Simple (22 page)

I ran my hands through my hair and sat down on the edge of the bed as Mic went about the work of powering down Two and Deraline.  In spite of what I thought that I saw, it was late. My nerves were fried, and I was running out of steam.  I felt extremely confused, and that bothered me.  Maybe I was finally going insane.  The world was turned completely upside down.  I’d survived by allowing my heart to freeze over, and now here I was mixed up with a group of people I couldn’t stand the thought of losing.  I’d allowed myself to let my walls down, and that alone should have been a clue to me that I wasn’t thinking straight.  I didn’t know what to make of my feelings, but I wasn’t ready to go back to my room alone.  Mic had left me to my thoughts as he reviewed his precious data, which was a good thing, because I didn’t think I could say anything intelligent at that point.  Alice and Giz had the decency to leave me alone as well.  I noticed them standing in the bathroom, quietly discussing what they were going to do for the night, and decided I would see where I stood.

“Can I ask you something?” said Mic.

“You don’t believe me now, do you?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You don’t have to, I can see it in your face.”  He lowered his head and sighed before looking back up at me.  “That’s not the case at all, Lee.  I think that you’re just tired.”  He said this while taking his tablet from the table and showing it to me.  I glanced down at the screen and saw a series of numbers.

“What is this?”  I asked.

“I think this is us having our first argument,” he said.  He raised a finger to his lips and pointed at the screen.  I looked at it and then back at him.  I didn’t understand.  “Simps,” he mouthed.

“They
are
here?”  I mouthed back.  He nodded.

“How many?” I mouthed.

“You see, Lee, I think that you are just tired of me being away from you and spending all of my time with Giz working.  You have
countless
reasons to be upset, and I’m not denying that.”  I felt my eyes widening at the realization of what he was trying to tell me.  There were simps all around us.  He’d obviously picked up more IP addresses than he could count.

“Does Giz know?” I mouthed.  He nodded.  I gathered that the conversation those two were having a few feet away in the bathroom was mirroring ours.  Yet I didn’t understand why he was being so secretive about it.  He’d sent the others back to their rooms unaware, and he’d powered down Two and Deraline.  I shook my head trying to comprehend the direness of our situation and the decisions he was making.

“Well, how do we resolve our issues, Mic?”  I said, my voice sounding slightly hysterical.  Mic was standing now, with his back to me.  Giz and Alice came into the room, and I could see that Alice’s face was red and streaked with tears.  She looked like she was falling apart.  Giz gave me a
don’t you say a word
look, and I nodded my understanding.

“I’m not sure, Lee.  I need some time to think, but there is a chance that this may be the end of the road for us,” said Mic.  I felt my blood rush through my body.  It was as if it did a quick rush from my toes to my brain, leaving me light-headed.  He was saying this was it, that we were as good as dead.  No wonder he’d let everyone go back to their rooms!  He was giving up!  True to my nature, I became instantly enraged.

“NO!” I shouted.  Mic turned to face me, his jaw tight.  “I’ve done all that I can, but I’m not sure if I can fix this!  Lee, you don’t understand what I’m trying to tell you.”

“Yeah, Mic, I do understand.  I understand that you are giving up.  That you think there’s nothing that can be done.  Well, let me tell you something.  I’m not wired that way and I will NOT give up.  Do you hear me?”  He heard me, and so did Giz and Alice.  Their blank faces said it all.  They had already surrendered, given up, and were as good as dead.  Well fuck that.  I had an overwhelming determination to live, and I would go out fighting, if that’s what it was going to take.  There was no way in hell I was going to just sit on the edge of the bed and sniffle until a simp came to rip my head off my neck.  I headed for the door.  Turning to them one last time, I said, “Are you with me or not?”  Mic opened his mouth to speak, but then closed it.  Giz pulled Alice to his lap.  She tucked her head down on his shoulder and cried softly.

“Please wait, Lee.  I’m begging you, don’t go.”

“I have to.”  Mic shook his head, then tossed me his pack of cigarettes.  His eyes glistened in the dim lighting.  “Good luck, Lee.”

