Chrysalis

by Brendan Reichs

  Baby steps. First, learn to fly.

  I took a deep breath. Lifted the ball from the cradle.

  Gravity fled, but this time I kept my body still. Pushing off lightly with my toes, I rose at a controlled rate. I lifted an arm and waved one hand. I moved left. Aha!

  So the vacuum wasn’t total. I could manipulate my direction in space.

  I began testing limbs to see what they could do. My body slid left and right, then dove, responding to subtle motions. This wasn’t zero gravity, it was something even better—total control over movement in three-dimensional space. “Incredible,” I breathed.

  I was so excited by these discoveries that I didn’t see Gray’s ball until it slammed into my stomach. “Oof.” I dropped to the padded floor. Chuckles echoed across the chamber again.

  “Point to Black. Two–zero.”

  “How many free shots do you usually get?” I shouted, coughing loudly as I struggled to stand. “Cheater!”

  “Get better quick,” Gray called back. “Next one puts you out!”

  I glanced at the ball on the stand, grinding my teeth. I had to change tactics and surprise him somehow, like I’d done in the board game. The problem was, I couldn’t even see him.

  But you can see his ball.

  I snatched my ball and bent nearly double. Then I pushed off hard, shooting up like a cork. Reaching the circle’s edge, I looked down and spotted the other ball floating near the floor. I reared back and threw immediately, was rewarded by a yelp as my ball crashed into something within inches of the other one.

  “Point to White. Two–one.”

  I landed in a crouch like a jungle cat. Snarled to myself.

  “Okay.” Gray’s voice floated across the barrier. “Okay. All right, then.”

  I lifted my ball again but didn’t repeat the move. Instead I shot forward and pressed my back against the divider. As I’d suspected, Gray had rocketed up quickly to meet my anticipated attack. His ball was floating in the center of the circle, but he didn’t see me beneath him.

  He hung a moment too long.

  I spun and pushed off the divider with both feet, throwing my ball nearly straight up at him.

  I heard a string of four-letter words.

  “Point to White. Two–two. Next point will win the contest.”

  Gravity returned and I crashed on my butt, smiling wickedly.

  Dead silence in the chamber. I grabbed the ball and moved forward again, flattening against the divider. I had him off balance and didn’t think he could anticipate me now, but my number one disadvantage was still a problem. He could see me, but I couldn’t see him.

  So solve the problem.

  My eyes popped, then I had to swallow a giggle.

  You’re right, me.

  Solve the damn problem.

  * * *

  • • •

  “Point to White. White wins the contest three–two.”

  I thumped down with a howl of triumph as the lights came on and the divider became invisible once more. Gray was slumped on the ground, his expression one of utter shock. Then he looked at me and his eyes bugged.

  My face went red. “Sorry, dude. Had to do it.”

  Gray covered his face and started to laugh. “Okay, man. You win. Holy crap.”

  “Gotta give a hundred and ten percent, right?”

  I was completely naked, covering myself as best I could. I scurried to where my jumpsuit sat in a heap and hastily pulled it back on. Gray snorted, one hand rubbing his eyes. “I lost, and now I’m blind. Rough day.”

  I was about to quip back when the barrier went solid again, blocking Gray from view.

  “Hello?” I called.

  No answer. He was sealed away as if by a brick wall.

  With a sigh, I turned back the way I’d entered, but there was nothing there. Instead, on the far wall a new door suddenly appeared. “Guess I go this way,” I muttered. The corridor beyond angled back toward the common room where we’d first met Sophia. I stepped through an airlock and found two others waiting at a table.

  “Derrick! Sarah!” I shouted.

  Derrick popped up and greeted me with a hug. Sarah rose, smiling, and gave me a tight little hand-wave. Grinning, I nodded in return, but kept my distance. It was just like that with us, and probably always would be.

  “Man am I glad to see you guys,” I said, meaning every word.

  “You too, bro.” Derrick squeezed my shoulder. “How’d you win the dodgeball matchup? That was sick.”

