Alice had a boyfriend for a couple of weeks last year.
I wasn’t supposed to know about him. Neither was Dad. He was Alice’s dirty little secret, but even though her whole life’s a lie, she’s not good at keeping them. So, when I found out, she begged me not to tell Dad. She said she’d give me whatever I wanted, but I couldn’t tell him because he’d freak out.
I didn’t tell him. Obviously.
But he found out anyway. And when he did, he and Alice fought. It got loud. I turned up my Knights of the Apocalypse game until the eight-bit music hurt my ears, but I could still hear them screaming at each other.
The next day, they broke up. She blamed me, of course.
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Location Unknown, Date Unknown, Time Unknown
- - - - -
I shiver as Li Mei launches into a tirade about how now that the Stag Lord is gone, I “owe her” for “saving me” and how she “needs access to the JAMES system now” or she’ll “have to reevaluate who her friends are.” She doesn’t ask me any questions, but I shiver anyway. The Revolver’s useless here; it punched nice holes in the Stag Lord, but Li Mei’s shadowy form seemed to pretty much ignore it. She was staggered but not wounded.
That leaves me in a bad place.
I’ve got to out-maneuver a thirty-plus-year-old anomaly that I can’t hurt, who can force me to comply with her just by asking a question, and who’s determined to eat someone—or something—I just decided was my friend. She’s still got me in the ‘Best Friend’ category, but who knows how long that’ll last? And when she decides to ‘reevaluate,’ what will that mean for our relationship—and for my survival? I’m not sure.
But I do know that if she gets access to JAMES, it’ll be bad for him and me. So, after listening to her breathless, rambling monologue about how important it is for her, I do the only thing I can do. I nod and stand up. “Okay. Let’s get in the System. I’ll need your help on a couple of steps, though.”
“Of course. Of course.” Li Mei’s eyes seem to smile at me, but it’s impossible to be sure. Her tone sounds much more friendly, though, and I let myself relax just the tiniest fraction. “Let me know what’s first.”
“Okay. First, I need you to check the JAMES Unit’s safety locks. They should all be disengaged, but with the fighting, we need to be sure.” I do not care about the JAMES safety locks. I just want Li Mei to be as far away from the monitor as I can get her. “I’ll check the instructions for the next step while you’re doing that.”
She slides away without saying anything. The moment she’s out of range, I start tapping on the screen, searching for any countermeasures against her that might keep the JAMES Unit safe. Nothing active comes up, just that the tank is built to handle Xuduo-Danger anomaly attacks for long enough that the automated defenses can kick in and eliminate the threat. That’s fine, except that the automatic machine guns aren’t targeting Li Mei, and I’m not sure they’d hurt her if they did. She’s ignoring the other defenses, too; the Universal Reality Anchors aren’t stopping her, and neither is anything on the research sector’s list of passive barriers.
I keep digging, looking for anything weaponizable or a half-truth I can feed Li Mei to keep her distracted so I have time to make a plan. But there’s not much else in here—at least not that’s not buried so deep I wouldn’t be able to cover my tracks. Li Mei would figure out my lie for sure if I pulled up any info on her, for example.
Li Mei’s back faster than I’d hoped, and I quickly pull up the next step on my list.
5. Initiate Core JAMES routines
I open the program and skim all the sub-steps. There are dozens of them, and just about none of them give me a window to leave this computer—or get Li Mei away again. I carefully, slowly maneuver through each step, trying to conceal what I’m actually doing—stalling—from Li Mei. Her red eyes watch me as I slowly connect the only partially booted JAMES unit to most of the SHOCKS system’s programs, and her shadowy tendril arms reach toward the ‘Initiate’ button, but I shoo her away with way more confidence than I feel.
“Li Mei, there’s a step down those stairs. Make sure the sub-systems are all running. The initialization won’t activate unless everything down there is connected properly, and I might have messed up the communications routines. Thanks.”
