The Block

by Ben Oliver

  “So they can paralyze me?”

  “Well … yes.”

  “Can you imagine that? Can you imagine what this is like? Every day I go through agonizing pain and then unbearable loneliness and fear.”

  “Everyone has to sacrifice for the good of humanity—”

  “Humanity?” I interrupt, and laugh. “Is that what they’ve been telling you? They’re lying.”

  “Galen Rye is ensuring the safety of the survivors, and I need to—”

  “Galen Rye sold his soul to save himself,” I interrupt.

  “Please, Luka, I’m just tryin’ to get me and my family into the Arc. I’m not a Tier One, I have to earn my place. I don’t like this but I don’t have a choice! What would you do? If I let you go, they’ll kill us both.”

  I sigh and look directly into the young soldier’s eyes. “I know, you’re only doing what you have to do to survive, but listen to me, Jacob, they are not going to let you live. They think of humans as a virus, and they can’t let even one of us survive. They plan on eradicating everyone.”

  “What are you talking about? The world is going to end, and the World Government had to make some hard choices, some really diff—”

  “Ask yourself: Why didn’t they just kill the Regulars? Why did they turn them into monsters?” I yell. “It’s because of their programming! This isn’t the World Government, it’s …” I sigh and shake my head. It doesn’t matter, he won’t believe me. I wouldn’t believe that the world leaders have been taken over by artificial intelligence if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.

  I think I’ve bought myself enough time. I think I have enough replenished energy now.

  “It’s who?” Jacob asks, his eyes narrowing.

  “Not who,” I reply, “what.”

  “Okay, then what?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” I look into the young guard’s eyes. “I’m sorry, Jacob.”

  I run at him.

  Jacob moves quickly, turning and running out of the room. He tries to slam the door shut but I’m too fast. I reach out a hand, forcing it between the thick metal of the door and the concrete frame. I hear the bones in my fingers crunch as Jacob slings the door toward himself. The pain is incredible. I clench my jaw and muffle the scream that forces its way into my mouth.

  I close my eyes and breathe through the pain as I pull the door open, the agony doubling in my contorted hand, fingers bending and bowed, blood already pooling beneath the skin, turning into storm cloud bruises.

  “Wait, wait!” Jacob cries as I grab him—by the collar with my good hand—and drag him back into my cell.

  “Code fourteen in cell three-nineteen!” Jacob calls.

  I throw the boy onto my bed, grab his gun, and aim it at him.

  “Lens,” I say, holding out my hand.

  “Wh-what?” he stammers.

  I push the barrel of the USW rifle against his forehead. “Give me your Lens.”

  He reaches a shaking hand up to his eye and removes the translucent contact lens. I take it from him and place it over my own eye. My vision is now filled with a three-dimensional heads-up display that I control with my vision. I find the menu labeled STASIS and activate my bed. The paralysis needle pierces Jacob’s skin and he falls immediately lifeless.

  I look down at the paralyzed boy-soldier on my bed.

  “Sorry, Jacob,” I mutter, and move quickly to the open door.

  My bare feet slap against the grated metal floor. I assess my surroundings as fast as I can.

  Third floor, cube-shaped building, walkways around each floor, approximately two hundred cells per floor.

  And then I freeze. I notice that every cell in the place is open, apart from the four that are next to mine.

  “Where the hell are all the Block inmates?” I wonder aloud.

  I drag my still-weak body to the next cell. For all of the thirty days inside the Block I have been hoping that Kina and Malachai are still alive. They were not included on Happy’s list of surviving escapees, so they are either dead or captured.

  I try the thick metal spin handle of the cell beside mine—it doesn’t budge. A panel beside the door asks for iris identification. I drop Jacob’s gun to the floor and take a closer look at the panel, trying to find another way to unlock it.

  “Hey!” a voice calls to my left.

  I turn to see a woman of about fifty striding toward me, her hand reaching for the USW pistol on her belt.

  I run toward her, fighting against the aching in my limbs and joints. Her eyes grow wide as I close the gap and she struggles to grip and draw her weapon.

