The Aftermath

by Jen Alexander

  “Upstairs,” Jeremy says. “It’s the only door on the right. Bed and everything—there’s another privy inside of it, too.”

  I leave them talking about the room over the bar and what items they’ve found so I can check the alley door once again. Olivia has me jiggle the knob, bang hard on the dead bolt with the palm of my hand. It’s secure.

  Olivia talks to April and Jeremy as she steers me toward each window to take a look at the locks. “I’ll be gone for a few days,” I say. I’m used to whispering little conundrums like this and even more accustomed to being completely confused by what it means. Now I know exactly what it means—I’ll be unconscious until whenever Olivia chooses to return. My stomach rolls.

  “I hate that you’ll be away,” April says. Jeremy agrees with her.

  My head bobs up and down. Olivia’s likely doing the same thing. “Hey, do me a favor?” I call over my shoulder as I grab my bag and walk to the staircase. Resting my arm on the splintered banister, I turn to look at them with my other hand on my hip. “Lock up when you leave, okay?”

  Jeremy nods quickly. “Mmm-hmm.”

  The stairway sounds as if it will collapse at any moment as I sprint up the steps, taking two at a time, sometimes three when I come to a stair that’s too risky to test my weight on. I go into The Save and toss my bag onto the bed. Olivia makes me climb in next to it, maneuvering me into a lying position with my back against the wall.

  It takes me a moment to comprehend that she has no plan to go with the others back to the museum. She’s leaving me here, on this mattress that sags in the middle—in a bar with spray-painted windows and a floor that smells like cooking oil—with no way to defend myself. She will leave me motionless with a gun in my waistband, staring with unseeing eyes at a bag of food inches away.

  Passive.

  Dead, breathing.

  The purpose of The Save is obvious to me now: it is here so gamers can leave their characters in a safe place while they’re away from the game.

  My head starts to buzz just as I hear the noisy click of the padlock on one of the doors downstairs. I stare up at the only window in this room, watch the rain splatter in places where the spray paint hasn’t completely blocked the glass. I wait.

  An eternity passes by with me sitting and staring, staring and waiting. What is Olivia doing? I don’t understand why I haven’t blacked out yet, and for a moment, I wonder if I have and this is me waking up again.

  “Just do it already!”

  These four words echo through the empty building, like hundreds of bullets going off all at once. I’m breathless when the silence returns. Are these my words? My whole body trembles at even the idea.

  “My name is Claudia Virtue, and The Aftermath is not real,” I whisper. “The Aftermath is just a game.”

  Years of conflicting thoughts and words, and the first ones that are truly mine are agitated, partially psychotic. I’ll take it. Right now, I’m too afraid to try and move. I feel as though at any moment, Olivia will take over my body. Then she’ll make me let this go.

  When another several minutes pass and I am still looking up at the window, I move my right foot off the bed, then my left. I am hungry. I am thirsty.

  I am free.

  I raid the box of food Jeremy left on the counter downstairs. I eat a chocolate protein bar slowly, and then I think of the sustenance gauge—bright red with a disgustingly low percentage—on Olivia’s screen and devour two more. I twirl around in dizzying circles on a ripped bar stool. Scream at the top of my lungs until my throat is raw and my chest heaves up and down.

  And suddenly I have an idea. I grip the edges of the counter, place my forehead against the warm, grimy laminate, and I concentrate. I think of Olivia and everything I’ve learned about myself just recently. I imagine getting out of the game that’s been my reality for so long.

  I think of revenge.

  When Olivia’s mind sucks me in, I’m in her world. And despite the beautiful freedom I’ve tasted for mere seconds, I’d rather remain here, stuck inside her head. We are in the back of a car. But this is nothing like the one with the missing tires and shattered windows Ethan and I took shelter in a couple of years ago. For starters, this car must be self-driving, because there’s nobody else in here with Olivia and me. The interior is immaculate, sleek black leather with gleaming metallic accents. There are flat monitors mounted on the backs of the headrests, one that’s tuned to a ribbon cutting taking place in front of a gleaming glass building and the other on a loop of silent advertisements.

