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As they trundled across the snow, Wires’ body bounced and jittered from where it had been strapped into a seat. Her head hung forwards, drool slipping out of her open mouth as she swung along. The PILOTs all avoided looking at her, and at him too. Probably having picked up random scraps and snippets of information about what had happened to them back at Geist. Although it didn’t seem too brilliantly horrific to Cray anymore though, perhaps because the whole thing had happened to him, such things were no-longer just alien possibilities.
They unnerved Cray, but once they’d reached Reeth the other PILOTs all jumped off and he went on alone, Wires’ body rocking back and forth in a ghost-like pattern. He slid as far away from her as he could, and looked at the city that had just left faded into the distance. Reeth was a lot smaller than Geist but as it slipped behind the blanket of snow Cray remembered. Linna and Canis Springwell lived in Reeth, but neither of them had come to see their daughter, or even send word to find out what had happened. Cray didn’t hear from his parents all that often, but when something happened to him they always let him know that they cared, and that he was in their thoughts. He glanced over at Wires; a goblet of warm saliva dripped out of her mouth. Did the Springwells care?
*
“We’re here.” Slowly, Cray prised open an eye and yawned deeply. He scrambled to his feet and then tumbled out of the truck and onto the cold snow below.
“You okay?” Someone grabbed hold of his arm and pulled him up off his knees.
“Zane?” Cray smiled, at last, here was a friendly face.
“Who else? C’mon, let’s get you in-“ He paused and looked over as Wires’ lifeless form. “Is that her?” He whispered. Cray nodded and watched her empty face as she was carried away, wait. He frowned, did she just blink? He was sure he’d seen those eyelids flutter, if for even only a fraction of a second. Evidently Zane didn’t see it else he would have said something. Perhaps he was just imagining things again.
“Didn’t you put a bullet in that arm? What the hell’s she done to it?” Cray looked at him curiously and then realised that Zane knew what he had forgotten, Zane knew how he had died. He was about to ask but they were both ushered back inside, a storm had been brewing for the past few days and was beginning to erupt; no one could want to be caught out in a blizzard like that.
*
“She looks so different.” Zane said quietly. Cray didn’t know how to reply so he just shrugged and looked though the one-way mirror that hid them from the eyes of those in interrogation room two. It was lit a dull orange, and although Wires had been propped up onto a chair she now lay slouched across the desk, pale eyes staring aimlessly.
We’re ready for you now. A broken voice crackled at the back of his mind. It was strange, Cray thought as he followed Zane through the corridors that felt so strangely alien to him now, why had Wires, a ‘terrorist’, been able to project her voice with such clarity into his thoughts, whilst those that had rebuild him were only barely able to tell him something audible? He thought about how Wires’ creamy lifeless eyes had gazed at him, as if somehow staring though the mirrored glass, and shuddered, before following Zane to the room where they were watching the information gathered from her chip.
Her memories were jumbled, unsorted as far as anyone could see. What was even stranger was the lack of a personality, the way the chip seemed to have been used for storing data rather than processing it. Cary found it interesting though, to see random segments of her life that didn’t make any sense, he’d hoped that it would help him work out what had happened to her since she’d left the school. He saw her talking to someone she was calling her brother, so that must have been Tanner, they mentioned a Mary, Isherwood and Acombe too although Cray couldn’t tell who they were from the sea of faces that swam around her mind.
“Pass me that needle would you?” He could see her scar ridden arm, fingers twitching slightly as if Wires had no control over their movement. Cray flinched as she drove a syringe into a cracked blue vein, injecting a pale, blue, watery liquid into her blood. The hand clenched into a fist for a moment, and then relaxed again.
Flick.
He gave a start of surprise when he saw the next image, his own petrified face staring at him, distorted though the corrupted data. He could hear Wires’ snide comments, before her gun came into view and was pressed against his forehead. Cray felt his stomach lurch when she pulled the trigger and turned away, unable to cope with the reflection of his own death that was dancing around on the screen, mocking him.
Flick.
This time all Cray could hear were disjointed voices that he was unable to attribute to anyone, there was no picture, as if the visual information has simply not been recorded.
“Where did you say it was? The Underground?”
“Mmhmm, I think the best was would be to go through the fields, you remember what happened when we tried to get through Seabasin last time.
“Yes, I agree, but do you re-“ The last sound was dragged out before deepening before stopping altogether. The technician that had been siphoning the information from Wires’ chip typed away - but to no avail. All the data had been corrupted, even the parts which they had already viewed were now inaccessible. The high ranking PILOTs were muttering amongst themselves, deciding what to do when a guard burst into the room and exclaimed-
“Sirs, I think you’d better come quickly, she’s woken up!”
