52. Breath
Breath
Dylan
Dylan screamed as Isaak fell through the red portal, disappearing as the portal closed and dematerialised.
“No!”
Jewel turned towards her. She grunted, her body even more muscular than in the real world. “You peasant!” The henchwoman’s voice dominated the room.
Dylan tried to stay calm. Talia and Isaak needed her help. She had to get through this.
As Jewel approached, Dylan noticed the dark trail of translucent material hanging behind her, the connection between a sleptigrade and its sleeping human body.
It wound up and down and across the warehouse, through the other somnambulists incapable of freeing themselves.
Jewel’s body was somewhere in that room, Dylan realised.
“Stay put, peasant, and I’ll crush you to bits.” Jewel pushed gurneys out of the way, toppling the sleeping people to the floor, where they landed reactionless and inert.
Dylan took a deep breath and shifted on her feet. Sweat slicked her hands. She tightened her fists.
“Why are you doing this? Because of Astrid?” Dylan said with a swallow, fighting her fear. “Look at these people. They’ve all been enslaved by your power-hungry bitch of a boss. Did she force the Sleeper on you too?”
The lumbering mass paused in place. “Force?” She let out a laugh, a contorted face of disgust. “ChainMail, I fucking begged her to put it on me. Lady Fern-Lock is doing us all a favour. What greater gift than the Sleeper, to live out a life in this simulation, where everything is possible?”
Dylan recoiled. She sounded like a true believer in whatever trash religion Astrid was peddling. The concept tempted Dylan, she couldn’t deny it. To ignore the real world’s problems and be safe in this other world… But she already knew that wasn’t possible.
“You can still die in here! We killed some of these sleptigrades, because you left us no choice!” She tried to take a confident stance, digging her feet in. “The Sleeper is a trap!”
Jewel scoffed, darting towards her.
Okay… Trying to appeal to her humanity failed. Now what?
“I’m not trapped! You’ll see. Once we lock you in, like your pretty friend…
You’ll be singing Astrid’s praises too.” Jewel was getting dangerously close.
She talked a big game, but Dylan sensed that initial blind belief wavering.
It was as if she was saying things she’d rehearsed, but couldn’t sell anymore.
“You really think Astrid wouldn’t let you die just like these guys? Whatever she’s promised you, she promised them too. And now look at them.”
Jewel stopped in her tracks and looked around the room. “No. She… Of course, I… Stop fucking with me!”
Jewel was resisting. But Astrid had programmed her brain, just like she was trying to do to her and Isaak.
The translucent column trailing behind Jewel. If Dylan followed it…
She climbed onto one of the hospital beds. “Sorry! I’m sorry, guys!” She jumped from one gurney to the next, narrowly avoiding stepping on the sleeping victims.
Jewel lunged at her, knocking one of the hospital beds over. Its occupant clattered to the floor, their head trapped in the techno-vice, the thud of plastic and flesh hitting the ground. “Stop!”
Dylan only had to cross a few more beds to make it to Jewel’s body, which she’d spotted lying in the same gym-tuxedo she’d been wearing at the mansion. She was nearly there.
But a kick to the face shut Dylan’s efforts down, toppling her onto an empty cot.
Hot blood trickled from her nose.
“Insolent vegan!” Jewel roared. “You’ll soon learn to love meat!”
Prone on the bed, Dylan was easy pickings for Astrid’s henchwoman to grab her by the leg. This isn’t going well. Her pulse accelerating, she fought off the woman’s fists.
Jewel loomed over her, displaying her rows of teeth. “Give up! Give u—”
Dylan threw a jab at Jewel’s throat, the only faintly vulnerable point on her cavalcade of a body. “Fuck you! Brainwashed cunt.” She slid down the bed and rolled onto the floor away from her.
Jewel let out a series of unnatural heaves and moans.
Of course it wasn’t easy to breathe after a punch to the windpipe, but this felt like something more, hinting at deeper changes the Tapeworld had made within her body.
She tried to keep her balance by placing a hand on the nearby bed, but she stumbled and fell to the floor. Her mass lay convulsing and choking.
Dylan reached the mirror of Jewel’s real-world body, the Crypterra device on her head, a tranquil expression on her face – in complete contrast to Jewel’s Tapeworld self, which was clutching her own throat, gasping for air.
Sweat dropped from Dylan’s forehead onto Jewel’s skin. Her heart raced.
Jewel’s tape self, beginning to recover, started to crawl towards her.
The punch with the knuckle-duster should have knocked her out, but it didn’t. Dylan wasn’t strong enough to defeat her, even in here.
She had no other choice. Dylan pulled off the piece of tape stuck to her own temple and exited the Tapeworld, the rushing colours speeding past her eyes as she derezzed.
“Fuck you!”
IRL again, but still in danger.
Dylan shouted in pain. It felt like she’d just been punched in her stomach by an unseen force. She had to hurry before Jewel hurt her remnant even more.
She jumped up from the bed.
