The stretcher settled onto some kind of docking mechanism with a soft click. Jaxon's restraints loosened automatically but his muscles felt like jelly. Whatever they'd hit him with was still working through his system.
Movement in his peripheral vision. People in white coats approaching the stretchers, their steps eerily synchronized. Finally. Humans.
Except something was off about the way they moved. Too precise. Too coordinated. Like they were all following the same internal programming.
The woman who approached his stretcher looked normal enough at first glance. Blonde hair pulled back. Wire-rimmed glasses. Lab coat that had seen better days. But when she got closer, Jaxon noticed her movements had that same mechanical quality as the captors.
She pulled out a stethoscope without saying a word. Her touch was gentle as she pressed it against his chest, checking his vitals with practiced efficiency. Professional. Almost caring.
Then she brought out a small flashlight and leaned over him to check his pupils. Her face was inches from his now and Jaxon found himself staring into pale blue eyes that didn't quite track right. Something missing behind them. Like looking at a perfect painting of a person instead of the real thing.
The light clicked off. She straightened up and Jaxon's gaze dropped to the ID badge clipped to her coat.
KD-249.
Not a name. A serial number.
His heart hammered against his ribs. More robots. Just better disguises this time. Designed to look human, act human, maybe even think they were human. But underneath all that synthetic skin and programmed bedside manner, they were just as artificial as the redactors.
The fake doctor moved on to the next stretcher without acknowledging him as anything more than a collection of vital signs to be monitored.
Six more stretchers had appeared while he wasn't looking. That made eleven total. Eleven people pulled from the ruins and brought to this place. If they weren't planning to kill them outright, then they wanted them for something else.
Selene could be here. Somewhere in this nightmare facility, lying on her own stretcher while robot doctors pretended to care about her pulse rate.
He just needed a chance. One moment when they weren't watching.
One chance to find her.
The fake doctors finished their checkups and started moving toward the next room. Jaxon's stretcher followed automatically, some kind of magnetic guidance system pulling him along whether he wanted to go or not.
His mouth felt different. The seal was gone but his tongue was thick and useless. Whatever they'd drugged him with was still cooking his nervous system. He could barely twitch his fingers.
The white walls of the examination room gave way to something darker. Emergency lighting kicked in as they passed through a doorway, then suddenly the space opened up and bright floods illuminated what lay beyond.
Jaxon's breath caught in his throat.
Rows upon rows of glass chambers stretched out in every direction, disappearing into the distance like some nightmare version of a warehouse. Each one contained a person. Men, women, children. All of them floating in some kind of clear fluid, eyes closed, bodies perfectly still.
Thousands of them. Maybe millions.
The sound started behind him. Moaning. Crying. Someone trying to scream through a throat that wouldn't work properly.
"What the hell is going on," Jaxon managed to croak. His voice sounded like gravel.
A woman on one of the other stretchers was sobbing now, her body shaking even though she couldn't move anything below her neck. "They're all dead. Oh God, they're all dead."
But they weren't dead. Jaxon could see the subtle rise and fall of chests. The occasional twitch of an eyelid. Whatever was in those tanks was keeping them alive, keeping them preserved like specimens in some alien laboratory.
His mind raced through the possibilities. Organ harvesting made sense. Earth gets invaded, humans get processed, useful biological components get shipped off to whoever was paying for this operation. Clean. Efficient. No waste.
The stretchers moved deeper into the chamber facility, past row after row of sleeping bodies. Some of the faces looked familiar. People he might have passed on the street before the invasion. A barista from the coffee shop near base. A kid who couldn't be more than twelve.
Selene could be in one of these tanks. Right now. Floating in that blue-green fluid while machines monitored her vital signs and decided which pieces of her were worth keeping.
The thought made him want to vomit but his stomach muscles wouldn't cooperate.
Just ahead, the fake doctors were approaching a section of empty chambers.
Eleven empty chambers.
The blonde doctor's fingers danced across a holographic interface that materialized out of thin air. The chambers responded instantly, glass lids sliding open with barely a whisper of sound.
