Rosalyn Abrams
~5 hours until arrest
A mixture of relief and disappointment to climb up the stairs into an empty, unfinished transit station. The itching feeling in your lungs and throat grows ever fainter the further from the maintenance tunnel you get.
Whomever that other telepath was, they’re gone.
Who knows if they even went this way.
The air is dead quiet. A layer of dust across every surface, lit from the exterior windows which look out over Boston at dusk, glowing from below. A sea of yellow and white lights rising in orderly squares with more floating along the horizon past the sea wall, isolated boats drifting through the ruins of the old city.
Cassandra presses her face against the glass, life threatening circumstances temporarily forgotten. “It looks like something you’d see in a movie out there. Wow.”
“Let’s um, let’s g-g-get away from the, uh, the windows.”
She hops back, face reddening. “Sorry!”
“It’s– it’s fine?” Is this what it feels like for Riley when you constantly apologize for things? “We just… don’t want to, um…”
“We don’t want to get spotted if the tram starts running again,” Riley finishes for you.
“Yeah.”
“I’m dumping this thing over there. I figure it’ll be out of plain sight that way?” Brayden announces, pointing to the far wall of the station. He’s already walking across the empty floor, sights set on a row of potted plastic trees that have been left abandoned.
“Um, why are we hiding it?” Cassandra asks.
“So whoever’s trying to use it can’t get it back,” Brayden answers. He looks over at you for confirmation. “That’s the idea, right? Keep it somewhere for evidence later?”
“Uh– yeah.”
That’s definitely what you were thinking, exactly.
Got it in one Brayden, good job.
“Is that going to be safe?” Riley asks, still hovering next to you. “Won’t it just… flood this entire space with whatever kind of fuck-you gas it is that triggers an Imago attack?”
“Roz says she turned it off. Right?” Brayden looks to you.
You nod back.
He continues, “Who ever goes to collect it will know it’s here, Riley. They can wear masks and shit like we are.”
Brayden reaches in behind the fake plants, making a space between one of the pots and the wall before carefully placing the air filter down. As soon as it’s out of his hands, he hurries away, not slowing down until he’s made it to the middle of the room, closer to Cassandra than not.
“Is it allowed for us to be out here?” Cassandra asks. She turns around in circles, taking it all in. “This feels… mega illegal.”
“Congrats Cass, you’re finally a proper delinquent,” Riley grins. “Roz and I used to sneak out here just to hang out where the Super couldn’t see. They never got around to finishing Zeta.”
“You guys came here for fun?”
“Um. Sometimes,” you admit.
“Babygirl, you should see the mall,” Riley says, looking like she’s having the time of her life watching Cassandra’s reactions.
“There’s a mall over here too?” Cassandra drifts towards the pitch-dark hallway, already enraptured by the idea. Nearly jumps out of her shoes when Brayden puts a hand on her shoulder to keep her from wandering off.
You hang back from the rest, digging your fingers into the straps of your backpack. The ache in your legs is still present, a dull throb. The last thing you want is to keep standing, but you can’t– you can’t stop here. There’s another telepath somewhere in the arcology. Were they responsible for today’s attack, too?
It can’t be Rivka. Too young, too agile.
So… who the hell are they?
Riley catches your attention with a wave of your hand, eyeing you over. “You okay?” she signs.
You shake your head.
“Want to talk about it?”
You flex your fingers, hands hovering in the air in front of you. Too many things going on. Too many problems. Too many feelings.
“I don’t know how,” you sign.
After a second, you add: “I’m glad you’re okay.”
That gets a laugh. “That makes two of us.”
You make a point of looking at her arm in the sling. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“I want to get drunk. And high. At the same time, ideally.”
Yeah. Same.
She steps closer, keeping an eye on Brayden and Cassandra who at some point in this conversation took some unspoken cue to give the two of you space. Together they wander towards the far side of the station, deep in their own whispered conversation. You don’t know whether to be grateful or not.
Riley taps her hand against your arm to get your attention again.“Dude, you’ve got actual superpowers. You realize that, right? That’s outrageously cool.”
“It’s not!” A harsher gesture then you intended, angry enough to make Riley lean back. With a wince, you try to get yourself back under control.
“I can’t– I’m not–”
“What’s the problem? You’ve been moaning for ages that you didn’t have a cool power like those vigilante guys, right? Isn’t this what you wanted?”
You bite the inside of your cheek. Something wet wells up at the edge of your vision. You blink it away. You’re not anything like Crow. You can’t fight; you can barely get through the day.
“I just wanted to be normal,” you whisper.
“Bullshit. You have never wanted to be normal. You wanted to be safe.”
Which is – you don’t know where that came from, but it hits you hard enough to hurt.
Riley fidgets, wanting to hug you but seeing the opposite of an invitation in your body language. She comes to a decision and hugs you anyway, one armed and from the side to avoid stressing her injury.
“You’re so much better than normal. Normal people suck.”
It’s not nearly the comfort that Riley intends by it, but you force on a smile regardless.
“Thanks.”
A tense silence, neither of you quite looking at the other.
She breaks first, brushing her hair back. “Hey, think I can get some of those superpowers too if I get some cybercell shit?”
You push her away with a snort, grateful for the change in subject. “I keep telling you it d-d-doesn’t work that way!”
“You don’t know that for sure! Maybe it does!”
