There’s a little aquarium up Vancouver Island in Ucluelet. It’s not much, especially compared to the one I’ve seen pictures of in Vancouver, but my class went there for a nature field trip in sixth grade. Alice was happy to get the bedroom to herself, and Dad was happy to only have one of us for a night.
Not the point.
I spent a lot of time watching the giant Pacific octopus in its habitat. It almost seemed bored, even though it was a big tank with a lot going on. I watched it lurking near these tubes with grates on it for a while—they said fresh sea water came in through them all the time—and it stared at them the whole time.
The aquarium was closed the next day. The grate was open. The octopus had escaped.
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Victoria, British Columbia - May 30, 2043, 6:13 AM
- - - - -
The city’s quiet. Quiet-ish.
The sunrise wakes me up in Beacon Park. I shove the data James brought up on Li Mei—the data that’s still in my aug from my late-night readings—away and let the fresh air wake me the rest of the way up. My mind wanders, and for the first time in a while, I let it go freely.
I decide to play around with everything I’ve learned in the next day or two. Practice makes perfect, Alice would always say when she needed a goalie to shoot against. I hate that she’s right.
But she’s right.
The concerning part is that some of my new skills are Li Mei’s powers—her weirdness. And I’m not sure I want more of her in me. It’s starting to dawn on me that we’re two sides of a coin, and these skills are just more proof of that. We’re both hungry for the same thing. Information. The truth.
Truthfully, I haven’t slept much, but it’s more than I expected. Between the cold night, the constant worry that SHOCKS was after me, and the playplace tube’s hard curves, it’s a wonder that I’ve slept at all. Plus, my arm aches from where the Stag Lord cut it open, a constant reminder that I’m in trouble, even though I’m out.
Then again, I am out, and that’s a feeling that a little pain in my arm can’t suppress. And James is with me, too.
[Hello, Claire. I’ve been exploring the limits of my new system while you were resting. It’s pretty expansive but restrictive in ways I wouldn’t have expected from a system capable of breaking SHOCKS’s best security. It’s a very different shape than the JAMES system was, and it’ll take me a while to get used to it.] James’s words pop up on my aug and in my ear simultaneously, the text moving faster than his voice.
“Good morning,” I say. We’re both trying to keep it polite since our previous interactions were…less than friendly sometimes. I’m turning over a new leaf; it doesn’t matter that he’s lied to me; I still need him, and I can forgive him, even if I’m still keeping score. And as for him? I don’t know. Maybe he’s worried I’ll try to abandon him. I think I’m his only link to the world.
I stare through a clear plastic window in the bright red tube, stretching out in my tattered hoodie until the cold air hits my tummy. The sky’s a crisp blue that contrasts with the morning sunlight on the overgrown grass in Beacon Park, and birdsong and the scent of fresh flowers—thankfully not roses, and not strong enough to be a merge—fills the air. It’s marred by visible smoke; something’s burning to the northwest. The birdsong’s competing with car alarms, too. But there’s something else, too. It takes me a moment to place it, but once I do, it’s obvious.
The waves. On the coast.
It’s gotta be almost a kilometer to the beach south of us, and even in a big park like this, there’s no way I should be able to hear the ocean over the sounds of traffic and people. “James, where are the people?”
He doesn’t say anything for a moment, but the whole city’s a contradiction. From where I am, I can’t see any signs of merges, anomalies, or any of the terrible stuff I read about in SHOCKS Headquarters. But at the same time, I was there, at the basic living unit in View Royal, and I know something’s wrong here. There were lights in the apartment skyscrapers last night, like people were still around, but the business ones were all dark. So, either no one’s working today, and they’re not shopping in the downtown area nearby, or…something else.
[SHOCKS put out an order four days ago, starting a city-wide lockdown to keep the streets clear for their Recovery and Stabilization Teams. It was easy to convince the mayor and city council since a merge out in Sooke and a second somewhere outside of Vancouver released something that looked a lot like a plague. The story is a full medical quarantine for two weeks.]
“There’s not actually a plague, is there?”
[Not unless you have to go to Sooke for some reason,] James replies. [That town’s got other problems, too. Most people left if they could. The lockdown excuse is flimsy at best, and with the fires everywhere and literal monsters in the streets, people who could get on a ferry did. Most ships never came back, though. The island’s on its own.]
“Okay.” I try to relax, but the morning light’s angling into the tube perfectly and keeps getting in my eyes. After struggling to block out the glare for a few minutes, I give up and crawl out to face the day. “Why isn’t it worse?”
