Oasis (The Last Humans Book 1) (16 page)

‘Fiona’ doesn’t respond. I suspect she won’t be bothering me anymore.

You’re running out of time,
the next part of the watch message says.
I’m about to patch a feed to this Screen from the real world.

A tiny image replaces the text on the ghostly Screen—an image that sends a chill down my spine.

I’m on the screen, back in that white room, in the exact position Mason was in during his last moments. Jeremiah is there too. He’s saying something. Tiny text, like ancient subtitles, tells me what he’s saying, even though I could’ve guessed.

“Why is your neural scan like that?” the old man in the real world asks. “What’s going on?”

So there goes Phoe’s attempt to hide this IRES business from Jeremiah and his people. At least, given his questions, it sounds as if he has no clue what’s going on with my brain.

I also can’t help but notice how quickly Jeremiah returned and that he’s holding the Stun Stick he dropped earlier, the doppelganger of the one that’s in my hand. That means the Council must’ve approved its use, despite what Fiona might’ve told them. I’ll remember this in the unlikely event that I live long enough to ever meet the Council and do something about it.

I force myself to stop watching. Now that I know what the situation is in the real world, the only way I can see to survive this boils down to beating the game and relying on Phoe to save me with her newfound resources.

It’s a small chance, but it’s better than none.

I give the in-game Jeremiah a kick to his side, but I do so pretty lightly, so as to not break anything. After all, a promise is a promise, even if I made it to an imaginary person who, even if he were real, doesn’t deserve my mercy.

This therapeutic activity done, I glance at the watch again.

The feed to the white room is momentarily gone, and the text is back.

Theo,
it says.
There’s something else.

I walk to the door as I wait for the Screen to refresh.

Now that IRES knows you’re certain you’re inside the game—
Another screen refresh.
Things could get kind of weird because it’s no longer bound by the parameters of your everyday reality.

“Great,” I whisper. All I need is for things to get weirder.

The watch returns to the scene in the white room, where Jeremiah is touching my unconscious body with the Stun Stick.

My body in the tiny image shakes as though it’s in pain.

Fortunately, I feel nothing here, in the game, aside from my heart beating as fast as a falcon diving for its prey.

Not feeling the pain of Jeremiah’s actions doesn’t make me feel any better, not when I know that my real-world heart could stop at any moment.

This realization reenergizes me for action, and I swiftly walk toward the door leading outside.

Opening the door, I step through it.

U
nable to believe
what I’m seeing, I tighten my grip on the Stun Stick.

Even for a fake world in a game, this is going too far.

I’m standing in something that looks like the Grand Canyon, only perhaps smaller. The red and brown colors of limestone and sand look nothing like what I’d expect to see in Oasis. It’s a terrain that no longer exists in the post-Goo world.

But the scenery isn’t the weirdest part, and neither is the door I just exited, which is hanging in the air like a warp gate with no building behind it.

No, the weirdest part is the creatures surrounding me—and I’m using the term ‘creatures’ loosely.

These beings appear to have come straight out of my worst childhood nightmares.

My earliest nightmare, like those of many other Youths, started after we learned about the end of the world by Goo, and specifically about the Artificial Intelligence explosion that preceded this event. It’s the AI stuff that the Adults described in graphic detail, going so far as to show us what this unholy, machine-spawned life might’ve looked like, as well as the atrocities these machines most likely committed against the ancient people before the Goo finished the job.

Now my skin crawls as I examine these ‘critters.’ We don’t have creepy-crawly creatures in Oasis, but that doesn’t mean I don’t find them disgusting.

The one closest to me is a ‘snake’—only it’s not a real serpent, which would’ve seemed harmless in comparison. Nor is it even a reptile. It’s a tangle of wires and circuit boards slithering to and fro, with two small, thin metal wires serving as its forked tongue.

Slightly farther from me is a ‘spider,’ which has as much to do with arachnids as the snake does with its animal cousins. It’s an eight-legged conglomeration of sensors, chips, and gears, with needles culminating in pincer-like claws.

If Dali had sculpted my childhood nightmares from ancient computer subparts, this canyon would’ve been the result.

All this runs through my head incredibly fast, and then I spring into action.

