I had to try something. “Amy, what’s wrong with him? What did the scan say? What did the bullets hit?”
“Insufficient information; unable to respond.”
“Okay, okay, but is there a manual surgical option given the diagnostic?”
“Affirmative. However, since your voice has not been pre-approved on the Tethys platform, you’ll need to read the waiver presented above and scan your fingerprint indemnifying Tethys and releasing us from any liability—”
“Jesus fucking Christ, he’s dying, just tell me what to fucking do!” I screamed, scribbling down a signature and jamming my thumb against the circle that had started blinking.
“Thank you, Mr. Waters, we will commence momentarily. At any time during the procedure you may say ‘define’ if you do not understand a word or an instruction I give. If the subject is a term, please say ‘define’ followed by the specific term in question. If the subject is the mechanics of an instruction, please say ‘define instruction.’”
“I got it, I got it—just start already!”
“Begin by putting on the blue gloves located on the lowest rack of the equipment tray and prompt me with the word ‘next’ once you’ve completed the current task.”
I fumbled around for the gloves and shouted, “Next!”
“Take the absorbent blue cloth hanging from the utility rack to the right of the panel and soak up any blood or fluid collecting on the chest, being mindful not to apply excess pressure on the source of trauma.”
It had to have hit some type of artery in the abdomen since there was so much blood. I dabbed at the larger pools, and once they’d been sopped up started swiping with a dry portion of the cloth. Pressure welled up in my throat and I turned my head and vomited onto the floor, managing to choke out “Next” in between gags.
“Remove the green bottle labeled chlorhexidine from the lowest rack of the equipment tray and spread three quarter-sized drops of gel along the area surrounding the trauma.”
I fumbled for the bottle and knocked it over. All I could think about was what was about to happen, and how I wouldn’t able to do it. “Next,” I whispered.
“Take the white surgical face mask from the lowest rack of the equipment tray and strap it snugly around your mouth and nose.”
“Just get on with it,” whispered Ethan. “Something’s . . . not right.”
“Next! Next!”
“Connect the three cords from the vital readout unit to the patient. First place the red Sp02% sensor on the patient’s index finger, letting the cable run over the back side of the patient’s hand. Second, place the two clear plaster strips connected to the blue cord on both sides of the patient’s chest, just above the solar plexus.”
“Slow down a second, Jesus!” I scrambled to keep up, accidentally sending a pair of steel instruments clanking onto the floor.
“Third, take the red syringe from the bottom drawer and deliver the local anesthesia within one inch from the operating area.”
Ethan’s nose started to bleed.
“I need some water, Dorian. I’m so thirsty.”
“It’s your stomach—you can’t. I don’t think I can give you anything,” I said, plunging the needle into him.
“Alert. Systolic blood pressure at 62 mmHg. Immediate stabilization required,” the computer’s voice chimed mechanically.
“Next! Next!”
“Pick up the purple-handled scalpel on the top rack of the equipment tray and make a midline incision down the linea alba.”
“Define term “linea alba.”
“The linea alba is a fibrous structure that runs down the midline of the abdomen, separating the two halves of the rectus abdominis.”
“Define instruction.”
“The midline incision is a longitudinal surgical cut initiated 6.5 cm above the navel and ending 2.5 cm beneath it. Hold with your dominant forefinger on top of the scalpel, and make one continuous cut through the superficial epidermis layer and then a second, slightly deeper cut through the fatty tissue, while using your inferior hand to keep the incised skin under continuous tension.”
I couldn’t breathe. I tried to suck in some air, but everything smelled like blood and I felt vomit climbing up my throat again. “How deep do I go?”
“That information is not available. The midline incision is a longitudinal surgical cut initiated 6.5 cm above the navel and ending 2.5 cm beneath it. Hold with your dominant forefinger—”
“Okay, Jesus, just hang on!” This wouldn’t help, cutting him open like this. The wound didn’t look so bad now with the blood wiped up; it was just ten millimeters wide. Maybe nothing too bad had been hit and I could just bandage it up for now.
“Dorian . . . I don’t think I can stay awake . . . but it’s okay. I’m done . . . I’m done with all of this. I just want to leave now.”
“Don’t say that.” I raised up my left arm. “Look at my hand, Ethan, and follow it. Follow it with your eyes.” I snapped my fingers and shifted it horizontally. “Keep following it.”
“Please . . . just let me . . . I don’t want to be here anymore. Let me go. I should’ve . . . done it . . . a long time ago.”
“Shut up, Ethan!”
“Alert. Systolic blood pressure at 58 mmHg. Immediate stabilization required.”
There was no question: he was dying. Knowing that I couldn’t stall anymore, I staggered over to the tray and slid my hand over the instruments—shivering as I grasped the scalpel again. The metal was so honed, so violent; I didn’t think I could cut into him even if I wanted to. The room was just spinning too fast. Nausea was wrapping around my head like a plastic bag, entering as I tried to breathe.
“Alert. Systolic blood pressure at 45 mmHg. Immediate stabilization required.”
In the midst of the lights and the blood and the robot voice, Jaden’s words to the guy on the rooftop found their way back into my head. Just tell your adrenal glands to dial back the juice. And I realized I could do the same thing.
