by Damien Boyes
The bags help but slamming into the building still hurts like hell, throws me forward against the restraints and sloshes my organs around. The hopper stays perpendicular to the roof for a second then tips back down and slams on its underside, rattles my vertebrae around.
My chest is aching and my head’s spinning but we’re still alive. I check on Fin-in-Dora and she’s looking back at me—I’m looking back at me. Jesus.
With the hopper’s computer back on, Eka immediately gains control, tries to fire up the turbines and fling us off his roof, but we’re not going anywhere. The motors screech for a second then die.
We made it. Hopefully we can still walk.
The passenger side door is buckled but I get mine open and we both crawl out of the wreck and onto the black roof, dragging our weapons and the extra ammo with us. We’re shaky as we stand but we’re both in one piece.
Fin-in-Dora takes the immediate lead and I raise my rifle and follow, covering her. Eka will know we’re here, he’ll be coming for us. So far I’ve been invisible to him, but I’d bet that doesn’t extend to Dora’s skyn. He’ll have watched the hopper approach, set contingency plans in motion long before we initiated the crash. Something will be waiting for us.
The building’s rooftop door looks heavy-duty but I’ve still got a half satchel of doorknockers. A couple of those will get us in. Fin-in-Dora stops a few metres away from the door with her gun raised, ready to shoot should anything come out. I move forward to set the explosives, but the door opens before I can get close.
I dart to the side and lower to a crouch, keeping the solid door between whoever’s emerging and me. Fin-in-Dora fixes her eyes down the sights and waits for a clear shot.
The door swings a few centimetres then no further.
“Doralai Wii,” a man’s voice says from the other side. “Born February 23rd, 1970, in Namyangju, Korea. You obtained a degree in engineering, but married instead of seeking employment and secretly regretted it for many years. This morning, you had an egg over rice for breakfast.”
The door pushes open and both of us tighten the grips on our weapons, our fingers curled around the triggers, and watch as a short Asian man steps out. He’s unarmed, hands at his sides. He scans the roof—passes his eyes right over me—and looks squarely at Fin-in-Dora.
I see Fin-in-Dora thinking, she opens her mouth to say—what? What would I say in her place?
I’ve got Eka’s skyn dead in my weapon’s sights, I could pull the trigger and we’d be past him and inside, but instead I wait, let this play out.
“Finally, the Void’s assassin,” the man says and I feel Fin-in-Dora resist a look over at me, trying not to give my presence away yet. “I have expected you.”
“Then let’s get this over with,” Dora-in-Fin says.
The Asian’s dark eyebrows narrow, scanning infinite horizons in half a second. He blinks. Nods. “So be it,” he says. “Come. It’s time for this to end.”
He turns and retreats through the doorway, leaving it open for us to follow.
Eka is inviting us in.
StatUS-ID
[fdaa:9afe:17e6:a2ef::Gage/-//GIBSON]
SysDate
[07:02:52. Monday, January 20, 2059]
I wake up on the floor, my face pressed into the rough carpet. I’m alive.
Dora—I’m—sitting on the bed, head bowed, a gun in her—my hand. That’s me in her body. I’m in Dora right now—Fin-in-Dora.
There’s no Fragment, maybe never was. This whole time it’s been me. The other me, the first me. Finsbury.
I remember it all. He may not be in my head anymore, but he left his memories behind. He forced his way into Dora’s body as a last-ditch plan to get to Eka and wound up trapped there.
All this, everything that’s happened over the past few days—my restoration, Dub attacking me, the shooting at the Fāngzhōu—all of it was part of his plan to get back into my head, back into his head, and he’d won.
A shudder of realization quivers through me, like I just avoided stepping off a cliff in the dark. I was a good as dead—or overwritten, anyway. I felt him enter me, felt his thoughts invade my mind and take control. For a few moments, I was him.
