by E A Carter
In my breast pocket, the value of the key to de Pommier's vault abruptly shifts—becomes as precious as the Holy Grail. The city calls to me. Even in its ruinous state, it's an oasis of order and civilisation in an endless, savage wilderness. I run the rest of the way, the heat of the sun warming my back. And for the first time in a long time, I don't feel like complete shit.
Lucky for me, I've got the layout of Alpha VI in de Pommier's downloaded files, so at least I know where the vault isn't. It's an eerie feeling to walk through the city, to feel the ghost of what once was here still breathing after ten thousand years. Even in its charred and desiccated state, there is enough of the city still standing to assault me with homesickness.
It's jarring to be present in two divergent realities at once. To be in this strange, alien world of vines and warmth, and to walk among towering buildings where we once luxuriated in the power we had to exploit an entire planet to its near destruction. To create something like me.
In the midst of the ruins I come upon a section of the city totally untouched by the cataclysmic fires. They stand alone and proud, defiant in the face of the passage of time, yet also lonely and meaningless in a world reduced to the creep of vines and insects. I push through a metal gate into a courtyard of what looks like a residential complex. It's not difficult to get into the building's reception area, or to breach one apartment after another. A single kick is enough for the glass panels alongside the metal doors to shatter.
I'm surprised how much is still intact. I expected it all to be dust. But there are things that remain. Glass, of course. Metal. Gems. Gold. Pieces of furniture made of solid wood. And bones. In an apartment where the air has not stirred in ten millennia, I discover two skeletons on the floor of the master bedroom, their bones not entirely in the right places, having fallen through the remains of the mattress, the titanium frame of the bed surrounding them like a cage. A dust-covered gun lies beside them, useless and hardened with time.
In another apartment I find a library filled with books, an incredibly rare sight even during my life as a soldier. Feeling as if I have won a circle of new friends I touch my finger to the spine of a leather-bound copy of Dante's Inferno. It dissolves into dust, taking the rest of the books on the shelf with it. After that, I don't touch anything. I barely breathe. I just look, and drink it all in until I start to feel shitty. All those words. Lost. Forever. When I leave, I don't look back. Somehow seeing who I used be only makes me feel more alienated and fucked up. It would have been better if it had all burned. But the brutal fact is everything is gone and will never come back. I am totally, and utterly alone.
It takes most of the day to search the parts of the city where I think the vault might be. My mood is black as fuck. I thought it would be easy to get underground but my optimism embarrasses me. Many of the buildings have crumbled into the lower ground levels and made going any further impossible. At my twelfth dead end, my temper takes control and I try to force my way through. An ominous groan comes from above, bathing me in a shower of ancient dust. I pull my shit together and decide I'd rather not be buried under several tonnes of unreinforced concrete.
So here I am. Back outside the buildings with their bones of the dead. I know there's a way down from here, because I have the layout. The available space under me is neatly marked: Laundry. Server rooms. Maintenance storage. Electricity. Water and sewage pumps. Air circulation. Shit like that. These were the places I intended to avoid, I wanted to go where there was nothing marked on the layout, but where there was space for a phantom room to exist. As usual, I'm not going to get what I want.
I'm not happy to have wasted a whole day and end up further from my goal than I was when I started out, but I'm invested now and pissed off. I push the doors to the lower levels aside, grit my teeth and prepare to face my thirteenth dead end.
There's three subterranean levels beneath this part of the city. I head straight to the lowest one and start my search. Without any light, I'm back to seeing with echolocation, in low res, but it's enough. One dusty, pointless room after another greets me, their security locks long since deteriorated. At the far end of the corridor I push against the door to the last room. Unlike the others that gave in easy, this door stays locked. Strange. I try again. It's definitely locked. Even after all this time. That pulls me up.
I recheck the layout in my database. This room is marked 'Maintenance storage'. Nothing special. I give the door a kick. It still holds. I back up, wary. Whatever is keeping it locked can't be ten thousand years old.