“Nice knowing you,” I said.  I heard the door lock click behind me, and a resounding sense of finality ran through me.  I was angrier with myself for expecting more from them, and even more pissed that I had again, allowed myself to end up in a situation where I was less than fully prepared for a fight.  The lights were flickering again and the rain was now coming down so hard that it blocked my ability to hear anything sneaking up on me.  I decided to make a run for my room and try to collect what I could of my belongings.  I needed ammo, plus I was still barefoot and that wasn’t going to work for long.  I took a mental inventory as I moved.  Aside from ammo, I needed my boots, my pack, and my slingshot if I could manage it.  The long eerie hallway with its peeling wallpaper and scraggly carpeting seemed to stretch for miles.  All of the moisture had left my mouth and my breath came in ragged bursts.

When I got close to my room, I could see that the door was standing wide open.  I paused a short distance away, ducking inside of an alcove that housed a broken ice machine and a couple of empty vending machines.  The glass was smashed out of both of them, and I prayed I wouldn’t cut my feet on the glass.  I could hear voices.  They were speaking in that same rapid fashion that I had observed on the bridge, so I knew they were simps.  Crouching down in the corner, I did all that I could to will my body silent, and then I strained to listen.  The rain was still pouring down, which made it difficult, but I was close enough to make out what they were saying. Then to my surprise, I recognized one of the voices.

“I’m sorry, but you can’t talk like that if you want me to understand you,” she said, with that distinctive replacement of Js for Ys. 
What the hell was she doing in my room?

“Weeeeeee expect yoooooou to deliver Keeeeeeenan,” said the first voice.  “And the 9035 Alpha Composite called Deraline Faith Roberts,” said the second voice, with a reverberating hiss.  It sounded as though they were both male.

“I told you it would take time but that you could count on me.  You can always count on me!”

“Weeee brought you here to do a job, Sonyaaaaaa. Instead, we find you here collecting supplies from this roooooom.”

“Yes, well, I am a human and I have to survive but that does not mean that I haven’t been working!” 
That bitch was in my room to steal my supplies!
  “I was just doing a quick inventory, as you can see, but I am a good person and you can count on me!”
A good person?
  I don’t think I’ve ever hated another human being as much as I hated Sonya in that moment.  “Have I let you down on any of the jobs you have given me?”  There was a long silence that followed, and I began to wonder if the simps had snapped her traitorous neck.  It would have served her right.  It never occurred to me that there could be simp sympathizers, or that the simps would even entertain the concept of employing humans to assist them in any way.  I struggled to wrap my mind around this realization and the horrors it entailed.

“Well, have I?”  She asked a bit more boldly.  I vowed in that moment to snap her neck myself if I got out of this alive.

“Do not presume you have more value to us because you have completed jobs in the past, Sonya.  You are no more to us than a rat is to you.  You are merely a parasite that minds well.  You are even offensive among your own kind.  Never forget that you are valuable to us only when you deliver on your assignments, and your deadline was up two hours ago.”

“I know I was late, but I sent you the notification!  Go look in room 614 and see for yourself.  The only reason I hadn’t done it sooner was because I was waiting until I found the girl, which just happened a little while ago.”

I had to bite my fist to keep myself from blowing my cover.  That gypsy bitch had just issued a death sentence for my friends.  As she continued to kiss their synthetic asses, I debated what I should do.  A part of me — the part that didn’t care about most people — argued to let it be.  The other part demanded I do something to try to stop this, for my friends.  I argued with myself that Mic and Giz had all but surrendered anyway.  They’d let me leave the room.  Hell, Mic hadn’t even so much as given me a goodbye kiss, so why should I even try?  We’d probably all be dead in less than an hour anyway. My instincts kicked in at the thought of this.  If that was the case, I had to try to do something.  I had to try to help them.  Not that I was worried about my immortal soul, or anything like that.