He’d succeeded, was elated to be back home, ready to finish what he’d started and walk away with my mind and my life intact. But his plan included killing Dora, a Dora I’ve never met but now know intimately because of the memory residue he left behind, and found he couldn’t go through with it. He didn’t anticipate that when he reintegrated his memories with mine, he might not think the same anymore. He didn’t account for the fact that I’d still be in there with him.
He thought he could come back and return to his old life, but he and I, we aren’t the same anymore. My Cortex triggered on his rithm as harmful and overwrote it. What ever it is I became last time, whatever he is now, we’re different enough that our minds are incompatible. He can’t come back. He’s too far gone.
I straighten and sit and squeeze my eyes shut against the images in my head, my mind awash in the debris of a life I never lived.
Miranda and Tala were suspicious of Dora’s strange behaviour after the first me took control of Dora’s body. He believed they were going to go to the police, so he somehow got into got Miranda’s head, stabbed her husband to death then walked her skyn out a window to make it look like a murder/suicide. Then he used Tala’s skyn to rip off an underground scaflab, killing everyone inside, and making off with a bundle of cashcards to pay for his own restoration. My restoration, arranged anonymously through Saabir.
I’ve been chasing my tail, wondering who brought me back, and refused to even for a second entertain the most obvious answer: it was me.
Who the hell is he?
More importantly, who the hell am I?
“What am I supposed to do now?” DoraFin says without looking up.
I bite down on every hateful thing I want to say, every accusation, and try to stay calm. He still has Dora’s body and her mind must be trapped in there with him. “You can let Dora back into her head,” I suggest.
“I’ll die,” she answers.
“Good.”
She raises his head and rests her eyes on me, her lids heavy. “You think I didn’t try?” she says. “I wanted to. Over and over. For the first week, every six hours when xY’s shyft was about to expire and let Dora’s rithm overwrite mine, I’d tell my self I’d let it happen, quit fighting. But I couldn’t—couldn’t let myself die.”
“Why don’t you give me the gun and when Wiser gets here, you can explain that to him,” I say, hoping she’ll accept reason. “Maybe there’s still a way to transfer you out safely.”
“To a stock?” she says. “You know as well as I do, I can’t have that.”
I do. She isn’t going to give up.
“I should shoot you,” she says. “Get out here and arrange for another restoration. Try again with the next version. I’ll need to find someone to tweak Cole’s shyft so I don’t get kicked out again, but I’ve learned what works now. I’ve been patient this long, I can do it again.”
“But I’m you,” I say. “You’d kill yourself?”
“If I have to,” she replies, feigning defiance.
“I don’t believe it,” I say and she doesn’t argue, instead she rises, keeping the gun low but between us, and moves toward the door.
“I’m leaving,” she says. “Don’t try to follow me.”
“What’s the plan here?” I ask. “You’re made. You won’t get out of the city in that skyn.”
“I still have resources. I can go north, get to Churchill. Find a boat. A goodlooking girl like me? Don’t worry, I’ll get out of the city.”
“I won’t let you go on hijacking people’s minds.”
Fin-in-Dora scrunches up his face, amused. “You don’t have a choice. I don’t want to shoot you—but I will if you try to stop me.”
“This isn’t you,” I say. “You felt that the same as I did, when we were connected. Your
own mind rejected you. Give yourself up. You know it’s the right thing to do.”
Fin-in-Dora takes a breath as though considering it, but shakes her head.
“Maybe I can’t have my old mind back,” she says as she backs through the door. “But I’m not ready to die either.” Then she spins and bolts off down the hallway toward the stairs.
I leap to my feet and race after her but slam the side of my head into the door when it doesn’t open ahead of me.
Shit. She locked it from the outside.
I have to fumble the lock open manually, and I can’t figure which way the handle’s supposed to turn. I twist it and kick the door until I finally hit the right combination and it slides open and I tear off after her.
She went for the stairs, I can catch her. She isn’t that far ahead of me.
Wiser will be here any second and no way she can outrun a hopper on foot. I just need to keep her in sight.