  Olivia’s used to seeing all this, so there are limits to what I’m able to observe since she’s not paying very much attention to our surroundings. Intricate skyscrapers tower over the car. The path we’re taking weaves between the buildings, and the car speeds effortlessly through traffic. When the car stops itself at a red light, my attention is drawn to the bus next to us. There are commercials playing on the side of this bus.

  Once the current advertisement ends, a woman comes on the screen. Even from inside Olivia’s car, I can hear what she’s saying. “If you’ve received a diagnosis for the Warrior gene or AVD Type A or B and have received a physician’s order, visit us at LanCorp International, where you can complete your treatment in as little as—”

  I don’t have a chance to wonder about what AVD Type A and B means because Olivia grumbles something under her breath and runs her fingertip across one of the monitors mounted to the headrest. She enters a series of numbers. Suddenly, all the windows darken until nothing on the outside is visible inside the car. There’s no sound coming in now, either.

  This is incredible.

  With the push of a few buttons, Olivia can cancel out distractions. I’ve never seen anything so incredible, and I want to know what else she’s capable of.

  What else is this world capable of?

  I’m still shaky when I unravel myself from her mind and drop back into The Aftermath. “She’s not in her game room,” I say, picturing Olivia’s white room with its flashing red lights. “She’s not there.” I repeat this like a mantra through mouthfuls of food and water until I am sick to my stomach.

  I crawl through a window, out into the rain. I’m standing in the center of the rows of bottles and jugs we set out here, with water dripping into my eyes and my clothes drenched, because I want to be here. Nobody forces me against my will.

  After a few minutes of wandering through the storm, I climb back into the bar and bolt the window. Then I down a few more bottles of water and pick up my empty energy bar wrappers, until I hear the padlock move on one of the doors. I’m reluctant to go back into The Save—I don’t want to huddle in a corner like I’m cowering from the world—but I do it anyway, unwilling to be caught. I close my eyes and tune out the people I’ve spent months, years, with.

  I fall asleep—into a true sleep—so I don’t listen in until much later, when April and Jeremy enter the room and I catch the end of their conversation.

  “...has to be reaching the end of treatment. I’ve been in it for just about as long as she has, but Olivia’s incredible. She has to have double the points I’ve got. Probably even more.”

  “You think she’ll be deleted?” she asks. I open my eyes a bit. She sits on a plastic crate, staring at a torn beer poster on the wall. “She’s pretty damaged.”

  Jeremy glances around, then shrugs. “I doubt it, even if she’s been around awhile.” He glances at me when he says this. “I mean, she’s good and Virtue is a big deal. She’ll stay in this game, even when Olivia finishes.”

  April turns her vacant blue eyes in my direction, too. “Olivia won’t let anyone else take ownership of her. She’ll find some way to have Claudia deleted before she does that—I guarantee it. Princess doesn’t want anyone else’s mind on her precious Virtue.” Despite April’s monotone voice, a ripple of dread squirms through me. She
really hates me. Or Olivia. I’m not too sure if she’s made the distinction or cares that there is one.

  Jeremy shakes his head sadly. “Such a waste to just...get rid of her altogether.”

  “Why do you put up with her anyway?”

  “Who? Olivia?” When April nods her head, he cocks his head to one side and says, “Because she’s my friend. You all are.”

  I have to fight to stay in control and remain still, silent. Because I’m possibly in more danger dealing with Olivia than with the flesh-eaters I once feared more than anything.

  I can be eliminated at any moment.

  Then I realize something else, something that gives me hope.

  If I can get into Olivia’s head on purpose, then maybe I can gain control of myself.

