This Vicious Cure

by Emily Suvada

  But if it’s happening everywhere—here in Entropia and in the Cartaxus bunkers—then it can’t be an attack like the one at Sunnyvale. It sounds like an error—like the glitch I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to fix.

  “Oh my God,” I whisper. “This is my fault.”

  CHAPTER 6 CATARINA

  THE WORLD FADES TO BLACK, then silver, then bursts into dazzling white. I scrunch my eyes shut, the wound on my stomach pulsing with pain. My hands hit the concrete floor, and I roll to my side, tears blurring my eyes, and freeze.

  I’m not in the Zarathustra lab anymore.

  There’s no sign of the room with the floor-to-ceiling windows, no tremors shaking the walls. There are no wide-eyed children or piles of broken genkit components. I’m curled up on the floor in a dim laboratory with a genkit on the wall. There are shelves of nanosolution vials, a glass freezer full of samples, and a desk in the corner piled high with notes. Three bubbling tanks stand along the far wall with three bodies floating inside them.

  I sit up slowly. The tiles on the floor are cold on my arms, and I can feel the whisper of the air-conditioning on my skin. This place looks and feels real, just like the Zarathustra lab. I must be in another VR simulation. A figure in a white lab coat is standing at the genkit, his hair a shock of red.

  “Dax?”

  His green eyes widen. “It’s really you.” He steps closer, staring in wonder. “You’re alive, Princess.”

  “Don’t you dare call me that.” I force myself to my knees and back away, trying to lift the scalpel Jun Bei gave me, but it’s gone. The last time I saw Dax, he was taking Leoben and Mato away from Entropia. He was siding with Cartaxus while they tried to kill everyone on the surface. I glare at him. “Where the hell am I?”

  “Easy there, squid,” a voice says from behind me.

  I spin around. Leoben is leaning back in an operating chair with a coiled black cable jacked into his arm.

  “You,” I growl. I was a prisoner in Jun Bei’s simulation before—and now it looks like I’m stuck in one run by Cartaxus. I shouldn’t have trusted him. The wound on my stomach is still aching, the pain strong enough to make the edges of my vision blur. “How could you lie to me?”

  “Stop being so dramatic,” he says. He yanks the cable from his arm. He must have been using it to access the Zarathustra simulation. But that doesn’t make sense. I can’t be here in this lab—not really. I’m trapped inside Jun Bei’s skull, so this must be another virtual world I’m being fed through the implant. I squint, staring at Dax. He steps closer, his lab coat crisp and white, the edge of a metal coding cuff peeking out from beneath his sleeve, and a jolt runs through me.

  Dax’s hair, his skin, the fleck of lint on his shoulder—they’re all messy, imperfect, and real. I thought the children in the lab were realistic, but they were nothing like this. I look around, my vision swimming.

  “Wh-what’s happening?” I ask. “Where am I?”

  “I know this is disorienting,” Dax says. “I’m sorry to have yanked you here so rudely.”

  Leoben slides from the chair, and I step backward, bumping into a black lab counter. I turn around, losing my balance, and my hand hits a pen resting on the countertop. But the pen doesn’t move.

  I frown, staring at it. That doesn’t seem right. I was able to pick up and move everything in the Zarathustra simulation. I push the pen again with all my strength. The cap presses into my fingers until they ache, but it doesn’t move an inch.

  “Okay, seriously,” I say, my voice shaking. “Tell me what’s happening.”

  “You’re in a simulation called Veritas,” Dax says. “It was created by Cartaxus decades ago as a way for people to experience the outside world from the safety of their bunkers. It’s running on a central server that’s being updated constantly with every camera, every drone, and every ocular feed that we have access to. I’ve used a remote connection to link the implant in your skull to it so you can use it too.”

  I blink, looking around. “This lab is… real?”

  “It looks real to you,” Dax says. “It’s based on real-time footage, but you’re experiencing a re-creation of it inside Veritas. Leoben and I are physically in this lab, but we’re both seeing an avatar of you through our ocular tech. It’s like a two-way video call, only a lot more… immersive.”

