But then, impossibly, Addison saw a reprieve. In the shadow of nuclear winter, he saw survivors band together. A shining era of scientific development ushered in advances like the levelling process, intrasolar travel and a myriad other wonders. He saw the temperature even off, extinct species levelled and reintroduced, trees sprouting again, and for one glorious moment the widening gyre seemed to contract...
But it was all a lie.
The mortal blow had been struck years before, and this false dawn changed nothing. As the planet warmed beyond repair, humanity finally lost hope. The last wars were the bloodiest, fought with terrible weapons that obliterated what remained. Addison saw the sky boil and cloud over forever, oceans poisoned black, plant and animal life extinguished, and millions exterminated by diseases engineered to kill in horrifically creative ways.
Finally, Addison saw the present: scattered survivors clinging on, desperate and doomed. He saw the levellers seal off their institute, preparing for the end, only to realise their technology offered a way to eke out some accountability. They could bring people back to face a reckoning: those who caused the damage back when it could have been averted. If there couldn’t be life, at least there would be justice.
And finally, Addison saw himself. He saw the levellers retrieving his sample, growing his body in a vat, reintegrating his consciousness in a vast laboratory of terrible, glittering machinery. He was the first of hundreds, thousands, to be levelled, made to pay for what they had done – and not done – back when doing could have made a difference.
Addison’s vision swirled.
The images were ending.
He felt himself stretched, his consciousness squeezed back down towards the chair. He howled into the void, pleading for it not to be true, but also knowing in his bones, in the deepest level of his soul, that it was. Everything the chair had shown him was real.
And Addison saw the awful, mind-searing truth.
The planet was dead and soon, again, so too would he.
He awoke, slumped and sodden in the vision chair
“We didn’t know,” he cried, hot tears staining his vision. “We didn’t know!”
Two and Four gazed down at him, unmoved.
“Yes, you did,” Two said. “You all did. Now, clean yourself up. Trials commence at dawn.”
* * *
Four threw Addison head-first through the door.
“Your cellsuite,” she said, silhouetted against grey-white light. “Here you have food, clothes, amenities. More comfort than you deserve. Rest up, you have a big day tomorrow.”
The door hissed closed behind her.
Addison lay where she’d thrown him, a crumpled heap fading in and out of consciousness. Feverish dreams plagued him. In one, images of a burning world played on loop. In another, long-dead friends pleaded for a salvation that would never come. In the last, Addison fled through the pyramid pursued by a rising tide. Black waves pounded at his heels, crashing onto the ramps, forcing him up towards that terrible light. It swelled, filling his entire vision, and a pounding sounded within, beckoning him onwards...
Addison awoke with a start.
Bolting upright, he immediately cried out. His body was on fire, the lingering effects of the drone’s taser. Grimacing, he dragged himself upright and looked around. The cellsuite was surprisingly plush, a large bed and even an ensuite, but everything was bolted down. In fact, save the non-descript grey clothes he now wore, there were no portable objects of any kind. Nothing to use as a weapon.
Gingerly, he stood, stretched and padded over to the locked door, then yelped when it slid open.
“Not locked,” he whispered, heart pounding.
Immediately suspicious, Addison risked a look outside. He was on a balcony two-thirds up the institute, a long corridor dotted with identical cellsuite doors. It was also deserted. In fact, the entire institute was deserted, the vast pyramid still and silent. For a moment, he thought he heard a distant pounding in the walls, but as he focussed the sound vanished.
“Testing me, Four?” he muttered. “Is this a trick?”
If the leveller was lying in wait, she was well hidden. Nothing moved anywhere in the empty space. Above, the grey-white light shone dimmer than he remembered, perhaps simulating moonlight, while below levels of balconies plunged into darkness. In the face of such thundering silence, Addison was seized by a sudden recklessness.
“Four!” he yelled, voice echoing across the void. “I’m out!”
He flinched, expecting a taser blast, but nothing came. The echoes died away, replaced by a thick-blanketing hush. Unsettled, Addison began to pad along the balcony. He spiralled down to the level below and came out by a large archway. He recognised the court vestibule from earlier, and as he walked up the ornate doors swung open.
Inside, devoid of people, the court really did feel like a film set. Only a crater on a bench and a lingering odour in the air told Addison his memories were real. Increasingly unnerved, he hurried out and down another ramp. Heading along identical balconies, along corridor after corridor, he found nothing but misty-grey lifelessness. Everything was still, sterile, dead.
Just as he was about to panic, Addison rounded a corner to find a strange doorway. Beyond, the semi-translucent material he’d started to think of as ‘mistwall’ pulsed eerily, casting strange shapes on a glass partition that cut the room in half. Faint memories stirred – slumbering machinery glinting in darkness – and Addison knew instinctively this was the levelling apparatus, the archives and machinery his captors had used to spin him back to life.
Appalled and enthralled, he walked over and pressed his nose up against the glass. He could just make out shadows,
