by Jon McGoran
Rex and I nodded and we started walking, up a gentle incline. Looking back, I saw that on the back of the Centre Hollow sign someone had spray-painted E4E 4-EVER.
Claudia looked back too, and said, “Chimeras.”
Rex smiled. “They’re everywhere.”
“Do you think that’s who helped us?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Claudia said. “But how could they survive if we couldn’t?”
“Maybe they had breathing masks, like Cornelius had.”
“Maybe,” Rex said.
The brush thinned out the farther we went, and a few minutes later we pushed past a wall of brittle vines and out onto a road. There were no signs, but it looked rough but functional, like Bogen Road, where we’d left Claudia’s car.
With a group shrug, we unanimously decided to take it.
As chewed-up as it was, I was still happy to be walking on pavement.
The road curved along and a sign came into view, partially rusted out, displaying a blue rectangle with a white H in it, and an arrow.
Just past it, we slowed down as we came upon an unpaved driveway on the side of the road. Twenty feet in from the road, there was a kiosk with a big green button, and beyond it a gate with black and yellow stripes.
“Is that it?” Rex asked.
A small, bulky-looking box truck appeared on the road, coming from the opposite direction. It pulled into the driveway, and the driver reached out and pressed the green button. The gate rose and the truck continued on, up an access road toward a sort of notch cut into the hillside.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
We angled to the far side of the road, cautiously eying the gate and the access road leading past it. As more of the dirt road came into view, we could see it was wide and flat, and at the end of it, set into the side of the hill, there was a massive steel door, like a garage door but bigger. A simple sign above it said CENTRE RIDGE – MAIN BRANCH.
The door slowly started to rise as the truck pulled up in front of it and two men got out. The driver stood by his door. He was tall, with bleached hair shaved on the sides and a matching blond patch on his chin. His partner, short and heavy with shaggy dark hair, went around and opened the back of the truck.
Behind them, two figures emerged from the darkness beyond the big door, each carrying a stack of gray boxes. Their movements were strangely jerky. For a moment I wondered if they were chimeras of some sort. But as they got closer, I realized they were a lot bigger than the figures by the truck.
“They’re wearing exosuits!” Claudia said. “That’s so cool!”
“What’s an exosuit?” Rex asked.
“They’re, like, semi-robotic steel frames, but incredibly strong and fast and maneuverable. Like a forklift that you wear. They’re used for, like, really high-end industrial work. I tried a few out when my dad was buying one for an assembly plant his company owns. They’re pretty badass.”
The frames had big gaps all over, where you could see the yellow fabric of the coveralls the operators wore.
“Wonder what they’re doing out here,” Rex said quietly.
Claudia shook her head. “Don’t know. This looks like a mine entrance, but that doesn’t make sense, this close to Centre Hollow. I thought all the coal around here had been liquefied and pumped out a long time ago.”
As the two guys in the exosuits put the boxes into the back of the truck, it sank down low on its tires. Each of the boxes was marked with an orange square surrounding a bold, black letter Y.
“Let’s keep moving,” Rex said, but as we resumed walking, a smaller figure ran out of the darkened entrance, then abruptly stumbled and fell, just past the truck. A third guy in an exosuit appeared just inside the entrance.
“Did they just shock that person?” I said as we stopped to look.
“I didn’t see,” Claudia said.
“He sure fell hard,” Rex said as the third exosuit reached down with one hand and picked up the figure on the ground. The other two exosuits joined him. Together they walked back into the garage or whatever it was, then the huge door began to slowly close.
The dark-haired guy closed the rear of the truck, and the one with the little beard paused at the driver’s-side door and glanced over in our direction.
Without a word, we looked away and quickened our pace.
“What the hell was that about?” I said.
“Don’t know,” Rex said. “Maybe the mine is still operational?”
Claudia shook her head. “Like I said, there’s nothing left to mine around here. It’d just be slag. And the carbon dioxide they pump down there to force out the liquid coal.”
