The air in Sector 4 smelled and tasted like sulfur. My throat absorbed it. It coated my throat with a thick, metallic film that no amount of pure water could wash away. I checked my watch. 19:31. The digital numbers lasered my eyes, the watch glowed a violent, bleeding red against my skin. She was late. In the lower sectors, being late often meant you had been found by night sensors.
A shadow fell over the table.
“Leo?”
I looked up, my heart racing. The girl standing there looked just like her in the hologram, with dark short hair and hasty blue eyes. She had the same sharp, asymmetrical haircut and the same oversized denim jacket. Her icy pale skin reflecting the snow covered mountains everyone was dying to get to.
“Maya,” I breathed, pushing myself up so quickly my knees popped. “You made it. I thought the Grid caught you.”
She smiled, but it came a bit too slowly. It was a perfect curve that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “The transit checkpoints were locked down. Internal security.”
“Right. Of course.” I slid back into the chair, a cold knot tightening in my stomach.
Up close, the illusion began to break. The tension grew louder, the eerieness of the empty room began to grow. In a sector where everyone’s skin was raw and blistered from the acid rain, Maya’s face was flawless. It was completely devoid of the city’s grime.
“It’s just… after six months of encrypted messaging,” I whispered, leaning in, “I can’t believe you’re actually sitting here.”
“Believe it,” she said. Her voice had a strange, melodic tone. No stammers. No intake of breath. “I told you I was real.”
The fluorescent, caustic sign outside flickered, casting a harsh crimson beam across the table. That’s when I noticed it. The light passed straight through the edge of her index finger. No capillaries. No blood vessels. Its like she wasn’t human.
And when I looked closer at her chest, it wasn’t moving. She wasn’t breathing.
Panic surged through me. The Ministry had sent new Synth-Infiltrators to root out the underground resistances.
“What’s wrong, Leo?” she asked, tilting her head. The movement was mechanical and precise.
I forced a grin, reaching across the table to touch her hand. Her knuckles were benumbed, like a piece of steel left out in the winter snow. No pulse.
“Nothing,” I calmly forced, the horror wrapping around me, you could see the cold, horrified look on my face. “Just… are you for real?”
Maya’s smile froze. Her seamless spaced blue eyes flickered, shifting into a vacant, vitreous glow of digitality.
“Scanning,” she whispered.