by Scott Cramer
“Mommy, no!” the girl cried.
Above the dizzying hum of her heart, Raissa prayed Petrov would stop playing games and tell her what he’d done with Caleb.
“Two…one…”
She applied pressure to the trigger. Her heart was in her mouth, and time stopped. Something was holding her back. She hated the idea of quitting while people depended on her. She slid her finger off the trigger.
“Eve, you can't harm yourself any more than you can hurt a child.”
With a dreadful sense that he had exposed a weakness in her, she lowered the gun. Then, suddenly, a lifetime of heartache and abuse at the hands of Petrov exploded in rage, and her weakness vaporized. The gun still felt ugly and cold, but she brought it to her temple with a renewed determination.
“Raissa!” The shout came from behind her, but she hesitated to turn around, knowing that Petrov could easily mimic Caleb’s voice.
“Please, put the gun down,” Caleb said.
What if it is Caleb? Aching to see him, and at the risk of handing Petrov another victory, she turned.
“Caleb, oh, my God,” she cried and lowered the gun.
IMPLEMENTATION: PHASE 11
Spring-loaded, the door was hard to keep open as Ashminov peered into the dark room.
A rectangular metal table on wheels, holding a corpse covered by a sheet, sat in the middle of the room. Petrov, it seemed, enjoyed leading him on a sick treasure hunt, each discovery more gruesome than the last.
He wouldn’t give Nicholas the satisfaction of riling him. What could a dead body do to him? Nothing. How many corpses had he already encountered since leaving Rome? Countless. Ashminov flashed back to the Copley Square slaughter, and that paled in comparison to the tens of millions dying from ricin poisoning as he stood here.
Despite his distaste at seeing the corpse, he had no choice but to follow the three bulky cables running along the ceiling, hoping they led to the transmission server.
Ashminov took a mental snapshot of the room because he would have to navigate his way in the dark, on weak legs and with a feverish brain. Then, aiming for the door on the opposite wall, he took an unsteady step forward, then another. The door behind him closed, plunging him into darkness. Holding his hands in front of his face, he stepped, stumbled, lost his footing, and pitched forward. His head banged against the table, and he went rigid with pain, but he stiffened his legs in a half-bent position to stay upright.
Leaning his weight on the table, he groped along the edge with his hands. He guessed the door was a straight shot from the end of the table. Something pliable was sticking out. An arm? He took a deep breath to rally his courage and grabbed hold of the wrist to steer himself around it. Panic rose inside Ashminov’s chest when his hand slid on a coating of blood.
But he did not detect a metallic scent, and rather than slippery wet, the arm was tacky. Maybe it’s not blood? Curious, he grazed his fingertips along the forearm to the elbow, elbow to shoulder, shoulder to face. Soft, wet, pillowy bumps covered the entire distance. Unmistakably, this corpse was covered in blisters.
IMPLEMENTATION: PHASE 12
Caleb stared at Raissa, her green eyes sparkling with intensity and confusion. He was confused, too. Why was she going to shoot herself? That’s not the Raissa I know.
She crinkled her brow, then looked over her shoulder. “He’s gone.”
“Who’s gone?”
“Petrov. Didn’t you see him?”
Caleb shook his head.
“You don’t believe me,” she said.
He had doubted her only for an instant before he saw an image in his mind of Dr. Petrov sitting on a rock by the stream. “I believe you.” Caleb could see what she had seen. He could feel Raissa’s heartbeat pounding in his own chest.
“Caleb, are you real?”
He placed his hand against her cheek, but that did not convince her.
She narrowed her eyes. “You were covered in blisters. What happened?”
He looked over his hands and arms. They were blemish-free. He patted his face. That too was clear and smooth. “I don’t know.”
“Where have you been?”
“I don’t know.”
“How did you find me?”
He knew that! Fifteen minutes earlier, he had been slipping through the dense greenery when he had heard the crackle of radios. Paladins were looking for Eve. The thud of boots had alerted him, and he had dived to the ground as a unit of paladins jogged by.
