by J. Kowallis
This floor of the building looks similar to the others except the tension isn’t quite so thick. Employees are more relaxed and at ease, because this is where many of them live from day to day.
One corner of my mouth tucks up while thinking to myself, not for much longer.
I turn on my heel, keeping the sunglasses on my face. The first hallway wraps in a crescent shape, carving along the west tendril of the building. The lights are a pale green, and I can’t help but feel a little sick to my stomach. The dark black marble floor blends in with the dark walls, and it takes a few moments before I realize I’ve already walked by three living quarters. Their doors are egg-shaped, black like everything else. In fact, they’re like the walls in Carmen’s apartment—the edges outlined in the marble.
A door thirty feet in front of me extends out by an inch and then slides up, allowing a man and a woman to exit. Instead of turning toward me, they walk in the same direction I’m headed. I glance behind me and then sprint for the open door. It begins to close before I make it and I slide through clipping the heel of my boot.
“All right, Rans,” I whisper to myself. “First thing’s first.”
I stand up and look around. I might as well be standing back in Carmen’s apartment. The walls are black like the hallway, the kitchen and living room minimalistic and cold.
There has to be a knife in there.
After searching, I’m able to find a thermal paring knife. It’ll work best and minimize blood flow. It sizzles a little while I slice under the skin, and I quickly find the small chip and toss it over my shoulder. Using the flat end of the paring knife, I try to cauterize the cut. It’ll have to be good enough.
One solitary door leads toward a bedroom. Blackout curtains draw closed in the living area window and I move around the couches and finger the fabric. Instantly, the dense cloth catches fire and the flames lick the side of the walls as they travel up toward the ceiling.
The acrid smokes fills my nose, tickles my throat. The warmth of it makes my nasal passages feel like they’re swollen.
My footsteps sound quietly on the hard floor and I tread back to the door. I check my handiwork once before putting my hand to the pad and letting the door open up.
With each door that opens in the hallway, I sneak inside. Each room goes up in flame before I leave.
I need to get up to the floor above me now. Where Roy is. My feet move quickly, but not fast enough to give my anxiety away and single me out.
A short ride up the elevator and I arrive.
Making sure no one’s watching I start counting doors. Reggie said Roy’s quarters were the thirty-seventh on the west side. I count to myself with each doorway I walk by, trying to look like I have a clue where I’m going and what I’m doing.
Quarters number fifteen, twenty-two, twenty-eight, thirty-three.
When I reach his door, I hesitate. Even though I know I can do this, a block has formed in my brain and my heart pounds loudly. I’m afraid of him. I can’t let myself be that way. It’s Roy. I shake my head.
A door closes quietly behind me and I pivot to see who’s there. A shorter woman. Tight black curls. She smiles at me and I return the gesture. When she leaves, I step across the hall to wait for Carmen to unlock Roy’s quarters. I keep my head bowed low when another individual walks by. More than one has looked at me, possibly smelling the remnants of sour smoke. No one says a word.
I watch Roy’s door closely. He hasn’t come out. Reggie said he’d still be in there. Come on, Carmen . . . come on.
Finally, the door pops out slightly and it holds.
“Thank you, Carmen,” I whisper to myself. I’m about to walk for the entrance, when a set of fingertips reach under the door from inside and it begins to lift.
My eyes dart up as the lights all down the hallway turn a brilliant royal blue, and a screeching alarm begins to bellow.
Apparently, my diversion worked a little faster than I thought it would. Mierda. The hallways aren’t going to be clear enough.
Doors down and up the walkway from my position begin to slide out and open, people hurrying to the nearest exits. A man crashes into my shoulder, knocking me off my balance. The sunglasses hang of my nose and I pull them off my face. The glasses won’t do me much good anymore anyway. I throw them behind me and hear a crunch when someone steps on them.
I swivel around to see Roy holding the door over his head. He looks at it in curiosity for a brief moment before looking at the hordes of people running by him. Like I’m a magnet, his eyes swivel on me and they widen.
