Prey

Chapter 22

"Oh," I said. "Is that what happens now? We finish?"

She nodded slowly. "Yes, Jack. It is."

I couldn't risk looking at my watch, I had to try and gauge how much time had passed. I was guessing three or four minutes. I said, "So, what do you have in mind?" Julia began to pace. "Well, Jack, I'm very disappointed in how things have gone with you. I really am. You know how much I care about you. I would never want anything to happen to you. But you're fighting us, Jack. And you won't stop fighting. And we can't have that."

"I see," I said.

"We just can't, Jack."

I reached in my pocket and brought out a plastic cigarette lighter. If Julia or the others noticed, they gave no sign.

She kept pacing. "Jack, you put me in a difficult position."

"How's that?"

"You've been privileged to witness the birth of something truly new, here. Something new and miraculous. But you are not sympathetic, Jack."

"No, I'm not."

"Birth is painful."

"So is death," I said.

She continued to pace. "Yes," she said. "So is death." She frowned at me.

"Something the matter?"

"Where is Mae?" she said again.

"I don't know. I don't have the faintest idea."

She continued to frown. "We have to find her, Jack."

"I'm sure you will."

"Yes, we will."

"So you don't need me," I said. "Just do it on your own. I mean, you're the future, if I remember right. Superior and unstoppable. I'm just a guy."

Julia started walking around me, looking at me from all sides. I could see she was puzzled by my behavior. Or appraising. Maybe I had overdone it. Gone too far. She was picking up something. She suspected something. And that made me very nervous. I turned the cigarette lighter over in my hands, nervously.

"Jack," she said. "You disappoint me."

"You said that already."

"Yes," she said. "But I am still not sure ..."

As if on some unspoken cue the men all began to walk in circles. They were moving in concentric circles around me. Was this some kind of scanning procedure? Or did it mean something else?

I was trying to guess the time. I figured five minutes had elapsed.

"Come, Jack. I want to look more closely."

She put her arm on my shoulder and led me over to one of the big octopus arms. It was easily six feet across, and mirrored on its surface. I could see Julia standing next to me. Her arm over my shoulder.

"Don't we make a handsome couple? It's a shame. We could have such a future."

I said, "Yeah, well ..."

And the moment I spoke, a river of pale particles streamed off Julia, curved in the air, and came down like a shower all over my body and into my mouth. I clamped my mouth shut, but it didn't matter, because in the mirror my body seemed to dissolve away, to be replaced by Julia's body. It was as if her skin had left her, flowed into the air, and slid down over me. Now there were two Julias standing side by side in front of the mirror. I said, "Cut it out, Julia."

She laughed. "Why? I think it's fun."

"Stop it," I said. I sounded like myself, even though I looked like Julia. "Stop it."

"Don't you like it? I think it's amusing. You get to be me, for a while."

"I said, stop it."

"Jack, you're just no fun anymore."

I pulled at the Julia-image on my face, trying to tear it away like a mask. But I felt only my own skin beneath my fingertips. When I scratched at my cheek, the Julia-cheek showed scratches in the mirror. I reached back and touched my own hair. In my panic, I dropped the cigarette lighter. It clattered on the concrete floor.

"Get it off me," I said. "Get it off."

I heard a whoosh in my ears, and the Julia-skin was gone, sweeping into the air, then descending onto Julia. Except that she now looked like me. Now there were two Jacks, side by side in the mirror.

"Is this better?" she said.

"I don't know what you are trying to prove." I took a breath.

I bent over and picked up the lighter.

"I'm not trying to prove anything," she said. "I'm just feeling you out, Jack. And you know what I found? You've got a secret, Jack. And you thought I wouldn't find it out."

"Yes?"

"But I did," she said.

I didn't know how to take her words. I wasn't sure where I was anymore, and the changes in appearance had so unnerved me that I had lost track of the time. "You're worried about the time, aren't you, Jack," she said. "You needn't be. We have plenty of time. Everything is under control here. Are you going to tell us your secret? Or do we have to make you tell?"

Behind her, I could see the stacked monitor screens of the control station. The corner ones had a flashing bar along the top, with lettering that I couldn't read. I could see that some of the graphs were rising steeply, their lines turning from blue to yellow to red as they climbed. I did nothing.

Julia turned to the men. "Okay," she said. "Make him tell."

The three men converged toward me. It was time to show them. It was time to spring my trap. "No problem," I said. I raised my lighter, flicked the flame, and held it under the nearest sprinkler head.

The men stopped in their tracks. They watched me.

I held the lighter steady. The sprinkler head blackened with the smoke.

And nothing happened.

* * *

The flame was melting the soft metal tab beneath the sprinkler head. Splotches of silver were dripping on the ground at my feet. And still nothing happened. The sprinklers didn't come on. "Oh shit," I said.

