I, Cassandra

37 | RYAN MADDOX

I wake in a hospital gurney. This time no bright lights sear my vision. Instead, soft illumination slides up the plain white walls from a thin luminescent strip embedded along the edge of the grey slate floor. Apart from the gurney, no other furnishings grace the space. The door facing me is closed. To the right of the frame, a panel with several blue lights blink in sequence. I lift my hand, cautious, expecting restraints. Nothing.

Disbelief, then relief slams through me. It is my hand. My own hand. I lift my other hand and clench both into fists, the movement familiar, invigorating. For a beat, euphoria rules me, then like the wash of a polluted tide, nausea swarms over me and steals my joy. I spot a stainless steel container beside the gurney. A vile, blue-black liquid splatters the pristine container, slides down against its sides in ugly rivulets. Sickened by the sight of it, I heave and empty myself, gagging against its bitter, metallic taste.

The door slides open. de Pommier's avatar walks in. I ease myself back onto the gurney, trembling, my guts strafed by agony. The acrid stink of my vomit fills the room, soaks my mouth. I want water. There is nothing.

'The worst is over,' de Pommier says. She stands just inside the door, her eyes move over me, critical, searching for flaws. A look of satisfaction touches the curve of her lips. 'Welcome back, Capitaine Ryan Maddox. For the next three months, you will remain with Vallis and be to her what you were before . . . and you will give her hope—the hope you and she will be together, forever, on Mars.' She cocks her head at me. I stifle a fresh wave of nausea. 'Of course, you won't. But when she realises that, it will be too late and she and the other evacuees will be on their way to Mars while the rest of us burn.'

She turns to leave, but I sense it's staged. She stops, her back to me. 'If you fail,' she continues, 'your memories of her, and your feelings will be disconnected.' I sense her cold smile, her relentless ambition all the way through the escalating burn of the poison within me. 'Your love for her, it is nothing more than an embedding of the memories of your amygdala into your neural net. It is easily taken from you. She won't know the difference, but for you, it will be death. She will fuck a machine programmed to act like you and think it loves her. Tragic, no? Perhaps I will watch.'

She leaves me alone. The door slides closed behind her. The lock engages. A threat. A promise. The lights on the panel flicker and pulse once more, a quiet beat. It reminds me what I am to them, a thing to serve their purpose, a thing they can control and cage. I puke onto the floor and don't give a shit about the mess.

de Pommier lied. The worst wasn't over. The puking and pain lasted for hours. In the end, there was only pain. Eventually, I slept, or at least it felt like sleep, because I dreamed, which was new. I hadn't dreamed once since they brought me back. It's vivid, a hyper-real dream, my senses soaking in every detail with acute clarity. It begins with me standing in the centre of a vast curving corridor lined with brushed metal pods the size of single beds. Every hundred steps or so, the logo for Genesis II glows in a smooth cubic font lit in soft white, the only source of illumination in the otherwise shadowed space. The curved walls, floor, and ceiling are a smooth, brushed metal fitted together with absolute precision, the joins thinner than a millimetre. The air tastes a little too oxygenated, as though the balance isn't right, but it works, at least for me. There is no one else there. Lifelessness soaks the place. I sense I am walking through a museum or a three-dimensional model of an architect's plan. An opening in the corridor rears up ahead, also dim, lit only by the somnolent light of the logo for the project de Pommier loathes. I pass through the opening, its heavy blast doors retracted into the walls, their girth thicker than my height. Ahead, a long, straight corridor. I follow its gloom for several hundred steps, pass three more logos.

At the corridor's end, huge metal doors to an elevator large enough to transport a digger. There is a keypad to the right of the elevator. I key in a sequence of numbers and letters. The doors open with a quiet hush. In its metallic, pale-lit interior I punch another sequence into the elevator's panel. I don't bother to ask myself how I know the codes, I just go with it.

It takes a long time to reach the surface. I decide to have a look at myself. All of myself. I am entire, exactly the same as I was in the moments before a firestorm engulfed my senses. I bite back a smile thinking of how pleased Blue will be. It doesn't last. Even this, the solace of our love has been stolen from us. I close my eyes and concentrate on the lift's thrust carrying me to the surface, force myself to think of nothing.

The doors open and I step out. I expect to find activity, but silence oppresses me. I keep moving, hot with trepidation. I wonder if I am seeing what is to come. The city is abandoned. I make a note of the location of the elevator, concealed in a lower level of the slaughterhouse, accessed via another elevator with another code I know without knowing how or why. I walk backwards, eyeing the nondescript building, impressed. The location of one of the most expensive projects in the world is almost invisible.

I find my way back to the building where Blue and I are being kept, even though I couldn't possibly know the way. It's far, but not too far. As I reach the building, its doors shimmer and dissipate into lines of code. I turn, the city slides away from me, transforming into strings of numbers and symbols. Darkness slams down from above, a ravenous thing, devouring the code, coming straight at me. I can't help myself. I duck. Oblivion.

I open my eyes. The pain is gone and so is the puke. The door is open. Fresh air circulates through the room. There's movement at the edge of the door. An Elite steps into the room and tilts his head at the exit. I get up. A frisson runs up my spine as my body moves once more strong and familiar. I am me again. The Elite turns and leaves, the contacts in his eyes shimmering with data only he can see. I follow him, my heart tight—or at least what feels like my heart—as I imagine Blue seeing me again, resurrected from the dead. I feel a stirring in my groin and bite back a smile. I'm whole again. And hers. And I have a plan.