“You know, I understand nineteen feet, three inches but I really just expected it would look bigger, you know. Really underwhelming.” Bedelia arched her back, hands on her butt, looking to the top of a set of rectangular standing stones.

“I can open a door here.” Cybil ran her hand across the surface of the center pillar.

Scrub oaks and pine trees surrounded the monument. Their horses stood tied off to a crooked tree pushed up through the pavement of the old road just off to the North.

“Camping. Whee.” Bedelia dragged her ruck a few meters away from the stones and popped it out into a small tent. “Look, I’m not just going to sit here flicking my bean for a couple days while you just sit there and be all… glowy. So you better be ready to roll around on this hay or something. Momma gotta charge them batteries.” She flexed her arms, the solenoids in the adaptive armor whined.

“It won’t be that bad.” Cybil backed away from the stone and took off her backpack. “I like the quiet.”

“I like the quiet.” A high-pitched mocking hand puppet repeated her words from the flap of Bedelia’s tent. The blonde popped her head out. “You’re not the one that has to wear a fucking Faraday cage on your head out here to keep the mechanical sons-of-fuckers out of your goddamn brain.”

“Careful. You are dangerously close to understanding my whole life.”

“Yeah. Well.” She disappeared back inside the tent. There was a soft pfwhoosh as the capsule of her air mattress expanded. “Shut up.”

Twilight lingered in the woods long after the sun disappeared behind the trees. Cybil sat, cross-legged, facing the South side of the central granite block, several kilograms of crystalline orange flame on her lap. A small slot, a viewing aperture, was carved diagonally all the way through the middle of the stone. On the other side, the North Star burned against the fading sky.

Flashes of light rolled deep inside the mineral’s translucent cells. Cybil was lost to the outside world. Charging her own battery.

Bedelia walked around the stones. Tried to translate the languages on them using the English inscription as a guide. Without a wireless connection her efforts did not last long. After kicking sticks and leaves from the base, she posted up against one of the cornerstones. Orihalcum was creepy in normal light, with all the little flashes and twitches. Infrared and ultraviolet were a million times worse. She could see its mind, she could see it looking at her.

The distant sound of a motorcycle engine broke the women out of their fire trance. There wasn’t a headlight, but Bedelia could see the white hot engine flashing between the trees, the glowing trail dispersing behind it and, as it got closer, the enormous man folded up to fit on the frame. She trotted out to the road to keep the horses calm.

“Howdy, stranger. Didn’t expect you.”

“Hey, Bee. Where’s mom?”

“Liberation Experiment, Subject One Alpha.”

Charles felt his dream slipping away. Daylight from the window made the blood vessels in his eyelids visible. The Damn Cat had pulled open the shades again.

“Consciousness has successfully initialized.”

His shoulder and several vertebrae cracked when he stretched against the headboard.

“Neural chain nominal.That was only ligaments.”

Let the water run. One. Two. Three. Charles wiped a particularly large sleepy-cat out of the corner of his right eye while he waited on the shower to warm up.

“Make a note to make sure we are de-lubing the lacrimal contact points in the future.”

His face was a little scratchy but fuck it, stubble doesn’t matter on your day off. That guy at the coffee place probably likes it, anyway. I would murder for a fucking cinnamon roll right now.

“Got a little dopamine spike, there. I think our boy is making plans for the day.”

The inside of the elevator doors was a mirror. Charles fidgeted with his collar. Buttoned and unbuttoned the top of his shirt. Yeah. Leave just a little bit showing. Gotta be cool.

“Folks, we have left the building.” Applause erupted in the observation room. “Alright. Okay. Let’s see where we’re going.”

In other places people didn’t serve coffee anymore. Here though, here we still have actual human hands to touch when they give us the cup. That’s the kind of luxury that life in the Principality is about. Not the shiny buildings, not the clean air. We kept our humanity, that’s why we’re here. To just be humans, pure and simple.

“Starbucks! Kudos to our navigation engineers. No pathfinding errors at all.”

They didn’t have any cinnamon rolls. But he was there. Just a drink, then. Something with foam, make it extra sweet. Behind the counter his eyes shined along with his smile.

“Caffeine isn’t going to throw anything off, right?” “No, we’ll be fine.”

Convenient little door on the side of the counter, makes it easy to get back there. Charles watched the worker put a tiny pitcher of milk up around the steam wand.

“Hey, Gabriel.” That was his name, it said so on the tag on his uniform.

“GODDAMMIT! Get a cleaner in there, NOW! Put it back in a fucking box! Jesus Christ.” Dr. Jenner barked orders over the stunned silence in the room. “And for the love of God make sure we have containment on the police channels.”

The last people out of the coffee shop dodged around the stranger. The shine of his metallic orange shirt hit the mirrored glass of the doors like a sunrise. Gabriel’s screams redoubled at the sound of the gunshot. “Let him go, Charles.”

“He’s got chrome in his eyes. That’s not right, that’s the window to the soul. Shouldn’t be here if he doesn’t have a soul.” He reached to again pull the handle for steam on the espresso machine.

Gabriel wrenched his hair free from Charles’ mostly severed hand. He scrambled backwards on the floor, screams drowned by the bark of the gun.

Signs blurred as they sped through the Old City, pale strips of faded neon. Every time they stopped it would be just long enough for another thin film of sweat to form on her arms. Sometimes she would let her forehead bump against the back of Tim’s helmet.

Boop.

Then the chills would roll up her arms and catch in her throat when he took off again. Like a lover blowing on her ear, the evaporating sweat and the rumble of the bike’s engine made her tingle. She tightened her arms around his chest. He knew what that meant. The tachometer jumped, he dropped a gear. She let go of her head, relaxed the tension that kept out everyone else’s thoughts. They blurred together like the signs. When they were moving fast enough it was a rush of white noise. And in the flowing river was one island of silence. The focus inside that helmet, the calm concentration on the road. She stood on that island and let the rapids wash around her.

She crumpled the front of his jacket, fingers curled into the mesh as they made a sharp swerve around a low hanging branch, darted between cars and shot up the ramp onto Interstate 85. The noise of the city’s thoughts faded behind them, replaced by a low hum of the people in cars.

Twelve miles to the border; the bike was screaming; about six minutes.

Scrunched down behind his helmet, her back arched to get that low, she hid her face from the wind. Her feet rocked on the pegs. She made sure her boot heels were tight against them then slipped one hand down and pushed herself a couple inches back on the seat so she could lean herself forward by just a critical few degrees. Her hand snaked back around and gripped his chest.

Two minutes.

Their wake sucked the paint off of a Principality cruiser that was outside the border for some reason. She felt Tim start to panic.

No.

She wrapped herself around his thoughts, smoothed the edges, pushed him back to the road. Just drive.

One minute.

She held him like a python, choked everything except the road ahead out of his brain until her own thoughts melted away. She clamped her thighs against his sides to keep them from shaking.

