by Russ Linton
The vault door has a security keypad next to it. I examine the oversized hands again and ask, “I don’t suppose you’ve got any tools hidden in the fingers?”
“Negative.”
“Can you hack the lock?”
“Negative. That class of breaching software is not currently loaded.”
“Can you do anything remotely useful?”
“I am programmed to perform twelve thousand, seven hundred sixty-eight functions relating to internal and external sensors, tactical response, and targeting.”
“I don’t suppose kissing my ass is one of those?”
“Command not accepted.”
“How about ‘mute’? Can you manage that?”
No response. At least that works.
Who needs doors, anyway? Haven’t seen a killer robot that uses them yet. I cock an arm like I’m going for a heater of a pitch and can’t help but smile. I have never felt this much raw power in my hands. Forget tossing a car, maybe I could toss a cruise ship.
Before I can rip the reinforced door off the hinges, I hear a loud clunk followed by the door creeping outward. I’m frustrated and a bit worried. Outside light knifes into the hallway beyond.
Emily steps out of the darkness. Harsh shadows cover her face, but I can tell it’s her by the fieldwork cargo pants and the caffeine molecule shirt. Her hair has escaped her ponytail and clings to her face in damp strands. In that instant, I’m ready to forgive her completely. She’s a rare piece of what could be considered “normal”.
“Don’t freak out,” I say. She doesn’t answer. Doesn’t flinch. Maybe forgiving her was premature. “What are you doing here?”
She gets closer, not stopping until she’s in the shadow of the Battle Armor. She flashes a playful smile, stolen from another face, and giggles in an oddly girlish way. “Waiting for you.”
Confused, I listen close for the trademark little snort that never comes. And then I notice her eyes. Luminous globes of living mercury.
Suddenly, the broad view of the HUD isn’t enough. The suit is tight, cramped. I can’t breathe. I want to turn and run on my own feet, but I’ve got to get air into my lungs before I suffocate. “Battle Armor, let me out! Let me out!”
With a hiss, the suit peels open. The chest slides outward, the limbs hinge, and fresh air washes over my sweat-drenched body. The helmet is the last thing to go as I slip to the ground on my hands and knees.
“Spencer, what’s wrong?”
I hang my head close to the pavement, gasping for air.
“You. The dreams. Am I awake?”
“You’re not dreaming. You never were.”
Those silver eyes, they were hers in the dreams. “Where’s my mom?”
Just like the forest floor when we first met, she reaches down and hauls me to my feet. “Come, Spencer.” She takes my hand and walks ahead, the smile bright and intoxicating.
“I don’t understand.”
“You will.” Her smile never changes as she speaks, never broken by her lips forming the words. Already, as I regain control of my breathing, I regret stepping out of the armor. I still have the urge to run, but my feet won’t listen. I must follow her down this shrouded, metal-ribbed hallway to the truth.
Chapter 46
Automatically, the heavy door swings shut, and it’s like watching the drone rip into the bunker, only in reverse, as the Battle Armor disappears. Everything in reverse, because this time, I’m afraid to have that high-tech killing machine out of reach.
“So you are an Augment?” I ask as Emily leads me away from the door.
“I am. She isn’t.” Her answer takes me by surprise.
“That makes no sense. Why aren’t your lips moving, you’re…”
“In you?” she says.
“In my head.”
“No, I’m inside you, Spencer.” There’s the school-girl giggle again in a dark corner of my skull. Concern erases her playful smile. “I’m frightening you.”
“Can you at least talk out loud?”
“I… ‘m… sorrrrr… eeeeeeeeeee!” Emily’s voice strains and cracks as her jaw spasms and the apology ends in a piercing wail.
“That didn’t help.”
“Speaking is difficult.” The voice echoes in my head.
“But why…”
“The body has mostly surrendered. The mind has not.”
I clench my jaw. “Whatever you are, please leave her alone.”
“She is my vessel. Do you disapprove?” Emily’s face twists with pain and anger. “Why would you? After what she did to Mother.”
