Oliver Invictus (Annals of Altair Book 3)

by Kate Stradling

  If Abel had been successful in killing the teen, they both would have skipped out of the hospital scot-free.

  The thought made Oliver sick. As long as those two psychopaths were loose, he could never rest easy again.

  But even so, a tiny hope kindled anew in his heart. Yes, Abel and Kennedy wanted him dead on a slab, but Altair was at least watching him, if nothing else.

  The guard didn’t remember leaving his post. He had come to his senses, disoriented, in front of a vending machine on the other side of the hospital. Oliver heard this detail gibbered from the man’s own lips as General Stone chewed him out.

  Kennedy Ross had indeed been inside the hospital with her father.

  When Oliver awoke, he had broken her projection. He counted Abel Ross’s threatened method of killing him as a blessing. Had the man been more efficient about his business, Oliver would not have remained conscious long enough for Smith to intervene.

  Or Dr. Moncrieff, as he had called himself. Smith had given a statement to hospital security that he had come to visit another patient, but in passing Oliver’s door had overheard a struggle and thought to check on the patient’s welfare. No one questioned its veracity.

  Doyle, General Stone’s driver, brought report of what had become of the Rosses: Kennedy and Abel had escaped.

  Hospital security had apprehended them in the north stairwell and promptly turned them over to the Seattle Police Department. Shortly after they were loaded into a police car headed to the nearest precinct office, the car pulled to the side of the road. The policemen got out, opened the back door, removed their prisoners’ handcuffs, and handed over the keys.

  The Rosses had abandoned the police cruiser in an affluent neighborhood near Puget Sound. Where they had gone from there was anyone’s guess.

  General Stone seethed as he received the report. Hospital security would receive an earful from him very shortly—as if they should have guessed that one of their prisoners could magically force her will onto others unless she stayed within a specific proximity to an awake and alert Oliver.

  The general’s beef, though, seemed more to be that the man who had attacked a patient under his protection had been turned over to the civilian police. As he chewed out the guard at the door, Cedric peeked around the casing, his eyes wide. Perhaps he realized that he might share Oliver’s fate if he didn’t play his cards right. Oliver wouldn’t be the only null-projector on Abel’s hit list.

  Better for Cedric if he figured that out sooner rather than later.

  Stone actually looked in on Oliver before he left, but only as a procedural visit. “The GCA will handle your affairs from here on out,” he said. “When you’re stable enough to move, they’ll transfer you.”

  “To Prom-E?” Oliver guessed, his voice little more than a hoarse mumble.

  Stone grunted, his eyes directed elsewhere.

  “Will Cedric be enough to stop Kennedy?” The younger, weaker null had already proven ineffective against her. Oliver’s sense of duty chose an odd moment to surface, but it was his fault Kennedy was on the loose, and it was his responsibility to reel her back before too many others got hurt.

  “He doesn’t have to stop her. I’ve ordered her shot on sight, and projections don’t work against drones.”

  An instinctive lump rose in Oliver’s throat. Projectors who didn't cooperate with the State were of no value as assets and posed too much risk as adversaries. The best way to ensure cooperation was through death.

  But she was only fourteen.

  He couldn’t dwell on it. Kennedy was as much a liability to General Stone as Oliver was to Abel Ross. The two adults were cut from the same cloth, both of them ruthless enough to do whatever was needed to accomplish their desired ends. Oliver, stuck in the middle, could not in good conscience support either of them.

  Under General Stone’s orders, the hospital moved him from Room 3042 to room 4057, on the next floor up. A second guard was added to the detail outside the room, as though two of them might resist Kennedy’s projections better than one. Only pre-approved hospital staff could bring Oliver his medication and meals.

  NPNN renewed its tale of Kennedy’s kidnapping with vigor and added one about an arsonist on the loose in Seattle. Security footage of Abel Ross in the hospital accompanied that story. Veronica Porcher never mentioned why the man was wearing scrubs like a hospital worker, or where the video had come from. The vast majority of her viewers would never think to question.

