Brain cramp. He couldn’t remember Zin’s real name.
“He had to take a dump, sir,” Zin said. “He ate some spicy food at the cafeteria an hour ago, I think it was a bad burrito or something. Anyway, he was—”
A shadow passed in front of the window. Danny moved down the wall, all the way to the corner, squatted behind the last desk. He did a global search for…
The cabinet is open!
Keys jingled outside. “Son, you better locate Danny Boy in the next five seconds.”
Metal connected with metal as the key slid inside the lock.
The knob turned.
Danny crouched down as low as he could, inputting a global search for Zin. Dozens of names scrolled over the interface. He went down the list. Everything with a Z was showing up. No time for another search. He went through the names.
The light went on.
Cameron. Nicholas. David.
Mr. Campbell stepped inside. Shuffled over to the cabinet.
Anthony. Benjamin. Theodore.
Closed the door. Looked around.
Hayden. Dane—
He saw him, stooped in the corner. Cheeks flushed, Mr. Campbell moved his hand quicker than Danny thought possible.
ERIC ZINDER!
Mr. Campbell’s hand reached inside his pocket—
Danny punched the tablet.
The classroom went dark.
Desks slid and tumbled. Mr. Campbell fell into a heap of overturned chairs. He laid motionless, hand buried in his pocket.
Eric Zinder was still highlighted on the tablet.
“Cut that sort of close.” Zin leaned inside the room.
62
He had drifted away – how long, he couldn’t say – when the rattle of the air handler went quiet.
The air stopped blowing.
The lights went out.
The room was pitch black.
“What the hell is going on?” someone said.
Mr. Jones felt a tingle on the back of his neck. He had never had the sensation before. He was told that the tracker was installed for his own protection, that everyone had one in case something went wrong. Even the Director had one. But, he was assured, no Investor ever had experienced the unconsciousness brought about by the tracker voltage that shocked the nervous system and overloaded the senses.
But they all felt it.
It was sudden. Like a hot wire spiking the back the head.
The old men dropped like sacks of meat.
Mr. Jones’s foot twitched in the dark. He would never experience pain that intense again. He would never feel anything again.
None of them would.
His last thought. We deserve this.
63
The Director walked around the sundial, taking his time to let the grass slip between his toes. The gray Nowhere had blotted out the blue sky, descending like a plague of locusts.
She thought she could take his world.
Not anymore.
The girl was on her hands and knees inside a circle of dirt. She wouldn’t escape the ring where the Director focused all his attention. He willed her to experience her flesh curling off her bones, willed her to sense the smell of fried hair and boiling bones. None of it actually happened to her.
But she felt it.
He took a knee. Her red hair hung over her face, shimmering as she convulsed. He lifted her chin. Her face contorted. Eyes filled with tears.
“It’s all over, Lucinda.”
She lunged, snapping her teeth at his hand. He pulled back, laughing.
She cried out, curling into a ball.
Now that she was out of the Nowhere and into the open, he knew everything about her. Everything.
“You know what you are, don’t you?” he said. “You’re just a thought. A memory. You’re nothing different than data. You are a reflection, a shadow, of a girl that once lived. A girl that is now dead. Your body has long since fed the worms. How does that make you feel?”
He waited.
Her skin fluttered in waves. Her nervous system fired uncontrollably. It appeared her flesh was trying to strip itself from her body.
“I am Foreverland, Lucinda. This whole existence,” he stood up, waving his arms, turning in a circle, “that you’ve been trying to destroy is me. It is my mind that creates this. That’s why I’m a little bitter you’ve been pissing on it.”
He wiped the hair from her face so she could see him.
“You’re one dimensional, darling. You can’t understand what I’ve done to help people. You don’t know what I’ve sacrificed to give them a new life. I pulled their memories from their damaged minds to heal them.
“At first, Foreverland was just a computer program but it didn’t work. It was too scripted, too artificial. Their identities didn’t survive and they turned into vegetables. I discovered they needed an alternate reality that’s organic. I became that, Lucinda. They plug the needle into their brains and transfer their identity into my mind where they can live their fantasies. Where they can heal their lives. I am the beautiful mind that heals them. I am the new dimension of existence.”
He leaned closer.
“And you tried to take that away. Shame on you.”
Another wave of pain. She shook, bouncing on the ground. This made the Director smile. He began pacing around the circle, observing the trees barely visible in the gray fog.
“I gave you life when I pulled you from Reed’s mind, Lucinda.”
He breathed the sweet air.
“You’re dead, but I made you live, again. And how do you repay me? A thank you? Maybe a kiss on the cheek?”
He looked down on her trembling body.
“You’re an ungrateful little bitch. But not for long.”
She was inferior. He could control her, but he couldn’t destroy her. And as long as she was inside Foreverland – inside his mind – she would be a distraction. But any moment now, his solution would arrive and absorb her, take her out of Foreverland—
“I know what… you are.” Her words scratched her throat. “I know… what you hide… from yourself.”
