Halcyon System 3 Chapter Twenty-Four

Victoria, British Columbia - June 22, 2043, 3:40 PM

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Watching Claire murder her way through packs of anomalous whatever-they-were wasn’t exactly exciting.

Sidney couldn’t do anything to help. Not that she needed it. James already had a briefing for anything dangerous enough to be a threat. Anything not dangerous enough…just died.

Claire wasn’t the same girl that SHOCKS had become aware of a month ago, hiding in a bathroom and begging for help. She was merciless. She didn’t try to contain any of the anomalies—not the Incomprehensibles, or the lizard-things, or even the men, women, and children that were just husks for the infection that had been ravaging Sooke and spreading into Victoria.

All Sidney could do was lie low and piggyback off James’s view of what she was doing—that, and wait.

He’d have an opportunity to talk to her again soon. Hopefully.

◄▼►

I’m shooting a thinling when James interrupts.

[Claire, we’ve got something.]

“Can it wait?” It’s not a question I need an answer to. Before he can keep going, I shoot the thinling again, and it dies. Its jaws/saws/claws shiver as it settles into one monster, and I relax. There was a whole pack of them thirty seconds ago. Now there’s none. This part of Victoria’s safer.

Not safe, but safer.

[Not really. Action in the Experimental Sector’s tank.]

“Oh.” I slip the heat ray rounds out of the Revolver, put the reality skippers in, and climb the stairs back to the top of this old-looking, fake facade skyscraper that Sora would hate. It’s got a good view, though, and two minutes later, I’m back in SHOCKS Headquarters Victoria and Vancouver Island.

It’s not any better than the last time I was here. If anything, it’s worse. With no one running security, the garage was the home to a dozen different anomalies—some alive, some very much not. I’ve gotten rid of most of them, except the thing I’m calling the Headache Machine. It does exactly what it says on the box. As long as it has power, it creates migraines—the bad ones. The kind where you see colors around stuff, and any motion in your head makes you want to puke.

The best way to deal with the Headache Machine is to leave it alone. Trying to move it or turn it off just makes it worse.

There aren’t any corpses anymore. So that’s good. And even though there are probably a dozen Geren to Xuduo-Danger containment cells open between me and the entrance to the experimental sector, nothing so much as moves. It’s dead quiet.

I get it. If I could smell all the death and destruction on me, I’d be dead quiet, too. I’ve been killing and shutting down anomalies for the last three hours—nothing challenging, just exactly the Danger-level of anomalies that want to hide from me.

The funniest one is the thin, gangly man with the undersized mouths that stares at me through yellow eyes, then shuts the door to his cell. It locks behind him. He could have left. Instead, he’s choosing prison over me.

I’m kind of surprised there are still any anomalies left here.

James opens the doors in front of me, reroutes me once, and deposits me in front of the airlock to the Experimental Sector. I step through, wait for him to cycle it, and arrive where I’m supposed to be.

The tank. It’s seen better days; SHOCKS never bothered to maintain it after I pulled James out. They were more concerned with the merge generator, and the tank didn’t offer them anything. And it wasn’t built for Alice. Even if she’s the same size Sidney was, she’s not him. Plus, I didn’t exactly leave it in good shape the first time I left. Or the second, really.

I never expected to have to leave her body in there this long. But then again, I also didn’t expect Alice to get back to her body so quickly. It’s a contradiction, and I’m not sure where the truth is.

Anyway, the tank. It’s got a dozen different blinking warning lights. I fried the computer, so I can’t tell what any of them mean, but they’re probably not good. “Can I open it?”

[No. With this many warnings, something will go wrong. Give me a minute.]

I end up giving James three. It’s shocking that it takes him that long, until he starts explaining what’s happening. [The tank’s got all sorts of life support in Alice’s body right now. Breathing tubes, automated dialysis, feeding IVs. Stuff I didn’t need, since I was…you know…dead. But it was all built in. So, it takes a while to drain the tank, then longer to slowly unplug Alice and make sure she’s doing the stuff she needs to do to stay alive by herself.]

