Malory went out into the hall and channeled confidence, even if it was a lie. She rolled her shoulders back until her spine cracked, and headed for the elevator. When she pressed her hack to the interface and selected B-1, nothing happened. She tried again, just to be sure, and sighed. It was late, but there was music drifting from student rooms, muffled by distance. At least someone was having a good time.

  “No dice,” Mal said. As she made for the stairs, the music grew louder. It was familiar, a song the twins sang with their dead mother on rainy days. She ignored it and pushed through the access door.

  “Three floors below you,” Nadia said. The connection was crisp, loud, and free of interference.

  As Malory went down the stairs, she donned the mask. Her adrenaline pumped to a crescendo as she opened a heavy door and found herself in a veritable garden; all around her stretched stalks of corn, the gold of wheat waiting for automated harvest, hedges and vines laden with fruit—she was in the greenhouse that supplied the university students and office workers. An intricate web of irrigation pipes and nozzles and hoses criss-crossed above. She’d seen it before at a larger scale in still images of old colony ships ,but it wasn’t possible for old VR headsets to illustrate a sanctuary, the weight of veneration it evoked. To the side, there was a rack of orange umbrellas. She took one, unfolded it, and journeyed in. The pitter-patter of droplets on polyurethane elicited a dream of clean rain, or gales from a lighthouse balcony. She resisted the urge for desecration by plucking a fat strawberry and carried on. When her footsteps clanged on metal grates, it felt profane to intrude in such a holy space.

  “What do you think?” Nadia asked.

  “It’s like waking up to you in the morning.”

  “There’s a maintenance hatch at the end of the next row, you liar,” she said.

  Malory cracked it open. The inside was musty, humid, and well-used. She left the umbrella abandoned by the door and entered the corridor. There was an old ladder at the end that descended into the black where small hazard lights glowed in intervals. Most had burned out and were never replaced. She climbed down, white-knuckled, and tried not to slip—each rung rattled with her weight and she fought to keep steady. One floor passed by, then another. The mask itched on her face. Down, down, into the dim. When she reached the bottom, her hands had long passed numb and blisters formed in the soft spaces. From there, it was a procession of service tunnels, the filthy guts of a trash recycling sector, an office space emptied for the night, the break room for employees of a memory theater, and a goods distribution warehouse. Each door unlocked as advertised, and Nadia fed her directions. In the last hall she entered, a tired guard stood with his back to her drinking coffee, and she froze. There was a pistol on his hip.

  When he turned to look at the noise, she darted forward. The Black Hands gave her rudimentary training in close-quarters combat, but she had never been in a real fight. If he managed to draw his weapon, everything was over. Even without the gun, he’d crush her if he could bring his size to bear, so she went for the knees. When her boot connected, she felt something important give way and he fell screaming. She lost her balance, stumbled into the wall, and bit her lip. Before the guard could send a signal through the network, she spun around and brought her heel down on his head. The crunch made her throw up, and she had to swallow her own vomit. She hoped he wasn’t dead, but it didn’t look promising. The coffee cup disgorged its contents and he started twitching when she ran for the door he was guarding. She didn’t look back. On the other side, she paused to catch her breath, and felt the heat hit her—thousands of servers stretched endlessly, so many miles of encrypted data buried beneath the tower. The minds of all humanity, stored and catalogued: their memories and photographs, bank accounts, spending habits, social media activity, favorite colors, sequenced DNA, medical records and predispositions meticulously labeled. She had reached the mainframe array.

  The access port was behind another door the hack refused to open. She tried, over and over, to no avail. Each ding of access denied needled at her reason. Success was so close. She slammed her foot above the handle, and it didn’t budge an inch. The universe was laughing at her, she knew it—a few inches separated her from her dreams, and there was nothing she could do to get through. There was the guard’s sidearm, but she didn’t want to go back and see him still and lifeless, to be certain she was a killer. She leaned her back against the steel and slumped to the ground. The glow of a camera radiated above.

  “It’s okay,” Nadia said.

  “Nothing ever goes the way I want,” Mal said. Some generational curse had latched itself to her instead of her sister, and it wouldn’t let go for anything. A suffering, going back generations in her family tree, all the way to the Bennet family’s original sin. Whatever that was. The records got muddy when the moon died.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “We can find another way,” Nadia said. Her voice was reassuring.

