The office had been ransacked, he could see that much. The contents of the desktop were scattered about the floor. One of the visitors’ chairs was overturned. The top three filing cabinet drawers had been yanked open and papers were strewn over the sides and onto the floor.
A slight breeze caressed his cheek from the open window in the back wall, bringing with it the metallic tang of rain and the promise of thunder. A few stray raindrops materialized out of the darkness and spattered against the glass, exploding like vitreous insects onto a windshield. Hot air rushed in from the vent directly above his head.
“Doctor White?”
Maybe Eric had warned her, just as he had warned him earlier. He imagined her grabbing whatever she could carry and skipping town, fleeing from the police. Was that who had broken in?
Or maybe it was Arc. If they found out she had a cure—
He stepped inside, feeling suddenly short of breath. If she was gone, then he and his little brother were in big trouble. For years, Doctor White had been treating Kyle’s infection with proteins she’d secretly purified out of Jessie’s blood. Now, with Jessie gone, he realized he had been counting on the cure to save them both.
Because she’s not coming back.
He hated admitting it, even refused to, but as much as he loved her and cared for her, despite their recent vows to stay together, he knew deep down that this was something from which she might never escape. The moment she left him to return to Long Island he knew the vows were little more than words. And he couldn’t depend on words. Not where his brother was concerned.
“Records,” he said aloud, and stepped around the desk. “There have to be records. Something to—”
He nearly tripped over Doctor White’s body. It was splayed on the floor beneath the kneehole of her desk, arms and legs akimbo.
“Jesus. Oh, Jesus!”
Her face and neck were covered in bruises, four on one cheek and one on the other. Startled, he realized they formed the shape of a hand pressing down against her mouth and nose. It looked like someone had smothered her.
With shaking fingers, he searched for a pulse but couldn’t find one, though he did locate her Link beneath her body, which he used to ping the emergency dispatcher. “I’m at the hospital,” he told the woman. “Sisters of Mercy. There’s been a murder.”
They asked him for his name.
“Just send someone to Doctor White’s office now! Room 2214. It’s on the second floor.”
Behind him, the doctor’s foot twitched. Kelly didn’t notice. He did, however, hear the low moan that escaped her lips.
* * *
Hidden behind a supply cart at the end of the hall, Kelly watched the crowd of doctors and nurses pile into White’s office. He heard muffled yells, calls for an IV, vitals. Someone shouted Doctor White’s name and asked her a series of questions.
He had been so certain that she’d been murdered that when she moaned, he nearly reacted by smashing the old antique telephone into her skull. By the time he realized she wasn’t dead, the emergency code team had already been summoned and was on its way. He barely had enough time to get himself out of there before they arrived.
A gurney was angled through the open door, but it wouldn’t fit completely inside the tiny office. People were shouting instructions, some inside, others stuck out in the hallway. He saw her being placed on her back on the thin mattress, a nurse’s hand beneath her head. The gurney was backed out and quickly rolled toward the elevator.
Doctor White raised a shaking hand and pushed weakly at the attendants. Kelly could hear her protesting, but her words were scratchy and incoherent.
One man told her to calm down. “We’re taking you to the Emergency Room,” he told her. “You’ve got a fever, so we’re going to put in an IV and give you some fluids.”
He told the nurse next to him to draw some blood for some tests.
Doctor White tried once again to protest, but the words were cut off as the elevator doors shut.
Kelly straightened up, unsure about what to do next. Should he stay? Should he go home? He needed to talk with her.
The last two people emerged from the office and closed the door behind them. One fiddled with the knob until the other told him not to bother. “You need to get that checked ASAP,” he said, gesturing at the other man’s hand. “At least get it disinfected.”
“Stupid,” the other replied. He shook his head disgustedly. “What the fuck was she doing with a bloody needle in her pocket? Hate to say it, but I always thought she was a little off. Probably a damn junkie.”
His coworker patted him sympathetically on the shoulder. “I’m sure it’s nothing, but don’t wait to take that syringe down to the lab for analysis.”
Chapter 6
It was clearly no ordinary storm. Jessie could hear it rumbling around outside through the cinderblock walls, whistling through the vents above her head in the steel-trussed roof. Every once in a while the ceiling tiles would flutter from an especially strong gust. The wind would force its way into the ventilation ducts, and the flaps in the grates in the wall would slap against their metal cages. The noises did little to settle her nerves. If anything, they reminded her of how alone and vulnerable she was, making her that much more anxious to move on.
Nevertheless, she knew that leaving was out of the question for the time being. It wasn’t the rain or the darkness which discouraged her now, but the wind.
She had traveled at night before, though she preferred not to, as that’s when the dead were out in greater numbers. Even so, the risk would’ve been worth it to get a few more miles between herself and those chasing her. But with the wind being so loud, she might miss hearing any sounds warning her of trouble. No, it was better to stay put and hope that the others chasing her were doing the same.
