by Sean Platt
Holly didn’t work off a script. When she’d returned to show business, she’d been unable to remember lines, let alone deliver them flawlessly. Today she could, but she had to play possum and still worked off the cuff, ad-libbing most of what she did.
On the big screen.
Onstage.
And when giving public speeches.
August stood and began walking forward, feeling urgent. There was no way to get in touch with Holly. She was dressed to emcee, and only her manager and security were tapped into communications … and right now, August could see them stirring nervously.
What made Holly endearing was that she talked from the heart, top of mind, without overthinking before she spoke.
And now, it seemed she’d chosen one hell of a bad time to rediscover the trick of proper speech, using clever phrasing and big words.
August moved to slip his tablet into his bag while walking, unsure where he was going or what he was doing. Before he put the screen to sleep, he saw Holly, still camera center, looking left and right nervously, probably realizing what she’d just said.
Not something she’d said poorly, like a mistake.
But something she’d said a bit too perfectly.
Holly’s black-suited handlers moved onto the stage. One of them — Cyrus, August thought — took her by the arm. It was hard to tell from so far away, but his body language seemed to be fake casual, pretending nothing was amiss. Holly wasn’t going without a hitch; she looked like she might grab the lectern and hang on at any moment.
Her eyes were across the stage, where the Hemisphere security guards set in front of the stage to control the crowd were moving up, coming forward.
August moved faster. The crowd — many of which were far-gone necrotics who’d miss the scene’s subtleties — looked around as if confused.
Cyrus pulled Holly harder. Now that August was closer, he could see her nervous smile: all white teeth, still in character. But there was something off about her look. Something that recognized the problem for what it was.
Holly’s handlers, pulling her stage-left.
Hemisphere security agents, all of them subtle and without uniforms, coming from stage-right, pressing earpieces with their fingers, receiving orders from someone, somewhere.
“Thank you,” said a male voice over the speakers. It was Cyrus, leaning in to speak for Holly. But the farce was paper thin. Anyone paying attention and able to think straight could clearly see what was happening. Holly had, in speaking so well, committed a crime that no one could admit was a problem. The ensuing dance unfolded before August as he paced faster: the Hemisphere agents coming forward slowly because they were pretending they only wanted to talk, and Cyrus and the others pulling Holly away as if they didn’t even notice because Holly had, of course, done nothing wrong.
The agents moved a hair faster, surely mindful of the cameras watching the event.
Cyrus dragged harder. Holly, in the middle, seemed torn. She saw the agents and clearly didn’t want to face them, but Cyrus wasn’t much better. She was pulling away with half strength, still trying to smile at the crowd as if everything was perfectly normal.
Her eyes went where she’d been trying to keep them away from, and Holly looked directly at August.
The crowd turned to see what had captured her attention. As their heads turned, so did the agents who hadn’t gone onstage, and were still watching the gathering from the rear.
August stopped. However he’d hoped to help Holly, it wasn’t going to work.
Agents approached him, blazers flapping. As the fabric moved, August could clearly see the butts of handguns in their shoulder holsters.
They were Panacea, not Hemisphere — maybe even high-level clarifiers.
With the world’s eyes still watching everything that was happening, the parties moved slowly like a dance advancing frame by frame. The first to run would break the stalemate. The first to run would start it all.
August detoured. Slightly to his left, toward a line of cars just past the blocked-off section of walkway, on the street between his position and the fountain, where kids — necrotic and non-necrotic, the picture of Aberdeen harmony — continued to frolic.
The Panacea agents began to jog, seeing the writing on the wall.
But August was too near his target. He yanked open the door of an electric cab, waved his card in front of the sensor, and tapped the digital map to indicate his desired destination — not in the right place, but enough to get the cab moving.
When the cab was away, August turned to look backward.
The agents watched his departure for a few seconds then turned toward the stage, where Holly had no such escape for the crime she hadn’t committed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
PARANOIA
IAN WAS BEING OVERLY PARANOID. He was sure of it. His meeting with Archibald Burgess was just that — a meeting. It was about time he got to meet his highest boss (and, let’s face it, idol) in person for more than a few minutes. He’d quickly ascended the company ladder, so it was only logical that he’d eventually end up climbing all the way to the big man’s office. Burgess had said he respected Ian’s mother’s book, and Ian by extension. It was a great, expectation-setting meeting.
It wasn’t anything ominous. That was just his earlier unfounded fears. Burgess had requested his presence, and it didn’t make any difference that he’d been summoned with rough hands, or that the meeting had ended on that dark little cliffhanger.
You’re a good man with priorities for yourself and your family firmly in order. I’m glad to hear you’re with, rather than against us.
With us.
Not against us.
Priorities in order.
For yourself and your family.
The words kept looping in Ian’s mind, and by the next morning he still hadn’t shaken them. They’d been in his head all night, robbing him of sleep. They’d been in his eyes when he’d woken, then stared into the mirror to brush his teeth. They might as well have been written on the wall at night, or across the bare flesh of Bridget’s sleeping back.