I carefully stretched out, dropping my body flat on the linoleum floor.  Without shoes, I was able to inch along using my hands and toes to move silently.  Their hearing was acute, so I knew my chances were slim.  It didn’t help that the broken glass was digging into my hands and feet, making for a blood-slicked endeavor.  I hoped that the drumming rain would block any slight noises I made.  I got to the edge of the carpet and paused.  Looking up, I could see into the doorway of my room now, which meant that if any of them looked over and down, they would see me.  The simp that was talking with drawn out words was the overly tall one.  It was as I had seen earlier, completely nude. From this close proximity, I could also see it lacked genitalia.  Its arms were garishly long and hung down to its knees.  The one with the hiss was even more disturbing.  It had a normal looking head and a torso, but instead of legs, it had multiple arms that sprouted from odd angles.  Some of them were masculine and others were pinkish and infant-sized.  The elbow joints seemed backwards, and where one would expect to see legs, it had more arms.  It positioned these outward for balance, like a tripod spider.  I squeezed my eyes shut and grit my teeth to push back the terror that threatened to immobilize me.  Spider simp began twitching in a rapid fashion while emitting an awful, high pitched, jittering sound.  I could only assume that this was some sort of signal to the other simps to join in the attack.  Sonya was pleading with the tall one to ensure her ‘boy’ would not be harmed.

“He’s all I have, please let him be.  We’re all going to die eventually anyway; I only ask that you let me keep him until death takes us both.  I’ve done everything that you asked of me, and I will keep doing that.  Aaron, you promised.  You promised me!”  She had called the tall one by name.  Those two simps were clearly not manufactured by IDE, which meant that whatever process of creation they were doing on their own now included…giving themselves names.  It’s strange how in that moment my brain struggled to grasp that concept. 
What else were they doing?
  The odd physical traits of these two suggested that either something was going off course in their creation process or they were deliberately altering genetics to modify their human appearance and capabilities.  Still, the fact that they were taking human names bothered me most.

I forced myself to continue inching forward, painfully aware that these could very well be my last moments.  My eyes shifted to the frayed carpet as I focused to remain as silent as humanly possible.  Then, without warning I heard Sonya scream out in agony.  Aaron had apparently hit her.  Fortunately for me, the sounds of her wailing offered me the distraction I desperately needed.  I jumped to my feet and ran down the hallway as fast as I could go.  Reaching the stairwell, I swung the door open and bolted up the stairs as fast as I could.  At that point, I knew that Sonya was still alive, because I could hear her pleading wails of protests from three floors away.  I hoped that her life was spared, only because I wanted the satisfaction of killing her myself.

By the time I reached the sixth floor I was completely out of breath. I slapped at the door with my palms.  “Let me in!  Please, Mic, open the door!”  I huffed.  When there was no reply, I pounded the door with my fist.  It wouldn’t matter if the simps heard me at this point; they’d be coming for us any second.  My lungs burned as they fought to squeeze air into my body.  I stopped pounding and rested my head against the door.  My eyes landed on a crooked picture on the opposite wall in a dusty, wooden frame.  A golden field with purple mountains in the distance…how I longed to be there.  How I envied every inanimate object that would continue to exist without facing the same terrors that I did.  I could be slaughtered right here beneath this crooked picture, and it would remain hanging safely on the wall above my rotting corpse.

My mental state was slipping, and I had to command my brain and body to move when I finally gave up and realized that they must not be inside anymore.  I couldn’t imagine them ignoring me.  With no other choice, I ran to the stairway at the opposite end of the hall and prayed I could make it to the ground level without being attacked.  I nearly tripped over Kyle’s lifeless body as I reached the landing of the second floor.  His left eye was missing and his intestines were snaking out of his belly like big fat sausages.  I didn’t like the flash of memory and comparison my brain threw out of fresh sausage in my father’s deli.  There was no time for that, and no time to feel sorry for this guy.  I hadn’t known him, and I wouldn’t allow myself to feel anything for him.  He didn’t need to worry anymore: his fight was over.  I was just about to step over him when I noticed that his right hand clutched a piece of notepaper. I paused long enough to reach down and grab it.  I shoved it in my back pocket and then I gripped the railing and continued.