leading to the cells revealed no air vents, no hatches, no hidden doors. She checked the floors and ceilings too, in case there were access ways that weren’t obvious on the maps, and found nothing. Bad for prisoners, good for everyone else.

  Clair jumped to level Y and found it to be much the same, but with three cell doors open rather than two.

  “It’s creepy,” said Tash. “The Mary Celeste of prisons.”

  “I keep expecting to turn a corner and find all the bad guys waiting to jump out at us,” said Ronnie.

  “Never fear, Ronette,” said Zep. “I’m here to protect you.”

  “What are you going to do? Hit on them?”

  Zep feigned a blow to the heart.

  “I’ll go first this time,” said Clair when they had exhausted the attractions of level Y. There were seventeen levels in total. At this rate it would take them all day to get to level J.

  Level X had been full to capacity. Clair checked the cells through the interface anyway, just in case the hollowmen found a way to hack the fabbers as they had on the seastead. She saw nothing suspicious, and when the others followed her she jumped ahead again, to level W, where six empty cells gaped at her, as impersonal as the rest. The terrible blankness in each one made Clair wonder just how different it would have been even when the prison was full.

  Footsteps sounded from level W’s hub.

  “I’m in here,” Clair called from the sixth empty cell, turning to see who had followed her down.

  No one appeared.

  “Hello?”

  She looked out of the cell.

  The booth was still active. There was no one on that level but her.

  She held her breath, trying not to think of Laughland Rhodesia Lane’s ghost prowling the prison. The cells no longer seemed so empty to her.

  Calling up the interface, she quickly checked through the rest of the cells on level W, open or closed. They were all empty.

  Imagining things, she told herself, or, more likely, glitching again, but she kept her hand on the pistol in her pocket, just in case.

  The booth hissed open. Ronnie emerged, laughing at something one of the others had said. When she saw Clair, her expression clouded.

  “You okay?”

  “I think so,” Clair said. “This place is just freaking me out a little.”

  “Good to see something gets through the armor.” Ronnie pushed her glasses up and looked around. “Maybe we should go back. I’m not convinced there’s a need for this apart from keeping us busy.”

  That was a good point. Clair could see Dylan wanting to get rid of her while WHOLE started work on his next autocratic “solution.” She didn’t want him doing anything without her, because her future was at stake too.

  They hadn’t even started talking about what use an exit would be if there was nothing to connect to on the outside—or whether Dylan would be willing to work with other groups like RADICAL, if they could be found—but already the question of what her life might be like when all this was over weighed heavily on her, with or without Jesse, with or without d-mat, in prison or free. . . .

  “Clair?”

  The cry came from behind them. They spun around to look at the booth. It was closed, processing Tash. The voice hadn’t come from there. It had issued from one of the six corridors that led off from the central hub.

  “You heard that too?” said Clair.

  Ronnie nodded. “Sounds like a glitch. I thought they’d stopped.”

  “Clair,” came the voice again, “can you hear me?”

  Clair slid the pistol out of her pocket, not reassured by the fact that she recognized the voice. She could indeed hear him. That was the problem.

  Devin Bartelme was dead. She had watched him die on the outside of the Yard. And yet here he was, talking to her now, not a recycled memory like the other glitches. All those other memories were significant, plucked from her mind because she remembered them well. This was too trivial to mean anything, except for one thing.

  There was a ghost in the prison, and it was him.

  [23]

  * * *

  “I’M GLITCHING AGAIN,” she bumped to Jesse, Kari, and Q.

  Kari said, “What are you experiencing?”

  Clair told her. “But I don’t remember Devin ever saying that to me. Could it be something new?”

  “It can’t be. He’s dead.”

  “I know. What if he’s alive in here and trying to talk to me?”

  “We’ve seen no sign that anyone from RADICAL made it into the Yard. Maybe it’s a crossed wire, or something new. Keep me up to date. I’m in the middle of something—but this is important too.”

