by A. L. Davroe
Gus and I run toward the door. I hear him say, “What the—”
Opus bursts through the door, Morden on his heels carrying a limp Nadine. Her eyes are open, wide and blank. My heart goes still, terrified that she’s dead.
Out of the corner of my eye I see a flash of black as Guster manifests his armor. He raises his gun. “Get behind me, all of you.”
“Yeah, right.” Morden lowers Nadine safely behind the counter and dons his own armor. A similar set to Guster’s but portraying a rabid-looking animal with long front teeth and ears on the back.
Through the open door burst more Damascus Knights. My mouth goes dry. They found us.
As they begin firing, I drop to the floor and crawl behind the counter with Nadine. Opus is crouched beside her. He’s got armor on, too. A large bird with outspread wings on the back. He’s muttering to himself. His words don’t make sense as he holds his hands over Nadine’s puckered burn wound.
I stare at her stomach and then meet her eyes, which look less vacant now. She smiles tightly at me. “It’s not so bad,” she seems to be saying. But it looks bad. It all looks bad. It’s like the diner all over again. Dishes shattering, shouts, explosions as laser pulses hit, the deep hum-thrum of laser rifles charging after each discharge, and the louder resounding bangs of real guns. The red liquid of a spilled glass of juice seeps along the black-and-white tiled floor. The green-gold of circuits scatter across the puddle, leaving tracks leading under the refrigerator. The scents of burned flesh and ozone lie heavy on a tongue already bitter with my own fear.
Gus yells out in anguish.
Before I understand what I’m doing, I slap my wrist and leap to my feet. In an instant the antique revolver is in my armor-clad hand, and the world is slowing again. I see the laser pulses rotating in lazy arcs in the air, can see the heat waves spinning away like ripples in water, resounding against the silver threads stretching from me to them to everything else in the world—the ties that bind us. The ties I can see and feel and manipulate like a spider weaves her silken threads.
There are five Damascus Knights, two at the front, two behind, and one coming through the back door. Frankie is shattered, his carapace split wide and his innards spitting ominous black smoke and sparks. Gus is caught in a backward somersault. The gelatinous wreck of sound waves caught in reverberation against his chest tells me that he’s been hit. Behind him, Morden’s face is turned partway to him, arms outstretched and face contorted with alarm.
My brain makes a few simple calculations. The threads move, slipping along limbs and tipping the odds. My thumb releases the safety. I take aim at my first target and brace myself.
The world speeds up.
I squeeze the trigger. Bam. Recoil. My recoil tugs a thread, knocking the arm of the nearest Knight so that his shot hits the wall to my left, showering my back with chunks of tile.
The chamber rotates as I pivot to avoid the tile while also shifting the threads so that they knock another Knight’s arm backward as he takes aim at Morden. Bam. Recoil.
The Reaper appears.
Shink, shink. Two quick strokes and the two Knights shatter and disappear, leaving rotating jewels spinning in the air. Jump stones. My spoils.
A shot comes my way. I leap backward, calling on the threads to aid me, and land on the counter with a huff. The shot goes through the bottom cabinet of the island in the kitchen, making wood splinter and snap. I brace my feet wide and shoot blindly, trusting my instincts to guide my aim. Bam.
Shink.
A laser pulse flashes, hitting me hard on the hip, knocking me to the floor, but I feel no pain. I roll, yanking all the threads, dragging the remaining Knights down with me, tangling them together in a tight little cocoon. My prey. Little black bugs in my web. I roll up onto one knee, take aim one last time. Bam. Shink. Bam. Shink.
The Reaper disappears.
The threads recede.
I draw a breath and blink.
Sounds return. Spitting sparks, a fire alarm screaming, a groan of pain.
“Gus.” I tumble forward, dropping the revolver and dismissing the armor. Morden’s already at his side, yanking off Gus’s helmet. I punch his wrist, dismissing the armor so I can see where he’s been shot. His eyes are wild and dazed as my hands grasp at his chest, searching and desperate. I shove up his shirt, run my hands along his stomach.
