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Tabula Rasa

Page 20

by Kristen Lippert-Martin


  “Thomas.”

  He doesn’t respond. I slap his cheeks lightly and he looks up, momentarily alert. I point to the man on the screen.

  “8-Bit,” he says, leaning forward, his eyes unfocused.

  “Can we hear what they’re saying?”

  “No. The surveillance cameras are just images, no sound. Including that external feed I found earlier.”

  On the screen we see that 8-Bit’s head is hanging limply to the side, and at first I think he’s dead, but then he moves and starts to speak.

  “Where is he?” I ask.

  He reads the location of the security camera. “Director’s office, first floor.”

  Suddenly Hodges comes into view. My whole body tenses up. We watch as she slowly approaches 8-Bit, sauntering toward him with her fists on her hips. 8-Bit smiles at her.

  She tucks her hair behind her ear and then backhands him across the face.

  He looks up and smiles at her again. Like he finds her amusing, or finds what he’s doing to her amusing, even if she doesn’t.

  She motions for one of the soldiers to give her something. He does. A gun.

  She puts the gun against his head. 8-Bit looks directly at the surveillance camera. His gaze is steady.

  “I can’t watch this,” I say.

  Thomas and I both hold our breath, unable to look. Unable to not look. Then Hodges leans in and gives 8-Bit a long, lingering kiss.

  CHAPTER 33

  “She must be messing with his head, right? That’s the only explanation,” I say.

  Thomas says nothing. I can’t tell if it’s the pain of his injury or the image of 8-Bit and Hodges together that’s got him looking so wrecked.

  Then I lie. “We’ll get to him in time. We’ll get him out of there. Don’t worry.”

  “It’s not that … I—play it back again.”

  “What?”

  “I need to see it one more time. It’s a digital file. Just slide the little time stamp bar back so I can watch it again.”

  “Why?”

  “Keep your eye on his left hand while he’s talking to her.”

  I would have dismissed it as a nervous tic, but now that I focus on it, I can see that 8-Bit keeps making a fist and then extending his forefinger like he’s pointing straight ahead as Hodges stands over him, shouting into his face. There does seem to be a pattern to it. We play it back two more times.

  “What is that? Sign language?” I ask.

  “Kind of. It’s binary code. Ones and zeroes.” He holds his finger up. “One is for ‘on.’ ” He closes his hand into a fist. “Zero is for ‘off.’ It’s the most basic language of all computers.”

  “So what did he say?”

  Thomas stares a minute, thinking, and then types something into the computer.

  “Go.”

  “What? I’m not leaving you here!”

  “No, that’s what he was trying to tell me. He knows I’m here, and he wants me to leave him behind.”

  We hear a crackling sound overhead, like a staticky radio. The PA system comes alive. There’s a bit of feedback at first, and then someone blows into the microphone and clears his throat.

  “Sarah.”

  It’s Larry. He sounds exhausted, but I know it’s him. My heart leaps at the familiar sound of his voice.

  “I guess I should call you Angel now.… I just heard the good news from our very irate consultant that you’re still alive and somewhere in the building. And that you have all our research data. I’m so proud. Although I wish you were miles from here, free from all of this. Angel, I need you to listen carefully.…”

  I listen. Oh boy, do I listen.

  “I couldn’t let Dr. Buckley do it. I couldn’t let him destroy you just because she wanted you to go away. I haven’t got much time, and you need to know some things about yourself. Things that may save you. I’m going to say a word in a few moments, Angel. It will unlock abilities that you didn’t even know you had. But you must be careful. Using these abilities builds you up but also tears you down.”

  And makes people want to kill me, apparently.

  “The process you’ve undergone is different from the tabula rasa treatment. You’ve had your memories sealed off, yes, but the pills I gave you will bring them back. We made some additional changes to your brain chemistry. And for that I want to apologize. I can only say this: I lost my way. We had so many failures, and sometimes when you’ve been working on something for a long time, you get frustrated and you do things you know are wrong. You think you can sort it all out later. That your discovery will more than justify what you’ve done.

  “She sent you to us, and you became our first success. At first we didn’t know why. I didn’t know why, but Buckley did. I found out much later, and when I discovered what they were planning to do to you during your last surgery, I couldn’t let it happen.”

  In the background I can hear people shouting and banging on the door.

  “They’re coming for me now, Angel, and I can’t hold them off any longer, but I’m going to level the playing field a bit. I want to give you the chance to survive that you deserve. Do you know what a psychological trigger is? I created it so we could ease you into your new skills when the time was right. Once I say this word, you’re going to be able to access all of your abilities. It may not seem like much at first, but what our Velocius project gave you is a huge advantage in battle.”

  Battle.

  I never asked to be in the middle of a battle. How could Larry have done this to me?

  My anger dissolves even before it’s fully formed as I hear gunfire over the loudspeaker. I stand up, helpless. A door bangs against a wall. Then a small explosion. Larry is shouting. I can’t hear what he’s saying, something about my mother’s name.

  The PA goes dead.

  Larry.

  Larry, who saved me. I would have liked to meet him, just once.

