Existence Oblivion

by Kai Ellory Viola

  "You did. Elliot, how many vaccinations have you had to come do this?"

  "Se...eight. You gave me one?"

  "I gave you one. I didn't have a choice. I had to cover you for what Justin did the first time you sat down, or you'd basically have fried when I spiked you. He's still trying to work out why you didn't," she said softly.

  "Tell me..." he said. She shook her head, "Tell me dammit,"

  "No Elliot. And you're never going to get certain information, not from me, so don't try it. You can't order me around. Your commands can’t break my programming - I've decided to help you, but make no mistake, if I can reach what I need to another way, I will," she said. For the first time Elliot heard that edge in her voice. It wasn't pleasant, and set tones reverberating around his skull.

  "Ok. Please. Tell me?" he said, modulating his tone to sound like he was asking.

  "Tell you what?”

  “Anything you can…”

  "It's the three clone storage areas - where they were sent before it was decided to decentralize storage," Morrigan said, her hands flying over the keys at the side of her steering wheel.

  "Pay attention to the..." Harper said, mildly, eyes on the swerving scenery in front of him. "Hang on, decentralize?" His voice took on a slightly higher pitched note, almost a yelp.

  "I can drive and do this Harper, shut up," she snapped, though not unkindly. He made a motion with his hands, as if turning a key in a lock, then tossed that imaginary key back over his shoulder. She smiled and continued, "Yes. We used to store clones in one place till we could humanely dispose of them..."

  "Euthanize them?" he said.

  "Not always, but yes," she said, almost evasively.

  "Clone storage 1 was declared biohazard," she said, and he nodded. "Two has a dormant virus that means it's to be left sealed for the next three years - they've still not found a reliable way to remove it from the quickfabric and quickmatter walls. It's under constant guard, it can't be there," she added. Again, Harper nodded.

  I hope I'm right, she thought, before swallowing hard and continuing. "Which is exactly why we're going there," she added. Harper blinked.

  "Three was flagged..."

  "Yes, but I saw who set the last flags on the file," there was a soft venom in her voice, as if imparting a truth that she was less happy about than ever. A deep chasm of anger, one that she was keeping in check, though he saw her stabbing at the keys at the side of the wheel even harder now, her lip bitten to a white, pale slant coming from one sharp tooth, her 'vampire' fang. She wasn’t supernatural…Harper knew of them, but they couldn’t survive in this….his home had them, but that was across something far harder than a simple code barrier.

  "Uh oh,"

  "Indeed," she said.

  "Are you going to elaborate?"

  "I don't think you want to know," she said.

  "I think I do," he said. She looked at him.

  You can't be a clone. You'd have killed me as soon as we started heading down the right road. Elliot has to be wrong. Shadows over shadows.

  "It doesn't matter," she said - it's not important right now. Let's sort Elliot out first, and then see what we can do about the rest of it," she said.

  Harper blinked and looked at her. "Since when do you withhold anything?"

  "I'm not withholding anything," she said. "I just don't know what to tell you. It's...some of it is classified. The rest of it is tertiary - it's got nothing to do with what we're doing right now."

  There was another flurry, and she pulled up the flag file tag, just to be sure. Roth, J.

  "Ok." Elliot said. It was all he'd said for several minutes. "Ok, we can fix this," he said.

  "Oh, Detective, this is beyond fixing," she told him. He nodded slowly.

  "Mitigate then," he said. She stood ready. "Tell me everything you have access to. Start with what you think is pertinent and then run down."

  Cerys snorted.

  "Mr Policeman, what's pertinent?" she said, with a snort. "OK, pertinent. I'm cloned from a woman being held at the compound that Naire intends to escape to. I don't know what they're doing to spring him, but Justin and Claudia, at a minimum, look like they're involved. Just from their logs, that is," she added. “But time’s up, go lie over there and I’ll ‘resurrect’ you.”