Chapter 46
Still shaking, I slipped the gun’s muzzle into the crack and inched open the door. The hallway was empty. Nothing creaked in the Doyles’ mansion, so my footsteps fell silent on the hardwood floor. I could hear low-flying helicopters and a dull rumble from the activity still going on outside, but clearly the police hadn’t made it in yet. I didn’t think anybody was upstairs, but I checked the open doors anyway, pointing my gun as I passed, trying to maintain the low, athletic stance I’d seen in movies.
It was an odd thought, but at that moment I wished to God I’d spent more time playing VR games, like Jaden; then, instead of this feeling like madness—instead of being despondent that I’d shot people—it would be part of a larger narrative. Where I was a hero inciting a rebellion inside some kleptocratic dystopia. The solipsism making it that much easier to delude myself into thinking I wasn’t in over my head.
Sure, I’d stolen money. I’d betrayed my friends. I was a monster now; that was obvious. But the reason I didn’t just keep crying the way I’d cried after sewing Ethan up—and end it already—was that maybe I didn’t have to stay this way. Maybe it was the Revision’s fault. And maybe if it had turned me into a monster, it could turn me out of one, too. I just needed to figure out who I really was. I’d still been doing that when the other burglaries had started and unfortunately, now there was only the faintest chance I’d ever get to finish.
Satisfied that there weren’t any cops, I tucked the gun back into my waistband as I took my first steps down the staircase. The ballroom below was empty, strewn with half-full wine and liquor bottles, carrying the air of a letdown after a celebration. The chandeliers were dimmer. Police lights spilled through the curtains of the front windows and made silhouettes on the walls like silent film projections. The ice sculptures were half the size they’d been, slumped and blurred, standing in the middle of large puddles. I wiped a film of sweat off my forehead and realized how hot it was—the Medpad had its own microclimate, so I hadn’t felt it
in there. But they must’ve turned up the temperature at least ten or fifteen degrees in the rest of the house.
I took the last step off the staircase and my shoe made a small echo on the marble. Checking quietly, I saw that there was no one in the parlor to the right or the drawing room to the left. I moved along the wall, careful not to disturb fragments of broken vase with my foot, and entered the hallway.
A voice called out, “Hey” and a cold sensation brushed across my back. Trying to stay calm, I slowly turned around and saw Jaden sitting at the end of a table in a dining room I hadn’t noticed before.
“How’s Ethan doing?” he asked, his voice still modulated into a lower pitch.
I’d managed to suture the artery in his liver, but the bullet had grazed his stomach on the way—and probably some other stuff, too—and he wasn’t in great shape. I’d begged him to let me take him outside, but he kept repeating, “I can’t go to jail. I can’t go to jail. Please, please, don’t make me.” And so, I gave him some morphine and told him I’d be back. “He’s hanging in there.”
“Good.” Jaden’s voice trailed off and he cleared his throat. “And since it sounds like you’re free now, how about you come and join me?”
When I hesitated, he added, “I insist.”
Conscious of the gun in my waistband, I carefully walked into the room and pulled back a chair at the opposite end of the table.
“All the way down there?”
I didn’t answer. I just sat down, and we sank into silence. The only light came from candelabras in the corners, each giving off faint bluish glows not strong enough to reveal any of the other furnishings.
“How’s your arm feeling?” Jaden inquired, finally.
“It’s fine.”
“It doesn’t look fine.”
“Ethan came and got you, didn’t he?” I asked louder, the words hanging out stupid and slow in the warm air. But I knew. By asking about him, Jaden had been throwing it in my face—the feigned concern in his voice accentuating it, hollower and starker than ever. And even though it was being filtered, more and more I could hear something familiar, too, that somehow seemed like it had always been there. Ethan had professed ignorance, but clearly had thought Jaden was the only person who could save us.
Despite the sweat on my arms, I felt cold. I’d just assumed Ethan would outgrow this idea that he could work with anyone. Outthink it. Especially once he’d Revised. Once he had the capacity to analyze the risk and make the correct calculations. I dug my nails into the leather armchair I was sitting in. I thought he’d be too smart to be so stupid.
Jaden shrugged.
“Why are you doing it?” I managed to say, my voice falling to almost a whisper.
“I think the better question’s why not.”
“But why this house? Why this . . .”
“Because it’s where the action was.” His laugh was like ice cracking. “Though you settled with the registers while I went for the vault. I guess that’s the difference between you and me.”
“And Ethan came and got you, right?” I asked again, not able to put the thought out of my mind. Disgusted with myself that he’d been able to turn not one, but two of my friends. My best friend. The one person in the world who should’ve cared enough about me to have my back.
“Of course, he did. I was on the fence about coming, however with the red carpet welcome and all, well . . . I couldn’t really say ‘no.’”
“You fucking bastard! How could you do this? I was going to help you!”
“By leaving me for dead in a shipping container? No, you’ve always helped yourself, so I just followed suit.”
“This isn’t the same! This isn’t the same thing at all!”
