“Listen, if this all takes more than another day, I’m going to want to have Jamie’s Navi removed. I can’t risk him getting any worse.”
She doesn’t answer, but I’m confident that she heard me.
I pace for a few more moments and then ask, “Is there something I can do to help?”
“Get me the list of Navi IDs for the other patients.”
I nod and message our nurse, Honor Thompson, with the request.
About thirty minutes later, Mila says, “It would be easier for me to do this if I could pinpoint some details about the installation of the Navis, since that’s how the nanobots are usually deployed. Is there an installation technician I can talk to?”
“They already said there wasn’t anyone,” I reply. “But let me ask again.”
The nurses station takes a good forty-five minutes to reply, but around midnight, we finally have a young technician bring the jet injector to Mila. He’s not an installation technician, but he’s familiar enough with the device to show it to her. He lets her handle it and review the specifications that scroll across the tiny screen on the side of the device.
I note that he’s rubbing his forehead like I am. “You don’t look so good,” I comment.
“Yeah, I’m about done for,” he answers. “Guess I’m coming down with something. Got headaches and maybe some fever. Going back home after this.” He turns back to Mila. “Did you get what you needed?”
“It would be good if I could hang on to it for an hour or two,” she says.
“Sure,” he says with a shrug. “I mean, my boss wouldn’t be happy, but don’t tell anybody.” He winks, briefly summoning up enough energy to flirt, but Mila doesn’t even seem to notice.
We both work until three-thirty in the morning, when Mila snaps her laptop shut and says, “My effectiveness has dwindled past the point of diminishing returns. I need to sleep.”
That happened to me about an hour ago. This kind of Navi work is a lot harder to concentrate on than nursing, and the migraines make it even worse. Instead of helping, I’ve been watching the news about HAD. There’s really nothing new. More schools and business are being shut down by the day. The medication shortages I found out about this morning are just hitting the news.
Now that I’m really thinking about it, I wonder what it’s like inside those detention facilities if there are no sedatives. Are they tying people to stakes like dogs and letting them flail and scream? It would be Bedlam, but I can’t figure out what other choice they would have. It’s horrifying.
“How close are we?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Mila says, not looking at me as she stretches and rubs her eyes.
We walk out together, and for the first time, she says “Good night” as we approach our cars.
“Good night to you, too,” I say. “Listen, I know you have a real job, too, but is there any way you can take some time off to keep working on this? I think you get how important this is… to a lot of people.”
She hesitates at her car door. Then she says, “I guess I can. None of my projects at work are urgent, and I have time off available.”
I let out a breath. “Thank you,” I say.
Her expression is inscrutable as she looks out into the distance. “Thank me when I’m able to help,” she says.
When Mila gets home, she pets cat-Phoebe for a few minutes and brews more hot tea. Then she opens her laptop again, despite her bloodshot eyes. She pulls up the email from Jerry Armstead at the nursing home and studies the photos of the men who took her mother away. They are, unmistakably, Neck and Televangelist.
Also included in the photos is the nurse. Her face is turned partly away from the camera, but Mila knows her instantly. It’s Nurse Thompson from the hospital they’re in right now.
Mila rubs her hands over her face. “Great,” she whispers.
Next, Mila looks at the photo of the van. A portion of the license plate is visible: X89-Z.
She thinks for a few minutes, tapping her fingernails on her keyboard as she gazes into the distance. Then she opens a browser window and navigates to the website for Atlanta’s Metro system. She finds the profiles of the executive board. She scans through the profiles until she locates a middle-aged woman: Drew Allison, VP of Marketing.
She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and uses her computer to call the helpdesk number at the bottom of the browser window.
“This is Drew Allison.” Her tone has become demanding. “I’m in San Diego for business, and for whatever reason, my Navi won’t log me in to the company network so I can get my business email. This is important. I have a big meeting in the morning. It’s saying my password is out of date, which makes no sense at all. I even tried going to the intranet manually, and it’s not letting me in. Do I even have the right URL for the intranet for when I’m off-site? I mean, I have nothing at all saved here. It’s like my Navi forgot I even work for this damn company.”
