by Elle E. Ire
“Okay, I can do this.”
You have already taxed your systems substantially. You are bordering on exhaustion.
“I don’t have a choice. Kelly’s out there.”
There is no guarantee that the doors on the far side will open either, if VC2 is truly in control.
“I have to take that chance.”
The AI falls silent.
Sweat beads on my forehead even though my palms are cold and clammy. “Calm the fuck down, Corren. The mirrors aren’t even visible. You’re just tired. You can work through tired.” I’m speaking out loud, hoping hearing my own voice will distract me from the tremors in my limbs.
It’s not working. I take a dozen steps back toward the far side and the doors I hope will unlock when I get there. If I get there. Deep breathing seems to help. I swipe the sweat away on my sleeve and keep going. Just as I round the fourth turn in the maze, there’s a soft click.
All the covers on the mirrors go up.
I close my eyes, dropping my head to my chest. “Oh, fuck me now.”
It appears VC2 has control over the equipment as well as the exterior cameras and doors.
“Yeah, I got that.” And it means the exit is even more likely to be locked to me, but I have to try. What else am I going to do? Opening my eyes, I face my disfigured reflection head-on. “Okay, bitch, let’s see what you’ve got.” It’s as much anger at her as encouragement to myself, since we are the same person after all. I can’t suppress a bark of harsh laughter.
You are raising concerns, my counterpart says in my head.
“Deal with it.”
Another twenty steps and I’m flat out yelling at my own image, using all the adrenaline-fueled rage and energy at my disposal, channeling my fear into anger. “Laugh all you want! Yeah, go ahead! That’s right. I’m hilarious, except you’re me. You’re me and I’m a fucking lunatic.” I’m shouting and slamming my tightened fist against each face I pass, counting off each mirror as a victory. “Twenty-seven, and fuck you! Thirty-one, you motherfucking nightmare. Thirty-nine, bitch. Yeah, that’s right.” If this does turn out to be some kind of new and very twisted test, Nuzzi is gonna wrap me in a straitjacket and lock me up for good.
And here I believed I was finally beginning to comprehend human behavior.
That earns a second laugh and another six steps.
By the time I hit the fiftieth mirror and what I’ve perceived to be about the halfway point, I’m hoarse from the yelling, raging, profanity-filled rant. My heart pounds. My pulse races. I’m dripping with sweat and can’t catch a full breath. Every last ounce of badass has abandoned me.
I’m not going to make it across.
As soon as I allow the thought, my knees buckle and I go down. I can’t even crawl. The mirrors are full-length, and I’m still catching glimpses of myself on both sides and in front at the next turn. On all fours in the middle of the walkway, I focus on the tile and heave air into my lungs. “What can you do for me?” I ask VC1. “Anything?”
You have already exhausted your adrenaline reserves. I took the liberty of setting your suppressors to full over twelve steps ago. I am sorry. I cannot think of any way I can assist you.
I manage a low growl, then stop when a sigh echoes in my head. “Hey,” I say softly. “I appreciate what you’ve done. When I’m yelling at the face in the mirrors, I’m not yelling at you. It’s not you I’m angry at. You know that, right?”
I know it now. A pause. I am, essentially, the metal and circuitry you persist in seeing. Sometimes it is difficult for me to tell at whom you are directing your disgust and hatred. I thank you for considering my feelings.
Is that what I just did? Yeah, I guess it was. I’ve acknowledged VC1’s capacity for emotions in the past, but I don’t think I’ve ever taken them into consideration when I’ve acted before now. I allow myself a small grin. “I’ll try to do better with that. You are so much more than metal and circuitry.”
So are you.
I let that sink in. She doesn’t say anything more, but the silence is companionable, not angry. I don’t know how I sense that, but it comes through. We’re an odd team, VC1 and I, but we are a team. So, how does this team solve this problem? I look up, not at the mirrors but at the ceiling, searching for inspiration. My eyes land on one of the overhead security cameras Kelly and Dr. Nuzzi have been using to monitor my progress.