From across the station, Brayden cups his hands over his mouth and yells: “Are you two done yet!?”
“I guess!” you yell back.
Now to make a case for not immediately turning around and going back home. After everything else the four of you have been through, it should be easy.
***
“You want to do what!?” Brayden shouts.
Riley doesn’t respond right away, mouth contorting in thought. You try not to stare at her lips while she makes up her mind. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
Cassandra nods in agreement. “Riley needs to get that arm looked at.”
“Okay, changed my mind, I’m on team Roz.”
“Guys. Please. It won’t take long, I p-p-promise. This could be our only chance to-to-to get–”
“Yeah, I heard you the first time,” Brayden cuts you off.
You need to know. Need to figure it out. If you can get a tap into the Super, you’d be able to do so much – like using the surveillance footage to figure out who this new mystery telepath is. Nail the person responsible, send the evidence, and then the authorities can step in and stop these attacks.
Maybe saving the day would even be enough to convince Rivka, or someone, anyone else to help you.
If not, there’s probably something else in Praxis’s files that you could dig up as blackmail. How does a terrorist end up running a scientific lab for one of the biggest companies in North American and get to do it while ignoring seemingly every corporate ethics law on the books?
Cassandra should be easy to flip once the others are convinced. It’s nakedly obvious how badly she wants to explore this place. Riley’s perfectly willing to put her own worries aside if it means avoiding the doctor, which is… a problem, but at least it’s a problem that helps you get you what you want. You can feel guilty about it later.
It’s Brayden that’s proving the real sticking point.
“I know we said we’d help, Rosalyn, but if there really is some… other terrorist running around out here, it’s not safe.”
“Th-they ran from us. They aren’t looking for a fight.”
“Yeah, in a public area! We run into them here and this asshole can just shoot us all and no one will ever find our bodies! Hell, what if they’ve made more Imago and left them to wander around?”
Riley rolls her eyes. “Rosalyn can give us a heads up if it seems like anyone’s getting close. We can turn around or hide or whatever we need to do.”
“No offense, but I don’t think we should be leaning so heavily on a girl that looks like she’s ready to collapse if she sneezes too hard.”
“F-f-fuck you too,” you grumble.
Girl.
Girl girl girl.
Even if he’s insulting you, it’s hard to feel upset about it when he keeps gendering you like that.
Comically, Cassandra raises her hand, waiting for a break in the conversation to talk. “I want to at least see the mall since we’re already here. How far is that?”
“The mall is fine. It’s um, it should be like… fifteen minutes to-to-to get there? That’s where I want to um, to go anyway. Find a Security Hub and plug in there.”
Riley nods in agreement. “See? It’ll be fine, B-man. Nothing’s gonna eat us. Or shoot us. Or blow us to bits.”
Brayden throws his hands up in the air. “Fine! Whatever! Better than you all going off on your own later and getting arrested. Or worse.”
Cassandra beams at him. “See, you do care!”
If it was anyone else saying that, you’d think it was sarcasm. Something that would have earned a rude comeback. Instead, Brayden makes a face and tries his best to ignore it.
“But we’re not hanging around all night, got it?” he insists. “An hour, two hours tops for Rosalyn to do whatever she needs to do and then we’re all going back.”
Cassandra nods her head in rapid agreement. “We can stop at the Urgent Care, get our shots, Riley can get her arm taken care of, that sounds good to me.”
“Rosalyn should see a doctor too,” Riley says.
“Wh-what?”
She sticks her tongue out at you. “If I gotta, you definitely gotta. What if this thing with your eyes is serious?”
This again? “It’s– it’s not– it’s like a-a-a bruise, um–” Cassandra and Brayden are nodding in agreement with Riley. You’re not winning this one. Your shoulders slump. “Fine.”
It’ll have to be enough. Brayden in particular looks ready to drag you out of here if he needs to. He pulls out his phone, checking the time. “Two hours it is.”
You eye the screen, the glow lighting up Brayden’s face. “T-t-turn that off.”
“What?” He looks back to you. “The Chattrnet is down, what does it matter?”
“It’s not g-g-gonna stay down.”
Once you’ve badgered everyone into complying, you take the lead down the tunnels. As you near the edge of the area lit by the exterior windows, Cassandra comes to a stop. She looks up at the ceiling.
“No emergency lightning?”
“Nope,” you confirm.
“How are we supposed to see where we’re going without our phones, then?”
You turn around and show off the clip-on flashlight you retrieved from your backpack.
“This.”
Clipping to the strap of your backpack, you tap the ‘on’ button, a beam of light cutting through the dead air as you face frontwards.
“Didn’t you have one too, Riley?” Brayden asks.
“Once again, I did not correctly guess how today was going to go when I got up this morning.”
“Christ.”
“Just d-d-don’t wander off.”
You offer a hand to Riley, an electric shiver running down your spine as she takes it. There it is again, her presence just under the skin. You can dip in–
I squeeze Roz’s hand. About to offer my other to Cass when the tug of the sling reminds me a second too late not to move my arm. Shit. Ow ow ow.
“Careful,” Rosalyn says.
“Dude, like I’d– –forget?” Riley says, all bluster.
You roll your eyes and turn back to the hallway, taking the lead. “Stick close,” you tell the other two.
