“And as years pass, the manifestations will continue, growing denser and knitting together…until the whole world is drowning in them, and everybody will be screaming…”

Quinn has watched this recording multiple times now. He mouths the words along with her: “ ‘Why did nobody realize what was happening?’ And nobody will answer, because everybody who realized was killed, by this system…”

He skips forward.

“Three years ago, UO Antimemetics was a mini-Organization of more than four thousand people. Today, we are ninety people. Tomorrow it’s going to be fewer. Our original headquarters is gone. Obliterated from our collective memory. No one remembers!”

Forward.

“There’s a machine we could build. All it would take is twenty years, a lab the size of a country, and all the money in the world.”

He skips forward again.

“I don’t remember the last time I slept without having a nightmare about Adam—”

He stops it.

Then he plays the other recording. The recording that was recorded as a response to the first, by a very different Marie Quinn. One with no one left to lose.

She takes a second to start talking. She collects her thoughts, and does not find it easy to look at the camera.

“I remember now. I don’t know why I remember now, but I remember that there is a disused heavy engineering lab beneath the Wyeleigh complex. Vault B30-000. I don’t know when it was built, or who built it, or what its original purpose was. No one has gone down there in living memory.

“My belief is that there are good reasons for those gaps in my knowledge. I believe that this vault was originally constructed to house a long-term project where Dr. Edward Hix would construct this machine. That machine.” She points off-screen, at an area of wall.

Adam Quinn has already found that area of wall. He’s retrieved all of those schematics. He holds up the paperwork, demonstrating that he is following her reasoning. The machine is called an “irreality amplifier,” and he doesn’t have a clue how it’s supposed to work.

Marie continues. “While that’s been going on, the rest of the Antimemetics Division has been fighting an unconscious war in order to buy time. We have been, inevitably, losing. But we have been losing as slowly as humanly possible.

“Now, today, the time we have bought is up. It is, I will concede, an extremely bad sign that nobody inside B30-000 has broken the seal yet, but there is no ground left for us to cede, and there are no more bodies to throw into U-3125’s maw to slow it down. It’s here, ready or not.

“I’m going to go to B30-000 and use the machine. I think I can get the information out through the airlock. I think I can get to the vault alive. This was the plan. It’s become garbled in the retelling because of variables, but I know that this was my plan, because I know myself. What else could it have been?”

Adam is verifying all of this against his notes. He nods.

Now comes the important part.

“Standard procedure is that I have to tell you what to do next if this doesn’t work. That’s the asynchronous research covenant.

“But I don’t have a good picture of who you can even be, watching this and alive. In your scenario the vault is empty, there’s no amplifier, Edward Hix is missing, I’m dead, this site is ruined, and—how would you even get in here? Are you UO? Are you conscious? Is there a single word of this that you comprehend?”

“One or two,” Quinn murmurs.

“You live in a world bathed with U-3125. That’s the loss condition. I can’t help someone who doesn’t exist. Unless…”

She regards the camera for some time, lips tightened into a grim line. Then she terminates the recording.

Quinn flips through his notes one last time. He takes a deep breath, and starts a recording of his own.

“You’ve been extremely helpful, in fact. You’ve given me the answer. I say ‘you,’ but I’ll confess I don’t fully know for whom I’m recording this. I found your body.”

He pauses.

“And I’m sorry.

“…You were right. About everything. It’s here now, and what it’s done to the world is frankly unspeakable. I’m still conscious. I think. I’m walking and talking. I might be the only one. I have seen neither hide nor hair of anybody else. At least, out in the open. According to my file—yes, I’ve found the files—the neurological condition I have, which protects me from this kind of mental interference, is very rare. Not totally unique…But how many other people have this U-4987 critter on their side as well? I looked it up. And like a lot of the things in your database, it seems to be one of a kind.”

Aside, he adds, “I lost a lot of time in your database. That dry house style of yours makes for bizarrely compelling reading. I’m going to cautiously assert that at least half of the entries are disinformation, yes? They certainly can’t all be true at once…

“I don’t know what’s happened to the rest of the Organization. I found your communications room, and I’m…decently sure that I got the equipment properly operational. There were written instructions, some key frequencies to try in case of emergencies, that sort of thing. But, nothing. And I’ve been thinking about what that means. It’s possible that there are surviving Organization staff, in bunkers somewhere. Somewhere else. If I were them, I’d be refusing incoming calls, because it seems like this thing is an idea, and we all know that an idea can travel across a phone call. But the Organization outside of your division didn’t have your training, so I don’t know if they’d have even thought to shut themselves away when U-3125 arrived, or even if they’d have bunkers, or the right kind of bunkers. So, I’d guess that most of them were pulled into the…mess, along with everybody else.

“Which doesn’t necessarily make them dead. Most of the people in there are alive.” He shivers. “But it does mean, it’s down to me.

“So.

“From the evidence I can see, this was never the sole Antimemetics Division site. There were others. I imagine they’re now all effectively invisible to (most) passersby, of course, just like this one, but I presume that they, just like this one, still physically exist. Your plan, I think, was in place for longer than you know. And since you weren’t at liberty to retain its details, you put it into action more than once.

“Your original headquarters. Your base of operations, up at UO Stanmoor, sent to oblivion years ago. I have a map of the base, here in the older files. There was a vault there, just like this one and just like B30-000. Same airlock, same, ah, what was the terminology…‘broad-spectrum informational cladding.’

“Stanmoor is a nonentity, of course. It’s likely ruined, ruined a long time before this all happened, and it’s quite definitely a long goddamned way from here. You would never have made it even if you tried. But I know precisely where it is, and I think it’s better than half a chance.