  I get to her just as she frees her pistol. I twist her arm behind her back—wresting the gun from her hand and pushing the barrel into her spine. I hear a snap from my broken fingers and feel them begin to click back into place; the pain of the bones grinding together almost makes me drop my newly acquired weapon, but I hold on.

  “If you activate any alarms, send any silent distress codes, if I see one other soldier coming toward me—I will shoot you, do you understand?”

  “Do you honestly think you’ll get out of here alive?” the woman grunts.

  “This isn’t my first prison break.”

  “Galen Rye will—”

  “Shut up,” I tell her. “Kina Campbell, where is she?”

  “I’m not telling you anyth—”

  I aim the gun at her foot and pull the trigger. She opens her mouth to cry out, and for a second there is only silence, her face almost comical in its shock. And then she’s screaming.

  “I won’t ask you again,” I hiss. “Kina Campbell’s cell, where is it?”

  She stumbles forward a step and then points to a cell two down from my own. I feel a moment of absolute relief. She’s alive; Kina is alive.

  “Who else have they got?” I ask. “Malachai?”

  The guard bites her lower lip, defiance in her eyes. I aim the gun at her other foot.

  “Wren Salter,” she gasps, holding out a hand to stop me from shooting. “She’s next door to you, Malachai Bannister is next to Kina, and Woods Rafka is there.” She points two cells down from Kina’s.

  “Why are the other cells empty?” I ask. “Where did you take the Block inmates?”

  “We didn’t take them anywhere. They died.”

  “What?” I ask, immediately shaken by her answer.

  “They died, all of them. It’s only you lot from the Loop that are still alive.”

  I try to work out why this might be. We were all injected with the same healing tech, so why have they died and we haven’t?

  There’s no time to debate this. I push the guard forward.

  “Open Kina’s cell first,” I command.

  She leans down and activates the iris scanner.

  I hear the lock click and I reach for the handle. I open the door and what I see stops my heart.

  I had known that Kina’s plight was the same as my own, but to see her, lying motionless on her bed, every muscle immobilized, her face so slack and unmoving that she might be dead, I can hardly breathe.

  “Give me your Lens,” I say to the guard.

  “What are you going to do?” she asks.

  I raise the gun until the muzzle is against her forehead. “Don’t make me repeat myself.”

  She reaches two fingers into her eye and pinches out the clear contact lens. A smirk spreads across her lips. “I can’t wait to see what Galen Rye does to you when you’re caught.”

  She hands me the Lens, placing it into my broken palm just as another finger snaps from its abnormal angle back to straight.

  I squeeze the Lens between two fingers, destroying it so that she’ll have no way out.

  I use Jacob’s Lens to navigate to the energy harvest activation option. My eyes scroll to cell 317 and select INITIATE ENERGY HARVEST. A circle of light appears in the middle of the floor.

  “Stand in the circle,” I tell the guard.

  The smirk falls from her face like melting snow. “I’ll hel
p you escape,” she says, her eyes bulging now with the prospect of the harvest.

  “Stand in the circle,” I repeat, moving the gun barrel toward the ring of light.

  “You can’t open the rest of the cells without me. Are you just going to leave your friends locked up?”

  “I have Jacob for that. Stand in the circle. Now.”

  Shaking, she limps to the circle. “You don’t have to do this,” she says, turning to face me.

  I stare at her, the heads-up display of the Lens around the outskirts of my vision. “Yes, I do.”

  I activate the harvest and the tube appears from the ceiling, surrounding the guard. Seconds later, she begins to scream.

  I run to Kina, deactivating her paralysis.

  She gasps, coming back to life. Her eyes take in her surroundings. She sees me, tears forming in her eyes and spilling down her cheeks as she sits up. “Oh my god, Luka. Is this real? Is this the Sane Zone?”

  I take a moment to soak in her features, her dark eyes, her brown skin, all her beauty and character.

  “This is real,” I tell her.

