Oliver Invictus (Annals of Altair Book 3)

by Kate Stradling

  “Be quiet. You’re done talking for today,” said the guard with a slanted glance toward Saundra. His companion had already left for the nurses’ station to register a complaint. “You, finish with his vitals and scram.”

  Saundra thrust out her jaw at an obstinate angle. She positioned her stethoscope ear-tips in place with meticulous, unhurried precision. “Your buddy may have ripped this kid’s chest open again. Don’t think I’m not going to report his manhandling when I’m done here.”

  She turned her back on him then, her attention fixed on her job.

  Oliver watched her like a hawk as she checked his vitals. He was desperate for any sign of camaraderie, of enlightenment, desperate for an ally. Her expression remained closed, tight, focused, except for one fleeting glance into his eyes.

  She changed the bandage on the front of his chest, tutting like a disappointed parent as she did so. She had to remove the brace to access the exit wound on his back, and called for a medical assistant to help her.

  “We’ve got some oozing back here. You need another pain pill, Ollie?”

  He shook his head. Every time someone touched the exit wound, his memory skipped back to that haunting moment on the pavement, the explosion of pain, the bewildering instant where his mind first grasped what had happened.

  Saundra didn’t press him to accept the medication. She smeared the wound with salve and wrapped it again, and on went the brace. By the time she finished, the first GCA guard had returned with hospital security.

  “Don’t look at me,” she told them. “This yahoo tried to mangle my patient.” With righteous indignation she skirted past the doorframe, followed by her assistant. The hospital security officer frowned at the guard.

  “That kid’s GCA property. We can do as we please with him,” the man sneered. He shut the door tight, leaving Oliver alone in the aftermath.

  The GCA would clamp down on him for sure now. They might even push the hospital to release him sooner. Yet, that fleeting glance from Saundra spoke of other possibilities, of allies in the hallways beyond his isolated room.

  He couldn’t decide if he had gained ground tonight or lost it.

  Chapter 23

  Friends in Strange Places

  Friday, March 8, 8:05 AM PST, Seattle

  David arrived half an hour early. “Making trouble with the night shift?” he asked under his breath. One of the guards had followed him into the room, but Oliver had the morning news on, loud enough to drown out the remark.

  He didn’t respond. Instead he kept his gaze fixed on the television screen. The news broadcaster was introducing Veronica’s segment.

  The couple at the B&B had always watched her with the sound muted. General Stone had done the same. Veronica reported fabrications and propaganda, whatever the State wanted people to believe. From a different angle, though, she was alerting anyone in the know of when the government was deceiving them.

  “A peddler of lies,” Oliver murmured.

  David caught the words. He glanced over his shoulder to the television. Veronica was reporting about a prison break. Five men had, supposedly, escaped a federal penitentiary in Northern California.

  “I wonder who they really are,” said Oliver. He punched the button to turn off the TV and threw back his covers.

  David, in the process of fitting his stethoscope, stopped short and stared. “You’re wearing pants.”

  “My legs were cold.” Oliver maintained a neutral façade, hoping the nurse would let this slide. He’d pulled the article of clothing from his tiny closet in the middle of the night. If another opportunity for escape presented itself, he would not hesitate.

  David, though, shook his head. “Dr. Bridger ordered diagnostics this morning. You can’t wear any street clothes in the room, or the metal might show up on the images. You put those on yourself, one-handed?” He sounded impressed, at least.

  “Should I have asked the monkeys that guard me for help?” Oliver said. The agent against the wall stiffened, his expression narrow.

  David glanced over his shoulder. “If your legs are cold, I can get you a set of scrub pants.”

  “There’s no need for that,” said the guard, his arms folded in a stance of overbearing authority. “If everything comes back clean, he’ll leave today in his own clothes.”

  Oliver’s heart lurched, though he tried not to show it on his face. He resisted the urge to ask questions, which would only cue his captors that he was worried. Instead, he fixed his attention upon his nurse.

