by Jim Keen
“If anyone knows how to corrupt an MI, it’s him. Let’s see what he has to say.”
Toko dropped eye contact. “Finances.”
“No money for a protection detail, huh?”
“A request would make your reemployment, and this case, general knowledge.”
“Figured.”
“Assume the hit was case related until we know for sure. I can release you now, but we don’t have a safehouse.”
“No. I’ll wait, see how Xavi is, then take it from there.”
“Any issues call Central Dispatch immediately. Forget keeping this quiet. Understood?”
“Thank you.”
Toko bent down and put the sports bag on her lap. Using her good hand, she ran the zipper along its length and smiled at the plastic wrapping that peeked out. First were clean clothes, next an NYPD street jacket, phone, knife, and handgun. The phone wasn’t new but was in better condition than the previous clunker.
“Still can’t get me a new one, huh?”
“All good things in time.”
These few possessions were her, what she was. Anything else was window dressing.
Toko gave her an awkward hug and left.
As soon as the door closed, she sneaked out the pack of cigarettes she’d just lifted from his pocket and stood, wincing as tight new skin throbbed across her chest. She checked the phone, her employment number etched onto its scratched surface, and ran her fingers along the thin lines, feeling their texture. This number was her identity, her family. She synced it back to the NYPD MI and dialed a secret number.
“So, you’re alive,” she said. “How you feeling?”
“Like I’ve been kicked by a circus kangaroo,” Conner replied. “My vest stopped the round, and I ducked out once that so-called fed started doing his soldier stuff. From what I saw, I got off lucky. Y’all okay?”
“Yeah, just got my arm and chest reprinted. I’m sorry about Link.”
“Don’t be, girl. He would have killed you first chance he had. How’s the other guy?”
“They’re gluing Xavi together now.”
“How well do you know him?”
“Started working with him yesterday.”
“If he’s FBI, I’m a banana.”
“He’s something for sure.”
“That boy is a hitter, no mistake.”
Hitter—mob slang for hired gunmen; that would explain his training at least. “Look into him, will you?”
“Already underway. Let’s run away from all of this, Officer Yu, just you and me. Beer, food, sunshine—just like the good old times.”
“Ah, Conner, you charmer. Let’s see if I can fix this before we take the nuclear option.”
“There’s a place for you in Five Points if you need one.”
“How will the other captains feel about that?”
“Now don’t y’all go getting me wrong—you’ll have some explaining to do—but after today that ain’t no big thing. If someone’s hired the military to hit us, then your training and connections would be mighty useful.”
“I appreciate the offer.”
“Think about it is all I ask.”
“I will, and keep your head down until we sort this out.”
“Likewise, Alice. Your home and garage are off limits I reckon.”
“Yeah, I figured.”
“Stay in touch, baby.”
“You too, Conner, and thanks for the help today.”
He gave a whooping laugh, coughed, swore, hung up.
Xavi’s shotgun lay at the bottom of the bag. She took it out. She’d been expecting something black and surgical to match his disposable rifle; this looked antique with dirty gray duct tape wrapped around a short wooden grip. Its two huge barrels had been sawed off, the rough silver edges in contrast to the dull gray plating. This was a weapon that killed everyone in the room, a weapon of revenge.
She put it back and paced the room. She needed to keep mobile, no roots, but was anywhere safe anymore?
18
Alice pressed a call button, and a synthetic voice answered.
“Yes?”
“How long until Agent Garcia’s operation is finished?”
“Two hours for inserts, another for the plastic to harden.”
The air conditioning blew dusty, dry air into the room with a soft hum. The hard plastic creaked under her as she leaned back in the cheap chair, looking for the next step. Sore muscles relaxed. Her eyes closed.
