/ Rigor Mortis /

Cold air hitting their faces, Arufa and Locri dashed into the central room looking for answers. The Transversal loomed overhead as they hid themselves underneath the smooth, elevated pods.

“You two, come back!” Ghiles shouted, his voice reverberating through the facility as he ran into the room. “We can talk this out!”

We can talk this out after I know the truth, Arufa replied in her head. She watched the reflectors on his lab coat glimmer in the ultraviolet light as he spun around frantically. Because then we’ll have something to reason with.

Ghiles, assuming they had kept running, moved along down the hallway. As his footsteps grew faint, Locri turned to Arufa, shivering.

“Alright, genius. What now?” she whispered.

“Maybe the office above us has files and stuff,” Arufa suggested. “I don’t know.”

“Cool, let’s–”

“No, maybe we can check the cells instead? He might have left his computer open. Or what about…”

Locri stared at her as she trailed off. “One at a time, miss indecision. We’ll check the office first. Let’s go.”

The former bodyguard rose to her feet and hopped over a row of computers. I admire her determination. She’s a lot like I was back in X2.

Beside the office was a small flight of stairs, which the two subjects quickly scaled before running through the room’s open door. Arufa clicked on her flashlight and scanned the desk, searching through a messy slew of papers.

“Arufa,” Locri said. “Ghiles said you were starting to remember stuff. How?”

“It’s just… coming back to me. Like he said, memory foam or whatever. Is it not happening to you?”

“No…?”

“Weird.”

Arufa opened a file folder labeled ‘MWP02’ and glanced over some of the text. Much of the first page had been redacted in blank ink, but something amidst it caught her eye.

“Locri, come look at this. I know it’s not about us, but still.”

She shrugged and walked over. “Oh, Marsia? What’s up with her?”

“Look how it says her name. Dr. Marsia Lilia. She was a scientist. And it says here she has a rare form of blood cancer…?”

“Give me this,” Locri said, grabbing the folder and thumbing to the next page. She read some of it herself, her expression turning grim.

“What is it? What did you find?”

“Marsia’s dead.”

“What?”

Locri set the file back down, jutting her index finger onto the page. It was a diagram showing the results of a reconstructive surgery—several notes in the margins made it clear it involved many robotic components.

“See, look, right there,” she spat. “Dr. Lilia’s tragic death will be undone through the Many-Worlds Project. What the fuck is this Frankenstein shit? They plugged her brain in and it just worked?”

Arufa gnashed her teeth. “That’s why her face looked weird. Her eyes are cameras. She’s basically a cyborg.”

“My question is, what the fuck does that have to do with the Many-Worlds Project? That doesn’t make sense. All they did was revive her.”

“Keep looking. Maybe we’ll find something.”

“We’d better.”

And so they kept sifting through folders and documents. There was a pertinent dread hanging in the room, a collective fear that Ghiles may soon return. Papers fell to the floor as they sorted them out, hoping for any evidence they weren’t a lost cause.

“Arufa, I found yours!” Locri hissed. “Here!”

She tossed the folder, which Arufa fumbled with to some degree—her fingers were frigid and hard to control. “Thanks.”

Let’s see here. MWP04, Arufa… damn, they blacked out my last name. And… pretty much everything else about me, too. But there’s a bunch of pictures in the back. Let me check those.

She flipped it on the table and opened it again, plucking through photos. One in particular disturbed her greatly—so greatly, she had to look away and try not to gag.

They’re… sewing my head to my neck…!

Locri leaned over to see the photo. “Hey, that confirms that theory,” she said. “We’re all dead, no doubt. Walking corpses. No wonder I don’t remember signing a consent form.”

Staring at the ceiling, Arufa traced her fingers along her neck. She found a metal ring where the stitches would have been, probably meant to cover them up. I was decapitated…?

Suddenly, she began to remember just a little more. She remembered laying shackled in a prison cell, this same dread hanging over her. She remembered being told her execution time. She remembered wanting to say goodbye…

But I don’t remember dying, she thought. Maybe it’s a traumatic response, but I don’t remember dying at all. And I’m pretty confident my hair was brown. So why is it silver in this picture?

