“You got me this to remind me that I’m beautiful, no matter what Mother says. And that I’m strong, even though Father treats me like a stupid, pathetic girl. Well, it works. I know I’m strong now. But you are too, Thomas. And I need you now more than ever.”
Thomas wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve and sniffed. When they’d first come in, Thomas’ gaunt features and exhausted eyes made him look nearly thirty rather than twenty-two like Anna. But now he looked like a young child, his eyes wide and teary, his body folded into a ball. Anna seemed sure that they needed Thomas’ help, but at the moment the guy looked like he couldn’t get himself dressed in the morning let alone help them liberate Alecto.
Thomas nodded slowly.
Anna smiled, took his hand in hers and kissed it. “You don’t need to leave your apartment. Everything I need you to do, you can do from here.”
There was nothing for Jack to do but watch Anna comfort her twin brother. They were engrossed in each other, and it was like Jack wasn’t there.
His muscles were taut with boredom. He’d spent weeks cooped up in a ten-foot cell and five days stuck in a car. He wanted to march out the door and run to the nearest exit and keep going. But Sewell’s threats clung to his mind like mold to a shower curtain. He stretched his arms overhead and yawned loudly.
Anna stood and dusted off her pants legs. “Okay, now that we’re all on the same page, we need to work out a plan for how to get inside Croft’s penthouse and liberate Alecto. Thomas, we need specs on that building, ears inside Croft’s place, and earbuds so we can hear you when we’re inside. Can you start working on that?”
Thomas nodded. He went to his chair, wheeled himself in and took the helm of his computer station. His tears were gone. Within minutes, Thomas was in a zone. He read screens and clicked at a frenzied pace. It made Jack dizzy to watch him.
“He’s gone to us for a while,” Anna said. She wore a small smile as she watched him. “He’s a genius with computers. Numbers are his friends. But people are a complete mystery to him.”
“You asked him for earbuds – for when we’re inside. You don’t think we’re going to just break into that guy’s house, do you?”
Anna laughed. “Sure. Why not?”
She really is crazy. But Jack didn’t have a better plan.
“Lighten up, Jack. I was joking. Well, sort of. We are going to break in, but no, we’re not doing that today. You and I are going on a stakeout. Thomas will work on recon. I figure it will take a few days before we know what we’re dealing with in there. Then we’ll come up with a plan for how we’re going to break into the house of the leader of the Makers and steal back from him his most precious treasure.”
Jack was only slightly appeased. Given the number of men with guns Croft had brought with him to A.H.D.N.A., he imagined a nearly impenetrable fortress of guards around Alecto.
“You think it can’t be done?” Anna apparently couldn’t take the extreme mess anymore and picked up spent soda cans and take-out boxes.
“You really believe it can? Or are you sending us on a suicide mission?” Jack remembered the pills in Anna’s medicine cabinet. Pills that his mom had once taken for depression. Maybe Anna had no intention of surviving this.
Anna walked around the half-wall separating the small living room from the kitchen. She rifled through a cabinet and shook out a fresh trash bag, where she deposited the trash she’d picked up. She came back into the living room and tossed empty boxes, paper plates and dirty plastic utensils into the bag. “Honestly? I’d say we have less than a fifty percent chance of success.”
Jack shook his head. “Not very good odds.” He caught her hand as she reached for an empty soda can. “Anna, why are you doing this? Really.”
She stopped cleaning and looked back into his eyes. “Because no one else will.”
“I don’t understand why you’d risk your life to get Alecto away from Croft just so you can get your aunt out of jail. I don’t mean to be crass, but your life is – well, you’re so much more … I don’t see why you’d sacrifice yourself this way for her.”
Anna’s eyes grew dark. Jack released her hand and shrank back from her.
“I’ve told you things, but you still don’t see. I’ll be happy to have her out of there. But I’m not doing this for her. This is bigger than Aunt Lilly or the Sturgis family. Something big is coming. And we know Croft doesn’t have an altruistic cell in his body. Alecto was created to help the people, not him. My aunt Lilly may not be perfect. Hell, she may even be a bit crazy. I concede that. But I know one thing about her. She has a single-minded obsession with saving the human race from extinction. And that’s our end game, Jack. Isn’t that worth a little risk?”