She woke with a start, a shout on her lips, and knocked the table to the floor. A ringing crash echoed around the room as metallic devices scattered across the linoleum. She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep, except it was dark, the only illumination coming from the faint yellow line under the door. The new scar tissue on her arm was tight and hard under her fingertips, and a deep ache cut to the bone. Her chest wound was shallow but wider, a jagged circle of fake pink flesh across her lower chest and abdomen. The skin was taut, the pain of her touch pushing a hiss through gritted teeth.
The room smelled of dust and blood.
It was quiet.
She felt very alone.
She knelt, gaze on the door, and grabbed her jacket. It was heavy and comforting as she slipped her arms inside; the gun was next, its grip buzzing as it recorded her palm print. Her phone was last. She thumbed it on.
“Hello, Officer Yu. How may I help?” it asked.
“My previous phone received a large data file before it was destroyed. Do you have it?”
“Yes. It was uploaded to your NYPD locker before destruction.”
“Okay, download to this phone. How is Special Agent Garcia?”
“The operation has completed. He is sedated in a recovery room.”
“Is there anyone with him?”
The machine stopped replying as it accessed the hospital camera network. “No. He is alone.”
“Alert me if anyone enters.”
Alice put the phone in her pocket. Her skin itched with tension, her mind racing; someone with serious resources had tried to kill her today and yet here she was, hours later, alone in a public hospital. Toko had given her fair warning, but, dammit, she’d fallen asleep just when she needed to be at her most paranoid. She crept to the door, opened it an inch, and looked out. The corridor was empty, lights low.
“Phone, take me to Agent Garcia.”
“Confirmed.”
The jacket whispered directions into her ear. She looked left, right, saw no one, so stepped into the quiet hallway. It had been years since Alice had been in a hospital; back then it had been huge and crammed with people, full of noise and activity. This one was deserted. She looked up and saw the red glow of a security camera.
Someone was watching.
Alice followed the whispered instructions and traversed silent, echoing corridors. The recovery area held a series of booths full of unconscious seniors, each with the medical questionnaire hung over their bed. Xavi was in the last space, bed adjacent to a room occupied by a sleeping middle-aged woman. A plastic wheelchair sat next to her with another questionnaire on its seat; at the bottom, a doctor’s signature marked her Nonproductive.
Alice placed it next to the woman and wheeled the chair across to Xavi, its rubber wheels silent on the floor. Xavi lay unmoving on a blue plastic bed wearing a green paper overall which did nothing to hide the riot of gang tattoos covering his body. A drug patch was stuck to his neck. She tore it off and threw it into the trash where it wriggled like a fat slug.
“Wake up,” she whispered.
The camera overhead winked its surveillance light. He didn’t move, breaths soft and steady. She cupped his cold face in her hands, as the tang of burned plastic drifted from the red flesh plugs dotting his torso.
“Xavi, can you hear me?”
He stirred, a low moan escaping his lips.
“Xavi, time to wake up.”
His head twitched, and his breathing accelerated; his tongue flicked to lick dry lips, and his eyes opened, the dark brown iri
ses held hers and focused.
“Water,” he said, his voice a whisper.
She poured some into a small plastic cup and lifted it to his lips. He managed a few sips then turned away.
“Can you understand me?” she asked.
He nodded.
“There’s no one here, no cops or anybody. I don’t like it. Can you move? We need to go.”
He nodded and tried to sit up, then sagged back gasping in pain.
Alice looked back to the corridor; it was silent. She leaned over Xavi and wrapped her arms under his, lifting him up. He felt light, insubstantial, but his body was hard, and the physical contact made her heart thump, blood flushing through her.
With a pained grunt, she twisted and lowered him into the rubber seat. She dragged the sheet from the bed with a dry rustle and arranged it over his lap, pushing her gun into his hand under the paper, out of sight.
“Show me the fastest way out of here,” she whispered to her jacket and followed its instructions.
