Complex City

by G H Edwards

  Now there was a chance that news of the cure could leak out. Allen knew he could never tell anyone the real reasons his family chose not to release the cure; the populace wouldn’t understand. They wouldn’t understand that he was saving millions of people the heartache of watching their grandparents slowly die of old age in someplace to be forgotten about. And that he was using the money he saved to make their lives better. But the main reason he couldn’t release the cure was that the economy simply couldn’t survive having millions of senior citizens waiting out their days on his dime and doing nothing for the city.

  It was the same reason he had shipped homeless people out of the city. But unlike the elderly, poor people simply chose not to be productive. Those people were given every chance to succeed but had thrown it away, so why should he waste his money on them? They were probably better off in the sticks anyways. They were just as big of a threat as the millions of elderly rotting away slowly. And when the city’s population started to drop, it was Terry Allen’s idea to make birth control nearly impossible to get. Old and homeless people cost him money, but babies cost someone else their money.

  Anyone not contributing to the city was a great weight trying to pull down the ship that his family had spent generations building. Failure would throw everyone into poverty, and chaos would take over. That simply wasn’t an option. The more power he got, the more important it became that the system not fail.

  Just after jumping into his private car, he called what he thought of as his digital watchdogs, the City of Houston’s Anti-Terrorism Office, and had them track Claire’s cell phone. A young man named Simon was able to locate her phone heading toward block thirty-three, seemingly confirming Allen’s assumption. Once she left his apartment and said she needed to “go back,” he knew she was heading to her old apartment. He hoped he’d catch Claire before she made it back there. He assumed she took a taxi or maybe a bus. He told his driver to hurry, so they took a different route than the busses, but they still got stuck in traffic. He thought of taking his helicopter but just getting the pilot there would take too long. Plus, he was pretty sure there were no helipads on the north side of the city; nothing there was important enough to justify building one.

  Growing impatient, Allen was tempted to call the commissioner and have an escort to break him through the traffic, but after his conversation with Claire tonight, he felt strange about that, and he didn’t want to scare her into panic. He thought maybe he could call the head of Houston transportation and have the busses and taxis all pull over and wait for him to pass but decided against that as well. He thought that if she was in a bus, and it pulled over it would scare her even more. He still needed to be able to convince her to come to his side of things. He hoped she hadn’t told anyone about what she’d just learned, but he doubted it. He made a mental note to review the surveillance tapes on whichever bus or taxi she had taken later tonight.

  After a slow, agonizing drive, he approached Claire’s old neighborhood and called Simon again to confirm her location. Simon told him the signal was just outside of block thirty-three. They needed to hurry; he was hoping to catch her before she disappeared into the building.

  A few minutes later, his car pulled up in front of her old block, and he kicked himself for allowing Claire to keep her old apartment. She had insisted that she keep it; she said it was preserved like a tomb for Michael. He found the whole idea kind of creepy—the dead were gone; let it go. He told his driver to wait nearby as he hopped out of his sleek car and onto the dark, crowded sidewalk that led to the lobby. He waited in the lobby for a few minutes, trying to look inconspicuous. He was hoping he beat her there and could catch her before she went to her old apartment. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been to a double-digit-numbered residence. He knew he had been to a low 1000s last year for a remodeling grand opening but couldn’t remember being in anything lower than that. After a short wait he feared Claire had made it there before him so he hit the elevator button and waited. Just as he decided the elevator was broken, the chime rang, the doors slid open, and he pressed the button for the fifth floor. As the doors were closing, a mother and her small son stepped in. The boy excitedly pressed the button for the forty-third floor. Allen gave them a quick smile, and the woman smiled back, seeming like she recognized him. The doors opened on the fifth floor and he was met by the smell of a thousand meals being cooked. He looked down the long hallway and saw dozens of people standing around. He vowed to himself to never be in a block this low ever again.

  Allen put his head down and passed several people as he beelined down the hall. On the drive over he had one of his assistants find Claire’s old apartment number. As he made the long walk to her door he mentally went over what he would say. He decided to tell her he would fight harder for the release of the cure and that he was on her side. Maybe he would have to release the cure; he hoped not. He wondered if he’d be able to patch things back up with Sharon. He assumed that would be very difficult since he had stood by and watched as each of her parents died of a virus for which he had a cure. But he knew Sharon was a reasonable woman; she would understand.