Of course his answer was yes. And Jack wanted to trust Anna. He wanted to believe that all the pain he was causing his mom wasn’t in vain, that he was doing something more than being a pawn in a loony rich family’s game.
But what he thought – or believed – was of little consequence at this point. He was in deep. Go big or go home.
“If lives are at stake, don’t you think we’ve got better things to do than play maid?” Jack asked.
Anna dropped the half-full bag of trash. Her lips curled into a wry smile. She hugged Thomas around the shoulders. He didn’t acknowledge her presence, but she talked to him anyway. “We’re going on stakeout duty. See you later.” She searched the piles of papers on his desk, found a pen and scratched out a note that she placed on top of the stack to his left. “Come on, Jack. I need caffeine.”
Jack followed Anna out the door and into the brisk New York day.
24
ERIKA
It seemed like hours that they ran through the dark halls. Erika was weighted down with guns and ammo, all of which was far heavier than she’d ever imagined it would be.
Finally they entered a hall that looked much like all the others but was also familiar to her.
Dr. Randall stopped before a door. “Xenos, could you please try to open this door?”
It took a while for her to catch up to where Dr. Randall stood. He too was winded and was bent forward, trying to catch his breath. Xenos quietly approached. She looked down at the gun and then to Erika with a pleading look on her face.
Xenos held the gun out to Erika. “I cannot open the door with this in my hand.”
Erika took Xenos’ gun, now holding a rifle in each hand. “I feel like I belong in a Mad Max movie.”
“Mad Max?” Dr. Randall asked.
Erika forgot that Dr. Randall had lived most of his life in a lab. He was as bad as Xenos or Tex at getting references to popular culture. “Never mind,” she said.
Xenos waved her arms, but the door stayed closed. “I do not have access.” Her voice was very matter-of-fact.
“Then we need to find another way in,” Erika said. She handed the gun back to Xenos.
Dr. Randall pulled the vapor torch out of his pocket. “Stand clear and cover your eyes.”
Xenos stepped behind Erika and covered her eyes with her dainty hands like a child hiding their eyes from a scary scene in a movie. Erika didn’t bother covering her eyes. She wanted to see the torch in action.
“Here goes.” Dr. Randall pushed the button and waited. There was no fire. Not even a spark. He shook the metal torch and tried again. But it was no good. “A dud,” he muttered. He flung the useless hunk of metal to the ground.
Erika dug the torch he’d handed her out of her pocket. “Try this one.”
Dr. Randall pushed the red button, and this time sparks sizzled. A flame of orange light erupted from the top of the handheld light cannon, but it was no light saber. The column of flame was only about six inches long and sputtered and spat. But Dr. Randall worked quickly with the thin flame. It made short work of the ancient steel doors. In less than five minutes, Dr. Randall had cut a rectangle large enough for them to fit through. But it was five minutes filled with Erika looking behind them, her shoulders tense, her rifle ready to shoot
any Conexus that appeared in the hall.
Dr. Randall gently pushed on the door and the large chunk of steel he’d cut crashed to the floor. Dust filled the air. Her lungs already burned merely from the effort of breathing. She didn’t need dust too. She coughed and hacked.
“So much for a stealthy entrance,” she said. She followed Dr. Randall as he stepped slowly through the hole he’d made. “Come on, Xenos.”
The frightened Infractus followed closely behind Erika. If Erika had stopped quickly, Xenos would have run into her.
The room they entered was more brightly lit than the hall they’d left. The bluish white lights ringed the ceiling as well as the floor. There were two stone tables that looked as though they emerged from the stone floor, as if they had grown up from the floor like a tree grows from the forest floor. Each table had a large overhead light above it, but neither of the lights were on.
Erika cautiously entered the room, her gun up and ready to fire. She scanned the room with her eyes. There were no Conexus inside. But the room felt familiar. She’d lain on one of those stone tables. Yes, and Ian was on the other the first time, when they gave them the virus. A chill ran up her spine and she shuddered.
