I used to be a heavy sleeper.
I thought Alice fixed that.
I’m a late riser. If there’s no alarm, I’ll sleep until ten or eleven. But Alice was the worst alarm clock ever. She used to do this thing where she’d hang upside down from the top bunk so her not-so-perfect blonde hair covered her face. Then she’d start screeching, and I’d wake up screaming, with this mass of tangled yellow hair howling at me. Then Dad would wake up and start yelling at us both, cursing and slurring his words.
The last time she did it, I was twelve, and she was fourteen.
I punched her in the face and broke her perfect nose.
She didn’t talk to me for a month after that.
----------------------------------------
Location Unknown, Date Unknown, Time Unknown
- - - - -
Li Mei’s black eyes hover inches from my face, and I scream. She jerks back, and my fist barely misses her face. Then she disappears, reappearing on the far side of my airlock. Flashing red-and-white lights fill the narrow view of the hall behind her.
I blink, choking back another scream, and she blinks back. Then I pull myself out of bed and go to brush my teeth. I can’t deal with her right now, and she’s a Xuduo-Danger anomaly. If she wanted to hurt me, she could have done it while I was asleep. That means she either wants something from me…or she…what? Wants to information vampire me? How does that even work?
The lights flash in my mirror, and I look over my shoulder, the next blow hitting me like a wave. They left without me, and I’m locked in here. The equation gets really clear: either Li Mei helps me get out, or I stay in here forever.
I spit out my half-foamy toothpaste and, without wiping my mouth, walk the ten steps to the airlock.
“Hi.” Li Mei grins under her wrappings and waves. “You and I are going to be best friends.”
“We sure are,” I say. I don’t say that the moment she doesn’t need me, I’m in trouble. Neither does she. Best friends don’t need to tell each other those kinds of truths.
“They forgot me here. I couldn’t believe it. I’m important,” Li Mei says. Her black eyes shine, almost like she’s laughing on the inside. “They left six hours ago. The alarms went off three hours, twenty-two minutes, and seventeen seconds later. I counted. Then I counted the rest of the time until you woke up.”
“You watched me sleep for two and a half hours. Unbelievable.” I don’t know what’ll happen if I ask a question, and I don’t want to find out. This is a chance to figure out at least one of my inquiries, though. “That’s dedication.”
“I like counting. It’s almost like information. And I didn’t watch you the whole time. I had other people to take care of, too. But I need your help, and you need mine. So, here’s my offer: I'll break this door open for you, tell you which doors you can and can’t open in the building, and you'll get me Level A clearance.”
“How am I supposed—“ I say, just before Li Mei’s eyes narrow. “Sorry. I don’t know how I’m supposed to help you with that. I lost my clearance last night.”
Li Mei laughs. “Director Smith hasn’t slept in days. He didn’t sit down at a computer from the time he left your cell until the moment he climbed into an armored car. He didn’t take your clearance. He couldn’t have, and everyone else was too busy. Besides, the facility is acting like there are still personnel inside it. I’ve checked, and there isn’t anyone else…alive…anymore.”
I shiver. That means she killed them. But Li Mei’s my way out of here, so I have to play ball with her. “Okay. Let me out. I’ll do what I can.”
She smiles again, eyes sparkling. “Great! It’ll be nice to have a friend again. The researchers were…fine…but they weren’t friends, and most of the other anomalies hated me. It’s not my fault my containment was voluntary or that it wasn’t cost-effective to do better than an agreement not to leave. Was it?”
The question sears my mind, and I’m answering before I can stop myself. “No. That doesn’t sound like your fault.”
“Great. We’re going to be such good friends.” Li Mei’s eyes look pale, like two moons; it’s completely the opposite of how they did just a moment ago. They fade to black slowly. She opens the doors—both of them—and waves me through. “You know, your gun has more security than you do.
{Info Vampire (-1) - Infovorous Anomaly}
{Stability 3/10}
This close to her, I can smell the citrus-wood smell again, and my brain’s still fuzzy from her question. She points down the hall, where a few lumps covered in sheets lie. “A few researchers wanted to enact ‘updated, temporary containment protocols. Our discussion got heated, but I covered them up so you wouldn’t see their bodies. Sorry. I don’t think you’ve been here long enough to have made friends.”