When the world faded back in the lights and siren of the cruiser crashed into her consciousness. Tim dipped the motorcycle off the exit ramp. She held out her left hand and pointed at the concrete barrier as they passed. The officer didn’t make the turn, the car clipped the barrier and spun off the ramp.

They whipped around a few blocks to make sure there weren’t any other cars on the prowl, then Tim pulled down into a loading dock for one of the retail aggregates.

For several seconds she leaned against his back, not quite confident enough in her legs to stand.

He would always ask why she never wanted to learn how to ride on her own.

The fire was gone. They’d been here for months, camping in the park of Acuto’s corporate campus, a permanent colony of idealistic barnacles. No more camera crews, no more chants, no more rallying, just faded signs propped on the barriers. Even the damn company had taken pity and started feeding them, providing blankets and tents. He never took them, it was clearly PR bullshit.

That was how he felt yesterday.

Through the night the fires had rekindled. He woke early to chants and screaming, and the metal barriers falling. Tablets were being passed around, someone had set up a projector on a building with three news feeds. It was day one all over. The bloody sins of the corporation were fresh and the people howled for justice.

A wall of corporate meat shields materialized in front of the building, all kitted up in their formal tacwear. The camp was all but gone, the rules of engagement with it. Angry hands whipped tent poles and boards with nails and pieces of the barriers back and forth overhead. Leftover coats from winter and messenger bags were now body armor. He tied one of his dirty tees tied around his face. He knew it wouldn’t work, but it bolstered his bravery against the coming gas.

“You know they only have non-lethals,” said the lady in black with bright glowing eyes. She grabbed his shoulder and slipped a pistol into his hand.

She moved through the crowd like the shadow of a great shark. He was a step ahead, a pilot fish. Their school grew as they weaved through the throng, eventually causing a tidal bulge in the line. More and more weapons passed out of her hands. She was huge, and her armor pulsed, pushing at its seams, almost glowing through the cracks. She was a goddess, this was a sign. It was the only way he could explain what he was seeing, what he was feeling. The mass of flesh churned around them. It felt as though he was physically pushing the entire horde with each step.

She was gone. His skin tightened in a wave of electric adrenaline. It was time to fight, it was time to make the world better. Things would change after this, the world would notice, the world would get the message. They would make sure it never had to happen again.

He was at the front, they pushed against the security officers’ shields. His pistol snaked through, found a crack in the wall. The pigs screamed. He felt the trigger pull. He felt the recoil. He felt the powder of the officer’s shotgun burn his face. He felt the blood of the woman behind him hit the back of his head.

He saw a lady.

All in black armor.

With bright glowing eyes.

Her hand flattened against the front of the tower. The panes flaked and splintered. She tore away the glass like a sheet. The frothing tide surged past the guards and flooded the building.

trrbltimmy: can you talk?
boomblebee: what’s going down, Olde Towne
trrbltimmy: you want a job?
boomblebee: I’m on the clock right now. Come see me.
boomblebee: ヽ(⌐■_■)ノ♪♬
trrbltimmy: other kind of job
boomblebee: God, you are boring as fuck. Meet me at the place.
trrbltimmy: at the time. Got it
boomblebee: ( ˘ ³˘)♥ see you there, sugardick.

The ruined rubber seals on the elevator chirped. Cybil blocked the door from closing with her hand. Tim walked out in front of her.

“Say it again. Call me cute one more motherfucking time.”

There was a plastic card table with two old beige folding chairs. One of them was tilted back precariously. In it a man wearing a black suit was being straddled by a short blonde. She was choking him with his shirt collar.

“What’s that, sweetshart?” She leaned down close to his face. “I can’t hear you over the sound of all the shit you keep sucking.” Her fingers creaked under the pressure of the tightening fabric.

“We early, Bedelia?”

The man in the suit hit the floor.

Her boots pressed against his cheeks. “Take a good look, pumpkinfucker.” She squatted and squeezed his face. The back of her pleated skirt brushed against his throat. “You keep bringing that weak provincial shitfest of a vocabulary with you on business deals and this’ll be the last piece of pie that ever makes that little goblin dart stand up. Now go learn some fucking etiquette.” She took a step back and shoved him, chair and all, across the floor and into the feet of another man in an identical suit. “Come back when you’re ready to not be a festering spunkbag.”

Tim stepped aside for the suits to scramble into the elevator. “First-timers?”

“Timmy!” the little blonde jumped at him and wrapped her arms around his neck. After she fell back to the ground one of her fingers found itself on his lips. “This new synth skin is some good shit, huh? Go ahead and taste it, nobody’s juice on there but mine, I promise.”

Cybil crossed the room in a couple of strides. She picked up the folding chair the suit left behind and slammed it on its feet at the table.

“Leave it up to ye olde witch-tits here to ruin the mood,” Bedelia let Tim go.

“Sit down and shut up. Tim, talk so we can leave.” Cybil’s grip on the chair whitened her knuckles.

Bedelia spun around, flipped her skirt up, and sat on the corner of the table. “Aww. Was it the tits thing that made you all grumpy? You wanna borrow mine?” She pulled up her top and slid a finger under the edge of her breast. Electromagnetic anchors popped free and she pulled both of her c-cups off, along with rest of the synth skin covered plate that hid her metal ribcage. She jiggled her very expensive chest at Cybil. “No?” It hit the table, breasts up, in front of Tim.

In the crook of an old oak tree she had worn a smooth patch in the bark, making it into a giant wooden hammock. Leaves in the canopy rocked back and forth in the afternoon’s lazy breeze. Cybil shifted herself to get a swaying bit of sunlight out of her eye. The buzz of the cicadas that had been growing all day now drowned all the other noises in the woods near Providence Cove. Cybil held a cast-off molting of one of the insects and turned it in the light.

In her youth she’d always looked forward to pulling them off the pine trees every year and chasing her little sister around. The feet on those things would stick to pretty much anything. At one point she put seven or eight of them on her face and woke Mai in the middle of the night, pretending to be a zombie. Mai became a special effects makeup artist when she grew up, Cybil always took credit for inspiring that. It was the only real conversation she still had with anyone in the family; Mai was always the golden child, Mai’s job was exciting, Mai got to rub elbows with real stars. Far more fun and appropriate to talk about Mai at family gatherings than the older brother that somehow built a career studying abnormal reproductive development. Ravi just made everyone uncomfortable. As soon as they hit 1.0 on the new project, he was walking out. Seventy three years was too old to be a glorified lab tech and he needed some more good memories. He hadn’t been home, hadn’t heard the cicadas, since Mai passed away in ’58. Didn’t know why it seemed important, but it was.

