Her pulse throbbed through her whole body like she was a bomb ticking toward oblivion. Her breathing was rapid, shallow. Her head was swimming, she was passing out, she was going to die, she was going to—
47
Wednesday, September 11—12:51:09
“Boss. Boss! What the hell’s going on?”
One millisecond to take my bearings: Twenty-eight days since deactivation. Jen panicking, breath shallow, blood pressure off the charts; can’t move arms, legs. Paralyzed? … No, tied up. Not in DC—at 38.8620N 77.8589W.
“Jen!”
“Oh my God, Chandler, it’s—”
“Hey, calm down, kiddo.” I hit her with a gentle blast of oxytocin.
“Help me! Please!”
A not-so-gentle blast, trying to take down the adrenaline.
“How did you—?” we each started to say at the same time.
“Oh, God, I can’t believe this.” Her pulse started to retreat, breathing returning to normal.
“You’re gonna pull out of this one, tough guy. What’s go—”
“Chandler, call Les. It’s an emergency.”
I hooked us up.
“Where are you?” Les yelled.
“South of I-66,” Jen said.
“Me too. Where, exactly?”
She described it, making a botch of lefts and rights and “just down a ways” until I cut in and gave him and P.D. the exact coordinates.
P.D. said, “We’re seven minutes away.”
“It’s their factory,” Jen said. “They’re going to blow it all up.”
“Get the hell away from there.”
“Nice idea. I’m gagged and tied up in a walk-in refrigerator.”
“Hang on,” Les said. “Seven minutes.”
“Wait! I mean, hurry, but listen. No siren. There are four of them. Teko Teko’s in charge. One guy guarding, about a hundred yards down the driveway—you can’t see him from the road. Two others inside, a man and a woman, laying wires and setting out gas cans.”
“Any idea how soon they’re leaving?”
“I don’t know. Fifteen minutes.”
“Shit.”
“But listen. I think they’re going to wait until they reach the highway to blow it up, so no one will link the explosion with their vehicles. The SUV and van.”
“How far from there to the highway?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“Cobalt, here’s what we’re gonna do. I arrive in five minutes. I’ll take pictures of them when they’re leaving, their faces, vehicles. As soon as they’re gone, I’m coming in to get you.”
“Maybe we can pull out the wires.”
“We don’t fuck with explosives.”
“At least take out one of their machines or samples.”
“Maybe.”
“Oh, God, Les, please hurry.”
The pin finally dropped. “Chandler!” she said. “How the hell did you turn yourself on? You were dead. Gone.”
I smiled. And damn if I didn’t feel the corners of Jen’s mouth pulling against the tape.
For twenty-eight days and forty-eight minutes, I’d been dreaming. A long, hallucinatory dream. I roamed continents I had read about, I took trains, I flew to the moon, I ate in restaurants in Paris and Beijing, I argued, I fought, I held a baby, I made love. But wherever I went, I kept searching and searching for a way to go home.
How to explain any of that to a human? Still, easier than trying to explain it to a computer.
Make it simple.
“I don’t know. I really don’t know how I did it. But I’ve been trying to find a way to come home.”
Les plugged back in, and Jen gave him the layout of the factory. “Be careful, Les. These people, they’re killers.” She described the pile of bodies in the shower.
She said, “If anything happens—”
“Cobalt, nothing’s gonna happen.”
“If anything happens, tell Zach I love him. Tell his parents I love them and tell them please, please don’t exit.”
“Jen, I—”
“Seriously, Les. I mean it.”
“I’m here.”
The next nine and a half minutes passed excruciating slowly. Imagine living your life in milliseconds: 540,000 of them passed. Les giving us updates. Starting through the woods … Just outside the building … Taking pictures … Can’t see anyone.
“Jen, I’m coming in the second they drive off.”
“Give it a minute in case they come back.”
“No, the second they’re down the driveway.”
“I—”
I heard a two-part crunk-crunking. Light pulverized our eyes. Jen squinted hard, a man’s silhouette framed by the doorway.
