The Tetradome Run

by Spencer Baum

  Days passed and he waited.

  Cameron was using a password breaker program to try and crack open the folder.

  “And what if we get in this folder and find nothing inside?” Cameron said.

  “Then there is no memoir,” said Gabe. “And we move on.”

  Move on and publish what he already had, which, in itself, was a good story. The Mary Nolan stinkbomb prank, a photograph of Jenna’s brother, photographs of the mysterious woman named Sunny Paderewski…

  A damned good story, but not an explosive one. Not a Stop the Presses We Interrupt This Broadcast kind of story.

  Having seen that photo on page 187 of the Mary Nolan College yearbook, Gabe had a feeling he might well be dancing on the edges of an earth-shattering story, one that was worth a few days of waiting.

  Because if that memoir was there…if what he saw in the Mary Nolan yearbook was what he thought he saw…

  A few more days. Twenty years of chasing that one game-changing story, and a few more days to see if he actually caught it.

  CHAPTER 46

  “How can this happen?” Bart yelled. “Fifty years this company has managed death row inmates—fifty years!—and never once has someone escaped! Before last night no one even tried!”

  They were in Conference Room G. Bart, Chanelle, Donnie, Herman. It was the morning after the chaos. Bart had been at the office all night.

  He resented that the rest of his family had not. Especially Donnie. This morning, as Bart finally started coming down off the adrenaline rush, he resented Donnie most of all.

  “The important thing is she didn’t escape,” said Chanelle. “The important thing is the incident was contained.”

  “Barely contained!” said Bart.

  He felt like none of them appreciated the magnitude of what almost happened. The most popular contestant they’d ever had. The media frenzy that would have ensued. The political fallout. The many, many companies who wanted to snatch the exclusive Redemption Rights contract out from under them.

  “It’s obscene how lucky we got,” Bart said. “And embarrassing how many holes in our security she was able to exploit.”

  “She wouldn’t have been able to exploit any of them if there’d been an implant in her neck like there’s supposed to be for every prisoner in the building,” said Donnie.

  “Oh, don’t you start,” said Bart. “Don’t you fucking start! The things I’ve seen in your department these past few days, the shirking, the disorganization, the utter lack of accountability—your floor supervisor was an antidomer mole!”

  “The point stands that Jenna nearly escaped because our most basic security measure, the one at the heart of everything we do-”

  “You know damned well why I took out her implant! Someone was trying to murder Jenna before the Finale and I’ll have you know that still isn’t resolved!”

  “Where is Jenna now?” said Herman.

  “She’s in the hospital wing,” said Bart. “She’s out cold. One of the lab techs hit her with a tranquilizer dart. The doctor thinks she’ll be out for the rest of the day.”

  “And then what?” said Herman. “Are we going to let her continue running around without an implant?”

  “I’ve special ordered an implant that only I can click,” said Bart.

  “Only you can click it?” said Donnie. “What if the trainers need to zap her?”

  “She won’t be training anymore. We’re going to have her on lockdown until the Finale.”

  “What if the guards need to discipline her?”

  “I’m talking about a complete and total lockdown. We’re bringing in a cage from the lab, we’re setting it up inside Cellblock D.”

  “Who’s we?” said Donnie.

  “I’ve asked a couple people from Course Crew to make this happen,” said Bart.

  “You’re just doling out orders in my department now?” said Donnie.

  “Damned right I am,” said Bart. “Somebody’s got to take responsibility for the security of our prisoners.”

  “I resent everything you’re trying to imply. I am not the one who took out Jenna’s implant!”

  “Stop it, both of you,” said Chanelle. “What’s done is done. What are we doing to contain this situation?”

  “I’ve already had legal come to the office with a pile of nondisclosure statements,” Bart said. “No one was allowed to go home until they told us what they knew and we told them what they were allowed to say.”

  “And what are they allowed to say?” said Herman.

  “Nothing,” said Bart. “Anyone who knows what happened signed an NDA.”

  “So that’s our stance going forward,” said Herman. “This escape attempt didn’t happen.”

  “Damn right that’s our stance,” said Bart.

  Herman nodded in approval.

  “And you’re confident you’ve spoken to everyone who was here last night,” said Donnie, emphasizing the word everyone in a way that made Bart want to punch him.

  “No,” said Bart, “there’s obviously one person we didn’t speak to, because there’s one person who has fled the scene.”

  One person who lured Bart to the futon in his secret office where he kicked off his shoes and drank wine like a fucking idiot while she coordinated an escape attempt. That person was probably out of the country by now.

  For the rest of the meeting, Bart told his father and siblings a truncated and self-serving version of what he knew about the mystery girl from facilities. He told them Foster Smith was her name and that he’d met her when he was poking around in operations.

  He didn’t tell them that Foster had lured him into a honeytrap as part of her plan.

  He told them they had a sparse paper trail from her personnel file. They had interview notes from people who worked with her at the company, he said. They had the meager results from a first pass at an identity search from the private investigator the company kept on retainer.

  “I assume we’ve authorized this investigator to continue searching for this woman?” said Herman.

  “I’ve told him to look into it, call me with questions, and most of all, to keep quiet,” said Bart.

