The ensuing chase was nerve-racking. Soldiers flooded the hallway. They tried to tackle me. I dodged them, tic-taccing off the wall and over their heads as they dove at me with their arms forward.
Then, suddenly, a fire alarm shrieked throughout the entire building.
And Tong’s voice boomed on the PA.
“This is not a drill, this is an emergency. Everyone evacuate the building and return to your homes, the National Guard is not your friend. You will be executed if you stay. Go! Home!”
I don’t know how many people actually went home. But the fire alarm woke everyone up and plenty of people were getting out of their rooms and into the hallways. The soldiers chasing me were smashing right into all these people, and I was able to make some distance between me and them.
I darted around a corner to try and get a second to check the chart. But there were two problems. First, I realized that Nyla would definitely take the chance to get the hell out of here. She was all about freedom. Second, I didn’t have a chance in hell to find her. During the chase, I fucked up—I lost a few pages, including the one that had her name on it.
But there wasn’t any time to think. I heard the soldiers approaching in their heavy boots.
Bolting off, I called out over the radio.
“Tong, we gotta get out of here!”
“Get back to Elgin,” he yelled, “but don’t lead them to her!”
“Got it!” I yelled back.
I ran and ran until I found the emergency stairwell. But when I got in there, I heard the yell of soldiers echoing off the concrete walls.
“Wayne!”
It was Elgin on the radio.
“Get up to the fifth floor,” she commanded. “I’ll drop waypoints for you.”
Up the stairwell I went. I threw open the door at the fifth floor and got into the hall.
On my HUD, Elgin had dropped a waypoint all the way on the opposite corner of the hotel. I ran towards it, but when I turned a corner, soldiers at the end of the long hallway were blocking it.
“There!”
A soldier pointed at me.
Fuck.
Elgin must’ve seen me backtracking, because she sent me a different waypoint.
I appreciated her help, but I realized that I was better off using my own head.
The steakhouse, I thought. That’s where I’d lose them.
“Elgin!” I yelled. “Mark the pool for me.”
I was going to get down a couple of floors, find the window, and leap down to the roof of the steakhouse.
Elgin marked it, and I ran off to the nearest stairwell and made it down to the third floor.
The stairwell I burst out of was the worst one I could’ve used. I ran right into a whole gang of soldiers, five of them. Thank God I surprised them, otherwise I would’ve been captured right there.
One of them leapt at me to tackle me, so I bolted off the other way. Four soldiers were hot on my heels, and I needed to make enough distance between me and them so that I could get out of the window safely.
When I got to the end of the hallway, I turned the corner with a kick off the wall and maintained my momentum and speed. They slammed into each other as they tried to turn though. That gave me the distance I needed. I kept running and got to that window.
Looking outside the window, I saw the roof of the steakhouse. After estimating the distance, my heart raced even faster.
The horizontal distance between me and the roof wasn’t much. I could handle it. But the height…I just couldn’t stomach it. I wasn’t sure I’d make it. I was afraid that I couldn’t make the jump and ended up falling all the way down onto the street level and end up with a shattered spine and broken legs and ankles.
Soldiers were on my ass. I kept running.
But I was tired by now, and these weren’t the same soldiers I’d been running ragged. They were fresh. And they were catching up to me.
I turned a corner and got to the nearby hallway window. I heard the soldiers’ stomping feet nearing. There was no way I’d be able to escape them if I didn’t act.
I threw open the window and stuck my head out.
Ahead of me, below, there was a glass building. It was the detached pool building.
I’d never jumped onto glass before. I wasn’t sure if it would hold me or break me.
But I had no choice.
The thud of soldiers’ boots neared even closer.
I clambered out of the window and onto the thinnest ledge I’d ever had to try to stand on. With my body facing away from the hotel, I leaped forward.
I prayed.
My body hurtled through the air, obeying the laws of gravity.
My feet struck the glass ceiling.
Automatically, I wanted to tuck and roll.
But my feet struck the ceiling and thick glass exploded into smithereens all around me.
Surrounded by glistening shards, my body cut through the air.
Then, I plunged feet first into the water.
Submerged in the pool, my arms splayed out instinctively to push my way up. I was flailing, but I managed to swim up to the surface.
I tried to wipe the water out of my eyes but the back of my hand hit the nanoscreen of my Cyclops. Blinking off the water instead, I looked up.
A soldier was leaning out of the window and barking something into his radio.
I had to get out of there. I still had to lose them and get back to Elgin.
Dripping wet, I got out of the pool and into the locker room. I figured if I was soaked that I’d be leaving a trail of watery footprints back to Elgin. I needed to dry off. After running through aisles of lockers, I found an open one with sweatpants in it. I stripped off my combat uniform and yanked the pants on. Then I ran out into the night.
EIGHTEEN
Red Elixir
After taking a long, winding route through back alleys, sprinting and tic-taccing off walls to jump over fences, I ended up in the back of some apartment building.
I took a moment to breathe.
No soldiers behind me.
No soldiers in front of me.