Your flashlight isn’t especially strong, but in the total darkness left by the absence of the exterior windows, it doesn’t have to be. A singular light source cutting through the pitch, leaving a cone of gloom in its wake, is plenty to navigate by.
You know where you are. It’s a trivial problem to pick through the series of twisting pitch-black hallways, each littered with various abandoned construction materials. All you have to do is go straight to the center of the tower, find the mall and you’re golden.
That’s all.
That’s all it takes.
Save for the hum of three other people walking with you, everything is dead silent. The air is as still and musty as ever.
“How far away did you say it was?” Riley whispers after the fifth intersection.
“Not– not far.”
The two towers are supposed to be mirror images. You thought they were. No, they have to be, right? They’re both primarily residential. Why make different floor plans?
By the time you lead everyone past the seventh intersection, Brayden’s shoulders are getting tense. Irritation masking anxiety leaking into the static around him.
“I swear to fucking God, Rosalyn, if you got us lost out here…”
“You’ll what?” you challenge, still leading the way.
Did you make a wrong turn somewhere? Thought you knew what floor you were on, but you don’t recognize that last intersection from anywhere in Epsilon.
He opens his mouth, doubtless about to say something he thinks will be cutting before the hallway turns and, without any warning, comes to a hard stop, dropping into the abyss.
“See? Not lost.”
That’s smugness you’re feeling, not relief.
Definitely.
“It’s a dead end,” Brayden says, unimpressed.
“We’re in the-the-the right place,” you insist. “We just um, we gotta go… down. I think?”
Wrong answer.
“You think?”
You step up to the doorframe and twist your flashlight around a little to give a better sense of the space. It’s a wasted effort; the one light alone is barely strong enough to light up anything on the far side of the mall, a series of staggered balconies scaling back or forward depending on your perspective as they recede into darkness above and below.
Maybe it’s the time of day, but it feels even darker than the last time you made it all the way out here. Everyone whispers, as if on instinct. Some absurd fear of an imagined terror waiting to pounce from out of sight.
Riley inches closer, reaches out a hand to pull you back from the edge. “Okay, Roz, so like… How exactly are we going down? And no, climbing is not an acceptable answer.”
“Um…” Chewing the inside of your cheek, you let yourself be led back into the hallway. “There should be some– some stairs? Nearby? We can use those to get to our usual spot.”
“It’s that close?” Riley asks, surprised.
“Sure,” you lie. “We um, we wanted to-to-to go down anyway, right? It’ll be… closer to Riley’s apartment when we uh, when we cross back.”
Cassandra, with an energy that feels borderline spiteful to how urgently your shins are begging for death, bounces up and down on her feet. “Great! What are we waiting for?”
You sweep your flashlight down the hall to your right and left. It takes a second pass to locate what you’re looking for, shut doors only betrayed by the stairwell sign propped up against the wall to the side.
“Brayden, um, c-c-can you help me with the door?” You waggle your light to direct him.
“The door?” Cassandra asks.
“They sealed all the stairwells to keep people from sneaking up the building from street level,” Riley answers for you.
“Oh. That’s… why?”
“T-t-to keep out the um, the homeless. I think.”
“That’s Praxis, baby,” Riley chimes in.
Brayden sucks his breath in through his teeth but mercifully doesn’t complain. It takes both of you together to work the doors open, wedging the stairwell sign into the space between them until the magnetic seal finally breaks and the doors pop free. The air inside feels even more dead than it did in the hallways. A thin coating of dust sits suspended in the air, kicked up by your intrusion.
“Not– not much further.”
Brayden drops the sign at his feet. “I’d feel better with my phone light.”
You take a breath, cough at the taste of the air. Find Riley’s hand again as she presses up behind you. Distractingly close.
“You okay?” she asks.
You nod. Squeeze her hand. “R-right. Um. St-stay– stay t-t-together?”
What should only be a short walk down the stairs ends up feeling way longer. Maybe it’s the dark, or the ambient anxiety. Or maybe the fact that every step down reminds you of how far you’ve already pushed yourself today. At least gravity is on your side going this direction.
As if to spite you for thinking it, on starting the third flight of stairs down, your foot slips out from under you. A split second decision to let go of Riley’s hand avoids pulling her down with you as you fall, skidding painfully along the steps until you reach the next landing.
Fuck!
You twist to your side on the way down, saving your skull at the cost of bashing the arm with the still healing surgical cut against nearly the entire flight of stairs.
“Woah, woah, woah, dude! Are you okay?” Riley hustles down after you, babbling. Nearly slips herself, only grabbing the railing just in time with a “Shit!” as the sharp movement jars her own injury.
A second later she’s standing over you. “Are you okay?”
You’re not crying in front of her. It’d be totally fine and understandable to tear up a little, considering the situation. Of course. But that’s not applicable here. Because you aren’t.
“Y-y-yeah,” you breathe out.
You can handle a little pain. You can handle stress.
You can definitely handle falling on your ass in front of Riley.
You’re cool you’re cool you’re cool.
And now everyone is hovering over you, great.
Great!!!
Brayden offers you a hand –
Rosalyn flinches as I help her up. Definitely not looking too steady on her feet as she pulls on the railing for additional support.
“Thanks,” she says, her face bright red.
My eyes dart to the way she cradles the shoulder she fell on. “I swear to God, if you’ve fucked up your arm too–”
“I’m f-f-fine!” you snap, pulling him away from him. “What about you, Riley?”
