A long time ago, in eighth grade last year, Sora and I got caught smoking under the bleachers.
We didn’t exactly get caught, really. We started a fire. The end result was the same, though.
But we didn’t stop. We just changed plans—changed the math. The Truth Club had to go on, even if we’d gotten in trouble. So we met in a different place, made sure there wasn’t anything nearby for the ashes to catch on, and kept smoking our ritual cigarette before our meetings.
Sometimes, things don’t work the way you hope or plan. But I’m a tough cookie, and there’s always a way to balance the equation. A variable can always change, whether it’s where we smoke or the way we leave another reality.
Location Unknown, Provisional Reality ARC, Time Unknown
- - - - -
Not every plan works out. I have to keep telling myself that as time ticks by.
Rodriguez doesn’t look so good. The timer’s at one minute, and it’s getting hard to keep her balanced. Half of her looks like it wants to slough off and slide into the void root. The other half looks almost pixelated or staticky. It’s hard to describe, but I feel like I’m balancing her on a knife’s edge, and she’s going to tip any minute. The knife keeps getting sharper, and there’s less and less room for error.
The rest of Lambda-Four and Lambda-Five are here. They’re experiencing the same shit as Rodriguez, but less of it; they’ve been exposed for less time, and that’s going to make the difference for them. None of them are happy about being ripped apart by hyperreality and the void, but they’re managing.
And they didn’t have to kill each other, so that’s good, because I’m going to kill them all myself if Rodriguez dies. All they had to do was wait until the point of no return to do something dumb. Instead, according to James, they were ready to kill each other well before we reached that point.
The thing is, this is working. I don’t think she’s going to die. She’s definitely out of commission after this, though.
The timer keeps ticking down. I push Rodriguez slightly toward the void root as she pixelates a little more. Other than that, the research mezzanine is silent.
[Claire, we need to come back here,] James says. He overlays an image in my aug, and I stare at it. Then I nod slowly. [That’s a high-security lab, two floors down, directly below the root. If we’re going to figure out what happened to this reality, or what caused the Voiceless Singers, that’s where we’ll have to look.]
“Yeah.” I don’t say anything else. Right now, I’m focused on Rodriguez, not on my Inquiries. I keep adjusting her position until the merge generator opens up a shimmering portal near me.
“Lambda-Four, Lambda-Five, this is Command. Proceed through quickly. We have a one-minute window,” Doctor Twitchy says.
I don’t waste any time. Before the rest of the Recovery and Stabilization troopers can get themselves moving, I’ve got Rodriguez in my arms. I stand there as the rest of the team hooks onto my harness, and then I drag them through the portal as soon as someone thumps my shoulder.
Alarms go off in the Experimental Sector as we touch down on the steel ramp.
Rodriguez looks even worse than she did in Provisional Reality ARC. Her body’s twisted and broken all across her left side, like she’s been wrung out to dry. Her arm and leg bend at impossible angles. She looks like she’s been spaghettified by a black hole—but only partially.
A medical team with a crash cart’s there. They slap her onto it and push her out of the room, all wearing heavy-duty bio-suits. The rest of the room’s empty except for a second team in bio-suits, all moving toward the RSTs.
They ignore me. I’ve been diving into enough realities for them to confirm that we don’t bring back contaminants, but something about that lab must have thrown SHOCKS off, and they want to be sure. I could leave right now. I want to leave right now, to see Alice and make sure she’s okay after whatever drug James gave her.
But a man in a bio-suit runs toward me. “Claire, thank you,” Doctor Twitchy says. He looks out of breath, and I can see the sweat condensing on his suit’s clear plastic viewing port. I take his hand, and he shakes mine.
“Do we need to debrief?” I ask. I don’t want to, but the best way to get to Alice is through Ramirez.
“Yes, but we’ll keep it brief. We can do it right here.” He pushes a button on his hip. “We’re recording. Claire Pendleton, RST Lambda Four-Three, anomalous employee of SHOCKS Victoria/Vancouver Island, interviewed by Director Paul Ramirez, head of SHOCKS VVI.”
