Paradox (23 page)

She’d wanted to face down the worm, but not like this.

The front portion of the worm’s body crunches across the sand toward her, while its tail segments stay in place, blocking
her escape. The creature’s bottomless eyes are like polished black glass, and suddenly they ripple like mirrors, like memory.
No! I have no memories!
And the noise is getting louder, the crush and grind and break of metal and glass like jagged shards digging into her, biting hot and sharp, trying to claw something loose inside her head.

The worm rises slowly to tower over her.

Its jaw opens wide, a circle like the night sky itself pulsing above her, like something as big as her entire world, something too big to outrun.

But she’s not running.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Ana whispers as Torus’s last bright edge slides under the far horizon, plunging the world into shadow. She whips out her dagger and shifts her feet into a fighting stance.

Its maw still gaping wide, the worm dives.

A gust of hot, sweet air rushes down to meet Ana as she leaps up and off her good foot, blade outthrust.

She lashes out wildly with the dagger and plunges it into something coarse and gluey. Ana finds herself suspended in midair, hanging from her dagger in complete darkness. She can’t see a thing around her. Then there’s a jolt, and she starts to move.
Oh
. She’s inside the worm’s mouth. It went down and she went up and—

She must have jumped right past the rows of razor teeth.

The worm swallowed her whole.

Ana swings her feet around, looking for purchase, but her hands are supporting all of her weight, and her fingers are slick with sweat. It’s getting harder and harder to hold on. The worm lurches, and Ana loses her grip on the dagger’s hilt. Her blade still caught in the worm’s side, she tumbles down to land onto a gummy, mushy surface.

Fumbling in the dark, Ana activates the map on her circlet and shines the light around. She’s in a damp, cavernous space that curves up to a peaked, bony ridge above her head. The walls are fleshy and dripping with fluid, which pools in a shallow stream around her feet.

She feels a prickling in her uninjured foot and gasps in realization: That neon ooze between the segments wasn’t acid. It was … digestive juice? Her left foot is raw in the dim half-light. Even worse, her jumpsuit is soaked with it; she can feel a burning sensation starting up all over her body. How long can she last in here before she’s broken down for food?

She hears and feels the worm grind into motion, crushing across the sand outside, and again her head resounds with the screeching of tearing metal and the crash of shattering glass.

There’s another sharp stab in her mind, and she knows what’s coming and she tries to fight it off but she can’t, not this time. It’s right in the middle of her head, pain like nothing she’s ever felt before, pain and heat and flashing lights and movement, faster and faster—

She’s at the wheel and she’s angry, steaming with the pent-up rage that comes from a lifetime of maintaining control
.

“No,” Mom says. “You’re not going and that’s final. If I had known that’s where this was heading, I never would have let you sign up for that program.”

“You didn’t
let
me sign up, Mom. They recruited me in spite of you.”
There’s a driving rain pelting the windshield outside, but that’s not what’s making her eyes blurry. Ana clenches the steering wheel more tightly
.

“Look, I’m sorry I never told you more about your dad,” Mom says. “I know that’s what this is all about. It’s just … it’s all still so painful.”

Caught off guard by the softer tone, Ana glances over, just in time to catch sight of the tear rolling down her mother’s cheek. Her graying hair’s come loose from its severe bun and she’s tucking and smoothing frantically, like even now she’s working to fix things, to make everything look okay
.

“Look, Mom,” Ana says, “I don’t want to upset you, but you’ve got to understand. Those Savitech registration forms you signed last year leave all the final decision making to me. You can’t stop me from going.”

“It’s not safe,” Mom whispers. “Something’s not right on that planet. I can’t lose you, too.”

Ana groans. “You’re not going to lose me! It’s the expedition of a lifetime—we’re going to be heroes. We’ll go down in history!”

“That’s what we said, too.” She sighs. “Do you know what your dad’s last words to me were?”

A tremor starts deep in Ana’s chest. At last she’s going to find out what happened to take her father away from her before she was born. Maybe if she knows that, she won’t need to escape across the galaxy, just as long as she can find out what really happened, just as long as she can know
.

And then—

The world flips over
.

The steering wheel slips and it’s only for a second that everything gets away from her but then it’s all too fast and oh God that was a corner but the car’s not turning not turning not turning and there’s a hand on her arm, her mother’s hand grabbing her and her mouth forming words that she can’t make out because there’s a light shining in her eyes there is noise and the
loudest sound she’s ever heard filling her ears, metal tearing, ripping apart like tissue paper, and blood and fear and heat and the whole world exploding and her hands are flying forward bursting through burning glass and everything is sharp, white-hot pain—

Ana topples forward on her hands and knees.

The worm’s flesh under her is soft and it’s burning into her hands, but she doesn’t care. As they sear and blister in the worm’s acid, she can see them twisting into the shape of her real-life hands—scar for scar, burn for burn, slice for slice—those hands that punched through the windshield in the fatal accident that
she
caused.

The accident, she now knows, that only she survived.

She understands now why she would exchange the memories of a lifetime for the chance to start over. The blame and guilt and crippling grief fall on her in a devouring swell, and even though she knows the worm is using those feelings to push deeper into her mind, she can’t muster the strength or even the will to push them away.