Her grip tightens and she drags me down the hall walking at a stiff but steady clip. No more words, in my head or otherwise, but I can still feel her. The sort of feeling you get that someone is watching, creeping up right behind you, breathing down your neck, but when you look, nobody’s there. That exact feeling, but it doesn’t go away.
“Sorry about your reception,” she says as we near the end of the corridor.
“Oh, you mean the BFG that nearly took my head off? You could have stopped that?”
“You had the Battle Armor, you were safe. You needed to feel the power.”
She’s in my head. But for how long now?
“Weeks.”
The entry hall ends at a second reinforced door with a biometric security pad. Emily, or whatever she has become, cocks her head and winks. One silver iris coalesces into solid brown, a stark contrast to Emily’s natural color. Flashing a badge at the panel, she presses her face against the eye cup. When the doors open, she pulls me into a room the size of the bunker bathroom. The door slides shut and a sinking sensation accompanies a whine of machinery.
Down we go. Longer than I expect we should.
At the bottom the doors open, revealing the shadow-splotched walls of a tunnel excavated from solid rock. We pass through another series of doors, one of these thicker than my outstretched arms with hinges like tree trunks set into a metal frame. The heavy door glides effortlessly.
On the other side, bodies litter the ground. A dozen armed and armored men in fatigues lay helpless but breathing, their eyes veiled in a milky glow.
“Are they dead?”
“They won’t move. For a long time. Come.”
She maintains her confident stride past the fallen soldiers. Dark, sterile hallways branch off in several directions. Soon, the halls narrow, and my tour guide’s steps falter. Her hand slips from my wrist and into mine. Vulnerable and natural, for a split second I forget about the creepy eyes and the voice in my head.
“What is it?”
“My home.”
We’re facing a narrow, featureless hall where metal plating has replaced the rock. Doors line both sides and a swinging crash door hangs at the far end. It’s the same hallway from the dreams I had over the desert. More bodies lie on the floor.
At first, the catatonic soldiers come to mind. But that wishful thinking dies when I see the blood. Everywhere.
People in HAZMAT suits with their brains fanned on the walls and guns in their hands. Men and women in white lab coats, their heads torn open viciously. I turn away and close my eyes but that doesn’t help.
I can see the little girl in her surgical gown, her head a crown of scars and gauze. As I recall the scenes, the hallway melts into the tiny spartan space of my bunker.
“We set each other free, Spencer.”
“The little girl, that’s you,” I say, but I really don’t want more details. I’m talking only to buy time. She’s headed across that hall and I don’t want to go.
“This was my home and my prison, too. I couldn’t leave, either.” She smiles at me.
“I’m sorry all this happened, but I don’t know what you want.”
“Don’t you see? I always thought this place was home. These people,” she tilts her head at the carnage, “my family.”
“No, sorry, I don’t see. I don’t want to see.”
“Mother loves you so much.” Her face contorts and she clut
ches at her shirt, twisting the symbol in her hands. “Through her I contacted you. I owe her everything.”
“Well, you don’t owe me.” I look frantically down the hall, wondering if I can make it to the elevator. How do you stay ahead of someone who is inside your brain?
“You can’t.” Tears begin to stream down her cheeks, flowing from a look of utter surprise. “You can’t go. We’re family, Spencer. I will give you what you always wanted. Family. Powers.”
“Please, if you want to help, just show me where my parents are.”
She nods and turns. She begins walking down the hall, her fingers entwined with mine. I follow, watching the ceiling to keep my eyes off the carnage, but spatters of blood decorate even there. The crash doors are within reach, and I see a bloody handprint streaked down the outside.
“He’s in here,” she says, as she pushes through the doors.
An underground cavern yawns before us that appears part natural, part manmade. The ceiling extends beyond a ring of stark lights that illuminate the room. In the center, giant glass cylinders connect to rigid supports that disappear in the void above. The cylinders are clustered in a circle, and each one holds a swirling fog. From the middle of the cluster another light glows, but I can’t see the source. My eyes drift back to the ring of light above.