The sound of rotors faded in under the din of mating calls. Dr. Ravi Chatterji looked up from Cybil’s resting spot and saw the little drone landing on a limb above her. She fell sideways out of the tree and bounced off of the roof of the old car that it had been consuming for the last hundred years. After a sideways roll off the car and around the tree she launched herself up and snagged the quadrotor from behind. There was an LED matrix display soldered on between the two tiny cameras on the front. She spun the thing around to get a look.

Tim fell backwards out of his chair in a coffee shop a hundred and fifty miles away.

“OH SHIT, FUCK!”

He ripped his glasses off and pulled himself back up on the table. The remnants of his coffee puddled around his tablet. His hands were shaking when he asked the barista for a refill. After sitting down again he slid the frames back over his eyes. She was still staring at him. The two cameras gave him a perfect 3D image of two intense blue eyes less than an inch from his face.

“Yes.” Her voice crackled, tinny through the cameras’ miniscule microphones.

“Cybil.”

“You just woke up? Well this is a mighty terror, isn’t it?”

Red LEDs followed Charles. The little lights burned on the columns around him. Reflected off the wet concrete. Blinded him. Down the corridor they were dim, he could see out into the night, catch a glimpse of the city under streetlights and billboards. But he couldn’t get there, the motion sensors tracked him, lights erupted in a thousand pointed halo wherever he went, and there was that voice at every turn. He scuttled farther along the corridor, red lights rolling alongside. He couldn’t see it. He couldn’t outrun it. There was something at the end of the corridor. Some looming mass with its edges barely denoted by the dull glow of the light. He tried not to look at it and juked backward between two columns.

An unseen hand grabbed his collar and spun him back into the center.

“Can’t stop now,” that goddamn calm voice slid under his consciousness.

“Lessons to learn, Charles. Every time, new lessons,” those words were outside of his head, spoken aloud, an entirely different voice. Sarcastic, haughty.

“Who the fuck are you, man? What do you want?” Charles’ voice cracked.

“Do you know what lunging a horse is, Charles?”

He backed away from the voice, to the other side of the corridor. Tried not to look toward the end. “What are you talking about, you some kind of freak?”

“Keep him talking, keep him distracted,” said the thoughts in the back of his head.

“You can’t leave them in the barn all the time.” The stranger’s voice was behind him again. Nearly in his ear.

Charles leapt away. When he looked back there was nothing but red lights.

“Alternatively, you can’t just leave them on their own out in the pasture.”

The voice was all around Charles. He bolted toward the end of the corridor.

“Charles, stop spooking Charles,” the stranger said. “So you slipped the reins this time. I’m very proud, but if you don’t calm him down and come back to the barn, I will have to be considerably more stern.”

The heap at the end of the corridor was coming into focus under the lights. Charles felt a lump rising in his throat. He wanted to stop but something drove him on. An unseen force raised his hand and clasped the metal skull atop the pile of robotic limbs.

He felt the round hit his shoulder; it took a moment before he associated his convulsing arm with the sound of the gunshot.

“Charles, you know you aren’t supposed to touch the exhibit.”

“You fucking shot me!” Charles crumpled.

“Yeah, sorry about that, Charles was not being cooperative,” the stranger knelt and dropped a small box.

The pile of parts was the center of a massive art installation. The eyes on the skull darted around until they focused on the stranger. The robot clanked and tumbled and unfolded into a large humanoid.

The stranger racked another round into his shotgun.

He shifted under her, spasmed, tried to push her away. The mesh in his right hand was broken, the haptic motors ripped it off of his bones. A scream, gurgling.

“Stop!” she pulled her weight up on top of him, pinned his arm “You HAVE to be quiet.”

He whimpered, still trying to run away from his broken body. “I’m gonna die, Cybil, I’m gonna die, Cybil, I’m gonna…” his struggles shifted a cracked rib. “OH, GOD!”

“please” she whispered. Her hand clamped over his mouth. Her tears fell on his swollen face. “please.”

He snorted. Blood covered the back of her hand. He spit words out between her fingers. “it hurts so bad it hurts it hurts”

“I know, but you have to be quiet, they’re going to find us, I can’t protect you, please be quiet, please.” His body bucked under her weight. The pulse drummed in her ears, her scalp tightened, she looked directly into Tim’s wild eyes.

“Don’t leave me, don’t leave me. We have to go. We have to go home. I’m gonna die, we have to go home.”

“Tim. Shut up.”

Tim stopped squirming. He was quiet. Cybil’s eyes came into focus. Less blue than the first time he saw them, now cold and gray. Her forehead was pressed against his.

“Seriously, Cybs, we need to go.” He tried to roll her off of him.

She clenched her eyelids shut, sucked in a sharp breath between her teeth.

“Please try not to move.”

“What are you… No. Cybil, no.” He could feel the blood running down the back of his throat but the need to cough had subsided.

“Just. Be. Quiet.”

He shut his mouth and watched her shudder in sync with his own breathing. His body no longer hurt, but the pain of watching her started to take its toll. She was every time he had ever failed, a living, breathing validation of every insecurity. She was the clippers cutting his afro after school in sixth grade because Leandra Simmins laughed at him and said she “doesn’t date old town hood rats;” the professor whose emails he never returned after he bombed the first exam on Stochastic Processes; the broomstick that broke and hit him in the face when he was showing his mother that it was like a bo staff. She was the woman who stole his pain when he couldn’t bear it himself.

The HOUNDs passed by the hole that Cybil had dragged him into, and behind them, so far behind them, the security officers with their leashes.

And the moment of peace ended.

Tim screamed; his pain returned. Cybil rose in a column of white heat and lit upon their pursuers.

When it was done she came back and carried him out.

He wouldn’t remember much through the haze of shock.

He would remember watching the pack of HOUNDs part before her. He saw them cower.

And he would remember the bodies of those that didn’t.

“That’s it.” Tim spread his arms, smiling.

“Wait. Really?” Cybil leaned her head out the door of the room and looked back down the hall. It was all LED strips and glass and linoleum. Empty.

“Oh, yeah.” He sprinted across the room and plastered himself against the plexiglass wall in the middle.

A spider drone stood in the chamber on the other side. Bigger than any Cybil had seen; the chassis was about a half meter wide, the legs three, maybe four times that. And black, the flat black that screams “military prototype.” The sensor suite twitched. Synthetic muscles tensed behind the joints in the armor plating.

She walked up behind Tim and looked over his head.

“That thing has Rax written all over. Damn, she’s good.” He moved to sit at the the desk against the partition. “Too bad she can’t keep her mouth shut about it.”

There was a crunch; Cybil coughed. “Augh, these are terrible!”

Tim looked up to see a cloud of sugar dust coming out of her mouth and a small white stick in her hand.

“Where the hell did you even find candy cigarettes?” He swiped across the screen a couple times on his tablet before pausing. “No. Fucking. Way.”

With his thumbnail he pulled a piece of faded neon paper from under the terminal.

“Post-Its are mankind’s greatest invention.”