She kept herself tight on the heels of Dr. Randall. “Do you see what we need?” She wasn’t sure why she was whispering.
Dr. Randall whispered back, “It will likely be refrigerated.”
Erika recalled the jolt of the icy liquid shooting through her fiery veins and knew that Dr. Randall was right. But there wasn’t anything that remotely looked like a refrigerator. The walls were smooth plaster. There were a few alcoves that had been formed in the wall, but there was nothing in them. They pushed and pulled at the smooth walls. Erika found a small indentation with her hands, pressed it, and a cabinet door opened. It had looked just like another part of the wall.
“No knobs or pulls,” he said. “I guess no need. They probably open them with their mind anyway.” Dr. Randall’s voice was filled with the same kind of fascination a child had when discovering some great wonder.
Erika was not fascinated in the least. To her, the Conexus were no more than murderers and terrorists. She couldn’t bring herself to respect their technology when it was used to hurt rather than help others.
“Hey, Xenos, can you help us look for a refrigerator?”
Xenos stood still and blinked at her.
Erika sighed. “A – cooler. Where you put things to keep them cold.”
Xenos moved to the left side of the room and unceremoniously pushed a hidden panel. The small door opened and light spilled into the room.
“Good girl!” Dr. Randall said. By the time Erika got to the refrigerator, Dr. Randall had apparently found what he was looking for. He held up a small packet wrapped in clear blue plastic and filled with tiny nodules that looked like bits of spaghetti.
“How do you know that’s the antiviral and not the virus?” Erika asked.
The look of joy melted from Dr. Randall’s face. “Blast it. I don’t know.” He stared at the blue packet in his hand. His eyes watered.
Xenos slowly reached her hand up and took the packet from Dr. Randall and briefly inspected it. “It is the medicine that you seek.”
“How do you know?” Dr. Randall asked.
“Blue,” she said.
“What color indicates the virus?”
“Green.”
Not how I would have done it. In Erika’s world, green meant go. Green was the color of clean eating and environmentally friendly. Not the color of death. But the Conexus didn’t think like them.
“Are there more?” Erika asked. “We should take all they have with us.”
Dr. Randall nodded. He rifled through the shelves. “Green,” he mumbled. “Green.” Packets fell to the floor and rattled as he pushed them aside. “More green. Green. Yellow.” He held it up. “What is yellow?”
“I do not know,” Xenos said.
Dr. Randall shrugged. “Maybe it was a test batch. Quite a few of those too.”
“Any more blue?”
“I don’t see any.”
“I can’t believe that. In this whole stinking place there’s only one batch of medicine that can counteract their deadly virus?”
“Maybe they just got it to work and haven’t had time to synthesize more,” Dr. Randall offered.
Erika held up the packet of precious life-saving medicine and looked at it. “I was one lucky guinea pig, huh?” There was a space where a nodule had been removed. My dose. “There’s not much here.”
Dr. Randall met her eyes. “Looks like five doses.”
Erika quickly did the math. One dose for Ian. That left four doses to save countless people that could be infected. What if my mom’s infected? Or Jack? And then there was Ian’s family and Jack’s mom, not to mention Erika’s lengthy list of aunts and cousins.
Each of them had countless ripples of lives radiating out from them. Everyone does. All of them meant something to someone. There simply weren’t enough doses for everyone that meant something to her or someone she loved.
Dr. Randall touched her hand. His eyes were misty.
“Thousands could –”
“Possibly millions,” Dr. Randall said.
That thought didn’t comfort her.
“We’ll give a dose to Ian, of course. The rest we’ll have to save and take with us. Get it to the CDC. They should be able to reverse engineer it. They’ll need all of it they can get.”
Erika hoped that giving the precious antiviral to the CDC was the right thing. She wasn’t a conspiracy theorist, but she had little faith in institutions, companies or committees. She’d always had faith in the one thing she could count on. Herself. And after her time with Commander Sturgis, Erika’d lost what little confidence she’d ever had in the establishment.
