The Plague Forge [ARC] (56 page)

I must be dying. Or dead.

The thought brought immeasurable comfort. The first chip of stone off a prison wall.
He thinks, therefore he is
. Isn’t that what the philosopher said?

Good, I exist. That’s a start.

The erratic replay of his life ended, and real memory flooded in to fill the space left behind. Memory of pain, of a glancing gunshot wound to his neck and a deeply cut chin, among a thousand other smaller aches, crashed into his brain like snow through a brittle roof and … and, vanished. Just memory, he realized. He reached up and touched his chin. No pain. Just stubble and irregular patches of caked blood.

“You are suitable,” a voice said. It came from everywhere and nowhere, as if he’d said it himself. Only the voice had a feminine quality, and something else. Something artificial. Haunting and synthetic.

“Ana,” he said, voice hoarse. “Ana?”

“She rests,” the voice said, clear and yet ephemeral. A girl’s voice, young woman at best. Strangely accented. No one Skyler knew.

He looked around. A pointless effort and yet he found comfort in the fact that his head did not ache. White stretched off in every direction as if he were inside a vast …

Bubble.

Skyler stretched his hand out, felt a pressure, a bulging.
This is familiar. This I know.
He pressed harder and the void seemed suddenly very much finite. A cocoon or egg, centimeters from his body.

“What did you mean? Suitable for what?”

“You are suitable.”

“Can I leave?” he asked, unsure whom he spoke to.

“If you’re ready.”

He swallowed, not expecting that. And, worse, realizing with a sudden crystalline clarity that the voice was the other entity in his head. The one who’d been watching his life. “What will I find out there? Bullets already in flight? More death?”

“A decision.”

“Is that all?”

“All that matters.”

He grunted. “Will you be out there?”

“Yes.”

“So you don’t matter?”

“I’m the decision,” she said simply.

A chill ran the length of Skyler’s body, bringing gooseflesh to his arms and legs. He shivered, and realized suddenly that he was alone in his own head again.

“Are you still there?”

“Yes.” Yet detached now. Separate.

Skyler pushed his other hand against the milky white void. “What do I call you?”

A slight hesitation. “Eve.”

He waited, digesting the name. He didn’t know anyone named Eve, and yet somehow he’d known she would say that. As if no other name would match.

The void began to stretch around his hands, pushing outward.

A nervous energy began to build in him. “Aren’t you going to ask what to call me?”

“I know what to call you.”

Chapter Thirty-Six

The Key Ship

2.APR.2285

Fear and desire propelled Skyler forward through the malleable void. Desire to find Ana, or Tania, or anyone. A familiar face, a real face. Then a way out.

Eve
. Of course it would be that. The name hung in his mind like a black hole, daring him to move toward its inescapable grasp.

His whole body began to shake. Then the bubble of white that was his world shattered and collapsed around him. He fell forward on his hands to a cold floor, hard as stone.

He found himself alone in a dark circular room. The bubble had been perched on a raised dais in the center, and there was an exit directly in front of him. He paused only long enough to bring his breathing under control. Quietly he stepped through into a hallway and glanced left. The passage extended forty meters or so, ending at a T intersection. He walked that way, the female voice ringing in his mind like a church bell with every step.
You are suitable …

At the first portal he slowed, held his breath, and leaned in to look.

A dome rested on a dais in the center of the space, two meters high and wide, made of pearlescent white tinged blue at the edges. He thought of breaking it, or stepping into it, and thought better of the idea. He continued down the hall, instead, and found more identical rooms.

Save for one, near the end, with no white dome. The dais was empty, like the one Skyler had left. Ana?

He swallowed, continued to the T intersection at the end. A soft yellowish light lit the walls from one direction.

He expected a long hall with a gentle upward curve.

Instead he saw a moderately large room, hexagonal in shape. The far wall was clear, revealing a stunning view of Earth and space. The space reminded Skyler of the meeting room where he’d encountered Neil Platz.

Ten seats dotted the floor of the room, facing one another in a rough oval. Not red couches like Platz had, but simple platforms with low backs that seemed grown out of the surrounding floor.

Two were occupied.