Which can only mean one thing.
I am not alone.
NINE | AMADI EZENWA
* * *
Even though a month has passed, my resentment against Maddox hasn't lessened. Instead, it has hardened into a solid, dangerous thing inside me. I hate him so much I can taste it, acrid and dry against the roof of my mouth.
The long, arduous trek back to Alpha VII infuriates me. Every pointless second I must continue to carry the box when it should have been opened by him grinds on my nerves like a steady drip of water against my brow. Bitterness burrows into me like a poisoned barb and my thoughts prowl through fantasies of revenge: Of smashing his face in with a rock. Of tearing out whatever it is that makes him exist. To shut him down and dismantle him piece by piece so he can never wake up again. To end him. Permanently. I'm glad he's lost whoever it was he was searching for. I hope he's miserable, lonely and tormented by a brutal, exhausting loop of remorse for his crimes.
But more than anything, I hate that he is here, in this empty world, with me. He is an abomination in a place like this, a relic of a lost world of high technology in a place where nature has become dominant.
Over the last weeks I have chosen to allocate the blame to him for every single thing that has gone wrong—for every night I have slept hungry, for every fresh obstacle I have had to find my way around, for every downpour of rain that has left me shivering with cold. All of it is his fault. He did this to me. And all I did was try to help him. And not only did he not open the safe, he fucking judged me. A god damn machine who used to be nothing more than a minor link in Global Command's chain. I'm the son of the last American president. Maddox wouldn't have done anything different in my shoes—he probably would have executed the order right away and enjoyed it.
I have to stop this line of thinking. I'm so furious I don't even know which direction I'm heading in anymore. After several deep breaths and a good look at the stars—or at least at the only one I can count on being a reliable guide—I reorient myself and continue heading south, stomping through the vines as if they were Maddox's face. It's childish, but I don't care, it makes me feel better. And I'm sick of feeling bad.
It hits me before I know it, my sour ruminations blinding me to the change in the monotony of the horizon. Just beyond a line of trees, the skeletal strut of Alpha VII's once-dome reaches up into the sky, a massive shadow that blots out the nebulous line of the Milky Way. An unexpected wash of disappointment floods through me. Even though I've walked for a month, I'm still furious. For some reason I thought I'd be able to walk it off. But I haven't, which makes me even angrier. I shove my way through the stand of trees and into what's left of Alpha VII.
Of course it's a shit show. The passage of ten thousand years have taken their toll on the remains of the city. I eye the section of the strut that still stands, a crumbling, feeble thing, and seek something—anything—I can use to get the box open. The sooner I'm done, the sooner I can leave and put all this shit behind me.
The base of the strut is heavy with vines, to clear them could take days but higher up the vines are thinner and I spy what might have potential. It clings to the structure by the leanest thread, a thin piece of ancient metal that drifts a little in the breeze. A good yank should set it free. Impatience makes me hasty. I don't carefully assess the situation like I always used to do, or plan out my actions or even consider ways I could fail that I can mitigate. No. I just drop the box onto the carpet of vines a
nd start to climb, like a mindless beast.
The sting of the vines' barbs give me pause, until anger surges over my pain and I press on, driven by hatred for the one who caused all my misfortune. I invite the hardship, the cut of the barbs, the ache in my limbs, and use it to fuel my rage, to give me the power to haul myself up the strut's side until I am high enough to see over the tree tops.
The view is worth the pain. Bathed in the light of the moon, the sprawl of the remains of Alpha VII stretches into the distance. Even ten millennia can't erase its deepest imprint. Its massive circumference still delineates the line between man and nature, and declares its once-dominant existence as the ruling city of a dying world. It's not much, but it's something and strangely makes me feel less alone.
