Measure of Danger

by Jay Klages

  Two more gunshots fired. He heaved himself on the floor of the waiting room, trying to pick out what was happening. A couple of patients ran out the door in the chaos. While looking in the direction of the door, he spotted Alex just outside it, jogging away toward the parking lot and looking like he was partially doubled over.

  “Call 9-1-1!” a female voice screamed.

  “Kade, help me out!” Hank yelled.

  For a split second he thought about running out the door and following Alex, but instead he crawled, scrambled to the other side of the waiting room, where Hank was pinning down the young Hispanic man with the bloody arm. A few feet away lay the second man, shot once in the head and chest, lifeless.

  “Where’s Cummings?” Kade asked.

  “Over there—he’s hit bad,” Hank said.

  “What happened?”

  “Not sure. These two guys came in and one pulled a gun, started shooting. Cummings shot back. Then I dove on this guy.”

  Walter appeared with two nurses, one male and one female, the man carrying a handful of plastic zip-tie-style cuffs. He assisted Kade and Hank in restraining the young man still struggling and squirming on the ground. They flipped him over so the nurse could secure his wrists with the cuffs, then Kade helped secure his feet with a cuff around each ankle and one binding them both together.

  “I need to take Cummings in back to see if I can stabilize him,” Walter said. “Kade, I’m going to need your help lifting him up. Any others with critical injuries?”

  “I don’t think so,” Hank said.

  “I saw a guy run out the door,” Kade said. “He may have been hurt.”

  “I’ll go check the parking lot,” Hank said and rushed toward the exit.

  CHAPTER 26

  Tuesday, June 25

  12:56 p.m. (EDT)

  Amherst, Massachusetts

  Janeen’s cell phone began to ring, the Paramore ringtone barely audible inside the tiny fourth-floor dorm room of the Orchard Hill Residential Area. She was sitting at her desk in a T-shirt and running shorts, painting her toenails. Her sandy-brown hair was pulled back in a clip.

  She scrambled to the bunk bed area and rooted through a pile of unfolded laundry on the lower bunk. The muffled phone lay underneath her pillow, and she grabbed it just before the call went to voice mail.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, Janeen, can you hear me?”

  “Yes, who’s this?”

  “It’s Alex Pace.”

  “Hi, Alex! What’s the matter? You sound terrible.”

  “Janeen, listen—I was just shot in the stomach.”

  “What? Did you say shot?” Her light brown eyes widened and she grasped her forehead. “Like with a gun?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh my God, Alex! Where are you?”

  “I’m in Oregon, on the coast, driving, trying to find an ER. Look, Janeen, Kade’s in big trouble. He’s gotten mixed up with some really bad people and I’m gonna need to tell you more about it.”

  “Okay, okay. Oh my God, Alex, you need to hang up now and dial 9-1-1 for an ambulance. Pull over, don’t drive any more. Then stay on the phone with the operator until the ambulance gets there. Okay?”

  Janeen didn’t hear a response.

  “Alex?”

  Alex replied in a cracked voice, “Yeah.”

  “You need to hang up and dial 9-1-1 now! Wait, what city are you in?”

  “Seaside.”

  “Okay, got it. Call 9-1-1, now!”

  “Okay.”

  The call ended and Janeen noticed she was shaking. She was alone during this summer session without her regular roommate, Jill, to consult. Kade had told her he was taking an Oregon vacation, that he was meeting up with some friends there for a slew of outdoor activities. How could he be in trouble? She didn’t know Alex was going on the same trip. Now Kade was mixed up with bad people? Maybe the friends he was meeting weren’t the people he thought? Something drug related? He’d never mentioned any kind of drug use.

  She paced around the room to untangle her thoughts before sitting at her desk in front of her pink computer.

  Oh my God, I can’t lose him too.

  If Kade was in trouble, she was going to find a way to help. She typed “Seaside, Oregon” into her laptop to pull up a map of the town and then began Googling questions.

