Mateo’s nanites were just about done healing him. They prioritized the most
life-threatening injuries first before moving on to the less serious damage.
So a few cuts and bruises remained, and they hadn’t done anything for the
pain yet. Even so, he could now stand up, and get a look around. Octavia
still didn’t look concerned, so maybe this was some kind of refuge.
“We need to get moving,” she warned. “I let you recover, but it’s not safe
here.”
“Is it safe anywhere?” he asked as he was following her along the stream.
“No,” she conceded. “The horde that was chasing after us can’t follow. Free
from oversight, they’ve formed alliances, and divided the land into
territories. We’re kind of on a border, so that offers us a
little protection, but someone will eventually grow brave enough to
cross the line—or hungry enough.”
What did you mean, no oversight?”
“This isn’t the real Castlebourne,” Octavia began to explain. “I don’t know
exactly what it is, like an alternate reality, or something, but none of the
staff is here. I don’t know who runs it—if it’s Pacey on his own, or if he’s
working with someone else—but they don’t keep watch over the safeguards.
These monsters are more vicious than they’re supposed to be.”
“How long have you been here?”
“The Vellani Ambassador rescued me and a bunch of others from Ex-486 in
2498. I wasn’t there long before I started hearing how worried the crew was
about your whereabouts. I don’t know what they thought was wrong, but they
were afraid that something had happened to you. So I agreed to investigate
while they continued on with their missions.”
“Well, you found it. You found us.”
“Now, I have,” she agreed. “I found Pacey first, though, and he
stuffed me in here so I wouldn’t interfere with his business. I’ve been
running for my life ever since.”
“What happens if you die here?” he pressed.
“Nothing good,” she answered simply. “My body isn’t like yours, so I’ve been
avoiding everyone. There are some buildings; particularly houses. They’re
mostly haunted, but the ghosts have rules, and if you learn them, you can
stay safe for a while.” She sighed. “But I think you can help end the
madness forever.”
“How’s that?”
She looked around with a face full of paranoia and fatigue. “We’re pretty
close to one side of this dome, and I can navigate us there. Unfortunately,
once we get there, we’re going to have to walk halfway around the perimeter
to reach the exit.”
“There should be more exits than that.”
“Like I said, it’s not the real Castlebourne. Pacey made modifications.
There is a way out, but I can’t get through it with you.”
“It takes two to open the door, or something?”
“No, it takes an elite.”
“I’m an elite?”
“Yeah, of course you are. You were in Hrockas’ inner circle, and he
hardwired contingencies into the software that should grant you access to
any area at any time. The way he sees it, the planet is as much yours as it
is his because of how much you contributed to its development. I don’t think
that Pacey could have erased all those privileges without breaking the
systems entirely. He would have had to reprogram everything from scratch.
I’m sure he’s technically capable of doing that, but he’s kind of old
school, so doesn’t like AI all that much. He likes to be hands-on, so he
deliberately limits the tools in his toolbox.”
“So I can unlock the door, and we can both walk through?”
“That’s the idea.”
“Does he not know that?”
“I don’t know how much he knows about what I know.”
“It could be a trial,” Mateo put forth. “He may want us to escape.
Some antagonists want us to stay out of their way, but others want us to
stop them, like Thanos is with the Avengers.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
“And you can’t teleport, right? Because I can’t. I tried while I was running
once I remembered that I should be able to.”
Octavia shook her head. “I don’t have any powers at all. I lost that when I
went back in time as September, and created a new timeline. I don’t like to
talk about it, but it sets me apart from the other Paiges.”
“You don’t have to,” he assured her. “How dangerous is the border?”
She bobbled her head. “It has its advantages, and disadvantages. The
monsters don’t know that they’re in a dome. If you showed one of them the
wall, and they were the kind who could talk, they would probably just say,
it doesn’t look like anything to me. They’re programmed to stop
several meters before it, but they patrol that border, because they can
still feel that there’s something weird about it. You’re safe beyond their
reach, but there aren’t any resources there. No freshwater, no edible
plants. You can take breaks, but you can’t stay.”
“Then let’s grab some supplies along the way. Now you can carry twice as
much as before, and I don’t eat much.”
