CA Chapter Forty-two (Patreon)

Heat, smoke, and crackling fire surrounded her. There was no way out through the door. No escape the way she’d come in. She’d have to go after Veralt.

Sudden urgency flooded through her, driven by the rapidly rising heat and the way the oxygen was burning out of the room, leaving it filled with nothing but death. Rolling, she got one arm under her body, then the other, pushing herself up on trembling limbs. She crawled toward the door. At least Veralt had helped a little. He had moved Amy slightly closer to safety before he left.

She could tell Amythyst was trying to speak to her again, but she couldn’t hear the words, and her vision was fading as the smoke and heat dried out her eyes again. She closed them and felt around until she found Amy’s still form. Sliding her hands up, she pulled Amy’s arm over her own shoulders, then pushed with her legs, desperately trying to force her muscles to move both her and Amy.

To her amazement, she succeeded. Amy’s body slithered along beside her, but the door shifted too, falling toward them as Amy’s weight moved out of the way. With a final tug, Ava pulled Amy through the door completely, letting the solid wooden door fall shut behind them with a thud. Amy’s arm slipped from Ava’s grasp, falling to the floor, the sound of its impact lost beneath the muffled crackling of the fire as it hungrily swallowed Veralt’s office and everything in it.

Ava panted, her seared lungs desperately struggling to keep up with the requirements of her body. When the world stopped swimming, she looked around, though her vision refused to clear completely this time. Everything looked slightly fuzzy, but she was able to make out a hospital bed, its side lowered to allow easy removal of its occupant, and a chair, sitting in front of a large bay window. It was Amy’s room, the one Amy had been sitting in the day Carl Landon brought Ava to meet the patient she’d be caring for. That meant there was a huge, open garden right outside that window.

Ava tried to turn to face Amy again, and discovered that at some point, she had fallen over. She hadn’t even felt it happen, but now Ava lay on her side on a thick carpet that she remembered as yellow, but now couldn’t see properly because the only light was a flickering orange glare that flashed beneath the door behind them, and the half moon shining through the polycarbonate window.

She had to get Amy out. But how?

Amythyst’s soothing voice came into her ear. “Ava? Ava, it’s okay. You’re almost there, and help is on the way. There’s a door behind the curtain next to the window. It leads into the garden, but if you can just get out there, you’ll be safe until help arrives. Come on, Ava.”

She was so tired. So tired, and everything hurt. Her lungs, her throat, her blistered hands and bruised knees, her battered ribs, her head… If the door was that close, then surely here was safe enough. Amythyst would guide the rescuers straight to them, and…

There was a BOOM, and the door shook, almost seeming to bow out toward Amy as something in Veralt’s office exploded. The fire howled, and bigger, more dangerous things began to creak and crack above and behind them. Flames licked at the gap between the bottom of the door and the plush yellow carpet, perilously close to Amy’s feet.

Ava looked up. She could see the curtain, billowing in the waves of heat that threatened to broil her alive. She was starting to get used to it, become numb to it, the constant, searing heat that made her skin dry and crack. Distantly, she knew that was very bad.

“Get up, Ava,” Amythyst urged, her voice almost lost in the renewed fury of the flames. “Get up!”

Ava’s elbow bent. The joint screamed in protest, but not as loudly as did her skin when she pressed her palm to the floor. The carpet fibers felt like wire bristles against the cracked and weeping sores. But Ava could handle it. Hadn’t she had her pain settings on maximum for weeks now? She’d broken bones, pulled embers from her skin, all without complaint. Without much complaint, anyway.

She grabbed Amy’s arm and pulled, but her hands screamed as it felt like she was being skinned alive, seizing up into agonized claws. She looked at the curtain again. Saw the outline of a door behind it, in her mind, even if she couldn’t see it with her eyes. She forced herself to her feet, stumbling toward it. She wouldn’t leave Amy behind. No. But maybe if she got a few breaths of clear air, it would give her enough strength to move the woman’s body, light as it was, the last few feet.

She brushed aside the curtain, laid her hand on the handle. The blessedly cool handle, at least in contrast to the inferno around her. Turned it.

Locked.

Locked!

“-ocked,” she mumbled, feeling her lips crack.

“Damn him!” Amythyst shouted. “That lazy bastard! He never does anything he doesn’t have to do, but this once, he goes the extra mile and locks the damned door?” She breathed an entirely unnecessary steadying breath. A breath without logic. “Okay,” she muttered. “That’s okay. There has to be a way…” Her voice shifts, becoming so sharp it stabs through the despair threatening to drown Ava in its overwhelming embrace.

“Ava? Do you remember what I told you about the pods? How they were designed to keep their occupant safe, even in the event of an extraordinarily unlikely emergency?”

Ava’s mind flashed back to… how long ago? Only weeks? A few months? To when Amythyst, a near stranger at the time, showed her a full-immersion pod for the first time. An echo of distant words trickled through her overheated brain.

Amythyst’s voice, saying, “If the pod detects an unsafe external environment, it will remain closed as long as it can protect the user. In case of fire, for instance, it sends a distress call to the nearest fire station, uses its tank of oxygen to keep the occupant alive, and can withstand temperatures exceeding any expected in a normal house fire.”

