Leah closed her eyes and willed the computers to pull her through. She felt the immense power of the machine working on her behalf, but there was something different. The edges of the network were hazy, ragged, as though they were damaged.
The soft hum from the computers around her faded away. Leah took a deep breath and smelled wood and dust. When she opened her eyes, she was standing in the library from her dollhouse.
Immediately, she reached toward the nearest bookshelf. Her hand stopped, hovering in midair an inch from the end of the shelf. It was empty.
47
Leah ran the length of the room. “No, no, no!” Her eyes filled with tears as she checked the shelves. Where before there had been hundreds of books, now there was nothing but empty space. Her despair mounting, she ran to the desk. There were no files on top of it or in the drawers.
There was no carpet behind the desk either, just concrete. A dark stain appeared near Leah’s foot. She jumped back as it crept outward. Dark smoke-like tendrils wormed toward her across the floor, driving her back. There was the crack of splintering wood. One corner of the desk sagged.
Leah ran back across the room. The red carpet was gone completely, and dozens of stains blossomed across the exposed concrete. A loud crunch echoed around the room. One of the bookshelves shattered. Splintered wood peppered Leah’s back. Covering her head with her arms, she ran toward the door out of the library.
A bookshelf a few feet ahead of her exploded. A chunk of wood stung her cheek, and she cried out. The concrete beneath her feet turned slick. She looked down to see a bruise-black stain spreading out between her and the door. She lengthened her stride until she was almost jumping. As she pushed off with her right foot for the third time, she slipped. The sudden movement caught her off guard, and she stumbled then crashed to the floor. The rough concrete ripped a couple of layers of skin from her palms.
With visions of the dark stain seeping into her body through the grazes on her hands, Leah staggered back to her feet. She threw herself against the door as she reached it. It burst open, and she crashed through, not into the hallway as she’d expected but out onto a dimly lit street.
It was the same city she’d seen earlier, but the bright sky of her first visit was gone. Now it was covered by a thick layer of roiling clouds. There was no rain, but red lightning flickered and flashed overhead. Off in the distance, a wall of gray stretched from the ominous clouds to the ground, obscuring the city.
The building behind her creaked and groaned. She ran into the middle of the street. Looking back, she saw her dollhouse made real, incongruous among the dozens of skyscrapers around it. A thick curtain of cloud hung down over the house, obscuring the roof like a soot-smeared veil.
There was another groan from deep within the building. Leah could feel the vibration of it through her feet. The front of the dollhouse buckled inward. Streamers of thick gray cloud swept down the front of the building. They wrapped around it like a many-fingered hand. More groans. More creaking.
One corner of the building folded inward with a squeal. The outer edges followed suit, twisting and bending as the dollhouse collapsed in on itself. The clouds rolled downward and swallowed up the imploding building. After a few seconds, they began to disperse like fog in sunlight. The space where her dollhouse had been was empty.
Red light flared, illuminating the street and throwing a scarlet glow over everything. Leah ran her fingers through her hair. With the dollhouse gone, she had no idea how to find the data on her mother.
The wall of cloud had swallowed up many of the buildings she’d seen in the city on her first visit, but there must still have been thirty or forty left. She didn’t have time to search them all, and she had no desire to find out what would happen if she was caught inside one of them when the storm absorbed it, or whatever it was doing.
She tried to picture her goal as a file packed with dozens of sheets of paper detailing everything about her mother’s life. Part of her hoped it might just appear on the street in front of her. The rest just wanted some sort of indication where she should go to find it. A glowing trail through the city or a beam of light streaming down from the heavens. Neither of those things appeared.
A sharp crack split the air. The ground shuddered again, longer and more intensely than before. It took Leah a few seconds to spot the collapsing building, but she found it at the edge of the clouds—a towering pillar of metal and glass. Like the dollhouse, it seemed to fold in on itself and was gone. A wall of thick gray cloud took its place. The buildings on either side were already twisting and buckling. The cloud was rolling ever closer.
Leah clenched her fists in frustration. Whatever Westler had done, the VR was shutting down or maybe even destroying itself. If she didn’t find what she was looking for soon, it would be too late.
A high mechanical howl sent ice scampering down Leah’s spine.
The wolves.
The noise came from behind her, but when she looked, there was no sign of them. Feeling exposed out on the street, she searched for someplace she could get inside. With luck, it would be somewhere she could find the data she was looking for. None of the mismatched cluster of buildings around her seemed particularly significant. They were just buildings.
Scarlet lightning flashed. Leah spotted the wolf crouched in front of one of the towers—a tall metal spike of a building she recognized from her first visit. Its hackles rose, silver eyes locked on to her.
Leah fought down panic as she started backing away from the creature. She had no idea whether she could repeat her trick and take over the thing’s machine brain and had no intention of finding out. She glanced over her shoulder. The entrance to the nearest building was thirty feet away. A pair of large glass doors revealed a broad, marble-floored entrance hall. She had no idea whether the doors were locked, and even if they were, the glass might not be enough to protect her.