  He arrived at Claire’s door and gently knocked. He hoped she’d let him in and not make a scene in the middle of the hallway. There was no reply. He knocked again and spoke quietly into the crack of the door. ”Claire, it’s me. Can I come in?” He heard loud TVs and the sounds of people talking through the walls all around him. “Claire, I know you’re in there. It’s Terry. I need to talk to you.”

  Allen reached into his pocket and produced his keys. He fished through the dozen or so keys until he found this block master key. He slid the key into the lock, turned it, and gently pushed the door open. He was happy to see that the lights were on; he knew she must be there. He quietly called out her name as he stepped forward onto the metal plate on the floor. In the blink of an eye, 250,000 volts shot through his body, killing him instantly.

  CHAPTER 63

  Claire was enjoying her grapefruit juice. She always loved the drinks at Ana Maria’s coffee shop, not for the taste but more for the atmosphere and memories. She looked around the small coffee shop and thought about the times she and Michael had a grapefruit juice and a brownie as they sat on one of the overstuffed couches. The place seemed different at night. She realized it had been a few months since she was here last, interrogating Julio regarding his ownership of the place.

  She looked up at the ceiling and saw two security cameras pointed in her direction. She’d never noticed them before. It’s amazing, the things you don’t see when you aren’t looking, she thought. But tonight she was pleased they were there. The barista behind the counter had said he recognized her from being on TV, and she gave him an autograph as she attempted to look worried and confused. The cameras and the barista should be enough, but she also had the cab driver who had brought her there. He didn’t talk much, but by the way he kept looking at her in the rearview mirror, she was pretty sure he recognized her.

  Things tonight had moved perfectly for her. She remembered sitting for hours in similar coffee shops in Miami with Ben and Rebecca, coming up with plans. She wished constantly that she could talk to them, bounce ideas off them, and have them keep her on track, but communication with them was impossible. She had left Miami with multiple plans. The primary plan the three of them had devised was to simply make a lot of noise, draw Allen in, and get him to expose his control. But it became obvious that he wasn’t going to simply tell her everything. She tried her best because the next plan repulsed her. She was going to have to sleep with him. She hoped that would be enough to get him to slip, maybe during some pillow talk, but he didn’t. He was too strong for that. The pregnancy was the last option. She hated the idea when the three first discussed it, but little by little she accepted it and was almost excited about the idea of having a child. More than anything, she wished it was Michael’s child, but she knew she was doing it for him. She had become a master at blocking Allen from her mind at times, an
d while thinking about the child, she blocked him out. This was Michael’s child. The next part of the plan was to use the baby and the affair as leverage to get the Allens to tell the truth and release the gerivirus cure. She knew if she took that angle, it would be a lifelong battle she hoped she didn’t have to engage in, but she would do it. But Allen had shown his true self in his office and in his apartment. She saw in his eyes that he had considered silencing her in some way. She shuddered to think of what he could do to a person. He always had done a great job of looking kind and harmless, but with what she knew and how he had acted, she knew his entire persona was a cover. Despite what he said, the city would be better off without him. So she had decided to move to plan Z. She assumed that Allen would never know about the security system Michael had made, so all she had to do was lay the breadcrumbs. Carefully she had planned out and completed her exit from his apartment, ensuring she said that she wanted to “go back in time.” Plus, she figured he would have a way to track her cell phone, so she had to be very close to her old apartment for the plan to work, but she didn’t want to make it look obvious. Ana Maria’s was right across from her old block, so it was the perfect cover for both.

  She sipped her juice and enjoyed the cold liquid as she looked across the busy street at her old block’s lobby. Sitting still in the chair she appeared calm, but inside she was restless. She went over the rest of her current plan and the rest of the contingency plans. She took out her phone, touched a few buttons, and pressed it to her ear. She listened as Allen’s recorded voice quietly came through her speaker. She had secretly recorded the entire evening, so she knew that whether he stepped into her apartment or not, she still had the recording of him admitting to holding back the gerivirus cure and a slew of other unethical things. She also had dozens of vials of the cure to the virus, which Ben had gotten her in Miami. She could easily pass it out to doctors she knew from before her trip; surely they weren’t all personally bought. Going those routes would be a long, hard fight but she was willing to do it to save millions of lives and to get the justice Michael deserved. Terry Allen had no idea what he was up against.

