by C. J. Hill
“Ah,” he said, remembering something. “You were supposed to eat as soon as you woke up. That’s probably why you don’t feel well. I was instructed to give you this. . . .” He patted one pocket of his tweed jacket, then another, and then finally pulled out two cellophane packages containing oatmeal cookies. He handed them to her.
Curious, she opened one. She sniffed the cookie, put it to her teeth. It smelled authentic. It felt right. She had eaten only half of her last meal bar, and her mouth was already watering. She bit into the cookie and tasted the familiar flavor. She took another bite, savoring it. “Taste, smell, and feel,” she said. “You’re good. Are you accessing the memories I already have or are you able to duplicate them somehow?” She took another bite. “Actually I don’t care. Either way, I’m eating both cookies.”
Dr. Branscomb took her gently by the arm. “Come back with me. You’ll feel like yourself again soon.”
She shook him off and kept walking. “Since this isn’t real, it doesn’t have any calories, does it?” She took another bite and munched it happily. “This is probably the twenty-fifth century’s best invention.”
Dr. Branscomb took her arm again, slowing her. “I can’t let you go off when you’re not in your right mind. You’re liable to hurt yourself.”
A breeze ruffled through her hair. It felt so natural. She could hear the chatter of the students around her, the thud of their footsteps.
“Come back with me,” Dr. Branscomb said more firmly, “or I’ll have no recourse but to call campus security.”
“I’m sure you will.” She stopped then and looked around. “It doesn’t matter though. I can’t escape. I’m still back in my room, aren’t I?”
“You ate food,” he said in exasperation. “Doesn’t that prove to you this is real? You don’t taste things in dreams.”
“Can we go to Smokey’s? I’m craving a cheeseburger.”
He hesitated, didn’t answer.
“You told me I’m supposed to eat. I’ll think much better after I have a cheeseburger.”
Dr. Branscomb forced a smile and let go of her arm. “Very well. I’ve got my wallet with me.”
They started toward the University Center and Sheridan ate both her cookies without feeling full, which she supposed was a drawback to the VR programs. She reached out and touched the smooth, delicate leaves on the bushes. She ran her fingertips over the cold metal of the lampposts they passed. Those felt real enough, but the program couldn’t take away what she already felt—hunger.
“Did you make this place for me or for you?” she asked Dr. Branscomb.
“What do you mean?” he replied, although she imagined he already knew.
“It’s so complete. It must have taken a really long time to program all of these things in. I bet you’re lonely for Knoxville, aren’t you? You made this before I got here.”
He laughed and it seemed good-natured, not like the laugh of a person who wanted to hurt her. “I shouldn’t be surprised at anything you say. Marion Jensen—you know him, he’s one of my graduate students—he took the pill and was convinced the CIA was trying to kill him.” Another forced chuckle. “You’ll be embarrassed by this later.”
“You probably come here a lot,” she went on. “You can program in every girl who ever dumped you, and they all love you now. The Nobel Prize committee stops by to tell you that you won, and you can kill off Dr. Branscomb and everyone else who ever ticked you off.”
Some of the humor dropped from his voice. “Those are the sorts of statements that make meds think you’re unbalanced. You wouldn’t want to be taken in for an evaluation, would you?”
She kept walking. “The twenty-first-century term is doctors, not meds. And you forgot the dirt.”
He looked at her grimly. “What are you talking about?”
“The parking lot,” she said, pointing to one they were passing. “It’s been so long since you’ve seen a parking lot, you forgot what they’re like. See how clean that is? No cracks, no litter, no oil stains or bird droppings. Which reminds me, you forgot the birds too. They should be chattering in the distance.” She turned her attention from the pavement to his clenched jaw. “That’s probably why you can’t get your QGPs to work. You overlook the importance of the little details.”
Dr. Branscomb sent her a venomous glare, and then she was back in her cell again, groggy, half asleep, and without the taste of oatmeal cookies in her mouth.
