“Who?” Rebecca demanded, fists balled at her sides. “Who are you talking about?”
Vladimir gave a slight shake of his head.
“You know already,” he told her gently, finally looking up at her. “It is entirely obvious.”
It all came together, like a headache building in the back of her skull. His expression said that he was sorry for that, sorry both for telling her and not telling her sooner, but it was too little and way too late. Rebecca left the room without a word, trying to decide what to tell Alice.
***
“What’s the matter?” Alice leaned close, tipping down her sunglasses to look over them. “Are you not having fun?”
Xia made a small adjustment to his dust mask. The beer on the table beside him was untouched.
“Oh, come on!” Alice threw her hands in the air, splashing the sand around them with beer. “This place is great! What’s your fucking problem?”
Rosarito baked in the afternoon sun, heat radiating from whitewashed ceramic walls and two-decade-old cars. The beach was white and long, the Pacific blue and sluggish, the vendors working the beach somewhat less emaciated than the diapered horses they offered to let tourists ride.
They sat beneath a thatch roof in a cabana, beachside, serviced haphazardly by a series of enthusiastic young waiters, locals who brought Coronas in buckets of ice with bowls of lemon and salt. Each of them made the time to flirt with Alice in playful Spanish, her response varying on a case-by-case basis. There were two buckets filled with Alice’s empties beneath the table that no one ever thought to take away, and plates of steaming crabmeat and fresh tortillas on top of it that they had not ordered.
“Why are you being such a drag?” Alice grumbled. “I set this whole thing up so we could come here together, just like the old days.”
Xia picked specks of sand from the arm of his jacket, which he wore zipped tight, with the collar up, despite the heat. His lacquered hair wilted in the heat, his face flushed beneath his goggles.
“You used to like the beach.” Alice shook her nearly empty beer. “You used to like to watch me swim, remember?”
Xia brushed away a drop of sweat that emerged from his drooping hairline.
Alice grinned and untied the towel around her waist, letting it drop to the sand.
“I could do this assignment without wearing a bathing suit, you know,” she teased, crossing her legs. “That was a decision I made for your benefit. The least you could do is appreciate it.”
She laughed and reached across the table for the most recent bucket, lingering over her choice of sweating bottles. Little patches of sun snuck through the thatching and dappled the Tree of Life tattooed on her spine, the canopy covering her shoulders, the furthest branches reaching the beginnings of her ribs. The suit was a relatively modest swimmer’s spandex two-piece, but Xia’s eyes were drawn nonetheless.
Alice laughed as she used the lip of the table to knock the cap from another bottle.
“You’re damn right,” she said approvingly, doing a little turn. “That’s a lot of time in the gym, you know.”
A new waiter arrived to sing Alice’s praises. She shooed him away with tolerant laughter, while Xia scooted his stool back to the deepest part of the shade beneath the canopy. A small group of children set up nearby, intent on getting a pair of plastic kites in the air, while vacationing students and American retirees occupied the cabanas around them, getting drunk in the shade and relative cool of a wicker shelter. Alice forced a wedge of lime down the neck of her beer, added a dash of salt, and then hesitated.
Xia glanced in her direction.
“What? No. I’m okay.” Alice frowned and pitched the lime rind on to the sand. “Just feeling a little down, I guess. This whole thing with Mikey…”
He leaned forward, just slightly.
“…yeah, I know. You told me not to. You were right – I admit it. Mikey deserves better than me, and I know it, and trying to live up to his expectations is exhausting.” Alice laughed joylessly. “We’re fucking idiots, you know, Xia. Me and Mikey both. Why the fuck do we keep doing this?”
Xia made no obvious reaction.
“I suppose I shouldn’t expect sympathy from you,” Alice said, finishing her beer. “I dug the hole, right?”
Xia nodded.
“You’re a smartass today, you know?”
Three.
A bright interval.
