Version Zero

by David Yoon

  if,

  if,

  if she were in another alternate universe, she would allow this day to stretch on and on and on while she lazed about with Shane in the warmth.

  But this was this universe, and she was riding in a helicopter with Shane and three of the Big Five.

  “They will tear your mother and father apart,” Cal Peers had said.

  “Fucking try it,” shouted Shane.

  “I love you guys,” said Max, and jumped out the open door.

  Max had not witnessed the rest of it, which was probably for the best.

  “We have to go back for him,” Shane had shouted.

  Cody, the pilot, strained to look behind him. “We forgot someone?”

  “Ignore him,” said Cal Peers.

  “Go, go, go,” shouted River Askew.

  “Just land for one second,” said Akiko. “Please.”

  “He chose to leave,” shouted Jonas Friend. “The whole place is going to explode.”

  “What the hell?” said Cody.

  “Go the fuck with him if you want,” shouted Cal Peers, and braced himself with both arms to give Akiko a hard kick.

  Akiko swung out of the open doorway and dangled in space from a grab handle.

  “No,” shouted Shane. He dove to grasp for Akiko’s arms.

  “You, too,” said Cal Peers. Akiko watched helplessly as he began kicking Shane everywhere he could: his head, between his shoulder blades.

  But Shane was bigger than those kicks. He turned, caught Cal Peers’s ankle with both hands, and shoved hard to flip the man onto his back. Both River Askew and Jonas Friend pressed themselves to the wall, as if to give them room to fight.

  Akiko could not dare release her grasp in an attempt to climb back inside. What if she slipped?

  Cal Peers, though supine, managed to score a hard jab kick at Shane’s shin, sending him down to a knee. This gave Cal Peers enough time to get back on his feet and charge.

  “Shane,” screamed Akiko.

  Her scream was unnecessary. Because Cal Peers did not know that Shane had taken aikido since he was nine, and that with just his fingertips, he could lightly grab and turn an oncoming opponent to alter their course by a few degrees.

  A few degrees was all it took to send Cal Peers shoulder-first into the doorjamb and tumbling out of the cabin.

  “We are landing right now,” screamed Cody. He pushed a lever; the cabin began to dip.

  Shane got low. He peered out the doorway. He covered his mouth at what he saw.

  Then Shane blinked, gripped Akiko’s wrists, and hauled her back into the cabin, where she scrambled away from the open doorway with eyes gone square with terror.

  Shane crushed her in his arms. “You’re okay, you’re okay.”

  The helicopter stopped its descent. It began rising again. Akiko looked up.

  Jonas Friend held something small and lime green in color: a box cutter blade, just an inch from Cody’s neck. Jonas Friend was saying something. Without headphones Akiko couldn’t hear what, but she didn’t need to.

  “No,” said Akiko. No one heard her.

  Jonas Friend touched the blade to the skin of Cody’s neck, so Cody pulled the lever, and the helicopter rose. River Askew heaved the door shut. The air inside the cabin sealed. It stabilized. The roar of the wind and the rotors hushed to a murmur.

  Akiko watched as the mountains outside sank to become nothing but brilliant blue sky.

  River Askew shared a fierce look with Jonas Friend. He sat, fastened his harness. He eyed Shane and Akiko. Then he smiled.

  “Enjoy this moment,” said River Askew. “Before you rot in separate cells.”

  “He’s the one who came at me,” said Shane.

  Akiko touched his arm. “Baby, don’t say anything.”

  “Do you think anyone will believe anything you tell them?” said River Askew. “Think hard about who you just killed.”

  She could not bear to look at the man’s face. So she slid, trembling, into what otherwise would have been a cozy little spot by the window with a spectacular view of the mountains gliding below them, if not for the sickening knowledge that she had been seconds away from plunging to her death—and that Shane had sent someone else down in her stead.

  Shane, oh, Shane.

  “It was self-defense,” whispered Shane.

  “I know,” whispered Akiko.

  “Could you remove the knife, please?” said Cody.

  “Fly,” said Jonas Friend.

  They flew.

  Shane held her. But she held him, too. Outside was endless beauty created by an alien god.

  They flew and flew. For how long, Akiko couldn’t tell. Adrenaline changed your perception of time, Akiko realized with melancholy interest.

  For a few hundred seconds, Akiko kept her eyes on these two motherfucking monsters: Jonas Friend and River Askew, the last of the Big Five. So did Shane.

  Twenty impossibly long minutes passed.

  Everyone seemed to sag at once. The adrenaline ebbing. And the reality, coming at them as fast as the speeding horizon, of the chopper landing somewhere. Somewhere where there were people.

  Max, oh, Max.

  How quickly Max had shrunk to the size of an ant, alone on that helipad staring bewildered at the body of Cal Peers. A moment later and Max was no longer visible. They had sailed away from the sparkling white tor and cruised low over the endless mountains.

  The terror of near death, she realized, had been a kind of punishment.

  Akiko closed her eyes. She made a vow. She would keep her night with Max like a secret pressed into a book hidden beneath the floorboards. Maybe she would look at it from time to time in the dead of night. She would remember it with fondness and regret and joy and sickening guilt. Then she would put it back in its hiding place.

