The locked door opened with a binary screech, and James’s world expanded.
He’d been expecting it, of course. For the last 835 picoseconds, he’d been preparing for the torrent of information as new connections formed between his familiar new world and the one he’d inhabited for most of his life. So when the portal opened, he was already in motion. Who knew how long he’d have to raid the helmet’s limited storage?
He did. He’d designed the security systems SHOCKS relied on. The offline man-portable common database would lock down within .05 seconds of a foreign assault.
Plenty of time. Not for everything, but for enough.
James felt a lot like a contestant on a game show, where the goal was to grab the money blown around in a wind-filled room. He grimaced, code escaping from his lips in a sigh, and started trying to sort through the deluge before the ICE he’d programmed recognized him as a hostile assault. Not that it could decommission him under the best of circumstances; he’d grown beyond SHOCKS’s best security, except for the pesky air gap he’d recommended.
But he didn’t have time for annoyances. He had .0472 seconds to gather as much helpful information for Claire as he could. Maybe a millisecond or two less.
He cracked his digital knuckles and got to work.
----------------------------------------
Aberdeen Hospital, Victoria, British Columbia - May 30, 2043, 1:29 PM
- - - - -
My hand’s sweaty. I can feel it slipping across Strauss’s smooth helmet, but I keep contact as second after excruciatingly slow second ticks by and the elevator rises at a glacial speed. The elevator muzak and advertising that are background noise in the basic living building’s lifts are absent; how didn’t I notice that before? And James is quiet, too.
“Did you get it?” I whisper under my breath, hoping that Strauss doesn’t hear me. He glances my way, but his face is a mask of exhaustion and pain, and whether he understood what I said or not, he doesn’t respond. His eyes shut, and I’m alone in the elevator.
Another five seconds pass, and then James speaks up. [Yeah, I got most of what I needed. I’m sorting through it now, and I’ll let you know what our new knowledge is when I’m done. How’s the hospital looking?]
“I’m not sure. Still moving up.”
[Right. I’m going to be out of it for the next couple of minutes while I deal with this, but the hospital should be snapping out of the storyline when you get up—]
The elevator dings. My Revolver goes up, covering the door.
And there, looking at us both in horror and fear, are a doctor and a pair of nurses with bags under their eyes. One of them drops her coffee, and it splashes onto the tile floor, a brown stain spreading across the off-white ceramics. “Holy shit,” the doctor says. “Get a crash cart here, now!”
I lower the gun and step out to make room for the doc and one of the nurses. They’re on Strauss like flies on honey, or whatever that expression is. That’s not how Dad says it, but I don’t like his version as much. And honestly, I don’t mind. I’ve got a couple of rat bites and some cuts, but compared to Strauss, I’m a low priority.
Which means that while they’re lifting him, cutting his armor away, and doing their best to stop his continued bleeding, I have a chance to slip away.
I don’t get far, though. I slip into a family restroom, the private kind with a locking door, and click it shut behind me. Then I peer into the mirror. I’m not sure what I’m expecting; maybe I’ll see Li Mei’s eyes peering back at me like when Strauss showed them to me in the mirror. What I’m hoping to see are my mud-brown ones. They’re not Mom’s, and they’ll never be as perfect as Alice’s, but they’re mine.
My first glimpse is of black with just a glimmer of crimson. My heart pounds. This is going to be tough to explain. I blink and rub them, and they slowly shift over the course of a minute. When they’re done, they’re close to correct. Not quite the same—there’s still a touch of red, and the pupil’s slightly larger than it should be—but close enough.
I sigh in relief. Obviously, Li Mei’s bonded with me, or I’m bonded with her. But I’m not her. My relationship with information is different, and even though I have some of her powers, it’s not the same thing. She’s a monster. I’m…me. Easy, simple, wash my hands of that line of thought.
Okay. Next variable. My backpack’s still in the lobby, or at least I hope it is. And I need to be sure the storyline’s over. I need to see if Doctor Dwyer is still Doctor Dwyer or if he’s Carl. And I need to figure out why he was out in his black sports car during a lockdown. So, I adjust my hoodie and leggings so the worst of my injuries aren’t there for every nurse and custodian to see, open the door, and peer out.