  And maybe—just maybe—I can escape The Aftermath.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The process to get into Olivia’s mind is initially difficult. When I’m not being drawn into her head at random, I have to concentrate for long stretches of time, and the slightest noise or distraction quickly ruins my progress. I soon discover that squeezing my eyes shut and pressing my forehead against a hard surface gets me where I want to be much faster. Whatever there is inside my own head must be broken. Still, it’s a malfunction I’m willing to accept in order to gain information about Olivia.

  At first, I’m terrified that she’ll realize what I’m able to do, so I flicker in and out, never staying in her head for longer than a minute or two. But after two days of doing this, I begin to relax and stick around for longer stretches of time.

  I start to learn about the person who’s been playing me for so long.

  Today, she goes to the roof of the building she lives in. It’s an enormous glassed-in dome with an amazing view of all the skyscrapers around it. On the far side of the roof, parked in front of a double garage door, is a sleek silver car that reminds me of a bullet. Other than the car and the small bench in the center of the dome, the rooftop is empty. Twenty feet above her, metal beams crisscross the top of the dome, making a pattern. A star. In the center of this hangs a light fixture—two curves facing each other that seem to be glowing even though the sun is out.

  Olivia presses her hand to a sliver of glass by the door. A digital keypad appears on it and she punches a code in—117908. The lock pops. She starts to turn away but freezes, glaring straight ahead at the building directly across from this one. Sighing, she returns to the keypad and enters a string of codes. All the windows darken, like it is night outside, and the other buildings disappear from sight.

  As she walks across the rooftop, a garden bathed in moonlight slowly appears.

  Even though I know that the grass beneath her bare feet and the roses curling around an arched trellis are nothing but an illusion, I can’t help but want to experience this for myself. There’s nothing like this in The Aftermath. Olivia has the technology to bring about an artificial evening and exotic, colorful flowers.

  I have dust and dying weeds and sunburn that won’t go away.

  Olivia stops in a courtyard located in the middle of the garden that looks out of place, ancient, in her world of glass and metal. She sits on a stone bench, clenching her fists in her lap, and breathes in and out, out and in. She does this for a few minutes, not saying a word, and I wonder if this is where she comes to get away from her worries.

  Whatever those may be.

  A shrill noise interrupts my thoughts. Olivia draws an electronic tablet from her bag and sits it down. To my surprise, when she enters her password on the device, a hologram pops up on the bench beside her—a full-size person to be precise. He’s a tall, skinny boy with springy brown hair and tanned skin. He looks so real that I’d swear she could reach out and touch flesh.

  She slides closer to him, until the only thing separating them is her tablet. Sighing, she peers down at her lap. “Didn’t think you’d actually come,” she murmurs, her voice quivering. It’s strange to hear Olivia talking to someone and not using me to do it. When she glances up into the boy’s eyes—the bluest I’ve ever seen—she says, “Landon, I’ve missed you.”

  Landon. The boy whose name I said while speaking to Ethan a few days ago. Is this the person who controls my friend? Is this boy the person who’s really whispered sweet words to me, offered to die for me, for the past few years?

  “I can’t talk for long,” Landon says. “But I wanted to keep my promise, see your face.”

  “I’m glad you did. Since you didn’t make it the last time you promised.”

  “I have to be careful contacting you outside of the game—you know that. I mean, my parents can barely deal with me being in the same clan as you, so they’d freak out if they knew we were doing this. Mom heard me say your name the other night when I was supposed to meet you here, and she went ballistic.”

  So this is Ethan’s gamer.

  And this must be the reasoning behind us saying “Never break” so often. Landon and Olivia can’t break character and call each other by their real names. That must be where Ethan and I come in. But why is it that they’re not able to talk to each other in their world?

  “Told you to stop saying it, didn’t I?” Olivia snaps. He flushes, glancing down at his hands. When she speaks again, her voice softens. “Your parents still keeping track of these calls?”

