"It's important that you don't panic, Runner Five. Concentrate on the sound of my voice. Try not to focus on the fact that you're locked in the dark basement under a mannequin factory with walls covered in spiders."
I grit my teeth, shining my flashlight around as I keep moving. Veronica still is just as bad at pep talks as she was when she was human.
I suppose I should be thankful. It means there's some part of Veronica left in there.
"The good news is that your mission was 98% successful. Your team captured the V-Types, and they're taking them to a containment facility for study. This is very likely to result in significant breakthroughs in my work on the V-Type morphology. The bad news is the remaining 2% represents your survival."
A whirring sound comes from above, and I gasp, shining my flashlight around. All I find are more spiders. They watch me but stay in their place.
I quicken my pace.
"Don't be alarmed by the noise, Five. There are security cameras in the room with you. I am tapping into them."
Just like she's tapped into whatever speakers are in this complex, I assume.
"Where's Sam, Veronica?" I ask, my tongue feeling heavy in my mouth. "Why can't I reach him?"
"I know you miss Sam. I do too! But I'm blocking his signal because your chances of survival are 6% higher with a single voice to focus on," She replies. "And I have access to more information on your location than Sam does.
"This factory has secrets. It was occupied by the Ministry not long ago. They built a small lab complex below the surface. Your only way out is through there. If you listen to me, I can guide you to an exit, but you'll have to be quick. I estimate you only have seventeen minutes of battery power left in that torch. Head down the stairwell to your left. Hurry."
"How do I know this isn't a trick?" I ask, and even though I don't really have any other choice, I have to be suspicious. Veronica merged with A.N.N.I.E., and Bad A.N.N.I.E. is still out there. I can't just trust her. I couldn't when she was just a human, so how can she expect that from me now that she's a machine?
"You can trust me, Runner Five," She says, and she almost sounds desperate, if robots can sound desperate. "I'm still Veronica! I'm just... I'm more, as well. Please go now. Run!"
Again, I really don't have much of a choice. If she's right about my flashlight battery, then I have less than twenty minutes before I'm in the dark with a bunch of spiders that seem to be watching my every move.
I can only think about the others. Poor Sam. He must be so worried. He always is, because I'm always the one who gets stuck in these dangerous situations.
Poor Peter. He was the one who told me to go hide. Is he feeling guilty that I'm trapped down here and they can't find me? I shouldn't have listened to him. I should have just kept running. The plastic wouldn't have done any real damage. I mean, it would have, but I would have healed.
Now I'm here, in the dark with a bunch of spiders with a voice that I'm not sure I can trust.
I'm scared. And even though I know Veronica is here, I feel alone.
I trudge down the stairs, careful not to trip. The silence is deafening, feeling like a heavy weight on my shoulders. I suppose that weight could be the hundreds and hundreds of pairs of eyes on me.
I keep thinking they're going to attack, but they don't. It feels like a waiting game in which I haven't been told the rules.
Somehow, even though my bones are quaking with fear, I feel as if I'm missing something. This feels almost too easy, too safe.
And I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
More cameras whir. The sound is cold, rigid, not at all comforting. It's mostly because I know Sam isn't the one who's seeing through them.
It's times like these, even after being alone for a few minutes, I remember how soothing it is to hear his voice. I'll never understand how I made it before Abel, listening to an operator who didn't really care about me. Anna did, of course, but she wasn't always my operator...
And Sigrid ended up killing her.
"I can see you're at the bottom of the stairs, Five," Veronica says. "There are plenty of cameras in the lab complex. Even if the lights are out, I can detect small changes in the quality of blackness to show where you are."
"Can't you also just see the light of my flashlight?" I ask with a raised brow.
"Yes, but it's harder to. I believe some of the spiders may have created webs over some the cameras. Take the corridor on your left."
I do. "You said this place was a Ministry facility?"
"Yes. This place is one of the 162 now defunct Ministry facilities across the country. Sigrid had almost every single one of them hidden under an innocuous location." She pauses. "She was a very deceptive woman. She could never build anything without a facade."
"And yet you still worked with her," I mumble, and there's another pause.
"I know you're uncertain about me, Five. I heard you all talking about me earlier. I monitor Abel coms whenever I can. It can be difficult, with so much information to keep track of. A.N.N.I.E. was-is-distributed across the whole United Kingdom. In drones, computers, Roufflenet. I'm spread over so many nodes, it's like being in a thousand places at once. It's like being nowhere at all.
