by Rachel Caine
Phone. She needed a damn phone.
And the best place to find one would be inside the central building.
Bryn raced over the open area, trying to keep to the shadows as much as she could; the moonlight was traitorously bright out, but she made it to the garden and hid in the dark overhang of a still-blooming rosebush for a moment. Lights were on in the secured-facility building, and she saw into the windows at the front; there were at least three or four burly, sour-looking nurses who were off to check the rooms. Someone would find the “body” soon.
The patio doors off the garden were locked tight. No way inside. She followed the curve of the building around, testing windows, and finally found one that was open to admit a cool night breeze. She slid it up, careful of the noise, and cast a quick look inside to scout the footing. It was clear beneath, and she slithered over the sill and down to the carpet without much noise.
The old woman sleeping on the gurney—unrestrained, except for the metal railings—didn’t stir. She looked as frail as a dandelion, but someone cared about her—there was a thick, hand-knitted afghan tucked around her, and a pillow nicer than anything available in the facility. Bryn scanned her bedside table, but found no trace of a cell phone or landline. She eased the door open. This facility had wider hallways, nicer carpet, big windows, and—unfortunately—more nurses. These were going door-to-door, methodically checking beds; when one went into a room, another came out, as if they’d planned it that way to cover any eventuality.
Bryn closed the door with a faint click and looked around. The bathroom wasn’t big, and she had the distinct feeling they’d be looking inside it anyway as they searched. Likewise the narrow closet. She went back to the window and closed it, and heard footsteps approaching.
Time to decide.
She dropped to the carpet and rolled into the shadows cast by the dangling afghan on the far side of the gurney/bed. There was no way to get all the way underneath, so it was the best she could do. Her heart hammered as the attendant stepped inside, opened the bathroom, the closet, and came over to check the window.
He never glanced her way. The woman on the bed, as Bryn had guessed, would be of no real interest to him, and he’d be focused instead on the concealed places, not the open ones.
Bryn let out a slow breath as he finished his search, exited the room, and shut the door behind him. She stood up and followed him, peeping out the narrow crack of wood to check the hallway. She waited until the staff had completely finished their search of the hall. One went back to the round nurses’ station desks; the others moved on, presumably to the next set of rooms.
“Thanks,” Bryn whispered to the sleeping lady, and slipped out. She hugged the wall, watching the nurse at the station. This one was a woman, and she had her back turned as she spoke on the phone.
“No sign of anyone,” the nurse was saying. “We’re clear in here. Blanton’s checking the parking lot out front. The gates haven’t opened, and we haven’t had any motion detectors go off. Nothing on surveillance in the front. I think she must still be on your side.” That, at least, answered the question of whether the nurses in this building of the facility would be sympathetic. “I’m telling you, we already checked the rooms. Every room. Either she’s in your building or she’s out on the grounds. Yeah, we’re searching the garden. Keep your knickers on. She won’t get far.”
The nurse hung up the phone, and Bryn backed up and into another room. This one held a sleeping man with an oxygen mask and an IV drip. Colorful, angular drawings were taped all over the walls—grandkids’ or great-grandkids’ projects, Bryn assumed. It was still a sterile, grim room, but it was trying to be cheerful.
There was a cell phone plugged in on the nightstand.
Bryn’s heart leaped. She eased over to it and unplugged it, trying to move as quietly as possible. The thing was shut off, but once she’d touched the power button, it gave out a nice, loud, musical tone she couldn’t muffle.
The old man opened his eyes, removed his oxygen mask, and gazed at her blankly for a moment—and then he began yelling, shockingly loudly, “Help! Help! Murder! She’s taking my phone! Help, help!”
Bryn cursed under her breath and headed toward the window, but it was latched tight, and the catch was stubborn. She finally racked it up with a shriek of metal just as the door opened, spilling light into the room. Even then, she would have kept going, except that Jane said, very softly, “I’ll kill the old man if you try it, Bryn.”