  “I’ll go get the scrub pants,” David said. “No sense having cold legs on the off-chance of a hospital release.”

  Definite animosity between the hospital staff and the GCA guards, Oliver noted. That, at least, played in his favor.

  David returned with a pair of pants—navy blue cotton with a drawstring waist—and allowed Oliver the dignity of changing them himself in private. His guards were none too happy about this show of favor. They muttered to one another just beyond the curtain David had swept into place.

  “He has to be able to change his own clothes if you expect us to release him,” said David loudly. “Patient mobility can be a determining factor in whether he stays here or not.”

  Oliver suspected that this was more justification than truth. He couldn’t change into a shirt by himself, given how stiff and injured his right shoulder still was. Even changing pants was a clumsy affair with only one arm, but he did it.

  The curtain swept back to reveal that David’s medical assistant Charlie had arrived with a wheelchair.

  “Imaging is down on the second floor,” said the nurse.

  The trek there passed in silence. David walked alongside Oliver while Charlie pushed. Both GCA guards followed, close enough to intervene upon any conversation. During the elevator ride, one of them actually positioned himself between Oliver and David, his right hand lingering casually upon the stun gun at his hip. The nurse arched his brows at the unspoken threat but otherwise did not acknowledge it.

  When they reached the assigned imaging room, however, David raised one flattened palm. “You can’t come past this point,” he told the pair of guards. “Patient and staff only in imaging rooms.”

  They bristled, but he directed them to the next room over. “You can watch in the control room with the tech, or you can stand guard out here, but those are your only options.”

  Charlie, meanwhile, had already wheeled Oliver inside. As the door shut on the guards, David trotted over.

  “Talk quick, Ollie,” he commanded. “They can’t hear you in here.”

  “You believe me?” Oliver blurted.

  David and Charlie exchanged a skeptical glance. “Anyone can see that something fishy’s going on. Saundra’s right: if you were a school-bomber, the FBI would be guarding you, not these guys.”

  Oliver scrambled for words. What, in the whole tangle of events, was the most important thing he could say? A window into the control room showed him one of his guards entering to observe. The man watched with eagle eyes. Oliver angled his face the opposite direction as Charlie and David unbuckled his shoulder brace. Their movements were slow, methodical as he spoke.

  “Prometheus is an arm of the GCA. They look for kids with a certain genetic profile and take them away from their parents if they test positive. One of the kids they stole was Kennedy Ross. She was at the Prom-F campus in Montana. She got a message to her father, Abel Ross, who enlisted a domestic terrorist group called the Overmountain Brotherhood to lay siege to the campus and get her out. None of the kids died. They took us all in transports to half a dozen hideouts in the mountains.”

  They didn’t believe him, from the mirror-like skepticism that crossed their faces. “So how did you get the blame?” David asked as he slipped the brace from Oliver’s shoulder.

  “I’m a null-projector. The GCA needed to get me back, so by painting me as the culprit, they guaranteed that anyone who saw me would report me.” They wouldn’t understand the term “null-projector” but he
didn’t have time to explain. With the brace off, he followed Charlie’s gesture toward the imaging machine. “When I get released from here, I’m going to Prom-E, the shadow campus. No one knows what happens there. I might be used for experiments. I might be eliminated.”

  David ignored his speculation, too focused on positioning Oliver within the machine. “What happened at our local Prometheus, then?”

  Oliver was facing the observation window now. He kept his lips tight, their movement minimal. “Abel Ross has another daughter, Liberty, who was there. He attacked the campus, but the GCA had already moved her to Prom-E before he arrived.”

  “This is one crazy kid,” said Charlie, exchanging a glance with David.

  The nurse tipped his head in acknowledgement and switched to official hospital protocol. “We have to step outside for the imaging, Ollie. The machine will rotate around you to get your wound site from multiple angles. You’ll hear a series of loud buzzes as it moves. Hold still until it’s over.”