Isaak was right there next to her, still where he’d taped in. His handsome face betrayed no emotion, no hint of whatever hell Astrid was putting him through at the same moment inside the Tapeworld.
She caressed his cheek with the back of her fingers, her heart hurting. “I’m coming, boy.”
Dylan ran, jumping and sliding over the hospital beds to reach Jewel’s IRL body. If her instincts were right, Jewel wouldn’t be able to remove the Crypterra Sleeper herself – that was up to Astrid, and hopefully Isaak was keeping that bitch busy.
Dylan touched the grey plastic device, the sharp, angular texture cold like death. The realisation of what she was about to do hit her like a sack of bricks. She had to rip the Sleeper from Jewel’s head, killing her in the process.
When Dylan first taped out, she’d felt so sure she was capable of doing it. But now, hovering over Jewel’s defenceless body, her gut clenched.
You must be certain. You must be ready for the consequences. Her mother’s words. Her mum and dad didn’t know anything when they joined the Apocalypse Revolt, when they played their part in the revolution. They simply hoped that their actions would pave the way to a better world.
Dylan made a split-second decision.
Doing this is a chance to correct their mistakes.
She picked up the lobster phone and connected it to Jewel’s head. She speed-dialled Elodie.
“Talk.”
“I’ve got her bodyguard. On my count.”
She took a deep breath and slapped on another piece of tape, entering the Tapeworld again.
The blue kaleidoscope was faster this time as her consciousness sped through it.
A punch knocked the wind out of her. Fuck.
Dylan had materialised back into the remnant presence she’d left behind. Tapeworld Jewel held her aloft with one arm, and was about to punch her in the stomach again.
Dylan grabbed her phone, still on her call with Elodie, lifting it to her face in a swift motion. “Now!”
A shockwave emanated from Jewel’s shape, rippling through Dylan.
The woman’s muscles went limp, the anger gone from the lines of her face. She dropped Dylan, who scrambled away. Jewel tried to grab her again, but as she grasped the fabric of Dylan’s dress, her hand dematerialised into particles, and her sleptigrade self was no more.
Dylan let her head fall back with a sigh.
I’d better be right about this.
Back IRL, Dylan safely lifted the Sleeper from Jewel’s head.
The heavy-set woman's eyes opened with a gasp, eye sockets sunken, forehead coated in day-old sweat and matted hair. She instinctively tried to raise her arms, only to be stopped by the rope restraints Dylan had tied around them. Jewel blinked. “You didn’t kill me.”
“Looks like it, huh?” Dylan said, frowning. She leaned closer to her. “Am I going to regret that decision?”
Jewel shifted uncomfortably on the gurney. “What do you want?”
“Talia.”
“Fuck that!” Jewel spat.
Dylan held the Sleeper above Jewel’s head. “You want to go back in?”
“No! No… Please, I… I don’t like it.”
Dylan raised her eyebrows. “Really? ’Cos it sounded like you were ready to stay there your whole life.”
“That’s Astrid’s shit. It makes you do whatever she wants. She… volunteered me. I never wanted to go in.”
So Jewel was another brainwash victim, a bodyguard that Astrid had grown too fond of – to the point of experimenting on her with the Sleeper, and the behaviour programming. Dylan’s instinct had been right.
“Let’s try again. Where is Talia?”
Jewel took a deep breath, shifting the creases of her gym-tuxedo. “Astrid keeps her close any time she’s in there. Find Astrid, find Talia.” She looked into Dylan’s eyes, brows bunched in a plea. “Will you let me go now?”
A metal clank sounded from below, startling them both. The shutter to the warehouse.
“Shhh. Did you alert someone?” Dylan pressed the Sleeper against Jewel’s cheek, hard enough to make her shake, her other hand bound into a ready fist.
“No,” Jewel whispered.
Hurried footsteps climbed the stairs.
Fuck.
She knelt down behind Jewel’s bed, hiding with a line of sight to the way she and Isaak had come in. The Sleeper was still in her hands. Jewel had better behave.
Dylan thought about Isaak asking her if she had a gun. One would have been fucking useful right about now.
Someone wearing a tradesman’s overalls walked in from the stairwell.
“Where are they?” said someone behind the first man.
“Holy shit! Look at all these people, Elo!”
It was them! She shot up. “Sacha, I’m here!”
He jogged towards her and they hugged.
“Hello.” Jewel’s gruff voice startled him, making him jump.
“I’m surprised to see you still alive, you evil bitch.” Sacha leaned closer to Jewel’s bound figure on the gurney. “Tell me where Talia is!”
“It’s okay, Sacha. She’s going to help us.”
“I am? How?” Jewel said, her voice straining.
Elodie joined them beside Jewel. “Greetings.” She leaned on one of the nearby occupied gurneys, regaining her composure from climbing the stairs.
“You could have told me you were so close when I called, Elodie,” Dylan said in frustration.
“And risk alerting this one?” She pointed at Jewel with her chin. “So. What’s your plan, Ms Colt?”