by Hayley Stone
Chapter 10
Knowing I’d have more luck solving Euclidean equations than falling asleep, I go in search of Samuel instead, hoping he is indeed back. While I’m eager to see my friend after almost two months of separation, I can’t pretend that’s the only reason. Cordier might be on to something. If anyone can shed some light on my doppelgänger mystery, it’s Samuel. Given that he usually spends every waking hour on the biology level, I figure that’s the best place to start my hunt.
Ulrich tags along, my big grumpy shadow, grumbling in German about the late hour. I let him continue thinking I don’t understand what he’s saying—and for the most part, I still don’t, but I can usually hazard a guess. I’ve even picked up a few phrases in our time together. For example, if I ever need to ask for seconds or complain about there being too many people around, I’m covered.
“Hey, now,” I say, interrupting Ulrich’s moody tirade, “I thought you were my huckleberry.”
“Not after midnight.”
“I wasn’t aware huckleberries got to choose their hours.”
“We are unionizing,” he replies absently, glancing back at the hall behind us.
I laugh. It feels good after a long, tense day. “You must be tired. You’re not normally so snarky. Anyway, I promise I won’t be long. Just a quick chat with Samuel and then you’re relieved of duty.”
“He is probably sleeping,” Ulrich points out. “Like a normal person.”
“Then I’ll wake him up.”
As loath as I am to use an elevator to reach Biology, I don’t have the energy for several flights of stairs. Someone else heading to the upper levels holds the door open for Ulrich and me, but I can’t help lingering in front of the threshold, cycling through all the horrible ways I could die inside that tiny metal car. I don’t realize I’m frozen, struck by mental catastrophe again, until the man clears his throat.
“Going up, Commander?” he asks me, eying Ulrich a little nervously.
“Yeah.” I force a grateful smile. “Sorry. Dragging a little tonight.”
“Not a problem. We’ve all been there.”
I liberate one foot from the floor, then the other, pushing myself forward like I’m escaping a tar pit instead of merely trudging into an elevator. Already I’m rethinking my decision not to return to Dormitory, flop into bed, and cocoon myself in a nice blanket burrito. Nothing bad has ever happened to someone wrapped in a blanket burrito. True story. Without Camus talking and thrashing, I might even sleep through the whole night. Then again, without the reassuring weight of Camus’s body on the other side of the bed, I probably won’t be able to slumber at all. Even if I somehow manage to fall asleep, I’m afraid of the dreams I might have. The lonely darkness I’ll eventually wake to.
“Level?” the man asks.
My brain’s slow to process the question. “Oh. Biology. Thanks.”
“You got it.” He punches the button for level three and takes a tiny step away from Ulrich, who is projecting his bad attitude like a radiation cloud. “Burning the midnight oil, huh?”
“Something like that.”
Throughout the brief journey, the elevator lights flicker a couple times, the car shuddering as it ascends. Leftover kinks from the attack, most likely. I’m not sure who I should talk to about getting it fixed, but I think someone should probably look into it. Each time the car jolts, I reach a hand toward the guardrail, as if that thin tube of metal will save me should the elevator crash.
“I don’t care for elevators, either,” our companion says sympathetically. He’s a short Indian man, midthirties, with some out-of-control facial hair curling down—or up?—both sides of his face, but his eyes are bright and friendly. “If it helps, there are numerous safety devices installed to prevent an elevator from plummeting to the ground. Fun fact: if the pistons fail, we’re much more likely to shoot straight through the ceiling. No worries about a freefall.”
“You don’t say.”
I inch closer to the wall, watching the electronic panel tick off floors as an automated voice announces the same in the background. Finally, the car begins to slow.
Come on, come on…
“Have a good night, Commander, and…uh, friend,” the odd man says, right before the doors open. I step out ahead of Ulrich, turning around long enough to give the man in the car a quick salute. You meet the strangest people on elevators. Must be the enclosed space, with no way to escape. Irony loves that kind of stuff.
A wall of hot air greets us, raising a thin coat of sweat on both my forehead and Ulrich’s by the time we’ve walked maybe forty feet.