I was good to go.
I made my way back to the truck.
“Where’s Tong?” asked Elgin.
I shrugged.
She radioed him, and he replied saying he would be with us soon.
“What happened in there?” she asked.
I told her everything that had happened.
“I didn’t find Nyla,” I said. “And I didn’t find out where she was. I fucked up…I really fucked up.”
She gave me a questioning glance, so I explained.
“I found the page, like a roster or whatever. But when I was running away—“
“Evading, Wayne. Soldiers never run away. You were evading.”
I gave a weak smile.
“Well, I lost the page that had Nyla’s name on it.”
The feeling of defeat pressed heavily over my shoulders, and my back stooped like an old man’s.
Elgin chuckled. To be honest, it kind of irked me. It wasn’t a laughing matter. We’d just failed our mission.
“What’s funny?” I asked.
She waved off my annoyance. “You had eyes on it, right?”
I nodded.
“Then we’re good to go,” she said.
She flipped open her field monitor. After tapping a few buttons and swiping and scrolling with her finger, she found what she was looking for.
“Here,” she said, turning the monitor to me.
What was on the screen was the page that I had seen. Apparently, she’d pulled the footage from my Cyclops.
“Were you watching that whole time?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “No, but I could’ve if I wanted to.”
Apparently, she’d put my Cyclops in low-power mode since the battery was running low. That meant that the transmission rate and frames per second wasn’t that high. It did, however, capture high FPS footage, as well as an overlay of where my eyes wer
e looking at any given moment. She explained that the feature was designed for training purposes. The footage and data was supposed to be put into the XAI program—explainable AI—which would analyze it frame-by-frame and give suggestions on ways to improve performance.
Anyway, she had a razor-sharp image of the page that I’d only gotten a glance at.
It said that Nyla was in Biocontainment Zone Red.
She’d been tested and confirmed as infected.
What little relief that I had from getting the image quickly gave way to a crushing sense of hopelessness.
The woman I loved was infected with the virus. And when she died, she was going to become a burner.
When Tong got back, Elgin said that we would go to the Red Zone to find Nyla. According to the roster, it looked like she had been transported there before we’d arrived on scene and caused a huge ruckus. We didn’t know the fate of all those people in the White Zone, but we figured they stood a better chance of not getting infected if they were set free.
Tong drove us to the Red Zone, north a couple of miles. The drive there was nice…the roads were wide and comfortable, and there were trees and greenery up there. The moonlight shimmered off the leaves as the night breeze blew threw the air. I caught myself holding my breath though, even though I had my mask on. Thinking of wind reminded me of how contagious the virus was. I wondered when I’d ever be able to enjoy breathing the fresh air without worrying about getting infected.
As we neared the zone on a long straight road, I saw the edge of town. I could already tell it was a nice neighborhood. The houses looked liked actual houses, not the giant shitboxes with aluminum siding that we had in Queens. These houses were just the right size for a family. Two-story brick houses, with a small pleasant lawn in the front and a tree in the yard. Before I met Nyla, I thought I’d always just be living in a little apartment with roommates, or maybe alone if I was lucky. But after I met her…I wanted to make a home with her, in one of those kinds of houses. The kind with a fireplace, the kind where we’d raise a family.
It made me remember something. Not once in my life had I left New York City. Not once. I barely ever made it out of Queens. I got out as far as Manhattan and once or twice I’d been in Harlem. But now I was seeing new places…not for long, but it got me thinking about how there was a world outside of Queens. I wanted to see it. But I also realized that the goddamned national lockdown meant that I wouldn’t get to go anywhere at all.
Soon, we got as close as we could to the town without being seen or heard—the truck was a loud rumbling mass of heavy metal. Tong pulled the truck over into a clearing in the woods. Then, we hopped into the back where they gave me a briefing about where we were headed.
The Red Zone was centered around a hospital. With a one-mile radius, the National Guard would be enforcing the boundary, meaning no unauthorized people were coming in or going out of the zone. That meant we had to stay out of sight, and we would have to approach on foot.
Our path to the hospital at the center of the zone started in the woods at the edge of town. The woods wasn’t dense. Just thin trees with a thick leafy canopy overhead. We kept a low profile and moved quickly to the tree line.
Once we got to the tree line, we stopped to observe. Tong and I watched the road as Elgin sent out the Fly.
There were guards posted in the middle of the road. Behind wooden barricades, four soldiers stood vigilant, facing away from the town. What was scary was that they had rifles clutched in front of their chest.
When Elgin was done scouting out the nearby area with the Fly, she told us that the zone’s boundary was guarded mostly on the roads. There was just a very light patrol of the wooded tree line—one or two soldiers or so. And there were a few watchtowers set up.
Nyla’s voice spoke to me.
Why do they need rifles? Why are the patrols focused on keeping people out? And what’s with that watchtower?
I didn’t have the answers, but it was certainly suspicious.