My insides flip-flopping with disgust, I jump over the snakes.

Two seconds later, I choke down bile as I jump over a bunch of spiders.

My pulse is sickeningly fast, but I remind myself of my current mantra:
This is all a game.

The mantra loses its potency when a ten-foot-tall scorpion-like creature-machine looms in front of me.

I skid to a halt.

The giant scorpion lumbers toward me, trampling the smaller abominations in its path. Zooming its lenses on me, it readies its tail—a tail that’s a web of various computer cables tipped with an enormous harpoon.

I swallow hard, fighting paralyzing fear.

The thing’s tail strikes at me with incredible speed.

I throw myself to the side, my teeth clanking as I land on all fours while still clutching the Stick in a white-knuckled grip. Scrambling to my feet, I see that there’s a foot-deep crater where I was standing.

A piercing, siren-like shriek tears the air next to me. I spin around and see that I landed next to the maw of another giant creature—a thing that looks like an enraged stegosaurus. Unlike the real dinosaur, this one’s armor is made of metal, and its dorsal plates are chainsaws.

Sucking in a breath, I swing the Stun Stick at it. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the scorpion backing away from the stegosaurus, as if in fear.

The dinosaur opens its mouth, revealing a row of scalpels that gleam in the sunlight.

Without hesitating, I bury my weapon in the creature’s camera-like eye.

Its screeching yelp creates an avalanche on one of the surrounding cliffs. The scorpion takes a few scared steps back.

The sound also sends primal fear skittering through my nerve endings—which works out well because my finger spasms over the button and activates the current of the Stick.

The stegosaurus vibrates, and a foul-smelling brown liquid streams out of its eye socket.

Emboldened, I press the button again, keeping a wary eye on the scorpion, which is recovering from its fear of the dinosaur.

The stegosaurus yelps again, and I smell burned rubber and wires—or at least that’s what I assume that horrible stench is.

With a final, violent shake, the stegosaurus collapses on its side, leaving me clutching the goop-covered Stun Stick.

My lips curl at the sight of the slimy substance, and I stuff the Stick into the waistband of my pants. A disgusting stream of mechanical blood is dripping down my leg, but I don’t have time to worry about that.

I run around the ruin of the dinosaur’s metallic body and examine the chainsaw-like dorsal plates. They stopped rotating, but they otherwise look functional.

Wrinkling my nose, I rip one out. It has a cord I can pull, and I reach to do so.

A shadow looms over me.

In a herky-jerky motion, I duck to the side. With herculean effort, I keep the chainsaw in my hands. I figure it’s best to move first and sort out what’s trying to kill me second.

And what’s trying to kill me is the scorpion’s tail, I realize a split second later. It penetrated the earth half an inch away from where my foot currently is—the place where my whole body was a moment ago.

With some coolly rational part of my brain, I determine that it’ll need a moment to get its harpoon out of the ground.

Spasmodically, I pull the cord on the chainsaw—a gesture I saw in that one and only horror movie I watched.

The chainsaw comes to life.

In an arc, I swing the roaring weapon at the scorpion’s tail.

The screech of metal against metal makes my skin break into goosebumps.

The scorpion’s tail thrashes, spilling a blue-green liquid that eats into the ground’s limestone.

I rip the chainsaw out and run, gripping the weapon tightly. The chainsaw emits nauseating gasoline fumes, making me feel as if I’m suffocating. Behind me, I hear the thud of something giant hitting the ground and glance over my shoulder to see the scorpion’s maimed body twitching.

I turn my attention back to the ground in front of me just in time to see a large snake leap at my leg.

Gasping in gasoline fumes, I swing the vibrating chainsaw at the snake and slash it in half.

One more monster down, and who knows how many more to go.

Another snake hurls its mechanical body at me, and I hack it apart without slowing down. A centipede is next, and I dispatch it too, my muscles straining from the effort it takes to control the heavy, buzzing chainsaw. Next is a man-sized robo-cockroach, followed by more insect-like shapes I find hard to categorize. I whack them all, ignoring the sweat pouring down my face, and when I glance back again, the trail behind me resembles an ancient computer warehouse after an explosion.