  “I … I …”

  It’s all she can say as her words turn to sobs. I know what she’s feeling; the unbearable cruelty of the machine’s Battery Project had left me wishing death would come for me day after day, praying that I would lose my mind so completely that I would no longer be aware of the agony. You don’t know what true pain is until the only thing you want is a way out of living.

  “Can you move?” I ask, lifting Kina’s chin until her eyes meet mine. Her black hair has grown since the last time I saw her. A few strands fall on to her forehead.

  She nods and pulls both the long needles out of her stomach, and then the thin one that is driven deep into her neck, and finally the one in her wrist.

  “We have to release the others,” I tell her. She nods again.

  I pull her to her feet, and she stumbles, her brain remembering how to command her limbs once more.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  “Wait,” she says, and then kisses me without warning.

  I feel a burst of joy inside me, like a million stars glowing bright in every fiber of who I am. The way her hand moves to the back of my head, the way her lips feel against mine. If I die right now, all this hell would have been worth it, and I would live through it a thousand times just to feel this for one more second.

  She pulls away from me and smiles. “Let’s go.”

  She’s moving to the door, and for a second I’m frozen. Staring at the spot where she had been.

  “Now, moron. We’re escaped convicts again, remember how that goes?”

  “Right, of course,” I say, snapping out of my stupor.

  We move quickly into the corridor. I pick up Jacob’s USW rifle and hand it to Kina.

  “Who else have they got?” she asks, her eyes scanning the doors.

  I point to the cell beside mine. “That’s Wren,” I tell her, and then point to the two to the left of her cell. “That’s Malachai and the next one is Woods.”

  “What’s the plan?” she asks.

  “I don’t really have a plan so much as a ‘get out of the cell and make it up as we go’ sort of thing …”

  “It’ll have to do,” Kina says, and tries Wren’s cell door. “It’s locked.”

  “We need iris identification,” I tell her. “I have Jacob.”

  I move back toward my cell, Kina follows. She laughs when she sees the guard slumped on my bed. “How in the hell did you pull that off?”

  “He had too much empathy,” I reply. “Keep your gun aimed at him when I take him out of paralysis.”

  Kina nods and presses the butt of the rifle into her shoulder, resting her cheek against it as she looks down the barrel toward Jacob.

  I lean down to the paralyzed guard. “I’m going to take you out of stasis now,” I tell him, using their words. “If you try anything, my friend will execute you. Am I understood?”

  He can’t nod, can’t reply, but I know that he understands the stakes. I navigate the menus and deactivate the paralysis. As soon as the needle is fully out of his body he gasps and sits up. He begins to sob in my arms.

  “Get it together,” I tell him, pulling him to his feet.

  “That was … that was …”

  “Believe me, we know,” Kina says, still aiming the gun at him.

  “This way,” I tell him, pushing him out into the corridor, where the screams of the guard in the energy harvest become almost deafening.

  “Oh god, oh god, oh, god,” Jacob mutters, stumbling toward the cells of our friends.

  “Stop,” I tell him, outside Wren’s cell. “Open it.”

  Jacob leans down to the iris scanner but stops as the lights dim.

  “What is that?” Kina asks, storming up to Jacob and pressing the gun against his head.

  “It wasn’t me,” he says, standing upright, his eyes wide with terror. “I didn’t do it.”

  Red lights begin to flash on all levels of the Block and a siren sounds followed by the voice of Happy. “Escapees on floor three. Complete lockdown initiated.” The screens beside the cell doors turn red as the doors to Kina’s and my cells slam shut.

  Kina looks at me, something far beyond simple fear in her eyes. We’re both thinking the same thing: Death is a beautiful prospect compared to what our lives have become in the Block. I nod my head and she aims the gun at me.

  “Wh-what are you doing?” Jacob stutters.

  Kina lowers the gun and walks to me. She kisses me one last time and smiles up at me. “Thanks for trying, Luka.”

  “It was no big deal.” I shrug, and we laugh as she raises the gun to my head once again.

  “See you soon, maybe,” she says, and her finger presses down on the rifle’s trigger.

  And nothing happens.

  “There are restrictions on our weapons,” Jacob says. “They won’t fire when aimed at batteries. To stop us accidentally killing assets.”