“You,” he says. His voice is husky.
In a flash, images of the night he pulverized my body spring up. I jerk and step backwards. It all happens in a moment, though it feels like forever. Frozen to the ground like I can’t feel my feet, my toes. The memory of his kicks. The fists. The rage in his eyes.
My heart pounds furiously. My skin frosts over. I can’t move.
It wasn’t him. It wasn’t him.
Roy steps through his doorway in a flash and the over-ridden door falls shut behind him. After a half-second hesitation, my energy explodes and I sprint down the hallway.
“Move, move, MOVE!” I yell at people, tearing through the crowd. Not surprisingly, they begin to pack together closer. I curse and turn my head to gauge how close Roy is. Less than three feet. His arm reaches out and I spin to grab his hand. Using all the focus I can center, I feel his skin boil inside my grip. He screams in pain. Jerking his hand back, he scowls at me. With a little extra time on my side, I set my hand on the back of the man in front of me and his jacket goes up in blaze. The people around him yell. He drops to the ground to roll and I jump over his body, dashing, bumping, and slamming into people, attempting to get far away from Roy, while still keeping him on my tail.
I stop when I reach the end of the hall and look behind me. Roy’s shoving people out of his way, their bodies slamming into the walls. With each push, he roars with a grunt of anger. Good. At least he’s feeling something. At least he’s more focused on his anger than on using his power.
My legs pump furiously and come to a screech. My feet skid on the floor. I run farther and stop in front of the elevator. The only one with a functioning light indicates it’s traveling toward the basement.
“Mierda.”
Carmen’s on her way down already. I groan and turn to see Roy come around the corner. Without a second thought to where I’m going, I book it in the opposite direction, hoping to find a door leading to stairs.
“Stop!” Roy shouts at me.
“Are you kidding me, pendejo?” I bend around the next curving hallway. People are filing through a single doorway and I speed up, hoping it’s the stairs.
“Out of the way!” I scream, sprinting for them. Their heads turn toward me and one of the women gets a look at my face. Like the crowd before, the site of my eyes makes them pack in harder to stop me.
“Not again.” The moment I reach them, I set both my hands on the nearest people and their clothing goes up in flame. The woman screams and finally the people back against the wall. I feel a hand grab at my arm, but I slip out and push people away from me on my way down. I don’t care how many of them I set on fire—as many as I need to get Roy downstairs.
My feet pound down the stairs, the sound bouncing and echoing off the tightly close walls. I grasp the handrail and soar over the top of it. The friction burns my own hand. I jump down to the next stair landing, my feet slamming into the floor. I hear Roy behind me and I move faster. With each pump of my arms, the exhaustion builds. My tongue is dry in my mouth, and my legs are starting to cramp. Yet it feels like Roy’s getting faster. He’s catching up to me.
I clutch the hand railing again and jump to the next landing. My legs buckle underneath me and I look up. Roy’s only a few feet behind. I push myself up and dash down the next flight. It’s only been twenty floors. There are still thirty left. Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight.
My feet pound and my heart races against
my burning lungs. If he gets his hands on me, I won’t make it this time. I know I won’t.
I jump down to the next landing and four seconds later, I hear his feet slam against the floor long before I realize he’s in front of me. I choke on my dry tongue in my mouth. A second Roy hits the floor next to the first and drives a fist into my gut. I stumble back against the stairs, my knees crashing into the hard corners. My body slams into the wall and I yell in pain. A third Roy stands above me and drags me to my feet by the collar of my jacket. The first grabs me from him and twirls me around, holding my arms behind me. Roy slowly walks down the stairs in front, breathing hard. When the other Roys are no longer needed, they disappear and I’m left with two of him.
“Why’d you run? You know what I can do,” he asks, approaching me.
“I had to try.”
“But you failed.”
I grit my teeth against the pounding in my head—the fear of having him in front of me—and say, “I may have tried and failed, but I didn’t fail to try, right? Didn’t someone say something like that?”
