Haven (The Last Humans Book 3)

I
’m brimming
with contentment as I walk down the beach, Phoe’s slender fingers wrapped in mine. The highlights of our activities flash across my mind’s eye: frolicking in the sun, reading books, listening to music, watching movies, swimming in the warm ocean, eating Phoe’s exquisite culinary inventions, and many intimate activities that residents of Oasis would see as beyond obscene. We’ve spent what feels like weeks doing all of the above, here in the beach paradise Phoe constructed. I’m currently an uploaded mind—a backup that she animated—but that doesn’t make our fun any less real. In all this subjective time, only a few minutes have passed in the real world of Oasis, where my biological body is sleeping in his bed.

In theory, we could do this all night long, which would equal to many years here. This gives me pause, and I ask, “Will I feel groggy in the morning if I spend the whole night here? Or does my body get sleep regardless of what this version of my mind does?”

“You’ll feel rested.” Phoe’s voice is as serene as the foamy surf around my feet. “This will feel like the longest dream anyone’s ever had.”

“Cool,” I murmur, and we walk another couple of miles down the shore. I focus on the pleasurable feel of my feet touching the sand, the pungent smell of kelp, and most importantly, the sensation of Phoe’s delicate hand clasped in mine.

As I gaze at the never-ending ocean, all our recent troubles seem far away. It’s hard to believe that the horrors of the IRES game and Jeremiah torturing me happened only three days ago. It’s even harder to process all the insanity of Birth Day. My ploy to Forget Phoe to fool the Lens of Truth, flying the disk to the black building, enduring that horrific Test—all that seems incredibly distant at this moment. Even learning that Council members don’t die, but ascend to a place called Haven—an existence similar to the virtual world I’m enjoying—feels like something that happened long ago.

The tension in Phoe’s hand bursts my daydreaming bubble, and I turn to look at her.

She’s stopped walking, and there’s a strange expression on her face. Before I have a chance to ask her what’s wrong, she jerks her hand away and grabs her head protectively, her features contorting in agony as she backs away.

My pulse leaps. “Phoe?” I take a small step toward her.

She continues backing away, cradling her head between her palms. “Something is happening,” she says through gritted teeth. “It’s Oasis-wide—”

“Hello,” a strange, gurgling voice interrupts. “I should have no problem destroying you here, in this little environment, as easily as anywhere else.”

I look around frantically.

No one else is here, but I do recognize that voice.

It’s a younger version of Jeremiah’s, though it sounds as if he’s under water.

“Theodore,” he says in that odd voice. “I have to say, I’m surprised to see you collaborating with this soon-to-be nonentity.”

“What’s going on, Phoe?” I think, fighting a sudden bout of dizziness. “Is this a joke?”

Before Phoe can answer, the sand to my right shimmers and rises up, as though a powerful wind is blowing upward from underground. The sand forms a small dune and morphs into a murky, thick, liquid-like substance. I recall reading that glass is made of sand, and for a moment, I wonder if that’s what I’m seeing—some sort of molten glass. Whatever the substance is, it begins to congeal, taking form.

“This is so bad,” Phoe whispers in my mind, and I get the feeling that if she spoke out loud, her voice would be shaking.

“Why?” I try not to panic. “What is this—”

A rustling to my left catches my attention. I turn and see that the same sand-to-liquid process is happening over there.

I’m about to repeat my question when I hear another rustling to my right and see the same morphing action occurring there as well.

My heart hammering, I glance at Phoe. She’s looking at the liquid stuff behind me with alert determination bordering on terror.

I follow her gaze and have to blink a few times.

It’s now possible to make out the rightmost liquid shape for what it is—not that “what it is” makes any sense. The dune is much bigger now, and instead of molten glass, it reminds me of a jellyfish. There’s a vague outline of a human face on top of the amorphous blob, and it’s somewhat recognizable as Jeremiah’s—though if I hadn’t heard his voice, I might not have realized that.

The being starts to wave from side to side, seemingly trying to move forward. Where the abomination touches the sand, that sand turns into the same viscous, clear protoplasm that the creature is made of. Frantically, I look around. The same process is happening all around me, though the Jeremiah-blob behind me is in the early stages of its gelatinous development.

“Phoe, did you create this?” I ask in desperate hope. “Is this your idea of fun—making a Jeremiah that got crossed with a giant amoeba?”

