STASIS: Part 3: Restart

by E. W. Osborne

  Stasis: Part 3

  Restart

  E.W. Osborne

  PART 3: RESTART

  This book is work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. This book contains explicit material and is intended for readers 18 years or older.

  The author acknowledges the copyrighted or trademarked status and trademarked owners of any wordmarks mentioned in the following fiction.

  Copyright © 2017 by E.W. Osborne

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review.

  All requests should be forwarded to: contact@ewosborne.com

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  1. Chapter One

  2. Chapter Two

  3. Chapter Three

  4. Chapter Four

  5. Chapter Five

  6. Chapter Six

  7. Chapter Seven

  8. Chapter Eight

  9. Chapter Nine

  10. Chapter Ten

  11. Chapter Eleven

  12. Chapter Twelve

  13. Chapter Thirteen

  14. Chapter Fourteen

  15. Chapter Fifteen

  16. Chapter Sixteen

  17. Chapter Seventeen

  18. Chapter Eighteen

  19. Chapter Nineteen

  20. Chapter Twenty

  21. Chapter Twenty-one

  22. Chapter Twenty-two

  23. Chapter Twenty-Three

  24. Chapter Twenty-Four

  25. Chapter Twenty-five

  26. Chapter Twenty-Six

  27. Chapter Twenty-Seven

  28. Chapter Twenty-Eight

  29. Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Author’s Notes

  I need your help!

  Chapter One

  South Lake Tahoe, CA

  July 3rd

  “This is insane,” Penelope said for what felt like the tenth time.

  More times than not over the last few weeks, she’d felt like she was living inside a dream. Reality simply didn’t match up with the things she found herself seeing and doing. Bundling her blindfolded, restrained husband into the back of the car was definitely high on that list.

  “I’m assuming the Seed has some type of GPS system,” Cameron asked Wesley from the opposite side of the car.

  “That’s what this is for,” he replied, plucking at the plain, gray slice of fabric. It looked like a repurposed pillowcase only with an elasticated hem to keep it in place over Joey’s head. “It’s woven with an alloy thread to distort and scatter the signal. Do we have everything? I’d like to put some distance between us and here.”

  “Let me do a final sweep,” Penelope replied. She made eyes at Cameron, urging him to follow her inside. She hadn’t gotten a chance to speak to him alone since Joey had shown up unannounced. He seemed to get the hint.

  “Yeah, I’ll help you.”

  Once inside, she angrily spun on her heel. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  He was prepared for this outburst, his expression barely registering the venom in her voice. “The way I see it, it’s either this or kill him. I’m pretty sure Wesley out there doesn’t care either way, but which one would you prefer?”

  “Kill him?”

  “Really? I thought the father of your child would be more important to you than that, but if you say so…”

  “Why is that even an option?”

  Cameron gave her a weary nod that reminded her of the old scientist. The two had obviously spent far too much time together. “The only reason he didn’t kill me was because he knew I could help him. Tell me again, what exactly does Joey do for work?”

  Penelope glanced out of the kitchen window, checking on her captive husband. “He stays at home with Anna.”

  “And before that? He didn’t work?”

  She felt the inside of her cheek with the tip of her tongue, knowing full well Cameron was just trying to get her to say it aloud. “He was a poet, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t a useful and important person!”

  Much to her surprise, his tone softened. She expected a full onslaught of sarcasm. “Not much use for a poet in a laboratory, is there?” He tenderly touched her arm, pulling her from her post at the window. “He brought this on himself. He should’ve never come up here.”

  “I disappeared.”

  “You were helping me.”

  “You attacked him!” She knew it was a ridiculous accusation, but it tumbled from her lips before she could stop it.

  “He pushed you. I had to,” Cameron replied, his eyes intense but caring. A trail of blood-tinted water snaked from the back of his head down his neck. “Are you sure this new house is going to be empty? I don’t have to tell you, driving around with him in the back is a bit of a liability.”

  Penelope nodded, her extremities tingling and numb. “Yeah, the Conrads only come up in the winter. They have enough money they don’t rent it out during the summer.”

  “And it isn’t far?”

  “Just around the side of the lake, maybe a twenty minute drive.”

  Cameron released her arm and surveyed the cabin. They’d stripped it, and the scientist’s of anything they might possibly need. “You know you won’t be able to come back here until after this is done.”

  All of the wonderful memories from her childhood, the times she hoped to pass on to her own children, were now stained with her actions from the past week. Lies, blood… Jesus Christ. Kidnapping. “I’m not sure I’ll want to…”

  He made sure all their bags were packed in the back while she locked up the house for good. She stared down at the silver key in her hand. With the electronic security system they had in place, it was little more than nostalgia. With every fiber of her being, she wanted to throw that key as far as she could into the shrubs. Instead, she dutifully slipped it on top of the doorframe, where it’d existed for decades.

