SILAS

Head. Chin.

Ow.

I keel backward, torso askance. I bring one foot back behind me, steadying myself.

Meanwhile, the weight of Shiloh's body presses in against me. She's more off-balance than I am. I'm holding both of us up. One of my arms is looped around her lower back, fingers tightly gripping the fabric of her navy jumpsuit. Her head is against my collarbone. Her blonde ponytail is in my face, having whipped up when she fell forward into me. I can feel her breathing fast and hard, like a tremor. I can feel the pound of her heart, like a pulse eddying through her skin and into my own.

Her hands are on my chest. She pushes herself upright—nearly knocking me over completely in the process—and away from me.

She clears her throat. "Sorry."

"That's okay."

"I'm just...in a hurry."

"Right," I say.

I'm not sure what to say, after that. What the procedure is, for this.

She looks up at me. Her eyes are this bright, forest green. Had I noticed that, before? Probably not. Before, she was on the other side of that garage. Now, she's standing right in front of me, at handshake distance.

"Well," I say, gesturing. "Welcome to...whatever this is. I'm not entirely sure."

"Me either," Shiloh says. "This is the first time I've done...this."

"This being...what exactly?"

"Jacktech," she says. "It's, um...well, you probably already know. Being...what you are."

"What?" I shake my head. "Actually, no. I don't know what that is."

She frowns, perplexed, then seems to realize something. "Is it...your memory? Perhaps you forgot."

"That does seem like me."

"No, your..." She closes her eyes and waves her hands, starting over. "Biodroids have a knowledge set as part of the default settings. You should know what Jacktech is. But it looks like someone went in and omitted stuff from your memory. At some point. We're not sure when. Or who. Or how. But the fact that you don't know...I guess it checks out."

Is that possible? But I guess it must be. There are definitely gaps in my memory, based on what I've seen. According to Sal, she and I had an entire history, and I don't remember a damn thing about her. In fact, I don't remember anything between the car crash and waking up in that stasis tank. Nothing at all. All I remember is...

Huh.

Something occurs to me. A spark. A flash of lightning out of the blue.

It's that one memory. Going downstairs and into the pantry. Hiding there as my parents came downstairs into the living room. They were in some kind of argument. My mom, she was saying...something. I couldn't make it out. It was as if someone—or something—had gone into my mind and put a crackly filter over the words, making it impossible for me to understand.

Could that be related to this manipulation of memory Shiloh is referring to right now? Or is that something else entirely?

The puzzle pieces are disparate, scattered. And I don't have enough of them to create a real connection or meaning, right now. But it's something to think about.

Meanwhile, there's something else Shiloh said. Something that sticks out to me in a more immediate way.

"I'm not one of them," I say.

Shiloh frowns, one eyebrow raised, her hands clasped together.

"I'm not a Biodroid," I repeat. "I'm human, like you."

She opens her mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. "I saw you. I saw what you look like. Inside."

"I'm human," I say again, firmly.

I raise my hand and wave it in front of her. In here—where ever this is—I'm me. The old me. Soft, skin-covered, human appendages and all. I'm even wearing jeans and my flannel over-shirt from before the crash.

"O-okay," she says, nodding, but clearly not believing. Though she does seem to take note of the fact that I look different in here.

"That's okay," I say, shrugging. "I'm guessing you'll see, soon enough. That's why you're here, right? For answers?"

"I want to know the truth."

So do I.

I doubt I'll find it here, in my own mind, or whatever this is. Not yet, anyway. But maybe I can help her find something she's looking for.

I turn back toward the hallway, where I came from. The walls flicker.

Where there were only nine doors before, now there appear to be dozens, or more. Closely packed together. The windows set in the doors are larger than before, and clear. You can see right into the room.

Shiloh scoots past me to peer through the window leading into the first room. I move up behind to look over her shoulder.

The effect of the room is...well, nauseating. Through the window, I can see the backs of myself and Shiloh in a hallway, as we look through a window, where her and I are in a hallway, looking through a window, where her and I are in a hallway, looking through a window....