  I’m sure my face colored. I tried to cover it with a cough. “Oh, you know. Just being quick, I guess.”

  Sarah gave me an odd look, but sat down again, her game face sliding back on. “Derrick and I were guessing, and you showing up kind of confirms it. We think we’ve graduated to a new level or something. Why else release three people together?”

  I glanced around, suddenly on edge. “Just us? Where are the others?” Where’s Min?

  “Did you win both arena games the first time?” Derrick asked.

  I nodded.

  “Same with us. I wonder how many did, though. My last one was close. Maybe we’re just first.”

  That made sense and calmed me down. I tried not to think about what would happen to those who couldn’t win.

  Don’t worry. That’s not Min.

  My thoughts were interrupted by the other airlock opening—the door that wouldn’t budge the day before. Sam walked in and I leapt up to greet him. “Sammy boy!”

  He cracked a rare smile. “Good to see you, too. Seriously.” He nodded to each of us in turn, and we nodded back. Sam was not a hugger.

  “You win out?” Derrick asked.

  Sam shook his head. “I lost the first match. I hate puzzles, and the prick against me was good.”

  “Sam, who’s over there with you?” I asked, holding my breath.

  He rattled off sixteen names, but I heard exactly one. “Min’s okay?”

  “Last I saw. We’re living in that wing.” He pointed back the way he’d come. “I guess you guys are over there?”

  “Yep,” Sarah said. “But that’s only thirty-two people. Where are the others?”

  Nobody knew. Eleven classmates were totally unaccounted for since the Terrarium raid: Spence. Zach. Colleen. Kharisma and Kayla. Cash, Greg, and Jacob. Neb and Isaiah. Emma Vogel. Those kids were just . . . gone. To repurposement? I felt a wave of cold pass through me. It didn’t feel right that no one had seen them aboard the station, not once.

  “We also learned something by accident,” Sam said. “Our class is competing against Nemesis Three for colony spots. Those guys aren’t assured places anymore, and they’ve been losing people in these games, too. They’re really pissed off about it. And get this—Josh Atkins and the Nolan brothers are on their squad now.”

  Derrick huffed loudly. “Those dudes are the worst. Is Cole against us, too?”

  Sam shook his head sadly. “Didn’t make it. We knew the lab flood got Toby, Kyle, and Tucker, but it also killed Cole. The Nemesis Three kids are seething about the four people they lost. That Rose chick is out for blood.”

  Sarah shifted next to me, but I was too despondent to care. Our class had lost seventeen lives inside that stupid hamster bubble. Kids who could’ve been sitting at this table next to me. Then add four from Nemesis Three to the list, people I’d never meet. It was all so senseless I could barely breathe.

  Then it hit me. My gaze darted around the room, then I leaned in close to whisper. “Where’s Tack?”

  Derrick eyes widened. He dropped his voice. “Everyone captured in the hangar ended up in the cells, right?”

  We all silently did the math. “Yes!” Sarah whispered. “Which should mean he wasn’t captured, unless he did something really stupid and got himself killed or repurposed.”

  I frowned
at that. “Really stupid” was Tack’s specialty. But if he were free and loose on the station . . .

  “What about that Cyrus dude?” Derrick asked.

  “He’s back with his class.” Sam snorted. “He made a big show about how we kidnapped him all alone, and forced him to reveal the lake hatchway. He also slipped us the info that the Guardian escaped the raid.”

  I started, unsure how that news should make me feel. It was another asset in the field. “Does Min know?”

  “She knows everything I do.” Sam glanced at me, and there was a trace of . . . something on his face. “One other thing. I was walking back to my room after losing the damn grid game, and I saw a couple of those Nemesis Three punks waiting outside Min’s cell. They were about to go in but wanted me gone first.”

  My pulse spiked. “Has anyone else seen those kids in the living area before?”

  Everyone shook their heads.

