Murder Victim.

Murder. Victim.

Amy couldn't believe her eyes. Murdered? Her? Murdered? Amy was going to be murdered? Murdered? How? Why? When?

This can't be happening this can't be happening.

"Whoa," Jeffrey said, his eyes wide as he stared at the damning words. "At least now we know why your file's so thin."

Amy twisted, desperately turning to look at him. "How does this happen?" she demanded, her voice breaking. No, no, I can't cry. Not now. Even with her determination, though, she could feel sharp pain in the corners of her eyes and she blinked furiously. "How?"

Jeffrey gestured to the report, meeting her frightened gaze with eyes that were equally scared. "Perhaps it will say."

Amy looked down at report, pulling the paper out of the folder as if it would reveal more that way. The paper was limp and folded back over her hand, so she adjusted her grip and began to read, Jeffrey reading over her shoulder.

But there was nothing to read, only the single line of text next to Amy's picture claiming her as the murder victim and underneath that the date. Amy reread the date multiple times to ensure it was correct. A year from now. She would be killed a year from now, almost exactly a year from now.

Flipping the page, she glanced at the one underneath the first, stapled to it. There on the paper was a picture of a young man, looking only about a year or two older than she.

Thomas Hartwell – Murderer.

The young man had blonde hair, the hair on top of his head longer than it was on the sides. His face was thin, angular, and his chin was covered with stubble. His grey eyes were hard, dead, staring out at Amy like she meant nothing to him.

If he'd killed her, then she probably had meant nothing to him.

"Damn," Jeffrey whispered. "You know, I always said that if any of us from the youth camp would end up murdered, it would be Amy 1545." With his forced tone, the joke fell as limp as the paper in Amy's hand.

Amy gave him a horrified look. "Jeffrey! That's not helping!"

Jeffrey raised his hands defensively. "I'm sorry, Amy! Look, I'm sorry. Okay, this isn't good. You're going to...you're going to die." He met her eyes, his own echoing the terror pumping through her bloodstream. "I don't want you to die."

Amy licked her lips, her mouth dry, her mind flying too quickly to focus on anything in particular. "I don't want to die, either," she whispered, her eyes flicking back to Jeffrey's. "And in an hour, we won't even remember. I don't know if that's better or worse."

"Better or worse," Jeffrey repeated. "I'm not going to remember you, will I? You won't remember me, Dana won't remember either of us and we won't remember her. We're all going to be strangers in an hour, won't we, and I won't even get to mourn you." He took a deep, shuddering breath. "Oh, damn. Never realized how awful this all is."

"You're not the one who dies," Amy pointed out miserably. "I am." Angrily, she shoved the paper back into the folder and shut it. "I don't want to die!"

Jeffrey turned to her. "I wish we could stop it."

"How?" Amy asked. "In an hour, we get Wiped and fitted with our chips. We'll be inserted into the Biodome to live our lives. At least they bothered to give you a life." She gestured to hers. "They couldn't even tell me why that guy kills me. Am I really this unimportant? Not good enough to get a backstory?"

Jeffrey awkwardly gave her a side hug. "You're important to me, Amy."

Amy leaned against him, trying to appreciate the comfort of his embrace. Jeffrey was the closest thing she had to family right now and she was about to lose him, never to realize it. How could this happen? "I don't want to die, Jeff. I really don't."

"I don't want you to, either," Jeffrey said, frowning. He removed his arm from around her shoulders and twisted to face her, his narrow face suddenly pinched in eagerness. "You don't have to."

Amy's brow furrowed. "Don't have to what?"

Jeffrey hesitated, glancing over his shoulder as if to check that nobody was listening. "Your file. If...if it gets changed, then you don't die."

"Yeah, but it's not going to be changed," Amy said, confused. "This –" She tapped the file. "– this is the final version. This is the life they have decreed for me."

"But what if it wasn't?" Jeffrey persisted. "What if...what if it was rewritten?"

Amy straightened, her gaze fixed on her best friend. Her file rewritten. This whole murder...erased. Was that what Jeffrey meant? "What?"

"We rewrite the file, Amy," Jeffrey repeated, leaning forward as his eyes glinted. "We erase you getting murdered. Then, then...we just write something else."

"Jeffrey, we can't write a whole life for me before I'm called to be Wiped," Amy argued. "There's not enough time."

Jeffrey started to his feet. "Then let's not waste any of it! We need to get into a computer or something. At least erase the murder! If we can change it in the system, then your chip will hold that version, right?"

Amy stared at him, the gears in her mind whirling. Rewrite the file. They could rewrite the file, save her life. Maybe even write in that she would remember Jeffrey, and Dana. "Okay, okay. But how? How are we supposed to do that?"

Jeffrey nodded over toward the other side of the large prefabricated building, where a closed door intimated a protected space, near the area where the processing would occur. "There. Controls behind that room. If we can get into the system, we can fix your file. At the very least we can try. Worst thing that happens is they kill us." His mouth twisted grimly. "No risk for you, anyway, right?"

"But there is for you," Amy pointed out. "I'll go, Jeffrey. I'll try it. You got an entire life ahead of you – college, a wife and family, a great job – no. I'll do it. You just –"

"What?" Jeffrey demanded. "Just what, Amy? Sit back and watch you try to break into the computer area? No, I'm going with you. Besides, you don't even know how to get in. You wouldn't get far at all."

Relief flooded Amy's veins. Jeffrey would be with her. They'd fix this; they had to. Otherwise she'd die. Otherwise, he'd most likely die.

"Okay, let's go."

