Dissolution

Chapter 16 - Armed and Dangerous

Go, I thought numbly, willing myself to move. Go.

My body didn't move.

I took a painful breath, and then imagined the voice that had once had a direct line into my head. The one that told us to get to work. That told us to find shelter. That had told me to "stop, stop your vehicle now." I imagined that voice saying, "Run." And I moved.

One step in front of the other. Around the gap where implants would see books, but where a human eye, my human eye—maybe the last human eye in existence—saw nothing but empty space. I tried not to look down, but I couldn't help it. I paused for a moment, feeling awful about just leaving her there, this woman who had tried to help me. Who had not sold me out. I remembered something from an old Ad, and I crouched and closed her eyes. They were stiff and cold; I felt repulsed and ashamed. My fingers came away dry, but they felt bloody. I looked down at her one more time, knowing the image was burning a home into my skull, and then I walked out of the University.

Somewhere, I hoped the security cameras clicked. I hoped they saw me leaving. That they would leave everyone else inside this building alone. I didn't dare look for Jake. I hadn't meant to kill anyone. I hadn't. I thought of Professor Cellowen, lying stiff and sprawled, the spray of her blood painting her books. I thought of Jake's face shaded that color of death, and then my mind shut down.

I moved. I didn't know where I was going. Just out. Away. I thought about bodies and groups of people, about my body, about Jake looking at me like I wasn't human. I thought about the world outside, the deserts and the poison lurking beyond the Wall, and maybe how nothing could be worse than the poison inside the city. If I could survive the river, maybe I'd survive the desert. Maybe. At least I'd have a better chance than here, where suited men who wore the brand of life on their chests shot a woman dead because she was in their way.

Images scrambled through my head, tumbling and chasing each other. The blood. The spatter. The patterns. It was a miracle I wasn't running, wasn't sprinting away from the city. This awful city. I moved like a drone instead, one foot after the other, desperate not to catch the eye of ANRON's suits or DRAYTH's mercs. I don't know how they didn't see me. I stumbled out of the city with the evening crowds, heading over the bridge, past the warehouses. The same trek I'd made this morning, only this time, I was going in the opposite direction.

Out. Away. I walked, both stronger than I had been and immeasurably weaker. I saw the Wall growing in the darkness, and instead of the vertigo that had always flipped my stomach at the idea of the great vastness outside, I felt a sudden wrenching desire to see the view from the top. To slide down the other side and disappear into the wilderness. To dissolve.

I passed the empty PERCO container that had shielded me from the mercs a lifetime ago. I walked toward the abandoned living blocks and the twisted streets. Corpless territory. I remembered being afraid of it once, but it was like trying to recall a half-forgotten nightmare. Sirens going off inside our heads. People clutching at their skulls and staggering away. It wasn't a clear memory—I was so young—but I remembered my mother grabbing my hand and us running, running out of the Promenade where we'd been shopping. She'd gone straight for safety. We'd huddled in ANRON's great foyer with what seemed like a hundred other frightened Experimentals and their families.

I'd started crying at some point. Tears smeared my cheeks and hands. My mother had smoothed my hair down. She'd said just one word: "Corpless." It had sounded bad, like a curse. Then she'd hugged me fiercely to her and hadn't let go.

The sirens had stopped shortly afterward, just long enough for the emergency announcement. "Shelter in place," they'd told us. "Unilox is under attack from an unknown city. We are closing down all non-emergency services until our forces prevail." The shutdown had lasted for a day. The war had lasted another two weeks. Throughout it all, despite all the announcements and the high-pitched whine of the vehicles carrying our soldiers through the streets, part of me had always remained convinced that my mother was right. That it was really the corpless. That I should always be afraid.