Bryn turned her head. Jane was standing by the old man’s bedside; he’d stopped yelling, and was staring at her with mute terror, because she was holding a silenced semiautomatic pistol to his temple. Jane’s face was pale and hard as bone, and the dark shadows pooled in her eyes. She looked…inhuman.
“I mean it,” she said. “Try anything, and he dies. Then I put a bullet in your brain. You can wake up. He won’t. Either way, I shoot the holy fuck out of you before you can use that phone or make it off the grounds, so there’s nothing to gain here. But by all means, go ahead. I’m sure it’s a mercy killing, shooting this old fart.”
There wasn’t any doubt at all that she meant every word of what she said.
Bryn shut her eyes for a second, then opened her fingers and let the cell phone drop to the floor. Damn it, damn it, damn it…
“Good choice,” Jane said. “I’m really pretty upset about losing Mr. Smith, but then again, nice use of the spoon. You’re learning. Now, just hold still.…If I do this right, it shouldn’t really hurt much at all.”
Oh hell no. Bryn let her knees go loose, dropped, rolled, and put the phone in her left pocket as she did. Her movement startled Jane into firing, but she missed, and Bryn shoved her right hand into her pocket, rose to her knees right in front of Jane, and fired, point-blank, through the leather of her jacket.
Three times.
Jane fired back, which was an impressive feat considering Bryn had scored three direct chest hits, but her bullet hit Bryn in the shoulder—not enough to slow her down. She felt it, but pushed the pain aside. Jane had taught her that, too—how to push the pain away.
Jane stumbled back against the wall, and the fury in her dark eyes was unmistakable. Her black shirt showed the bullet holes, and beneath, Bryn saw the flash of blood. Jane caught her balance and aimed, not for Bryn, but at the old man on the bed. She was going to kill him out of sheer spite.
Bryn took the gun out of her pocket, advanced, and fired twice into Jane’s face.
The woman’s trigger finger still convulsed, but the shot went wild, into the floor on the other side of the bed, and Jane went down hard.
Dead for sure.
Bryn wanted to keep on shooting her, just for the hell of it, but there wasn’t time. She flipped open the cell—one of those easy-to-use kinds for older people—and quickly dialed Patrick’s number.
She was talking as soon as she heard the connection click in, even before his voice made it over the distance. “It’s Bryn. Don’t ask any questions right now, just trace this phone and come heavy; I’m leaving it on and hiding it. I’ll be around here somewhere. I have to find Carl and Chandra.” She didn’t wait for him to respond, just opened a drawer and dropped the phone in. She couldn’t talk to Pat just now; he’d infect her with his worry, make her less focused on sheer survival. It had hurt to even hear his voice begin to say hello; the idea of having him say anything else, anything to comfort her, made her think she might break apart into tiny pieces.
The old man was still staring at her with blank terror. He was gasping for air. She reached over and fitted his oxygen mask over his mouth and nose and said, “Sorry for all that, sir. You’ll be okay.”
Then she pushed herself up, opened the window, and headed into the darkness. There was nothing here now for her except the certainty of being caught by the staff of the regular, presentable side of the business; rescue was coming, and they’d find Jane’s body soon enough. Bryn didn’t have a whole lot of time, and although hiding out was a good opt
ion, she knew Carl, at least, was still being held on the lockdown side of the complex where she’d been kept.
If it had been secure enough for the two of them, it was a good bet that any other Revived individuals they’d taken might be kept there as well…and there were some more still missing. Chandra Patel, for one. And Bryn owed it to Chandra, too, to try to get her out of this horror.
The gunshots had drawn attention all over the nursing facility—lights blazing on, voices babbling—and as Bryn tried to make her way through the garden, she had to keep to the ever-sparser shadows. She’d just made it past the gazebo when someone thought to turn on the full security lighting in the garden, which lit it up like a football field; Bryn sprinted for the edge of the bushes and out into the darkness beyond.