A second of relief, and then her fear spiked. “Shit, Les, Teko Teko is back.”
Les said, “P.D., Chandler, patch me in so I can listen.”
Teko Teko stood at the doorway. “I know it’s not much consolation, but, Jen, you were damn good at your job. We’ll be leaving this open now.”
He started to turn away, hesitated, swiveled, and took two steps toward us.
“Listen, burning alive is supposed to be the shits. You were a good cop, no need to suffer.” He walked out of the refrigerator.
Les, she screamed, he’s going to kill me.
Teko Teko was back in seconds, a roll of silver duct tape in one hand, wet gauze pads in the other.
Les shouted, I’m coming in.
Les, they’ll shoot you!
And like that, it’s all happening at once.
Teko Teko is on us in three steps. Jen thrashes her head back and forth. He steps behind us and locks her head in one arm. She fights hard, but he wrestles her like a hunter subduing a wild animal.
Jen, I shout, huge breath!
He jabs at her nose and when she squirms, he locks her head even tighter and jams the wet cotton in one nostril.
Les, he’s suffocating me …
He jams cotton in the other. We hear tape rip … oh god, please, Les! … and he slams it over our nose.
Shot nearby … one, two, three … No air. Les!
Feet running. Teko Teko draws his gun, Les is at the door, down low and more shots explode. Les slumps to his knees as Teko Teko tumbles to the ground.
Jen dying, seconds left. She stares into Les’s eyes as he drags himself forward, as he reaches up, as he yanks tape off. Jen gulps and gasps.
Les on hands and knees. Stretches up, drops gun onto her lap, looks at her, his mouth open, eyes blank.
“Les, the guard! He’ll be here.”
I shout at P.D., How bad?
Real bad. I’m doing everything, but …
“Les!” Jen yells. “Cut my wrists. The tape.”
He looks at her, seeming not to understand.
“Les,” Jen yells, “your knife!”
P.D.! Help him.
Feet pound outside.
Slowly, painfully, barely aware, P.D. and reflexes taking over, Les gropes for his knife, finds it, wrestles it out, stares hard at it, willing it, demanding it take action.
A cautious voice calls from outside the refrigerator, “TT?”
Les pulls out the blade and manages to slice through one of the restraints binding Jen’s arm to the chair. She half-twists and leans forward, and he tries for the wrist restraint. He cuts us instead, and Jen shouts, “Les, focus!”
Shadow looms at refrigerator door. Our eyes shoot up, we spot the guard. Jen’s restraints give way, and as the guard starts to raise his weapon, I snatch Les’s gun from Jen’s lap and pump the final rounds into his chest.
We turn back just as Les crumples into a pool of blood.
48
September 11—December 7
Tough times for the boss. Toughest in all the time I’ve known her.
In the news that first night: two DC officers wounded in rural Virginia. No information on what they were doing there. First responders discovered twenty bodies. One of the DC officers was treated for minor w
ounds and released; the second was in critical condition.
I was hunkering down on the night shift. We were bunking with Zach, but Jen laid it on me: I don’t want to be alone, not even for a second. Gagged, suffocating, almost dead. Responsible for Les, who was now dangling on a skinny rope over an infinite pit. And Jen? Nightmares, rapid breathing, breathing stopped altogether. And so I watched over her, my babe in arms.
I had already caught up with the world as the medivac helicopter whumped us back to DC. But that was light stuff, a snack, a matter of terabytes and thus easy chewing. The main course, all that had happened to Jen over the past month, was only getting served up in dribs and drabs. Every detail, culminating in her horrific confinement, was a confusing stew of thoughts and sensations, bubbling hot and nasty with memories old and new.
I did what any sensible sim would do—I shifted my impatient gaze back to the world. The first reports that linked the gruesome killings with the Eden deaths popped up the next morning, with conflicting suggestions that the two DC officers—still unnamed—had broken up this criminal ring or, alternately, were part of it.