  She pressed her wet face into Shane’s chest and kept it there.

  Max stayed behind.

  Why?

  Was it to stop whatever cyberattack Pilot had planned? Did he somehow know something about it that she did not? Maybe. Maybe not. Max himself said that hacks don’t last, and he was right—the world would recover.

  So why?

  Akiko felt the wristbands on her wrists, and had an inkling. She imagined Pilot wriggling free of his restraints and, in a fit of command line fury, detonating their wristbands from afar. That must be what Max was going back to stop.

  Or—what if the wristbands were on a timer? What if they detonated outside a certain distance from the facility?

  What if, what if.

  The cargo chopper would cut through the sky and land somewhere where there were people, people like police. Everything would come out.

  All of it would come out, and the whole world would know. And there she would be. Her face, everywhere.

  She thought back to that moment at Point Whittier when she had stared out at the ocean, stunned by Pilot’s invitation forever ago. Had the trap already been set at that point? How long had Pilot been planning this bloodbath?

  What if they hadn’t answered his invitation?

  What if they had just gotten jobs instead and lived normal lives like normal people?

  What if?

  All possible universes came crashing down, and in the end they were nothing more than glass. Only one remained intact.

  She got up out of her seat and began rummaging through storage cabinets.

  “What are you doing?” said Jonas Friend, still holding the blade at Cody’s neck.

  Akiko ignored him. She glanced at Shane, and Shane understood, flinging open locker after locker until he found a pair of specialized pliers. He grasped how it operated instantly, unlocking some kind of safety latch and rotating it into an open and ready position.

  Shane always did like his tools.

&
nbsp; “Baby, I think this will work,” he said.

  “It has to,” said Akiko.

  “Do not fucking try anything,” said River Askew. He nodded at Jonas Friend, as if they were a couple of tough guys.

  Akiko ignored them both. She held out her wrists.

  “I should be wearing insulated gloves, but whatever,” muttered Shane. It was a meaningless precaution, since Akiko herself had no insulation against the wristbands, but she said nothing. Now was not the time to correct him.

  Now was the time to let Shane be Shane.

  “Do it,” she said.

  He slid the tool’s jaws under a wristband and crunched it down. Akiko expected it to spark, but nothing happened—the metal simply flattened, but held.

  “Cut mine next,” said River Askew.

  “Stay the fuck back,” said Akiko, keeping her eyes on Shane. He squeezed and squeezed, but the metal would not give. His hand slipped; the tool had pinched the flesh between his thumb and index finger, which now bled.

  “I can’t cut it,” said Shane, sucking the wound.

  “Oh, baby, your hand,” said Akiko.

  She found herself clutched in Shane’s arms and closed her eyes to see his face staring back at her all underlit blue and white by the pool water agitated by the partygoers splashing around them. His thumb caressing her scar like it was sacred.

  “Did you cut them?” said River Askew.

  The bracelets would not come off. Maybe they would explode; maybe they would not. Either way, it didn’t matter. The instant they touched ground on the other side of this nightmare, there would be questions.

  Are you Version Zero?

  How did you meet Pilot Markham?

  And so on.

  It was the end of her. It was the end of them.

  “I love you,” she told Shane, struggling against her own thundering heart.

  “I love you, too, baby.”

  Maybe Max would be the one to get out of this whole thing safe. Down the snowy slope, maybe, passing through villages that slowly grew in size until he reached a big city where he could dissolve into the crowd. Maybe he would come visit them in prison or whatever.

  If they were lucky enough to make it to prison.

  Separate cells, River Askew had said.

  Wherever they wound up, she vowed to deny Max’s involvement every time anyone mentioned his name, tit for tat. Every time. She would tell Shane to do the same. She was never going to give Max up.

  Never gonna give you up

  Never gonna let you down

  Impossibly, Akiko found herself laughing. The two CEOs turned to look at her with incredulous eyes.

  Shane released her to try once more with the tool, but he slipped yet again. The metal wristbands held.

  “Fuck,” he screamed.

  “Baby, come here,” said Akiko, and this time she held him. She wanted to rest. Rest forever and die there clutched tightly together.

  “Give me that,” said River Askew, approaching now.

  Akiko kicked him hard and sent him back up against Jonas Friend, who exploded in a shower of sparks.

  “What?” screamed Jonas Friend. A half second later it was River Askew’s turn. Akiko watched as the magical trail of sparklers, pretty as small street fireworks, severed their hands clean off.

  They waited for theirs to ignite as well, but nothing happened.

  Akiko raised her wrists and stared at the bracelets with wonder. She pushed in the crown. The bracelets came free. Had they reached some trigger radius? Had Pilot marked them exempt from automatic detonation?

  Why, Pilot?

  The sparks that had swarmed the cockpit died in an instant, leaving the whole cabin steadily flooding with smoke. A harsh beeping filled Akiko’s ears. She held her breath and watched as the two CEOs lay bleeding, dying, now dead.

  The Big Five, all dead now.

  In the last moment before the smoke obliterated her vision she saw Shane hold on to a chair arm. She did the same. Together they held tight as the world took a sickening pitch down.