“No, I didn’t create this.” Phoe’s tone is full of anxiety. “And rather than comparing this to a bacterium, it might be more accurate to say it’s a virus.”

“A vi—”

I’m interrupted by Phoe’s sudden movements. She gesticulates and an object appears in her hands. It looks like a cross between an ancient vacuum cleaner and a bazooka.

She points it at the rightmost—and largest—Jeremiah-blob and pulls the trigger.

With a yelp, the strange creature is sucked into Phoe’s weapon. As soon as it’s gone, Phoe points the weapon at a spot of sand a few feet away and squeezes the trigger again. In a stream of disgusting liquid, the creature half flies, half pours out onto the sand, splattering bits and pieces of itself along the way. Wherever a droplet of the protoplasm falls, a new blob congeals. Now that I know what to look for, I see Jeremiah’s face forming in all of them.

Phoe grabs my hand, squeezing it hard as she drags me through the patch of sand that she just cleared with the bazooka vacuum cleaner. The Jeremiah amoebas—or viruses, if Phoe is correct—slither after us like gigantic slugs. As they crawl, I notice to my horror that the sand behind them shifts into more of them.

Phoe drops her weapon and raises her hands, palms up, to the sky. A blinding flash follows the gesture. I’m momentarily blinded, and when my vision clears, I notice two extra people on the beach. Both of them look identical to Phoe. The two pixie-haired women examine the slugs approaching them.

The original Phoe picks up the bazooka-like weapon and uses it on the blob crawling right behind us.

“Don’t touch that substance.” Grabbing my hand again, Phoe hurries down the quickly diminishing untainted sand, dragging me along.

I can’t help but glance behind us. The two Phoes raise
their
hands in the same gesture my Phoe used to create them. I look away, but the flash, twice as bright as the last time, stings my eyes anyway. As soon as the light fades, I look back. Not surprisingly, there are now four Phoes. Then the four Phoes raise
their
hands to the sky. I avert my gaze and squint, but the flashes nearly blind me anyway. The four Phoes are now sixteen.

My guide jerks my hand, and I pick up my pace. A slug-blob is an inch away from my leg when my Phoe, the one with the vacuum cleaner in her hand, uses her strange weapon to remove the thing from our path.

“It’s futile,” Jeremiah’s voices say in unison. “You know you’re just prolonging the inevitable. I’ve cleaned up enough of you to prove this, haven’t I? Or does this humanoid instantiation make this part of you dumber?”

I look back and see those sixteen Phoes respond by raising their arms to the sky. After a supernova-bright flash, they multiply yet again. Given that each new batch was a square of the prior one, I assume that there are now 256 Phoe duplicates, and eye-balling it, I see about that many. If they do the maneuver again, there will be sixty-something thousands of them.

The virus, or whatever it is, must’ve done the same math and is determined not to allow it. As one, the hundreds of instances of Jeremiah throw themselves at the multitude of Phoes.

It’s painful to look at. Wherever the slime of the attackers touches a Phoe’s skin, that skin turns into the disgusting slimy substance, and from there, that Phoe quickly starts melting into clear protoplasm. What’s truly horrific is the end of that transformation. That unfortunate version of Phoe inevitably turns into another instantiation of the Jeremiah-slug-thing.

The rest of the Phoes don’t wait to join their sister’s fate. They gesture, and bazooka vacuum cleaners appear in their graceful hands. They use the weapons to push back the wave of Jeremiahs.

The Phoe holding my hand looks back, and her eyes widen. Urgently, she says, “I won’t last much longer. I’ve written this version of myself—with memories of you—into the DMZ, or Limbo. If I ever recover from this attack—”

The world shudders.

I follow Phoe’s petrified gaze but don’t comprehend what I’m seeing.

What I’ve been thinking of as the ocean is no longer made up of salty water, but of the horrible Jeremiah ooze that surrounds us. If my heart wasn’t a simulation, I think it would’ve stopped. The whole ocean begins to form into a shape. Hurricane-loud laughter rumbles in the distance, and a mountain-sized tsunami hits the beach, bringing with it millions of gallons of the disgusting protoplasm. It covers the barely struggling Phoes and then rushes toward the last Phoe and me.

She steps in front of me, bravely facing the tsunami, and yells, “I’m writing you back into your sleeping mind.”

As soon as the meaning of her words registers, my consciousness turns off.

T
hrough the haze of sleep
, I hear a siren-like noise.