Prumble sat in one, relaxed. Almost jovial, as if this were just another meeting at Clarke’s. He was talking in a low voice, his fingers drumming on his knees like they did when he was spinning a whopper of a story.

In the other occupied chair, across from Prumble, sat a girl. Twelve or thirteen years old, Skyler guessed. Light brown hair that fell in long wavy locks over her shoulders and down to her waist. She was perched on the edge of her seat, leaning forward and listening intently as Prumble spoke to her in a low, casual voice. Her hands were folded in her lap, her legs crossed. A graceful pose, sincere and very
adult
. She wore a white dress that Skyler thought looked familiar.

Her face was at once exotic and yet bizarrely familiar, like seeing a distant, long-lost relative after decades apart.

Skyler stepped into the room and withered under her gaze when she noticed him. There was no mistaking the resemblance. Part of him was in that face.

Prumble turned and grinned broadly. “There’s our man now!” He stood with an effort and met Skyler near the entrance, hauling him into a hearty embrace. “It’s good to see you, my friend.”

“Uh, likewise,” Skyler managed. “Sorry, I’m a little … out of sorts.”

“Come sit with us! This is—”

“Eve,” Skyler said.

Prumble’s gaze swung between the two of them, then settled on her. “I thought you only had a title?”

The possibility that Skyler’s earlier discussion had been a dream suddenly dawned, then vanished when the girl nodded.

“Eve,” she replied. “I found my name, just a moment ago.”

“Oh,” Prumble said. “Excellent choice. Much better than Emissary, if you want my opinion.”

“Thank you. I agree.”

“Emissary?” Skyler asked, baffled.

The girl nodded again, and smiled.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Skyler said.

Prumble spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “Roll with it, my friend.” He turned toward the girl. “Do that thing you did a minute ago. You know, the—”

Eve vanished. A ghosted afterimage remained, like a frozen projection of light onto some impossibly fragile lattice. This vanished, too, a second later.

Too stunned to move on his own, Skyler allowed Prumble to guide him to a chair. “She’s not real?”

“Amazing, isn’t it? Some kind of hologram, although it has a physical aspect.”

“Please,” Eve’s haunting voice said from all around them, “sit. Another is waking, I must attend.”

The urge to argue, to demand answers immediately, rose and then bled out of Skyler with the realization that time to think would be welcome. He scanned the empty chairs and took the one next to Prumble.

The big man threw an arm over his shoulder as soon as they were seated, fingers gripping tight. It should have been painful, given everything Skyler had been through. Yet it wasn’t. He wasn’t sore. He wasn’t tired, or hungry, or thirsty. In fact he thought he’d never felt better. Less confused, granted.

Prumble leaned in. “Did you see the room?”

“What room?”

“Oh,” Prumble said, clapping a hand to Skyler’s shoulder, “you’re in for quite a treat. They have a whole world in here, Skyler.”

Skyler ran his hands over his face. Too much was happening at once. He heard a soft pop accompanied by a change in the room’s lighting. When he glanced up, the girl—the projection—had returned.

“Look at her, Skyler,” Prumble said quietly.

He did.

“Can’t you see yourself in her face? Can’t you see me? Tania? Sam, even? We’re all there.”

Eve sat unnaturally motionless, oblivious to the scrutiny or simply expecting it. She smiled warmly when Skyler began to really study her face.

Prumble had it right. They were all there, something from each of them. In the turn of her mouth, Ana. The eyes had Tania’s shape yet all the bright luminosity of Sam’s. Vanessa’s hair. Each time she moved he saw something new.

Motion in the hallway caught Skyler’s eye. He turned and saw three familiar faces. Tania, with Tim next to her, his arm around her waist. Vanessa walked behind them, and when she stepped into the light of the room Skyler let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. None of them appeared to be injured.

He locked his gaze on Tania, watched her expression of relief and joy when she saw him, and then the confusion at the stranger.

Eventually they all looked to Skyler for guidance, and he nodded at the chairs across from him and Prumble, the chairs at Eve’s right hand.

“Pablo?” Skyler asked.

Vanessa’s gaze dropped to the floor like stone. The color drained from Tania’s face.