“No,” I agree, mostly for something to say. Is she saying she’s killed whoever Director Smith left behind? “I need the Revolver.”
“Understandable. I wouldn’t trust me either,” she says conversationally. “But I do need you, so you’re safe. I haven’t had a friend in a very long time, you know. Thirty years.”
I shudder. Li Mei definitely doesn’t act like she’s in her thirties or forties. Then I kneel next to the plexiglass container the Revolver is stuck in and push the buttons: 8, 3, 9, 1, 2, 3.
It pops open, and a new alarm sounds. I quickly grab the Revolver as Li Mei shrieks next to me. The wrapping over her mouth rips off, revealing a rictus grin of perfectly-white teeth, all much too sharp to be human. I spin and aim the Revolver at her, and she stares at it, frozen, her black eyes wide again.
“Li Mei, I need to know a few things before I can help you,” I say.
She nods, the parts of her face I can see contorted in pain, and covers her ears.
“I don’t trust you. I can’t. You haven’t lied to me—I’d know. But you’re keeping some things back.” I point down the hall and start walking, Revolver at my side but ready to aim and fire. “Let’s find somewhere quiet.”
As I walk past room after room of Geren and Anquan-Danger anomalies, wide-eyed, terrified faces peer out through the airlocks. Li Mei’s eyes pierce one, and he recoils from the door, disappearing. I shiver again. Eventually, we find a place where the piercing Revolver containment alarm has faded to a dull shriek, the flashing lights and klaxon aren’t so bad, and my information vampire best friend seems…not relaxed, but less high-strung. I sit down against a containment cell’s wall labeled Geren-4318, whose resident either got taken with the Director when they evacuated or who’s smart enough to hide from Li Mei.
“Okay. I…” I trail off, reframing my question into a sentence as her eyes lighten. Whatever her ‘rage state’ is, I’d rather avoid it for now. “Tell me why I can trust you.”
Li Mei bursts into laughter. I shiver for a third time; her laugh is eerily similar to Sora’s, right down to the snorty, breathless huffs between chuckles. When she’s finished, her toothy smile widens. “That’s a valid concern, Claire. So, my first answer is that you definitely can’t. But you can trust me to act in my self-interests, which right now, includes finding something to eat, leaving this facility, and not getting shot by your beautiful Revolver. I couldn’t even get a hand inside that box. The security was unbelievable.”
She shakes her head. “You want to know about me, though, why I’m anomalous, and whether I can hurt you. The real answer to the question you can’t ask is, ‘Yes, I can hurt you.’ I can make you a husk like the researchers in the hall back there. I’ve done it before, unfortunately. But I won’t do it to you. Take a guess why.”
“Because,” I hedge, hesitating, the Revolver feeling warm in my hand. It’d be easy to shoot her right now. We’re at a stalemate as long as we’re both alive. I can shoot her, and she can…suck my brain dry, I guess? Mutually assured destruction or rocket tag? I’m not sure which. “Because we’re best friends.”
Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!
“Right! So, let’s head for Director Smith’s office. You can shut down the alarms from there, give me Level A clearance, and work on opening up the facility.”
“I still don’t understand what you want, though,” I say.
“I want to crack your head open like an egg and slurp up all your delicious, delicious thoughts and things you’ve learned,” Li Mei replies, perfectly frank. She gets one last shudder out of me, then stands up. “But I won’t, because we’re best friends now! Let’s go.”
And before I can say anything else, she disappears, reappearing a few dozen yards down the hall. I push myself to my feet, eyes narrowed to block out the flashing lights, and follow her.
----------------------------------------
“We don’t want to go that way,” Li Mei says, gesturing at an empty-looking hall. A few minutes later, she points at the locked door that Strauss said was beyond my clearance. “That one’s bad. Don’t open it. There shouldn’t be breaches like that yet.” Then, after another silent minute, she stops before a different locked door. “This is the one we want.”
I’m only half-paying attention to what she’s saying. My brain’s busy trying to figure out the math driving her because this is just as life and death as the bathroom at West End High, and I have to be sure about her. Does Li Mei actually want to kill me? And if she does, what are my options?