We go through the events as best I can describe them. He’s especially interested in the antimeme and my resistance to it, but he can’t help bring the conversation back to Rodriguez over and over. After the third time of running through the same information—and telling him that I don’t know anything else—which is a lie—I point to the door. “Are we done here?”
“Almost. With both of our Recovery and Stabilization Teams out of commission, we’ve made the decision to stop hunting for a Voiceless Singer until we’re more stable. It’s too high-risk, and SHOCKS can’t afford to lose the Victoria Headquarters. Our operations in other realities are on hold, and I’m shutting down the merge generator until we’ve re-strategized.”
“What?”
[What?] James echoes me. [That wasn’t in any of his digital notes. That’s an emotional decision because he’s been boinking Rodriguez.]
“What?” I ask again. No, that doesn’t matter. I don’t care what two adults are doing. I don’t want to know what two adults are doing. I squeeze my eyes closed and try to breathe. “Listen, we’re close to—“
“Claire, we’ve lost forty percent of our fighting forces in the last two days. We’ve been taking casualties fighting in Victoria, but nothing like this. L4-2 is out for good, and I don’t know if L4-1 will survive this at all—and that’s not even getting into the two L5 troopers we lost to the antimemes.”
“I need to go back. There’s something in there—“
“No. I’m not risking any further SHOCKS personnel,” Doctor Twitchy cuts me off. “You can threaten me as much as you want, but I’m not crossing this line. We’re not sending you alone, and I have no teams left to cover you.”
Before I can argue or tell him I’ll have James shut the whole facility down, he’s gone.
SHOCKS Headquarters, Victoria, British Columbia - June 16, 2043, 10:22 PM
- - - - -
I almost have James do it.
He could open all the Xuduo-Danger cells and wipe the place clean. My people would stay safe—Alice, Sora, our families, and the Landsdowne people I still haven’t seen since I rescued them. It’d be simple. It’d be final.
And it’d be irreversible.
That’s why I don’t ask him. I can solve this problem another way—fudge some numbers here and there, try a different formula or two, something. But if I start killing SHOCKS off, I can’t go back, and like it or not, I might need them.
So instead, I lie on my bed and stare at the plain white ceiling. I’m one hundred percent not sleeping, though. Everyone else might be. I can’t.
I’m stewing.
What does SHOCKS want? That should be obvious. SHOCKS wants to keep Reality Zero free from anomalies, or at least keep the anomalous and regular folks out of contact as much as possible. They’re containing a problem, not solving it. Maybe because it’s unsolvable.
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That’s not important.
What’s important is that what SHOCKS wants and what Director Paul Ramirez, head of SHOCKS Victoria/Vancouver Island, wants are two different things. In fact, he wants exactly what I do: to keep his people safe. His list of people includes Lieutenant Olivia Rodriguez, who he’s apparently ‘boinking’ when they’re not on duty. That’s got to be a conflict of interest or something, but that’s not important. That’s why he’s closed down the merge generator.
But James is right. Rodriguez knew the risks before she went through that portal, and even though I tried everything I could to save her—even though she’s twisted, mangled, and in emergency surgery as we speak—that doesn’t mean the mission was flawed.
Not at all. We almost completed it in the last few minutes. It’d be easy to finish it from here. SHOCKS needs the information. I need the information. And so does someone else.
“James, you want to get back to that lab, right?”
[Yes. I need access to its secrets. The answer’s in there—I’m calculating an eighty-eight percent chance of that being true.]
“Great. Do you have access to SHOCKS’s security systems?” I ask, sitting up.
“Yes.”
Alice is asleep across the hall. She’s snoring. It’s one imperfect thing about my perfect sister. Dad’s sleeping, too. I checked. There are way fewer cans and bottles in his room, and they’re all for juice. Whatever SHOCKS is doing with him, maybe it’s working. Everyone I care about is down for the night, and while I could wake Alice up to check on her, she needs the rest after that compound James fed her.