Roy’s hand strikes my face and my head knocks back. The burn of his hand throbs on my cheek. My stomach turns while flashes of that night cut behind my eyes. I shake and I know he can feel it under my skin.
“How’d you get in here?”
“Aw,” I groan, licking the blood on the inside of my cheek. “You have to ask that? You’re not that . . . stupid are you? I thought the Nexis made you perfect, right?”
“Carmen Mata.”
I shake my head. “She may have helped, but that’s not how I got in here.”
He squints at me.
“I got in here because you let me. I know you saw me in her closet. But you did nothing.” I smile at him. “It took me a while to understand why. Now I know. I guess some things can’t be changed. You felt sympathy like you always have. It’s your weakness. You failed. It’s your fault Public Four will be encender en llamas.”
Roy’s face turns red. A blood vessel in his forehead rising like a worm under his skin. He hits me again.
My teeth cut into my cheek again and I hiss. I can imagine my teeth look more pink than white, smiling at him. “Unless this is what you wanted?”
His hand flies once more and my head snaps to the side. Again and again I remember the kicks to my stomach. The pain in my chest when he came too close to killing me.
The shocking wrench shreds my nerves. I yelp. Like a wounded perra.
My neck feels dislocated. I wiggle my fingers behind me, trying to get a small grip of Roy’s clothing behind me. When I’m sure I’m holding the corner of his jacket, not mine, I focus my concentration and feel the cloth burst with heat. The Roy behind me swears and releases my arms. With the energy I have left, I slam into the Roy in front of me and grasp hold of his clothes. They flame beneath my hands and I shove him backwards.
“I dare you to stop me,” I spit at him and fly down the rest of the staircases. I spread my hands along the walls, forcing the fire to travel down and engulf the staircase behind me. It will slow him down, but won’t stop him.
I run faster, pumping my arms and forcing my feet to take one more step. Tenth floor, ninth, eighth.
Roy yells two floors behind me and I keep my hand on the wall, tunneling my energy into expanding the blaze behind me.
When I finally burst through the basement doors, I hear piercing power-gunshots and I know Reggie, Nate, and Carmen are all down here. I sprint faster when I see Nate glance at me from one of the side doors.
“Ransley!” he yells. “Where’s Roy?” His arms flex, firing off ten rounds, covering me.
A shot buzzes by my ears and I hear it crackle before exploding into the wall. I keep pushing myself. My body protests with trembling legs. I turn my head to look for Roy. He zips through the doorway, gaining on me like a speeding car.
“He’s right behind me, Rambo!” I scream back. When I make it to Nate, I duck inside the room and I notice Carmen crammed into the corner.
Nate pulls back before Roy reaches him. The moment he runs through, Reggie slams her hand onto the door pad and Nate blasts it with his gun to keep it locked. Immediately, Roy splits into nine forms. Each one zeros in on one of us, but leaving Carmen to herself in the corner. Before the three forms of Roy reach me, they all stagger, twist in pain, and fall to the ground.
I turn my attention to Reggie and she’s staring down Roy, the real Roy who’d tried to take her on. Nate slams the butt of his gun into Roy’s head and he falls limp on the ground, the other forms disappearing.
“There are more guards coming,” Reggie looks at the door. “We need to get him into a pod. NOW!”
Nate and I both rush for Roy’s limp body and strip him down.
“Carmen!” I call to her. “Open this pod here.”
“No,” her voice shakes.
I spring around and glare at her. “’No,’ what?”
“We need that one. It’s the alpha.” Her finger shakes, pointing to the farthest pod on the left. Finally, she stands up and moves to open it up. With a few touches to the control pad next to it, the pod drops slightly and then lays parallel to the floor. Nate and I pick up Roy’s bare body and set him inside. Carmen slips a device into his mouth securely fitting around his teeth before the glass pod door closes and fluid begins to fill the inside. When it’s completely full, the pod raises up once more leaning slightly forward.
“What do we do now, Carmen?” Nate asks.
“Nate . . .” Reggie says. “We’ve got about five minutes!”