We’re in what amounts to McKinley’s greenhouse, where most of the base’s food is produced. When we first moved in, and our population was smaller, we relied largely on what we could scavenge from neighboring cities, but in the years since, we’ve become entirely self-sufficient, taking advantage of renewable energy technology from before the war. I thought we were doing pretty well for ourselves until the Chinese surveyed our agricultural programs and pointed out half a dozen ways to improve our output and reduce the risk of deadly mutations killing our crops. Further proof of how much we need this coalition.
Ulrich and I navigate the waist-high planters side by side, with room to spare. Each planter runs the length of the room, hundreds of feet long. Inside them, a variety of vegetables are growing, their vines breaking through dark, moist soil to lean against metal stakes. Along the far wall, there are even fruit trees, a small orchard resurrected from seedlings. I visit this part of the level so rarely that I’m still completely enamored with the color in the room. Above all else, the sight of oranges and bright red apples makes me smile. It’s a reminder of life before, as well as the promise of life continuing. As I pass by a tomato plant, I brush my fingers across its feathery petals. Something always survives.
Exiting the greenhouse rooms, Ulrich proposes we take a shortcut through Water Treatment. We’ve had this debate before; he claims it’s faster than navigating all the back halls, especially now that there are more people around. I’m too tired to argue with him, so I reroute.
A dozen large basins occupy the enormous water treatment room, each taller than an aboveground pool, separated by narrow platforms for maintenance workers. Pipes of various sizes climb the walls and wrap around the width of the room like snakes on the inside of a tomb, delivering waste and retrieving fresh water as necessary. I breathe in deeply, tasting clean moisture on my lips. The slightly chemical smell reminds me of pirates. No. A ride with pirates—an amusement park attraction. Something like that. Oddly enough, this is the one place in all McKinley that doesn’t feel like a swamp. The air conditioning units must be running constantly here to keep the water chilled and prevent the growth of harmful bacteria. Praise be to the AC gods.
There’s something comforting about the sound of the water, too, every basin warbling to the tune of overworked filters. Samuel once compared this area to the Jedi Temple’s Room of a Thousand Fountains, but I’ve seen the films, and I don’t remember any fountains.
“Commander Long!” One of the security officers flags me down and jogs over. The necessity of having clean, drinkable water is enough to warrant 24/7 security for this area of the base. Even with everything that’s going on, I’m glad to see the council hasn’t neglected its other duties, such as reassigning shifts to those still alive.
At first, I think the officer’s going to give me trouble, but then he smiles, a little breathlessly. Someone’s out of shape. Lefevre’s warning surfaces in my brain. We’ve become too comfortable here. “Twice in one night. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Twice? An uneasy feeling snakes into the pit of my stomach. “Sorry. You’re saying you saw me earlier, here—in Water Treatment?”
The officer’s substantial forehead wrinkles, his smile turning confused. “Is this some kind of test?” He glances at Ulrich who is too busy watching the perimeter of the room, the entrances and exits, to pay him any mind. Something has him on edge,
even if he won’t admit it. “Have I done something wrong?”
“No. No, you’re not in any trouble.” I feign a headache, pinching the bridge of my nose. “It’s just been a long day. Refresh my memory. When was I here last?”
“A few hours ago, shortly before the vigil. You asked whether it would be possible to introduce a fluoride agent into the water supply.”
“But we’ve already fluoridated the water. Didn’t we do that a month and a half ago?”
“Right. I thought it was odd. Then you asked to see how the process worked, how we make sure the dosage is correct so we don’t accidentally poison the water instead of cleaning it. Are you…feeling all right, Commander?”
“Just a little rattled by the attack.” At his concerned expression, I offer a smile. In reality, I feel like I’ve just swallowed a horned toad. “I’m fine. Really.” I press my finger against the shiv in my pocket so hard I know I’m running the risk of drawing blood, but the pain is a nice distraction, and it’s better than the alternative—having a psychogenic attack in front of one of my subordinates. That story—the great Commander Long coming unhinged—would run like a violent, electric shock through McKinley. Never let them see you sweat. Or black out. “While I have you, officer, one more question: you haven’t seen Commander Forsyth tonight, by any chance?”