  Oliver, sick in the pit of his stomach, nodded. They didn’t believe him after all. His one opportunity, wasted.

  Would that he’d been born a projector instead of a null.

  The two men left. The imaging machine whirred to life around him.

  Of course they would think he was crazy. Few people outside of Prometheus had ever even heard of projectors or nulls, so they wouldn’t know how desperately the government worked to control such individuals. To Oliver, who had grown up in that environment, it was completely normal. To outsiders, it was nothing more than a fairy tale—even though the proof was right in front of their faces.

  The machine rotated through its different stations, emitting a buzz every time it paused for an image. Bruises still encased Oliver’s shoulder and down his chest, brown and yellowing green from the trauma of the gunshot wound. Did he hope the internal injuries were better, or worse? Would the hospital release him to the GCA before he was medically ready?

  Could he escape in his current condition? If the imaging meant eminent release and Prom-E on his horizon, he needed to get out now.

  The machine finished its rounds. David and Charlie entered again to help him put his shoulder brace back on.

  David chattered as he worked. “The radiographer still has to interpret the images, but the tech says everything looks really good to him. Your clavicle’s made a good union, and your shoulder blade is starting to knit.”

  “Lucky you’re so young,” Charlie added.

  Oliver didn’t feel lucky. Quicker healing meant quicker release, and that only pressed upon him the urgency to bolt. His mind raced. Could he convince David or Charlie to guide him a different direction? To leave behind his guards somehow? Surely there was a plausible escape route on this floor.

  But he’d been studying the fourth floor layout, not the second.

  As Charlie wheeled him from the room, one of the guards blocked their path. “I can take him back from here.”

  “We’re not supposed to leave patients unattended outside their rooms,” said David.

  “He’s not unattended,” said the guard. “I’ll be with him. You guys did a lot of talking in there where no one could hear you. I’ll be making a call to your superiors.”

  Charlie stepped back, defensive hands raised. David, less inclined to obey, opened his mouth to argue.

  “This isn’t a discussion,” said the guard, shoving his way behind the chair. He pushed Oliver in the direction of the elevator, leaving the pair of workers behind.

  Oliver, meanwhile, seethed. “Where’s your buddy?”

  “Upstairs rifling through that book you’re always scrawling in,” the guard said. “You might think you’re pretty smart stuff, but you’re not going to pull one over on us.”

  “Paranoid much? I’m recovering from a gunshot wound, if you haven’t noticed.”

  “You’re a flight risk. Our orders are you don’t get an extra inch to move.”

  They had arrived at the elevator bay just as a set of doors opened. The guard pushed past a pair of orderlies exiting. They skirted out of the way with irritated glances.

  He smacked the button for the fourth floor. Oliver, facing away from the doors, heard footsteps quickening behind him.

  “Take the next one,” the guard commanded whoever was coming, and he drummed his finger on the close-door button.

  “Pretty aggressive for a trained ape,” Oliver sneered.

  “Listen up, you little jerkwad.” The man wrenched Oliver’s wheelchair around. He planted his hands on both armrests and thrust his nose directly into the teenager’s face. “You blew up a school, and now hundreds are dead. You’re not getting any sympathy from me or from anyone else.”

  So many sarcastic remarks bounced through Oliver’s head at once, so tempting to rattle off. Even more tempting, however, was the guard’s stun gun holstered to his right hip—currently in easy reach of Oliver’s good hand.

  He snatched the weapon and jammed it into the man’s ribcage, pulling the trigger. The guard twisted to one side with a jolt and fell upon the floor.

  In a flash Oliver was out of his chair. He stashed the stun gun inside his shoulder brace, wedged against his forearm. The elevator passed the third floor as he crouched. His heart in his throat and his shoulder aflame, he yanked the unconscious man’s loafers from his feet.

  They were moist inside and half a size too small, but Oliver put them on anyway. As the elevator pinged for the fourth floor, he tapped the buttons on the panel for floors five, six, and seven. Thankfully, no one was waiting to board. The doors slid open to a deserted lounge. Oliver slipped out, head high as though he had nothing to fear, and walked straight to the nearest stairwell.