“No, there is no coincidence.” She pulls, and we rattle across the open metal grating that floats over empty space.
We reach the end of the catwalk when Emily stops. My hand slips out of her grasp. No voice in my head reprimands me for thinking about running this time. Whatever has control of Emily is distracted. I can see myself running to the hallway, grabbing a loose gun. I could finish this Drake’s way—bloody. Or Dad’s—neutralize the threat before saving anyone.
But Emily put a truck through a wall for me. I don’t know why, but she did. Even if it was pure guilt, I don’t care. Enough people have died. My way. We’re doing this my way.
I take her hand. “What’s wrong?”
Instead of answering, she stares at the closest tall cylinder. A solid shape hangs in the swirling gray cloud. White wrappings flutter on a smoke-borne breeze. She is a small girl with a round face and delicate, narrow eyes. A little Chinese girl.
Eric was right. Well, almost right, but close enough. His personal story might have been way off, but that foundation must have been involved in these experiments. What better guinea pigs than discarded kids whose families didn’t even want them? If I were missing, Mom would’ve been looking for me. Even Dad. I step up to the glass.
The girl’s eyes are closed as if she’s dreaming. Wisps of hair flutter between rows of scars on her scalp. A neural cage grasps her skull.
“That’s you?”
She shakes her head. “No. That was my prison.”
“So, since you, um, escaped, you’ve been where exactly?”
A giggle crawls through the closed-off spaces in my brain. “Inside people. And inside the people they know. Space isn’t the same in here. ‘Being’ isn’t the same.”
Okay, no more questions. I step forward and focus on a puzzle I might have a chance of figuring out. There’s an instrument panel covered in digital screens and switches at the cylinder’s base. Information scrolls by on a central monitor, along with a variety of voltage meters, digital gauges, and diagnostic text. Through openings in the floor, trunks of wire and hoses snake out and disappear into the smoke around the girl.
“Mom? Is she in one of these?”
She sighs and tugs on my hand, following the cylinders in a loose spiral, each one containing another person. At times, the smoke parts enough to reveal tubes and wires crisscrossing into the frozen bodies. In each one, I start to recognize bits of hardware sewn into their skin. The pile of parts and skin that was Polybius, or the neural cage on this girl, they’re identical to the internal workings of Drake’s technology.
I can see faces in the mist. They’re all Augments, I’m sure of that, but without the masks and suits, they’re impossible to recognize. Entire lives spent incognito have made them invisible inside their glass tombs.
“They live. These weapons were deemed far too valuable to simply disarm.”
“Where’s—”
“This way.”
We follow the cylinders, spiraling to the core. There, a harsh light beams onto a metal table. Scalpels, syringes, various pieces of surgical equipment are scattered about as if dropped in a hurry. A hairy, bloody mass exactly the size of someone’s head lies on the table. I look away in horror.
“A necessary test, Spencer. They all were,” she brings her hand to her head, her eyes locked in the past, “necessary.”
The closest cylinder catches my eye. “Dad!” He’s floating in the same stuff with one key difference – he’s minus most of the extra hardware. His eyes are sunken pits and pale skin peeks out from the wrappings.
“Get him out of there.”
“The facility is locked down. None of them,” she gestures to the bloody lump on the table, “could tell me how to bypass the fail-safes.”
“Hang on, Dad.” This panel is the same as the others—a tiny alphanumeric keyboard for an interface, several touch screens, and a card reader. “Hand me—” The security card Emily was carrying drops into my outstretched palm.
I swipe the card and a red light flares above the reader.
Unauthorized access.
Couldn’t be that easy, could it? I set my backpack on the floor and get my multi-tool. Eric breathes code like air. I just sort of know how circuit boards and modules and a mess of cables works. Like reading a map; some people get lost going to the grocery store. I’m not those people. Maybe these are Augment powers? Maybe Eric is right on some level. As I dig behind the panel, a lifetime of taking apart every piece of tech I could get my hands on reveals the secrets hidden there.
