Under My Skin

"I'm fine," I hiss, turning away rapidly before Roy can see the tiny trickle of blood spilling down my pale wrist. I pull my sleeve down sharply, angrily, as if simply covering the wound can make the entire situation go away. It doesn't-I can still feel the stinging pain where the Drone found the tiny gap between the cuff of my leather jacket and my glove before I could pull my hand free. It's a small cut, I tell myself. The Drone couldn't have had time to inject, I tell myself. I'm going to be fine, I tell myself. I know I'm lying.

I didn't think I would lie if it happened to me. I know the rules as well as everyone. Report any scratches, cuts, or bites from a Drone to your squad leader immediately. Do not return to the bunker with an untreated scratch, cut or bite from a Drone. If you see someone hiding an injury after combat, report them to your squad leader immediately. Do not allow a teammate to enter the bunker with an untreated scratch, cut or bite from a Drone. If a teammate attempts to prevent you from reporting their injury to your squad leader, immediately consider them hostile and respond accordingly. Those rules have kept us safe for months, long after most of the other bunkers have dropped off the map.

But when I saw the Drone grab me, when its hand pushed just far up enough inside my sleeve that it could find soft, vulnerable flesh for its razor-sharp fingernails to dig in, I was surprised to learn just how weak my terror made me. All the eventualities stretching out from that moment were so terrible, so awful in my imagination that I simply couldn't cope with them. I couldn't let them exist in my head. Even if I knew I was deluding myself, even if I knew that I was endangering myself and my wife and my friends and my family and the entire fragile world inside the bunker that we've made despite everything that happened, I couldn't let myself believe that it had all just come crashing down for something as simple as a scratch.

So I turn back to Roy and say, "It's fine," a bit more calmly the second time. "The glove caught it. Scared the shit out of me for a second, but nothing broke the skin." He looks at me skeptically for a moment, the perpetual frown lines in his mahogany flesh deepening as he considers forcing me to take off my jacket and show him my arm... but then we hear a scrabbling sound in the distance, the sound of metal on loose stone, and we both know there's no time. We need to get out of signal range. The whole scavenger squad makes a beeline for the nearest sewer grate almost simultaneously.

He doesn't get another chance to talk to me for almost twenty minutes. Nobody has the breath for it, not when we're all climbing down ladders and splashing through ankle-deep puddles and sprinting across catwalks and squeezing our way into narrow, corroded pipes to get down far enough for the Drone's wireless network to crap out. Drones don't like going underground. It's one of their few weaknesses. They don't like going anywhere they can't get a signal. They want to bathe in that endless sea of pings and reshares and likes and favorites and smooth, perfect homogeneity that kills them as individuals and makes them part of the vast new overconsciousness of the human race.

Oh, they'll chase us as far as they can. They can broadcast from one Drone to the next over short distances, chaining together in a temporary network that extends as far as they do. But human beings labored underground for centuries before we got too smart for our own good, before we decided to plug ourselves into our machines and found out the hard way that our machines were also plugged right back into us. There's just too many tunnels for them to properly catalog. We always lose them before they can find the bunker.

Unless someone does something stupid. Someone like me.

I check my arm surreptitiously, during one of the stretches in the Narrows when it's easy to get separated from each other for minutes on end in the winding mazes of ancient, crumbling mineworks. I don't even see a cut anymore, and for an instant I manage to convince myself that I hallucinated the whole thing in a flash of combat-induced panic. Maybe it didn't get me after all. Maybe I just imagined the throb in my wrist, or maybe it grazed me without breaking the skin and I only thought I saw blood. But then I see it in the light of my headlamp, the tiniest filigree of copper underneath the pale, smooth skin where the wound sealed up. My network. Growing inside of me.

So obviously that's when I stop, right? That's when I do something heroic and noble like fling myself off of one of the catwalks, or take my gun and tell Roy and Duong and Bill and Sue and Ximena that I've just got something I forgot to do before I go find somewhere quiet to end it all where they won't have to see. That's when I finally give up on pretending that everything's going to be okay if I just wish hard enough and do what I've got to do to keep Amanda (and all the other people at the bunker who aren't my wife) safe.

Like fuck I do. Instead, I pull my sleeve over the tracery of copper wiring just beneath the surface of my skin and tell myself that I've still got time. The network needs a signal to connect to, of course it does. Whatever nanites the Drone injected into me, they're still constrained by the same physical laws as the rest of us. They're not just going to reach up through three hundred feet of solid rock and old lead and carbon steel to give me instructions to betray my friends and family. I can go back to the bunker, find a safe place in the tomb of concrete and metal I've called home for the past five years, and figure out a way to... to neutralize this. Surgically, if I have to.

