Jessie shook her head and winced at the stiffness in her neck. She took a sip of the hot liquid but didn’t really taste it, just grateful for the way it warmed her. She stared into the cup and tried to gather her thoughts, but they remained as muddled as ever.
“You pinged me this morning, Jess,” Reggie said. “Remember?”
She frowned at him in concentration, the first hint of something niggling the back of her mind. What was it?
Outbreaks. Rumors.
Something about Kelly.
And Micah.
An image of her Link, the marriage proposal.
Jacker’s Code.
She choked, coughed. “Too sweet,” she said, covering her shock. Reggie took the cup.
“I’ll make some more,” Kelly said, taking the tea and getting to his feet. “Less sugar this time.” He threw Reggie a worried glance before leaving the room.
“So, you want to tell me what’s going on?” Reggie whispered. His eyes flicked to the empty doorway to the hall. “What the hell is going on with you two? You’re acting like he has leprosy.”
“I I’m not sure.”
“You told me to come after school and not to bring Kelly.”
And then it all came back to her in a mad rush: yesterday’s trip to the capitol, the screening, her search using her grandfather’s old computer for a file that didn’t belong.
Finding it. Realizing everything Kelly’d been telling her was lies.
“The code,” she whispered. “The Jacker’s code.”
It was in the last place she would ever have thought to look: embedded within the photo Kelly had sent to her that day they’d broken onto Long Island.
The bastard.
“What?” Reggie asked, shaking his head.
“Why did you bring him?” Jessie hissed.
“Kelly? I didn’t. I came alone. Knocked on the door, pinged, but you didn’t answer. It was open. When I found you downstairs, I had to ping Kelly. I had no choice.”
Jessie closed her eyes and exhaled slowly, trying to relax. It was difficult. At least it had been Reg who’d found her. She smiled to herself, knowing how embarrassed he would’ve been, modestly covering her up. His macho demeanor was just an act. Inside, he was such a little kid.
“He was on his way anyway,” Reggie continued. “Got here not two or three minutes after I pinged him.”
And now she sensed the need to tell Reggie everything before Kelly returned from the kitchen.
“I found a file,” she whispered. “On my Link.”
His eyebrows raised, then fell in confusion.
“Remember what Micah said, right before he was—?” She stopped, swallowed.
He nodded. “I remember. Go on.”
“It was hidden. Micah was telling the truth. He wasn’t working for the SSC. Kelly was.”
Reggie jerked away from her, shaking his head. “What? No.”
They could hear Kelly puttering around in the kitchen, the ding of the microwave, a drawer closing.
“Look, there’s not enough time to explain everything,” Jessie whispered. “Just, whatever this file is, I think it’s screwing up my implant, blocking it somehow.”
“How do you know?”
“When I went to Citizen Registration yesterday—”
“You went to Hartford?” Kelly asked. He was standing in the doorway, the cup in one hand, a spoon and the sugar bowl in the other. “Yesterday?”
Both Jessie and Reggie jumped. Nobody spoke for several seconds, they just stared at each other in turn.
“Um, yeah,” Jessie finally said, measuring her words carefully. “They pinged and said I had to go in because I missed the screening at school.”
Kelly’s face went red. He stepped in looking angry.
“Whoa, hey, brah,” Reggie said, getting to his feet. “Calm dow—”
Kelly swept Reggie’s arm out of the way and stepped toward Jessie. Hot tea sloshed over his hand and he hissed in pain, but his gaze never left hers.
“What happened?” he demanded. “Tell me!”
“Nothing! I—”
“It’s not nothing!” He set the items down on the table, then reached over and took hold of her arms. Jessie tried to pull away, her eyes widening in fright.
“Kelly, you’re scaring her.”
“Back off, Reggie!” Kelly roared. His face was twisted, unrecognizable.
Before Jessie could stop him, he reached around to the back of her neck and pressed his fingertips to the skin there.