Alice would have used the emergency stairs, but with the wheelchair, it had to be an elevator, and that meant slow and noisy. She rolled Xavi past rows of sleeping old people and into the dimly lit corridor. She paused and listened. The silence made the ringing in her ears louder, but there was nothing to hear—no machine tones, no PA asking for doctors, no shouts from patients, or tired nurses calling to each other. Only the hum of the mechanical system disturbed the peace. If it hadn’t been for the reek of antiseptic, the whole building would have felt more like a deserted hotel or a prison on lockdown.
She followed her jacket’s instructions and took a left at the next corridor to enter a long hallway filled with bunk beds. Every one of them was occupied, patients of all colors and sizes spread-eagled across thin foam mattresses, lamprey patches at their necks. A few had kicked away their blankets, and Alice saw each one was physically challenged, body parts missing. She stopped at the end of one bed.
“Hurry,” Xavi hissed as he looked around.
“One minute.”
Alice approached the lower bunk and studied a sleeping, dark-skinned woman. She had suffered a large head trauma, and her right eye and ear were missing, body misshapen and twisted at the pelvis. Alice checked her pulse—slow and steady—then sniffed her breath and got chemicals. She shook her, softly at first, then harder. No effect, the woman’s body flopping comatose. Alice looked about and spotted the medical chart. It was another of the questionnaires with Non-Productive circled at the end, alongside an order for a high-powered tranquilizer. Alice stood on the metal frame and checked the upper bunk—another broken and distorted body, this time with no legs, also unresponsive. Another questionnaire, another tranquilizer patch.
Alice stepped backward until she bumped into Xavi and had to stop herself from screaming.
“What’s wrong with them?” he asked.
“Old injuries, nothing new that I can see. They’re all drugged into submission.”
She grabbed hold of his chair and moved forward, slow at first as she scanned the lines of beds, then she picked up speed and ran to the far doors. She swung through them, following her phone’s directions, and took the next right. A large red plastic sign reading under construction hung over the door. She ducked under it and pushed her way through. What looked like patient recovery rooms were being gutted and replaced. Two gleaming rows of new full-body scanners faced each other across a central aisle strewn with half-hidden power cables.
“Phone, what is this place?” Alice asked into her collar.
“This hospital has been selected as one of the new National Health and Wellness Centers,” it said.
“What does that mean?”
Her phone played an audio recording, the sound small and tinny as it leaked from her collar speakers. She recognized the voice—President Rachel Harper, fresh from her second-election victory.
“Friends,” the recording began, the president raising her voice to speak over the roar of the crowd. “As a true daughter of America, I’m filled with the sacred wish to solve this problem and lead my homeland back to the light. We’ve achieved so much, but this is only the start. We need to rebuild this once great nation, restore it to what it was. Together, we can do that. Don’t listen to the doubters, the moralizers, the weak willed; to do this, we must make the hard choices.
“That is why this very morning I’ve instructed Senator Avia to embark on a program that will once and for all determine the health of our great nation. She’ll find those most in need of help—the old, the sick, the disabled—and give them the aid they need. She’s releasing a questionnaire that every citizen must fill out, one that’ll tell us where we are strong and where we are weak. We are the future that can’t be denied; together, we can achieve it.”
At this, the crowd roared so loud the jacket’s speakers crackled with white noise, and the recording was silenced.
“Phone, it’s been a long day. Tell me now, or I’ll trade you back in,” Alice said.
“As our president said, every person in the country is having their mental and physical health reviewed by a local physician. This hospital’s role has switched from care to vetting of the senior and disabled. They undergo a physical; if they pass, they are given life options; if they fail, they are moved to new government facilities designed to treat their issues. Those with physical deformities will be given the option to claim a full-body reprint under the proviso they are transmitted to an American colony in the solar system.”
“What if they don’t want to go?” Xavi asked from the chair.
“They are free to return home; however their choice will impact the availability of unemployment benefits.”