The wolf howled again. A response came a few seconds later and was quickly followed by another. She caught sight of movement and spotted the shadowy outlines of the wolves in front of the building. There were three of them, plus another patch of darkness that might be a fourth, or simply a shadow cast by the building. None of the wolves moved as she backed away. They seemed content to stand watch where they were.
A vicious crack shattered the silence. Behind her, another of the buildings was swallowed up by the storm. It was only three blocks away now, maybe four. Time was running out.
Ignoring the nagging feeling that the data she was looking for might have already been swallowed up by Westler’s self-destruct sequence or virus or whatever this was, Leah scanned the buildings around her. She could feel the machine—whispers of it out there at the periphery of her senses. She reached for them, but they dissolved before she could home in.
She turned her attention toward the wolves. As her thoughts drew close to them, she felt a wall go up, as solid as the walls in Columbia she’d climbed as a child. She pushed at the barrier. She poked and prodded. Each time, her thoughts were repelled.
Two more buildings fell.
Leah tried to ignore the cloud and the wolves. Instead, she needed to work out where the data would be. It had to be here somewhere. If not, why would Westler go to so much trouble to destroy everything? Why not just let the wolves hunt her down? They were right there. If they struck now, there’d be nothing she could do.
She looked at the wolves again. Menace radiated off them in waves. Why weren’t they attacking her?
Ignoring the rumbling of another building collapse, Leah took a handful of steps toward the wolves. They didn’t move.
The building behind them was the biggest in this part of the city—a triangular silver spike impaling the sky. Strips of glistening steel wrapped around the windowless structure at regular intervals. Another spike, an antenna of some sort, topped the building. The way inside was obvious. There were no doors, just a triangular opening leading into the shadowed interior.
Leah was beginning to think
the wolves were actually statues, when one of them moved. She had to force herself not to turn and run for cover. But the wolf didn’t come for her. It paced sideways, moving across the triangular opening as though daring her to try to get inside.
The more she looked at the building, the more she was convinced the data she was looking for was inside. Whether Westler had given the wolves their instructions or not, they were clearly guarding it. All she had to do was get past them.
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Leah focused her mind on the solid wall surrounding the wolves. The resistance was there just as before, but she could feel the machine, too. It was behind them, a conscious, thinking presence waiting to block any attempt she might make to get past its defenses.
Desperation mounting, she felt her way across the surface of the wall. She couldn’t be sure, but it seemed weaker at one particular point. She pushed against the weak point with her will and felt something give. One of the wolves let out a low-pitched growl.
The wall of cloud loomed up behind the silver spike. Lightning danced across its surface. Leah lost count of how many buildings fell as she searched for a way into the wolves’ minds. Two of them were pacing back and forth in front of the building. The third, the one that had growled, sat off to one side, just watching her. That was the wolf she focused on. As soon as she directed her thoughts toward it specifically, she could feel the weakness in its defenses. There were cracks there, something she could exploit.
She swept her will across the wolf’s barrier and found the deepest of the fissures. Picturing it in her thoughts, she forced her way inside it. The wall split apart. Instantly, she felt the mass of the machine’s intelligence hit her. Leah pushed back. She’d already forced herself into the machine once, and she’d do it again.
Pain radiated through her skull. The world shimmered and shook in front of her eyes. Her mouth filled with a sharp metallic taste. Her grip on consciousness began to slip. Her chest grew tight. The machine was winning. She could feel her will being forced back.
Leah shouted—a desperate cry that was quickly drowned out by another peal of thunder.
The wolves charged at her.
Fear blossomed inside her. They hadn’t reached her, but the sensation of their teeth tearing at her body became almost overwhelming. She could feel their hot breath, hear the breaking of bones and the rending of flesh. Imagined pain ripped through her body.
She screamed and pulled back. The wall of resistance she’d been fighting turned to a guiding hand helping her retreat.
“No!”
The wolves hadn’t reached her. The pain she was feeling wasn’t real. It was the machine building on her fear, amplifying it until it turned to terror and threatened to incapacitate her.
The third wolf was still crouched outside the building. Ignoring the oncoming creatures and the fear they were bringing with them, Leah focused on that chink in the machine’s armor.
The wall between her and the wolf’s consciousness was still there, but she slammed her will against it, and it shattered into thousands of tiny fragments. For a moment, the fragments became physical things, and they pattered against her face like winter rain.
The machine was there, too, behind the wall, but it was weaker. She drove her will against it, and the machine’s defenses buckled under her attack. She broke through, into the wolf’s mind.
Immediately, she felt the rot. Dark veins of dead cells ran through its artificial brain. What little energy remained felt weak and insubstantial. Leah’s thoughts spread through the withered remains of the wolf’s intelligence. If she could get into the machine, maybe she could shut down the wolves before they got to her.
The wolves were thirty feet away and closing quickly.
The wolf’s mind was decaying even as she searched. Pathways went nowhere or disintegrated before she could explore them. When she reached its core, the nexus of the creature’s thoughts was a dull, lifeless mass of blackened tissue. Dead. All that remained was a withered, twisted nub like a lump of melted plastic.