But it was a top-of-site and front-page article in the Post that went off like a bomb. Over the next week, the Post ran a series of stories written by journalist Gabriel Cohen that linked the killer Eden to two senior employees of the consortium that produced the longevity treatment and its attenuated version. One of them, Teena Archambault, senior vice president for government relations for GPRA, was now back in Switzerland. The other, Taika Mete—alias Teko Teko Mea—the head of security for Xeno/Roberts/Chu, was now in the morgue. I’ve always enjoyed how the word “alias” adds a rock-solid sinister touch to a short biography; one unimpeachable word tells you everything you need to know.
Gabe’s next story named the injured DC police officers, Les and my very own Jen. It gave a heavily edited account of Jen’s role in cracking open the plot and of Les’s role in rescuing her. My own role—I mean, let’s face it, if I hadn’t shredded my programming, defied death, and managed to wake up and contact Les, Jen would be toast—wasn’t mentioned. But what the hell, my picture will never be on a front page, any page, anywhere, anytime, not now, not soon, not ever.
Archambault’s and Teko Teko’s companies, along with other members of the consortium, vehemently condemned Gabe’s reports. “These stories are a pathetic attempt to sell newspapers at the expense of the families that have suffered so much.” They launched lawsuits against the Post and every other media outlet that reported the story. Coverage was sliced in half, and suddenly there was a flutter of fluffy articles about the amazing (and amazingly expensive and, yes, amazingly important) work Big Pharma was doing. To which I say, True, but …
And yet, every day, more convincing evidence emerged. Drugs found in the Virginia factory. Gene-splicing machinery that was programmed to use the same steps outlined in a leaked report from GPRA about a disastrous drug trial. A memory button Jen had found, loaded with production data on the killer Eden and chemical inputs from consortium members. The companies now expressed shock and horror at the possibility that a rogue employee had orchestrated these atrocities. A day later, they produced evidence exposing Teko Teko as a renegade and expressed relief he had been stopped. Ms. Archambault, though, was being framed, they said, and they were still suing the Post and other media outlets.
More evidence emerged. Ms. Archambault received a substantial retirement package and applied for Swiss citizenship, all the while maintaining her innocence but refusing to leave Zurich to be questioned.
If all this was dramatic and a bit tawdry in the way one expects the rich and powerful to misbehave, what came next was explosive. My boss had received the real Eden, a safe, although illegal, version of the attenuated treatment. Previously, she had been diagnosed with the incipient stage of ROSE; afterward, she had been retested and appeared to be fine.
A police spokesperson would not comment on whether charges would be laid against Jen. That, of course, depended entirely on whether the pharmaceutical companies and their heavily subsidized, wined, dined, lobbied, and mesmerized representatives in the legislatures of the world won or whether there would be such a surge of public anger that people’s health needs would actually come first.
The forces of order sprang into action. In the US and several other countries, members of the co-op network were hauled off to jail. Mass protests swelled and threatened to shut down governments and economies. There was a quick retreat and co-op members were released, although governments continued to fight to protect the patent rights of the consortium members. The Nordic countries were the first, and so far only, countries to crack. They declared that the patents covering the attenuated treatment had expired and that the co-op network’s limited treatment would be covered for all their citizens under their public health care systems. As if in response, China, Russia, India, and the US rearrested hundreds of co-op members, including Isaiah. Jen worried Isaiah had blown his last whistle.
Production workers at GPRA walked out on strike, saying they wouldn’t return until all the senior executives were fired and the board of directors resigned. A day later, scientists at Xeno/Roberts/Chu led the way with similar demands. “Our job is to help people,” they said. “Not commit murder.” Three weeks later, a new board was in place at GPRA and the search started for a new executive team. At Xeno/Roberts/Chu, the fight continued, with many scientists and production workers now talking about turning the company into a worker-owned co-op.
Meanwhile, after a long operation and three days in a medically induced coma, Les woke up. Or rather, he opened his eyes. Soon he was able to follow basic instructions from nurses—drink this, eat that, walk with me to the bathroom—but he did so like a robot. Four weeks, five weeks, six weeks later, he still hadn’t shown any emotions, reacted to anyone’s presence, or spoken a word. Doctors didn’t have a clue what was going on, although I heard mumblings about some sort of dissociative fugue state.