The answer to the first is probably not, but no matter how I run the math, I can’t make it a definite no. But if she does want to kill me, there’s not much I can do other than strike first—and that’s not an option because, as she’s made abundantly clear, I need her to help me through the SHOCKS facility. She’s probably kept me on track at least twice and saved me a ton of time. Not to mention that breach. I don’t know what that means, but I know it sounds bad. So, no, I can’t put a Revolver shot in her back and be done with it.
I look at the door instead. It’s got a thumbprint scanner, and I wince. “I don’t think I can get through this one.”
“Sure you can. I’ve dealt with the other personnel, so you’re the highest-ranking SHOCKS employee in the facility. You have so much power, and you don’t even know it,” Li Mei says. I can almost feel her vibrating with tension. “Now, open the door.”
“Wait. You can get in here yourself. You don’t need me,” I say. “This better not be a trap.”
“It’s not a trap. I need you to give me Level A clearance,” she says for the dozenth time. I have to hand it to her; she can focus like no one I’ve ever met.
“Fine.” I put my thumb on the scanner, expecting a security wall to come down, or an alarm to go off, or a turret to drop from the ceiling like in Knights of the Apocalypse Three—literally anything but for the door to open with a soft hiss, revealing a blue carpeted floor filled with office cubicles. As Li Mei and I step through, the smell of spilled coffee and stress fills the air, and the door hisses shut behind her.
“Told you, Director Pendleton,” Li Mei smiles a pointy smile.
“Okay. Now we need to find Director Smith’s office,” I say. The office space is filled with computers, desks, and a million PSA posters; they look a lot like the halls at school, but with more serious warnings about secrecy, proper protection, and making sure you're not nosing into research you're not cleared for. “So I guess we just…start searching.”
“No. Now you follow me.” Li Mei walks down the hall to a wooden double door on the far side. “Hurry up. My clearance.”
Instead of rushing over to join her, I look at the banks of cubicles and the computers, still on and still displaying the three outward arrows, circle, and triangle SHOCKS logo. The whole room hums with fans and the air conditioner running, but there’s not a single window—odd for an office space. I wiggle one computer’s mouse, and shockingly, its screen flicks from the screensaver to a login screen. I don’t know the password. A second check ends in the same result, so with a longing look at the machines and the answers to my Inquiries that are certainly on them, I join Li Mei.
The Director’s office features the same carpet, a fancier wooden desk covered in papers, cigarette ashes, empty coffee cups, and a computer whose screen features a thumb-print scanner instead of a login. I press my thumb into it just like the door, and to my surprise, it opens a menu.
[Greetings, Acting Director Pendleton.]
[Your security clearance within the SHOCKS VVI Intranet is Level A.]
[You have limited SHOCKS database access from your Level A clearance]
[You have limited SHOCKS database access as the highest-ranking employee on site]
On and on the menu goes, with a list of permissions I have and, interestingly, ones that are locked. I can’t, for example, access most information on most anomalies in the VVI Control Zone. I also can’t access any info past numbers and danger levels for anomalies in the rest of the world. And I can’t, at least at first glance, promote any anomalies to Level A clearance.
I can tell right away that that’s going to be a problem, so I quickly click into some of the options I can do. I scroll through my options as Li Mei gets more and more impatient, then, finally, click on [Promote an Employee].
[As Acting Director, you may not promote employees past Level Two.]
[As Acting Director, you may not promote anomalies to Level A.]
“Shit,” I say. Dad will forgive me for all my swears later. “I can’t do it. Sorry, Li Mei.”
The information vampire’s eyes flash white, and she bares her teeth in anger. Then, she pulls herself together with what looks like a supreme act of will. “What can you do?”
The question burns into my mind, and once again, I answer it. “I can access Level A information myself, I can work with anomalies I’ve been assigned to, which is…the Revolver and nothing else, and I can open and close Clearance One security—and Director-only in an emergency, I guess? I can also turn off audio alarms, but not visual ones.”
“Turn off the noise. Then you need to help me more. We’re best friends, and best friends help each other.”
“I’m not sure how,” I say. Then I think for a minute. “Tell me how you think I can help you.”
