My second merge started at 11:48 AM on the West End High soccer field, in the middle of my big sister’s valedictorian speech.
Alice isn’t sure when my first merge happened. She can’t trust her memories anymore, so she doesn’t know if I was four or five.
I’ve lost track of how many merges I’ve been through. Roses, daffodils, and lavender. Dry wastelands and endless mazes. The tang in my mouth and the smell of rotting meat. Fungus that clogged my lungs. And it isn’t just the monsters in the merges. The ones that are already here are worse. Director Smith and his gun. Li Mei—the infovampire bonded with my sister. And SHOCKS, the boogeymen.
The point isn’t what’s already happened. The point is what’s coming, and what happens next.
That’s gonna be important soon.
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Cowichan Building, Duncan, British Columbia - June 1, 2043, 2:34 PM
- - - - -
The car door bounces off my seatbelt clip, and I curse and pull it free before slamming it a second time. Seeing Sora was great—she believed everything I told her, even the wildest, craziest stuff—but that doesn’t change the fact that I have no idea how to move her family out of the Duncan arcologies. That I don’t know how to track down Keith. Or, most immediately, that Alice looks seconds from losing her cool with me.
The Chrysler sedan’s ready to go. She had to stay with it for the half-hour I spent in Sora’s apartment, and even though she’s my sister—or maybe because she is, the math is unclear—I don’t want to make her wait any longer than she already has. “Alright, dumb-butt, let’s go,” I say. It’s not mean. But it’s not playful, either. It’s more…routine. Anything to maintain the routine.
It’s amazing how, when you start exposing truths, a liar’s whole world falls apart.
Alice’s sure has. She made me wait almost thirty minutes while she got her foundation and blush perfect. It’s covering up the bags under her eyes again. She didn’t sleep, but that’s not surprising. I’m a little shocked she was willing to help me at all, to be honest. But I guess her perfect illusion of a life’s shot and her beautiful blue eyes are gone, so she’s got to start over somewhere, with someone. Might as well be me.
“Fine. About time.” The Chrysler starts moving across the parking lot, Alice’s hand moving the stick shift back and forth as her feet push the pedals like an expert.
The fungus that came from the reality merge last night has started sticking. Mostly where it’s moist. The problem is that this is Vancouver Island, and everything is moist, or at least damp. It’s not dying as much anymore, either. This place won’t be inhabitable forever.
But the same thing that’s threatening to kill them is also the reason we couldn’t just pack Sora’s family into the Chrysler and move them, or get Dad and drive him up here. Alice struggled early on, but her Toxin Resistance must be high enough now because she hardly seems to notice all the spores in the car. Neither do I; my Toxin Resistance is at 3 now, according to James. All they do is make me sneeze.
So, it’s back to Building Three-Five, then…what?
I haven’t thought this far ahead. Getting my people—Sora and the Itos, Dad and Alice, and Keith, if I can track him down—off the island would be a good goal, but with the Fungal Lords out there spreading their spores everywhere after the big reality merge, the equation’s all out of balance. The X and the Y won’t match, where X is my desire to leave, and Y is the possible ways off Vancouver Island. That leaves me with a Z that’s pretty clear, though.
If they can’t stay where they are, I can either change what they are or find somewhere else for them to go.
James already rejected the first option. The boy in my head, who also happens to be my link to the Halcyon System that’s giving me all my powers, was pretty firm that [It’s dangerous, and if it hadn’t been the only way to save Alice, I wouldn’t have tried it with her.] If he won’t help me, then that’s not a possible solution, which leads me back to Landsdowne Middle School.
If I could get the Itos and Pendletons there—well, Dad; Alice is already fine—they’d be safe for a while. And Mrs. Nazaire would take them. I know she would. Then Alice and I could…
My plan stalls again as Alice drives through a red light, breaking my focus. I grab the panic handle over the window, and she stares at me. “It’s a lockdown, remember? There’s no one out, and I’m not going that fast.”
I nod, letting my white-knuckle grip loosen microscopically. The tall, square teeth of Ten Mile Point’s basic living buildings loom before us, though I can’t see any Fungal Lords anymore. “Where’d they go?”
[I’m not sure,] James says before Alice can interrupt. He’s been talking to both of us a lot, probably to make things less weird. Ha. Like that’s the strangest thing about him. I’ve got a voice in the back of my head that I share with my sister, and it’s an incredibly powerful supercomputer who’s also a boy my age. [From what I've seen, they’re not actually aggressive, but if they wandered across a street, they probably wouldn’t notice anything below them.]