  And never once did they retract their story about Oliver being a murderous, malcontented teen. They simply dropped it cold.

  Chapter 22

  Persona Non Grata

  Thursday, March 7, 2:15 PM PST, Seattle

  “What’s that you’re drawing, Ollie?”

  He squelched the urge to shield his notebook from view. Shielding would be suspicious. “I’m just doodling. It gets boring in here. Is it time for my walk?”

  His daytime nurse, David, nodded. One of the guards at the door stood attendant, ready to trail the two through the hospital hallways. Oliver was nine days into his recovery and no longer bed-bound, which meant that twice a day, someone took him walking around the fourth floor for some token exercise.

  The walk lasted all of ten minutes, but it was the only time Oliver spent outside of his room.

  He pushed away from his chair by the window. A molded brace pinned his right arm to his side and kept his shoulders immobile. His gunshot wound ached. The hospital staff had transitioned him from an IV painkiller to an oral one, but Oliver, not trusting what medications they might be giving him, had taken to palming the pills instead of swallowing them. He had a growing stash shoved between the back and bottom cushions of his chair.

  “You’d better hurry,” said the waiting guard to the nurse. “His GCA handlers are coming today.”

  Oliver’s pulse quickened. “Am I getting transferred?” Dr. Bridger had told him he’d need ten to fourteen days in the hospital, but he’d assumed, with the additional trauma from Abel’s attack, that the longer estimate was more accurate.

  The guard frowned. He was GCA himself, so getting useful information out of him was akin to squeezing water from a stone. For the most part, he didn’t have anything useful to convey. Oliver had played dumb for long enough to lull him into a sense of normalcy, though, to where he would drop tidbits that the teen could use, and without realizing that he was giving him any information at all.

  “Not today,” he said, much to Oliver’s relief.

  “The doctors haven’t released you yet,” said David, and he motioned for Oliver to pass through the door.

  They started counter-clockwise through the halls. David always went counter-clockwise. The nurse in the evening, Saundra, always took him the other direction. He walked slowly, his head tipped downward to shield his eyes from the cameras stationed in the hall corners. His periphery vision worked overtime during these walks as he mentally catalogued everything he passed.

  The guard remained five steps behind, close enough to intervene should anything happen, close enough to overhear any conversation. As they approached the first corner, Oliver slowed his steps, giving himself more time to observe the emergency exit plan on the wall.

  There was one at the end of each hall, next to the stairwell doors. He’d memorized the floor’s basic structure already; the posted plan gave him a glimpse of the hospital’s layout from a bird’s-eye view, including the exits and the surrounding parking lots.

  Escape was such a delicate operation to plan. His physical stamina was returning by degrees, but his street clothes amounted to nothing more than a pair of pants and the too-big shoes he had worn. The EMTs had cut his only shirt right off of him, and the GCA hadn’t bothered to replace it. Escape in his hospital gown and slippers would paint him as an immediate target to any bystanders. The gown was closed in the back, thankfully, but it wouldn’t hold up against the chill of winter. He wouldn’t get new clothes until the hospital was ready to release him, either.


  Clothing was only one variable in the mix, though. A daytime escape would leave him with dozens—hundreds—of people to evade. Nighttime, with the city’s curfew in strict force, would make him an easier target for authorities and drones scanning the area.

  And then there was the unknown variable: Altair. Was Smith still somewhere nearby? Was he still watching over Oliver? The teen had caught no glimpse of him or any other observer during these twice-daily walks, but hiding in plain sight was Altair’s specialty.

  “You’re lagging a bit today, Ollie,” said David. “Are you feeling all right?”

  With practiced control Oliver looked up at the man. “Hmm? Just lost in my thoughts, I guess. Why do you guys all call me Ollie?”

  He already knew the answer. He’d asked Saundra the night before, with a different guard eavesdropping behind him.