“Stop it! Get away from me!” She pushed his arms away. “I s-said nothing happened. They screened my Link and implant devices. That’s all.”
“And?”
“And what? Nothing. They’re both functional. As in not rejected.”
Reggie gave a start. “Your implant? Not rejected? I’m confused.”
“I don’t know,” Jessie screamed. “I don’t understand it either!”
She turned her eyes onto Kelly’s face. And suddenly she knew that she was right because there was no surprise there by her admission.
“Jessie,” he whispered. He took a deep breath. “I wish I’d known. I would’ve taken you to Hartford myself.”
She didn’t answer. Behind him, she could see Reggie blinking, his gaze passing from one to the other and his face twisted in confusion.
“What did they say?”
“There’s a glitch,” she answered. She spoke slowly now, calmly. There was still no glimmer of surprise in Kelly’s face, only defeat. “Something wrong with the devices. Something’s blocking how they communicate with the network.” She felt Kelly tense up.
“Can they fix it?” Reggie asked.
“This is ridiculous!” Kelly exploded. “It doesn’t need to be fixed!”
“Dude, what the hell is going on?” Reggie demanded.
Jessie stepped away. Kelly followed, keeping the distance between them the same. They faced each other, he a couple inches taller. Jessie wondered if he could see her shaking. “Yeah, Kelly, why don’t you tell us what’s going on?”
“I don’t know!” he cried. He stepped away, stumbled, then circled behind Reggie. “I I have to go.”
“Whoa, dude. We’re right in the middle of—”
“It’s Kyle! I forgot about Kyle. At the hospital.”
“What?” Reggie exclaimed. He tried to grab Kelly’s arm. “Are you freaking kidding me?”
“Let him go,” Jessie whispered.
After the front door closed, she watched him from the window, made sure he really was leaving. Then she went into the kitchen to get a glass of water. She was feeling jittery again, like the floor might suddenly give beneath her or the walls might collapse or float away. Reggie trailed after her, gawping, speechless. Jessie wanted to tell him everything, but now she wasn’t sure it would be wise. She thought she’d known Kelly. Could she trust Reggie?
She went and stood at the sink and tried to make the trembling go away, but it just seemed to get worse.
Reggie placed a meaty hand gently on her arm. “Jessie, it’s me. Talk to me.”
She looked up and into his eyes and instantly knew that she wanted him to know. She needed him to know.
So she told him.
‡ ‡ ‡
Chapter 16
“I don’t get it,” Reggie said, staring at the file directory window on the computer screen. “Why would Kelly do something like this? And what the hell could it be? It’s, like, freaking massive. Definitely not just a photo.”
Jessie slumped down in her grandfather’s chair and shook her head. She’d taken another dose of aspirin and was grateful for the relief it brought. But there was no way any medicine could touch the real pain inside of her.
She was scared. Terrified. The world around her had gone from a strange dream of denial to a terrifying nightmare. And she just couldn’t seem to wake up out of it.
“How could he do this to you?”
She could see the betrayal in Reggie’s eyes and knew
he saw the same in hers. She was glad she’d decided to confide in him, but also afraid of what he might do in response.
You knew he’d be like this. That’s why you told him. You wanted him to know, remember?
“All these years . . . .” Reggie began, but then he stopped and just sat there on the edge of the desk shaking his head. “I just can’t believe it.”
Jessie nodded. Kelly had professed his love for her since he was thirteen, long before either of them even knew what love was. He had never once abandoned her, not even when she had abandoned him last summer.
Retribution?
The thought left an even worse taste in her mouth. Could Kelly have held a secret grudge that long?
It just didn’t seem possible. It wasn’t like him. With Kelly, what you saw was what you got. He’d always been that way, solid and consistent. Like a rock. Just like he’d always been Kyle’s rock.
But now all of that was put into doubt. Now she feared him more than she had ever feared anything else in her life. How could that be?
“You checked the whole drive?” Reggie asked. He was scrolling through her other files.
