wired, part iv

(This is a post-apocalyptic retelling of Rapunzel. While this is not graphic, it is meant for a mature audience.)

Wired, Part IV

I knew she would find out. It wasn’t a matter of if, only when.

Still, it was too early, the night she came. She never came at night, but she did then. She broke the pattern.

I didn’t notice her coming because I’d diverted all my resources into finishing the operation. I crouched over my screens, my gown half-unbuttoned while he caressed my bare back and nuzzled my neck. It had been quick—hot and heavy and panting. He was satisfied, but it was just another item on my to-do list. Another thing to check off, along with the small favor he’d asked for, before I could plug in the code he’d brought me. He held the tiny data-disk nestled between thumb and forefinger, playing with it, tantalizing me.

I shunted supplies around, diverting more oil to his father’s manufactories, giving his family a more favorable route in the annual trading caravan. He peered over my shoulder, not too far gone in the afterglow to refrain from checking my work.

“There.” I keyed in the last number—for show only, since I could do it all with my hair. I liked the finality of the click. “Now.” I jerked my shoulder from his kiss, held out my hand. “Give it to me.”

My tone was too eager. His shrewd eyes narrowed, but it was too late to pretend nonchalance. I opted for a sort of bland directness and he relinquished the key to me.

“What, no riddles for me this time?” I tried for lightness, but my avid fingers had already pushed the disk into the slot.

“None, because you’ll find plenty to keep you busy. That’s encrypted and I—um, acquired it from Wizard Aquarius without any instruction manuals.”

“Acquired it, huh?” I met his rougish expression with a wry smile of my own. “Why, you do care!”

He seemed about to speak, but I had no time for banter. I turned back to my work. Later. I’d tell him my plan later. I would even ask him to come with me, but I’d do it right before I had to leave. I couldn’t risk letting him talk me into modifying my plan for his family’s benefit.

It didn’t take long to break the code, but every second was precious. Ah, there it was–data from the only satellite in orbit I couldn’t access because Aquarius had gotten to it first. I brushed my fingers through the information stream; I’d immerse in it later. Right now I had to dump it into secure and secret hard drives and dump it fast before anyone noticed the huge footprints I’d made all over the network this evening…

And then I lost it.

The sea, the information I’d swum in for years, vanished. Just gone, leaving me floating in nothingness. The screens went blank, in unison, blinking out on an exhalation.

“Lady Locks?” He looked from me to the screens, and back again. Confused but not panicking. Not yet.

He didn’t know I had been locked out. Didn’t know that the vacuum was sucking out my breath and brains, didn’t know how the cold of it had turned my bones to ice and my thoughts slow and sluggish.

Then a rope in the darkness, a blue-white spiral of code. It was a lifeline and I grabbed for it, desperate to be connected, to be part of the sea again. Maybe it was a river, maybe it could lead me back…

Pain flared through me. Muscle-spasm, bone-tingle, electric-fizz. The code came alive, like a muscular snake that had been pretending to be a vine. It tangled all around me, tying me up with knots.

I toppled from my stool, hair jerking my scalp painfully. I smelled something burning, tasted something ashy. He stood, backed away. The fake skin on my cheek softened, melted, dripped down my neck. My left eye was out of control… weak… showing nothing. Static buzzed in my ears.

“So, you turned traitor, then, did you? Even after all I did for you?” Her voice, so close, as it had been when she used to comb my hair. But no, she was not behind me. The tingling at the back of the neck had led me astray. No, she was at the elevator shaft.

She was here. At night.

“Taken in by a pretty face, eh? Gave into desires of the flesh?” Light and shadow set her aged face into harsh lines; the suit and the boots gave her a menacing bulk.

I couldn’t answer. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t access the sea.

I saw him from the corner of my eye, the tension of his muscles, the spring at his heels.

No! I shouted into my own skull.

Mother Gothel moved and suddenly he was staring into the barrel of a disruptor gun. Unholy glee lit her face as she squeezed the trigger. His body jerked as the energy hit him, but he’d committed speed and strength to the move. He was tall, his reach long. His knife sliced through the sleeve of her suit.

Mother Gothel jerked back, cursed. He fell at her feet, twitching, his features all twisted. Blood seeped from the tear in her suit. She kicked at his body.

“Your lover here forgets his manners. You need to take better care of your rubbish, dear.”

Her code wrapped me tighter, snaked into my wires and veins—they were all one now. Commands I’d not given slithered into my skull, prickled up my scalp, shot down my hair. Robotic arms came to life, crude things scavenged from the carcasses of factories. My more elegant constructions were occupied elsewhere. I couldn’t reach them.

They grabbed him, my prince, my faithless-faithful scoundrel prince. Pinched him around the middle, took his feet in a vise-grip, held his shoulders. He moaned and thrashed, not from any real struggle, but from the current still running riot in him.

Did he even know what was going to happen?

I did. And I could do nothing about it.

My voicebox was no longer in my control, nor the muscles of my left cheek. But my lips, still real, twitched, crimped, rounded. Shaped out the words Please. Don’t.

Wheels grinding, inexorable and unfeeling, the robots took their burden to the windows, those huge holes I had never patched, never needing to.

They flung him out.

He had not the strength to scream. I had not the sensors to see him fall, though my imagination pictured it: head down, arms akimbo, a spreadeagled speck.

And the splat.

I never got to ask him to go away with me. I’ll never know what he would’ve said.

Were those tears or the liquefying remains of my flesh/machinery on my face?

He’d used me. But he was my prince, and I had used him, too.

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