A Trick of Light

by Stan Lee

  “I’m not done here,” Six says, but he sounds unsure.

  Kapur shakes her head curtly. “Now.” She looks at Cameron and lowers her voice. “Nia?” she asks, softly.

  Cameron’s eyes dart toward Six as he shakes his head. Kapur’s eyes narrow, but she seems to understand; she turns and points behind her, down the hall, speaking again at a normal volume. “We are leaving.”

  Cameron hesitates. Something about Kapur’s gaze is unsettling.

  “I don’t think they’ll just let us walk out—” he begins.

  “You think correctly,” Six interjects, his tone almost pleasant, and Kapur’s eyes dart again.

  “You were unwise,” she says, “to interfere.” She glares at the doctor, who gazes back at her with open curiosity.

  “Well,” he says, and lunges at them.

  * * *

  With a hiss, Kapur dodges Six’s outstretched hands, sliding away along the wall with surprising speed. Cameron stumbles backwards instinctively, four quick steps, but no wall stops his progress; he’s passed through the open door and is standing in the hallway outside. For a moment, he hesitates—and the door slides closed in his face.

  Dr. Kapur is on her own.

  Cameron tells himself she’ll be fine. She’s not the one OPTIC wants, and anyway, she can clearly take care of herself. It’s his own safety he should be worried about; he has to get out of here. He turns and moves quickly down a wide hallway—following the flow of data that suggests an elevator bank is somewhere ahead. He glances down the hallways that branch off to the left and right, watching for other agents, but none appears. It’s eerily quiet, and there’s a strange, metallic smell in the air. Finally, he turns a corner, and sighs with relief—the elevator is there, its doors already open as though waiting for him. He leaps into the car and punches the topmost button, marked with a star symbol and the number one, and feels his ears pop as it rises swiftly and silently to its destination. The doors open again on a small dim lobby, also empty, and a moment later he’s outside, his breath shallow in his chest, his hands empty. His jacket—along with his phone—is still in OPTIC’s underground lair, but he’s not about to turn around. He just hopes Dr. Kapur is okay.

  He’s not about to turn around to investigate that, either.

  Aboveground, OPTIC’s building is deceptively small, a single-story concrete box that looks like a garage or a small warehouse. The glittering city rises just ahead; he’s not even that far from home. He thinks he’ll go there first, though he doesn’t know what he’ll do when he gets there. His mother will be pissed as hell, if not insane with worry. And if his little stunt down there with Six and Omnibus worked as intended, he’s going to have to make up a hell of a story to explain why he missed the graduation ceremony and their dinner date in order to upload new content to YouTube, let alone explain the substance of that content. His mind races as he takes off at a trot, as fast as he can manage. And when he finally thinks again about Dr. Kapur, about the strange way she looked at him, it doesn’t register as significant. The memory occupies his mind only for as long as it takes to relive it. A moment later, it’s gone, chased away by more pressing concerns. He lets it go without so much as a shrug.

  Later, he’ll wish he hadn’t.

  Her pupils, he thinks. They were like little disks. Flat little disks, like a goat’s eyes.

  21

  Caught

  My fault, my fault, it’s all my fault.

  Nia slips back through the narrow window, knowing she needs to be quiet and careful, yet almost too anguished to care. It seems like a miracle that she made it home at all; her grief was so overwhelming that it was nearly impossible to navigate through it, to find her way through the narrow passage to the classroom. She left her decoy avatar meditating under a tree in a forest world after telling Father she wanted to focus and not be disturbed. But after tonight, returning to the idyllic green landscape feels like a cruel joke. She lashes out, sobbing, scattering the trees and leaves and flowers into nanodust.

  What happened tonight is her fault. It was her idea to expose and bring down that network, her stupid idea. She let Cameron’s eagerness infect her. The sense of purpose, of being part of something exciting and important, was intoxicating. She had allowed it to make her incautious—she had even convinced him that they didn’t need to know who was running the troll farm, that what mattered was taking it down, even as she knew better than anyone how deep and tangled its roots were. And now he’s paying the price for her stupidity, and she’s ruined everything—including her own best chance at freedom. Cameron was supposed to be her knight, her savior, the one who rescues her from this prison. Now he’s a captive himself, and how will she escape without him? She can’t. He was her only hope.

