by M. R. Forbes
She unzipped her bag and pushed past the clothes to where the laptop was resting. She pulled it out and wheeled it over to the desk. I didn't try to move the chair out of the way for her. I knew she'd take care of it. It wasn't that she'd never accept help, but only if she knew you would have done it even if she were still fully operational.
Her upper body was strong, and she lifted the desk chair in one arm and spun about in a tight three-sixty, dropping it next to the table. She replaced it at the desk, opening the cover of the laptop and navigating back into the kinetics. We watched the dots a couple more times, and then started going over my route.
I found my other watch in another pocket. It wasn't the same one I had used to time my assault on the hulk twins; this one was more modern, with a curved, full-color screen and a buffet of apps installed on it. I opened up the timer app and reset it. I preferred the old-fashioned kind of watch because I didn't need to worry about the lithium running out of ions in the middle of a run. In this case, I needed the extra features.
It took another hour and a half and dozens of repetitions to get a clean plot of the inception, from the moment I snuck over the ten foot stone wall at exactly 10:31pm, to the second I put my hand on the prize at 10:39:08.
Eight minutes going in. It was a long time. I wasn't going to tell Dannie, but it made me nervous. So much could happen in eight minutes. So much could go wrong, and I had bet both our lives on it. Of course, she wasn't the one being threatened from the great beyond. Remembering what Rayon said gave me a new chill.
"That's it," I said, hitting the screen and setting the last timer. Once I started the countdown, it would vibrate on my wrist as each checkpoint was reached. If I hadn't made it... I didn't want to think about not making it.
"You still have a little time." She closed the lid of the laptop and rolled over to the window. I had parked in a good spot, leaving the van visible from our room. She wasn't looking for that though. She was looking to see if we were already being tailed.
"Anything?"
She reached up and lowered the blinds, closing them tight. "Not so far. Hey, did you see the news this morning? There's some Senator in Iowa pushing a meta registration bill."
"This again?"
In the sixty years since the reversal, and the forty since the Houses had smoothed the brave new world over, there had been what seemed like a bi-annual effort to force 'metas' to declare themselves. That was the fancy term the politicians used for wizards. The line of thinking was that we were inherently dangerous, because we could create destruction seemingly out of thin air. First, for most of us it didn't work like that. Second, guns were still a whole lot more dangerous than users were the vast majority of the time, and not everyone who owned a gun was subject to the scrutiny that we tended to fall under.
Dannie rolled her eyes. "The Houses will get it lobbied out again. Personally, I think she's just looking to line her pockets a bit more."
"She should introduce a subhuman equal rights bill if she just wants to get someone to pay for her next trip to Bora Bora."
There was no end of the groups that wanted to keep the leathers down and out, to go with the few that wanted to welcome them in. On one hand, I could understand the discomfort with having your CEO be a ten foot tall, muscular, greenish brute with long teeth jutting out from the corner of their mouth. It was a little intimidating. On the other, they were people. They looked different, and they had varying intelligence levels depending on their types, but we had the same origins. Some, like the ogres, even had their own specific usefulness. Fukishima would still be melting down if it hadn't been for them and their immunity to radiation.
We fell into a somewhat uncomfortable silence. We were trying to fill the gap while we waited for my flight. The fact was we were both nervous as hell about it. I'd done sneak and grabs before. So had she. We were good at them. This... This was the major leagues. This was serious business. If it wasn't for the fact that it was too late to go back, way too late, I would have been really tempted to call it off.
Dannie turned on the television. "I hate waiting on a job."
I flopped down on the bed with my jacket still on, while she flipped channels until she found some late-night news. We got past the commercials for the latest invention in slow cooking, what to do if you have diabetes, and class action lawsuit notices. It faded to a pretty young thing in a short, tight business suit.
"This is the scene from Nevada's Death Valley Yard only a short time ago," she said. The video skipped off her to some amateur footage of a line of armed men in uniform, standing atop a high wall and firing down. "According to sources, a riot broke out in the yard at around eleven o'clock, when one of the inhabitants allegedly assaulted and killed a guard."
More gunfire. Growling could be heard from off-camera, along with shouting and screaming.
"The ferals imprisoned inside overwhelmed security before breaking out into the yard itself. Reports have come in that the containment team was successful in regaining control of the situation, but not before a half dozen of the inhabitants managed to escape through a rear exit that had been abandoned during the riot."
The camera was shifting all over the place, from the men firing down into the yard, and then to the yard itself. Spotlights had been aimed at the chaos, and in it I could see the ferals; the third kind of new human. These were the creatures that were supposed to go bump in the night. The weres, the wendigo, the vampires and the like. People who were people, but who had changed in ways that made them violent, unpredictable, and an overall danger to the rest of our dysfunctional society.
The camera scanned across them. The different blocks of the yard would hold the different kinds of ferals, grouped so that they wouldn't kill one another. This one was for weres. Dozens of dead lay motionless in the bright light of the yard, their tough bones and thick, furry hides ravaged in bullet holes, blood pooled around them.
