The Aftermath Read online

  I slide into Olivia’s head just in time to see enormous red letters flashing across the central screen: Mission Failed.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Over the next day and a half, Olivia’s game play is erratic. Five minutes here, an hour there—she makes it impossible for me to predict her movements and leave The Save. So I stay put. Watch through hazy eyes as the rest of the clan comes and goes. They play this horrible game like they’re the ones fighting to survive. They treat the sorrow and death like it’s nothing, even though they live in a world where I’m certain such violence doesn’t exist.

  Someday, and I hope that day is soon, I want to come face-to-face with a gamer, not his character, and ask him why. Why do you play this game? Why do you think death is a sport, a source of entertainment? And, most important, why do you make someone else challenge death for you—don’t you know that we’re real people?

  Olivia’s gone for the time being. She left me slumped low in the chair by The Save door, with my arms dangling over the sides. My back aches because the position is so awkward, and my arms feel as if they weigh a hundred pounds each. But I’m too scared to move. What happened with Reese in the parking garage may have blown my cover, so I have to be cautious.

  I must be a broken rag doll.

  An image of the flesh-eater’s freckled face just before Olivia made me stab him flashes through my head. My nostrils flare. If I were stronger and knew how to block Olivia out of my head entirely, maybe Reese would still be alive.

  I hear voices on the other side of the door, and I smooth my expression into a vacant mask.

  Jeremy and April enter The Save. His hands are covered in blood, as is her chest. As far as I can tell, neither of them is injured, but there’s so much red, and they smell like cold, wet pennies mixed with rusted iron and decay. Like death. I wonder what was so precious to their gamers, important enough to make them kill today.

  I expect it won’t be much.

  “She hasn’t been around.” Jeremy nods at me as they begin unpacking their things. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him pull a second bag off his back. It’s new and enormous, with dozens of compartments and padding. No doubt it’s filled with the spoils from today’s bloodbath.

  “She ruined that side quest for us. If I were Olivia, I wouldn’t show my face, either. Still, botched mission or not, Virtue glitched, and I wish I’d been there to see it. If she were my character, I’d have her game footage pulled immediately.”

  But I’m not yours, I want to say. I’m Olivia’s. I’m her living, breathing game pawn. Instead, I continue to stare. Jeremy bends over me, placing one of his hands on my lap to support his weight. He’s heavy, weighing at least a hundred pounds more than me. I smell his sweat intermingling with the stench of blood. Feel pain shooting through my legs from the pressure. And then, just when I’m sure it won’t get any worse, he touches my face. Moves a loose tendril of hair away from my cheek.

  Please get off me.

  “Maybe the mods will come in after Claudia soon. And besides, Olivia swore killing that flesh-eater was an accident. She just forgot the side quest instructions. I mean, it’s an honest mistake.”

  Get off me, and stop touching me!

  April snorts. Strange to hear this from a girl with such a passionless face. “Whatever. She’s your friend, not mine, so believe what you want. And if I have to hear her brag one more time about the stupid game update...”

  I drag my thumbnails over my fingertips, attempting to focus on something other than Jeremy’s weight and odor.

  “Don’t be like that, April,” Jeremy says. To my relief, he backs away from me, a creepy smile on his face. I sink my teeth deeper into my tongue. “She makes the game fun.”

  His reason for wanting Olivia around is nauseating. Fun. This is not fun—not for me anyway. I want to shake some sense into him. Scream at him that his idea of fun is my torture. Instead, I watch listlessly as he walks to the bed and lies on his side.

  “If you call being held back fun,” April says. “You don’t think it’s because of her being—”

  “No,” Jeremy says abruptly, cutting off whatever April was about to say, to my disappointment. He closes his eyes a second before my eye twitches. “Hopefully Claudia will be back soon. And maybe she’ll surprise you and accept The Badlands.” His entire body freezes, including his upturned lips. I shift my eyes to a splotch of blood on his T-shirt so I don’t have to look at his face.

