Tainted

by A. E. Rought

  It takes my mind a while to make sense of what I’m seeing. The jumble of shadows and motion becomes lights bouncing off massive, shaggy animals charging and people running. The sounds filter out into snarls and wails, growls and shouts.

  Yards ahead, on the edge of the commotion, stands a group of girls from Shelley High, their arms full of shopping bags. I recognize Marin and her groupies. Then, one of the creatures abandons its victim and turns towards the girls. One of them shrieks, two of them drop their packages and split off. Marin stands frozen, as the bulked-up canine prowls closer.

  “Marin! Run!” I shout.

  She flinches into action, throwing her packages at the advancing animal, and runs toward a mall security car. A hulking shadow detaches from the ground near a car, eyes reflecting headlight beams before it slams into Marin’s back. The two go down in a tangle of torsos and limbs.

  Feet from the car now, with its engine running and door open, I can vaguely hear the DJ warning people to stay away. Running to help Marin, I scan the unreal scene, looking for any sign of my missing girlfriend. The emergency lights cast faces in red and blue, both unreadable. Then on the far side of the parking lot, a blond girl flees into the dark pursued by something hulking and furred.

  Emma? The snow and flashing lights make it impossible to know for sure.

  Distracted, and too late to react to my own imminent danger, a sudden impact rams into my right side and drives me head first to the asphalt. I throw up my hand, shielding my face. My left elbow hits the pavement with a crack. The side of my jaw slams onto the parking lot.

  Black smatters the edges of my vision, and dots it with motes. Heat and a crushing pain dig into my forearm. Dizzy, I roll to my belly and fight to get to my knees against a hard tugging on my arm. When my vision clears I see the dog tearing at my arm. It appears to be a shepherd mix, but huge, muscles rippling like Bane from the Batman comics. The dog’s eyes wheel in their sockets, snot runs from his nose, drool froths over my sleeve.

  Kicking at the dog doesn’t work. He gets madder. Jaws saw back and forth over my leather coat arm as he shakes his head and drags me closer to the human cries and animal howls.

  Changing tactics, I lunge forward and jab the thumb of my free hand into its eye. This close, I see a small tag pierced through its ear. An Ascension labs digital marker.

  Oh dear God. What is going on? Are they all Ascension experiments?

  Bane Dog yowls when my thumb stabs under its eyeball and pops it from the socket. It releases me and runs off, scrubbing the side of its head across the asphalt, trying to rub off the pain, and succeeding in rubbing road salt into the wound.

  Everything sloshes and rocks when I stand again. I’m only a couple yards from the melee, the blond girl’s gone and I’m bleeding. Red drips from my fingertips to splat on the snow. Watching gravity work on my blood makes me dizzy.

  A paramedic catches my gaze, and breaks off from the crowd. I ignore her, and limp in the direction of the girl I pray wasn’t Emma. There was only a small distance between her and that beast. Somehow, the paramedic is suddenly in front of me, and my world tilts and slips on its axis.

  A buzzy static noise fills my head. My only coherent thought is Emma. The medic speaks to me, asks me something. My name, maybe?

  “Alex,” I tell her.

  That might have been the wrong answer. The parking lot falls out from under my feet, and her hand swings up toward my face. Or is it swinging down to catch me?

  I land in the soft, painless black of fading consciousness.

  “Emma,” I beg, but I don’t think she hears me. Neither does the encroaching dark.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Whooshing fills my head. Warm, heavy fuzz weighs my body. For one brief moment, nothing hurts and everything is a blur. Then memory crashes back in, and pain rampages along my right side. Even opening my eyes hurts.

  Gauging by the IV in my left arm, the bandage on my right and the drugged feeling, that paramedic brought me to the hospital. And Marin. I don’t even want to think about how her night of shopping ended. Is she even alive?

  I have no way to gauge time. Where’s Emma? The image of the blond girl running from the massive animal flashes in my head.

  I can’t stay here. I have to get to her, have to find her.