She wants to weep. Chen’s and Ysa’s deaths—the versions she witnessed, anyway, here on Paradox—take on new meaning for her, the way the warping of their bodies echoed what was going on in their minds. No wonder Chen took that last fateful step into the crater
—not giving up
, he said,
just letting go
—surrendering to the disease in the face of an unrelenting loop of his most terrifying memory. And Ysa, literally drowning in fear. And Todd …

Oh, Todd! Is this what you are feeling, too?

She sees his face as she last saw it, eyes smiling though his lips could barely move. She feels his finger tracing the lines of her face. And then she knows—she knows—

He wasn’t letting go of anything.

And if Todd is fighting so hard to hold on, how can she give up? With all the world hanging in the balance, in the end it’s just for one person that she will get up and keep going.

She has to try again.

Regrouping for another attack is easier said than done. Ana drags herself to her feet and, as best as she can, wipes the worm’s digestive juice off of her hands and on her pants. Her hands are red and swollen and covered in blistering sores, but she can still use them. The pain is good; it grounds her to what is real.

As real as this world gets, anyway.

But what can she do with those damaged hands? Her pistol is waterlogged and useless, the knife too small to do much against the worm, and her dagger is stuck above her head, in the roof of the worm’s mouth.

Wait. In the worm’s
mouth
?

Ana swings the light from her circlet around until she sees the hilt above and in front of her, behind the last row of the worm’s jagged teeth. Staggering, she reaches out to clutch the fleshy wall of the worm’s throat. It feels like a giant wet sponge,
but it’s easy enough to wedge her fingers into the mushy stuff to help her walk.

She stumbles forward, moving toward the worm’s teeth until she’s standing just below the dagger—looking impossibly, unreachably high. The worm’s inner wall is softer here, it’s like trying to grab a feather pillow. Her hand sinks in past her wrist, but she grips the flesh firmly and gets ready. Digging in her toes, with a hunk of flesh in each hand, Ana climbs.

About halfway up the wall, she thinks she feels a tremor under her hands and feet. Was that her imagination, or did the worm’s body twitch? Can it feel this?

The climb seems to take forever, though it can’t be more than several minutes before Ana reaches the dagger. She’s hanging nearly upside down from the roof of the creature’s mouth. The last thing she wants to do is fall again, so she digs her feet and one of her hands in as deep as she can before she reaches over to slowly and methodically pry the dagger loose. Yes!

What now?

The dagger had been wedged into the underside of the long bony ridge that runs the length of the worm’s body. The ridge starts just behind that last row of teeth. If the worm’s anatomy is laid out in a logical manner, Ana’s willing to bet that its brain is somewhere just above that point. With any luck, the roof of its mouth will be soft enough for her to saw through and reach that vital organ.

Or something, anything, that will make an impact.

At this point, she can’t afford to be picky.

She’ll need both her hands for this next step. She puts the blade between her teeth and bites down on it hard, nearly gagging at the foul worm-slime that covers it. Still mostly upside-down, she inches her way across the roof of the worm’s mouth, her arms screaming and every movement sending jolts of pain through her damaged rib.

Hand over fist, foot over leg. It’s painfully slow going.

And still she can feel the worm beating at the edges of her mind, trying to find purchase and get back in. That one-time memory wasn’t enough; the disease won’t stop until she is stuck in an endless replay loop of that moment, over and over. Until she’s dead.

She keeps moving, struggling to hold on, though she doesn’t think she can last much longer.

Finally, she’s there.

X marks the spot
, she thinks.

Gripping the dagger in her left hand, she thrusts upward with all her might.

The knife easily slices into and through the worm’s flesh—until it doesn’t. Halfway in, the blade stops with a dull
thunk
and goes no farther. The force of the aborted blow is jarring, and Ana’s numb toes slip.

She falls, screaming in frustration, trying and failing to hold on, grabbing at the dagger, which comes loose and arcs down with her. She lands with a splash of digestive juices, the knife spiraling away down the worm’s throat.

No!

The worm’s body twists and turns, tossing Ana from side to side. Her blow didn’t break through, but the monster must have felt it. Ana can sense the pressure in her head mounting—
there’s rain and the steering wheel is blistering hot in her hands and the wind whips the car to the side, and—

Ana screams again. She has to stay in control! She has to kill the worm.

But what can she do against it now? She’s weaponless, and the worm is burrowing deeper. It’s in her head, in her mind, and … 
Wait
.

Just like real life to the sim, and then the sim to real life. The worm is in her mind….

And if it works one way, why not the other?

It’s such a risk, such a terrible risk. She’s not even sure she has the strength to accomplish what she suddenly understands is needed. But if she fights the creature face to face, there is absolutely no way she can win.

It’s this shot or nothing.

Ana takes a deep breath and opens herself to the memory—
tears pouring down her mother’s face
—embraces it—
tears like the rain, like blood—
welcomes it
—wind lashing the car—
accepts it
—the lurch and spin, the loss of control—
accepts herself.