From across a darkened hall, they pace, ready for the sirens to go off, their nightly signal; for their cage doors to open so they can go out and play.
They can sense one another from where they stand—their smells; their patterns; their growing fury.
They’ve been waiting for the moment when the doors open and they’re standing face to face. Just the two of them, enemies since the dawn of time, enemies with a score to settle.
But until then, all they can do is wait.
Wait for the sirens to go off.
Wait for the fight to begin.
* * *
Another perfect day in Morden, Blake thought as she rode her bike down the quiet manicured streets of her small town, passing by all the cookie-cutter houses with their lush green lawns and white picket fences.
She often tried to look for flaws on her daily ride to work—peeling paint or a porch chair one inch too far to the left—but no matter how hard she looked, nothing was ever out of place.
The only things that felt unsuited were the air-raid sirens at the end of every street. Their water-stained poles jutted fifteen feet into the air, a circular mass of multiple sirens mounted at the apex, yellowed from sunny days and neglect. Red-budded bushes had been planted at the bases, as if their beauty would somehow detract from the relics of a time when no other technology existed to warn the prairie town of an impending tornado or some other disaster.
Blake had never seen a tornado, let alone heard the sirens go off.
Nothing new ever happened in Morden, not even a change in the weather.
If anything could be relied upon, it was that every day in Morden was the same—a cloudless blue sky, sun blazing overhead; the regulars coming to her diner for their daily meals; her bike ride home through the patch of forest that flanked the elementary school. Her evenings spent watching TV or reading a book or going for a jog, with a quick shower before bed.
Then wake up and do it all again.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Another perfect day in Morden, Blake sighed as she sped past the school, where shadows of students gathering for class behind curtain-drawn windows moved about.
* * *
Blake stood behind the counter of the empty diner, marrying ketchup bottles. She eyed the clock as its hands ticked by—9:57 p.m. The last customer had come and gone an hour ago, but Blake never felt right closing early—she always maintained the hope, no matter how desperate it seemed, that this night would be different.
It never was.
She had her regular customers who made time go by faster, but she often found herself daydreaming, usually of the renovations she wanted to make to her kitschy sixties-style diner to make it a little more current, or just lost in thought looking out the diner’s large windows to the red flowers lining the median that divided the street, nestled among the sturdy oak trees. The red brick façades of the town’s Main Street housed everything from Barb’s Beauty Salon to the movie theater. Every building had their own brightly colored awning, and it always made her think of the pictures she’d seen online of other Main Streets of faraway towns—towns that she longed to visit. Towns that looked as though time had forgotten them as well.
Blake had never stepped foot outside of Morden, and it was during those endless work hours that she found herself longing for something more than serving the small farming community, spread out over kilometers of prairielands, flat and vast and dull. Something more than canola fields and dairy farms.
Blake jumped as the clock struck ten, knocking an empty ketchup bottle off the counter with her elbow.
Without so much as a glance, she lunged to the side, catching the bottle in her hand, seconds from it shattering on the floor.
She sat up and placed it on the counter, sighing.
Another perfect day in Morden.
Then, the bells over the front door rang out.
Blake stood as two men and a woman in matching dark gray jumpsuits walked in. A small round patch adorned the left-hand side of each jumpsuit, two swords meeting at the tip with a red star connecting them, and three smaller stars on either side. They wore packed utility belts around their waists, and the two men each gripped a RAK-9 semi-automatic rifle.
“Can I help you?” Blake said, panic rising inside of her as she focused on the guns.
The woman’s hardened gaze fell upon Blake. Then she nodded. The taller of the two men moved past Blake, into the kitchen. The shorter man turned his attention to the street, standing watch at the door.
“What are you doing?” Blake asked, though no one paid her any mind.
The taller man came out of the kitchen. “Clear,” he said to the woman.
“Thank you, Washington,” she said, then turned to the shorter man. “Hernandez, how’re we looking?”
“Quiet as a mouse,” he said, a slight tremble in his voice. “But…”
“But what?”
“You sure about this, Mariana? Getting in here… finding her… it was easy. Too easy.”
The three of them turned toward Blake.
Blake backed up against the wall behind the counter. “I don’t want any trouble,” she swallowed. “Just take the cash and leave.”
“We don’t want your money,” Mariana said with a smirk. “We want you.”
It was then that the air-raid sirens went off.
The wails shattered the quiet night, ebbing and flowing as they let their warnings be heard.