  Over the next ten minutes, she assembled all of the answers she needed. Portland PDX was the airport to use if you were going to visit Seaside. It was about a two-hour drive from PDX to Seaside, and there was only one hospital in that town. A one-way, direct flight from Boston Logan to PDX was about six hundred dollars. She’d arrange a rental car and lodging after getting to Logan—she needed to get to Boston well before rush hour. The last flight for today left at 6:15 p.m. and arrived in Portland at 9:30 p.m.

  She grabbed her duffel bag and stuffed clothes into it, followed by a box of granola bars and two Red Bulls she’d left in the fridge. And her phone charger. She’d call Aunt Whitney on the way to the airport, then Alex again.

  Outside the building, Sentry Seth Robertson, a heavyset man dressed in an Under Armour T-shirt and athletic shorts exposing his enormous calves, sat in a lawn chair about thirty yards away, in the partial shade of an oak tree. He turned off the laser microphone aimed at Janeen’s window and placed the microphone and small tripod inside his empty cooler. He put his e-reader and iPod filled with ambient music MP3s in the backpack and zipped it back up.

  The sister of the new Associate would be going to her ninety-minute one o’clock Accounting 224 class shortly. She’d be ten to fifteen minutes late as usual. She’d just spoken with someone named Alex who had apparently been shot. This seemed an unusual development and significant enough to report, but not an emergency. He’d type up an e-mail and attach the audio file following his lunch break, since he was already too damn hungry. He wished he could’ve heard the city where the person named Alex said he was located.

  He got up and began carrying his belongings to the car. Thank God there was only one more day of this annoying stint before driving back to Camp Walpole for final mission preparations. After months of careful planning and training, he was excited to soon receive final orders to attack the target. He knew the members of his crew were ready. He’d been worried about the other crew from Walpole after their leader had torn his ACL, but headquarters had certified a replacement, a guy named Wolf, who seemed like a more than capable backfill.

  Hell, if all of the other crews were half as strong as his, the attack would be an enormous success and change would be coming soon to America.

  CHAPTER 27

  Tuesday, June 25

  10:28 a.m. (PDT)

  Nehalem, Oregon

  The whirring sound of the Medevac helicopter carrying Cummings to Emanuel Medical Center in Portland began to fade. Twenty minutes later, the police finished questioning and taking statements from all of the witnesses in the waiting room. A Tillamook County deputy took the young Hispanic man with the bandaged arm inside her police cruiser to another location.

  Next, the Tillamook County medical examiner, in conjunction with the sheriff’s office, removed the body of the older Hispanic man. The Oregon State Police dispatched a crime scene reconstruction unit that would arrive sometime in the afternoon, so clinic operations were shut down for the remainder of the day, except for two administrative personnel.

  Walter told the clinic admins he, Hank, and Kade were stuck momentarily because their car keys were on Cummings when he was flown out.

  The three gathered in the clinic’s magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) suite on the opposite side of the building to privately recount what had happened and decide what to do next. Walter and Hank sat in the aluminum chairs, while Kade sat on the floor and stretched out.

  Kade realized there was no longer a Sentry watching and the police were gone for the next hour or two. He debated whether to say he was going to take a break, and then just go on the run. Should he have told the police m
ore about his situation? That he was being held captive? He could go try to find out if Alex was okay. Hank told him there was a trail of blood going out the main door into the parking lot. Alex had to have been shot or stabbed. Kade was having difficulty sorting out this jumble of thoughts when Walter spoke first.

  “This was some bad violence today, guys. The big question is, why? I’d expect this maybe if I were doing shifts at an inner-city ER, but not out here on the coast.”

  “Did any of the authorities offer thoughts?” Kade asked.

  “I heard some mention of gangbangers,” Hank said. “Some kind of star tattoo on the wrist of the dead shooter meant he was gang affiliated. I’m sure there’re going to be a lot of unanswered questions.”

  They sat in silence for a moment, and then Hank stood up.

  “You know how to work this MRI machine here?” he asked Walter.

  “I’m not a tech, but I can run it for a couple basic scans in a pinch, yeah.”