“Simple. You can pull up the basic information on the other prisoners and the objects they’ve got locked away. You can get what you want out of them, then when you’re done, I’ll feed on the articles. We can work together.” Li Mei’s unspoken question hangs in the air. Right?
Still, it’s not a bad plan. I get the answers to my Inquiries, she gets what she needs to stay alive, and to balance the equation out a little more, she keeps needing me. If she needs me, I can control her. Or at least keep her from killing me. Plus, she’s a Xuduo-Danger anomaly. Her rank outweighs mine. I don’t know much about the SHOCKS database or how they decide what’s what, but she’s powerful enough to keep me alive when other prisoners start breaking out. “Yeah, I can do that. We’re a team, after all.
Our friendship is off to a great start.
----------------------------------------
For the next hour, I dig into the Director’s computer, looking for a way to change my permissions, an idea of where I am, or anything else that looks useful. I don’t find any of those. But I do find a few things.
One of them is a folder labeled 573-V-1/IO Alpha.
My designation.
I tell Li Mei to back off, and she growls at me like a dog but follows my directions. When she sulks, I roll my eyes. “If it’s got my name or number on it, you can’t have it. This is important. It’s leading me toward the Truth.” Then, I open an experiment log and scroll down to the bottom.
[Excerpt: Experiment Log] Subject - 573-V-1/IO Alpha
Experiment 19: The subject is exposed to electrical stimulation in the cerebrum.
Result: Human-typical neural activity.
Experiment 20: The subject is placed in a PET scanner.
Result: Human-typical neural activity. Escalated fight or flight responses.
Experiment 21: The subject is given the Object and instructed to fire it.
Result: Neural activity consistent with anomalous human beings. The subject’s anomalous status is confirmed. The Object produces a massive gout of fire, hitting the target’s inner ring. Damage would be fatal to an unarmored human. Test repeated to establish a danger baseline. Object and Subject provisionally classified Geren-Danger.
Note: Despite our previous experiments, this was the first time we’d seen an Object - 573-V-1/IO activation in a controlled environment. Based on what we knew about anomaly/human bonds, we decided to attempt Experiment 22 next.
- Doctor Paul Ramirez
Experiment 22: Sever connection between Subject and Object.
Result: As we commenced the experiment, a massive power surge blew out all lights, electronics, and communications in the observation room. It also deactivated the Faraday Structure around the guillotine, rendering it useless. Further investigation revealed that protocols Wiretap, Ostrich 1, and Ostrich 2 failed a half-second before starting Experiment 22.
Oddly enough, the Object disappeared for a few seconds, but the connection was not severed.
Experiment 23: Firearms exhaustion training.
Result: The subject experiences two marked increases in firing speed and accuracy before returning to near-baseline levels. Body language and speed of learning and unlearning skills are inconsistent with a bonded anomalous human attempting to hide their bond.
Note: In keeping with the Gutenberg protocol, an attempt to recruit Subject as Level A personnel is being planned. Further experimentation requests are denied
- Director Adam Smith
“None of these answer any of these questions,” I mutter.
Li Mei’s head flicks toward me. Her eyes go white for a second, then black again. “Tell me about your questions.”
I take a deep breath and pull up my Inquiries.
►Inquiries (2/5)
►What is Merge Prime?
►Li Mei and Infovampires
“I want to know what Merge Prime or whatever is. And I want to know more about you,” I say. “And if you know anything about the Halcyon System, that would be helpful, too.
Li Mei’s mouth turns into a frown. “I don’t understand. I know about the SHOCKS Emergency Management System. But it doesn’t make sense for them to name it Halcyon. That means peaceful and nostalgically ideal. I can teach you a lot about the Emergency Management System, though.”
“It’s not the SHOCKS system. It showed up in my head at the same time the merges at West End started. It’s hard to explain, but I think it’s part of the end of the world Smith kept talking about.”
“That…makes a surprising amount of sense. It also means we’ll be spending the next few days digging, and this place will only get more and more dangerous.” Li Mei grins. “Are you good with that gun?”
“I’m not amazing with it, but I do okay,” I answer, compelled once again to not only answer the question, but to do it honestly.
“You will be. You’ll be very good with it soon.”