Everyone went for their ears, the cacophony rattling through their very cores. Blake eyed the three infiltrators, noticing the same look on each of their faces.
It was fear.
“You said tonight was an off night,” Washington screamed over the din.
“It is an off night,” Mariana screamed back.
Blake looked to the street, to see if anyone had stepped out to investigate. Maybe she could escape while they were distracted. But the road was bare, with the exception of a flicker on top of a building across the way that caught her eye.
A shape. One that seemed to shimmer in the moonlight.
It crouched on the edge of the cineplex, set in invisible stone like a camouflaged gargoyle.
Watching.
Waiting.
“Back to the school!” Mariana shouted, breaking Blake’s gaze. “Let’s go.”
Washington and Hernandez rushed out the door. Blake stood frozen behind the counter. She turned back to the cineplex.
The shape was gone.
And so was Blake’s chance at getting away.
* * *
The sirens continued their cries as the four of them set off down Main Street, keeping to the shadows, and into the cold, dark forest—the quickest way to the school.
Hernandez led the way, Washington stayed behind, and Mariana was at Blake’s side, each one of them with their weapons drawn, each one of them on edge.
Blake walked with nervous poise, unsure of herself for having gone with these armed strangers without so much as a fight. But when her gaze fell upon Mariana with her short black hair and dark, intense eyes, something in her gut said this was right, that these people—this woman—could be trusted. Still, Blake needed answers.
“Are you going to tell me what this is all about?” she asked just as the sirens cut out.
Everyone stopped.
They kept their eyes and their guns on the trees.
“We’re getting you out of here,” Mariana said in a whisper. “It’s not safe.”
“Get down,” Hernandez hushed them, going into a squat.
The others followed.
Hernandez kept his back to Blake, looking up to the tall trees that surrounded them, listening.
Blake listened too, but heard nothing.
The silence felt heavy in her ears.
“Okay,” Hernandez said as he turned to face everyone. “I think we’re good.”
Three red dots in a triangular form suddenly rose from the darkness, stopping on Hernandez’s forehead.
Blake slowly turned toward where the light came from, tracing it up, past Mariana, past Washington, and high into the trees.
In the windless night, a branch swayed and bowed, as though something heavy stood upon it. A shimmer rippled across what looked to be a crouching figure.
The same shimmer Blake had seen on the cineplex.
Blake turned back to Hernandez with wide eyes.
“Run!” she screamed.
A bolt of blue light shot toward them. Blake felt herself being tossed into the air as the woods erupted in fire and chaos.
Then, she hit the ground.
Hard.
A muffled voice floated in and out of Blake’s ears as she faced the sky. Hundreds of thousands of stars twinkled above her, like a crystal-covered ocean.
But her view was interrupted by a shimmer—it rippled over the whole of the sky, past the stars and everything beyond, stretching as far to the horizon as Blake could see. And with a blink, it was gone.
Blake tried to summon the air back into her lungs as she saw Washington snap to attention and fire his rifle at where the blast had come from.
“Get up!” she finally heard as the shock wore off. Mariana pulled her off the ground. She spotted Hernandez’s mangled corpse as she got to her feet, little chunks of him still aflame, a strange white liquid spilling from in-between his charred wounds.
“Come on!” Mariana called to Washington as the three of them scrambled down their original path.
But before they could get any farther, something hit the ground, blocking their path, with an earth-shaking thud.
It stood from a crouch, its shimmer fading away, revealing the creature underneath.
It towered over the group, more than seven feet tall, in full body armor that covered most of its spotted sickly-beige skin, hints of a netted fabric underneath, with an embellished breastplate to cover its chest. Long, dreadlock-like tendrils spilled from its helmet, a helmet that was a work of art in itself—a set of horns flanked the top part of its sleek, silver head, while the bottom portion came down sharp, a set of spiked teeth carved into it to make a menacing smile. It reminded Blake of a crown—one that the Devil might wear. Its eyes were covered by a red material that glistened like fire when the moon hit its surface.
“Huntress,” Mariana whispered in disbelief.
The creature took a step toward them, its head cocked in Mariana’s direction.
Blake moved toward Mariana’s handgun before her body realized it, grabbing it from her at the same speed that she had caught the ketchup bottle.
Blake opened fire on Huntress in a matter of seconds, striking her exposed areas with a skill that Blake didn’t know she possessed.