  “Cool,” Hank said. “Let’s talk about some more unanswered questions.”

  “What do you mean?” Walter asked.

  “I mean, no one at the Chapter has given me a straight answer on why I feel sick. That’s the real reason I volunteered to come out today. I thought I might be able to ask you for a private exam, or you might already have an idea of my condition. You seem to talk to Dr. Drakos enough. She’s always running tests on me, but I don’t learn shit. She’s always saying the results are inconclusive. I don’t believe it. Tell me what’s wrong with me.”

  Walter hesitated, shook his head. “I can’t, Hank.”

  Hank pointed at Walter with a finger-and-thumb pistol. “I don’t think you understand. I want to know why I’m sick. Terrible headaches and blackouts. Behavior that’s not me. No one’s telling me anything and it’s not right. I wonder if it’s something wrong with the chipset they gave me. They told me the model they gave me wasn’t working right, and so I’ve been waiting months for some kind of upgrade they promised. In the meantime, everything’s getting worse. I’ve been forbidden to talk about it, but it doesn’t look like the other Associates have this same problem.”

  Walter looked uncomfortable. “I think you’ll get your answers pretty soon, okay?”

  “So you know some of the answers, but you just can’t say,” Hank said.

  “I think it’s time to check in with headquarters and see about going back, don’t you think?” Walter stood up and stretched, but when he moved toward the door, Hank stepped in front of him.

  “That’s what I figured,” Hank said. “You do know more, but you’re not willing to say.”

  Walter tried to sidestep around him, but Hank wouldn’t allow it. When he attempted once more, Hank gave him a hard shove backward and Walter struggled to regain his balance.

  Walter glanced over at Kade, now sitting cross-legged on the floor, tapping both feet. Kade just stared back.

  “I want to know why I’m sick,” Hank continued, now in a more threatening tone. “I want to know what’s going on. Something very bad is happening. You better fucking tell me.”

  “I can’t—I’m not permitted to say. That’s Special Knowledge. You know what the penalty is if I violate that.”

  “I know what the penalty will be if you don’t tell me everything right now.”

  Walter looked over at Kade again. “Are you going to help me out here, Sims? These are Chapter rules.”

  Kade gave a slight shrug. He figured Hank had about six inches in height and at least forty pounds in solid weight over Walter. Walter wasn’t getting out the door without his help, and he was feeling drained at the moment. The administration office was on the opposite end of the building, and only two people remained in that office right now. They would be too far away to hear anything.

  “I’d tell Hank the truth if I were you. Isn’t that what we all deserve?”

  Walter sighed, nodded his head, then made a dash for the door. Hank blocked him, grabbed him around the waist, and threw him down on the ground with enough force that it looked and sounded painful.

  “I’ve got no problem killing you if you don’t come clean right now,” Hank said.

  “Shit. Okay, Hank!” Walter put his hands up, took a minute to collect himself and push himself back to his feet. “Yes . . . I know you received the chipset, and the chipset protocol didn’t work on you.”

  “Well, what does that mean? What happened? Do I get the upgrade?”

  Something clicked inside Kade’s thoughts.

  “I get it now,” he said. “Hank received the Guardian protocol, just like I did. They tried it on you, they just didn’t tell you more about it because it didn’t work. There is no upgrade. There is no current fix. Nothing. And the other Associates have the Z protocol, like the Sentries. Only with a number of the features turned off.” Kade saw the yellow program light in his vision flickering throughout his statement. “How am I doing, Walter?”

  Walter gave a solemn nod. “Yeah, that’s about right.”

  “So what happens when it doesn’t work?” Hank asked.

  “If you don’t die during the procedure itself,” Walter said, “then the worst possible complication is the neural growth stimulant used in the protocol can cause a tumor.”

  Hank shoved Walter back farther into the room, yelled a volley of expletives, and kicked one of the nearby aluminum chairs across the floor, sending it crashing against the wall. After the sound dissipated, he walked back to the door to block it again.

  “Yeah, that’s what my gut was telling me,” Hank said in a calm voice.

