The Roadhouse Chronicles (Book 3): Dead Man's Number

by Cox, Matthew S.

  “Succinctly put.” Dad stood, took her hand, and walked to the door.

  Tris followed him without protest out into an immaculate hallway. The sounds of people moving about came from both directions, conversations, footsteps, the squeak of a pushcart wheel, but they appeared to be alone. A whiff of coffee that didn’t exist slid past on air that didn’t exist. If not for the lack of seeing anyone, the place sounded as though the university still functioned circa 2019.

  Dad led her to another door, two classrooms down, and opened it without knocking.

  She stepped through into her old bedroom, which had most certainly not been in the university, and stared at herself. A child version of her, perhaps eight years old, sat cross-legged in bed clutching a ragdoll to her chest. Tris cringed at first, but when she realized the girl didn’t move―that she’d walked into a three-dimensional still image―she whirled on her father.

  “This is cruel. Why do you keep tormenting me with my childhood? I know I can’t go home again… it’s a hollow echo of a life they stole from me when they killed the man who wrote you.”

  The AI smiled; deepening wrinkles made him look more like her grandfather than her father. “I prefer to think of it as a fond memory. At least, to me, it is. The war would have taken this life away from you with or without the Enclave. They did not exist until after. Please… go to her.”

  She let a lingering glare seethe for a few seconds before approaching the bed. The child-Tris didn’t move so much as a single eyelash. Something about the scene made her want to recoil, to run off screaming at the impossibly eerie false child.

  “Do you remember what you named that doll?” asked Dad, behind her.

  Tris’ heart raced at instant recognition. All the times she’d heard that word recently, not once had she remembered this doll. Her lungs seemed to implode, releasing a wheeze of a voice, “Persephone.”

  The ragdoll twisted its head around and looked up at her. “Hi Tris! You have been gone a long time.”

  She glanced at her father, trying to force herself not to cry. “It was only a ragdoll. It never used to talk back to me.”

  “A child’s imagination,” whispered Dad. “Say hello to it.”

  Tris raised a hand in a limp version of a wave. “Hello, Persephone.”

  Black button eyes shimmered to points of white light, fading to ancient television snow a second later. “Is it time to activate the Eden Protocol?”

  ‘Yes’ formed in her brain, rode down a nerve to the muscles that would eject the air from her lungs necessary to speak it, and halted halfway up her throat. “Umm. Define Eden Protocol.”

  The doll nodded once. “Eden Protocol consists of multiple subroutines. Module One initiates a modification to the simulated reality module CoreCity.exe, which allows Module Two to run. Module Two plays audiovisual data media kit. Module Three begins complete stasis system shutdown and pod thaw. Module Four and Module Five run concurrently with Module One. Module Four searches for and erases all technical documentation related to the Agent-X program. Module Five contains updated program code for Symbiote Agent-94 extension/control units. Module Six completes shutdown of cryogenic stasis units and overrides local control systems to open all active pods. Module seven triggers an overload in the production machinery associated with the Agent-X program, which will render them inoperable.”

  Tris exhaled with relief. Nothing about boom. “What’s in the media kit?”

  White dots turned black for an instant, suggesting an eye blink. The doll extended a fabric arm, above which appeared a tiny playback window of Dad speaking.

  “The truth,” said Dad. “The truth for the people of the Enclave. That they have been paired and bred like farm animals, then put in the freezer for later use.”

  “Later use?” She shivered. “That sounds ominous.”

  “I mean repopulating the Earth once they’ve wiped everyone else out.”

  Tris looked back at the fake child. “Persephone?”

  “Yes?” asked the ragdoll.

  “Initiate Eden Protocol.”

  A jolt of pain shot into her skull from the left side. Her knees weakened, but didn’t dump her to the floor. In VR, Tris grabbed her head where the plug would’ve been.

  “What the hell was that?” She stared at Dad.

  “The program used your implant to analyze a minute amount of blood to confirm your genetic password. Nothing to worry about.” He smiled. “The first part of the password was your voice speaking the doll’s name.”

