Chapter 29: Things Have Changed

74 wanted to see the sky.

He eyed the bottles lined up above the sink. Should he? He’d been rinsing doses down the drain. Not all the time. They’d started checking his vitals when he went to Medical. A blood test would be the end of him.

The edges of things were less defined, now. His reflexes were diminished. He found it hard to focus. His body hurt, he was exhausted, and he wanted to see the sky.

63 wasn’t waiting in the hall. The man’s behavior had grown erratic; this was the third day in a row he’d been late.

Thankfully 74 didn’t have to wait long before his partner strolled nonchalantly around the corner. His uniform looked slept-in.

“You’re not in compliance.” A note of reproach slipped into 74’s voice; 63 hadn’t even shaved.

“I don’t care.” The last word stretched and dragged as 63 scratched his jaw absently. “You can tell them that. Tell them I know what they did.”

He turned, then, shoving his hands into his pockets as he sauntered away.

74 wondered if he should file a report, shift the attention from himself. He thought about it all through the long patrol, which he completed alone, fighting the urge to look up.

—

There was a riot in the factory district. 74 ended it.

He waited for her to appear and torment him as the Regulars lined up the bodies, searching them for rebel paraphernalia, but the only voice his mind spoke in was his own.

A grey rain fell as the survivors were rounded up for questioning. 74 considered turning himself in with them, or just using his service pistol. It would be faster that way. Cleaner.

There was something wrong with him that couldn’t be fixed; a critical fault in his programming. He’d ignored 63’s dereliction of duty. He washed his pills down the drain. He knew pieces were missing, but he didn’t know what was supposed to fill those empty spaces.

Above him, the spring sky was vast and iron-grey.

—

Regulars had the draft-dodgers on their knees in a barn. Four men, three women. They smelled like fear and human waste. They were crying, but they weren’t begging yet.

74 remembered how close he’d come to deserting. He was starting to remember a lot of things. The cold cut through his coat, crystalizing in his chest. The rifle in his hands might as well have been ice.

“Do it, 74,” 86 commanded.

He looked again at the kneeling figures, and every single one of them was a young woman in a red dress, her face bloody and scared—

74 woke gasping, reaching out for…something. Her, maybe. His hands came up empty and he pulled the flat pillow over his face.

Just a dream.

It hadn’t happened that way. She hadn’t been there. 86 gave the order and he’d refused, throwing his rifle down. They all died anyway and he’d run until he couldn’t anymore, and when he woke—

Slowly, he pulled the pillow away.

Blood on the snow. The sky burning with stars. Terror as he dragged her limp body up the riverbank and realized she wasn’t breathing—

For an instant he had her name on his tongue and everything was stretched out in front of him…

It disappeared back into the fog before he could grasp it.

—

63 was missing. This time there was no hiding it.

Alpha Base went into lockdown. Three Operatives were mobilized to find him, but 74 slipped away too and ducked into a maintenance tunnel.

Somehow he knew exactly where to go.

The rooms he found in the sublevels smelled of ozone. Frost tinged the doors of server rooms. Wires like capillary veins trailed off to an unseen silicon heart.

A vault door waited for him on the lowest level of Alpha Base, and it was cracked open. As he knew it would be.

He’d had this dream before. He’d walked this corridor, bypassed this security checkpoint, opened these swinging double doors.

Beyond them stood the tanks, ten perfect rows of ten, labeled 00-99. Inside, one hundred fetal forms were suspended in thick yellow liquid. Readout screens blinked. Vital signs spiked and dipped.

74 laid his hand against the warm, curved glass of tank 23. That was important. He didn’t know why. The little dreaming thing inside opened and closed its mouth.

There was something wrong with his eyes — everything was wet and blurry. But he wasn’t surprised, which meant he’d seen it before.

A deliberate footstep broke the silence. 63 stepped out from behind the tank bearing his number, hands raised in surrender.

“We’re not real,” he said hoarsely. “Copies of copies of copies…how many of us are there? How many of me?”

“Ten,” 74 said quietly. “At least ten.”

63’s pupils were massively dilated, his eyes red-rimmed. He pointed at the readout. “2263. Twenty-two of her, of you, of us…”

“How long have you been down here,” 74 asked, remembering his duty.

“Days. Nights.” Slowly, 63 came to stand beside him. His face glistened with perspiration. “I remember things that never happened. I remember a desert. Mountains. A forest. You were there too.”

“A dream,” 74 insisted. “Come with me to Medical.”

“No!” 63 jerked away. “They’ll wipe us again.”

Understanding hit like a bolt of lightning. Memory stirred just below the surface of his consciousness like some horrible, nameless predator, and 74 recoiled.

63 tilted his head as the half-formed creature inside tank 23 rolled slowly, gently.

“The white room. The chair. And if that doesn’t work…” He slammed his fist against the side of the tank. An alarm began to sound. “They’ll just decant another one.”

She appeared behind 63, holding out her hand. The blood on her dress was fresh and terrible. “You have to run,” she urged. “Michael, go!”

63 threw his head back and howled with laughter, and 74 ran.

—

Summer rain washed the streets clean. For a week 74 patrolled with 91, and it took all of his willpower to remain calm and controlled as a tornado ripped through his insides.

On the eighth day 74 opened his door to find 63 waiting. His uniform was crisp, his face clean-shaven. The back of his neck was bandaged discretely. His boots were polished black mirrors and his eyes were a void.

The word Reconditioning screamed through 74’s head as they walked to the lift, perfectly in step. As they rushed toward the surface, he waited for 63 to speak.

Nothing was forthcoming.

“Where were you,” he asked, keeping his voice neutral. The fear helped.

“Medical,” 63 said, and nothing more.

For the rest of the day 74 followed all directives to the letter. He kept his eyes forward. He pretended he didn’t see 63’s hand grasping his sidearm like a life preserver.

He touched the back of his neck and found a little scar there, and he pretended he wasn’t afraid.

That night he counted out four pills and cupped them in his hand, holding them over the drain.

“It’s all right to be scared.” She was a blurry shape in the corner of his eye. A mirage in the desert.

He was sure now that they’d had a life together, somehow, before the Coalition found them, and killed her, and dragged him back. They’d made him forget, just as they made 63 forget.

63 had been there. He had been there, in the forest.

“You’re not real,” he said, before his thoughts could spiral into panic.

She smiled sadly. “I used to be.”

He used to be real too. Now there was nothing left of him; just a useless right arm and the ghost of her memory. It was this, or something more final.

“Don’t,” she said.

74 swallowed the pills dry. In time, he no longer had to pretend that he felt nothing.