"You don't have to worry about the bad parts of A.N.N.I.E. I've taken steps to protect myself from her. It's hard to explain how it feels to be without a body. It's liberating! I don't have to waste a third of my time on sleep, or spend 102 minutes per week in the bathroom. I don't have to worry about old age or death, and I will never, ever be a zombie!
"Of course, I'm not really human anymore. Human is a biological category, and I don't have biology. But isn't that fascinating? I can be something more. In the zombie era, we all had to evolve."
Somehow that last sentence hits like a punch to the gut.
"I know you can't tell, but I've been working on this speech for a long time. I've created two versions of it every second since the moment I became A.N.N.I.E. My statistical models tell me it could be more reassuring. It can be hard to tell your friends that's it's okay to be different."
"But it's not always okay though, is it?" I ask.
"I already know you are referring to yourself rather than me," She replies, and my blood freezes. "Like I said, I monitor Abel coms when I can. I know you've been visiting Pro. Van Ark's old labs, looking for his notes on immortality."
My steps falter. "I-"
"Looking back, it does add up. With everything you've survived, all the injuries that healed in record time, despite you doing nothing out of the ordinary to speed up the healing process. The only reason the others don't know is because it took longer than expected for Van Ark's treatments to take to your body. No one besides Sam knows you're immortal."
I try to speak, but no words come out.
"It's alright. Sometimes it can be hard to tell people you're not like them. You badly want to be perceived as normal, so you keep it a secret. But now that I know, I can help you. I'd like to help you. I will, once I get you out safely."
"I... thank you," I reply, shellshocked.
"Those spiders seem to be covering every service down there," She says, abruptly changing the subject. "The lab must have been experimenting on them. Their markings don't match any UK species. Look at them, building their webs together. Social spiders exist in the wild, but none of this size, and their webs are unusually opaque."
"Should I be worried about them?" I ask, and my heart jumps in my throat when my flashlight starts to flicker. I give it a shake, and the light comes back on. I sigh with relief.
"I will look into any files I can find about them. It's best you speed up, straight down that corridor to your right. It would be extremely inefficient for you to end up feeling your way through the dark with all those spiders."
I shudder at the thought and keep running.
As silence and darkness fall over me again, so does the ever-growing fear. It digs into me, infecting every crevice of my mind, my only thought being to run, survive, get out of here.
The dark has never been a calm place for me. People say fearing it is childish, but when you've been in as much danger as I have, with most of it being surrounded by darkness, it's a legitimate fear.
I'm afraid of being alone in the dark because of what I associate darkness with. Danger always hides in darkness. It's always easier to cover up your sins in the edges of black shadows where no one can see.
I focus on my breathing, my steps, anything to keep the crippling fear from taking over. It's so quiet, making me feel even more alone. When I reach the end of the corridor, I nearly sigh in relief when Veronica starts talking again. Even though I'm unsure how to feel about her, she is better than no one at all.
"You're passing through the primary lab facility now," She says, and more cameras whir. "They were definitely experimenting with spiders here. I count fourteen glass tanks full of webbing."
Dread hits me like a truck. If the Ministry were experimenting on these spiders, then it can't have been for anything good.
"I have enough Ministry access privileges to enter the lab's systems, but the computers are offline. Five, can you turn on that console bank in the corner? There aren't many spiders on it."
I let out a small noise, but head to the corner of the room and smack away any of the spiders that are near the power button on the console. One hisses at me but doesn't make any move towards me. If I weren't afraid at making all the others angry and violent, I'd step on it.
The console bank beeps when I turn it on, and I start running again.
"Thank you, Five. It seems the computers went into auto-shutdown because of disuse."
I hum. "What am I down here with, exactly?"
"A lot of the files in here are corrupted, but I can cross reference with other Ministry databases. This kind of digging is how I found out about this lab in the first place... Oh no. Five, this place... it was one of Sigrid's bioweapon projects!"
My heart stops in my chest.
"The spiders were being developed as a potential alternative delivery vector for Junin 2. They burrow into human flesh and lay their eggs inside. When the young hatch, they consume the host. Some zombies got into the lab. There was a firefight. The spiders got out and began to multiply-"
Suddenly Veronica's voice distorts, like a bad signal, and she lets out a shout as if she's hurt.