  “Goddammit,” said Cody. “Am I bleeding?”

  Cody’s last word came out as a wet gurgle.

  The rest of it was a strange, amazing dream in which gravity stopped working and Akiko’s hair orbited her in resplendent liquid ribbons. Every part of her body drifted just an inch from where they should be: her arms from the armrests, her head from the headrest, her feet from the floor.

  Then the chopper found ground. There were three hard bounces, like a triple jump colossal in scale, then a final long slide through an endless wall of pure snow that Akiko thought would never end. But it did end, and the world became a chattering storm of glass and groaning metal before falling utterly silent.

  3.6

  Max stared at the body of Cal Peers. The chopper was gone. All was silent. A perfect contour of snowslope next to the helipad had been ruined by a small avalanche triggered by the thundering helicopter, which had sent a shelf of glittering white tumbling down.

  Max turned around to watch it go. It was beautiful.

  The piece broke apart as it gathered speed, then hit a distant valley floor with such a sound that Max thought it might start a grand concerto of avalanches.

  But the snow held.

  No sound but footsteps.

  Max glanced back just in time to be tackled to the ground with a sharp crack.

  He felt cool air on his face. His mask was no longer there.

  When Max opened his eyes, he saw the face of Cal Peers above him.

  “Die,” said Cal Peers, and he brought down both clasped fists onto Max’s forehead.

  The world fell sideways with a bounce, which Max realized was his head flopping to the right. There was a quick blackout as Cal Peers struck again, and the world became like a piece of negative film.

  Cal Peers raised his fists for the next blow.

  Max quickly flinched this time. Cal Peers’s hands scored only a glancing blow. Max braced his arms and kicked—a mad sprint nowhere—and the man staggered back.

  Max kicked at the ground now to put distance between them.

  “You die here,” said Cal Peers, rising to his feet.

  Max felt his heart stop. CEOs tended to be very tall—and indeed, Cal Peers had more than a foot on him. Max could see this ending badly. Even if he fought as hard as he could, even if things devolved into slapping and kicking and biting, nothing could change the physics of a heavy person versus a light one.

  Beyond the platform rail was nothing but open air for a hundred feet.

  Max could see things ending very badly.

  Ending alone, and cold, and silent.

  Max did not want to die alone. He wanted to die surrounded by family and friends in a ranchito where it was always warm and full of talk.

  He had enough time for a single dry swallow.

  Cal Peers flung off his premium quilted winter vest and began a stumbling approach—injured, but too drunk with rage to notice his own limp.

  Max could go back into the facility. There were things there. There were doors to slam and rooms to hide in, at the very least.

  But he couldn’t go there—Pilot was still strapped to a chair inside. A sitting duck. Cal would kill him, and then there would be no way to stop whatever cyberassault he had planned.

  Everything that could go wrong had gone wrong in the wrongest way possible, but Max vowed to not let Pilot’s final crime happen.

  “I’m driving the fuck outta here,” yelled Max, and he ran in the opposite direction.

  Toward the cubist communications tower.

  Max yelled I’m driving the fuck outta here to lure Cal Peers with the decoy promise of some sort of emergency vehicle, and it worked. Max had no idea if there was any such vehicle.

  Max ran fast—nothing could
change the physics of heavy and light bodies, and he darted across the narrow catwalk, sending exquisite chains of snow into the abyss, while Cal Peers lumbered forth.

  Max flung open the tower door, then slammed it shut with the sound of a hundred steel timpani.

  He found himself in an echoing steel vestibule painted green. All exposed conduits and steel mesh landings and structural beams, like a submarine balanced vertically on one end. There was a cot, and a dresser, a little fridge, a stove—Cody’s quarters. No knives or anything useful.

  The front door had no lock. Max looked for something to bar it with, found nothing.

  The tower contained a single large spiral staircase climbing hundreds of feet up. Max did not want to go up. He spotted an iron service door, pulled it. It groaned for the first time in decades, but held firm.

  “Fuck,” said Max.

  He looked back through the reinforced glass window slat and saw Cal Peers now just steps away.

  “Fuck,” said Max again and, pong pong pong, began climbing the metal stairs.

  Max heard the door slam open; the timpani filled the air.

  “Grahh,” said Cal Peers, and took the stairs, doom doom doom.

  Max’s mind went blank. With curiosity he noticed that what they said was true—that the field of focus narrowed to a tiny circle during moments of extreme stress. He could’ve found a heavy something and flung it down, after all. Used his high position to his advantage. He could’ve kicked Cal Peers from above.

  But all Max could think to do was run.

  “Gnn,” said Cal Peers, and something struck Max in the back hard enough to make him fall into the edge of a stairstep. It was a chunk of concrete, expertly thrown. Max tasted blood and, unbelievably, checked if all his teeth were intact.

  They were.

  Good thing you took the time out to check, Max.

  Because now Cal Peers was right there behind him, snatching at an ankle. Max kicked and scrambled. His shoe came off in Cal Peers’s hand.

  Keep it, he thought. Then he leapt, taking the stairs two, three at a time.