by John Rector
“You don’t argue the message, Nick.” Abby put her hand on my knee. “You just make the messenger sound insane. Turn the message into a conspiracy and then dismiss it.”
I looked up at her. “Don’t.”
She smiled through tears, then leaned close and pressed her lips against my forehead. She held the kiss for a long time before pulling away.
“It’ll be okay,” she said. “I know this is hard, but try to understand. Your sacrifice is for the greater good.”
Ellis put an arm under mine and walked me out of the house. Travis followed. When we got to the SUV, Ellis opened the passenger door and pushed me inside.
My head was still clouded, and my muscles were weak, but I could sit up without falling over, and some of the feeling was coming back in my legs and hands.
Small steps.
Travis shut the passenger door, then climbed into the backseat as Ellis walked around to the driver’s side. I leaned against the door and looked out the window toward Abby’s house. She was standing on the porch with Victor behind her, and all I could see was her silhouette in the doorway.
I thought about the photo of her in the yellow dress and of how out of place it seemed to me now.
Ellis got in and started the engine.
We pulled away, leaving everything behind.
I kept my eyes closed as we drove, and I tried to focus on what was happening. Ellis and Travis didn’t speak, and the only sounds were the hum of the engine and the low buzz of the highway passing under the tires.
I heard a click from the backseat, and I turned around. Travis had my gun in his lap. I watched him pull the magazine, check it, and then slide it back in.
He never looked at me.
I turned back and stared out at the dark highway and the white line flashing past. I had to figure a way out of this, but I didn’t know what I could do. I had some strength in my arms, but that didn’t mean anything. It was still two against one, and those were bad odds even on a good day.
I glanced over at Ellis. He had his elbow propped up on the door and his other hand holding the steering wheel at the bottom, calm and relaxed. Outside his window a line of trees blurred past, shadows against shadows.
Then it all came clear.
I looked back at Travis. This time he stared at me. I closed my eyes and let my head roll loose on my neck. I didn’t know if it fooled him or not, but it was worth a try.
“How much farther?” he asked. “I don’t know if this guy is going to last much longer.”
Ellis looked over at me, then up at the rearview mirror. “We’ve got a few miles. If he passes out, he passes out. It doesn’t matter if he’s—”
I moved as fast as I could, reaching over and grabbing the steering wheel.
“Hey!”
I felt Travis’s hands on my shoulder, pulling me away, but it was too late. I had a good grip, and I pushed the wheel hard to the left, putting all of my weight into it.
The SUV turned sharp, cutting across the highway and slamming into the center guardrail. The sound of tearing metal screamed around us, and when Ellis tried to compensate, I felt the SUV tip up onto two wheels.
Behind me, Travis said, “Oh fuck!”
I felt a cold rush of air on my skin as the SUV lifted up off the road and spun, untethered and silent.
An instant later the world exploded.
33
At first there was only darkness.
Then pain.
I could hear sirens in the distance, and then I was gone again. I came back to a bright light in my eyes, and when I tried to turn away I couldn’t move. There was something around my arms and legs. I lifted my head to see, and several hands reached in and held me down.
A woman’s voice said, “I need you to be still. You’ve been in an accident, and it’s important that you don’t move. Can you understand me?”
“What . . . ?”
I looked around and saw metal walls and black windows. There were rows of small plastic bins, shelves of blankets, and lines of bandages.
“Where am I?”
“You’re in an ambulance,” the woman said. “You’ve been in an accident, but you’re going to be okay. Can you tell us what you took?”
“The hospital?”
“Try and relax, sir. Do you know what you—?”
“Where are they?” I asked. “The others.”
The woman leaned in closer. “Was there someone else in the vehicle with you?”
Again I tried to sit up. “Where did they—?”
The woman pushed me back, and I fought against her. Then I heard another voice say, “He’s going into shock.”
A man with heavy arms leaned above me and slipped an oxygen mask over my face. I tried to jerk my head away, but every move sent waves of agony up my spine, and I screamed. A second later I felt a sharp pain in my arm and then an easy cold spread through me.
I stopped fighting.
“Try to relax,” the paramedic said. “You’re going to be fine.”
I looked up at her face, deep lines drawn around baby-blue eyes, and listened to the slow whine of the siren. I focused on the pain, letting it remind me that I was still alive and that there was still a chance.
Then the shadows came in like an oil spill, seeping in from the edges of my vision, covering everything, until there was only darkness.
I open my eyes to a solid white room.
No windows. No doors.
And I’m not alone.
There are others, watching me, white and faceless. They circle the bed like pale shadows, blending into the walls and the floor and the sky.
Then I see her.
She’s standing at the edge of the room, hunched forward, her hands at her sides, staring at me. Once I see her, I can’t look away.
“You.”