She gives a thumbs up. “Peachy fucking keen.”
”W–what did I um, slip on?”
You usher everyone back, waving your flashlight across the stairs up the way you came. Something wet glistens across them, shining near-silver with the reflected light, and your breath catches in your throat. But it’s just water. Normal. Ordinary water. Looking further up confirms it, a wet spot running along the ceiling above. A drop pearls from an exposed pipe as the four of you watch.
“A leak?” Brayden asks.
Cassandra hums as she looks up at the ceiling. “I guess no one’s doing maintenance?”
Riley ignores the leak altogether, still fully focused on you. “Are you actually okay, Rosalyn, or are you just being a hard-ass?”
“Like you’re one to talk right now.” Brayden almost laughs.
You wince, reaching one hand back to rub the base of your spine. “The-the-the damage to my pride might be uh, terminal. Is it p-possible to sprain your butt?”
Stone faced, Riley asks, “You need me to check?”
Your eyes go wide as your face heats up all over again.
That is not where you intended that joke to go!
“I’m g-g-good!” you stammer, backing away as she laughs.
“Okay, I’ve had enough. I’m turning my phone back on,” Brayden declares, pulling it back out. Over your protests, he continues, “We’re outside the Superintendent’s range right now, right? That’s what you said last time. And the Chattrnet is probably still down anyway.”
“B-b-but–”
“This is not worth breaking our necks over.”
Cassandra nods along, rummaging through her bag.“Bray’s right. I understand where you’re coming from Rosalyn, but I don’t want any of us getting hurt.”
Riley shrugs, reaching for own phone. “Sorry man, you’ve been outvoted.”
You glare at her. Traitor.
Admittedly, once you’re back on your feet and confident you haven’t messed anything up, things go much quicker with three more light sources showing the way.
It’s only an educated guess which landing to get off the stairs at, but luckily for your credibility the first try turns out to be correct. A straight shot from the hallway here takes the four of you past room after empty room, doors left ajar. Large empty windows reveal hollowed out rooms as Brayden or Cassandra sweep their lights across. Probably meant for commercial use.
“You’re sure there’s no one else here, right?” Brayden asks, raising his voice.
“J-j-just us.”
“It’s just… I feel like we’re inside some giant dead monster,” he mutters.
“Technically,” Cassandra’s voice cuts in, “in this case it’d be more like a stillborn monster.”
“That’s so much better, thanks for that wonderful mental image, Cass.”
“You’re welcome!”
“If they ever finish this place up, would that count as necromancy then?” Riley chips in.
Brayden lets out a low whine. “Can we please stop talking? I regret ever bringing it up!”
Cassandra steps in closer, grabbing his arm. Under her mask is a delighted grin. “Awww, Bray, are you scared?”
“I am not scared, I have entirely reasonable concerns about being eaten alive by giant monsters and I–” Brayden’s voice dies as the four of you step out of the hallway and back into the mall. “Shit.”
‘Yawning chasm’ is the only possible description for it. Without the redwood trees rising up to fill the empty middle space, or the cables with signs and advertisements hanging from them, everything feels utterly empty. Doorless storefronts with empty windows line the walls opposite a floor that just… stops. There are no railings installed, either.
Even with the combined power of everyone’s phone lights, you still feel feeble against all the cumulative emptiness. The far side of the unfinished mall stands a mere suggestion of itself, not even half-lit. Cassandra tries to run towards the edge so she can get better look above, only for Brayden to grab her wrist and pull her back.
“I am not making the first time I talk to your parents into me having to explain why their daughter fucking died.”
Her good mood vanishes for a moment. “Well, you don’t have to worry about that either way, do you?”
He flinches back, as if stung. “Fucking suit yourself then.”
When he lets go, her smile returns. “I’ll be careful, I promise.”
Whatever the hell is going on between the two of them, it’s something to slot into the category of ‘none of your business.’ Just trying to navigate where you and Riley stand with each other is monumental enough a task.
As if she knows you’re thinking about her, Riley nudges your side again. Mouths something about keeping an eye on the others and breaks away from you. She slides up to Cassandra’s side, shining her phone light out into the empty mall.
“It’s cool as hell, isn’t it?” she says.
You hang back, watching the three of them as they talk, Cassandra continuing to gawk. She’s already demanding to come back to explore more when everyone hasn’t just survived a lockdown. Brayden desperately argues that wandering around here for no reason is too dangerous.
You take the chance to sit on the floor, rubbing some feeling back into your legs. Pull your knees to your chest, resting your head down against them. The nap was nowhere near enough either, and topping it all off is the gnawing pang of hunger. All your little video game need bars sliding towards empty again.
A second too late to realize something’s wrong.
Brayden claps a hand over Cassandra’s mouth, pulling her back from the edge. Riley swipes her phone light off just as you stumble to your feet.
“Wha– what’s–”
“Shhh!” Brayden hisses.
Cassandra worms herself free. Glares furiously at Brayden before turning her phone light off.
“I know how to be quiet,” she whispers.
“Then shut. Up.”
From a vantage point next to Riley you see a beam of light cut across the dark, coming from down below. Faint echoes of human voices come with it. Following after is a contingent of armed men, dressed in Praxis Security uniform.
