Post-Human 05 - Inhuman (13 page)

13

“You really
have
been cut down to size,” Thel whispered harshly to the A.I. as they made their way up the elevator in the candidate’s building, “because anyone with even half a normal human brain wouldn’t think
this
is a great place to lie low.”

James was almost able to stand under his own power, his head having cleared enough that he could speak, but he squinted in the harsh light of the elevator as Thel and the A.I. continued to help prop him up on his unsteady, rubbery legs. “Wh-where are we?” he asked.

“Out of the frying pan and into the fire,” Thel replied.

“What?” he groaned in reply.

“We’re in the candidate’s building,” the A.I. answered. His complexion was frighteningly pale as he hadn’t yet stopped the blood from oozing out of his partially consumed face. He held his still sopping-wet jacket against it, trying to keep the blood from dripping onto the elevator floor, attempting to prevent a pool of blood forming, leaving clear evidence behind of their presence.

“Easily the stupidest hideout we could have—” Thel began before the A.I. gently cut her off.

“Not a hideout, per se. It’s imperative that we be here,” the A.I. stated.

“If the candidate finds us, he’ll tear us to shreds,” Thel countered.

“That’s unlikely.”

The elevator stopped, just one floor before the penthouse, just below the belly of the supposed beast.

The door opened.

The A.I. stepped out into the hallway first, swiveled his head to look both ways, then stepped back into the elevator to help Thel with James. “The coast is clear,” he said in a low tone.

“The sim is purging,” Thel replied. “If an NPC sees us and they start swarming, we’ve got no way to protect ourselves.”

“Let’s just get him to the bedroom,” the A.I. said as he recognized the similar layout of the apartment to that of the penthouse just one floor above. Though the memories were old, they hadn’t faded in the slightest. The apartment they were now in was extraordinarily similar to the one in which he’d been burned alive—a recollection he wouldn’t soon forget.

They laid James on the bed, and he groaned softly. “Thank you,” he said in a faint whisper.

The A.I. put the back of his hand on James’s forehead. “Good. No fever.”

“What’s a fever?” Thel asked.

The A.I. briefly considered how little people like Thel, born in the era of post-humanism, knew about the frailty of the natural human body. “A fever is one of the body’s natural defenses. If there’s an infection, the body automatically raises its temperature to try kill it. The absence of a fever means James doesn’t have an infection—at least not yet.”

“Should we lay him on his side or…”

“I don’t know,” the A.I. said with a shrug. “The sim does have a rudimentary version of the Internet, however. We all lost our aug glasses in the crash,” he said as he got up from the side of the bed and started searching the apartment for a device, “but if I can get online, I’m sure I can find directions.”

Thel sighed and closed her eyes, trying to be patient. “This era is so...slow...fumbling with clunky devices to access information that may or may not be accurate. Thank God I didn’t have to live back then, when everything was so archaic.”

“Well, we’re stuck ‘back then’ for the foreseeable future,” the A.I. responded. He opened the drawer in the bedside table and found a bracelet reminiscent of one he remembered from his own time as a candidate, inhabiting an extraordinarily similar sim. “This will do,” he said. He swiped the small touchscreen, searching for information. “It’ll just take me a moment to hide our location, and then…
voil
à
. Hmm. It appears James’s chances of surviving depend on whether or not he inhaled water into his lungs.”

“We
know
he did,” Thel said, her heart suddenly thundering to life in her chest.

“Not necessarily,” the A.I. replied calmly. “There is a chance that the water never made it past his nose and mouth, since his airways might have automatically closed off. I saw him clutching his throat as though that were indeed the case. If that turns out to be what occurred, then his chances of survival are quite high.”

“What if he did inhale water into his lungs?”

“Then there’s still a chance of secondary drowning, unfortunately.”

“Secondary drowning?”

Anywhere between now and forty-eight hours from now, he could develop pneumonia symptoms. If that happens, he’ll die quickly, unless we can get him out of the sim.”

“So what do we do?” Thel asked, desperate. “Just watch him?”

The A.I. nodded. “At the very least, we have to let him recover from his concussion. Remember, all of our avatars are human and, therefore, extraordinarily suboptimal. A concussion recovery can take anywhere from just a few hours to a few weeks, depending on the severity.”

“Did you read that online too?”

“Yes,” the A.I. replied before setting the bracelet down on the bed and slumping his shoulders, exhausted.

“What about your face?” Thel asked, standing up and crossing to the other side of the room to check on the A.I.’s gruesome wound.

“I think we should clean it and bandage it up. Perhaps a little Tylenol might be in order.” He turned and headed to the bathroom in search of supplies.

Thel followed him.

“Why are we here?” she asked him. “We could’ve hidden anywhere in the sim, but you decided to come here, one floor below where the candidate lives.”

“I’m not planning to hide much longer,” the A.I. replied as he opened the medicine cabinet above the bathroom sink.

