“Extrapolating from the vaults you were denied access to will be an incomplete representation of all locked vaults since not all vaults have been tried.”
“That works.”
“In addition, there is the possibility that there exist more rooms behind one or more of these locked doors.”
L smacked her forehead with the notebook she’d left on M’s side of the bed. His pillow still smelled like him.
“How is he?”
“All systems operating within recommended stasis parameters.”
She took a deep breath, making her way to the medpod after eating.
On the monitor next to her, the computer displayed the 3-D model of the habitat, the red circles lost amid the blue, covering all the locked rooms.
“Access secure databases.”
“DNA authorization required.”
L pressed the plunger with a twitching finger.
L realized she was Devid without knowing how. She always seemed to know. It wasn’t that she recognized his room. Even when she’d been Devid at school, or in a car, or just outside, she always recognized him. Something in the way he saw, maybe? Or smelled? She just knew. The way she knew her own name.
Or what little she remembered of herself. Sometimes it was hard to remember everything, and memories seemed such fragile, delicate creatures, dissolving at the slightest sound. So many things forgotten over the years. But she never forgot Devid, the smell of him, the him of him.
“I don’t know,” he said.
L listened but couldn’t tell who he might be talking to since there was nothing to see.
He shifted, raising a hand to press a button on his smartphone. The speaker crackled to life.
“You don’t know what?” someone said, female, familiar. Then she laughed.
L cringed. Amy.
“Why I called,” Devid said. “What would Levi say?”
Amy lowered her voice. “No personal contact, none, never, ever, ever. Did I say never, I meant never. Never, ever.”
Devid laughed with her and their laughter melted together.
That’s what laughing is supposed to sound like, L thought, still staring at the ceiling.
“He’s not that bad.”
“He used to be. Better recently. Probably that girl.”
“What girl?” Devid asked.
“I don’t know, Yasmeen thinks there’s a girl.”
“Does she know about us?”
“There’s an us?” Amy laughed. “This is the first time we’ve ever talked on the phone.”
“In the last three months we’ve talked every single day.”
“And every night,” Amy said, softening her voice. “Don’t forget the nights.”
“I will never, ever, forget the nights.”
“That’s just texting. This is talking.”
“Much better.”
“Much.”
“I still don’t know why I called.”
“That’s okay, we can just sit here and listen to each other breathe.”
Devid breathed heavier.
Amy laughed. “No, not like that. Like this.” She purred into the phone, barely above a whisper. “Better?”
“Oh, much better. Much.”
“Know what?”
“What?”
“We need code names.”
“Code names?” Devid asked.
“Absolutely. Like in the movies.”
“Okay, code names. What’s your code name?”
“I don’t know. What’s yours?”
“This was your idea.”
“Fine, we’ll use middle names,” she said.
“I don’t have a middle name.”
“Everyone has middle names.”
“Not everyone.”
Amy laughed.
L cringed, until Devid joined in. They fit together, she thought, listening to their shared happiness.
“I don’t even know how to pronounce your last name.”
“Mukhopadhyay, my family’s from Kolkata, in India.”
“How about I just call you M?”
“Okay, so what’s the middle name we’re using for your code name?”
“Elle.”
“Clear.”
M watched Cathy sleep. Well, Levi watched Cathy sleep. She seemed so small, curled on her side, long dark hair hiding her face.
Levi reached his hand out, moving the mass of hair out of the way so her lips came into view. Most of her makeup had worn off, and he liked her better without.
“You’re staring,” she said.
“Go back to sleep.”
“I need to go home.”
“Why?”
“I don’t need to upset my granddad, he’s not doing all that well.” Cathy buttoned her shirt. “You need to shave.”
He rubbed his face, then shrugged.
“Want me to keep kissing you?”
“Usually,” he said, ducking her slap against his shoulder.
“Shave.” She kissed him. “For me?”
He nodded.
Her breath soft in his ear, her whisper softer. “Good boy.”
Levi studied his face in the mirror after she left, the way his skin had cleared, replacing pimples with stubble. His jawline broadening, cheek bones higher than he remembered. Dull brown hair had lengthened and darkened, partially covering his eyes and hanging past his shoulders.
“Doesn’t change anything,” he said. “She doesn’t change anything.”
M wanted to claw his eyes out but accomplished nothing no matter how much he yelled. It changed everything, you stupid son of a bitch, please let it change everything. But no one heard him. No one listened, not even himself. He’d stopped listening long ago, when he’d finally accepted the truth. There was no M. There was no L. There was only Levi. There was only the plan.
There was only ARMAGEDDON.
Levi sat at his desk, opened his anonymized text message server, and quickly sent off a series of texts.
Devid to check the status of non-aerosol delivery systems, fundamental material acquisition from MRMC, and a final decision on automated medical scanners, triage/surgical units, and incubation chambers.
Amy for the status of the memory block technology and the prospects for a vaccine.
Billy for the status of the artificial intelligence needed to run the end of the world.
Stephanie for the status of nutritional and dietary requirements as well as virtual virus manipulation and projection.