On and on. Ad infinitum.

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Shiloh tilts her head quizzically, and so do the rest of the Shiloh's. An infinite amount of Shiloh's, to be precise. Or at least as far as we can see.

"Yeah, I have a feeling we should leave that room alone," Shiloh says. "Unless we want to fry your circuits."

"Fair."

She stares at the dizzying spectacle for a moment longer. But then she tears herself away, heading further down the hall. I follow her.

We pass a series of moving images as we move door to door. We pass Gavin sorting through his tools in the garage. Boring stuff. Not to me, at the time, but as an image outside its context, it doesn't exactly catch the eye.

Shortly after that, there's one with a first-person perspective of myself, running in the canals, just before I got electrocuted by Gavin.

Shiloh clears her throat, which seems to be a nervous tick for her. She keeps moving.

She stops in front of my memory of Sal's death. The image seems to pin her, mentally. The broken body. The leaking fluids. The way Sal seems to be struggling to breathe, and think.

I'm having a hard time looking away, myself. I feel sick when I look at Sal's struggling form. Empty.

"You were with someone," Shiloh says, without turning to look at me. Her eyes are on the movie in the door, fascinated.

"Yeah," I say. "She claimed we knew each other. I guess I've taken her word for it."

"She tried to save me. Even at the end, she wanted me to escape. Honestly, it's probably my fault she's gone."

Why did I say that? No one wants to hear some deep shit like that, especially when you just met. What's she supposed to say to that? That she's sorry? Is she supposed to give me her condolences?

Well, I don't want to hear it. What the hell am I thinking?

Whatever. I can't look at this. I can't deal with this, right now.

Before Shiloh can do or say anything, I move past her and onward. She's not gonna find what she's looking for in that memory, anyway. Everything in there is between me and Sal.

It's the facility, she wants. That's what she was arguing about with that guy, Gavin. There's something there she's after. Some knowledge or technology or…I don't know. Whatever it is, I can't quite bring myself to care. That's her business. I'm a means to an end, for her.

I can hear her footsteps behind me as I plod forward.

"You never told me your name," she says.

"You never asked," I said. "I think you were too busy debating the finer points of how you were gonna gut me for parts."

An awkward silence. And why shouldn't it be awkward?

To my right, I pass moving images of my ride on the bike, when we were being chased by that Biodroid from the ship. Meanwhile, my and Shiloh's footsteps make stark echoes in the hall.

"Sorry," Shiloh says. A surprising timidity in her voice. "I'm asking now."

I swallow. Tension builds in my jaw.

Is it warranted though, this feeling? A lot has happened to me in the past forty-eight hours. But I don't think I can pin any of it on this girl. If anything, she might have been trying to help me back there, after I was captured. I can't say for sure. Besides, it seems like her community doesn't perceive Biodroids as people, anyway. So what should I expect, exactly? Her to shift her entire worldview around in minutes, just for me?

Still, I don't have to like it. I don't have to like her. I just need to get this done.

"Silas," I say.

"Silas," she repeats, to herself. "I'm Shiloh."

"I know."

I come to a halt next to a door depicting the giant armory hangar in the facility. In the image, I'm going through the gear arranged on the racks along one wall, while Sal is messing around with the med station.

I stop suddenly enough that Shiloh nearly walks into me. I put a hand on her shoulder, steadying her and keeping her at a distance.

"This what you're looking for?" I say.

She squints, examining the movie in the window. "Definitely looks like it. I don't know what else it could be. How did you get out?"

"There's a ramp- here," I say, leading her back a couple doors. We stop at the memory of ascending the tunnel on the bike. As we look at it, the movie speeds up. Fast-forwarding, as if for our benefit.

Shiloh seems enamored with the spectacle of it. For me, it's still pretty fresh, so I can't say I find the visuals all that captivating.

There it is, though. Me driving, dodging the big robot's attacks, while Sal shoots at the little seeker drones chasing us. Eventually we fly up and out, through the opening. We crash. I fend off the big robot—Autobot, as I kept thinking of it, back then. Then, I finally blow the sucker up.

