The McCall Initiative Episode 1.1: Deception

by Lisa Nowak

Chapter 4

  Piper

  The White Eagle Saloon, Saturday, May 19, 2063

  All night long, my mind bobs to the surface of consciousness, and I will myself back into oblivion, hoping the next time I wake up, this will all just be a nightmare. Eventually, the trick stops working. A little light seeps through the overgrown bushes around the side door to tell me it’s morning. I lie on the bare, funky-smelling mattress, paralyzed by my new reality as I stare at the ceiling and listen to Bailey snore.

  The scene from last night keeps replaying in my mind, but no matter how many times I go over it, I can’t change it. What if I never see Mom or Nick or Grandpa again? A tightness grips my chest, making it hard to breathe. It’s not the first time I’ve been through this. I guess I should be grateful that at least now there’s hope, even if it’s slim. Three-and-a-half years ago, I wasn’t so lucky.

  Memories rush in to ambush me. Rain pounding down outside, the smell of turkey filling the house, Dad telling me he’ll be back in an hour, and that I can’t go with him to pick up Grandma and Grandpa because I have to help Mom with Thanksgiving dinner.

  We didn’t really worry when that hour stretched into two, but then there was a knock at the door. The cop standing on our front porch told us there’d been an accident. We forgot the turkey in our hurry to get to the hospital, where we sat up all night. But there’s only so much anyone can do when things are that bad. The next day, the father who’d been my whole world—who’d urged me to follow my dream of being a doctor the way he wished he had—died.

  For weeks, the rest didn’t matter. The only thing I could think about was the chasm of emptiness I was drowning in. And then Grandpa came to live with us because the accident had cost him everything, killing his wife and son and putting him in a wheelchair. That was right after the whole secession thing happened, so medical coverage—shifting from the U.S. National Health Service to the Cascadian version—was a mess. Grandpa was left with huge debts, while Dad’s hospital bills sucked up every bit of his life insurance and almost cost us our house.

  Beside me, Bailey snorts and rolls over, rubbing a hand across her face.

  “Piper, are you awake?”

  I scramble to pull myself together, to shove those awful memories back in the vault. “Yeah.”

  “Are you okay?”

  How am I supposed to answer that? I’ll be damned if I’m going to cry again, but my throat aches from holding back tears.

  Bailey pushes herself up on one elbow and looks at me. “Your family’s okay, Piper. I’m sure of it. Whoever’s taking these people is probably just dumping them outside the border. We’ll get this figured out.”

  “How?” My voice sounds hollow. “Nobody believes the disappearances are real.”

  “Right,” Bailey says, nodding. “People don’t want to think anything bad can happen in Cascadia, so they ignore the rumors. But we know they’re true now, right? And that means there must be evidence somewhere. We’ve just gotta find it.”

  “Don’t you think someone’s already tried?”

  Bailey runs a hand through her long, tangled mess of hair, sweeping it out of her face. “Maybe. Maybe not. These people are going to an awful lot of trouble to track you down, so my guess is, they don’t want to leave stragglers behind. They probably target small families so there won’t be anyone left to ask questions.”

  I go on staring at the ceiling. Bailey’s argument doesn’t explain why no one’s heard back from the people who got abducted. If they’re safely outside the border, why haven’t they gone online and raised a big stink?

  “It’s not gonna do you any good to lie here stewing about it,” Bailey says, squeezing my arm. “C’mon, get up. You’ll feel better with some food in your stomach.” She swings her legs over the side of the stage’s low platform and reaches for her purse. After digging around in it for a few seconds she says, “Ah, here we go. The breakfast of champions.”

  She pulls out a bag of peanut M&Ms—Cascadian edition. Even when the secession threatened to take away a good chunk of their electrical supply, the Mars Corporation couldn’t resist an opportunity to make a buck.

  Bailey pours some green, white, and blue candies into her hand and tries to force them on me.

  “Maybe later.” What I really want now—what I’d practically kill for—is a good cup of coffee.

  I get up and head for the bathroom, which is behind the stage at the very back of the building. After I do my business, I splash water on my face and try to swish my teeth clean. This is even worse than the camping trips Mom and Dad used to drag me on. At least then I had a toothbrush.

  Feeling dirty and disgusting, I schlep myself out to the main room. There’s not much light coming from the side door, which is right at the end of the bar on the east wall, but more oozes from the windows at the front of the narrow building. Even though we’re far enough back from them that there’s virtually no risk of somebody accidentally seeing us, I still feel like I’m walking through Waterfront Park in my underwear.

