40. Sleepers
Sleepers
Isaak
As Isaak inspected the room, he heard a tape-tube materialise behind him.
Talia tumbled out of it, wearing her dress for the Night of Entertainment.
“Talia!” He rushed to her side, helping her stand up.
“It’s Astrid. She and that woman, they’ve got Dylan. And me.”
“Can you tape out?”
She fingered her temples, grasping for any bit of tape, but there was nothing. “She put the Sleeper on me. I can’t get out!” Her breathing was fast, and she was walking backwards away from him. “Goddess, save me. Do something!”
“I’m trying,” Isaak said. “This place is hers, and I think there’s a version IRL somewhere. She’s doing something to these people.”
Talia took in all the beds, and the view to the city.
“Do you recognise any of it?” he asked.
“I… I don’t know. Somewhere near the river?” Her eyes widened. “Look out!”
He narrowly dodged a fist aimed at his face, the shape materialising halfway through its attack. It looked at him, the grey sludgy skin too close for comfort. He swung the Gunkatana at it. It dodged, exposing a black-translucent glowing cable emanating from its back.
“It’s connected to one of the people on the beds!” Talia shouted, following the transparent flow.
Isaak fought off the shape’s attacks. It was posing more of a challenge than the previous ones. He aimed the Gunkatana at its head, finger poised on the trigger.
“Wait! I recognise him.” Talia stared at the sleeping person connected to the shape. “The shape is him. It’s Nicholas from the demo! Don’t attack him!”
The volunteer at the Night of Entertainment, IRL. Isaak released the trigger and sheathed the Gunkatana.
The Nicholas-shape paused for a moment, as if it understood them. But then it resumed its attack, fists dealing a barrage of strikes. Some hit Isaak, some he avoided. A gut-punch took the wind out of him.
The blue-red aura of a tape-tube formed next to them.
“Oh, my dear Ike. What are you doing here?”
His heart sank. It was her.
Astrid strode out of the tube in a black office pencil dress, wild-eyed, her mouth a jagged line.
“You bitch. What the fuck—”
“Silence!” Astrid waved a hand at Talia, and she shouted in pain, doubling over, knees hitting the floor.
The Nicholas-shape looked at Astrid. Whereas before the grey shapes all looked uniform, now his eyes glowed yellow. It – he – seemed to recognise Astrid’s authority.
“Poor Nick. You’re not my best sleptigrade, are you? Go on, Isaak. Finish him off.”
The realisation twisted his chest. All of the shapes he’d destroyed were connected to real people strapped to Sleepers. Sleptigrade?
“No.”
“Suit yourself.”
Nicholas looked at her, the glowing embers of his eyes widening. He looked scared, and he ran, scrambling for a way out of the room.
Astrid seized the translucent cable connecting him to his body, and twisted it, severing it in the process.
The shape let out a scream like a CRT TV tuned to static. The translucent cables evaporated – Nicholas’s body, a mirror of himself in IRL, began convulsing and foaming at the mouth. His spasms became more violent by the second.
“Stop!” Isaak shouted.
Nicholas went still, head lolling to the side.
“Is he…?”
Astrid grinned.
“You killed him.” He could barely speak, his body and brain numb.
He finally had an answer to the question that had haunted him for the last couple of weeks. Dying in the Tapeworld killed you the real one.
Goddess. All the shapes I’ve destroyed. That guard…
“What the fuck did you make me do? Who are you?”
“I thought you knew me.”
Blood poured from Isaak’s thumb, his index fingernail driven fully into the space between the nail and the nail bed, as he tried to fight off the mounting horror dawning inside him. Horror, fear, guilt.
Astrid cocked her head to one side, smirking. “I thought you loved our time together.”
He shook his head, trying not to spiral. “It was a mistake.”
She laughed, arching her neck backwards, yet keeping her eyes always on him, like a creepy painting.
“Not to me. I had a lot of fun, building you up every night. Then breaking you into a wreck in your post-coital return. You were like a bawling child, and me…” She came closer to him, ever so slowly. “I was your new mummy!”
