Johnson spoke to the nurse and the security guards. He took something out of his pocket and held it out for the nurse and guards to read. Jacob couldn’t see what it was, but the guards nodded and the nurse pressed a button near her station. A door down the hall burst open and a medical team with a gurney came rushing out. They shouted for Jacob to clear the way. In disbelief, he moved aside.
The medical team took Gomez out of the van and placed him on the gurney and rushed back through the hospital doors. Jacob caught a glimpse of Gomez. He looked lifeless, an empty shell.
Jacob tried to run beside the gurney. “You will have to wait out here,” one of the nurses said. He stopped and watched as Gomez was taken into the side doors.
Johnson came over to him. “Everything has been taken care of.”
Jacob barely heard what Johnson said. “What? How?”
“I simply told them the truth. Mr. Gomez was injured while performing a job for my employer and all bills will be taken care of. They do ask that you move your van, however.”
“Move my van?”
“Yes. It appears this area is for ambulances only.”
Jacob tried to understand what was going on. Why was Johnson here? How did he know to come to this hospital?
“That was your men at the parking garage, wasn’t it? Your drone?”
“You understand, we could not let the Russians and Chinese kill you. We have too much invested in your survival.”
“Just who in the hell is we?”
“As I have mentioned before, Mr. Quince, my employer’s identity is of no consequence.”
“How did you get people to the garage so quickly? What the hell is going on?”
The doors opened again and Sandy and Kat came in.
“Mr. Quince, I am on a very tight schedule. I must go. I would also suggest that you have the staff look at your ankle. I have cleared payment for your treatment as well.” Johnson turned and went out the doors.
“Where is he?” Kat asked.
“They took him in,” Jacob said, gesturing to the side doors.
“I need to be with him,” Kat said.
“They won’t let you. I tried.”
The nurse from the desk came over. “Mr. Johnson said your ankle will need to be examined. I’ll call a nurse for you. You can go to room 2B. It’s down the hall to the left,” she said to Jacob. Turning to Sandy and Kat, she said, “The waiting room is down the same way, just a little past room 2B.” She started back to her desk before she stopped and turned. “But could you please move the van first?”
Chapter 30
Jacob limped into the waiting room. Sandy sat, drinking a cup of coffee, and Kat paced the floor.
Sandy looked up, her eyes showing her fatigue. “Hey.”
Jacob took a seat next to her.
“How’s the ankle?”
“A small fracture. They shot it with a bone regenerator. It will be good in a few days.”
Sandy handed him the coffee. “Want some?”
“Thanks.” He took a drink. “Any word?”
“Only that it will be a while.”
Kat stopped in front of them. She had been crying. This was the first time Jacob had seen anything but joy or determination on her face. She gave a half-smile, then started pacing again.
“What happened back there at the garage? And who was that suit?” Sandy asked.
Jacob handed her the coffee. “That was Johnson.”
“The Johnson who hired us?”
“Yes.”
“What was he doing here?”
“I don’t know, but he got Gomez in. They weren’t going to let him in because of insurance, and Johnson talked to them.”
“Is he connected to the people who saved our asses back there?”
Jacob shook his head. “I don’t know. I mean, yes. I just don’t know how he’s connected or what the hell is going on.”
Sandy watched Kat pace. “Did you notice anything about the security guys who showed up at the garage?” she asked.
“Only that they were good. Why, did you?”
“Their boots had the NirvanaWare logo on them. I saw it when they brought Evgeny by. I wasn’t sure, but I saw that ad for the hospital and it clicked.” She pointed to an ad screen on the other side of the room. An ad ran on a loop, finishing with the NirvanaWare logo superimposed over an external shot of the hospital.
“NirvanaWare troops saved us? How does that make sense?”
“I’ve been trying to figure that out. Maybe they were getting back at the SRS for the hijacking we helped with,” Sandy said.
“Why not take us too?”
“Maybe they didn’t know we were part of it.”
“But what about Johnson? Is he hooked up with NirvanaWare? That doesn’t make sense. He would have known we were going to help with the hijacking. He knew so much about me, about all of us. He even knew we were here, so there’s no way he didn’t know about our part in the hijacking job,” Jacob said.
“Why would NirvanaWare let us help the SRS steal from them? That must have cost them millions.”
“I know, none of it makes sense. NirvanaWare must have been there to burn the SRS, and we just lucked out.”
“Deus ex machina,” Sandy said. She took a drink of coffee. “This is getting cold, you want to finish it?”
He took the coffee and motioned to Kat, who still paced, in her own world. “Have you tried to talk to her?”
Sandy nodded. “She’s barely holding it together. She didn’t want to talk about it when I tried.”
Jacob understood. He didn’t want to talk about it either. He didn’t want to think about it. He leaned back. He was tired. His body felt the exhaustion left after an extended adrenaline rush. He drank the rest of the lukewarm coffee, knowing it wouldn’t help. “I should put my foot up,” he said and pulled over a chair.