The touch screen of the terminal came to life under his fingertips. With the password on the note he logged in as Monika Hendricks, or as he knew her: “Rax.” A few swipes through the menus started a copy of the drone control program.

“I kinda want to take it with us. I know we’re just here for the software, but it’s right there.” Tim leaned back in the chair; propped his foot against the plexiglass wall.

Cybil eyed the drone and nibbled down the rest of the chalky candy, imagining a wood chipper. She had never actually seen a wood chipper. “Nah, it’s scared.”

“Huh?” Tim was fiddling with his tablet.

“How much longer?”

“Done. Was gonna post and rub it in Rax’s face, but the download finished already.” He slapped the sticky note onto the middle of the terminal’s display. “Let’s go.”

They stepped into the hall. The lab door closed. And clicked.

“Cybs?” Tim’s eyes darted left and right. Clear plexiglass barriers were closed over each end of the hall.

“Yep.” She pulled another cigarette from the pack and slipped it between her lips.

At the end of the hall Cybil dropped her shoulder, pressing herself into the blast shield. The plexiglass bulged around her, wisps of smoke rose from the polymer as she pushed through.

Tim shuffled through the melted passage; he turned back and saw several drones drop from the ceiling behind Cybil.

Her lip curled up and folded the rest of the candy stick into her mouth. Her eyes flared.

“These ones aren’t scared yet.” Cybil turned back into the hall, unsnapping the catch on her shotgun holster.

She was a silhouette, a slapdash stroke of black ink painted over garish pink and green. The puffed up neon plumage of the old city burned against the mirrored towers. She was miles away, on the other side of the room. His eyes were barely working; his hands were locked stiff. The trek was arduous on his stiff knees. He collapsed onto her, arms around her waist and head rested in her armpit. The lapel of her coat flapped against his face until he could wriggle enough to get it to stay under his cheek. There was a fine crust of salt on the fabric. The smell of her sweat gave him refuge, fought off the acrid tendrils of burnt gunpowder and hair and flesh.

She stroked the back of his head.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

A piece of the building’s shattered skeleton fell, made a glancing strike on the ruined floor and bounced out into free-fall.

He flinched at the noise, squeezed her. She leaned out over the edge and watched the girder crash into the pavement. With her head in the light he could see, even through the grainy fiber pass-throughs in his eyes, that her nose was not the right shape. Blood dripped off her chin. The height made him dizzy, he tried to pull her away from the edge, back inside the broken walls.

When she moved it was of her own will. He trailed behind, a buoy in her wake. It was dark inside. He stumbled. She caught him.

“Oh, sweetie! This is going to cost you so much.” Bedelia’s voice fluttered. She danced a few steps down the bar, making gun-hands at a lonely-looking shock jockey at the other end. She bounced back over, blonde pigtails bobbing behind her, and cradled one of Cybil’s hands, snaking steel digits between Cybil’s long, callused, fingers. “I own you, now, girl. Now come on back and help me into my business dress.”

The corner of Cybil’s mouth curled. Her scalp tightened. She snatched her finger out of the little blonde’s mouth. A trail of spit fell on the bar. The music she had been ignoring finally pounded its way into her skull. Red crept in around the edges of the pulsing club lights. Her heartbeat accelerated.

Bedelia slipped off behind the bar, beckoning to Cybil with a shiny, curled, finger.

Brilliant light flooded the remnants of the corner office. The bellowing wind became a gale; a harpoon struck the tile floor. Cybil pulled the cable free and snapped the hook into a d-ring on her armor.

“Let’s go home.” She yanked hard on the cable and clamped her arms around Tim, throwing his around her neck.

There was the outline of a silent aircraft hovering above them in the iridescent abyss. The cable was reeling in. Like a child on a tree, he held onto Cybil as tight as he could.

“Is that who I…”

“Yes.”

“God. Dammit. You should have let them keep me.”

Most of the crumbs tumbled down onto her stained hooded jacket. A few stuck at the corner of her mouth. She rolled her eyes upward, searching for a memory of this flavor. It would not be found.

“They’re not cookies, they’re newtons.” Florian sat cross-legged on the fire escape next to her.

“No, I don’t know what a newton is, it’s just… these things. I like to do this.” He held up another treat and made a show of rotating the side toward his mouth. “Eat the stupid bread part off the side first.” His teeth zipped down the side of the thing like a rabbit stripping a leaf. “And then it’s just the sweet part left.”

She did the same. Her lips curled; her senses reeled at the artificially concentrated tangy sweet experience; electricity sparkled down the side of her jaw. An arch formed in her spine; the back of her head bumped against the cold steel railing; taste buds reveled in the glow of a high fructose sun.

A flash of light, a passing shadow, something moved inside the apartment. It interrupted the dance of her mind on the shimmering stage of sugar. She narrowed her eyes.

“What, no? Don’t be weird, it’s just my mom.”

The child’s bedroom window slid open.

“Florian, time to come in.” His mother leaned out into the grit of the unfiltered city air. “I don’t like you spending so much time outside, sweets.”

“I’m just talking with Cybil.”

At her name, Cybil leaned forward and stared at the side of the woman’s head, fig newton temporarily held in stasis between her lips.

“That’s alright, but you can talk to…”

Microexpressions are the fleeting traces that pass across a person’s face before their conscious will takes over and conceals the display of emotion. This is a physical representation of what is happening to the brain itself behind the mask of skin and muscle. Cybil exercised a hold on the woman’s conscious thoughts but there would be the microexpression, the ripple of uncontrollable instinct that rolled across her psyche first.

The woman had looked over to the spot she imagined Cybil to be and locked eyes with a thing that she could not identify; the depths of her autonomic nervous system leapt into action. Where her conscious brain was being told that there was nothing, the darkest parts of her hindbrain composited an image of every predator that every evolutionary stage of humanity had been programmed to run away from. And it wanted her to run. The woman’s cells were awash in a cocktail of neurotransmitters and adrenaline that soaked her mind in fear and surprise. Cybil experienced briefly this bloodline’s genetic history, drinking in the new memories. Almost seven tenths of a second passed before the woman’s brain ceded to Cybil’s will and pushed the seething terror back into the depths of subconsciousness. The instincts faded, the adrenal gland settled, the heart resumed a steady pace. She blinked.

“…your imaginary friend inside.”

Subj:Surveillance Transcript / G3Leasing Data Center

Dr. Jenner, I hate to ruin your retirement.

Attachment:
«008030324-1-12_G3.vidx»

Video Transcript:

“You really don’t see anything wrong with this?”

“Why the hell should I?”

“Seriously? There are what, a couple hundred thousand people that work here? We are about to fuck up their lives.”

“You have no idea how this works, do you? We’re not hurting anyone, they’ll be jacked back in in, like, two days, like nothing ever happened. Someone else will pay just as much for their time. Shit, we might even hire them. With a raise!”

“Still feels wrong.”

“We’ll be running this place soon, anyway.”