  Trying to sit up reminds me of how hard I hit the pavement. The dog must’ve tried to scramble my brains with the initial body slam. The walls rock, and things take a sharp turn toward dizzy. I groan, and lay back.

  “Hey,” a shadow says from an armchair in the corner.

  “What time is it? Where’s Emma?” I should be out looking for her. Instead, I lie loopy in a hospital bed, one arm wrapped in what looks like gauze and feels like barbed wire, and one pinned down with a big-ass needle in my vein.

  “It’s almost midnight. I refused to leave after visiting hours,” Paul says when he stands and comes close to the bed. A flash of doubt rips at my sense of relief. I can’t trust him anymore and I feel robbed. “Being head of Ascension has its perks. They didn’t chase me out. Jason called your phone while you were unconscious in the ER. Emma’s fine. She’s at the Ransoms’, apparently falling-down drunk.”

  “What? No.” Everything on the right side of my body complains when I force it into a sitting position. “I heard a shriek before the phone went dead. Emma sounded scared. She wouldn’t just go out and get smashed and leave her cell phone on the door mat.”

  Paul leans over, places a hand against my ribs. He seems so sincere. The broken, scared boy in me wants to trust him, wants him to make the hurt and horror go away. My lip trembles, eyes sting. I snuffle the moisture in my nose.

  “I know you’re upset. You’ve been through hell the past few days, but you need to lie still, son. Doctor said you have a slight concussion.” He nods when my eyes widen. “You also have a fractured cheek bone and eye socket. And bruising, puncture wounds and soft tissue damage in your right forearm.” Paul reads the monitor readouts, checks the IV bag and pain med pump. “How are you feeling?” he asks.

  “Like Cujo’s chew toy.”

  “Nice Stephen King reference,” he says absently. Then he focuses his hazel eyes on me. “Do you remember anything?”

  “All of it.” And I don’t want to. I want to rip tonight out of my head and replace it with what happened to Emma.

  “Really? No memory loss. Must be a side-effect of your formula.”

  “Suddenly I feel like a lab experiment,” I grumble and reach for the Styrofoam cup on the table over my bed. Paul intercepts, and holds the straw to my mouth for me. I hold him in a glance, first. He gives me a weak grin. Cold water shocks my throat when I pull in a big gulp.

  “You are, Alex.” He regards me with a serious, evaluating expression. “Until Emma, you were one-of-a-kind. The only human your father managed to revive – the only human revived after being gone so long. You’re the jewel in Ascension’s crown.”

  “Yippee. And I’m sure they’re just happy as hell an Ascension animal attacked me.”

  Light reflects from Paul’s glasses when he shakes his head, then he scoops the remote from the table and switches the TV to the news station. After a commercial for a kitchen gadget, a segment runs on the attack at the mall. “It’s all over the news,” he says. “They scanned the chips. This hasn’t made national news outlets, but Ascension’s shareholders are clamoring for containment. The cops are demanding answers.”

  “Do we have any?”

  Paul crosses his arms, and goes still. The silence leans in like this hospital room has some stake in hearing what he has to say. He comes to stand beside my pillow before speaking in a hushed tone. “I told the police that the blackouts knocked out the security camera.”

  “So, you do have answers.”

  “No.” Too fast, too heavy with denial. “The recording is fuzzy, fading in and out of static.”

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  He heaves a sigh, shoots uncomfortable glances around t
he room. “The video footage could be incriminating.”

  “And…”

  “And, about thirty minutes before the first animal attack report came in, Emma appeared on the main security feed. She didn’t look right, confused or inebriated, maybe. Then static rolled through and she was gone.”

  “What? How? Why would she…?” Disbelief is so strong and savage I can’t complete a train of thought.

  “I don’t know, Alex. I doctored the footage, fudged the timeline and extended a wave of static through her appearance.” He uncrosses his arms and paces the length of the bed. “With Emma in the equation, it looks like she did it. Without her, it looks like a massive case of negligence.”

  “Emma wouldn’t do it,” I argue.

  “I don’t think she would either, but it doesn’t look good. And we have to take into account what she did on your father’s property.” He stops, inhales a breath, his expression drawn. And guilty? “If Emma’s suffering psychotic splits…”

  “My girlfriend is not psychotic!” I yell.