He shakes his head. “Sorry.”
Oh, well. It was worth a shot. “Do me a favor…”
“Larry,” he supplies eagerly.
“Larry,” I say. “I want increased security for the treatment room, whether that means new ID scanners or more guards. Whatever it takes. Also, have the engineers run diagnostics on the water—check the pH levels, that sort of thing. Just to make sure there are no problems.”
He frowns. “Problems? Like what?”
“I don’t know, Larry,” I reply, a little more tartly than I mean to. “That’s why I want the tests. We’re still assessing the damage to the base’s infrastructure, including piping and power. Better to be on the safe side, right?” I start to walk away, but another thought strikes me, spins me back around. “One more thing: halt all fluoridation for the time being. I don’t want anything in that water but water.”
Larry scratches the back of his neck. “I don’t have the authority to—”
“Then pass it along to your superiors. If they have complaints, tell them they can take it up with me, personally.”
I nod to Ulrich, who falls into step beside me. “Well?” he says.
“There’s something rotten in the state of Dakota.”
“Denmark,” Ulrich corrects with a hint of a smile.
“Denmark. Dakota. Same difference,” I say, covering. “Besides, Denmark’s a country. That doesn’t even make sense. Whatever. Let’s just hurry and find Samuel and Camus. Then we can worry about what the hell else is going on inside this base.”
—
The Chemistry department is located at the end of Biology’s Research and Development wing, marked by a shift from concrete floors to blue linoleum. A painstakingly detailed mural stretches the length of the hallway, crosses a portion of the linoleum, and finishes on the other wall, depicting a complicated atomic structure that looks like it took some time to paint (and even longer to understand). Beneath the mural are the words Dimidium facti qui coepit habet in an elegant script.
Sounds profound. Too bad I don’t know Latin. I am versed in a little Klingon, oddly enough, but only because I thought it would be funny to have Samuel teach me how to ask where the bathroom is. He also taught me the phrase I cannot speak Klingon in Klingon, which seems self-defeating, but what do I know about aliens? I have enough problems with robots; no need to add extraterrestrials into the mix.
Unless the aliens were on our side, fighting against the machines…
It’s easier to let my mind wander to these ridiculous scenarios than let my thoughts fester and my doubts cannibalize me. Camus missing. Samuel still absent. Blackouts. And a woman parading around the base with my face and my handprints and my voice. Only two explanations make sense.
One: another clone is running around McKinley. Somehow. It survived the demise of Brooks facility, was recruited by the machines, and made its way back here. How, and to what end? I don’t know. Nothing good.
Or.
I’ve been dancing around the alternative, stamping down the possibility like glowing embers I could put out with my bare feet. But I ignored the first rule. The most important rule when it comes to crisis management.
Where there’s smoke…
Fire.
And usually I’m somehow involved, too.
“Hey, Ulrich,” I say, falling back alongside him. He’s not moving at his usual, relentless speed, and I’d outpaced him. “Quick question. Yes or no.”
There are so many things I want to ask him, but I have to tread carefully with this line of questioning. Even Ulrich can’t know what I’ve come to suspect—that the original Rhona might have come out of that snowy hell alive, fought her way back to consciousness only to discover herself surrounded by machines and corpses. Abandoned. Maybe she would have wished she died. But the machines…
The machines would never release such a prize.
This is the scenario that haunts me. Mostly because if that Rhona showed up today, I have no way of knowing where people’s loyalties would be, on my side or hers. The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb. I remember hearing that once. How thick is the water of a cloning tank, I wonder?
“Do you think I’m capable of what everyone’s accused me of?” I ask, not referring to myself per se. “Letting the machines inside the base, planting a bomb…” Hurting Camus. Conspiring to poison our own water supply. I don’t volunteer that last one. It’s still only a suspicion at this point.
Ulrich considers for a moment. “Yes.”