The object of my effort is just a little further away, but there is no easy way to reach it. This time I do think it over. I'm at least twenty meters up, if I fall and break my leg, I'll be totally fucked. I park my rage against Maddox into a corner, and focus. The metal strip hangs just out of reach, taunting me. Now I am close up to it, I can see it's perfect for what I need. It won't take much to break it off but getting to it is the issue. I spend a long time considering every angle and possibility and at last settle on hooking my leg through a sturdy vine and hanging like a trapeze artist from it to get within range.
Thinking it through is one thing, execution is another. It takes a long time to loosen the vine enough to fit my leg through it, and then even more to work up the courage to allow myself to hang from it upside down twenty meters up. For at least a solid minute I consider not doing it, the risk feels to great for such a small reward. What am I going to do with a cat anyway? I don't even know if it still functions. Then again if it's made with the same tech as Maddox it probably does. A companion would be nice. Something to talk to, something that won't die. I realise I want this more than anything—to not be alone—so I ease my weight onto the vine, hold my breath and let go.
The vine sags and I sink a meter into the night. For a horrible moment I think it's going to break, but with a jerk, the vine holds. I let out my breath, slow, and focus on my goal. Even stretched as far as I can go, my fingertips can only brush against it. I try to lure it towards me but it wobbles away, impertinent. I pull back and reconsider. It's not enough to reach for it, I won't have enough force to break it free. The only way I can get it is if I swing towards it, grasp it and fall back again.
The sane part that remains within me tells me not to do it. The lonely part ignores that and pushes me away from the base. The first swing is a bust. I shoot wide of it, but the second one takes me near enough to catch it against the palm of my hand. The momentum of my swing pulls me back but the metal clings to its home. I hurl a string of profanities into the silent basin of the city. My head is pounding, packed up with blood and I feel dizzy. I haven't eaten in a day. One more try, my lonely self says. Just one. You can do this.
Fuck it. I push myself hard against the base, grab it in my hand and yank it as hard as I can. It breaks free, and I whoop with joy until the vine gives up its will to hold me and I am falling, bellowing in terror, regretting everything as the ground races up to greet me.
I hit the ground. Pain envelopes me. Darkness follows.
TEN | CASSANDRA VALLIS
* * *
Now I'm here I don't know what to do with myself. I don't know what I thought was going to happen when I reached Alpha VII, but I expected more than this. I don't understand how so little of it can remain after only a thousand years. Before I ended up being de Pommier's experiment when I was a kid, I remember learning about the ruins in Rome that were two thousand years old. We watched as drones flew over the city in real time. Even filled with refugee tents and campfires, the Colosseum looked a lot better than this and it was twice as old.
All that remains of Alpha VII are heaps of irregular mounds—what I assume used to be buildings—covered in a dense carpet of vines. I am sick of them and their sharp, cruel barbs.
I've almost picked my way around the city's perimeter and apart from what's left of the decaying, vine-infested monolithic struts that supported the dome I have found nothing. No one has survived. There is no evidence of anyone ever having been here, no clearings, no ramshackle shelters. Nothing. If there have been, they're long gone. For the hundredth time since I first got an eyeful of this sullen, sunken basin of overgrown vegetation, the weight of time bears down on me. I can't escape the sense that far more than one thousand years have passed. I think again of the Colosseum as I approach the jagged claw of another strut arcing up from the nest of vines. It looks ancient, and worn by more than two thousand years of weather, probably even more than five . . . maybe even more than that. And then it hits me, why Ryan wasn't there. I didn't wake up in time and Ryan shut down and rotted away. And now. Here I am. Alone. Fuck.
A wave of desolation rolls over me even as I resist the explanation, because nothing else makes sense. I'm lost to a time so far into the future even the struts look as if they are about to collapse. I can't do this. Be here, in this place. It's madness. I never wanted this anyway. Without Ryan there's nothing left for me, no reason to go on. I have no intention of dying a slow death of starvation, of living in misery until my body gives up and I curl up to die like an insect. My gaze slides back to the distant strut, and catches on a smudge that looks like a vine dangling in the light breeze. A chill slides through me. It seems the hateful things have a useful purpose after all. So be it. My eyes on my feet, I press on, my thoughts turning back to Ryan and the last thing I said to him as I slipped into cryo-sleep.
