ARC: The Almost Girl

by Amalie Howard

  For a second, our eyes meet, and before I can even blink, the air in the room shimmers for a second, and without warning, the Vector disappears. The only memory of it is the red-hot end of Caden’s sword, neatly lasered to half its size, and a blackened patch on the carpet. I’d forgotten about the eversion device.

  The monster is gone. For now.

  But it knows where we are, and it’s only a matter of time before it comes back with more. It’s my last thought before I slip into an unwelcome oblivion.

  TRUTH BE TOLD

  My vision is swimming when I awake. The room is dark, lit only by a single flickering candle. It hurts to focus, and I am confused because Cale and Caden are both in the room, staring at me with wide frightened eyes.

  “You OK?” they ask me simultaneously. I lift my hand toward their faces.

  “How is this possible?” I rasp. “Where… am I?”

  “You’re safe, Riven,” they both say. “Drink this.”

  A cold rim touches my lips and I sip the liquid gratefully. My throat feels like it is on fire when the liquid touches it, but I feel better and less woozy as it goes down. A small silver flask dances at the edge of my vision. “What is that?”

  “Shae said to give it to you.”

  “Shae’s here, too?” My head is ringing, and the feeling that something isn’t quite right slips around inside of it. “Cale?”

  “No. Riven, it’s me. It’s Caden. Here, drink some more.”

  I sip obediently, the liquid tearing a path again into my insides. It’s bitter but warming. I sit up, pushing my elbows back against the pillows. Surprisingly, it takes very little effort to move, despite the pain in my head that would suggest otherwise. The room starts to take shape, and as I grow more and more awake, I realize that nothing else hurts.

  “Where am I?” I ask again after a couple minutes. “What happened?”

  “Don’t you remember?” Caden says. “Those things that attacked us?”

  And then it’s like a tidal wave as the events from earlier come rushing back. My fingers curl into the scratchy blankets on the sides of my legs.

  “How long have I been out?”

  “Only a couple hours.”

  “Where are we?”

  Caden comes closer, and the metal cot dips as he sits next to me. “We’re in the basement. It used to be a tornado shelter back in the early fifties. It’s why Shae picked this house out of all the others. She’s a bit of a Miss Doomsday, but I guess she was right.” He nods over to the far side of the room that’s still shrouded in darkness. “She’s pretty hurt, but I gave her some stuff that June uses for head injuries. It’s a mild sedative too, so she’s sleeping now. She didn’t want to call 911.”

  No, Shae wouldn’t; too many questions. I hobble over to where she’s lying on a cot similar to mine and stare at her bloodied face. Caden has cleaned off some of the blood, but her injuries are starting to blacken and swell. She looks far worse for wear than I. My fingers drift to her neck, and I can feel a faint but steady pulse. Her breathing is shallow and wheezy. Caden has cut off the legs of her pants to bandage some of her wounds, but his efforts are amateur at best. It won’t be long before her cuts become infected. And the migraines… Those are the beginning of the end. The injector in my bag would help, but unless she gets real help from our doctors, it would only provide temporary relief at best.

  “She doesn’t look so good,” I say.

  “I used what we had.” Caden’s voice is apologetic. “Riven, we need to get her to a hospital.”

  “No.” I shake my head emphatically. “No hospitals; too many questions that we can’t afford to answer. They wouldn’t be able to help her, anyway. I need to get my backpack. Does June have a medical kit upstairs?”

  “Yes, but I don’t even know how to use half the stuff June has in there. It’s hospital-grade stuff.”

  “Then we’re going to need to figure it out,” I say flatly, resting my hand against Shae’s hot forehead. “And fast.” Infection has already begun to set in. I walk back to my cot, where Caden is still sitting, and squat to retrieve my boots.

  “Riven,” Caden asks quietly, “what were those things?”

  I stare at him, wondering how after all these years Shae could have singlehandedly protected him from ever coming up against them. I don’t even know what she’s told him, if anything at all. My guess is nothing. She’s tried to protect him the only way she knew how – by keeping him in the dark, letting him have as normal a life as possible here with some kind of chance to be happy. Glancing over my shoulder at her sleeping form, I am unsure of what to say, but Caden is far from stupid, and he certainly isn’t blind. I settle for something near the truth.