Then shots had rung out. The paladins had huddled, speaking in low voices, and then had marched in single file in the direction of the gunfire. Caleb had known it was Raissa who had fired the gun, and he’d sprinted in a full arc around the paladins to reach her first.
That’s when he had spotted her holding a gun to her head.
Raissa gasped. “Caleb, I just saw all your thoughts like I was watching a movie.”
“Your lips didn’t move.”
She swallowed hard. “Yours didn’t move.”
“We must have Eden Chips.”
She nodded vigorously. “After Ashminov and I crashed, a paladin injected me with an Eden Chip.”
“I can see everything that happened to you,” he said. “Ashminov is dead?”
“He must be.”
“Then it’s just us.”
“Caleb, Petrov can read every one of my thoughts, which means he knows what you’re thinking, too.”
“Raissa, we’re in this together.”
“How do we stop him?”
Caleb smiled. “It's two against one. He doesn’t stand a chance.”
“Your lips moved when you smiled,” she said, smiling herself.
“Yours, too.”
Suddenly, a laser bullet cleaved the space between them and bore a hole into a tree trunk to their left.
Caleb spun to see a paladin emerging from the vegetation twenty meters upstream, aiming a laser rifle at them. The paladin fired again and missed.
BOOM!
Raissa didn’t miss. The paladin grabbed her knee and crumpled on the bank, crying out in pain.
Raissa grabbed his hand. “Let’s go.”
* * *
Clutching Caleb, Raissa led him into the stream. The water was ankle deep, and they moved with caution at first. She noticed something strange; she was splashing with every step, but Caleb wasn’t even making a ripple in the water. She shot him an anxious look as his frightening thought blossomed in both of their minds.
“Raissa, I don’t know if I’m real.”
“You’re real enough to me, and I’m not letting you out of my sight again. Faster.”
When the stream became deeper, she steered him into the brush. Anticipating each other's movements like partners in an intricate dance, they ducked and crawled and jogged and pushed through Petrov's garden as one.
Raissa tripped, pitched forward, and planted her face in moss. Taking in the odor of musty, wet dirt, she remained on the ground, trying to catch her breath. Deep inhalations cooled the fire in her lungs.
She got to her feet, and Caleb was breathing just as hard. “Imaginary boys don’t gasp and wheeze like that.” She slapped his shoulder. “What more proof do you need?”
“In Dr. Joyce’s Eden Chip experiment, the rats believed they could see and feel each other. They had no sense that their brains were floating in synthetic placentas.”
Raissa placed her hands on the side of her head. “My brain is right here.” She placed her hands on his head. “Your brain.”
Caleb smiled, but his anxiety remained high.
“Raissa, I’m only sure of one thing.”
Heat flared in her cheeks. “Please, stop.”
“Do you know when I first fell in love with you?”
“When Petrov gave you an M-code patch.”
He shook his head. “You told me I played beautifully. You heard the music in my head. We didn’t even have Eden Chips. Nobody ever told me that.”
She turned away, needing a moment to
think.
“You can’t hide anything from me,” Caleb said.
“Love takes years to grow,” she said. “We only met two days ago.”
“I feel like I’ve known you my whole life.”
Even though she had actively studied Caleb’s habits and tastes over the past five years, she felt like she had known him her whole life. “I care about you deeply, but I don’t love you.” She expected him to wince at her hurtful words, but his grin spread wider.
“Mr. Darcy never gave up!” he remarked.
She jolted. “You read ‘Pride and Prejudice?’”
Caleb nodded. “Right after you ran out of my apartment. I wanted to learn more about the rebel girl who had stolen my heart.”
In her mind, Raissa saw Caleb put on his readers and devour the novel. “Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth are fictional characters,” she said. “Anyway, happy endings only happen in books.”
The butterflies in his chest told her that he believed otherwise.
Caleb was building up his courage to kiss her. She’s so beautiful. Just one kiss. No, I might frighten her. Kiss her on the cheek first? No, her lips. I love her so much.
Raissa was building up her nerve to stand there and not run. One kiss, what could happen? I can say more with a kiss than ten thousand words. No, no, no! Don’t give in to Petrov. He and his algorithm cannot predict love.
