Ersatz

"Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. That wasn't the case when they launched the scaled prisoner out of the airlock. I could swear I felt her screams in my bones - "

"Will you cut that out?" Alec hisses, making his latest attempt at retrieving contraband from his companion's hands. It is just as successful as previous attempts, which is to say, not at all. "I'm not supposed to have that."

Jael pushes him away with one hand on his jaw and laughs, exerting her enhanced strength while he huffs in place. She holds the book out of reach with the other, taking great care not to crease the worn covers.

Although it's been hours, it still makes her feel giddy. She's holding a piece of history. No one they'd passed on their way from school had given them more than a passing glance. Synth-paper can be made to appear aged, but very few would think a teenager - especially one who is clearly a Tester - would be holding an actual centuries-old book made of honest-to-God tree-skin.

She twirls on the curb, narrowly missing other pedestrians. A man who'd had the glazed expression of someone watching social media feed steps out of the way just in time to avoid her flailing arms, eyes refocusing to shoot her a dirty look. He taps his wrist as he passes them, no doubt reactivating the feed.

She waits until he's clearly not paying any attention, and lowers her voice. "I could probably scream loud enough to be heard in space."

"That's not - it doesn't matter how loud you are, sound can't travel because there's no air in space -"

"I can hold my breath for sixteen hours."

"That's not the point."

Agitated, he tugs the high collar of their uniform jacket up to further hide his face, hunching to make himself look smaller. Jael shrugs and stuffs the book - gently - into her backpack, slinging it back over one shoulder.

Alec Sari is tall for his age, dark haired and dark eyed, and could maybe have been passably popular instead of devastatingly average had it not been for the rather awkward disposition, general air of twitchiness, and poorer fashion sense than usual for a teenage boy.

Being largely unaware of the last trait, Alec tends to focus on the first, and has long since concluded that those higher on the social ladder are those who know how to steal the spotlight.

Like Jael Zayland. Unlike most other drained Tester students, who can be seen roaming the halls in trancel-like exhaustion, Jael is generally energetic, gregarious and of the thrill-seeking sort that catches attention. She's also quite pretty, in Alec's opinion - heart-shaped face framed by dark hair, on a petite figure - but he is biased after long years of exposure.

While she rubs a few people the wrong way, either due to prejudice or personality - she complains it's the former, while Alec will always insist it's the latter - Jael is well-liked by both the students and faculty. The supervisors in charge of Testers unanimously dislike her for her disregard of protocol, but the feeling is mutual there.

As she likes to remind them, the search of the latest upgrade in biological enhancements is their purview, and there are few enough scholarship students that the government can't afford to lose one.

"It's a good story," she insists.

"It's not just a story," Alec snaps, again. "Why are you even going if you don't believe me? Why are you making me go? I'm going to get in trouble!"

"It's astronaut June Reed's journal, Alec. Of course it's a story," she says, pitying. "Besides, you were the one who stole the book in the first place. You kind of deserve to get in trouble. Anyway, we're here."

People and paved highways had thinned out as they walked, and the long stretch of empty sand they found themselves in only had one rusted building. Perhaps thirty stories tall, it had likely been impressive in its heyday, but it was now rusted and falling to pieces.

Alec's breathing is harder than it had been when they left school. Jael looks away to let him regain composure. She feels the nanobots burn through her body, replenishing her muscles. Upsides of being a Tester includes the latest technology.

Even if it is experimental and can leave her bedridden for weeks when it malfunctions. She picks at her fraying sleeve. Her last period was Gym, but she's in long sleeves and pants to hide the surgery scars all Testers have lining their bodies.

Alec sighs, fishing out an access pass from his pocket.

"This is an awful idea. Just, for the record."

"Noted."

Alec's mother works to inspect old buildings for anything salvageable before the government repurposes them. The old world stored information on physical chips, or even actual physical scrolls and books, etched into animal- or tree-skins. Far less efficient than their Network-controlled society now, but probably, Jael realized a long time ago with no little envy, far more private.

Alec is nearing graduation and enjoys following his mother on her inspections. Children often followed their parents' line of work, which is a notion he capitalizes on with relish. In truth, Alec has no interest in being a building inspector. He is, however, fascinated by the old world.