  Before I knew it, I was on my feet, racing toward Sam’s portal. I yanked on the handle but it refused to budge. Feeling a panic I couldn’t suppress, I started pounding with both fists.

  “Min? Min!”

  The skin on my left palm split, but I ignored it. Why had they come for her? Where would they take her? The word repurposement gonged inside my head as I left red smudges on the metal.

  Hands grabbed my shoulders. Pulling me back.

  “Where is she, you bastards?!” I shouted. “Let me out of here! Let us all out!”

  My arms dropped. Tears threatened as I slumped to the ground and closed my eyes.

  I let my mind drift, searching for equilibrium. For a quiet place of peace.

  Min.

  Chrysalis had taken Min.

  25

  MIN

  I was led to a spotless interrogation room.

  Two kids from Nemesis Three escorted me, a boy and a girl. I hadn’t encountered them before, and they didn’t respond to my awkward attempt at chitchat. We walked the halls in silence. I didn’t consider resisting. I didn’t know what was happening, good or bad. We reached a nondescript door and I entered alone.

  Table. Chair. I faced a wall that was half seamless white and half mirror. I assumed it was one-way glass. After a seemingly endless period of brooding, I gave it the finger. After another lengthy spell, I couldn’t stop staring at my reflection.

  I looked . . . haggard. My face was thinner than I remembered, with sharper edges. There was a wariness in my eyes I didn’t like—the ghost of a hunted animal lurking behind my placid expression. I’d been sitting in my windowless cell for the last day with no contact from anyone.

  Moments later the door opened and Sophia stepped inside, smiling pleasantly as she walked to the other side of the table. She carried a tablet tucked under one arm. A chair rose from the floor and Sophia sat, waking the device in her hands. She tapped on its surface for a few beats, then looked up at me. Our sole Chrysalis contact retained her ageless quality even in person. I couldn’t tell if she was twenty or forty.

  “Melinda Juilliard Wilder.”

  “That’s me.”

  “You’ve had quite a miraculous showing, Ms. Wilder.”

  I blinked. Blinked again.

  Her smile became coy, as if we shared a secret. “You subverted the rules, both inside the Program and as part of the Terrarium.”

  My temper sparked. “Sorry. I don’t know how property is supposed to act.”

  The woman chuckled. “Oh, don’t apologize. We’ve learned a lot from you. It never occurred to me that someone might destabilize the Guardian of an active Nemesis Program and use that opening to manipulate source code. Needless to say, I’m impressed.”

  I opened my mouth. Closed it. I didn’t have anything to say that would help my situation, and would give nothing away.

  Where’s my father? Do you know he escaped the cargo bay?

  The woman nodded at my restraint. “Inside the Terrarium, you made choices that went against our predictive models. We took painstaking care in its design to keep subjects contained in two places—the island, and a secondary location remote enough to satisfy the need for exploration. We selected the plants, the animals, and the dangers. We chose your food.”

  I felt a burning in my cheeks. “So no sea monsters.”

  Sophia chuckled. “Sadly, no. Turbines and noise machines do the trick nicely.” Then her voice hardened. “But you allowed Tobias Albertsson and his associates to break away from the group, and they in turn brought about disaster. We had no choice but to purge the Terrarium early.”

  “You made a deal with Toby, not me.”

  Sophia pursed her glossy lips. “A miscalculation. I thought he could be a useful tool, but he had delusions of reentering the Program, as if we’d allow that. It made him unreliable. Toby was merely supposed to secure the MegaCom, but instead he tried to play both sides. His delay in reporting back to me proved disastrous.”

  I crossed my arms. “Why work with him at all?”

  “I needed access to the MegaCom, and Sarah Harden was too good with the Nemesis software. She actually closed the system off to Chrysalis, blocking the entire station from all but physical access to its hard drive.” Her face registered disbelief at the affront.

  Pieces snapped together. “So you made a deal with Toby to seal off the lab complex.”

