by Guy Morpuss
Kate/Ben, I’m on my way back. We should be in Montreal by 8:00. I don’t know if Alex will want to leave, but I agree that we need to.
I’ve just spoken to a lawyer in Montreal, on a no-names basis. He was pretty cagey, but he said this didn’t sound like a crime to him. He said the statute requires force, and trickery isn’t the same. He mentioned a case a while ago about someone who fooled women into sleeping with him by pretending to be a famous film star, and he was acquitted. He said it would be all the more difficult to get a conviction where it is different minds in the same body.
It doesn’t make it any better. I’m going to propose a vote on putting Sierra into stasis for rehab when we get home. This isn’t normal behaviour. She needs treatment. We can force her into rehab for up to three months without needing to involve CGov. Agreed?
It’s going to take a while to calm Alex down. There may not have been any long-term potential in this relationship – there never is for us schizos – but that’s not how he’s going to see it now. Mike.
Alex, so sorry, mate, don’t know what to say. I know it’s unforgiveable. I don’t know where we go from here. I’m going to suggest we put Sierra in stasis for three months. She’s ill. We need to get her some treatment. Whether she agrees to it or not. Whatever happens, we’ve still got to live with her. It’s not what you want to hear now, but you are going to have a find a way to forgive her and move on. Sorry. Mike.
Chill, Alex. It’s not as though you were going to marry her. She was the one bit of fun I’ve had since coming to this godforsaken country. I can see why you liked Emily – underneath that prim exterior she was pretty wild. Can we all agree to go home now? S. xxx
KATE
DAY FOUR
13:50–16:20
It felt as though someone was sawing off my leg.
I tried to sit up, screaming for them not to touch me, but I couldn’t move. I was lying on a cold hard surface, my wrists and ankles tied down. I opened my eyes but there was only darkness. Something was covering my face.
‘Help!’ I screamed, pulling frantically at my bindings.
Pain coursed through my body again. My back arched and slammed down on to the hard metal.
‘Kate, stay where you are. Don’t move,’ said a voice. ‘It’s me, Alex.’
To my confused brain that did not immediately seem odd. I had thought the game was over, but maybe it wasn’t.
‘What? Where am I? What’s going on?’
‘You’re in the medical centre. You got hurt.’ He paused. ‘And there are other … complications.’
‘Hold still, please,’ said another voice. ‘I’m your medical officer. I’m sorry about the pain but I needed to stop the bleeding quickly. In a moment the meds will kick in and you won’t feel anything. You need to lie really still and try not to panic. I need to seal the wound. It won’t take long.’
My fingernails dug into the palms of my hands. All my muscles were taut. I tried to make myself relax. How had I got hurt? The last thing I remembered was being in the game, pressing the button. Killing Ben.
Was that not the end of the game? Might that mean Ben wasn’t dead?
‘Why can’t I see anything?’ I asked, trying not to panic.
‘You were unconscious,’ said the medic. ‘We needed to scan your brain for any injuries. The light would blind you, so I put an eye mask on. Try to relax.’
The pain was receding. I was drifting. Was I back in space? Or were the meds just kicking in?
I was losing track of time. For a while I could distantly feel someone poking at my leg. There was the occasional beep or hiss of air, and lights flickering around the edge of my vision.
Then everything went quiet.
‘I’m done,’ said the medic. ‘This all looks fine. There shouldn’t even be a scar. She’s lost a lot of blood, though. There’s a limit to what we can replace, even in an andi. For once it’s important that she actually drinks, and gets her fluid levels back up. Make sure she does.’
‘OK,’ said Alex. ‘Could we have a moment alone please? It was a pretty traumatic game, and she almost died.’
So does Alex think the game is over? How can that be? And why are they talking about andis?
‘I don’t understand why you people play these games,’ said the medic. ‘Take as long as you need, give her time to come back slowly. She’ll be dozy. It’s a body, not a machine. I’ll be outside.’
‘Thanks,’ said Alex.
Footsteps came towards me. The bindings on my hands and feet withdrew. Then the footsteps receded, and I heard a door open and close.