“I-I’m okay,” he grunts. “I’m okay. The armor absorbed it.”
It takes another moment for my brain to calculate his words, to realize that I see no burn wound. I throw myself at him, wrapping him in shaking arms and sobbing into his neck. “I thought you were dead,” I wail.
He puts his arms around me, holding me. “I’m okay. I’m okay,” he keeps saying.
“Holy Hell, they aren’t, though,” Morden breathes. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”
I look up, smiling despite my tears because I’m so glad that no one is dead, but when I see Morden’s expression, my face falls. There’s fear in his eyes. Fear and awe and respect. I straighten and look around the room. There’s a fine layer of silken fiber everywhere, draped over the furniture and around our bodies and smoldering over Frankie’s exposed innards.
When I realize what I’ve done, I sit down hard and stare in wonder.
“How’d you do that?” Morden whispers, his voice an accusing hiss.
I shake my head. “I-I don’t know.”
Gus grunts as he sits up. His dark eyes survey the damage. “Along came a spider,” he muses, turning his bright gaze on me.
Chapter Thirty
Post-American Date: 2/22/232
Longitudinal Timestamp: 2:02 p.m.
Location: Free Zone, Neo-Naples; Nexis
“Right,” Opus breathes as he struggles to keep the list from falling off the table. “So, this bit goes here.”
We’ve moved on, gone to what seems to be an earlier period of human civilization. I think it’s mostly Roman, but the upright walking, talking black-and-white striped horses who wear powdered wigs and colonial clothing, are throwing me off. Hundreds of paper squares—representatives of the squares on the quilt—are spread out around us with the small numbers that Nadine wrote on them facing up.
“And this one here?” Nadine asks, her face uncertain as she leans over Opus and puts her square on top of his. She’s good as new, nothing a little healing potion and some rest couldn’t cure.
“Yes,” I say, standing on a chair among the paper quilt pieces. “Now, piece 356 goes on top of that. Who has that piece?”
Everyone looks around them, searching. Guster bends down and holds it up. “Here.”
“78?”
“Got it.” Morden doesn’t meet my eyes as he comes forward and puts the piece on the stack. He hasn’t looked me in the eyes since what happened in the kitchen.
Two hours later, the list is complete. All of the squares have been stacked in ascending order, looking like a fine obelisk in the center of the table.
“We should have stayed in Discoland,” Morden mutters into his goblet. “We could have gotten Frankie to do this for us.”
Nadine throws herself into a chair with a huff and airs herself with a feathered fan. “Frankie, if you remember dear Mord, was blown to bitty smithereens by the Damascus Knights.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot about that,” Morden says lightly. “Must have been too busy fighting for my life.”
Nadine flashes a false smile. “Don’t you mean too busy hiding behind Ella?”
As Nadine and Mord devolve into a fight about his manhood, Gus’s eyes search over the rim of his goblet and find mine, their expression meaningful, and I look down at my hands.
We’ve jumped four times since Discoland. Each time the Knights have found us. Each time it seems I emerge the victor. It’s always the silken threads. Yet I can’t seem to figure out how I am able to manip
ulate them or even what they really are. I’d spend more time trying to puzzle out my strange, almost magical talent, but we have greater problems. The Knights’ attacks are becoming more frequent, more frantic, and each time, the numbers are greater. They’re following us, more deft and efficient than the mechanical hands of a sorting machine. The time between landing on a new gaming level and them finding us seems to be shrinking exponentially. It’s only a matter of hours before we’ll be attacked again. We all know it, and it’s frightening.
Gus sets down the goblet and crosses his arms over the back of the chair he has his foot planted on. “Well,” he says, his voice bringing everyone back on task, “we have our onion. Now we must peel it and inspect the layers.”
“Excellent,” Opus mutters. “Since we’re talking about food, why don’t you go get us some? Meanwhile the rest of us can abandon ship before another batch of Knights comes along.”