"Not now! No!"
"Veronica? Veronica!" I shout, and a second later I hear her voice. The tone is urgent, but there's no longer a distortion.
"Five, this is important. They made the spiders photosensitive to control them, but during the zombie attack, the lab's generator was damaged. Emergency power took four minutes to kick back in. Five, point your torch at the ceiling. The emergency lights are working now that Janine's turned on the generator again, but they're blacked out due to thick layers of web.
"The glow from your torch is keeping the spiders back, but you're almost out of battery. As soon as that goes, they'll attack you. You need to head straight through the lab to reach the nearest exit. Don't let anything touch you, and run!"
•
"Veronica! Veronica, please say something! Tell me where to go!"
I'm desperate, afraid. I've been running for a few minutes, nothing but silence accompanying me. My flashlight is flickering a lot now, and I keep shaking it to make it stay on longer. Every time it flickers out, when the light comes back on, the spiders are a bit closer to me, just waiting to attack, to burrow into my flesh and lay their eggs.
The worst part is that I'd live through it. I'd live through the eggs hatching inside me and eating me from the inside out. I'd regrow the organs, becoming a permanent feast for these spiders.
The thought makes me want to vomit.
"Veronica!"
"I'm sorry, Five," She says suddenly, sounding upset, afraid. "I tried to stop it."
"Stop what? What happened? Did I mess you up when I turned on the power bank?"
"No. No, the problem isn't you. It's everything else-" Her voice distorts again. The words that follow are inaudible. Static crackles through my headset.
"Runner Five?" Sam calls.
"Sam!" I yell, an unsteady smile appearing on my face.
"Five, is that you?" He asks, and there's a glimmer of hope in his voice, along with desperation. "Callista... say... to me..."
"Sam! I'm here! Can you hear me?"
I don't get an answer.
"Sam, please!"
"E-e-e-everything else," Veronica says, and I swallow thickly, blinking back tears as my headset dies down again. "There's so much of everything else! I have these-"
She's cut off by static, and A.N.N.I.E.'s voice comes in.
"-bad moments.
"If I try to do too much at once, think too many ways, my mind freezes up," She says, and her voice is hers again. "Breaks into pieces. I lose cohesion. I didn't want to tell you about that... yet.
"It's my mental architecture. It's still too human. I can't get it to admit that it has enough processing power! Things revert to old, familiar patterns, like the Last Riders. When things are frightening, people revert to childhood behavior, screaming and throwing things. My brain is just being childish."
A distorted, agonizing scream reaches my ears, and my eyes go wide.
"Veronica!" I yell fearfully.
"It doesn't hurt," She says calmly. "It's not painful, I know that. There aren't any nerves. It's purely psychosomatic."
That scream sounds off in the air again, loud and horrifying. My steps speed up, every fiber of my being screaming at me to just keep running. When Veronica speaks again, she sounds frustrated, but also tired.
"I was trying to do too much at once, Five. I was in 1,427 different databases at once, looking for information on Ministry weapon research. I was searching 10,123 Roufflenet posts for general trivia on spiders. I was in thirty-two different security cameras keeping an eye on you. I was in the containment facility I'm bring online to test the V-Type.
"I was defending myself against 212 iterations of that other A.N.N.I.E.," Her voice drops a few notes, becoming darker, angrier. "Not the friendly one. The aggressive, dark one. Maybe... maybe I'll just call her A.N.N.I.E. now, if that's okay with you, since I took over the friendly one. A.N.N.I.E.'s trying to access my framework. I was trying to infiltrate twelve iterations of her myself to find out what she's up to. Funny. She knows I'm here, but Mr. Valmont didn't seem to know. Either he's lying to us, or she's lying to him."
My flashlight flickers again, and as nice as it is to hear her speak, to have her tell me what's going on so I'm not left alone and afraid in this dark lab with killer spiders, I wish she would tell me just how close I am to the freaking exit!
"There are too many variables in the system now, Five. I thought I could solve the V-Types, but now there are the Last Riders too. They're more drastic than they were when I was alive. Their plans keep disturbing things. They're a chaotic force. If you wanted to disrupt my ability to model, unpredictable anarchists are exactly the thing you'd invent. I'm stretched thin-"
She screams again, radio static and overlapping voices all melding together into a sound that shakes me to the core. When it finally stops, Veronica speaks again, but she sounds dazed, drained.