  “Assets?” Kina says, turning the gun toward Jacob and marching toward him. “Batteries?”

  “That’s what they call you. Assets, batteries. These are their words, not mine.”

  Kina doesn’t slow. She marches forward until the barrel of the gun is pressing into the boy’s temple. “You’re one of them.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he says, fumbling his words. “No piece of Block equipment will kill you,” Jacob continues, his voice straining now. “You’re worth too much to the government.”

  “The government?” Kina scoffs. “You think the government is behind this? You really don’t know anything.”

  The sound of footsteps running up the metal staircases.

  “The guns don’t work on us,” Kina says, grabbing Jacob and turning him toward the oncoming soldiers. “But they work on you, right?”

  “Oh shit,” Jacob mutters, affirming Kina’s assumption.

  The first to appear at the top of the stairs are two hosts, their eyes glowing bright white. They are both clearly Alts, both women, tall and athletic. Both clearly benefiting from the pre-life cosmetic improvements that all Alts are eligible for. In addition to their looks and their obvious strength, it is clear that they have Mechanized Oxygen Replenishment systems where their lungs used to be, as they don’t appear to be breathing hard at all despite having just run up three flights of stairs. No doubt they have Automated Pulmonary Moderators instead of human hearts as well.

  “Inmates 9-70-981 and 9-72-104. Cease all activity and return to your cells,” the slightly shorter one orders. Her eyes briefly glow orange, and both our cell doors swing open once again.

  “I’ll shoot him,” Kina says, pressing the gun harder against the side of Jacob’s head. “I will kill him.”

  “This will not change the outcome of the scenario,” the taller host says, stepping forward. “Kill him or don’t kill him. You will end up back in your cells.”

  I look over the edge of the railings—a four-story fall probab
ly wouldn’t kill me, especially with the enhanced healing that the Alts have equipped us with. I realize that this is a moot point anyway, as there are nets separating every level.

  “We’re not going back in there,” Kina says, her voice shaking.

  More footsteps approach and three more soldiers emerge into the corridor. These ones must be Tier Three or Tier Two soldiers: humans who have agreed to help the government—at least they think it’s the government—in exchange for their lives and a place on the Arc, a shelter in which they can survive the end of the world.

  The shorter of the two hosts turns to the first soldier to arrive, a good-looking blond man. “Soldier Ramirez, execute Soldier Smith.”

  Without hesitating, the Alt aims his gun at Jacob.

  “No!” Jacob manages, before the ultrasonic sound wave hits him in the chest and he falls limp and silent.

  “You—you shouldn’t be able to do that,” I say, staring at the bright-eyed host as Kina lets Jacob’s body fall to the floor. Galen Rye had informed me that the AI’s core coding would not allow it to harm or kill a human or give orders that would lead to the harming or death of a human. This was the very reason Happy and its hosts infected humanity with a virus that led people to kill one another: to bypass its programming.

  “Things have changed, Inmate 9-70-981.”

  There was a trick I used to use back in the Loop, on those long days when loneliness and boredom would creep into my bones. (How little I knew back then; I hadn’t even been introduced to true isolation.) The trick was a sort of disappearing act, escapology of the psyche. I would build a world inside my mind, a world in which I was free and happy. This world—a story really—existed dozens of years in the past, long before I was even born, in a time I had only heard about in accounts from my father. I could wander the city, happy in my freedom; I could meet friends who weren’t prejudiced, neighbors who weren’t forced to live in poverty; I could spend afternoons reading in the sunlight, evenings with my dad and my sister just talking and laughing about nothing at all. But I’ve lost the trick; I can’t find the way into that world. Instead I have to rely on the Sane Zone.

  Minutes after being placed into paralysis again, I appear in the white room.

  The Sane Zone exists to keep Happy’s batteries functioning. The AI gets its power from the energy harvest, and the energy harvested is produced by our fear. If we lose our minds, we won’t feel fear and the harvest won’t work. So, to combat the isolation, Happy allows us six hours a day inside the Sane Zone.