Julia was watching me thoughtfully. "It was a nice try. Very inventive, Jack. Good thinking. But you forgot one thing."

"What's that?"

"There's a safety system for the plant. And when we saw you going for the sprinklers, Ricky turned the system off. Safeties off, sprinklers off." She shrugged. "Guess you're out of luck, Jack."

I flicked the lighter off. There was nothing for me to do. I just stood there, feeling foolish. I thought I smelled a faint odor in the room. A kind of sweetish, nauseating odor. But I couldn't be sure.

"It was a nice try, though," Julia said. "But enough is enough." She turned to the men, and jerked her head. The three of them walked toward me. I said, "Hey guys, come on ..." They didn't react. Their faces were impassive. They grabbed me and I started to struggle. "Hey, come on now ..." I pulled free of them. "Hey!" Ricky said, "Don't make it any harder for us, Jack," and I said, "Fuck you, Ricky," and I spit in his face just as they threw me to the floor. I was hoping the virus would get in his mouth. I was hoping I would delay him, that we would have a fight. Anything for a delay. But they threw me to the floor, and then they all fell on me and began to strangle me. I could feel their hands on my neck. Bobby had his hands over my mouth and nose. I tried to bite him. He just kept his hands firmly in place and stared at me. Ricky smiled distantly at me. It was as if he didn't know me, had no feeling for me. They were all strangers, killing me efficiently and quickly. I pounded on them with my fists, until Ricky got his knee on one of my arms, pinning it down, and Bobby got the other arm. Now I couldn't move at all. I tried to kick my legs, but Julia was sitting on my legs. Helping them out. I saw the world start to turn misty before my eyes. A faint and misty gray.

Then there was a faint popping sound, almost like popcorn, or glass cracking, and then Julia screamed, "What is that?"

The three men released me, and got to their feet. They walked away from me. I lay on the ground, coughing. I didn't even try to get up.

"What is that?" Julia yelled.

The first of the octopus tubes burst open, high above us. Brown liquid steam hissed out. Another tube popped open, and another. The sound of hissing filled the room. The air was turning dark foggy brown, billowing brown.

Julia screamed "What is that?"

"It's the assembly line," Ricky said. "It's overheated. And it's blowing."

"How? How can that happen?"

I sat up, still coughing, and got to my feet. I said, "No safety systems, remember? You turned them off. Now it's blowing virus all through this room."

"Not for long," Julia said. "We'll have the safeties back in two seconds." Ricky was already standing at the control board, frantically hitting keys.

"Good thinking, Julia," I said. I lit my cigarette lighter, and held it under the sprinkler head.

Julia screamed, "Stop! Ricky, stop!"

Ricky stopped.

I said, "Damned if you do, damned if you don't."

Julia turned in fury and hissed, "I hate you."

Already her body was turning shades of gray, fading to a kind of monochrome. So was Ricky, the color washing out of him. It was the virus in the air, already affecting their swarms. There was a brief crackle of sparks, from high in the octopus arms. Then another short lightning arc. Ricky saw it and yelled, "Forget it, Julia! We take our chances!" He hit the keys and turned the safety system back on. Alarms started to sound. The screens flashed red with the excess concentrations of methane and other gases. The main screen showed: safety systems on. And the sprinklers burst into cones of brown spray.

* * *

They screamed as the water touched them. They were writhing and beginning to shrink, to shrivel right before my eyes. Julia's face was contorted. She stared at me with pure hatred. But already she was starting to dissolve. She fell to her knees, and then onto her back. The others were all rolling on the floor, screaming in pain.

"Come on, Jack." Someone was tugging at my sleeve. It was Mae. "Come on," she said. "This room is full of methane. You have to go."

I hesitated, still looking at Julia. Then we turned and ran.

DAY 7

9:11 A.M.

The helicopter pilot pushed the doors open as we ran across the pad. We jumped in. Mae said, "Go!"

He said, "I'll have to insist you get your harnesses on before-"

"Fly this fucking thing!" I yelled.

"Sorry, it's a regulation, and it's not safe-"

Black smoke started to pour out of the power station door we had just come out of. It billowed into the blue desert sky.

The pilot saw it and said, "Hang on!"

We lifted off and headed north, swinging wide of the building. Now there was smoke coming from all the exhaust vents near the roof. A black haze was rising into the air. Mae said, "Fire burns the nanoparticles and the bacteria, too. Don't worry."

The pilot said, "Where are we going?"

"Home."

He headed west, and within minutes we had left the building behind. It disappeared below the horizon. Mae was sitting back in her seat, eyes closed. I said to her, "I thought it was going to blow up. But they turned the safety system back on again. So I guess it won't." She said nothing.

I said, "So what was the big rush to get out of there? And where were you, anyway? Nobody could find you."