"That's...quite the situation," Shiloh says, the reflection of an explosive fireball glinting in her eyes. "And without your memories, too. Must have been disorienting. You handled that pretty well."

"Not as well as I could have," I say. "Or should have. According to Sal, if my OS was up and running, I would be capable of a lot more. She definitely would have survived, I think."

Here I go, talking about Sal, again. What, am I trying to start a pity-party, here? No amount of navel-gazing is going to change what happened. And why should Shiloh care?

I tear my eyes away. I'm honestly not sure how much more I can take of seeing Sal's face. Even if I probably will continue to see it, every day for a while to come. Somewhere in the darkness behind the lids of my eyes.

If I really am a machine, will the memories fade? Or will they always feel as raw and fresh as they do right now? Perhaps there's only one way to escape the past, and that's the corruption of my memory, like Shiloh was referring to.

Imagine if I was the one behind this? Wouldn't that be weird? I have a feeling that's not the case, especially considering some of the consequences my memory issue have incurred. But I can't deny the possibility entirely. There were plenty of people, back in the 'before', who would have done the same thing if they could. Everyone has something they wish they could forget. What kind of things might I have done here, in the new world? Could there be things my past self regretted?

Speculation, of course. Baseless. Pointless. Nothing is actionable until I know for sure. And I will find out, eventually. I'll find the threads, wherever they are, and follow them.

"I think I might be able to pinpoint where this is, based on some of the topography," Shiloh says, studying the movie. "If I had some good overhead imaging. Especially considering the exploded bot parts you left behind. I might not even have to go that far, though. With the door open, Cade should have enough access to pinpoint the actual coordinates."

She blinks, frowning at herself, self-consciously. Like she just got caught talking to herself aloud.

"I wonder if your friend, Cade, can get my OS up and running, as well. It's too bad we can't contact him from here and ask."

"Yeah," Shiloh says, noncommittally. Dispassionately.

She slips past me, working her way further down the hallway. Further into the past.

I follow her, a couple of steps behind. Part of me wishes I could figure her out. What her angle is. Can I really expect her to keep her side of the bargain? Can I honestly-

I freeze. Through the window in the door on my right, I see a silver urn. In the memory, I'm holding the urn in my hands, running my thumb back and forth, slowly, over the ring-like etchings in the surface of the metal.

I can remember it well enough, without the visual aid. Sitting in the funeral parlor, in one of those low-back chairs with the scratchy cushions. Surrounded by simple, church-like decor. A ceiling fan spinning slow overhead, rustling my hair with lazy currents. Me, sitting there, alone. My father, nowhere to be seen.

It's the last memory I need to be visualizing right now. If I go down that road, if I let myself sit in that moment...there's no telling how long it would take, or what it would take, to get back out.

Actually, no. That's not true. I never did get out. I'm still there. I'm still sitting there, in that chair. Alone. Waiting for...something. I don't even know.

I force my eyes shut and turn away.

When I open them, Shiloh is a few doors ahead, focused on one of the windows.

It's strange. I hadn't expected so few doors to lead this far back. Which means this hallway isn't a catalogue of every memory. Rather, these must be the snapshots of the more impactful moments of my life, grouped close together. Which would mean-

"Oh my god," Shiloh says, almost gasps. Her eyes are wide. Pupils dilated. "You really- you really were telling the truth."

An intuition—hunch, whatever you want to call it—slaps me across the face.

I step forward. "Shiloh, wait-"

"It's more than I ever imagined," Shiloh says, not seeming to hear me. She raises her hand, grasping the knob with her fingers. The window in the door depicts the grassy embankment of an easygoing river, almost lethargic in its flow, the flat surface gleaming brightly in the noon sun.

Shiloh turns the knob. The door cracks. In comes an overwhelming burst of yellow light, flooding the hall.

By the time I reach the door, she's already through. And I have no choice but to leap in after her.