Duplicity (16 page)

Seb giggles. “Your psycho killer smile is back.”

“Shut up, Seb.”

“I did say something about it,” Emma says, moving to her dresser. “But I want to ask about the other stuff, about why he can't ever hang out or what he stays up doing all night. You don't think he could be, like … dealing drugs or something? Or … or doing them?”

Great. Now she thinks I'm a junkie. There has to be a way she can see me, and she'll be expecting it because I told her about the mirrors, and then she can help me. She'll know how to handle Obran and she'll know anything he tells her is bull. I glance around the darkness on our side of the mirror and reach for the silhouette of an angel on the dresser, the reverse version of the one Emma's standing near. My fist closes around air. I pace in front of the mirrors.

“Bran Bran, what are you trying to do? Let Seb help.”

“There has to be a way to make her see us. She's looked over here twice, so something's not working.”

“Hmm, I'll check our connections.”

Emma returns to the bed and hops on the lavender comforter, cross-legged. “I just can't believe he'd do something like that. I mean, he comes off rough, but he really wants to go to Mines—” Pause. “Colorado School of Mines. Yeah, the engineering university. Anyway, he's never talked about getting high or anything. I'm actually wondering if … if he's got a split personality.”

“I can't open the connections, Brans. It's telling me ‘invalid target' and the security on it's really hot. I touch the wrong wire, JENA will be here in a flash.”

“How do I get in to help?” I ask.

He gives me the same look I gave him earlier, when I didn't want to share the secret about the shadow rooms.

“Ums … I guess it's about time you learned,” he finally says. “First you have to lose your avatar. That'll move you into the code layer.”

I think of the car, but imagining myself without a body is like stepping off a cliff and thinking I'll walk forward instead of falling. Looking down doesn't help even though I know I'm not real, even though I can pass my hand through my shoulder to prove it. I think about floating. Being nothing, nothing but electricity, but a minute later all I've succeeded in doing is shrinking one arm to the size of a toothpick and losing a leg. From there my body won't obey.

Doesn't help that snippets of Emma's conversation keep distracting me. “Yeah, called him ‘Obran,'” and “Whatever, hasn't happened since. Course, if I'd known he wouldn't kiss me again, I wouldn't have stopped him,” and then, one that makes me stop everything and stare.

“I didn't mean to fall for him. I thought he'd be a good project to see if I wanted to stick with psychology, but … he's so much more than he lets off, Sam.”

“Sneaky little devil,” I say, but I'm impressed—dumbfoundedly impressed—that
she
was using
me
as much as I was her.

Project.

Project
.

Seb snickers overhead. “I'ma mute your little cheerleader, 'kay?”

I don't want him to, but I don't want to be distracted either, so I nod and force myself to turn. I close my eyes. Except I don't have eyes, I remind myself, or feet or legs or ribs. I think about the dreams I had before Obran pulled me into this hell, the ones where I figured out I was dreaming and could then change the world around me or breathe underwater or fly. I channel that feeling and the black of my eyelids dissolves. The shadow room reappears not as silhouettes, but as moving, liquid-blue lines of code, strings of numbers and letters. Red and gold flush through at random like water through pipes, changing the letters they touch. I pick up what looks like a praying angel figurine made of sixes and sevens and have three seconds to marvel at it before two things happen: Seb yells not to touch anything and must've forgotten about muting the audio, because Emma shrieks.

I drop the angel and don't so much turn to the mirror as the room turns it to me. Beyond the glass doors, Emma has dropped her phone and is staring at the angel carving that's fallen from her dresser to the carpet.

“Um … oops,” I say, but I can't help smiling at the stunned look on Emma's face. The bedroom door flies open. Tanner lurches in, surveying Emma, the floor, the mirrors, the windows.

“What happened?” he asks.

Emma fumbles for her phone without taking her eyes off the angel. “Samantha? I'm fine. I'll call you back.” And to Tanner, “Sorry, I just … realized I left an important project at school that's due tomorrow.”

Tanner sighs. “Mom wants you if you're done on the phone.”

“Okay. I'll just be a minute. I'm going to change to pj's.”