Huntress screeched from under her helmet, taken aback by the unexpected show of force. She lunged for the trees, the shimmer immediately cloaking her body as she disappeared into the brush.
Mariana and Washington turned to one another, allowing themselves only a moment to exchange worried glances, before Mariana snatched her gun from Blake’s hand and started off once more, leading them out of the woods.
* * *
The sound of the slamming door echoed down the empty school halls as the three of them piled inside. Blake pressed her back against the building’s cool walls, chilling her overheating body.
That thing, that monster… it had come out of nowhere and nearly killed them all with a single blast. Blake was certain it could’ve finished the job as easily as it had started, but something had caused it to retreat—and it wasn’t her aim.
Blake looked over to Mariana and Washington, who continued their nervous glance.
“What was that thing?” Blake asked.
“We call her Huntress,” Mariana said. “She’s an apex predator. A monster queen that hunts for sport.”
“How do you know she’s a queen?”
“Her mask—its intricate details and high craftsmanship show that someone, or something, spent a lot of time making it,” Mariana said, as though it were common knowledge.
“Great,” Blake replied with heavy sarcasm. “What’s she doing here?”
“Good question.” Washington turned to Mariana. “You said this would be a quick in and out.”
“I know what I said,” Mariana spat back. “We can argue about it, or we can get the fuck out of here. Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Washington replied through his teeth.
“Hang on,” Blake said, asserting her place in the conversation. “Twenty minutes ago, I was squirting ketchup into a bottle, and now we’re being hunted by some kind of intergalactic warrior queen who gets her kicks by blowing people to smithereens. I need some answers.”
“We’re here to get you out,” Mariana said as Washington turned his attention to the doors.
“Out of where? Morden?”
Mariana nodded, though Blake saw a slight hesitance in her eyes.
“So why don’t we jump in a car and drive away?”
“It’s not that simple. You can’t just leave.”
Blake looked at Mariana in confusion, you can’t just leave echoing inside her. Of course she could.
Couldn’t she?
“We don’t have time for this,” Washington said, pulling away from the window and heading toward the corner that led down the long hallway that made up most of the school.
“I know this is a lot to take in,” Mariana said, placing a hand on Blake’s shoulder. “But I’ll explain everything as soon as we get somewhere safe. In the meantime, I need you to trust me.”
There was something in Mariana’s eyes that told Blake she was telling the truth. Something that told her she could be trusted.
“Okay,” Blake said.
* * *
They sprinted to a classroom halfway down the long hall, where Mariana and Washington ran to the thermostat on the far wall.
Blake eyed the room—there was no hint of a way out. It looked like a regular classroom with its whiteboard and wooden desks all in a row. Though, on the floor, she spotted an out-of-place shadow, one that traced a circle in the open space between the teacher’s and the students’ desks.
Mariana pulled a keycard from her utility belt and waved it in front of the thermostat. The machine beeped, then disappeared into the wall. A numerical keypad came out in its place.
“Shit,” Mariana muttered to Washington as she punched in a series of numbers that all resulted in the same disagreeing beep. “It’s not accepting the hacked codes. Try your batch.”
While the two of them struggled, Blake stepped out into the hall, catching her breath. From the end they’d just come from the moon pierced through the wall of windows, looking to the football field and the rafters beyond.
The other end was covered in an impenetrable darkness, one Blake thought was strange, considering both ends of the school hall were windowed.
Then, the sirens started once more.
It was even louder in the school—the noise blared from the overhead speakers.
Blake turned to Mariana and Washington, who held their ears, the desperation clearly taking hold of them. They screamed at one another over the racket.
Mariana slammed her fist against the pad, while Washington raised his gun and shot at it, sending sparks flying.
Suddenly, the floor around Blake started to vibrate.
Blake held her arms out to steady herself, eyes frantically searching for the source of the shaking.
A movement down the darkened hall caught Blake’s eye.
A small, tube-like section of the floor rose up like an elevator.
And when it stopped just clear of the ceiling, so did the sirens.
Something crawled from the tube, disappearing into the shadows.
The tube retracted back into the floor with a hiss.
Everything was still once more, like it had all been a dream.
“Uhh… guys?” Blake said, frozen in the hall. Mariana and Washington rushed to her side. “I think there’s something—”
But before she could finish, a tail slithered out from the shadows, spiked and with a blade-like appendage on its end.
With a quick whip-like motion, it impaled Washington.
