I am outmatched.
“FUCK.” THE heavy ceramic pot containing a three-foot ficus tree slams into my torso and carries me halfway across the empty space in front of the nurses’ desk. I land on my tailbone, skidding another three feet on the slick tile before coming to a stop. The brown pottery shatters into a million sharp pieces, adding to the dozen other hazards in the room: a broken lamp, tablets and styluses, medicine vials, loose syringes, and other equipment. It’s all scattered across the floor, making footing precarious.
No time to worry about it. I press both palms to the floor and flip to my feet, slicing open my left hand on a piece of glass in the process. Not deep, but it will make gripping any sort of makeshift weapon difficult, not that I have one. I lost my piece of cabinet door a while ago, when I embedded it in VC2’s thigh. A flash of movement tells me VC2 is behind the nurses’ desk, keeping her covered and me out in the open.
Something whizzes toward me, displacing the air with a whistling sound. My head ducks without any intent behind the motion and a sharp blade passes over me, then drives into one of the double doors to my rear.
Did you do that? I think at VC1.
Indeed. You need to pay more attention. She is toying with us, but she is armed. You are not.
Yeah, well, thanks. Keep it up. I dive-roll to the right, ending up behind a couch that sits as part of a small cluster of chairs and a table between the doors and the horseshoe-shaped desk—a visitors’ waiting area if it’s not visiting hours or if a patient is out having treatment.
You are giving me permission to take control as needed? Her surprise is evident in her tone.
I think on that while I catch my breath. When we escaped the maze, I said I understood she might manipulate me if our lives were at risk. This is different. I’m acknowledging us as one body, two brains, either of which has the right to make unilateral decisions for the both of us. As long as you warn me when possible, I send back.
Agreed.
I suck in a few more lungfuls of air and check on Cynthia, most of her smaller body hidden behind the other potted ficus still upright beside the double doors. So far VC2 has ignored her. I’m the target here. But if I lose, I have no doubt Cynthia will be her next victim. She’s come a long way since her enslavement. I intend to make sure she lives to come a lot further.
More movement in my peripheral vision. I glance to my right, where an archway leads into the dark hallway beyond. Three shadows shift and move, one crouching, the other two standing behind. The cavalry has arrived.
High-pitched drilling sounds reach my ears from beyond the double doors—yet another distraction. They’ll come through soon. More backup. She’s outnumbered and cornered. Why doesn’t she surrender?
Would you? VC1 asks.
No, I wouldn’t. And I realize I need to not think like a target. I need to think like VC2. Analysis, please. If I were where she is right now, what would I do to win?
Silence.
“Everyone freeze!” comes Carl’s voice from the corridor. He’s standing now, leaning around the edge of the arch so only his upper body and head are visible, ready to duck back out of sight if necessary. He’s got one pistol trained on my general position and another aimed at the desk, and I realize he doesn’t know which of us is which. Great. “All of you stand up with your hands raised where I can see them.”
I catch a glimpse of another guard, an OWL member whose name I never learned, right behind him, and… Kelly. Shit.
We move as one, me, VC2, and Cynthia rising slowly from our hiding positions with our hands raised high. Mine and Cynthia’s are empty. VC2 holds a pistol pointed up in her right grip. I recognize the make and model as the one the OWLs prefer. She must have taken it off Robert when she attacked him.
She’s giving up a defensible position, I realize. She’s got to have a plan in mind. Nothing else makes sense. I wouldn’t do what she’s doing. I would… I would….
What the hell would I do?
“Set the gun on the desk and shove it away from you,” Carl demands, keeping his own weapon trained on VC2. The other guard has me covered with his own pistol.
To my surprise, VC2 does what he asks, setting the gun with a dull thunk on the desk and sliding it to the far end, where it stops just before falling off the edge. It’s out of her immediate reach, though she could dive for it. Still, she’d likely be shot before she could get it and aim.
What am I missing?
“Cynthia, come to me,” Carl says. Never taking his eyes off the room, he tilts his head to the side and says something to Kelly that, to my enhanced hearing, sounds like, “Which one is VC2?”
Kelly doesn’t hesitate. She points to the clone behind the desk. I let out an audible sigh of relief. Dressed in identical clothing, I wasn’t certain she’d be able to tell us apart, but I guess our emotions give us away. Carl has the other guard shift his aim to VC2 and holsters his own pistol. I put my arms down.
That nagging sense of impending disaster keeps poking at me as Cynthia moves quickly across the open space between the potted plant and the hallway arch, skirting around the remains of the other destroyed pottery and random debris. Carl goes to meet her, offering her an arm to lean on. They’re together at the halfway point when VC1 says, Robert carried two pistols.