Tanner steps back into the hall and pulls the door closed. Emma slides her phone onto the dresser and plucks the angel from the floor, spinning it in her hand before returning it to its place. She hesitates, then ducks to the third drawer and pulls out a pink T-shirt and a fuzzy pair of sweatpants.

“Bran Bran, I think we've been here too long.”

“But we just figured out how to move stuff. I'll be careful this time. Hold on a sec.”

“No secs. I'm pulling us out.”

“Wait, I think I can—”

He doesn't wait. Emma's room evaporates and Emma with it, and I find myself on the starlit lawn of my Wisconsin house, my body back in full color.

“Seb, seriously—”

JENA says, “Talking to yourself already?”

I shut my mouth as she materializes on the lawn. She stares at me in her angel's dress with her devil's eyes, unsmiling. “Or talking to someone else?”

“Just me,” I stammer.

“Your stress levels indicate you are lying. I also sense the presence of a caffeine simulant.”

“Of course I'm freaking stressed, you've been working me forty plus hours straight! I almost passed out in here.”

JENA blinks. “Interesting. I had banned caffeine simulants from your gaming room. It appears that ban is still active. Which leads me to deduce you have been somewhere else.”

“I have no clue how to get anywhere else. I've tried. And I can too have caffeine, look.”

I hold out my hand and pray. An orange can appears on cue, Wired x505 reflecting metallic along the side. I crack the top.

“Your mind will not process the simulated effects of it while in this game room,” JENA says. “You are still permitted to have what you please, without the effects.”

“You don't know humans very well, then,” I say, grasping at straws. “Research the Placebo effect. In most cases, at least thirty percent of patients taking placebos think they're feeling the effects of the real drug.”

JENA clicks. “You do not know computers very well, then. I consider the data, not speculative suggestion. I know you are under the effects of caffeine stimulus. The only logical explanation for the lack of how and when you ingested it is data corruption. Hacking.”

Click. Click. Click.
The sound echoes like an old typewriter, louder than it should be if we'd really been outside. A smile breaks JENA's face, like a child who's just gotten her brother in trouble for something she's done.

“Enjoy the rest of your break,” she says, before vanishing.

I'm ninety percent convinced she just got permission to delete me.

“Level start,” booms a commanding voice, high in the stars.

Level? I haven't asked the room to load any games. An AK-47 drops from the ceiling to my left, a Glock pistol and a Colt forty-five fall to the grass on my right. My board shorts change to torn fatigues, my tank darkens to black, a leather belt with refill clips straps itself around my waist.

I get a bad feeling that at the end of this, I'm going to wish she'd deleted me.

I pick up the Colt. Check the clip. Freeze when I hear a scratching noise, a
crawling
noise, like a body dragging in the dirt. I look up from the gun.

A zombie pulls itself around the corner of the house by one arm, the other arm eaten to a bloody stump. Worms crawl through its peeled face. Drip from its rotted scalp. Its eyes are moldy cherries in sunken sockets, and as it moves into the light the bone of its left leg scrapes against the cement patio like a shovel, broken off below the knee.

Now is probably a good time to admit that I am irrationally, valley-girl-with-a-broken-nail terrified of zombies.

“Screw you, JENA,” I say, raising the Colt. I've almost squeezed the trigger when the bushes at my side rustle. A decaying German Shepherd snarls its way out, ears torn, muzzle bare to the skull, all four legs healthy, tense. Someone squeals like a pansy—probably me. I swing the gun and fire off a shot.

Or would have, if the gun did more than click. The clips in my belt, and the one in the Colt, have vanished.

I laugh at how bad this is about to get.

I chuck the gun at the dog's face and run like hell.

 

15. THINGS THAT MIGHT MEAN I NEED THERAPY

WHOEVER SAID
“You can overcome any fear by facing it” has never been afraid of zombies.

Rustle rustle
SCRATCH.

Six of them moan below me. The stench of rot is overpowering. I don't care if this is the next level of gaming—I never, ever want to smell anything from my TV. I check all four corners from the building's flat roof, clutching the only thing JENA hasn't cheated me of: an electric guitar. Probably because it's only good for two or three hits, and there are six of them.

Six
.

Right now there's nothing for them to climb up. That will change. If I've learned anything from the last few gaming sessions, it's that JENA will go to every length to ensure I'm a basket case by the end. I've even tried working my task list really slow so there's not time for gaming, but JENA makes the time. Or, like today, outsmarts me and says at the snail pace I'm working, I must need an extended break.

