The Aftermath (3 page)

A light flickers across the statue’s concrete face, and I think I am the one holding it. There’s no way I can be sure, though.

I am not in my body.

For the second time in one day, I’m on the outside, in the white room with the red flashing lights.

The girl in this room—the girl whose eyes I stare out of—shakes out her pale hands. On the screen a sleeping bag cracks up and down. Dust floats from the fabric before the bag drifts to the floor.

“Hungry?”

We turn to the right, to a screen where Jeremy’s brown eyes greet us. They look empty—exactly like Ethan’s eyes. I feel this person’s head nod, hear this girl’s voice and mine simultaneously say, “Didn’t think you’d save anything for me.”

I watch the screen in a mixture of horror and curiosity as it changes. The museum fades into the background. At the very top,
THE AFTERMATH
is written in a gritty block font with every few letters distorted and the color of blood. Just under that, on the right of the screen, is my photo followed by several rows of information.

Name: Claudia Virtue

Date of Birth: 04/22/2023

Blood Type: B Negative

Height: 5'3"

Weight: 101 Lbs.

This is the same data written on the bent, peeling ID card I found in my back pocket when I woke up three years ago—the only difference is the photo and my height and weight are all current. At least, I assume my measurements are recent. I’ve never come across a scale, though I have taken up counting visible bones when I wash up in the privy.

Beneath my personal information are a bunch of words and numbers. Long colored bars.

Life. Eighty-six. Green.

Health. Seventy-one. Yellow bar.

Sustenance. The number beside this is low—thirty-three—but I watch as it raises and the red gauge slowly changes color. Forty-two, red. Fifty-one. Sixty, orange. Seventy-two...yellow. The Health numbers have changed, too. Low eighties and neon green.

The girl moves her finger across the empty space in front of us. The red X at the top of the screen glows. My picture and the information collapse, showing the museum again. The others are lying on their bellies in a circle around one of the pillars, on top of sleeping bags with their flashlights creating a ring of light. The girl takes one step forward. Transparent letters flash in the middle of the screen.
Walk Mode.
She taps her palm out once and the picture gradually zooms in on my friends. The girl flicks her hand two more times, the screen stills and she stands right above Ethan.

Through the girl’s eyes, I can see a stray eyelash on his cheek; I can count the strands of hair falling onto his bruised forehead.

He tilts his face up and smiles. The cut on his neck looks so much worse on the screen, and I want to shout at him. Shake him until he shows some emotion other than contentment, does something to address his awful wound. “It took you forever,” he says.

“I was at thirty percent,” I listen to myself say. “It always takes more time when that happens.”

“Stop doing that so much, will you?” April’s voice says from my left side. When I turn to her, I am back in the museum, back inside my own head and body. “We’ll never finish this game with your character getting sick or beat up at every turn.”

The corners of my mouth feel as if they’re ripping open as my lips are coerced into a smile. I catch a glimpse of my reflection in one of the dark windows. My face isn’t damaged like Ethan’s. There’s not a new blemish in sight; even my sunburn is gone.

And as I sit, listening to the others talk and responding with someone else’s words, I come to terms with something terrifying.

My reality isn’t at all what I believed it to be. It’s not even real.

I’m some sort of puppet, and this girl, Olivia, is the one pulling my strings.

CHAPTER FOUR

An hour later, I tell the others that I’m ready to leave. This is something I always say before I go to sleep, sometimes losing consciousness for hours and days at a time, and for the first time I understand why—it’s not me that’s leaving. It’s the girl, Olivia. Ethan draws me in for a kiss as usual, stroking my blond hair from my forehead as he promises me we’ll be together again soon. Then April and Jeremy mumble goodbyes.

But for some reason, this time it’s different. I don’t black out like I normally do. At least not entirely. I feel the numbing static from earlier start in the middle of my head, but when it reaches my eyes and ears, it pauses. For the next hour the pricking sensation slides up and down my entire body, dragging me in and out of darkness like a chaotic light show.

And then, consciousness. I’m awake in the museum, in our safe room. Every shelter we’ve ever lived in has The Save—a space we hide out in to rest. It’s where I am when I lose consciousness, and when I come to after a lapse. I’ve got a suspicion The Save has a function other than what I believed it to be.