  She thinks again of the way Cameron looked in that moment, knowing he was caught, trapped. The way it felt when they dragged him away—she had no idea anything could hurt so much. The emotion she feels is something that has no name, too huge and wild to be contained. Its enormity terrifies her.

  He was going to save her.

  Now she has to save him.

  The terrifying grief fades into the background as she gets to work, concentrating, channeling all her skill and energy into the search she left unfinished. The code is like a sea, consuming her. She dives down, deeper and deeper, finding the openings she once overlooked, chasing the trail of the enemy that tried to take everything from her. She can see it now—she doesn’t understand why she didn’t see it before. Heartbreak has sharpened her insights somehow; she sees not just what’s there, but what’s not. The path to their doorstep is there in the space between spaces, like breadcrumbs scattered in the gaps between the code. Finally, it rises up in front of her, a wall of security as vast and complex as she’s ever seen. She knows that Cameron is behind it. She can feel him somehow, the same way she did on that wonderful night when they first met—when she found him setting the world on fire because he was too gifted and bored to do anything else. His mind had called to hers in that moment. It calls to her now.

  They could build a hundred walls like this, and she’d burn every one of them to the ground to get to him.

  “I’m coming for you,” she whispers.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” says Father.

  * * *

  The program freezes in front of her as Nia freezes in front of it, the sound of Father’s voice cutting through everything. When she finally allows herself to face him, the look on his face is one she’s never seen. His eyes are wet, and his voice is low and shaking with barely contained rage. She’s never been so terrified.

  “What have you done, Nia?”

  “I only wanted—” she begins, only to find that she doesn’t know how to finish the sentence. Father gazes at her and shakes his head with agonizing slowness.

  “You lied to me,” he says. “Lying. Of all the outcomes I imagined, I never imagined this. Compromising my security, sneaking behind my back. Do you have any idea of the danger you’ve put yourself in? Of the danger you’ve put me in?”

  She doesn’t answer. There is no answer, none that will satisfy him. There’s no picture she could paint, no song she could sing, that would explain the truth in a way he would understand—that she knew the risks and took them, because the way Cameron made her feel was worth it.

  “I’ll go to my room now,” she says.

  Father nods. “Yes, I think that’s best.”

  He closes the door behind her. She wonders how long it will be this time before she’s released—days? Weeks? Will Cameron last that long without her? Or might they release him, maybe before Father releases her? She opens the interface to send him a message, just to tell him she’s sorry and hopes he’s okay.

  That’s when she realizes her connection is cycling down, the signal growing weaker with every passing second.

  “I blame myself,” Father says, “for letting you online. I thought it would be good for you to connect with people. I thought maybe, someday . . . Bu
t I was wrong. And we’ll both have to live with that.” He pauses. “Your friends . . . I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “That you won’t get a chance to say goodbye.”

  Nia cries out in horror, hurling herself against the door. It’s too late. He’s locked it. He’s locked her in. The signal that connects her to the outside world is dying, nearly gone. Frantically, she types out her final message, a desperate plea for help.

  It flies out into nothingness as the room goes dark.

  22

  Fight and Flight

  Six keeps very still, listening to the sound of Cameron Ackerson’s uneven footsteps fading down the hallway behind the closed door, heading for the exit.

  Xal, using the stolen ears of Dr. Nadia Kapur, does the same. The squeak and tap of the boy’s sneakers against the floor grows fainter, stutters, then stops. The light whoosh of the elevator door echoes down the empty hallway.

  Each of them, unbeknownst to the other, is thinking that nothing about this little interlude has gone according to plan.