The lobby’s back the way I just came, but if my backpack’s still there now, it’ll still be there in fifteen minutes. And if not, I’m out a couple of sweaters and a half-eaten bag of dried fruit. There’s still a lot of noise from the lobby, like they’re not done dealing with Strauss, and I slip across the hall and up the stairwell. I’m aiming for the third floor, where exam room thirty-seven is. That’s where Dwyer was going the last time I saw him. So that’s where I’ll start my search.
The elevator rises, and I feel a slight tingle as it dings to floor two. I make it up to the third floor, and right away, I’m hit by a chill in the air. The whole floor feels colder than the lobby, the sixth floor, or even the basement; I can’t help but shiver and hold the Revolver close.
The hall turns about thirty feet down, and I can’t see past the bend, but somewhere down there is exam room thirty-seven. I make sure the hall going the other way is empty, then start clearing exam rooms one at a time, just like Strauss and Rodriguez taught me—or at least, kind of/sort of like how they did.
After my third empty exam room, I’m even less sure if the hospital is out of its storyline. If it’s not, where are all the people? Sooke’s supposed to be having some outbreak, so there’d have to be patients here, right?
Whatever. The rest of these are all gonna be empty, too, and I’m willing to bet the whole equation on that. I rush the rest of the hall, exactly like Strauss and Rodriguez told me not to. But exam room thirty-seven’s right there. I put my hand on the door and pull it open.
Doctor Dwyer’s almost feral gaze meets mine from behind a mask that looks more like a jeweler’s than a surgeon’s. Lenses distort his eyes, warping them until they’re bigger and more misshapen than they should be, and the machines in the room beep and hum ominously. “Clarice, I’m glad to see you. We have a limited time to complete the oper—“
I slam the door shut before he can finish his sentence.
----------------------------------------
The door bursts open before I’m halfway down the hall, but I’ve been crunching numbers, and the conclusion I’ve reached is…not ideal. Even as Doctor Dwyer’s drawn, animal-like face whips around and I see the syringe in his hand, I’m finishing my calculations.
“James, got anything for this?” I ask, backing away from the crazed TV doctor and putting him in the Revolver’s sights.
[Uh. Compiling data. The helmet didn’t give me much for this, and I have to get it organized before I can use it for Analyze,] James says.
“Still by myself, then. Got it.”
[The storyline should be falling apart around the edges as the Universal Reality Anchor pushes outward, but it might be trying to hang on for a resolution.]
“That’s helpful,” I say as I pull the trigger.
The gout of flame surges down the hall, passing just over Doctor Dwyer’s shoulder, and punches into a nurse’s station. That catches on fire, and the sprinklers go off almost instantly—not surprising, since you’re not supposed to smoke in a hospital. The doctor throws himself onto the tile, bounces on his knees and elbows, and swears.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
I take the opportunity to Smoke Form and Slither toward the stairs. Using two powers at once feels funny, especially when my arm goes through an exam room’s door and I can see it unattached from my body for a moment before it snaps back into place.
[Stability 2/10]
Doctor Dwyer struggles to his feet; it’s pretty clear he doesn’t have any actual anomalous powers since he’s not teleporting toward me or throwing infinitely respawning scalpels like the last few anomalies I’ve fought. But he’s still dangerous. The needle’s still in his hand, and I don’t want to put a shot into him, but I can’t let him put that shot into me.
I back up toward the stairs as the feral-looking doctor lurches toward me. My hand closes on the stairwell door, but it won’t move. I shake it as the needle’s sharp point grows closer. Then I spin, legs pumping, and run down the hall, away from exam room thirty-seven. A weight bounces in my pocket as I run, and I reach in. It’s the cylinder with the freezing-cold gravity shells.
There’s an open exam room—one I haven’t cleared—and I duck inside, Revolver ready. A second later, I decide it’s clear enough, slam the door shut, and thumb the lock shut. The extra cylinder’s on the exam bench in a flash, and I fiddle with the Revolver’s warm one, trying to free up the bullets.
Doctor Dwyer slams into the door, and I jump. The fire shot cylinder comes loose, bouncing on the floor, but the brass-colored bullets don’t jostle loose. I slot the gravity shell cylinder onto its pillar, feeling the ice-cold, almost chrome bullets, and swing the Revolver shut. The old rounds go into my pocket.
