The Ghost and the Machine

by L B Garrison

  “Just so. Even with that, I may well go to prison. Depending on how things turn out.”

  Her throat tightened. “If I die, you mean.”

  “Try not to fall asleep.”

  The mood-tat was still. “So, suddenly you’re a doctor—”

  Hands yanked her from the table. She sunk into something soft. Lights in the ceiling rushed by. Little firecrackers popped at the edges of her vision. She kept forgetting to breathe. Is this dying?

  Mandy grabbed an orderly’s scrub and pulled weakly with all her strength. “My Izzy . . . need it. Please.”

  He glanced at the guy on the other side of the gurney and muttered about stupid teenage girls.

  Hot tears trickled down her face. “Damn you. I should have told Sage . . . this morning . . . have to say the words to Landin—to Mom.”

  The orderly wrenched her hand free and placed it on the sheet. “You have more important things to think about.”

  “I’m so stupid . . . what was I afraid of?”

  Nothing hurt anymore. The room smeared to black.

  CHAPTER THREE

  T

  he world came into focus like a hammer blow. Mandy lay on the ground, fingers twitching. Numbing cold seeped through her clothes. The creamy skin of her forearm was pristine and that didn’t seem right. A dark, swirled surface pressed against her side. It stretched far beyond her to a high, sloping wall of blasted earth. An orange glow and filigree of frost covered everything.

  Her hand slipped to her blouse and closed on a fistful of midnight green fabric. She wore high-waisted black jeans and black combat boots that appeared dainty on her small feet. Not clothes she would want to be caught dead in. Maybe she shouldn’t think things like that. What had happened? Something about a hospital. An accident? No, not an accident. Moto had done it on purpose.

  Mandy sat up too quickly. The world wobbled around her, sending spasms through her gut. Small breaths. She could only manage small breaths. Any more movement and she would throw up everything she had ever eaten.

  She sat in a crater hundreds of feet across. Half of it lay in deep shadow. The ground had been fused into glass. Red flames crackled beyond the crater’s rim, filling the air with bitter smoke.

  Her nausea faded. She ran trembling fingers through her hair and pulled it tight, focusing on the pain. Only that seemed real. How had she gotten here? Why? The ground tilted, went all screwy. She was hyperventilating. Mandy clenched her fists and concentrated on slowing her breathing.

  Could it be a dream? A coma? She pressed her hand against the glazed dirt. The little peaks and valleys in the rough surface left red imprints on her skin. This was too real to be a dream.

  Strange. She rubbed her fingers along the fate line of her palm. Her hands didn’t look right and yet they did, like she had two competing memories.

  Apricot-colored lightning cut a jagged path across storm clouds that glowed the color of ripe cantaloupe. She hated orange. Never cared for it and the weirdness didn’t help her concentration. She sat still for the length of several measured breaths.

  Think. She’d sprawled on a gurney with the lights whizzing by. Now she was here. Hadn’t there been darkness in-between?

  Thunder rumbled.

  No realistic scenario fit this strangeness. She didn’t know where this eerie place was and she doubted anyone knew she was here. Except possibly Moto. A sob bubbled in her throat. Panic stood by, ready to take over her mind, but she swallowed and refused to give in. Whatever had happened, wherever she was, she had only herself to rely on.

  Large raindrops popped against the obsidian around her. Even in dreams, you can’t sit on your butt forever and staying here would just get her soaked. Mandy rolled to her feet and stumbled. Her legs seemed too long, or the boots were too high. Probably the boots. She dusted frost off her backside. Maybe, she could find help. Somehow.

  The sky glowed as bright as twilight. It might be night here, though she could see surprisingly well. She crossed her arms and hunched over as she trudged to the nearest crater wall. Large rocks peppered the slope and some of the dirt had melted into bumpy glass. The wall’s grade was about thirty degrees at the base, but near the top, the side of the crater became almost vertical. If she could find a spot with more embedded rock, she could climb out. Maybe.

  She trekked along the lit side of the crater. Her boots crunched on the frozen ground.