Casually, they meandered across the chamber, weaving through the crowds of other eighteen year olds as her heart pounded in her chest. Amy fixed her eyes on the door that was their target, hoping beyond hope that Jeffrey was right. She knew he was right; Jeffrey had been one of the kids chosen to help put up the building, and had been on the prefab team for the past several years. He knew the plans down to the last detail.

Amy clenched her fists as they neared the door. It was a simple lock, shouldn't be too difficult to break. Dana had taught her how. Beside her, Jeffrey frowned, suddenly looking worried. "Wait. How are we going to get in without being noticed?"

Amy paused for a fraction of a moment, flicking her eyes over the area. "Diversion, maybe? I haven't noticed anyone going in or out. The lock looks easy to break, though."

Jeffrey stopped, his eyes widening. "No. I have a better idea." Seizing Amy's wrist, he dragged her away from the door, around the corner into a nook with several empty benches, for kids who may want to read their files in private. But right now, it was empty; their hour for perusal was ticking away.

We don't have much time. "Jeffrey, what are we doing?"

"Going in through the back," Jeffrey said quietly, walking quickly to the back wall. "I put this together, remember? The paneling is slightly weaker at the interior corners, I've noticed that over the past couple years. It shouldn't be hard to slide out one of the wall panels to enter."

Amy glanced swiftly at the walls, her eyes traveling up their length. "Would that hurt the overall structure?"

"No, interior panels are seldom load-bearing. And these aren't. They're just serving as partitions, nothing more." Carefully, Jeffrey placed his hands in the seam of the panel next to the exterior wall, wiggling it slightly. "Come on, start separating it."

Stepping forward, Amy found the second seam and watched as Jeffrey continued to wiggle it until the notches connecting it revealed themselves. With a smile, he pulled the panel's edge toward him, and Amy separated the other side from the second panel, the result being a two foot gap in the wall.

"Go," Jeffrey whispered, gently propping the panel up against the wall. "We won't have long."

Cautiously, Amy stepped into the dimly-lit computer room, which was currently empty. The Wipings hadn't started yet, so the several computers along the opposite wall were unoccupied, idling. Jeffrey entered behind her and the two crossed toward the screens.

The computers were old, bulky models, specifically engineered for the colder environment outside of the Biodome. But as Amy touched the keys for one of them, the screen immediately demanded identification.

"Dammit," she muttered, her lips twisting into a frown. "Give me a second."

Her fingers flew across the keys as she brought up a tracking algorithm, commanding it to scan for codes that were frequently used. Within a minute, the algorithm presented her with a list, from which she eliminated the obvious commands. Selecting a likely passcode, she inputted it. Verification flashed over the screen and Amy smiled. They were in.

"Never get tired of watching that," Jeffrey murmured as Amy flicked her eyes across the screen.

"Can't believe they allowed me to learn that," Amy returned as she drew up the Wiping program. Her time in in the tech division of the youth camp had served her well. Searching Amy 1545, she soon found her file, which opened easily in a read-only copy. "I don't know if I'm going to be able to edit this," she whispered to Jeffrey. "How am I doing on time?"

"Ten minutes before processing," Jeffrey replied. "We need to hurry."

"Here goes."

Amy pulled up the file controls, her brow furrowing at the sight of the little lock symbol next to the edit command. When she attempted to unlock it, a red alert flared on the screen: YOU DO NOT HAVE AUTHORITY TO EDIT THIS FILE.

"Hurry up, Amy," Jeffrey muttered, shifting his weight impatiently.

Amy bit her lip, staring at the screen. This computer wasn't authorized to rewrite her file, period. She backtracked the command's origin, watching as the search code flew past on the side of the screen. Then who does have the authority?

"Amy," Jeffrey said warningly. "Any minute now."

"Almost there," Amy promised despairingly, willing the backtrace to hurry up. Maybe, just maybe, there was another way to save herself from getting murdered....

Command origin KISMET.

Amy straightened. KISMET. The only entity with the authority to alter her file was KISMET.

They might as well just murder her now.

"Amy!" Jeffrey said insistently.

"I can't do it, Jeff," Amy said slowly, her fingers sluggishly ending the backtrace. "The file is only authorized to be edited by KISMET." She glanced at him, defeated. "There's nothing we can do."

"I'm so sorry," Jeffrey murmured, his shoulders sagging. "I thought...well. I'd hoped."

"Thank you anyway," Amy murmured, about to close out of the file. Then she hesitated. If she was going to die, she might as well see who would do it.

Quickly, she typed Thomas Hartwell into the search box, changing the settings to open the files of previous years. Within a minute, a search list had been created, and the top result belonged to a Thomas 1276.

With bated breath, Amy opened the file, but another red alert lit the screen. CLASSIFIED filled the monitor. SECURITY THREAT.

"Well, the guy who murders me is two years older than us," Amy said, glancing behind her at Jeffrey. "You ever know a Thomas 1276?"

Jeffrey shook his head. "No, I don't. He wasn't with construction."

"Or tech," Amy replied, exiting the file program and closing out the monitor. "His file's classified."

"Do we know whether old files are classified or not?" Jeffrey asked. "Maybe because he's already been processed; his file's no longer needed."

"Perhaps," Amy said reluctantly, straightening. "All right. I guess that's it, then."

She turned to Jeffrey, who was opening his mouth to speak, but the next voice she heard didn't belong to him. "Not quite."

Amy jumped, spinning and staggering as the voice emanated quietly from behind her. Jeffrey gasped as a black-clad figure dropped out of the overhead rafters.

"Amy 1545," the figure said, swinging down to the floor via a grappling cable. "You don't know how long I've been waiting for you."