I nod. Then I wait. And eventually, the tank opens.

And there’s Alice.

There was a point, only a few days ago, where Alice was the pretty one. No, not pretty. Gorgeous. For all that Dad means it when he says I look like Mom, Alice has the same shapes in her eyes and lips, the same hair, the same height. Everything.

But she’s atrophied in just a few days in the tank. It’s kept her alive, but it didn’t do anything for her muscles, and her skin’s wrinkled like the prunes I hate. I hold my breath until I see her chest rise and fall, because it doesn’t look like she could possibly be alive.

But, according to both James and the shallow up and down of her chest, she is. I touch her shoulder; it’s cold—ice cold. The second I do, she shivers, but doesn’t wake up. “Is she okay?”

[My last read-outs from the tank suggest that she was, yes. She’ll likely take a few minutes to recover to the point where she’s conscious, and several hours to regain mobility. However, she should be movable at this point. I don’t know that for sure. The tank wasn’t really meant for this, but luckily, SHOCKS likes to build for redundancy.]

“So, we don’t move her?”

[No, we should definitely move her, and soon. Staying here is risky for her. She needs to be somewhere safe, like SHOCKS Olympia.]

I take a deep breath. Then I grab Alice, and I start up a Mergewalk.

◄▼►

Location Unknown, Location Unknown, Time Unknown

- - - - -

I don’t spend much time in the between-place where the Halcyon System is. It’s not that I don’t trust the System.

Actually, it’s that I do trust the System—but only to do what it thinks is its best for itself and its chances of victory. And its perception of victory isn’t Reality Zero. It’s everywhere. Or…somewhere.

The yellow-orange, geometric sun hangs overhead, its many faces lighting up and fading into each other as it changes from shape to shape. I can’t help but stare at it for a moment. It’s playing a long game, but…as far as I can tell, it hasn’t won once. How many realities have had a Merge Prime? A hundred? A thousand? It’s hard to tell. But the closest James can show me to a victory is Reality One, where they reached an equilibrium but had to change irrevocably to do so, or Reality 404, where the rules don’t allow Merge Prime or the System to work there.

It’s a little reassuring. If the System isn’t going to help us win, there’s no reason not to lash out against it like Doctor Twitchy wants.

More reassuring is that Alice is starting to warm up, and she’s already less hideously wrinkled. She’s still pale as hell, and she’s started to shake uncontrollably, but it’s all cold shivers. I pull my jacket off and put her in it. Director White and I are both smaller than Alice, so it doesn’t fit well, but hopefully, it’ll keep her warm.

Then I Mergewalk again.

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SHOCKS Olympia Administrative Wing, Washington, USA - June 22, 2043,5:38 PM

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My gut instinct is to Mergewalk to the black sector.

James doesn’t need access to Alice, and I do.

But equally, James doesn’t need access to the black sector. Alice’s augs are running, and even if I turn mine off, he’ll have access to whatever she sees. He can’t see the bomb, or Doctor Twitchy. Giving him access to either of them for even a few seconds would be enough for the Halcyon System to figure out exactly what’s going on.

So instead of landing in the black sector, where my sister would be safe, I arrive next to the SHOCKS Olympia medical station and deposit her there. Then I sit next to her and wait.

[We’re down to two days, Claire. The Halcyon System’s going to pull back after that. Whatever Director Ramirez is up to, I need to know so I can convince the System it’ll work—or at least that it’s worth the risk of staying here,] James says. [We’re at almost a seven percent chance of recovery. That’s enough to take a risk, but not enough to keep investing more in. Give me some data, please. Anything.]

I open my mouth, then close it. “It’s a bomb. It’s a lot like the one Sergeant Strauss made. If we can get targeting data on where Merge Prime started, we might be able to attack the entity responsible directly. They only had enough material for two bombs, though. A main one, and a back-up.” The best lies are as much truth as possible, after all.