  Purple light flared in the sky and the shockwave of multiple sonic booms echoed through the darkness, thumping hard enough against Mandy’s chest to make her gasp. She shielded her eyes with one hand. Three fireballs tore through the low clouds, impacting beyond the crater’s walls.

  A shadow moved above, sending a trickle of debris tumbling down the scorched walls. She wasn’t alone.

  “Hello? Can you help me? Hello!” Her words turn to gray fog and drifted away in the chill night air.

  Only the crackling flames answered.

  She swallowed. “Hey, don’t be shy . . . or rude.”

  Nothing.

  “Or a serial killer,” she murmured.

  Mandy waited, but no one answered. She hurried along the wall. Her lungs ached with each breath of glacial air. A hundred feet further on, near the shaded part of the crater, she came to a shattered boulder. Its scattered pieces protruded from the wall. This might be climbable, but the prospect of what waited above made her hesitate.

  A large shape skittered through the shadows on the dark side of the crater, crawling on its belly like a snake or centipede. Clouds of dust rolled into the light. An icy tingle crawled down Mandy’s spine. It was here with her.

  “Oh, crap, oh crap.” She scrambled up the slope, slipping on the mud. The first stone held as she grabbed it. More scurrying. This time from a different direction. More than one thing followed her. She seized the next rock and pulled. It came free and tumbled, skidding across the crater floor.

  Mandy pitched forward, sliding down several feet. She dug her fingers into the frosty mud and stopped her slide. Grit crunched between her teeth. Serpentine shapes twisted into the light. She had no time or inclination to look closer. She hoisted herself higher, digging into the ground and testing the rocks before she trusted them to hold her weight.

  Hundreds of tiny claws clicked on the seared ground behind her, inspiring Mandy to climb faster. She got her foot on one stone and pulled up on her tiptoes to reach the next. Her progress seemed pitiful. Something brushed her boot. She kicked and grasped the rock above her. The broken edge bit into her skin. She clenched her jaw, but didn’t slow.

  Trembling and gasping, she hauled her body over the crumbling edge of the crater. She spat. Unladylike, but it got the dirt out of her mouth.

  Fallen trees littered the ground, pointing outward from the crater like the spokes of a wheel. Fires around the crater bathed the ruined forest in shades of flickering red and yellow.

  The forest’s edge was a couple of hundred yards away. The scattered fires lay between her and the trees. Beyond the woods, there might be a road or she could wait for the fire to attract attention. Loose pebbles clattered against the crater floor. They were coming. She had to move.

  Mandy ran. The ash-covered land blurred past. In an instant, she was among the trees. She stumbled on the underbrush and slammed into the forest floor, plowing a furrow in the muddy ground. Just breathing hurt. After several seconds, she managed a gasp. She had accelerated to blinding speed in just a few steps.

  Mandy rolled her aching body over and stared at the angry sky. If this was a dream, it hurt more than any she had before. At least the forest was warmer than the crater.

  She pulled out of the sucking mud and into a sitting position. A trail of churned earth and tattered vegetation worthy of a four-wheeler at play lay in her wake. No human could do that. “What is going on?”

  The flickering glow of the fires by the crater were nearly lost in the foliage, but she had enough light to see the trees were all wrong. They had hexagonal leaves and the gray trunks
were made of overlapping scales. Mandy touched the tree next to her. It had the texture of raw chicken skin.

  She snatched her hand away.

  With each gust of wind, the leaves above her rustled with the sound of a thousand pom-poms. Between the gusts, something moved in the forest canopy, crackling leaves and creaking branches. Mandy jumped to her feet. Leaves dropped and scattered to the wind. A dark silhouette skittered down the trunk and crawled into the shadows. Had the things for the crater followed her?

  “What the hell do you want?” Mandy screamed at the night.

  The trees remained silent and the wind stilled. A tingling chill spread across Mandy’s neck. She backed deeper into the shadows. What could she do?

  She turned and fled through the gloom and the forest, careful not to lose her footing.

  Thump! Something unseen landed in the tree behind her. Bang! It leaped to a tree beside her. The deeper into the woods she went, the murkier the forest got. Her heart pounded in her chest. She moved faster. Her pursuer kept pace. The blur of speed didn’t come again and she had no idea how to summon it.