“He is proud of you,” she says.
“Excuse me?” I mumble, staying focused on the task.
“He is proud of the things you could do. Things he could not.”
“Three-way calling. Whatever it is, I didn’t sign up for it on my plan. So stop, just stop.”
“At the moment, I can only be inside two minds.”
“Don’t you think that’s two too many?” I mutter.
“Soon, it will be so many more,” she says.
Then she giggles.
In my brain.
Whatever that means, I need to get Dad out of here, fast. As I work, the feeling of someone watching over my shoulder grows more and more intense until I can practically feel hot, psychic breath warming my gray matter. I focus on a new panel. When the first screw clinks through the grating, dropping into the abyss below, a deafening alarm dices the air.
“They’ve already gone to containment protocols. Ignore the alarm,” she says.
“Eh?” I mumble, mouth wrapped around the handle of my multi-tool and hands buried in wire.
“Nothing leaves the base. Bombers are scrambling overhead. We need to hurry.”
I manage to find the logic board that controls the cylinder retraction. With a few adjustments, I’ll have it open.
“You might get… well, move Emily out of the way.”
She steps backward. Watching Emily retreat, I try to keep closed thoughts, but whatever it is inside her pries them open. “If this could be dangerous for her, what about you?”
“Yeah, well, I’m an idiot. I unplugged a nuclear-powered drone earlier this week and managed to not become a chicken nugget. I’ll be fine.”
“But you are uncertain.”
“Again, you aren’t helping.”
I plug in the modified board and scramble out to watch. I do my best not to think of what I’m going to say to Dad, trying to find a way to warn him without alerting the squatter in my head.
“He’ll be fine, Spencer. He’s invulnerable, remember?”
The mist inside his cylinder clears, sucked out through one of the hoses. Surrounded by a metallic buzz, I step clear as the meta
l arm retracts the cylinder into the void. Dad hangs in midair, his limbs dangling outside the gauzy white wrappings like a corpse on an invisible meat hook. He begins to descend; his pointed toes touch first, then fold back gently on limp ankles, next knees, until he lies in a heap on the platform. I rush forward.
Dad’s hand shoots out and grabs my shoulder. I grit my teeth, vowing not to move even if he crushes my clavicle. But his palm relaxes leaving only the dead weight of his forearm supported by… me. His eyes flutter and he mumbles, but I can’t understand him.
“Dad. Dad! We’re going to get you out of here.” The waist-high platform is too high, and I can’t even begin to hoist him down. He’s breathing in shallow gasps and his eyes flutter. Emily steps forward and we both struggle to place him on the floor.
“Spencer?” he mumbles. “Spencer, is that you?”
“Yeah, Dad, it’s me.”
“What are you doing here?” He scrunches his eyes and forces them open. “You shouldn’t have come. How did you even get in here?”
“Black Beetle style.”
“What?”
“He’s… he had an accident. I borrowed his formal wear.” Dad starts to reply, but I cut him off. “Did you find Mom? I think she’s here.”
Emily steps forward, her eyes blazing in the sterile light, and her lips part in a sinister smile. Dad registers her presence for the first time. Confusion transitions to tense determination. He tries to rise and balls his fists, but the determination is swept away by a blank stare.
A silver sheen fills his eyes.
At the same time, Emily’s jaw quivers and her mouth twists. “Spencer… run!”
“Emily!”
But as quickly as her eyes cleared, they disappear again behind the mirrored surface.
She turns, spreading her arms wide beneath the ring of light. Dad rises, floating to his feet and hovering inches off the catwalk, his face a naked mask. The creature that is Emily reaches out, trying to cradle the entire cavern in her embrace, and shouts, “We’re all together, now. We’re a family, Spencer. We have a family!”
Between the words, I hear Emily, screaming.
Chapter 47