I lay still for a moment, then reached up to remove the mask covering my eyes. A hand gripped mine, stopping me gently but firmly.
‘Wait, Kate,’ Alex said. ‘We need to talk first.’
‘What? What has happened?’ I asked. ‘I thought the game had ended.’
‘You were hurt. You were unconscious when I found you. You may not be processing this at the moment. But what’s happened isn’t possible. I don’t know what Sierra’s done, or how. But I’m here, in our body – Mike’s body.’ He hesitated. ‘And you’re here … in Amy Bird’s body.’
‘What? Don’t be stupid, Alex. That’s impossible.’
I sat up, pain stabbing through my head. An arm came round my shoulders, steadying me.
‘Take it slowly, Kate. I know this isn’t easy, but it’s happened. It doesn’t make any more sense to me than it does to you. Sierra’s done this somehow.’
I reached up and tore off the mask covering my eyes. This time Alex didn’t try to stop me.
The first thing I saw was a hand resting on my shoulder. Just above my left breast.
My left breast?
I looked down. I was sitting on the edge of a shiny metal treatment table, in a body that wasn’t mine. I was female, small … everything was wrong. My left trouser leg had been cut away, and through it I could see pale white skin. Not my skin. My hands were small, delicate, white.
I reached up to touch the hand on my shoulder. I knew that hand. It was mine.
I flung it off me and jumped down from the table, wobbling as I landed. I turned around. There I was, standing in front of me, staring back at me, a shocked expression on my face. Which was nonsense.
At first my brain couldn’t deal with it. Then I laughed.
‘This isn’t real, Alex,’ I said. ‘Bird is playing tricks on us again. We’re still in the game.’ I looked down at my hands. ‘It’s nicely done. Do I really look like I’m in her body? What’s Sierra playing at this time? What do we have to do to end the game?’
Alex hesitated. ‘It’s real, Kate. The games don’t work like this. We know what the goal was – stop the spaceship, and we did that. The game is over. I woke up in an arena, in the usual way. I went to check the other rooms, and found you badly injured. So I brought you here. It shouldn’t have been me waking up, though. Ben and Sierra come first in the cycle. So it must mean that Ben is dead, and Sierra is gone.’
Ben dead. I remembered that. Killed by me because Alex wouldn’t.
‘How can Sierra have gone?’ I asked. ‘Where? This can’t be real, Alex. We’re still in a game. If not the spaceship game, then something else.’
‘I’m sure it’s real, Kate. It all fits. We know Ben shot Bird. She was hurt when we saw her, and her wounds match yours. I carried you here, through the park. No one could have written a game of this complexity in advance, containing the whole park, Bird getting injured, you having the same wounds. And why? If Sierra wants to kill us all she could have done it in the game as it was. It doesn’t make any sense for her to put you in her body in the game, and then have me save your life by bringing you here.’
He paused, and took a step towards me, reaching for my hands. I let him take them in his – in mine. Our gentle green eyes looked into mine. ‘Kate, you’ve got to face it. This is real.’
I slumped back against the examination table. Could he be right? I could feel the panic starting to
rise again, and my heart was beginning to race.
‘But what about Sierra?’ I asked desperately. ‘Where could she have gone if I’ve got Amy?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Alex. ‘Maybe she’s still in here with me and the cycle has somehow got screwed up. If it’s the same as happened with Mike then we won’t know until the cycle resets tonight.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘This can’t be right. What has Sierra done to us? This isn’t me.’ I pulled away from him and put my head in my hands, to try to shut it all out. But then I hated the touch of the alien white skin on my face. I snatched my hands away.
I hurled myself at him – at me – beating at our chest with my fists. They felt weak, and small. ‘Give me my body back!’ I screamed. ‘Give it back!’
He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me into him. I pushed back but he was too strong. This stupid andi body too weak to escape from him. What was the point of surrendering your humanity for a fake body that was deliberately designed to have no strength at all? I gave up fighting, slumped in his arms.