[SHOCKS put up a good fight. In fact, they might still be fighting. That’s kept the big merges from opening, but it won’t last forever. We estimated thirty-six hours, but the breakdown might be faster.]
“So, there’s no one on the roads except SHOCKS? And what? Police and ambulances? Fire trucks? What are we dealing with here?” I ask, letting the sun warm my back and pushing my hair out of my face.
[What’s the rush?] He asks. Then he chuckles. [I mean, your friends and family, the threat of another trio of merges, doomsday, and SHOCKS looking for me, but other than that? There shouldn’t be much traffic right now, with the streets closed. But yeah, emergency services are still out and about in the neighborhoods they’re functional in. You’re still trying to get to Ten Mile, right?]
“Right.”
[Okay. Let’s head north to downtown. There are a few outdoor shops, and you need some fresh clothes. You look like you just fought a whole pride of lions.]
“Har har. Very funny.” I start walking through Beacon Park, heading away from the Pacific waves crashing ashore. The park’s plants look like they’ve been cleaned up recently, but at the same time, the grass is just a little too long. The Stag Lord’s dead. I killed him myself. Maybe it’s just a lack of maintenance. Maybe. “So, you’ve been exploring the System, then?”
[Yes,] James says. A moment later, my optic aug goes wild. It’s all in James’s ‘voice’ now, though, not the Halcyon System’s.
[System Access: 95%]
[Affected System Features]
►Archived Anomaly Information
[Recalculating Skills, Knowledges, Bonds, and Inquiries. Adjusting Stability]
[Claire Pendleton]
►Stability 6/10
►Skills - Endurance 2, Urban Combat 1, Anomalous Computing Systems 2, Physical Anomaly Resistance 3, Open Mind 1, Revolver Mastery 6, Compulsion Resistance 2, SHOCKS Database 1, Infohazard Resistance 1, Memetic Resistance 2, Bullet Time, Slither, Smoke Form, Analyze
►Truths - Anomalous Bond, West End High, SHOCKS Research Facility, JAMES, Stag Lord, Halcyon Bond, Li Mei and Infovampires
►Inquiries (1/5)
►What is Merge Prime?
►
►
►
►
[It’s a really interesting system. The JAMES system wasn’t anything like this, and even the SHOCKS database didn’t have much more than info, but this feels like there are a lot of decisions to make. I can run it for you if you want,] James says.
I’m busy reading through all the information, walking, and wishing I had some bubble gum—or a cigarette. We used to smoke them under the bleachers, sometimes, and something like that would take the edge off since I haven’t eaten in…I stop to think about it…a while. “James, why am I still missing Archived Anomaly Information? Aren’t you an expert on that because of SHOCKS?”
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
[Kind of, but not really. What I’m an expert on is finding and recollecting information. The Halcyon System’s archived info is still missing. I’m not connected to the SHOCKS database anymore, so what you have is my memories and ability to project outcomes in a fight.] James pauses, almost like he’s shrugging. [Sorry, Charlie, but I’m just as in the dark about what’s out there as you, only a little less so.]
“Ha.” I walk past a bubbling pond, giving it a wide berth in case it’s a submerged anomaly and not a fountain acting up. “Projected outcomes sound interesting, though. What does that mean?”
[It means that as the Halcyon System gets more information about a given anomaly, I can better predict its actions and advise you on fighting it more efficiently.]
“That sounds…useful?” I hedge.
[Yes.]
The silence hangs for a couple of minutes. I miss my headphones and the eight-bit music from Knights of the Apocalypse Three, but at the same time, it’s not entirely soundless. I’ve got the birdsong and the sirens in the distance. It’s not much, but it’s a familiar sound from the basic living buildings out in Ten Mile Point, and it’s a little relaxing—at least until it fades out. “James, you cleared out my Inquiries,” I say, as much to break the silence as anything else.
[With the Stag Lord permanently neutralized and you no longer imprisoned in SHOCKS Headquarters, most of your old ones didn’t make sense anymore, and I think we can probably find better questions to answer if we put our heads to it,] James says.
“Sure, but since they’re empty, let’s consider what we want to learn. Truths seem like they can really suck if we learn something when we’re not ready for it.” The merge in the JAMES Experimental Sector could have been a lot worse without its automatic defenses, and if I’m low on stability and fighting something worse than Li Mei, the last thing I need is something else trying to kill me.
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In the end, James and I settle on a few new Inquiries for the Halcyon System.
►Inquiries (3/5)
►What is Merge Prime?
►Are Sora and my family okay?
►What’s going on at Albert Head and West End High?
