Paradox (22 page)

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The world is a snow globe and she is trapped inside, trapped here next to the only thing that matters, maybe the only thing that ever mattered, and still
—still
—not able to remember him. What kind of person scrubs her whole past out of her mind? What could possibly justify it?

Is the past a worthwhile exchange for the future?

And meanwhile, Todd is trapped in his past and he’s dying. He’s
dying
! If she can do anything to save him, she can’t do it from here.

Ana rests Todd’s arms gently by his sides, then turns and walks back to her own little room.

It’s not just Todd who’s dying—she is, too. There’s one last hope, one chance. It’s that paradox all over again. They went into the simulation to find a cure to the disease, and ended up finding a quicker way to die. Well, now she intends to do everything she can to bring about a death. Maybe through it, someone somewhere will have a shot at life.

She’s going back to Paradox.

Ana comes awake underwater. There is pressure on her chest and a roaring in her ears. She opens her eyes and everything is a deep, murky green.

Apparently she did a lousy job modifying the simulator’s coordinates; she didn’t want to start off back at the rocket, but she didn’t want to drown, either!

Thick and viscous, the dark green water clings to her like a heavy blanket. She’s back in her jumpsuit and vest—no backpack, thank goodness—and her boots are two anchors dragging her down. Pulling her knees to her chest, she rips at the laces. Her lungs are screaming. She kicks off both of her boots, her socks sliding easily in their wake, and pulls toward the light.

She breaks the surface and gulps in a deep breath of clean air. Now supported by the same dense water that was dragging her down a moment ago, Ana churns her feet gently and
paddles her hands, moving in a full circle. She’s quite far out to sea—the shore is maybe a half mile away, pale and sandy. Down the coast she can just make out the broken-down stone walls of the old APEX base.

Overhead, the sky is afire. Torus is a blazing bowling ball toppling into the far horizon, so bright and so close to the edge of the world, with the rim of the sun stretching out tendrils toward the land as if it can’t wait to go play in the shadows. High overhead, Anum holds its place, but it looks pale and washed out by comparison with its fiery twin. This view of the world looks beautiful, but ominous, too; heavy with the promise of shadows to come.

Ana set the simulation’s auto-eject for two hours, so she has that long—assuming she doesn’t succumb to the infection before then—to find the worm and destroy it. How things go forward from there, she has no way of knowing for sure. But if there’s even a chance of success, she has to try. For Todd, for herself—the Ana she once was, the one she killed inside her own mind—and for any other survivors who might be just holding on, or who might be isolated somewhere and still uninfected.

There is no one else. It’s up to her.

She’s almost turned a full circle when she sees a whirlpool forming ahead of her. It churns faster and faster until the worm erupts into the air with a roar, bald head glistening, sleek and almost graceful on water like it never was on land.

There’s no need to find the worm; the worm has found her.

Out here on the open sea, there is no grinding noise, but the worm is far from silent. Ana’s blood chills at the screech of metal and the eerie tinkle of smashing glass that echoes inside her head. She had suspected that these sounds were linked to the fear memories—just like Todd’s ordeal in the forest, Chen’s fire, and Ysa’s attack under the bleachers—and everything she’s read about
Vermiletum
has confirmed that to be true. These noises must be the link to whatever nightmare memory the disease is trying to drag back into her own mind as it hammers at her body with the infection. It’s the sound track to her own worst memory. A memory she doesn’t even have—yet still, she can feel the infection pushing at the edge of her mind, trying to find a way in: first memory, then fear, then paralysis and mania.

She pushes back. It’s all she can do.

The worm dives underwater and disappears. For one heartbeat, the world is frozen. Then the worm is back, rising out of the depths just in front of Ana with a bellowing roar and a cascade of churning, foaming white water.

In desperation, Ana takes a breath and slides below the surface.

She dives deep and finds herself below the worm’s vast body. It looks like a brown wall rippling through curtains of stringy seaweed. It’s so big! How did she think she was going to kill this thing? The pistol has to be useless after this kind of a soaking. So it’s down to her two knives—next to nothing against a beast this size.

But that doesn’t change a thing. She’s here and she’s alive. As long as there’s breath in her body, her real body, back in the Savitech lab on the decimated Earth, she’s going to fight this monster.

Watching the worm pass, Ana begins to formulate a plan. Todd tried attacking it head-on; it didn’t work. Climbing over the worm’s face is way too risky. But attacking from behind …

She pulls toward the worm’s leathery flank, but before she can grab ahold of it, the tail whips by as the worm breaches again. There’s a muffled splash as it reenters the water behind her and disappears.

She’s missed her chance.

Ana kicks out and propels herself upward. She breaks the surface—
for one horrible second like crashing through a pane of glass, hands first, searing pain
—and then she’s treading water again, surrounded by a dark sea and a purpling sky.

Was that her own memory trying to break through? She can only hope her memory wipe will protect her long enough to accomplish what she needs to do.

But the worm … where did it go?

With a gurgling splash it’s back, the worm’s head and body erupting from the water behind her in a fountain of cascading water and algae. Ana pulls her body through the waves, fighting her logical mind and swimming toward the beast’s flank instead of away from it. She closes the distance and throws out her hands. The worm’s hide looks leathery but it’s rough, as hard as iron, and pockmarked with little holes and craters.

Gritting her teeth, Ana wedges one hand into a crevice, and hangs on. In an instant, she’s airborne and scrabbling with her free hand and with her feet, trying to find other holds. She finds them just in time, clinging tightly to the worm’s side as it reaches the top of its jump, then turns and crashes back into the water. She takes a deep breath and holds on as the worm dives down—down—down. The water turns from green to mud to coal black. Ana squeezes her eyes shut and concentrates on keeping her fingers and toes wedged into the worm’s hide.