“You should do it.” Li Mei’s eyes narrow, and she stares at me. I can feel her suspicion weighing down on me. It’s like a soaking-wet comforter, too heavy to carry and drenching my clothes.
I nod. “I should, but I can’t. You can’t run the main computer, but you should be able to check the sub-systems. If you try to run this part, it’ll probably lock up, and then I’ll have to reevaluate our friendship.”
She stiffens and starts float-walking toward the stairs, then looks over her shoulder. “We’re besties. I trust you, but don’t do anything until I get back.”
“You’ve got it, bestie.” Besties don’t lie to each other.
But besties don’t try to force each other to help them, either, so as soon as she hits the first step down to the tiny room at the bottom of the one-way stairs, I move to the next step in the reboot sequence. I type in a new command pattern. The screen feels warm against my sweaty fingers, but I still find the option I want.
Eject JAMES Unit
WARNING: JAMES Unit should only be ejected in case of an emergency threatening facility, during which the on-site self-destruct is disabled. Unit must be reinstalled in its tank or an identical backup within 24 hours. Continue? Yes/No.
I click ‘Yes’ and quickly run through the steps, heart racing and stomach in my throat. If Li Mei comes back too soon, I’m screwed. Royally. The safety locks are already offline, so I find the commands to offload the JAMES system into another place—not that I need it, he’s already copied onto my augs—and run that. It takes five painful minutes, and my shoulder aches from the spike plant’s attack, but after a barrage of humming and clunking, a tiny microdisk pops out of the computer in front of me.
The tank stops humming, and something clicks. Then it opens slowly, with steam and fog billowing out.
And I realize I was wrong about everything.
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The air fills with the smell of the sea—the good kind, salty water and clean beaches. Lying in the tank, surrounded by dark black water, is a boy my age. His dark hair’s little more than stubble, and I can barely see it through the translucent cap on his head. Wires reach from the cap into the tank’s wall, and a mask covers his mouth. The wetsuit covering his body hangs loosely except around his wrists, neck, and ankles, and the skin I can see is so pale and wrinkled it’s clear he’s been in the tank for a long time.
A long time. Longer than a couple of days. Probably longer than I’ve been alive. I try not to throw up, but my stomach rolls, and I have to look away for a moment. When I do, I catch sight of the one-way stairs anomaly, and swallow down the bile. I’ll have time to be horrified later.
“James?” I ask, not expecting a response. I’m still crushed when I don’t get one, though. JAMES isn’t an AI. He’s never been an AI, and he didn’t lie to me about that. But whatever he is, he’s not human anymore, even if he did start out that way. The horror’s still there, but I’ve got a grip on it. I think. I hope.
SHOCKS did something to him—something that I definitely can’t reverse. The boy floating in the tank isn’t breathing, and when I grit my teeth and reach down to touch his hand, it’s icy cold—colder than the water around him, even.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
Somehow, that’s more comforting than it should be. Me running the emergency disconnect didn’t kill him. He’s been dead for a long time—probably for longer than he’s been in the tank. I take a deep breath and wait for a Halcyon System notification about the Joint Anomalous System. There’s information there, or in the SHOCKS databases, or on the computer, about what happened here. About what SHOCKS did to a kid. I just need to dig a little more, or wait for a message. That’s all. Just wait.
It doesn’t come.
And after almost twenty seconds of waiting, I realize it’s not going to. But Li Mei is. I pull the tank’s lid closed over James’s body, an idea forming in my head, and rush back to the computer. Then, I quickly palm the microdisk and maneuver the screen back to the JAMES reboot instructions. Hopefully, my pale face and the shivering I can’t quite stop won’t give me away. Hopefully, she won’t smell the bile on my breath.
I’ve got one chance to deal with Li Mei, so I take a deep breath as she comes up the stairs. “Okay, good news and bad news. The good news is there’s only one step left, and it’s the reboot for the JAMES unit’s main programs. The bad news is it also takes two people because SHOCKS’s monitoring equipment inside the tank is faulty. I need you to manually adjust it so the AI core inside is being monitored correctly.”