  “They’re called Vectors, a government experiment. Reanimated corpses.”

  “Reanimated? Like zombies?”

  I shake my head, a faint smile at his childlike response curling my lips. “Zombies are dead, period. And they aren’t real. Vectors are very real dead bodies, controlled by nanobes. Tiny little microscopic robots that operate inside the hosts.”

  “Microscopic robots?” His expression is skeptical. “You’re kidding, right?” I shoot him a look and raise an eyebrow. “Is that even possible?” he asks.

  A dozen mocking responses slip to my lips, but I stifle them. I lace up my left boot and start on my right. “Not everything’s impossible. Remember the blue fluid?” Caden nods. “That’s nanoplasm… the robots.”

  “I don’t get it; why dead bodies?”

  “Easier to control than live ones, I expect,” I say bluntly, and grab my weapons, walking over to the steel door. “How do you open this thing?”

  Caden grabs my arm. “Where are you going? Those things, the Vectors could be up there. What do they want, anyway?”

  I try to keep the fear slinking around deep inside my belly out of my eyes.

  They want you.

  “I need to check the bodies to see if there’s anything we can use. And Shae needs something I have in my backpack. I’ll be back; just sit tight.” I watch as he unbolts the heavy door. “Lock it behind me. When I come back, ask me who our physics teacher is, OK?”

  “OK,” he says, squeezing his fingers, his hand still on my shoulder. “Be safe, Riven.”

  I climb the basement stairs carefully, hearing the heavy steel bolts fall into place behind me. The entire entrance has been reinforced with some kind of thick metal, and I trail my fingers across the shiny, cool surface. Shae has definitely made sure to be prepared for something. The door at the top leads into the kitchen. It’s a narrow trapdoor-like entrance that I’d never noticed before, not any of the previous times I’d been in their kitchen. It, too, is heavily reinforced, with special seals and gaskets. There are no visible handles for re-entry, so I stick a nearby cookbook in the gap. I have no idea if it will hold or not, but it’s the best I can come up with.

  It’s quiet, which isn’t necessarily a good thing, so I’m cautious when I make my way back upstairs. The room is a shambles, furniture tossed and broken, blood and blue fluid spattered everywhere, with three dead creatures in various stages of decay gracing the floor. The smell is putrid, like a wall of rotting human compost curling against me, and I feel the answering bile rise in my throat. That’s the thing with Vectors – when the nanoplasm dies, the bodies decompose rapidly. My father had once said that it was a disgusting but necessary element of control. As a society, we’d learned that the hard way.

  Trying not to breathe and careful not to touch any of the fluid, I methodically check each of the Vectors for weapons and anything else of use. I pocket an electro-gun, some rods, a couple metal golf balls that I’m sure are some kind of high-tech explosive devices, as well as any wireless communications headgear I can find. I’m onto the third in less than five minutes when I hear a faint sound. My weapons are at the ready before I’m even in a standing position. I tiptoe to the bedroom door, ears straining, but everything is quiet. I must have imagined the sound.

  The lo
w whine behind me catches me off guard and I swing around to an empty room until I realize that the sound is coming from the third Vector. It’s not dead! I pull what’s left of its head to face me, wincing at the stench of its wounds. If it’s not dead, it will be soon.

  “Soldier,” I say urgently. “Can you hear me?” No response. I tug on its jacket and its head lolls forward. “Answer me. That’s a direct order.”

  Its uninjured eye cracks open and the entire pupil is covered in pale bluish ooze. I doubt it can even see me, but somehow it’s registering my voice.

  “Who sent you?”

  The Vector’s eyes roll back in its head. “Is Cale dead?” There’s nothing, and I rephrase, desperate now. “Is the Lord King dead?”

  The Vector’s head moves slightly from left to right. It’s a no! My relief is tangible, and I sink back onto my haunches. It’s more than I could have hoped for. “What does my father want?”

