“It is our opinion that the creation of these artilects, these intelligent machines, are a threat to our very existence. We will become obsolete not only in our own economy, but as a species. One only has to look at the Industrial Revolution to understand the potential collateral damage that we will pay with our own lives. And we recognize this instinctually. Why else would we treat androids with the contempt and hatred we do? We oppress them because we know on a primeval level that they would destroy us all if given half the chance. Let’s beat them to it.”

— Sarah Weiland, President of the Preserve Terra Society, 2039

I was in the bed again, with the full length of Tor’s body pressed against my back and his thighs curled up under mine. When he realized I was awake, he started to lift his arm from where it rested, entwined with mine. But after what I’d seen when I’d opened the front door, I’d decided to trust him, and I couldn’t bear that he might leave me. I trapped his arm under my elbow. He froze for a second then relaxed, his face in my hair. It should’ve felt strange and awkward, but it didn’t.

A tickle in my mind. He was waiting. As always.

We lay on top of the covers, my breathing rapid and shallow, his long and deep. Everything in me was light and temporary, like a bird ready to take flight. He listened about the woman in the bunker, the man with the knife. I didn’t tell him everything; some of it seemed too private to share, like a betrayal of part of myself.

“It’s not the first time I’ve…been her, either. What do you think it is?” I asked. “Dreams? It was like I was there, inside her, but all I could do was see and feel. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t speak. Her thoughts were my thoughts. It was like I became her, but I was still aware that we were two separate people. Does that make sense?”

He paused for a long time before answering. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s a side effect. Did you have these dreams before you became a cyborg?”

“I don’t think so. I…” I tried to remember. I had trouble sometimes. The treatments that kept me alive interfered with my brain. “I’m pretty sure I didn’t.” I waited for him to be incredulous, to ask how I couldn’t understand my own mind. But he didn’t. He changed the subject instead.

He told me what had happened, what I’d seen right before I passed out. Why the air was freezing. Why there was no sun.

“All the tension that had been building between the Terrans and the Cosmists finally hit breaking point. It came out on the news that an artilect had actually been created.”

“I heard about that, just before I went under. Wasn’t it just a rumor?”

“It probably was. But for whatever reason, people believed it this time. They began to panic. Then the information on the Pantheon Modern Omega Project was leaked. And it…that’s when the world went crazy. Anybody with cybernetics was issued with an order of removal. The military started to hunt us, the Program Omega cyborgs, down. It was difficult, of course, since we look just as human as they do and Pantheon had already taken measures to hide us.”

“But how did that become this? I mean, it’s barren out there.”

“I don’t know who made the first strike, exactly. One day the news said it was the Russian Cosmists. The next it was the American Terrans. Even Canada was accused. I didn’t think we had that kind of arsenal. Information came out, stuff we’d never heard before. Murders, sabotage, illegal weapon prototypes. The war had started long before we’d even known it was a possibility.

“The bombs fell in Canada on the third day. Major cities in every province were hit: Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto. And it wasn’t just us. There were coordinated attacks all over the world. That was the last thing I heard.

“Those who still had to be cyberized were spirited away to their main compound, wherever that is. Those, like us, who’d already undergone the process were separated into pairs and hidden in bunkers all over the province. They only expected the war to last a few weeks, a month at most, and they’d planned to move us all to the compound after a week or two in hiding. To keep us safe, Pantheon Modern triggered a forced stasis program they’d planted in all the cyborgs from Program Omega.”

Being put to sleep without my knowledge, even if it was for a good reason, made me sick. “And then?”

“And then…I don’t know exactly. I was underground, with you.”

“But you were obviously awake before me. What happened? ”

His eyes had become glassy. “The world was…just over. While we were in the bunker, communications went down, and the earth burned. More bombs leveled entire cities and scorched the earth around them for miles. Have you heard of Russian Tar?”

“Isn’t it some sort of napalm?”

“That’s right. It was banned, never used, but someone, not the Russians, got the formula for it and…it clung to every surface and burned for days. There was explosive lightning, firestorms that raged unchecked.

“Many people survived the war itself. But then ash from the firestorms blocked the sun, and the temperature plummeted. People burned, and froze, and starved, and fought, and died.”

“But lots of people survived, right? I mean, I know we’re out in the woods, but—”

“No, Ailith. I mean, yes, people survived, but very few. The world we knew is gone.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I…I talked to some survivors.”