It felt like that first virtual reality trip had taken place a long time ago. It hadn’t, though. She was losing track of time. It was hard to keep the days straight when you went to bed in one reality and woke up in another one. It was hard to keep anything straight.
Sheridan heard footsteps in the hallway outside her cell. It happened often enough. Usually the footsteps kept going by. This time they stopped, and her cell door slid open.
Chapter 21
Allana lay on the roof of the second building, staring vacantly upward. She looked younger that way, Echo decided. He was so used to seeing her with expressions of coyness or sophisticated disregard, she hardly seemed real without them. Xavier held the restorer box over her, shooting out beams to relax her muscles. She blinked, grimaced, and let out a small moan.
Echo’s first impulse was to help her up. He didn’t, though. He didn’t have that role anymore. He finished peeling off his overalls and left her to Xavier.
“You’ll need to take off the science uniform,” Xavier told Allana, unfastening her harness. “When we go inside this building, we need to blend in with the crowd.”
She sat up, looking around. “Where are we?”
“On top of the courthouse building,” Xavier said. He’d taken off his overalls and slipped Echo’s old shirt on. He took a bag from his pack, one lawyers might use to carry evidence. He put everything else inside it.
Unsteadily, Allana got to her feet. “The courthouse building?” she repeated incredulously. “Why did you take us here? There are kilos of Enforcers in the courthouse.”
Xavier helped her with her overall fasteners, hurrying her to get rid of them. “The Enforcers here were probably the first ones called to help out at the Scicenter. Hopefully most of them are gone.”
Echo dropped his overalls on the roof. Taylor had already shed her pair, and he couldn’t help notice how nice she looked out of them. Butterflies glimmered across her shirt and tight-fitting pants. The flowers around her eyes matched those tucked underneath the leaves of her clothes. Wearing that outfit, she reminded him even more of one of the woodland fairies he’d read about in historical documents.
He watched her pull her hair from its holder and shake it loose. It fell around her shoulders in emerald-green waves. It made him happy somehow that Taylor was pretty. It was as if the universe was reminding him that Allana wasn’t the only woman to be admired. Taylor was attractive, intelligent, and from the twenty-first century, which made her intriguing too. If she hadn’t been so quick to shoot people, she would be a good candidate for helping him get over Allana. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Allana staring at him. She’d seen him smiling and had followed his gaze. Her eyes narrowed at Taylor.
Allana stepped toward Taylor angrily. “You stunned me.”
Taylor took her belt from her overalls and rethreaded it around her pants. “I admit it. I’m a stunning sort of girl.”
Echo laughed. Allana didn’t. She turned and glared at him.
“Stunning used to mean ‘gorgeous,’” Echo said.
Allana pulled off the rest of her overalls and threw them to the ground. “How nice. You can talk in code.” She scowled at Taylor. “Where did you come from, anyway? You have a weird accent.”
“Someplace you’ve never heard of.” Taylor took the rank badge from her overalls and pressed down on the top; the number changed to 4,258. She stuck the badge on her shirt, nestling it under a fluttering butterfly.
Allana gaped at the new number. “Those are fake rank badges.”
“Brilliant,”
Taylor said. “I bet you get your rank points from your IQ.”
“If anyone stops us,” Xavier said while he changed the number on his badge, “hopefully our ranks will make them think twice about detaining us.” He took a badge out of his pack and handed it to Echo. It read: 1,091.
Taylor bent down and picked up Helix’s rank badge from Allana’s discarded overalls. She tossed it to Allana. “Look, now you’re good enough to be with the rest of us.”
Allana put the badge on her shirt. “What’s your real rank?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Taylor said.
Echo could tell she meant it, and he somehow found that the most attractive thing about her. She was confident enough about herself that she didn’t need a number to prove anything.
“You know, rank used to be an adjective,” Taylor went on. “A fitting one.”