My eyes fix straight across from me at Ethan’s hazel ones. They’re open and emotionless. His lips are drawn into a thin line. What are we?
Where
are we?

How did I get here?

I feel my right eyelid twitch, feel the muscles in my fingers tense as I try to move them. Am I human? If The Aftermath isn’t even real, how do I know I am?

What am I?

When I’m sucked back into unconsciousness, I’m hit with a terrifying string of nightmares. At first, I dream of the boy in the elevator, with his clean face and dark eyes. My time with him is fleeting—just long enough for him to give me a crooked smile and cover his lips with his index finger. “Good night, Virtue,” he murmurs. Then he swings out at me, rendering me unconscious, sending me to another dream world that’s even more terrifying.

Men and women in crisp dark suits stalk in slow, deliberate circles around me like vultures. They’re so close I can smell them—the scents of vanilla perfume and cigar smoke and foul-smelling armpits mingling together—and I feel sick to my stomach. There’s no food left in me to vomit, though. I must have gotten rid of it all earlier, after...

There is something I can’t remember—something important—but it refuses to come to me.

“She’s the first,” a man says from the back of the crowd.

The first what?

A woman touches a few strands of my hair—it’s long in this nightmare—and studies me carefully. She reminds me of an owl with her large light-colored eyes and bobbed salt-and-pepper hair. “I was told she performed exceedingly well in the War trial. When do you plan to put her in?”

“Tonight,” the man in the back says. The woman smiles at me. She has small teeth, like a piranha.

I want her to stop touching me. I don’t want to be in this dream any more than my last nightmare, the one with the metallic white machine and the mechanical arms. But I can’t leave. I’m standing perfectly still, letting these people appraise me. And this time I’m certain I’m in my own body.

“I’m a human,” I plead, but this only seems to amuse the group of people. They smile at me as if I’m a small child speaking her very first words. A man wearing a black-and-gray-dotted tie touches the top of my head. I shriek as pain blisters my scalp.

“I’ve heard The Aftermath’s designers did an excellent job constructing the game’s world. My business partner toured the game and says it’s the most realistic one yet, with the asteroids and ruins,” the man says, ignoring how much agony his touch is causing me. He shoots a look over his shoulder.

The smug voice behind everyone replies, “Physical reality is always realistic, but I agree. The Aftermath is a winner. Claudia is perfect—a symbol of dedication and progress.” When the crowd separates and the man walks forward, I can’t make out his face—it’s blurry—but I know I want to hurt him.

I’ve never wanted anything so much in my life.

“And let it be known, I am dedicated to this cause,” the man adds, and applause erupts around him.

My nightmare disintegrates the moment I fling myself at him, my fist tight around the sharp needle I find hidden in the waistband of my starched pants.

My eyes open, and I’m back in my body, staring around The Save.

I am human.

And I know with conviction that my dream—at least the second one about the crowd—was a memory, something that happened to me before The Aftermath. As I lie on my side, my arm falling asleep from the weight of my body, I’m ecstatic—or as ecstatic as a person who just found out her life is a fake can be. My first memory. My first genuine, frightening memory that doesn’t involve The Aftermath.

I am not just some virtual person stuck in a reality that was created by computers. I am something else. Something called a character. A human trapped inside an intentional hell that’s been created by designers—other humans. These are my last thoughts just before the electric current that makes my teeth chatter descends upon me.

And this time, it powers me down completely so that there are no more memories.

* * *

“We need to plan a massive raid,” I’m saying to my clan when the other girl inside my head flips the lights back on. I’m positioned on top of my sleeping bag in a sitting position with my legs crossed at the ankles. “It’s been too long, and I feel like I’m losing my touch.”

“Losing your touch?” April turns her gaze toward me, and my shoulders lift in a shrug. “
Okay,
what are you thinking, Claudia?”

“We could go to The Badlands,” Jeremy suggests, rolling a bottle of water to April. That’s where we’d found her a couple of months ago. The Badlands are a part of the city where a bunch of flesh-eaters live inside and around a football stadium—a death trap that’s only intensified by the massive sinkholes in the football field and where some of the buildings once stood. When the flesh-eaters are finished with their victims, those holes become a resting place for the dead.