At the sound of my voice, the movement around me stops, and the white figures turn, forming a still circle around my bed.
“Where’s Kara?”
I look up at their faces, white sheets, clean and featureless.
“Where is she?” My voice is loud. “Tell me!”
The figures don’t move.
I look down at my legs, covered in a thin hospital gown, and I try to sit up.
Then the clicking starts.
The sound is loud, and it comes from everywhere.
The figures step forward, closing the circle. When I look up at them, their eyes open, black and depthless.
The clicking grows louder, like the marching of soldiers or the rattle of insect wings.
The circle tightens around me.
“No!”
I look past them toward her, but she’s gone, faded into the white.
“Wait!” I scream. “Where is—?”
I feel hands on me, holding me down.
“No one will know! I won’t say any—”
The clicking is louder now, deafening, and my voice is lost in the roar. Their hands press, cold and heavy, and the more I fight them, the harder they push, until all I can do is scream.
I scream until they listen.
I scream until they let me go.
I scream until my throat rips.
“Nick.”
I felt a hand on my face—heavy, familiar—and when I opened my eyes, the first face I saw was his.
“Dad.”
“Be still,” Charlie said. “I’ll go find the doctor.”
He got up and walked toward the door. I called after him, wanting to know about Kara, but my throat was raw and dry, and all that came out was a low whisper. There was a plastic cup of water on the table next to my bed. I reached for it, but my hand stopped halfway.
I was handcuffed to the bedrail.
I eased back on the bed and looked around. There was an IV attached
to my arm and a heart monitor beeping beside my head. I listened to the sound for a moment, then closed my eyes and tried to remember what’d happened. I must’ve drifted off, because when I opened my eyes again Charlie was back, and he wasn’t alone.
“Nick,” he said. “The doctor is here.”
I looked past him and saw a woman in a white coat and blue scrubs reading my chart. She had silver hair pulled back into a bun, and there were two younger doctors standing with her, both dressed in blue. Behind them a uniformed cop stood in the doorway, watching.
“Where’s Kara? Why am I handcuffed?”
Charlie looked back toward the cop, then down at me. “Kara’s fine,” he said. “Now let the doctor look at you. We’ll talk later.”
Charlie’s eyes were heavy and tired, and I wondered how long it’d been since he’d slept.
“Can I have a drink?” I asked.
Charlie reached for the cup of water. He held the straw while I drank, then said, “Kara was here. She stepped out to grab us dinner, but she’ll be back.”
“She’s not safe,” I said. “They’re going to . . .”
I looked up and saw the doctor staring at me, and I stopped talking. I turned back to Charlie.
“How long have I been here?”
Before he could answer, the doctor said, “How are you feeling, Mr. White?”
I took a quick inventory.
My chest ached, and it felt like someone had drilled a spike into my head, but otherwise I didn’t feel too bad. I told this to the doctor, who nodded, replaced the chart at the foot of the bed, and then took a penlight from her pocket. She checked my eyes, listened to my chest, and then opened my chart again and began writing inside.
“How much do you remember?” she asked.
“I remember the accident,” I said. “After that, just flashes. There was an ambulance.”
“That’s right, good.” The doctor closed the chart, handed it to one of the younger doctors behind her. “You suffered a fairly significant concussion, along with three fractured ribs. You’ll be sore once the painkillers wear off, but there shouldn’t be any lasting damage.”
“How long have I been here?”
“You were admitted two days ago,” the doctor said. “You’ve been unconscious since you arrived.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I don’t want you to worry,” the doctor said. “You’re in good hands. You’ll be out of here soon.”
“When can I leave?”
“I’d like to keep you here one more night, just to be safe.” She smiled at me, patted my arm. “But I don’t see any reason why we can’t release you in the morning.”
I thanked her, then leaned back on the bed.
“Get some rest,” the doctor said. “I’ll be back in a little while to check in on you.”
She walked out of the room, the younger doctors following behind her like little blue ducklings.
I turned to Charlie and held up my wrist. “Why am I handcuffed?”
He shook his head.
I looked past him toward the cop standing in the doorway, and yelled, “Hey, why am I handcuffed?”
“Nick, stop.” Charlie put a hand on my arm. “He’s only here to watch the door. The detective is on the way. He’ll explain everything.”
I held up my arm again, rattled the cuff.
“Do you know what this is about?”
Charlie looked at the cop and then turned back to me. “They said you were driving drunk and that drugs were involved. I told them you didn’t take drugs, but—”
“I wasn’t driving.”
Charlie stopped. “They told us you were the only one in the car.”
“They’re wrong. Abby had . . .”
I tried to sit up, but the pain in my ribs screamed across my chest, and I didn’t try again.
“Try to be still, Nick.” Charlie moved closer. “You’re lucky to be alive. The car you were in was totaled.”