Jaden put his hands behind his head and took a long deep breath, held it for a few seconds and exhaled slowly. “You Revise a little . . . and then you realize you need to Revise a lot in order to accomplish the things you want to. I think you’ve come to that same conclusion, no, judging by all the mischief you’ve gotten into? And what’s more, you know the next guy over’s going to be doing everything he can to Revise, and the next guy over from him.” He made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “Getting ahead—it’s the only thing that we dreamers ever dream about. The problem, though . . .,” he chuckled, “is that there’s only so much room at the top. And when you’re that smart, you don’t think you belong anywhere else.”
“But you didn’t have to hurt people, Jaden!”
“If my memory serves correct, you were out there doing the same thing.”
“Because, because they shot Ethan! Because I was caught in your mess! That’s different! You kidnapped people! You’re holding them hostage!”
He smiled. “My mess, huh? Well . . . at least I’m being honest about it.”
“It’s not worth it! It’s not worth this, Jaden—Jesus Christ!” I cried, knowing then that this was all my fault. That Jaden was my fault. That the help I’d given him had been the seed that had bloomed into this nightmare. And how it was up to me to stamp it back into the earth.
“It’d be worth it to somebody, so it might as well be me,” he said matter-of-factly, folding his hands into an arch on the table.
There was silence for a while as we both stared at each other, not blinking.
“Where is everybody?” I finally asked.
“They’re around.”
“You don’t think they’re going to let you out of this, do you?”
He looked to both sides, as if he were letting me in on a secret, then said, “Power is such an abstract concept sometimes. There are hundreds of police out there, armed to the teeth, that can’t come in. Why not?
“The hostages,” I said.
“That’s a part.”
“And the house.”
“That’s part of it, too. Curtains and walls that block infrared. Blast-proof windows and doors. Nano-tight surfaces that keep out their bots. The house has its own immune system, and I told them if it detected anything uninvited, they’d regret it . . .”
I’d assumed he’d simply killed the alarm and defenses, but the way he was talking he must’ve taken it over, gotten Lena to get him through the biometrics or something and then locked it down. That had bought him time, but he was hardly invincible. It was one thing with the police, but the Feds would be different.
“That might keep them from coming in, but it doesn’t get you out.”
“Sure it does.”
“They’re not going to bring you a bus, if that’s what you think. And if they do, it’ll be some kind of trick.”
“I asked for a helicopter.” He looked up toward the ceiling. “Since they clearly have a number of them.”
“And you really think you’ll get one?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
By the way he’d returned his gaze to me and held it, I sensed that he wanted me to ask. “Why not? If the hostages don’t get you that, then what do they get you?”
“Time.”
“They don’t like letting things like this stretch out forever.”
“Not unless it’s them wanting it to.” Jaden paused, tapping his red syringe on the table. “And for that to happen, they have to think they’re in control. They have to think they’re leading me into something.”
I was increasingly disturbed. Not just because he’d clearly given this a lot of thought, but because he was enjoying himself and actually seemed to think he was in control. Was he delusional or just looking to go out with as big a bang as he could? Get attention and send some type of message. Because the latter was still very much doable given not just the number, but the kind of hostages he had: rich, Revised kids from a rich, Revised suburb. This already had to be a national story.
“What are you going to do with this bought time?”
“You’ll see.”
I studied him, his mask flickering in the candlelight. “And why aren’t you wrapping me up like the rest of them?”
“Good question, especially co
nsidering that piece you’re carrying. But I’ve got a special plan for you, Dorian.”
There was another long silence. What kind of answer was that? What was the possible use of keeping me around?
“Perhaps not as ambitious as I’d once imagined—us teaming up like the Kray Brothers or the Newton Gang—but still something important nonetheless. Something I think you’re uniquely qualified for.
“So, I insist that you stay hydrated,” he said, getting up and pouring two glasses of ice water from a decanter on the table. “People tend to neglect their bodies during times of acute stress, and I suspect there might be quite a bit more of that in the cards.”
The temperature felt like it’d risen another degree or two even in the few minutes since I’d sat down, but I didn’t reach for the glass.
“I really am glad you were able to save Ethan by the way. I know you don’t think I have the . . . let’s call it capacity, for that much affection—justifiably so. But it’s been a while since you’ve given me that EEG test. And I think if you repeated the experiment you’d find some rather different results.”
Underneath the table, I moved surreptitiously to take out the gun. “Oh, I can see you care now.”
“Not about everyone, clearly. But about the people that matter. Like my guys out there. Like him. Like you. I know you don’t believe I’d make myself more empathetic—I can see the skeptical look on your face—and you’re right, I wouldn’t. But you know, too, how much I hated being lonely. Feeling nothing. Feeling like I was missing something. Is it really such a stretch to think I’d want to find it?”
“And what exactly did you find?”
Just as I was aiming at what I thought to be Jaden’s stomach, there were footsteps in the hallway and I swiveled to catch a glimpse of one of the kidnappers carrying something metal wrapped in orange wires. It looked homemade but there was an elaborateness to the way all the cords and tubes were linked together, and a meticulousness to how the parts were crafted, that betrayed a certain know-how. If I had to guess, I’d say it looked like some kind of an engine.
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