The creatures seem wary now, so I run unhindered, which gives me a chance to scan the nearby cliffs.

On top of one of them, I spot something familiar and head that way.

A tarantula doesn’t move out of my way in time, so I swing the chainsaw again and chop half of its mesh-wire appendages off. My breath rattles in my chest, and my legs burn from the effort of running. As I approach the cliff side, however, I forget my exhaustion.

On top of the cliff is a big neon ‘Goal’ sign.

It’s just as I suspected. The target is a duplicate of the one I never reached on the top of the tower.

There’s something else there, though.

I have to squint to make it out, but I’m fairly sure a set of doors just appeared on the top of the cliff, surreally hovering in the air.

Helmeted figures dressed in white pour out of the doors.

They’re Guards—only something is a little different about them. From this distance, I have trouble figuring out what it is.

The creatures around me scurry away from the cliff.

If the stupid Goal sign weren’t at the top of this thing, I’d follow the example of these creatures. Instead, I run for the cliff. With nothing in my immediate path, I risk glancing at the ghostly watch on my wrist.

The real-world Jeremiah is no longer holding the baton. He’s saying something to my unconscious self. The little subtitles read: “I’ve run out of the time the Council allotted me. This is your last chance to speak up, or to at least open your mind to our influence. I can tell you’re not under Oneness right now, which I initiated as per our usual protocol. You should know that Oneness is what makes the euthanasia painless. Without it, the process of your brain slowing to a stop will likely be extremely unpleasant.”

M
y stomach drops
. I shouldn’t have looked at the watch.

Trying to push my horror aside, I look up.

The cliff appears much taller up close—impossibly taller, as if the game made it grow.

Cognizant of the ticking clock in the real world, I drop the heavy chainsaw and make sure the Stun Stick is secure in my waistband. Mumbling, “This isn’t real,” I find a rock protruding out of the cliff and reach for it with my right hand, then place my foot on the stony ledge at the bottom. I then push off the ledge and grab for a higher rock with my left hand as I find another foothold with my other foot.

I recall watching ancient vacation advertisements and seeing smiling people climbing rocks this way. Allegedly, they did this for fun, not to escape peril or reach an important resource. I didn’t believe it then, and now I’m sure it’s a fabrication created by the Adults. They probably wanted to make the ancients look even more insane than they were (and from what I know, they were pretty nutty).

I start holding in a scream when I’m four feet off the ground.

When I’m ten feet up, I’m covered in cold sweat, and my hands are trembling.

A pair of ropes falls from the peak.

I blink, stunned, and examine the one within my reach.

These aren’t real ropes, as I initially thought. They’re woven out of a variety of cables—some silver metal, some bronze, and many more shielded by rubber (or whatever the ancients used) that’s every color of the rainbow. I recall a movie where someone had to disarm a bomb—that bomb had these kinds of wires.

Could this rope be from the Guards I saw exiting those surreal warp-like doors near the Goal sign?

My pulse drumming in my throat, I find a particularly good perch for my left foot and prepare for whatever’s coming my way.

A burned petroleum stench assaults my nostrils again. It’s accompanied by a whooshing sound.

Time seems to slow.

I lick my sandpaper-dry lips and look up.

A Guard is zipping down the rope.

Only this isn’t a Guard. This creature’s visor is broken, but there’s no face underneath—only a charred husk. Where his eyes should be are two bloodthirsty cameras. His shoulder and leg joints glint with the metal of various electronic subcomponents.

If an ancient computer and a vacuum cleaner ate a Guard, this creature would be what they’d throw up.

The ‘Guard’ is holding a set of gigantic garden scissors in his white-gloved hand. He aims the weapon at my stomach.

Twisting, I dodge and nearly fall.

The feeling of vertigo is terrible.

Seeing that I can’t hold on to this rock any longer, I push off with my feet and latch on to the rope a couple of feet under my assailant.

Instead of trying to hack at my head with the scissors, the Guard starts cutting the rope above his head.

I curse myself. If the creature’s objective is to stop me from reaching the Goal sign, of course he’d act suicidally. The only good news is that the hodgepodge of wires looks too hard for the scissors to cut through with ease.

I have seconds to act.