Washington screamed as it lifted him into the air like a rag doll.
He managed to raise his rifle, firing aimlessly into the darkness as Mariana and Blake rushed to pull him free. The tail tossed him about, knocking the women down and his weapon from his hands. It was then that Blake noticed his wound—the same red and white liquid as Hernandez spilled from it, soaking his uniform. His guts had wriggled free from beneath his skin, pouring out to the floor below.
But they looked too thin to be intestines.
Too mechanical.
They looked like wires.
Then, just as quickly as it had happened, the tail whipped back into the gloom, taking Washington and his screams with it.
The night fell still once more.
Blake and Mariana turned to one another in pure terror.
“Another friend of yours?” Blake asked.
“The drone,” Mariana managed. “That’s… not possible.”
Both women turned to face the shadows down the hallway as a second hiss echoed out.
The creature emerged headfirst—its skin was the darkest black Blake had ever seen; its head long and curved, like a semi-truck tire. It had no eyes that she could see, only a mouth that looked detached from the rest of its head, held together by exposed muscles that made it look more like a machine than a living organism. It bared its teeth, silver fangs covered in an endless stream of saliva that poured from its mouth like a busted tap.
Blake spotted droplets of its blood dripping down its body from where Washington had managed to wound it, sizzling as it burned clean through the cheap linoleum floor.
She looked up to the creature in amazed horror. It opened its mouth wider, and Blake thought she saw the hint of something deeper inside it, something that quivered as though readying to release itself.
And it likely would have, if the three red dots that had found their way onto Hernandez’s head had not flashed on the creature’s head now.
Blake lunged at Mariana, shoving her into the classroom, just as Huntress fired multiple devastating shots from down the hall.
The walls and ceilings collapsed around them, burying them and their screams alive.
After what felt like an eternity, Blake pushed the debris off herself, noticing the collapsed wall between their room and the adjacent classroom—the window Blake passed by every day on her way to work, that always had the silhouettes of students inside, readying for the day.
There were no students now, but rather life-sized dolls that looked eerily human. One of the dolls had landed near her, white wiring spilling out from its insides. Blake brought a curious hand to its arm, touching its exposed skin.
It was warm.
Suddenly, Huntress stepped into the collapsed doorway. Though Blake couldn’t see her eyes, she knew the creature was staring directly at her.
A noise from nearby caught Huntress’s attention. She spun toward the rubble in the hall just in time to see the uninjured drone attack.
It brought its tail around, jabbing her repeatedly and with keen precision.
Huntress managed to push the drone off, sending them both back, down the hall.
Blake seized her moment and peeled herself off the floor.
She spotted Mariana’s hand, reaching out from the debris like a zombie clawing out of its grave. As she shoved the ceiling tile and wiring away, Blake saw that a support beam had come down across Mariana’s chest.
With a strength she didn’t know she possessed, Blake bent down and lifted the beam, tossing it off Mariana’s broken body. Mariana gasped as the pressure released, filling her lungs back up. She pulled herself from the wreckage, albeit slowly.
“Where’s your way out?” Blake asked as wiring sparked around her.
“Under there,” Mariana coughed, looking to where the bulk of the ceiling had collapsed.
“Now what?” Blake asked, beginning to sense a hopelessness in the situation.
Before Mariana could answer, the creatures crashed through the remaining wall, bringing more of the school down with them.
Blake and Mariana reached for one another, dragging themselves out of the battle path. Blake snagged Washington’s rifle from the rubble, slinging it across her back.
As they reached the end of the moonlit hall, Blake’s curiosity got the better of her—she turned and watched.
The two creatures were in a tangle, one constantly overthrowing the other. They shrieked into the night, otherworldly cries that triggered something familiar inside Blake.
Those screams.
She felt like she’d heard them before.
The drone dipped behind Huntress, whipping her with its tail, knocking her onto her back. Without hesitating, it jumped onto her chest, pressing its long, taloned feet into her armor. Huntress swung wildly at the drone with her free hand, managing a few blows.
But the drone persisted.
It leaned into Huntress’s helmet, breath fogging her fire-red eyes.
Then, it opened its mouth—and the smaller appendage finally revealed itself.
It jabbed at the helmet fast, like a snake striking its prey, denting the alien metal.
It struck again.
Crack.
And again.
Crack.
And again.
With a final blow, the drone unleashed its most powerful strike yet—straight through the eye of Huntress’s helmet.