Allana didn’t say anything, probably because she didn’t know what Taylor meant. Echo thought about it and laughed. Rank had once meant that something smelled awful.
Xavier motioned for everyone to follow him, and the group headed quickly along the edge of the building toward the roof’s maintenance door. “Once we’re inside,” Xavier told Echo and Allana, “we’ll go down a hallway to the stairwell. If no one is there, we’ll take the stairs to the ground floor. If someone is waiting for the elevator, I’ll decide whether it’s better to ride with them or to pretend we forgot something and don’t need the elevator after all. Once we’re outside, we’ll pick up a crystal. . . .” Xavier felt along his belt for his comlink, then realized he didn’t have it anymore. “Taylor, call for a car, then check the sensor to see if anyone is near the other side of the maintenance door. We can’t let anyone see us come in this way.”
Without breaking stride, Taylor took out her comlink and did both tasks.
“Where are we going after this?” Allana asked, panting again.
Xavier craned his head to see the scanner results on Taylor’s comlink. “To the postmission contact spot.” He added under his breath, “Hopefully it’s the same place in this timestream.”
“We’re not going there yet,” Taylor said. “Not until I hear from Joseph and he’s told me what I want to know about pots and kettles.”
“What’s a kettle?” Xavier asked.
Taylor didn’t answer. She went back to checking the sensor.
Echo answered for her. “A kettle was a twentieth-century device for boiling water. Don’t ask me why Taylor wants to talk to Joseph about them.”
“She’s neurofailed,” Allana said.
Definitely not. Anyone who could do the programming he’d seen at the Scicenter had a mind that was half computer, half art.
They’d reached the maintenance door. While Xavier used the disabler to unlock it, Allana adjusted the heel of her jewel-encrusted shoe. “These aren’t styled for running,” she muttered. “People aren’t styled for running. We’re all going to be shot, and the only thing that will have changed is that now I’m sweaty and tired.”
Had Allana always been this whiny? Echo ignored the impulse to ask her if she had better escape plans.
Xavier opened the door, and they went down the ramp to the top floor, slowing their pace to a casual walk. Echo tried to breathe normally. His chest still rose and fell too fast. Everyone’s did.
The hallway looked like a typical office walkway. In between the rows of closed doors, the hallway displayed building announcements, newsfeeds, city updates, and message links. He saw a flashing evacuation notice for the grounds around the Scicenter. The building was in lockdown, and any people found in the area would be immediately stunned. No notices about this building were posted. The Enforcers must not have realized yet that the group had left the Scicenter.
All the office doors on this floor had high-security locks, which meant this wasn’t where the public usually went. The building’s alarms weren’t sending out a warning that unclearanced people were in the hallway, but if anyone saw them, they might still be questioned.
Up ahead, a couple of people walked from one room to another. Echo could hear the murmur of voices coming from a few open doors. Any moment someone would look over and see them. What sort of story had Xavier and Taylor prepared if they were stopped? If Taylor spoke, people would know she wasn’t from Traventon.
Against his will, Echo began adding up the criminal offenses he was now guilty of. Even if the government never connected the Scicenter break-in to this group, they could still be charged for blocking their crystals, being on an unauthorized floor, having weapons—sangre, even having a comlink with a scanning sensor was enough to make the city give them memory washes. With the other things added in, the sentence would be death—probably the public kind to set an example.
At a cross point in the hallway, Xavier motioned to the right. “This way.”
Wordlessly they followed him down the corridor. The group hadn’t even made it around the first corner when they ran into a man and a woman walking the other way. The two were talking about a case, but they stopped when they saw the group coming toward them.
The woman looked them up and down with disapproval. “Do you have an appointment with someone?” Without waiting for an answer, she added, “Where is your escort?”
Xavier didn’t slow down. He tapped his rank badge. “I am the escort.”
