Darklandia (13 page)

A woman pushing a baby carriage glared at Darla and me. I wanted to ask her what her problem was, but I didn’t want to draw further attention to Darla’s, or my, strange behavior. The woman cast one more incredulous look in our direction before she disappeared behind us.

A poster on the side of an old bank depicted Jane Locke facing right, as always, but this poster differed from the others. Someone had painted Jane’s sleepwalker smile a brilliant red.

A small mutiny.

I had to temper my smile as I thought of
the face of Felicity
being defaced.

I had an overpowering urge to clear my throat to get Darla to look up as we approached an angel on the corner with his helmet pointed straight at us. Clearing my throat would be too obvious, but I had to get her attention.

“Look! It’s Aaron,” I said, and Darla’s face lit up as she scanned the sidewalk ahead of us. Her gaze flitted across the street then back to the pavement in front of us, a slightly bewildered smile played across her freckled face as she searched for Nyx.

“I don’t see him.”

The silver helmet followed us as we stepped down from the curb and I watched the angel’s reflection in the shop window across the street. His helmet never turned away from us until we passed the window and I no longer had a view of him. I sped up just a tad to urge Darla on and soon we were inside the abandoned apartment building staring at Nyx.

“Do you ever work?” I asked him, as Darla and I approached the scanner.

“I’m working right now,” he replied, as he turned to Darla and whispered, “Hey, Killer, you go ahead. I need a word with your pal.”

Darla looked disappointed that handsome Nyx didn’t want a word with her and I truly felt awful. She was already having a miserable day.

“I’ll be right in,” I assured her, though I had no idea if that were true.

She scanned her sec-band and disappeared into the darkroom without a word.

I wanted to ask Nyx if she would feel better once the drugs wore off, but I was highly conscious of the security camera in the corner of the ceiling. He nodded toward the corridor and I followed him out of the camera’s line of sight.

“Are the pain relievers working?” he asked, his voice dripping with concern.

“I’m fine,” I replied, conveniently leaving out any mention of the sharp ache snaking its way through my abdomen and lower back. The truth was I had only taken one pain reliever this morning. I left my afternoon dose underneath my grandmother’s pillow; too afraid the soft click of the pills in my pocket would draw attention to me at school.

“Good, because today is your first test.” He fixed me with a gaze that drove spikes through my nerves. “Once you’re inside, you’re going to realize, for the first time, that you’re not actually in control and it’s going to be… alarming. You’re going to hear a voice urging you to wake up. Try to hold onto that voice.” He grabbed both my arms to get my attention and I couldn’t help but flinch at his touch. He let go of my arms, but he held my gaze. “Sorry, but this is important. I need you to keep a cool head in there or you won’t remember what I’m about to tell you.” I nodded and he continued. “Your dad was trained with a code word that will trigger a response from him inside Darklandia. I need you to try to work this word into the conversation.”

“That’s it?”

“It’s not as easy as it sounds. You’re going to have a very hard time controlling your thoughts in there. That’s the nature of Darklandia. You’re not yourself. You have to fight off this digital persona the system imposes on you. It’s going to be difficult.” His gaze softened. “The system is designed to slowly make you forget who you are, who your father was, what he gave up. The darklings had a saying, ‘Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.’ Don’t let them make you forget.”

The way he looked at me made me uncomfortable. “Okay, so what’s the word?”

“It’s not a filter word so it shouldn’t be difficult for you to say, but it’s not part of the standard projection the system created for you so the bots will take notice.”

“That’s not comforting.”

“The phrase is ‘sweet felicity’.”

“Sweet felicity?” I repeated the phrase I had used hundreds of times in my lifetime. “You’re telling me that my father is trained to give up the algorithm at the mention of such an extremely common phrase?”

“Only inside Darklandia… and only from you.”

“How am I supposed to work that into a conversation about cherry soda and tears?”

“You’ll figure it out.”

“You’ve put too much faith in me. I’m not as strong or clever as you think.”