*
Wires was sat ramrod on her chair, hands lightly placed on the desk in front of her. Cray watched her through the one-way mirror, did she have some kind of secondary chip? It was the only explanation that he could think of, he’d never heard of anyone who could remain awake, conscious, without a chip present in their mind. A government official pulled up a seat and sat down opposite her, although he was clearly flustered by this situation.
“How did you..?” He gasped, unable to finish his sentence. Wires opened her eyes.
“Unlike you simpletons,” she spat sourly, “I still think with my brain.” This brought an uneasy silence. It had been centuries since people had last though, processed information, using brain-cells, even before the technology to regenerate people had been developed. At least it explained why there was no personality to Wires’ chip, just a series of memories. She slid back on her seat, propping her feet onto the desk, clearly bored. But Cray had had enough.
“Let me in.”
When he entered the room, Wires looked up and gave a quiet noise of contentment. He could see her better now she was sat still in front of him, now that she was in the light. He hadn’t seen the scar that zigzagged up her neck and across her cheek, ending at the corner of her eye. She still had her barcode tattooed behind her ear, easy to see with her hair tied up. Cray could see other tattoos now, a round red circle where her neck met her breastbone, and a series of coloured rings that circled her paler arm. He guessed that she probably had more that he could not see.
The official that had been talking to Wires nodded to Cray, stood up, and left the room, door clicking behind him as it closed. As soon as he had left, Wires slid her feet back and leaned forwards onto the desk, balancing her chin on her hand, she cocked her head to one side and when she grinned and Cray could see those pointed teeth, the whole appearance was a rather demonic one.
“And how may I help you, my little murderer?” She yawned. Why the hell did she keep calling him that? Cray frowned, no doubt if he asked she would never give him an answer.
“What were you doing in the sphere?” He asked coolly, the memory of his death still fresh in his mind. “Did you come because I was there?” Wires snorted at this.
“You think you’re that special? You think I’d do all that just to see you? Don’t be so presumptuous, you’re nothing to me. Just another killer.
“Killer? KILLER?” Cray was on his feet before he realised it, slamming his fist into the desk. Wires flinched, as if surprised by his reaction, but soon regained her calm composure. “Who the hell are you to call anyone and murderer eh? What do you do apart from going round shooting people?”
“You know jack about what we do. If you did you’d know why you’re the killer,” Wires wasn’t grinning anymore. She slid up out of her seat and slowly stepped towards him, feet slapping on the laminated floor, “and you’d know why I can still think with the lump of jelly that is my brain.” Cray opened his mouth to reply, but instead yelped as Wires grabbed hold of him, wrapping her arm around her neck so that she had him trapped in a headlock. She kicked the door open and dragged him down the corridor as quickly as she could.
“Make a move and I swear…” She hissed into his ear. Cray could feel something flat and warm pressed against his temple, and when he glance up to see what it was, he caught a glimpse of a sharp steel blade. How’d she managed to sneak that in? Cray had seen them search her, limp and lifeless, for any weapons and had confiscated her gun, so why’d they missed this? The officials followed them as Wires stumbled along, cursing every now and then, but didn’t attack, didn’t try to rescue him, their fear of Wires was so great. Only when she was immobilised would anyone come near the ‘terrorist’.
They crashed onto the landing of the stairwell, and Wires continued shuffling backwards until her back was pressed hard against the glass wall, gasping for breath. Condensation seeped through her clothes, sticking them to her skin. Cray could see the snow that had erupted from the sky, it would be piling up on the already thick blanket of white which was cast across the ground. The government officials may not have dared to approach Wires, but for PILOTs it was a different matter. They hadn’t been on the landing for a very long time before soldiers began to appear, both from upstairs and down, guns all pointed towards Wires’ fragile skull. She muttered something to herself, too low for Cray to hear, but he felt her muscles tighten, although her grip around his neck loosened slightly.
“Let him go,” one of them ordered, “let him go and we won’t gun you down.” Wires shook her head at this, laughing softly.
“I really don’t think that either of those things are going to happen.” She tensed her elbow before thrusting it through the thick glass that separated then from the outside, she did it again and again, snow flying into the stairwell, blinding the PILOTs. Blood ran down her pale arm, dripping onto Cray’s face, although Wires didn’t seem to notice. She kicked out a little more of the glass and unwrapped her arm from around his neck, whilst grabbing hold of his head with the other. She smirked and turned to the soldiers who were trying to clean their eyes of snow.
“Bye bye now!” She called, and gave them a jaunty salute, before pulling Cray out with her into the freezing whiteout.
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