  It was a strange thought, but she felt as though she were standing on a precipice. The moment she left that cabin, she was leaving her old life behind. It was ridiculous. She knew she’d made dozens of little decisions that had brought her to this moment. Every step of the way was a tiny precipice, a jump down she would have a hard time climbing back up from. But this moment felt significant.

  With her eyes on Joey, she climbed into the car and took her place beside him. She didn’t dare look up to Cameron for fear of the sympathy, or even apathy, she might see returned in his gaze.

  Wesley looked up at her through his bushy, judgmental eyebrows. “Can we please get…”

  Penelope rattled off the address for their family friend’s cabin. The car zipped into motion, taking her away from a life she recognized. At one point in the short journey, she reached over to touch Joey’s knee. He couldn’t see or hear. No one had explained anything to him. Short of a quick flashlight in the eyes to confirm he didn’t have a concussion, she wasn’t even sure he was feeling alright.

  The moment her fingers grazed the denim on his knee, he jolted away from the touch. Her hand hovered over his leg, shaking. She stared at it, willing herself to return to her own lap and not push him any further.

  The Conrad’s house was at the top of a narrow pass, the road a series of switchbacks leading to a dead end. The houses were tightly packed at the base of the mountain, but at the top, they couldn’t even see their neighbors. The
dense pine forest blocked any view, but they still checked their surroundings carefully before moving in.

  Cameron proved adept at breaking into the cabin. They were lucky. The Conrads were a much more old-fashioned kind of family. Penelope even remembered them saying a few years back that they didn’t lock their doors when they came to stay.

  “I remember a time when we didn’t have to fear our neighbors,” Jeb had said, his wry smile trying to hide the true sadness to that memory.

  They shuffled Joey in. Penelope was careful to guide him away from any obstacles. He was tense under her hand. She tried to tell herself she’d feel exactly the same way if their roles were reversed.

  Once safely inside, the trio let out a collective sigh of relief. Judging by the amount of dust on everything, it seemed that the family hadn’t even made it up to the cabin since the previous year. She hadn’t realized how much anxiety she’d been holding until they were tucked away behind the closed doors, in a new place no one would think to look. They were alone and safe, for now.

  “Now what?” she asked when she finally summoned the courage.

  Wesley gestured to the tablet in front of him. “Never in my wildest nightmares could I have imagined this,” he muttered. It was uncharacteristic.

  “How could the Seed cause millions of simultaneous miscarriages? Do you think it’s able to spread throughout the body?”

  Penelope rubbed her arm to keep from shivering at the thought. It’d been bad enough watching Wesley extract the threads from Cameron’s brain. To think they could be throughout the body…

  “No, no need. Almost everything our body does is regulated by hormones. If there was even the slightest shift internally, it could easily trigger the body to expel a fetus, at any stage.”

  The men carried on debating semantics. They were hypothesizing in the dark and completely missing the whole point.

  “Why?” Penelope whispered in a break of conversation. The looked up from the floor, nausea rolling her empty stomach. “Why would they do this?”

  Both brilliant men were at a loss. She pressed on, thinking aloud.

  “You said you thought these were the actions of someone clumsy. They were fumbling around, basically cooking their victims brains while trying to figure out how to control them, right?”

  The old man shrugged with one shoulder, unable to meet her eye. “It was one of many theories.”

  “But this doesn’t match that theory, does it? This was deliberate. This wasn’t some savant hacker messing with something above their skill level. This was blatant, outright evil.”

  Cameron scuffed his toe on the dirty floor and leaned back against the wall, arms crossed. “You know better than to assign good or evil to these sorts of things. It is what it is.”

  The old man’s face crumpled as he shook his head. “Clusters of cells were rejected by the host. It doesn’t mean it was deliberate.”

  Penelope balked. “Those clusters of cells were children to those women and families. Literally millions of people…”

  “Miscarriages happen every day, Pen.”

  She held him with a pointed, surprised gaze. “And does that knowledge make it any easier when it happens to you?”

  Cameron’s eyes darted to Joey who sat deaf and dumb to the conversation happening only feet away. He didn’t dare reply.

  If Wesley sensed the tension between the pair, he made no sign of it. He was more intrigued by her idea of the act being deliberate.

  “Say this was an attack. You have to admit, it’s quite a brilliant one. Physical, psychological, practical… I can’t think of a time in modern warfare any such attack was able to do all those things at once.”

  The awe in his voice made her feel even more sick to her stomach. She looked back to her husband and said a silent prayer of thanks they hadn’t been trying for another like he’d wanted. “I need to tell Joey what’s happening. I can’t let him sit there thinking…”

  Cameron sighed. “You can’t.”