“You’re
only
as strong or as clever as you think. And it’s my job to make you think you’re very strong and clever.”

“You’re not doing a very good job.”

I was pleased to see him smile at my teasing, but his smile quickly faded. “I’ve been watching you… inside Darklandia. I know what you’re capable of.”

Something passed between us as he gazed into my eyes, as if he were transferring bits of confidence and knowledge to me through the air. A chill passed over my arms and I hugged myself, feigning cold though it was at least 80 degrees inside this building with no air-conditioning.

“Another thing you should know,” he said, as his glare penetrated me. “If the bots detect an anomaly in your standard projection, in other words, if you become self-aware inside Darklandia, the system may deploy the clones.”

“What are the clones?”

“The Sera you saw inside the pod on Level 17 was a rudimentary clone I coded specifically for that pod. The clones inside Darklandia are digital projections of people you trust. The clones are controlled by the master levels.” I gritted my teeth at yet another phrase I didn’t understand. “You’ll learn about the masters soon. Right now, all you need to know is that you’ll notice the clones if they do deploy them because they look different from the standard projections, but you won’t understand why they look different. They’ll use the clones to deceive you, to throw you off your mark. No one expects you to wake up and make contact with your father on your first attempt, Sera, but if you get close they may use the clones the same way they’ve been using your father—to create a false narrative, a false memory. Just keep telling yourself it’s not real. Keep willing yourself to wake up. Got it?”

“That’s a lot to remember,” was the only response I could muster.

He nodded as he backed away from me, which I took as my cue to get inside the darkroom. I rounded the corner into the lobby and scanned my sec-band. I glanced over my shoulder through the glass door. My gaze skimmed across the street and skidded over a silver helmet pointed in my direction. I turned back to the scanner and realized the door to the darkroom was still shut. I held my wrist inside the scanner again and it didn’t flash green.

A spark of panic shocked me, overtaking me, until I could hardly breathe. I watched my sec-band, shivering as I waited for the red flash.

“Scan it again,” Nyx whispered urgently into my ear.

My hand trembled as I slid my wrist into the scanner again. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.

12

The sec-band flashed. Green.

I let out the breath lodged in my chest and scampered into the darkroom before the door closed. The darkness, only slightly broken by the row of tiny blue lights marking the path to the pod, made me uneasy. Now that I had been inside the pod on Level 17 and I knew the darkness in the darkrooms wasn’t required, I realized it was just another psychological device. It gave the pod user the impression they were willingly submerging themselves in the darkness; willing participants in the illusion of Darklandia.

My body collapsed into the pod as I tried to conjure a way to work the words
sweet felicity
into the conversation with my father. The neuro-gel detected my presence and tightened around my limbs and torso as the lid of the pod whirred closed. The darkness was heavy, my heart hammering against my breast, as I waited for the feed.

The feed flashed on; no flickering as there had been in the pod on Level 17. Immediately, the site of my father’s blue eyes filled my vision as he gazed at me across the park bench. The wind lifted the hairs on my arms as it lifted the pale hair on his head.

None of this is real.
Hold onto that thought, Sera
.

I pleaded with myself, but the standard projection soon took over as they force-fed it into my nervous system.

My father’s eyes crinkled as he smiled and fear chafed at my insides as I glanced at the Atraxian star carved into the skin between his eyes. Why did he have to take me outside to see the rain last week?

He handed me a bottle filled with a glistening red liquid. The liquid turned a pixelated gray for a moment then switched back to red.

A glitch.
This isn’t real.

I shook my head as I took the bottle in my hand and pressed it against my lips. The liquid bubbled and popped as it washed over my tongue and exploded in my throat. I spit it out all over the grass and my lap.

My mind flashed back to a distant memory: red liquid sprayed across my face. The memory flickered away suddenly and I gasped, coughing from the beverage sizzling in my throat.

My father laughed as I wiped tears from my cheeks. “You get used to the fizz,” he said, his voice distorted and distant as his fingers wiped my chin.