He backed away, trying to escape a flood of memories from their time together. “Shut up! You took advantage of me.”
Talia was still staring at Nicholas. Tears trickled down her face.
Astrid grinned. “I know I wasn’t the only one taking pleasure. When you wiped your tears on these” – her hands cupped her breasts – “you looked very pleased then!”
Isaak turned away, shame roiling in his gut. He swallowed hard, his legs like jelly, his heart and stomach intertwining in a chaotic rubble. “Why are you doing this to these people?”
She stepped nearer to him again, still fondling her breasts, and taunting him with exaggerated moans. “Doing what, silly boy? Tell me… Don’t you want a taste of this again?” She placed a hand on her crotch.
He hunched his shoulders and flinched away. “I don’t need you, or your pity sex.”
“Ah, that’s right.” She smiled and stopped playing with herself, crossing her arms. “You found yourself a whore.”
He met her eyes. Suddenly his squirming chest was filled with rage.
“Shut up! You don’t know anything about—”
“Dylan Colt,” she interrupted, stretching her arms. A cloud of particles enveloped her. Her face and body changed in a flash. Into Dylan’s.
“What’s she really like?” Astrid slid her hands down the sides of her chest and waist. “She’s got a hell of a body, tight in all the right places.” She threw two punches in the air. “Can hold her own in a fight too… Have you slept with her already?”
He grunted. It was disturbing, seeing Astrid wear Dylan’s face like this.
“When I looked in your brain, when you slipped on the Sleeper, I found out all there is to know about her and your little relationship. She’s just like you, another pitiful worm, a rebel without a cause, a true-born vegan.
Oh, but don’t worry. We’ll give her cause to revolt soon enough.
Pity she won’t be here to see it herself. My Jewel has her in hand right now!”
Astrid leaned her head back, laughing. She shape-shifted back into the pencil dress, back to wearing her own face.
She raised her hand, fingers outstretched.
A few words escaped her lips, then a bolt of lightning cracked the ground between them.
A cloud of smoke transubstantiated around Talia.
Through the haze, he watched as an enclosure – a see-through glass cage, filled with water, surrounded with cables, circuit board chips, connection ports, and metallic adornments – materialised, trapping Talia within it.
He turned to Astrid. “What are you doing? You’re going to pay for this!”
“Forget her, Ike. I’m done pretending. I want you!”
“Yeah? Well, come get me!” he shouted, arms outstretched, ready to fight.
Astrid flew towards him and slapped him to the floor, her nails sharp as talons. “You are in my space! Look what happens when you can’t stop messing with my plans!” Her voice was hoarse, rage bursting out of her.
Isaak coughed, struggling to sit up. He put his hand to his chest and it came away bloody where Astrid had cut him with her nails.
She snapped her fingers and Talia started struggling. She banged her fists on the glass from the inside, her eyes gone white, convulsing, the water bubbling and chaotic.
An ache engulfed his heart. “No!”
Get the Gunkatana and attack her, now!
He tried to get up, tried to activate the gun-sword at his side, but Astrid forced him back to the floor, preventing his movement with a simple gesture, without even touching him.
He couldn’t even move his hand to rip the tape from his head. Tears streamed down his face. The sound of Talia’s semi-conscious whimpers became impossibly hard to listen to. Tears formed rivers in the dirt that caked his face. Sweat lined his brow.
Talia…
He looked at her again to see her natural eye colour return. Through the pain, he could have sworn she winked at him.
What was she doing— Oh!
Astrid turned towards Talia, who was still pounding her fists into the glass, fighting the torture and the pressure of the water. “Enough!” Astrid marched towards her, gesturing at her with a twisting motion.
But Talia’s distraction gave him an opening.
He was free from Astrid’s grasp. He gripped the tape on his temple and ripped it off. In the moments before his consciousness left the Tapeworld, he saw Astrid dematerialise Talia away.