The helpdesk technician is eager to assist. He walks her through the URL for the intranet, supplies her forgotten username, and helps her reset the password. He assures her that her Navi appears to be working correctly from what he can see on his end, and he can’t explain why she’s not seeing email messages on her end. He suggests that she visit the helpdesk at the San Diego office in the morning.
Mila thanks him and then uses her new credentials to log into the company intranet. With her advanced access levels as a company executive, she’s soon searching the Metro camera logs for the van with the X89-Z license plate.
After a while, she gets up to refill her mug with more hot water and brew more tea.
She’s yawning deeply when she finally finds the full license plate number.
From there, she pays $30 to run a routine license-plate lookup online. The search gives her the name of the owner of the van. It’s Richard Sarran.
A quick search on his name reveals his online profile, complete with photo, confirming that Richard Sarran is Neck.
Further searches on Richard Sarran turn up more pictures—one of them with Televangelist. The name on the caption is Julian Overbridge. They both work for a company called Peake International.
Mila rubs her eyes and opens the document with notes from the jet injector used for Navi installations. While at the hospital, she copied down a username and password and a URL. She types the URL into her browser window and logs in with the copied credentials, bypassing the security screen that says, “Warning! Authorized personnel only. Unauthorized access is a violation of HIPAA and federal data security laws and carries a mandatory prison sentence of ten years.”
She types in Richard Sarran and then Julian Overbridge.
A few minutes later, she copies down two Navi IDs.
Neck is Richard Sarran, Navi ID AX02094835.
Televangelist is Julian Overbridge, Navi ID LT05465888.
She stops and taps her fingertips on her keyboard again. Then she searches for Dr. Green at Grady Hospital. She quickly finds his public profile, confirms his full name, and then does some additional research.
Fifteen minutes later, she finds and skims a paper published in a medical journal. Dr. Green and two doctors associated with Peake International did a joint research project on motivation in low-dollar purchasing decisions.
A search on Nurse Honor Thompson shows an association with Waverly Corp, and another twenty minutes of research turns up numerous joint projects between Waverly Corp and Peake International.
Mila glances at the front windows. Dawn has begun to peek in beneath her living room drapes. She stretches, finishes her cup of tea, and goes to bed.
It’s early afternoon on Wednesday. Mila is already in the hospital room, working on her silver laptop, a thermos of hot tea at her side, when Phoebe walks in. As soon as Mila glances up at the other woman, her forehead wrinkles. Something about Phoebe’s face is wrong. It’s slack and staring.
Phoebe asks, “How’s Jamie doing?” Her voice is unusually flat.
Mila gla
nces over at Jamie, who appears to be the same as ever—lost in Naviland and perfectly happy to be there.
Phoebe asks again, “How’s Jamie?” But she stares past Mila as if she isn’t there.
“See for yourself,” Mila says, gesturing toward him.
Phoebe glances at her brother, seemingly without recognition. She walks across the room and then back again, muttering under her breath.
Mila tries to work but keeps glancing back at the other woman. She inclines her head as if trying to make out Phoebe’s words.
“What are you doing?” Mila finally asks.
“Worrying about Jamie, mostly. And wondering about…” She doesn’t finish her sentence. Her hands go up to her hair in an uncharacteristic, repetitive motion.
Mila snaps her laptop shut and stares intently at the meandering woman as if trying to solve a crossword puzzle. “Are you feeling okay?”
“I feel funny. My stomach. What are you doing here?”
Mila’s eyes narrow. “You didn’t drive here, did you?”
“No. Smartcar. What are you doing here?”
Mila lets out a breath. She puts her head in her hands for a moment. “You don’t remember.”
“I don’t remember. I’m…” Phoebe’s voice trails off.
Mila’s face sags. “Oh God.”