“VC1, you said you couldn’t access anything outside this room. What about the cameras inside?”
A pause. Then, I am able to see you through the cameras in this room, yes, but I—
“Guide me,” I say, closing my eyes, rising to my feet, and bracing myself against a mirror.
Brilliant. I don’t have long to bask in the glory of her approval before she says, Forward four paces.
I’m unsteady as hell, but if I use both hands outstretched to the sides and grab the tops of each mirror I pass, I can remain upright. I take four steps.
And walk face-first into very hard polycarbonate.
“What the hell?” I release my grip on a mirror to rub the bridge of my nose—not broken, but very, very bruised.
Recalculating for your longer than usual stride. VC1 sounds miffed.
“I’m in a hurry.”
A sigh. And you gave me your complete trust. I apologize. I will endeavor to better live up to your faith in my guidance.
It goes faster after that, though with my eyes shut, the second half of the room seems to go on forever. When she at last tells me I’m facing the exit doors, I crack open first one eyelid, then the other. Then I slap my hand against the exit panel.
Nothing happens.
Of course the doors are locked. I flip myself so my back is against them and slide down until I’m seated on the floor facing the backs of the mirrors. I made it, dammit. I found a way across and I made it and I’m still fucking trapped in here.
What am I supposed to do now?
Chapter 42: Kelly—Dark Reflection
Vick is unique.
“YOU’RE AGITATED,” I say, keeping my voice soft and calm while my heart threatens to burst out of my chest. I want to scream for help, but it might trigger some violent reaction in my captor. We’re also far enough away from the main building that no one is likely to hear me, and Vick and VC1 should be able to find me without me needing to scream.
VC2 paces back and forth across the storage building where she’s dragged me. It’s small, about the size of a one-bedroom cabin, made of logs but sealed well with no visible seams between them. On either side are racked snowmobiles, stored for the spring and summer. Along the front and back walls hang skis, snowshoes, ice skates, and various other winter recreational equipment. We’re still within the perimeter fence but hidden in the trees.
The back of my head aches. When we first arrived, she knocked me out to keep me still while she tied me up, though I couldn’t have been unconscious more than a half hour or so. In the meantime, she changed clothes—from the brown-and-olive drab camo to the black tactical armor Vick wore today. At least she didn’t try to fool me again. I spotted her discarded clothes in the corner right off, and she shrugged it away like she didn’t care if I knew. I swallow hard at all the implications that come with the wardrobe switch. Is her plan to replace Vick entirely? Step into her life without anyone but me noticing? If she were more balanced, would that become possible?
I tuck my knees into my chest, where I sit on the floor in the middle of the storage space. The rope she’s used to bind my wrists and ankles chafes my arms, though my legs are protected by my thick socks.
VC2 acts like she never heard my words, though she casts a glare in my direction from time to time. I use the somewhat quiet moment to study her with my empathic sense, careful to keep my walls mostly in place. Even the slight crack I allow pours her rage, anxiety, fear, and aggression through it. I suck in a sharp gasp.
She whirls on me, stopping her pacing so she ends up standing over me. Guess she was listening after all.
I look up
and up until my eyes meet hers, and a shiver passes through me. Vick is about five foot nine or so. A little on the taller side, but not too much. I’ve always felt our bodies fit together, since my head comes right to her shoulder on the rare occasions when we dance or the more common embrace. But she carries this presence, this sense of complete control, this outer confidence that makes people jump to obey her orders. It’s all a front. I can read the insecurity beneath the persona she portrays. But it’s effective.
Vick has told me more than once that I’m the only one who really sees through her. She complains that she can’t get away with shit when she’s dealing with me, and I suppose that’s true. While she’s certainly intimidating to her enemies (and often her fellow members of the Storm), I’ve never found her frightening.
Until now.
With a start, I realize that’s what’s missing in VC2. She’s got the confused mixed emotions, the anger and frustration, but she’s missing the guilt and the low self-esteem, the self-deprecation that makes Vick approachable when she lets down her guard. Quite the contrary. The whirl of colors around VC2 tells me she’s got ego in spades. She knows she has issues, but she’s confident that she’ll resolve them. With me.
