Chapter Sixteen

I had always been able to tell when I was dreaming. When I was little, my foster parents told me I was a lucid dreamer and that it was actually pretty rare, especially for someone my age. But I’ve always been underwhelmed with this ability. To me, knowing when I was dreaming was no different than knowing when I was awake. It didn’t make my dreams any more interesting. Why was it so special that when I dreamed I was trying – and failing – to match two shoes together in the closet in order to make a pair, I knew I was dreaming it?

I’d heard there were people who could control their dreams, special lucid dreamers with what I considered magic powers, frankly. But I wasn’t one of them. Instead, I dreamed one of two ways. Either I would take an active role in the dream, and I would dream I was doing something like showing up naked for school or running out of ketchup for my fries, or I would take an inactive role in the dream and just sort of float above it or around it and “watch” the whole thing unfold, naked math class and all.

This time, for the first time ever, it was neither. I wasn’t floating above the scene, nor was I taking part in it myself. It was more like – someone else was taking part, and I was watching through their eyes.

But most importantly… I knew it wasn’t a dream.

If you’ve dreamed lucidly your entire life, you damn well knew when you weren’t doing so, too. Whatever this was and whatever explanation there was for it, it was real.

At first, I was running. I could tell by the swift movement and by the sound of hard shoes on the ground. But it was a fast clip, unnaturally graceful, so I knew right away it was an android running, not a human. When I realized where we were running – the escape tunnel Lucas and the rest of Prometheus had gone through – the fact that it was an android doing the running made sense.

Now I knew it was Zero.

It had to be. It even felt like Zero. The air around my dream self felt charged with the power he resonated, that certain something I couldn’t quite put a name to but that made me feel both terrified and excited when I was near him. It was potent and heady.

But Jack shot him! my mind argued. How could he be well enough to run now?

He was gone from the hall when we returned, I reasoned.

For all we knew, he’d been wearing some kind of armor and the wounds Jack had given him were as superficial as the ones I’d given him. Maybe they’d knocked him out by sheer force of impact, the way people in Kevlar were sometimes knocked out.

Plus IRM-1000 was… well, frankly Zero was special. He seemed genuinely unique. The techno-gods only knew what he was capable of surviving. No one knew anything about him, where he’d come from, why he’d been created, who had designed and produced him, nothing. The fact that he was nearly Luke’s slightly taller and blue-eyed twin was unsettling. The similarities between the two would suggest some kind of connection. But it was one I couldn’t figure out and would rather not give credit to, anyway.

The important thing was, I was certain it was Zero I was experiencing the world through. Confirmation came when he burst out of the tunnel and into the snowy clearing, and I saw his strong, beautiful hands grip the rocks on either side of the opening from the escape shaft. I saw what he saw – his hands and that pristine black suit jacket. There wasn’t even any thorium on it.

He leapt out of the hidden entrance-exit with perpetually frustrating grace, then strode purposefully across the snow. As he did, he took in every single technical detail of his surroundings. For the first time ever, I got to see exactly what an android saw when they did what everyone called “reading” a scene.

Zero scanned the area, and succinct text scrolled across non-invasive areas of his vision, neat, orderly and extremely informative. With light speed, he counted his soldiers, summed up the damage caused by both sides, and then focused his attention on Prometheus.

In the distance, the helicopter Nicholas had commandeered, refueled, and was apparently going to fly was already gearing up. The rotor blades circled with increasing speed, preparing for lift-off. Zero’s android eyes and senses located two people inside, one android and one human. The android was wounded enough to be out of commission, but not fatally.

Shawn, I thought with a pang of intense concern. If the bullet had pierced the protective coating I’d given him against the weather, the cold would be able to get in. He wouldn’t be able to stay out in that intense temperature for long without suffering dire consequences. But that’s why they put him in the chopper, I reassured myself. It’s warm in there.

I followed along some more as Zero continued to scan, further processing details.

Ahead two-hundred paces, but a good hundred paces short of the chopper, the mission team of Prometheus tried their best to get to the vehicle, but Zero’s soldiers were laying down massive amounts of fire directly in front of them, clearly trying not to hit anyone while simultaneously trying their best to prevent further progress. As a result, Daniel and the team had come to a desperate standstill.

And at the center of that team, virtually surrounded on all sides by protective android bodies, was me.

It was truly bizarre to see myself third-person, especially this clearly. Unfortunately, I wasn’t looking so good. Jack had taken off his jacket and wrapped it around me; I would have recognized that piece of shit jacket that was incredibly warm anywhere. But despite the fact that Jack was now sans protection against the elements, the extra layer didn’t seem to be doing me much good.