My father’s hair beamed in the sunlight, like platinum and starlight spun together. I wished I had my father’s hair color. Instead, my hair color was something between starlight and the dark side of the moon. Grandmother called my hair color “sweeter than honey”. I didn’t know what sweet or honey were, but I was almost certain neither of those had anything to do with hair.

Sweet
…. I had a strong and sudden notion I was forgetting something.

Sera? Are you awake?

My head snapped up. “What is it?” I asked, referring to the red liquid in the bottle.

Whatever it was, it was nothing like the salty, metallic ration I drank that morning.

“It’s cherry soda,” my father replied, smiling at the confused expression on my face. “Cherries are a fruit. Soda is a drink infused with carbonation to give it that bubbly feeling.”

The bubbles inside the bottle mesmerized me as they floated up and formed a foamy ring on the surface of the liquid.

Cherry soda.
Now I was
certain
I was forgetting something.

Sera, wake up.

“Where did you get it?” I asked, as I tipped the bottle on its side, fascinated as more pockets of air drifted to the surface where they burst only to be replaced by more bubbles.

My father glanced around the park, his gaze skidding over the Guardian Angels positioned along the path every one hundred yards. Their silver helmets reflected the sunlight making it impossible to see through the glass to the face inside; impossible to know what or whom that face was watching.

“Sera, what would you say if I told you there’s a whole world outside Manhattan? A different world. A place where cherry soda runs like water from fountains and people are so happy that sometimes they cry.”

“They cry?” I clapped my hand over my mouth as I glanced around the park at the angels.

“Real tears,” he continued. “How does that make you feel?”

“Feel?”

Crying was something people did only when they were in extreme physical pain—unless you were a darkling. I remembered all the pictures of darklings our teachers showed us in Felicity school, starving darklings huddled on street corners, tears cutting paths through the filth on their cheeks. Just the memory of it filled me with terror.

“Don’t be frightened,” he said, flashing me the gruesome, crinkled darkling smile he had inherited from my great-grandmother. “Please, Sera, don’t look at me like that. I don’t want to hurt you. I want you to know the truth.”

My father’s face flickered with an expression of pain, so quick I would not have noticed it if it weren’t for the fact that his face now appeared fuzzy and his hair had stopped moving with the breeze.

Wake up, Sera.

“The truth?” I replied. A lump formed in my throat as a surge of hot anger swelled inside my belly. I was sent here to get the truth. “Sweet felicity.”

My father’s body quivered like a poorly projected hologram. “You are eighty-seven light-years ahead of them. You’ll make it,” he replied, as his sec-band flashed red and his body went rigid against the park bench.

The feed switched and I was in the corridor on Level 17. Nyx was next to me, his fingers clasped tightly around the crook of my arm as he guided me toward a cell.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked, unable to hide the tremor in my voice.

“To your cell.” His lips moved, but they didn’t seem to be in sync with his words.

“I don’t have a cell.” He ignored me as he yanked me along the cold corridor. “You’re not paying attention. I don’t have a cell. I don’t belong here.”

“When you choose suffering, suffering is what you get,” he replied, his voice as cold as his fingers on my skin. “Suffering is optional, Sera.”

“That’s not true.”

“Suffering is optional, Sera. Why do you choose to suffer?”

“It’s not a choice.”

“Suffering is optional.”

His lips didn’t move as his words echoed inside my head. He pulled me into a dingy cell and shoved me into a pod. My neck cracked as my head ricocheted off the headrest.

“That hurt.”

“And it’s all because you didn’t drink your rations.”

This isn’t real. Wake up.

13

The pod hissed open and Nyx stood over me holding out his hand.

“They’re coming,” he said, as he pulled me loose from the grip of the neuro-gel.

I didn’t have to ask to know what Nyx meant. The bots detected the message to my father.

“Where’s Darla?” I asked, as the door slid open and Nyx pulled me out of the darkroom into the empty lobby.

He yanked me sideways toward the corridor instead of toward Broadway. “They took her.”