  “Yes,” said Herman. “Discretion is our friend on this. Our enemies in Congress would be quick to use this incident against us. Even if it means this woman gets away-”

  “That’s exactly the approach I’m taking,” said Bart. “No matter what, nobody finds out what happened here last night.”

  Nobody finds out that Jenna nearly escaped, and nobody finds out that Bart was a fool who went to a secret office he kept on Floor 9 and waited for a pretty girl who never came.

  They ended the meeting. Bart went to his office, told Carlos to hold all calls, locked the door, collapsed on his couch, and slept. He woke up some time after lunch and checked his texts. Fourteen messages. He ignored or delegated almost all of them. The only message that directly interested him was from Carlos.

  We’ve found some letters that were in Jenna’s pocket when she was caught.

  A minute later he was at Carlos’s desk, reading three handwritten letters from someone who knew the biggest secret in the company.

  Remember that surgery from a few days ago? When they told you something was wrong with your implant and now it’s fixed?

  It isn’t fixed. It isn’t there at all.

  “Let’s make a list of everyone who knew we were removing Jenna’s implant,” Bart said.

  “Already started,” said Carlos.

  Bart looked again at the letter.

  I know you’re mad at me. I’d be mad at me too.

  “She’s talking to Jenna as if they’re friends.”

  “Friends with a history,” Carlos added.

  “I know you’re mad at me,” Bart read aloud. “I’d be mad at me too. We can talk about that later.”

  “It’s crazy, isn’t it?” Carlos said.

  “She sounds like...”

  Bart didn’t finish the thought. Had he made it to the en
d of the sentence, he would have said she sounds like she feels guilty, but before the words even came out, their implications sent Bart’s mind alight.

  He was thinking about the girl Jenna spoke of on the witness stand, the girl the prosecution never found, the girl the media ultimately dismissed as immaterial or maybe even make-believe, the girl whose name lived on quietly amidst Internet conspiracy theories but otherwise was nothing.

  The thought that this antidomer mole, Foster Smith, could be the mystery girl Jenna spoke about on the witness stand, the girl named Sunny…it was absurd.

  Wasn’t it?

  Jenna woke up in late afternoon. Bart met her in the medical ward.

  She was in a hospital gown, handcuffed to the bed. She looked slimmer than usual. Less colorful than usual. A new haircut. Dregs of mascara still lining her eyes. Makeup and glasses and a crew member’s uniform—if Bart hadn’t been so angry about this turn of events, he’d be inspired at the audacity of Jenna’s attempted escape.

  You nearly did it, he thought. Fucking Christ, you nearly pulled it off.

  “Hello Jenna.”

  “Hi Bart.”

  Her voice was sharp. If she was woozy at all, she was hiding it well.

  “You know why I’m here?” Bart said.

  “Maybe you should tell me and save us both the trouble.”

  The words had all the attitude he’d come to love about her, but the sound of them…what was it? Was it fear?

  “You caused us trouble, Jenna. You broke the rules.”

  “Fuck your rules.”

  No, it wasn’t fear.

  “Go ahead, Bart,” she continued. “Click me. Click me a dozen times in a row. Click me until I’m a vegetable. Do your worst. If you can kill me while you’re at it, all the better.”

  Despair. That’s what was different about her. Jenna had come so close to freedom only to have it snatched from her grasp at the end.

  “You don’t care anymore,” said Bart.

  “Care about what?” said Jenna.

  “About anything,” said Bart. “You’ve given up.”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  “Of course I wouldn’t. You’re one of the final twelve. Vegas has you at second best odds to win.”

  “Oh yeah? Who’s got the best odds?”

  “Nathan.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Jenna, you might think that I’m angry at you for trying to escape, but I’m not.”

  “Why would I care what you think?”

  “You see me as your adversary, but that’s not how I see you.”

  “No, you see me as your cash cow, good for making milk until it’s time for the slaughterhouse.”

  “I see you as my partner.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “You’re giving me a record-breaking audience. I’m giving you a chance to keep on living.”

  “If you’re going to torture me, get on with it. Otherwise get out of my room.”

  “I want to know who she is, Jenna.”

  “Who?”

  “The woman who helped you get out of the cellblock.”

  Jenna turned her head back and looked at him. Locked eyes with him. Judged him.

  “Dammit,” she said.

  “What? Dammit what?”

  “I was hoping you caught her,” said Jenna. “Obviously you didn’t.”

  “You were hoping we caught the woman who committed a felony offense to try and save you? Interesting. I had assumed the woman was your friend. Perhaps I was wrong.”

  Jenna laughed. “Oh Bart, if you only knew. If you and the rest of the world even had a clue of who she is and what she’s capable of.”

  “Tell me,” said Bart. “You want her caught, I want to go out and catch her, but I need you to tell me who she is first.”

  “You don’t want to catch her. If you caught her you’d have proof, right there in your blood-stained hands, that everything I’ve said about Sunny since the day I was arrested is true.”

  “You’re telling me it’s Sunny Paderewski,” said Bart. “The woman we all knew as Foster Smith was actually your mystery friend Sunny Paderewski.”