“Don’t be afraid of Petrov,” Caleb said.
“Caleb, we have to keep moving. Millions are dying.”
“We might die, too,” he whispered and leaned forward.
A chorus of voices told her to step back, but one voice kept her rooted in place. I want Caleb to be the first and only boy I kiss. She closed her eyes, hungry to taste his lips.
A girl screamed.
Raissa wheeled around and raised the Glock, blood pounding in her ears. “Do you see anything?” She panned the weapon back and forth across the wall of green. There was no movement. “It sounded like a little girl.”
When she turned back, Caleb was gone.
IMPLEMENTATION: PHASE 13
Unable to shake the feeling of wet, slimy blisters, Ashminov stumbled out of the morgue and into a brightly lit corridor. He was certain that Caleb was lying on that gurney. Petrov’s surgeons had done little to save ‘Adam’, but at least Caleb had found peace in death. Ashminov, still among the living—barely—had to contend with his raging infection and the psychological horrors Petrov no doubt had in store for him.
The cables ran the length of the ceiling, and he followed them to where they disappeared into another room. With no time for caution, he raised the joule and opened the door. Three paladins stood before a server. Above them, a monitor featured a spinning globe bathed in swathes of deadly yellow.
He opened fire and dropped the middle paladin. The other two dived for cover. Limping inside, he pressed the discharge button repeatedly. The air crackled with energy. One paladin returned fire, and the slug winged Ashminov’s left ear. As hot needles punctured the side of his head and neck, he plugged the armed paladin. When the third paladin crawled over to her dead comrade and pried the joule from his hand, Ashminov emptied his joule into her.
Tossing the weapon aside, he collapsed into the chair in front of the server keyboard. The ricinware had reached Buenos Aires and Melbourne in the southern hemisphere. The cities of Murmansk and Ivalo had fallen in the north. Tens of millions of people were dropping dead every minute; the total victim count was closing in on one billion.
Ashminov pecked out M-code syntax to gain access to the server, but, after ten seconds with nothing to show for his effort, he thought he must have mistyped the syntax.
An inspiration, like an ember fed pure oxygen, glowed in his feverish brain. A decade ago, he and Petrov had shared a password. Give it a go? Ashminov keyed it in: partylikeits1999.
A menu appeared on the screen.
A millimeter from the finish line, his giddiness gave way to the sobering realization that he might succumb to his infection before he halted the transmission. He figured he had fifteen minutes before his organs shut down after which he’d join the ranks of Caleb and the other corpses on the premises.
The system architecture was straightforward. The machine had but a single purpose: pump ricinware to the E.L.F. towers. After identifying the transmitting file, “beyond_eden_step_1,” he highlighted it and pressed DELETE. On the monitor, the globe stopped spinning, and the victim count remained static at 956,333,100.
He took a deep breath, but before he had fully exhaled, the spinning resumed, and the count climbed higher. He discovered a new file: “beyond_eden_step_1_copyA.” He deleted it, and the count stopped again.
A new file popped up, “beyond_eden_step1_copyB,” and the slaughter resumed. It was like fighting the technical equivalent of the mythical hydra. Cut off one head and another grew back.
His only option was to create a program that would propagate endlessly, deleting each new copy of ricinware. The two programs would fight an ongoing duel with no winner or loser.
He gritted his teeth in grim satisfaction and blinked to bring the keyboard into focus. “Nicholas, welcome to my domain.”
“Christian, my surgeons are on the way,” Petrov replied at once. “Then you’ll enter my domain.”
IMPLEMENTATION: PHASE 14
Raissa listened for leaves rustling, stems snapping, footfalls. Anything to reveal Caleb's whereabouts or the direction he might have taken. She closed her eyes. Caleb, where are you?
She heard him calling out to her, but his voice was faint and garbled. Was he injured? Caleb, louder. Where are you?
Had paladins abducted him? No, she’d have seen them.
Petrov, you are responsible.
Petrov kept quiet.
Thinking Caleb must be close, she set her sights on a 45-degree quadrant.