Now, the current Amythyst repeated the same words, and then added, “Ava, you have to get to the pods. They’re just in the next room. You,” her voice cracked, and how was that even possible, when she was a digital being? “You may have to leave Amy behind. That’s… okay. You did your best. Far more than I… than anyone could have asked. Please, Ava. Get into a pod. Please,” she whispered.

Ava shook her head, stubbornly. “Won’t,” she ground out, then bent over, coughing violently. She staggered, and her hip bumped into something. The chair. It moved, easily. Far too easily for the overstuffed armchair it seemed to be. Reaching down, her fingers traced over the back, every brush of skin against fabric sending sharp reminders that they were still injured. But, yes, there were handles there. It was a wheelchair! A wheelchair disguised as a normal chair, in an attempt to make the occupant feel normal as well.

Ava grasped the handles, this time forcing herself to ignore the feeling as the skin slid away from blistered flesh. She used the weight of her body to move the chair, falling forward and moving her feet in a painful shuffle. It wasn’t far. The space was large for a hospital room, small for a bedroom, but she was barely a quarter in. Not too far to walk one more time.

Leaning down, she slid her elbows under Amy’s armpits, lifting her slowly. Her eyes were getting worse and worse, but with her face right next to Amy’s cheek, she could see blisters forming there, beside the dry, cracked skin. She smelled burned hair, the stench momentarily overwhelming even the scent of burning plastic and chemicals.

She twisted, dropping Amy into the seat. The woman’s body slid, but the soft cushions caught her, keeping her in place even as Ava herself nearly fell. Another BOOM sounded, and then a third, and the door caught fire, burning and cracking from the bottom up. Once it caught, it was like it was simply swallowed whole, and a sheet of flame stood in the doorway, like a [Firewall] dropped by an overzealous mage.

Ava stumbled back, the chair rolling as her weight fell against it again, and she spun in place, her abused hands instinctively landing on the handles of the chair. As much as her eyes might try to convince her this was a regular chair, she had pushed her mother’s wheelchair for months, and her body knew how to do it, though the pain she was in as she shoved at it was far more visceral than the emotional agony she had suffered then.

Smoke blanketed the room. She couldn’t see anything. Every breath felt like daggers tearing her lungs to shreds. Something white appeared against the darkness, blurry until it snapped into semi-soft focus, her ocular implants adjusting for the changes in her vision.

A map. It looked like the newbie’s mini-map in Veritas Online. White lines, no labels. Just lines for walls, with angled lines indicating doors, and a glowing blue spot for her. She closed her eyes, giving up on everything past her eyelids, and moved, pushing the chair through the darkness, toward the opening in the wall.

Step.

Step.

Stagger.

No, she could do it. It was just a game. Her body wasn’t really burning. She wasn’t really crisping from the inside out. Her pain settings were up too high, and when this was over, she would finally make Amythyst figure out how to turn them down.

Step.

Step.

The chair bumped into something. The bed. Correct her angle. Keep walking. Walking.

Another bump. This time, for once, a door was unlocked. It moved under the force of the chair as Ava’s body slumped forward in a push that was more of a collapse, and she found herself draped over the back of Amy’s chair, but slightly cooler air touched her face, and on the map, the blue light that was her gleamed, halfway through the wall, like she’d phased halfway through before running out of mana and getting stuck.

Except that there were two egg-shaped things in the room beyond. They glowed a bright, friendly green, and they were only a few steps away. Words scrolled across the bottom of the map.

You’re almost there. Put Amy in one, and get in the other. I have control of them. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything else. I’ll protect you.

Her hands couldn’t close around the handles any more, so she just used her legs to push her whole upper body forward, using her position draped across the chair to keep moving them forward. The chair bumped into something, and Ava forced herself upright. Mostly upright. More up than not.

She lurched around the chair and felt the pod with her forearm, since her hands were just… numb. Numb and agonizing all at once.

The surface of the pod was smooth and solid until it wasn’t, and she fell forward into the space where the hatch was open, almost tumbling into it. But this wasn’t for her. She was here to save Amy. Amy, who she hadn’t even seen move. Not even a twitch. Not even a breath, not that Ava’s eyes would have been able to make out such a small movement. Right?

She turned again, sliding her arms under Amy’s knees and behind her back and oh god it hurt and she couldn’t lift her because it hurt but she had to try because she

wouldn’t

leave

Amy.

So she lifted anyway, and a scream tore her throat into a zillion razor blades as she dropped the woman’s limp body into the pod. She felt the pod shift as the door closed, and she imagined that she could hear the hiss as it sealed shut, but she couldn’t actually hear anything except the fire, and it was just her now.

She had saved Amy.

Hadn’t she?

Words filled the blackness behind her eyes. Yelling at her in all caps.

DON’T STOP NOW! GET IN THE POD.

So she moved. Blue dot surrounded by white lines. Shouldn’t there be orange flames, biting at her heels? Why didn’t the maps ever show details like that?

She left the first green egg behind. It was no longer hollow. It was solid now. Filled with Amy.

Her hands touched the second pod, and confirmed that they were, indeed still there, still attached, and still agonizingly painful. Follow the pain to the dip in the side of the pod. Tumble in. The lid closes. Fluid rises.

Ava drowns, surrounded by fire.