  “That’s what they told us to call you,” said David. “Isn’t it what you go by?”

  “No,” he said. “I’ve always been called Oliver.”

  A flash of distaste flitted across the nurse’s face, breaking through his cheerful façade. He schooled it a moment later, fixing a pleasant smile upon his patient. “Is that what you want me to call you?”

  “I don’t really care,” said Oliver. “I was just wondering why everyone used the nickname. ‘Ollie’ is more personable, isn’t it? You don’t naturally think of an ‘Ollie’ as a mass murderer, do you?”

  The guard behind made an interjectory noise even as David’s lips pressed into a flat line.

  “That’s enough chatter, you two.”

  Oliver turned to look curiously at the man. “Why? That’s the narrative going around, isn’t it? That I blew up a school in Montana? I didn’t really,” he added to David. “They just needed a scapegoat.”

  The nurse’s brows shot up.

  “That’s enough,” the guard said again.

  They continued the walk in silence, but Oliver was satisfied. When he’d posed the question to Saundra the night before, she’d gotten defensive as well. Hospital workers had a sworn duty to preserve life regardless of what their patient might have done prior to arrival. Still, treating a teenaged bomber took its toll. Everyone who worked with Oliver, who called him “Ollie” so readily, wore the same false nonchalance. They pretended he was a normal patient when clearly he wasn’t.

  Plotting escape meant taking such variables into account. If everyone in the hospital believed he was a ruthless, conscience-less killer, everyone would come after him when he bolted. If he could plant seeds of doubt against the narrative, though, he might increase his chances of success.

  So many other variables worked against him that even the smallest leeway seemed worthwhile to cultivate.

  The slippers on his feet shuffled across the floor, a steady rhythm against the hum of machinery that thrummed through the building. Behind him, the guard’s cell phone rang.

  “What? Yeah, we’re almost back. We’re just coming around the last corner.”

  David took advantage of the man’s distraction. “If it wasn’t you, who was it?” he asked in a low, eager voice.

  Oliver, surprised to have the topic pursued, whispered back conspiratorially, “The guy who tried to strangle me was the ring-leader. They’re calling him an arsonist on the news, but that’s because they already blamed the bombing on me.”

  Interest flickered across the nurse’s face. The story intrigued him. “But why would—”

  “What’re you two talking about?” The guard had finished his phone conversation.

  Oliver, with a sigh, looked back at the man. “Are my GCA handlers here?”

  “Just arrived. Hurry back to the room.”

  David seemed reluctant to end the walk, to lose his chance at a juicy piece of gossip. Oliver, however, thought it better that a couple of GCA agents not snoop around his hospital room for too long. He picked up his pace, though not too much. It wouldn’t do to have the staff think he could move that quickly.

  The two GCA agents were, to Oliver’s annoyance, flipping through the notebook he had left behind. A casual glance wouldn’t yield much information, he hoped.

  “You play the dot game by yourself?” one of them asked him as he settled on his bed. David moved around him, taking post-exercise vitals.

  The “dot game” was a simple grid of points, and each player took turns drawing lines between them until they formed a square. The person who drew the square claimed it with their initials, and whoever had the most squares when the grid was filled won. Emily had taught it to him during their last week of handler-student interaction.

  “Are you offering to play it with me?” Oliver asked with a note of sarcasm to his voice.

  The agent closed the notebook and set it down, much to his relief. “Are you keeping out of trouble?”

  “What trouble can I get into here? It’s a hospital. I practically had to beg them for something to doodle in.”

  The second agent glanced up to the TV screen, dead on the wall. “Most people just watch the news.”

  “I’m a null,” said Oliver. “Your news broadcasts can’t brainwash me.”

  The first agent hissed and looked to David, who had looked up with a frown at this comment.

  “Don’t worry about him,” said Oliver. “He’s brainwashed, thinks I somehow acquired a hundred pounds of fertilizer and gasoline to blow up a school when students weren’t even allowed off campus. But you guys probably think that too. You’re all bleating sheep.”