She didn’t hear anyone yelling on her trail, so she headed straight for the cinder block building, slammed her back against the wall, and tried to think. She checked the clip, and controlled a burst of frustration—should have picked up that bitch’s gun, too—as she assembled a tactical plan. She’d have to go in through the front entrance, where two of the big male nurses were standing; either or both of them could be armed, and she didn’t know for certain if they were guilty parties or just innocent dupes. She’d rather have tried the rear exit, but the alarm had stopped sounding, which meant they’d closed the door. She didn’t have superstrength or anything. Being hard to kill didn’t qualify as much of a superpower.
If cockroaches were superheroes…
Someone spotted her shadow against the brick outside, and she heard a yell. A flashlight flared bright, and she moved for the reception area, fast, with the gun pointed at the two nurses. One raised his hands immediately. The other looked stunned.
“Open the door,” she ordered. No reactions. “Hit the button and open the door! You!” She pointed at the one who hadn’t raised his hands, and he reached beneath the counter.
She had just enough warning to dive out of the way as a shotgun blast tore through the cheap wood. The nurse yanked the gun free and fired again, nailing her left arm with pellets, but she shot back, two fast bullets to his chest, and he went over backward and took the shotgun with him.
She switched aim to the other nurse, still frozen with his hands in the air. “Open it!” she screamed.
He slammed his fist down on a button, and she heard the harsh metallic buzzing as the lock clicked free.
Bryn hit it hip-first, and cried out at the agony that zipped up her arm and across her body from the shotgun damage. Didn’t matter. She had to duck to avoid a volley of shots from the other side. Another armed caregiver. That just didn’t seem safe, somehow, having all these guns around the elderly. She didn’t want to shoot back—too much risk of hitting a patient—but she didn’t have much choice, and putting him down with a bullet in his side had the benefit of getting her a handful of room keys.
She found Carl in the third room, strapped to a gurney. He hadn’t been tortured, or at least there was no evidence of blood, which was a mercy. No time to extract him, though. She left him and tried the other doors, looking for Chandra, the other Revived she knew was in their hands.
She didn’t find her, which meant either she’d never been here or it was far too late.
She just barely had time to make it back to Carl’s room and strip away his restraints fast before more gunfire sprayed her way. He was staring at her uncomprehendingly, and for a few panic-stricken seconds she thought they’d drugged him so thoroughly he wouldn’t be able to move, but then he snapped out of it and said, “Bryn? Oh my God, are you here to rescue me?”
She laughed. It rang hollow in the room, and had a bitter, wild edge. “Sure,” she said. “Why not? Get up, you ass. We have to get out of here.”
“I’m sorry about…you know,” he said, as he slid off the bed. They hadn’t let him keep his own clothes, either; he was wearing—of all things—some dirty pair of denim overalls that sagged around him, and an equally dirty T-shirt.
“Selling me out?” she asked. “They used your Protocol. You didn’t have a choice. Never mind. Get down in that corner.” She shoved him toward it and backed to cover him, facing the door. She’d locked it, but she couldn’t have taken the only set of keys, and even if by some miracle she had, these weren’t the type to play a waiting game. “Did you see Chandra in here?”
“I didn’t see anybody,” he said, “except that woman. Jane.”
“Jane’s dead now.”
“Thank God.” His voice was trembling, on the edge of cracking. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t. I couldn’t—”
Bryn couldn’t really blame him; she’d been forced to cooperate, too. That didn’t mean she had to like it. She checked the clip in her gun. Only three shots left, and she had the strong feeling that wouldn’t go far. Damn, she was missing her riot baton. It made a great close-quarters weapon.…
She spotted the aluminum cane in the corner a few seconds later, and laughed. It was the adjustable model—press in the round button, and the bottom section slid up and down. She slid it all the way out, weighed it, and then decided the top part of the cane was better weighted—more momentum from the heavy plastic grip.
She was back to being the spider, waiting for the fly…until the fly arrived.
The door banged open, and two tear gas grenades rolled inside. Bryn tried to kick them out again, but doubled over, coughing and choking on the fog, and through her tears she saw someone stride forward with a gas mask covering half her face.