Alice starts down Arbutus Road, heading for home. Then, suddenly, she jerks the steering wheel toward the left, rocking me into the console, and we roll toward Telegraph Bay. It’s not a big stretch of water, and it’s surrounded by towers and skyscrapers, but even with Victoria’s huge burst of growth over the last twenty years, some beautiful places remain.
Sort of. The rocks have growths of fungus. [The Fungal Lord merge is affecting the local reality,] James says. I ignore him.
The Chrysler stops, idling twenty feet from the water, and Alice opens the door. “Claire, we have to talk,” she says.
I gulp. She wants to know…something. And I don’t have all the answers; Hell, I barely even know the equations. But I get out of the car anyway. “What?”
She stares out into the water, one blue eye and one black and red, and I shiver. But she doesn’t say anything. She’s psyching herself up for a conversation she doesn’t want to have with me. It’s not the first time she’s done it, and I brace for her ‘mom’ voice.
When it comes, the tone’s not a surprise, but the words are. “Li Mei says you’re responsible for this. Is that true?”
I blink. “She says what’s my fault?”
“Me. This…whatever this is. Her being stuck in my head,” Alice says. I’m quiet this time, and she takes that as the truth that it is. “She was right. I knew it. You’d better have a good explanation, Claire.”
“Besties aren’t supposed to throw each other under the bus,” I half-joke. Alice doesn’t think it’s funny, and I cross my arms over my chest. The waves on this side of Vancouver Island aren’t as high, but the cloudy light and their in-and-out motion are still enough to shimmer a little. Even the spores in the air that make me sneeze sometimes can’t blot the light out.
“Alice, you’re not Mom, and I know what you’re trying to do. But yeah, sure, it’s all my fault. I let her out, I got her mad at me, and then I trapped her in a sensory deprivation tank. Someone else let her out, though So sure, if you want to blame someone, I guess blame me. That’s fair.”
“So how do you fix it?” she asks, ignoring my sarcasm.
“I don’t know.” I look at my hoodie pocket, where the Revolver is. It’s heavy, and I resist the urge to wrap a hand around the grip. “I don’t want mine fixed. It’s helped me a lot right from the beginning. But Li Mei? I get you wanting her out.”
“I don’t want her out. I need her out.” Alice joins me in crossing her arms, so at least now I’m not the only defiant, angsty-looking teenager looking out at Telegraph Bay. She quickly realizes her composure’s cracked, though, and pulls herself back together. “What really happened at West End High?”
I shrug. The truth is that I have no idea. “Freak accident, I guess, just like Mom. A reality decided your graduation was a great place to merge with ours. I had to kill some stuff, and Director Smith’s organization picked me up when it was over.”
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
Alice’s first instinct is to argue. All her memories disagree with everything I’ve just said. They think it was a tsunami warning or something, but that’s not the truth. Then she goes quiet. Who knows what she’s thinking?
We watch the waves for two more minutes before she turns back to the Chrysler. “Let’s go. We’re not getting any closer to getting back to how things used to be by sitting here.”
I follow her, lips curled in a barely-there smile that shows no teeth. Getting back to how things used to be isn’t a typical Alice goal, but she’s the most determined, pig-headed person I know—especially when she’s trying to maintain a lie.
She’ll do what I need her to once I figure out what we need to do next.
Now, I just need to come up with something. Anything.
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“I’ve got nothing.” I’m sitting on my bunk in our one-bed apartment, fingers pressed against my temples. I’ve been thinking about what Alice wants for the last twenty minutes—getting rid of the infovampire she’s bonded with. And for every idea I’ve had, James has pointed out a dozen flaws. Either it’d take technology that doesn’t exist on Earth yet and that he can’t replicate right now, or anomalies that are more likely to kill her than separate them.
So, for the time being, the Alice equation is unsolvable.
Before that, I was trying to figure out Dad. He hasn’t moved since last night. If the TV channel didn’t change periodically, I’d be worried he was dead. He’s always been a rock, but now he’s more like a mossy boulder: impossible to move, uncaring of what’s around him, and slowly eroding away.
I definitely don’t have the tools to do anything but manage him—the same way Alice and I have been for a decade. Except this time, he knows something’s different about both of us. Maybe that’s why he’s just a lump instead of a swearing, hulking lump. Maybe this has been hard on him; he wants to be in charge, but he’s out of his depth.