Her skepticism must have been written on her face. “Don’t worry. The CDC isn’t controlled by Commander Sturgis. Or me. Guard that as though millions of lives depend on it.” Dr. Randall took an injector out of the cabinet above the refrigerator.
Erika’s pockets were full of grenades and bullets. She didn’t have a pouch or pack. She put the small packet of precious medicine in the safest place she could think of. She tucked it down her shirt between her breasts.
Dr. Randall raised an eyebrow and smiled. He nodded and turned to go but stopped. “My mind is tired. I’m a bit turned around. Xenos, would you be so kind as to lead the way back to our quarters?”
Xenos nodded and walked toward the door. Or rather, the whole they’d made in the wall. She’d gone only five feet or so before her hands flew to her temples, her rifle falling to the ground. She fell to her knees, her mouth open in a soundless ‘O’. Finally the screech found its way out of her. Her voice was like that of an animal caught in a trap.
Erika had slung her rifle over her shoulder while they searched for the antiviral. But at the first sign that something was wrong, she instinctively pulled it from her shoulder and got ready to shoot anything small and grey. She didn’t relish spilling more of their purple blood, but if they stood between her and Ian, she knew she wouldn’t hesitate. Her eyes darted from side to side, but there was no one in the room or the doorway.
Dr. Randall stood so still he looked frozen. He held a gun, but it shook in his trembling hands.
Erika didn’t wait for him to ask. She stepped out ahead of him and took point. She reached Xenos and knelt down to her. “Are they coming?” Her voice was a whisper.
Xenos held her hands to her head and cried in agony. She managed to nod.
Erika looked back at Dr. Randall and motioned for him to go to their left while she walked quietly and quickly to the right of the hole in the wall they’d made. A small thought slithered to the front of her mind. It’s no use being secretive. They can read your mind, you know. She did her best to build a wall around her thoughts. At the first sign of buzzing and pressure, she pushed back against it. It was exhausting work, but she hoped it kept them in the dark about t
heir plans.
She planted herself with her back to the wall. She took deep breaths of the musty air. Her pulse beat in her neck as sweat dripped down her temples.
Erika focused all her attention to sounds. There was the rush of blood in her ears and the sound of Xenos still crying out. She listened more intently. A small rustle of fabric. They’re coming. She wished she could telepathically communicate that to Dr. Randall. She signaled to the hallway with her hand but wasn’t sure if Dr. Randall could see it in the dim light.
Erika kept her back to the wall but her eyes trained on the door. Her plan was to shoot at anything that crossed the threshold. But Dr. Randall apparently had another idea.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw him gesture wildly at her. She squinted to see him. He had a grenade in his hand and was miming a throw with it. Then he motioned her to move back.
She didn’t need to be asked twice. Erika slowly backed along the wall, moving herself away from the door. As soon as she was clear, Dr. Randall pulled the pin and lobbed the grenade through the opening.
They waited for an explosion, but it didn’t come. A dud like the first torch. I hope not all our ’nades are duds.
Xenos had stopped crying out and lay on the floor, writhing. Erika knew what pain the Conexus could cause. And she knew that Xenos wouldn’t last much longer.
The grenade lay on the rubble pile in the doorway like an impotent blob. It needs a spark? I’ll give it a spark.
Erika stepped away from the wall and caught sight of bluish light reflecting off a pair of dark, mirrorlike Conexus eyes in the hallway, ready to approach the door. She opened fire at the pile of rubble, hoping to ignite the grenade and take out any Conexus that were in the hall. Some of the bullets actually fired; others didn’t. But she held her finger on the trigger and fired round after round. Bullets ricocheted off the blocks and stone. The room was filled with the echo of gun blasts and then an explosion as one of the shots finally hit her intended target and exploded the grenade.
The blast sent her to the ground. Her left leg felt like it was on fire. A piece of shrapnel was lodged in her thigh. She winced as she pulled it out and flung it to the ground. It was too dark to see how bad the injury was. Her pants leg was already soaked wet with blood. There was no time to look for a bandage.
H.A.L.F.: The Makers Page 16