by E A Carter
Above, the brutal weight of two kilometres of the Earth's mantle presses down on me. A tremor of claustrophobia shears my cells, the deepest part of me resisting where it should not be, far from the air, the sun, the surface. I smother it. I'm here now and won't be let back out. They hooded me before I left the Prime Minister's residence. I could try to find the way out, but I know it's pointless. I am free to roam, but only where the titanium bracelet loaded with all my data and blinks with a life of its own allows it. I roll my gaze back up to the curved roof of the corridor two meters above me, lit from an unknown source and suppress another wave of claustrophobia. It is what it is. I think of Adiana. Of what I intend to do when we reach the other side. It keeps me focussed. Clear.
I've had my debriefing, and been assigned my pod in section C-3. I went to see where I would exist for the next thousand years in a state of sub-zero preservation. It's elegant—unnecessarily so. Then again, it's exactly what people who pay a billion dollars would expect for the price tag, not just a second chance but style. A lot of it.
Capsule-shaped and finished in brushed steel, one thousand of them gleam, quiet, in their fractal-like layout, laid out in perfect symmetry throughout the massive torus-shaped vault. Each pod a work of art that could easily be placed in a gallery—a monolith two and half meters long and one meter wide. A diamond-paned window curves over where one's head would be. I peer in, expecting a jumble of equipment, but there is nothing more than the white interior of a pressure sensitive mat and head cushion. I have been advised there will be injections beforehand loaded with chemicals, nutrients and 'other things' to help my system survive a millennium of deep cold.
'What 'other things'?' I'd asked the medic checking my vitals.
'Nanobots.' He'd answered without looking up from the tablet streaming the data that defined the essence of my existence.
He didn't expand and I didn't ask. I didn't want to know. If it worked, I would do what needed to be done to avenge Adiana. If it didn't—I would never know. Either way, Adiana would be waiting for me on the other side of this. I would find her, somehow. But right now, I've got thirteen hours to kill before they prep me for sleep. I decide there's no better time to drink to the dreams of men one hundred fifty years dead.
FOURTEEN | RYAN MADDOX
* * *
It has to be now. Right now. If I don't do it now, it won't happen, and everything will be fucked. An hour ago, de Pommier's avatar turned up in the war room and hasn't left even though the general has been with Blue almost every waking moment these last three months.
I know by the way de Pommier’s avatar is eyeing me she's realised her order to decommission me later today has been scrubbed. I run a quick scan. No new order, at least not in the system. I sense this time the order was issued 'in person' or at least as close to that could be with her. They will come for me at any moment, take me away, extract my memories, and leave me to burn.
But I can tell she's not sure, so she leaves me to keep working, her desire to extract every last particle of value out of me superseding her caution. At least this much I have to my advantage. I keep cool, and pretend ignorance to what I know she intends to do to me. To Blue.
Blue thinks me and Miro are coming with her to Mars. I know the truth. She's been led to believe these things to keep her working hard, so she is motivated, and believes every effort she makes will give her the advantage she needs to terraform Mars and create a new life for herself with me and Miro. I have seen the numbers. They can't afford the luxury to send me and Miro with her when they have had to leave so many brilliant minds behind to perish. Besides, Miro would never survive the trip. It would be cruel and impractical to send a cat to Mars. But Blue has nothing else to cling to, so she doesn't even consider the impossibility of it, or maybe she knows but refuses to face it, I don't know. I don't ask.
What I do know is the lab has created a kind of cat for her, a nanobot driven robot, exactly like Miro. I know it won't be the same, but it will be better than nothing. I also know how much resource de Pommier used to make the replacement Miro. It tells me something about the general, that she's not all bad. Somewhere inside her cold avatar there's a woman's heart which still faintly beats.
But right now, de Pommier is eyeing me. I scan the system again. The order for my termination appears. In the reflection of the smartscreen, I see her watching me, narrow, waiting to see what I will do. I continue to process the data, feigning ignorance. Her stance relaxes slightly, and she looks away, asks one of the men to bring her a coffee. In that instant I execute the command, and the shit hits the fan.
