Her body was twisting and writhing inhumanly in my grip. I was heavier and stronger than her, but she had the stamina. She was a runner—she could wiggle and twist all day long. I felt myself getting weaker as she continued to kick and wiggle and push at my arms.
Minutes passed.
My shoulders began to burn; sweat and blood made my arms slippery where they grabbed each other. I couldn’t do this. I started crying. This wasn’t who I was; it’s not what my life was supposed to be.
“Miranda, if you can hear me, I know it’s not you. I know it wasn’t you.” That seemed like the most important thing to tell her. “It’s OK,” I said through my tears. “If you kill me, I’ll know it wasn’t you.”
Then she went slack. The banging at the door behind us stopped.
I didn’t dare let go.
“Maya,” she said, breathless and terrified and racked with sudden sobs. Through them she managed to gasp, “Don’t let go.” She coughed and sobbed but then seemed to gather herself. “Whatever it was, it’s gone, but I have no idea whether or when it can come back.”
And then, at the far end of the hall, the door that I had come through after walking past a receptionist’s desk cracked open. The wide hall we were in was oddly plush, with dark green carpet and a high ceiling and wood-paneled walls. At the end, coming through the door, was Carl.
Not monkey Carl, robot Carl. Its massive bulk ducked through the doorway and then stood, full height. The robot walked slowly toward us. And then it staggered, as if it had tripped, or was maybe a little drunk.
It continued to walk toward us, steadily now, before finally leaning over the bloody, bruised, messy pile we had formed at the base of the door. It reached out and gently took one of Miranda’s wrists in its massive hands. I let her go and pushed myself away from both of them. Carl held Miranda so that I didn’t have to.
“Huh,” Miranda said, her eyes looking up and to the right. “Interesting. I guess that makes sense.” But I didn’t know what she was talking about. Mostly, I was just suddenly very happy that she was still Miranda. Still figuring things out that no one else could see.
Carl kept ahold of Miranda’s wrist in their massive hand as they turned and put their back to the door. Silently, Carl and Miranda sat down together. I couldn’t tell which one looked more defeated.
APRIL
You have nothing, you know,” Peter said as he walked me across the warm early-morning darkness toward, I hoped, the place where he was keeping Miranda. “No one is going to believe you anyway. You broke in here, you attacked people. You’ve always hated me, and it will just look like more bias. What do you think you’re going to achieve? We haven’t done anything wrong.”
I assumed he said that last part just in case I was still recording audio, which, honestly, I should have been, but I hadn’t thought of it.
He wasn’t completely wrong. We had to convince a lot of people who thought that they were going to get wealthy beyond their imaginations that, in fact, their investments were worth next to nothing. I hadn’t gotten any good dirt on Altus. Peter had been perfect the moment I turned the camera on because of course he had—that was his job.
He had imprisoned Miranda, but if that news came from me, it would just look like we were trying to make them look bad. But we had The Thread. The Thread was credible and had broken big stories before. We just had to get video of Altus being immoral to The Thread, and they could plug it into the video they were nearly ready to release. If we could do it soon, we could get it up before the East Coast was even awake.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, “you really think you’re the good guys?”
He was looking ahead at the door to the building we were walking toward. I looked over his shoulder and saw a man there, crumpled on the ground. I could see fear dawning in him, so I reached forward with my left hand to hold his right and said, “Don’t run away now, Peter.”
I’ll admit that I was enjoying freaking him out. For so long now, I had felt like he was controlling my life. He’s what turned me into a pundit. He created the legions of people who made my life miserable. He was the reason I wasn’t even sure who I was anymore. And now I was getting to control him.
I looked back to the man crumpled on the ground, and for a moment I worried he was now a pile of grape jelly. But as we got closer, another terror kicked in. His skin, from what I could tell in the overhead light shining on him from the building, was the right color, but ropes of fur seemed to have sprouted from his chest. I almost looked away, but then I realized what it was.
“CARL!” I shouted and ran forward, pulling Peter along with me. The monkey was lying on the unconscious man’s chest. “What are you doing?” I asked. But the monkey didn’t move. I reached my right hand out to them, my warm, human hand.
“Aaaapril—” Their voice came out of the watch, slow and then all at once, like ketchup. The monkey body didn’t move at all.
“Carl, what’s wrong?” I said, hearing the terror in my own voice.
“Bring me”—and then there was a long pause—“inside.”
Peter suddenly tried to jerk his hand out of mine, but there was no breaking free of that