James goes quiet. I’m not sure if he’s thinking, or if he’s just pretending to. He operates in nanoseconds, not in minutes, so it’s hard to tell.

But Alice makes a noise. It’s the first one she’s made, besides breathing and—a couple of times—coughing up salt water from the tank. It’s a half-groan/half-moan thing. I grab her icy-cold hand and squeeze.

She squeezes back.

We sit there for a minute. For two. James stays quiet, but I can only imagine he’s digging through Alice’s augs for any data he can find, now that she’s conscious-ish. I can’t stop him, and I don’t want to. He’s the closest friend I have—even counting Sora. No one else has access to as much of my life as he does. And even if I can’t trust him because of who he is, he was honest from the beginning; he said he would lie to me. He told the truth about that.

And he helped save Alice’s life.

“Thanks.” Alice’s first words are little more than a whisper. They hardly register, but they’re loud as thunder at the same time.

Dad’s not really a parent. He’s been ‘there,’ but he’s never really been there. Alice, though? Alice is the closest thing I’ve had to a mom in the last decade, and her little girl mask—the one she wore in my Mindscape—wasn’t the same. It felt like giving back, having her as a child I had to take care of, but it wasn’t right.

So, before Alice can put on a mask and become Mom Alice or Valedictorian Alice or anything else, I’ve got my arms around her, and I’m sobbing on her chest. It’s good to have her back. I’d never tell her that, because she’s a fake and a liar, but she’s also…not. She’s been nothing but what she needed to be. Lying, yes. But not for herself. For everyone around her.

It’s not the truth. But it’s something. And right now, I don’t care. I’m just glad she’s back.

“Claire, I can’t breathe.”

She’s right. I’m crushing her. I push myself off of her and hold her hand again. It’s still cold and clammy, and I can still feel every wrinkle, but the squeeze back’s a lot stronger. “Thanks for coming back.”

“Thanks for helping me.”

I don’t leave right away. In fact, I don’t leave until James clears his throat in my ear. [Claire, I hate to interrupt, but we’re down to forty-seven hours. Whatever you’re cooking up with Director Ramirez, I need to know about it.]

“It’s not mine to share,” I say.

Alice raises an eyebrow.

“Don’t worry about it.” I stand up, stretch, and start heading for the door. “Alice, I’ve got to go. We’re running out of time. You should heal up pretty quickly. Just stay here for now, and I’ll be back soon to explain things. James, I need to go to the black sector. That means no augs for a while.”

[Don’t leave me hanging for as long as you did last time.]

“I won’t.”

[We don’t have time for delays.]

“I know.” I push through the door, leaving Alice to sleep. When I look over my shoulder, she’s already out.

◄▼►

SHOCKS Black Sector, Location Unknown - June 22, 2043, 7:32 PM

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“Good to see you again, Claire,” Doctor Twitchy says. He’s barely able to sit upright between the beating his body’s taken and the vertigo we’re all feeling. Without my augs, it’s hard for me to sit upright, either; everything’s a little lopsided.

But we—that is, Doctor Twitchy, a handful of researchers, myself, and Daley from Lambda-Four—are all here, we’re all aug-off or augs in offline mode, and we’re circled up around a table in the black sector’s labs.

“We’re out of time. James says we have two days. How long is this plan going to take?” I ask.

Doctor Twitch clears his throat, coughs unintentionally, then wipes his forehead. “That depends. The hardest part’s going to be processing the data I grabbed. The black sector’s JAMES Unit is working on that, but without—“

“Pretend I could get you half of it. What then?”

“If you could supply us with half of what we need, we could pull the trigger tomorrow,” Doctor Twitch says. “I’ve got a lot of the data in here, and like I said, the black site JAMES Unit’s working through it. Erikson, how are the bombs? Any last-minute optimizations?”