  The canopy covered the sky and she was far from the fire. Shadows swallowed the light and her hopes of escape. In the branches above, her pursuer leaped unseen through the night, rustling leaves in short bursts. On either side of her, the underbrush twitched as dark shapes leaped and joined the hunt. The thrashing grew closer as the flanking hunters converged. She whimpered. How many times had she seen nature shows and held her breath, hoping the gazelle would get away? It never did.

  No. She wasn’t some dumb gazelle. She slammed her foot down, slid in the mud and leaves, scrambling to change direction. Low branches scraped against her face as she rushed blindly through the black forest. Foliage stirred as the hunters changed direction, but Mandy dodged behind them and ran.

  Her gasping breath drowned out the sounds of the woods. Her legs burned from the effort of keeping ahead of her unseen predators. In the distance, the trees stood like iron bars in her path, but beyond them loomed the orange glow of the stormy sky. Slipping and stumbling, she wound a path through the weird woods. The trees ended.

  Orange lightning flared across the churning clouds. A clearing stretched out in front of her, covered in gray moss and circling a dark lake. Blue flashes dotted the water wherever raindrops struck its choppy surface.

  Mandy turned back to the forest, panting and searching the gloom. Night winds churned the dark leaves.

  The forest around her rippled, like air on a hot summer’s day.

  “I don’t believe they followed,” said a lilting female voice.

  Mandy spun around and stumbled back. Her feet got all tangled and she plopped onto the soft moss. “Ow.”

  A willowy blonde girl and a guy with chestnut-colored hair stood a few feet away. They were about her age and wore cobalt uniforms with white trim. Transparent images of scrolling data floated in the air around the girl, following her as she moved, like a flock of hummingbirds. A silver ring hung around her neck, strung on a golden chain.

  The wisp of a girl twisted a lock of her butter-blonde hair around her finger. “Apologies, love. Among other things, our nanomech shields buffer sound and allows us to fade into the background. Bit crass not to announce ourselves. We’re with the Orion Ecological Survey Corp. I’m Bailey Rochelle Timesmith. Pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

  Mandy sat panting on the soggy moss. At least they were people. “What is this place? How did I get here?”

  The guy extended his hand to help her up. “You tripped, don’t you remember?”

  Mandy slapped his hand aside. “I mean here. In this bizarro forest, smart ass.”

  Bailey smirked. “She sized you up rather quickly, Cisco.”

  “Smart ass,” he mumbled. They stood closely to each other. Whatever their relationship, it seemed to be more than professional. The guy, Cisco, had a bulky pistol strapped to his hip. He didn’t seem threatening, but he had the potential.

  Bailey knelt, so she was eye-level with Mandy. “We were rather hoping you could tell us how you got here.”

  Unseen hunters were chasing her. What had happened to them? Mandy turned back to the forest. Wind rustled the leaves, but nothing came bounding through the dense foliage. She frowned, trying to recall anything that happened between laying on the gurney and waking in the crater. “I don’t know how I got here or where here is, really. I’m so lost. Something chased me. I don’t know what or why.”

  “Yah. As fortune would have it, we’re studying fauna in this vicinity. The swarm net doesn’t extend quite far enough in that direction to see what you were fleeing from, but we saw you were in distress.” Bailey held her palm out. The image of a figure stumbling through dark trees floated above her hand.

  Mandy stared at her panicked doppelgänger. Her breath quickened.

  Bailey closed her fist on the image. “Don’t fret poppet. We’re here now.”

  Mandy took a deep, calming breath. “Thank you. Maybe you scared it off?”

  Bailey got back up and flipped through more floating images. “Perhaps.”

  Cisco offered his hand again. “Sorry about before. The moss holds water. You really don’t want to sit there for long.”

  Now that she was paying attention to it, water was seeping through her pants. Accepting his help would make her appear less threatening and more compliant. Given that he was armed, that seem the best approach. She took his hand.