Yasmeen for the status of actual virus deconstruction and reconfiguration.
T-minus one year and counting.
“Time?”
“Seventeen hours, forty-one minutes.”
L began searching at the top, the residences. Keeping a steady log with the computer constantly monitoring and updating the 3-D model of the habitat. Four doors remained locked on A, the rest empty bedrooms and storage, much like I.
B contained empty rooms, sixteen locked. One filled with yellow vials. A number filled with their server farm.
C, every door opened. Every room empty.
D with the main infirmary, the operating room, and five locked doors.
L sat in her medpod, inserted a food pouch and grabbed her notebook. Something teased and lingered from her last death, something that burned into memory before disappearing. Something on the tip of her tongue since she’d been reborn. But it was gone, like everything else. She hadn’t tried hard enough. Hadn’t paid enough attention.
Hell, she’d not paid much attention at all. She’d been focused on the search for DNA, desperately trying to locate the missing stasis units, and nothing else. On the potential to open all those doors, to access the secure databases, to save M.
So little to learn from the past, from when people lived with real food and laughter.
Lots of laughter.
Her hands twitched.
L rested her fingers on the injector, ready to die, and finally remembered her name.
Step
hanie tried to cry but failed. Three men from the medical examiner’s office walked through the living room.
“You don’t need to be here for this,” one of the police officers said.
“Is there someplace you can go and sit down?” another asked, a look of practiced pity on her face.
“My room.”
“I’m Officer Williams,” she said, reaching a hand out. “But my friends call me Sue.”
Stephanie didn’t look away from the three men trying to figure out how to maneuver the corpse out the door
L had no choice; she saw everything, emotions burning the image into memory.
He hadn’t died pretty. Sprawled on the toilet in the tight half-bathroom too small to even fit a sink.
“It’s next to the kitchen, use that sink,” he’d said with bluster and impotent rage, drunk with beer and anger, the times her mom complained about the useless bathroom. When she’d had a mom. Before he’d driven her to an early grave by driving after too many beers when Stephanie had been too young to know what losing Mom meant.
He’d received nothing but a slap on the wrist. The too-kindly judge decided sentencing a suffering man to jail risked turning poor-little-Stephanie into an orphan. Instead, the judge sent him home, to father a daughter he’d never wanted, barely knew, and had always tried to avoid.
One of the men from the morgue took out a measuring tape, measured the door. Studied her dad, half-naked in the half-bathroom, dead on the toilet with a beer in his hand and a drowned cigarette in the bowl.
Stephanie had pushed the still lit cigarette in. No need to tell them that. She’d called 911 and waited, trying to cry. Trying not to laugh.
L couldn’t remember ever hearing her laugh before. Stephanie never laughed. She kept her head down, tried to be invisible, and plotted the end of the world. L ignored the dead man, the faint memory of punches and slaps and kicks fading as she remembered who she’d been more than who she might be now.
My name is Amanda Elle Forrest. She repeated the words, trying them on for size. They felt right. She wanted to laugh. She’d always hated her laugh, remembering Devid telling her he loved her laugh because it was her. A little dangerous, a lot loud, and very much Amy. Remembering M laughing with her, how they laughed together.
Memories fizzled and died, draining away, like an engine sputtering to a stop, restarting, sending more memories to replace the ones she’d just remembered and forgotten. How could she forget her name?
L. Her name was L.
M. She remembered M, his face, the first time they met in the airport. Their first kiss, hiding behind a column so Levi wouldn’t see. But Levi saw everything, though he didn’t interrupt.
Devid. Not M. His name was Devid. Why didn’t they recognize each other?
His face, so dear, faded, like her name.
Stephanie bit her tongue to keep from laughing, and led the way out of the living room, Sue following behind. Through the paper-thin walls, they could still hear the conversation of the three men from the medical examiner’s office debating how to squeeze a three-hundred-and-fifty-pound man through the small door of the half-bath.
Biting her tongue failed, laughter bubbled out, escaped in a cough. Stephanie clenched her fists, trying to feel something. Anything.
“Might need to break through the wall,” one of the men said, the words faint but still understandable even after Sue closed the bedroom door.
“Could try, you know, stand him up, tilt him?”
“Think that’d work?”
“Just need to get one leg out—”
“Right, then pivot.”
“You’ll need to climb over, get in that corner.”
“You climb over.”
“It was your idea.”
Stephanie sat at her desk, spinning in her chair, pretending she couldn’t hear the men.
L studied the room, staring at the hole in the wall peeking out from behind the dresser. Books filled every surface, even the bed, and Sue moved a handful to make enough space to sit.
“Virology: Principles and Applications,” she read out loud, running her fingers over one of the titles. “A little light reading?”
Stephanie stopped spinning, staring at all the other books before looking at the dresser, seeing the hole in the wall partially hidden by shadows. “It’s for school.”
Sue held up another book. “Molecular Virology of Human Pathogenic Viruses. What school do you go to?”
“Stanford.”