As we observed the guard post from our spot in the tree line, we heard the sound of a motor behind us. A car with its headlights beaming behind us was driving up to the guard post slowly. Elgin gestured silently for us to go prone, and we got our bellies on the grass.
I couldn’t see who was in the car, only that it was a beat-up sedan. Two guards came out from behind the barrier and surrounded each side of the vehicle and another guard came to talk to the driver. I zoomed in with my Cyclops and it looked like the guard talking to the driver was showing a map to the driver and giving directions. After that, the car drove away.
Elgin gave us the plan. We would need to stalk through the woods, around the boundary, looking for a way in. Elgin and Tong didn’t think it’d be too tough—who the hell was going to be trying to go into the zone? Once we made our way in, we needed to get an observation post where we could see the hospital. With the plan in place, we made our way to our destination.
When we got a few blocks away from the hospital, Elgin sent out the Fly to look for a good observation post. She marked a three-story apartment building for me and told me to get up on the roof before she handed me a metal cylindrical canister about the size of a relay race baton. Inside was a compressed climbing rope with pre-made knots, to make it easier to climb. All I had to do was depress a button on the lid to release the air pressure inside and rotate the hinged lid open so that the rope would come out.
I scaled up the exterior of the building using vertical wall climbs and grabbing a hold of window sills and other parts of the building. When I got up on the roof, I secured the climbing rope around a short metal outlet pipe on the roof, I threw it down to the team and they climbed up.
Up there on top of the roof, Elgin sent out the Fly to scan the hospital. The building wasn’t too far away. We could see the broad side of the building where the main entrance was, but we needed more information about the layout and to check out all the sides of the building.
There were five floors to the hospital—not a huge hospital, but not small either—and it had room for hundreds of patients. There were two buildings connected by a skybridge on the top floor. The footprint of the first floor was smaller than the floors above it—when you walked around on the street level, the second floor of the building would be over your head. A grid of columns supported the second floor and above. There was the main body of the building, the east wing, and a smaller extension building which was the west wing. The two wings were connected to the top floor by a skybridge.
While the Fly was scanning, Elgin was monitoring the video feed.
“It’s strange,” she muttered. “There are National Guard units there—”
“Aren’t they there to support the containment zone?” I asked. “Help build stuff and give supplies.”
“Yeah. That’s not what’s weird.”
She looked at me.
“They’re leaving right now,” she said.
I had a flashback.
…you know how the doctor gets antsy about the concentration in the air. They’re gonna burn the place down anyway.
“Elgin,” I said urgently. “They’re gonna burn this place. Everyone in there’s gonna die.”
“How do you know that?” she demanded.
“I heard it from a soldier while they swept Nyla up in facility. We can’t let them die.”
Elgin mulled it over briefly and gave her decision.
“There’s only so much we can do without taking out the soldiers. Just like before, we don’t have the vehicles or the manpower to evacuate them. And honestly, this is the Red Zone—there’s a strong possibility that these soldiers are authorized to kill. Breaking anyone loose would be a death sentence. We’re here to get Nyla, and then we’re out.”
Elgin held up a hand. She just saw something on the Fly’s video feed.
“I see three men moving in,” she reported. “They’re putting something on one of the pillars.” She pulled up the structural data from the Fly’s scan to check somethi
ng. “Holy shit…that’s a support column. I don’t know what they’re doing, but Wayne, you better go check on that. If it’s what I think it is…”
I didn’t like the idea of walking into a dangerous situation without knowing a little more about it.
“What’s going on, Elgin?” I asked.
“If you’re right about burning the building, they might be trying to destroy the support columns to cause a building collapse. Make it look like an accident. And it didn’t look like they were wearing Guard uniforms either. Get out there. Now.”
Using a quiet stealthy route, Tong and I approached the hospital and hid in the back alley of a nearby coffee shop. We waited for Elgin to give us the all-clear to move out. When the last National Guard units vacated the area, we moved in closer.
“Wayne.”
I heard Elgin’s voice in my ears.
“Get to the column and find out what that device is,” she told me, marking it on my Cyclops.
When I made my way to the front of the hospital, I walked past rows and rows of columns. When I got to the pillar, I saw a drab green line stuck across it. And after I took a closer look, there was something else attached to it.
It was a timer.
And it was counting down.
“Elgin,” I whispered. “I’m looking right at it.”
“What the fuck is that thing?”
I searched the device for something that would give me a clue. On the side, I saw some numbers and letters stenciled on it.
“It says demolition block, thermal. Should I take it off?”
“Don’t bother. You risk setting it off. Shit’s gonna burn the flesh off of your bones. How much time is left?”
“Less than ten minutes.”
“Well then get your ass in gear. Check here,” she said, setting a waypoint on my HUD.
There was no time to waste. I had to find Nyla.
With the entire hospital vacated, getting in was easy. Elgin was keeping an eye on the three-man team that was setting the thermal cutting blocks onto the columns while me and Tong searched the hospital. We ran into the same problem as before—we didn’t know what room she was in. So when we got into the lobby, I headed straight for the front desk where I used the workstation to find her room.
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