Alarms tear through the silence, and rip their way through the building, crescendoing and de-crescendoing, dozens of them, ugly and discordant. Ones I have never heard before. de Pommier looks up and as far as an avatar can look startled this one does. Like a deer in the headlights startled. For a heartbeat she goes completely blank, as if de Pommier has cut the connection to her avatar, but no, it blinks. She's still there.
She doesn't even look at me. And deep inside I know this isn't me. It's too big, Then it hits me, what's happening as the monitors scream the truth, of the hell that has hit the world and is working its way towards us. Blue played us all. A stab of pride slams into me, for her cleverness, and her ability to keep this from me. She didn't even say goodbye to me this morning. Just kissed me and said: 'See you on the other side.'
On the monitors: Three days, twelve hours, fifty-three minutes, and twelve seconds continue their pointless countdown. I run a quick scan of the system, calculate at the speed of light we've got maybe seventy minutes left before the burning wall of destruction reaches us up here at the top of the world. She lied. To all of us. I never loved her more.
To her credit, de Pommier holds it together, the captain of a brutally sinking ship, along with all her hopes for humanity. She doesn't let her devastation show. Instead she orders new commands, diverting everything the city has to support G-II, pivoting her hopes from Mars back to Earth in less than ten seconds flat.
I get up. My work here is done. I still have a card up my sleeve. It's not over for me and Blue yet, not by a long shot. de Pommier catches my sleeve as I pass her. I stop.
'You didn't know.' It's not a question.
I realise belatedly the command I executed has slipped entirely under her radar. The luck of it would be incredible if it were not for the magnitude of the cost.
I shake my head. 'Where is she?'
'The lab,' de Pommier answers, her eyes unfocus for a moment, her attention yanked back to wherever she is. I realise I don't know where she is. She could be thousands of kilometres away in one of the other, lesser, cities. The thought sobers me, that she could be gone before the rest of us, the highest of Global Command's military leaders who tried to save humanity in the eleventh hour, while the rest only cared about their own selfish skin. The unfairness of it eats at me. But then, Global Command was never fair. I knew it when I was ordered to kill innocent people trying to survive what had been done to them by those who had the power to get away with it.
Her gaze fixes on me. 'The Elites have been shut down. All their data is gone. Everything.'
'Guilty.' I answer, though I feel none.
'You bastard,' she seethes. 'Do you realise what you've done to us?'
'Exactly what you deserve,' I say, and walk past her men who stand still as statues, the sheen of data in their eyes lost. They stare at me blank, empty shells, disconnected from their central nervous system. It took a long time to find it, what I had begun to suspect in the early days of my new existence; when I sensed the brotherhood of our data-driven heartbeats aligning us like a hive of insects. Deep in the highest security files of the general's system, there it was: the holy grail I had hoped for—the system commands to shut down every single one of her lesser versions of me. They were de Pommier's pet project, I read it all, how she wanted to create something that could live forever, which made sense, considering she lived through her avatar. Anyway, betas wo
uld had to have been made before me. And now, the ones who could keep me from doing what I needed to do, were silenced, by the very thing she herself created.
I cut a look over my shoulder as I leave de Pommier's pointless war room, swarming with alarms, and the bleats of AI voices detailing feedback from the satellites, one screen after another bleeding red with warnings—as her precise, controlled world collapses around her. She glares at me, rank with hate, with powerlessness, probably the first taste of it she's had in decades. I can't help myself, through the din of our dying world, I smile and flip her the bird.
Even though she kept me locked up with Blue or processing data in the war room, I know the layout of every building in the city, every access way, door, every hidden room. Nothing is inaccessible to me. I have it all inside me. Every corner of this city is within my reach. I feel like a god as I stride to the lab, as doors open before me with nothing more than a thought.