The simple act of putting his feet in a chair seemed to increase his exhaustion. Sandy did the same and rested her head on his shoulder. He closed his eyes, the soft sounds of the hospital's piped-in music giving his mind something to focus on other than Gomez and the garage and Your Better Life and the SRS and NirvanaWare and Johnson. He let his mind go with the music and dreamed.
In his dream he floated in a stream of data, bodiless, surrounded by a firewall. He tried to crack it. He noticed someone was trying to crack it from the other side. Together they brought down the firewall and he was a teenager, sitting with Gomez in an internet café on Main Street of their hometown. Gomez was talking, but Jacob couldn’t understand what he was saying. The words came out, slowed down, and faded before they finished. “I can’t understand you.” Gomez tried again, but the same slowed down and faded words came out. “I still can’t.” An old laptop appeared at Gomez’s hands and he began typing, the words on the screen appearing out of order and scrambled. “I can’t.”
“Jacob, wake up,” Sandy said, shaking him. “The doctor’s coming.”
Jacob sat up, foggy from his sleep. “Okay. I’m awake.”
Kat met the doctor at the entrance of the room. Jacob and Sandy stood and held hands.
“I’m sorry,” the doctor said. “There was nothing we could do. Near the end, we tried to upload his consciousness to the cloud, but there was a technical glitch. We were...”
He continued to talk about the upload and bullets with anticoagulants and the medical nanotech and too far gone and gotten here sooner, but most of his words were noise in the background while Sandy hugged Kat. The room seemed to draw back from Jacob, as if he was watching from a distance, floating in data and code, watching reality unfold below.
Chapter 31
“Where does this leave the project?” Mr. Craig asked. He leaned back in his chair, placed his elbows on the armrests, and brought his hands together near his chin.
“It is a setback,” Johnson said.
“A terminal setback? Perhaps an unfortunate use of words, but nonetheless, how does this setback affect our going forward?”
Mr. Craig nodded. “However, you will keep me updated.”
“Yes, sir,” Johnson said. “May I ask how your meeting with our Russian friend went?”
Mr. Craig smiled. “It went well. He was understandably upset by our methods of forcing the issue, but you were right to have suggested he should have been our initial subject.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“The Russians and the Chinese will continue to distribute chips and code decks for our research program, as originally planned, and Mr. Tal will be our eyes and ears for their operations beyond that. As for the research itself, it goes well. The data we are gathering is invaluable. Of course, the income is a bonus. Just yesterday we were able to finalize two more codes and should bring them to market within a month. There is still the issue of the missing technology and how we intend to resolve it.” Mr. Craig stood up and went to his wet bar. “But something tells me you already had that information.”
“Yes, sir.” After he said it, he realized the arrogance of the statement.
Mr. Craig poured two drinks and chuckled. “It is perfectly natural to want to gloat a bit, Johnson.”
“Sir, I was only…”
“Nonsense.” He handed Johnson a drink and sat down. “I would have done the same thing. It shows an instinct that is important to our line of business. A drive to be better than the person in front of you. It is admirable, and I wish we had more like you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Mr. Craig waved his hand as if to say no need to thank me while accepting the thanks at the same time. “Now, what are the possibilities Mr. Quince and his team is, how do they say it, on to us?”
“Their discussion in the hospital waiting room indicates they are suspicious, but they believe our people arrived at the garage to strike back at the SRS. And at the moment, they discount the possibility I am working for the corporation.”
“Good. That will play to our benefit, I believe.”
Johnson thought for a moment. “I do think, sir, we need to discuss the possibility of Mr. Quince and his team deciding to call off the project.”
“That, Johnson, is a possibility we must not allow becoming a reality. They must go forward. If there is any indication otherwise, convince him the project has to go to completion. If they waiver, if he waivers, you have permission to use whatever tactics necessary to ensure their compliance,” Mr. Craig said, tapping his finger on the edge of his desk.
“Of course, sir.”
Chapter 32
A lone skyscraper in this part of the city stood across from The Galleria. It had once housed multinational corporations and was considered a classic of postmodern architecture. Now, its sixty-four floors served as low-income housing, and instead of bearing the name of a corporation, it was known only as The Tower. Below The Tower, rows of shipping containers stacked three high were arranged in a neat grid known as The Market. The bottom container of each stack had been converted to a shop or food service, and the two top containers had been converted into living quarters. Like The Galleria, The Tower and The Market were home for those on the fringes of society; all three were extensions of each other, existing in their own economy, their own reality, one separate from the surrounding city.
Neither Jacob nor Sandy had ever lived in The Tower, but they, and many people who lived in The Galleria, often went to the old sky deck on the 51st floor. At times, families with young children would have picnics by the observation windows, the children pressing their faces against the glass and looking down. Jacob had done that himself once, after seeing the children. There was the sensation of floating above The Market and the structure that used to be a water wall at its far end. Jacob wished he had seen the water wall when it was flowing. Pictures gave the impression of water flowing from an opening in the sky. But like many useless things, when the corporations no longer found the water wall necessary, it stopped flowing. Now, the structure served a practical use as a vertical garden, the original plumbing used for watering the crops.
