The colonel’s eyebrows nearly flipped over the top of his head. “And I’m supposed to believe that an Amish girl just strolled into a Transport database and plucked the exact data we need from the petabytes of information in there?”
“Yes,” said Alice, before Leah could respond. “Like I said, she’s a natural.”
Colonel Billingham clenched his teeth. Everyone had stopped moving and was waiting to see what he’d do.
“Get them inside,” he snapped. He turned and walked briskly away.
Alice smiled and winked at Leah as the two men carried her into the building.
Leah moved to follow, but Da Silva put a hand on her shoulder. “Come on; you look tired.”
Leah hesitated.
“Let Sarge get some rest. You can see her later.”
Leah tipped her head to the wound in Da Silva’s neck. It had scabbed over now, but the edges still looked inflamed. “You should go with them.”
“It’s fine. I’ll go once we’ve got you back in your room.”
Leah was sceptical, and she didn’t move until Da Silva squeezed her shoulder again. Then she nodded and let Da Silva lead her inside.
35
Leah slept for ten hours and still felt tired. When she woke, her head was aching—a dull, throbbing pain at the base of her skull. Her jaw felt like a lump of rock, as though the bones had seized up. There was blood crusted across her face where her nose had bled again while she was sleeping. She went over to the washbasin in her room and splashed cool water onto her face. The movement sent a dull pain down her arm from her shoulder. There was a long, rectangular bruise there, dark and livid.
Leah had just finished drying her face when there was a gentle tap at the door. It was Hobbs.
“How ya feeling?”
Leah grimaced.
“That good, huh?”
“Yeah, I’m not sure I’m cut out for this.”
Hobbs stuck out his bottom lip. “From what Alice says, you did good.”
“Is she okay?”
“She’s pretty beaten up and her ankle’s in bad shape, but she’ll be fine. She’s asking for you.”
The guilt came flooding back. Leah felt the heat rise in her cheeks. “I…”
“There’s nothing to worry about, she understands.”
Leah frowned. How could she?
“Come on,” said Hobbs, his voice soft.
Reluctantly, Leah let herself be led through the power station to the medical wing.
Alice was sitting up in bed, and she smiled at Leah as she walked in. Her foot was wrapped in a plastic boot and the bruise on her face had darkened even further, but she was less pale and seemed more like the relaxed woman Leah had seen last time they were at the power station.
Alice pointed toward a battered metal chair. Leah pulled it nearer the bed and sat down. It was hard and uncomfortable, as though its designer had set out to make sure hospital visitors didn’t stay too long.
“I’ll leave you two alone,” said Hobbs.
“Thanks, man,” said Alice, and she winked at him.
Alice waited until Hobbs had closed the door behind him and then turned to Leah.
“I hear you got plenty of sleep.”
Confused, Leah frowned.
“I asked Hobbs to check in on you and bring you here once you were awake.” Alice smiled. “He dropped by five times while you were sleeping.”
“Yeah, I was pretty worn out.”
“You feeling better?”
“My head aches, and I had another nosebleed.” Leah rubbed her face. “And my jaw’s stiff.”
Alice nodded. “You went deep into a VR. If you’re not used to it, that can have some adverse effects. It will get better.”
Leah winced. “I don’t know if… I mean, I’m not sure I’m going to stay.”
Alice’s face dropped. “Why not?”
“It’s… It’s complicated.”
“It’s that woman, Katherine.” It wasn’t a question. “Please, Leah, why is bringing her to justice so important?”
Leah turned away, suddenly self-conscious. “I told you.”
“You told me some of it, but there’s more. I can tell; I’m a smart cookie.”
Leah didn’t reply.
“I know, Leah.”
“Know what?”
“You were going to leave me in the Jeep to go after her.”
Leah started to protest, but Alice held up a hand. “I saw you hesitate. Don’t worry; I’m not angry. I just want to know why. Who is this woman to you?”
Leah raised her head and looked Alice directly in the eyes. “My dad and I were running away. She could have let us go; she had the memory module.”
“But she didn’t,” said Alice, her voice soft and filled with empathy.
“No, she shot at us. I thought we’d made it, but when we got outside…” Leah’s voice trailed off, swallowed up by the pain of the memories.
She gathered herself. “My dad had been shot. I had to leave him to die.”
Alice placed her hand on Leah’s. “I’m sorry.”
Leah swallowed, fighting back tears.
“Revenge won’t make you feel any better,” said Alice
“It will, I—”
“It won’t, believe me.”
Leah shook her head in disbelief. “You said—”
“Yes, I got revenge, but it didn’t help. The hole inside me is just as big; the ache is just as deep. Maybe you’d feel better for an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually, the pain comes back.”