“Some of your powers and abilities are available to you, as you discovered
when you jumped off the cliff and survived, but not all of them. If you
aren’t hungry already, you will be soon. We need to get to that exit.”
“You seem to know a lot about it; about me.”
“You were part of my investigation,” she clarified. “I had to know who I was
looking for. A lot has changed since I last saw you, many iterations of
Paige ago.”
“Yeah.”
After nightfall, they finally managed to reach the border. She was right,
there was a narrow open space that seemed to circle around the border. The
problem was that this meant walking an additional 130 kilometers. Mateo
didn’t know how his pattern worked in here. Even if he woke up right at
midnight central, there would not be enough time for them to cross that
distance before the end of the day. Paige would have to wait a whole year
for him to come back, and then they still wouldn’t be able to make it in
under 24 hours. Perhaps this plan wasn’t so perfect. There had to be
a closer exit, perhaps hidden behind a false wall, or a hologram. As they
were sliding their hands along what felt like glass or metal, they started
hearing a commotion behind them. They turned around to find a new horde of
monsters, about the same size as the one from before. But then more began to
appear on the ends, and it eventually felt more like ten times that size.
They were just standing there, staring at the two of them menacingly.
Paige’s watch beeped. “Oh, no.”
“What does that mean? Don’t tell me the worst monster comes out at a certain
time.”
“No. It’s an hour until midnight central. You’re about to disappear for a
year. This was stupid, we should have run straight through the center to the
door. Now we’re screwed.”
“Don’t be so sure. Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Mateo asked her. “In
that clearing over there.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“If I recall correctly, it’s pretty maneuverable.”
“It’s pretty deadly.”
In the 1980s, a horror movie came out that would become a cult classic
decades later. It was simply called Seatbelt Killer. Mateo couldn’t
remember the exact backstory, but the villain’s origins involved his
seatbelt getting stuck while his wife was being violated outside in front of
him. He ended up turning the car on, and running over one of the rapists,
but when the husband turned to get the other one, the second rapist threw
his wife in front of the car, leading him to hitting her instead. The rapist
then ran off, eventually getting trapped between the car and a cliff. With
nothing left to live for, the husband drove right into him, and over the
edge, where they both died. Then he and the car came back to life as a
ghost, and started killing the protagonists over the course of the movie.
The premise was that he literally couldn’t get out of his car anymore, but
you couldn’t escape by going inside, because as a ghost car, it could fit
through doorways, down hallways, and even up the stairs. You would think
that he would kill rapists, but because he accidentally killed his own wife,
the ghost could now only kill rape survivors. There was an
implication that he didn’t want to do this, but was...driven
to, so to speak. Due to the sensitive nature of the film, they never gave
the car a name, but it was entirely fictional. The propmasters apparently
manufactured the models from scratch so they wouldn’t have any sort of legal
or reputational issues to contend with. But whatever it was, it was here,
and Mateo wanted to steal it.
“Mateo...” Octavia began uncomfortably. “I can’t go near that thing.”
He knew what she meant right away, and if she was willing to talk to him
about it, this wasn’t the time. “Have you seen the movie?”
“No, but I know the premise, which means I know that I qualify as a target.”
“The Final Girl survives by getting in through the passenger side window,
and taking the steering wheel. She didn’t just take control of it, she
literally removed it.”
“I’m guessing it wasn’t easy.”
“It’ll be easier for us. She was alone. You have me.”
“But if we take off the steering wheel, we won’t be able to drive either.”
“His weapon is the car itself, his hands are only his means of controlling
that. If we get inside, I can control where the car goes, and he can’t hurt
you while you’re in the back. We’re not gonna remove the wheel, because
unlike the girl in the movie, we need to use it.”
“It sounds risky.”
“It always is. It’s your decision, though. I understand that I don’t
understand. But I can tell you that I will protect you, and I’m a damn good
driver.”
“Okay. We better come up with a plan fast, because we’re running out of
time. Even if you drive as fast as possible, it will take nearly the full
hour to get there.”
Mateo nodded, then started to shake his head. “We’re not going around the
perimeter. We’re going straight through.”