  His grip was firm. He pulled, frowned and shifted his weight on his front foot, pulling her to her feet. Oddly, he stood about as tall as Mandy. So did Bailey for that matter. Either everyone here was short or Mandy had grown somehow.

  Mandy slipped her hand from his warm hold. “Thanks.”

  Cisco looked her up and down, as if trying to gage her height. “You’re heavier than you look.”

  The wind picked up, tossing Mandy’s hair and chilling her bottom. She was soaked. “That seems rude.”

  He shrugged. “I’m from a place where people say what they think. I’m trying to change. Well, Bailey is trying to change me. If you don’t mind me asking, what is the last thing you remember?”

  With the immediate danger over, Mandy trembled in the cold as her adrenaline waned and the dizzying strangeness of the new world settled over her. Could she get back home from here? She turned back to the forest. Still nothing. “I was in a hospital and I passed out. I think. This must be a dream, but my dreams always jump around. They’re not linear like this.”

  “I’m not sure about you, but we’re real,” Cisco said.

  “Exactly what I’d expect someone in a dream to say.” From his trim body to his strong jawline and hair that ruffled in the breeze like a toffee-colored wheat field, Cisco was handsome. Movie-star handsome, which reinforced the dream theory. He seemed to be looking away whenever she glanced at him. He was watching her. She just couldn’t catch him at it. She scanned the forest and faked a couple of yawns, knowing that people tended to mimic them subconsciously.

  He yawned.

  “Okay, what are you looking at, Cisco?”

  Cisco turned a light rose hue. “I’m wondering how a civilian got this far into the Wilds, alone and unarmed. Your clothes too.”

  “Wilds,” Mandy said, trying to wrap her mind around the implications. Were they in a wildlife preserve? She looked down at herself. The black jeans and heavy green shirt weren’t high fashion, but they were practical here. “What's wrong with what I’m wearing?”

  He gestured at her from top to bottom. “The plants here are mostly orange or red, with an occasional violet one thrown in. The camo is cute, I guess, but green and black sticks out.”

  Mandy put her fists on her hips. “Hey, I didn’t dress myself, you know.”

  His eyebrows arched. “There are so many responses to that, it’s a shame I have to pick just one.”

  Maybe it was his expression, the absurdity of her words or the touch of normalcy the banter brought to her strange situation, but a laug
h escaped her before she could swallow it.

  That brought a smile to Cisco’s face.

  Mandy crossed her arms. “Hey, it wasn’t that funny, I’m just temporarily insane. Apparently.”

  He just kept smiling. “Say, you never did tell us your name.”

  “Oh, I go by Mandy.”

  Bailey split more images off from the others, littering the air with floating pictures of the forest. The woods must be crawling with cameras. Mandy reached out and touched an image, sending ripples through it like a reflection in a pond. “How are you doing that, without projecting onto a surface?”

  Bailey stepped back. The images retreated with her. “See here, poppet, I’m a girl, you’re a girl and you’re touching my personal nanomechs. Not cool.”

  Mandy drew her hand back. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to break any social taboos.”

  Cisco chuckled. “Next time, buy her a drink first.”

  Bailey tilted her head to one side. “Dinner. I’m not cheap, Cisco.”

  A shadow dashed across one of the images.

  Bailey opened a flurry of new pictures. “Something is amiss. I’m catching glimpses of some sort of animals moving at the boarder of my scan range, in that direction.” She pointed to the far side of the clearing. “I’ve not seen their like before.”

  Cisco watched the trees for a moment. “The way Mandy came.”

  Bailey closed the images leaving a map, scattered with red icons. “Yah.”

  Mandy took a step towards the lake. “I think we should leave.”

  Cisco’s hand slipped to his pistol. “Agreed.”

  Bailey led them on a path that circled the dark lake. “I’ve contacted Alex. We’ll meet on the far side.”

  Since only Cisco was armed and they were still strangers, Mandy moved to place Bailey between herself and him, just in case. “Who is Alex?”

  “The base commander,” Cisco replied from his flanking position between them and the forest. His eyes watching every movement. His persona had changed, reassuring and threatening at the same time.

  “When did you talk to Alex?” Mandy asked.