Something vibrated in the Nowhere.
“Your true memories…” she said. “The ones… you want… to forget… I know what you are.”
Something buzzed around the Director.
He closed his eyes, but a thought still entered him. A boy’s voice, pleading. It came from above.
No! No, please, please don’t! Please! PLEASE!
“You are not who you believe. You try to forget…” She sat up. “What you’ve done.”
The thought he heard was more than a voice. It was a vision. A young boy, his African skin was black. His arms skinny.
His eyes, empty.
A needle in his head.
Stop. Stop, stop, stop… STOP!
The Director spun and pointed. “WITCH!”
Lucinda was lifted by invisible hands. A stake emerged in the ground, her hands bound behind her back. Kindling at her feet.
“You will poison me, no more,” he said.
He refocused his efforts, pushed away the thoughts of dead and dying children, willed them back into the Nowhere. Pushed them far away until he forgot them, until he was strong again. Sure of who he was. He was a man that brought healing to the world.
The 21st century Buddha.
A body began to form near the sundial. Translucent and fetal.
The Director smiled. He released the girl from the witch’s stake. She collapsed in a pile. Pathetic.
“Your end has arrived.”
64
Reed tried to count a breath. Tried to be with the pain.
He could not.
The bars were crushing him; his chest had no room to inflate. His breaths were shallow, quick and stabbing. When he supported some of his weight, the bars would relax. He had more room to breathe. But that brought more pain. And there wasn’t much feeling left in his legs.
The lucid gear brushed the top of his head.
“They want to keep us apart.” Lucinda stepped out of the dark aisle. “They’ll win.”
“They—” He grimaced, took a dozen tiny breaths. “They want me to take the needle.”
He went limp. The bars squeezed. He whined.
“Why do you think they brought you to the island?” She reached out.
The room was darker.
Reed couldn’t see the ceiling. Or the fan.
But he could see her. Like she was in a spotlight. Her fingernails candy red. Like her hair.
She reached for him.
“They want to keep you away from me. They don’t want us together.”
Her fingers touched his ribs. Cold numbness spread across his ribcage. She traced up his side, to his arm, numbing a path as she went. It was cold and freezing and pleasurable.
He took an easy breath. It came out smooth.
Her hand was on his shoulder.
Touched his collarbone.
Erasing the pain.
“I can’t,” he said. “I won’t—”
“You die. They win.”
A black tunnel closed around him, ate up the cells across the aisle. Closed in behind Lucinda as she leaned closer. Her lips were full. They touched his ear.
“Bastards,” she whispered.
The pleasurable numbness spread across his face.
Down his neck.
“I miss you,” she said.
Her fingertips touched his lips. His upper lip frosted over.
“I miss you, Reed.”
His lips fluttered.
“Tell me,” she said. “Tell me.”
“I…”
She hooked her finger beneath his chin. Sensation left his bottom teeth.
“I miss you.” He closed his eyes.
Let her lift his chin.
Let her lift the crown of his head into the lucid gear.
The strap tightened around his scalp. The knob snugged up to his forehead. He was losing feeling in his head, but could feel the coldness of the needle searching for the hole that had healed long ago. It sensed the stent embedded in his skull and centered over it.
Lucinda’s lips hovered over his.
The needle shot through.
Cracking the skin. Piercing the frontal lobe.
His head snapped back. He saw a bright light. His body stiffened against the bars. Crackled. Then let loose.
He went inside the needle with his eyes open. Head cocked to the side.
Body, limp.
He went to Foreverland.
65
Danny and Zin left Mr. Campbell in the classroom. They didn’t bother to check his pulse.
They stood outside the entrance of the building. The sun was up. The sky was blue. It was like any other day, except for the four bodies in the Yard.
“How long did you put them out?” Zin asked.
“I don’t know. I just activated every tracker in the system, besides ours.” He looked at the tablet. “I think I hit them pretty hard. And I crashed all the solar and hydrogen power systems, so everything’s off. Well, everything except the building with a backup generator.”
“Which one is that?”
“Guess.”
The Chimney was pouring smoke.
“We can stop him,” Danny said. “This is our chance. Maybe our only one.”
“What about Reed?”
Danny looked at the tablet. There was no telling how much time the trackers would keep the Investors unconscious. He could always zap them again, assuming the system didn’t lock him out this time.
They sprinted toward the Haystack.
The Haystack smelled like sewage and piss.
Maybe that was how it always smelled during a round, they weren’t used to it. But it was stronger, more pungent. Danny’s eyes watered when they entered. It took a few moments to adjust to the darkness. They went down the aisle, past their empty cells—
Reed was crushed.
“Oh, no.” Danny got there first. “Oh, no, no, NO!”
Zin was on his knees, working the lock. Danny could tell, even in the dim light, that Reed’s face was blue. His tongue swelled in his mouth.
“HURRY, ZIN!”
Zin fumbled with the lock, but it was taking too long. Danny reached for the lucid gear—
“Don’t take that off!” Zin shouted. “It’s too soon, he might be in there and won’t be able to come back if you take it off.”