  Clair was glad to hear it. She wasn’t so sure it was just a case of mixed-up memories. If Wallace was messing with them by means of the glitches, they might not be safe anywhere.

  Neither Q nor Jesse responded as Clair peered up the corridor, newly arrived Tash and Ronnie falling in behind her. The hall was empty. One of the cell doors was open, and she approached it warily, keeping the pistol between her and anyone who might appear before her.

  The cell was empty too. No Devin, no Laughland Rhodesia Lane, nothing but echoes.

  “Let’s go back,” said Tash. “I don’t like this.”

  “We can’t,” said Clair, although she didn’t like it either. “This is exactly what we’re looking for. If the source of the glitches isn’t here, it might be on the next level down.”

  “What might be on the next level down?” said Zep from behind them.

  Clair almost shot him. She lowered the gun with shaking hands and shook her head.

  “I think I should keep going alone,” she said.

  “Uh-uh,” said Tash. “That’s not happening.”

  “It’s too slow like this,” Clair said.

  “So we split up,” Tash said. “Go in pairs. You and me on odds, Ronnie and Zep on evens.”

  “What counts as an odd letter?” asked Zep.

  “You know what she means,” said Ronnie. “We’ll take V, these guys can take U. We’ll leapfrog from there down. Last one to the bottom is a rotten egg.”

  Clair looked around level W. Devin’s voice hadn’t returned.

  “All right,” she said. “We’ll go first.”

  Tash and Clair went back to the booth, where Clair insisted on going first. There was nothing untoward waiting for her, and when Tash arrived they thoroughly searched level U and found nothing elsewhere on that level. No one spoke to them. Nothing moved. Tash wanted to chat; Clair could sense her need to pretend that everything was normal as though it was a physical thing, a cloying cobwebby cloud hanging between them. Eventually, Clair simply took her hand, and that went some way to reassuring her. Reassuring both of them, if Clair was honest with herself.

  “We ought to be at school,” Tash said, peering into the second-to-last cell. “I can’t help wondering if anyone is there, if there’s anyone left.”

  Clair had had thoughts like that. “Don’t get stuck on that,” she said. “We can’t do anything about it right now.”

  “I know, but . . .” Tash took back her hand to put her blue hair behind her ears. “What happens after? How many people will there be? How long will it take to rebuild? Who’s going to be in charge? What’ll happen to us?”

  Tash looked to Clair as though for answers. But she didn’t have any, not yet. She assumed the Consensus Court would resume and they would make everything they needed using fabbers, but beyond that she didn’t want to speculate. There were so many steps between now and then that if she tried to map them out she might
freeze.

  “I think this level is clear,” Clair said.

  She felt her friend studying her, appraising her with keen sapphire eyes. Tash wasn’t freaking out. She just wanted to know, and she wasn’t going to give up that easily.

  All Clair had were hopes, based on memories that now seemed very faint.

  “I guess we’ll go back to school,” she said as a kind of concession. “Some kind of normal.”

  “But no more crashlander balls,” said Tash. “Not for you. Perhaps not for anyone, if you have your way and d-mat is banned.”

  “Why would it be banned?” Clair hastened to reassure her friend on that score. “Being an Abstainer doesn’t mean forcing everyone else to give it up. That’s what I think, anyway. And if you hold the balls somewhere I can get to, I’ll still come.” She lightly punched Tash on her bony shoulder. “Promise you’ll let me.”

  Tash nodded, but if she was truly satisfied it didn’t show on her face.

  “S,” she said.

  “Yes what?”

  “Level S is next.”

  “Oh yeah.” Clair tried to hide her relief. Ronnie wanted to rebuke her; Tash wanted reassurance. What would Zep want from her? He was next on the list. “I’ll go on ahead—”

  “No, it’s my turn. I’m sure you’re just glitching, so it doesn’t matter who goes when.”

  Clair couldn’t argue with that, although it was a worry that whatever Q had done to fix the Yard was now unraveling. “All right. I’ll be right behind you.”

