When Mateo and Constance!Five first returned-slash-arrived in the Third
Rail, everything seemed like it was going to be okay. It quickly turned into
a horrorfest. A lone fisherman happened to be relaxing on his little rowboat
in Danica Lake where the two time travelers came up. His first thought would
not have been that they were a transhuman and an organic superintelligence
from a parallel reality, but Constance!Five didn’t seem to think it was
worth the risk. After taking a look around to check for other witnesses, she
pulled the innocent man out of the boat, and drowned him in the water. Mateo
was hopeless to stop her. He’s strong, but she’s much stronger. It would
appear that she gave herself a better substrate than him. It’s a wonder that
she did anything for him at all. She’s clearly completely self-reliant. And
also evil.
Once the deed was done, Constance!Five demanded Mateo navigate them to an
isolated location, where they would not be disturbed. Not wanting to put his
loved ones in danger, he suggested they go to the Walton bunker in the
middle of the woods. He didn’t know what she was going to do with him there,
but he didn’t think she was going to torture him. After all, what did he
ever do to her? She didn’t start right away. She activated a tablet that the
team had left on the desk, and got to work. It took Mateo some time, but he
eventually came to the conclusion that she was absorbing all the information
she could find. History, politics, culture; all of these were unknown to
her, and if she wanted to blend in, or complete whatever agenda she has,
she’ll need to know everything. When she was done with that, she moved on to
gaining personal information about Mateo and his life. She wanted to know
everything he had been through, and she was willing to hurt him to get it.
He hoped his upgrades would protect him against the pain, but she knew what
buttons to push.
When she had everything she wanted out of him, that’s when the true horror
began. As it turned out, she was far more advanced than he ever could have
imagined. Like something out of the Terminator franchise, her epidermal
nanites rearranged themselves, and in a matter of minutes, she no longer
looked like herself. She looked like Mateo. That’s why she wanted to know
everything about him, because she was going to initiate contact with the
team, and pretend to be him. She was just about to clip him off like
a loose end when an alert came in over the tablet. Apparently, the
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was back in orbit over Earth. She had to get back
to the group quickly, so she could sell a lie about Mateo having never died
in the first place. He laughed at her, knowing that his people were not
going to fall for her ruse. The little argument they had over the matter was
enough of a stall to save his life. By the time she was ready to finish him
off, her time really was up, and she had to teleport away
immediately. That was the last he heard from her.
Mateo opens his eyes, aware that he’s lying on his back, but unable to
gather any other information about his surroundings. His vision is blurry.
He feels the mucus attached to his lids. “Hegh,” he says, realizing that
it’s just an unintelligible noise.
“He’s awake.” It sounds like Alyssa, but he can’t hear very well either.
“Repo,” he tries. “That’s a little closer to a meaningful utterance, but
still wrong.
Another figure approaches the bed. “Report?” Leona guesses. “All you need to
do right now is relax.”
He feels a warm washcloth rubbing his eyes clean. “Wada,” he requests.
“Right here.” Alyssa says. She holds the strawn in his mouth.
Mateo smacks his lips, drinks a little more, and then clears his throat.
“Does this bed move? Can I sit up, please?”
“I got you,” Ramses says, pushing the button for him.
“That’s good.” Mateo blinks and gets a better look at where he is. It’s a
double room. There’s another person in the bed next to him. He can’t see who
it is at this angle, especially since his vision isn’t all there yet. But he
can tell that Vearden is sitting in the chair between them, and upon closer
inspection, Mateo realizes that his roommate is pregnant. “What happened to
Arcadia?”
Vearden had been staring at the floor. He looks up to find that everyone
else is being silent, so he stands. “Constance!Five showed up, looking like
you, claiming to be you. They were suspicious of him, so they asked
Arcadia to psychically interrogate her. She’s in a coma now. We don’t know
what Constance did to her.
Mateo tries to move his legs and arms over at the same time, but he’s
attached to an IV line, and other instruments. “Get me out of this, I wanna
see.”
“You can’t move.” Leona puts two hands on his chest, and gently pushes him
back into place.
Vearden steps forward, and regards Mateo with a really good poker face. “I
don’t blame you for what happened, but I’ve seen the security footage, and
looking at your face makes me wanna choke you to death.” He turns away, and
hastily pulls the curtain closed behind him.