I twist down the floors, taking the steps four at a time. I’m still on seven when the fire door clangs open below me. Fin-in-Dora’s outside. I can’t let her slip away.
Moving as fast as I can it still takes too long to reach the ground floor. I pop through the exit and out to the lawn at the east side of the building. The predawn sky is an inky blue overlaid with the Reszlieville skyline, like precious stones shimmering on velvet.
I don’t see her. It’s 50/50, Did she run north toward the city or south toward the lake?
The lake will limit her options, but it’s the less obvious choice. What would I do?
North. To keep my options open.
I cut left and race toward the front of the building. Gunshots pop before I arrive at the corner and as I round the edge of the building to the circular drive I see Wiser stumble backwards into his hopper and fall to his knees, struggling to draw his Service weapon. He finally frees it from the holster but before he can fire Fin-in-Dora has cut around the other side of the building and out of sight.
His target gone, Wiser falls forward, struggling to breathe. I don’t see any blood, but even with a stopsuit, close-range shots can crack ribs.
I reach him and ease him back up straight and he sucks in a breath.
“She shot me,” Wiser says, confused. Of course he’s confused. The woman he was racing here to save just shot him.
“It wasn’t her,” I say. “He was inside her too, all this time, had me completely fooled.”
“Eka’s fragment has her?” Wiser asks, his face tight.
No, not the fragment. There is no fragment. I wonder if there ever was. For a second, I consider telling him the truth about who’s inside Dora, that it’s me, a copy of myself I made to help assassinate Eka, but where would I even start? I nod instead of confessing, but can’t look at him when I do.
“Go,” Wiser says. His breathing is ragged but he waves me away. “Get her.”
I leave him and sprint after Fin-in-Dora and as I hit the driveway at the other corner of the building I have to dive aside as she screams by on my motorcycle. I barely get out of her way in time, land hard on my shoulder, roll, and watch my ride—the one I’d never told anyone the start-up code for—turn onto Spadina Ave., and open up the throttle, heading north.
I’m gonna lose her.
I turn back to Wiser and he’s still on his knees, clutching his chest with his face all twisted up in pain.
“She’s getting away,” I yell as I run back to him.
Wiser sees me coming and struggles to his feet, swings back to get on his hopper.
“Get off of there,” I say as I reach his side and plant my hand on his shoulder. “You’re in no condition to ride.”
Wiser tries to pull away but his prosthetics whirr without any force behind them. He’s on the edge of consciousness. Can barely walk, let alone fly a hopper.
“I’ll let the pilot drive,” he says, but doesn’t fight me as I help him off the seat. I get him away from the rotors and down on the grass, have him put his head between his knees. Sirens wail in the distance. The Standards AMP will have seen Wiser’s vitals drop. Medical is on the way.
“Authorize me,” I say as I climb onto the hopper and lean over the dark controls. “I’m going after her.”
Wiser lifts his head and shakes it. “I can’t,” he says. “Regulations.”
“What do regulations say about letting that thing get away?” I say. “Ack me.”
He sighs but considers for a long moment then says, “Command override: Wiser, Galvan. Authorize current rider.” The control display springs to life and I start the engine warm-up. “You know how to drive one of those things?” Wiser asks, his voice straining to be heard over the rising turbines.
“Sure,” I lie. I haven’t piloted one of these since the Service training course years ago, but I’m sure it’ll come back to me. “I’ll let the autopilot handle the rough stuff.”
The turbines hit cruising rotation and the hopper bucks into the air. I’m not square on the seat and lurch to the right and have to frantically tighten my grip on the steering handles as the hopper pulls back level before finally stabilizing on its cushion of air.
“I’ll have back-up on your position in minutes,” Wiser yells. “When they arrive, you are to disengage.”
I nod and twist the controls to spin in place. Wiser turns his head against the dust flung up by the turbines. “Promise me, Fin,” he repeats, his face serious.