  I hear Hodges’s voice overhead now. “Angel, you need to come upstairs and let us kill you. No more of this cat-and-mouse stuff, darling. I’ll also be needing that data file. I know you have it. I’m sure your little friend must have given it to you, and yes, of course, I know about him now. I’m sure you don’t want anything to happen to him. But I will tell you this, Angel: you’re going to have his blood on your hands if you don’t do exactly as I tell you.”

  I look at Thomas. He can’t even keep his head up anymore.

  “I know that if you don’t get the pill you need to flush the plasticizer from your system, you’re going to gum up your brain. And I have them all. Or rather, I did, before I popped them all with my heel. All except one. So here’s the deal. You bring me the data files and I will give you the pill you need and a five-minute head start. That’s my first, last, and best offer.”

  The PA cuts out. I feel numb, and lost, and confused. What am I going to do? I try to think if I have any cards left to play. I don’t.

  And then I remember one thing. One small, pathetic hope, probably no more effective than casting a message in a bottle. But it’s all I have.

  That external security feed. Someone has been watching all this time. What if it isn’t Claymore who’s been observing me? What if it’s someone else? Who, I can’t even imagine, but I’m about to place all my trust in that person. It’s cruel to try to rouse Thomas, but I’ve got to. I shake him, gently at first, and then so hard that I’m afraid I’m breaking his neck. “Thomas, I need two things from you! I need you to turn on the feed!” I shout directly into his face. “That external feed you were telling me about before.”

  Slap!

  “Thomas!”

  I’m about to slap him again when he grabs my wrist and holds it. “What’s the second thing?”

  “I’m sorry. I thought I was losing you.”

  His eyes open to slits. “I’m still here. For you.”

  “What is it? What is the Velocius thing?”

  “We should kiss now,” he says.

  “Thomas, please.”

 
; “No, I mean it. Circumstances require it. Plus, it’s the second thing on my bucket list: Kiss a bald girl. You can’t say no.”

  “Thomas, stop messing around.”

  “Kiss me and I’ll tell you what Velocius is. What you are.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “I know. I’m a huge jerk.”

  I kiss him quickly.

  “That didn’t count.”

  I growl. “Thomas, we don’t have time for this!”

  “Kiss me like we have all the time in the world,” he says lazily.

  I lean toward him and kiss him again, softly this time.

  “That’s a little better, but not much. Do it again.”

  “I don’t have much practice with kissing.”

  “That’s okay. I have some theories about what makes a good kiss, if you think you’d like to hear them.”

  “No. I don’t.” I put my hand against the side of his face and close my eyes. I kiss him just like he asked me to, like we have all the time in the world. Like this is the last good thing that’s ever going to happen to me. Because in all likelihood, it is.

  CHAPTER 34

  Before I’ve even pulled back from him, he begins moving his fingers across the keyboard, without opening his eyes.

  “I know you’re only kissing me for my mad hacking skills, but that’s okay. I’ll take it.”

  He opens a file, and I see that he’s showing me a doctoral dissertation from MIT written by Joseph Purcell Wilson.

  “I really don’t have time to read an entire book right now.”

  “Too bad. It’s interesting stuff.” Thomas’s voice is barely a whisper now. “See, when people are under extreme stress, they literally think faster. It’s why people say they feel time slow down when they’re in a car crash or a similar situation. It’s not that time slows down; it’s that your brain speeds up. Amazing, eh?”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  “It’s not just that. You can push your body further, survive longer in extreme conditions—you can be stronger, better, faster—all because your life is threatened. The only trouble is, it only works when your life is truly in danger. The brain kinda knows if you’re trying to trick it.”

  “Okay. And?”

  Thomas tries to sit up, but I make him lie back down. He’s exhausted but somehow frantic at the same time. His hands tremble as he points to the computer.

  “Buckley wanted to figure out a way to replicate what the body does in those rare moments of extreme stress. But instead of the process being dependent on a near-death experience, what if you could choose to turn it on and off whenever you wanted? The government paid him a lot of money to do further research. That’s what’s in all the files I have on this flash drive. Top-secret research. That’s the reason Dr. Wilson had his little accident and became Dr. Buckley. They knew that if Buckley could pull it off, figure out how to give soldiers this ability, it would change the world as much as the atom bomb did.

  Imagine whole armies of guys with the ability to think at hyperspeed, all the time. That’s what this whole place was devoted to doing: helping soldiers become better soldiers and then helping them recover from being good soldiers who couldn’t hack remembering all the brutality they dished out. Velocius and Tabula Rasa were distinct research projects that got sort of murkily combined at some point. Probably once Buckley discovered that only certain kinds of people should be used as test subjects for the tabula rasa process, or else it didn’t work so well. See Elmer, Sam, Jerry, and Sylvester for proof of that.”

  “Young people,” I say.

  “Yes, that’s what they thought at first. That’s why they started trawling juvenile detention centers for test subjects. They said it would help them reclaim their lives, rebuild their futures. It was the only way they could get anyone to allow them to experiment. Most of these kids were wards of the state anyway, and they had nowhere else to go except jail, so why not give them a chance to fix their lives, right? Makes perfect sense. And just about every kid they offered this opportunity to jumped at the chance.”