  “Wouldn’t you know it, not a single drop of booze,” complains Bailey, who’s rooting around behind the bar. “All the last owner left were a few glasses, half a box of napkins, and these stupid drink umbrellas.” She dumps a handful of them on the bar then slips out from behind it. “C’mon, let’s go do a little reconnaissance in the basement.”

  I’m up for anything that’ll distract me, so I follow, shivering in the tavern’s chill.

  To get to the staircase, we have to cut through a tiny kitchen tucked along the center of the wall opposite the bar. Bailey steps inside and flips on the light, stopping a minute to take inventory.

  I lean against the doorjamb and wait. There’s not much in here but a carton of salt, a couple of beat up pots and pans, and a huge grill and stove assembly that looks like it wasn’t worth anyone’s time to haul away. Bailey spots one of those little dorm refrigerators under the counter and plugs it in.

  “Hey, it works,” she says. “Now you’ll be able to store some real food.”

  Shouldn’t she sound a little more regretful about the prospect of me being stuck here that long?

  “Won’t your dad notice the electricity?” I ask.

  Bailey shrugs and heads for the staircase. “If he does, it won’t be for, like, a month. But probably not, because there’s solar panels on the roof.”

  “How do you know these things?”

  “Simple. This was a bar. They needed to keep their beer cold and their music hot, which was kinda hard to do with the power cutting out the way it used to when the U.S. was sucking us dry. Solar kept places like this in business.”

  I guess she must’ve learned that kind of thing from her dad, but it’s another side of Bailey I’ve never seen.

  She leads me down into a creepy, windowless basement, where the concrete floor is so uneven it looks like it was allowed to set the way it was poured. Pipes and wires, which seem more modern than the rest of the building, hang low over our heads. A brick wall divides the front of the basement east to west, and another separates the north end from the south.

  “The entrance to that tunnel I was telling you about is supposed to be under here.” Bailey kicks a wooden platform that covers the floor at the foot of the stairs. “C’mon. Help me lift this.”

  I grab one corner of the structure, which is maybe six inches tall and four by five feet across. We heave, raising the front edge. Underneath, the concrete looks different. Like someone patched it with a porous, substandard material and ran out before they got the job done. The area is wet and cluttered with old drink coasters, scrap lumber, and a single Pabst Blue Ribbon can.

  “Well, obviously nobody’s cleaned under here in a while,” Bailey says, toeing the container. “Didn’t the PBR guys bite it, like, twenty years ago?”

  I shrug. “Sorry. I don’t keep up on the alcoholic beverage culture. Doesn’t look like much of a tunnel entrance, though.”

  “Of course not. They filled it in. But maybe we can bust
through.”

  “Maybe you can.” There’s no way I’m going outside as long as people are chasing me, and if I change my mind, I’ll use the door.

  “Fine.” Bailey lets go of the platform. Gravity rips it from my fingers, and it thumps to the ground.

  She turns to explore the basement, which is mostly empty except for a walk-in cooler, a regular-sized freezer, and a set of shelves that holds rejected towels and bedding. A few empty boxes lie around on the floor.

  “Can we go back upstairs?” I ask. “It’s a little creepy down here.”

  “You’re probably sensing one of the ghosts,” Bailey says as she sorts through the linens. “I was kinda hoping we’d have seen one by now.”

  “Ghosts, hell. It’s rats I’m worried about. You don’t really believe in that woo woo stuff, do you?”

  “Maybe.” She leads me back toward the staircase. “There are at least two of them. Rose was a prostitute who lived in the brothel on the second floor. She was supposedly stabbed by a jilted lover. The other ghost is Sam. The owner took him in as a little kid and gave him a job. He lived here his whole life. Y’know that room where we got the mattress? That was where he stayed.”

  We go upstairs, and I help Bailey put sheets on the bed. When my stomach growls, she hands me what’s left of her bag of M&Ms. I’m desperate enough to eat them. At least they’ve got caffeine.

  “Now what?” I say.

  “I need to get you some food and stuff. Maybe while I’m gone, you can go online and see if you can learn anything about the disappearances.”

  The idea gives me a glimmer of hope, so after she spruces up her hair and makeup, tells me the code for the alarm system, and takes off, I fish my backpack out from behind the mattress. When I reach inside for my laptop, my fingers brush against the MedEval. A weird little pulse shoots through me. That part of my life is over now. I’ll never get into med school—never become a doctor—because everyone thinks I’m a violent drug addict. Does Dr. Alvarez believe that, too? Shame wells up at the thought. How could everything go so wrong so fast?