Wiser’s risking a lot here, letting me go, giving me access to Service equipment. Even under the circumstances, even with a superintelligence on the loose, trusting me could cost him his job. I can’t fuck with that.
“I’ll disengage,” I say, lean forward, ease out of the driveway and pick up speed as I pull up over the traffic, racing above Spadina, chasing a copy of my former self who’s occupying the body of the woman I was about to run away with.
Everything I feared about myself, everything I was terrified of discovering when I first came back—the reality of why I’d thrown my life away, the reason behind the disgrace I’d become—it turns out the truth is far worse than I feared.
I became something horrible, something without remorse, existing only for itself. I can’t let it get away, to keep terrorizing people. No matter what happens, I have to stop it.
StatUS-ID
[a646:d17e:8670:511f::Finsbury/D//GAGE]
SysDate
[18:51:52. Saturday, May 11, 2058]
We’re in.
Fin-inDora and I follow one of Eka’s skyns--a barefoot Asian man wearing a pair of simple black pants and white dress shirt--down a flight of narrow switchback stairs and through another door into a room that stretches out across the entire triangular top floor of the building. The space is open from window to window to window, with a 360 degree view of the city through one-way glass—either that or livewalls are replicating the view. I can’t tell.
The sightlines are blocked only at the building’s corners by two more doors identical to the one behind us. Probably more stairwells leading down into the building.
The room is artfully and indirectly lit. Soothing music shimmers in the air, an evolving ambient score of synth and piano accompanied by a man on a large drum shaped like two horns stuck together and woman in a long red gown strumming a helically stringed instrument I’ve never seen before—one I’m pretty sure doesn’t exist outside this room, because the woman needs all four of her arms to play it.
Across the room, another couple dances with bones of rubber, entwined with an alien precision that shudders an uncanny revulsion up my back.
We’re in some kind of museum or gallery. Works of art in paint and pencil and clay and glass are perched on simple wooden pedestals around the room, everything from a rudimentary coloured sketch of a sunset to a marble bust of a woman I recognize as Amit’s mother. The likeness is perfect, her loving eyes forever captured in stone. Some pieces are so beautiful, I can feel them calling to me. Others are so twisted and horrible, I can’t look away no matter how much I want to.
/> A gigantic rainbow-hued gnarl of light floats in the centre of the room, a billion individual glowing filaments curling and writhing around each other like living things. Fractal explosions extrude from its surface, erupting out into independent spheres that sprout more spheres that sprout more spheres.
It takes a second, but I finally realize what this is: it’s Eka.
This is Eka’s mind made visual. A projection of his thoughts translated into pulsing light.
His masterpiece, on display.
Our guide leads Fin-in-Dora forward and I follow just behind, keeping my footsteps light. I don’t know if Eka really can’t tell I’m here or if he’s ignoring me. Last time he was able to figure out where I was easily enough. He could be leading us into a trap, but at this point I don’t much care.
We’re in, that’s all that matters. The second I feel even the slightest bit off I’ll go back to Plan A and start shooting everything that moves. Either we get to Eka or we won’t, but if we don’t have to fight my way to him all the better.
As we grow closer to the shimmering projection I notice something odd—a black ooze slithering amid the rippling colours like a streak of living decay on the hunt.
The guide stops in front of the radiant sphere and turns to face Fin-in-Dora, still apparently unaware I’m tagging along. I move off to the side, out toward the woman playing her stringed instrument and the dark-skynned man behind her. Neither of them have looked up, haven’t wavered from their focussed playing since we walked in. The dancers continue through their gyrations. We’re surrounded now. Two on each side, one ahead of us.
If I were about to spring a trap, now would be the time.
“I anticipated your arrival,” the man says. His voice is calm. Borderline soporific. “The probabilities dictated this moment would occur.”
“Then why don’t you show yourself and we can get this over with,” Fin-in-Dora says, startling me. We’d been sync up until now, but it hadn’t even crossed my mind to say that. I’m concentrating on staying hidden and she’s on point. Our minds are already moving in different directions.