  I look down at the scuff marks on the floor, my head spinning. This room is real, but I’m not really here. Everything I’m seeing is a three-dimensional feed being sent to me through the implant, pulsed straight into my brain. But this isn’t a constructed, carefully designed world like the Zarathustra lab was. This is reality, processed and turned into a virtual structure that I can walk around in.

  “You… you re-created the entire world in VR?”

  “Most of it,” Dax says. “It took a considerable amount of resources. Some places, like these bunkers, are updated constantly with feeds from cameras and people’s ocular tech, but there are places on the planet where all we have is reconstructed satellite footage. Veritas was supposed to be a tool that would keep our civilians happy, but Cartaxus discovered that letting them see the outside only made them want to escape the bunkers more. It’s been kept as a secret project during the outbreak, but Cartaxus hopes we can use it once the virus is dead.”

  I look around the lab. “You’re telling me I can go anywhere in the world?”

  Dax nods, smiling. “Anywhere. If you’re not near a camera or someone’s ocular tech, the feed might be out of date, but you should still be able to jump there and walk through it. It’s the closest thing to freedom that I can offer you right now.”

  I reach for one of the vials of nanites arranged on the counter beside me. The surface is smooth and cold, the edges of the vials slick and sharp. But I can’t move it, like I couldn’t move the pen, no matter how hard I push it. Because I’m not really here.

  I can see everything, and hear it, but I can’t change it. I could throw myself against the door until my shoulder broke, and nobody would hear me. I could throw a punch at Dax, and he wouldn’t feel a thing. I’m like a ghost—I can walk around, and people can see me, but I can’t do anything.

  But it’s still a whole lot better than being trapped in the Zarathustra lab.

  “Why are you doing this?” I ask, turning back to Dax. “Why did you drag me out of the simulation I was in?”

  Leoben leans back against the counter beside Dax, crossing his arms. If there was tension between them after Dax took Leoben from Entropia, it isn’t there anymore. “We had no choice,” Leoben says. “You were on the verge of being fried.”

  “He’s right,” Dax says. “The implant in your skull is failing. Lachlan has been remotely monitoring its readings. He’s the reason we were able to reach you and get you out of there. He’s been managing the simulation you were in. I didn’t know until a few days ago that you were still alive, or I would have contacted you before. I’m sorry you were trapped in there for so long.”

  “Wait…,” I say. “Lachlan was keeping me locked away? I thought that was Jun Bei.”

  Dax shakes his head. He turns to a screen on the wall, bringing up an image of a brain. Its two hemispheres are pulsing in different colors—a storm of red on one side, and a network of neon green connections on the other. My breath catches. That’s me: just a network of neurons. Not a body, not even a whole brain, but a pattern of thoughts. I’ve known it for weeks, but seeing it like this is strangely unsettling.

  “From what I’ve been able to determine,” Dax says, “Lachlan hacked the implant to suppress the readings from your half of the brain.” On the screen, the green side of the brain grows dim, until only a weak light ripples across it. “These are the readings Jun Bei has been seeing. Lachlan has made her think you’re dormant. I think he’s been hoping she’d wipe you.”

  My head spins. “But she hasn’t.”

  I’ve been angry with Jun Bei—thinking she was putting me through some kind of twisted revenge for stopping her from r
unning the wipe. But this whole time, she thought I was asleep, just like she was for the last three years. She could have taken down the wall between us and reclaimed the rest of her brain, but she didn’t.

  She must be hopeful that I’ll wake up one day. The thought wrenches at my chest.

  “Indeed,” Dax says. “She’s been keeping you alive, but the implant is straining under the pressure of keeping the two of you separated, and the added load of running the simulation was destroying it. Lachlan says the implant isn’t far from collapse. It might only have a matter of days left. He’s added code to it to make sure that Jun Bei survives when it disintegrates.…”

  “But he’s not protecting me,” I say.

  I close my eyes. It doesn’t surprise me that Lachlan has rigged the implant to protect Jun Bei when it’s destroyed. I’ve given up expecting anything but indifference from him. I didn’t think he’d still be trying to kill me, though. He saw Jun Bei and me working together. He saw that we cared for each other. But he also saw me shove a sparking electric cable into the back of my head and try to kill us both.