  Finally, she saw Allen’s private car pull up and a well-dressed silhouette leap out. A pang of fear and guilt shot through her as she knew she was presumably sending a human to their death. She thought about running across the street and stopping Allen before he left the lobby. She didn’t know if she could go through with it, but as if on cue, the young barista walked up to her.

  “I’m really sorry to hear about your husband,” he said as he wiped down a nearby tabletop.

  Looking down, she quietly thanked him. The conversation was cut short by the flicker of the lights of the café. She looked up at her old block as it was engulfed in darkness. The café and street around it were quickly illuminated again, but her former block stayed dark. “What was that?” she heard the barista say to no one in particular.

  Claire whispered to herself, “The invisible hand of revenge.”

  CHAPTER 64

  The lobby of the Allen Corp. Building was standing room only. Everyone had either a camera or a microphone or a cell phone ready to film. A podium had been set up in front of a large Allen Corp. logo, and a tight half circle of microphones coiled around the front of the podium. It was nighttime, almost exactly twenty-four hours since Mr. Allen’s mysterious death. The buzz in the room and in the mega city was nearly deafening. A message had been sent to all the news outlets inviting them to the lobby for a major announcement about Allen’s death.

  Rumors had been swirling out of control since Allen’s body had been discovered nearly melted into a pile in one of his own buildings. The initial shock led to questions of how he had died, why he was in this seemingly random apartment, and the juiciest: was foul play involved? The police seemed to be playing catch-up as the news stations broke nearly constant stories about the final hours of his life. The stations were soon discussing the fact that homemade security systems were commonly used in the lower-numbered blocks. Many of the hosts and anchors didn’t know about these systems so “experts” were brought in. They questioned if Mr. Allen would have known about them; they questioned how he would have tripped one and why he was seemingly breaking into a random apartment. Without Allen there to rope in the stations, the media was running away at full steam. Even the late Terry Allen’s media man was stunned and seemingly had taken off the news stations’ leashes.

  Soon video footage of Allen rushing out of his block’s lobby leaked, and it was played in a nearly continuous loop on all stations. It showed him bursting through the doors and jumping into a private car. Soon the media had found the driver. The driver described Allen as seeming rushed and a little unhinged.

  Next, another bombshell came when neighbors reported that the apartment where Allen had died was owned by Houston’s hottest celebrity, Claire Gale. The media went even more insane. Was this a love triangle gone wrong? Was Claire involved with his death?

  Then the barista from the coffee shop Ana Maria’s, where Claire had been during Mr. Allen’s death, started doing interviews. He said that when Claire came to his shop, she appeared nice but distracted. He said she sat in the coffee shop drinking grapefruit juice for a long time and might have been crying. Shortly after the security video of Claire appeared, it wasn’t long before the cab driver came forward to collaborate the timing. Quickly the talking heads from the news stations had pieced together the timeline. “She couldn’t have killed him if she wasn’t even there!” they yelled at each other, and Claire’s name was cleared live on TV. But what was their relationship? Why was he at her apartment? Who would take over Allen Corp.? It seemed this story kept heating up and the new details might never stop coming in. The entire Mega-City was eagerly waiting for the surprise press conference.

  Just after 8:00 p.m. Sharon, dressed in black, appeared from a door near the podium. A respectful hush fell over the crowd as the widow walked toward the microphones. When Sharon was a few feet into the room, Claire emerged from the same door. The packed crowd erupted in chatter. The clicking of camera shutters was deafening. Sharon, appearing forlorn, stood to the side as Claire walked up and stood behind the podium. Slowly the crowd quieted, and the room became silent and filled with anticipation.

  Claire’s heart pounded as she cleared her throat and tried to let her eyes adjust to the blazing lights pointed at her.