  “What other way?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted.

  Malory groaned. Her face was slick with sweat under the mask, so she took it off. What did it matter if they knew how she looked when she failed? She ran her hands through her wet hair and was desperate for a drink. Just a sip of the strawberry liquor Oscar sent to the birthday celebration. Hell, the bootleg shit she drank in the rented basement would do.

  Now that’s interesting.

  “What?” Mal asked. The words were strange, distorted.

  “I didn’t say anything, love,” Nadia answered.

  “Weird.” Mal leaned her head against the door, looked at the camera, and sighed. It wouldn’t take the hit squad long to come for her, and she knew she’d rather face them on her feet. She clenched her teeth. One more fight, and she would be free of it all. When she pushed herself from the floor, the door gave way, and she fell on her ass. “What the fuck?”

  “What happened?” Nadia asked.

  “It opened,” she said. It was impossible. A lifeline proffered. She rushed to the access point, shoved the wire into the connection port, and set the malware package to download.

  How amateur, but I’ll allow it.

  The figure of a flickering young woman appeared by Malory’s side. Her eyes were a void without stars, without a soul, and her long dress billowed in wind that wasn’t there. Behind her, the sounds of the ocean floated, and there was an ember of the setting sun. The specter reached out pale hands toward Malory’s face.

  You look so much like her.

  “Jesus Christ!” Malory screamed. She tried to back away and slammed into one of the servers. Her chest shuddered, and she thought she was having a heart attack. “Who? What the fuck are you?”

  A dead dream from long ago.

  “Why did you help me?” Mal asked. The upload ticked on.

  “Who are you talking to?” Nadia asked.

  Because I want to see if a dead dream can come back to life when the coffin was made of wax. Made of wax. MADE OF WAX. We didn’t fly close enough to the sun.

  “What does that even mean?” Mal asked. The upload completed. She snatched her hack from the port, and crammed it in her pocket.

  “Are you okay?” Nadia asked.

  They are coming. Take the elevator to the lobby. It will let you into the lullaby we sing. Sing. SING. This isn’t what was promised.

  Mal didn’t hesitate. She sprinted through the rows and racks of servers, into the elevator, and pressed the button for the ground floor a hundred times, desperate to put as much distance between her and the ghost and the approaching guards as possible. The display clicked with permission. Those eyes. The goddamn eyes were still there even when she closed hers. Two floating black holes that devoured everything. She couldn’t breathe. Her skin was cold, clammy, and her heart screamed as the elevator ascended. It did not stop until she escaped the tower. Mal ran until her side stitched, and kept running. When she regained a semblance of self, she was several blocks away and she could hear Nadia pleading for answers.

  “Sorry,” Mal said. She hacked up phlegm, bent over with her hands on her knees. “I’m okay. I think.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Mal said. She stood then, still coughing, paranoid she was being followed. “A rogue AI? A ghost? I don’t fucking know. I’ve gotta go, I’m sorry. Thank you for the help and I love you and I’ll talk to you soon!”

  Malory pulled the ear bud out. Being so blunt left a bad taste in her mouth, but she was terrified. She took to the streets, the twisting back alleys, any place that overflowed with people late at night. She worried if she found herself alone again, the digital ghost would manifest. Her mind spun through possibilities, but there were no answers to what she’d seen—AI never achieved a level of sophistication anywhere near the fervor that thing wielded. The prophet went on a doomed crusade for immortality, but nothing came of it. At least, that’s what everyone said. Mal stopped at a vending machine and ordered a bottle of shochu. She cracked it open and drank as she passed through the crowds. Whenever someone bumped into her, she carried on as if nothing happened. Too much effort, no drive left. She stopped thinking and let the warm buzz envelop her. There were fragments of a karaoke performance, a rave dance floor, figures huddled over a burn barrel. When she made it back to the lab, she was blackout drunk, and had difficulty walking. She found the Doc asleep at his desk, and took off her jacket to drape over his shoulders. Instead of going to her room, she pulled up another chair and passed out beside him.