  “Aren’t you done yet?” the second agent asked David, his voice tight. “Check his heart rate and get out.”

  David moved his stethoscope from his ears to around his neck. “Everything looks good,” he said shortly. He jotted a note on the whiteboard—the time of their walk, and that all vitals were normal—and then he left the room.

  “You’re a troublemaker, kid,” said one of the agents. He and his partner walked out of the room, finished with their brief check. Oliver, glad to see them go, waited until the door was firmly shut before retrieving his notebook from the chair where the man had dropped it.

  He flipped open to the half-completed dot game.

  It wasn’t a dot game at all. It was the fourth floor of the hospital, marked with hazards all along the best path he could take to get out.

  His nighttime nurse, Saundra, came for him that evening, her neutral expression cracking at the edges. Oliver set aside his notebook and followed her out the door to walk the halls. One of the GCA guards followed close behind. As they rounded the corner to the adjoining corridor, Saundra glanced back over one shoulder.

  “I hear you’re quite the storyteller,” she said to Oliver in a whisper, her voice brimming with suspicion.

  David had spread his tidbit of gossip. Oliver looked to her apologetically. The guard, though different, had been warned that he had spoken out of turn earlier.

  “I can’t talk,” he muttered. “They’re always watching me.”

  From behind, as though on cue, his guard asked, “What’re you two discussing up there?” He quickened his pace until he was practically on their heels. “No unnecessary conversations tonight, understand?”

  Disdain twisted across Oliver’s face as he scowled at the man. Then he shifted his attention to the wall and continued shuffling down the corridor.

  As they reached the corner, he pressed his luck. “Would it be so bad for people to know I’m not a crazed killer?” he burst out. “It makes me sick what happened at Prom-F. What happened at Prom-B.”

  “That’s enough!” The guard grabbed him by his arm—his right arm, the one still strapped to his side in a brace. Oliver hissed as pain shot through him.

  Saundra instantly intervened. “You do not touch a patient like that. I don’t care who you are!”

  Oliver backed against the wall as the two adults confronted one another. “You don’t interfere with my orders!” the guard shouted. “That kid is the GCA’s responsibility!”

  “You don’t interfere with
hospital protocol,” the outspoken nurse replied. “I’ll have security on you like dogs on raw meat, and a full report to your superiors!”

  Oliver, meanwhile, edged toward the nearest exit. Nighttime in a hospital gown and slippers was not his ideal for an escape, but if now was his window he would take it.

  Neither adult was that distracted from him, though. The guard, as though to emphasize that he could do with his charge as he pleased, made an effort to catch Oliver’s arm again. Saundra, in full mother-bear mode, blocked the endeavor. “You can’t just grab someone with a gunshot wound,” she yelled. She latched onto Oliver’s left arm, her body angled as a shield between him and the irate GCA guard.

  That man was done with the altercation. “Exercise is over. Get back to the room. I’m having you removed from duty on this floor!”

  Her head tilted at a dangerous angle. “You can sure try,” she said sarcastically, but she did orient her steps toward Oliver’s hospital room. “C’mon, Ollie. Who knows but this guy just tore open your stitches again.”

  It was possible. That initial flare of pain had yielded to a slow, agonizing burn. Oliver bit the inside of his cheek as he rounded the final corridor. Should he have bolted in that moment of altercation? Had he missed his window?

  The anxiety of a lost escape was more painful than any physical ache.

  The guard groused to his fellow the minute they were within speaking range. “Stay inside while she takes his vitals. Don’t leave these two alone. I need to speak with her supervisor.”

  “You causing trouble again, Ollie?” asked the second guard as Oliver walked past him into the room. “It’s not enough for you to blow up a school, but you have to sow seeds of contention everywhere you go?”

  “If I’d really blown up a school, the FBI would be standing watch over my door instead of you,” Oliver replied, cynicism thick on his voice. “The GCA has no jurisdiction over terrorists.”