  He fights back a frown. Traces her lips with the tip of his finger. She shivers, and I wonder if she can feel anything since he’s just a hologram. “You know they are. My mother’s all over me every day about the points. She and Dad received my monthly point update on their AcuTabs a couple days ago and it wasn’t pretty—72,528 points out of a prescribed 90,000. They wanted to know why I’m going on three years now with no end in sight. They just want me to finish my treatment and—”

  “Come off the game so you can get away from me.”

  “The treatment is expensive and my parents—”

  “Are acting like sympathizers,” she says, scooting away from him until she’s pressed to the far side of the bench. “I’m surprised they don’t just go against the law and flat-out refuse to let you play!” The last words are almost shouted, and she grips the bench for support.

  “They’re my parents. And you know better than anyone how much my father did for LanCorp when the games were being designed. He practically built The Aftermath.”

  LanCorp. I’d heard that name before, in Olivia’s car when I was in her head.

  “Then tell your dad thanks for all the glitches early on in the game,” Olivia says sarcastically. “And let him know what a hypocrite he is for not wanting you to receive the treatment he helped create.”

  There’s a long moment of silence between them that gives me a chance to gather my bearings and try to sort out everything I’ve heard them say.

  The game is a sort of therapy. Refusing to participate is a crime.

  And even though Landon’s father had a significant role in the creation of The Aftermath, now he’s a possible sympathizer. I’m certain I’ve heard someone use that word before, but I can’t remember when.

  The sound of something crackling pulls Olivia’s attention away from the flower she’s staring at, a hybrid of a rose and an orchid. Landon’s projection flashes several times, like a dying lightbulb. She snorts. “Your mother is disconnecting you.”

  “Olivia, I—”

  “Goodbye, Landon,” she says sharply, but he’s already gone. After she restores the sunlight and noise to the rooftop, taking away the flowers and grass in the process, I jolt back into my own head.

  And a memory hits me.

  Someone carried me, jarring my body around. I could hear his breathing and feel his sweat running from his skin and onto mine. Pain shot from the tips of my toes to the top of my head as my left side collided with something flat and squishy. Then the harsh scent of mildew on vinyl fi
lled my nostrils.

  “Careful so you don’t hurt her,” a female voice had whispered. “You know who she is, don’t you?”

  “Don’t be such a sympathizer. Because I promise you won’t keep your job with the company for very long if you’re speaking out against it. It doesn’t matter who she was—what she is now is a criminal. Look at her—she’s not even sentient. She doesn’t even realize what’s going on,” a male replied, snorting. As if to demonstrate his point, he touched the center of my head, pressing into my flesh until I shrieked in pain.

  He was wrong. I’d felt everything.

  “She’s still a human,” the girl grumbled.

  Who were they? I can’t remember either of their faces, but I know this memory is real. Their voices are too alive for it to be anything else. And even though I’ve gained another small fragment of my past, I don’t feel as if I’ve made any headway.

  Because in order for me to understand why people are against The Aftermath, I need to know why the game was needed in the first place.

  * * *

  “We’re going on a raid,” I say to April and Jeremy the moment Olivia takes control of me again. “And you two are coming with me.”

  She’s been away from The Aftermath approximately seventy-one hours and twenty-two minutes—I paid close attention to the time. Just like I kept track of every bit of food and drink I had while the others were inactive and I was left free to roam the game.

  “We’d be better off doing a rescue mission,” April tells us. “That’s where all the points are.” But when Olivia maneuvers my gaze toward her, she doesn’t say anything else. I wonder if the person playing April is afraid of Olivia. Or if she just loathes my gamer as much as I do.

  Jeremy’s expression is as deadpan as ever. “Of course I’ll go, Claudia.”

  I feel myself nod. “I’ll find a good spot, then.” I am still turned toward April, and she gives me a tight-lipped smile.

  I go into Olivia’s head. It takes a few tries and a lot of concentration since she’s playing me and I can’t lay my head down, but I manage it.