Brayden is back at your other side, phone light off now but camera recording.
Don’t even have time to be mad at him for thinking of it first.
An electric cart wheels into view, garish safety-orange paint job sticking out like a sore thumb. The cart tows a heavy looking metal container behind it, big enough to fit a grown person inside with room to spare. More security guards fan out to either side.
They look less like an escort and more like they’re waiting for whatever’s inside the box to leap out
Just as soon as you have that thought, the box rattles, bouncing on its wheels. It comes to a brief stop and the guards swarm around it like bees. Out of a single minuscule opening in the back, a long thin tendril shoots out, wrapping up and around the top of the box. The group’s alarm only intensifies. A pair wielding white stun batons approach and whack at the tentacle until it finally lets go and retreats back inside.
You risk taking your eyes off the sight long enough to check on Riley.
She’s shaking. You slip your hand into hers and she squeezes back, hard.
You’re both thinking the same thing.
All four of you stay still and watch as the procession reorders itself and resumes, trundling across the empty park and down a hallway at the other end. The last of the lights fade, and as a collective you all let out your breath.
Fuck.
“I got it on video,” Brayden says, breaking the silence.
Cassandra swallows, mouth dry. “Was that…?”
“An Imago,” you answer first. “They… captured it?”
“It’s got to be,” Riley agrees. “But like, why?”
Brayden pockets his phone. “Who cares why? We can worry about it later. We are leaving. Right now.”
“Not– not yet.”
He stares at you, eyes ready to bug out of his skull. “No? No??? What the fuck do you mean, no? There are fucking armed guards and at least one livingImago out here. Who knows how many more there might be!
Halfway through the rant, you’re already walking off. Ignore him completely as he continues to whisper-yell after you.
“Roz! Rosalyn!” he hisses, “What the fucking christ do you think you’re doing?”
Finding the rest of your blackmail material, that’s what.
***
Everything’s exactly where you left it. The abandoned room, once destined to be a Security office hub, looks as desolate and untouched as it did a month ago.
You hurry to the loose panel on the wall, unslinging your backpack as you go. The sooner you start digging the less likely you’ll have missed your chance. Already terrified you’ve taken too long as is.
The other three follow in behind you. Cassandra is the only one that seems to have recovered from the shock out in the mall. Speculating endlessly on why Praxis would be taking Imago alive rather then just killing them. A research opportunity? Looking for a cure?
You’d certainly love to know that answer yourself.
“It can’t be Biotique,” Cassandra is saying. “Dr. Abrams is in charge of their research division. Praxis wouldn’t put someone who can’t even access NMIV research on her own in charge of handling Imago.”
“Are we sure about that?” Riley asks, watching Cassandra pace the room.
As Cassandra talks, you pry the panel off the wall. Dig through your backpack to retrieve your tablet and connection cables.
“It’d be weird? I mean,” Cassandra shakes her head. Stops moving to seriously consider the question. “It invites further questions. Generally speaking, as a scientist, the simplest explanation that fits all available evidence is the most likely to be correct. Occam’s Razor.”
Riley nods, barely following.
“There are two other Praxis subsidiaries that could be involved here. Armuro is military stuff, so that just leaves Dollox. They focus on materials science. I… guess they could be… harvesting something off the Imago? Or testing weapons? Armor, maybe?”
“I don’t think you should count out Armuro,” Brayden speaks up. “They could just as easily be using those things as weapons on their own.”
“What? But– you can’t control them–”
Riley snorts. “So what? Gather up a few, dump them on some poor hapless South Asian or Middle Eastern country the US is mad at…”
You don’t have your splicer cable with you. Forgot to pack that away during the fight. Damn it. Okay, well. You still have a knife you stole from the drug store this morning. It’ll just take a few–
“Woah, what the fuck!?” Brayden is gawking at you. Eyes fixed on the knife in your hand.
You look down at it, then back at him. “Wh-what?”
“Why the hell do you have that?”
“To… do stuff?”
“Relax B-man,” Riley puts a hand on his shoulder, coaxing him to take a seat with her on the floor. “Rosalyn knows what she’s doing.”
“Th-thank you.”
She shoots you a look, as if to ask whether you do, in fact, know what you’re doing.
You roll your eyes and return to the task at hand. Have to peel back the insulating plastic and separate out the individual wires without fraying them. Once that’s done, you can manually hook it into the exposed wiring behind the wall panel. It takes your full focus to keep your hands from getting shocked, holding the pulse of the live wires in your mind.
For the first time, it occurs to you – have you already been unintentionally using your glitch, every single time you’ve done this in the past?
After securing the last part of the wiring, you sit back down and grip your tablet with both hands, waiting for it to finish connecting with the Super. The process feels agonizingly slow. It’d be just your luck to get all the way here only to be locked out right at the finish line.
Cassandra is back to pacing again, unable to stay still as she keeps going through possibilities out loud. Vaguely aware of Riley making a joke about catching anxiety just from watching her.
“The real question is if this is the first Imago they’ve taken alive or not,” Cassandra says.
“Does it matter?” Brayden asks.
“Morgan– Rosalyn and I saw that big one out in Hydroponics, remember? That one looked pretty dead.”
Hearing your name, both of them, is enough to get your attention. You look over at her. “I’m… less sure.”
Riley goes still. “What?”
“The um, the whole time we were there, I kept… I was afraid it-it-it would get back up again.”