  “That’s just fucking great,” Kade said, standing up. “Are they benign or malignant tumors?”

  “Almost always malignant,” Walter said.

  “And what’s the survival rate for these tumors when they’re malignant?” Hank asked.

  “Practically zero.”

  “Oh my God,” Kade said. He felt terrible and began to worry about himself too. He’d witnessed his mom’s struggle with breast cancer firsthand, first diagnosed too late and then aggressively treated with only partial and temporary success.

  Hank shook his head.

  “I knew something was very wrong. More than just migraines, which I’ve never had before in my life. Did you know I might have this tumor?” Hank asked Walter.

  “I suspected you had one, but since I’m not in charge of your treatment, I haven’t seen any of your test results or documentation. Dr. Drakos didn’t pass on the information, and they make sure I stay in my lane.” Walter blinked his eyes, grimaced, and grabbed the bridge of his nose. “I just got a yellow light.”

  There was silence for a good minute before Hank took a deep breath and spoke.

  “Well, then. I wanted some answers, and now I have some. If I do have this tumor, it’s a death sentence.” Hank pointed at Walter. “And that’s why the lightbulb went on when you brought me in this room, and why I asked if you knew how to work this machine. Because now you’re going to scan me and find out if I have the tumor for sure. I imagine Kade would want to know the same, right, Kade?”

  “Damn right.”

  “You can do that, right, Walter?” Hank asked.

  “Yeah, I can run you through. If I do the scan without contrast and it’s where I’d expect it to be, it’ll take thirty minutes. It wouldn’t be perfect, but that would be enough to confirm it. But I can’t put Kade in the MRI—it will destroy his G-protocol chipset, which is functional. That’s why they have a CT scan and not an MRI back at AgriteX. If the chipset isn’t working, they’ll figure it out and—” Walter winced again. “Another yellow light. That’s all I can say now, guys.”

  “Fuck it,” Kade said. “I’m definitely going in the MRI then.” He pointed to his forehead. “I want this thing in here dead. Hank, I’ll watch Walter scan you, and then you do the same for me.”

  “Okay,” Hank said.

  “Great, now we’re all finished,” Walter said. He looked like he was almost in tears.

  “I
t looks like we’ve got our own little code of silence now, huh?” Kade said.

  Following Walter’s instructions, Hank stripped down to his underwear, put in soft earplugs, and climbed onto the white table of the doughnut-shaped MRI machine, his head stabilized in the headrest, with a specialized helmet placed on top of it. Walter pressed a button and the table slid Hank into the doughnut hole headfirst.

  A series of loud chirping and foghorn sounds filled the room. Kade kept a close watch on Walter as he walked between the MRI machine and a separate small booth containing two computers. When several of the initial images on the screen appeared, he didn’t need an interpretation or further enhancement of the images to know what the large dark blob in the front of Hank’s brain meant. It didn’t look good.

  When Hank put his clothes back on and joined them in the booth, Walter explained that while he was no radiologist, it was clear that Hank had the cancerous tumor. He had annotated an arrow on the image to point it out, even though he didn’t need to.

  “I’m so sorry, Hank,” Kade said.

  Hank looked resigned with the information. “Yeah, me too. Now it’s your turn.”

  “Yeah.”

  Kade stripped down and they repeated the same process. As he lay there with his eyes open, thinking about his full bladder, all of a sudden his vision was clear. Less than a minute into the scan, the stoplight and program readout had disappeared.

  Wow, everything’s gone. Thank God.

  But then the scanner stopped, and the table began to slide him out of the MRI. He saw Hank’s face first.

  “What’s going on? We done?”

  “No,” Walter said, “we’re out of time. One of the admin assistants who’s still here stopped by and said that a Jon Constantino is at the door asking about us.”

  “As in Guardian Constantino?”

  “Yeah. The admin didn’t give him entry. She met him outside and told him the authorities said the front area is still considered a crime scene. But he communicated that we three need to return to AgriteX with him now and he’s waiting for us.”