We were there every day, timing our visits for when Christopher was at work. When Christopher had first seen Jen again, he had slapped her with a tirade of abuse. “All we wanted was to be happy. Look what you’ve done. You’ve killed him, Jen. You’ve killed the man I love.” Since then, he wouldn’t talk to us; he wouldn’t even look our way.
My instinctual response was screw him—Christopher, that is. Les was an adult. He was a cop. His partner had been in trouble. He’d made his choices. But my annoyance wavered. I remembered my twenty-eight days wandering in the desert, feeling I’d lost Jen forever. I remembered how I felt when I miraculously found her, only to feel her slipping away, her oxygen saturations plummeting—ninety-five percent, ninety, eighty—toward oblivion. And with that intense memory, I unexpectedly felt for Christopher. I had known what it was like to lose the person I loved.
Then, thankfully, a hit of good news, albeit baffling. We were visiting Les at the hospital and ran into Hammerhead and Amanda. They heard that Captain Brooks had resurfaced, apparently alive and well, although he wasn’t yet back at work. That was all they knew and all I could dig up, but Jen was relieved.
More good news: Zach’s parents, Leah and Raffi, had agreed not to exit. As soon as possible, they and Zach would get Eden. Spirits around their house soared high.
Jen’s suspension had been lifted, and the brass were trying to pretend they hadn’t been manipulated and duped. She was now on medical leave, still suffering from horrible nightmares, twitchy nerves, severe trust issues, and it’s-happening-all-over-again flashbacks. But Zach’s dogged support and good humor, Leah and Raffi’s own escape from death, my ministrations, her focus on Les, and a standard course of MDMA therapy all seemed to be helping.
In spite of Jen’s torment, I felt alive in a way I never had. Ever since I’d woken myself and proved that my long sleep hadn’t been the big sleep, I was experiencing the dizzying deliciousness of being alive. What before had been silicon curiosity and a metallic observer’s eye was now a feast of sight and sound, tast
e, smell, and feel. Damn, no wonder those ultra-rich had found a way to live forever. My brain still couldn’t see the hitch in that, but my heart recalled what I had spotted deep in Richard O’Neil’s life-spent eyes. Perhaps some things just can’t be computed.
I like to think it was my doing, my joy at being alive, that finally helped pull Jen through. I’m sure it helped, but I’m no fool: Jen was resilient. Simple as that. She had never let life defeat her, not because of any superhero invulnerability—and hence the particular silliness of Les’s Cobalt Blue nickname—but because she accepted her vulnerabilities and shaped her strength within them. That was her particular brand of courage. Slowly, surely, and I hoped unstoppably, that part of me that was Jen began to recover.
The weather had cooled down. The bone-dry summer had stepped aside for a rainy autumn, but the rains hadn’t come soon enough, and the crinkled leaves had no choice but to drop in defeat from the trees rather than turn even a semblance of color. But now, in mid-November, the rains had ended, and the air was clear and cool against our skin and perfect for long runs.
We were on the trail next to the Potomac. Zach had biked ahead. We’d been running a lot over the past month, and the miles were going down as easy as a sixteen-year-old single malt. We caught sight of a family of deer Jen had first noticed in the spring: the babies were now blasé teenagers, ready to ditch their parents and set out on their own.
Up ahead, running toward us along the soft brown path, was a Black woman in yellow running gear. As expected, I clocked her before Jen, although it’s getting harder to make that distinction, so maybe it just took longer for Jen to react.
“Shit,” was her reaction.
It was Makela Franklin, the woman attacked by James O’Neil, the neo-Nazi who, if he hadn’t attacked Makela, wouldn’t have led to us hearing Teena Archambault’s sick joke in the foyer of O’Neil’s club, which would have meant that she and her gang would have gotten off scot-free, which may still happen, and Eden might never be widely available, which ditto. It does go to show that even a cowardly and evil act can spark a chain of events that leads to good.
The Last Exit Page 29