  “Quiet down,” he warns, “before a nurse comes in and shoots you full of sleeping meds.”

  “Fine,” I huff. “Well, what about the security alarms? If security was breached, we would’ve received instant notification on our phones.”

  “That’s what makes it so suspicious.” Paul nods, pushes a hand through his hair. “The logs say your code was used to get in at that time. We all know you weren’t there. To the authorities, it would look like an unstable girl using your connections to get in. But this smacks of an inside job. Katrina was in the lab, running trials. She logged in, logged out, didn’t report any trouble.”

  Emma doesn’t know my log-in code. Paul does. So does Hailey. The last possible thing I wanted when I woke up was to doubt him any less. And I don’t think this problem is getting solved tonight.

  “Speaking of trouble… when do I get out of here?” Already the hurt is being undercut by that burning sting of my accelerated healing. “The doctors are going to start noticing anomalies in my healing rate, if not already in my blood tests.”

  “I have a technician in the hospital’s lab, doctoring your samples.”

  Of course he does. Maybe my father knew what he was doing when he named Paul as Ascension’s interim CEO. He knows more than I do about the company. How far does Ascension’s arm reach? Is there a part of this town Ascension doesn’t have its feelers in?

  “OK. So you took care of the test results. Still, the doctors will notice how quickly these heal,” I gesture to my battered side with my left hand.

  “I spoke to the physician on rounds and he said if you don’t exhibit any worsening signs of head trauma you’ll go home tomorrow afternoon. Now, if you don’t try to get some sleep, I will hunt down a nurse with sleeping meds myself.”

  Just then, a nurse pokes her head in the partially open door. “Did I hear Alex isn’t sleeping?”

  “Thanks a lot,” I whisper at Paul.

  “You’re welcome,” he mouths.

  The extremely efficient night nurse has a pill in a paper cup in my hand in no time. Paul holds the straw where I can easily chase the med down with the water. Maybe I’m tired, or the pill is incredibly fast acting. The dim-lit room darkens, and I can hear, “A rested mind is a sharp mind,” in my head. We’re going to need to be sharp to save Emma.

  Consciousness fades, and the blond girl runs through the darkscape of my mind.

  Hospital meals are bland. The coffee is worse.

  I sit in this bed, stomach a sucking void because I hardly ate anything for breakfast. The TV dies when I point the remote at it and jab the power button. It’s nothing but infomercials and mama-baby-daddy drama shows now, and I’ve seen all the “shocking” paternity test results I can stand.

  The glorious scent of Mugz-n-Chugz take-out reaches into my room before Emma appears in the door with it.

  I didn’t realize how her absence hurt until I saw her.

  What’s left of Daniel wakes – separate and yet more integrated. His visions and memories are mine now and they wash away the misery, the worry plaguing me since Emma disappeared yesterday. My heart rate picks up, everything hikes up a notch. The monitors read my physiological response. They can’t read my nerves singing, the grounded, weightless feeling I soar in. The high is so perfect and sweet it beats the hospital’s painkiller a thousand times over.

  I lift my recently liberated left arm, and Em rushes from the door to my side. The food bags make it as far as the bedside table before Emma curls beneath my arm and rests her head on my chest. I’m whole with her. I squeeze her as tight as I can, and let out a groan.

  “What happened to you?” she asks, voice hushed and near tears.

  I can hardly understand my own feelings, let alone voice them. How can I talk about my physical injuries?

  “He fought a beast in your honor,” Jason suggests when he and Bree step into the room.

  “You remember,” Bree adds, “like that play we did our freshman year.”

  “I’m not important,” I tell Emma, mostly ignoring our friends. “What happened to you?”

  Tension whips through her. Then she tucks in tighter beside me. “I met up with some old friends. They were only in town last night.”

  “Em.” Pain throbs up my right arm when I hook a finger under her chin and make her look up. “What really happened?”