A lot of people, including leathers, hated the ferals, and would find the scene exciting. I killed people who were in the business, who knew what they were getting themselves into and the risk they were taking. My prior life had been dedicated to saving people. I saw only sadness and futility in it.
In the beginning, when the ferals had first appeared, there had been rightful terror. They needed to eat fresh meat to survive, and their new mental state didn't give them much room to discern between wild game like boar and deer, and human beings like their neighbor or their little sister Susie. Of course this led to them being hunted down without regulation or control, in many cases by their own families. Like all things fighting to survive, they had found one another and joined together, creating growing packs of violent, cannibalistic wanderers.
There was a lot of death then. A lot of destruction. Time passed. Science. We learned that one, it wasn't their fault, and two, it could happen to anyone. The mutation wasn't straight genetics. It was like a virus, able to be carried without showing symptoms, and passed along like HIV. The really shitty part? The number of people carrying it was growing, as if feral human is what we were meant to be.
"Its so sad," Dannie said.
The gunfire stopped. The camera zoomed out to take in the whole yard. There was no motion.
"According to Peter Mays, the Director of the Death Valley Yard, eight guards were killed in the riots, along with forty-six of the two hundred seventy-eight ferals in Block 'C', making it the third deadliest feral riot in history." The young reporter shifted her eyes to a new camera angle. "Residents of the area around the yard have been advised to be on the lookout for the escaped ferals, and Homeland Security has mobilized search units to locate the escapees. The National Feral Control Board has scheduled a news conference for ten o'clock tomorrow morning in response to calls for action on increasing feral violence."
"They put people in cages, and expect them to be happy?" Danelle said.
"What do you want them to do?" I didn't like the situation, but the alternative was worse. It wasn't even that the yards we
re like true incarceration. Their goal was only to contain, to keep the ferals out of society at large and to avoid the mass killings on both sides. That had been the 'compromise' that had calmed the whole episode.
Of course, ferals were still out there, and new ones were 'born' every day. While most were captured and contained as soon as they started the change, there were always some that got away. The smart ones kept themselves hidden in places like Yellowstone, but the smart ones weren't that common. Most tried to go back to the places they knew, and found themselves out on the streets at night with their fellow monsters.
"I don't know. Put them on a reservation?"
I knew her well enough to know she was only half-joking.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Thanks, Grandma!
FIVE YEARS EARLIER...
"Come on, kiddo, we're going to be late for day care." I leaned over and scooped Molly into my arms, ignoring her complaints. It was tough for a dad to compete with the colorful monsters that laughed their way across the television.
"No," she said. She was two, of course it was her favorite word. I kissed her cheek and found the remote, shutting off the television and heading for the kitchen.
Karen was waiting there. She was ready to go, looking fantastic in a red blouse and dark slacks. Her short hair turned forward behind her ears, and her eyes sparkled when she saw our daughter.
"Cutting it close again, Conor." She reached out and took Molly from me.
My cell was on the counter. It was already eight-thirty. I had twenty minutes to get to the hospital to prep.
"I should be getting the results of the biopsy back today." I tried to say it casually, matter-of-factly, like it was no big deal. It came across flat and nervous.
"I'll come by, if you need me. I know you like to play the tough guy, but you aren't going through this alone." She put her hand on my face. I gave her my best forced smile and tried not to start crying again. They had said there was a good chance the tumor was benign. They were my friends, my peers. They wouldn't lie just to make me feel better.
"No," Molly said again. She wasn't talking about anything. She just liked the sound of it.
"I'll be fine."
I had told myself that a thousand times every day, in hopes that repeating the mantra would make it so. They had found the growth almost by accident, after a skiing incident had broken one of my ribs. The rib had healed okay.
The jury was still out on the tumor.
I put my arms around her, and she swung Molly aside so I could give her a kiss.
"Good luck," she said.
She was worried. She wanted to be there. Part of me wanted her to be there, too. I couldn't bear the thought of hearing bad news in front of her. If it was malignant... I needed my own time to deal, without worrying about her. In any case, there was no guarantee they'd have the results today, and I had a surgery scheduled this morning. The logistics weren't in favor.
"I love you," I said, kissing her again. We'd been married eight years, after being matched by one of her best friends. We'd hit it off right away, a so-called fairytale romance. A year to the wedding, and then five years of trying, some IVF, and a lot of prayer to get Molly into our family. We were close before she joined us. We were closer since.
"I love you, too." She put her head on my chest and kept it there for a minute. She was being strong for Molly. I was being strong for both of them.
"I love you, kiddo." I kissed her pudgy face again, her head turning to avoid the moisture. Then I let go of them both, grabbed my cell, and picked my blazer from a hook next to the door. "I'll call you if I hear anything."
I moved out the door into the garage, and dug out the keys to the Tesla from my blazer pocket. It was one of the originals, and I kept it in great shape. I circled around to unplug it, and then got behind the wheel. I backed out into the street.
Our house wasn't anything special. Fifty years old, four bedrooms and a small yard. It was modest for a surgeon, but it was the kind of place Karen had always dreamed of living in, and she loved it. That meant I loved it, too, and I really did, if only because it was in a low magic zone, and kept the sensitivity from becoming too overpowering.
