For a moment, Viper struggled to breathe. What if I never find a way out? Over the past few weeks, that fear had grown inside her like a tapeworm. Would she be trapped here with this phony Aspect, forced to live the same day over and over? Would the computer ever release her consciousness—let her die?
“Get whatever you want,” Viper said before they reached the counter, tugging her sleeves down. Dark shiny scales were starting to grow out of the skin along her arms. “It’s on me.”
Viper bought herself a croissant, even though she never felt hungry while in the simulation. Pain, yes. Hunger, thirst, no. She did have to use the restroom from time to time. The computer must have assumed she would take care of her other needs, and limited the realism to the only unavoidable biological function besides blinking and breathing.
The Burnt Aspect ordered a cinnamon dolce latte and blew on it for the first five minutes after they took possession of a small table on the patio. At the six minute mark, Viper finally had to say something. “Why bother? The heat can’t hurt you.”
“You think so?” he replied.
She didn’t care for his tone, the one that implied he knew something she didn’t. “Am I wrong?”
He shrugged. “You seem like a woman who has all the answers. You tell me.”
Everyone and their brother had a theory about The Burnt Aspect, particularly his origins. In California where Viper’s family lived, the media leaned hard on the Roswell angle. There was always someone willing to go on TV and claim they’d seen him escape from Area 51, or visited the inside of his spaceship. He was almost a joke.
Not so west of the Rockies. Many in the country’s breadbasket believed him to be a figure of divine judgment. Cults had sprung up, attracting the same astrologist types who had named him, and an unsurprising number of young people, too. Everywhere Viper went someone was selling merchandise with the Aspect’s stupid face on it, and if she hadn’t stood two feet from the man watching him shrug off acid like it was water, she might have thought he was one huge publicity stunt on the part of some enterprising corporation.
“Some think you’re a god, but I know you can be killed,” Viper answered. “Nothing else matters.”
The Burnt Aspect blew on his coffee again, and then took an experimental sip. “How do you know I can be killed? No one’s managed it so far.”
“In another reality, they have.”
“Who?”
Viper laughed. “Really? I mention an alternate reality, and that’s your question?”
“I’m guessing it’s you, or you’d have answered more directly.” His gaze zeroed in, really focusing on her for the first time, and Viper’s fingers twitched against her leg beneath the table. Hollywood was supposed to be making a movie about the Aspect with Riz Ahmed rumored to be starring in the lead role, and while she could see the resemblance, she doubted any actor could capture the contradictive intensity of the actual man: purpose diluted by pure nonchalance. “What I don’t know is why. Why would you care enough to want me dead?”
The truth was, Viper didn’t.
Of course she’d followed the Aspect’s story like everyone else, but only with the same loose interest she reserved for most celebrities. While waiting in checkout lines, she flipped through tabloids with headlines like “The Burnt Aspect Saves Twenty in Warehouse Blaze!” and “Feeling the Heat? The Burnt Aspect Shares His Tricks for Staying Cool Under Pressure,” but that was about it.
Someone else had made the determination that the Aspect needed to die. Viper could see how he might pose a danger to the sitting president and his congress, if the hero ever decided to reach out to those who worshipped him and incite resistance. But all of that was guesswork. She didn’t know the actual reasons behind the mission. Manic wouldn’t say who had given the order or why, leading Viper to suspect he didn’t actually know, but that wasn’t unusual. Those reborn into the National Embryonic Service and Tankbred were lackeys, foot soldiers, grunts in everything but name. Everything was above their pay grade.
That would change once she killed the Aspect for real. N.E.S.T would collect the government’s gratitude in the form of a significant raise, better benefits, some moderate influence among senators and representatives from the great Southern states—who, she suspected, were pushing this agenda in the hopes of avoiding a religious zeitgeist in the Bible Belt—and Viper would finally be able to afford that trip to Italy she’d been wanting to take for years.