“You’re not helping anything,” Nadine says, scowling. She signals the waitress, a young filly with bright pink hair, to the table.
Gus turns to me as Nadine begins to order. “We’ve got to examine the squares on the quilt and try to find a level we recognize—”
“What do you mean you don’t have meat?” Nadine exclaims.
Gus clears his throat. “If we can find a level we recognize, then we can move from there.”
Nadine’s voice cuts in again. “Vegetarian? What’s that?”
This time Gus waits for the waitress to explain the dietary preferences in Neo-Naples. “Fine,” Nadine grunts. “I’ll have these oat things here.”
Gus takes a breath. “As I was saying, now that we know the order of the levels we should be able to jump from one to the other.”
“So, basically,” Nadine adds, handing her menu to the waitress, “We now have stepping stones? If we can just get to one of the fields represented on the quilt then we’ll be able to go straight to the Dominion?”
I blink at her. It always amazes me how she can manage to do two things at once. I make a mental note to ask her if she’s like me. If she ever questions the occupation assigned to her by Central Staffing. I’m sure she’s a fine Developer, but I bet she’d be an even better Tasker. I reach out and pick up the first paper tile. Number 503, the Central Dominion. I turn to the quilt where we’ve laid out numbers that correspond to the tiles. The center square, with silver mountains embroidered with gold thread and crystal beads. “The number of tiles represented in this quilt are only a fraction of the existing levels in Nexis, right?”
“Yeah,” Gus says.
I go to the table and pick up the tile that was just under 503. Tile 284. A green, triangular shape with a black infinity sign over it. “So, that would mean this one here is the last stepping stone before the Dominion, right? And the one after that…” I go back to the table and pick up the next tile. 45. “Is the second to last.” I take it to the quilt and find the corresponding quilt square. This quilt square is cut into quarters, black-and-white, respectively, with a small golden crown on one of the white quarters.
“Makes sense,” Opus concedes.
“Okay,” I say. “So if each of these quilt squares has some kind of clue indicating what level it is, then all we have to do is find a level that matches a square. That will give us a jump point to advance from.”
“But we don’t know where here is in relation to any of those tiles. There could be a hundred fields between each of those tiles,” Morden reminds. “Plus, I don’t know about you, but I don’t know the names of half the places I’ve been to let alone those I haven’t.”
I slump back in my chair, making Morden jump. “We’re in a bind.”
“It’s not so bad,” Morden says, smiling for the first time in a long while. “Remember that time we tried playing Twister? Now that was a bind.”
We all start laughing.
Part Four:
Ella’s Worlds Collide
Chapter Thirty-one
Post-American Date: 6/19/232
Longitudinal Timestamp: 9:05 a.m.
Location: Dome 5: Evanescence
For a long moment, all I can do is stare at Meems. She stares back at me, her blue eyes too large and bulging without the protection of her synthetic skin.
“W-What happened to your chasis?” I demand, incredulous.
Meems looks down as if seeing herself for the first time. Then she shakes her head and moves into the room, her domestic uniform hanging limp without supple synthetic skin and muscle to fill it out. As she comes forward, I can hear the whine of the motorized actuators and pistons in her legs; can see the fragmented movements of each segment of her body as it works to keep her upright; can feel the heat of her power cell; can smell the hydraulic fluid, grease, and oil in her joints; can see the glint of her internal processors and mechanical parts beneath the white plastic panels of her standard body.
I follow her with my eyes as she walks toward the bed and begins making it like she does every day at this time.
“You got out of bed on your own this morning,” she notes. While her jaw moves, her wide-open mouth looks garish and frightening without the facial and dental features of her chasis. She has no lips or cheeks, no teeth or tongue. She’s like a chattering skull with glass eyes and no teeth.
Still confused and horrified by what I’m seeing, I swallow hard. “Yeah, I guess all those exercises you’ve been insisting I do are actually paying off.” Now that I’m getting enough food to actually build muscle.