Then the worm is climbing again. They break the surface, and Ana begins moving. Slowly and laboriously, she starts to scale the flank of the giant worm as it swims along the surface of the sea. It takes just a few minutes to get to the top of the creature’s back, minutes that feel like hours, but finally she’s there. She positions herself in the center of the worm’s back.

The worm makes a sharp turn and she is thrown backward and she’s slipping, skidding down the worm’s back, scrabbling for handholds as the bony ridge along the worm’s back tears down the front of her body. Her bare feet scrape along the worm’s scaly outer shell.

The ridge is clawing up her middle, but it’s also her salvation. She throws her weight into her hands and forces them to close around the protrusion. Her fingers wedge into place and she skids to a stop.

Now the worm settles into a smooth forward pace. Instead of diving, it begins to dip shallowly through the water and then flatten out, swimming along the surface, undulating
easily like a snake. Ana lifts her head and squints into the fine spray circling the worm’s body. The worm seems to be swimming for shore. There’s a beach ahead, though she can no longer see any sign of the APEX compound. In fact, she can see lots of trees, green trees, and wonders whether this is even the same shore.

Time is running out—she has to get to the worm’s head.

The worm’s body is divided into segments, each one almost twice the length of her own body. The plates slip and slide and overlap each other as the worm shimmies its way across the sea.

Now, the time is now
, she thinks as she slides her right foot forward. Immediately, she feels a searing pain. She screams and looks back.

Her foot has slid onto the overlap between two sections. The area is sticky and gooey, even with the seawater cascading down the worm’s back. Fluid oozes out from between the overlapping plates in the worm’s armor, and it’s coated her foot.

She yanks her foot out of the crack but it’s too late. The pain is like white-hot blades of fire. She can barely stand to move it.

At the same time, she feels again the push of broken glass trying to force its way into her mind. For a second it’s almost as if the worm itself is inside her head, looking into her soul.

Of course, the worm
is
in her head.
She
is in her head.

Nothing about this showdown is physically real. And yet it’s the only way to save her life—and maybe, also, the world.

The worm’s body jerks and Ana slides forward, her good foot scrabbling against the worm’s armor.

Ana glances at her circlet; her two hours are nearly half gone. She looks up. The sky is a hard cranberry and edging fast toward plum. Torus is nothing but a glowing half circle on the far horizon. The land is near and getting nearer, and the worm’s travel is steady enough that Ana thinks she might be able to stand and walk along its back. If her damaged foot will let her.

I can do this
, she thinks, willing the words to be true.

Ana slides her hands to her chest, then scoots her left foot forward so that she’s crouching. Her right foot is tougher to position. It’s covered in red welts and ridges, and the fluid from the worm’s joint glows a pale luminescent green. She wobbles as the worm angles to the left, but manages to keep her balance. The pain in her foot hasn’t let up, though at least it hasn’t moved any farther up her leg. But her foot is as numb as a sock filled with sand, and when she tries to put weight on it, she pitches forward.

She catches herself on her hands and gasps when she sees how close she’s landed to the next seam. The thick goo glows eerily in the gathering dusk, seeping and trickling from the crack.

It’s easier to get moving the second time. She slides her injured foot along without really lifting it—scoot, step, slide—keeping her stance wide and her hands thrust out to the side.

She crosses three segments this way. Overhead the sky is
a giant purple bruise over the land. Anum glows pale and ineffective in the darkening sky; Torus is nearly fully set. She’s almost there. She thinks again of Todd’s wide, staring eyes, his last heartbreaking smile. She can’t lose him. She
can’t
.

Ana’s whole foot is throbbing, like dozens of tiny teeth chewing the end of her nerves, but she’s only three seams away from the head. She has to do this. She’s so close.

The worm is stretched out flat on the water now, and Ana can feel the wind whistling past her ears. She looks up ahead—and then the worm hits the beach, hits it like a batter sliding into third, arcing out of the water and grinding up the shore in a cresting wave of sand.

The force of the landing sends Ana flying off her position on the worm. She hurtles through the air and hits the sand, landing hard on her back. For a second the air is knocked out of her lungs and she feels something in her chest go
crunch
. A rib?

Tears fill her eyes as she scrambles to her feet, reaches down, and draws her long blade out of its sheath on her hip. The worm is just across the sand, its head high in the air and scanning the landscape … but looking in the opposite direction. It’s looking away from her, toward a gaping hole in the ground. A burrow? Is this its nest? Its original resting place, back on the Paradox of so long ago?

Limping, Ana starts toward the creature. The plan hasn’t changed—get on its back, climb to the head, and stick her dagger as deep as she can between its eyes.

She doesn’t take three steps before her foot twists under her and she falls flat on her face in a cloud of sand. She lets out a low moan. How can she climb onto the worm’s back with her foot like this?

The worm’s still facing away from her, but its tail now twists in her direction.

She gets shakily to her feet, casting a desperate look around her. In the rapidly dimming light, she sees lumpy forms along the shore. Long, spindly shapes, all stick-bones and torsos …

Skeletons, bleached human bones, and grinning skulls, a half dozen or more, lying strewn all around her.

What is this place?

While she’s looking at the bones, the worm’s long body loops slowly, so slowly around, until she is fully trapped. Only then,
only then
does the worm’s head start to turn in her direction.

And now the familiar grinding noise starts up again, with its new accents of crunching metal and shattering glass. It’s loud, bone-jarringly loud as it courses through her body and the beach and the sand and everything is shaking like an earthquake and the worm rears and with it the pressure on her mind,
in
her mind, increases like the worm is physically trying to get in, as if it’s trying to force back in the memory that will anchor her to the disease.