Mateo stares at it. He’s got his own poker face, but it’s probably just from
whatever drugs he’s on. He finally turns to face the ceiling. “Where is
she?”
“Trapped in a stasis pod on a freezing oceanic island in the middle of
nowhere,” Ramses tells him.
“Now that you know that she wasn’t me, you can destroy her.”
The three of them exchange some looks.
“What?” Mateo asks. “Now you’re suspicious of me? You think I
wouldn’t suggest such a thing. I’ve changed, Arcadia’s in a coma. Blow that
asshole straight to hell.”
“Even if we wanted to do that,” Ramses begins, “we don’t know how to kill
her. Her nanites are sophisticated enough to impersonate someone to the
smallest detail. She should be able to survive just about anything.”
“She had enough time to build backups too,” Leona adds.
“I don’t think she did,” Mateo contends. “She was with me the whole time.”
“Are you sure?”
“Stop questioning me.”
“We’re not questioning you, we just—”
“Get out.”
“Mateo...” Leona says.
“Get out of my room. I need some sleep.” They don’t move right away, so he
appends, “please.”
They start to walk out. “Were I you,” Leona tells him.
Mateo clears his throat, and turns his head towards the wall without
replying. When it looks like she’s left, he turns back. “Vearden,” he
whispers.
“Leave us alone,” Vearden spits from the other side of the curtain.
“Vearden, I need your help.”
“I said that I don’t blame you, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to help you
with anything.”
“Just come here, goddammit. You’re gonna like this.”
Vearden huffs, but does as asked. “What do you want?”
“Take this from my finger, and put it on yours.”
“Your pulse monitor thingy? Why would I do that?”
“Because I’m going to teleport to Constance!Five, and then toss her into the
mouth of a volcano.”
Vearden stares for a moment. “I don’t think that’s going to work. You can’t
just throw something into a volcano. There’s not, like, this cliff
overlooking the hole.”
“Are you sure?”
“I don’t know, but..I don’t think so. You don’t hear about people just
tripping and falling into a pool of lava.”
“I think it’s called magma.”
“Whatever!”
“Shh,” Mateo urges. “I don’t want them to know, for obvious reasons.”
Vearden sighs, and gets out his handheld device to look it up. “Okay, it
looks like, to be sure the pod gets to where it’s going, you would have to
drag it all the way down into a magma chamber.” He shows Mateo the photos on
the search page, some of which are probably artist’s renderings. “But the
heat will probably kill you before you get that close. I know you have those
fancy new bodies, but still...”
“I can teleport into a chamber.”
“No one really knows what they look like, Mateo. You’re not necessarily
going to find a patch of dry, safe land where you can stand and watch it
happen. The internet doesn’t say anything about that, because normal people
don’t ever seriously contemplate getting rid of bodies in a volcano.”
“I can sit on the pod, and then teleport away just before it finishes
sinking.”
“What if it doesn’t sink?” Vearden asks. “What if the magma can’t even
breach the pod at all. If she remains alive, there’s a chance she comes
back. This is an incredibly foolish and ridiculous plan. It’s never going to
work.”
Mateo thinks about it for a few moments. “Okay. I’ll send the Bridgette on a
collision course with the sun. That’s even better. I can pilot it with voice
commands.”
Vearden shakes his head. “They purged everything of AI. They don’t know
what’s been compromised, and what hasn’t been. They’re not even living in
the lab anymore.”
“Oh. That makes sense.”
“Mateo, I know you feel bad, and I know you want to fix this, but you and I
have to face the fact that neither of us can live this life alone. We rely
on smarter, more capable people to get us by. If we tried something like
this, we would inevitably screw it up. The Two Stooges, they would call us.”
“Let’s take her to the Constant.” Alyssa has snuck back into the room, and
could have been listening for who knows how long.
“Why would we do that?”
“Because it’s Danica’ fault, and therefore Danica’s problem,” she reasons.
“It’s become clear that she’s not going to help us, so let’s give her the pod
that she loves to use so much back, and rid ourselves of the whole thing.”
That’s not a bad idea, but it’s not a good one either.
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