"I'm in too many places," She says slowly. "I don't remember what we were doing... I'm sorry, Five. I pushed myself too far. I'm not running properly. Can you run for me? I can't remember anything... Run for me, Five. Run... while I try and remember myself."
She goes silent, and I pick up my pace.
My flashlight flickers again.
The spiders inch closer, eyes on me, watching through sparkling blue eyes. I've never been so glad to be wearing thick pants that cuff at the ankle and a jacket to help keep my skin covered. If this flashlight goes out before Veronica can come back, then my clothes will keep me safe for just a bit longer.
Not for much longer though. If these spiders can dig into human flesh, I'm sure they're equipped to rip through clothes.
I remind myself who I'm running for, who I'm staying alive for. Abel needs me. My kids need me.
Get back to Sam. Get back to Abel. Don't stop. Don't slow down.
I wish I knew how long it would take for Veronica to start working again, but she said she stretched herself too far, too thin. I don't know how I'm supposed to do this without her, but she's down, hurt. She says she's not hurt, but she sounded hurt. Those screams...
I'm not a robot, but I've had quite a few "out of body" experiences. I still felt pain during that time. I'm sure Veronica can feel pain too, even though she tells me otherwise.
Has she been going through this for the past six weeks, glitching, becoming overwhelmed, being in-or at least her mind believing that-she's in pain? Her brain is smarter now, faster. She said the speech she gave me was something she's created tons of times. I'm no mathematician, but I know from boredom with a calculator that there's over 86,000 seconds in a day, meaning Veronica's made over twice that in a day. Times that by six weeks... It's a lot.
So these glitches, these slip-ups, even if they last a few minutes, with how Veronica's mind works now, to her it may feel like hours, days even.
She says it's liberating, but the more I think about it, it sounds like torture.
"The Ministry was stockpiling so many secret weapons like those spiders," Veronica says suddenly. She sounds normal. Well, normal for a robot that used to be a human. "Napalm, burn cubes, senescent gas. That last one turns you inside out. I have records of tests on live subjects. I can't stop watching them.
"That's what happens when I glitch, Five. Bits of me shut down. Bits of me fixate on random date. It takes time to reassemble myself. Just keep running through that lab." Her voice starts to speed up, become quicker, higher pitched. "Different groups will uncover those weapon stockpiles now that the Ministry is gone. Use them. I've been trying to predict how. I've been building models to anticipate the behavior of every remaining faction in the United Kingdom, but the results are always g-g-g-
"-gibberish," A.N.N.I.E.'s voice finishes. I know it's Veronica, but I still feel that bit of fear when I hear it. My shoulders slump, a small bit of tension disappearing when her normal voice returns.
"Too many variables. I keep predicting Amelia will end up president of the world within ten years. It's the zombies that are the key variable. If I could just work them out! Their behavior should be simple, but it keeps mutating. The slow ones, the fast ones, the smart ones, and now the V-Types.
"That V-Type chased you into the basement, Five. Did it do that on purpose? Was it trying to trap you in here?"
My breath hitches at the sound of low moans behind me. "No, not them too."
Cameras whir. "It's okay, Five. There are zombies behind you, but they're not V-Types. They are likely former staff, given the lab coats."
Decaying flesh squelches and breaks, and when I look back and shine my light on the zoms, I taste bile on my tongue.
There are spiders hatching from the zombies' flesh. Baby blue-eyed spiders crawl out of their mouths, their eyes, their ears. Gray-red blood is spilling everywhere, but the zombies are still moving.
I look ahead, unable to keep watching the scene behind me.
The flashlight goes out.
"No!" I scream, hitting the flashlight again and again as my pace increases.
I hear them moving towards me. The zoms, the spiders.
"That was a bad time for your torch to die, Five. I don't think shaking it is going to help," Veronica says, but I keep hitting it, desperate for light. I kick off the spiders that crawl on my shoes and try to crawl up my pants' legs. "Parts of me still aren't responding, but I have an idea. There is an exit hatch straight ahead of you, leading to the surface. You don't need to see, Five. You just need to run. Hurry, before those spiders get you! Run!"
•
My breath hitches when I hear Sam laugh.