“Uh… dude,” she laughs, anxious. “You never mentioned that before.”
“I wanted to just b-b-be worrying over um, nothing.”
Your tablet screen flashes, connection successful. Any thought to the current conversation immediately flies out of your head.
“It worked. I’m online.”
“Oh shit.”
All three of them immediately move closer to you, crowding around to get a view of your tablet screen. You shrink down a little, desperately wishing for space. In anticipation of the first question on everyone’s minds, you run a search for news reports before the request is even out of Brayden’s mouth.
There isn’t much to find. Nothing on the local Chattrnet – still down, and just a handful of scattered notices in the city news about the Arcology being closed to outside traffic due to a ‘combination of technical difficulties brought about by the ongoing spree of Imago attacks.’
Switching access levels using your Admin access brings up a few more things. A handful of pre-written statements and drafted news reports all set to go live once local Chattrnet access is restored to the public. They all say pretty much the same thing, among lists of numbers decrying hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage and lost labor: a condemnation of the attack on the mall as an intentional act of terrorism by an unknown party with Tomorrowist leanings.
“They must be getting desperate for someone to blame at this point,” Riley murmurs.
You minimize the window, switch to the access terminal for the Super’s surveillance system. It takes a little work to pin down exactly which transit station you were at, but after a few false starts you have it. A live feed of the station fills the screen, showing that a sizable crowd still remains there waiting for the elevators. A few Security personnel walk between the lines, automatically tagged as such on the screen by the Super as it tracks them through the room.
You jump around between camera views until you find a shot that gives an acceptable view of the stretch of wall where you first saw the other telepath. If you just get a shot of their face on screen, the Super’s ID system can do the rest of the work.
“D-d-does anyone remember, um what time it was when we, uh…”
“It was almost seven thirty,” Cassandra answers. “I think?”
It’s a start.
You skim through the footage, the crowd on camera moving rapidly in reverse, growing larger the further back in time you go. Eventually it gets so big the camera angle no longer works, too many people blocking the shot. With a hiss of frustration you jump cameras and start again. The angle on this one isn’t as good but it remains clear. The sight of all four of you racing after each other in reverse leaves a strange feeling. There goes Brayden, then Cass, then you with Riley in tow, and then–
“Is that it?” Riley is leaning in close, practically talking into your ear.
“Th-that’s– that’s them.”
It’s a perfect shot, or as perfect as can be hoped for on this camera. A still frame of the other telepath looking up across the room, face etched in surprise at the sight of you charging across a gap in an elevator line. At the time, you didn’t exactly have the mental bandwidth to commit to memory any real visual detail, but it’s all here. They have light brown skin with black hair, styled in a sort of spiky pixie cut hanging loose over the ears. Their clothes are loose and baggy, tan canvas pants with an untucked sky-blue shirt.
“Is that a guy or a girl?” Cassandra asks.
Trying to zoom in just gets you a pixelated mess, impossible to say anything for sure about their face. But they can’t be that much older than you are. The Super’s already auto-detected you focusing in on them, a little yellow box encompassing their person as it runs an ID search.
“We’re about to find out,” you mutter.
Riley’s hand squeezes your shoulder. “Once we do, who do we tell?”
“The FBI?” Brayden responds, incredulous at the question even being asked. “Obviously?”
The ID box turns red.
“Um–” you start, and the video turns black.
After a second, an error message pops up.
Error 583: Corrupted file. Please contact your local administrator.
Silence.
Cassandra recovers first. “Did the Super just… delete the video on us?”
“Somebody did,” Brayden says, voice heavy.
You swallow the lump in your throat. You want to be sick. Just purge out every bad feeling welling up in you.
You were right there! You were so fucking close to having answers!
“Either we– either we missed our-our-our chance by like, seconds, or… Or something about the ID request tr-tr– alerted some uh… some failsafe and forced the Super to take action.”
God. Fucking. Damnit.
“It’s Praxis, right?” Riley says to the others. “It has to be Praxis itself doing this shit.”
“Riley,” Brayden shakes his head. “Why the hell would Praxis commit multiple acts of terrorism, killing people and costing who fucking knows how much money on their own employees and property?”
“I don’t know, dude! This is like, psycho shit!”
“Another company would at least make more sense. Look, we’ve gone as far as we can possibly go with this. It’s time we come clean to the FBI and let them do their jobs.”
“Are you crazy? You trust the FBI to not throw the book at us while they’re at it?”
“Why are you convinced they’re all fucking evil?”
“Dude, have you read a history book lately?”
You tune the two of them out. Staring down at your tablet, the error message is still there. Mocking you, really. There has to be another angle you can take. Some other path to get at an answer. If you go back home with nothing, if you have to spend the rest of your life under Rivka’s thumb, if you have to keep being something you’re not… the thought is unbearable.
At that, you switch over to searching employee records. Bring up Rivka’s and skim through it. There’s absolutely nothing there about her birth gender. Nothing at all to suggest she’s something other than a woman. It’s all exactly the same as the last five times you looked at it this week. A twenty year long list of various research projects ending in one, the first one, simply titled ‘Silkworm.’