Everything is fine, he told himself.
But goddammit, it just wasn’t. He’d been sure someone was messing with him, but now it seemed that Hemisphere’s top brass had been informed. That was a problem even if the original incursions were someone’s idea of a joke. It all made his skin crawl. Ian felt like he’d been caught even though he’d never trespassed where he didn’t belong. Someone else had started this. Someone else had put files in front of him — and not even useful files, as if this mysterious source (or more likely troublemaker) wanted something figured out but lacked the guts to say what needed saying even to the person he or she wanted to say it to.
Ian’s toothbrush paused mid-stroke.
Maybe it was Alice Frank.
That made sense. She was a snoop who didn’t trust Hemisphere at all, despite the fact that the company had — oh, no big deal — just saved the fucking world. She seemed, from what Ian could tell, to have a lot of connections. You don’t get into the Yosemite Containment Reserve without connections. Someone was helping her get into places she shouldn’t be, and she had every reason to want to be there. Not only had she tried to call him repeatedly (including that strange call where she’d pretended he’d called her); he’d seen between the lines in her documentary. It was objective on the surface, but tilted to anyone with the least bit of sense. Hemisphere was the bad guy, daring to make a profit, even though it gave out its cure for free. If Alice Frank had one wish, Ian supposed, it’d be to topple the giant and … well … apparently to go ahead and let the plague break out all over again.
Yes. This was Alice Frank’s fault.
Ian couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought to pass the buck in Burgess’s office. He should have blamed her top to bottom. This wasn’t Ian butting into places he shouldn’t be. It was Alice Frank, known adversary.
Ian spit then wiped his mouth. He met the man in the mirror’s blue
eyes, running a comb through his brown hair.
“Stop being an asshole. You’re not doing anything wrong,” he said, reaching into the stream of water.
“About what?”
Ian’s gaze flicked up. Bridget appeared behind him in the mirror. He’d thought she was still asleep. They had a fixed schedule: He woke at five; she woke at seven. Today he’d overslept, and they seemed to be meeting in the middle, the clock on the wall fixed at 6:04.
“Nothing.”
“Talking to yourself again?”
“You knew I did that when we were first dating.”
“Yes. It creeped me out.”
Ian turned, a smile on his lips at her effacing joke. Bridget slept only in panties. He was bare chested, and so was she. He stepped closer and reached around to hug her close, but the skin-to-skin warmth lasted only a second. Instead of lingering as they usually did, Bridget only gave him the shortest of moments before pushing past him to reach for her own toothbrush, in her own sink down the counter from him.
Puzzled, Ian looked at his wife’s profile. He’d always found her beautiful. She had pale skin and bright-red hair that brushed her shoulders. It was in a mess now, sleep-tousled and bent in odd orange angles. The way it hung mostly covered her face, hiding her expression.
“Did you sleep well?” he asked.
“Okay.”
“Why are you up early?”
Bridget turned to face him. Again, her expression was unreadable. Standing there topless as she was, Ian found it difficult not to be aroused. But the look on her face dampened any fire that threatened to rise.
She turned back to the sink. Instead of answering, she made a statement that was almost a question of her own.
“You’ve been working a lot lately.”
“There’s a lot going on.”
“I tried to call you yesterday morning.”
Ian nodded. He’d seen the missed calls once the big men had taken him out and returned him to the other campus, where he’d met his team with tired eyes.
“Where were you?”
“At work.”
“I tried your office.”
“Why?”
“Do I need a reason?”
Ian couldn’t quite get her tone. It was unusual between them. He looked over, but she was again looking down, toothbrush working.
“You must have called when I stepped out.”
“That busy, huh?”
She looked up. Ian nodded.
“And working evenings, too. I thought you hated doing that.”
“I don’t work evenings. It’s one of my rules.”
“You were in your study watching that thing the other night.” She paused, spit, then said, “After taking that call.”
“It was a work thing,” Ian said, knowing “taking that call” for the violation of his usual rules that it was.
Bridget wiped her mouth then put both hands on the counter. She looked up for a second then over at Ian. Her eyes were soft, hard to read.
“I really like the life we’ve built here,” she said.
It was a strange thing to say. “I like it too.”
“I don’t say that often enough.” She blinked, looked away, looked back. “I just don’t want to take it for granted.”
“What’s this about?”
“We used to be so poor. Just kids.”
Ian nodded again. “Sure.” He didn’t trust himself to say more, strange as this was. Their time as “just kids” held some of his favorite memories. Bridget had been so crazy back then, before the demands of family and marriage and motherhood. They hadn’t had money, and he’d had a lot of time. He still had time thanks to his rules (no working after dinner, no working on the weekends), but it wasn’t the same. Now everything was scheduled, right down to their sex life.
“But I like things how they are. How they’ve been for a while now. You could work a little less. But that’s just details.”
“Bridge—”
“Are you happy how things are?”
“Of course. What’s going on here?”