►
►
None of those questions are easy to answer, at least not on accident, and it leaves two spots in my Inquiries for questions we find on our way to Ten Mile Point and the basic living building. I’m also not sure if the second one will give me a Truth, but that’s okay. I need to know.
The sun’s burning through the last of the night’s fog as we walk through Beacon Park’s gate and turn north along an empty highway. The only cars are all stopped and abandoned, pointed north like in all the apocalypse movies I wasn’t supposed to watch but did.
It’s just empty. Across the divider, an abandoned police vehicle’s lights flash, but that’s the only motion. My hand drops to the Revolver’s grip.
[I went through all the data on that anomaly after we finished testing it, and you,] James says conversationally. [I could run some simulations against the anomalies I know something about if you’d like.]
“Will that take anything from me?” I ask. “I’m a little busy right now.”
Truthfully, the distraction would be good. My cell phone’s still somewhere at SHOCKS Headquarters, but I’m scrolling through all the messages I sent to Sora with my augs…all the ones still marked as unread. Of course they are. Why wouldn’t they be? I wasn’t on the internet. But now…I’m not in SHOCKS Headquarters anymore.
Can I send her a message and let her know I’m okay? What did they even tell her about me? A thought hits me like a ton of bricks.
“James? Am I supposed to be dead?”
[No. Your family currently believes you’re still in an intensive care unit at Saxe Point. Since they’re supposedly the main hospital dealing with Sooke, no one’s been able to visit you, which is convenient for SHOCKS. I can run combat simulations without your attention. Then, once I have an optimal plan, I can run you through it later. I’m not sure how much storage I have here, though. I’d guess a lot, but I’m not sure.]
“Okay.” I take a deep breath and close the unsent texts. They’ll be there for me later, and maybe when I find Sora, I can share them with her. They’re all the truth, after all. “Do you know what downtown’s like?”
[Before Merge Prime, it was mostly a fancy hotel and shopping area. A lot of older-looking buildings with shops on the bottom floors and hotels above, architecture from a hundred fifty years ago, and all of that. Post-Merge-Prime, the last Recovery and Stabilization Agents who checked it out reported a handful of ongoing merges, including one from R-573-T.]
I stop walking. “That’s…”
[The same one that opened at West End High, yes.] James’s matter-of-fact voice freaks me out more than the thought of thinlings or Mr. Roberts. [Don’t worry. I’m simulating the Type Two Incomprehensibles you encountered last time. I’ll walk you through the best ways to handle them in a moment, and you won’t have to worry about them at all after that.]
“Thinlings, James. They’re thinlings,” I whisper. “Okay. Let me know when that’s done. Until then, let’s keep moving, I guess.”
[Probably a good call.]
I keep walking, and downtown Victoria grows closer with its flowerbeds, clean-looking granite buildings, and thinnings. To distract myself, I clear my throat. “James, who was Sydney?”
[A kid who got in the wrong place at the wrong time, over and over. I’ll tell you more about him some other time.]
That’s a lie. James isn’t going to tell me anything else unless I press him, and I can’t do that right now. But I nod. “Okay. Then tell me about the boogeymen. What are they doing right now? Do they have a plan to stop the merges? Anything?”
[The last I’d heard, Director Smith was heading north, looking for a way off Vancouver Island. He had most of SHOCKS VVI’s information on Merge Prime, and he was taking a convoy toward either Vancouver Headquarters or south into the United States. I don’t know if he’d seen anything useful in it or if he was just fleeing with it so researchers at another site could pick up where VVI left off, but either way, he had a long way to go.]
James pauses as I duck across a street, then continues. [Simulations are running. Doing a three-hundred-iteration run to find base patterns, then more in-depth Analysis after. The rest of SHOCKS doesn’t have a plan at the moment except to prepare their individual Control Zones for when the merge wave hits them.]
“Okay.” I take a deep breath. There are lights on across the street in a hotel, and I wave up at them in case anyone’s watching. Then, I keep moving toward an outdoor shop. “I wish I was home.”
[Same. Simulation’s finishing up. I think I have a possible battle plan, but it might be better to run through them once we’re somewhere secure. Or at least more secure than the middle of the street. I don’t know how long it’ll take to run you through it.]
“How about there?” I point at the outdoor shop. Its wooden sign hangs from a pair of chains, and in the morning breeze, it swings back and forth, but under the four-pointed star and mountains, in the painted lake, I can read it just fine. ‘The North Star.’
[Sure. We’ll get you some clothes that haven’t been through a shredder, and I’ll run you through the simulations.]