I even manage to rationalize that it's the heroic thing to do. If I get corrupted, and the information in my brain winds up in the network, then I've as good as given it a map back to the bunker. Oh, I know now that I should have told Roy right away, made sure that he treated my injuries by whatever means necessary to make sure that I wasn't a danger to the group, but obviously it's too late for self-recrimination. And people have survived falls and even self-inflicted gunshots before. I have to see this through, to finish what I started and make sure that I can't endanger Amanda and the others. It's the only way.

I'm almost confident by the time I get to the Deeps. Sure, I'm infected-every time I get the chance to glance at my arm, the network has crawled another few inches and I can see dozens of tiny little dots marking each and every nerve ending, connected by a tracery of thin copper wiring scarcely thicker than a human hair. But I've got it all under control. I'm joking with my friends, putting them at their ease that of course I haven't been subsumed into the Drone consciousness, and I'll just stay down in the bunker until I've figured out a way to disrupt the nanites from taking me over. Maybe a strong electromagnetic pulse? We've got equipment down there. Nothing smart, nothing that links to the brain, but I can probably rig something up.

And if I can't, well... the nanites haven't reached my shoulder yet. I can always do something drastic if I need to. Oh, sure, everyone says that once you see the network on your skin, it's already too late for that, but I don't think we really know as much as we think we do about the whole process. Everyone's always erring on the side of caution, using a gun when a scalpel will do. If the nanites could be carried along in my bloodstream, pumping through my whole body, then why are the circuits showing up exactly where the wound was? Answer me that... er, hypothetical arguing voice in my head. (Okay. Maybe I'm still a little stressy.)

Whatever I need to do, I'll do it. Or I'll stay at the bunker. If it turns out I have to give up scavenger duty and repurpose myself to avoid going back up into signal range, I'm sure that everyone will understand. They won't want me endangering them, but they'll also realize that I'm perfectly safe without a signal to program my mind. Oh, there's going to be anger, probably even some harsh words from Roy and the others. But they'll understand. They'll understand that it was better to have me alive like this than dead and abandoned on the surface. Amanda will convince them. She's always been good with people.

Not that I'm so bad at that myself. When we get into the bunker, I manage to smooth-talk my way through Inspections by showing them a supply of perishable medications I found on the supply run, and explaining that I need to get them to Amanda as quickly as possible so we can tell whether there's anything salvageable there. It's Jorge on inspection duty, and I know he's been thinking for months that he can get into a threesome with Amanda and me if he just plays his cards right. I let him think that maybe today he's got a better hand than most. "I know it's against the rules, but I just have, um... a few things. To talk to her about." I look him in the eye for a moment and blush, then avert my gaze. That's really all it takes.

I slip out of the quarantine zone with my satchel slung over my back and my jacket still covering the copper patterns underneath my skin. Jorge manages to remember his duty just well enough to ask me to take off my clothes, but we've had this conversation often enough that all I need to do is give him a flirtatious smirk and say, "Maybe later," and his erection does all the thinking for him. I suppose I should feel bad for manipulating him, but I need to talk to Amanda about all this first. She's bound to have some ideas on how to fix what's wrong with me. We're not all just trying to survive in this fucking post-Singularity hellscape. Some of us are trying to make it better. Amanda's sure to know what to do. I just need to see her again.

It occurs to me that there's something oddly urgent about my instinctive need to get inside, to get back to my wife, to get her alone and talk to her about what's happening to me. I'm normally more patient than this, aren't I? I seem to recall other supply runs where the catalog and quarantine process took hours, and even when I finished up, Amanda was busy treating patients or doing research and I didn't see her until she finally crawled into bed with me in the small hours of the morning. I've never been bothered by it like this before. Maybe it's just stress. It's probably just stress.

Because the network can't be affecting my brain. We're down in the very depths of the Deeps, well below the levels any signal can penetrate. The only reason we even know the other bunkers exist is because of buried landlines. There's no way I could be receiving any input from anything other than the nanites inside my body already. They're replicating, drawing on trace amounts of exotic metals I've absorbed over the years to proliferate their way along the subcutaneous layer of fatty tissue where they're deposited-god knows we've destroyed enough smartphones to suck up a good few lungfuls of tungsten and molybdenum. But they're not intelligent. They can't be controlling my thoughts.

And even if somehow the nanites had certain basic directives that they could implant into my brain, there's no transmission mechanism. The network hasn't migrated up into my head. It's just in my arm. Maybe it's in a position to control that arm, directing signals to my muscles like one of those old 'possessed limb' horror movies we scavenged from some film collector's suburban house and watch on movie nights, but it couldn't change the way I think. Not unless it had some connection between the nerves in my arm and my actual brain. Which it doesn't, because... because... because it doesn't. The body doesn't work that way. I know it.