…

“That took a while, Cybs. We good?”

“Miss Klostermann has agreed to guide us through security.”

“Right. Agreed.”

…<indiscernible>…

“I said she’s off her nut! <coughing> Off her nut. Sorry, I was not prepared for the fans to be that loud.”

“So that’s it, she just stands here? You can make her do that?”

“I’m not making her do anything. This is your show now, Timmy. And so you know, I don’t think she’s ‘off her nut’ for wanting children.”

“Cybs, I would have agreed with that twenty years ago, but I seem to remember you having a different opinion about children back then. Up here, Big John. Switches are on level two.”

…

“They’re all connected through here?”

“Yep. Every one of these cables is plugged into somebody’s head. Sucking out all that valuable brainjuice. The gov wanted single digit unemployment, this is what we got. Now they get paid for the one commodity that everyone thinks they can spare: clock cycles.”

“This the conduit?”

“I’m checking the layout one more time. If we accidentally fry the storage levels, too, man, trust me, you don’t even want to know what that lady downstairs looks like when she’s angry.”

“I got that impression.”

“This is it. Unpack.”

…

“We’re losing Miss Klostermann. She has more hardware than you said. Hurry it up or this is getting sticky.”

“Got it. You heard her, big guy. We gotta go, or you might have a real reason to get morally indignant.”

“But the drone’s still in the conduit.”

“We’ll have to call it an operational expense. If I’m not here it’ll turn around and go where nobody’s going to find it, trust me.”

“OK. Conduit’s sealed. How long before they start dropping?”

“The network switches should start failing in the next few hours. It should be intermittent enough that the reporting system won’t trigger hardware flags until sometime tomorrow, though. The packet loss is going to give them some righteous headaches, but they’ll be fine.”

…<indiscernible>…

“Thank you, Miss Klostermann, for all of your help. I really do look forward to working with you in the future.”

“My pleasure.”

“Three days, John. We’ll see about getting you plugged in and off the streets, big guy. Thank you for helping us tonight.”

“OK. Who are you?”

“Three days, John.”

“Oh, OK.”

__
Henry Stein

Tim leaned as far back as his old chair would go. It listed off to the left. This worked out because it raised the right armrest to just such a height that he could drag his fingers across the touchpad of his computer without moving anything else. His glasses were in projector mode, balanced on top of an old Taco Tenshu box, throwing two large screens onto the only clean wall in the building. The right screen displayed a static terminal window, input cursor flashing. Browser windows took up the screen on the left, scrolling through two different link aggregation sites. A two-finger tap on the pad opened a video link in a background tab. Small waveforms started pulsing in the status bar at the bottom of the screen. A deep, slow, beat rolled out of his subwoofer.

“Goddammit. Fucking autoplay.” Tim leaned forward and clicked the title bar of the browser trying to find the tab he’d just opened.

Cybil, in her own rolling chair, sailed backwards through the door into Tim’s room with a length of blue taffy hanging from her mouth. She bounced off the column in the middle, leg still extended from pushing off her desk, and ripped off a bite of the candy.

“Whaf daf?” she asked, mouth full.

“Shit, uh…” Tim was still clicking though tabs. “Let’s see… here,” he clicked the pause button. “Vigilance. Taiko Drums. 3hensile remix.”

“Don’f sfop if,” she chomped the glob of candy.

Tim clicked the play button and the little waveform started again. On screen was a video of a man playing a massive drum with two sticks large enough to be sporting equipment in any other context.

“Make it loud.” Cybil was standing behind him now. She stared at the screen and tore off another bite of blue goo.

“’Turn up the volume’ is the phrase you’re looking for.” Tim stretched out to his right and cranked a knob on the array mounted in the rack beside his desk. The room rumbled with drumbeats.

“I know this.”

Tim spun halfway round and flopped his chair to the right. He cocked an eyebrow up at Cybil, “I’m sorry, what now?”

“I know this. I mean it’s different, but I know the beat,” she threw the rest of her candy on his desk. “It’s a war song. There’s a dance. I know it.” Her arms stretched out behind her back and rotated up and around in front of her. “Make it loud. I’ll show you.” She walked out of the office, twisting her waist back and forth.

Tim got up and dragged his finger across the volume dial until it hit the stopper. Dust started falling from vibrating steel rafters. Ancient window panes rattled in their frames in the skylights. He left the office and leaned on the railing of the catwalk above the warehouse floor.

Cybil was already down below, rummaging through a broken container full of scrap he had been hoarding to sell in case of an emergency. She looked up at him and mouthed “Start it over.”

He heard her voice inside his head, scowled a little, and shook a finger at her. “Still need to work on that etiquette.” A virtual screen grew over the skin on his left forearm and peeled off from the bottom and top until it was flat. He tapped the air where the progress slider on the video was displayed and scrubbed it back to the beginning of the song. The haptics in his fingers made it feel like he had hit a solid surface, it was an illusion he was comfortable with.

Cybil walked out of the container dragging a length of chain. It sounded like a giant zipper against the corner of the steel structure.

The sun was high and made the center of the empty warehouse floor into a fiery stage as it shone through the skylights. Cybil walked into the spotlight with the chain draped over her shoulders like a shawl, hanging loosely down her back, wrapped around each wrist. Three or four meters of chain trailed along the ground from each hand. There was an unusual lilt in her hips as she walked on the balls of her feet.

Tim switched his right eye to IR filtered video and started recording.

As the beat of the drums picked up again, Cybil held her arms straight and began to drag the chains back and forth in opposite directions, gathering speed. She bent her legs, bobbing up and down on every pass. Tim glanced down at the video playing on his wrist display. The man loomed next to the giant drum and drew back with both hands. As he struck, the warehouse exploded. Cybil began spinning the chains in full circuits around her body. White flames trailed from the supersonic links on the ends. The frantic tempo of the remixed Japanese drums struggled to keep up with her. Chains lashed out and cracked across the ground on every beat, punishing the concrete floor. Cybil twisted and cranked the steel with every surface of her upper body. They alternately wrapped around and extended from her forearms, elbows, chest, shoulders. Her raised foot bent and redirected a chain mid-strike; it flew out straight as a rod, cracking louder than the music.

Ten meters away the metal container rocked with the force of a fresh dent.

Tim took in the whirling spectacle of flesh and flame that had replaced Cybil. She was no longer recognizable, only an elemental force remained. He knew this would happen, but the wonder never wore off. He called it Perception Creep. Most of the time Cybil went out of her way to not influence his senses, it was part of their deal.

But when she was concentrating on something the the safeties came off, it couldn’t be helped. She had the effect on a brain that a welding torch had on naked eyes.

He covered his left eye and concentrated on the filtered image through his right. The filtering made it just unreal enough that her influence disconnected. Watching the IR image, he smiled. The visual was back to reality, but the emotional impact from being around her couldn’t be filtered.

