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She stumbled to the
doorway, feeling the floor tremble and shake underneath her. It would
be over soon, she thought. Looking out into the hallway, she saw Dr.
Fielding running down toward Alan’s room. The ground stopped
moving, and she blinked the sleep out of her eyes.
Alan
.

Without hesitation,
she took out the syringe, quickly filling it with the interferon
serum. It was the only weapon she had, and she hoped she would not
have to use it. She held it tightly, her hand stuck in her pocket,
and walked out into the hallway.

There was another
loud rumble that began and kept on going. The hallway leapt sideways,
and Chal felt her legs being knocked out from under her. She
stumbled, catching herself against the wall. If she ended up stabbing
herself with the syringe, she thought, it would be the most idiotic
death imaginable.

The previous
earthquakes had been small, over in only a few seconds, but this one
didn’t stop. As she held herself from falling, she heard a loud
crack from another part of the lab. An alarm began to sound. The
impossibly loud rumbling was eclipsed by the buzzing of the alarm.
The lights went out overhead as the hall shook again, and Chal
decided that walking was too dangerous. Emergency lights came on, the
red arrows pointing toward the emergency exit behind her. The floor
was shaking under her feet, and she crawled on her hands and knees
toward Alan’s room, in the opposite direction of the arrows.

Technicians ran past
her and she ignored them, finally reaching Alan’s room.
Clutching at the keypad, she swiped her ID and pulled herself into
the room.

Dr. Fielding was
standing over Alan’s bed and green liquid was dripping into his
IV. The handcuffs were already off of Alan’s feet, and Dr.
Fielding was in the process of unlocking the cuffs on his wrists.
Another tremor rolled through the structure, and Chal was almost
knocked down again.

“Get out!”
Dr. Fielding cried. He waved toward the door, and she saw irritation
in his face.

“I won’t
leave him,” Chal said. The ground was steadier now, but the
alarm was still wailing, the lights flashing red. She stood at the
foot of the bed. She thought that perhaps playing dumb would work.
“We need to get him somewhere safe–”

“I’m
waking him now,” Dr. Fielding said. “He will evacuate
with me.” His eyes narrowed at her in suspicion, and she tried
to keep an expression of earnestness.

“I’ll
help,” Chal said. “I can – ”

Dr. Fielding took a
gun out of his pocket and leveled it at Chal’s face. She
blanched. So much for that ruse.

“You’ve
become quite unnecessary, Dr. Davidson,” he said. “If I
were you I would leave right now. Evacuate upstairs with the others.”
A small tremor shook the room, and Chal saw the ceiling crack above
Alan.
Alan
. His eyelids fluttered as specks of plaster rained
down from the ceiling.

“Did you do
this?” Chal asked. She focused her gaze at the barrel of the
gun. Her hand hovered just over her pocket where the syringe waited.
It was little defense, but it was all she had.

“An
earthquake?” Dr. Fielding laughed. “You overestimate me.
No, I’m just seizing an opportunity.” Behind him, Alan
was starting to shift, waking up. The alarm continued to buzz loudly
through the room. She glanced toward the door. Where were the guards?

“Everybody has
already gone,” Dr. Fielding said, as though reading her
thoughts. “Protocol. You should have left too. You should have
never come.”

“I can’t
let you take him,” Chal said.

Dr. Fielding cocked
the gun. “Then I’m sorry I have to do this.” Chal’s
heart dropped in her chest. But before he could shoot, Alan’s
foot kicked out from under the blanket, hitting Dr. Fielding directly
in the stomach. He doubled over and another earthquake tremor, this
one bigger, shook the lab. The gun clattered to the floor.

Chal dove for it,
but Dr. Fielding got there faster, picking up the gun in one hand and
whirling around. Chal gripped his wrist, struggling with him for
control. Alan was halfway out of the bed, one wrist still handcuffed
to the railing, as the doctor aimed the gun upwards toward him.

Chal did not
hesitate. She thrust her free hand into her pocket and pulled out the
syringe in one swift motion, swinging her arm around to stab Dr.
Fielding in the neck.