The simulation included a stretch of beach in Santa Monica where Rebecca had apparently spent a great deal of time as a student at UCLA, within sight of the Ferris wheel and the pier. Alex preferred it of the three available venues, so they spent most of their time there. The sun was brilliant, the air smelled of salt water and car exhaust, and the sand was warm and surprisingly clean beneath his feet. The beach was dotted with people – families, surfers, girls working on their tans – but if he looked too closely, they faded and become two dimensional, so he didn’t pay the crowds much attention.
They did hours of yoga, his feet slipping in the sand and sweat rolling into his eyes, until he was too tired to worry over anything. They swam in the ocean, bathing suits mysteriously provided, and made giant bonfires at night, cooking steaks and drinking ineffectual beer. Alex walked with Rebecca along the pier, the wind steady and mischievous, eating Churros and chatting about his anxieties in a manner that did not feel very much like therapy. They did their best to fly a kite, and then laughed uproariously when the endeavor failed. The sun would occasionally set, but it was never night for long, and there was no sensation of the passage of time.
They practiced breathing exercises and protocol activation routines. She read to him from a Hemingway novel that seemed to be mostly about drinking and watching bullfights. He learned techniques to tolerate pain, mental exercises to control anxiety and awareness. Rebecca taught him to visualize, to retreat into his own head. They did sun salutations before a prolonged dawn and then sat in the sand, practicing something like meditation, though Alex felt too restless to achieve emptiness.
They mostly walked on the beach, though, hiking from the tide pools at one end to the pier and faded amusement park at the other, deep in conversation.
“This can’t last forever…can it?”
Rebecca shook her head, the ball of the sun a pink sphere reflected in both lenses of her sunglasses.
“No. You’re experiencing time dilation – the simulation makes a few seconds feel like years – but nothing lasts forever, Alex. Even this.”
Alex shivered.
“And then…whatever is waiting for me. The Weir.”
“I don’t think it’s Weir,” Rebecca said, looking like she didn’t know what to do with her hands without a cigarette. “For one thing, the last thing you remember is deploying against the Anathema…”
“…pretty sure.”
“…and for another, based on your description, a telepath is trying to worm their way into your head. The Weir don’t have telepaths, and neither do the Witches.”
“The Anathema?”
“Best guess? Yeah.”
“Huh. Is that…bad? I don’t really understand the Anathema.”
“Nobody does, unless they understand themselves.” Rebecca kicked at the sand. “They went into the Outer Dark of their own volition. They seem to think of death as a stage in evolution. That’s pretty incomprehensible.”
“At least they’re human, though, right? Better than one of those wolf monsters.”
“Not exactly.” Rebecca’s lips were pressed together into a thin, colorless line. “The best you can say for them is that they used to be human. They are something less than that, now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course not. I’m just giving you my opinion.”
They started to walk again, their backs to the Ferris Wheel and its candy colored lights. Alex watched the waves arrive in orderly sets, disintegrating against the shore into spray and sea foam.
“You said something about the Outer Dark…
do you think that’s where I am? I’m not…I don’t get it. Is that a place, like Central, or…?”
Rebecca tripped unexpectedly in the sand, going head first into the shoreline. For a long, alarming moment, her face remained firmly planted in the sand.
“Rebecca?” Alex grabbed her by her shoulder, and found it slack. “Are you okay?”
She mumbled something inarticulate. He helped her clumsily to her feet, and then discovered that she was bleeding from the nose.
“What’s wrong?” Alex flitted around her in a panic. “I thought you were a simulation! Why are you bleeding? Did you hit your head?”
Rebecca slowly wiped the trickle of blood from beneath her nose. She stared at her reddened finger in apparent amusement, and then wiped her hand clean on her sweatshirt.
“I’m fine,” Rebecca said, her voice muddy. “Nothing to worry about.”
“Are you sure?” Alex studied her in concern. “Your voice is all…”
“Problems with the simulation,” she said, with an odd expression he had never seen before. “Your mental defenses are under tremendous strain.”