“That’s not a high school.”
Stephanie shrugged, started spinning again. “I’m part of a joint effort with the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute researching online with Stanford’s Proteomics Center for Systems Immunology.”
Sue’s eyes widened, and she went back to looking at the books. A loud crash echoed from the living room.
“Get him off me,” one of the men said.
Stephanie coughed.
“This isn’t working.”
“It’ll work.”
“Seriously, get him off me.”
“He’s stuck on the plunger.”
“Move the plunger.”
Sue picked up a brightly colored printout, holding it to the light to see it better. “What is this?”
L stared at the picture, far too familiar, until Stephanie looked away.
“Just some homework,” Stephanie said, spinning the chair to face the dresser.
“Fascinating,” Sue said, returning the paper to where she’d found it. “How are you doing, Stephanie? Children’s Services will be here soon, that okay?”
Stephanie shrugged. “That’s okay.”
Someone knocked on the door, then one of the men from the medical examiner’s office peeked in. “We’re all done.”
“Thanks,” Sue said before standing. Books tilted off the bed and scattered across the floor.
Sue knelt to help, and Stephanie jumped down, pulling the books away from the dresser.
“I’ve got it,” Stephanie said.
“I’m sorry, didn’t mean to make a mess.”
Stephanie coughed, wiped her eyes. “It’s okay, really.”
“What’s this?” Sue asked, pointing to a piece of paper taped to the wall next to the desk, low enough not to be seen easily.
“Nothing,” Stephanie said, leaning against the dresser to hide the hole.
“Doesn’t look like nothing. 2061 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award.” Sue stared at Stephanie. “You won this when you were twelve?”
“Almost twelve.”
Sue whistled. “I’ve never even heard of endogenous retroviruses. Sounds dangerous.”
“It’s not,” Stephanie said, so quickly the words came out as one. “Really, I’m not dangerous.”
“Clear.”
Seven hours. M knew because every hour on the hour Levi counted it out loud. Seven hours since Cathy left. The happiest seven hours M ever remembered. He’d not seen much of the hours Cathy had stayed there. Levi kept his eyes closed and the lights off and M tried to give them some privacy, even if no one realized he existed.
Sure, he’d felt everything, the way he always felt pain or cold. It was better than the empty darkness most sleepless nights felt like. Not that he remembered ever sleeping.
But these past seven hours? Special, different, and wonderful.
Levi cleaned, a little. Ordered some things for the house he’d run out of long ago. Watched a movie on TV. And never once checked his email or crossed out a Step or worked on the plan, updated the timetable, adjusted an analysis, or made further plans.
His phone beeped every so often. He’d check for her name, and when someone else’s appeared, he’d ignore them.
Levi never ignored the plan. Not ever.
M smiled, or tried to, at least. Happiest hours ever, ARMAGEDDON just a little further away. Maybe Cathy had changed something.
Eight hours. Nine.
Levi texted her.
Ten. Eleven. Twelve.
&
nbsp; He hacked into her computer, looked at her empty room through the all-seeing eye of her own monitor.
Thirteen.
Fourteen.
Fifteen.
Levi moved a stack of papers off the couch, sat with a slice of cold pizza in the space Cathy usually claimed. He took one bite, doing nothing but holding the pizza and watching the wall.
He’d cleaned that side of the living room, leaving nothing for M to see other than the crappy paint job. Thick rivers of hardened paint, like random icicles hanging from various spots on the wall. Every so often, Levi blinked, but he didn’t eat any more.
Sixteen.
Seventeen.
Levi stretched out, shoving everything onto the floor.
“Eighteen,” he said.
M counted the water stains on the ceiling.
After checking to see if she’d texted, emailed, or called, Levi fell asleep, abandoning M to the eternal darkness.
L sat in the medpod, pen clutched in her hand. She bounced the notebook off her forehead, trying to remember. She’d been Stephanie. The old bastard had died. L remembered that. Remembered the laughter Stephanie couldn’t contain. Squeezed her eyes tight, knowing there was more, something else, something important, to remember.
“Alert at fifteen hours,” she said, inserting a food pouch but remaining in the pod. Not enough time to waste sleeping, too much to do. But she’d need to eat, and little reason to save food any longer.
“Fifteen hours and counting.”
Level E contained empty and locked rooms in random order.
F more of the same.
Halfway down the ladder to G, the lights went out, plunging her into absolute night. The darkness sent her pulse racing, the beat loud in the sudden silence. Sweat beaded on her palms, making it hard to maintain her hold on the metal rungs of the ladder.
The computer chimed.
“Emergency backup generator online.”
A red-tinged light filled the ladder shaft.
“What the hell was that?”
“Running diagnostics now.”
She descended the rest of the way to G, holding tight to the ladder. She studied the corridor. Every thirty feet or so, a weak cone of red light illuminated nothing.
“Unidentified failures in the backup hydroelectric system are causing intermittent power fluctuations. Running automatic repair programs now.”
Eight Minutes, Thirty-Two Seconds Page 9