With vivid clarity, I recall the events on the beach, and my grogginess vanishes. Before I open my eyes, I forcefully think at Phoe, “Was all that a dream? And if it wasn’t a dream, then what the hell was that?”

Phoe doesn’t respond. Instead, the siren-like noise grows louder.

“Phoe?” I subvocalize.

She doesn’t answer, but the alarm, or whatever it is, blasts even louder.

“Phoe,” I whisper and open my eyes.

Flashes of red light assault my eyes, forcing me to blink a few times.

“What did you just mumble?” Liam asks.

My friend’s voice is right next to my ear. I flinch, rolling away. It could be my confused mind playing tricks on me, but Liam sounds frightened—an emotion I didn’t think him capable of feeling.

My eyes adjust, and I make out Liam’s features as he bends over my bed. His eyebrows are drawn together in his signature “forehead caterpillar” look, and the flickering red lights give him a strange glow.

“Some kind of alarm is going off,” Liam says as I push myself up into a sitting position. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Weird,” I mumble, swinging my feet down and gesturing for the mouth cleaning.

Nothing happens.

I gesture for Food and water—nothing.

In the middle of my attempt at a mental command, I hear Liam say, “If you’re trying to bring up a Screen, or anything else for that matter, it won’t work. It’s like the Witch Prison in here.”

To confirm his words, I gesture to bring up a Screen.

“Told you,” Liam says when nothing appears. His breathing sounds heavy.

I attempt—and fail—to mentally summon a Screen.

“Phoe, what the fuck?” I say out loud and get up.

Liam looks at me in confusion, and Phoe doesn’t answer despite my saying her name out loud—the final confirmation of what I already know.

Something has gone terribly wrong. The question is: what?

Without my usual footwear, my feet turn into icicles when they touch the chilly floor. Ignoring that, I walk a lap around the room, trying to make sense of the situation. The flickering red light is coming from every direction, replacing our usual white illumination.

“Did you check to see if the door is unlocked?” I ask Liam and follow up with a mental shout at Phoe: “Where are you? What the hell is happening?”

Phoe still doesn’t answer. Liam walks over to the door and gestures, but the door doesn’t respond to Liam’s command.

“Try opening it manually,” I suggest in desperation and subvocalize my plea at Phoe again.

She’s silent.

Liam pushes the door by hand, and it opens into the hallway. The alarm continues to blare. I wonder whether it’s some kind of fire drill or the real deal. The air inside the room certainly feels musty and unusually still.

Liam’s breathing seems to confirm the latter supposition. His chest is expanding and contracting in a quick, labored rhythm. Of course, that doesn’t have to be carbon monoxide poisoning; it could just be fear.

“Attention,” Phoe says in a staged, super-loud voice. “Attention, please.”

“Phoe,” I yell mentally, but then notice that Liam is standing at attention, as if he heard her too.

“Oxygen production and circulation compromised. Evacuate the building immediately,” Phoe’s booming voice orders.

“Is this a drill?” Liam asks.

My eyebrows rise. “You heard that?”

Liam cocks his head, his forehead pinched. “Dude, a deaf person would’ve heard that.”

“Oxygen production and circulation compromised. Evacuate the building immediately,” the voice repeats, and I realize that though it sounds like Phoe, it isn’t exactly her. Now that I’m paying closer attention, it sounds like a recording of Phoe’s voice delivered by one of those ancient automated phone systems. There’s no emotion, and the diction is slightly off.

Liam steps out into the hallway, then returns a second later. “We should go.” His voice is unusually raspy. “Everyone else is getting out.”

As if to emphasize his suggestion, Phoe’s mechanical voice repeats its command for us to evacuate.

“Okay,” I say. “Let’s go.”

In the hallway, the red lights are brighter, and the sinister announcement is louder. The Youths Liam saw earlier are gone, leaving the corridor completely empty.

Feeling increasingly uneasy, Liam and I start sprinting down the hallway. As we run, I consider the distance we have to cover and curse my younger self. Back when we were choosing our lodgings, it was
my
idea to take a room on the top floor and in the farthest corner of the Dorms. In my younger self’s defense, I didn’t think emergencies ever happened in Oasis. To some degree, I still can’t believe an emergency is happening.

“Phoe,” I yell mentally. “Phoe, if you don’t answer me, I’m never speaking to you again.”

She doesn’t respond—unless one counts the robotic announcement as a reply.

When we turn the corner, I see a couple of disheveled Youths running toward the stairs. They have a huge lead on us.