I leave the building, the air afire with alarms, surrounded by panicking citizens, hurrying to get to the safety of G-II, carrying whatever matters to them most. Pathetic trinkets of the vanity of men. Pointless, useless things. Art, jewels, furs, antiquities. All of it meaningless in the face of what is to come.
I push my way through them, shoving them aside, uncaring of their indignation, outrage and promises of retribution. I hate them all, savour their fear, their futile attempt to control what they cannot. The arrogance of their entitlement, clung to even now, right at the bitter end. At last, the tables have turned and those who oppressed have become the oppressed.
I reach the lab. Work my way into its heart, doors gliding open before me, one after another. I find her there, alone, tied with cable ties to a gurney, unconscious. Her guards flank her, inert, their eyes vacant. I kick the nearest one aside. He topples over, like a broken toy. I can't help myself. I kick him again and again, unleashing the rage locked deep inside me. When I am done with him, there is nothing left of his face except a metallic hole and the weak flicker of the dying light of his operating system.
I cut the ties, knowing de Pommier did this to Blue this in anticipation of my next move. Blue doesn't stir. I check her vitals. She's alive, but totally under. I gather her in my arms, her slight weight collapsing against me, trusting, and my heart—or whatever it is I have in its place—clenches with love.
Now I have her, I never want to let her go, but I know I have to. The alarms continue their wail, incessant and maddening, a stark reminder of what's coming. Of what I still have to do to save her, the only woman I have ever loved.
I run, for once grateful for what I have been made into, out of the lab and past the hordes pushing to their way towards G-II's entrance corridor, none of them yet realising I killed the access codes to the main elevator and there is only one other way in. Inside the elevator in the lower level of the slaughterhouse, I tighten my hold on Blue as we glide down to where the main elevator awaits us, empty and silent, impervious to the demands of those above using their access cards to activate it.
Within the main elevator, I use the override code and start the long fall down into the earth. The blare of the alarms fade as we speed into the depths, and then, nothing but the quiet hum of our descent.
In my arms, Blue stirs and sighs. I watch her, willing her to wake before I have to let her go for a thousand years. She will sleep. I won't. A thousand years without her. I can do it. I have to because there is nothing else left for us.
In the sleep lab, Blue continues to dream as I hack into the system and gather up what I need to prep her for sleep. Predictably, the medics down here have already put themselves under, uncaring of those seeking sanctuary above. I don't blame them. They would have been left behind to die, after all. It pleases me, this silent world, deep underground, sheathed by trillions of dollars of tech and design. Of the fact that those who created the mess in the world would die with it. Of no one escaping. No one.
Miro.
I stumble to a halt halfway between the steel counter and Blue's bed. Shit. How could I have forgotten? My hands full of vials and syringes, I dither, suddenly deeply uncertain. I hadn't expected to find Blue unconscious, or kick the shit out of one her guards. I'd planned to collect the replacement version of Miro packed in its titanium-plated safe and bring it down here with Blue so she'd have something in case anything happened to me in the millennium I had to survive, alone.
I run a quick scan of the system's main readings. ETA of the end of all things. Forty-seven minutes. Shit. Shit. Shit.
Blue stirs. Her eyelids flicker open. I wait. Give her time. Precious time.
Her eyes scan the room, take in its sleek whiteness, its silence and utter emptiness. Her gaze lands on me, slides down to the fluorescent blue shit I'm holding in my hands. A flicker of uncertainty, then fear crosses her features.
'Ryan?'
I go to her. Set the chemicals and syringes on the bed, where she can't see them and take her face in my hands. 'I got you, Blue.'
Her eyes hold mine, loaded with questions I know she won't ask. She waits, wary.
'Remember when they changed me back to me?' I begin.
She nods, quiet, in my grip.
'I said I needed you to trust me.' She says nothing. I press on, clawed at by the fading time—of what I still have left to do to make things right.
'This is the part where I need you to do that.'
