Simon opened his eyes slowly, painfully. First blackness, then the impression of television static in the form of two human outlines. He blinked and it was gone. One of the men reached out, gently touched Simon’s forehead and cheek.
“Solid enough for now, but there was a hell of a lot of signal degradation in the transfer.”
“But how could you know them?”
The dark man turned, gazed icily at his companion with silver eyes.
“I told them they’d get here eventually. I never expected them to arrive so soon. This wasn’t a part of the plan.”
Simon watched this conversation through the haze of his aching mind. He finally placed where he had briefly seen the larger man before. Diablo.
“I know them because they came from the same world I escaped from. They’re monsters just like me.”
Simon frowned, unable to gather enough strength to say anything. The dark man leaned down, whispered into his ear.
“Welcome to heaven, Simon Hayes.”
He touched Simon’s soul with his own, giving him life anew.
Richter.
Simon fell back into the void.
Waking, sitting up. A hand wipes sleep from eyes. Searching surroundings for familiarity, finding a precipitous lack thereof. Gnawing, thudding pain from behind silver eyes.
“What do you remember, Simon?”
He spun to face the source of the voice and found him sitting in a darkened corner of the room. He sat up in his chair, face falling partially into the light, but bands of shadow concealed most of it. Richter folded his hands in his lap, regarded Simon with a palpable mixture of curiosity and pity.
“Where’s Maggie?”
“She’s close. What I just can’t figure out is how you two got here. Please, tell me what you remember so I can piece together what happened. You aren’t supposed to be here.”
“Where’s ‘here?’”
Richter smiled sadly, shook his head. “What do you remember?”
Simon shrugged his shoulders. “Not much. You disappeared into that light in the Diablo ship, and everything started to fall apart, so we ran to the surface. Those aliens were everywhere, except we found out they weren’t aliens when Maggie—Oh Jesus, she was wounded so badly, we tried to pull her into the ship—”
“The ship? The Diablo vessel?”
“No, there was a spaceship that came from above, not one of the alien ships, but one with other people in it who came to help us. They pulled us in and we tried to pull Maggie up but she was covered in blood and she fell—Is she really all right? She was bleeding so badly from—”
“She fell from the vessel?”
“Yeah, into the mountain. Most of it was coming apart anyways, being pulled into the sun, and she fell into the crack made in the earth. I saw the light from that vessel, the black sphere, just before she fell, and when she fell I let go of the man’s hand and fell after her.”
“She fell into the sphere?”
“I—I don’t know. I don’t remember anything after that until I woke up.”
Richter touched Simon’s mind with his own and saw that Simon was telling the truth. He saw more than the truth, and he looked away for fear that anyone could possess within him the destiny of futures and not yet feel them trying to tear him apart.
“Where’s Maggie?”
Richter looked soberly into Simon’s eyes. “She’s very badly wounded, but she’s alive. We’ve been able to stabilize her, but she can’t maintain her pattern in that state for long. There’s been so much signal degradation.”
Simon frowned his incomprehension. “What do you mean? Signal degradation?”
Richter’s hands unfolded, and he walked over to sit next to Simon. “You really don’t know, do you?”
Simon shook his head, face acquiring a veil of suspicion and distrust.
Richter sighed. “Of course not. How could you? I’m sorry, it’s just—”
“Tell me.”
Richter nodded slowly, resigned. He cleared his throat.
“Do you know what an emulation is, Simon?”
Simon shook his head.
Richter told him.
Simon shut the door behind him, leaned against the wall, overcome with emotion and exhaustion and horror. The chamber was a vacuum of sound, and every inhalation and exhalation was magnified disgustingly. How could it still sound so real?
The table at the center of the room was illuminated by a harsh light that came from above. The still figure on the table looked so small and peaceful and utterly still. They had contained her in stasis until the transfer could be performed. She was alive, but barely so.
She lay before him, eyes closed, her body covered with a thin medical blanket that was stained with her blood. The erupting Enemy armor had torn her midsection apart. In her comatose state, she looked very peaceful. Unsettlingly peaceful.
“Oh, Maggie…”
Simon bent, crouched down. His face was at the level of the cold table she lay on. He reached out and touched her hair, brushed it away from her face. The unruly curl… A thin line of blood trickled from the right corner of her mouth. Simon wiped it away.
“What am I supposed to do, Maggie?”
Her face held no answers. Her breathing was strained, and it hurt him deeply to hear her in pain. Simon knelt and held her. Her eyes remained closed.
“I hope this is the right thing to do. I hope…”
A tear slid down his face. He buried his face against the unmoving, cold mask that her face had become. He shuddered with the grief flowing through him.
He kissed her cold, cold lips one last time.
“I hope our deaths aren’t for nothing.”
He closed his eyes and knew it was time. He left the room and left humanity behind. His life was forsaken; his love was forsaken.
Simon Hayes became Judas Simon. Maggie Flynn became Judas Magdalene.
“What do you mean, ‘transfer’ her? Where?”
“If she stays in her present form, she’ll die. There’s nothing we can do for her. Her signal was almost lost in this transfer, and I’m surprised she came through at all.”
“What does it involve?”
“She’ll be transferred into a Judas vessel. Her body’s pattern will corrupt soon. If that goes, then there’s nothing we can do to retrieve her, but if we transfer her to the pattern cache within a Judas, we can at least save her essence, and she can be emulated by the program.”
“Why can’t you just put her pattern into the—the things you—”
“The download generators.”
“Why can’t you put her pattern into one of your generators and make a full emulation of her, like you?”
“Her signal’s too weak as is. She wouldn’t last as a full emulation. The only hope is to put her into a shadow.”
“Please save her.”
“We’ll do everything we can, but I can’t promise—”
“How long until my pattern breaks down?”
Richter looked away, down at the floor, back at Simon. “Your signal isn’t degrading as fast as Maggie’s, but it’ll break down soon enough. The transfer was pretty hard on your pattern.”
“Upload me too. I’ll do it. I’ll be one of your Judas. I can’t live here without her. I have to go with you, and if