  Tears wet her eyes, the corners of her mouth twist down. “I met up with some old friends…”

  How am I supposed to believe it when even she doesn’t? Doubt, denial, confusion stretch and pull on Emma’s features, making the new shadows under her eyes more apparent. Whatever happened, it’s different from the first time she flipped out and left me sitting trapped in a traffic jam in a snowstorm. Emma’s hiding something, and I don’t think she knows she is.

  “Aren’t you going to eat your food?” Jason asks, an obvious ploy to dispel the awkwardness. “We got you the coffee you like, too.”

  “Sure,” I say, taking my cue from Jason. Em sits, hip to hip with me in the bed, and wheels the table close. She reaches for the controls and guides the bed to a more upright position. Jason catches my gaze, his expression says so much: “Are you really OK? What happened? What’s going on with Emma? I’m worried about you guys.” The best answer I can give is a limp smile.

  Emma unwraps the bagel sandwich for me. “I swear,” I say and grab the sandwich, “they try to harass their patients here into improvement by using bad food.”

  “Sooo,” Jason drags out the word, looking at me, then shifting the gaze to Em. “Things have been pretty abnormal lately. I think we need a dose of normal. How about a movie this Saturday?”

  “Perfect.” Yes, I’m eager. The Reindeer Games are on Saturday. What better way to avoid them than a very public double-date? “What do you guys want to see? Is it the girls’ turn to pick?”

  “Then we’ll end up at another book-turned-movie movie,” Jason complains.

  “Yeah.” Bree puts her hands on her hips. “And if you guys pick, we end up enduring something with fast cars, girls with big boobs, and stuff that explodes.”

  Jason cracks a big smile, and then dodges a swing from Bree.

  “Enough,” Emma says, “Everyone pick out a movie, then we’ll put them through RANDOM.ORG and see what comes up.”

  Leave it to Em to resort to Internet geekery to make a decision. I run my fingers through her hair, then tug it gently. She turns, and I drag her mouth to mine. Electricity and warmth. She sighs, and leans deeper into the kiss, and I press her lips open. When we’re together like this, nothing matters, not what I did to her, not what she might’ve done to others, not the pain I’m in. It’s just Em and me and everything’s right.

  “Whoa. Break!” Bree says. “Give the boy air, Em.”

  I could go without breathing for a while…

  “OK,” Bree says, “Em suggested collecting movie titles and going all nerd girl to pick a winner. Who’s in?”

&nb
sp; “Deal,” Jason says. Bree arches an eyebrow and says, “Fine.”

  “I’m good with it,” I agree. “Then we’ll make calls and firm up the time.”

  As if on cue, all four of our phones ring at the same time. Emma fishes hers out of my scarf, then hands mine to me. Jason and Bree both get theirs out, too.

  Unknown caller.

  We all load the message, another video clip. It freezes on a frame of Emma at the Ascension Lab gates. When it completes the download, Emma walks toward the front doors. Static distorts her image, then devours the screen. Em, Bree, and Jason share stunned looks. I watch it again, squinting at the timestamp in the lower right corner. According to the timestamp, it was as Paul said, about a half-hour before the reports came in, right about the time I was on the highway headed to the mall. The ASCN L M1 designates the footage is property of our lab.

  Paul said he destroyed this. How can I trust him when another incident has dragged itself into the light? As important: where did it come from?

  Why are we all receiving this?

  I push the icon to return the call, and get another “not in service” message.

  “You were not seeing friends,” I say, as Emma slinks down and huddles at my side again. She stretches an arm over me. “Were you?”

  “That’s all I remember,” she says, voice meek. “Those words keep rolling through my head.”

  “Friends don’t bring friends to Ascension Labs,” Jason says.

  I arch an eyebrow at him. That line is worse than him and I blasting undead and him missing the joke.

  “Well?” He crosses his arms. “That place set off the alarms on my weird shit meter.”

  “Mine, too.” I agree.

  “Totally creeps me out,” Bree adds.

  Emma says nothing, her attention focused on her phone, watching the video of herself over and over, her fingers tightening around the phone like she wants to throttle the truth from it.