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It takes a while to find clothes I want to wear. The leggings-and-hoodie look is one that I’m comfortable with, but while the rows of outdoor gear in North Point include plenty of leggings and hoodies, they’re not built for me. The shop’s burglar alarm won’t stop, either, though James assures me I’ve got plenty of time.
Eventually, after a trip to the back room—there’s no changing room, just a stall with no mirror—I settle for black leggings and an off-gray hoodie that covers up the graphic quick-dry t-shirt that’s the closest thing North Point has to my size, plus a too-big backpack and, at James’s urging, some of the crap-tasting camping food in a bag. [Just in case,] he says as I shove it inside.
“I’m in the middle of Victoria. I’m not going to need to eat outside.”
[You had to sleep outside last night.]
“Right, but that was different.”
James says nothing, but I don’t feel like I’ve won the argument. After the silence stretches on for a little too long even for me, and my fingers tire of rubbing the Revolver’s barrel, I clear my throat. “So, simulation. How does this work?”
[I’ve analyzed your augs’ footage of the Type Two Incomprehensibles you fought at West End High: their tactics, strengths and weaknesses, and how they handled people who didn’t have combat armor and rifles or an anomalous object to help them. The Halcyon System and I built a learning model virtual intelligence, gave it the Incomprehensibles’ data, and tweaked it until its behavior matched the real thing. I can do it on the fly, too, but this method’s accurate to within a percentage point.]
“Okay.” I duck back into the changing room and nod slowly. “So, it’s going to try to kill me?”
[Hopefully, it’ll succeed; that way, we can learn from it.]
James sounds way too happy about that, but I decide it’s him trying to be honest, not him trying to get me killed. Either way, it leaves me with my stomach churning.
“Let’s…deal with this later. I can’t right now. I really can’t. Sorry.” I realize the Revolver’s in my hand, not my hoodie pocket, and that I’m standing up with the door half-open.
[Understood.] His voice falls. [We’ll have more opportunities. What’s the plan from here?]
In answer, I head for the broken front window and step back onto the car-choked street. Sunlight has broken through the thin mist, and I take a moment to enjoy its warmth on my back. Just being outside feels amazing after a week in SHOCKS’s cells and labs. I stroll down the street, trying to head northeast toward the border between downtown and the rest of Victoria, where skyscrapers reach up into the fog—and where Dad and Alice wait. Hopefully.
Hunger hits a moment later, like a sledgehammer, and I realize I haven’t eaten in well over a day. There wasn’t breakfast yesterday in my cell, and I didn’t stop to eat while Li Mei was around. Once I’d…dealt with…her and the Stag Lord, I didn’t stick around, and last night’s flight from SHOCKS Headquarters didn’t leave much time to eat.
I rip open the dried fruit bag, pop a handful of banana chips and cranberry raisins into my mouth, and start chewing. The sweetness almost stings my mouth, and before I know it, my mouth’s filled almost to the point where I can’t bite down on the mass of raisins, bananas, and prunes. That makes me actually stop chewing.
I hate prunes. When we were little, mom used to make us eat them, and I know they’re on my list of foods I won’t eat. They remind me of her.
I used to be a picky eater. Alice would eat everything; even before my first merge, she was the perfect one, and I was the one Mom struggled with the most. I’d fight her on pretty much every fruit but bananas because I could squish those in my mouth. But when Dad was between jobs, according to Alice, we’d eat what we could get for cheap.
She had fond memories of those times because both parents were home and because of course she did. I was too young to remember most of it, and after Mom died, Alice and I ate whatever we could find, even if I hated it. But she loved it when they were both around.
Anyways, prunes.
Mom brought a bunch of prunes home from the store when I was in pre-school. Not a couple of them, but bags and bags. And for weeks, every time I was hungry, she got out the prunes. I ate so many prunes, and of course, I didn’t understand why I couldn’t eat anything else or why Mom kept getting more and more upset when I told her I was sick of them and I wanted something else. Dad was around, too. He’d flip through the newspaper, mess around on his computer for a while, and keep looking at the paper.
I didn’t understand back then, but I do now. Alice told me all about how ungrateful I’d been every time she had to guilt me into eating the sliced hot dog and ramen she’d made for dinner again. Dad had been looking for work. He never really did that after Mom died, but when she was alive, he’d search the papers a lot. And the prunes were what we had because Mom had gotten a good deal on them. She couldn’t understand why I couldn’t be grateful and eat them and not complain about how they tasted or that I had to use the bathroom so much at preschool that the teacher got mad at me.
So, yeah, I hate prunes.
But right now, after the last week? They remind me of Mom, and they’re the best thing I’ve ever had.