  Something sharp digs into the flesh on my arm, and I grit my teeth to hold in the gasp of pain. April bends over in front of my face. She’s smiling, just as Jeremy was, but I’ve a feeling that if her eyes held any real emotion, I’d find nothing but hatred there.

  “If I could kill you myself, Virtue—Olivia—I would.”

  I realize there’s someone else making her say this and that the anger is directed toward Olivia, but it doesn’t stop the heat spreading through me like wildfire. First Jeremy touching my face, and now I’m being scratched and pinched. All I want to do is take out every bit of frustration I have with my fists.

  My fingers spasm.

  “But someone will do it for me eventually,” April continues. Why eventually, I’m dying to say. What’s stopping her from sabotaging me right now? What’s stopping any of my clan from trying to kill me? April lies on the mat on the floor, turns toward the wall and then she’s silent.

  The girl she leaves behind doesn’t know hate.

  She doesn’t even know me.

  * * *

  Since my movements are limited, I spend my time flicking in and out of Olivia’s thoughts. She’s furious. Probably because she thinks there’s a glitch in the game, a glitch in me. Nearly every moment I witness through her eyes is spent fuming, and it’s impossible for me to make sense of anything she says in her anger.

  But I have questions, too. How was I able to block Olivia’s commands? And when will she let me go long enough for me to see Declan? Now that she’s suspicious, there’s a nervous feeling in the pit of my belly, and I have a feeling it won’t go away until I’m far away from the game.

  I fall into her head again.

  “The Mind Experience is a pathetic waste of time,” she’s saying. We’re in a dark room that’s so abstract it makes me feel drunk even from inside someone else’s head. Dark tinted windows, spreading from wall to wall, slant in diagonal angles toward the ceiling. It reminds me of a black diamond.

  Olivia sits at a six-sided table that’s glossy, spotless. Every now and then, she covers her face with her hands, blocking my view of the room. I don’t think she’s had a good night’s sleep in days. And I feel that, if I could see her now, she would look completely wrecked.

  “This was a mistake,” she murmurs against her palms. “It’s not going to work. Why else would it take this long?”

  “Olivia?”

  At the sound of a man calling her name, she places her hands flat on the table. Lifting slightly out of her seat, she glares at the two people across from her. Sitting on the right is a man in a dark suit. He’s brown-haired and middle-aged, with a thin mustache and a crescent-shaped scar beneath his left eye. His arms are crossed tightly over his chest and his lips pressed thin. He’s just as frustrated as Olivia. I can tell by the way his brown eyes twitch every few seconds.

  Next to him is a woman wearing a white lab coat with a LanCorp badge on the pocket. She taps away at her tablet’s projection, nervously peeking up at Olivia.

  I know her. This is the same person who fixed me after my run-in with Declan at the courthouse.

  Dr. Coleman.

  Olivia’s having a meeting with the physician who might have something to do with why I’m not working properly. Have I been discovered? Does she know where I’ve been the past several days? If I were in my own head, my own body, I’m confident my heart would have alre
ady imploded.

  Olivia bangs her fists on the table. “You saw the mods’ reports about what happened. The new version doesn’t work!”

  Hunching forward, the man says through clenched teeth, “Not possible. The platform is virtually flawless.”

  “Flawless? Have you tested your own technology yet or are you going on the word of a bunch of idiots?” Olivia curls her index finger and tilts her head to one side, studying it. “Does this look flawless to you? Because my character’s trigger finger froze just like this in the middle of a raid.”

  “Perhaps Claudia is broken,” the man says. “She did nearly die recently. And don’t say you weren’t warned.”