Unable to sleep, she busied herself by trying to understand how Ashley had figured out the hack that allowed her to control Reggie and Kelly. She studied the neural implant that the girl had somehow managed to extract from the Player. The device was the size and shape of a pea and was programmed to self-destruct if tampered with, but somehow Ashley had neutralized that capability while keeping the rest of its functionality.
A pair of spider silk-thin wires trailed from one side of the device, and it was with these wires that Ash had connected it to the Link which she’d used to control the boys.
I know how to remove your implant.
The insinuation bothered Jessie, not that Ashley would try and use that bit of knowledge to negotiate for her life, but that it had almost worked.
If the implant in her head hadn’t needed to stay where it was, would she have spared Ash’s life in exchange for the knowledge?
She thought the answer might be yes.
“What was she trying to do with you?” she muttered as she stared at the tiny object pinched between her thumb and forefinger of her right hand. Was it part of the hack or something else?
Earlier, after discovering it and realizing what it was and where it came from, Jessie had yanked it from the Link to which it had been attached. The Link belonged to Ben Wolfram, the man who had been sent by the Southern States Coalition to find and retrieve her biological father, Professor Halliwell— or, as he had been known by the living refugees here, Father Heale. It hadn’t taken Jessie long to see, after the misfortune of running into him, that Ben was a complete psychopath. Thinking the syringes of her father’s blood, which she’d been transporting back here to treat Jake’s infection, were the cure, he’d stolen them from her. But after self-injecting one, he’d gone even further insane and ordered his teammates to murder Jessie and the rest of her group.
All except for Ashley, for whom he’d apparently had other plans.
Jessie smiled thinly. He’d had no idea what he was getting himself into.
Neither did you.
Anger flashed through her again, then guilt as she recognized the sinister thought in her head. For just a split second she found herself wishing the man ha
d had his way with Ashley before killing her himself.
She hated herself for thinking such a terrible thing.
It would’ve been better for everyone if he had just killed her outright.
She plucked Ben’s Link from the floor beside her and brought the two devices together in front of her eyes, as if their mere proximity might provide a clue as to what connecting them this way did. But, of course, nothing happened, and no flash of insight came to her.
The Link was very similar to hers— a plain rectangle of black plastic and metal, a nearly indestructible sheet of synthetic sapphire glass for a screen. Upon waking, it showed a familiar array of icons.
Curious, she opened up his contacts folder.
Most of the listings were identified by nonsensical alphanumeric codes, but as she scrolled through them, she noticed one labeled BLOCH.
Her half-brother’s name came to mind: Enoch Bloch. He had insisted that they call him Stephen, a vanity he’d believed would endear him to his father— their father. He had apparently gone to the most horrific of lengths to gain that attention by getting himself infected. All it had managed to do was further alienate the two men.
In a fit of pique, Stephen — Enoch — made his way off the island and gained a position within Arc. But even then his actions were selfish. He was also secretly assisting Arc’s most powerful threat, the Southern States Coalition.
The Coalition had been formed ten years ago, after several states’ requests for greater access to the tech were denied by the federal government. In a bitter but blessedly brief civil war, the states seceded. They’d been trying ever since to steal Arc’s technology.
Jessie wondered what secrets Stephen might have shared with them. The Coalition was known to be waging an ongoing aggressive campaign to build up their own military capabilities in order to take control of New Merica. At least, that’s what the Media Stream reported.
While the subject of warring nations in which both sides possessed Undead soldiers was an entertaining one in school, most people agreed that the government needed to do everything in its power to keep the technology from ever falling into outside hands. No one wanted to envision such a scenario where it might be misused, but it seemed obvious that misuse was inevitable. In fact, it had already happened.
She found the text message folder and clicked it open. There were only a handful of stored messages, and, once again, most were between Links whose owners’ identification codes were concealed. There were, however, two texts from ENOCH. The most recent one had been sent to Ben’s Link almost a month prior, from about a week before Jessie had run into him. It said simply:
<< PACKAGE DELIVERED. WAITING PICKUP. >>
She didn’t know to what it referred. Was it the file now on her Link?
The second text was nearly six months old, and it didn’t take long for Jessie to realize that it was this message which Ashley had used to figure out how to deactivate and extract an implant device:
<< EMPLOY RAPID SUCCXN EM PULSE X2 W/IN 5MIN >>
<< 30MIN WNDW B4 MPLNT REBOOT >>
<< CAUXN! 3RD PULSE MAY SCRMBL FRMWR >>
It seemed almost too simple: Two blasts from an EM pistol within minutes of each other. They probably forced the implant to completely shut down, then reboot. By then the device would have already been extracted.
And suddenly it became clear to her why the EM pistols the Necrotics Crimes officers like her brother carried contained only enough charge to fire once every thirty minutes. It had always seemed like an arbitrary and unnecessarily dangerous limitation, certainly one that could be easily remedied with a more powerful charging system. But Arc Tech was the weapon’s developer and sole manufacturer, so they controlled the specs and approved any improvements. They clearly didn’t want a weapon that could destroy the implant or expose it to theft.
So where had Ashley gotten a pair of EM pistols, enough for two shots in rapid succession?