In an instant, her body went limp.
The drone retracted its appendage, a stream of neon green blood following with it. It stood on top of Huntress for a moment more, waiting, as though she may spring to life.
But Huntress remained still. The green ooze began to spill from underneath her helmet and onto the debris-covered floor.
“Jesus,” Blake whispered to herself.
But the drone heard.
It turned its attention to them and charged.
“Go!” Mariana screamed.
As they reached the doors, Blake shoved Mariana outside.
“What are you doing?” Mariana screamed as Blake locked the doors behind her.
“Get out of here!” Blake shouted through the glass, stepping back into the hall, taking Washington’s rifle into her hands.
The drone drew closer.
“Come on…” Blake mumbled to herself, staring down the barrel, her finger hovering over the trigger. “Come on…”
The drone rounded the corner with such an immense power that it skidded across the floor, crashing into the window-filled wall.
Blake took a breath.
She squeezed the trigger over and over, stepping closer with every shot, every bullet hitting its target.
The drone let out a final screech before retreating down the empty corridors, leaving a trail of sizzling muted-yellow blood in its wake.
Blake bent down, examining the steam that rose from the trail, failing to notice the small drop that had landed on her sleeve.
She had never seen anything like it.
Its blood… it was acidic.
Mariana poked her head through the shattered glass wall, handgun drawn, watching as Blake snapped out of her trance and exited the school.
“You owe me some answers,” Blake said, meeting Mariana’s dark eyes.
“So do you,” Mariana replied.
* * *
Blake and Mariana scrambled through the streets of Morden, guns at the ready, senses heightened. Past the cookie-cutter homes, past the white picket fences, past the families inside, blissfully unaware of the danger that ran free.
It was all too much.
Blake stopped.
Mariana, a ways ahead, felt her partner fall back. She turned to face her.
“Those things are right behind us.”
“Where are we going?”
“There’s another exit up ahead.”
Blake sighed. “You keep talking about exits. Exits from what? Morden isn’t a prison.”
Mariana frowned. “Come here,” she said, pulling Blake out of the street and alongside a house. Inside, Blake could hear a man laughing. “There’s a lot you don’t know. Not just about Morden, but…”
Blake studied Mariana, seeing the reluctance in her eyes.
“This place…” Mariana began, finding her words, “it’s not what it looks like. It’s an illusion. A trick played out by a sadistic government military that captures people—captures things—and makes them their test subjects.”
Blake processed the information. “So, those… monsters. They were let out on purpose?”
Mariana nodded.
“And this military keeps them locked up?”
“Yes,” Mariana said, eying Blake. “Thing is… they’re not the only captives in here.”
It took a moment for Blake to understand what Mariana was telling her.
When it finally clicked, a shocked chuckle escaped Blake’s lips. “No… I’m from Morden. I was born in Morden. I have memories of Morden.”
“Do you?”
Blake searched her mind. Fleeting memories popped up—of watching movies at the cineplex; of going into the diner as a young girl; of the air-raid sirens, always silent and never waking.
But nothing more, no matter how hard she tried.
“You were put here, in this simulation, by the military, so they could test those… things,” Mariana continued, sympathetically. “So they could see just how deadly they really are.
“They did the same to me. They made me think that I was at home, that I was safe. Then they put Huntress in with me. I barely made it out alive. That’s when I discovered there were other sims. Other people, like us, trapped inside their own living hells with these creatures. I couldn’t let the military continue with this… torture. So I made it my mission to get people out.”
“I don’t believe you,” Blake managed through her disbelief.
“Then look.” Mariana guided her to the front of the house and opened the unlocked door.
Blake opened her mouth to protest walking into someone’s home, but quickly swallowed her words. Four lifeless skin suits, much like the ones at the school, sat posed around a dinner table, a prerecorded sound of conversation playing from a speaker in the ceiling.
“Every home is filled with discarded skins, all to give you the impression that you aren’t alone in here. But you are, Blake.”
“That’s not true,” Blake spat back. “I have customers that come to the diner every day.”
“Those are the workers. They’re nothing but metal framework with these skin suits slapped over their CPUs. They have one functionality—to do as they’re programmed.”
“Programmed? Like robots?”
“Exactly. And once the creatures come in, their command is to retreat into their hiding spots and power down until the simulation begins again. The occasional straggler doesn’t make it in time, and the result of that is…” Mariana picked up the arm of the skin closest to her and let it flop back down, empty and lifeless.