  A single outstretched finger points to me. The Vector’s eye rolls back into its head, and its mouth opens and closes haphazardly, as if choking. The hand thumps to the floor. Within seconds, its head lolls to the side, and the pungent smell intensifies as its internal organs degrade and liquefy. Swallowing past the sourness in my mouth, I release the jacket and finish my search of its body, pocketing a pair of infrared glasses and a silver pearl-like earpiece communications device.

  I move to leave but pause at the door, thinking ahead. I don’t have a plan in place, but if any of us are to make it back to Neospes, we will need clothing. The Vector’s uniforms are designed to keep their bodies protected and are made from a rare type of engineered fabric-like armor, which also provides warmth and heat depending on weather conditions, both of which are unpredictable in Neospes. It would be stupid to leave them.

  I frown at the task at hand but move quickly before I have time to think about what I’m doing. In no time at all, I have three sets of uniforms peeled off of the Vectors’ bodies. They stink, but I can’t help that. I put them along with the weapons in Caden’s fencing bag and sling it over my back.

  Now for the medical kit.

  At the door, I glance back into the room. Looking at their naked, decaying flesh is far more repulsive than seeing them clothed. Curved ribs and sharp hipbones protrude against their milky, opaque skin with grotesque prominence: the stuff of nightmares. Blue veins traverse their near-transparent skin to route the nanoplasm from their artificial central nervous systems to the rest of their bodies, like a ghostly blue spider web. They barely look human now. Instead, they look like rotting, dead wraiths. I shake my head, swallowing thickly – the Vectors are true abominations of my culture.

  The sound of the front door jerks me out of my thoughts.

  “Hello? Caden? Anyone home?” It’s June’s voice. She must have come home early. I glance down at my filthy shirt and grab one of Caden’s clean T-shirts off the dresser, shrugging into it. “What is that horrific smell?”

  “Hey, June,” I call out, taking the steps down three at a time. “Sorry, we were doing an experiment for bio. Went bad. I wouldn’t go up there if I were you for at least ten minutes.” The last things I need her seeing are the three dead bodies in her house that look like something out of a science fiction movie. I fake an embarrassed grin and offer her an apologetic look.

  “Why am I not surprised?” she says slowly, after glancing with narrowed eyes to the stairs before putting her keys and bag on the counter. I hesitate – I still need to get the medical supplies.

  “June, we were looking for your… medical bag?” I ask in as casual a manner as I can manage.

  “Why?” So much for putting anything past her as her eyes meet mine, immediately full of concern. “Are you hurt?”

  “Nothing major,” I say quickly. “I hurt my leg fooling around with Caden’s foils earlier. I’m worried that it will get infected.” It’s not an outright lie, as one of the Vectors caught the back of my calf, but it’s not like I’ve paid much attention to it with everything else going on.

  “Well, let me just wash up, and I’ll take a quick look. My bag’s in my office.”

  “I’ll get it,” I say, and all but sprint to June’s office. I grab the bag and a couple of the blankets lying on her couch, and go back to the kitchen where she’s still washing her hands. June stares quizzically at the blankets and the medical bag in my arms, and her eyes flick to mine. She dries her hands slowly, her gaze drifting between Caden’s gear bag, the blankets, and me. Then her eyes flit to the staircase.

  “What’s going on, Riven?” Her voice is quiet, but there’s something in it that raises the hairs on the back of my neck. It’s an instinct that has kept me alive all these years. Her gaze settles on some fluid spattered on my collar peeking out over Caden’s shirt. My stomach sinks. I can see something dawning in her eyes. Mistrust. Fear.

  Gently placing the bag on the floor, I shift my balance from toe to heel and back again. There is no easy way to explain what I’m about to do, no lie that will make my actions any less terrible. She has to go down below, willing or not. And the fact is, I don’t know June, which means I can’t trust her. I edge closer and place my hands in the air in a non-threatening motion.

  Not missing a beat, June edges nearer to the kitchen island so that it stands between us. “Where is Caden?” she asks carefully.

  “Caden’s fine.” My voice is inflectionless and slow. “You have to trust me, June. But I need your help. Shae’s hurt.”