Jessie dug through the girl’s backpack and found one of the weapons. She assumed it had once belonged to Ben; most of the equipment inside the bag was his. The pistol’s housing had been cracked open, then wired back together again. Jessie pointed it at the wall and pulled the trigger.
She could feel the EM pulse behind her eyes, a mild itch and a sensation of fullness, as if her brain had swelled slightly. The discomfort quickly receded. If she’d been aiming the pistol toward herself, she’d be unconscious for the next half hour.
She took aim a second time and squeezed. Nothing happened. There was no soft pop or sensation. The weapon was out of juice.
The recharge dial on the barrel indicated that the time before next discharge was twenty-nine minutes.
Whatever Ashley had done to bypass the power restriction, she’d apparently removed it again. The modification had served its purpose.
Jessie searched through the remaining texts on Ben’s Link, but they were all scrambled, presumably encrypted. One very recent text, however, contained no characters at all, only an attached image. At first, she didn’t understand what it was. It appeared to be some sort of wiring schematic. She zoomed in on a notation at the very bottom:
ACCESS TO iVZ CODEX VIA ACDI BACKDOOR: DIRECT HARDWIRE IMPLANT-CONTROL CONSOLE REQUIRED. TO BYPASS DEVICE FIRMWARE FOR CONTROL EXECUTION, INPUT IMPLANT REGISTERED NAME TO SELECT IDENTIFIER CODE.
This was it. These were the instructions Ashley had used to gain access to Reggie’s and Kelly’s implants and assume control of their bodies. If not for the firewall her grandfather had installed in Jessie’s implant, Ash would’ve done the same to her, too.
The backdoor allowed access through what was known as the Asynchronous Communications Device Interface. ACDI was an architectural construct, and it was the foundation upon which the entire iVZ codex was built.
Architecture had been Micah’s specialty.
Had he written the firewall?
It seemed likely. This had his signature all over it.
Chapter 7
Blackness, that’s what Jessie saw. Nothing but a vast, unbroken emptiness. And silence. There was nothing here which suggested her mother was alive.
“Mom?” she said, her voice shaking.
Nothing.
She wouldn’t hear you, even if she were alive.
“She is alive,” Jessie said, as if voicing it aloud might make it true.
Fool. Don’t believe it. Don’t let Ashley get to you.
“Mom?”
She tried to make her move like she might make a Player move in The Game. She tried to make her at least open her eyes. But the darkness continued unabated. She raised her hand. She stood up. But there was nothing.
That’s because she’s dead.
Reluctantly, Jessie removed the goggles from her head and switched the gaming console off. She didn’t want to admit that she was terribly disappointed, both in the result and in herself for falling for Ashley’s trick. The girl must have known Jessie would try. Even from beyond the grave, she still managed to torment her.
Jessie wanted to hurl the headgear across the room. Rage built up inside of her, rage and disappointment, threatening to make her lose control like she had earlier.
She knew what she’d just done was wrong, and it made her even angrier. She’d known how hypocritical she was being, even as she programmed the identifier into the gaming console. Nevertheless, she had convinced herself that what she was doing was okay. All she was doing was checking. She wasn’t going to actually make her mother do anything.
Except she had tried, hadn’t she?
It had taken her the better part of an hour to figure out the schematics, another twenty minutes as she painstakingly reconnected the delicate wires from the implant and gained access to the inner workings of the codex. Once inside, she located the identifier code database, which consisted of millions upon millions of listings. But finding the right one had been as simple as inputting her mother’s maiden name and birth date. It was so easy. The code was right there along with every other,
just waiting for anyone to steal.
Even her grandfather’s.
But it had all been for naught. The question of her mother’s status still hadn’t been answered. The blackness and silence had told her nothing. All she had done was to prove that Ashley was stronger and smarter than she was.
She supposed there was something positive to be gleaned from the brief connection she’d made. If her mother really was dead, then she hadn’t yet been conscripted. She wasn’t mucking about in some sewer or standing guard in some desolate outpost. Not yet, anyway.
It would’ve been a terrible irony if they’d turned her into a Player and set her here to find and kill Jessie. If that happened, would she be able to stop the thing that had once been her mother? Would she have the will to snap her neck?
She set the goggles back into the duffle, then extracted Ben’s Link from its socket in the console. The implant dangled loosely to one side. She carefully wrapped the wires and set the unit inside.
The shoulder where Ashley had bitten her was throbbing again. She reached up and rubbed it absently. Searching through the rest of Ashley’s backpack, she found a computer tablet and set it aside to check later. There was also a tube of wound ointment — probably from Ben or one of his people — and she applied the greasy medicine liberally over the open sores. It took the edge off the pain. The stiffness, however, remained.
A glance at her Link told her it was nearly midnight.
She might be asleep.
But sleep hadn’t prevented Ashley from controlling Reggie. It would not have prevented Jessie from controlling her mother.
She was tempted to try again, but this time with one of the others, Eric or Kelly, just to prove that the connection could be made and was working as the schematic said it should. Surely they’d understand.
S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) Page 81