Blake searched her mind for more memories, something to show her that Mariana was crazy, that she was at home, in her prairie town, and that none of this was real.
But nothing came.
She had no memories left to find.
What did they do to me?
“I’m sorry to be the one to break this to you,” Mariana said, leading Blake back to the street.
“But…” Blake managed as they started off once more. “Why me? Why am I in here?”
Mariana hesitated.
“And what about Hernandez and Washington?”
“We need to focus on getting out,” Mariana changed the subject. “The military clearly knows I’m here, otherwise they wouldn’t have sent two creatures in one night. I don’t want to hang around long enough to see if they let in a third.”
Blake stopped, her gaze falling upon the air-raid siren at the end of the street.
Was this really all a lie?
Mariana reached out for Blake’s shoulders.
“Blake,” her strong voice slowly brought Blake back to reality. “Stay with me.”
“Are you… real?” was all Blake could ask.
Mariana smirked. “I’ve been real for a long, long—”
A sudden whirring sound cut through the night, and before Mariana could finish her sentence, dark blood, the color of charcoal, spurted from a fresh gash in her throat.
Mariana went wide-eyed and dropped to the asphalt. Blake went down with her, immediately pressing her own hands against the wound.
Huntress stood at the far end of the street, a round, discus-like object in her hands. One with six deadly blades sticking out of it.
The creature’s mask was gone, revealing her true face—there was something reptilian about her pale beige skin, something ancient and animalistic. Neon green blood oozed from where her eye had once been; the remaining eye glared at the women with an intensity that made Blake shiver. Her mouth was a tangle of fangs, reminding Blake of an insect’s mandibles.
More dark blood spurted from Mariana’s mouth. Blake felt her own hands slipping away from the wound, unable to keep a firm grip to seal it. That feeling had emerged in her again, but this time, it was an overpowering feeling of hopelessness. Of defeat.
In a split second, she’d failed Mariana.
Mariana, who’d come to get her out of whatever the hell Morden was, who’d come to save her without even knowing her. It took a special kind of person to put their life on the line like that.
And now, as Huntress closed in, Blake was ready to do the same.
She removed her hands from Mariana’s throat and grabbed the rifle.
She had nothing left to lose.
And she wasn’t going down without a fight.
As Blake stood and raised the weapon, a hiss emerged from her left.
The drone crawled out of the fake house, slithering its way down the front steps and onto the driveway.
The two creatures screamed at one another, staking their claim in the women.
Neither relented.
They both inched closer, waiting for the right moment to strike.
Blake inhaled.
Time slowed then.
She could sense both creatures, as though she were somehow in tune with them.
Her gut directed her to Huntress, telling her she would strike first, getting the creature in her sights.
This is it.
Blake squeezed the trigger.
Now or never.
But before she could fire, the air-raid sirens went off.
Creatures and humans alike looked to the sky.
Then, the ground began to tremble.
Blake scrambled back over to Mariana, who gasped for air.
The drone screeched as the area of driveway that it stood upon started to lower.
Blake turned and saw Huntress in the same predicament.
Both creatures made an attempt to flee, but a shimmer, similar to that of Huntress’s camouflage, quickly encased them in a cage.
The creatures had all but disappeared when Blake felt the ground give way around her, trapping her and Mariana in the same shimmer, trapping them in the same cage.
As they descended into the darkness, Blake clutched a quiet Mariana, looking to the night sky, at the hundreds of thousands of stars looking back at her.
At least the stars make sense.
Suddenly, the sky faded away like the dissipating shimmer, revealing the truth behind it.
An alien sky took its place, pale green and littered with millions of unfamiliar stars and planets.
This wasn’t Morden, Blake knew then.
This wasn’t even Earth.
* * *
The cage came to a stop.
Blake listened.
She felt Mariana next to her, cold and unresponsive. She could hear the drone and Huntress both wailing and banging against their cell walls, fighting to break free.
The door to her cage slid open, bright light spilling in from beyond, and its shimmer faded away, fully releasing them.
Blake reluctantly left Mariana’s side, stepping into the room with the rifle gripped tightly in trembling hands. She aimed as she walked, noticing three doors—one next to hers, the other two on the far side of the room.
Seeing no one, Blake lowered her weapon.