Smoke from the East Texas fires had thinned, but enough still lingered in the air to give the impression the sky itself was on fire during sunset. Jacob and Sandy sat on the floor of the sky deck watching a small boy press his face against the glass, his body a dark outline against the reds, oranges, and yellows filling the sky. The boy’s mother, a young woman in a hijab, called to him, and he went back to the blanket spread out for their picnic of hummus, pita, tabbouleh, and kabobs.
Jacob stretched out on the floor, using his backpack as a pillow.
Sandy brought her knees up to her chest and hugged them. Her eyes were puffy and red. “I’m worried about Kat. She’s taking this hard.”
“She’s at the church. They’ll look after her. It’s going to take some time. For all of us.”
“I know. It just hasn’t sunk in yet. How’s Two-Step doing? He seemed in shock earlier.”
Jacob sighed. “Gomez was like a big brother to him. Hell, sometimes like a father. I told him we should close the store for a day or two, but he didn’t want to. He said he would work alone if I didn’t want to come in.”
“I guess he needs to keep busy to keep his mind off of it.”
The family with the little boy started packing up to leave. Jacob stood and held his hand out for Sandy. “Come on.” Sandy took his hand, and he pulled her up to him.
“We leaving?” she asked.
“No. I need to take my mind off of this too. Have you ever pressed up close to the glass and looked down? You know, like the little boy was doing.”
“No. I never came up here as a kid.”
“Me neither, but I didn’t let that stop me. When I first got out of prison, I would come up here to think. I saw the kids doing it, so I figured I would give it a try. I guess I needed to feel something then, some awe or something. I need to feel that now. Come on, give it try.”
They went to the window. “It’s not scary,” the boy said. He had stopped packing and had started watching them.
“Thanks. I wasn’t sure,” Sandy said with a smile.
“Come on, we have to go,” the boy’s mother said, taking him by the hand and leading him away.
“Here, let me show you how to do it. You’ve got to get the angle right and you only see the ground,” Jacob said. He pressed his forehead to the window and looked down at a slight angle. Below him, the lights of the market filled his field of view. “Try it,” he said.
Sandy leaned against the window, imitating his posture. “That’s a bit disorienting,” she said.
“You get used to it. It reminds me of being net-linked. Almost like your floating.”
Sandy put her hands on the window, steadying herself. “I can see what you mean.”
Jacob pushed himself away from the window and sat down. Sandy did the same.
“You know, they closed this down after the 9/11 attacks back in 2001,” he said.
“The Tower?”
“No, the sky deck. I guess they thought Muslim terrorists would come up here and blow up the place. Now Muslims live here and have family picnics.”
“Things change.”
Jacob fidgeted with the laces of his boots. “I guess that’s my point. Yesterday changed everything.”
Sandy looked at him. “Like you said, it’s going to take some time for all of us.”
Outside, the sky grew darker.
“It’s not just Gomez I’m talking about. I mean, I know I’m going to miss him. We’ve been best friends since elementary school. I’m talking about this job too. I’m not sure if we can get it done now. Not without Gomez. We need a new plan, and to be honest, I’m not even sure I want to try. I can’t have anyone else getting hurt b
ecause of me. Xia already got hurt once. Now Gomez. All because of me.”
Sandy took his hand. “I thought we talked about this before. We all made our own decisions to help.”
“I know. I know. But this is different. Gomez is dead.”
Sandy gave him a long look. “You want to call it off?”
“Part of me does. But part of me wants to finish, get our pay, and get out of here for good.” For a moment, he watched the sky grow darker, the reds and oranges giving way to dark blues and purples. “Maybe that’s selfish,” he said.
Sandy shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“I guess I have time to think about it. First, I’ve got to tell Gomez’s mother. That’s going to be hard.” He stood and once again offered his hand to Sandy. “It’s getting dark, let’s get going.”
They rode the elevator down in silence, its hum and its rhythm offering a calming effect, allowing Jacob’s mind to wander. He knew what Gomez would want him to do. He would want the job to get finished. He always hated unfinished business. He had obsessed over the security monitors on and off for more than a year and would not accept that they weren’t going to work the way he wanted, no matter how many crazy rigged up schemes failed. There was no way Gomez would let him quit this job. But it was Jacob’s decision, whether he liked it or not. If he wanted to continue, everyone would agree, and if he wanted to stop, everyone would understand.
The elevator doors opened to the lobby. A couple sat at a table, the woman holding a flower and laughing as the twilight filtered through the windows.
“Where do you think they were before?” Sandy asked, nodding in the couple’s direction.
“Oh, we’re playing that? That’s an easy one. They spent some time wandering around The Market. He bought her that flower at the stall next to Pigeon Eater’s.”
“That sounds like a good idea. You want to go wander around The Market and buy me a flower?”
The rows of stacked shipping containers that lined the aisles of The Market created the impression of walking through a tunnel, the containers rising up on the sides and strings of lights zigzagging overhead, creating a glowing web. Above the lights was a second web, one of laundry lines running from one row of containers to the other, bouncing the light back down, giving the sensation of a dome over The Market. The sounds of the crowd and the noises from the shops blended with the sounds of people living their lives in the top two containers, adding another layer to an already layered sensory experience.
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