“That…seems sloppy on SHOCKS’s part,” Li Mei says from the stairs. “Too sloppy.”
“I’m getting errors whenever I try to access the sub-steps for Step Seven,” I lie. “It needs someone to run the computer and someone to fix the equipment in the tank. Sorry.”
We’re both doing a question dance, avoiding them, and I can’t figure out why Li Mei won’t just ask one and force the truth out of me. It’s almost too convenient for me. Her scarlet eyes blaze and go nearly pink for a moment, like she’s looking through me. “Li Mei, we’re best friends. I just need help with this last step, and then you can get into the JAMES system.”
The best part about that sentence is that it’s the truth, and she knows it. She just doesn’t know why it’s the truth.
She still hesitates, but I can see her hungering. It takes her almost ten seconds before her eyes slowly lose their burning white cores, and the shadow starts moving toward the tank. I pull in a shallow breath. It worked. I fiddle with the computer for a few heartbeats longer, then turn to follow her.
And that’s my first mistake.
Li Mei’s eyes lock onto mine. “What?” The shadow seems to turn toward me, though without any other features, it’s hard to be sure.
I fight it. I fight it until it feels like my mind’s about to explode, until it seems like I’ve been struggling against it for an eternity, even though it’s been half a second…a second. The pressure keeps building and building until all I can think about are Li Mei’s burning white eyes peering into me.
And then something breaks.
{Skill Learned: Compulsion Resistance 2}
“The computer told me where to look,” I lie smoothly. A distant part of my mind splinters and I can feel my Stability drop—it’s close to nothing again—but my voice doesn’t catch. “You’ll need to open it up and plug the power systems back in. I’ll type in the code. Clearance stuff.”
{Stability 2/10}
She seems to smile again. She has no idea, but I can’t keep lying for long, so I step past her, showing my back to the information vampire like I’m not trying to trick her, like we’re working together. Like we’re best friends. And that’s what does it. She shivers, almost like a nod, and slides next to me. “Open it up, then get back to the computer.”
I walk to the keypad and pretend to push a few buttons, then crack the tank’s lid. “There you go. All yours.”
Then I start retreating to the computer. I take three steps. Four. All this could be ruined if she’d just asked if I was lying to her before, but now? Now, I’m invincible. I can deal with Li Mei. I can deal with anything.
The tank creaks open a little farther, and I count to three. Then I whirl, Revolver up, and start firing into Li Mei’s smoke-shadow body.
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Each shot does almost nothing, but by the time I’ve emptied the Revolver’s cylinder and the bullets in it have stopped glowing, Li Mei’s body has five holes in it—and the tank has an orange-glowing spot where I’ve missed and a few more where I haven’t.
Li Mei smiles a shadow-toothed smirk and surges toward me as her body starts reforming.
I push her. Hard.
[Truth Learned: Li Mei and Infovampires 1]
[Stability 1/10]
[Skill Learned: Smoke Form]
My hands push into the shadow smoke for a moment before it starts feeling solid, and I shove her forward. Every moment I’m touching her, it feels like she’s ripping into my mind, searching for something to turn against me, and I clench my jaw and push back, my brain shoving as hard as my arms. She tips into the tank, screaming in hatred and rage.
Then, as she struggles to pull herself together, I yank the tank’s lid down, trapping her inside the water—with James. Not JAMES, but James.
The tank rocks on its steel legs, but even completely unbound from her wrappings, Li Mei’s not powerful enough to break free from it. I scoop up the recharging Revolver, slap the keypad’s big red ‘Lock’ button, and hurry to the computer.
There’s a timer: eight hours, twenty-two minutes, and a few seconds, and under it, a sentence. ‘Warning: JAMES Tank degredation imminent.’ Half a minute passes, and the number’s eight hours and eighteen minutes. So it’s only a matter of time before Li Mei breaks free, but at least she’s not getting out right now. The tank’s built to keep Xuduo-Danger Anomalies out, after all. It’ll keep one in.