Either way, I can’t do much about him, either.
And, of course, I’ve got an even bigger problem. The apartment’s not safe.
There are about four thousand people living in every basic living building. I can’t help them all. And that’s…okay, I guess. I can’t save everyone. I can’t even warn everyone because no matter how hard I try, all the TV programs say the same thing: shelter in place, don’t leave your homes. They won’t listen to me, so I can only care about people I can help.
But there’s this impossible obstacle out there, and I can’t get my people—the ones I care about—out, either. I’m nowhere near strong enough, or I haven’t bonded with enough anomalies, or something. Whatever. The point is that Alice, Dad, and Sora are stuck. And the apartment’s a very temporary solution to what’s looking like a permanent, worsening problem. Fungus is starting to grow over the windows.
“James, give me my System status,” I say.
[System Access: 100%]
[Recalculating Skills, Knowledges, Bonds, and Inquiries. Adjusting Stability]
[Claire Pendleton]
►Stability 6/10
►Skills - Endurance 5, Urban Combat 2, Anomalous Computing Systems 4, Physical Anomaly Resistance 4, Open Mind 1, Revolver Mastery 12, Compulsion Resistance 2, SHOCKS Database 1, Infohazard Resistance 6, Memetic Resistance 6, Gravity Shells, Reality Anchoring 1, First Aid 1, Toxin Resistance 3, Bullet Time, Slither, Smoke Form, Analyze, Mergewalk, Mindscape: ERROR. Missing Component
►Truths - Anomalous Bond, West End High, SHOCKS Research Facility, JAMES, Stag Lord, Halcyon Bond, Li Mei and Infovampires, Dr. Dwyer
►Inquiries (3/5)
►What is Merge Prime?
►Are Sora and my family okay?
►What’s going on at Albert Head and West End High?
►
►
At least I’ve figured out why I didn’t answer the Inquiry about Sora and my family. They’re not okay. Not yet. Temporarily okay isn’t okay.
Yeah, it’s not enough. It’s nowhere near enough.
The equation’s a mess. I’ve locked in the people as variables. Sora, her brother Itsuki, and her two sisters. Their parents. Alice and Dad. And Keith and his family. Ten, plus me. That’s more people than I’ve talked to at one time in…a long time. And, somehow, I’d have to get them all to listen to me, a fifteen-year-old.
Sora would, without question. And Alice would, too, if I said it’d get her closer to being perfect, valedictorian Alice again. But the adults? There’s no way. So that’s the first impossible-to-solve part of the equation.
And say they do listen to me? I mean, things are bad, obviously. Parts of Victoria have even been evacuated, and I think I can smell smoke blowing in from the southwest if I sniff hard enough. So maybe. Maybe. But that’s when it gets hard.
I need to move them all—at the very least—across the Haro Strait and all the way to Vancouver City, or south across the Salish Sea to Seattle and Tacoma. Ordinarily, a long ferry ride. Right now? I don’t know if the ferries are running, but my guess is probably not. Otherwise, Smith would have been long gone, and so would Sergeant Strauss. So, a small boat? Twenty miles across the ocean in a rowboat? Yeah, right.
Or I could try hiring someone. But with what money? We’re in basic living, and Sora’s family’s a little better off, but still paycheck-to-paycheck in the Duncan arcologies. Not exactly mid-Victoria living. That’s not an option, either.
“Any ideas?” I ask James.
[On leaving?] He seems distracted, but he’s probably just working on millions of other projects. That doesn’t leave as much James for me, though. I kind of miss when he was 100% dedicated to me, before he fully integrated with the Halcyon System. [Not anything you haven’t already thought of. SHOCKS obviously didn’t make it off the island, so I don’t see any way for us to, either.]
“Thanks. You’re a real help,” I complain. The Truth, with a capital T this time, is that I don’t have a solution. No matter what I think of, there’s nothing. I’ve been working in circles all day, and nothing’s changing. “If you’re so sure we can’t leave, what’s our other option?”
[I’m trying to work on some, but as far as I can tell, we need to head north. Getting away from Victoria is the first step. That’s got its own problems, like how to move nine people who can’t breathe the air and not knowing where the Fungal Lords went. We could run into them, and that would be bad. But it gets us out of Merge Prime’s epicenter. We could try hitting a nearby hospital for protective gear.]
