The scariest part about being five and watching your life fall apart is the police car.
When the dust settled on our apartment, and the air stopped smelling like roses and machine oil, the ambulances and cops descended on us. They pulled me away from Mom and put me in the back of a cop car with Alice and Dad. He almost broke the window trying to get to Mom as they loaded her into an ambulance.
They said we’d see her at the hospital, but they lied about that.
We never got to the hospital. Instead, we went to the boogeymen’s base, got an hour or two of therapy and a handful of pills, and went home.
Mom didn’t make it to the hospital, either.
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Victoria, British Columbia - May 30, 2043, 1:42 PM
- - - - -
I’ve only been this glad to leave somewhere twice.
The first time was when we left the SHOCKS therapy base. That time, I thought I’d get to see Mom soon. My excitement lasted until we got home, when I realized Alice and Dad thought she’d died at the hospital. I refused to believe them. They weren’t telling the truth, and I still don’t understand why they believe what they do. They must not want to deal with reality.
I get it. Reality is starting to suck—a lot.
The second time was last night, when I put the SHOCKS headquarters in my rearview mirror. Today’s starting to feel like a good day to leave places, too.
James, for his part, has been quiet. That’s fine. He’s said he’s sorting information, and even if he’s incredibly slow, I’m not in any rush. Besides, it’s a long way to the road he’s marked out for my turn north, and every step feels more and more comfortable. More and more like home.
The biggest clue I’m out of hoity-toity central Victoria is the towering, thirty or forty-floor basic living buildings. They’re sore thumbs compared to the clean, colored concrete, brickwork, and marble I left behind downtown. All sharp angles and blocky shapes, they’d look like prisons if it weren’t for the windows. As it stands, they’re only a little less gloomy, and there’s a definite smoky stink in the air that makes me want to hurry.
Landsdowne Middle School’s a bit past the Wal-Mart. It’s part of the école intermédiaire—middle school system, because even over here, three and a half thousand kilometers away from Ottowa, Canada’s all about French in weird places—and it’s where I went for seventh and eighth grades. I took two semesters of French, but I don’t remember anything except for some swear words Dad doesn’t want me to say and how to ask to go to the bathroom. It’s not as prison-like as the buildings around it. Instead, it’s just old.
Old, but also occupied.
Someone—or something—keeps moving along the stacked square windows, shadowing me as I walk by the line of trees. I’m too far away to tell if they’re human, or if they’re a kid or adult, but that’s okay. As long as they leave me alone, I don’t care if whoever it is takes over my old school.
The figure waves at me, signaling me to come inside. I’m not stupid, though. Whatever the hell they’re planning, I want no part in getting too close to the building. With my luck, it’ll be the ‘High School Story’ anomaly, and I’ll have to deal with that. I keep moving, ignoring their increasingly frantic gesturing.
[Done. All done.] James sounds exhausted. [I have Level 5 clearance for several dozen known anomalies across Victoria. If you want, I can start running Analysis on them and build battle strategies for you.]
“Uh, not right now,” I say, pointing at my old middle school as I keep walking. “There’s someone inside, and I’m not sure I trust them.”
[You don’t trust anyone.]
“Very funny. I want you to keep track of, uh, anything sneaking up on us. Can you listen through my aural aug?”
[Yeah, I can do that. If they’re human, though, it might be worth seeing what they want.]
“No.” I keep walking, trying to leave the school behind. But as I step past the row of trees and the parking lot, I encounter a problem.
Its silver, multicolored shine leaves no doubt what’s going on, but this thinning’s much, much bigger than the one I saw at West End High. It covers the whole block—maybe farther—and stretches high into the sky.
I take one look at it and wince. When it merges—and it’s going to merge—it’ll be the whole city’s problem. And worse, based on what I can see, Ten Mile Point’s either inside it or on the other side.
“Do you have something for this?” I ask James. I’ve been watching the thinning waver and twist for almost a minute, and I could be wrong—hopefully I’m wrong—but it looks angrier than it did just a moment ago. More reds and blacks, and less blues and yellows. Not that colors mean much, of course, but blue and yellow feel more comforting than red and black.