Phoebe says, “Okay.” She stops walking and turns toward Mila. Her gaze doesn’t quite make it to Mila’s face but stops short, staring out into the far distance with such intensity that Mila turns to look behind her.
Slowly, Phoebe asks, as if thinking of it for the first time, “How’s Jamie doing? I haven’t seen him…”
Mila runs her hand through her hair. “Please sit down. I need to fix this. Somehow.” She opens her laptop, finds the name “Phebe Bernhart,” taps “Request access,” and looks at Phoebe, who’s still standing motionless in the center of the room, still staring at that same place. “Your name is misspelled in the system.”
“No, it isn’t,” Phoebe says. The statement restarts her slow movement across the room. “It’s P-H-E-B-E. But that’s a Biblical name. I don’t like it spelled that way. I changed it when I moved here. Phebe Esther is my full name. I hate it. Also, my head hurts.”
“Okay, Phebe Esther, can you please approve my access request? And sit down?”
“I’m watching myself sit down,” Phoebe says as she takes a seat. “It feels weird. Like I’m not in there.”
“Can you please watch yourself approve my access request?”
“Okay.” The woman looks down at the floor sadly. “I’m worried about Jamie.”
“I know,” Mila says through gritted teeth. “Please watch yourself sit quietly now.”
Mila works on her laptop, urgency in her movements. Occasionally, she casts concerned looks at Phoebe, who stares into the distance, her face still slack and her gaze still fixed far into the distance.
After about half an hour, Phoebe’s eyes glaze, and she slowly begins to slip off the daybed toward the floor.
Mila’s eyes widen. “Oh no!”
Phoebe slips onto the floor on her left side. Then her right hand and arm begin to jerk convulsively. Mila jumps up, setting her laptop aside, and pulls Phoebe away from the hard base of Jamie’s hospital bed. At the same time, she looks around the room, but she doesn’t find what she’s looking for. “Jamie! Can you call for a nurse right now, please? Tell them someone is having a seizure.”
“Okay,” Jamie says. “Really? A seizure?” His gaze focuses on the woman on the floor, and his face brightens with excitement.
Phoebe jerks spasmodically along the length of her entire body, and Mila kneels beside her, watching, her face serious. She grabs the blanket from off Jamie’s bed, folds it, and carefully slips it under and around Phoebe’s head.
Phoebe makes guttural sounds as her back arches. Mila grabs her laptop and sits next to Phoebe to resume her work, but with increased urgency. “Come on, come on!” she says to her machine.
“Is she gonna die?” Jamie asks with interest.
“Not if I can help it,” Mila says tersely.
“What are you doing on your laptop?” Jamie asks.
“Trying to stop whatever her Navi is doing to her.”
Jamie laughs. “Her Navi is doing that? Really?”
Mila doesn’t answer.
“That’s so weird,” Jamie says. He studies the jerking form on the floor for a moment. “It looks so freaky, her body doing that. I bet it feels crazy.”
Mila continues to work, her fingers tapping rapidly. “Did you call the nurse?”
“Yup. When I was a kid, I had a friend who had seizures. Until they fixed him, I mean. As long as they’re breathing and it doesn’t last more than five minutes, they’ll be fine. Unless they die. Sometimes they die.” He consults his Navi. “It’s been three and a half minutes.”
“This isn’t a typical seizure. Be quiet so I can concentrate.”
“Okay.”
Mila works furiously as another minute ticks by.
Phoebe’s face has turned dark red, but the guttural gasping sounds still come.
The door opens and a code team steps in, but the doctor sizes up the situation quickly and holds them back. No doubt they discuss the situation and their options via Navi, but no one speaks aloud.
Mila hits “enter,” and code runs by on her screen too fast to track. She types another series of commands and then pushes her laptop aside.
Phoebe’s body begins to relax, and at last, she draws a full breath. Her eyes close. Her limbs settle.
Mila takes a long, deep breath of her own.
“Guess the fun’s over,” Jamie says. “Oh, well.”