“Really? Not exactly what I was hoping to hear—”
The German holds up a hand, not the one grasping his rifle. “You are one of the most capable women I have ever known. If you wanted to destroy us, you could. With ease. But not like this.” Frowning, he gestures with his gun to our damaged surroundings. Even though Biology suffered no direct assault, there are cracks where the force of the blasts traveled through the rock above and below. The whole base still smells faintly of ash and metal and something else no one wants to name. “This attack was…complicated. Messy.” He settles the barrel of the gun back in the pocket between his neck and shoulder. “You could do better.”
My eyebrows go up, even while my heartbeat begins to slow. “That’s…strangely reassuring. So,” I say, catching up to him as he keeps walking, “hypothetical scenario. Your base of operations is attacked. An insider is suspected. Who has the most to gain from allying with the machines?”
Ulrich furrows his brow, side-eying me. “That isn’t hypothetical.”
“Right. Forget about McKinley for a minute. Pretend we’re talking about another base. Who benefits the most from helping the enemy?”
Ulrich extends his arm and checks around the corner before allowing me to proceed down the next hall. “Depends. There are cowards who change sides to save themselves; fools who believe the enemy’s lies; and, in certain instances, the truly faithless. Those who never believed in their own cause, and now seek to replace it with empty promises. Of wealth, future prosperity. Survival. The loyalty of some is more cheaply purchased than that of others.”
He pauses, scanning behind us again. It’s starting to make me nervous. What danger does he believe is following us?
“Is that all?” I prompt, sensing he has more to say.
“Or,” Ulrich says, hesitating, “there is the prisoner. Someone caught, who has no other choice. Trapped between a rock and a boulder, many starve to death. But a few—a rare man or woman—will chew their own limb off to escape. Or even for just the hope of escape.”
I think about Ulrich in captivity, a prisoner of the machines. He doesn’t talk about the months when he was tortured
or the time he spent in the wilderness after he “escaped,” but I see it in his eyes, sometimes, and in the hunch of his shoulders when he believes no one’s watching him. The damage is still there, beneath the surface. His infrastructure has changed. Some parts of himself he’s rebuilt, but other parts remain demolished. And if Ulrich came back…
“How do we fight that kind of desperation?” I ask him.
“Some will tell you patience.”
“You’d disagree.”
He stops so abruptly I nearly rear-end him. A hard look comes into his eyes, and in that moment I regret asking him these questions. It’s forcing him to paw through the rubble from last year, and he’s unearthing something primal, angry. “Sometimes,” Ulrich says, “the greatest kindness you can do for a wounded animal is to put it down.”
As he finishes speaking, Ulrich’s walkie crackles on his chest. The council still refuses to give me my own, on the off chance that I’ll try to use it to communicate some plan to my clone (or clones), or even the machines directly. Set up more destruction. Honestly, I’m not sure what they think I’m going to do with such old technology. The walkie has a limited range; it barely functions between levels, with all the rock in between.
“Ulrich? Hello?” It’s Zelda’s voice. Ulrich’s face immediately softens at the sound of his lover, while I feel myself tensing up. The last time Zelda and I spoke was the day of the attack. “I know you’re with Long so this should be the right channel. Pick up.”
Ulrich rips the walkie from its Velcro and answers, “Zelda.”
“Finally. Is Long listening, too?”
He looks at me, and I nod. Ulrich affirms my presence for Zelda.
“Good,” she says, “because you’re both going to want to hear this. I was down in Military going over the security logs again—what’s left, anyway. This place is a damn mess. Anyway, I was trying to pin down the date each machine arrived at the base, and—”
“You are supposed to be recovering,” Ulrich interrupts. “Not working.”
“I have a few broken bones. I’m not dying.” I imagine Zelda rolling her eyes. “Like I was saying, they arrived with the Chinese, disguised as subjects approved for testing. Someone must have dropped the ball on assessing their functionality, because their kill switches were all fake. Garbage code. There’s also the issue of their dormancy; they remained powered down until a specific command was given. With all our firewalls, that command had to come from inside the base. I think someone inside McKinley helped the machines.”