“Um, excuse me!” Jessie said, pushing him away from the computer. “There’s private stuff on there!”
“Ooh, nekkid selfies?” he said, but his face flushed, and he looked away. “Sorry, I didn’t mean— I mean, that was—”
The redness on his face made her smile. Despite everything, it felt good to get rid of some of the tension, even if it was the tiniest of releases.
“Why don’t you just delete the file?” he asked.
She turned back to it. “I tried. I couldn’t do anything.”
“What do you mean? Just swipe it into the trash.”
“Yeah, duh. I tried that. I also tried transferring it to my grandfather’s computer. Tried copying it, opening it. It won’t do anything, just stays right there like a big, fat—”
“Booger.”
Jessie didn’t laugh this time.
“Man, that’s not good. Not good at all.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his own Link. “Do you think maybe Kelly . . . ?”
Jessie leaned over and watched as he swapped out the Links and did a quick check of the directory on his. “There’s nothing like that on mine,” he said. “I mean, here’s the pic Kelly sent me earlier that same day.” He showed her an image of the five of them standing around, their wetsuits peeled off their torsos, arms and shoulders and chests glistening from the water they’d just come out of. “But the file size is no bigger than any other photo.”
She saw why Kelly had sent the image to Reggie, and why Reggie had kept it: In the center stood Ashley, the sunlight shining brilliantly off her auburn hair. On her face was a huge grin, her teeth flashing white. She was standing beneath an umbrella she’d found inside the trunk of an abandoned car, the fabric in tatters and the canopy’s spider legs radiating out.
A flash of jealousy passed through Jessie. Ashley was absolutely radiant, desirable. But grief quickly followed.
“That was right before we all split up that day,” she whispered. “Before Micah told us about his tracking app and left to find a node to connect to. Kelly and I got into a fight. I stayed behind with Jake. Oh, Christ, what have I done?”
“You didn’t do anything,” Reggie said. “Kelly did.”
Jessie reached over and pushed the Link away. She didn’t want to see anymore. The memory hurt too much. But Reggie was already back to searching his files.
“Here’s the little program Micah sent, the one you came up with. Remember?” He exhaled through his teeth. It was the failsafe override proxy. “Saved my life.” He buried his face in his hands. “Do you think Micah was innocent then?”
Jessie gave a quick nod.
A strangled cry rose from deep inside Reggie’s throat. He stood up and ripped the cord out of his Link and hurled the device at the wall, roaring in pain. The device embedded itself in the plaster.
“Reggie!” Jessie cried. She went over and pulled it out and dusted it off.
“Sorry, Jess. I’ll fix the wall.”
“I don’t give a crap about the wall. It’s your Link I’m worried about. You’re dead if it breaks again. Right now, I need you.”
He took the Link from her, but didn’t reply, and for just a moment she thought she saw in his eyes a look of homicidal rage. A month ago, she would have sworn before a court of law that Reggie wasn’t capable of inflicting serious bodily harm on anyone. Although it was true that he loved to kill zombies in Zpocalypto, and while he might get a little rough with people sometimes, she knew he’d never intentionally cause anyone pain. Not even Kelly, and they had always been the two most competitive people in their group.
But he’d changed since Ashley’s death. Now she saw something new in him, something dangerous. Right now, right at this moment, Reggie looked like he wanted to kill Kelly.
He slipped the Link into his pocket.
“You should actually see if you can get your devices replaced,” she told him. “That would get rid of the failsafe in your implant.”
He shrugged, then immediately brightened. “That’s how you get rid of that file on your Link.”
Jessie sniffed. Yesterday, getting new devices had scared the hell out of her. Today, she’d love nothing more. But she knew it would solve nothing.
“Kelly’d just resend the file to the new Link,” she said. “I need to find out what it is first and why he put it there.” She sighed. “I just wish Micah were still around so I could ask him. I’m sure he’d be able to hack into it.”