‘Stop it, Kate,’ he said firmly. ‘I don’t understand this either, and I know it’s awful. But it’s no easier for me. We’ve got to get out of here and work out what Sierra’s done. Together we can solve this.’
I barely heard his words but burst into uncontrollable sobbing. It was overwhelming. His grip relaxed and I felt a hand softly stroking my hair. ‘Come on, Kate,’ he said softly. ‘We’ll deal with this afterwards, but let’s get out before the medic gets suspicious and decides to report this to someone.’
I couldn’t stop shaking, and he continued to hold me, more loosely now.
‘Why’s Sierra doing this?’ I asked weakly. ‘This is worse than anything she’s done. Worse even than what she did to Emily. She’s torn me out of my body and put me in … in this thing. She knows what I think of andis. What any normal person thinks of them. Why’s she doing this to me?’ I felt numb.
Alex released me. ‘Let’s discuss it somewhere else. Can you keep it together for that long?’
I nodded and took a deep breath. I blotted my eyes with the cuff of my shirt, trying to find a bit that wasn’t splattered with blood. Amy’s blood. My blood.
Alex smiled uncertainly at me. ‘Come on, let’s go.’ He put an arm around me and led me out of the treatment room.
The medic was waiting for us. He looked at me closely. ‘Is she all right now?’
‘She’s good,’ said Alex. ‘Just a bit shocked. It was a rough game. She wants to leave.’
‘Physically, she’s fit to go,’ said the medic. ‘I checked the brain scans and it all looks clear. The game booths are a bit too good at simulating wounds, but it all seemed more nasty than it was. Keep an eye on her, though. The main issue is the blood loss. Remember, plenty of fluids. If you have any concerns, bring her straight back.’
‘I will,’ Alex said. ‘Thanks.’
The medic looked at me. ‘I do need your sign off,’ he said, and handed over a small screen. The text looked blurry to me through my tears, but I could just about make out ‘Amy Bird, treatment cost – one month’. So was this to be my new life? Stuck in a stupid andi’s body? Living as Amy Bird, not Kate Weston? I sniffed and put my finger on the screen.
‘Thanks,’ said the medic. ‘Good luck.’
I stumbled out of the door, holding on to Alex, holding on to what had been my body for the last twenty-five years.
•
Alex took me to the nearest bar, which made sense. I needed to get some alcohol inside me to dull the shock. Andis don’t normally need to eat or drink, but they can, and alcohol has the same effect on them as on us.
I didn’t bother to look at what Alex had ordered. I downed the first two shots without thinking, as we sat in silence. Alex toyed with his drink.
He poured me a third glass, and eventually spoke. ‘How’s your leg feeling?’
‘It’s not my leg,’ I said bitterly. ‘You have my leg, Alex, along with the rest of me. Amy’s leg is fine.’ I glared at him.
He sighed. ‘I know this isn’t easy, but we need to work out what’s happened and how to fix it. Getting cross with me won’t help.’
I bristled. ‘I wasn’t, but I’m starting to. It’s Sierra I’m furious with. It’s Montreal all over again.’
Alex sat back and raised his hands. ‘Sorry, Kate. Look, I’m not trying to defend Sierra. You know what I think of her. But it’s not as bad as that.’
I leaned across the table, banging my glass down. ‘Don’t you get it? She’s ripped me out of my body! I don’t see how it could be worse.’
‘I’m not trying to diminish what Sierra has done to you. But you were moving to a new body in ten days’ time anyway.’
‘Not like this! I would have been moving to a body that we had all chosen, with the rest of you. If I’d wanted to be an andi I would have chosen that at seventeen. I didn’t. I like being a schizo. Sierra doesn’t get to turn me into an andi, and then you defend her by pretending it’s no different.’
‘Sorry,’ said Alex. ‘All I’m saying is that what she did in Montreal was completely different. Worse.’ He took a drink. ‘Look, I’m not the one sitting there in Bird’s body. I can see you’re upset, I would be too. But it’s not going to help if we fall out.’
I took a deep breath. I didn’t understand why he was defending Sierra. But the alcohol was starting to take the edge off.