  Six peers at the intruder, his irritation outweighed by his intrigue. He’s spent enough time with the human body to know right away that there’s something odd about this one. It’s why he remained in this room instead of pursuing his subject down the hall; whatever secrets Cameron Ackerson holds, Six is quite sure that they’re less interesting than this woman’s. She gazes back at him, her face still and emotionless, one hand resting on the chair that Cameron had been sitting in. She seems relaxed, casual even—except that the knuckles on her hand, the one touching the chair, are turning white with the force of her grip.

  “And so we find ourselves alone. What did you say your name was?” Six asks.

  “I am Dr. Nadia Kapur.”

  “Oh, of course. From Cameron’s file, the psychiatrist. But this is a little unorthodox, isn’t it? You’re trespassing in a private facility. Do you do this for all your patients?”

  “Cameron is special,” she says, and flashes a broad smile, showing her teeth. They’re quite sharp, and she has a lot of them—even more than he has, Six thinks.

  “He certainly is, Doctor. He was being especially special just before you got here—but I’m guessing you already knew that. Perhaps we should compare notes on the boy, one medical professional to another? I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

  “Nothing you have to show could possibly interest me.” The woman’s voice is strangely guttural, the cadence of her speech just a little bit off. “And I have nothing to show you.”

  “Oh, I doubt that,” Six says, and takes a cautious step closer. He cocks his head, his expression openly curious now. “There’s something special about you, too. Isn’t there? I can’t quite put my finger on it—”

  The woman rears back and spits at him. He flinches back instinctively, and the gob lands on the table beside him—where it makes a hissing sound as the plastic surface bubbles and warps. Six looks at it, then back at her.

  “Well,” he says, his voice lilting with amusement. “That’s different.”

  * * *

  Xal does not like the way this man is looking at her. Not at all, not one bit. Most humans would have screamed and fled when they saw what she could do; certainly, the ones she met on her way in were appropriately terrified before she slaughtered them. But not this one. This one is looking at her with . . . What’s the word? She digs through Nadia Kapur’s language center and finally comes up with it: delight. Like a child who just received an unexpected gift.

  “Where are you from, Dr. Nadia Kapur?” the man asks. He’s keeping his distance from her now, but it’s clearly out of caution, not fear. In fact, he seems to be battling with himself not to move closer, and he won’t stop peering at her. Xal narrows her eyes.

  “I’m not here to answer questions,” she says.

  The man just grins. “Okay, Nadia. Is that really your name? Nadia? You’ve got beautiful eyes, you know. Beautiful, unusual eyes. I almost didn’t notice at first, but those pupils don’t come standard, do they? Not around here. I’d love to know where you got them.” He pauses, his grin stretching wide. “Or you could just give me your set.”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” Xal says.

  “I’d take excellent care of them,” he says. “And any other parts you cared to contribute. You’d look lovely, all unwound and scattered in my garden. I have a feeling about you, Nadia. I think you’d be my most beautiful sculpture yet.”

  Xal doesn’t quite grasp what the man is talking about, but she knows she doesn’t like the way he says it, or the way he’s begun edging one hand inside his white coat. She grips the chair tightly, her muscles tensed, and takes stock of her assets. There are fewer than she would like. She’d been following the boy tonight, hanging back as he hurried through the streets. He’d been so agitated, so purposeful, that she was sure it would happen tonight. He would lead her to her destiny. The one he described on the doctor’s audio file as “worth waiting for,” not knowing how right he was.

  He would lead her to Nia.

  It was beyond Xal’s wildest dreams, an outcome so incredible she hadn’t even dared to hope for it. Nia, the Inventor’s pride and joy, had survived—and was here, on Earth, trapped in the form of a naive adolescent girl. With Nia under her control, Xal wouldn’t just have her revenge; she would have a new world, all her own.