  Elliot looked on in horror as a survival expert skidded to a stop, inches from a man watching him murderously, a wicked grin on his face, blood smeared on the glass in front of him. It was obvious he couldn't reach him, but the survival expert twisted on his heels, then turned in the opposite direction. Though the flexi-matter had been there, with a flicker, he moved into the other side of the maze - like he ran through a waterfall. Elliot heard a quiet curse from behind him and turned to see what Justin was doing. He didn't seem to acknowledge his attention though, hands rapidly flying over his panel.

  There was another tingle beneath his hands, and Three more prisoners and one man, looking very confused, darted into the room - he skidded to a stop, found one of the cameras and waved desperately.

  "Who's he?" Elliot said. The grid flickered and vanished from the floor and Elliot blinked.

  "What's wrong with the tracking?"

  Justin looked panicked. "Cascade surge," he snapped tersely. One of those four men shouldn't be in there," he added, "and it's the only area we can't subdue - it's the main floor."

  Elliot noticed for the first time, that the room the experts were playing on weren't level. There was a subtle rise into the room - and until he'd seen someone running up it, he couldn't see it.

  "Did the set...change?"

  "No," Justin said. "Yes. It's sanctioned. But the floor will rise as more people enter it. No more than eight allowed in that room," he said. "Your request," he added absently.

  "I asked for doors!" Elliot said, annoyance burning through him.

  "Yeah, well. Asking for certain things is kinda like tilting at windmills; everyone sees you do it, but it's not always exactly the sanest..."

  "Shut up and fix it!" Elliot roared.

  All bar the feed screens died. The man waving frantically was looking for a way out or around the men.

  Justin snapped something in a language Elliot didn't understand and his nanites couldn't translate. Techs all swarmed to the three main panels.

  "Reboot in the three second buffer we've got then please, rebuild a ten second footage buffer. I'll tell the on screen talent what's going on," he added.

  The room was hectic. The frantic image of the man waiving to the camera chilled Elliot. And until the camera came back up, all he could see was a little man cowering in the corner of the room. A fleximatter panel finally opened behind him and he crawled in. Elliot could see a man lunge at him and grab his ankle, and his fingers explode in a mash of blood and bone as it snapped shut.

  "System reboot in five, four, three..."

  "NO!" Elliot yelled, but it was too late.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The system rebooted and for a minute the flexiwalls flickered. And then, inexorably, the man that was in the 'safe hole' - an area designated only for emergencies in the plans - was slowly pushed out. The field buffering the area above, where everyone sat working and tracking the footage - where the talent periodically pretended to walk using a blue-screen, suddenly contained roars - gladiatorial bellows and challenges to everyone around them. The screen above the prison was gone, and the sealed sounds washed over them. Elliot ran to the lip of the balcony, looking over the edge.

  The pit was filling rapidly and the man being pushed out of the safe container was now being pulled, his screams drowned and filtered by the men around him screaming and baying. He was scrabbling, Elliot could tell, trying to squeeze back into a space that was pushing him forward. They got him by the scruff of the neck and hauled him out, throwing him under a table, where he skidded to a stop with a rough clatter. Silence fell as two men moved towards him, the others naturally forming a rough circle. More men, scores of them flooded in as the floor stay
ed level, the slight incline just looking like they had to duck to enter the room.

  Elliot hurried back to his space, which was furthest from the balcony lip - from where he sat he was the only one that couldn't actually see what was going on below him and looked at his keyboard, trembling. The cameras resolved properly and he realized he was wearing a dusty survivalist’s jumpsuit, the orange not vivid enough to seem obvious when the tag system was down. He reached forward, and someone touched his arm, firmly grabbing him.

  "Don't stick your hand in, even though it's flickering. There are no safeties up here," Cerys said, her low voice carrying only to him.

  Men began pulling the tables out of the way, the chairs squealing a warning as they went, and soon there was a boundary where people could stand, could push and shove. One man went down with the snap of a neck – a convict that was hesitating and trying to shove the others away. A wall of a man, neck a solid band over his collar suddenly grabbed him, spun him around, snapped h

  Elliot looked around desperately trying to find Cerys. She had vanished again.