  I pull out my laptop. The Net service gods smile on me, maybe because I’m not zipping along on the light rail, but panic surges the second my browser pops open. Can the kidnappers trace me through a computer the way they can through a phone? I scrabble through memories of crime shows and movies. I’m pretty sure it’s as hard to pinpoint someone on the Net as it is to get a good fingerprint from a crime scene. But to be safe, I don’t check my email or go to any sites that’ll log me in.

  A search brings up a page full of hits. I spend the next few hours exploring them while my stomach gripes about having nothing but M&Ms in it. Every time my thoughts wander off in a pessimistic direction, I rein them in. Breaking down and blubbering like I did last night isn’t going to get me anywhere.

  My research tanks what little hope I had. I don’t learn anything useful. It’s all rumors and speculation from secondhand sources—people who say a best friend’s boyfriend or a family in their neighborhood disappeared. There’s nothing from anyone who was actually abducted.

  Why’s there no trace of these people? Shouldn’t employers and schools be reporting them missing? Who’s taking them, and how are they covering their tracks? It doesn’t make sense.

  The authorities say there’s no evidence of foul play—that everyone who’s been reported missing moved voluntarily. People who believe in the disappearances argue nobody would leave Cascadia of their own free will. They think poor people are being deported to make room for rich Americans, who are buying their way in.

  When I finish my research, I’m tempted to check the news websites to find out what they’re saying about me, but I don’t have the guts. I’m not sure I could handle seeing people from OHSU spreading lies about me. I fall back on the mattress, my belly gurgling, and wonder what the hell I’m going to do next. How are we supposed to find my family if there’s no clue where to start?

  I hear something outside the door, and panic explodes through my body. Crap! Maybe they can track someone through a computer! I jump up and run to hide in the bathroom, my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest.

  The door creaks open. “Piper? Where are you?”

  I slink into the main room, my face hot with embarrassment. Of course it’s Bailey. Get a grip, Piper.

  She drops a huge duffel bag on the bed and shucks off her over-stuffed backpack. “Sorry I was gone so long. I had to go to the house and then hit a couple of stores. And I figured you’d want this.” She unzips the backpack, letting the delicious odor of greasy fast food waft out. McDonald’s. Judging from the smell, she even sprang for real meat, not the veggie dreck I’m used to.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve got a cup of coffee in there?”

  “Nope. Sorry.”

  “That’s okay,” I say, and take the bag. “This is great.” Not bothering to sit down, I tear into the Big Mac and fries as she unpacks everything else. Food, toilet paper, a pillow and blanket, soap, a toothbrush, shampoo, even a few changes of clothing that look like something my little brother would wear.

  “Stylish,” I say around a mouthful of hamburger.

  “Well, if you need to go out for anything, you can’t be running around in your regular clothes—especially not those scrubs. You’re gonna need a disguise. Which is why I got you this.” She pulls a long blond wig out of the duffel bag.

  I snicker. Does she really think people will buy that? It might cover my short black hair, but with my dark eyebrows, it’ll look about as natural as fried chicken in one of Portland’s ubiquitous vegan restaurants.

  I swallow my last mouthful of fries and lick salt off my fingers. “So, am I still making headline news?”

  “Oh yeah. You’re supposedly armed and dangerous. A couple of guys have my house staked out, too. I had to sneak in and pretend I’d been there all night. When I left, they ambushed me and tried to follow my car, but I dodged ’em in traffic. I parked at Lloyd Center, turned off my phone, and then took the bus to get this stuff.”

  “Sheesh, Bailey,” I say, shaking my head as I drop into a chair. “How’d you think of all that? It’s like you’ve been leading this secret double life or something.”

  She shrugs. “I always kind of wanted to have an adventure, you know? I’ve been waiting for something exciting to happen since third grade. I thought maybe the secession movement would be my chance, but no, I have to go on leading a boring, pampered-rich-girl life.”

  My skin flares cold and my stomach tenses around the food I just stuffed in it. For a second, I can’t say a word. Then my true thoughts spill out. “So this is all just fun and games to you?”

  “Piper, no—” She breaks off, her eyes widening into a boy-did-I-just-screw-up look.

  “You realize this is my life we’re talking about, right? Not just some chance for you to play hero?”

  Bailey sinks onto the bed, her expression sagging right along with her body. “Oh man, I’m sorry. I didn’t think about it that way.”