Oh, and maybe they’d make an action figure with her likeness. See Papá try and pry me away from mi manito then. Viper could think of no better vengeance than having her younger brother and a dozen cousins running around, laughing and shoving her into one another’s faces, while the adults sat tight-lipped and pale.
“Well?” the Aspect said, wearing a small foam mustache from his latte. It was actually kind of cute.
“Wipe off your face.” Viper shoved a napkin at him. “You’re not a child. Anyway, I didn’t ask you here to discuss the details of your inevitable demise.”
He smiled. “Inevitable, is it?”
“Yes.”
“Because you’ve done it.”
“Yes. I manufactured my poison into a time-release aerosol and sprayed it into your face. Your body attempted to metabolize the toxin before realizing what it was, too late for your powers to stop it. And for good measure, I set off a bomb that took out half a city block, turning you into a bloody smear in front of the Capitol Building. So, yes. I killed you.”
She hoped the gratuitous description would get a rise out of him, if only because his ease was beginning to annoy her, but he merely set down his drink and tilted his head. “Huh,” he said.
Viper’s fingers twitched again, and she felt her fangs descend into her lip. “What?”
“Did you see my corpse?”
“What kind of stupid question is that?” Of course she had.
“Because what you just described, while exceedingly clever, I’ll grant you, should not have worked.”
“Well, it did.”
“If you say so.”
Viper picked angrily at the croissant she’d ordered, boiling in the silence. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting from this conversation, but it certainly wasn’t this.
After another moment, the Burnt Aspect pulled out his phone. He finished his drink while peacefully scrolling through what she assumed was some news feed. A Facebook timeline, maybe. Did he even have a Facebook? Who were his friends, if he did? It might be an avenue worth pursuing, something they could exploit, though as far as their research had turned up, he was a loner. No family. No significant others…
“Are you on Reddit?” Viper asked after catching a glance at the screen.
He looked up, appearing startled, as if he’d forgotten she was there.
“Qué pedo!” Viper’s chair screeched as she jerked up from the table. “This was a mistake.”
The Burnt Aspect also rose. Viper wasn’t tall, but they were almost of the same height. Perfectly aligned so that if she wanted to, for example, unhinge her jaw and begin swallowing him whole she could easily start with his head.
“Wait,” he said, brows knitting together in genuine apology. “I’m sorry. That was rude, wasn’t it? I’ve been told I have a short attention span.” She hesitated, allowing the appeal only because she didn’t have anywhere else to be, and because her sister was the same way. Easily distracted, constantly being pulled from one crisis to the next. “Sometimes the world moves too fast, and this helps me keep it all organized.” He waggled the phone.
Her eyes bugged at what she glimpsed. She gave an audible click with her teeth at the same time she threw her hand up. “You were looking at pictures of corgis just now?!”
He gave her an odd look. “I’m not sure I understand the problem.”
Viper cursed him out in Spanish, drawing the attention of the computer-generated passersby, who she then proceeded to shove out of the way as she escaped her terrible idea.
In
his haste to avoid her, one man slipped off the sidewalk and fell into the path of an oncoming semi. The Burnt Aspect rescued him at the last minute. Instead of drawing new traffic lines in blood, the truck slammed into the Aspect as if he were a bollard. The semi came to such a sudden and complete stop, the rear wheels lifted for a few seconds before crashing back down, sending a concussive wave through the asphalt.
Smoke poured out of the smashed engine block to a soundtrack of screams and cries for someone to call 9-1-1. Viper didn’t stop to see whether the truck driver was okay.
It didn’t matter, either way. None of this was real.
• • •
She spent the next week bloody and alone. Sometimes she got herself killed by accident—sometimes on purpose. Every day began the same as the one before, except now her skin broke open within minutes of gaining consciousness, and her scales itched. Even as she moved around the decent-sized apartment that served as her starting area, the cape of skin that usually dragged behind her in effortless grace instead caught on everything, tearing like cheap fabric.