Rex tilted his head. “Slag?”
“The stuff that’s left behind from the coal liquefaction,” she said. “They pump the chemicals and steam into the coal and break it down, then force out the liquid fuels with carbon dioxide. It totally destabilizes the mines. Miners used to leave columns of coal to hold up the ceiling of the mine. But when they liquefy and suck that out, all that’s left behind is a bunch of byproducts from the process—the slag—and a lot of carbon dioxide and other unbreathable gases. I’m sure that’s what seeped up and killed Centre Hollow.”
“How do you know this stuff?” I asked.
She shrugged. “My dad says if I’m going to go into the family business, I need to know this kind of stuff. But it’s pretty interesting anyway.”
“What is the family business?” Rex asked.
She shook her head. “All sorts of things, actually. My mom says my dad has the attention span of a fruit fly.”
I looked at her. “All sorts of things, including…coal drilling?”
She scowled at me. “Of course not! But we are involved in environmental remediation, cleanups and stuff.”
“Maybe they’re here cleaning it up, then,” I said. “Or fixing it so the gases aren’t seeping out.”
“I doubt it,” Claudia said. “It’s expensive, and I imagine this would be low on the list of priorities for rehabilitation.”
Rex nodded. “Because there are so many places that are much worse off, contamination-wise. And closer to population centers.”
Claudia pointed at him. “Exactly. I doubt Centre Hollow would make the top ten thousand.”
CHAPTER 20
Once the coal mine or whatever was a little ways behind us, the road got better. We passed a few cross streets and began to see more cars and trucks coming and going. No one hassled us, but we moved off the road anyway. Better safe than sorry.
“There it is,” Rex said, pointing. “OmniCare.”
My stomach lurched. I’d been lost in thought, still unsure of exactly what I planned to do when we got there, or even what I hoped would happen when I did it. I had done some crazy things just a few months ago, and it all had turned out to be important, so I was glad I did. This time, though, I suddenly wondered if the whole venture was half-baked and ridiculously naïve.
The big metal-and-plastic sign said OMNICARE in white letters against a blue background. Below that, blue letters against a white panel listed the different departments—EMERGENCY, RADIOLOGY, OUTPATIENT, ADMINISTRATION. Each panel had an arrow pointing left or right.
“Okay,” Rex said to me. “What’s your plan?”
I had been thinking about that since we’d left the coffee shop. “We go to the emergency room,” I said.
As we crossed the road and made our way up the driveway toward the ER, I explained my plan a little more. There wasn’t much to it.
A guard nodded to us as the automatic door to the hospital slid open.
I’d only been in a handful of emergency waiting rooms in my life, but they all seemed to have the same vibe: a combination of pain and fear and anxiety, all somehow smothered under a thick blanket of boredom.
There were maybe a dozen people, in twos and threes, scattered in chairs across the room. Several were filling out paperwork. Roughly half were chimeras, which made me feel better about the place.
A guy not much older
than me was mopping the floor. He was handsome, with shiny black hair trimmed neatly on the sides but topped with unruly curls that fell onto his forehead. He stared at us in a way that made me wonder if he somehow knew what we were up to. When I met his eye, he looked away and went back to his mopping, working his way out of sight down a hallway.
Claudia and Rex sat by the exit and I got in line at the check-in window, clutching the scanned copy of Cornelius’s bracelet. My “plan” involved a lot of me bullshitting the intake nurse, but as I waited, I noticed a second window on the other side of the room with a sign that said BILLING. It gave me an idea.
As I turned toward the billing window, I overhead the chimera in front of me at the check-in counter saying, “Sorry, I don’t have anyone for the emergency contact.” He was holding up a clipboard with a form that said in bold across the top: ALL CHIMERA PATIENTS MUST FILL OUT A SPLICE DISCLOSURE AND EMERGENCY CONTACT FORM.