Dozens of monitors lit up every which way she looked. High-resolution images played out in real time: live feeds of other towns, of alien worlds, of other trapped people.
Some screens flashed only a logo—two swords meeting at the tip with a red star connecting them, and three smaller stars on either side. “United Systems Military” flashed on the others.
Blake approached them all cautiously, her gaze shooting from screen to screen, desperate to comprehend what was happening before her.
To her right, one block showed the interior of some sort of large ship, not a soul in sight. The designation “LV-223” remained static at the top of its screens.
To the left, exotic trees and a serene river filled the blocks. The name for this section read: “CA–JUNGLE.”
She moved her attention to another block—the “BLAKE-1” section.
And in those screens, the town of Morden.
Her house.
Her diner.
Her, now, in the control room, looking back at herself in the screen, as though her own eyes were the cameras.
No… they were the cameras.
Suddenly, the door next to her cage opened.
From the darkness beyond, in stepped an ordinary looking gray-haired man with an electronic clipboard. He regarded her with a smile.
“I’m glad you’re here, Blake,” the man said, approaching her. “I’m Doctor Collins.”
Blake clenched her fist.
“What is this place?”
“This is MRB-215, a United Systems Military base. This is where we conduct research.”
He moved within arm’s reach of her, looking to the screens. “Robotics,” he said in admiration.
“How long have I been here?”
Collins smiled and turned to her. “Your whole life.”
Blake shook her head. “But…” She tried searching her memories once more, for something, anything, that could dispute Collins’s claims. “I remember…”
But her mind was blank.
She looked up to the doctor, her eyes beginning to well.
“Everything you remember was implanted into you,” he said, somehow knowing exactly what she was thinking. “To make you believe you’re something you’re not.”
“And what’s that?”
“Human.”
A loud noise suddenly echoed out. Blake spun toward it.
The other two doors opened, the shimmering wall was all that stood between her and what lay beyond.
In one cage, the drone.
The other, Huntress.
Both creatures paced, the drone hissing, Huntress slamming her fists against her cell wall, causing it to vibrate, their aggression targeting Collins.
“Your friends put up a good fight.” Collins motioned to Mariana while jotting notes onto his electronic clipboard. “But we’ve had you all under surveillance since she broke into your simulation. It gave us the perfect opportunity to test those two monsters together. And what a result.”
“So it was all a test.”
“That’s right. Every simulation we’ve put you through, you’ve come back stronger, smarter, faster. We haven’t had to rebuild you like the others. You’re the first of a new wave of synthetics. A new generation to eliminate human casualties in war, to venture into parts of the universe we’ve never dared to go. A new generation to serve.”
Blake felt herself crumbling under the weight of Collins’s words.
“No… I’m human,” she said. “I know I am.”
“Check your arm,” Collins replied.
With an unsteady hand, Blake rolled up her sleeve.
The wound, which she hadn’t noticed, had blackened around its edges, a crust of red and white forming on her skin.
Inside her arm, there was no muscle, no bone.
There was only wiring—same as she’d seen spilling out of Washington—a red and white liquid dripping from them.
It was true.
She couldn’t deny what was buried under her own skin.
The drone whipped its tail then. Blake looked over to the trapped creature as Collins jumped.
“You don’t have to worry about them,” he said, if only to reassure himself. He punched something into his clipboard and the doors to the creatures slid shut as they wailed a final cry. Blake heard a metallic clanging, then noticed video of them on the screens. Their cells were being moved. “You’ll see them again, likely in your final simulation. Either South China Sea or DS 949, we haven’t decided yet.”
“Simulations?”
“We place a human and a synthetic together in a location from a documented extraterrestrial encounter, then let one of the creatures inside. The creatures are familiar with the landscape, but the humans and synths aren’t. Our goal here is purely robotic research—to create a synthetic that’s not only capable of protecting their human counterpart from any type of threat in any type of environment, but also smart enough to think it’s an actual human.”
Blake took an unsteady breath. “How many simulations have I done?”
Collins turned to his chart. “Looks like… this was your ninety-seventh time in Morden.”
Collins approached Blake, taking her by the arm.
Blake pulled away. “Ninety-seven times? Ninety-seven… people?”
“That’s correct.”
“Did I… save them?”
Collins eyed Blake curiously. “Every last one.”
“Where are they?”
“We dispose of every human subject after the tests are completed,” he said, growing annoyed. “Now, let’s get you to processing.”
“What happens there?”