Without letting myself think, I wrap the cable-rope around my right ankle in the style of the craziest ancients of all: aerial circus performers.

My hand shaking, I reach into my belt, take out the Stun Stick, and twist the dial to a lower setting—slightly less than ‘knock out’ mode.

Taking a deep breath to calm my galloping heartbeat, I bury the Stick among the wires making up the rope and make sure that the tip touches as many of the exposed wires as possible. If I understand my physics correctly, electricity should travel up and down this rope and the Stick should stay put.

With a sickening flashback to Jeremiah torturing me, I press the button.

The shock of the pain and my uncontrollable shaking cause my hands to release the rope. Arms flailing, I fall, but the rope I wrapped around my ankle prevents me from plunging too far. With a scream, I come to a halt, swinging upside down like a pendulum. My back scrapes against the side of the cliff, and my ankle feels like it’s about to be ripped off.

Worst of all, the sight of the rope starting to unravel from my ankle threatens to loosen my bladder.

Using every ounce of strength in my abs, I reach up and grab onto the rope. My arms are trembling as I take in the results of my insane stunt.

The Guard is still hanging on to the rope, but his electric components are going haywire.

I untwist the coils around my ankle and climb higher up the rope. My palms are slick with sweat as I grab for the Stick still buried in the wires.

The Guard clumsily swings the giant scissors at me. Sparks fly as his joints screech from the movement.

I block his thrust with the Stun Stick, the impact nearly sending me flying.

He pulls the scissors back, but before I can rejoice, he throws them at me. I try to swat the projectile away, but the sharp blade slices across my chest, leaving a streak of burning pain. I gasp as blood spurts from the gash and nausea twists my stomach.

The creature violently shakes the rope.

I don’t know how, but I manage to climb another inch while ignoring the sickening dripping of my blood.

My fingers reach something metallic on the creature’s body, and I press the Stun Stick’s activate button.

The Guard shakes.

My head spinning, I move up the dial on the stick without letting go of the button.

The Guard’s thrashing slows.

I turn the dial all the way to ‘knock out’ mode.

Parts of the creature weld together, and then he lets go of the rope and nosedives to the ground.

Shaking in relief, I stuff the Stick back inside my waistband and look around.

There are two other ropes, each about ten feet away from me, with determined-looking Guards on them. They’re shaking their respective ropes in seesaw-like movements, clearly attempting to get closer to me.

Wrapping my legs tightly around the rope, I pull my shirt off, hissing in pain as I do so. A symphony of agony emanates from my chest as I rip the cloth into long strips and tie them around my wound to stop the bleeding.

The pain gets so bad I nearly lose consciousness.

When the white flecks in front of my vision go away, I realize I’m no longer dripping blood, though the makeshift bandage is already soaked.

I unclench my legs from around the rope and climb.

The Guards on the other ropes manage to swing and climb at the same time, getting closer with every movement.

If I let myself dwell on their inexorable approach, I’m screwed. So instead, I ignore them and focus on moving my hand up the rope and pulling myself up. Then, tightening my legs to hold myself in place, I repeat the maneuver. I climb like this until I make the biggest mistake of the last half hour.

I inadvertently look down.

Adrenaline hits me hard.

My jaw tenses, and my entire body locks up. I can’t move my arms and legs; they’re clutched, claw-like, around the rope.

Calm down,
I tell myself. I’ve already faced every human being’s biggest phobias—AIs, spiders, snakes, cyborg-people—and none of that unmanned me this much. What’s so freaking special about heights? If Phoe were here, she’d probably say it was the fault of my overactive amygdala, or something along those lines. She’d tell me to suck it up and not be a slave to my biology.

None of this helps. I still can’t move. Irrational fears can’t be curtailed by rational analysis. I’m about ten feet away from the edge of the cliff, but I might as well be miles away.

I will my arms to move, aware that the loss of blood is making me increasingly lightheaded.

Suddenly, agony erupts on the top of my head.

A gloved hand grabbed me by my hair—a hand belonging to the Guard on my right.

The pain brings me out of my stupor.

I jerk my head away, leaving a bloody piece of scalp in the Guard-thing’s hand as he swings away from me.