“That’s okay, honey,” said the intake nurse. “Just put ‘NA,’ for ‘Not Applicable.’ ”
Unlike the check-in desk, the billing window was essentially a hole in the wall leading to a cramped office. A small ledge ran across the front of it, with pamphlets about flu shots and hand-washing.
The woman behind the window—her name tag said MAUREEN—glanced up at me. She looked bored and standoffish, like she was expecting a challenge or an argument or an excuse. Or some bullshit.
“Hi,” I said, opening with a smile, trying to come off as young enough that she might want to cut me a break, but old enough that she should take me seriously.
She gave me a dubious look, but I kept smiling, waiting. Eventually she said, “How can I help you?”
I let my smile falter. “We’re trying to find my brother. I know he was a patient here—”
“Name?” she said, cutting me off and turning to her computer.
The kid with the mop appeared over her shoulder. His name tag said DANIEL. His head was down, his eyes on his mop, but I got the distinct feeling he was listening in. That didn’t help my nerves.
“Well, that’s just it. His name is…” I froze for an instant, realizing I hadn’t come up with a random name. “Bruce Johnson,” I said, hoping that wasn’t some Hollywood star or famous athlete. “But I’m not sure what name he used when he checked in here.” I paused and looked around, then leaned forward and lowered my voice. “He’s been involved in some…bad stuff. Drugs and…getting spliced. He’s using different names. And running up debts. I know he was here because he had on this bracelet.” I held up the copy. “My parents can pay whatever balance he left. They just want to know if he’s okay. And what name he’s using. So we can find him. And pay his debts.”
She looked at me, maybe even more dubious than before, but she took the copy and ran it under the scanner next to her keyboard. I could just barely see her computer screen, enough to perceive it flicker and change. Her eyes widened, just for an instant, then she glanced at me again, her face different than before. She tapped a few keys and waited, tapped a few more and waited again. It seemed to be taking forever, and my heart was pounding.
Finally, she turned to me and shook her head. “Sorry, we have no record of that person here,” she said, her voice flat and her face blank.
I glanced from her to the monitor. I wanted desperately to reach out and turn it so I could see it. Scratching my head, I turned to look behind me. Rex and Claudia were sitting by the exit. There didn’t seem to be any security, other than the guy in the uniform standing outside. My new plan was to reach over and look at the monitor, see what it said, and then run.
Unfortunately, when I looked back at Maureen, there was a man standing behind her. He had appeared out of nowhere, a tall white guy with gray hair and a neatly trimmed beard, maybe sixty but with an athletic build. He looked like a doctor from a pharmaceutical commercial or a holo-show. He had a Wellplant, one of the new ones, and his head hung low so his chin was on his chest. He stood there like he owned the place, staring down at me in a way that was both eerily calm and frighteningly intense.
“Hello, Dr. Charlesford,” Maureen said, flustered. Then I was flustered, too. If this was Charlesford, he really did own the place. He owned the entire company.
“What seems to be the problem, Maureen?” Charlesford asked. His eyes quickly scanned her computer screen, then darted back at me, as if he had his answer before she opened her mouth.
“This young lady—” she began.
“And what is your name?” he said, turning to me.
Good question, I thought, still flustered. “Mary,” I said. “Mary Johnson.”
“And how old are you, Mary?”
“Eighteen,” I said.
His eye twitched.
“And you say this is your brother you’re asking about?”
“That’s right,” I said. I hadn’t told him that, and I wondered how he knew, if he’d overheard or if he knew because of something Maureen had typed into her computer. “His name is Bruce,” I said, although I got the feeling he already knew that, too.
He asked me everything Maureen had asked, plus a dozen other questions: about the fictional Bruce’s birthday, what school he went to, his medical history.
I tried to stay calm and casual, looking into his eyes and not at his Wellplant, but I got the impression he was studying my reaction more than listening to my answers. I briefly wondered if the Wellplant gave him some sort of built-in lie-detecting ability. I was pretty sure I’d heard somewhere that the new generation were sensitive enough to read other people’s biometrics, not just the wearer’s.