  “I’ll be careful,” she replied, her tone leaving no room for argument.

  She collected her husband, who didn’t put up a fight, and led him into a bedroom at the far end of the cabin where they could have some privacy.

  Penelope guided Joey to a white, wicker chair in the corner of the room. A single window cast dim, forested light into the wood-paneled room. The air was stale and stifling, but she couldn’t risk him hearing anything other than the sound of her voice.

  She removed the headphones but not the pillowcase. She considered prying the gag from his mouth at the same time, but decided she’d at least explain her side of the story before giving him a chance to butt in. Unfair perhaps, given the circumstances, but necessary.

  “It’s me,” she whispered. He gestured with his hands, urging her to continue freeing him from his shackles. Tears welled in her eyes as she shook her head. “I’m sorry, I can’t. You have to let me explain.”

  Joey slammed his heels against the floor, rocking himself and the chair backwards in a futile attempt to break free. The gag caught his muffled screams. The noise brought Cameron running into the room.

  Penelope held him at bay with her hand. “It’s okay. You’re safe. You’re safe, please calm down. Please.”

  Cameron held onto the door, silently keeping an eye on the situation until Joey stilled. She nodded to him to leave and took her place on the bed. Joey turned his head at the squeak of the springs but snapped away, showing he had no interest in listening to her.

  She held the headphones in her hands, her nails running along the hard plastic as if counting beads on a rosary.

  “I know what it must’ve looked like to you, finding me with Cam like that. Maybe I should’ve told you what was going on, but you have to believe I only kept it from you for your own protection.”

  Joey grunted and turned further away in the chair. With the gag still in place, he had no way of replying. Physically, he did everything he could to show her he hand no interest in her excuses.

  “I lied about why we came up here a few weeks ago. I didn’t want a mini-vacation. I wanted to find my father’s partner. All these things that are happening, the murders, the suicides…”

  Her throat clicked as she swallowed. She hadn’t yet accepted what she was about to say, not deeply, not in her heart.

  “Somehow, it’s linked to Seeds. I don’t think my brother has anything to do with it. I don’t even know if he’s aware of the connection. What you saw were the remains of us removing Cameron’s.”

  He shifted again, less violently this time.

  “We can’t just deactivate them. There’s a whole authentication process. We’d have to be inside the facility with access to…” She straightened with a quick breath and shook out her arms, trying to get rid of the building stress.

  “They can track us through you. Until we know what’s safe and what isn’t, I’m sorry.” She glanced at the door to make sure Cameron wasn’t there and whispered, “I’ll try to get them to let you go. As long as you promise not to come looking for us again, I don’t see why they’d have a problem with it.”

  His hooded head whipped around. Through the gag, he mumbled something that sounded very close to fuck you.

  She touched his hand, hoping a bit of contact might ease his anger. He tore it away, springing to his feet. The chair slammed against the wall with a loud crack.

  “Wait!”

  Cameron flew into the room so fast he must’ve been waiting in the hall. He quickly wrestled Joey into submission, hog-tying his hands and feet in the back. Grunting and screaming into the gag, Joey threw himself around on the floor, resisting his captivity.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. Hot tears rolled down her cheeks as she replaced the headphones.

  Chapter Two

  New York City, NY

  July 4th

  “Doctor, I can’t thank you enough for coming,” Christopher said at the door.

  She wasn’t sure how he’d managed to get a doctor
to make a house call in the middle of all the chaos, but she’d never felt more loved.

  The harried doctor didn’t look a day over thirty. He’d come in normal street clothes, a backpack slung over his shoulder. The ongoing crisis stretched into its second day and the poor man didn’t look like he’d slept more than an hour or two.

  “I told you on the phone, I’m not an OB/GYN.”

  “I know, I know. Can you please just take a look, though? Our normal doctor is obviously busy right now and…”

  “Sure, yeah,” he breathed. He approached with his hand outstretched. “I’m Doctor Holley. I understand you’re currently pregnant. How far along?”

  Kristine had felt fine up until this point. She shook his hand and watched as he slipped on a pair of gloves. The reality of the situation sinking in for the first time.

  What if there is something wrong with the baby? Oh God, what if…

  “She’s a little over eleven weeks,” Christopher answered for her.

  The doctor nodded and continued speaking directly to her. “And you’re feeling fine? No bleeding or pain?”

  “No,” she squeaked out.

  “Good, that’s good.”

  He listened to her breathing, took her heart rate, looked in her ears, eyes, and mouth. When he suggested they move to the bed to perform the pelvic exam, she thought she was going to faint. His grip on her elbow tightened.

  “I’m sorry. This is just a little…”

  “You’re fine, not to worry,” the doctor replied. “You know? I used to walk past these buildings when I was doing my residency. I lived just a couple blocks away on Columbus.”