by RJ Crayton
“No, it’s fine,” he said. He looked around the room, feeling like it wasn’t a great place to chat. “You feel up to a walk?”
She eyed him for a moment, as if debating whether to say yes. Finally, she nodded. He led her out, and they wandered the halls, without saying much. When they stopped, they were in the area Natalie had led him to a few days ago.
“What is this place?” Shonda asked.
“Bowels of the building. Natalie said it was safe to talk here.”
She looked around at the gray cement walls, her eyes tracing the corners, perhaps looking for places listening devices or cameras might be placed. After a moment, she looked up at him. “Alex said you’ve been doing good work. Your boss likes you, said you’re competent, friendly.”
“Everyone likes me, Ma,” he teased. “You know that.”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s good that you’re doing well here. I was worried that if you didn’t fit in well, Alex might look to renege.”
Even though they were speaking in the open hallway, her voice was soft and she had edged very close to him.
“Are you alright? Were you really sick?”
She shook her head. “Alex was mad at me because I lied about Josh. When I got here, once Alex trusted me a little, he left me alone in his apartment, and I had access to some of his things, including his computer. I tried emailing your father, the way I used to. It worked. I explained our predicament, and he told me that Kingston had told people that he hadn’t given Josh the vaccine, that that was a lie, that Josh really was immune. Kingston was trying to bargain to bring him back.”
Lijah raised an eyebrow. “He’s always got an angle, doesn’t he?”
“He had a way to doctor the test, to make it look like your blood is immune. Your father explained it, so when I tested your blood, I doctored Josh’s results. If he had to go back there, I wanted him to go back as immune, not as someone sentenced to Facility One. He’s lucky we got captured here. If Josh had been in any other facility, they would have known it was a lie. That’s why I think Kingston was desperate for Josh to turn himself in. He wanted to get to his son and have access to the lab work. Even if Kingston hadn’t done the work himself, he must have known someone, had someone he trusted in the lab to help him.”
Lijah raised a hand to his chin. “So you knew they were going to send him back.”
“I guessed,” she said. “Alex has always done what’s best for him, and turning in Elaan and Josh were what was best. I just hoped he wouldn’t.”
“Are you OK?” Lijah asked. “If he was keeping you in the apartment because he was mad…” His voice trailed off. He wasn’t sure what to ask.
She shook her head. “Alex didn’t do anything to me,” she said. “He just told me to stay put. He doesn’t trust me in the lab. He went back and looked at the test data and realized there was a small anomaly. Anyone else would’ve missed it. Everyone else did in fact miss it. But Alex realized something was wrong. I figured it was best to just admit it. To admit that I helped Kingston in exchange for helping my daughter. Alex thinks it was implicit, that Josh would know I was the one who took the blood, and Josh would explain it to Kingston. Alex doesn’t realize I’ve been in touch with your father.”
Lijah looked around the hallway. No one was near or coming. “Have you talked to dad since Elaan got there? Is she alright?”
Shonda shook her head.
“She’s hurt?”
“No,” his mother said adamantly. “I haven’t talked to them. Alex already doesn’t trust me after Josh. I haven’t wanted to use his things without his permission. I don’t want to give him another reason not to trust me.”
“What about the vaccine? Is he working on that? The stuff I’m doing isn’t related to that at all.”
She looked down the hallway, folded her arms across her body and shuddered. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I know that was our goal, but I can’t be sure it’s being done when he’s told everyone I’m sick and can’t go to the lab to check. They’d started before my, you know, sickness.” She rolled her eyes.
He breathed out. “We need to leave. I don’t like this guy.”
“We do need to leave, but first we need an active vaccine. If we can get it to a facility that will share it, Thoreaux loses his power. People aren’t out because they’re scared. If we take that away, people will come out into the sunshine again. They’ll rise, they’ll take our country back.”