A far-too-familiar tightness pressed in on Skyler’s gut. Another of his crew gone. An immune, a good man.
Will it end now? Do they have their pound of flesh yet?

Vanessa raised her chin. “Later,” she said, “we’ll raise a glass for him.”

Skyler nodded, blinking away the moisture clouding his eyes. He leaned toward Prumble. “What were you and, uh, the Emissary talking about when I came in?”

Prumble smirked. “She had a lot of questions. She … knows, Skyler, things she shouldn’t know. Everything about humanity. And I do mean everything. But it was like she had none of the context to stitch any of it together. She sounded like a computer at first, though that’s almost gone already.”

“How long were you talking to her?”

“Hours,” he said, with noticeable pride. “Heard some crazy things, my friend. Did you know the Elevator wasn’t the first ship they sent?”

The words stung like cold water. “What?” he and Tania said in unison.

“There was some kind of, I don’t know, she called it an exhibit, but I think she’s still figuring out what words mean what. Apparently it explained all this up front, like a map or blueprint or something, but it would seem we destroyed it.”

Skyler considered this. Something Tania had said tugged at his mind. Neil Platz had known.
Interesting
. Skyler filed that. It was water under a bridge, unimportant now.

There were footsteps in the hall. Skyler turned and saw Skadz. He stood and walked to his old friend, pulling him into a soldier’s embrace that felt as familiar as an old coat.

“Good to see you, Sky.”

“Likewise.”

“What’s … uh …” His gaze went past Skyler. “Am I supposed to believe they just happen to fucking look like us?”

“Do not be alarmed,” Eve stated.

Skyler gripped his friend by the shoulder. “She’s not real, Skadz.”

“I’ll say. I suppose speaking English isn’t real, either?”

Eve tilted her head slightly. “I speak two hundred and thirteen of your languages so far, though more are coming online. This one seemed appropriate, though.”

“Do me a favor,” Skyler said to Skadz in a low voice. “Keep quiet, keep alert, all right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay. Kinda at a loss for words anyway.”

“I don’t blame you. Take a seat; we’ll talk later.”

Samantha came next, with a man Skyler didn’t know. She took in the scene with a quick glance and grunted, unimpressed. She acknowledged Skyler with the briefest of nods and tilted her head to the room beyond. “Are you the girl who’s been talking in my head?”

“Yes,” Eve replied.

“Neat trick. I hope you have a good fucking explanation for all this.”

“I hope so, too.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed. “How long were we in those freaky healing whatever-the-fuck egg things, anyway?”

Eve tilted her head, her brow furrowed just like Sam’s did. “Sorry. My understanding of time differs from yours.”

“How fucking long?”

A hesitation, again. Then, “Thirteen point six-seven-five fucking minutes have passed in this, well, this context. I think minutes is a scale that is applicable here?”

Prumble erupted into laughter. “Oh, I like you. Oh yes. We’ll get along fine.”

The Emissary smiled at him, then glanced back at Sam.

“Good enough,” Sam said, all the gusto suddenly drained from her voice.

“Not good enough,” Tania said suddenly. She leveled a gaze on Prumble. “I’m sorry, but there is nothing to joke about here. Our planet is a ruin. Our species on the verge of extinction. Billions have died. Billions. And you sit here and laugh?”

“Forgive me,” Prumble said, “but it was pretty funny.”

Tania’s expression flashed to disgust. “I don’t think you understand—”

“Can we let her talk?” Skyler said. He hadn’t intended the words to plunge the room into silence. They did. He ran a hand over his face. “Let’s hear her out first.”

“Thank you,” Eve said. “There’s just one more … ah, here she comes.”

Skyler turned.

Ana stood at the corner of the intersection, one hand resting lightly on the wall.

“Skyler,” she whispered, tears on her cheeks. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”

“Me neither,” he said. “Come sit,” Skyler said. “She’s about to explain.”

Eve looked at each of them in turn, framed by the view of Earth outside the window behind her.

“For lack of a better term,” she said carefully, “I am an Emissary.”

“For the Builders?” Tim asked.

Eve shook her head. “For this vessel.” Her eyes went up, looked around, implying the ship around them. “And, yes, perhaps for who you imagine the Builders to be, in an indirect way.”