Viper began talking to the people she passed on her way to the bookstore, the ones she’d always ignored before because of their irrelevance to the story she’d been telling herself. She learned that the woman who lived across from her, and always left at the same time Viper did, was working a job she hated in order to provide for a child she’d been too scared at the time of her pregnancy to admit she didn’t want. The UPS guy who delivered the same three packages to the lobby in the mornings was a terrible flirt. A white-faced pit bull tied to a bike rack in front of the building belonged to a homeless lady who always asked Viper for change to buy her furry companion some food. Viper always gave her the money, except on one really bad day when she spat acid into the woman’s face and stole her dog for the day. It hadn’t made her feel better or worse. The next morning the homeless woman was there again, asking for spare change.
Viper worried about her new habit of getting to know these people. On the one hand, it gave her something to do when she wasn’t trying to kill the Aspect, and it eased the loneliness of being the only living person here. On the other hand, it carried the risk of driving her insane. Eventually she would know all there was to know about them, and once the novelty was gone, what good were they to her then, except as a reminder of her prison?
“I’m sorry, have we met?”
The Aspect watched her with mild concern, like she was a spider he’d suddenly discovered in his kitchen and was trying to decide whether or not to squash.
He had to be the key to all of this. And even if he wasn’t… well. Viper still had to let herself hope. It didn’t hurt that the Aspect was fairly easy on the eyes and radiated a strength Viper wanted to test herself against. She hadn’t forgotten her cute IT dreamgirl, but after being trapped for more than three months, and faced with the real possibility of never getting the hell out of this nightmare, Viper had begun imagining a few ways to enjoy the Aspect’s company that didn’t involve murdering him.
“So let me get this straight,” Viper said over coffee. Again. It was easy to fall into the same patterns here, as in real life. “I could wrap my hands around your throat and squeeze with all my might, and it would do nothing; but a hot latte would burn you?”
He nodded and blew steam off his coffee. “It’s about intent. If you tried attacking me, my powers would rebuff you. They oppose any threat. But my coffee here isn’t trying to hurt me.”
“What if you were hit by a car? The driver obviously doesn’t intend to hurt you, either.”
“That’s more of a gray area. Do I see the car coming?”
Not that Viper knew from experience, but, “Yes.”
“Then I’d simply avoid it.”
“If you do that, it’s going to hit someone else.”
The Aspect set down his drink, resting his hands in his lap. He seemed relaxed, but in an affected way, almost like he was acting. “Fight or flight usually triggers my powers. So in that instance, my body would likely repel the impact of the car. It’s much like what happened in Seattle last month, actually. With the plane on the runway. You heard about that?”
Viper snorted. Now he was just bragging. “Who didn’t? But let me ask you this: why are you so open about all of this? Shouldn’t it be a secret?”
“A secret? Why?”
“Someone could find a workaround. Kill you.” Someone like Viper, who was already trying to think of ways to fool the reflexes of his power.
The Aspect considered it, but ultimately shrugged. “Maybe. Doubt it.”
“Ah, sí?” Viper leaned back with a smile, crossing her arms. “What makes you so sure?”
“Because we’ve had this conversation before, Tiacapan, and you haven’t managed it yet.”
• • •
He knew her name.
Not the clever moniker she’d slid into as easily as a second skin to divide who she was from the monster her country had made. Her name. It was her mother’s first gift to her, a promise to raise her daughter with strength and dignity. The memory of a dead empire fit between each syllable, full of blood and war. Tiacapan. First-born.
Viper didn’t feel particularly strong or dignified as she jerked away from the table, her pupils contracting to slits, her breath coming short and quick. Around them the city pulsed and thrummed in a mimicry of life. So convincing that for a moment Viper wondered if she had imagined this whole other world where she killed strangers merely on the word and whim of other strangers. Maybe here only Tiacapan existed, with Green Viper the darkness she dreamt of.