“That’s too complicated,” I say. I’m lying, and James knows it, and that’s okay. I just don’t want to get back to Aberdeen Hospital and figure out that something’s gone wrong there. But the only other option’s almost as unworkable. “Let’s figure out how to get them to Landsdowne Middle instead. Alice and I can stick them in the shelter there. Mrs. Nazaire would take them.”
[Two problems right away. First, still a temporary solution. It’s less temporary, but still not permanent. Second, right back to how do you move them?]
“I don’t know. But it’s only a matter of time until the filters in the air system here go, and spores get in. I don’t…know what to do.”
[I’ll keep thinking, too. You two can stay here, but I don’t think your Dad can. Not for more than another day.]
I flop back onto the bed and stare at the plain wooden bottom of Alice’s bed, where I used to put stickers until I grew out of them. There are hearts and rainbows everywhere—all faded with time, of course. A layer over them: skulls, swords, and stuff like that. Then, stuck over those stickers, a few taped drawings of characters from Knights of the Apocalypse.
I miss my phone. It’s still somewhere in SHOCKS Headquarters, back in Victoria proper. It was a piece of shit, but at least I had one. I could distract myself with games. Not so much anymore.
The door opens. “You done screwing around in here?” Dad asks.
“Yeah. I guess.” It’s a classic conversation between him and me, and I don’t even look toward the door. The stickers have my almost undivided attention. What do they say about me? What don’t they say about me? Maybe that’s a more interesting question.
“Then help your sister. She’s trying to make some shit on the stove, and she keeps calling for you. And leave the damn door open next time.” Dad turns and disappears back to the living room.
At least he’s moving again.
I push myself up, groaning. I may be a super-powerful anomalous girl who visits other realities or whatever, but apparently, that doesn’t get me out of helping cook dinner. “Keep working on things, okay?”
[I’ll think of something I can’t immediately poke holes in at some point,] James promises. I’m not sure I believe him.
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Alice’s makeup is perfect. Just enough blush to look natural, eye shadow around her blue eye that’s clean and crisp, and perfect pink-red lips. If it weren’t for her black-and-red iris, I wouldn’t even know she’d been through all that shit yesterday, the stress is covered so well. She meets my eye and looks away, but it’s too late. I’ve already seen her new truth. “Hi.”
“Hi. Whatcha making?” I ask, sliding up next to her.
I do not care what she’s making. Anything will be better than the stale pizza pockets from last night or the bag of prunes and dried fruit. But I also do not want to help her. It always turns into a show, or a power game, or something.
Unlike Alice’s makeup, the kitchen’s far from perfect. Bottles line most of the counter, with the exception of a small spot she’s cleared for her phone, a small cutting board, and some light pink meat that doesn’t quite remind me of a devoured. She’s also got some microwave packs out, but they’re piled up so I can’t read what’s in them. The tight space puts me uncomfortably close to her; my shoulder bumps her elbow, and I pull away an inch or two. I wrinkle my nose dramatically at the partially frozen chicken breast. “Oh, I see. Slime.”
“I’m trying to cook actual food. Chicken. We can make microwavable rice, too. You can handle that, and I’ll deal with the meat. Or you can prep the meat. But it’s gross, so we shouldn’t both do it.” Alice is all business, but I can see her angle. This is a power play—show the little sister that she’s still little. That her big sister still needs to take care of her. I can’t afford to give her that power right now, because I need to be in charge of our evacuation.
Maybe I’m too worried or too mistrustful, but I’ve played this game with Alice before.
Raw chicken’s clammy, slippery, and disgusting—but it’s also nowhere near as bad as the devoured. And I’m not falling into this trap, not even if the other option’s just as much of one. I reach for the knife; it’s dull, but it’ll do the job with a little work. “I’ll do it.”
“Good.” She moves out of the way, opening the bare refrigerator like almost all our food isn’t dried, frozen, or canned.
But before I can do anything with the raw bird on the cutting board—which, apparently, Alice wants me to chop into cubes—James interrupts. [I had a sudden, very bad idea.]
“What?” I ask, tapping my ear so Alice knows I’m talking to our mutual friend.
[You’re getting a search call on your augs. I’ve got it isolated, and I’m spoofing your location to a dozen different places across the city, but that won’t fool the caller forever. We need to talk before you answer. It’s from your phone number.]