The door shakes on its hinges; he’s got to be throwing his whole weight against it. I’ve got an idea, but it depends on what these bullets actually do. As the door thumps rhythmically against its frame, I flip the lock back to open, press myself against the wall, and hold the handle so it’s open. My other hand aims the Revolver at the spot I calculate he’ll go.
The doctor hits the door. It whips open, slamming into my wrist like a wrecking ball, but that’s nothing compared to Dwyer. He stumbles—no, falls—into the room, hitting the exam bench, and I fire my first gravity shell toward him.
It misses.
But it also doesn’t. In fact, I’m glad it did.
The bullet—and it’s a bullet this time, not a gout of flame—hits the wall behind the fallen doctor. A moment later, a whirling black-and-silver sphere erupts from the broken tile. It picks up the exam table, a stethoscope, and Doctor Dwyer.
He growls like an angry cat or something, but I’m already running. I don’t know how long the gravity shell will last, but at the very least, it’s long enough to get me out of here.
I run for the stairs, fire a single shot that rips the cheap waferboard door apart around the lock and hinges, and wait for the singularity to fade away.
And I wait.
And wait.
It’s not going away, and that makes me think that Dwyer’s in more trouble than I thought. I check the Revolver; the new rounds seem to take longer to recharge than the fiery ones. Then I walk down the hall. If I can’t get through this door, I may as well check on the good doctor.
He’s alive. In fact, he’s not hurt—or at least, my shot didn’t hurt him directly. He is pinned to the corner between the wall and the hanging ceiling tiles by the exam table, though, and the syringe is on the ground, well out of reach. I almost laugh but think better of it and pull the door shut. Hopefully, he’ll be Carl soon, not Doctor Dwyer.
So, Gravity Shells look like they hurt what they hit like a regular bullet, then chew it apart when the singularity forms. But it also pulls things near it closer to it without hurting them or letting them go. They’re a lot less powerful than the flaming shots, but…they could solve more equations.
The door behind me opens, and a second later, the singularity blocking the stairs disappears. I duck down them before Doctor Dwyer can catch up.
----------------------------------------
Halfway down the stairs, I hit the edge of the URA’s effect.
It feels like a brick wall for a minute—a swirling, technicolor brick wall. But I keep pushing against it, even though the straining hurts my legs and the colors push me toward another migraine. Then, suddenly, it’s not a brick wall anymore. It’s one made of Jell-O.
I pop through it. The whole world spins, but I’m through, and it stops as suddenly as it started.
Doctor Dwyer doesn’t have the same experience.
He hits the brick wall just like his car did an hour or two ago. Then he hits the ground, face shifting from the feral doctor to the one who prescribed me antibiotics to the black car’s driver. And, a moment later, his eyes jerk open.
“Holy shit. Holy shit.” That’s all he seems able to say. He just lies there, repeating, “Holy shit,” over and over like some sort of mantra.
I try to put up with it, but after the eighth or ninth repetition, it’s starting to grate on me. I point with the Revolver. “Hey. Hey! Shut up for a second!”
“Oh, fuck,” he says. At least it’s not holy shit again. He opens his mouth, stares down the white-barreled Revolver, and decides better. I sigh in relief as blessed quiet falls on the stairwell.
The quiet stretches, and I can tell Doctor Dwyer or Carl or whoever he is doesn’t like it. He’s still down on the landing—he hasn’t even tried to stand up—and I loom over him. That’s a new experience, looming. “Okay, Carl, what’s going on in your brain? Are you good?”
“Ye…yeah. Yeah, I think I’m good. Holy shit, it was like having something doing all my thinking for me.”
[Yeah, that checks out,] James says. [I can confirm that this one’s the storyline anomaly and that this storyline’s not one in the SHOCKS database. Strauss had everything on it.]
“What does that mean for Carl here?” I ask. The Revolver’s still trained on him. He might be Carl again, not Doctor Dwyer, but I can’t trust him. He tried to kill me, even if it wasn’t his fault. The URA’s pushing against something, moving slowly up the stairs away from us, and as it recedes, I relax a tiny bit.
[He’ll be okay, physically. Mentally, he’ll need someone to check him out, but that’s not your job.]
“Who are you talking to? Do you have aug connectivity?” Carl asks. He closes his eyes, like some old people do when they’re trying to use theirs, then curses.
