After years of testing, working with proper government authority, building strong media relationships, and the development of robust manufacturing and distribution, the final phase of the E10 unit, the R0713, will be in the hands of billions by the end of the year. Or, rather, will be the hands of billions.
Arnon D’Bvaym
EARLIER
CORTEX KEPT HIS eyes open, not blinking until they burned. He kept staring backward, hopelessly, as Hannah carried him through Id’s factory. He should probably try to control Hannah and escape, but . . . what was the point? Id would catch him again. Id would hurt both of them again. Cortex didn’t know why Id had commanded Hannah to carry him away, other than a vague guess that Id didn’t want him to be injured before she could torture him. Maybe he would get lucky and die quickly at the teeth of a rozie before then. Cortex didn’t see that as very likely.
What was most strange, somehow, was that Hannah’s hold on Cortex felt like a hug. She held him gently as she navigated Id’s factory, called down the elevator, and stepped into it. She didn’t let go of him until they were both back in Id’s control room; there, Hannah set Cortex down in front of the control station.
Cortex stared forward. “So, you’ll keep me here until she’s ready to kill me? I guess it doesn’t matter the room, a prison is a prison.”
Hannah knelt next to Cortex, took his chin in her fingers, and looked at him eye to eye. “Help . . . me,” she grunted. “Fighting. Wrong . . . room. Leave . . . can’t . . . follow. . . Her . . . focus . . . other . . . rozie . . .”
Cortex froze for a moment, then threw his arms around Hannah, crying. She wasn’t Id, right now—or, at least, wasn’t entirely under Id’s powers.
Hannah let Cortex cry for a few moments, then gently pushed him away and pointed at the control station. “Please . . . doors . . . timer . . . Slow . . . down . . . them . . .”
Cortex wiped his nose and nodded. He closed his eyes and found the connection to Id’s computer; then, as before, Cortex felt as if he were transported to a strange, fleshy room. He ran up and down the various filing cabinets in the room, listening to Hannah’s distant-sounding suggestions, until he found a file controlling various doors of the rozie factory. Cortex didn’t know how much time he and Hannah had—though the thought depressed Cortex, it had looked as if Id was just about to overwhelm 64Bit and his friends. Perhaps they were dead already. Cortex held up the file, stuck his hand in it, and felt his brain fill with information. He didn’t sift through the information much—after finding and opening the entrance, he commanded every door to, in ten minutes, close and lock. Cortex then withdrew his hand from the file and tried to tear it up, but despite flexing like paper, the file was harder to rip than iron. Cortex settled for hiding the file in a random cabinet, as he had done with the security file before, and hoped that it would take Id too much time to find it.
When Cortex came out of the computer, he found Hannah nearly hovering over him, anxious. He nodded and she swept him into her arms and then began running. In just a few minutes they were running down the long hallway to the surface, watching the light grow brighter and brighter until they burst out onto the mountainside, surrounded by light, and trees, the smell of dirt, the smell of leaves. Cortex couldn’t believe how refreshing it was just to feel the sun on his face again; after only a few moments, the factory behind him began to feel like a bad dream.
Hannah stumbled, then froze.
“Does the sun feel that good to you, too?” Cortex asked, eyes closed, face still turned toward the sun.
Hannah shook her head. “No. That is not what I felt. She . . . Id is dead.” Hannah stood and looked around. “We must leave. Quickly. We must get to Prophet as soon as possible.”
Cortex frowned, then looked back at the still-open entrance to the factory. In just a few minutes it would close, assuming Cortex had done his job right. If Id had been killed, then it was possible 64Bit was still alive, trapped down there, surrounded by rozies. Perhaps the right thing would be to go back in and try to help him.
Then, the memory of 64Bit looking at Cortex, then running toward someone else, flashed across Cortex’s mind. The boy frowned, feeling the anger that he had been collecting coalesce into a hardness in his chest.
Hannah looked backward, following Cortex’s gaze. “Are you missing something?”
“No.” Cortex looked forward, away from the factory. “Prophet offered to make me his acolyte. There’s nothing left for me here.”
\ END PART 3
Copyright © 2023 by David Ludlow
Boo Ludlow 