The bare mechanics on each side of her face move, a gear swirling on each side and a number of attachments hinging upward. I can’t tell what expression they are meant to be making without her face over them. I hope it’s a smile. “I told you they would be beneficial. You must keep yourself strong so that your body will take to your new legs when you get them.”
I ignore her. While Meems has hope that I will one day get legs, I know that I’m trapped forever. In this body. In this room. I’ve accepted it. “Meems,” I breathe, barely able to keep my skin from crawling away and leaving me looking like a biological copy of her. “What happened? Where’s your chasis?”
“I have given it up,” she answers simply. Too simply, her mechanical voice is there again. The one without emotion.
I crunch my eyebrows. “But you’d never willingly give up your chasis. That’s who you are.”
Her shoulders flex upward, with a tzzt, tzzt sound, and she tips her head to one side, the stainless steel bones of her spine clicking. I swallow hard and try not to grimace. Like this, I’m barely able to recognize Meems as the same being I’ve always known. No wonder we started putting encasements on our robots. Not only do they shield the sound, but they really help to maintain the illusion of some semblance of humanity. As she is now, she’s nothing but an animated skeleton with a clockwork face and an internal processor.
My fists ball in my lap. “Why’d you give up your chasis?” I demand, my grotesque horror turning now to abject anger at having to endure her in this state. This is not the Meems I know. This is not my surrogate mother.
Straightening from the now-made bed, she crosses her arms over the plastic shield of her chest. Her pistons hiss, and her fingers move in ways that remind me of spiders as she clasps her elbow joints. “I gave it to Katrina.”
For a moment I don’t speak. I’m not entirely sure that I heard her correctly. “Katrina?” I repeat, my voice choked.
“Katrina,” she assures.
“What for?”
“For you.”
I can’t help urging the hover-chair closer to Meems, compelled by her gentle tone of voice. “Me?”
She nods. “To pay for prosthetics. My chasis is older, but it is a custom model, so the materials that went into its design are far superior to most available. They are still worth many credits.”
I don’t understand. And yet I do. Tears fill my eyes, and
I cover my mouth with my hands. “Oh, Meems,” I whisper through my fingers. “You didn’t need to do that.”
“I wanted to. It is my choice. My body for your legs.”
I want to argue with her, want to tell her that she’s not allowed to make her own choices—that I technically own her, and I don’t condone what she’s done. I can’t live with knowing she sacrificed everything that made her who she was so that I could walk among the living once more. But I will—because I respect that Meems wants to make her own decisions. More than her chasis, her independence and self-sacrifice maintain her own impression of her humanity. I bite my lips to keep them from trembling, but the tears start anyway, slow and hot.
“Katrina says that she will order the prosthetics this afternoon, and I can help attach them tomorrow.”
I nod, not trusting myself to look at or speak to her. News of my finally getting legs should make me happy, but I only feel like I’ve lost another piece of myself.
Chapter Thirty-two
Post-American Date: 6/20/232
Longitudinal Timestamp: 3:14 p.m.
Location: Free Zone, Fief of Lau; Nexis
“How about this one?” I point at the picture of a middle-aged man with a bulbous nose and no front teeth.
Gus looks at him and wrinkles his nose. “That guy is small-time. We want a big one. Like this.” He points at a picture that has been on the board for what looks like eternity. “Five thousand gold crowns to anyone who kills Glockmock the Terrible.”
“Glockmock the Terrible?” I repeat with a scoff. “What kind of ‘strikes fear into the hearts of many’ name is that?”
“Come on, Elle, you should know by now that nothing is what it seems here. Remember the gummy bears?”
I grimace at the reminder. “That was a misnomer.”
“Well, let’s hope that Glockmock the Terrible is, too.” Gus unpins the wanted poster from the bounty board and hops off the step, sending up a cloud of dust. “It doesn’t matter what he’s called, just that he is the most valuable kill.”
