I don’t remember much about the before times.
What? I was five. What do you expect?
But I do remember that Alice and I used to be friends. More than that. I remember that she used to be my hero. When she learned to read, I got to listen to her stories while Dad browsed the paper and Mom cooked whatever we were having for dinner. We’d play with her dolls—even then, I got the hand-me-downs, but I remember loving them. And, of course, she did my make-up. But only when Mom wasn’t home.
She got in trouble for that once. Maybe twice.
But everything changed after the merge. I don’t see any way for it to go back to the way it was. And that sucks, because I looked up to her so much.
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Building Three-Five, Victoria, British Columbia - May 31, 2043, 7:17 PM
- - - - -
It’s only been a couple of minutes when I limp back into our apartment. The Fungal Lords are still outside. Smith’s body’s out here, too, but I can’t deal with either of them. Not right now. I promise myself I’ll go take care of his body later, but right now, I have to get to Alice.
Or what’s left of her. “What did you do, James?” I ask, my hand on the door. I should be rushing in; my lying fake of an idol is in there. But still, I hesitate. I need to know. But I desperately don’t want to at the same time.
[Everything I could. I fully integrated with the Halcyon System.] James sounds exhausted.
“So you’re…it?” That sounds horrible, even though I knew I was signing him up for integration when I saved him from Li Mei. That this path might lead James to something like this. But the math pointed me toward it as the only option. “Sorry. Did it hurt?”
[No. But it’s overwhelming. It’s like seeing another world. I can see everything. I can do everything. Right now, there are several million other people who’ve bonded with an anomaly, and I can see and talk to them all, but I’m not allowed to share any of that information with you. Except in one case. If your sister lives through this, she’ll be one of them. I hope.]
“So, there are more of…me?”
[Yes. They’re all struggling, and it’s taking a noticeable fraction of my new processing to keep up with them all, but they’re out there.]
As I open the door, Dad’s swearing hits me like a baseball bat. I blink, then power through. He’s up, standing near the table, staring at my sister as an incomprehensible string of curses flow from his mouth, but all I can do is ignore him. He used to be a rock. But right now, my sister doesn’t need someone who used to be one. She needs someone who can be one, and there’s only one person here who fills that variable for her.
Unfortunately, it’s me.
Alice is out on the kitchen floor, exactly where she hit the ground when Li Mei jumped her. A shadow writhes under her unconscious body, and her half-done makeup is smeared in tears and snot. For a moment, a part of me’s glad she’s not awake for this; she’d hate herself for being anything less than perfect.
But whoever won their wrestling match—and I hope it’s my sister, not my bestie—isn’t in any shape to care about her appearance. My knees bounce off the floor painfully, and I roll her onto her side, letting her cough up half-digested pizza pockets. “Was this as messy for me?” I ask.
“What?” Dad says. He stares at me, his litany of foul language interrupted, and I look up at him. He hasn’t shaved in days; the grayish stubble and bloodshot eyes complete a picture of a man who’s the opposite of even an exhausted Director Smith—to say nothing of someone like Strauss. He used to be a rock. Now he’s…
Nothing.
But even though he’s a shadow of even Doctor Dwyer, I can’t help but answer him. “Dad, I know what’s wrong with her. I think. Let me help her, please.”
He narrows his eyes. Then, he collapses into a kitchen seat. My kitchen seat. I ignore the transgression into my space; it’s not the first time it’s happened, and it won’t be the last, but his crashing is a sign that he doesn’t know what to do. I know. I’ve lived with him for a long time, and I know all his ticks and habits, even if he doesn’t. I’ve had to to make the math work.
I push on Alice. “James, what’s the timeline for her waking up, and what’s the likelihood that she’s won her fight with Li Mei?”
[Running sims—done.] James’s voice seems crisper than it has. He’s waking up and getting more energetic, too. [She’ll awaken naturally in the next few minutes, and I’ll make contact then. Be ready for anything. It could be Alice—it should be Alice—but there’s a chance Li Mei won.]
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As the seconds turn to minutes, Dad clears his throat. “What the hell was that?” he asks. My head twitches toward him; I’ve listened to him swear and demand for ten years, so it’s reflexive. But I have other problems, like the math on my sister.
She’ll wake up as her. I don’t even have to think about that. James says it’s a battle of wills. Alice is the most strong-willed person I can think of. Even if she’s a liar, she lied her way to perfection from the time she was eight. The best at soccer. Every teacher’s favorite. The most popular girl in middle and high—even if that left nothing but scorched earth for me to walk through after. And she did it by never seeing the truth, by refusing to believe in it.
If she can lie to me, Dad, our teachers and classmates—if she can even lie so perfectly to herself—for ten years without ever cracking enough for anyone but me to see it, she can lie to Li Mei. She can hide whatever information the infovampire’s trying to eat. Mathematically—if math applies to falsehoods—she can win.