You tap the link to your own file. This, too, is exactly the same as before. Full, horrible name. Date of birth. Every school grade and medical report (and there are a lot of those listed). There’s a subfile for your arrests (two: once at the party, once at school), and another marked ‘behavioral issues’. That one has in big red capital letters ‘FLAGGED FOR DEVIANT GENDER BEHAVIOR’ right at the top, followed by dozens of lines of supportive evidence.
Cassandra hasn’t said anything lately, you realize. Pull your eyes up and cast about the room. Find her sitting in the middle of the floor, her deck of tarot cards in hand as she shuffles them.
She catches you looking and smiles back. “I think we need some lateral thinking.”
Brayden breaks away from the argument with Riley to try and start a new one with her instead. “Oh, great idea, let’s consult the fucking moon mother, that’ll answer all our problems!”
“Dude, don’t be a dick,” Riley snaps.
“It’s not fucking real!”
“I know it’s not real,” Cassandra says, voice small. “That doesn’t mean it can’t help.”
Brayden doesn’t have anything to say to that.
Good. You don’t want to have to get up to punch him.
Cassandra shuffles the cards one more time.
“I’m going to try a three card spread.” She starts laying them out, announcing each card as she goes. Ace of Cups, Two of Swords, Death.
“Ominous,” Riley comments.
“It’s not literal death, everyone always assumes that!” Cassandra hastily assures her. “It’s supposed to be about like… transformation. A great life-altering change. It’s in the future space so… The Ace of Cups is about healing, and Two of Swords are a difficult choice. I think. I’m still learning all the card meanings.”
“Great insight, Cass. I can’t believe we’re wasting time on this.”
“You’re welcome, Brayden!” Cassandra responds in the most polite ‘shut the fuck up’ tone you’ve heard yet today. She fidgets with the cards on the floor, chewing over her lip as she thinks.
Death and transformation. Death and transformation.
Hell, you could just call ‘Death’ the Imago card and the meaning wouldn’t be much different, right? The word ‘Imago’ used to have a whole other meaning before NMIV came along. Something with bugs? You have a vague memory of talking about this before.
You stare down at the tablet resting in your lap, switch back to Rivka’s file. Eyes glaze over the words on the screen. Brain refuses to cooperate with you on solving this.
“I c-c-can’t– I feel like it’s th-there. You know. Like. The– the pieces. But…”
“Can’t what?” Riley asks.
”The– the connection. Between all of th-this and– and Rivka and…” You gesture out towards the hallway. Shake your head, hands in your hair.
“Wh-what was the um, the-the-the…” you gesture with your hand, trying to will the words to you.
Cassandra blinks, completely thrown off.
She’s not the only one.
“What was the what?” Riley asks.
“The thing. Imago. The other thing that, uh, that it meant?”
Blank stares.
“Are you… talking about how it’s another term for adult butterflies?” Cassandra asks, brow furrowed. “Technically it’s any adult insect that undergoes a metamorphosis.”
“Like– like a chrysalis. That was um, that was that other p-p-paper I found in Rivka’s, uh, in her office.”
“We already talked about this,” Brayden says. He crosses his arms over his chest.
You wrinkle your forehead, trying to remember. “We did?”
“Uh, yeah? On Sunday?”
Cassandra is nodding now. “Oh! That weird old research paper where it sounded like they were trying to make glitches happen on purpose. Except it was way before NMIV was around.”
Another look down at Rivka’s file. “Wh-what about, um, what about Silkworm?”
“Huh?”
You look at the others. No one else knows what you’re talking about either.
”Something, um, something else she… worked on. Th-th- that’s a bug thing too, right?”
“And as we all know, all ‘bug things’ are related.” Brayden rolls his eyes.
Your face burns. “You d-d-don’t know!”
Fully aware you’re reaching at straws here.
“I mean…” Cassandra plays with a stack of cards in her hand, shuffling them over and over. “Silkworms are what they make silk out of? You take their... cocoons – the chrysalis – and you can spin silk out of it which is this really valuable natural fabric.”
Riley whistles. “You’re just full of animal facts, aren’t you.”
Her face flushes red. “I watch a lot of videos, that’s all.”
“What happens to the silkworm?” you ask.
“Oh! Uh…” Cassandra makes a face. “The, uh, the process kills the pupa inside. They never get to grow up into moths, so you have to let a certain number become adults anyway, even though it means you don’t get any silk from them. You know, just to get the next generation of silk worms.”
“So… Silkworm could be something that… makes something useful out Imago?” Riley hazards.
“Cool, great.” Brayden looks up at the ceiling. Desperate for everyone to give up and agree to go home. “We already know they’re doing that. I got it on fucking video like half an hour ago.”
That can’t be it. Imago are already the adults, the final form. If Silkworm makes something useful out of them before that…
You go back to your tablet, start digging through the surveillance footage again. Queue up multiple requests for footage of the past three Imago attacks before switching windows to start digging through the employee records, set them all to automatically save local copies to your tablet once each search completes.
Riley notices your renewed efforts, leans in against you to try and read over your shoulder. “You thought of something?”
“Um… so. Don’t– don’t be mad,” you start.
She presses her lips together into a line. “Too late. But go on.”
“Sorry.”
“Just spit it out, Roz.”
“The… the air filter. Today. Did you… smell anything?”
You can feel the moment where her heart skips a beat.
“….Nnnno?”
You risk a glance towards Brayden and Cassandra. “Did you?”
Cassandra shakes her head.