He clutched his
neck, dropping the gun to pull out the syringe lightning-quick. It
was empty. Dr. Fielding reached out toward his weapon but his hand
jerked back in a spasm as his eyes rolled back in his head.

Chal kicked the gun
away from him. Dr. Fielding’s limbs splayed over the tile
floor, twitching as his body began to seize up. He groaned, the noise
coming from the bottom of his throat, deep and rumbling under the
high buzzing of the alarm. For a moment he froze, his eyes locked on
Chal’s, and she saw the fear in his eyes.

Relatively
painless.

A thought raced
through Chal’s brain.

“The code,”
she said. She knelt next to Dr. Fielding, her mind focused on the
missing piece. “Where’s the code?”

He did not speak,
could not speak. His eyes darted from one corner of the room to the
other.

“The code! I
need the code!” If she couldn’t get it now, she might
never get it. She would never know how Alan’s brain was
structured. Chal clutched Dr. Fielding’s lab coat, shaking him
as the earth shook her. “
Where is it?
”

Chal watched his
eyes go blank and he crumpled up into himself, his limbs curling
tightly against his body. Spit leaked from the corner of his mouth,
his groans turned into whimpers. He kicked once again and then
stopped moving.

Chal’s fingers
were already scrabbling on the floor tile for the handcuff key, and
she was at Alan’s side already, releasing him from the bed. He
stared at Dr. Fielding, his mouth agape.

“Come on,”
she said, wresting him out of the bed and into a standing position.
The bedsheet fell down, exposing his naked body. Chal pulled at his
arm, but Alan seemed to be made out of lead.

“Not supposed
to harm anyone,” he said, his eyes fixed on the body crumpled
on the floor.

“You didn’t,”
Chal said. “It was me.” She tugged again, hard, and he
took a reluctant step, looking dizzily around.

“Where are we
going?” he asked. The alarm rang in Chal’s ears and the
red flashing lights cast an eerie glow on the metal and white tile.
She was surprised that Alan had not gone into a seizure upon being
woken up. She was surprised Dr. Fielding had taken that chance.

“This way,”
she said, pulling him past Dr. Fielding’s body and through the
door. She looked down each hallway, but there were no guards. They
must have already evacuated, she thought.
Protocol
.

There was another
rumbling and Chal saw the movement of the hallway before she felt
herself being thrown to the side. She smashed into Alan’s
shoulder and fell forward only to be caught by his arm. They stumbled
together toward the emergency exit, the floor rolling underneath them
like a ship in a storm.

In all of her life,
Chal had never experienced an earthquake like this. It had already
lasted more than a minute, and the shudders didn’t seem to be
abating.

This is it
,
she thought.
The big one they always predicted
. The walls of
the laboratory were cracking with the strain, and although Lieutenant
Johnner had assured her that it was safe, she thought that this
earthquake might be the exception to the rule.

As they passed her
room, a sudden tremor shattered the door, spraying them with glass.
Chal covered her eyes and continued walking, aware that she had been
cut in several places but not caring overmuch. She glanced over at
Alan, who was continuing forward slowly with a glazed look in his
eyes. The overstimulus had burned out his senses, she thought. There
was blood running down a cut on his cheek, but it was not a serious
wound and there was no time to stop, anyway. She hoped he would not
cut his feet; they were bare, as was everything else. She looked at
him.

A perfect man,
escaping from chaos.

But escaping into
what?

Chal fell onto the
metal door, spinning the heavy wheel as she regained her balance. Air
began to hiss around the edge of the door as the seal was broken, and
Chal remembered, too late, that the lab was positively pressurized.
The door would have broken her arm had she not let go at the last
second, for it swung open with such force that the wall behind it
rained down a fall of dust and rock. Another alarm, this one
higher-pitched, began to squeal above the buzzing.

“Come on!”
Chal said, but her voice was lost in the whistling of wind out of the
pressurized lab. Papers blew past them in gusts and the shattered
glass tinkled across the floor. Chal yanked Alan’s arm and he
began to sprint alongside her as though he had just realized the
danger they were in. She had to push herself to keep up with him.