  “Hello My name is Claire Gale,” she began. With every movement a blitz of camera shutters went off. “As I’m sure you’ve heard, Mr. Terry Allen was killed last night in a freak accident. Mrs. Allen and I called you here to tell you a few important things.” Claire took a deep breath and mentally reminded herself to be calm and roll out the plan in the correct order. “The first thing is that I received some life-changing news yesterday, and I was distraught. Initially I didn’t know how to handle the news, so I ran away. Mr. Allen had come to my old apartment to find me, but unfortunately, I wasn’t there. He let himself in with his master key and was tragically killed by the homemade security system my late husband had installed. It was an accident that was caused by a miscommunication and his selflessness. You see, he had come to find me because we had just found out some big news.”

  Claire looked at Sharon and smiled warmly. Sharon smiled back. “Mrs. and Mr. Allen asked me and I agreed to act as their surrogate and carry their child. The three of us had just found out that I was pregnant with their child.” An audible cry came from the room; it was the sound of an entire city’s heart breaking. “I began to feel guilty about the baby and my late husband, so I ran away. I told Mr. Allen I needed to have some time to think about Michael, so I went to our favorite coffee shop and looked at pictures of him. Terry must have thought I went back to my old apartment, so he went there and was killed. It truly was a freak accident,” Claire said looking down. She reached out and took Sharon’s hand. Claire gently pulled her to the microphone. Sharon’s surprise showed on her face; she’d been told she wouldn’t have to speak. Claire lo
oked at her and gave her a slight nod.

  “Thank you, Claire. This has been a tragic twenty-four hours,” Sharon said, gaining her composure. “My husband was a great man who had an oversize heart. He dedicated his life to the welfare of our great city. He was a wonderful husband, but he was an even better business and community leader. No one has done more for Houston than Terry did. He will truly be irreplaceable.” Sharon carefully touched the corner of her eye to stop a tear, fearing she would smudge up her professionally applied makeup. “I’ve seen the news today, and there was lots of talk about foul play, but let me say here and now that Claire had nothing to do with Terry’s death. She was simply shocked by the pregnancy. His death was a pure accident. We’ve talked to the police, and they’ve cleared everyone of any wrongdoing. But the news of our pregnancy is a silver lining. Thank you.”

  Claire smiled and pulled Sharon into a hug. The clicking of the cameras exploded. After the short embrace, Sharon was pivoting to retreat to the back of the room but noticed Claire had returned to the microphone. Sharon shuffled back to her original position.

  Claire took a deep breath. She felt slightly bad about how she had just used Sharon to clear her name, but then she remembered the whole reason for this. Allen had said it himself; tough decisions had to be made. After months of planning and patience, everything had worked out even better than she had hoped.

  Claire raised her eyes to meet the line of cameras. “Things aren’t always as they seem,” she said, and paused. Sharon nodded in agreement. “Mr. Allen wasn’t as he seemed, and this entire city isn’t as it seems.” Sharon’s nodding slowly came to an end. “Terry Allen and his family owned every single thing in this town. He owned all the businesses, all the busses, all the stores, everything. He and his father and his grandfathers have bought up everything in the entire city. They controlled it all,” Claire said becoming more passionate to the silent room. “They even bought up the utilities outside of Houston and raised the prices until everyone had no choice but to move here. All to save them money and increase their power.” Sharon was no longer looking sad; instead she looked as confused as the journalists were. “Terry Allen owned the power and water company and controlled the prices. He owned the companies that owned the stores and controlled what items went where. He owned the police and controlled what they did. He was above the law. He hired people to kidnap and get rid of homeless people. He even owned the TV stations that you’re all watching me on. He told them what and what not to report in order to deceive you. He told them to push many fake stories including Miami being a war zone, but it isn’t a war zone. It’s a place just like Houston. I know because I went there. The Billies are great people; they pretty much saved my life.” Claire looked across the crowd of stunned reporters and saw her own image across the street on a TV inside a bar. She saw people watching the entire broadcast and knew the cat was coming out of the bag. “But most important, he owned the hospitals. He was the person who controlled which drugs and cures would or wouldn’t be released… Gerivirus has a cure, but Mr. Allen refused to release it.” The packed crowd inside the lobby went into a roar at this news.