[No. Two possibilities. One is that I know what it is. If that’s the case, nothing I can tell you will help. And two is that I don’t know what it is, and my detailed advice isn’t going to cut it. I do have general advice, though.]
“What’s that?” I already know the answer.
But before he can answer, I blink.
And it does nothing. It’s still a thinning, not a merge. I release a breath—I knew I was holding it, but it’s still a relief.
[You know what it is. I was going to say leave, but that’s less and less of an option.] James sounds sarcastic. [See if you can push into it.]
“What?”
[You spent time merged with another reality earlier, so maybe you can merge with this one,] James says. [That skill, Mergewalker, should let you do it.]
I nod, gritting my teeth as my pulse pounds in my chest. The reality—har har—is that I don’t want to do this, but the merge is huge, it’s in my way, and it’s probably covering Ten Mile Point. So, if I’m going to get to Dad and Alice or further up the coast toward the Duncan arcologies, I need to go in.
I push on the merge wall. Nothing happens until I use Mergewalk. Then the bubble parts like it’s been cut by a knife, and I’m pulled through into another reality.
Mergewalking isn’t anything like walking. It’s more like falling. Fast. Toward a spike-filled world lit by lightning and the reddish fungus that grows on the sharp stone pillars. That fungus is growing quickly, too; it’s already climbing up the towers all around me even before I slam into a patch. It explodes into spores that blot out my vision and fill my lungs.
Completely.
Panic fills my whole mind even before my breathing stops. The rose smell’s not quite right—almost rotten, and without the machine oil stench I’d expected—but it’s enough to make me hyperventilate if I had any space in my lungs at all. But I don’t.
There’s no time for equations. There’s no time for James. I can’t breathe and I’m stuck in a hell reality and I can’t think about the people in the buildings all around me. All I can do—all I can do—is freak out.
Freak out and Mergewalk back out.
The wet grass I collapse into should be comforting. The rain should be cooling. But it all feels agonizing. My lungs still aren’t working. No, they are. They’re not breathing, though!
I try to cough. Nothing comes out, but things move in my throat. It feels like my chest’s on fire, tears won’t stop flowing down my cheeks, and James won’t stop talking in my ear. I ignore him. There’s no way I can do anything he’s telling me to do. All I can do is curl up on the grass and cough.
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The first cough hits like a truck. I’m surprised my ribs aren’t broken, but a glob of spores and fungus erupts from my mouth onto the grass. My lungs are on fire, but I cough again. This one clears a path for air into my lungs, and I breathe for the first time in…I didn’t count how long. Fifteen seconds? Three minutes? A lifetime? My head spins, but the air still feels good.
[Skill Learned: Toxin Resistance 1]
Over the next minute, I cough the rest of the fungus out. It’s dissolving, and I breathe a sigh of relief. Is it the carbon dioxide or the oxygen? It doesn’t matter. The spores can’t live here, and I’m safe. Maybe the people inside the tinning are safe, too, as long as they stay inside. Or maybe they’re used to it. They live there, after all. But I can’t go back in there. The smell of gross, rotten roses won’t leave my nose.
[Okay, that’s a new reality. I’m putting together a preliminary report on the anomalous fungi we found inside of…R1847 should be open. Your vital signs are stabilizing, and your breathing’s settling down, so—]
“I can’t go back in there,” I say.
[I heard you the first time,] James says. I flush red. Did I say all that out loud? [That doesn’t leave you with many options, but your first priority should be dealing with your visitor.]
I roll over, pull the Revolver, and face…a person.
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The woman’s as old as Dad. Maybe a little older. She goes cross-eyed on the Revolver’s barrel, which is about a foot from her face. At this range, I can’t miss. Her hands go up over her curly black hair, and she blinks once, then clears her throat. Her French accent’s just as heavy as always. “What are you going to do with that?” she asks severely.
I recognize her, of course, and I know she recognizes me, too. As I sheepishly lower my gaze, she wrinkles her nose and glances at the mostly-dissolved pile of spores. “Shouldn’t you be at home, Miss Pendleton?”