Lucas was holding me tight to his chest, and I swear it looked like he was holding on to a ghost. Every bit of me was white, from the hair that was flying like wisps of ghost silk in the wind, to my lips, which were seriously turning from white to blue. I looked like some kind of fallen angel, utterly drained of divine energy. An empty vessel.

And I suddenly wondered if… maybe I was actually dead. Perhaps I was seeing all of this as I passed from one existence to the next. Or… as I ceased to exist entirely.

Oddly, the scene began to take on a reddish tinge, as if blood were seeping in from the edges of my vision. At first I had no idea what to make of it. I was too wrapped up in what was happening to give it much thought. Zero was trying to get a reading on me. But in their efforts to protect me, Lex and Matt huddled behind Lucas, blocking IRM-1000’s view. Zero was unable to permeate their bodies to accurately scan mine.

More scrolling information flashed before Zero’s vision, this time so fast I couldn’t read it. However, it was obvious he was figuring something out. Processing. Planning.

Further ahead, Sonia dropped down from the chopper, and Daniel tossed something to her. I felt a little floored when I saw it was one of the make-shift “bombs” I’d put together in the bathroom earlier. As Daniel and Sonia turned in opposite directions to deal with different cells of soldiers, I looked at the shampoo bottle in her hand and thought to myself, Wow, that really is the most rudimentary piece of claptrap you’ve ever made, Sam. But for her part, Sonia seemed to know what to do with it. She lit the tightly rolled toilet paper and shoestring “wick” immediately and sent it flying directly into a team of Zero’s men.

The world tinged slightly more red, and to further add to its strangeness, it began to flash. Suddenly it felt like I was standing right next to a police car while its lights were on but the siren was off.

Completely enthralled by the unfolding movie-like scene, I watched rapt, as Zero’s soldiers scattered just before the bomb went off with far more explosive power than I’d thought it would.

Yes! I allowed myself to mentally cheer. Maybe it hadn’t been complete nonsense after all! Those make-shift bombs were actually pretty kick-ass!

The explosion afforded Prometheus a brief opening. The team knew what to do with that too. Every one of them, including Lucas who cradled me like a small child against him, broke into a swift run toward the chopper.

It was always impressive watching androids like Daniel and Lucas move, even in simple ways like running and walking. But it was especially impressive now because when Lucas broke into a run, he did so with me in his arms, and it didn’t have the slightest effect on his speed or agility. He moved just as fast as everyone else, if not faster.

Gunfire started up again however, and he skidded to a halt with a good fifty paces to go before he would have reached the chopper. Plumes of snow and ice flew up in front of him, combined with what seriously looked like spraying water.

A lake, I realized. This is not actually a plain or a valley of snow, but a frozen fucking lake. That’s why it’s so flat! Even from this distance, I heard Lucas swearing. But I heard Jack swear even louder. Of course.

They were probably thinking the same things I was. It was bad enough they’d been stopped short again. It was even worse that they were on a lake and bullets were making swiss cheese out of the only barrier between them and the deadly water below.

Daniel reacted at once, turning to the group of soldiers who’d just begun firing. He lit his conditioner bottle bomb, took aim for a split second, and threw it into their laps. Just as its companion bottle had before, this one sent Zero’s soldiers scrambling, and was closely followed by an impressive explosion.

There was a brief moment directly after the explosion when everyone was crouching or covering their faces. During that interlude, Zero scanned my body at last.

More of the world turned red, and it dawned on me that Zero’s eyes must have been turning red. I was seeing the world through his red vision. So that’s what it looks like to see red, I thought. It would have been so convenient for humans if their eyes turned red when this happened like it did for Zero. What better way to convey extreme and dangerous emotion? It probably would have stopped a lot of fights before they’d started.

Warning signs began to flash amidst the other scrolling texts before Zero’s gaze. I may not have known exactly what they all meant, but I would have recognized a warning sign anywhere. It was a little like the skull and crossbones symbol in its effect. It meant trouble and it was impossible to ignore.

A spit second later, I heard a command spoken, simple and effective: Cease fire.

The gunfire stopped at once, and Zero’s men lowered their weapons.

Lucas and the others slowly straightened, no doubt wondering what the hell was going on. But when Lucas made a break for it toward the Chopper, Zero called out at last.