“Knowing Micah, he’d just reprogram it, turn it into a zombie wearing a tutu with a lightsaber. Remember how he hacked into Kelly’s Zpocalypto account and turned all of his avatars into ugly girls?”
“I thought you did that.”
“Me? Dude, Micah was the mastermind behind all of my stunts, not me. I’m just a big galoot, just like they always said I was.”
“You’re not a galoot.”
Jessie stood up and her joints cracked loud enough for Reggie to smile at her.
She turned off the computer. “Tomorrow, I’m going to ping CR and request that both my implant and Link be replaced. Screw this.”
“And Kelly?”
She sighed. “I don’t know.”
She couldn’t just throw away all those years together, the closeness, the trust.
Sentimentality will get you killed.
That was something her grandfather always used to say to Eric, whenever Eric complained that people just didn’t care to understand the Omegas better. “To people, they’re just machines,” Eric’d snipe. “When they break, we throw them away and get a new one.” He would say that if we could just understand the Undead a little better, then—
Then what? Grandpa would always interrupt him, always with that infuriatingly bland look on his face, as if he really wasn’t all that interested in the conversation and was just participating out of courtesy. The truth was, Grandpa wasn’t just interested in the conversation, he was recording it in his mind. Analyzing and plotting. Deciding how the information fit into his narrow world view. If we understood the Undead better, she could almost hear him saying, do you know what we would do?
“Kill them,” she whispered to herself. “Kill them all before they kill us.”
Beside her, deep in thought, Reggie nodded.
‡ ‡ ‡
Chapter 17
“Jessie?” Eric shouted, slamming through the front door. “Jess? Where are you?”
“We’re in the kitchen, brah,” Reggie called.
Eric appeared in the doorway, his face flushed, his coat sprinkled with silver droplets from the light rain which had begun to fall. He hurried over to Jessie’s side, placed a hand on her shoulder and looked down into her face. “What happened?”
“Nothing. I’m fine,” she assured him, but she winced when his fingers brushed her cheek. Her skin everywhere felt hypersensitive. “I just fainted. I�
��m fine now.”
Eric glanced at Reggie, who crossed his arms and shrugged.
“She fell down the basement stairs.”
Jessie glared at him, but he just shrugged again.
“Nothing’s broken. We checked.”
“We?”
“Kelly was here.”
“He left?” Eric frowned, confused. He slipped off his jacket and placed it over the back of the empty chair beside Jessie, then sat down. “Why?”
Jessie opened her mouth. “Because he’s an asshole,” she was going to say.
“Kyle’s in the hospital,” Reggie explained. “Kelly was here for a while, but left after we figured out Jessie was okay.”
“Are you okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” Reggie answered for her. “Well, except you’re going to need a new clothes basket, ‘cause the one you got’s trashed.”
Eric gave Reggie a confused look. When he swallowed, his throat made an audible click. He turned back to Jessie, clearly not in the mood for humor. “I shouldn’t have left you this morning. You said you were sick. You asked me to stay. Damn it! Why didn’t I listen?”
“It’s not your fault. I was actually feeling better after you left. I decided to clean the house. I guess I overdid it.”
Reggie pushed himself away from the table and stood up. “Think I’ll go.” He bent down and kissed Jessie on the top of her head, something he’d never done before, and squeezed her shoulder gently. “Ping me later,” he told her, holding up his Link.
Jessie met his eyes and nodded. “Thanks for everything.”
“No problem, sister. Get some rest.”
After he left, Jessie briefly explained that she’d tired herself out cleaning and fell down the cellar steps. She didn’t tell him that she thought she’d heard phantom voices down there. And she didn’t say anything about Kelly and the file on her Link. She just didn’t know how to tell her brother that the man she had married wasn’t who they all thought he was. She felt . . . embarrassed, like it was her fault.
And the voices had only been her imagination. After all, no one was down there. Reggie or Kelly would have seen them.
S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) Page 12