  “So you brought me here to… save me?” I ask. “What’s the point if the implant is going to collapse in a few days anyway?”

  “We need your help,” Dax says, exchanging a glance with Leoben. “The vaccine has been holding, but there have been unforeseen side effects from the code that was released with it.”

  “The Origin code,” I say. Jun Bei’s code, written to allow us to control the human mind in the same way that we can control our DNA.

  Dax nods. “We know it was authored by Jun Bei, and that Lachlan is the one who built it into the vaccine and released it. Recently, though, he’s changed his mind and thinks that the code is incomplete. In fact, he’s agreed to remove it.”

  I frown. That doesn’t sound like Lachlan. He risked everything to help Jun Bei send out that code. He orchestrated the vaccine’s release just to make sure it got into every panel. He said that this was her world now—that her code was the only thing that could save us. I can’t imagine what would have made him change his mind.

  “Removing Jun Bei’s code from the vaccine isn’t easy,” Dax says. “Lachlan designed the vaccine so that it would depend on it. He wanted to make it impossible for anyone to delete her code. He has a way to do it, but he needs to run a test using the subjects that it was based on.”

  I look between him and Leoben. “You mean Lee, right?”

  “Not just me,” Leoben says, rubbing his neck. “All of us—all five Zarathustra subjects. Lachlan based the vaccine on every one of us, and he says he needs us all to finish it now.”

  “He wants the others to come to a Cartaxus lab and be voluntarily experimented on again?”

  “Yeah,” Leoben says. “They’re not exactly gonna be thrilled. I’m not either, but this is what we’ve been working for all these years. We’re so close now. I can be a lab rat for one more test if it means finishing the vaccine.”

  A shadow passes over Dax’s face. “You’re not a lab rat—”

  “Of course I’m not,” Leoben says, leaning back against the counter, crossing his arms. “I’m a willing, informed participant in Dr. Lachlan Agatta’s completely painless and definitely not evil research.”

  Dax closes his eyes. “Lee…”

  Leoben ignores him. “It’s screwed up, squid. I know. But I think this is the only way.”

  “So why do you need me?”

  Dax’s eyes glaze. “We need you because a couple of days ago somebody sent you this.”

  A file appears in my vision—a letter in blocky white text.

  Catarina—I know you don’t know me. I wouldn’t be writing this to you if it weren’t urgent. There’s a plan in play that could end this world—nothing that’s happening right now is an accident. Not the vaccine, not the pigeons, and not the Lurkers. We’re all being manipulated, and you and I might be the only people who can stop it. I need to talk to you in person. Meet me at your cabin by the lake. Come alone. If you’re followed, or if you tell Cartaxus about this, you’ll never hear from me again.

  —Ziana

  I frown, scanning the note. Ziana is the only one of the Zarathustra subjects I haven’t met—the bald, frail girl whose five-year-old avatar has spent the last few weeks trying to get me to play hide-and-seek. If the real Ziana is anything like her avatar, she’s sweet, shy, and strange—but I haven’t actually met her, and I don’t know why she’d be writing to me. I don’t know how she would even be aware of my existence.

  And I also don’t know what she means about a plan to end the world, but it sends a shiver down my spine.

  “It was sent from an anonymous terminal to your comm account,” Dax says. “We intercepted it. I think it’s genuine. Ziana is the hardest of the five subjects for us to find, because she doesn’t have a panel—her mutation makes her unable to use most gentech. She escaped from Cartaxus during the outbreak and has rarely been seen since, which means this note is our best chance of finding her. I need you to go and meet her.”

  “What is she talking about?” I ask. I blink the note away. “She mentioned the pigeons and the Lurkers.”

  Dax shares an amused look with Leoben. “Our intel suggests that Ziana joined a group in Montana. They’re… eccentric, to put it mildly. They think the outbreak was caused by supernatural forces. They have a range of theories about the origin of the virus and Cartaxus’s role in the world.”