“Well that sounds awesome,” Alice said as she pushed them through the new scanning center, the chair bumping over coiled power cables and crackling plastic wrap, to reach the steel service elevator at the end. She saw their reflection in the metal door as she stabbed the Down button. Xavi was ashen, drooped in the chair, while she looked as if a heavy cough would shatter her into pieces.
She reached out to hit the Down button again, cursing under her breath.
The elevator machinery clanked in the shaft, the hushed click-click of wheels moving.
She pressed the Down button again—once, twice.
Silence.
Alice turned Xavi around to face the room and leaned back against the elevator door. It was vibrating, and with a thud, it stopped, and the doors opened. Harsh overhead lights that made her eyes sting lit an empty interior. Studded black rubber covered the floor, and a glossy black-glass camera hung from the ceiling, green light pulsing.
Alice stepped backward into the space and moved as far away from the door as she could. The elevator was cold. She shivered as her jacket warmed up, her throat tight. With a grinding noise, the doors inched shut. Alice’s view of the gleaming, sterile scanning center shifted to a thin vertical line and disappeared.
They were on the move.
19
They exited into a deserted loading dock next to the closed ER. The frigid air carried the far-off stench of burning trash; the floor crunched with a thick layer of snow. Three large waste recycling trucks occupied the dock, rears facing the entrance. Each had the Department of Homeland Security and Employment logo on the side, an eagle carrying a cheering family. welcome the future stenciled beneath in bold blue letters. Yellow Arizona license plates glowed on their rear axles.
The doors to the service elevator closed with a ping that made Alice jump. She pushed Xavi against the wall.
“I’m going to see if anyone is here. Hold tight,” she said and inched forward.
The ER entrance’s long glass wall extended to the forecourt; pale yellow light spilled from the interior to illuminate a wide canopy. Two SSPs guarded the entrance, both dressed in their black suits with silver decals. One stood with his back to the glass, the other at the entrance desk studying his phone. Alice knew the lights would reflect in the glass, making views outside difficult as l
ong as she stuck to the shadows. Two buses were parked across the main entrance, blocking road traffic; the building was closed.
She shivered inside her jacket, skin puckered into hard bumps despite its heating elements. She ran to the first bus and cupped her hand over the glass; long rows of plastic bench seats filled the interior. She looked back; neither guard had seen her. She slid her surgically sharp knife between the doors and ran it down the rubber seal, then reached through to pull the release lever. Nothing happened; the electrical system must be off. She leaned against the doors and forced them apart enough to squeeze through, swearing as the door scraped across her new skin.
The bus was warm inside and smelled of flowers, a cloying odor that made her want to sneeze. She crouched and scuttled down the aisle, but the seats were empty. She knelt and looked across the spotless floor—nothing. She chewed her lip in thought, then moved to the front. On the driver’s seat was a paper flyer with text in large clear type:
Your Courage
Your Cheerfulness
Your Resolution
will
GET AMERICA BACK TO WORK!
A LOCAL HEALTH CHECK WILL BE PERFORMED
TOMORROW AT 6PM, ATTENDANCE MANDATORY.
All Symptoms Are Treatable With Our
Amazing New Printer Technologies!
TOGETHER WE ARE THE FUTURE!
TOGETHER WE ARE STRONGER!
“Freedom Through Fulfillment.”
Dept. Homeland Security and Employment,
Copyright Insight Media, 2050
Alice folded the thick paper in half and put it inside her pocket then forced the doors apart to step back into the cold. She walked to the rear where the luggage compartment sat over the low battery tray and twisted its T-shaped silver handle. The door dropped with a bang that echoed across the entrance bay, and she swung around, knife in hand, but nothing moved. Her heart thudded, breath was coarse and loud. She had to get out of here, had delayed enough. The luggage compartment held a disorganized pile of wheelchairs and walking frames. The sight sent a chill through her body, made her toes curl, and she hugged herself. Something terrible was happening here. She sheathed her knife and ran to Xavi, feet light through the snow.