  Tris stared down, chuckling. “You named your dolls after my doll.”

  Her father’s apparition laughed, a sound tinged with a hint of digitization. His face pixilated a touch. “I suppose he did.”

  “Genetic match confirmed. Access granted.” The doll bowed. “Confirm authorization?”

  Tris clenched her hands into fists. Please be right. “Yes. Do it.”

  27

  Lying in Wait

  After the story of how Tris went off on Neon and they wound up helping six women escape slavery (Kevin omitted that two were teenaged, and that all had been forced into prostitution), Aura seemed ever so slightly more relaxed. She still sat rigid, hands clasped atop her knees, looking like the smallest aggressive motion from him would set her off screaming.

  Kevin glanced at Tris’ body, slumped back in the chair by the desk. The monitor showed three boxy windows, two small ones over a wider space on the bottom. Nothing there to indicate what went on in her head but numbers, text, and a pair of ‘data throughput’ meters―whatever that meant.

  “Look, Aura… I know you’re scared. I would be too at your age.”

  She knotted her eyebrows closer. “But you’re a boy.”

  Kevin chuckled, and gestured with a side thumb at Tris. “Don’t let her fool you. She’d kick my ass.”

  “Well, no kidding.” Aura started to roll her eyes, but her casualness faded to trembling. “She’s rogue ISF or something. They have cybernetics. I’m only a little girl. I’ve got two cats. One’s named―”

  “You don’t have to do that.” Kevin sighed into the hand he rubbed the bridge of his nose with. “We’re not going to hurt you.”

  Aura looked down. “What are you going to do with me? I wanna go home. I already miss my family.”

  “That’s the plan.” He smiled. “Back to your family. What got into her? Kidnapping isn’t who we are. Hey, maybe think about it like you just walked into a dangerous situation and we’re keeping you safe ’til it’s over.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Aura smirked.

  Tris squirmed and made an odd noise in her throat, like someone trying to sob through duct tape.

  “What is she doing in there?” Aura glanced at her. “She sounds like my mom when she’s in those stupid drama sims.”

  “Drama sims?” asked Kevin.

  “Entertainment. Before the war, they called them ‘movies,’ but with these, it’s like you’re in there with the characters. She always watches lame ones where people fall in love and then one of them dies… or something like that. Puts her in a bad mood for days. I don’t know why she keeps doing it.” Aura grumbled. “It’s like living with someone who has a death in the family once a week.”

  “Damn that sounds…” He scratched his head. “Yeah. Why would anyone do that? Why not watch a funny one?”

  Aura shrugged and swung her feet back and forth.

  She looks like a little version of Tris. Same shoes. Junior fascist soldier. “They’ve probably told you a lot of lies about what the world is like outside. Tris…” He chuckled. “She had all these ideas in her head from the ‘historical documentaries.’ She didn’t know they were movies.”

  “They’re not movies.” Aura folded her arms.

  “Okay, you know the one with the guy and the car… and this black woman with the big hair and the little midget sitting on the shoulders of the giant?”

  Aura nodded. “Yeah. That’s from Arizona. Like 2062 drone footage.”

&nbs
p; Kevin laughed. “Sorry. Nope. It’s a pre-war movie. Hell, it was old even in 2021. The guy’s name is Max right?”

  “Yyyyyeah…” She stared at him.

  “And I’m a Wildlander, so I couldn’t have seen it.”

  “You’re out there.” She gestured at the wall. “You saw it happen in front of you.”

  He shook his head, and rambled on about other things that happened in the movie, as well as other movies he’d seen. “They were all actors. What happened in that video never really happened.” Kevin bit his lip at the thought of the Boatman compound. “Okay… I will admit that there are some people out there that need to be shot in the face, but the entire world isn’t like that. Bad people existed before the world blew itself to hell, and they’re still out there. Only real difference is now there’s no cops. People have to protect themselves.”

  “We have cops.” Aura narrowed her eyes. “And they’re gonna shoot you in the face if you hurt me.”

  “You’re such a little sweetheart.” He smiled.