Jane. There was no mistaking those eyes. Of course. How could it have never occurred to Bryn to think she was one of the Revived?
“Surprise,” Jane said, but it wasn’t really. And then she kicked her in the head, several times, until Bryn went dark.
Chapter 14
When Bryn woke up, fuzzy and sick, it all seemed that much worse. She’d wasted a lot of bullets on Jane, and it seemed pretty annoying to be kicked to death by her afterward. But somehow, in the rearview mirror, Bryn couldn’t understand why she hadn’t just assumed it from the beginning, that Jane was Revived; half of those she’d met were clinging to sanity with both hands, and the other half had lost their shit entirely.
Jane was the same order of psychopath as Fast Freddy Watson…someone whose darker tendencies had been liberated by the drugs, who wasn’t afraid of death or pain or reprisals.
It wasn’t good news, and the worst part came when Bryn realized just where she was.…
Back in her original predicament.
Bryn’s gaze focused up on the same grimy ceiling light, the same cracked paint, the same fluttering spiderweb. The same spider sitting patiently in the center, waiting for a new, juicy snack to wander by.
She didn’t bother trying her restraints, or even turning her head to see if Jane was there. She knew the woman would be.
“Who the hell thought it would be a good idea to Revive you?” she asked the ceiling, but she meant it for Jane, and turned to look at the woman’s dim shape in the dark where it sat comfortably, legs crossed.
Jane shrugged and flipped a light switch, and Bryn winced. The damage from the tear gas had healed, but she still felt unusually sensitive to the brightness…but then, the nanites were overworked now, struggling to keep pace with both the body’s natural self-destruction and that imposed on it from the outside. She could expect to be hurting soon…and for any further damage to be slow to heal.
“I’m useful,” Jane said. “To the right people. Cheer up, Bryn. You can be useful, too, if you work hard, study, eat your vegetables, and, above all, stop fucking around with me.”
“Sorry,” Bryn said. “That’s just never going to happen. Maybe you’d better get your badass little spoon again. Or raise your game to a full-on spork.”
Jane leaned over her, and what was in her eyes was like looking through a peephole into the darkest, emptiest hell Bryn could ever imagine. “You,” Jane said, “are going to tell me anything and everything. You’re going to beg me to ask you a question. You�
�re going to want to tell me so bad you’d crawl over hot coals to lick my ass. Understand me, sweetie?” Her tone continued to be warm, sweet, bizarrely likable. “You are mine for as long as I want to play with you. Nobody’s coming to get you. Nobody’s taking you away. There’s no hiding.”
“Prove it,” Bryn said. She didn’t blink. She’d let go of all that fear, all that pain, all that anguish that had been haunting her since she’d woken up screaming for the first time with the taste of that plastic bag on her tongue. She had life, unlimited life, for as long as those nanites could scurry their little mechanical asses through her tissues and give it to her.
And she was going to use it to spit in Jane’s face for as long as possible. If it was insanity, it tasted sweetly metallic, as if she were chewing tinfoil. She didn’t care anymore. Couldn’t care anymore.
I think I broke myself, she thought, and almost laughed.
Jane blinked first. Then she took a step back, cocked her head, and frowned, just a little. “You’re a weird little thing,” she said. “I mean that completely as a compliment. But—Oh, damn it! Does this happen to you? You’re getting really focused and there goes the cell—” Jane’s phone, Bryn realized, was ringing. The ringtone was Britney Spears’s “Toxic.” If that wasn’t appropriate…
“Yes?” Jane asked, and put the phone to her ear as she turned away. She strolled toward the door. Bryn focused up on the spiderweb, on the spider, on the cocooned future lunch. Maybe she wasn’t the spider or the fly. Maybe she was the web. Sticky and impossible to tear apart, no matter how hard the struggle.
“Are you kidding me?” Jane said, lowering her voice to a hard whisper. “No! No, I’m telling you, this is the one. You do not want to waste this opportunity—trust me. We need—” She stopped talking and stood very still. “All right. You’re the boss.”