They ran through the
tunnel into a darkness that was broken only by occasional emergency
lights set into the concrete floor. The wind howled through the exit,
pelting them with debris as they ran out and up. Chal felt like a rat
being chased through the sewers by some unknown force.

Dios te salve Maria,

plena eres de
gracia, el

Señor está
en vostra

compañia,

The old words she
had prayed with when she was a child came into her mind. As they ran
forward, the noise behind them grew fainter and fainter, until
finally Chal could hear her own breathing again. The wind still
whistled through the corners of the hallway, but more softly, the
debris far behind.

She stopped then and
bent over coughing, her sides aching from the effort of running so
fast. The adrenaline that had sustained her was wearing off and she
felt dizzy and weak. When she raised her hand to her head she felt a
wetness and knew it was blood.

Beneida tu eres

entre totes les
dones, y

beneit es el fruit
del vostro

ventre Chesus.

She realized that
she was going to pass out at the same time that she noticed she was
saying the words of the prayer out loud.

She slumped against
the wall, and Alan caught her before she could fall far. Her vision
swam before her eyes and she clutched at his arm for support. Had she
hit her head against something, or was it the glass?

A small aftershock
of the earthquake trembled the floor below her, and she felt her legs
turn to jelly. Alan stumbled and she slid down against the wall,
smearing blood onto the rock. She couldn’t go on. It was all
too much.

The lights had gone
out, or had they? She blinked and there was Alan in the dimness,
kneeling in front of her, his face full of concern. She tried to
whisper to him to leave, to run away and get as far from this place
as possible, but for some reason she could not speak. Then she
blinked again and everything was dark.

Santa Maria,

mare de Dios,

suplica por nosatres

pecaors, ara, y en
el hora

de nostra mort.

Asi-siga.

***

She woke twice more
that she could remember. The first time she opened her eyes, Alan was
clutching her to his chest. Pebbles fell loosely from cracks in the
ceiling, and a thick air of dust whispered through the corridor. She
could hear in the far distance the echo of the laboratory alarm, its
incessant buzzing now as faint as a blood-seeking insect in the
corner of an otherwise empty room.

They were in the tunnel
that sloped up and away from the lab. She tried to estimate the
length of the tunnel, but her mind couldn’t hold the numbers
long enough to figure it out. She thought about what they were
leaving behind. The code that she had never gotten to look at. How
Alan was made. Then blood ran into her eye and she blinked again into
darkness.

The second time she
woke they were at the exit. Alan had shifted her in his arms so that
he could open the door and the jostling woke her. She looked up as
they walked through the doorway, and, despite her tiredness, she
gasped in surprise. Underneath the lab she had imagined it would be
daylight when they emerged, but the desert stretched out before them
in an inky, moonless night.

There was a huge
object off to the side of the exit doorway, but Chal couldn’t
make it out. That was the last thing she remembered.

***

Sleep had always
troubled Chal. Not going to sleep – she had never had to deal
with any sort of insomnia, fortunately – but the philosophical
implications of sleep.

John Locke had been
the first one, in the 1700s, to define a person by their
consciousness – specifically, the continuity of consciousness.
When a person went to sleep, their continuity of consciousness was
broken. Sleepwalkers who perpetrated crimes while they were asleep
could not be prosecuted for their actions; they were, after all, not
themselves. How far could we take this?

Chal remembered
herself as a little girl playing in the streets, remembered herself
as a young woman studying hard in the deep recesses of the university
libraries, remembered too the person who had loved, been heartbroken,
done too many things which she later regretted. Was she the same
person throughout? Certainly not.

The Chal Davidson
who stood in front of a lecture hall a few days ago was light-years
different than the Chal Davidson who had stood, nervous and shamed,
in front of her childhood classmates after she had been caught
selling test answers to a friend. Every cell in her body was
different, every neuron in her brain had died and been replaced. All
that was continuous was a fallible memory and the fact that from one
day to the next she had felt like the same person.