He also has a tendency to steal things that would hardly be missed. An old flashlight. A pencil. A keyring, back when keys were carved from metal instead of unique codes implanted in the chips in everyone's wrists. He was actually fascinated by old world history. His latest obsession was space-travel, which in Jael's opinion cemented how far from popular he would always remain.

Jael has a tendency to sell the things Alec takes, which he always complains about, but never actively stops.

There is always something new to find. This particular bunker has been abandoned for just over two-and-a-half centuries, just after the last astronaut, June Reeds, returned. Jael's done her research.

Alec once told her the first living beings to be sent into space were fruit flies in 1947, almost four centuries ago. As far as Jael, and most of polite society was concerned, that was where progress should have stopped.

They spent billions to explore space. To Jael, it's ridiculous.

But Alec isn't the only one with ridiculous ideas. The Network - Alec told her its predecessor was called the Internet - lately started brimming with pockets of people interested in space travel. The Moon, the other planets, interstallar systems. Ancient science fiction is on the rise, with people willing to pay thousands for it - which is where Jael's interest is piqued.

Alec's latest find was the last book written by the last astronaut. An incredible find on its own, but Alec made the mistake of admitting he only took a cursory look at the room he found it in.

Which was why Jael persuaded ("bullied-") persuaded him to borrow Mrs. Sari's access pass and bring Jael with him. Just for a few minutes. Maybe an hour.

Alec swipes his mom's pass at the door, then reaches for the protrusions on its surface.

Jael frowns. "What are you doing?"

"Doors weren't always automatic," he explains, pushing it open and stepping into the dark building.

Hesitating, Jael follows.

The building is a skeleton of itself, broken windows and dust inches-thick coating the floor. They leave clear footprints in their wake.

"Footprints on the moon stay there forever," Alec says. "Because there's no wind to blow them away."

"Nerd."

"I bet June Reeds' are still up there."

They walk in silence for a while, taking twists and turns to the basement room Alec found his loot in. They can explore the rest later, Jael reasons, but she wants to keep her eye on the prize.

"It's all fiction, you know," she finds herself saying.

He doesn't turn to look at her. "You're reading it, right? How far have you gotten?"

"The first chapter," she says, flushing. "But it's nonsense. There's aliens and intergalactic politics. Even if she did go up there, this isn't a journal - it's just a story she made."

Alec says nothing and pushes open another door, leading them down to a dreary basement. He feels across the wall and she's about to ask what he's doing, before the dimmest light she's ever seen floods the room.

There are rows of ancient looking shelves, rickety desks filled with actual paper, and a large lump in the center of the room, covered in tarp.

"Let's leave that for last," Alec says, as she makes a beeline to it.

"Why?"

He hesitates, but then smiles. "What ever's under there's going to be hard to take."

It's good enough reasoning.

"They went up in teams, you know," Alec says into the silence. "Reeds was one of them, but Bryan Cage was the other."

"Cage," she repeats.

Alec hums, looking smug.

"As in, the Bryan Cage, the guy who started the Network and the chips and technology as we know it? That Cage?"

"Yep."

"How'd he go from being a spacehead to the father of modern technology?"

"Maybe he got it from the aliens." He pauses. "That was a joke."

"I know."

"You didn't laugh."

"I didn't think it was funny."

"Oh."

They explore in silence. Jael prods at the tarp.

"Nothing's jumping out at us. There aren't any alarms. Shouldn't there be alarms? I think I should have stepped on a laser tripwire by now."

"You watch too many movies," Alec mumbled around the old-fashioned flashlight between his teeth. Another antique he'd appropriated, it was less trackable than their implemented dark-vision or the Network-powered lights in their chips. "Anyway, this place has been closed for decades. The security is - "

Someone - some-thing - appears in the doorway. It has the appearance of a short blond man, dressed in a fitted bodysuit. An android.

" - old."

Androids these days can't be told apart from humans by the naked eye. Most people rely on their chips to identify the helpers of society. This one has all the right parts, two eyes and a mouth and four working limbs, but there is something off. Its skin moves rather than stretches, pushing up and away from its skull and eye sockets slightly when it smiles in greeting. Jael catches a glimpse of the wiring attached to its eyes.