The wound he left must be deep, because my face is covered in blood. Nevertheless, I’m almost thankful to the creature for jolting me into action.

I’m climbing again, my fear of heights temporarily suppressed.

Left hand.

Right hand.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a shadow.

The Guard who ripped out my hair is swinging back toward me.

I cast a frantic glance to my left.

His partner is also about to reach me, and he’s holding something sharp—a cross between a bolt and a sword.

I tense, planting my feet firmly on the mountainside.

Holding my breath, I let the Guards get closer.

At just the right moment, using all my remaining strength, I push off the cliff with my legs.

I fly a couple of feet away from the cliff wall.

The Guards collide, and the sword thing stabs the Guard on the right.

I extend my legs. I’m about to swing back into them, Tarzan-style.

My feet hit the Guards. I get the left one in the helmet, and the right one in the shoulder.

Neither tries to defend himself, which means they’re either stunned by my hits or by their own collision.

Before they can recover, I tighten my grip on the rope with my left hand and pull out the Stun Stick with my right. In a fluid motion, I stick the Stun Stick into the red LED light that marks the eye of the sword owner. I press the button. His head almost explodes from the current. I leave the Stun Stick in what’s left of his eye socket and grab the hilt of the bolt-sword. As I suspected, my maneuver loosened his grip. I rip the sword out of the Guard’s hand, as well as out of his partner’s body. As I pull it out, I try to do so in a jagged motion to damage as much of the Guard’s internal machinery as I can.

Before either Guard recovers, I put the sword between my teeth like a pirate and use my arms to pull myself up the rope as quickly as I can. When I’m about four feet higher, I kick at their heads.

My attackers lose their grip on their ropes and tumble down.

One plummets without any signs of life, but the second one starts clutching at the air with his pincer-like fingers.

With a clank of metal, the creature manages to grab onto my rope several feet below.

The rope shudders, nearly causing me to lose my grip, but I manage to hang on.

Hoping he doesn’t shake the rope, I decide to do a risky maneuver. Letting go of the rope with my right hand, I grab the sword from between my teeth.

The Guard begins to climb up.

Though my sword hand is stiff with fear, I hack away at the wires below me.

The Guard moves closer.

I continue hacking away at the rope. Each downward swing of my weapon cuts some of the intertwined wires.

He climbs even closer.

I raise the sword higher and bring it down so hard that the ricochet causes my rope to swing toward the cliff.

All that’s left of the rope below me is a thin braid of red, blue, and green wires that look too thin to support the weight of the creature, yet, impossibly, they don’t break.

The Guard is almost on me. He reaches up with his claw-like pincers.

I use the sharp tip of the sword to cut at the leftover wires.

Only the red wire is left intact.

The Guard reaches higher, his pincers scraping at the sole of my shoe.

The red wire snaps with a soft
ping
sound.

Reflexively, the Guard continues to climb up the detached rope. As he falls, the creature claws at the cliff side, but all that accomplishes is leaving marks in the stone.

I stick the sword between my teeth again and resume the climb.

The last six feet are harder than all of the previous climb. Only two thoughts enable me to keep going:

This isn’t real. Don’t look down.

Finally reaching the edge of the cliff, I grip it with my hands and pull myself up, scrambling over the cliff on all fours. Breathing hard, I grab the sword from my mouth and stand up.

A thick coil of wires and screws securing the rope to the edge of the cliff is in front of me. I step over it and begin walking.

Almost immediately, I see the neon Goal structure. It’s a short sprint away. This close up, it looks like a giant rippling mirror made out of some mysterious luminescent material—a material blinding in its brightness.

All I have to do is find the energy to reach it.

Unable to help myself, I glance at the little watch on my wrist. On the tiny ghost Screen, Jeremiah is standing next to me, talking. On the table to his left is a syringe. The small captions scroll by, but I don’t bother reading them.

Instead, I push my tired muscles into motion and run.

When I’m two-thirds of the way to my target, I jerk to a sudden halt.

A new hovering door appears between the Goal and me.

Unlike the others, this one looks worn and rusted. With a screech of unoiled hinges, the door opens.

Incredulous, I stare at what exits through it.