So, as time ticks by and I ignore Dad, I find myself hoping something I’ve never hoped before: that Alice can keep lying. He looks like he wants to grab my hand, spin me around, and make me answer the questions he hasn’t asked yet, but one look at the white ceramic Revolver and its glowing bullets, and he reconsiders.
Instead, the room lapses into an uneasy quiet, interrupted by an occasional twitch from Alice as her arms or legs jerk. After the second one, I drag the closest chair away from her, and Dad follows suit by moving the table so she won’t hit anything.
[Don’t touch her,] James says.
“Why not? Because of Li Mei?”
[No. Because you should treat what’s happening like a grand mal seizure, and if you’re too close, her thrashing will hurt you. Yes, even with your skills. People are stronger than they realize, and she won’t be able to hold back when she's not in control. Let her come out of it on her own, and then we’ll see what has to be done.]
So we wait, Dad and I, in silence. Alice’s twitches slow, then stop, and her breaths steady out into something that’s close to sleep. Then her eyes open.
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They’re mirrors of mine, black, with a red core in the middle. My hand tightens on my Revolver’s grip. But before anything else can happen, James speaks up. [Pendletons, both of you, take a couple of deep breaths. I think it worked.]
Alice’s eyes narrow, and she reaches up for her aug. It’s not top of the line anymore, but it’s a damn sight better than my outdated charity drive version, and I’m sure she can hear everything he’s saying, too. Then her eyes lock on me. “Claire, what’s happening? We…I…I don’t understand. I don’t remember…”
Li Mei’s compulsion hits me, but it’s like getting smacked by a rolled-up towel, not hit by a truck. Whether it’s my Compulsion Resistance or Alice just not being as powerful as Li Mei, I can’t tell. She’s got the anomaly’s power, though. The bond must have worked. I wait for the sensation to wash over me and break like a wave. Then, when it finally stops, I answer. “Alice, before I start trying to explain, what do you remember?”
She looks at me, eyes flashing white, but doesn’t say anything.
“What the hell?” Dad asks. “Claire, what’d you do to her?”
“I didn’t do anything,” I say. It’s a reflex. Never accept responsibility with Dad. But it’s also the truth; I didn’t do this. James, Li Mei, and Alice did.
But this time, he’s not buying it. He pulls his shoulders back, looming over me—and over Alice, who’s still on the ground. “Dammit, Claire Pendleton, answer me right now. You’re here with your weird-ass eyes, and now she’s got them, too. This the plague from Sooke? And where were you? You were gone for over a week without even a phone call.” There’s something there I can pry at. If I want to.
But I don’t want to. I’ve worked with Strauss, so I know what a scary man looks like, and Dad looks like a man who’s trying to be scary. But—and it takes all my will not to back off—he’s nothing like the monsters from the maze world or like facing the God in the Machine. He’s not even anything like Strauss, who was scarily competent, or like Director Smith, whose determination and sliminess made him the boogeyman.
Those features made him dead, too. I won’t kill Dad. I can’t kill Dad. But I don’t have to be scared of him. It’s just a reflex. A habit.
“Dad, I promise I’ll explain everything,” I lie. “Alice will be fine, I think. And so will we, but right now, sit down and go back to watching the news. Do something that’s not here. Anything.”
He wants to fight, though. His voice raises, “Clarice Pendleton—“
“Claire!” I shout back at him. Then I catch myself. A fight’s familiar to him; we’ll go through the same old song and dance with that routine. I’m not doing the usual song and dance right now. His arm reaches out, and I slap it away with the Revolver’s barrel.
He stares at the gun, really seeing it for the first time. Or, maybe, feeling its weight made him realize it’s real. And he shrinks. He’s still huge—still six feet four inches—but something inside of him’s not as big anymore. “Fine. But you and your sister are fucking telling me everything later.” He stalks over to his chair, collapses into it, and wraps his hand around the neck of a bottle.
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Five minutes later, Alice sits on the edge of my bed, blanket over her shaking, hunched shoulders. Her eyes are still black and red, and so are mine. They’re staring back at me through her dollar store makeup table mirror. They shine with tears.
[Alice is fine physically. She’ll have some bumps and bruises from her fight with Li Mei, but I got to her in time,] James says. [I’ve integrated her into the Halcyon System and bonded her with her first anomaly. Unfortunately, that anomaly’s not quite as friendly as your Revolver. She’s going to need some help working through this, and she’s not listening to me, so it’s all on you.]
“Got it,” I say, nodding. Alice shoots a scared look my way, and I sigh, sitting down next to her. “We have a lot to talk about.”
It’s going to take more than one quick conversation, but that’s okay. I think. This will be a start. “James, are we okay inside?”
[You’re okay for now. If the Fungal Lords don’t move on in the next couple of days, you’ll need to move, and if SHOCKS keeps coming after you, this is where they’ll check first. But you have some time. I’m trying to simulate what’s coming next, but I don’t have enough information.]
“Thanks. Okay, Alice, first thing first, James is a friend.”