She blinked, sighed, shook her head. “Nothing.” There was a long pause then: “You got a phone call the other day.”
“I get a lot of phone calls.”
“On the house line.”
“The house … wait, the wall phone?”
“Yeah.”
“The phone company. Or a wrong number. I don’t even know what that number is. Or if it even has a number.”
“The caller asked for you.”
Ian looked up. Then he saw it: somehow, for some reason, Bridget was scared.
“What did they say?”
“‘Is Ian there.’” She said it like a statement, not a question.
“What did you say?”
“You weren’t home. I said no.”
“And?”
“It went dead.”
Watching Bridget’s emerald-green eyes, Ian heard another voice in his head: You’re a good man with priorities for yourself and your family firmly in order. I’m glad to hear you’re with, rather than against us.
You’re a good man with priorities for yourself and your family firmly in order.
For yourself and your family.
Your family.
He was being ridiculous. Being more of that paranoid. But then, who else would call that number? Who else could find that number?
If he’d been alone, Ian would have splashed water on his face and shaken his head. It was moronic. First of all, Hemisphere was a good company — just a company, not some sort of evil genius’s underground organization. Second, Burgess hadn’t been happy that Ian had been 1) snooping and 2) talking, seemingly, to Alice Frank. Ian had seen it before; Archibald Burgess was all over the media and routinely adored, but strange in person. Clearly there were two Burgesses: a public face and a private one. The latter was far more driven. Far more tuned to mission and destiny. Far more willing to do whatever needed to be done, obstacles be damned.
But he was strange, not intimidating.
He’d spoken of priorities and allegiances and family as face-value items, not something Ian should take as anything deeper.
Not the kind of thing someone would snoop around and get an unknown number for in order to mess with his family, even though Hemisphere was one of the few companies connected enough to Panacea to pull something like that off.
“I’m sure it was just a mistake.”
Bridget’s hands went to her hips, her breasts still on prominent display. To Ian, her body had never stopped being fantastic. He was confused in two diametrically opposed directions, both turned on and feeling accused.
“A mistake. Is that really your response?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“You don’t seem very surprised. By someone trying so hard to get in touch with you in a way that’s kind of … covert. Then hanging up when I answer.”
“I don’t know what the hell it was, Bridge! Maybe it was the phone company.”
Of course he didn’t think so.
Bridget returned to the bedroom. Ian splashed his face and followed. He found Bridget with her shirt back on, looking deliberately away from him. He decided to let her sulk. He’d get to the bottom of this, but the fact that he was somehow being accused of wrongdoing from every angle at once was too irritating to take. The files had been forced on him by, probably, Alice Frank, and Burgess blamed Ian. Now someone was calling the house to intimidate him into keeping his mouth shut, and Bridget was accusing him? Ian loved his wife with all his heart, but fuck that.
She wasn’t going to break the silence. Ian didn’t want to play into whatever this was but wanted them to meet Analise in the front room with an angry cloud overhead even less.
“I saw leftovers in the fridge,” he said, keeping his voice light. “You went out with Gabriella?”
“Yes.” Just one word, but almost challenging in itself.
“How is she?”
“Cheating.”
Ian’s head cocked. It was a private joke between them that Gabriella — who, Ian had to admit, was stunning — was screwing every uninfected guy she could lure to the house while Jim was away. But her saying it with no mirth felt strange.
“What, does she have new stories?”
“Just stories about how she gets away with it.”
“Oh? How’s that?”
“She says you just need to know what kinds of things will give you away if you’re cheating.”
Again, Bridget was looking right at Ian.
“What kinds of things?”
Bridget turned the knob and opened the door. But before heading out to greet the day, she said, “You know how she watches the neighborhood all the time with her binoculars, right?”
“Yeah.” They’d joked about that plenty, too, even though Bridget’s tone didn’t have a single note of humor.
“She said someone keeps coming around. Driving down our street, over and over, slowing in front of our house without ever stopping.” Then she turned, shrugged, and gave Ian a fake little smile that didn’t fool him at all. “Not when I’m home, anyway.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
MALFUNCTIONS
DANNY WAVED HIS CARD IN front of the swipe sensor to enter Alpha building. Then he waved it again.
Red. And an annoying buzz of rejection, not loud enough to do more than annoy Danny and make him sweat.
He glanced around, surely looking like a textbook definition of guilty. Jordache had texted him a few times already this morning, each time about something inane. She was poking him, and he poked playfully back, but Danny knew what she was trying to do. Each text was open ended, heavy with a question he could answer if he acknowledged it. She’d built herself plausible deniability; later, she could explain each message as small talk. But they were all asking if he’d managed to get the PhageX.
Just wondering about your day. <3
To which Danny could, if he’d had the PhageX, answer, It’s great. Got something for you. :)
Or she’d say, Do you want to set a time to hang out tonight? Just planning my day.
To which Danny, if he wasn’t being stymied by a locked door, could say, Let’s meet at five, so I can give you a present.