Tears trickled down Leah’s cheeks.
They sat in silence for several minutes, each of them deep in their own thoughts.
Eventually, Alice spoke. “Please stay.”
“I don’t…”
“I meant what I said. You have a talent for VR work. I can train you, teach you.”
“What about the colonel?”
Alice snorted. “Don’t worry about him. He may think women are best seen and not heard, but he knows we need all the help we can get. And the people above him are a lot more enlightened than he is.”
Leah smiled slightly.
“Don’t tell him what happened in the VR though. Especially not about the man who gave you the data.”
“Won’t he want to know?”
“Yes, but until we know who this mysterious benefactor is, we need to keep it between ourselves.”
“The data was real?”
“It looks like it, yes. Morgan is being held in a low-security facility, along with a couple dozen other prisoners. They have his name, but they haven’t made the connection with TRACE yet. It won’t take them long, but whoever gave you that information included access codes, security protocols, guard schedules, everything we need to break Morgan out.”
“What if it’s a trap?”
Alice shrugged. “We’re going to need to be very careful, but so far it seems legit.”
“Then why did he give it to us?”
“Well, that’s the million-uni question isn’t it?”
Leah stared at the floor, pensive.
“Help us,” said Alice, softly. “Help TRACE bring down Transport. That’s how you get revenge for your father.”
Leah considered Alice’s words. Yes, Leah wanted to kill Katherine, to make her pay for what she’d done, but there was truth to what Alice was saying. The ache in her heart, the guilt at having let down an entire city, wouldn’t be cured by Katherine’s death. It couldn’t be.
Deep down, she knew what she had to do. Her father had raised her to be a good person. He’d taught her right from wrong, and what Transport was doing was wrong. She didn’t know if he really had been part of TRACE, but he’d helped them when the time had come. So should she. She should put her quest for revenge aside and use the anger burning inside her for something more, something less selfish.
She should do that, but could she?
Leah looked at Alice again and nodded.
“I’ll stay.”
Leah sat in her room, a flat piece of steel she’d found in the station on her lap. A knife lay on the bed beside her. She trailed her fingers over the metal.
Katherine was out there somewhere right now. She could be plotting another betrayal, another bombing. Some unsuspecting daughter could be condemning her father to death by helping Katherine.
Their encounter at the data center replayed in Leah’s mind. Katherine’s face as she fired at Leah, her frustration when the pistol clicked empty. The hatred Leah had felt for the woman. The hatred was gone now, but it had been replaced by something else—a cold, hard determination.
Leah picked up the knife and continued cutting into the metal plate.
Author’s Note
Thanks for reading The Girl in the Wilderness, I hope you enjoyed it. The story was inspired by events in Michael Bunker's novel, Pennsylvania, and I'd like to thank him for writing the novel, and graciously allowing me to play in his world. If you haven't read Pennsylvania, you should.
Thank you to Jason Whited for his copy-editing of the story, and to the team at Pikko’s House and Therin Knite for proofreading. Any remaining errors are all down to me.
And finally, thank you to Adam at Around the Pages for creating fantastic covers for all three Leah King books.
The final book in Leah’s tale - The Girl in the Machine - will be available in the Fall of 2016 but you can get it completely free. Just post a review of this book on whichever site you bought it from and email me at [email protected]. I’ll send you a copy of the third and final book as soon as it’s ready.
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Philip Harris
About the Author
Philip Harris is a speculative fiction author and video game developer. Originally born near Oxford, England, he now lives on the West Coast of Canada where he spends his days developing video games and his nights writing speculative fiction - anything from horror to science fiction to fantasy.
His first publication, Letter From a Victim, appeared in the award winning magazine, Peeping Tom, in 1995. Since then he has been published in numerous magazines and anthologies including Garbled Transmissions, So Long, and Thanks for All The Brains and James Ward Kirk's Best of Horror 2013.
His science fiction novel, Glitch Mitchell and the Unseen Planet, is an homage to the old Flash Gordon serials and is available now from all good book retailers.
He has also worked as security for Darth Vader.
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Also by Philip Harris
The Leah King Trilogy
The Girl in the City
The Girl in the Wilderness
The Girl in the Machine
Novels
Glitch Mitchell and the Unseen Planet
Short Stories
Bottled Lightning
Curfew
Saviour
Only Friends
The Girl in the Wilderness
Leah King Book Two
by Philip Harris
Copyright © 2016 by Philip Harris
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author or publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living, or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 978-0-9938998-4-3
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cover design by: Around the Pages
Edited by: Jason Whited
Proofreading by: Therin Knite
Even more proofreading by: Pikko’s House
The Girl in the Wilderness (Leah King Book 2) Page 16