  “Shae?” A small furrow of worry shadows her brow, but she steels her expression almost immediately. “Shae’s not home. She’d have called to let me know.”

  “She came back today,” I say. “She had an accident.”

  A sharp glance. “And the dead Vectors upstairs?”

  “What?” This time it’s my eyes that rivet on hers. “What do you know about Vectors?”

  She has taken me by surprise, and just as I’m considering leaping across the island and knocking her unconscious, a small voice has us both spinning around. Shae’s leaning against the wall, her face a mottled collage of purples in the fluorescent lighting. Climbing the stairs from the secret room has her wheezing.

  “June’s a… Guardian, Riven,” she gasps, besieged by a round of ugly-sounding coughs. A trail of bloody spit runs down her chin as her body slumps down against the wall. I stare at June’s impassive face, incredulous.

  A Guardian! My hands grasp the hilts of the blades tucked into my waistband.

  “Was a Guardian,” June corrects, this time placing both her own hands in the air. She turns her head toward Shae, and I understand what she wants to do. I nod but don’t release the handles of my weapons lying flat against my back. She cradles Shae’s head against her. “Can you pass me the bag?” she asks me. Her eyes, so warm before, are now cold and expressionless.

  Unconsciously, I steel my expression to equal hers. “You can’t help her. She’s everted too much. She needs more than the help you can give her.”

  “I can try.”

  With a glance at Shae, I push the bag across with the toe of my boot, ever cautious. I am the enemy here, the one who has come to take Caden back. I can’t trust either of them, even after what happened with the Vectors.

  “Was a Guardian?” I ask, after a couple minutes watching her take out several glass bottles from her bag. “I didn’t think someone could stop being a Guardian.”

  “Well, I did.”

  “Why?”

  “Look at you; you’re just a kid,” June says softly, not answering my question.

  “I’m not a child,” I snap back.

  June’s eyes are gentle. “But you are, Riven. Look around you, look at the children in your school: they’re kids. The same age as you are. You’re babies trained to kill.” I can’t stand the pity in her voice, and I bristle.

  “They’re useless and wouldn’t last a minute in Neospes. Answer the question, June.”

  A long, searching look as if she’s trying to see inside my head. “I didn’
t believe in executing innocent people… innocent kids.” Now it’s my turn to stare at her. “The Guardians honor a code to protect the fabric of the universe,” June continues. “You know what would happen if people were to jump back and forth, don’t you?” It’s a rhetorical question, so I remain silent. “The threat of infection, of disease, is of course the worst, not to mention altering the course of a civilization’s future. We honor an agreement between the worlds to protect each side from the other… more so to protect this world from the greed of yours. Eversion was never meant to be permanent. It was a mistake to let it go this far, to create an algorithm that allows abominations like the Vectors to come here.”

  “What do you mean, it was a mistake?”

  June answers my question with an equally blunt one of her own. “Why do you think Murek wants Caden so badly?”

  “I don’t know.” It’s not a lie. I have many theories but none of them strike me as accurate. The truth is I have no idea why he wants Caden, especially if Murek wants to rule Neospes. Getting rid of him would be the easiest thing to do, after Cale is out of the way. It makes no sense that he would want him so badly. “So why does he?”

  “Pass me the blankets,” she tells me, and I comply automatically. She makes Shae, who keeps slipping in and out of consciousness, more comfortable on the floor. I glance at my watch, knowing that each second we remain here becomes more and more risky. June sends a sidelong glance in my direction and continues speaking while sticking a thermometer into Shae’s mouth. “It is a secret that many would kill to protect.” She pauses as if assessing whether to tell me or not, and I wait, silent. Nothing prepares me for the next words that come out of her mouth. “Caden, like Cale, is a hybrid. A product of both universes.”

  “That’s impossible,” I shoot back. “I may not know Murek’s endgame, but I do know what happens to any progeny that comes out of any union between universes. They are abominations and are all to be disposed of… by you, the Guardians, and the Vectors.” I can hardly keep the vitriol out of my voice. “It’s the law. You track them, and the Vectors eliminate them.”