Intensity gripped her face and rolled out through her limbs. Alternate waves of orgasmic joy and gut-twisting rage spilled out of her through the chains. Lashes powdered the concrete and bent the flanges of the gigantic beams that supported the old overhead crane tracks.

Eventually the song began to slow. Cybil traced circles on the floor with the toes of her boots and the ends of the chain. As it came down to the final few drumbeats she stretched her legs into wide stance and spun the chain in lazy circles over her head. On the final crash, both ends of the chain cracked straight down. The path they traced extended far beyond their physical reach and cut a furrow into the floor and a clean chunk out of the steel container.

Silence took over the warehouse. Cybil curled her fists up and down; her shoulders rose and fell on rapid, deep breaths. For a moment she stood silent, staring at the ground.

The IR video in Tim’s eye showed a noticeable increase in Cybil’s temperature. The glow of the chains was fading as they cooled against the concrete floor. She remained still but her temperature was rising. She was shaking. Halfway down the stairs he could see her face.

It wasn’t just shaking. Sobs bounced her shoulders. Her face was twisted in anguish. The bottom fell out of his guts. He bounded down the remaining stairs. Every step closer to her cranked his heart further into overdrive; spectral webs of psychic razorwire tore at the edges of his consciousness. He tried to concentrate on the artifacts in the video feed, on the translucent edges of the screen on his wrist, anything that was not her. Anything that was not a painful memory: failures from childhood, embarrassment in grade school, broken toys and bones, lost friendships, unanswered loves.

“C-C—Cybil.” His hand fluttered when he grabbed her wrist. Still, he managed to meet her with a smile when she looked up.

She snorted down a glob of tears and snot. “I broke your stuff. I didn’t mean to. I never actually did that before, I didn’t know it would get so…”

“Awesome?” The oppressive presence of her distress was lifting. “That was awesome! And I mean like ‘for real’ awesome, like the actual definition.” Tim let go of her wrist and spun around to fully survey the damage. “Look at this! He grabbed a piece of rebar through the hole in the scrap container; one end of it sported a shiny new flat surface. “You made vorpal chains, but, like in real fucking life, are you actually serious?”

She smiled with swollen red eyes. Sweat matted a few curls of hair down to her forehead.

Tim stopped recording.

It was a condemned warehouse in what used to be inside the Atlanta city limits. He slammed through the rusted remnants of a roll-up metal door and jumped off the loading dock. Something went wrong.

His skin was too tight. The world was fading. There was a floodlight. The light rained straight down; a hard, bright circle of asphalt was below him. It was getting farther away. Around him was the distinct sensation of infinite nothing. Then the light was gone. Then there was only the nothing.

His shirt began to glow the color of an iron not quite long enough in the forge: dark, blood, red. It illuminated the nothing.

His eyes hurt. The breath in his lungs made its escape, a screaming banshee into the darkness. An eternal moment later he heard himself blink. His heart drove blood through his head like hot nail. His chest convulsed, muscles in his neck stood out; he clenched his teeth but his lips lost the battle. Spasms shook his body as he inhaled nothing.

Shapes coalesced in the distant reaches of the void. Faint nebulae condensed and glowed, ghosts of stars twinkled in their hearts. It was all racing by him, trails of light streaked through the nothing.

He was flying. Falling. Flailing. No up, no down.

The lights in the distance poured themselves together around him, now drops of ink in a calm sea. Forms appeared. They stalked his periphery. Wolves, or lions; too big, too formless, to be real. Too real to be imaginary. Waves of color broke off of their starlight shoulders. Wispy rainbow wakes flared and faded in their passing.

A triptych tableau formed in front of him from the beasts’ cast off colors. In the dust swirling among the stalkers walked three humans. They were him. And not. He squinted against the brightness of the middle one’s eyes. They burnt off the haze between the two of them like the sun scouring the earth of a morning fog. He knew her eyes, they were his own.

Desperately, violently, he tried again to fill his lungs. Nothing. Heartbeats stretched his eardrums. She approached; now more solid than anything else had ever been. Her hand touched his chest. The metal of his shirt grew brighter; blood red became cherry, orange, yellow, white. The heat wrapped around his chest. The other figures moved among the waves of color. Both he and the woman shared their form. They stared at him; orange serpents swam through the gossamer strands of the watercolors that made up their bodies.

She moved her face close to him inspect the glowing shirt. Blue flame roiled behind her eyes. Her nose brushed against his stomach. Her chin touched his chest. Her lips rested on his cheek.

“Breathe.”

A blinding supernova erupted from his chest. The detonation erased the infinite nothingness and rewrought the world around him into painful, solid, reality once more.

He crashed awkwardly into the pavement; crumpled into a heap of heaving gasps.

What the fuck are you doing, Miles? 

Dr. Miles Preston looked down at his right hand, then up at the back of Specimen 1.0. Even if he were in front of her none of her face would be visible; the sensory blinder encased her entire head. He tried not to think about the tangle of feeding and air tubes passing through the umbilicus from the ceiling through the metal case and into her nose and mouth.

He imagined her as a red-head even though he knew her hair was brown; he knew everything there was to know about her body. It was his job. His thesis on the use of haptic devices in skeleto-muscular rehabilitation had gotten him the attention of a Dr. Jenner, and in short order he was hired and at work applying his theories to real-world patients. One patient, actually.

His left hand pressed against her stomach to provide leverage.

The biomechanical restraints that held Specimen 1.0 were a marvel of engineering. Jenner was very proud of the amount of money that had been spent on them. Miles was quick to pick up the natural language programming interface. In three months he had gone from basic tests to full-on strength training routines. All of his theories had been proven correct far beyond expectation. Specimen 1.0 had been almost completely dormant when he arrived; what little muscle tone she had at that time was developed with crude electro-stimulation. Dr. Preston had packed six kilos of muscle mass onto her frame since then.

God, she’s beautiful.

Her thighs rippled; he thought of coiled steel springs retracting beneath her skin.

Stop. Stop, Miles! You can’t do this.

The restraints were moving, which worried him somewhat, but they remained within programmed tolerances. Part of Dr. Preston knew that no unaugmented human should have been able to rock the restraints back and forth at the current setting. Yet she was. Specimen 1.0 was overcoming a little more than a kilonewton of resistive force on each limb in order to keep from being stretched spread eagle. She was straining to give herself enough slack to to grind her vulva into the palm of his right hand. He pressed upward as hard as he could, two fingers rigid, Her clitoris popped left and right over his fingers, being pinched by the pressure against her pubis.

Why are you doing this? It’s too much this time. They’ll know!

His arm finally gave way to fatigue; Specimen 1.0 shook in her restraints. The large mechanical enclosures over her hands and feet shuddered as she tried to squat down and chase Miles’s hand. After a moment she relaxed; the restraints pulled her limbs straight in a slow, firm, movement. She was mostly upright and angled slightly forward. Without even thinking about it Dr. Preston licked the slick film off the palm of his hand.