'I lied,' she whispers. 'I didn't want to go to Mars. I put ten sleeping pills in Miro's breakfast. She ate it all.' Tears wet her lashes. One escapes and trickles down the side of her face, somehow making her more beautiful, more precious to me than imaginable. She put her beloved cat down and waited to burn along with the rest of us, the one who least deserved to die.
I kiss her. I don't know what else to do. There's no time.
'Blue,' I say, my lips still touching hers, 'I have a plan. For us. A second chance.'
'Do it,' she breathes.
Her eyes follow me as I fill her veins with chemicals; as I access every meticulous detail of G-II's cryo-protocol from the system, amazed at the precision of my abilities, at the speed I can work, of how little I hurt her, of how many things I still don't know I am capable of.
Twenty-seven minutes left. I could wheel her bed to a pod, but I don't. Instead, I carry her, just to feel her body against mine, to excise every last precious heartbeat of our final moments before an impenetrable wall of time separates us. I choose a pod marginally more sheltered than the rest in this cavernous space. It's close to the elevator corridor. I want to be near her when the shit hits the fan. If I make it.
She's groggy. Soon she will slip away from me. One thousand years. I can do this. I touch her face. Her eyes open, slow.
'See you on the other side,' she smiles, faint, and then she's gone. I kiss her one final time, our last kiss in this dying world before I close the pod. It seals with a sibilant hiss and activates instantly. The window over her face glazes over, and she's lost to me. I check the readouts on the side panel. Everything is as it should be. As I back away, I imprint the code for her pod—G-II-0493—into my deepest memory.
I'll find you, Blue. After all this. I'll be here. Waiting for you.
The silence of her sleep is deafening. It's unbearable. Blue. I crush the agony ploughing into my existence and run.
Back in the city, I bolt out of the slaughterhouse into a world of utter darkness lit only by sporadic pools of emergency lighting. Above, the dome glows with a macabre red-orange hue, reflecting the destruction tearing its way over the world towards us twenty kilometres high. The alarms have stopped, all of Alpha VII's power rerouted to G-II's systems thanks to de Pommier. In the wake of the alarms' silence, chaos has unfolded. Gunshots ring out. Pandemonium reigns, punctuated by screams of terror, wails of despair, weeping, and cries to the gods of men to save them. I ignore it all, my entire focus on what I must still do, and where I need to be. Sixteen minutes left.
The lab is deserted. On the third floor, locked in a small vault, I f
ind the safe exactly where it should be, its precious cargo inside tucked tight into another container seething with nanobots to sustain it. It's dormant, the code to awaken it long since hacked and buried inside me. I heft the small box and thank the quantum powers that be for this one good thing that has come out of this hell. Something for Blue after all she has lost. Just one thing.
The safe tucked in the crook of my arm, I push my way out of the lab into the corridor. de Pommier's avatar is there, waiting for me.
'I knew you would come back for it,' it says, soft, de Pommier's French accent hits me, tragic in these final moments, I realise, pointlessly, there will never be another French accent again. She continues, conversational, a faint smile on her lips as if we have all the time in the world for a little chat: 'My little gift for the one who could save humanity from itself.'
I say nothing, I keep walking. I have no time for this. For her. She left Blue tied up and drugged with the intention to take me out and leave Blue alone on another planet. Fuck her.
'Maddox,' she says. 'Wait. Please. Take this.'
Her avatar holds its hand out, curled into a fist. It unfolds its fingers and in its palm, a tiny unit beats with a little life of its own. 'I am pleased you never learned about this in all your searches. My deepest secret of all.'
Time claws its way past me. Fifteen minutes. I reach out to take it, whatever it is. She drops it in my upturned palm.
'It's the key to a vault,' she says, sensing my urgency, 'buried under Alpha VI. The history of man, or at least what I could salvage from what was left during the relocation. I had hoped for it to be used by those returning from Mars in the future. Well,' she smiles, soft, and shrugs, valiant in the face of the totality of her failure, 'maybe, one day, it will come in handy again.'
I secure the thing into my breast pocket, and leave. There's nothing more to say.