  He quickened his pace as he pushed through the fire door and started down the steps. Was it really this easy? But he had, maybe, a window of thirty seconds before the guard was discovered and no clue what he would do when he reached the parking lot below. His quickly waning stamina, at the moment fueled by adrenaline and anxiety, would not last him for long.

  He took the stairs as fast as he dared, hanging onto a handrail for balance as he went. The door at the bottom displayed a warning: an alarm would sound in security if opened.

  Oliver didn’t hesitate. An alarm would sound in security soon enough regardless. Cold air blasted him as he emerged into a light drizzle—hardly ideal—and dashed straight for the parked cars. He knew what a sight he made: hospital gown, scrub pants, stolen loafers, and a brace across his shoulder that pinned his right arm into place.

  He wouldn’t get far, but trying was better than accepting his fate with tepid resignation.

  And he could always hope for that elusive variable, luck.

  “Oliver!”

  He whipped his head, the sound of his own name an odd joy. Across the lot, a woman waved her arms. Emily, he thought instinctively, only for an immediate correction to crowd it out.

  Not Emily. Jenifer.

  He bolted for her. She’d already dropped into the driver’s seat of a zippy gray hatchback. It veered out of its parking spot and directly for him. Oliver skirted out of the way, and the car screeched to a halt beside him. He jerked open the passenger-side door and dropped into the vacant seat. Jenifer peeled out of the lot.

  “You stupid, crazy kid!” she cried, but she sounded more impressed than upset.

  Oliver was too busy panting to answer.

  Jenifer continued her rant. “I have been lurking around that parking lot for a week trying to figure out how to get you out of there. Rumor was they were releasing you today. How did you get away?”

  Wordlessly he lifted the stun gun from inside his brace. She glanced at it from the corner of her eyes. “Unbelievable,” she muttered.

  Half a mile down the road, she turned into a grocery store parking lot. Oliver looked to her in alarm.

  “We have to change cars. The hospital lot’s covered with cameras.” She parked next to a gold sedan in the back half of the lot. “Come on.”

 
; Oliver exited the vehicle. “Are we stealing one?”

  The doors of the gold sedan unlocked as she crossed to the driver’s side. “Of course not,” Jenifer said. They climbed inside. “I mean, I could if I wanted to, but we’re better prepared than that.” She reached across to help Oliver with his seat belt. “There’s a blind spot for the security cameras here. When we’re further down the road I’ll stop and send a message to Smith.”

  “Where’s he?”

  “Inside the hospital. I told you we were going to get you out. Didn’t realize you’d take the bull by the horns and do it yourself. There’s a pair of gloves in the glovebox. Put them on.”

  Oliver frowned.

  “They block your ID chip,” she said. “It was replaced while you were there, right? Put ’em on before someone runs a scan around here.”

  He found the gloves. They made a strange addition to his already strange ensemble. Jenifer drove from the lot at a leisurely pace, taking her time as she turned onto the main road. In the distance, sirens sounded.

  “Sorry if I threw off your escape plans,” said Oliver.

  “Naw,” she replied. “We were going to ambush the GCA agents that brought you out. You escaping on your own is a lot cleaner, and it’ll keep Smith off their list of suspects to start. They’re probably scrambling to figure out how you orchestrated an escape with someone down in the parking lot when they’ve been monitoring your every move.”

  “And really, it was just dumb, blind luck.” A weight of gratitude pressed down upon him, that he had somehow acted in the right moment and had emerged in the right spot.

  “That you came out on that side of the hospital, maybe. I guess we had a 50-50 chance.” They stopped at an intersection. Jenifer pulled a cell phone from her pocket and tapped in a message while she kept an eye on the red light.

  “Did you two have a code word set up for if I came running into the lot?” Oliver asked, a bite of sarcasm in his voice.