They hatched their plan, though it wasn’t all that complicated. Octavia came
up with the idea to use herself as bait for the Seatbelt Killer, but Mateo
wasn’t getting off easy. He was bait as well. While most of the monsters in
this dome wanted to kill both or either of them, only a few of them were
exclusively attracted to Octavia, based on her profile. They would use this
to their advantage. Mateo would lure all of the others away, so Octavia was
only contending with one of them. Once it was just her and the car, she
would hop over the boundary, back to the safety of the perimeter. This would
give her a respite that the characters in the original movie never had. From
there, with the driver essentially frozen in place, she could simply climb
onto the hood, and slip through the open window. Mateo never saw her
accomplish this, but it evidently worked. She drove up next to him while the
horde was chasing him through the woods. He dove in the back, and she sped
up so fast that no one else was able to keep up.
“We need to get you up front so you can do the steering!” she shouted. She
was navigating the terrain pretty well, but still struggling against the
driver. He was bound to his seat, but not entirely helpless there. He was
still trying to peel her arms away, just as he had the girl in the film.
With a bit of ingenuity, this heroine had managed to pry the wheel off of
its place, which stole his power from him, and allowed her to escape back
through the window. A mid-credits scene suggested that he was about to be
successful in finding a workaround by rigging a tire pressure gauge as an ad
hoc steering wheel, which may have played out in a sequel, but it was never
made. Mateo was a driver, so he watched movies about drivers, even bad ones,
and sometimes he read about them too. There was a theory that made the
rounds on the message boards that this sequel would have ended with the
Final Girl also managing to get in the car, but solving the problem by
finally freeing the killer from his eternal seatbelt. Could it be true? The
creator never responded to these rumors, but an unverified snippet of the
sequel’s script appeared to support the lore. Whether that was how it
would have worked in the movies was not the question, though. The question
was...was the android who was programmed to believe he was the
Seatbelt Killer coded with this solution, or would it only make things
worse?
“Do you have a knife?” Mateo asked her. Now that he was inside, he could
hold the killer’s arms back, but the guy was really strong. They might not
be able to keep him at bay for the duration of the drive.
“What?”
“A pocket knife. Scissors. Anything!”
“No, I don’t have anything like that!” Octavia yelled back. “I didn’t know I
was gonna be trapped in the woods for seven years!”
“I need something sharp,” he muttered. Just then, a glow started to form in
his right hand. He let go of the killer’s arm to look at it in wonder. The
glow consolidated, and began to take shape. Before too long, it was in the
form of a knife. And he could feel it in his palm. Somehow, despite Pacey’s
restrictions, Mateo’s weird telekinetic hologram powers were back, at least
in this one instance. Not taking any chances that it wouldn’t last, Mateo
slipped the blade underneath the belt, and with one slice, ripped it right
open.
The killer stopped struggling. For a moment, he just sat there in awe. Then
he pulled the strap through the loop, opened the door, and tumbled out.
Octavia sat there in shock, not even paying attention to where they were
going, which was all right, because they were in an open area now, and
slowing down quickly.
“Okay. I’ll take it from here.” Mateo climbed over the headrest, and
situated himself in the driver’s seat. Then he took off again, free from
resistance or distractions.
Now that they were clear of the monsters, their primary struggle was against
the clock. In the movie, the car could phase through objects, or even
squeeze itself through like a bus out of Harry Potter. That wasn’t possible
in the real world, so Mateo just had to negotiate the trees and other
obstacles. He kept going though, relying on his great skills, which had only
been enhanced during his stint in the Underburg dome. The clock was ticking
as they were approaching the part of the wall where Octavia said there was a
door. He barreled through the treeline, and onto the perimeter again, almost
all the way on the other side of the dome. New monsters were upon them now,
but were still bound by that imaginary line.
“How do I open this?” Mateo asked. Before Octavia could answer, he placed a
hand on the handle, and heard a buzzing sound. “Hm. Was that it?” He opened
it.
Octavia breathed a sigh of relief as her watch was counting down. “Finally.”
Four, three, two, one.
Mateo blinked, and it was 2506.