Standing up might have been a mistake. Everything felt like it was spinning.
“What did you call me?” Viper said.
The Burnt Aspect pulled out his phone. “You’re confused. This might help clarify things…”
Viper batted the phone out of his hand. It rebounded off a nearby table and clattered to the ground. “Tell me how you know my name. And what you meant when you said we’d had this conversation before.”
His eyes dropped to the phone on the ground. He sighed before retrieving it.
“Is everything all right?” one of the servers asked.
The Aspect waved him off. “Everything’s fine. Just a little disagreement between friends. Thank you.”
“You’re talking nonsense,” Viper hissed when the server had left.
“Will you sit down?” The Aspect glanced around. Everywhere people were staring at them with wary expressions. “You’re drawing attention we don’t exactly need.” Viper continued to stand. “Look. Unless you want to do this all over again tomorrow…”
She anchored her arms on the table, leaning into his face. “Talk.”
The Aspect held her gaze for a long moment, then relented. “Fine. We’ll do things your way. Like always.”
Using her hand, Viper pantomimed pointless chattering.
“Mature,” he said, then heaved another sigh. “But I suppose fair. I’ll make this as simple for you to understand as possible. It should be obvious to you by now that you’re not the only one trapped in this aggravating simulation. Before you try and disagree with me, consider this: how would I know this is a simulation in the first place unless you yourself told me in a previous conversation?”
Viper opened and closed her mouth. She slowly sank back into her chair. “Go on.”
“Right, so the way I figure it, the computer is running us both from separate locations.”
“Wait,” Viper interrupted. “We’d have to have already caught you in order to connect your consciousness to the scenario…” The Burnt Aspect tapped the side of his nose. Bingo. Viper swore. “Why wouldn’t they have told me before sending me in here?”
“Maybe they worried about your resolve. This way, I could appear and behave as myself, while never threatening your assumption that I wasn’t real. It’s one thing to kill unfeeling pixels; it’s far more challenging when you know you’re inflicting harm on a living, breathing person. Tell me I’
m wrong.”
Viper peeled some molting flesh from her arm and flicked it onto the ground. “Challenging doesn’t mean impossible.”
“Aren’t you a cold one,” the Aspect murmured, unimpressed. He adjusted the cuffs on his paisley sleeve, almost as if he were mocking her. “If you’re done trying to intimidate me, we can—”
“There’s another possibility,” Viper countered. “N.E.S.T. didn’t have you when I began the scenario. How long have you been here?” What she really wanted to know was, how many times have I died to a computer? How many times have you killed me?
She could tell he hadn’t considered this possibility, because he hesitated before answering. “I’m… not sure, actually. A month, perhaps? How long have—”
“126 days.”
Hearing a hero revered by some as a god himself take a different deity’s name in vain was strangely satisfying.
“I see you’ve been keeping count,” he said dryly, a light blush creeping up over the collar of his shirt. His entire manner shifted, genuine sorrow bringing down the corners of his mouth. Viper had to look away at the risk of feeling pitied. “I’m sorry it’s taken this long to speak openly. I should have said something sooner, but I wanted to get a better sense of who you are. It’s not often you get the opportunity to study your own murderer beforehand.”
“For what it’s worth, I’ve only managed it once, you know,” she said sullenly, without knowing why. It was almost like she wanted him to feel better. Which was ridículo. The Burnt Aspect was her sworn enemy. Well. The enemy of someone with enough money to power the engines of this whole endeavor.
The Aspect shook his head. “I don’t think so. If you had, we’d both be free already.”
“You couldn’t have survived what I did to you.”
“Either that’s true and neither of us are ever leaving this simulation. Or.” He flagged down the server and asked for more creamer. “You failed, I was still alive when you reset, and we still have a chance of getting out of here if we work together.”
“You mean, if I kill you.”
World Domination Page 17