Lijah kept his mouth shut, though he felt like he wanted it to pop open. His mother sounded like a revolutionary. “We just need to get out of here,” he said.
“Save ourselves isn’t the attitude,” she told him. “Save everyone and that will include us, too. Just save ourselves and they’ll still keep coming for us. We need to save more people.”
Lijah opened his mouth to ask his mother how, when, or what her plan was. But at that moment, one of the military workers came out of the stairwell and into the corridor. The man in army fatigues squinted at them. “What are you doing down here?” he asked.
“We were just taking a walk,” his mother said.
“You shouldn’t be here,” the military man said.
Shonda nodded, and walked toward the stairwell. Lijah followed suit. He supposed their conversation was over. He’d have to talk to her later, when they could be alone.
Chapter 28 - Lijah
He and his mother had left the Central level and gone to the cafeteria to grab dinner on the early side. They talked about mundane things. He told her a joke a guy named Dan in the lab had told him. It was stupid: Why did the elephants get kicked out of the pool? Because they kept dropping their trunks. His mother had laughed, and he’d enjoyed that.
After she finished, she said she needed to get back to her room. Lijah offered to walk her but she said she wanted a minute alone to think. He frowned but bid her adieu. He wondered briefly if her reticence had something more to do with Alex than him.
As he was leaving the cafeteria, he felt a hand on his shoulder. “Jacob,” Natalie said, as he turned to face her.
“Hey,” he said.
“You were off in your own little world, there, weren’t you?” She gave him a significant look. “I called your name a couple of times and you didn’t even notice.” She smiled, then lowered her voice. “You need to work on that.”
He nodded. She was right. She knew damn well he wasn’t Jacob. But she didn’t seem like she would tell anyone.
“Can we go to your place?” he asked. “I wanted to talk to you, about something private.”
Her eyebrows smooshed together and a worried crease formed as she pursed her lips. “Alright,” she said, and turned to exit. He followed behind her, and soon they were at her apartment. This time she offered him a seat on the sofa. He left a cushion between them when he sat. He was trying to figure out where to start, when she said, “So, what’s up?”
“I’m still worried about my mother.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I just saw you two having dinner. She looked fine.”
He shook his head. “She didn’t seem fine,” he said.
“How do you mean?”
He had no qualms about telling her. He knew from what Josh had told him that Natalie had likely been in an abusive relationship, and he needed her on his side, and not Alex’s. “She wasn’t sick,” he said without preamble.
She squinted. “What? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Yes it does,” he said. “Alex is a control freak, and she did something that upset him, and he told her she couldn’t go out, that she had to stay in his apartment, feigning sickness.”
Her brow furrowed with worry, even a hint of disbelief. “Are you sure?”
“She told me herself,” he said.
“I don’t know,” Natalie said. “I’ve never seen Alex be like that.”
“Like what?”
She took a moment to search for the word. The pause was long enough for her to test the words out in her brain. “Abusive,
” she said, finally.
“Exactly,” Lijah said. “I hadn’t thought of it that way,” he lied. “But that’s exactly the right word. He’s abusive to her.”
She still appeared skeptical. “I think I’d know if he was abusive.”
Lijah straightened up, offering a pointed look. “How? Are you some type of abuse expert?”
Natalie looked down at her hands, a weakness overcoming her persona that he didn’t anticipate. “You could say that,” she said finally.
He simply mumbled, “Oh,” and let it sit there for a moment. “So, you have a background in social work?”
She shook her head. “I was a nursing student, and when the virus hit, I got pressed into service earlier than would have been normal. I hadn’t even finished my degree.”
“But you saw abuse victims, then, saw abusers.”
She didn’t respond at first. Then she looked at him. “Abusers are master manipulators. They try to make everyone like them, and they try to appear perfect. Or like they’re trying their best. Alex has no desire to make everyone like him. He’s kind of an asshole to certain people. He doesn’t give me that vibe.”