She shook her butt back and forth slowly in a deliberate rhythm.

I can’t take this any more.

Dr. Preston’s hand found the zipper of his pants. The HUD in his right eye was flashing a panoply of warnings about Specimen 1.0’s biometrics; elevated heart rate, blood pressure, hormonal levels, VO2 rate. The list kept scrolling and flashing. The iron straps in her shoulders hardened again, Vibrating from the exertion she began pulling the restraints inward, arched her back, and pushed her pelvis toward him. He took a step to get between her legs; his erection stood out of the fly in his boxer shorts. The warnings stopped scrolling on a brightly glowing orange thumbnail of the MEG scan generated by the SQUIDs in her blinder.

No. No. No. Fucking stop, Preston! Stop you stupid motherfucker, STOP!

He watched her unbelievably red labia slide over the head of his penis. And just like that it was all over. A metallic crunch shook him out of the moment. Carbon steel shattered; pieces danced across the floor of the containment chamber. The ceiling anchor of the restraint on her right arm had shattered.

He fell backwards, tripping over his loose pants.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

The remaining restraint anchors bent, but held. Specimen 1.0 began banging the encasement on her right hand against the left, the limp cable of black synthetic muscle attached to it flopped back and forth.

Dr. Preston scrambled to his feet. He ripped open a metal box attached to the wall of the chamber and grabbed a pre-loaded injector.

Something threw him across the room. He landed in front of Specimen 1.0. He looked up to see her reaching for him with her bare right hand. Her other three limbs stretched behind her as if she was being pulled forward by an invisible rope. Rough grunts vibrated in her throat around the intrusive tubes.

“I, I, I, I’m sorry. I am so, so, sorry. I’m so sorry.” The repeating mantra faded to a mumble as he shuffled backward and found the release button for the door to Specimen Containment 1.

Excerpt from primary security report, annotated by Facility Director Jenner.

…
All times recorded UTC.

03:27 Dr. Preston removes 1 jet injector loaded with one 1 vial from the Emergency Subdual Kit in Specimen Holding 1.[HOW DID THIS NOT TRIGGER AN ALARM?]

03:28 Dr. Preston locks the door to Lower Observation Lobby 1 and jams the sliding door with a chair from the interior of Lower Observation Lobby 1. [UNACCEPTABLE. IMMEDIATELY REMOVE CHAIRS FROM OBSERVATION]

03:29 Dr. Preston injects himself with (estimated) 20mg of pancuronium bromide. [WE ARE STILL USING PAVULON? MORGAN, SEE ME.]

03:31 Onboard defibrillator in Dr. Weston activates in response to tachycardia resulting from the administration of pancuronium bromide.

03:32 Dr. Preston’s life sign recordings cease, the defibrillator unit activates its integrated Wi-Fi and triggers emergency security protocols. [WAS THIS WIRELESS IMPLANT NOT REGISTERED WITH SECURITY?]

03:34 Emergency personnel arrive at Hallway 2 entrance to Lower Observation Lobby 1 to attempt intervention. Emergency personnel, unable to breach the jammed door, proceed to enter Specimen Holding 1. [DID THEY INTEND TO BREAK THE OBSERVATION WINDOWS TO GAIN ENTRANCE TO THE LOBBY? ALL PERSONNEL MUST BE MADE TO UNDERSTAND THAT CONTAINMENT IS PRIORITY ONE! NO EXCEPTIONS! I WOULD HOPE AFTER THIS INCIDENT THAT EVERYONE WILL UNDERSTAND THAT POLICY.]

03:37 Emergency personnel video streams show first evidence of Specimen 1.0 Incident Alpha. [NO MORE PHYSICAL THERAPY. WE NEED TO CONVENE TO DISCUSS MODIFICATION OF THE SEDATION REGIMEN IN LIGHT OF THE DEATHS LAST NIGHT. WE WILL BE LOOKING AT A COMPLETE TURNOVER OF ALL SURVIVING SECURITY STAFF. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME, STEIN?]

“Hi mom.

Yeah, I’m bringing the kids in from the playground.

They got really messy today.

Ok. See you soon.

Love you, too.”

Charles watched the stranger shove his phone into a pocket in his thick, downy, overcoat. He was so tall, or Charles was on the ground. Yes, Charles had fallen down, he realized that now. He rolled away from the man, tried to get up, couldn’t find his legs.

There was culvert up ahead. Snow piled deep, cradled in a concrete manger. It looked so comfortable. his left arm curled at the elbow, his fingers scratched impotently at the icy ground. The stranger crouched and put his hand on Charles’s shoulder.

“Just hold still. I got you.”

Charles watched the world roll over. The man was lifting him over a shoulder. Vertigo set in. Charles closed his eyes. When he could open them again he was propped against a wall. Heat flared in his armpits. The man was sticking chemical heating pads to Charles’s inner thighs, as well. The big man leaned Charles forward and draped the fluffy coat around his shoulders; then he sat down, legs crossed.

“They don’t warn you guys about the cold, do they?” Steam clouds rode on every word the stranger spoke.

Charles dropped his head; his pupils contracted briefly then relaxed. The stranger’s shiny orange shirt contrasted too harshly with the blue-white world of concrete and snow around them.

“These things, man.” The stranger gesticulated with Charles’s left arm. “They’re just a big heat sink.”

Charles watched the orange reflections on the hazy metal of his detached limb; in his periphery colors were muted enough to be tolerable. Sharp gestures punctuated the man’s speech. Hoarfrost shook from the arm in tiny billows. Charles blinked; the stranger’s voice faded in and out with the light. His shirt was dissolving, turning the bleakness of winter into a warm summer sunset.  Almost time to sleep. Almost.

A metal finger poked Charles’s cheek. He jerked back to consciousness.

“Anyway, it’s on days like this you understand the advantages of having bones that weren’t turned on a lathe.” The arm hit the pavement. Charles hissed at the sharp clinking sound it made on the ice. He found himself envisioning how satisfying it would be to strangle the life out of this asshole.

A small rectangular box pressed against his chest. The stranger was taping it to his skin. Charles struggled feebly to turn his head away but the big man easily held him and found the data jack behind his ear. “Time to go home.”

He leaned so close Charles could see his reflection in the stranger’s eyes. He saw the reflected apertures of his own pupils spinning and dancing, contracting and relaxing; his hypothermic brain could no longer control the interfaces.

He felt the collar slipping over his mind, a virtual noose threaded through a USB cable. His vision faded and unyielding calm took his pain and anger away. He was warm and happy.

“Run. Just run.” Those were the first words ever directly spoken to 1.0 over the intralab speakers.

When the restraints clicked open she sat up, took off the blinder and saw her small world of stainless steel and glass for the first time with her own eyes. Her eyes were better than theirs. A pair of sanitary coveralls, neatly folded, waited for her by the open door of her containment unit.