  “They’re batshit, basically,” Leoben says. “Ziana was always a little different, but it looks like she’s gone off the deep end with this group.”

  “So, what? You want me to lure her in and lie to her?”

  “Yes,” Dax says. “We need her brought in, along with Anna, if you can. Anna has been AWOL since flood protocol. We’ve been able to track her intermittently, but it’s possible she’ll go dark. I know it’s hard to accept, but this is our only plan. There’s been unrest in the bunkers—the civilians are starting to talk about storming the exits and taking back the surface. It’s imperative that we can trust the vaccine. Cartaxus has made me their temporary leader now that Brink has been deposed, which means I have three billion people’s lives in my hands. I have to do whatever it takes to save them.”

  I scrub my hands over my face. “This isn’t a deal with you, Dax. It’s Lachlan telling you that he needs the others. Everything he’s done so far has been to help Jun Bei, and I’ve promised myself that I won’t let him keep screwing with people’s lives. I won’t be manipulated by him anymore.”

  “He’s not manipulating us—” Dax starts.

  “Of course he is,” I say, cutting him off. “How can you possibly trust him? I wouldn’t trust him to fix the vaccine, and I’m definitely not going to round up the people he’s tortured just so he can do it again.”

  Leoben tilts his head back. “I told you she’d say no. She’s more stubborn than Anna.”

  Dax’s jaw tightens. “Lachlan is willing to give you a future in exchange for your help.”

  “A future?” I ask, gesturing around the room. “You mean in Veritas, like this? What’s he going to do—bolster the implant?”

  “Not quite.” Dax turns toward the row of bubbling tanks on the wall. I follow his eyes, freezing as the long, dark strands of hair float away from the face of one of the bodies. It’s a girl, her eyes open and unblinking, her skinny body wrapped in a silver pressure suit. Her skin is olive, her jaw square, her left arm ending in a stump just above her wrist.

  It’s the body Regina created to use as a decoy. The one that looks just like me.

  “Fourteen brain transplants have been carried out successfully since the dawn of gentech,” Dax says, crossing his arms. “Eleven of them relied on code written by Lachlan. None so far have attempted the transplanting of half a brain, but we think it could be done.”

  My mind races to keep up with him, to process what he’s saying.

  Leoben steps to my side. “If you help with this, squid, Lachlan will give you a bo
dy again.”

  CHAPTER 7 JUN BEI

  I TURN AWAY FROM COLE and shove open the door to Regina’s lab, holding my hands in fists to keep them from shaking. The lab is dim and strewn with debris, the air smelling faintly of smoke. Barely anyone has been in here since Cartaxus’s attack, because nobody has been bold enough to claim the space. The birdcages and plants that lined the walls are gone, and the bubbling tanks that once held twitching bodies are dry and empty. A gaping hole blown in the concrete wall lets in slanting shafts of the afternoon light and a jagged view of the bunker’s atrium. I pick my way through the room to the lab counter along the far wall, forcing my eyes from the lingering stains of Regina’s blood on the floor.

  Every time I blink, I see the snarl on Matrix’s face when she turned and attacked me. I hear her growling, see the flash of her teeth as she bit into my flesh. It was my code that did that to her—my broken, glitching Panacea. How could Lachlan be so foolish as to send it out to everyone?

  “Nobody’s blaming you for this, Jun Bei,” Cole says, following me in.

  “I should have seen it.” I walk to the dusty counter and brace my hands against it. “I need to finish the Panacea. It’s the only way to fix this.”

  “The Panacea?”

  I turn to Cole. “My code—the extra lines that were added to the vaccine. Lachlan didn’t realize that it was incomplete when he had it sent out. If I finish it, I can stop this happening.”

  But I still don’t know how to do that. I wrap my arms around my chest, walking across the lab to the hole in the concrete wall. Below us, a crowd of people are gathered in the ash-strewn park, tending to the wounded. Rhine is walking between rows of makeshift beds, but there’s no sign of Ruse. He’s probably hunting through the tunnels for more Lurkers, or trying to figure out how they got into the caves. I can picture him right now—organizing search teams and slapping people on the back, trying to boost morale. They’re going to need it.