The Badlands are about five miles south of here, and the last time we made the trip there, we killed several flesh-eaters. Raided everyone we came in contact with, cannibals and Survivors. Everything we did was dangerous and reckless, and I remember it all.

When I realize that I am inside the white room again, I don’t think I’m the only one those memories belong to.

“If we go to The Badlands, we’ll have to use points to upgrade weapons. It’s not like we can just go in with knives and a few guns,” April complains. On the screen, she’s twirling the ends of her red hair around her skinny wrist. Three twirls. Unravel. Four twists. Unknot. I remember all the times I’ve told her she should upgrade to a haircut.

“That’s how you’ll get caught,” I’d told her once. “Some flesh-eater is going to snag you by all that stupid hair and I’m not going to do a damn thing to save you. I don’t care how many points you offer me.”

At the time, I’d inwardly cringed over how callous and heartless I sounded. How confusing my words were, when truly I’d do just about anything to keep my group safe. Now I don’t think it was myself at all saying that to April.

“You have to spend points to make points,” the girl in the white room says in sync with me inside the game. “Unless you’re too afraid of failing, April. If that’s the case, maybe you’d be better suited for another group. One that moves at your pace. I’m sure you’ll finish up by the time you’re twenty-one.”

“Olivia—” Ethan begins, but he quickly corrects himself. “Claudia...maybe we should save The Badlands for later. Give ourselves another month or two to load up on some better weapons, get some new supplies.”

Olivia, the girl in the ten-sided room, doesn’t say anything for several seconds. She taps her foot against the white laminate floor. She’s wearing heels. Just like in the nightmare that I had after I was hit in the courthouse.

But I don’t think that was a dream, either. It must have been what was happening to me at that very moment. Could it be that the Regenerator and Dr. Coleman are both real? At last, I hear Olivia sigh. “You, too, Ethan?” He nods. The way he moves his head so quickly can’t be good for the gash under his chin. “Fine. Let’s do things your way this time. See how well we manage.”

I can tell she’s livid, though, by her sharp, jerky motions. She slams her hands out in front of her, which pulls up a screen that lists supplies. There are weapons—every knife and gun and hacksaw that’s come into my possession over the past three years, as well as my clothing and the little bit of food I currently have. The Glock is on this list, and so is the cold-weather jacket I took from the woman at the courthouse.

More than thirty-six months of my life, summarized on ten oversize screens.

“But just so you know, I’ve plenty of good weapons to go to The Badlands.” The center screen focuses in on April as Olivia and I say this. She starts to say something else, but then there’s a knock on the door behind her. “What?” she snarls, turning around.

“Your car is waiting upstairs to take you to your academy,” a woman says.

“I’m not going today.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Get off now or I’ll come in and disconnect you.”

When Olivia twists back to her screens and the game, she is seething. Her hands are flushed as she works her way through the various menus, and I imagine her face is just as red. I wonder what she looks like. “Ugh...I’ve got to go to class. Hopefully, I’ll be back tonight.”

A minute later she opens a screen with a square in the middle that reads, “Gamer Name” (GmrGrl06) and “Password,” which is so small I’m unable to read what it is. Below that information is a purple horizontal block with the word
Logout
inside of it. When she slaps her hand over the bar, the images on the screens disappear, leaving nothing but transparent glass.

This is when I completely lose her, and I find myself in the exact spot I was the night before. Flickering in and out of consciousness. One moment there’s blackness—so dark it’s as if I don’t exist at all—and the next I’m in her head for a few seconds, observing flashes of what she sees. A world made of buildings that are whole and vehicles that aren’t rusted and broken and people who aren’t emaciated and hopeless. A world that is vastly different from The Aftermath. This change in cognizance happens so often and so quickly that when I find myself partially awake inside the museum, surrounded by a bunch of blank faces, my head is reeling from dizziness.

My hands ball into fists.

Because I will them to.

“Wake up,” I try to say between my clenched teeth. It comes out sluggish and barely audible—the static current is slinking down my face. “Get up and fight this.”

Before I go to sleep again, I think of Olivia, the girl in the decagon room. The girl I’ve dreamed about.

The girl who operates a character named Claudia Virtue in The Aftermath.

It’s all a game to her, and she’s controlling me. Olivia.

My gamer.