  Tash went into the booth and the door closed.

  The silence of level U wrapped around her like an invisible shroud, threatening to smother her. Not wanting to bother Kari again, Clair bumped Q, but received no response. That left only Jesse. She searched for him via the prison interface and found him on the admin level, in a large room that looked like a mess for the guards. There was a fabber, a dozen or more tables, and a scattering of plastic chairs. Jesse was sitting at one of the tables, talking to someone sitting opposite him. Someone with frizzy brown hair.

  Herself.

  Clair hunted for another angle so she could see both their faces. She hadn’t been planning to eavesdrop, but audio was available and she didn’t see the harm in listening in. Not at first.

  “Is that what you think she should have done?” Jesse was saying. “Given up and let Wallace get away with it?”

  “Of course not. Wallace is obviously a psycho and has to be stopped, but that doesn’t make her infallible, or me stupid. I have questions. It’s reasonable to ask them. If you try, though, PK Sargent is all You don’t know what we’re talking about, like no one’s allowed to criticize Clair Two because we weren’t there. But I was there—or would have been, if she’s telling the truth. And I’m telling you, I would never have done those things. Not in a million years.”

  “I don’t think you’re stupid . . . ,” Jesse started to say.

  “I know, but that’s how she makes me feel, ordering us around and only explaining when she feels like it.

  “Clair Two,” said Clair One, “is such a bitch.”

  Clair knew she should look away, but it was far too late for that.

  “Why are you telling me this?” Jesse asked.

  “Because I know you’re not going to blow me off.” Clair One leaned over the table and lowered her voice. “Doesn’t it seem weird to you, how she appears out of nowhere and then suddenly we have to move? It worries me that you and I were perfectly safe before she showed up, but now we’re in a prison miles underground, all in one handy basket. Wallace just has to shut the doors and turn the air off and we’re done. Doesn’t that seem a little too neat for you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jesse. “But I don’t think she’s lying to us.”

  “Are you sure? Do you know her that well?”

  “I think I do. The other me did. I don’t know.” He looked confused. “I know both of you.”

  “Then you know she’s changed,” Clair One said. “She’s not me anymore. She’s someone else. And who knows what side she’s on? It’s not necessarily ours. That’s all I’m saying. We need to watch her, you and me. We need to be ready, just in case.”

  Clair One reached across the table and took Jesse’s hand.

  Clair watched in horror. What was Clair One doing? Had she been turned somehow? Was she a dupe, planning to betray everyone after she’d finished betraying herself?

  But then Clair realized again that from Clair One’s point of view it did make a kind of dark sense. She, “Clair Two,” was the source of the glitches, and from the outside perhaps it could seem as though that made her a likely suspect for treachery.

  Clair One wasn’t being malicious; she genuinely thought she was doing the right thing. She simply had it backward.

  A surge of frustrated fury rose up in Clair unlike anything she had ever felt before. After everything she had done and all the losses she had endured, this was how Clair One repaid her.

  It wasn’t helped by the knowledge that this was why Clair One had volunteered to stay behind—to turn Jesse against her while Clair was busy. Maybe Libby, too. Libby might already have been turned, and all her friends would follow like ducks in a row, while she was stuck down in the dungeons of the prison.

  She wanted to vent her rage into the empty level, but her throat was closed tight as though a fist were clenched around it. She couldn’t even make her eyes move to spell out the words.

  “Are you with me?” Clair One asked Jesse.

  “I think you’re wrong,” Jesse said, pulling his hand away. “She’s not lying. I’d know it.”

  “Okay, then. Say you’re right. Clair Two doesn’t have to be lying to lead the hollowmen right to us. She could be carrying a tracker of some kind—or not even that. Just by existing she’s warping the Yard, making us stand out. Doesn’t that make her dangerous? Aren’t we better off without her?”