Given her earlier comment about making her “whole,” I can’t come to any other conclusion.
VC2 crouches in front of me, leveling the playing field a little, her eyes never breaking contact with mine. For a long moment, we stare at each other. Then, “I need you to do that thing you do,” she says, waving one hand in an abstract manner. Her expression softens, something almost akin to affection in her features, but it isn’t love. That’s missing too.
“What thing?” I whisper, unable to keep the tremor from my voice.
She reaches out and I flinch back, but I can’t get away from her. Her fingers tuck a stray strand of hair behind my right ear. The gesture is sweet, tentative, and so very, very Vick that my heart goes out to her. “You shouldn’t be afraid of me,” she says, rocking back on her heels.
The fear returns in a wave, but there’s anger too, and I channel that to strengthen my voice. “You kidnapped me. And you killed people I care about.”
VC2 puffs out an impatient breath, her bangs rising and falling with the exhalation, the rest of her hair tied back. “I wouldn’t have. Not if they’d made me right. They screwed up. I’m broken in here.” She slaps a palm against the side of her head for emphasis.
I wince in sympathy. “I’d like to help.” I force the words out. Part of me does want to help her. Part of me is repulsed and terrified. I worry about the long-term effects of this encounter and how it will alter my relationship with the real Vick Corren, assuming she’s alive.
No. I’m not thinking that. She’s alive. She has to be alive.
“But I can’t do what I think you’re asking me to do,” I continue, pushing the darkest of my nightmares away. “I can ease some of your emotional pressure,” I say when her face hardens again, “but I can’t complete a bond with you. It’s a rare thing, and even in the rumors of its existence, it’s never been between more than two people.”
Her hands move so fast I barely notice the motion before they clamp on to the sides of my head. I can’t hold back the whimper that escapes my lips as she pulls me forward and rests her forehead against mine. Our lips inches apart, she growls, “You’re damn well going to try.”
In this much physical contact, the empathic channel erupts open between us, and we both gasp in surprise at the sudden rush of the emotional onslaught in both directions. Genetically, VC2’s brain wave patterns should be identical to Vick’s, which means they are almost identical to mine. The impact tears through my walls as if they are tissue paper.
I get all her aggression. She gets all my fear. They mix and flow, back and forth, roiling around inside us, searching for an outlet. I can’t think straight enough to provide one. There’s a roaring like a launching shuttle in both my ears, a pounding in my skull that hurts like the mother of all migraines. My vision tinges black at the edges.
“If you don’t let me go,” I pant, gasping between the words, “I’m going to pass out.”
“Then fucking fix me!” VC2 shouts into my face. “This is your fault. Yours and hers. You gave me the basics but none of the context, the skills but not the training, the bad shit but none of the good. You have that good. Give it to me!”
I moan as my sight tunnels. “We didn’t do it on purpose,” I tell her. “We didn’t even know you existed. Please… you’re going to send me into emotion shock.” Which, if untreated, could result in coma or even death.
VC2 might not know that, but her implant surely does. She thrusts me away from her so that I tumble over onto my side, unable to right myself with my arms and legs tied and lacking the strength to do so even if I were free.
Standing, she takes up her pacing again, her boots and lower legs coming into my line of sight, then leaving it. It heightens my nervousness, not being able to keep her in my view at all times. She’s muttering under her breath, half incoherent, half profanity. But when she comes to a sudden stop and goes silent, that is much, much worse.
My heartrate slows enough for me to get my breathing under control. My head still pounds in painful throbs, and my shoulder hurts where I landed on the pock-marked wood floor, but rocking side to side gives me enough momentum to roll onto my knees and sit up again. I search her out, finding VC2 standing near the door, staring out through the single window in its surface, staring toward the edge of the trees and the Klenar Facility beyond.