“Oh. Shit.”
“Yes.” Rebecca seemed to compose herself. “Now, what were we discussing?”
“The Outer Dark,” Alex said, scratching his head. “The Anathema. You were gonna tell me…”
“I’m a simulation,” Rebecca said brusquely, with a strange, clipped intonation. “I have very little to offer in that sense, and I’m afraid our time together has grown short.”
Alex dropped into a squat, his hands resting on the sand.
“Oh, God. Can you…can you stretch this out? Give me some more time? I’m not ready…”
“We are past that,” Rebecca said curtly. “We must discuss this quickly; we have little time. Review your memories, Alex, and search your thoughts. Are any of them not your own?”
Alex was busy trying not to vomit, and did not make a response. He was willing to bet regurgitation was not included in the simulation; nausea, unfortunately, was included.
“There is something hidden within you, something of great importance,” Rebecca explained, her phrasing weirdly precise. “I do not know what form it might take, but I am certain that you would recognize its alien and unfamiliar nature.”
Alex hesitated.
“What are you talking about, Becca?” Alex ran his hands through his hair. “Why didn’t you bring this up before now?”
“We had other priorities,” Rebecca said, obviously annoyed. “I am a simulation. My priorities are externally derived.”
“Right. A simulation,” Alex said, letting sand fall between his fingers. “What are you looking for, again?”
“A memory, most likely. Perhaps a thought in a foreign language, or a dream that you never had, or a book you never read.” Rebecca gave him an urgent look. “Do you know what I’m talking about?”
Alex gave her an unhurried look, and then turned his attention back to the escalating surf.
“I think so. I didn’t at first, but I think I know what you’re after.”
“We have little time. Let us begin!”
Alex poured sand from one hand to the other.
“So, you want me to, what; just describe it? Some of this stuff isn’t even words…”
“No. You need only to think it, and I will…”
Rebecca’s expression wavered.
“Alex?”
His eyes remained on the flattened surf, and the legion of new waves forming in the deeper water, beneath the black clouds. The dark front seemed to have advanced while he was distracted. His fingers dug down into the sand around his feet.
“Yes?”
“You just cut off my access to your mind,” Rebecca said softly. “Why did you do that?”
“You were a little obvious.”
“Ah. Was I? I see.”
Alex stood, brushing sand from his hands, and turned to face her. Rebecca’s eyes glowed an unearthly green, radiant as precious stones, as did the columns of Chinese-looking text inscribed beneath either eye.
“Are you one of the Anathema?”
“Not even slightly,” Not-Rebecca said, with a sneer. “We have already met. You don’t remember…? Ah! I see. This is a trauma reduction implant, is it not? One moment.”
Alex felt the peculiar horror of someone riffling through his mind like fruit at the grocery store.
“Hey! Get out of…”
He fell to his knees, and seized his maimed right hand, moaning.
“There we are,” Not-Rebecca said, with obvious satisfaction. “Is it all coming back?”
Fragments of memory, sharp as broken glass. Alistair, laughing and mocking him, while cutting him to pieces. The ends of his fingers rolling across the floor. His leg, pierced to the bone. His ruined, violated eye.
Alex covered the space where his eye had been, afraid to touch whatever remained.
“Yeah. I remember.”
“Good! Then we don’t need to bother with introductions.”
“Actually, I, ah…don’t remember your name.”
Not-Rebecca’s eyes narrowed, and then she smiled evilly.
“Give me just a moment,” she said, digging her fingers into her brown hair. “Perhaps this will jar your memory.”
Not-Rebecca tore her scalp in half, tugging at the end of the flesh until it ripped away on long strips, like wallpaper. Alex watched, transfixed, as the Yaojing peeled away Rebecca’s face like a snake molting, casting aside pieces of unwanted viscera with a mortifying nonchalance. Her clothing tore just as easily, and once she made it down to her torso, the remainder of her flesh seemed to slough off, her outer layer discarded on the sand like an ill-fitting suit.