My sister doesn’t even look at me through the mirror this time; she just stares at the floor. “He’s a voice in my head, Claire. And so is that other thing. I keep waiting to wake up. I usually wake up. But this time, it’s not happening.”
“Nightmares, huh?” I already knew about them, but she’s never talked about them, and I’ve never asked before. It wasn’t my business. Now it is. She nods, and I keep going. “Li Mei’s in your head, too?”
“Li Mei? Yes. No. I’m not sure.” I’ve never seen my sister like this. If it weren’t so important that I get her to listen—to explain to her what’s going on as best I can—I’d be gloating. The lies have fallen off—all of them. The only thing left is an Alice that I don’t think I’ve seen since I was five. One that’s not sure, that doesn’t know what the perfect girl should do.
She keeps talking. “Fuck, this is hard to explain. It’s not her, exactly. I know what she was like—I fought with her forever—and her voice isn’t loud like she was. I can ignore it if I try. But she’s there. And not just there. It’s like she’s everywhere. If I stop trying, she’ll take over for a while. And I don’t want that.”
I wait. But Alice has nothing else to add, or she’s too busy holding herself together to keep talking. My hand reaches out behind her, pauses, then touches her shoulder—not like when I punched her on the bus, but more like a hug. She still flinches under it, but I don’t pull it away. “Are you okay?”
“No.” She pauses again, jaw clenched. “It feels like if I loosen my grip for even a minute, she’ll take over.”
[You’re dealing with a Xuduo-Danger anomaly that’s fully bonded with you,] James says. I can tell that even though I can hear his words, they’re not meant for me. Still, I’m grateful I’m part of the conversation. [You’ll level up your skills enough to stop having to fight it soon.]
“And then there’s him. You say he’s a friend. I don’t know anything about him, and he’s in my augs. How do you even go to the bathroom?”
I laugh. I can’t help it; Obviously, he’s a boy. But he’s also a disembodied voice in my head, not someone who’s really there. He’s not a boy, and other than some teasing, I’ve never thought about him like that.
But of course Alice would. She stares at me, then bursts into an uncontrolled laughter that’s not amused so much as losing it. Her body keeps shaking, and she starts rocking back and forth and staring off into space with her black and crimson eyes. She hasn’t acknowledged them, I haven’t told her about them, and now’s not the time. It’d break her. I stop laughing, though.
Instead, I tighten my grip and pull my tall, tough, strong, helplessly overwhelmed sister into a bear hug until she’s done laughing. Eventually, she pulls away, but she keeps rocking in place.
After a minute, I clear my throat. “James, can you switch your voice to something…less male…with Alice? Maybe not a girl, but genderless? It might help her deal with you.”
[Got it.] He’s stayed mostly quiet, but he keeps talking now. [Alice, your sister’s right. I’m here to help you figure out what’s happening, how to handle your anomalous bond’s powers and needs, and how to keep yourself as together as you can. I’ve got terabytes of information on what you’re dealing with, and I’m compiling them as quickly as possible. You’re not alone, though. Several million people are fighting battles similar to yours.]
“Yeah. I’m one of them, too,” I say before I can stop myself. Without thinking about it, I keep going. “You’re behind me, dumb-butt, so you better catch up.”
That usually gets her going, on the rare occasions I’m better than her at something.
This time, though, she seems to melt away. One second, she’s there, and the next, she’s a blur of smoke with two blazing red eyes. They stare at me from her spot on the bed; her bond with Li Mei is stronger than mine, and she doesn’t fade back into being Alice like I do after Smoke Form. Alice—or maybe Li Mei, I can’t tell—keeps watching me for almost a minute.
Then, all at once, she’s Alice again, solid and hysterical. Tears run down her half-done makeup, smearing her mascara. “I don’t want to catch up. I don’t want to get better at…whatever this is. I want my life back!”
I don’t know how to respond, so I try to give her another hug—this time a one-armed side-hug.
She slaps my arm away before it can touch her back, pulling away. I recoil as she hisses, “Get out!”
Then, before I can stop myself, I’m up, heading for the closed door. Facing Dad is easier than handling my sister when she needs space to let down her mask—and in the shape her mask’s in, it’ll take hours for her to rebuild it. I’ve got one other thing to do, though, so she’s got some time. But hopefully, she does soon, because we can’t stay here forever. I can’t stay here forever.
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Dad takes one look at me, then looks back toward the TV. Its volume’s on now, and the talking head’s screaming about unrest in southern America, as usual. Then his eyes flick back to mine, and he taps the remote.
The TV turns off, and I freeze. My lizard brain’s good at that. But he doesn’t say anything, and the stale smell’s overpowering. What’s he thinking? That whatever’s happened to Alice is my fault? Or is he too drunk for any of that? He turns toward the TV again, and after a minute, I start moving again, this time toward the closet. As Dad glances over his shoulder between time spent staring at the black screen, I gather some old, ratty sheets.
Smith’s body’s waiting for me in the hall, and I can’t leave him out there like…that.