  “You knew her?” said Jenna.

  “Other people at the company knew her. I only met her once.”

  “What’s she like now?” said Jenna. “Did she pull one over on you? Did she win your trust and make you think she was your closest friend only to screw you over and ruin your life?”

  Close enough, Bart thought.

  “Because that’s what she did to me,” said Jenna. “You know what I was going to do when I got out and finally got to see her face to face?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t either, and that scares the hell out of me. If she were here with us right now, in this room, and I wasn’t chained to this bed, I might wrap my hands around her throat and squeeze.”

  “She was helping you escape, and when it was done, you were going to kill her?” said Bart.

  “Pretty much, yep. Or maybe not. Who knows how I might have felt when I made it to the outside? Maybe I would have been in a forgiving mood. But she’s left me with a lot to forgive.”

  Bart reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper Carlos had made for him. He unfolded it and held it up for Jenna.

  “This is the photo we took of Foster Smith for her security badge,” he said.

  Jenna looked at the photo, shaking her head.

  “Amazing,” she said. “The girl is a chameleon.”

  “It’s her,” said Bart. “You are confirming for me that the woman we knew as Foster Smith is the same that you once knew as Sunny Paderewski.”

  “She’s lost weight. Got super skinny on purpose, I bet. It’s a good way to change your appearance. And she’s wearing contacts or something—her eyes were a different shade of blue when I knew her. Her hair’s different, but you’ve gotta expect that, don’t you? But yeah, go look on the Internet for the photo my lawyers gave to the media. See it for yourself. She looks different enough that you’ll try to convince yourself it isn’t true, but in your heart, you already know that the woman you thought was your employee is the same woman I thought was my best friend.”

  “Thank you, Jenna,” he said, turning to leave.

  “What? That’s it? You don’t want to talk about the escape route she had me take? Because I’ll walk you through the whole thing just to get out of this stupid bed.”

  “We’re good, but thanks.”

  “Am I going back to the cellblock? Am I doing any training before the Finale?”

  He left her without answering. He went back to his office, struggling to reconcile the Jenna he’d just spoken to and the Jenna he thought he knew.

  Struggling with the idea, uncomfortable that it was, that she might have been telling the truth all this time. That she might be innocent.

  CHAPTER 47

  Four days before the Finale race, Cameron’s password breaker cracked open the Utility Bills folder on Kyle’s laptop.

  CHAPTER 48

  Devlin Enterprises continued the run-up to the Finale as if everything was normal. Training, media, marketing, live course tests, citywide preparation.

  On the Friday before the race, as on every Friday, all the senior staff gathered in Conference Room 12 for a recurring meeting that was named “State of the Company” on their calendars.

  Bart hated the State of the Company meetings.

  “Our next agenda item…” said Chanelle.

  Bart came to this weekly meeting only out of deference to his father. When the old man died, Bart intended for the State of the Company meeting to die with him.

  “…is new regulations governing the storing temperature of food that will affect our watch party at the Polaris…”

  Bart tuned out the chatter and looked around the conference table. All the company’s highest paid executives, gathered in one place, pretending to listen. Bored Chanelle sat next to Sleepy Herman sat next to Somber Fu sat next to Dull Donnie sat n
ext to Liza.

  Lovely Liza.

  It had been six years since Bart played with Liza in his secret office. Six years since she was a fresh-faced eager-to-please new hire from Smith College.

  Next to Liza was Blake. He looked awfully piqued today. Beads of sweat were glistening on his bald head. You feel my pain, don’t you Blake? More than anyone else at this table, you understand what a miserable waste this meeting is because you, like me, are a doer.

  Bart usually got through the State of the Company meeting with good old-fashioned day dreaming. On a normal Friday, a daydream about naked Liza’s legs wrapped around his back would make this dreary meeting tolerable. But not today. Today his mind was too occupied with Foster.

  Or Sunny. Whatever the hell her name was. Foster/Sunny/Fugitive/Hot Girl/Gone Girl/Secret Girl/Who’s That Girl/Paderewski-Smith. Foster is Sunny. Sunny is real. For all we know Jenna’s testimony at her trial might have been the truth. Bart hadn’t told anyone. He’d sent Jenna back to her cell. He’d put her on zero contact protocol. No guards were allowed to speak with her. Her Yack Shack messages went straight to Bart and Bart alone for approval. The little secret that she and Bart shared, the knowledge that her friend Sunny Paderewski had been in the building for three years posing as an employee named Foster Smith, would follow Jenna to the afterlife, and fade into nothing after she was gone.

  “Our next agenda item is from Pamela,” said Chanelle.

  Pamela Davis, Senior PR Director and Media Liaison, sat forward in her chair.

  “I need to talk to you all about a story that’s going to run in Logic Lighthouse magazine on Monday,” Pamela said.

  So, so good with her makeup, Pamela was. Bart stared at her shiny pink lips as she spoke.

  “The author of this particular story contacted me to ask if Devlin had any comment before the story runs,” Pamela said. “I didn’t give a comment. But the story is potentially problematic for us. It’s about Jenna’s past, particularly her relationship with a woman named Sunny Paderewski.”