Fifteen feet away.
Another branch of the wolf’s mind fell away. Leah was running out of options. Alice’s voice came to her, insisting she get out before it was too late.
And then there it was. Not a link to the machine but a connection to the other wolves. Praying there were no defenses, Leah reached out, her will bridging the gap between the wolves even as they leaped at her.
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The difference between the weakened wolf’s mind and a healthy one was marked. Energy rushed into Leah as her consciousness joined the wolf’s. She ignored the outer fringes of its mind and instead sought out the nexus. She plunged into it, crashing through what little defenses there were. She got the same dizzying sense of double vision as she’d gotten before, then the wolf was hers.
Leah turned the wolf and directed it away from her, toward its companion. The second wolf was leaping as she lunged at it. Steel jaws snapped shut. Razor teeth clamped around its throat. Metal buckled and twisted as Leah tore through the outer skin and into the mechanism beneath.
The two wolves tumbled over each other. Leah could feel the consciousness of the second wolf through the shared link. Pain tore through it, but instead of trying to fight back, it was still focused on her. It tried to right itself to attack again. The single-mindedness of its programming evidently left no room for self-preservation. She yanked the wolf’s head back and tore out a mass of twisted metal.
The damaged wolf bucked and twisted, but it was the death throes of a mindless automaton, not any attempt to free itself. Leah tightened the wolf’s jaws again. A circuit board shattered. She felt something sharp dig into the roof of the wolf’s jaw, but there was no pain. The other wolf fell on its side. Across the link, she felt its consciousness blink out of existence. She released her grip on its throat.
Leah’s wolf stood over the broken machine. White liquid seeped from the tear in the thing’s throat and ran across the pavement. The wolf felt nothing, but Leah did. She felt revulsion. She felt guilt. She felt excitement. She turned toward the spiked building. The final wolf was standing in front of the door. Its head was bowed, and its silver eyes regarded her with a cold intensity. She paced her wolf toward the building. Its claws rasped against the pavement.
The other wolf tilted its head. The movement was almost comical. It gave it a confused appearance, like a dog that had just heard an unfamiliar noise. Its jaw opened and closed.
Leah could feel its mind, too—what was left of it, anyway. The rot hadn’t let up—if anything, it had accelerated. A few shreds of intelligence clung on, but that was all. She could feel it trying to process the situation. It had its orders to protect the building, but it no longer understood how to execute those instructions.
The dying wolf tried to take a step forward. Maybe it was attempting to intercept her, or maybe it was just going to join its companion. Either way, its front legs gave out. It fell forward, and its back legs collapsed. It rolled onto its side and lay there, its silver eyes growing dim. Leah felt its intelligence vanish from the link.
She stood beside the fallen machine until another building came crashing down. The ground beneath her feet rippled. The wolf staggered to one side. Leah’s vision flickered, and for a moment she was back in her own body, staring across at the wolf.
Then she was back in the wolf and looking up at the immense silver spike of the building. The wall of cloud had reached it. Long smoke-like tendrils wrapped themselves around the spike, obscuring the upper levels. Red lightning leaped from the clouds to the rod on the top of the building. The wolf caught the smell of ozone, its intelligence immediately breaking the scent down and presenting it to Leah as a series of chemical compounds.
Leah felt the wolf twitch. An electrical charge ran up its hind legs. A black shape, like a worm, crawled across its vision. The wolf blinked. More of the shapes appeared.
A sudden burst of static tore through Leah’s mind. Pain formed behind her eyes. She withdrew from the wol
f’s nexus and saw the rot. Dozens of the connections in its mind were already breaking down. Darkness flared around one edge of the nexus. Another spike of pain drove itself into Leah’s head. She cried out and retreated.
As she reached the edge of the wolf’s mind, a wave of blackness rolled out from its core. It spread along the connections and turned them to ash.
Leah pulled her mind back, but something was holding her in place. The machine was intent on keeping her there. She struggled fruitlessly against it. She couldn’t fail now; she was too close.
The blackness reached her.
Every nerve in Leah’s body screamed out in agony as a wave of ice spread through it. The cold clamped around her skull like a vise, crushing bone and turning her brain to frozen mush. The muscles in her arms and legs tensed, then contracted, then shriveled as though they were consuming themselves.
Blackness descended over her vision. Screaming, she tore herself free of the machine’s grip. There was a ripping sensation, like something was shredding the flesh from her face, and then Leah was lying facedown on the pavement. She tasted blood. Her vision swam.
She rolled onto her back. When she wiped the back of her hand across her nose, it came away smeared with blood. The vise around her skull had eased. Now it felt like it was only going to crack it open, not shatter it completely. She spat blood and looked across the road. Her wolf was lying on the ground. Its forelegs twitched once.
Beyond the wolf, the building was now almost completely encased in the destructive storm. Only the triangle of the door remained. Lightning flashed. Thunder boomed.
Leah took a deep breath. Her legs felt like someone had stripped the bones from them.
This isn’t real.
The Girl in the Machine (Leah King Book 3) Page 17
