Between a Bear and a Hard Place(64)

After all, here she had bears. Back home, she had approximately nothing.

The phone was buzzing, sure enough, as though a call was coming through. However, the screen wasn’t lit, so she wasn’t quite certain how to answer. As she held it, the phone kept right on insisting that she answer it. Feeling like something of an idiot, Claire just held the receiver to her head.

“Are you there?” It was a static voice, but clear enough. “Claire Redmon? Is that you?”

With a start, she dropped it on the ground and jumped back slightly. “What the fuck?” she asked the empty cabin.

“Hello?” the phone pleaded. “Is that you, Claire Redmon?”

Eyeing the receiver, she bent down and plucked it off the ground once again before holding it gingerly to her ear. Every ounce of sense in her body told her not to say anything – though she didn’t know how much it would matter. The helicopters had been circling for days, and the increasing paranoia shared by the bears had grown day by day. And now, with the depths of winter setting in, and Stone spending more time than not staring out into the darkness, Claire knew something bad was on the horizon.

It was that feeling she recognized from having a professor, or her boss, cold-call her in the middle of the afternoon. That feeling of paranoia that only comes from something you know is bad, and that you know is also completely unavoidable.

She took a deep breath. “How is my phone working?”

“Electromagnetic waves. I have taken control of one of GlasCorp’s jamming towers. You have certainly felt the tingle on your skin from time to time? As though static electricity was all around you?”

“I... yeah?”

“Yes, well,” the voice said, “that would be the field. It comes and goes during the day, but I was able to use it to manipulate the battery in your primitive communication device. And I am using the towers which you have certainly noticed in order to communicate with you on said communication device.”

There was a peculiar cadence to the caller’s voice, and a particular static she recognized as coming from those faceless soldiers who had ambushed them three times now. But at the same time, this one sounded less robotic, more like a person using his voice than a machine trying to figure out how it was supposed to work.

“Oh...kay?”

“Five-eight-one-one-nine-eight-six-two-three,” he said.

“What?”

“Nothing. I am disconnected from GlasCorp tracking, but I had to say that to keep them from realizing they lost me. Every so often I jack back in and repeat a string of numbers so they think I’m connected.”

She started pacing and chewing on the inside of her bottom lip. “What do you mean, lost you?”

“I am one of them. Eighty-Three. We have met.”

“Why don’t you ever use contractions?”

“It is too informal,” he stated flatly. “I do not know you that well.”

For a long moment, Claire sat there with her long-dead phone pressed to her ear. And then she heard a halting click-click-click. “Are you laughing?”

“Yes,” he said. “I told a joke about the familiarity which we do not share.”

Claire scrunched her eyes, trying to figure out what was going on, but not quite able to grasp it. Outside the tent she heard a fairly intense exchange break out between the two bears. Some incomprehensible shouting in that bizarre patois they had of English and some invented language that came from the necessity of communicating without anyone knowing what they were saying to one another in their confinement.

It sounded like they were really having it out about something, but that wasn’t rare. Especially not as time wore on, and supplies were getting harder to find.

“Did you just call me to tell a joke?”

“No,” he said, still flat as anything. “I called because I have recently gained consciousness apart from the network. I am wishing to destroy the network and free my friends, although I am not sure that they would survive. In the meantime, I decided that the enslavement of your people is wrong and wish to free them. In addition, I have decided that I am going to warn you that the one you call Stone is not the one you call Stone.”

Claire closed her eyes again, processing every part of that statement in order. That proved too tall an order though, especially for her, right then. So, she did what everyone else would have done: started thinking out loud.

“Okay,” she said, mumbling. “So you gained consciousness which means you were previously unconscious? I’m guessing then all the other gasmask not-robots are—”

“Controlled by a combination of mind control devices in their respirators and also genetic experiments that resulted in our inability to function without said respirators.”