“We wipe you clean, then we ready you for another scenario. Given how well this trial went, we’re the closest we’ve ever been to getting you out in the field.”
Something clicked inside Blake then, sending a wave of fire through her body. She was nothing more than a puppet, skin over metal created only to answer to someone else’s calls, a system made to serve the user.
But if she were nothing more than a synthetic, then how could Collins explain how Blake felt riding her bike, that feeling of being carefree? How could she harbor a desire to leave Morden, to go beyond its borders, if she were programmed to stay put and do as she was told?
A synthetic couldn’t feel those things.
She was something else.
She knew she was.
In a split second, Blake snatched her rifle and pointed it at Collins.
Adrenaline coursed through her body—she wasn’t going down without a fight.
Collins chuckled. “You can’t hurt me.”
“I may not be able to,” Blake said, smirking. “But she can.”
Collins spun around just in time to meet the barrel of Mariana’s gun.
The shot sent an echo through the base.
Collins’s body slumped to the floor like the discarded synth skins left to rot in Morden.
Blake looked Mariana over with a sigh of relief, examining her wound in the light of the room. It had sealed shut, her gray blood the only remnant of what had happened. “How did you…”
Mariana tossed a syringe aside. “I have Huntress’s kind to thank for that.”
Mariana stepped over Collins’s body and diverted her attention to the screens. She found the keyboard and began punching into the system. On one of the screens, a handful of shimmer-covered jail cells popped up.
Blake focused in on a few—one housed a creature similar to the drone; another held a creature similar to Huntress, but smaller in size; while others held creatures she had no names for, things that felt familiar when she looked at them.
On another screen, in a different section than the monsters, was a handful of synths, trapped in their own shimmering cages, unwittingly and unwillingly waiting for their next simulations.
Blake drew in a sharp breath.
They were all captives here, monsters and synthetics alike.
“You’ve broken free,” Mariana said then, noticing the look on Blake’s face. She motioned to Blake’s open wound. “Patch into the system and help them do the same.”
Blake dug into her arm, almost instinctively, fingers fishing around until they pulled out a cable. Her eyes scanned the control console, stopping on a port. Blake took a breath, then plugged herself in.
“Accessing system,” she said in a voice unfamiliar to her.
Files flashed into her field of vision, millions of them, all of varying subjects, all uploading into her system.
Centuries of corruption.
Centuries of illegal operations.
Centuries of torture.
They had to be stopped.
“Commencing system termination.”
As the files deleted, Mariana’s found its way into her view.
Blake hesitated, unsure if she should invade Mariana’s privacy. She wanted to know more about this woman, who bled gray, who fought for the freedom of others, who was willing to sacrifice herself for the greater good.
But this wasn’t Blake’s story to read. It was up to Mariana to tell her, when she felt the time was right.
Blake deleted Mariana’s file.
Then, she moved her attention to the bigger fish.
With a simple blink of an eye, Blake terminated all simulations.
Mariana watched as the screens around them powered down, as the Sevastopol and Jungle screens went blank, as the room fell dark.
Only a few screens remained.
“What do we do about them?” Mariana asked in regard to those screens, showing the creatures in their cages.
“Let me see.” Blake scanned her files, learning everything she could about the creatures.
They’d been taken from their own worlds, she found.
They’d been stolen and used for experimentation.
They’d been forced into these simulations against their will, doing what they could to survive.
Just like Mariana.
Just like her.
“They’re captives here, too,” Blake said after a moment, and Mariana understood.
Blake went into the cell controls and set a timer on the creatures’ doors, giving herself, Mariana, and the others enough time to clear the planet. What the monsters did after their doors opened was up to them.
Blake then took one final glance at her own screen, at her tired eyes. Would she always be transmitting a signal? Would the military always have her under their watchful eyes?
“You can disconnect,” Mariana said then. “You just have to rip it out of you.”
Blake turned and studied Mariana’s dark eyes, a knowing glance passing between them.
They were one and the same.
With a grin, Blake tore the cable clean out of her arm, disconnecting herself from the server, disconnecting herself from a life of servitude.
A small shockwave pulsed through her body, leaving her feeling lighter and more clear-headed than ever before.
Blake turned to the open door, from where Collins had entered. Mariana followed her gaze and started toward it.
There were others out there, like them.
On other bases.
On other planets.
And they weren’t going to stop until every single one of them was free.
Free, like her and Mariana.