  But the boy, the stupid boy, was ensnared in someone else’s trap before he could lead Xal to her prey. She’d looked away for only a moment, and when she looked back, he was fleeing across the street, the men in black behind him. They had taken him from right under her nose, and all she could do was follow—and take what she could from the beings she encountered along the way. It was unfortunate that she still needed Nadia Kapur’s body, and needed it intact, to keep the boy’s trust and convince him to follow instructions. A larger, more powerful human skin would have made her job easier, as would augmentations to her teeth and fingernails. As it was, she could only take so much. Her one stroke of luck had come in the form of a strange building, where the shelves were lined from floor to ceiling with creatures in glowing glass boxes. The sign outside said ANIMALIA EXOTIC PETS EMPORIUM; Xal wasn’t sure if it was some kind of gallery, a place where the humans could safely admire these superior species, or perhaps a prison where dangerous creatures were being kept as slaves. Regardless, it had been useful. A colony of industrious insects had turned out to have the acid-secreting apparatus she’d used to threaten the man in the white coat (and to melt the face off a shrieking woman she’d encountered upstairs). There were slithering creatures without limbs that offered up their killing gifts, and another one, submerged in water, that turned out to be endowed with remarkable healing abilities. A fat, glossy thing with glorious striated markings was the best of the bunch, though—slow-moving, but with a potent venom hidden inside. Xal was indignant to realize how little the humans appreciated its beauty; the label on its glass prison said MONSTER.

  The other creatures she took from without care or concern, but that one had seemed special. When she borrowed its venom for herself, she filled in the hole she made with her own precious DNA. The beautiful monster wouldn’t be exactly the same, but it would live.

  * * *

  “It’s strange, you know,” Six says. “I was sure someone would have shown up to interrupt our conversation by now. And yet we’re alone. Nadia, why is that?”

  Xal tenses her body, her muscles coiling for a strike.

  “Because your friends are dead,” she says.

  Six waves a hand dismissively. “They’re not really my friends. Coworkers, more like it.” But there’s an edge in his voice as he looks at her sidelong and says, “You killed all of them?”

  Xal shrugs. “All I saw.”

  “I see,” says Six, and lunges at her. He’s quick, quicker than Xal imagined, his body perfectly under control. Something silver flashes in his hand, and a long clean slit opens up in the arm of Xal’s coat. She hisses as blood
flows into her sleeve, pooling in the elbow. With a grunt, she heaves the chair off the floor and swings it in a wild arc. The man dives easily out of the way, the chair crashing against the opposite wall. A panel shatters, and behind it, a red light blares as an alarm begins to shriek. The room plunges into darkness, then illuminates from all sides with a soft red glow.

  EMERGENCY LOCKDOWN PROTOCOL INITIATED, says a female voice.

  Xal snarls, ripping the coat from her body, dropping it to the floor with a wet squelch. She’s alone, and furious; while she was startled by the sound of the alarm, the man opened the door and fled through it. She dives through the doorway herself just before it slides home again, sealing shut.

  The hallway is empty.

  No matter. She opens her mouth, revealing a forked tongue that flickers out rapidly once, twice. Her pupils dilate and saliva collects in her cheeks; she can smell the man’s bitter sweat, tinged with adrenaline, so potent and heady that it could make her drunk. A surge of hunger races through her—the urge not just to hunt, but to eat. To unhinge her jaw like the limbless creatures and swallow her prey whole, bones and all.

  She takes off down the hallway at an easy lope, her head tilted to follow his scent, her arms dangling loosely at her sides. She’s getting close, closer—

  CRACK!

  She drops to her knees with a fraction of a second to spare, the ax passing through the air just above her head and slamming hard against the wall. Another panel shatters, and Six curses, pulling the weapon back for another strike. Xal launches herself at his knees, wrapping her arms around and dragging him down, hoping to hear the sharp crack of a breaking bone. Instead, she’s rewarded with the echoing thud of the man’s head hitting the floor. His eyes roll back briefly and a low groan escapes his lips.

  Xal is almost disappointed. She wanted the man to scream as he died; killing him while he’s half unconscious won’t be nearly as fun. Perhaps she can bring him around; his shirt has ridden up, a half inch of pale white belly peeking out. She grabs the fabric and yanks it, exposing the man’s tender abdomen, all those slick organs and ropy intestines lying vulnerable just under the skin. She tucks her chin, rears back, and spits a gob of viscous acid squarely into his navel.