  They'd pulled the frenetic man out now, and, now that the cameras were working again, Elliot could see that he was wide eyed, pale, and had a massive cut above one eye already. He wasn't behaving like a prisoner - there was no aggression. No anger whatsoever. Just fear, and panic. He was gesturing and waving at the ceiling.

  A man reached down and stood him up, then shoved him hard - pushing him back out into the middle of the floor. He bumped one of the tables and sprawled again.

  Three circling him, they appeared to be kicking and punching.

  "Back online!" Justin bellowed. The sound was instantly gone, and Elliot turned to look at the map rebooting. It flickered a few times, then, just as it was about to show Elliot who the man was, a loud klaxon sounded and three monitors were bordered scarlet. And around one man, warning was plastered above his portrait.

  "Survival expert incursion," a voice said, and everyone stopped. "Survival expert unable to access safe zone, calculating..." it continued.

  "I thought you said the survival experts..." Elliot began, tapping Justin's screen and his head whipped around.

  "Oh shit!" Justin said. He punched some keys.

  "What do we do?" Elliot said quietly. The room was still, bar the frenzied tapping of Justin, his keyboard sounding cold and discomforting.

  "Shut up. The reboot must have it wrong," he said. Silence followed like an accusation. Elliot looked on mutely, watching as the men surrounded the survivalist. "That can't be right," Justin said, punching all of the panel unlocks. Elliot's panel came back online under the fleximatter cover, then it melted into it, uncovering one row of buttons.

  "Justin!" Elliot said, loudly.

  Justin gestured helplessly. "I can't unlock the rest of the panel - once we revoke fleximatter privileges for the cells, it's difficult to unlock the panels and...." His hands flew over his panel, bringing up a wall between two of them and the survival expert. Elliot looked on helplessly as the third one snuck up behind him and twisted his neck hard. The man collapsed to the floor. It was almost graceless and soundless - though, Elliot knew exactly what sound the man had made - the gunshot snap of something twisting and snapping from its moorings. He closed his eyes.

  There was an alarm - and Claudia shot back into the room.

  "What in the fuck is that?" she demanded.

  "One of the experts got cornered,"

  "ANOTHER of the survival experts died," Elliot said softly.

  "That's not supposed to happen!" she snarled. Elliot looked over at her, surprised - her composure slipping. The name came up on the screen, and flashed twice.

  "This ends now," Elliot said.

  "What?"

  "This ends now. Claudia, end it."

  "Can't do that. There's a clause that covers this. Come into my office Detective," she said, gesturing to the room on the other side of the floor. He rose to follow her...

  "He's fighting it," Justin observed from the other side of the room. Claudia shrugged.

  "Nothing to fight, now is there?"

  "That man didn't need to die,” Elliot slurred softly. Claudia raised a hand to her mouth and pantomime giggled as his eyes rolled back in his head.

  "Is there?" she repeated, turning back to Justin. He glared at her, before genuflecting in the direction of Naire.

  "No my lady," he hissed, almost involuntarily.

  "That's better," she said. The room filled with the sounds of low movement, as people came and went. Justin looked around before continuing, "I guess it makes no difference. The ..."

  "Will you shut your mouth," she hissed. "What will or won't happen is down to our master. If you don't like that, then move off and leave me to do my job!"

  Justin stared at her.

  "Don't speak to me like that," he said quietly. She smiled, the mirthless gesture of barring her teeth aging her ten years and suddenly, she wasn't the smooth contained creature pacing the room.

  "What are you going to do about it?"

  Lightning fast, Justin moved, shoving her back against the far wall, flicking a switch on his wristband. The walls darkened and became privacy shielded, a door appearing across the entrance to the break room, sealing them off. His hand snapped up to her throat and he grabbed her under the chin, moving her back against the far wall. She slammed into it with a light "oof" and a gasp.