“It doesn’t matter.” His hand brushed Reed’s cheek. It was cold. “He doesn’t… he shouldn’t have died like this.”
Danny slid the black strap off his head. The needle was wedged firmly in his forehead. It came out like a cork. Watery fluid leaked from the hole.
The lock clicked.
Reed’s dead weight threw the door open. Danny caught him before he hit the ground. Zin helped lay him down and started to arrange his hands in a dignified manner.
“Not in here,” Danny said. “I don’t want him staying in here anymore.”
His body was limp, but not as difficult to carry as it should’ve been for someone his age. He weighed less than Danny. They stopped outside the door.
“Let’s take him to the beach,” Danny said.
Zin shaded his eyes, looked at the sun. “We don’t have time.”
Danny retrieved the tablet. He was right. There was no telling when someone would recover. Once the island was back to full power, there would be nowhere to hide.
They left Reed’s body outside the Haystack, hands folded over his chest.
Eyes closed.
Dozens of golf carts were parked around the Chimney.
Danny and Zin hid in the trees, just in case someone was watching. No one was in sight, awake or unconscious. Danny started out first. Zin made a lot of noise.
He was holding a stick the size of a bat. “Just in case.”
Together, they crept to the front door. Still no one. Nothing.
Danny took a deep breath. “We’re in deep, man. There’s no going back, now.”
“So what are we waiting for?”
Zin started to inspect the lock. Danny yanked the handle and the door opened. No jokes, this time. They moved cautiously inside. The ground floor was open floor space with bunches of comfortable furniture and tables for informal meetings. Large monitors were mounted on the large cylinder elevator, showing an overhead tour of the island on a continuous loop. It looked like an area to entertain company or tourists. Or potential clients.
They stepped inside the elevator. There were four buttons.
“Where’s the fifth floor?” Zin asked.
“Fifth floor is the Director. No one goes there, he brings them.”
“Where then?”
Danny dragged his finger over the tablet, rearranging data and tapping commands. He searched the Chimney for clues. “Most of the power consumption is on the fourth floor.”
Zin pushed number four. “We have a winner.”
The doors closed slowly. The floor shifted. The elevator began a slow ascent, the numbers ticking off above the doors.
Second floor, we have the doctor.
Third floor, where we wake up.
The elevator eased to a stop. Number four appeared. The doors jerked a bit, then began to slide open. Zin cocked the stick. Danny stood off to the side. They waited.
The hallway was reflected on the back silver wall. Empty.
Tentatively, they looked out.
One hall. Nothing branching out, just one long hall. Near the end, there was a door on the right, one on the left.
Someone was on the floor, halfway inside the left door. Legs in the hall.
“It’s Mr. Lee.”
Zin gently rolled the old Asian man onto his back. He felt cold. Zin put his fingers on his throat, looking for a pulse. He didn’t really know how to do that, so he put his ear next to Mr. Lee’s mouth and listened.
“I think he’s dead.”
“Oh, man.” Danny looked at the tablet like it would tell him what h
appened. But he knew. “Oh, man.”
“It’s not your fault, Danny Boy. You weren’t trying to kill him.”
Danny shook his head. He didn’t want to hurt anyone, despite what the old bastards had been doing. He just wanted off the island. He wanted his life back.
“What the hell?” Zin went inside the room. “Is that Sid?”
Danny followed.
There was a hospital bed with white sheets and a curtain next to it. Sid was on his back, hands folded over his chest and a needle poking from the center of his forehead. Danny approached with the tablet at his side. Zin cocked the stick back, ready to swing.
Sid looked skinnier than usual. Sort of gray. His mouth was open, breathing. At least he was alive. Danny followed the wire from the end of the needle to a machine next to the curtain.
“What the hell is going on?” he said. “I thought he already graduated.”
Maybe that was the last step, one last trip to Foreverland where they download the rest of the memories, all reprogrammed for a better, more efficient mind.
Danny reached for the curtain—
“Take a look at this, Danny Boy.”
Zin was looking inside a large window with the stick at his side. It looked like a waiting room. Danny could see the old men piled on the floor as he stepped up to the glass. They must have been standing there, watching, when Danny ignited their trackers. Some of them had knots on their heads where they hit the floor.
Mr. Jones was in the back, laid back on a lounge chair. His fingers laced over his belly. He couldn’t tell if he was breathing.
Zin tried the door. “Want me to pick it?”
“No.”
He didn’t want to find out if he killed all of them. Especially Mr. Jones. The guy cared about Danny in his weird way. He didn’t want to live with the thought that he accidentally murdered him. Even if Mr. Jones did acquire him.
Even if his name was really Constantino.
“What’s over there?” Zin asked.
It appeared that the room was fairly large, separated by the curtain. Zin snuck up to it with the stick ready for action. Danny grabbed a handful of the fabric and yanked it to the side—
What Tomorrow May Bring Page 167