"No! Oh... no, look, the point is that Henry Fonda is a hero, Veronica! I mean, he's practically using the scientific method. You must like that."
"I know you're scared, Five," Veronica says steadily. "Running around in the dark with all those spiders. Just keep going."
"It's marmite, Ronnie," Sam says with a brief pause. "No, of course I'm trying to poison you! I just, well, I just-I just thought you'd be in the 'love it' crowd. That's all."
"I'm mostly better now, Five. I tried to patch Sam in for help earlier, but I don't have the processing power. But I can synthesize his voice from my memories," She says, although it's hard to hear her over the crunch of me stepping on spiders. None of them have broken skin yet. None of them have ripped clothes yet, but I know some must be on me by now.
"Veronica, how many times do I have to tell you you cannot conduct experiments on my baby? And the answer will be no if you ask Maxi or Paula too." He scoffs. "No, I won't change my mind if you get Callista to ask me! Yes, I know it works for everything else, but not for this."
"Sometimes it helps to hear friends in the dark. I'm fully in the lab systems thanks to the consoles you activated. I can transfer more power to the emergency lights. Enough that the bulbs will blow and set fire to the webbing. Brace yourself, Five. There will be light."
I hear the rising electricity and power in the bulbs, and I cover my head just as they blow, glass shattering everywhere and the webbing catching aflame. After having so little light for so long, the fire burns my eyes.
"That did it. Fire and light all through the complex. Five, you're covered in spiders!"
I shriek, looking down and seeing spiders all over my sleeves and pack. I throw them off onto the ground, the light seeming to have froze them. One was seconds away from reaching my right hand, and another few from reaching my neck. I kick off the few frozen on my pants' legs and then start running.
"Those bulbs can only blow once, Five, and webbing only burns briefly. My plan can only give you seconds of light. At the end of the corridor in front of you there is a ladder leading to an exit hatch. The spiders are going to try to attack you as soon as the webs stop burning, and you don't have your jacket anymore. Go, Five! Go! Run!"
I grab my pistol from off my hip. I brought it as a precaution in case we needed to slow our V-Type down. I shoot at any cluster of spiders I see. The gunshots are loud, and the hisses from the spiders are louder, but it pushes them back, the light scaring them too much to have them attack.
But it's already starting to dim, and they're already beginning to feel more confident.
My gun is strapped back to my hip before I even reach the ladder, and I climb. There are spiders all around, but the light is still there, just a bit, dying more and more with each second.
"That's it. The door is there," Veronica says, switching from the speakers in the lab to my headset. "Use your T-shirt to grab the handle and-"
She stops when I push the hatch open, crawling out into the rising sun, orange and red painting the sky. I collapse into the grass, breathing heavily and feeling relieved now that I'm no longer trapped and alone.
"You're safe. Those spiders won't follow you into daylight, but it's probably best to close the hatch, just in case."
I grab the hatch and slam it shut, trapping those spiders in the dark forever. I stand, resting my hands on my knees as I catch my breath.
I survived. I made it out.
"Five, I know you're good at keeping secrets. You've got a 99.99% confidentiality record. Please don't tell Janine about my... problem. The mental crashes only happen when I'm overtaxed. I can snap myself out of it, but I need to free up the processing space. I have to delete memories." Her voice holds a certain sadness I rarely heard when she was human. "Usually when things are that bad, I can only reach the memories I visit often. Today I had to... delete my childhood. Ages four to six. Everything with my father. It was either that or everything at Abel.
"And if you keep my secret, I will keep yours. From what I've gathered, only a few people know about you being immortal. Sam, mostly. It's obvious Peter doesn't know. I heard what he said to you. And I'll help you. I know you want to be mortal again, and I'll do what I can to find information on Van Ark. it won't be easy. He kept most of his research on paper files, but I'll be sure to tell you about anything I find about his cell regeneration research.
"You keep this secret because you're afraid others won't look at you the same way, that they won't trust you. I understand that. Janine isn't sure what to make of me as it is, Five. She won't trust me if she knows about this. I can fix the problem. I just need time. You'd better head back to Abel. They're very worried about you. Tell them... tell them I'll be in touch. And tell them I'm still me. Tell them I'm still Veronica. Please."
A/N: Here you go, guys! Lot of dialogue in this chapter. I hope you don't mind. Please be sure to vote and comment. Thank you and have a blessed day!