  “We’re not kicking her out on her own,” Jesse said. Clair told herself to be glad for that, but she could hear the uncertainty in his voice. If Clair were Jesse, she would have been remembering her attempts to be close to him, to appeal to his emotions and perhaps cloud his judgment. He would wonder. It was only natural. Clair One was making sense.

  “Okay,” Clair One said. “But keep your eyes open. And be careful. If something does go down, and you’re with her, you’ll be right in the line of fire.”

  “I can handle myself.”

  “I mean it, Jesse. We only have one shot at saving the world. She’s had hers, and look what happened. It’s lucky anyone survived.”

  Clair felt her cheeks growing hot as her fury turned to remorse and shame. Unable to bear any more, she stopped watching, stepped into the booth, and jumped to level S.

  [24]

  * * *

  TASH WAS STANDING outside, dancing from one foot to the other.

  “S for ‘spooky,’” she said. “I don’t like this level.”

  Clair forced herself to concentrate on what was happening right in front of her, not eight levels above. All the cells were open, and that made the echoes of their movements more unsettling. It sounded like there were four of them or more, moving about the level in all directions. Clair kept glancing over her shoulder, expecting to see someone there, but there was never anything or anyone. Just a feeling that something was getting closer. That someone was looking for her.

  “It’s empty here,” Tash eventually said. “I’m positive.”

  “Good. Let’s just move on to level Q. The sooner it’s done, the sooner we can do something real.” She heard the bleakness in her voice and wished she felt otherwise. Listen to yourself, she thought. Saving the world would be so much easier if everyone didn’t keep getting in the way? That’s the kind of thing Kingdon would say. “Do you want to go first?”

  “I think we should go together. The booth was designed for big, beefy guards. I bet we can both fit in.”

  It was true, but only barely. Clair was reminded of squeezing into the
flooded booth in Crystal City.

  As they waited for the machines to work, Clair asked, “Do you think I’m a bad person?”

  Tash shifted awkwardly, but in the cramped confines of the booth there was no escaping the question.

  “I think you’re Clair Hill,” she said, “and I don’t think Clair Hill’s a bad person, so why would I think you’re a bad person?”

  “You don’t think I’ve changed?”

  “Not that much.” The look Tash gave her was almost painfully shrewd from this close up. “It’s bizarre. You’re both asking the same questions. It makes me wonder how well you knew yourself in the first place.”

  It was Clair’s turn to feel uncomfortable.

  The door hissed open, and there was Devin right in front of her, a small figure with wispy red hair dressed in a black Nehru-collared suit with one hand upheld, as though telling her to stop.

  “Cunctando,” he said. His voice was faint, as though coming to her from a great distance. “Cunctando regitur mundus!”

  Then another person pushed through him—a woman no taller than Clair, with Asian features and thick black hair. Her expression was glowering, full of wrath.

  “Do it, Clair! Do it!” said Mallory Wei.

  Tash screamed. Clair fired once, twice, the gun instantly in her hand. Bullets slammed into the far wall of level Q, throwing sparks but hurting no one. Both visions, both glitches were gone, and Clair and Tash were alone, ears ringing from the sound flung back at them in the enclosed space, Clair breathing fast through her open mouth and Tash hanging on to her.

  “Who were they?” Tash gasped.

  “Data ghosts,” Clair said shakily.

  “Yes, but who?”

  Clair didn’t answer immediately. First she sent Kari, Q, and Jesse a message saying that she had seen first Devin and then Mallory—Ant Wallace’s wife, who had murdered Libby along with the many other young women whose bodies she had briefly occupied.

  “Clair?” Tash said.

  “They’re people who won’t stay dead.”

  They stepped out of the booth and it immediately closed behind them, processing another person. All of Clair’s senses were tingling. She felt as though eyes were watching her from all directions—and that was true in the sense that she had the prison’s attention now. Dylan Linwood was watching, and so was his son. Jesse bumped her, but she didn’t reply, telling herself she needed to concentrate, but really she just didn’t know what to say to him.