Samnang Banh smiled and adjusted one of the wooden combs that held her elaborately arranged hair in place with jeweled fingernails. The characters inscribed on her cheeks beneath either eye gleamed. She wore white skirts and a robe whose colors mimicked the sunset, an interwoven pattern of gentle yellows and pinks that softened to deep red around the hem.
“My name is Samnang Banh, but you may call me Samantha, should you prefer. I am an Artificer in the service of the Church of Sleep; a Yaojing, by birth,” the southeast Asian woman explained, with an air of relaxed contempt. “You are Alexander Warner, or so you’ve been told. I believe that you harbor intentions toward my younger sister.”
***
Emily followed the slanted stairwell of the Inverted Spire down, past the dormitories and the manufactories, the prisons and the Etheric Furnaces, deep beneath the sterile crystalline surface of the Outer Dark. She paused occasionally to allow teams of laborers and emergency crews to pass her, working her way around the maintenance staff frantically attempting to brace and shore the threatened structure. The air became polluted with sulfured steam as the Spire narrowed, the darkness broken by a series of mournful LEDs strung overhead.
She hummed the Rite of Spring to herself as she went, a cheerful bounce to her steps, pretending not to notice the lingering looks that some of the workers gave her, when they thought her safely past, their halos ruddy with lust. The Inverted Spire had been a construction site since the base of the building had started to list – due to exceptional, Alex-related circumstances – and Emily was deeply glad to live with Marcus on the fringe.
The bottom of the Spire was traditionally reserved for those who would never return from its depths – corpses were brought here, for burning, and prisoners, for interrogation. Emily visited only of necessity, preferring to send representatives or read reports over the visceral nastiness of the interrogator’s art. This was only the third time she had descended this far, but the view had changed considerably since that time.
She halted at the last guard post, ignoring the nervous guards stationed there, and leaned over the railing to get a good look at the bottom.
The whole final level of the Spire, and a considerable amount of the space above it, had collapsed, putting tremendous strain on the outer walls of the structu
re, which were cracking and tilting more radically every day. The list continued to worsen, the mass of the Spire tortured by a strange gravity in its basements, slabs of broken stone and concrete grinding slowly into gravel. Brilliant white chunks of ice were scattered throughout the debris, the product of broken water pipes. The cold radiating up from the lower levels was so substantial she could feel it on her cheeks, even from a distance.
“Oh, hello, Emily!” The man standing on the top of the miniature landslide called out to her. “Come to mock my failures?”
Emily sighed, and climbed down the final accessible section of stairs, holding tight to the railing to avoid tripping on the slick coating of ice. She slipped off her heels carefully and left them at the base of the stairs, continuing barefoot to join the man on a treacherous surface of broken stone and ice, where he mournfully contemplated the lost interrogation level.
“No, Alistair,” Emily said glumly. “To commiserate, perhaps. I could even be helpful, should the mood strike me.”
Alistair looked surprised.
“Oh? I wouldn’t expect to benefit from that sort of charitable feeling.”
“We may have had very different intentions, but certainly no purpose is served by neither of us having access to poor Alex. Tell me – did the surgeons have time to stabilize him, before…?”
“…he hollowed the base out of the Spire?” Alistair offered grimly. “The engineers say it’s going to fall over, you know, even if we figure out how to make that twerp shut off his protocol. The only habitable structure in the Outer Dark, and your boyfriend destroys it.” Alistair rubbed his forehead. “Anyway, the first thing we did was stabilize him. We had Alex in a forced evolution chamber, and were still working out exactly how much patching up we needed to do, to get him awake and talking…”
“Which wouldn’t have been necessary, if you would have exercised a little self-control.”
The Outer Dark (Central Series Book 4) Page 5