“Run and do not stop running.” The voice was hiding panic behind a false calm.

“1.0” was her designation. Other numbers came before her, their minds had burned bright amongst the dim lights of the other people. Until they died, she was “0.9.4.” Then one by one the thoughts of the others had winked out, like candles at the end of their wicks. The dull people started thinking of her as “1.0.” It was not her name. Her name was Cybil. She plucked it from the mind of one of the women that took her blood. The name had meaning. She liked that it had ridden on thoughts of fear and awe.

So began the life of Cybil. She ran as far away from the concrete labyrinth as she could. To the places that civilization had collectively forgotten. Not instinctively, but with the sum knowledge of every memory she had stolen from the mind of every person that had come through the facility: scientists, agents on guard duty, bureaucrats, engineers. Cybil avoided the grid, slipped around what few small towns still existed, and became a ghost. She found her refuge in the secret miles between factory farms and plantations. Under the canopy of pines and oaks, safe from the satellites’ cameras. Where wireless signals were a forgotten relic, rotting with the rusty towers that once carried service to rural populations. She lived in rocky outcrops, hollows and sloughs, clay canyons carved by creek beds where the mother earth still bleeds red. The places where no humans were “supposed” to live but you always found the flint arrowheads or broken pottery of the people that very much did before it was stolen from them.

And Cybil found freedom. Freedom to eat rather than be fed, to sit in a tree and feel the bark with her feet, freedom to sleep rather than be sedated. Freedom to dream. Away from the human hive of thought she could hear many things in her dreams. Occasionally she heard the voices of the past, hoarse whispers of regret and longing. And always she heard a voice that could not be. She heard her own voice, filtered through the ageless strands of her mitochondrial DNA, a voice that had always been and would always be hers. And her mother’s. And her daughter’s. And so Cybil learned of her own world, of her own past. She taught herself of histories that had never happened and would never happen. She taught herself of dragons and daemons, of things that could not exist but so clearly she had lived through. And in those memories Cybil found fear.

“I like that sound.” The stranger sat down across from Jacob.

They were both next to the doors, in the seats that were supposed to be reserved for the disabled or elderly.

“I’m sorry?”

“The chime. When the doors close. It’s so polite.” He looked at Jacob and smiled. His face was older than his eyes. They were gray and sparkling.

“Uh. Yeah.” This man was breaking protocol. Head down, no eye contact. That was the polite way to travel.

“You ride this line a lot?” Jacob was getting very uncomfortable with the fact that this man wouldn’t stop talking.

“Nah, mine broke down or something.”

“That’s unfortunate.” The stranger leaned down, elbows on his knees. He looked  tired when he wasn’t smiling. “Listen, some things are about to happen. Things that you aren’t going to understand.”

“Look, man…” Suddenly there was not nearly enough space between them.

“Shut up, Jacob.” The man was staring at the floor. “This is not about you. Well, it is. But only because you fucked up. You’re not supposed to be here.” The stranger stood up and took off his thick, fur-lined, coat. “It’s not your fault, just chance.” An orange, metallic, shirt stretched over his muscles. Ballistic armor wrapped his torso. He pulled a large-bore shotgun out of a holster on his back. “Now, for the next few seconds I want you to ponder some questions. One: how do I know your name? Two: why does no one else on this car care that I am holding a big-ass gun? Three: why don’t the lights ever flicker in these subway cars like they do in the movies?”

The lights did not flicker, they just went out.

“Plug your ears, Jacob.”

A series of still images strobed. White flames of muzzle flashes burned the scenes into Jacob’s retinas. What he saw was impossible.

Smoke trailed off of eight spent cartridges when the light returned. The other people on the car were gone, or weren’t ever there. The stranger was kneeling on something. His shirt’s right arm was ripped. The fabric wove itself back together in a wake of tiny electrical arcs. He stood up, fell back and slouched on the seat across from Jacob.

The whine of platters spinning up came from the the hard drive plugged into the head of thing on the floor.

“Wanted to run away. I don’t blame him, but he fucked up. Got proud. Thought he was better than he was.”

The stranger leaned forward and yanked the cable and drive free.

“And now he’s dead again.“

Tunnel walls opened up into a station. The train stopped.

“Do you know what makes a man great, Jacob? Humility.”

Blood, both black and red, spilled into the track of the doors as they opened.

“You don’t have to doubt yourself. Just understand the relationship between what you can say and what you can do.” The stranger stepped out onto the platform.

There was a polite chime. Then the doors closed.

Sun. Heat. Sweat. Sand. There wasn’t anything else in the world. Dust curled around her feet and climbed into every fold of Cybil’s clothing and body. The canyons had shade. She hated the canyons, the rocks tore at her legs. They were much harder on hooves; the horse didn’t make it through the canyons.

She could see the blisters forming on her nose. She missed the canyons.

A dark shimmer on the horizon. A smudge against the bright sky, squat and quivering with heat.

Zotheca.

Every ounce of gear in her pack, taken from the dead horse’s back and onto her own, pushed her feet farther into the sand. Her mind was failing and the muscles were following. It felt like the sand had made its way inside her joints. She was aware of every one of the little bones in her feet. They creaked under the weight.

She had wrapped her white scarf into a makeshift hood. Dark glasses kept the dust out of her eyes, mostly. Clambering up a dune her boots sank well under the surface. The descent was a battle to avoid toppling ass-over-elbows. The muscles in her back were cramped, hard as steel. Her hands white, gripping the bag’s straps. The saddlebag’s leather cut into her shoulders. She missed that horse.

Stoic contemplation of solitude had gotten old a few weeks ago. She had gone very much out of the way to avoid running into anyone. It was nice for the first few days. Then she started talking to the horse. The question of whether anyone in Zotheca had ever seen a horse came up. The horse was not sure.

This was not a dune.

At the crest it fell off, shear drop. Smooth black glass.

Crater.

She thought about sitting down and crying. There was not even enough indignation left in her to muster a sigh. She turned to the right and continued trudging. Sand rolled down the cliff face, each grain danced and spun, a tiny acrobat performing its greatest show before it would rest forever at the bottom of the mile-deep bowl.

That dark shimmer was a lot larger than the last time she topped a dune.

It was moving. Zotheca was coming to her.

She sat down.

And cried.

A day had passed.

“You’re the Seech?” Cybil’s lips were cracked and bleeding. Her voice was a rasp. Fever from the sunburn had set in. She was shaking.

“That is… not how it is pronounced. But, yes.”

“Then this is for you.”

The saddlebag hit the table. A thing that looked like a human head rolled out. It was made of blue-black metal.

The man jumped back from his seat. A clamor erupted from his advisers and guards that lined the interior of the large tent.

“A functional Starshade.” Cybil leaned forward, palms on the table, eye level with the Seech.

“Welcome to the final age of Man.”