A GPS appeared in front of my eyes. The floating image jittered at the edges, and a point began to flash. Impulses cracked down the length of my spine. A low electric hum rattled through my brain. It urged me to move toward the point on the map. I’d managed my way back up to street level, where I walked forward blindly.
I had felt Nico’s presence inside my head. He’d dug down in my mind, deeper and deeper, when something else intruded. The other presence reached in and took control.
The other presence was still there—I sensed it, though it hadn’t responded. It had referred to itself as Samuel Fawkes. Samuel Fawkes had forced me to kill Nico.
I could still feel Nico’s chest beneath my palm. His skin had been so warm and so full of life. I never meant to do it. Something triggered the blade, and the warmth seeped out. It gushed through my fingers and over my hand. He fell back, spilling onto the concrete floor. Blood bloomed through his white shirt until it turned red. The vibration in my chest grew more urgent. I wanted to go to him. Instead I rifled through each of his pockets. I found the keys that would free me from the chain. With the padlocks undone, I stood and left him.
The snow had gotten heavy. Flakes sprayed over my face and my mostly bare body. I was still wearing only a button-up shirt that reached the tops of my thighs, but I didn’t feel cold. A man stared as I trudged barefoot down the street, a passenger inside my own body.
His eyes narrowed, and he leaned in very close. The warm brown of both his eyes was blotted out as his pupils dilated.
The anxiety left me, bleeding away. In its place, I felt relaxed. Happy, even.
Those memories weren’t real, I was certain of it. Other memories referenced them as just a dream. I’d shared those dreams with the department psych rep. I was sure that they weren’t real. When Shanks came up to my apartment that night, it had been for the first time.
I shook my head, scattering cold drops and snow. More people were watching me, pointing at me…. I began to walk faster, and then I ran. I darted down a side street. One foot plunged into a puddle of water, splashing slush and flakes of ice. I ran through the dark maze of streets and alleys.
As I ran, I tore frantically through my thoughts, through the gaps in my corrupted memories. Inside so many of them was Doyle Shanks, saying and doing things he had never done.
I should have been terrified. What happened when that blade went into my chest? Between the time my life slipped away from me and the time the warmth first came, what was it, exactly, that I had become? Though I knew my identity was the same, something had changed when I fell into that darkness. I should have felt something, anything, but I did not.
Snow covered everything now. People and cars fell off; then I was alone. I didn’t know where I was. I’d come out in a wide, open drift of snow. Dark structures loomed through the haze in the distance. The GPS point was somewhere up ahead.
I saw a squat, blocky shape some ways away. It poked up from out of the expanse of white. I moved toward it, dragging my feet through the snow. It was a small guard station. The door lay open, and the glass was all smashed. An old, rusted breaker box had been torn down. A shopping cart lay on its side next to it. Just beyond, a ramp descended underground.
Squinting through the snow, I made out a figure. There was a man at the ramp. He wore a long, dark coat, with the hood up over his head.
A thrumming began to swell in the distance. It came from up above me. I turned and shielded my eyes against the snow. There were several black shapes hanging in the air. As they came closer, the thrumming grew louder. It was a formation of helicopters.
I turned back to the man who stood at the ramp. He gestured for me to come.
I recognized the man’s face. He was the one who had pushed the blade through me. It was the killer I had chased for so long. Somehow he was there, waiting.
The group of helicopters drew closer. As they did, they spread into formation.
The vibration filled my head, urging me on. As the helicopters closed in behind me, I staggered through the last length of snow to him. He held a blanket and wrapped it around me.
“You killed my friend,” I told him, “and you killed me.”
He wrapped the blanket tight around my shoulders. His cold, electric eyes stared and met my own.
“I killed your shadow,” he said, “and I didn’t kill you. I freed you.”
Nico Wachalowski—New Amsterdam, Warehouse District
She wasn’t much on social graces, but I admit I had taken an immediate liking to Calliope Flax, despite her foul mouth and the frank hatred of authority that included my own. It wasn’t just that she came back to check on me, which she didn’t have to do. Most people would have called us even by that point, but she was still taking point for a ride that could put her closer to trouble instead of the other way around. She had guts.
When we got back up to street level, the snow was coming down hard. We got on the bike and headed for Zoe’s apartment, but we didn’t get two blocks before I spotted the first military patrol. The armored vehicle was moving slowly down the main street, a soldier sweeping a spotlight across the building fronts and down the side roads. Another soldier on the back of the truck held an automatic rifle, keeping watch with an infrared scope. Further on I could see another beam scanning the street while a group of three uniformed revivors marched down the sidewalk, rifles slung over their shoulders as they crunched through the snow. It seemed like whole sections of the city had come under occupation.
Images from Zoe’s apartment appeared in my field of view. The feed from the officer scanned the inside of the place, shining a flashlight through the dark. The place was filthy, spiral-bound notebooks arranged in skewed stacks along the walls and leaning against the furniture. Trash, dust, and grime seemed to cover everything.