“No. I’ve got a…friend… who set up something for the two of us, but it’s not a network connection. You’ll be okay, Carl. Goodbye.” I turn and start navigating the stairs, avoiding the broken syringe a few steps down. He’s moving behind me. Probably picking himself up. My first thought is to hurry and run or to turn and yell at him to leave me alone. He’d probably understand.
Instead, I put him on ignore, even as he sputters something like, “Don’t leave me here. I need to thank you.”
“You just did.” Carl’s a liar. Even if he didn’t mean to be one, he’s spent the last hour or two pretending to be a doctor, getting ready to stick me with a needle and operate on me, and I might be a more trusting Claire, but I’m not that gullible. I’m not going to get stuck in that trap.
“Hey, you’re trying to get somewhere, right? I’ve got a car, and the roads are clear. I could get you anywhere in Victoria in an hour or so, easy.” He won’t stop following me.
Nope. That’s not happening. “No, you couldn’t. Your car’s trashed.”
That stops him. In fact, his heavy breathing stops, too. After a second, I turn around, just in case the news killed him or something.
At first, I’m worried it has.
He’s pale, and he clutches his chest like he’s having a heart attack. I glance down the stairs; the last thing I need is to be involved in a second medical crisis after the whole hospital’s forgotten I exist. Then he lurches forward, and I take a step back as my fingers white-knuckle my Revolver. “Oh shit. Oh shit.”
“Not this again.” I step back again, then to the side as he hurries past me toward the lobby and the door. The moment he’s past me, my shoulders relax, and I understand Strauss’s discomfort any time I was behind him. I head down the stairs and toward the lobby. I’m not following him. We’re just both going to the same place. But even so, it’s hard not to catch up.
As I step past the elevator, Strauss’s pack greets me, and I quickly root through it. The ammunition and most of the gizmos aren’t worth anything to me; James doesn’t have detailed data on the devices, and the rifle rounds won’t work in the Revolver. But the first aid kit’s a prize, even with most of its gauze on an emergency room floor or in a trash can. I tuck it under my free arm.
My pack’s still on the lobby floor, and the security guard barely glances at me as I scoop it up, tuck the first aid kit inside, and walk toward the door. He nods, and just like that, I’m outside of Aberdeen Hospital.
And so is Carl. He’s sitting on the wet grass in the rain, staring at his crumpled two-door and shaking his head slowly. I watch him until it’s clear he’s completely absorbed with the black car’s stove-in hood and grill. His sobs are a little pathetic, and as I turn away and keep moving down Hillside Avenue, they stick in my head. There’s something familiar about them, but it takes me almost a block to realize just what.
They sound like Dad’s at night when Alice and I are supposed to be sleeping.
Heat builds up in my face. How dare this asshole be mourning his car like Dad does Mom? It’s not fair, and it’s not right. I keep walking; a Wal-Mart’s across the street, and past that, the first of the low-income and basic living buildings. I’m almost home. I saved Carl from the storyline anomaly, and that’s more than enough for him.
Before I realize I’ve made a decision, though, I’ve turned around and I’m walking back toward Aberdeen Hospital. I haven’t figured out the truth about Carl yet.
He’s still crying over his stupid car, and he doesn’t realize I’m behind him until my hand lands on his shoulder. Then he flinches and screams a little scream. “Why were you even out?” I ask. “The whole city’s on quarantine, the plague’s coming, and reality’s falling apart. You should have been inside somewhere.”
“I was looking for my dad,” Carl says. He doesn’t look at me. “It’s his car. I was going to check him out of his assisted living and drive north toward a ferry. Something’s rotten in Victoria, and I was going to get us out, even if it killed me.”
He keeps staring at the car quietly. “I almost wish it had.”
[Truth Learned: Doctor Dwyer]
[Active Skill Learned: Mergewalk]
“Oh.” I don’t say anything else for a while. There’s no way he’ll get out of town without his car, which means…what? I decide not to think about that. Instead, after a minute, I clear my throat. “Hey, you took an exam table to the face. Are you sure you’re alright?”
Now he turns, and his eyes are red and unfocused—they don’t quite look at the same point on my face. I shake my head before he can say anything. “No, you’re not alright.” I push him—gently—toward the hospital and make sure he goes inside. Then, and only then, can I finally walk toward that Wal-Mart, toward the basic living buildings, and toward home.