Locri tapped her on the shoulder. “Hey, Arufa. I hear footsteps down the hall. We might want to get down.”

“One second…!” she replied, grabbing a couple more folders and files before running out the door. They hid below the pods like they had before, waiting it out.

They both winced when they heard the click of a gun. Ghiles, slowly approaching the Transversal, held a pistol at arm’s length, aiming it around.

“White gave me her gun! I-if you come out now, I won’t shoot you on sight!”

Not a chance, Arufa thought. Now let’s see what I grabbed.

She set it all softly on the tiled floor and spread out the papers silently. One of the folders read ‘MWP03’—she slid her fingers underneath it and handed it to Locri. She mouthed the words ‘read it’.

A low hum resonated from the machines all around as Ghiles stepped up into the office. Being directly above them, his presence was a little terrifying; even so, Locri began to flip the pages of her own document.

I hope he’ll understand why we’re doing this. I hope he sees we’re not just being rebellious for no reason. He seemed reasonable enough—more than White, at least—so maybe we’ll actually have a chance? And maybe it’s better to go down trying either way.

Locri set the folder down and pulled out a few photos. She showed Arufa with a confused look on her face, and immediately she understood why—they barely looked like her at all.

Her hair’s long, curly, and black. And it looks like she’s got darker skin, but maybe that’s just the lighting. Plus, this is a mugshot… and she’s smiling in it?

“The desk looks different,” Ghiles grumbled to himself, “which means they came through here already. God, how’d I let them run away?!”

He trotted down the stairs and ran off somewhere to the left. As soon as he left audible range, Locri slammed her hand on the file. “This is bullshit. I mean, it’s kind of working, ‘cause I’m starting to remember stuff, but I don’t remember ending up in prison.”

“Same here. I don’t remember getting executed, but here we are,” Arufa replied. “These files aren’t gonna help us anymore. Maybe talking to each other more will jog our memories?”

“Bitch, I don’t fuckin’ know. ‘My name’s Locri, and I killed people!’” she grumbled. “There. Your turn.”

“I’m Arufa. I’m seventeen–”

“You’re seriously just gonna try small talk?”

“Yeah! What other choice do we have now?”

Locri shrugged. “Sure. Talk away. I’m going to figure out what’s up with that Transversal thingamajig.”

They both got up and bolted out of the darkness, over to the tall machine as quickly as their undead bodies would take them. Locri tried accessing the command prompt while Arufa racked her brain for memories.

“I’m seventeen years old, and I committed a terrorist attack. I like reading history books and solving mysteries. Um… I remember a library! I know there was one in X2, but I remember a real one. I used to stay there all the time when I wasn’t babysitting my sister—holy shit, I have a sister!

“My sister was… two years younger than me. Her name’s right on the tip of my tongue… gah, I can’t figure it out. But I know I had parents, and I remember going to school. I think I used to bully kids when I was younger because I had issues with insecurity, but I might have gotten over it…?

“I have a ton of fears, like the dark, or spiders, or tight spaces. I think a lot of it came from the bedtime stories my mom used to read me about monsters hiding in the dark—wow, that’s really specific. I’m super indecisive, and a little anxious, and I still act brash sometimes to hide that…”

“Okay, stop right there,” Locri said. “One, really glad it’s working. Happy for you and all that. Two, they left this computer open, and I worked my way into its file system. Go grab the files and check the five-letter codes on them. Fast.”

Arufa nodded and turned back around to get the folders. While she ran, she heard Locri begin talking to herself:

“My name is Locri Lonestar. I’m twenty-three, and I was a serial killer before the simulation. I like guns and weapons, which I guess makes sense for a fuckin’ psycho, and I’ve always wanted to go hunting. Which means I must have lived on earth, because I remember being out in the woods.”

Arufa reached over the row of computers one last time and scooped up the folders with both hands. She glanced at their codes—the one on top read ‘MANYW’, which she could only assume to mean the Many-Worlds Project.

“I’m trying to think of siblings or parents, but nothing’s coming to me. I do remember someone… I can’t put a name to his face, but I think we were related somehow. And… oh, okay, funeral, I’m gonna skip over that memory.”