Shit shit shit.
“Everybody down!” I shout even as VC2 blurs into motion, reaching behind her back to pull a second gun from her waistband. She doesn’t shoot Cynthia or Carl, like I expect her to. She doesn’t even fire at me, her primary target. Instead, she aims the barrel straight up and fires three times… into the huge glass dome overhead.
Maximum damage, maximum chaos, maximum casualties.
It’s what I would have done. If I were a sociopath.
If she can disrupt the entire room with one blast, she might escape out some other exit before the rest of the guards can get in through the double doors.
I don’t think. I move, leaping over the couch and tackling Cynthia to the floor to roll with her against the desk and the limited protection the overhanging surface of it will provide. I’d meant to grab Carl as well, and I do knock him down, but not out of the way of the shower of glass falling all around us. Most of the bits are tiny, snowflake-like in the way they glitter in the emergency lights and blanket the tile floor.
But those are the precursors.
The metal support framework holding the glass panes in place groans, then bends, central connectors breaking apart with a screech that has Cynthia clamping her hands over her ears. In seconds, much larger, sharper shards drop like transparent blades, one landing in the center of Carl’s chest where he lies sprawled in the center of the floor.
My boss has one brief moment of shock and surprise, his eyes flying wide, all his limbs jerking taut in four directions, before everything slackens. He exhales a single gasping, wheezing breath as his eyes slide shut.
Carl might have been an asshole, but he didn’t deserve that. Cynthia chokes out a sob from where she lies half beneath me.
A second sob echoes it, coming from the archway to the corridor beyond. Kelly.
I raise my head just in time to see her slide backward into the shadows of the hallway, then a soft thud when she hits the floor out of sight. The other guard turns at the sound, bends to help her.
It’s all the distraction VC2 needs to shoot him in the back of the head.
Cynthia screams. Kelly, somehow still conscious, also screams, though I can’t see her.
“Stop fucking killing everyone. You’re going to send her into emotion shock!” I shout at VC2.
The only response I get is a half-hysterical laugh.
She’s really insane, I think at VC1.
As insane as you would have been without Kelly, my AI confirms.
How do I beat an insane version of myself?
“We’re about to remove the doors,” comes the other OWL’s voice over my internal comm.
Don’t, I tell him, using thought-to-text so my words come up on his comm screen rather than me speaking out loud and risking being overheard by VC2’s aural enhancements. My double has multiple weapons, protective cover, and a clear line of sight to those doors. She’ll pick all of you off as you come through. If you can, send more backup through the interior halls. Come in from behind her. We’ve got two dead and one disabled in here.
“Roger that.”
“What do we do now?” Cynthia whispers.
I consider our options. We’re in front of the desk, up against it. VC2 is on the opposite side. She’s likely got both her pistols in hand. If we try to run for the corridor, she’ll gun us down before we take three steps, but we can’t stay where we are, waiting for her next move.
Her next move….
If I were VC2, what would I do next? How would I eliminate my targets without taking damage to myself?
“OWL3 to Corren. The exterior doors have resealed. Security access codes rescrambled. We’re working on overriding, but for the moment you’re on your own.” The guard pauses. “I’m sorry. Apparently the one they managed to open slammed shut in the wind and VC2 took the opportunity to retake control of it.”
Understood, I text back, not wanting to alarm Cynthia further.
We’re stuck, lying on the floor, with a few inches of wood between us and our attacker.
Inches… wood…. Oh fuck.
“Move!” I shout, grabbing Cynthia by the collar of her pastel yellow fuzzy sweater and shoving her across the room toward the archway. I go the opposite direction, away from the safety of the hallway, crouched and working my way around the far corner of the horseshoe desk.
A beat later, three shots echo through the high-ceilinged room, and three neat holes appear in the back of the desk, right where the two of us had been lying seconds before. You don’t need your targets to be visible if you can just shoot through a barrier to kill them.
Most opponents wouldn’t have thought to do that, but I would, and VC2 would. I have to stop treating her like any other enemy. She’s me. A deranged, psychotic me, so she won’t care how much damage she does or whom she kills, but she’s still me.
And I’m terrifying.
Leaning around the curve of the desk, I spot Cynthia vanishing into the shadows of the hall, safe for the moment.
VC2 and I are the only ones left in the room, and this needs to end now.
I draw my legs up under me, coil my body for maximum momentum, and launch myself up and over the desk.