The woman swallowed, stepped aside, and let them go by. Echo waited for someone else to call after them, to come after them. The only footsteps he heard were their own. The group passed a couple of men. Both of them openly appraised Taylor. Not all that strange, Echo supposed. She was pretty and walked with a confident stride, the swagger high rankers always had. That was bound to bring attention, but neither man said anything to the group.
They came to the elevator just as the door slid open for a man waiting there. Echo looked to Xavier to see what he would do. Was it safer to make up an excuse not to take the elevator or to ride with the man?
The man was in his thirties, with the untoned physique of someone who spent too much time sitting in meetings. His curly blue hair sat on top of his head like a pile of bubbles. Not much of a threat.
Xavier followed the man into the elevator. Good; this would be much faster than the stairs, and Echo wasn’t in the mood to hear any more of Allana’s complaints.
He shuffled into the elevator with the others. Allana’s face was still flushed and sweaty, making it look like she’d added splotchy red patches to her makeup. She pushed her hair away from her face and looked around with annoyance. Before, he had only seen her in situations she controlled. Now that they were in danger, her faults were compiling into an unignorable list. She was ungrateful. Unhelpful. Uneverything.
The man lifted his crystal to the control panel, and Echo silently willed him to choose the main floor. Instead the man chose the eighth subterranean floor. Not only a restricted floor, but one eight stories underground.
The man waited for someone in Echo’s group to choose a floor. Xavier smiled at him blandly. “We’re going to sub eight too.”
The door slid closed. As soon as the elevator began to move, Xavier made a slight motion to Taylor, a flick of his hand. She had positioned herself behind the man and now unclipped the laser box from her belt.
Echo knew what they were planning. They would stun the guy, then use his crystal to choose the ground floor instead.
The man didn’t notice Taylor. He was surveying Echo. “You look familiar. . . .” His gaze went to Echo’s rank badge, then back to his face. “We’ve worked together on a case, haven’t we?”
Echo gave an apologetic smile. “No.”
Taylor pushed the button on her laser box. It clicked but didn’t fire. She pressed it again. Nothing happened.
Odd. That shouldn’t happen unless—it was only then that Echo noticed the red blinking lights rimming the elevator—unless the courthouse had installed his laser-disrupter design inside the building.
Sangre. Today was going to be filled with ironies. Joseph had told
Echo that if he ventured into disabling engineering, he would regret it one day. Echo had known his brother was right; he just never figured today would be that day.
The Prometheus Project had been Echo’s assignment from the Dakine, the assignment that would guarantee him enough credits to set his rank for life. It was named after the Greek god who stole fire, because that’s what the Dakine wanted to do—steal the Enforcers’ fire. Or at least keep their laser boxes from firing. Dakine engineers had been working on a disabler for the last two years and hadn’t succeeded.
Echo hadn’t exactly wanted to make the disabler work for the Dakine. That would have been foolishly dangerous, but he had wanted to make it work for himself. He had wanted to prove he could do it, that he could figure out the invention without Joseph’s help. And Echo had wanted to have a disabler to protect himself from Enforcers. After all, if they found out he’d joined the Dakine, he would be given a memory wash.
Besides, how could Echo resist the opportunity to read through two years of research, testing, and trials? Then, like every other invention Echo had ever worked on, he hadn’t been able to keep from asking for Joseph’s help. Echo knew if he could brainstorm design theories with someone who understood the more intricate parts of physics, math, and engineering, he’d be able to come up with solutions.
And together, they had. They’d come up with not one but two different ways to shut a laser box down. Joseph favored a blast that would destroy a laser box’s inner mechanisms. Echo’s way was more refined: a field that temporarily absorbed the laser box’s energy and left the box itself intact.
Echo hadn’t told the Dakine he had figured out a way to make the Prometheus Project work. He’d enjoyed the Dakine lifestyle, knowing he had another year or two before the Dakine became frustrated with his lack of progress. And in a couple of years anything could change.