  She nodded. “His team had discovered the rim of the Terrarium anyway. I elected to bring them in and explain things. Offer them a place. It seemed like a neat solution for two problems. I granted him access to Chrysalis so that his group could move around the Terrarium at will, including a secret entrance to the lab from beneath the silo. Nemesis Three provided logistical support. We even drained the lake to complete his admittedly shortsighted cave-in plan to clear the silo of residents. I wanted to keep the experiment going, you see, but in the end I risked too much.”

  Her eyes grew cold. “Toby failed to properly account for some of you, and lives were lost. The MegaCom was destroyed. We’d intended to extract only those living at what you called the Outpost, in hopes that their disappearance would deter further exploration by others and the Terrarium’s fiction could be maintained.” She clicked her tongue. “There were too many of you to begin with. Instead, the whole thing fell apart, and we had to remove everyone. Your class is advancing to the next stage in the process far more quickly than I would’ve liked.”

  My toes curled in my shoes. “What process? What is this place, really?”

  She gave me a look of confusion. “This is Chrysalis. The vessel of all humanity.”

  I sat forward, curiosity winning out over caution. “But where did Chrysalis come from? Who built it? Are you the only humans alive? How can you be here, a million years after the Earth itself died?”

  She laughed. “Which shall I answer first?”

  I tried to calm my breathing. “Where did Chrysalis come from?”

  The woman folded her hands and assumed a professorial tone. “Chrysalis is the final piece of Project Nemesis. Four MegaComs were buried along the spine of the Rocky Mountains as the Dark Star approached. Additionally, and in total secret, a frantic effort was made to create an overseer space station. AI software was written and given autonomy over the project. This allowed raw materials and components to be launched into orbit as time grew short, and the station was constructed while humanity slept.”

  My eyebrows rose. “I don’t understand.”

  The woman smiled patiently. “While the Programs ran under the mountains, Chrysalis was literally building itself in space. A painstaking, diabolically slow process that only a truly independent AI could complete. When the station finally came online, the MegaComs on Earth were nearly depleted. All data was therefore uploaded to Chrysalis, and the remainder of your time was spent aboard here, as the station prepared itself for your regeneration.”

  My head was spinning. “But why a Terrarium?
Why stick us inside a fake Earth bubble in space?”

  “To assess and prepare for the next phase in the process. Colonization. We even made it look like Fire Lake.”

  It all sounded so crazy. A station that built itself in outer space? The idea that we’d been uploaded from the planet like data files . . . My stomach lurched. I put both hands on the table.

  “What about you?” I whispered. “Have you . . . Have people been living up here since . . . forever?”

  The idea gave me vertigo. How long had this been going on?

  Something rippled in the woman’s expression, quickly smoothed over. She shook her head. “No. Like you, the original crew members were preserved as lines of code, stored on a hard drive in the supercomputer Chrysalis was constructing. We’ve only inhabited the station as biological beings for a little more than a century. Our population never surpasses one hundred and fifty. Until recently, we were caretakers with a distinct purpose: to prepare for the conclusion of the Nemesis Programs and the eighty test subjects who would emerge.”

  My head was a sloshing fishbowl. I couldn’t speak. It was all so much bigger.

  The woman tsked again. “Of course, your class exceeded its threshold, didn’t it? All sixty-four codes regenerated, rendering a million years of methodical processing worthless. We’ve had quite a few discussions about that, believe me. Some argued your whole Program run should be flushed into space as contaminants.”

  An icy spike pierced my spine. I glanced at the door.

  Sophia held up a hand. “That idea was rejected. In this situation, a secondary process makes more sense.”

  My worry didn’t ease. “What do you intend to do with us?”

  “Your mission was never false, Min. The Programs were intended to select the strongest candidates for regeneration. Our ultimate purpose remains the salvation of the human species. That purpose can still be achieved.”

  I looked around. “You mean, here? On this station?”

  She shook her head gravely. “This station is a miracle of scientific achievement, but it’s not eternal. Humanity must return to a terrestrial home.”