It jitters, scraping forward on heavy feet. Both hands are raised in an approximation of a wave, creaking with each movement.

"Hel-lo-lo-lo."

Its smile stretches, wide and blank, and it punches Jael in the face.

She shouts and goes down, and then Alec is there, swinging his bat into its head. He misses and it twists, pressing its palm into his chest and pushes out a wave of energy that sends him flying.

Jael feels more than sees him go past her, air whistling past her face. Hears the series of crashes that follow, the cry that cuts off abruptly.

Then the android is on her. She rolls, snatching the bat off the ground and swings it up to take an arm off. It shrieks, a sound like nails on concrete, but barely slows down, grabbing her wrist as she tries to scramble up and yanks, breaking her wrist clean in half. She shouts, kicking out blindly. Her foot connects with its knee and it stumbles, letting her go.

She lunges behind the first thing she sees to gain some distance, grabbing the tarp.

It drags her away by the hair. Movies that had people cut off their hair dramatically made it look so much easier than it was. A few brown strands fall into her eyes, but the android's grip remains firm.

She's still holding the tarp, and it pulls away to reveal a metal dome. Coughing the dust out of her eyes

It's the size of a small closet, shaped like a missile. Entirely silver and entirely smooth, save for a semi-sphere shaped dent in the middle.

She doesn't have time to see anything else before she is slammed to the ground. She cries out, her bad hand wedged between her and the floor. The android crouches over her. It reaches down, aiming at her throat.

She turns her head to the side and tucks her chin to hide her neck. It presses its working hand to her cheek, she digs her fingers between the plating on its collar, and they push against each other.

From the new angle, she sees Alec sprawled face-down on the ground across from them. The lower half of his body is trapped under a fallen shelving unit. He isn't moving. Something dark and wet pools under his head, coating his outstretched fingers.

Wires catch under her nails as the pressure builds on her skull. The low buzz of nanobots come to life, like a persistent itch, working overtime to repair her as blood vessels burst and bones crack. Black spots dance in her vision and she gasps.

She works a leg between the android's and shoves it off balance. Its grip loosens as she sends nanobots to her muscles to strengthen her own, digging finger-shaped dents in the metal of its collarbone. She frees her broken left hand to find purchase on its shoulder and pulls with the right. Half its chest comes off with a sickening tearing noise and it reels off of her with a screech.

Metal, wires, artificial skin dig into her palm as she scrambles upright. The android shrieks and lunges, but it's unfocused and sluggish now, She slips to the side and trips it. Beneath the mess of wires and silicone she holds, there sits a red sphere where the android's solar plexus would be, churning in fast circles.

The next step back pushes her against the dome.

Behind her, the dome starts to creak, the hollow in its door sparking and smoking angrily. Before she can step away, the android slams into her, slamming her into the smooth chrome surface. She grunts and holds the remains of its chest between them like a shield.

Her enhanced muscles hold against its strength, then start to give.

ZAP

A blast of light shoots past her and hits the android square in the chest. It's bisected on impact, falling both forwards and backwards with a dull thud.

She turns and freezes.

The ship is unfurling in long strips, like a metal flower, groaning loudly all the while. Legs fold beneath the circular flooring until it forms a flat surface, something like an old landing pad.

A pillar of blinding light beams upwards from the centre without warning.

The ceiling is unharmed, she notices as the light dies down and she blinks white spots out of her vision. What ever it was, it hadn't been an energy blast.

Then she sees it.

A hulking figure stands on the new landing pad. Six legs, she counts with growing hysteria, lining the abdomen and covered entirely in thick dark fur. Above the first set of shoulders is a face vaguely reminiscent of a gorilla, with its squashed nose and mouth of sharp teeth.

She's barely a third its height, and it's longer than it is tall. Bulbous insect eyes sit atop its head, distended from the eye sockets, swiveling slowly in different directions. All four of them find her.

It recoils.

The noise it makes is a chittering growl that makes her skin crawl, but words and feelings press into her mind. It feels like an ice pick being hammered through her skull. She groans and presses her hands into her temples.

"Oh God," the alien voice warbles in her head. Panic that isn't her own washes over her. "The Earthlings are loose."