Brayden squints at you. “You did.”
“Y-yeah.”
“You said something like that about the filter Cass showed us, too.”
“Um. Sorta.”
Riley’s hand finds your arm, digging her fingers in. You can feel her fear blasting at you full force through the static. “Rosalyn Abrams, if you’re about to tell me you’re infected I’m going to throttle you.”
“N-no! I don’t– I don’t think so? Well. Not… not exactly.”
“Not exactly!?”
“The filter today, um… it smelled different. I don’t– I don’t know how to describe it. Cass’s filter made me… woozy.”
“You threw up. I thought it was just the garbage.”
“That other one, today. I– I don’t know– it hurt? To-to-to smell?”
“It hurt?”
“What the hell does that mean?” Brayden asks.
Cassandra figures it out first.
“Oh!” The cards slip out her hands, scattering across the ground. “Sugar!”
Riley ducks her head, has to bite her lip to keep from laughing. “Girl, please just curse.”
“No thank you!” she replies. Starts picking up the cards. Stacks them together. When she’s recomposed herself, she says, “It’s a repellent. The air filters Dr. Abrams gave me were Imago repellent.”
Brayden still doesn’t get it. “I– what? How the hell do you figure that?”
“Because the filter we had today are the ones that trigger an Imago transformation.”
Riley reaches over to pick up a card with an oversized moon on it and hands it back to her. “You’ve lost me. Rosalyn’s not infected. She can’t be. Even if we got exposed, it’s only been– there hasn’t been time yet.”
“Not infected, no,” Cassandra agrees. “But she is already glitched.”
“I’m not following.”
Brayden snaps his fingers. “It’s the cybercells.”
Cassandra’s face lights up. She claps her hands together, almost dropping her cards again. “Yes!”
Riley raises her hand. “Can any of you please talk in plain English for the future dropouts in the audience?”
“NMIV works by converting the entire body into cybercells, right? It’s why people that have had almost any form of nanite therapy become more vulnerable to it. So. Hypothesis,” Cass pauses, straightening the deck of cards in her hand.
She holds up a finger.
“Observation one: Rosalyn was affected by both kinds of filter chemicals. One made her sick, the other… with enough exposure it could have made her, well…” Cassandra makes a face.
“We get the picture,” Riley says through gritted teeth.
“Okay,” Cassandra nods, keeps talking as she picks up the last of the cards from the floor. Accepts one with a lightning struck tower from Brayden. “Observation two: The cybercells that an Imago creates – they don’t stick to the host’s original body plan or uh, surgical treatment. It’s part of what makes Imago so dangerous, right? You know, aside from how they tend to attack everything in sight. They develop strange abilities and no two Imago end up exactly alike. You know, the best theory we have is that the transformation process responds to something in the nervous system? Electrical impulses, or maybe brainwave patterns or...”
“Cass, focus?” Brayden prompts.
“Sorry! Um… where was I?”
“Imago make lots of weird cybercell shit,” Riley answers.
“Right! Okay, so – and this is important, I promise, you know how the Imago vaccine works, right?”
You know that from experience. “It– it flushes the-the-the body of nanites.”
Cassandra nods in agreement, head bobbing up and down enthusiastically. “Mhm, mhm! NMIV is a corruption of nanite instructions and since that bypasses our normal immune systems it’s easier to just get us to flush them wholesale. But bodies are complicated and when you’re the size of molecules, very very big. On top of that, it’s not a perfect solution, right? It’s not like it can get rid of all the patient’s cybercells.”
“Okay… I think? Right. Because, otherwise Rosalyn would have to get re-treated every time she had the vaccine. But, wait. That means even if you get cured after being infected, you could still have a bunch of weird random shit inside you. That’s creepy.”
You shake your head. “Unless you’re already uh, g-g-getting injections, they’d fall apart and die pretty, um, pretty fast.”
“But…” Riley pauses, visibly struggling to put it together. “But you are, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So if any of that happened to you, it’d stick around.”
“Same for um, for anyone who needs nanites.”
“Which is… everyone with a glitch.”
You nod.
“Which brings us to Observation three,” Cassandra says, three fingers up now. “Praxis recruited Dr. Rivka Abrams, who we now know was a terrorist. One who worked for an organization that was infamous for using Imago against people. And they put her in charge of which research department? One that focuses on glitches.
“What’s the life stage before the Imago? The chrysalis. Just like that research paper we saw. The one that was dated from before the NMIV epidemic. Therefore, my hypothesis: a glitch is a partially aborted Imago infection.”
Finally, finally, Riley gets it. “Oh. Fuck.”
“Th-there,” you say, turning the tablet around for them all to look at the screen with the rows of personal files you’ve been carefully arranging during the conversation. “Medical d-d-data for every person in the, um, the arcology who– who turned into an Imago.”
Might have been overtaxing your tablet; it’s starting to run hot in your hands. But there they all are, medical files and employee records all neatly organized and topped off with autogen’d summaries of the Super’s observations. You tap through each one for the benefit of the others. Each file has a linked security clip recording the person’s moment of transformation.
By the third, the sinking feeling in your stomach has intensified. You stop reading along with the group after the tenth.
‘Electromagnetic sensory glitch’ reads the top of one file, contact telepathy says another. Accelerated healing, infrared vision, the list goes on.
Every single Imago victim was glitched.