  Olivia interlocks her fingers and presses them to her lips as if she’s praying. I can hear the number of breaths she takes in gradually increase; I can see how violently her hands are shaking. If there were a knife nearby, I bet she’d hurl it across the table and into the man’s chest, just like we did to Reese. Finally, Olivia drags her fingertips across a glass partition in front of her. A virtual image of my brain hovers over the middle of the table, rotating so everyone can see it. I hadn’t noticed the implant the last time I saw a projection of my own head, but now that I know what to look for, it’s obvious. A small square with rounded corners positioned in the top center of my head.

  “You see that? Claudia isn’t broken—she’s perfectly normal. The mods took it upon themselves to check her stats and vitals for the last thirty days when they saw what happened the other day.” When she gestures to the walls, I’m aware that there are images of me in the game playing on them, just like a video. Me freeing Survivors. Killing flesh-eaters. Arguing with April about her knives. None of Olivia breaking the rules and losing points. If I could hold my breath, I would. I’m terrified Declan’s face will show up on the dark glass and then my facade will be over. They’re all silent for another few seconds and then the clips fade. No Declan. And no images of me sentient.

  “Version 1.2.0 is what’s lacking. It’s a waste of money—a horrible, expensive excuse for an update. That’s why you let me test it, right? To tell you whether or not it worked,” Olivia says.

  Dr. Coleman lifts her hand, as if she’s a student. Olivia turns our gaze toward her and she shrinks back into her seat until only her face is visible. “Well, guess what? The update is a bust. But Claudia Virtue—Claudia Virtue is just as functional as she was when we were first linked. Isn’t she, Coleman?”

  Dr. Coleman looks like a deer caught in the headlights. Obediently, she bobs her head up and down. Her lips stretch into such a taut smile, I’m afraid they’ll start to bleed. Poor woman. She’s just as intimidated by Olivia as everyone else.

  I’m not sure I’ll ever understand how Olivia has so much control over people. How it came to be that I’m the person she has the most power over.

  The Aftermath is her obsession, and that scares me. Right now she doesn’t believe it’s possible for me to be sentient, but what if she digs deep enough to discover that I’m self-aware? What if she realizes that what she thinks is a glitch in the game was in reality me temporarily preventing her from playing?

  Cautiously, I pull away from her and the angled room and the spinning projection of my brain to return to The Save. Olivia’s argument is still going strong, giving me a little time to speak to Declan. Except for Jeremy, everybody is accounted for, but I’m not afraid of him catching me. All I have to do is threaten to kick him out of the clan and he’ll do anything I ask.

  Something bitter burns my throat and nose. I can’t stand the thought of manipulating people—of acting like her.

  I’m not electrocuted when I leave the save point. I’ve had plenty of time to think the past several hours, and I’m certain my getting shocked last time happened because Olivia changed the save setting to prevent the other characters from playing without her.

  Thousands of other gamers and the one operating me had to be a sociopath with a power complex.

  I race down to the basement. I’m careful not to touch the door Declan rigged for fear of getting hurt. Banging the toe of my shoe against the wall, I whisper his name repeatedly until I hear the four beeps. The door creaks open and Declan stands in front of me. He leans against the doorway, grinning. Shirtless. Disheveled dark hair falling into his eyes.

  “You look like hell, Virtue.”

  I barely give him enough time to move out of my way before I brush past him. The last time I was in here, I had almost freaked out. But today I’m determined to hold myself together, to ignore the fact that being in such a tiny space frightens me. Tightening my hands into fists, I focus on the first thing my gaze connects with: the mess.

  CDS packets are strewn across the cellar floor, along with crunched water bottles. I sweep a section of garbage out of the way with my foot, then sit with my back to the wall. Crossing my feet at the ankles, I raise an eyebrow at Declan. I keep my eyes focused on his face because I don’t want them to wander to his bare upper body. “Redecorating?”

  He smirks. “Might as well make it my own.” He comes to the middle of the room, where his rucksack is turned on its side, the contents spilling out onto the floor, and begins repacking his gadgets and food.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You don’t think I’m going to leave this here while we search, do you?”