When he finally stopped asking questions, he continued to stare at me for a moment, then he said, “Well, I’m very sorry, Ms. Johnson, but your brother has never been a patient here.”
He had an odd way of speaking. Flat and measured, almost robotic. It was hard to read his emotions, and I didn’t have a Wellplant to help me read his micro-expressions or whatever. Even so, I was certain of one thing: he was lying just like I was.
“Okay, thanks,” I said briskly. Then I reached through the window to grab my printout from Maureen’s desk, leaning far enough in that I could see the computer screen.
In that brief second, I saw Cornelius’s picture, complete with his brilliant feathers. He didn’t look happy, but it was definitely him. Underneath it was the name Bennett Thompson—so Bruce Johnson hadn’t been too far off. Two other things jumped out at me. It said he’d been transferred to something called the Chimeric Conversion Unit. And at the bottom of the page, in bold red letters, it said RESOLUTION: UNAUTHORIZED RELEASE.
Cornelius had been here. And he had run away.
CHAPTER 21
As soon as I realized Cornelius had escaped, it occurred to me I needed to do the same. When I had leaned through the window, Maureen had backed away, shocked by the intrusion into her space. Before she could lean forward or even say anything, Charlesford’s hand shot past her and clamped onto my wrist. I looked up at him and when our eyes met, he smiled.
He was fast and probably stronger than me, but I had leverage and I was scared. I braced my other hand on the side of the window and wrenched free. Staggering back away from the window, I spun around and ran.
Rex and Claudia were already on their feet, but my heart sank as I looked past them and saw three guards pulling up in some kind of cart just outside the door. As I paused, another guard came at me from the side, holding a shock baton. Rex flattened the guy with his shoulder. Another guard came at us from the same direction, his shock baton already spitting blue sparks. I could smell the ozone coming off it. As he closed on Rex, Claudia threw herself onto his back and raked his face with her fingers. He screamed and tried to get her with the shock baton, until Rex punched him, once in the gut and once in the face.
Claudia jumped off him as he fell, landing on her feet at the same moment the guard’s face hit the floor.
In the moment of quiet that followed, as the rest of the people in the waiting area sat up and star
ed, Rex flashed me a glare, letting me know that all his misgivings about coming out here were coming true.
The guards outside were running for the door.
“This way,” I said, and took off running toward the far corridor, away from the guards at the entrance, away from Dr. Charlesford and Maureen in the billing office.
I pushed through the swinging metal doors and heard Rex and Claudia come through them behind me. I had no idea where we were headed, but I figured first things first: get away from the bad guys, then figure a way out of the building.
We were in a long corridor with doors on either side. None of them were open, and there was no sign of anyone else. At the far end there was a set of double doors, much like the ones we had just come through. As we drew closer, however, I realized one crucial difference.
“They’re locked,” Claudia said, before I could.
There was a keypad with a card slot next to the door, and a big red light next to the word LOCKED.
We’d barely had time to slow down when Rex reached between us and swiped a card through the slot. Claudia and I both stared as he pushed open the door.
“Picked it up off the floor. I think I knocked it off that guard back there. Figured it might come in handy.”
The next corridor wasn’t empty; there were doctors and other medical staff coming and going from room to room. A few of them looked up at us like we didn’t belong in there, but apparently they were too busy to bother with us. At the end of the corridor was a single swinging door and a red EXIT sign. We headed toward it.
Just as we reached the door, a man in nurse’s scrubs approached us and said, “Excuse me, can I help you?”
“No, we’re good,” I said, pushing the door open with my back. Through the doorway I saw stairs going up and down, and on the opposite wall, another door that hopefully led outside.
“But you’re not—”
“It’s okay,” I said as Rex and Claudia moved past me. “I just need to get my card.”
I let the door close in his face and turned to see Rex swiping that card through another card slot. He pushed the door open and we stepped into the outside air. It was cold and wet, smelling of rain and leaves and something else, too. I took a deep breath and was about to start running when I realized that other smell was ozone.