See you on the other side.
I wonder if he'll be there. On the other side. Waiting. The silence of aeons envelopes me. Dread of what's to come touches my spine. It's going to hurt for a long ti—
'Shit! Motherfucker! God damn fucking bitch!'
The hairs on the back of my neck reach for the stars. I turn.
'Fuck this bloody hole straight to hell!'
It's a man's voice. A wail of hope screams through me.
'Ryan,' I breathe. Oh god. Let it be Ryan. I almost cry out his name, when wariness rams through me, hard-earned during my life with Zandiki. Or, it warns, maybe not Ryan.
I hold my breath and wait, willing there to be more swear words, to fix the location, but it's over. Whoever is pissed off isn't giving up any more information. I can't be sure but I think he's near the strut that's behind me, the one I passed an hour ago. I turn and head back, never taking my eyes off the thing, for now nothing more than a looming shadow against the constellations.
My feet hurry and catch against the vines, tripping me up, but I press on, reckless, afraid he will leave and I will miss him. Hope claws at me, my desperation so raw it steals my breath. Please, my thoughts scream, let it be Ryan. With every step that shortens the distance between me and the strut, hope pounds through me, hot as the beat of a battle drum: Please. Let. It. Be. Ryan. Please. Let. It. Be.—
A cry shreds the air. I stagger to a halt. A heavy thud. Silence.
'Ryan!' The scream leaves me, borne of fear, loneliness, hope. No answer.
Everything shrinks to a tiny point. I run until my lungs burst into fire and my throat aches, but I don't stop. I can't. There is no thought, only action.
At the strut I scramble through the vines and search the darkness, frantic. There. A body, face down, dressed in rags. My hands trembling, I turn him over.
He's not Ryan.
His eyes open and find me. He moves his arm, slow, reaches up to touch his head, then his chest, his eyes never leaving mine.
'Am I dead?' he asks.
'If you are then I am, too,' I say.
He grunts, then hauls himself up to sit, checks his legs.
'How about that,' he mutters. 'Not a single broken bone. Lucky me.'
'The vines are pretty thick here,' I offer. 'I guess you had a soft landing.'
'Didn't feel that way.' His eyes move back to me. 'I'm Amadi. And you are?'
'Cassandra.' I take a step back. My legs brush against something hard. I turn. It's a metal box, completely bent out of shape.
'That's mine,' he says. 'I found it a year ago. Been trying to open it ever since.'
'You've been here a year?'
He pats the vines around him, cautious, his attention on whatever it is he is looking for.
'More than that,' he says, 'almost two.'
I sink to my knees beside the mangled box. 'Alone?' I whisper.
He nods. 'Just me and the box.'
Another session of gentle pats against the vines follows. I wait, marinating in disappointment. If only he could have been Ryan.
Amadi pulls a long piece of metal free of the vines. From behind the wild mat of his beard he cuts a smile at me. 'At least it wasn't all for nothing,' he says.
'What wasn't?'
'My fall from grace,' he rolls his eyes up into the heights of the strut. 'The things you do in a world ten thousand years from the one you left.'
'Ten thousand?' I repeat, bleak. 'How can you know?'
He looks down at his worn clothing, brushes a vine leaf from his leg. A shrug. 'The stars. They moved.'
I look up at the sky. I barely know the names of the constellations let alone where they are supposed to be. 'But—'
'How long have you been here?' he asks before I can ask how he figured it out.
It's my turn to shrug. 'Who knows, it just feels like one long endless night.'
'Make a guess,' he says as he pulls himself to his knees and reaches past me for the box.
'Maybe a month,' I say. 'Long enough to lose hope.'
He pulls the box into his lap with a grunt and wedges the metal bar into it. 'First months are the hardest.'
'How are you still alive after two years?' An hour ago I was ready to die. Two years of this shit is unfathomable.