Lijah took in a deep breath and scrutinized her. “I’m not going to leave my mother’s safety to your vibe,” he said finally. “All I ask is that you keep an eye out, alright?”
She gave him a reluctant smile. “Alright, I’ll keep my eyes peeled. But you give him the benefit of the doubt, too.”
“Got you,” he said.
With that she stood, as if it was time for him to exit. But he wasn’t ready to go yet. “Since I’m here,” he said. “Did you want to maybe play a game of cards? I’m awesome at go fish.”
She laughed. “Go fish? You go hard, don’t you, Lijah.”
“It’s Jacob,” he said, winking at her.
“Alright. Go fish it is.”
* * *
They’d played for about an hour, quickly abandoning go fish for blackjack, and then playing a game of war. She was good company and kept the conversation light. He tried to sprinkle in personal tidbits about himself. Stuff that would make her feel like he was opening up, that she could trust him. She could in fact trust him, but he needed her to feel it.
“So,” he asked as she dealt out their hands. “How did you end up working here? You said you were a nurse, but I don’t see you in the infirmary.”
She half laughed. “Long story,” she said. “Too long for me to tell right now.”
“Nah, we’ve got plenty of time, or you can give me the short version.”
She paused in her deal for a moment, considering his words. “Alright. The short version is, I was in Chicago with my husband when he died. I thought I could come back here, help out, maybe work at the nursing school to help train people. But when I got back, there were just tons of dying people and very little order. That’s when I met Alex. He sent a few people from the SPU up here to look for people they could help. I was one of them.”
“Why you?”
She shrugged. “I’m not really sure. Perhaps because I needed help. Perhaps because even though I was in need myself, I also wanted to help. He grabbed a handful of us, tested us, and brought those who tested safe down here. He gave us a place to stay, gave us rations. Added us to the compound, even though he probably shouldn’t have technically. But for that we’re grateful.”
She looked him dead in the eye, and her unspoken words were clear as day: We’re loyal, too.
Turning her against Alex wasn’t going to be as simple as he thought.
“Do you play bid whist?” he asked.
“A little,” she said. “But you need four people.”
“I got an idea of who we could play with.”
Chapter 29 - Lijah
He hadn’t yet had a chance to talk with his mother about him and Natalie joining her and Alex for a little whist. He knew his mother liked whist, and she said she used to play tournaments sometimes in college. If Elaan was right and Alex had been at school with her mother, then he probably played whist, too.
He wanted to show Natalie what they were like together. And if Alex were as controlling as he’d been earlier, it would at least give Natalie pause. Perhaps enough pause to offer him help. He was quite curious about the Central floor. He wanted to know more about what they did there. He was sure Natalie hadn’t just taken him there because it was a good place to talk. She wanted to help him. She wanted him to know things. She was secretly letting him know that.
And if she was doing it in secret, it should follow that she didn’t entirely trust Alex either. Only, she kept insisting he was a standup guy. Or maybe she was simply practical. You could trust someone and know that, at some point, they would be in no position to help you. At some point, things were above their pay grade. Lijah trusted his father, but that hadn’t helped them back in the DC SPU.
He sighed as he walked over to the centrifuge to remove two test tubes. Dan was standing nearby and nodded at him. Dan was a short black guy with a goatee and close-cropped hair. He always stood very straight, as if his height bothered him, but he wasn’t particularly aggressive, as some short men were, feeling they had to make up in attitude for what they were missing in inches.
“How goes it?” Dan asked.
Lijah shrugged. “Can’t complain. I’m not up there,” he said, his head indicating the world uptop.
“Ain’t that the truth,” Dan said. He was looking over data on a tablet. He leaned in a little. “I’ve been seeing you a lot with Ms. Radcliffe. Are you two a thing?”
Radcliffe? “Who’s that?”
“Natalie,” he said, then added, “Until recently, queen of cold.”