She brought back the files as asked and laid them out on the ground beside the Transversal. The cold fog iced her fingertips as she handed them one at a time to Locri.

“I curse a lot to sound tougher than I am. Maybe I was part of a gang…? I remember riding a motorcycle, but I don’t remember anyone doing it with me. I started bodybuilding because people in school called me fat, and maybe I was. I remember them calling me other names, too. But… I never remember anyone calling me Locri until X2.”

Locri typed the code ‘MANYW’ into the command prompt and watched the screen fade into a long manuscript. Scrolling up and down, she found it was a lengthy description of the experiment. Arufa looked into her eyes—panic, an emotion she’d not expressed until now.

“We don’t have time to read this shit. Arufa, give me the next one.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Clicking back to the home menu, she now entered the code ‘MWP03’, which after loading in, gave her a brief description of herself. Several numbers on screen meant nothing to either of them, but the descriptions below them did.

“Psychopathic. Unforgiving. Violent. Is that all they think of me?” she muttered. Her hands shivered on the keyboard—her face twitched. “This is stupid. It’s all stupid.”

“Hey, Locri, it’s okay. We’re gonna prove you can change. That’s why we’re doing this,” Arufa said, trying to ease the tension.

“Easy for you to say!” she hollered, throwing the folder to the ground. Photos and clippings flew all over—Arufa backed up in fear. “You killed a few kids! So what? It was one time. That was all!”

“This isn’t about comparing! Locri, I watched you protect Marsia! I know there’s good in you!”

“You’re not the one remembering it all now! You don’t have to see the bodies pile up in your head! You don’t have to remember slitting throats, bashing in skulls, any of that! You don’t have to remember torturing the innocent! And you don’t have to remember how much you loved it!”

Arufa began to understand at that moment what Ghiles had meant. Even longing to be someone new, someone good, Locri was drowning in the guilt of her past. It was rising up to swallow her whole, to turn her right back into the woman she was before.

But that wouldn’t stop Arufa from trying to save her. “But you hate it now, don’t you?” she cried. “You hate how you loved it! You hate the Locri that killed those people! And you don’t have to be her!”

“That’s the problem,” Locri whimpered. “I don’t want to be her. But that’s who I am. Our memories define us, that’s what Ghiles said. And am I supposed to believe the six years of fake memories I made in X2, or the twenty-three years of real memories I made killing people for fun?!”

“Locri!”

“I’m tired of it all! Those scientists think I can never change, well so be it!” she wailed, her voice hoarse. Tears fell from her dead eyes. “Maybe I won’t change! Maybe I’ll bust out of here and snap their necks! They lied to me for six years and they thought it was all a waste, so I guess it was!”

“Locri!”

“And you know what I just remembered, Arufa? They lied about one more pointless little thing. Just another nail in the coffin, another measure to stop me from going berserk. They told me my name was Locri Lonestar.”

“Locri, behind you!”

“That’s not my name! That’s never been my name! So let’s start this game all over, huh? Let’s see how it goes! My name is–”

            SEVMcE1laEVscE1FaEVMUG1FSG                                                   VMcG1FY0hFTFBtRWhlbHBNRUhoRUxwbUVoZWxQTWVIRUxQTWVoRUxQbUVMSEVM                                                                                                    cG1lSEV

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The blood of a murderer splattered across Arufa’s face.

Ghiles brought the smoking gun down to his side, hands trembling, and watched as Locri Lonestar’s body crumpled. Her memories were permanently erased, her consciousness destroyed in a single instant. The bullet hole through her skull was evidence of that.

Arufa was frozen in shock. She stared unblinking, unfocused, into the darkness. She couldn’t move—she couldn’t even think. Tears welled up in the corners of her eyes and mixed with the oozing blood below.

“I… I-I had to do that,” Ghiles whimpered.

“…”

“She could’ve… I… I’m not a murderer…”

“…”

“The way I see it, she could’ve killed us all… so I-I did that to save you.”

“And, the way I see it,” Arufa murmured inaudibly, “people can change.”