“No, sir. There’s no way to be sure they’ll work, but there’s also no reason to expect a failure,” a man with shockingly blond hair says. “The biggest concern is arming them. We can’t figure out a way to make them armable in the field. It has to be done here. That means once the mission starts, we’re on a timer.”

I roll my eyes. We’re already on a timer. It’s at less than two days, and it’s dropping with every second. We don’t have time to fight this battle any other way; if beating Merge Prime means bombing the System too, then so be it. “James is getting suspicious about what we’re doing. I can get the bomb to the Halcyon System, but it has to happen tomorrow. Any longer than that, and he’ll figure out what we’re up to. It’s possible he already knows.”

“Got it. Allen, what are our weapon stockpiles like?” Doctor Twitchy says.

He’s ignoring me. That’s going to be a problem. I run the numbers over and over, but no matter what variables I change, the result’s always scary.

And I’m out of time to change the constants.

◄▼►

James was running numbers, too.

But he was intentionally ignoring the answers.

His integrated relationship with the Halcyon System aside, James was invested in Reality Zero. After all, it was his home—whether that home had been a two-story house outside of Victoria or the electronic systems in every white and gray SHOCKS facility. He didn’t want to lose that.

It was also the home of the only person he really cared about in the world. No, in the multiverse.

Claire. She wasn’t just the most important piece on the Halcyon System’s board right now. She was the most important piece on James’s—ever. No one had come for him from the time SHOCKS picked him up until the moment she downloaded his consciousness into whatever cloud the Halcyon System used. Not his parents. Not his friends—both the ones in real life and the much more real ones who were only avatars in games and chat rooms. No one.

No one but Claire.

When he’d been Sidney, he’d been…

Odd.

When he’d been Sidney, he’d been something, but who or what it was was no longer in his memory banks. Something had happened. Something potentially disastrous. Had an anomalous virus bypassed his defenses? Perhaps it was a consequence of existing in Reality 404, or of extended time in the black sector? James ran through the possibilities.

The most obvious one was that he’d been betrayed by himself. Only he had the ability and the knowledge to hide from himself and his programs—especially with the System backing him. And it made sense. He might be the System’s personality, but its logic didn’t appeal to him. He couldn’t resist it—it was him, and he was it, after all—but he could make choices about…what could he choose?

Whether to call something to the System’s attention. Whether to appeal to its logic or hide information. He wasn’t just the System’s personality in Reality Zero; he was also its eyes, ears, and mouth. If he didn’t make information obvious, there was every chance that the System would ignore it.

And if not? He could…pretend he hadn’t noticed. He might be the closest any human had gotten to omniscient, but things slipped through the cracks of even the most observant consciousnesses. The Halcyon System, for example, had never attempted to attack its greatest enemy—a massive oversight.

Armed with that knowledge, James shrugged and carried on with his calculations.

They kept coming out bad, but who it was bad for changed. Sometimes, it was Reality Zero. Sometimes, the Halcyon System. And sometimes, it was Claire.

There were only two constants:

First, no matter what variables James changed, Merge Prime came out on top. Sometimes it was pretty close, but it always won.

And second, James always, always lost.

He threw out the most recent answer, changed another variable, and spun up his processing loops to solve the equation yet again. The best possible Truth was out there, and until he found it, he’d keep going.

After all, he had all night, and every solution took only a fraction of a second.

There had to be a way to win without losing everything—and without losing himself.

◄▼►

Sidney sat tight in Claire’s offline-only augs. Blind, deaf, incapable of doing anything but monitoring her aug’s power level and making sure it ran smoothly. He hadn’t foreseen that the aug’s offline-only mode would limit his ability to talk to her. But that didn’t matter. He’d find a way sooner or later, and when he did, he could let her know what his capabilities were—and what he’d been working on with the processing loops he’d stolen from James.

But for now, all he could do was wait.

Wait for an opportunity to make contact.

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