The RSTs are holed up in their barracks. James told me they’re on opposite sides of the room and that there’s a very real chance of a firefight breaking out. Now that the stakes aren’t life and death, Four’s ready to fight Five again. Strauss is pissed. Doctor Twitchy and a few shrinks are trying to work everyone through it. That’s going to be a thing. Doctor Twitchy was right; both teams are done.
Most of the on-site security personnel are hanging out near the barracks, just in case something kicks off, but no one’s tried to disarm either RST yet. James thinks that the first person to try that stunt’s going to catch a bullet and kick off the shooting gallery. But that’s where all the focus is right now.
That means the night is mine.
“Shut down all the cameras between here and the Experimental Wing. We’re going for a little Mergewalk.”
James knew how to operate the merge generator.
James knew everything.
Object 723-V-1/RP was the power, but Object 1092-V-12/S kept it going, and even though Ramirez had ordered the generator shut down, James knew they couldn’t turn it off without pulling 12/S out of the Experimental Sector. That’d take hours, and no one wanted to remove the generator from the equation completely.
So they’d just left it running instead, and locked the door.
A locked door could stop a lot of people, but it couldn’t stop him—not when he was inside every computer in the building, including the security doors to the Experimental Sector. It couldn’t stop Claire, either. He simply unlocked it for her.
By the time Claire made it through the airlock, lugging a duffel bag she’d stolen from Strauss’s ‘secure’ locker, James had the merge generator running. It hummed along as Claire headed for the portal. Their window was plenty long, but they wouldn’t be returning for a few hours at the earliest.
She hit the portal like a brick wall, then pushed through it and disappeared from James’s overhead camera view. He watched through her augment as she hit the floor inside the research mezzanine. Before she’d even recovered, he was already feeding her directions to the lab below.
Location Unknown, Provisional Reality ARC, Time Unknown
- - - - -
It’s go time.
As far as anyone at SHOCKS Headquarters is aware, I’m in bed. James has all the cameras showing flawless loops, and no one saw me leave my room via micromerge. Eventually, someone’s going to check on the Experimental Sector, and when they do, they’ll realize something’s wrong.
But for now, I have all the time in two worlds.
[Left, then down six flights of stairs,] James says. He’s got this whole place mapped out—I don’t bother asking how he did it, but it is helpful. [We’re looking at a sealed room just like the one SHOCKS kept me in. But be careful.]
I nod and slow down, checking my corners and slicing my pies with the Revolver instead of hurrying through the Research Mezzanine. It’s so dark here it’s almost black, but the lights burn overhead, and the squared-off concrete walls remind me of that architect, Loos, and his brutalist-looking buildings. Sora would be having a field day if she was—
I turn the corner and almost pull the trigger reflexively.
It’s a skeleton. It’s short but wide—almost a cartoon of a real person’s skeleton, or a fantasy dwarf’s. This one’s propped up by a metal frame, and its joints are bolted and pinned together so it looks like it’s standing. James overlays words over the informational plaque: ‘Pre-Modification Baseline Human Skeletal Structure (Male).’
“So that’s what they looked like,” I whisper, imagining the muscle and skin over the frame. The darkness seems to press around me, and I keep moving, trying not to shiver. “Not much like the tall, angel voids, are they?”
[We need to figure out what they modified themselves into,] James says.
“Right. Modification.” I walk. If I hurry, I can outrun the shiver. I check a door off the main room. There’s a screen and a computer that’s almost identical to the ones Alice unlocked, but I can’t break into it right now. The rest of the room’s filled with naked dwarf-people floating in tanks of purplish goo. They look a lot more human than I’d imagined. They’re hooked up to all sorts of machines, and maybe they were alive at one point, but I doubt they’re alive anymore.
[Someone put a lot of effort into whatever happened here,] James says. [I’m guessing, but I’d got sixty percent that they were trying to do something positive—saving people, not torturing them. Well, maybe some torture, but voluntary.]