  Very softly, he whispered in her ear, "Just because you think you're in a relationship with him, doesn't mean that he doesn't value me,” Zeal gleamed in his eyes and turned his words to shimmering gems of anger. "But, my dear, I hate to say it, we're worthless. The One doesn't give a crap about you, or me. Or anyone else here. When he reaches the center of the building, once the viewing numbers peak, we're setting that bomb off. If you are not in your designated space, you will die, and I will let you. And I will not be sorry. And he will replace you," he snarled, spittle spraying her face - white and pale, ashen across her lips. "I have spent quite long enough dealing with your moronic voice, and your inane lies," he added, and let her go. She dropped the few inches he'd been holding her raised and began to cough and splutter.

  "How dare..."

  "How DARE I?" he yelled. "You keep talking about how I'll give away a plan that was nearly ruined because you requested the wrong fucking badge number."

  Her eyes widened in sudden realization. "Three numbers you reversed, so instead of getting Detective Roth, who, as you know - as the fucking world knows now, was a clone - and probably heading off that investigation, you managed to choose the only policeman that Naire can honestly say is completely clean. We've had to make a last minute move and do something we really didn't want to do," he added.

  "You....You're lying," she said, her voice hoarse and painful.

  "AM I?" he roared. He brought up a flexipad and showed her a picture. "We've had to replace him with a partially indoctrinated clone. Which means he still has free will, and if his bond with his friends is stronger than his programming, we could lose him and everything we've invested long term in this deal,"

  "I thought the point of this was to replace the Detective...”

  "I thought the point of this was to replace the Detective...” he mimicked, and then slapped her, hard. “The point is to release our Lord, and have him carry out his master plan. Elliot Peters is a bonus, and this has worked out better than it could, but did you honestly, and seriously think that your plan would work?"

  “Open the path…” she snarled, “and wake the bastard up. I want this over with. We’ve sent them enough footage to cover it now,” she added, stalking back. “I’ll prepare our safe area,” she added, looking around and snapping her fingers in the direction of Cerys.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The floor was slick with blood by the time the canister with weapons opened. There was an alarm, and the onscreen talent again acted as shocked as he could be. Three guns dropped into the tubes as seven men wrestled around them, then, from another part of the
room, another canister raised. The seven men warily moved to the edges of the rooms, looking around and trying to decide what would be best.

  Justin was barking instructions. "Box A, tight on the first canister - box B, second canister - box c, wide feed." Everyone moved to do as they were told and Elliot felt as if he were floating. The anger and anxiety building at the core of his consciousness, watching the people doing their jobs was reaching a crescendo, and he didn't know what to do.

  Cerys was nowhere to be seen, and as he gazed around the room, the frenetic energy seemed to slow. Dizziness washed over him again, then, as if his ears and eyes had cleared, with a pop that felt almost real, the room dissolved and clattered down into a jumble of noise and whispers, multiple conversations all overlaying on top of one another. Colors became more vivid, the onscreen talent was narrating this live, so Justin was frantically flicking feeds as he passed everything over to the various places, like parcels moving through an intricate dance.

  "Ball passed," he finally confirmed and everyone seemed to relax, except Elliot. He was watching the men circle, predator wide, one another and watching the release of the weapons.

  "Is this necessary?" he asked finally, as Claudia passed behind him.

  "Yes. Be thankful we aren't airing it live," she said.

  "Thankful?" he demanded. Cerys waved at him, wide-eyed, one gesture. "I'm not sure this is sanctioned," he added slightly weaker. Claudia's eyes narrowed slightly, and she paced back to where Elliot was sat, leaning against his panel.

  "If we're going to have this conversation Detective, it would be nice if you could remember it, wouldn't it?"

  "Claudia!" Justin hissed.

  "Shut up tech boy," she snapped back, raising her hand to her throat. Light finger marks were appearing under her makeup, the angry red dulled to an almost careless blush.

  “You shut up bitch,” he snapped and Elliot stood up, turning to look at both of them. Justin took that as a sign to act.

  "MIDNIGHT FOR UNBELIVERS!" he yelled, reaching under the table and pulling a remote. He smacked the button, sending his chair rocketing back from the main panel the systems sat on.