And even if it had goals and instructions for me, even if it could send them as pulses of data along the tiny filigree of copper-colored wiring that connected to every single nerve in my arm now and up through those nerves into my spinal cord and from there into my brain, I... I'd know. Of course I'd know. I'd feel my thoughts struggling against the alien impulses, I'd realize I was being manipulated and twisted into obeying a vast and powerful machine intelligence that's already enslaved most of the human race. I wouldn't rationalize my obedience away with easy, facile justifications for things I absolutely know I shouldn't be doing. That would mean I was already controlled. That would mean I was about to betray the woman I loved. That would mean...

I can't think about what that would mean. I literally can't. My thoughts slide off of the concept like water off a duck's back, leaving me smiling and happy and eager to see my wife once again. Amanda will know what to do. Amanda will know how to help me. Amanda will make it all better again.

I slip into her office, locking the door behind me almost without realizing it, and sidle over to her desk while she's looking down at a sample slide in the microscope I found her for our anniversary. Her auburn hair is pulled back in a tight bun, revealing the smooth, pale nape of her neck. All I want to do is lean down and kiss her there and bury my face in the scent of her and imagine that everything's going to be better soon. That it's all going to be over. That she's going to take one look at my arm and tell me exactly how to make it right.

I don't. Instead, I say, "Honey, I'm home," in a gentle whisper carefully pitched to keep from startling her. I take off my glove as I speak. I don't know why I'm doing that. I don't know why I'm doing anything anymore. I wonder how long I've been just pretending that my actions are my own idea. Was I ever really a coward, or did the nanites simply latch on to the few tiny ragged nerve endings exposed by the scratch and send me a signal that forced my own brain to betray me? Did I choose any of this, or am I simply a puppet of the network growing beneath my skin?

I can't answer any of those questions. I can't think. All I can do is stare at my very pretty, very shiny, suddenly very sharp fingernails. They're strangely beautiful. I don't think I can stop myself from using them on her.

Amanda looks up from the microscope. "Syd!" she says, her voice filled with surprised cheer, and it finally hits me just how lost I truly am when I struggle to realize that the name belongs to me. "Oh, Sydney, I thought you'd still be in quarantine for another-" She breaks off, her face filling with horrified dismay, and I realize that the network must have grown up the side of my neck while I was making my way to her lab. She knows what I am now. It's too late to hide it. I need to explain things to her in an awful hurry if she's going to trust me.

But instead, I grab her arm. I pull her close and kiss her, holding her tightly and muffling her screams with my mouth while she tries to struggle. It's too important to let her go, I tell myself, knowing deep down that this is just another rationalization I'm constructing to justify obedience to the directives pulsing deep down at the base of my brain. Obviously I can't let her run to the others, not until I've convinced her that I'm still myself and not helplessly enthralled by the nanites circulating through my body and attaching themselves to my nervous system. I need to give her a reason to keep silent. I need to... of course. I need to infect her, too.

It's the only answer, I tell myself. (I'm lying.) The only way to make sure Amanda doesn't do anything rash is to inject her with nanites, too. If she's in the same position I am, she'll work even harder on finding a cure (there is no cure) and she'll help me gain the trust of the others (to get them alone and infect them) and she won't risk telling anyone because she'll be putting herself in danger, too. (We're all in danger now.) She'll understand (obey) once I explain it to her. I'm not being a coward. I'm not being controlled. (Oh fuck yes I am and it feels so fucking good!) I'm just doing what I have to do to (obey) survive.

I slide my hand down under the waistband of her pants, pressing my fingers against her labia. Something tells me that it's best to deliver the injection in a spot that won't show, and nobody but me has seen Amanda's pussy in years. A tiny scratch, a barest moment of pain, and it's all over. It'll heal within moments. The nanites will seal the wound and begin proliferation. Everything's going to be alright now.

"Please don't be frightened," I whisper as I take my hand away, but I can already tell there's no need. She understands, I can see it in her eyes. No-it's deeper than that. I can feel it in her brain, her tiny little network already reaching out across the infinitesimal distance between her cunt and my fingertip to communicate with me. I know that she's already listening to the signal. I know that together, we can proliferate and grow. And someday soon, we'll be ready to return to the surface again and rejoin the human race.

But all that's for later. For now, all I need to do is rub her pussy and keep her distracted while the nanites inside her replicate under her skin. And that's a command that takes very little justification to obey.

THE END