  Kevin leaned against the next desk over from Tris, in front of Aura enough to probably grab her if she made a run for it. He hoped she didn’t. The situation already felt bad enough; having to manhandle a kid would cross the line. Dad would kick my ass. “We found this girl about your age whose father got killed by the Virus.” He rambled on about how she survived escaping her town past packs of Infected along with a bunch of survivors who all thought she’d been infected because she had a cold. “Tris told me they tied her to the bed in case she woke up as one of those things. They’re damn lucky I wasn’t there. I wouldn’t have let them do that to her.”

  Aura stared into his eyes for a few seconds and looked down. Her posture relaxed a bit more.

  “I saw Infected for the first time when I was about ten or so.” He told her about how his adoptive parents decided to move, and their convoy strayed too close to a big city. Aura started to cry when he mentioned the teenaged boys who buried the dead before realizing they’d become sick and committed suicide after digging graves for themselves. “Abby’s got nightmares still… like I do. I don’t know if we’ll ever stop seeing those things in our dreams. What we’re doing here… we’re only trying to stop anyone else from having to go through that.”

  “What you’re saying sounds like a lie, but I think you believe it,” whispered Aura.

  Kevin gripped the desk on either side of his butt, and looked down. “I wish it was a lie.”

  “Okay, so say I do believe you’re really going to let me go. I don’t know where this is. It’s scary down here. I hope you’re not going to like tie me to a chair and hope someone finds me when you leave.”

  “Nope.” He pointed at the vent. “You can crawl back up the way you came in. We’re probably going to leave underground. I doubt you’d want to go there.”

  The lights flickered.

  “What’s happening?” whispered Aura, looking up.

  “She’s doing… something.” Kevin glanced to his left.

  Tris sat up, her eyes fluttering like hummingbird wings.

  “You okay?” asked Kevin.

  She slumped forward over the desk, shivered, and lapsed into a mild seizure. Right as Kevin moved to run to her side, she recovered and sat up straight.

  “Ouch.” Tris unplugged the wire from her head.

  “What the hell was that?” He took a step, backed up to take Aura’s hand, and pulled the girl over to Tris.

  Tris frowned at the desktop computer. “This old piece of crap doesn’t have enough RAM to process a smooth transition between VR and reality. Felt like I went face-first into a bathtub full of ice water and needles.”

  “Are you done? Can I go now?” asked Aura.

  Tris stood and embraced him, trembling as if about to explode into tears, but kept quiet.

  “What happened in there?” He pulled her tight with one arm, keeping Aura’s hand in a firm grip with the other.

  “That AI kept teasing me with my past.” She took a step back and gathered her hair into place. “I’m fine. Just… emotional. We need to do two things before we can go. I know the path… got a map in my head now.” She put a hand on the girl’s shoulder and stooped to eye level with her. “Aura… I need you to stay with us for a little while longer. We’re going to the surface, and I want you to come with us both because I think you need to see this, and because people will die if you run off and sound an alarm. Can I trust you to stay quiet while we move?”

  Aura shivered.

  A momentary vision of carrying a struggling girl with a hand over her mouth reddened Kevin’s face. “What are we doing? Is this kid really going to be that much of an issue if she runs off?”

  Tris looked up at him for a second before standing straight. “I have no way to know that, but are you willing to gamble Abby’s life on it? Or everyone else out there? Zoe? Bill? Ann? Emma? The whole town?”

  “Okay… okay…”

  Aura bowed her head, trembling. “I won’t scream. Please don’t hurt me.”

  Tris crouched again and looked the girl in the eye. “I need to go to a room and push a couple of buttons. When we get there, you’ll see what I’m saying is true. The Enclave has been lying to everyone about everything.” She glanced up at Kevin. “There is no Core City.”

  “What?” Aura blinked. “No way.”

  “It’s all virtual reality. Kids live with their families here in the Quar. As soon as they turn eighteen, they get put in stasis again and plugged in. The parents think they ‘went off to University,’ and a day or so later, the parents get put back on ice too. Everyone in the Enclave except for parents, children, active military, and the politicians, are frozen.”