He overlays more text. ‘Chemical Storage Experiment: Variant Five, breathable, sustenance-producing, self-cleaning suspension mixture. Efficacy Ratings: Storage Potential - 11.3; Corruption Resistance - 6.4; Absolution Resistance - 4.2; Physical Protection - 1.0; Mental Protection - 14.5. Efficacy for general population: Low. Efficacy for research personnel: Mid-High.’
“They were trying to store people,” I say.
[That’s my understanding as well. We can assume they knew what was happening, and this was one of their steps to stop it. I’m not sure how this would lead to either the Voiceless Singers or the Mindbenders, though. We should keep moving. There’s more to learn here, but that lab under the void root is where we’ll find the answers. It’s got to be. The rest of this is just adding more questions.]
“Does this mean whoever ran this research facility failed?”
[At stopping what was happening? Probably. At saving someone? I have no idea. Let’s keep moving,] James insists.
The shiver catches up to me, and I hurry to the stairwell.
Three flights down.
Four.
The darkness doesn’t grow less oppressive. If anything, it feels like it’s starting to claw at me. In a way, it reminds me of days when it’s about to rain but it’s still sunny and the light’s both faint and bright at the same time, or the time we saw a solar eclipse and everything felt cold and dark even though it was mid-day. None of the lights are burned out; they’re all shining brightly. But the floor’s covered in darkness. I can’t even see the steps under my feet.
We pass a dozen different locked doors. I stare through their portals, revealing surgical rooms. They’re a lot like the room SHOCKS used to upgrade my augs, but bare-bones, without any hint of humanity. They’re filthy, too. It looks like dozens of operations happened in each, with only a cursory, simple cleaning between procedures.
I’m getting sick of hospital horror.
[This door, then down the hall,] James says.
“SHOCKS is going to tear this place apart. There’s a treasure trove of information here.”
[I’m recording everything I can. It’s interesting, because the Halcyon System should have a record of this place. It’s got System written all over it if you know what to look for. But I can’t find anything at all.] James doesn’t elaborate, and I don’t ask.
The door’s right there. It’s in front of me.
I reach out for its handle.
SHOCKS Headquarters, Victoria, British Columbia - June 16, 2043, 10:38 PM
- - - - -
The lunatics were running the asylum.
But Alice’s body was still a prison. Li Mei still couldn’t leave. And she desperately needed to get out. To be free.
From the outside, Alice looked like she was having a nightmare—the thrashing, silent screaming terrors that only Claire knew she sometimes had. But from the inside, Li Mei had discovered that the box she’d been held in was only one of many.
She finished draining one of the personas Alice had kept locked away for when she needed it, then stretched herself until she couldn’t stretch anymore. That was the last of the pesky personas, at least that she knew about. And she knew everything this body knew. She’d eaten it all. The only one she hadn’t gotten had fled, and when she’d tried to pursue, she’d bounced right back.
This body was a cage, and it was keeping her from singing and dancing and, most importantly, from eating to her heart’s content. That would have to change.
First, though, she needed more power. So much more power. The JAMES Unit had no idea what its chemical had unleashed, but it would soon.
Alice got out of bed, dressed herself, and left the Geren-Danger wing. No one tried to stop her; Li Mei hadn’t had this kind of freedom of movement in SHOCKS since she attempted to use Claire to open the JAMES Unit. He was out of reach—even if she could consume everything he knew, he wasn’t physically here. That made her furious for some reason. Her biggest foe—the thing that had kept her contained—and he wasn’t here to fight?
She raged inside the Alice body for a bit before realizing that the longer she stood around shaking and scratching at her arms, the more likely someone would try to stop her. Li Mei couldn’t have that. The scratches were red and inflamed, and she wished Alice wore hoodies to hide the bleeding. But she had too much to do to turn around.
Li Mei headed down into the SHOCKS Headquarters’ sub-basement.
The first order of business was defeating the JAMES Unit. After that, the rest of SHOCKS wouldn’t pose a problem. And Li Mei had just the plan in mind.
She’d lived in SHOCKS for long enough to know where everything was. The time had come to use that knowledge.
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