The medical personnel step in and perform a rapid, silent evaluation of Phoebe’s vital signs. Partway through, Phoebe’s eyelids flutter open, and she moans.
When they finish, the doctor looks at Mila, recognizes that she doesn’t have a Navi, and speaks aloud. “She should be okay soon. She may have some disorientation for up to an hour. Are you a friend or a family member?”
Mila hesitates for the span of a breath. “Friend.”
“Do you know if she’s ever been diagnosed with epilepsy or any other seizure disorder?”
“No.”
“Can you give me her full name so we can check her medical records? Normally, we would find it out from her Navi, but since she doesn’t have one…”
“Phebe Esther Bernhart.” Mila spells out each name for them.
Jamie perks up. “She does, too, have a Navi.” He looks at his older sister, and then his expression shifts to puzzlement. “Usually.”
The doctor looks back and forth from Jamie to Phoebe to Mila.
“Temporarily deactivated,” Mila says.
“I see,” the doctor says, although his blank expression suggests that he doesn’t. He looks at the data in his display for a moment and then reports, “It’s important that she see a neurologist right away and not operate a manual-drive car until she does. Seizures are dangerous but treatable. We would set up an auto-reminder for her to make an appointment, but since she doesn’t have a Navi, it would be good for you to remind her later today and again tomorrow. She wouldn’t remember if we told her now.”
“Understood,” Mila says.
The team steps out of the room.
Only Phoebe’s head moves. The rest of her body is limp with exhaustion. She looks over at Mila, and something in her gaze seems pleading. It draws Mila as if it were magnetic, and she slides closer. Phoebe reaches out one hand for her, and without hesitation, Mila takes her into her arms.
Tears run down Phoebe’s cheeks. She tries to speak, but her words are garbled.
Mila strokes Phoebe’s hair with a trembling hand, smoothing it away from her forehead. “I’m so sorry.” Tears appear in Mila’s eyes, but she blinks them away. “This is my fault. I should have seen it coming sooner.”
Phoebe moans. Between long, slow blinks, her gaze traces Mila’s face. Mila rocks her sl
owly. Phoebe’s eyes flutter closed, and their breathing rhythms slow, almost coming into sync. When Mila shifts to wipe her eyes, Phoebe starts to try to pull herself into a sitting position. Her right arm gives way. Mila helps her up, and the two women sit facing each other. Then, gradually, Phoebe sags forward onto Mila’s shoulder, back into her embrace. “So… sleepy,” Phoebe whispers.
“Why don’t you take a nap, then?” Mila suggests softly. “I can help you onto the fold-out bed.”
“Okay.”
A few moments later, Mila gently lays a blanket over Phoebe, whose eyes have already closed. Then Mila sits beside her, wipes her eyes, picks up her laptop, and resumes working.
Shortly before ten o’clock, Mila gets up and goes to the telephone at the nurse’s station in the hallway.
“Hello?” The same man’s voice.
“I just got an email telling me to call.”
“Is Ms. Bernhart dead?”
Mila clenches her teeth. “Sorry to disappoint you, but no.”
“Her Navi is offline.”
“I shut it down temporarily.”
Silence.
“I know that you tried to kill her. And I guess I didn’t give you enough credit. I didn’t think you could affect individual Navis on command. But I stopped you anyway. That puts us at something of an impasse, doesn’t it?”
Another pause. Then the man says, “We didn’t try to kill her. But let me remind you of why you want to cooperate with us, no matter what happens.”
Mrs. Bremer’s voice comes through.
“Hello? Who’s there?”
“Mom?” Mila straightens up. “It’s Mila.”
“Mila? Darling, it’s so nice to hear from you. Oh, how is school going, sweetheart?”
Mila’s voice catches and her eyes glisten. “It’s going fine, Mom. None of these classes are hard for me.”
“I know, sweetheart. You are so smart. You are as smart as your father was, and he was a brilliant man. Brilliant. He would have talked circles around me if I didn’t talk so much in general.” She chuckles.
Mila tries to smile. “I know, Mom. You always tell me.”
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