“That’s where I’m trying to go,” I say, but Mrs. Nazaire never listened to me to begin with, and now that my gun’s not in my old assistant principal’s face, she’s obviously not listening again. I step back, getting a little distance from her, because something’s not right. Something’s very, very not right. She shouldn’t be here. She should be at home.
She doesn’t seem to mind my apprehension. Instead, she holds out a hand, like I’m a 6th grader again. “Come on. Let’s go inside.”
I take another good look at her dark brown eyes—so dark they’re almost black—but there’s nothing obviously wrong there except for fear. And it’s not that she’s afraid of me, so the wrong feeling I’m having isn’t about her. “James, what do you think?”
[I’m not seeing any signs of memetic tampering. As far as I can tell, she’s a baseline human. There’s no connection to the Halcyon System—at least not one that I can access. That being said, I’m currently locked out of the parts of the system beyond my job, and I have no interest in accessing them. The code doesn’t make sense.]
“Okay.” I nod at Mrs. Nazaire. “Lead the way.”
“Good choice.”
The rain’s still coming down, the same incessant drizzle that sometimes covers Victoria for days, and we hurry toward Landsdowne Middle School’s doors. I follow her in, and to my surprise, she leads me past the posters and the cafeteria, straight to the emergency shelter. I stop her at the door before she can open it. “I can’t go in there. It won’t let me.”
She stiffens and reaches for her own hip, and I realize I’m not the only one packing a gun. Hers is a handgun that even my inexperienced eye thinks looks cheap. I hold up my own hands, scowling at her. “I’m not going to explain it, but I don’t want to hurt you, so don’t pull that on me.”
Her eyes waver, glancing down at her gun, and I can almost hear the gears grinding away in her head, but she must’ve decided I’m okay because, after a second, she keeps opening the shelter.
This time, I can feel the static as the door opens; it’s obvious I can’t get inside. I don’t even try. When she disappears inside, I sit down against the lockers and wait.
I don’t have to wait long before a handful of other teachers exit; there’s a couple of mine and one of Alice’s, of course. Her lies ingratiated her to everyone, and I’m benefiting from them for the first time. They look at me, some anxiously and some with signs of relief on their faces.
Mrs. Nazaire comes out last, with a map of the school. “Miss Pendleton, what are you doing here? Tell us the truth.”
The truth. She’s throwing my own words at me. How dare she accuse me of lies? I’m not telling her anything, I decide, and I clam up. She can figure out what’s going on outside her precious school herself. “Why don’t you start? Why are you here?”
Her scowl matches mine for a moment before her principal face takes over. That’s a crack in her armor. “We’ve been here since the twenty-third. The school’s safe, but we took our families to the shelter in case something went wrong. That bubble’s been forming since the twenty-fifth, and now that it’s done whatever it did before you tried to get inside it, I’m glad we did. Let’s get you some food.”
It’s a blatant manipulation—and not that great an offer, if Landesdowne’s cafeteria food’s as bad as I remember. But even so, it’s better than more dried prunes. So, I pull off the rain jacket, tuck it into my backpack, and slowly stand up. All four of the teachers are armed, too, with hunting rifles and handguns, so I’m not interested in moving quickly.
But food is food, so I don’t exactly lolligag, either.
----------------------------------------
Lunch is pizza sticks.
So that’s good.
I dig into the scalding-hot tomato sauce and cheese, blowing on it to cool it down. They gave me a triple-helping and two milks—the one nice thing about middle school is that people knew I needed the food, and they didn’t question when I doubled or even tripled up. But I didn’t expect Mrs. Nazaire to remember that about me.
The pizza sticks are a little stale, and when I’m done with them and the apple sauce, I wander over to the month’s lunch menu. I nod knowingly; they were supposed to be the 27th’s meal. Then I get back in ‘line’ for a fourth helping.
No one else is gonna eat it, and that’s the truth.
A couple of other kids are eating on the far side of the cafeteria. So are their parents. And in between us, Mrs. Nazaire and the other teachers look like they’re having a little chat. They keep shooting glances my way, but I can’t make out what they’re saying until I tune up the gain on my aural aug. Old people are never ready for that, which is crazy—it’s not like every student doesn’t have augs at least as good as mine. Mostly better.