When I was ten, I’d been playing on some old farming machinery when I’d fallen and sliced my arm. There was no pain at first, just the glistening brilliance of the open wound and a terrible clarity of how bad the pain would be once it started. I’d held my breath, believing that if I didn’t breathe, time wouldn’t move forward and I could stay suspended forever in that moment before the blood welled to the surface and brought agony.

All gone. My father. No. I couldn’t think of him. It was too much. If I stopped to think about it, I would die. So many days had passed, over eighteen hundred of them. How many people had lived in fear before dying in fear? How many had been born into darkness? The careful hope that had taken root in me since I’d woken up was curling inwards, withering and retreating. We went so long without speaking that the fire died in the hearth. I only spoke when I had a safe question to ask. “Why are we in this house?”

“They never came back for us. After a week, I managed to break the seal and go to the surface to have a look. I wanted to keep us moving, to keep us safe. If the wrong people had found any record of those bunkers, we’d have been sitting ducks. Plus, they were only stocked for the short-term.”

Sitting ducks. Like the people who hadn’t chosen a side. Who, despite their personal beliefs about artilects and cyborgs, simply wanted to live normal lives. People like my father.

I couldn’t wait any longer. “I had a father,” I said in a rush.

His chest expanded. “Ailith.” The softness of his voice told me my father was dead.

“You don’t know, though, do you?” How could he, when we’d slept through it?

“No, I don’t. But, Ailith, it’s been five years. It’s… There’s almost nobody left.”

“Yes, but how do you know? Maybe it’s only this part of the country. Maybe he found other survivors, and he’s starting over with them.”

He was silent.

I tried a different approach. “What about you? Didn’t you have a family?”

“I did,” he said, his voice tight. “A mother.” The way he said it, I knew she was dead. But there was something else, a dullness to his tone. His grief was old, blunted. All of a sudden, I was cold. “You never talked to any survivors, did you?”

The muscles rippled in his jaw. “Yes, but—”

“Tor, how long have you been awake?”

“Ailith…” He paused. “I never went to sleep.” He said it gently, as though the truth would hurt me. It did.

“Why not? Did something go wrong?”

“You were already in stasis when they took us to the bunker. They said you were too important for both of us to go to sleep.” He held up a hand before I could ask. “I don’t know what they meant by that. They took us to the bunker and told me to stay put until they retrieved us.”

For five years, he’d watched over me, a stranger, just because another stranger had told him to. He’d guarded me and waited for the end—any end—to come. That was why he felt so familiar. For five years, he’d protected me.

Something occurred then to me that was completely irrational, given the circumstances. Is this the beginning of my nervous breakdown? “You’ve seen me naked.” It was hard to keep the accusatory tone from my voice.

A puff of air gusted against my scalp as he laughed. “Yes. I’ve seen you naked.” I stiffened away from him, which only made his shoulders shake harder. “Look, would you rather I’d left you in the same underwear for five years?”

I couldn’t argue with that.

“What did I eat? How did I go to the bathroom?”

“You didn’t. Nothing went in, nothing came out. You were just…frozen. I don’t even think you aged.”

“So why am I awake now?”

“I don’t know. About two weeks ago, you started to move. Tiny movements. A finger one day, a toe the next. Then, last week, you began having seizures. And that’s when I strapped you down.”

“Thank you,” I whispered.

He didn’t laugh again.

He pulled away from me, the mattress springing up as he stood. Cold air slammed into my back. “I need to get the fire going again.”

“What did you see? For you to know what happened, what did you see?” I called after him. He didn’t answer, so I followed him.

He was kneeling in front of the hearth, striking something together. He avoided my gaze.

“Are there others? Like us?”

This time he looked at me. “I have no idea. I am sure there were. As to whether there still are...”

The room began to spin again. It was too much for me to take in. What if this was a dream, like the other dreams? They were more real than this.

What do I do?

Survive , a voice inside me whispered, pushing back the part that needed to scream, to fall apart and be forever undone. I focused on Tor, the cut of his face in the glow of his fledgling fire. My hands ached to wrap themselves in his hair, to twist it around my fingers and hold together the pieces of my broken heart.

In less than a heartbeat, I was beside him. “Tor—”

He lifted his eyes to mine. Kneeling, his face was level with my stomach. I pulled him in, pressing him against me. He didn’t resist, and as he wrapped his arms around me, his breath flared quick and hot through the fabric of my shirt.

I would’ve cried then, had there not been a sudden scratching at the door.