I waited for the pain to pass.
Once it did I said, “There were two others with me.”
Charlie frowned, said, “Maybe it’s better if you keep that to yourself.”
“What? No, they have to—”
“You’re awake.”
I stopped talking and turned toward the sound. Kara was standing in the doorway. She was carrying a white plastic bag weighed down with Chinese food boxes.
For a second I almost thought I saw her smile.
34
I ran through everything that’d happened, and Charlie and Kara listened. When I finished, no one said anything for a long time.
Charlie was the first to speak.
“The other two. Who were they?”
“Ellis was driving,” I said. “Travis was in the backseat. I don’t know his last name.”
“They work for Victor?”
“Ellis does,” I said. “Travis was Patricia Holloway’s driver. He was the one who started all of this.”
“He started it?” Charlie said. “How?”
“He had connections,” I said. “Patricia had him find someone willing to take the job.”
“Killing the girl?”
I nodded. “But Patricia didn’t know that they were . . .” I paused. “Involved.”
“He warned Abby?”
“She decided to turn it around on Patricia and use her to get what she wanted.”
“And she wanted the names of the people who worked with Daniel Holloway on his project.”
“Not just the people who worked on the project,” I said. “She wanted the names of everyone involved, and Travis acted as a bridge between Patricia and Victor.”
“And Victor is—”
“Loyal to Abby,” I said. “That’s all I know.”
Charlie was quiet.
I glanced over at Kara. She was standing at the window, arms crossed, the afternoon sunlight on her skin.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
She turned to face me, nodded, silent.
Charlie said, “So Travis went back to Patricia and told her what they wanted in exchange for killing Abby. She agreed, but when she went to meet Victor for the first time, she saw you and assumed—”
“That I was Victor.” I nodded. “She was a little drunk.”
“That was when her plan went off the rails.”
“Right up until Abby and I came looking for her.”
Charlie sat back, his eyes never leaving mine.
“You’re lucky they didn’t just kill you and take the flash drive and the money. That would’ve been easier.”
“Suspicious murders lead to suspicious cops.”
Charlie frowned.
“Abby told me that the last time I saw her,” I said. “It’s the reason they didn’t kill me outright.”
“They could’ve dumped your body in the woods.”
“Could’ve,” I said. “But they need to stay invisible, and leaving a trail of bodies is a risk.”
“I don’t understand any of this,” Kara said, turning away from the window. “If they weren’t going to kill you, where were they taking you before the accident?”
I looked away. I’d never mentioned Abby’s plan to kill Kara and frame me for the murder, and I wasn’t going to mention it now. Kara was starting a new life, and the last thing I wanted was to scare her and make her feel like she wasn’t safe.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t want to find out.”
“This experiment,” Charlie said. “These girls. Abby was part of it?”
“She was the first one,” I said. “There were others, but I have no idea how many are still out there.”
“But Abby does?”
“She has the list,” I said. “If she didn’t know before, she does now.”
Charlie seemed to think about this for a moment, then said, “What do you think she’s going to do? Are these girls in danger?”
“I think she’s trying to protect them,” I said. “She called them her sisters.”
“Because they were part of the same program?”
“There’s more to it than that,” I said. “Each of the embryos was cultivated in a lab using Daniel’s sperm, so genetically they’re all sisters.”
“That’s horrible,” Kara said. “Who were these women? Why would they agree to something like this?”
“Because of what Daniel was promising,” I said. “These weren’t just healthy children. These were children who were immune to disease, who’d never get sick. To hear Abby talk about it, everyone involved believed they were going to change the world.”
Kara put a hand on her stomach, turned away. “I can’t imagine.”
“I don’t have all the answers,” I said. “Maybe the police will know more after they find her.”
“About that.” Charlie cleared his throat. “I don’t think telling this story to the police is the best idea.”
I looked over at him. “Why am I not surprised?”
“How do you think they’ll react to all of this?”
“I don’t care.”
“You should.”
I tried to sit up, winced. “I’m going to tell them the truth, and if they think I’m crazy—”
“You can count on that.”
“Then so be it.” I kept my eyes locked on Charlie and tried not to react to the pain shooting through my chest. “I’m not going to lie anymore.”
Charlie stared at me. “It’s a mistake.”
“We’ll see.” I looked toward the cop standing in the doorway, then turned back to Charlie. “When is the detective supposed to be here?”
Charlie didn’t answer, so I asked Kara.
She frowned. “Any time now.”
The detective stood at the foot of the bed with his notebook open. He had a yellow pencil stub in his hand, and he tapped it against the page as he spoke.
“You’re saying there were others in the car?”
“Two others,” I said. “Travis in back, and a man named Ellis in the front. He was driving.”