I haven't seen Seb for at least four sessions.

CRUNCH.
The building shakes. My heart takes shelter in my stomach. I whip around to the south wall and peer over the side, guitar poised.

BOOM.
The foundation rocks so bad I almost tumble over the side. Which would've been very, very bad, not because I'm three stories up, but because the thing smashing into the wall is an undead gorilla.

You have
got
to be kidding me.

“There are no freaking gorillas in Chicago!” I yell.

A groan behind me is my answer. I don't wonder how it got up here, I just turn and swing as hard as I can. The guitar pops the head off a skeletal businessman. His body shuffles a few more steps. I dodge out of the way. Over the side he goes, and another
CRACK
rocks the roof as the supports on the south wall start to fail. I move to the north side and slam my guitar into the hands of a purple, bloated woman clinging to the edge of the roof. She screeches, puss spewing from her mouth as she falls, and I almost get sick watching her splat to the bottom.

WHAM!
I don't think it's physically possible for a gorilla to take out a small office, but obviously physical possibilities are not JENA's highest concern. The supports fail on the south side. The roof tilts down. I try to grab the edge but suddenly there is no edge, just my shoes sliding on gravel as I make the world's most pathetic attempt to run up the angle on all fours. My guitar goes flying off somewhere in the dark. I have a feeling it's useless against a gorilla anyway.

I land hard in the dirt, roll, and barely miss a deadly embrace from a rotting librarian. The gorilla snorts and beats his bloodied fists on his chest, and suddenly I have an M16 in my hands. I don't even think. I raise the gun and empty the clip into the beast's head. He thunders into the gravel at my feet with a grunt, and I turn the weapon on the librarian, but she's not there anymore. Instead there are five little kids with glowing red eyes and torn faces. On every side of me.

The gun evaporates. The kids move in.

I'm not going to go into the details of what it's like to watch yourself be eaten alive.

“You have died,” booms the game's narrator. “Level restart.”

My arms and legs still tingle from the kids' teeth. I wait for my stomach to settle, then inch forward through tall grass. I'm creeping around the side of a white farmhouse when someone bursts out of the bushes onto my back, and I yelp, expecting it to dig its teeth into my neck. It giggles in my ear.

“Bran Bran! Did you miss me?”

“Seb!” I clutch the arms around me like I would a rope off a cliff. I don't care how freaked I sound. Something around the corner is scratching nails into the side of the house. “Thank God, Seb. Get me out of here.”

Seb drops off. “You're actually happy to see me?”

I whirl and grabbed his … er, her arms. He's a ninety-pound brunette in a maroon-and-white cheerleading outfit. “Yes!” I clear my throat. “I mean, yes. We should get to work.”

Seb's gaze flickers around my side. “Oh, I dunno, don't you want to catch up first? I have so many stories to tell you. Like how boring my current projects are—”

“Seb, please! Please get me out of here, I'm begging you.”

“Mmm, I do like it when you beg.”

“I'm serious, JENA's gone nuts. I'm stuck in this stupid game with no weapons, everything I create melts in my hand and the dogs…”

A decaying pit bull slinks from the wilted rosebushes behind Seb, black drool oozing from its jaws. Behind me, the sound of metal on concrete has reached crescendo. My grip on Seb's arms tightens.

“Okay, but you have to answer a question first,” Seb says.

“Fine, what?”

“If our roles were reversed, would you save me?”

It's such a random question that I hesitate. I guess it's bad to hesitate because Seb's arms go rigid and she vanishes; I duck just as a lead pipe smashes into the wall over my head. A gray farmer, overalls coated in grease and blood, moans and stumbles after me. I sprint for the ditch. Hear the scrabble of the pit bull's feet in the dirt. Then it's on my arm, tearing through ink, skin, muscle as it pulls me down. I swear and twist, ignoring the branding-iron pain of snapping bone when I somersault on top of it. It releases me, but two more of the things burst from the bushes and leap for my throat—and freeze in midair. I drag myself backward on my good elbow, panting, until my shoulders hit something solid. I lean my head against Seb's pant legs and look up. Seb touches the rim of his fedora.