“Lucas!” Zero bellowed, his angry voice cutting through the sound of the rotor blades and the wind like only an android’s voice could. It was amplified by both technology and fury. The red and flashing in his vision were a reflection of that fury. I would have wagered the EED around Zero’s left eye was doing the same thing. By the looks of it, Zero was livid.

Up ahead, Lucas and the others came once again to a skidding stop. I could see Luke’s hesitation, almost feel his distress and uncertainty as he slowly turned his head to look back over his broad shoulder across the snowy field toward Zero.

“She needs immediate medical attention!” Lucas yelled back, meeting Zero’s gaze dead-on and matching his volume decibel for decibel. The sound of his voice was ridiculously comforting to me, and when Zero zoomed in on those big, stormy gray eyes, I recognized the agonized unease, the apprehension, and the stewing terror in their depths. His hands, where they gripped my unconscious body, had gone white. He wasn’t afraid for himself. He’d already been through the worst Zero could do to him. He was terrified for me.

But Zero’s gaze slipped from Lucas to my unconscious form, and now that the view was unobstructed, I noticed something startling in the way Zero saw me. It could have been my imagination. It might just be that I was so close to death, I was just that pale. But for whatever reason, there was a literal glow around my face as he looked upon it. I looked surreal, stunningly beautiful – even perhaps in death.

He saw me a little like Daniel did. And even then, on a really, really good day. But across his field of view, a hundred words scrolled chaotically. My all-too human eyes caught a few phrases, noticing that some words were more bold than others: inconsistent development, FRACTURES, internal hemorrhaging, unpredicted, SHOCK, ACUTE hypotension, bradycardia….

And then, a single, horribly dire phrase bloomed to life, layered over them all, and hovered in the foreground in angry, blinking red. The letters were disjointed and out of order as if Zero did not want to read them, but they were still far too easy to comprehend: CONDITION CRITICAL.

Zero turned his attention at once to Daniel, Prometheus’s delegated leader. His vision zoomed and focused, and suddenly I was peering into beautiful bi-colored eyes. Wexner Medical Center, Zero’s mental voice resonated, strong and clear. Take her there immediately. The helicopter is pre-programmed with the route. The way will be cleared for you, and the staff will be prepared and awaiting your arrival.

I frowned as I watched and heard this. It was confusing enough to wonder how he could ensure that what he was promising would actually happen – the way cleared, the doctors waiting, and so forth. What I really didn’t get was how he was mentally speaking with Daniel in the first place.

But Daniel didn’t seem surprised to hear Zero in his head. He turned slightly to glance down at Jack and Lucas, who were watching him in confused silence. Of course they were confused; they hadn’t heard Zero. In a meaningful gesture, Daniel pointed once to his ear. He had turned just enough toward them that I could also see it – Nicholas’s communications crest. Or as he’d called it, the co-crest. Daniel was telling the others that he was hearing Zero through it.

It hit me then that the reason Zero was able to speak with Daniel was because both Zero and Daniel were able to speak with me. I was like the android telepathy missing link. Or the white creamy filling in-between two hard android cookies. Daniel was wearing a device specially encoded for me, making this third and probably unintended communication with IRM-1000 possible.

Something else hit me then, something fundamental: I’m seeing this because Zero and I are…. If I’d been conscious I would have blanched. But seeing as how I was already pretty much as pale as a person could possibly get, I just helplessly admitted the truth. Zero and I are linked.

His bioreading stint with me strapped to that chair in Vector Fifteen had seen to that.

Daniel said nothing. Instead, he held IRM-1000’s gaze for a short but hard, meaningful moment, a thousand unsaid messages hanging in the frozen air between them. Then he returned with a nod and a simple, Understood before he spun away. Even through the distance between Prometheus and Zero, I heard him shouting to the others.

Lucas was instantly mobile. He raced to the chopper, where Nicholas took my unconscious form from his strong arms. I imagined that the cold was probably medically helping my situation in this case, chilling my body enough to slow what was looked like a lot of internal bleeding.

Every member of Prometheus climbed aboard the helicopter in record time and Nicholas managed to get the thing airborne without losing a single unnecessary second. But as the chopper turned in the air and headed away, making a bee-line for what I reasoned was the Ohio border, Zero’s vision clouded with countless commands, scrolling across his consciousness to the point that I lost sight of them altogether.

Everything blurred, fading away. I felt a distancing that I could only describe as a passage of time. In the dream that was not a dream, I closed my eyes and rested.

Somewhere far away, I heard the chopping of helicopter blades as they sliced through the air – and the gentle touch of loving fingers as they tenderly brushed a wayward strand of hair from my forehead.