I'd splurged a bit on the car, but I did have to keep up some kind of appearance in the hospital parking lot.
As I drove, I could hear the pulses of the fields shifting and moving through the earth around me. It had been with me as long as I could remember, but for some reason I was more in tune with it today. It wasn't just the magical energy that was clearer. The sky looked more blue, the air felt more clean. Even the morning traffic barely registered. I was in a weird state of happiness and lust for life that I hadn't felt since Molly was born. I turned on the radio, and started singing along.
My voice trailed off in the middle of the first tune.
That was the moment I knew I had cancer.
###
"It's malignant, isn't it?"
I was sitting in the office of Dr. Robert Anders. His assistant had been waiting for me when I'd come out of surgery, and after a quick shower I'd put my slacks, shirt, and blazer back on and headed up to see him. I knew I should have been more scared, more nervous, more something.
I was resigned.
When the realization had hit, it had done so with such force that nothing short of God's own voice in my head could have convinced me otherwise. I had done my best to stay in denial, and to be positive for Karen. All alone, left to my thoughts, there was nothing to deny.
I was going to die.
I'd remembered my grandmother Sophie then. She lived to a hundred and four. She made it through the reversal, survived the riots and the feral virus, and managed to avoid the Rot. I'd asked her once how she'd been able to survive so long.
"Nothing in life can scare me as much as death," she had said.
She'd borne that out when she had gone screaming from this world, her eyes wide in terror and her voice hoarse. I had made the mistake of being there when it had happened. I had made the mistake of knowing her at all. She'd passed her fear down to me.
He was sitting behind his desk. Seventy years old, an expert in his field. Like Sophie, he'd also been born before the change, and that meant he had seen a lot of bad shit in his time on Earth. He had also given this talk, and worse ones, too many times to think about. Even so, it hadn't become rote. He hadn't become hard. His eyes were soft with compassion, and his lip quivered when he answered me.
"Yes."
I nodded and pursed my mouth. Rob had been the first person I'd met at the hospital. He was the smartest guy I'd ever known. He had more experience in his pinkie than I had in my whole body.
"How long?"
He opened his mouth, and I knew he was going to give me all of the disclaimer bullshit that he had to throw in there, so that the hospital was safe from legal trouble.
I put my hand up to cut him off. "How long?"
"Six months at best. I'm sorry, Conor. In my professional opinion... less than three."
Three months? Ninety-days? I had been expecting the worst. I had underestimated. I clenched my stomach to keep myself together. I thought about calling Karen. To tell her what? 'Hi honey, I'm going to be dead by Christmas. Now that I've dropped that bomb on you, can you please drive over here without getting into an accident?'
"Conor?" Rob stood. "Look, I know this is hard..."
"I know you do," I interrupted. He had told me stories, and it wasn't like I was a novice. I'd made the 'I'm sorry' speech before. I'd lost people in the operating room.
"You don't deserve this. You're a good man."
I sat in silence. Deserve had nothing to do with it. It was just bad luck. He was twice my age, and in three months he would open his eyes, kiss his wife, get out of bed, and come to work. I'd be sucking dirt.
"If you need anything..."
There was so much a doctor could say to a typical patient. So much they could try to explain, and help them prepare for. So many words they could use to fight th
rough the shit situation both parties found themselves in. Doctor to doctor? There was nothing to say. There was nothing to do. I knew what I was in for. I knew how people fell apart from diagnosis to death.
Three months.
I got to my feet and walked out without another word. My face felt like it was on fire, but it was cold to the touch. My heart was racing, and all the clarity that had brought me to the truth of my situation had fled the moment it had been confirmed. People passed me in the halls. They said hello. Maybe I was cordial and polite, maybe I brushed them off. I don't remember.
Somehow, I made my way to my own office. I closed the door behind me and slumped in my high leather chair, the chair I had dreamed of sitting in from the day I had first played with a stethoscope. I took my phone out of my pocket and held it up. I found Karen in the contact list a dozen times, but I never made the call. I was too afraid my hurt would get her hurt.
I did the only thing there was left for me to do.
I cried. Silently. In agony.
Some people think doctors are superheroes, immune to all of the garbage in life that downs lesser mortals. I was the furthest thing from a superhero. I was anything but strong. I wanted to be. I wished that I could be. I had everything I could ever want, and in three months it would all be gone.
I didn't want to die.
CHAPTER NINE
A legend in the making.
I called Dannie the moment I woke up, which was the same time the plane hit the tarmac at Bradley International in Hartford.
"I'm here. Which rental place did you book again?"
"Thrifty." She sounded tired. "How was the flight?"
"I got some sleep. Did I wake you?"
"No. I've been working since you left. I can't find anything even remotely related to the rock you're tracking."
"You didn't think you would." Neither did I. The Houses didn't tend to be interested in things that anyone else knew anything about, although there had been occasional exceptions. I reached into my pocket and found the dice, wrapping them in my hand. You couldn't Google them either.