‘I’m more than upset, Alex. But I agree that we need to work out what’s happened so we can reverse it. We don’t even know how she’s done it. None of this is meant to be possible.’
‘Let’s take it in stages,’ says Alex. ‘Somehow she’s found a way to subvert the games. She almost certainly killed Mike, but we didn’t die. Presumably because she would have died herself. That broke the rules. Then she found a way to get Ben, you and me into the same game, to access three schizo minds from one body at the same time. That broke the rules. And now she has found a way, when the game ends, to dump one of those minds into a different body. Again, that broke the rules. But it seems she can only do all this during the games. That’s when our minds have been loosened from the body.’ He paused.
‘She must have been planning this for some time,’ he said. ‘Remember, she and Mike were desperate to come to the death park. I said it was a stupid idea, but Sierra persuaded Ben and you to vote yes.’
That was true. I’d been unsure about it, as had Ben. Mike had been confident that no one could beat him, and Sierra and he had pushed us to vote yes. I’d thought at the time that it was just Sierra looking for excitement. Now I realised that there was much more to it than that. I should have trusted Alex’s instincts and said no. Then none of this would have happened.
‘All right, maybe she has somehow found a way to do all that,’ I said. ‘When Mike first went missing you suggested he might be Bird. It sounded crazy, but I did a bit of digging and discovered an old government research paper saying that they had experimented with unwinding schizos. It sounds as though it was a disaster. Half the people went mad, and some died. But it said that they were more successful transferring minds back to andis than to humans. They stopped doing it because it was too risky, but maybe not everyone stopped. I’ll dig the paper out again and send it to you.’ I paused. ‘Let’s suppose that it’s somehow possible. I still don’t understand how Sierra would have done this – she doesn’t have the skills. Or why. And where she’s gone? If she was still with you then it would have been her turn in the cycle, not yours.’
‘I’m not certain what happened,’ Alex said. ‘We don’t know if you downloading to Bird was Sierra’s plan all along, or if something went wrong. Maybe she didn’t intend this. Bird was injured at the end of the game, and left in a hurry. Maybe Sierra was in Bird’s body, and needed to get out before she became unconscious. But then where did she end up?’
I thought back. ‘I don’t see how Sierra could be Bird. They were together in the clip you sent to me of the bar. But when Bird fir
st contacted me she said she had another andi body to take her mind. Most lies contain some truth. Maybe that bit was true, and Sierra always had another body hidden away somewhere. She might have jumped into that body. Did you see anyone else leaving the arena?’
‘No, but it took me a few minutes before I came looking for you. Did you see anyone? Do you remember waking in the game booth?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I remember the game, and pushing the button. Everything after that is a blank until I woke up in the medical centre.’
A waiter dropped some food on our table. I didn’t remember ordering. Alex must have done so. There probably wasn’t any point in me eating, but it still felt good. Comforting. Some slight link to my humanity. Because whatever they tell you when you’re seventeen, no one really believes that andis are human. Everyone knows that they are just a shell to house those who have decided to depart the human race. And now I was one of them.
We ate in silence. It wasn’t easy for me as my mind and my muscles didn’t seem to understand one another. My balance was off. I lacked the fine motor skills to move food from my plate to my mouth.
Everything about this body was wrong. Colours were different. Sharper. The smell of the food was wrong. If I wanted to lift something I had to tell myself to exert more force than I was used to. Amy’s muscles were half the size of Mike’s. I hadn’t noticed when downing the first few shots, I had been so angry then. But the more time I spent in this body the more I noticed the disconnect between it and my brain.
I realised that that was what meant that Alex was right. That this wasn’t a game. I’d played plenty of games where I’d manifested as someone else, as female, as young. They’d always felt perfectly normal. The game mechanics had adjusted to my new body without me needing to. This was different. This was reality. Where the only thing out of place was me.
I pushed these thoughts away. I wasn’t ready to face them head on. Not yet.
Having finished his meal, Alex took pity on me, and fed me the last few mouthfuls of my food. It felt strangely intimate. There was concern in his eyes.
