Page 1 of M.A.Y.A
Prologue
Earth, 2040, Control Dimension 0: continent previously called United States of America
M.A.Y.A. Unit 13 used to be human.
When she was twenty-two, the Coalition for Political Peace had gagged and dragged her from her family before she was transported to her assigned residential bunker. Her mother screamed and her father fought off government officials, but she was simply taken away. The Coalition shoved her into a glass box, stripped her of her clothes—of her autonomy, of all feeling except pain—and used her as a lab rat ever since. All because of her blood type.
Years later, her captors thought she was broken, her soul gone, and her identity replaced with that of a robot. They’d cut her limb from limb and swapped parts of her heart and brain with computer chips, which was why they assumed she’d be too damaged to leave the safety of the underground lab. To them, she’d become malleable and weak.
They’d been wrong.
With the help of a rebel scientist from a different dimension who had also been kidnapped and held captive by the Coalition, she’d slipped free from her prison and finally escaped. She was back on the Earth’s surface for the first time in what had to have been years.
Except now, she was on the run.
The sound of a siren blared in her ears as she raced through the ruins of what was once Manhattan. Despite her limited activity while being forced to stay in the lab’s glass box, she found herself fit enough to easily jump over rubble from fallen buildings and abandoned vehicles. She dodged larger debris in her path, bobbing and weaving to stay in the dusty and decrepit city shadows. The lingering smell of toxic chemicals and corpses burned her nostrils, but that didn’t slow her down.
There was only one thought that continued to pound through her head, that raced faster than her slender limbs.
She couldn’t get caught again.
She wouldn’t survive another year.
That’s why Unit 13 had to make it to the alternate dimension bunker portal. It was her last chance at freedom.
The whir of military helicopters and urgent voices followed her as she pushed her new body to run faster than she’d ever had before. Her bare feet were shredded after the first block, and her heart burned in her reconstructed chest cavity.
But she didn’t stop. She had a destination, the bunker portal, and she’d die trying to reach it.
The lab employees and her captor, the lead scientist, had been careless enough to speak about their plans for the bunker portals that had been uncovered around the United States. They’d discussed at length the five portals the Coalition had already managed to open and the worlds they’d taken over for resources.
That was supposed to be her mission as well. To become a drone for the government and steal from unknown worlds through these portals. But Unit 13 refused to ruin the lives of others the way hers had been destroyed. The rebel scientist felt the same, and together, they hatched a plan to save bunker portal six.
She had already escaped the lab which was step one. Step two was to cross into the last unbreeched dimension.
When she rounded a corner, the sweeping surveillance spotlights cut across the asphalt inches in front of her toes. Her arms windmilled to stay upright, and she almost toppled over into its path. She waited for it to pass, and her eyesight, enhanced with whatever experiments the lab had conducted, spotted a clear way forward. When the spotlights retreated, she followed the path and raced through the desolate destruction.
Almost there, almost there, almost there.
Her lungs, which still resembled human organs, must have had minimal modification. They burned as she raced the last few hundred feet toward the doors of one of the only buildings left standing in the former continental U.S.: the Empire State Building. It was now a monument to the dead. The windows were blown out, and half of the building’s side had a gaping hole in it.
When she found the main entrance locked, she punched through the glass, grateful for the first time that her arm was fortified with metal and could do substantial damage.
She slipped inside and crossed what was once the building’s lobby, searching for archways until she found a stairwell that led to the lower level.
What had the rebel scientist told her?
Right, she thought. The keycode.
The bunker portal opened with a keycode created from a prompt. The keycode was made from Earth’s original system of ISO 639 language codes. Her captor mentioned how the Coalition couldn’t interpret the prompt to create the ISO 639 based keycode as they’d been installed decades ago by the original government team assigned to study alternate realities. The Coalition’s computers, cyborgs, and humans assumed it was alpha numerical, but she knew that ISO 639 based keycodes required finesse. There was an artistry to it that was lost with computers over generations of misuse. Those who locked the bunker portal ensured that only a human with a certain set of skills could open the door.
She’d studied crypto linguistics in college and had worked in the government archives. After all this time, she could say that learning a dying art was finally coming in handy.
Once she unlocked the bunker portal, the plan was simple: she’d cross to the alternate dimension then hide until she could gather resources and attack the Coalition. In her glass box shrouded in pain and torture, Unit 13 made a vow to destroy the bunker portal if it was the last thing she did.
Halfway to her destination, she heard sounds of footsteps, of a laser powering up, and she pushed through the lower levels even harder, knowing that they were gaining on her.
It took her a few minutes, but she found the only door to a sub-basement, then followed the painted red arrows until she reached a small mechanical chamber with a metal door covered in computerized locks.