Lijah thought her last name was Payton. Maybe Radcliffe was her married name. Still, he would’ve thought any woman married to an abuser would have wanted to jettison that surname in favor of her own. “You know,” Lijah said. “I didn’t even know her last name. And yeah, we’ve been chatting. She seems nice.” He paused as the centrifuge finally whirred to a stop, and lifted the lid to pull out the test tubes. “Is there something I need to know about her?” He looked at Dan meaningfully.
This time Dan shrugged and said, “Nah. It’s just unusual for her to take an interest in people. She’s usually pretty closed off.”
He nodded. “Actually, I am, too,” he said. “Maybe that’s why we get each other.” Lijah grabbed the test tubes from the inner cylinder and walked away.
* * *
He hadn’t seen his mother in the lab today, but it was a big facility and there were a couple of labs. He hadn’t had time to look into every corner. But since the day was over, he wanted to talk to her. He might as well go see her in her apartment. Maybe see if she wanted to grab dinner.
He walked over and knocked on the door. When it opened, Alex was standing there. Of course. You’d think the man would spend more time working in his office. “Is my mom around?” he asked.
Alex nodded and opened the door further for him to come in. “Jenny,” he called with ease, as he shut the door. Alex had fallen into an easy rhythm with the lie.
“One minute,” he heard his mother call back in response.
Alex smiled cheerfully at Lijah, though the smile didn’t touch his eyes. “How are things for you here?”
“Very good,” Lijah said. “I appreciate you taking me in like this and getting me set up here. It’s much better than being up there.”
Alex nodded. “I’m glad for you.”
Lijah glanced toward the hallway, where he expected his mother to emerge, but she wasn’t appearing. He looked up at Alex. “Hey, do you play bid whist?” he asked.
Alex chuckled and slapped Lijah’s shoulder. “It’s been ages,” he said.
“Natalie and I were playing cards last night and I told her we should play whist, but we need another team to play with. Would you and Mom want to join us some time?”
Alex’s cheer had faded, and his brown eyes were laser focused on Lijah. “You and Natalie?”
&nbs
p; Shit. Had he said the wrong thing? “Yeah,” he said nonchalantly, trying frantically to think of a way to repair whatever rift he’d somehow created by playing with Natalie. “She was nice enough to play with me after I ran into her.” Lijah glanced back at the hallway where he’d expected his mother to appear. Then he leaned in to Alex. “Truth be told, I wanted reassurance from Natalie that you’re a nice guy. I mean, you are seeing my mother. And she gave it. She’s a real fan of yours.”
He hoped he’d taken the right tactic. Yes, he’d admitted he doubted Alex, but telling him about the momentary lapse had to make it seem like it was something of the past. Or at least he hoped it did. Whatever happened, he didn’t want Alex to not trust Natalie. That would be bad.
“I’m very fond of your mother. She’s in good hands here,” Alex said, trying to sound reassuring.
At that moment, Shonda emerged, a huge smile on her face. “Son,” she said. “I didn’t expect to see you here. What are you doing?”
“I wanted to see if you wanted to have dinner with me?” he asked.
Shonda immediately looked at Alex. He smiled. “I was actually going to tell you that I’m going to head back to my office for a bit. I’m behind. So, dinner with Jacob is probably a good idea.”
Alex looked between the two of them and said he was going to head out. Lijah watched as the door closed and then turned to his mother. “Didn’t expect him to leave us alone.”
She shook her head. “I’ve allayed his concerns,” she said. “And he’s not mad about Josh anymore, so I think we’re good.”
Lijah raised an eyebrow and started to ask how, but realized he probably didn’t want to hear the answer. “Is he moving forward with the vaccine?”
She nodded. “With the general fix, yes, but I haven’t told him about you, what I’m trying to do for you and others like you.” She seemed to want to avoid using Josh’s name.
“Is it safe to talk here,” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I just feel guilty about letting them go. Saying his name is a reminder that I failed them.”