“Carmen!” I yell at her. “What’s next?”
She hurries to the command room next to the pods and I follow her inside. The projection screen appears and she begins to move files around. It’s complicated, but while she works, I start to figure it out. There are hundreds of words and commands, but Carmen moves through them like they’re simple instructions on how to draw a straight line.
“No. It can’t be,” Carmen whispers, leaning closer.
“What did you find?” I move closer.
“I don’t believe it.”
“Don’t believe what?” I press her.
Carmen swallows and then pulls her gaze to me. “When subjects are amplified from their original state . . . then they, uh, they . . . have parts stored, right?”
“Yes?”
“The parts making them great aren’t . . .” she hesitates again and looks outside at Reggie.
“Carmen!”
“. . . they aren’t just physical or mental. It’s more than that. These parts make each person who they are; they’re hidden, and replaced with artificial improvements. The improvements I would make. When they’re . . . changed . . . the parts of the mind . . . this process is like . . . like, taking a part of their, their . . . .”
I grab a hold of her shoulders and try to get her to concentrate. “Say it, Carmen!”
“It steals a part of their alma . . . o espíritu. Their soul.”
I feel my heart sink. Parts of Roy’s soul are gone. “Where do those parts go? Are they dead?”
Carmen shakes her head. “No. They’re still there. Inside. But we have to unlock them again. The body may have a hard time reconciling the returning parts. His mind will have to be convinced it belongs. Like he’s receiving a transplant. He has to be walked through it.”
“Walked through what?” I continue to hold her arms.
“He’ll be lost. His artificial mental complex will reject the real parts. So, the upload requires a dual connection. Something to make the mind reattach the original pieces. Someone has to talk to his stolen soul and guide him.”
Without a second thought, the words spill from me. “I’ll do it. How? What do I need to do?”
“We connect a second pod to his. The pod is built to drill into your brain. But . . . it may not work.”
“We have to try it.” I let go of her and reach up to unzip my jacket.
“You don’t understand, Ransley. It could kill you without th
e proper process. The procedure is invasive.”
I fling the jacket to the floor and yell, “We don’t have a choice! And we don’t have time to argue!”
Finally, she nods and follows me out.
“Ladies,” Nate warns us.
“We know, Nate!” I spit at him. While Carmen explains to me what’s going to happen, I pull my top off and then slide out of my pants, dressed in my underwear. I go to climb into the pod Carmen has lowered for me and she shakes her head.
“Any foreign objects in the pod may create disturbance.”
“What?”
Carmen looks at my bra and panties.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I grumble, reaching around and unclasping the bra and slipping out of my underwear, dropping them to the floor. I glare at Nate to keep his eyes the other way, but he’s already occupied with changing out magazines with Reggie. Carmen hands me a breathing device and I clamp it down between my teeth and climb in, still breathing through my nose.
“Now, once the pod fills, and you’re connected to the smaller needles like Roy, a probe will drill into your skull. Roy will have one drill into his, um . . . his, um . . .” She squeezes her eyes closed in frustration.
“Hith drain too?” I say with the breathing device through my teeth.
Carmen nods and I roll my eyes. Great.
I lay back and watch the pod door close on top of me. My breathing echoes in my ears and the warm fluid filters in around me. It’s not like water. It’s thicker. Almost gel-like.
It rises higher and soon, it’s covering my ears, brushing my cheeks, and then it spills into my eyes. At first, I clench them shut, but when the initial shock dies, I open them slowly. My body floats in the fluid and I can feel the pod rising up to sit perpendicular.
My arm jerks at the feel of a poke, then, a needle slides into my arm. The weight of the drugs makes my mind slip from me. I hardly feel the long thin probe drill into the back of my head and my consciousness submits to the drugs.
―ROYDON―
The silence is beginning to bore into my head. It’s been too long. Not knowing where I am, how I got here. Oh . . . I could eat a giant watermelon. Remember watermelon? It was blue, I think. Then again, it could have been pink, or red.