Fifteen steps forward, fifteen back. She parted leaves as if they were veils and looked all around. There were only more leaves and more flowers.
She searched two more quadrants the same way.
Suddenly, another scream triggered her to freeze in panic. She recognized the voice. It was the little girl. Dropping into a shooter’s stance, Raissa spun around with the Glock raised to chest-level. The girl screamed again. Closer this time. Taking a deep breath, Raissa relaxed her muscles and cleared her mind.
“Help me!” An eruption of taut goosebumps ran from Raissa’s scalp to waist. She caught a flash of red hair between the leaves. The girl was running. Raissa was ready to take off in pursuit when the girl stopped and looked her way. A shaft of sunlight painted her face, and her eyes glittered green.
A violent disturbance of leaves sounded to Raissa’s right, and she turned to see a male paladin with a laser rifle charging through the vegetation. The girl took off running.
The paladin closed the gap. Raissa rotated her hips and tracked him with her Glock. A clean shot was not possible, but she had to fire soon or he would catch the girl. Shoot to kill. She aimed for his midsection and pulled the trigger.
BOOM.
The paladin went down. Expecting more paladins to show up, she trained the gun behind him.
After a moment, still wary of reinforcements arriving, she hurried over to check on the paladin, but there was no trace of him or his weapon, no blood. She stood dumbfounded, wondering if she had wasted a bullet on a hallucination. She held her breath and listened for the girl’s voice, but the loud thrum of insects washed away all sounds in a flood of white noise.
“Hello,” she called out. “Where are you? I won’t hurt you. You’re safe now.” Safe from whom? From what? An imaginary girl with green eyes is safe from an imaginary paladin.
“Fern is most certainly real.” Petrov’s voice cleaved her mind like a rusty blade.
She scanned three-hundred-and-sixty degrees just in case he was showing himself again.
“Who’s Fern?”
“Are you speaking of the little girl with Eve’s magical eyes and Adam’s nose?” Pet
rov’s tone was mocking.
She could not stop him from tormenting her, and maybe he would try to prevent her from finding Caleb, but until that happened, she would continue the hunt.
Caleb cried out to her from far away, in gibberish. Homing in on his garbled thoughts—her north star—she left behind the broadleaf plants and buzzing insects of the jungle to enter a field of lush grass, their feathery tips rising a meter above her head. The micro-environment became arid, and the grass turned brown. She kicked up clouds of dust as the stems snapped and crackled.
She came to the lone building in the garden, the one she'd seen from the air, and when Caleb’s voice suddenly went silent in her mind, every fiber of her being told her that he was inside.
“Caleb?” She called out, “Caleb, speak to me!”
Silence reigned under the hot sun.
Keeping her cover by staying about a meter deep within the curtain of grass, Raissa first circled the white, windowless building, then sprinted in a zigzag pattern to the only entrance where she leaned against the wall and took inventory of her ammo: fourteen bullets. Reminding herself to keep count of shots fired, she tested the knob; it was unlocked. She pulled the door open and trained her weapon inside.
No paladins. No Caleb. No Petrov.
She stepped into a room packed with glassware, chemicals, and mindports. The lab space, divided by a wall, occupied half of the building. A feeling of terror hung in the air.
The Glock raised in front of her, she moved around the room clockwise. Bottles of liquids lined the shelves above a bench crowded with beakers. A showerhead with a pull chain, an eye-wash station, and a first aid kit were in the corner. A sign said: “WARNING – SOLID OXYGEN – NO OPEN FLAME.”
She came to a sliding door in the dividing wall. Digging her nails into a thin crack, she tried to pry it open, but she failed to move it. She banged on the door with the pistol butt. “Caleb, are you in there?”
Three meters to her left, a mindport flickered to life, and her knees turned to jelly. The screen showed her parents and Farouk, along with Zoe, Jack, and Julian, in a sparsely furnished room. Farouk was listless in her mother's lap. Her mom and dad wore glum expressions. Jack paced wall to wall, and Zoe stared into space. She held Julian in her arms.