“You can only bond with one person at a time,” she says, not looking at me. It’s a statement, not a question, so I don’t respond, but her tone is dead even, cold, and calculating. “I’d hoped to be more together before tying up loose ends, but it appears I need to reorder my to-do list.”
Without another word to me, she pushes open the door and steps into the brisk evening air. A few faint rays of setting sunlight cast their glow across the floor before the door swings shut behind her. Several locks click into place. Her booted footsteps recede into the distance.
Terror clenches my chest and closes my throat.
I know exactly where she’s going and which “loose end” she intends to take care of, and exactly how frayed that loose end will be if she’s been stuck in the mirror maze all this time.
Chapter 43: Vick—Exit Strategy
I am at the end of my rope.
“DAMMIT!” I shout, my voice bouncing off all the glass and echoing through the high-ceilinged room. Yelling hasn’t helped the situation. It hasn’t even made me feel better. But the pressure of my bottled-up emotions needs some kind of release, and Kelly isn’t here.
Thinking of where Kelly might be makes everything even worse.
You need to regain control, VC1 warns. You are redlining in four out of six critical areas.
“Will I overload?” I do not need that right now. My medications are in my suite or with Kelly. Either way, I don’t have access to them or time to deal with the side effects.
Not if you regain control.
“Not helpful.”
I take a couple of deep breaths and stare at the ornately decorated ceiling of the two-story room, plaster curlicues forming intricate designs and patterns from one side to the other. Sooner or later, someone will figure out I’m trapped in here and they’ll come get me, but will that be too late?
If I had something to pry off the access panels with, I might have a chance at hotwiring the doors, but I’ve already torn my short nails to the quick. Several of them are ragged and bleeding with no progress to show for my pain. I swipe the blood on my pants and sink back down onto the floor, concentrating on maintaining as much calm as I can muster, which isn’t damn much.
There has to be something I can break and use as a lever. I scan every inch of the room again, at least the parts I can see, my eyes falling on the two balconies halfway up the twenty-two-foot walls and marking the second floor. The one on the right is the same one
Dr. Nuzzi brought me out on to show me what she had in mind for my treatment in the maze. I squint at an anomaly there, then activate my enhanced eyesight.
Sure enough, a thin beam of light across the ceiling just above the balcony zooms into definition. The doors leading from that balcony into the exterior hallway beyond are ajar. Makes sense. Sometimes, when she wanted a better view of me, Nuzzi would stand up there rather than watch me on the monitor screens in the green room. She must have left a door unlatched.
I leap to my feet, wait a moment for some dizzy nausea to pass, and study the underside of the balcony from where I stand. If I can find a way to get up there, I can escape the conference room. Except, even at my best and on an adrenaline burst I can’t leap more than five feet straight up. In my weakened condition, I won’t get half that high, and there’s nothing to grab on to if I could.
Fuck.
An image of the murdered girls flashes through my brain—not on my heads-up display. VC1 isn’t that cruel. Rather, it’s a real memory of the victim I found in the slaver tunnels and the photos Officer Sanderson showed me. All young, all blond, all similar to Kelly. If I don’t get out of here soon, Kelly could end up like one of them.
Think, Corren. Think. What can you use to get up there? I ask myself. I need a rope and a grapple or some other kind of hook.
“Learn to use the resources you have at hand rather than wishing for ones that aren’t there.” My father’s voice comes back to me, faint and almost unrecognizable in my memory, but at least now I have the memory, and lots more, of his early lessons in survival from high school freshman year on. He knew I’d pursue some sort of military career. My aptitude for the required skills was too great to ignore. And as the owner of the Fighting Storm, he’d had plenty of advice to give.
God, I miss him.
After the trial that determined my not-human status, the Storm had held a funeral for him. I’d still been in semi-shock, but Kelly stood by me, supporting me through it all. Everyone in the Storm not out on assignment had gone, dozens and dozens of respectful soldiers clothed in black dress uniforms like all these black-cloth-covered mirrors in row upon row…. My thoughts trail away as I stare at the rolls of fabric atop each reflective surface in the room.