  Kevin blinked. “Okay… I’ve seen some wild movies, but… damn.” He chuckled. “I get it. That’s why you had no toilet.”

  “What?” Aura looked back and forth between them. “Where did that come from?”

  “Come on.” Tris took Aura by the hand and headed for the door. “They paired me with this guy who hit me in the face after only a half hour alone in a room with him. I said no, so I got put in Detention.”

  “You rejected a pairing?” Aura gasped. “Why would you do that? I’d give anything to be chosen. I want kids someday. My friend Dhara doesn’t. She thinks kids are a waste of time.” She frowned. “Not everyone is allowed to have them.”

  Tris headed left out the door, moving a brisk pace the girl had to struggle to maintain. “Yes, I did. Would you want to be told who to marry and then spend the rest of your life living in fear of what he’d do to you?”

  “But… it’s the pairing. We’re supposed to… for the good of humanity.” Doubt crept into the girl’s voice. “He really hit you?”

  “Yep. He was First Tier and thought I was worker caste. When I refused to talk to him like he was better than me, he punched me straight in the nose. I was just there for him to…”

  Aura grunted with her effort to keep up. “You can say it. I’m old enough to know what sex is.”

  “That. I would’ve been a possession to him, not a wife.”

  Tris jogged down a long corridor and stopped in an area that widened out to both sides. Three elevators lined the wall on the left with still-perfect looking ferns between them, obviously plastic. An information desk took up the majority of the opposite side of the space, and a handful of decaying chairs and sofas sat in the middle of the room.

  Kevin followed, eyeing books laid out on a coffee table. Course catalogs, admission guidelines, and a couple of issues of Time from 2020. “I think I get why you always stare at this shit. It’s like the world stopped when all the people disappeared.”

  She forced open the elevator doors, since they didn’t react to the button. “Yeah.” Her voice echoed in the shaft. “Okay, we have to climb up one floor. Aura, do you want to climb? Or do you want me to carry you.”

  “Is it dirty?” asked the girl.

  “Filthy.” Tris squeezed in and moved to a ladder on the right side wall.


  Aura crept to the edge and reached out. “I don’t wanna get sick.”

  Kevin grasped the girl under the armpits and lifted her over to Tris, who wore her like a backpack.

  “I know you know that I’ve got a gun in my pocket. Please don’t do anything stupid.” Tris checked her footing on the ladder, and climbed.

  Aura sniffled. “I don’t wanna get in trouble for touching a gun.”

  Kevin blinked. He forced the doors open a little more and shimmied in after them. The ladder rung squished in his grip, coated with dust-encrusted grease. “Wait… you’re really more afraid of getting in trouble for handling a weapon than you would be if you needed to use a gun to protect yourself from a pair of kidnappers?”

  “Uh huh. Guns aren’t allowed unless you’re in the military. If they find out I touched one, they’d lock me up.” Aura paused a tick. “I thought you said you weren’t kidnapping me.”

  Kevin smirked up at them. Little brat. “We’re not, I’m just… Wow. Tris, tell me that kid’s taking fear a step too far and those idiots aren’t that bad?”

  Tris stopped at the inside of the doors one floor up. “Since we’ve repeatedly told her we don’t want to hurt her and haven’t been violent, if she told them the truth of what happened… yeah they would charge her with a firearms offense if she got her hands on my gun and used it to escape. Even if she didn’t fire it.”

  “What the hell kind of fucked up shit is that?”

  “What do you think, Aura?” Tris pulled the upper set of doors open and crawled out on her knees. She shifted to the right and lowered the girl to sit on the edge, feet dangling.

  Aura scooted back, whimpering while staring down the shaft. “Guns are bad. They hurt people.”

  A Cheshire cat grin formed on Kevin’s face. He climbed up into the hallway and eased the .45 out of his pocket. With Aura distracted by backing away from a deadly fall, he popped the magazine out and ejected the round from the chamber.

  “There are a small number of people running everything,” said Tris. “They want everyone afraid so they can be controlled. In a little while, everyone will learn the truth.”