  Of course that would be the first thing he brought up. Even though I haven’t seen him since the day we arrived and my absence could have meant anything—capture or injury or even death. Nice of him to care. “We’re not going out today,” I say, shaking my head. “For all I know, we might not be going anywhere for a while.”

  He freezes, one hand on the strap of his bag and the other gripping the remote that operates the two small dome-shaped devices at the door. His smirk disappears, and his nose scrunches up. “Then why are you here?”

  “I came to... Look, there might be a bit of a delay. My gamer has been playing The Aftermath more frequently.”

  “Why?”

  Do I tell him about the past several hours and how Olivia has used me sporadically? Or about the short-lived moment where I defied my gamer’s commands to hold my own? I trust this boy about as much as I do Olivia, but he knows the game. The Aftermath is his job, and even if I don’t have much faith in him, he may be able to help me figure out what happened in the parking garage.

  “I have a glitch,” I say.

  He stares at me as if I’m the biggest fool in the universe. “You function without your gamer—no crap you have a glitch.”

  The way he says it makes me sound like a robot. I throw an empty CDS wrapper at him. It lands a few inches between us after drifting quietly to the floor. He leans over and blows it back at me.

  “No, that’s not what I mean. When she was playing me—the day we came back—I was able to control myself for a minute. She wanted me to shoot some flesh-eater, and—”

  “You blocked her?”

  He’s no longer interested in his bag. Instead, he drags it across the floor, drops it in front of me and then plops down on top of it. Everything inside it clacks together. I hope he hasn’t broken anything we’ll need.

  “I just— Yeah, I guess I did.”

  He nods his head slowly, as if he’s trying to digest what I’ve just told him. Cold fear slices through me, and suddenly I regret having told him what happened. How stupid can I be?

  Bending his head close to mine, he pulls my hand into his and runs the pad of his thumb over my knuckles. I take in the sight of him—his narrowed gray eyes, clenched jaw, at the way he bites the center of his top lip. At his chest. I wish he’d put on a shirt already. I swallow hard, trying to force down the mass of uncertainty in the back of my throat.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” I ask in a small voice.

  “Because you’re an anomaly, Virtue. I don’t understand why
your chip malfunctioned like this. And I don’t understand how LanCorp’s scientists missed the malfunction. How—”

  Scientists. That single word sends fear spiraling through me, ruining the moment between Declan and me. Whatever that moment was. I jump to my feet and head for the door, but he’s on his feet, right behind me. He grabs my wrist, and my breath catches in my throat.

  “Don’t touch me,” I whisper, though I’m not sure if I’m asking him to let me go out of fear or because his touch isn’t so bad. Isn’t nearly as dangerous as I’d convinced myself it was.

  No, Declan’s touch is something I didn’t expect.

  “Hey, wait. I didn’t mean that as a bad thing, not really. I—” Cornering me against the wall, he stares down at me. “I’ve just never seen a character like you. Nobody...nobody with LanCorp has.”

  The tips of his fingers move over the scars on my wrists—painful little things that ache when it’s cold outside. His hands trail up my forearms and finally stop on my shoulders. He bends his neck until our faces are centimeters apart and a lock of his black hair brushes the bridge of my nose.

  I hear my breathing slow until it comes to a temporary stop. Feel my heart speed up—it’s so rapid I’m afraid it will explode. His upper body presses against mine, and a scent that reminds me of clean garments drifts from his sunburned skin, filling my senses.

  “You can’t expect me to accept all of this at once,” he says.

  How does he think all of this makes me feel?

  “Don’t screw me over,” I whisper once I catch my breath and the room stops turning. “Please.”

  But I expect him to. I only hope it’s after he’s helped me out of the game and not before. At least then I might stand a chance, if I run fast. “I’m not going to turn you in, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Then don’t mention LanCorp. Or scientists. Or anything else that’ll lead me to believe you’re ready to turn me over as soon as we reach the border,” I say. “And take your hands off of me.”