Liam’s breathing is audible now, which concerns me. The optimist in me hopes Liam is breathing this way because he’s neglected his cardio, but I know that most likely, Liam is having a hard time breathing because the oxygen has stopped flowing in the Dorms and he’s experiencing asphyxia—a condition I’ve only come across in books and movies.

I examine myself and realize my own breathing is completely normal. That stumps me for a moment, but then I recall the Respirocytes—the nanomachines Phoe enabled in my bloodstream a couple of days ago. This technology serves the same function as red blood cells, only the Respirocytes are a few hundred times more efficient at carrying oxygen than the little biological guys. When she first did this to me, I tested it out by running while holding my breath, and the effort it took was a joke. I also used the Respirocytes to survive a Guard choking me.

My selfish introspection is interrupted when I see Liam struggle to open the staircase door.

“Let me,” I say.

When he moves his hand away, I pull on the door. The door opens so easily that I worriedly marvel at Liam for struggling with it at all.

We dash down the stairs. I can’t help but notice that Liam’s breathing is growing more frantic, and his speed is decreasing with every step.

“Dude, do you want to lean on me as we walk down?” I ask him when his dash becomes a careful walk.

“Me, lean on
you
?” Liam says with a wheeze. Though talking is clearly difficult for him, Liam’s somber expression brightens a little. He thinks I’m kidding since he was always considered the stronger one in our crew. “Right. That’s happening. Now shut up. Oxygen is low, and we’re wasting it by talking.”

“It’s just that the climb down is easier for me,” I say. “There’s a reason for it, and I’ll explain when we get outside, but just trust me when I say you should let me help.”

Stubbornly shaking his head, Liam starts walking down at a faster pace. His burst of energy doesn’t last, though. As we approach the second floor, he falters, and to stop himself from falling, he slows to nearly a crawl. A few moments later, even walking slowly seems beyond him, and he clutches at the handrail, wheezing.

“Okay, that’s it. You’re letting me help.” Without waiting for him to object, I grab his left arm and drape it around my neck. Once I have a good hold on him, I move as fast as I can.

I thought Liam would complain, but he gives a grateful grunt and leans on me as we make our way down. I press my index finger to his wrist and sneakily check his pulse. His heart is beating frighteningly fast. I look him over, keeping my expression neutral to mask my worry. It’s hard to tell whether it’s a side effect from all the red alarms, but Liam’s eyes look bloodshot and his face has a blue pallor. On top of that, the veins on his forehead and neck look swollen.

Half a staircase later, my back is hurting from stooping to accommodate Liam’s shorter height. On the bright side, I don’t feel any effects of oxygen deprivation.

“Phoe,” I shout mentally. “You don’t even have to answer. Just enable Liam’s Respirocytes, please.”

She doesn’t respond.

Liam leans more heavily on me, forcing me to slow down. We’re only one floor away from the ground, but once we reach the main floor, we still have five long corridors to traverse.

Halfway down to the first floor, Liam begins wheezing harder and clutching at his throat.

I grit my teeth and ignore my back screaming with every step.

Twenty steps to the bottom.

Fifteen steps.

To distract myself from the strain, I focus on counting the stairs and ignoring the biting cold seeping into my bare feet. I also listen to Liam’s quick, gasping breathing.

Then a new development shatters my concentration. Liam’s frantic breathing ceases—or slows to barely audible. At the same time, he slumps, putting all his weight on me.

We’re ten steps away from the bottom, but we might as well be on top of Mount Everest.

No. I’m getting Liam out of the building.

My heart starts beating like an ancient power tool as adrenaline blasts through me. I tighten my grip on Liam, and in a haze of ripping muscles, I get us down a step.

One step conquered, nine more to go.

Ignoring the pain in my back, I drag Liam down another step, and then another.

The last seven steps go by as though I’m in a trance. All I see is red; all I hear is the blaring of the announcement. I no longer feel my muscles straining or feel my spine aching.

Only when my foot touches the flat ground does the weariness hit me with full force. Instead of giving in to it, I carefully lay Liam down, then grab him under his arms and begin dragging him out of the building.

Twenty feet later, my arms feel like I have lead coursing through my veins. I also catch myself breathing heavily, though I’m not sure if it’s from the lack of oxygen or the exertion. Not that it’ll matter to Liam soon.

I can tell that my muscles will fail in a matter of seconds.