Jaxon felt his stretcher lurch forward. Not his choice. The male doctor was working his own control panel, puppet-mastering all eleven of them toward their glass coffins.
"Help! Please help! What is going on? Please help!" The woman three stretchers over had found her voice and wasn't planning to waste it. Her screams echoed off the chamber walls, bouncing between thousands of sleeping bodies.
Others joined in. Crying. Begging. Calling for their mothers.
Jaxon wanted to laugh. The sound was building in his chest, sharp and hysterical. What was the point? Screaming wouldn't change anything. Crying wouldn't stop whatever came next. They were insects caught in a web and the spider was already moving.
The screaming woman went first. Her stretcher slid into the chamber and mechanical arms extended from the walls. One sealed her mouth. Another positioned itself over her chest. A third began attaching monitoring cables to her temples.
Second victim. Third. Fourth.
Then it was Jaxon's turn. The chamber walls closed around him like a mechanical embrace. Something sharp bit into his arm. Injection. The fluid around him started to fill, warm and thick as blood.
A helmet lowered over his head, covering his eyes and nose and mouth. Tubes snaked down his throat before he could fight them.
This better be a dream, he thought as darkness crept in from the edges of his vision.
Just a really shitty dream.
***
Jaxon hit pavement hard enough to rattle his teeth. No, that wasn't right. He was already standing. Had been standing. The falling sensation was just his brain trying to make sense of something impossible.
The city around him looked wrong. Too clean. Too perfect. Like someone had built it from a magazine photo instead of letting it grow naturally over decades.
He took a step forward and his body moved like it was following invisible rails. Like he was an actor who'd forgotten his lines but his muscle memory still knew the blocking.
"Who am I?"
The question popped out of his mouth before he could stop it. Which was stupid because he knew exactly who he was. Jaxon. Twenty-three years old. Recently discharged. Planning to propose to Selene before the world ended.
Then the memories hit him like a freight train. The redactors. The brain facility. The chamber filling with fluid as tubes forced their way down his throat.
His stomach heaved and he puked all over the pristine sidewalk. People walked around him like he wasn't there, their faces blank and pleasant. He retched again, bringing up nothing but bile.
The city hummed around him, too quiet and too loud at the same time.
Jaxon wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and straightened up. The taste of bile lingered but his stomach had settled. Sort of.
The faces around him moved with that same mechanical precision he'd seen in the fake doctors. Pleasant smiles. Empty eyes. Like someone had programmed them to look busy without giving them anything real to do.
None of them looked familiar. Not one person from his old life, his unit, his neighborhood. Just strangers playing out some elaborate theater.
The city stretched up around him in impossible angles. Glass towers that seemed to bend light, neon advertisements floating in midair without any visible support structure. Everything looked like it had been designed by someone who'd seen pictures of cities but never actually lived in one.
Across the street, women in barely-there dresses clustered around what looked like an upscale club. Their laughter carried over the traffic noise, sharp and artificial. Targeting the married guys who thought their wedding rings made them invisible. Business as usual, apparently, even in whatever twisted simulation this was supposed to be.
Night already. But that didn't make sense. The redactors had hit him around nine-thirty in the morning. Maybe an hour to get to the facility, another hour for processing. It should still be daylight.
He looked down at his wrist. No watch. No scar from the shrapnel that had torn up his forearm in Syria. His clothes were different too. Black jacket, white shirt, blue jeans that fit better than anything he'd ever owned. Combat boots that looked fresh out of the box.
What time was it anyway? He needed to know where he stood before he could figure out what came next.
Information flashed across his vision like someone had installed a computer screen behind his eyeballs. Translucent text floating in the air, updating in real time.
TIME: FRIDAY 23 SEPTEMBER 2035
ACCOUNT BALANCE: $1000
HOME: NIL
MARITAL STATUS: SINGLE
2035? That was twelve years in the future!
Single.
The word hit him harder than the energy blast from the redactor. His chest tightened and for a second he couldn't breathe.
Selene. Where was Selene in this twisted version of reality?