So, new equation. The Stag Lord’s gone. Li Mei is ‘temporarily neutralized.’ Which means all I need to do is convince James—I can’t call him JAMES anymore, he’s not even an AI, but what is he?—to cooperate. Given that his body’s in a tank with an enraged infovampire, that shouldn’t be hard. I should have three hours before Li Mei gets out. Maybe a little less. By that point, I should be long gone.
So, instead of jumping down the stairs or opening the ‘Halcyon Integration.exe’ file, I start digging into the computer. And eventually, after what seems like an hour, I find it.
- - - - -
[Anomaly] Entity - 0-P-4/LO-1-Prime
[Status] Contained
[Type] Post-Life, Limited-Omniscient, Digital
[Danger] Atero
[Containment]
Entity - 0-P-4/LO-1-Prime is held in various Shocks Headquarters buildings in the Joint Anomalous Management Enhancement System Experimental Sector. Its body is to be held inside a reality-anchor-protected tank filled with salt water, with multiple Faraday cages in place and armed autonomous sentries outside of it. LO-1-Prime’s brain activity is to be monitored at all times. Clearance is only given to Directors and Director-approved researchers, with no more than ten non-Directors involved in the program at any time. These containment measures are for LO-1-Prime’s protection.
In the event that LO-1-Prime’s body must be moved, its consciousness must be downloaded into a storage device, as the body cannot sustain consciousness outside of its containment tank. The stored consciousness must be reinstalled at a new, identical chamber in another SHOCKS facility within 24 hours.
Due to LO-1-Prime’s status as a Post-Life anomaly, the Experimental Sector is to be left in exactly the same configuration as it was on the day of its death. Any changes to the space must be reset by 04:13 daily. Failure to do so may result in cooperation failures and the need for enhanced containment procedures. To facilitate this, other facilities worldwide currently host JAMES facilities, along with duplicated consciousnesses.
[Description]
Entity - 0-P-4/LO-1-Prime is a human cadaver, formerly of a fourteen-year-old male named Sidney Alexander. Sidney showed beyond-savant levels of technological aptitude and, upon being tested, was found to be anomalous. However, the low-grade anomaly was considered to be non-threatening, and with a media restriction and special medication, Sidney was allowed to live a relatively normal life.
After he was killed in a car accident on July 12, 2034, SHOCKS took custody of his body. They discovered that his consciousness had transferred to a digital watch he was wearing and began working on integrating it into an alternative storage system. After [REDACTED] experiments, Sidney’s consciousness was transferred outside his wristwatch and integrated into the SHOCKS emergency system on July 15, 2034.
LO-Prime-1’s consciousness is considered an Atero-Danger anomaly. Though its current access to SHOCKS intranet systems makes it a potentially world-ending threat, its cooperation is near-universal. Its access to SHOCKS databases and control systems globally makes it appear omniscient within SHOCKS facilities. Still, its status as a digital, post-life entity offers SHOCKS several means of control.
SHOCKS researchers cannot currently replicate this process outside of direct digital cloning, though experimentation is underway.
- - - - -
I stop reading. I’ve read enough—I don’t want to know more of the truth, because the Truth, the real Truth with a capital T, is that SHOCKS has been putting this kid’s ghost to work for a while, and that…that changes things. It changes things a lot.
For one thing, I may have to figure out how to let James, or Sidney, or whoever he is move on. I don’t want to kill him, but he’s already dead, and he may not want to be here anymore. I understand that, believe me. I don’t want to be here a minute longer than I have to, either. Now that I know, I have to help him if he wants me to—even if it means losing the only friend I’ve really got in this place.
And that leads to a potential major problem.
Li Mei’s in there with his body; if he wants to move on, I’ll probably need to open the tank. I’ll have to manage her permanently someday, but I don’t have the skills to do it now. So, hopefully, James is okay with waiting or wants to live. Either way, though, I won’t know until I talk to him.
I fiddle with my augs and open the ‘Halcyon Integration.exe’ file.