“I could die on this jaunt too, naturally. The world outside of here is a horror show, and nothing is simple. But I’ll give it my best shot. And whomever I’m speaking to, if anybody: Well, follow me. With care. I could be dead wrong.”

He pauses the recording.

He resumes recording.

“You saved my life,” he says. He wipes an eye. “I’m still here. I wish you were here.”

He stops the recording.

“I’m so scared,” he says.

■

As he moves down the forest road away from Wyeleigh, he approaches the edge of the antimemetic crater. He squares his shoulders, preparing to reenter the presence of U-3125. His inner ear starts free-falling again. The ambient light is reddening.

“Where were you, just now?” someone calls out to him.

He slows, and stops. He squints into the intense light ahead of him, shielding his eyes. He can just about make out a figure standing there. The trees on each side of them rustle and move. They’re too tall. Spider-scrapers. A wave of dread hits Quinn, followed closely by one of perverse relief. In the back of his head, Sunshine trembles.

“Why can’t I track you?” the unidentified man says. His voice sounds faint. “You’re so weak, it’s like you don’t exist. I just wasted two days trying to pick you up again. What’s wrong with you?”

Quinn says nothing.

The man is closer. He didn’t walk, but the distance between them halves, and his voice is easier to hear, though he is still too bright to look at. His body structure blurs and flickers. “You’re not one of Them,” he says. “And you’re not one of Us. And you’re sure as hell not the hero. Maybe that’s how you did it. You don’t mean anything.

“Why are you wasting your time on this? Whatever the fuck this is. Kill yourself. It’s not going to work.”

Quinn knows that.

The light collapses. The figure smashes into focus, becoming physical. It’s a real human. A skinny twentysomething with scruffy, uncut hair and a sketchy beard. He is shirtless, and there is a deep, black pit in his clavicle, a hole where he has clearly been very badly wounded. Blood has run down his chest, soaked his jeans and forearms, and dried black. Fresh blood is still coming, building up thick layers, which shouldn’t be possible. Quinn doesn’t spot the second hole in his gut, obscured by too much blood.

Quinn is trying to keep his expression neutral, but he knows it isn’t working. He can feel his left hand, his bad hand, starting to shake. He gets a tighter grip.

A part of him still wants to ask the man why. But there is no possible answer.

It’s not going to work, Quinn tells himself. He got a fair distance, but surely the man is here to kill him now, and he will, at the instant that his curiosity ebbs. Surely, despite his protestations, the man can clearly see him, and what he’s clutching in his arms. It’s over. It was over a long time ago.

…And yet.

If he saw it, wouldn’t he have been disarmed by now? They’re at the edge of the crater. The man said he couldn’t see into the blast radius of the…memory warhead, whatever it was.

He can’t come any closer. He doesn’t comprehend.

“This is what our race really is,” the man explains, spreading his hands to gesture at the whole world. “We lied to ourselves for thousands of years. But this is it. This is how it was always meant to be.”

“That’s—” Quinn begins, then grunts with annoyance, raises U-7381, and fires.

In the moment that Quinn takes to raise the weapon and take aim, the man begins to react. Quinn starts to act; he starts to mean something. Quinn comes into focus for him in turn, and Red starts to perceive what Quinn stands for in this scene, if weakly. At a step removed, perhaps; what Quinn stands for standing for. At minimum, he senses the outline of the weapon, what it means. But, at that instant, Sunshine has begun to move. It arrows forward, over Quinn’s shoulder, masking his intent with its own. The gun’s gleaming points are still rising toward horizontal, wavering as they rise, but Red’s attention splits.

Sunshine is personal. It is a being of raw memories, trivial factoids, small, human moments; Red is completely impervious to its attack. He dismisses it, snuffs it out with utter callous ease, a pinch of his fingers. But this means that he is distracted, turned partially away from Quinn, when U-7381 discharges. The weapon is absolutely silent aside from the click of the trigger. It’s a good shot. The front half of Red’s head disappears, and nine-tenths of his throat, and most of one shoulder. Red’s remains twist as they fall. He lands “face” down.

Quinn has to turn away quickly from his work, gasping with inarticulate disgust. There is much, much more blood than he wanted there to be. He almost drops the gun. He gets a tighter grip on it, again. He turns back, and aims back at the bloody ruin of the man’s head. He wants to throw up. He controls himself. In through the mouth, out through the nose. He’s okay. Red isn’t moving.

“I let him talk for too long,” he says, apologetically.

Sunshine does not respond.

Quinn turns, scanning his surroundings. There’s nothing in the corner of his eye, or the back of his mind. Sunshine is gone.

Sunshine has disappeared before. It left him alone for long stretches during the march, but…Quinn plays back those two seconds of action, realizing what happened. It was so quick. Uncaring, easy.

“Oh.”

He doesn’t know if Sunshine is dead. Organization literature was unclear on whether the thing was able to die, or, for that matter, meaningfully alive. But it is gone. Does an idea die? Does it go somewhere?

It bought him the moment. Why?

He says, “I feel that I should say a few words.”

But they do not come to him.

■

He uses the gun to erase the rest of Red’s remains. He does this methodically, cleaning a large ellipse of the asphalt road.

He says, to the space, “What I was going to say was something along the lines of: ‘That’s a lie. That’s what you are. You’re the lie.’ But, ah.”

He looks up, hearing movement in the forest all around him. He realizes that the immense spider forms—he’d sincerely forgotten about them, they were standing there so quietly—are dispersing.

The atmosphere, however, is not changing. The sky is not returning to blue. There is still that red eye/star, and that heinous pressure. U-3125 remains the dominant force in the world, and Quinn’s objective remains: he must travel north, alone now, and find out what happened to the dubiously late Dr. Edward Hix.