  “Maybe that’s why they were always telling us how lucky we were, and that we should be grateful for this second chance we were being given.”

  Thomas squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, trying to gather the last of his strength.

  “I’ll jump right to it, Angel. They realized that the process could work, but only on an undamaged mind. That’s why it worked on you.”

  “On me?”

  “Buckley gave you this Velocius ability. The same stuff that happens during an ‘I’m gonna die’ adrenaline rush. But you can access it whenever you want.”

  “But I can’t!”

  Thomas must have missed when Larry explained the trigger mechanism.

  “But what about Claymore?” I ask. “What’s he got to do with any of it?”

  “I don’t know. He’s been putting money into this kind of research for years. Claims he’s just trying to push the frontiers of medicine, but who knows what he’s really after.”

  Thomas fumbles toward his jacket pocket. He takes out the flash drive. “Take it and go. When you get far enough away, destroy it. This is scary.” He opens his eyes and glares at me. “You’re scary.”

  “That’s right. I’m scary.”

  “So scary,” he says, putting his fingers to my face. He grabs the front of my shirt and pulls himself up toward me. I lean closer and he kisses my bottom lip.

  “That’s my theory, by the way,” he says.

  “Your theory?”

  “My kissing theory. You kiss one lip and then the other.” He kisses my upper lip. “Then both at the same time.”

  He gives me the kind of kiss Sleeping Beauty would envy. Slow, sweet, full of promises that everything will be all right because he will make sure I get my happy ending. As I look into his eyes, I no longer feel not good enough. I know this has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with him. When someone looks at you like that, it elevates you.

  For a moment anyway. I blink, and all the good feelings vanish.

  “Take this and go,” he tells me again.

  I push the flash drive away. “After all this, you think I’m just going to run off? I’m not leaving you here so that woman can kill you.”

  “You have to go.”

  “Thomas, please.”

  “She won’t kill me, Angel.”

  “Of course she will!”

  “I opened the file.”

  “What file?”

  “The ‘In Case Something Happens to Me’ file that 8-Bit left me. Didn’t even have to hack it. Her name was the password.”

  “Who’s name?”

  “Evangeline.”

  “I don’t understand. Why would—”

  “Angel, she’s my mother.”

  CHAPTER 35

  The room spins. Thomas looks away from me, arms crossed over his chest. He’s shaking from fever, and his teeth are chattering.

  Three times I try to speak before I can finally manage to ask, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I told you I was adopted. 8-Bit came and got me eight months ago. I’ve never met her, but some of the things he told me before this job … they make sense now.”

  “No,” I say as I back away from him. “There’s some mistake. That can’t be right.”

  “Look for yourself!” He tips his head forward. “See that? My roots are showing. Red hair.”

  I run my hands through his hair.

  “She probably dyes her hair. Maybe she’s got gray hair,” I say.

  “Yeah. Maybe she dyes her hair the exact same color it used to be when she was younger. Isn’t that what women do?”

  “A lot of people have red hair.”

  “Angel.”

  I stare at him, trying to make sense of this horrible fact, still hoping that he’s wrong.

  “That woman took every single thing in my life away from me.”

  “I know. I’d give anything for this to not be true. Anything.”<
br />
  Thomas can barely keep his eyes open now, and he’s fallen to the side, cradling the computer, unable to push himself up again. I take him in my arms, propping his head up with the crook of my elbow.

  “They were married. 8-Bit says he didn’t know about me until after I’d been adopted. By then he had problems of his own to deal with. Like fleeing the country.”

  Thomas again holds the flash drive out for me.

  “No.” I push it back at him.

  “Take it.”

  “No. Keep it, hide it. She wants it. You need something to bargain with.”

  “I don’t need it to keep me alive. Nothing will keep me alive now.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I told you, I read a lot. I know a lot about things. Shock, for example. And sepsis … Angel, I want you to promise me something.…”

  “No.”

  “You’re going to take this drive and promise me that you won’t give them the data. You can get the pill another way.”

  His voice is fading now.

  “How? It’s impossible!”

  “Not for you, Angel.” He raises his hand slowly and points toward the ceiling. “You’ve got wings.”

  I don’t want to leave him, even though he’s unconscious and there’s nothing I can do to help him. Still, I’m torn.

  Suddenly the choice is taken from me.

  I hear an explosion from above. The soldiers are coming. It sounds like they’re blasting through the rubble in the stairwell. This gives me minutes to get out. If I’m lucky.

  I think of Hodges. Then my mother. I’m blind with rage and sorrow and fear. I want to run, and I want to curl into a ball and cry. I can’t do both. I must choose.

  Thomas is right.

  I know what to do. There’s only one way to escape now; I have to go back out into the storm. And then I have to go up.

  Thomas’s jacket is lying on the floor nearby. I take it, plus his hat and gloves. Then I sling the soldier’s backpack over my shoulder. Just as I’m about to leave, I go back for two more things. I take the headlamp, because I might need it. Then I whisper in Thomas’s ear, “I love you, too.”

  Because if I’ve ever said it to anyone before, I don’t remember.

 

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