“Okay, Sharon, but we’ve never needed the shelter this long. Fires and earthquakes don’t last for a week, and that bubble’s not even mentioned in the messages. All they say is—“
“I know,” Mrs Nazaire says, “’Wait indoors, ignore strange messages, do not interact with unknown people or objects.’ And we have enough food for a couple of weeks here, the school’s good shelter, and the safe rooms are earthquake-proof to magnitude eight. We just have to ride things out.”
“So, do you think she can help us with the other problem?” one of Alice’s teachers asks. She gestures my way pointedly.
Mrs. Nazaire rolls her eyes. “Even if I thought she could, I wouldn’t ask her. She’s fourteen, Erik. She’s not old enough to take that kind of risk.”
I almost say I’m fifteen now, but my aural aug’s heating up, so I shove what’s left of the fourth pizza stick into my mouth and chew quickly, swallowing the hot pizza sauce and spicy-ish pepperoni before I’m really ready. I chase it with a carton of milk, stand, and bring my tray to the dirty dish conveyor. Then I linger, watching them talk and holding back a yawn. “What do you think?”
[I think these people are in trouble,] James says. [I’m trying to get a good reading on unreality levels here, but they keep fluctuating. There’s something, maybe a merge, or maybe another potential merge. Either way, it’s creating wildly inconsistent measurements, and that’s bad for everyone here, especially outside of the shelter.]
“So, what? We turn on the URA and call it good?” I ask, blinking back that tired feeling behind my eyes.
[No, it’s already on. That’s the problem. I don’t think it has to do with the merge outside, but it’s definitely going to be a problem for these people.]
I nod, abandon my tray, and walk toward the knot of middle school teachers. They’re the toughest people I know; Sora and I put them through hell in eighth grade, and we weren’t even the top twenty students for office trips. So if they have a problem they can’t solve, they’ll need help. And I need a way through the merge blocking my path.
I just have to decide how much I can trust them.
As I get closer, three of them disengage suddenly, shooting looks my way, and I realize that I probably can’t. They’re mostly Alice’s former teachers; I dodged the worst of the overlap with my sister, who was already pretending to be perfect in sixth grade. The two that are left are Mrs. Nazaire and Mr. Williams, my old social studies teacher.
Social studies is almost as untrustworthy as English. There are rules, but they change all the time.
“Okay,” I start. “What’s your problem? You keep looking at me, and now you’re all quiet. You want something. I do, too. Spill it.”
Mrs. Nazaire blinks again, looking over her gigantic nose. It’s a power move, but I’m not some scared seventh-grader anymore. I meet her eyes, and eventually, she looks away. “Fine. Tell her, Erik.”
Mr. Williams coughs once. That’s a habit of his. He’s constantly coughing to clear his throat, especially before he starts telling made-up history stories like we can’t search the truth instantly. I take a deep breath and tap my ear pointedly. “In the past week, I’ve been attacked by aliens from another reality, negotiated with supercomputers about whether a dead kid was alive—“
[Hey, I appreciate it.]
“—and I’ve got some boy living in my head, which makes daily life pretty awkward. So, whatever you’re about to say to cover up the truth, don’t. Just tell me.” I cross my arms over my chest and sit at the cafeteria bench, glaring at him. But inside, I’m already biting my tongue and kicking myself.
They don’t need to know all that. They just need to tell me what I want to know.
The social studies teacher shakes his head. “It’s just kind of hard to believe all this. But the short version is that there’s something in the music room, and it’s growing.”
I yawn. I’m not bored—really, I’m not. And all this does sound important. But I also haven’t slept well since SHOCKS drugged me and left me in my cell—last night’s attempt to sleep in a play structure doesn’t count.
Mrs. Nazaire raises an eyebrow. She stares at my face for an uncomfortably long time until I’m sure she’s looking into my mind. Then she holds up her hand. “Erik, we’ve been holding out for a while now. We’ll deal with this tomorrow.”
When I try to protest, all that comes out is another yawn, and my old principal points down the hall. “Room 103. We’ll have someone bring you up a cot.” Her tone’s kind and crisp, but firm. And, just like Dad’s equally firm but much less crisp order to go to bed, I find myself listening instinctively.