“What do you mean?” Thel asked, shocked. “The candidate’s still out there.” She leaned forward and spoke in a harsh whisper, cognizant that the candidate could be nearby, possibly right above them. “If he finds you, he’ll kill you.”

“That’s possible,” the A.I. conceded as he pulled some rubbing alcohol and a few cotton balls from the medicine cabinet. He sat on the edge of the tub, poured the rubbing alcohol on the cotton, then began to gently apply it to his opened wound. He winced in pain.

Thel’s upper lip curled in revulsion. “Uh...do you want some help with that?” she offered.

“There’s a gauze bandage there.” He pointed to the medicine cabinet, blood painting his fingertips red. “It looks to be adequate to cover the wound.”

Thel grabbed the bandage and unwrapped it before sitting next to the A.I. on the cold porcelain edge of the tub and applying the bandage over the wound. She struggled not to vomit as her eyes briefly fell on the visible teeth marks in the flesh at the top of his cheek. “That really,
really
looks like it hurts.”

The A.I. faintly smiled, though anything more than a faint smile would’ve been too excruciating. “Milady, believe me when I tell you I have looked
much
worse.”

“You’re going to look a heck of a lot worse if you try to confront the candidate before we know what’s going on,” Thel cautioned. “We were extremely lucky to survive.”

“I’m not so sure,” the A.I. replied, his brow furrowing as he thought deeply.

“What?” Thel reacted, holding her hands out in dismay. “He locked us in a speeding car and drove it off a bridge! Then he hovered above us, that sadistic son-of-a-bitch, and waited for us to drown! What is there to be unsure about?”

The A.I. sighed. “Plot holes.”

“Excuse me?”

“The candidate said someone contacted him, and we have no reason to doubt his story. He knew details that only someone familiar with the sim could’ve known.”

“Yeah,” Thel said, nodding. “I know that already. 1 infiltrated the sim somehow, knew the basic outline of the training program, told the candidate, manipulated him into believing we were the bad guys, then gave him the power to kill us. I’m way ahead of you.”

“Perhaps not as far as you think,” the A.I. replied before standing and reaching for the Tylenol from the cabinet. He sighed. “I wish they had something stronger.”

“I saw a liquor cabinet in the hallway,” Thel offered.

The A.I. shook his head. “I don’t think it would be wise to dull my wits further.” He popped two Tylenol in his mouth and scooped water from the sink to help him swallow them down.

Thel shook her head. “Cavemen medicine.”

The A.I. turned back to her. “There are holes in your theory. While we can’t eliminate 1 as a suspect, we have to use our inductive reasoning and examine what we
do
know. While you’re right that whoever is behind this opened the door for the candidate to realize that he could have more power than intended, it is also clear that the candidate’s powers are limited. If he’d had, for instance, the abilities of the Kali avatar, he would’ve been able to crush the car with us inside it. During my own testing, I experienced Kali ripping a skyscraper from its moorings and crushing it. I also saw her rip an NPC to shreds, with merely her mind. Clearly, the candidate has limitations.”

“Does he?” Thel said, posing an alternate possibility, “or is he just sadistic?”

“That’s possible, but it’s highly unlikely,” the A.I. replied. “It could be that whoever is behind this manipulated the candidate’s core programming. That could have indeed caused him to become sadistic. Still, it seems far more plausible that the intention of whoever is behind this is
not
to kill us.”

“Really? They’ve got a funny way of showing it!” Thel reacted, again in a harsh whisper. She couldn’t help but look up at the ceiling every time she spoke, constantly aware of the super-powered monster who inhabited the penthouse above them.

“The crash, the drowning, the NPC...” the A.I. responded. “All of these might have been genuine attempts to kill us, yet the fact remains that we are still alive. Considering the vast resources this sim has at its disposal for killing us quite efficiently, it’s remarkable that we’re still here. It seems more likely that the failed attempts were misdirection.”

“Misdirection?” Thel’s eyes were wide before she pointed aggressively out the bathroom door toward James, who remained motionless on the bed. “James might die!”

The A.I. grimaced. “I do not have all the answers,” the A.I. replied. “Perhaps I am wrong, and I admit that I am clearly missing information. We can only depend on our reasoning. However, following inductive reasoning will often lead to strange but true conclusions. I think it’s important to ask ourselves who would benefit from trapping us in the sim and cutting James and me off from the mainframe, yet, at the same time, wouldn’t want us dead?”

Thel’s eyebrows knitted together, and she tilted her head back as she considered the new conundrum. “1 benefits from cutting us off,” she said, “but she would also benefit from killing us—especially you and James.”

“Agreed.”

“But if it’s not her, then who?”

The A.I. looked up at the ceiling, imagining the fate that might await him just one floor above. “I don’t know,” he admitted, “but the mainframe
is
vulnerable. If the androids are aware of this, they’re undoubtedly launching an attack as we speak.”

Thel agreed and nodded, taking in a deep breath as she considered the implications. “We won’t last long. Without you and James in control of the mainframe, they’ll wipe us out even faster than last time.”